00:00:00
She was a person out of a 40s film noir movie. She was a stunner physically. And she had a strange hold over men.
00:00:10
She was able to say jump and the men would say how high. One of those men was her husband.
00:00:17
He said she's just fun and vivacious and we have a good time. But the good times ended.
00:00:24
He disappeared. And so did she. leaving behind a very close friend. They bought matching underwear together.
00:00:33
A mystery. How deep a hole did you dig? 19 and 19. And a murder. It was a love triangle and one of them had to go.
00:00:44
Here's Keith Morrison with a story of poison. It was September 11, 2001. just about everybody knows where they were that awful day.
00:00:58
Like the glamorous trio that was traveling north through California's Yosemite National Park.
00:01:05
Even as the rest of the world's attention was focused on New York City, they were intent on their own urgent needs,
00:01:13
their desires, their fears, their deadly love triangle. So they probably didn't appreciate the passing wonders,
00:01:21
the astonishing cliffs, the waterfalls, the giant sequoias, any more than the one in the back seat, through fading eyes, saw anything at all.
00:01:34
His name was Larry McNabney, and he was a tall, handsome man, a well-known and respected attorney
00:01:41
from Nevada. A personal injury specialist, made buckets of money, loved the big life,
00:01:47
love being in control. There was never a hair out of place. There wasn't dust on his desk. His pen
00:01:55
was always in the same spot. Larry's daughter, Tavia, was crazy about him in awe of his type A
00:02:03
personality, his joy of life, his courtroom presence. I loved to go to the courtroom and
00:02:11
watch my dad. It was mesmerizing to me. He was completely confident, not an ounce of shyness.
00:02:21
He commanded the courtroom. I've been a trial lawyer for over 20 years. A good attorney and
00:02:26
perhaps as important, very good at the business of law. Larry's longtime friend, Fred Acheson.
00:02:34
He could open 50 files a month in personal injury litigation, which made him a rich man.
00:02:41
But nobody's perfect, of course. And for all of Larry's unquestioned talents, the man carried around with him a raft of corresponding demons.
00:02:52
I know he had a difficult childhood and that a lot of your personality is shaped when you're a child.
00:03:03
And as an adult, Larry struggled with alcohol and women. He married and divorced several times.
00:03:11
It was like a void he was trying to fill, and he never could fill it. In fact, from time to time, Larry had gone on benders and just vanished, weeks at a time.
00:03:23
And everybody would worry and wonder, and sure enough, he'd show up again. I had a t-shirt made up once, yellow with black letters, saying,
00:03:32
Where is Larry McNabney? But then, finally, Larry, well into his 40s, seemed to get his act together for real.
00:03:40
He set up a new office in Las Vegas. Everything clicked, possibly for an attractive reason, as Tavia discovered.
00:03:49
I went by the office one day, and he said, I have someone I want you to meet. He said, this is Elisa.
00:03:59
Elisa, 17 years younger than Larry, and he was in love. And he said she's just fun and vivacious and she's young and it's just we have a good time.
00:04:14
Davia didn't stand in the way. She wanted her dad to be happy. And he welcomed the new person in.
00:04:21
It's my dad, so I didn't want anything that would inhibit me from spending time with him.
00:04:28
And he really cared for this woman. He did. Larry and Elisa thrived both personally and professionally
00:04:37
they got married Elisa became his office manager they opened up a firm in Sacramento, California
00:04:43
another big success so they hired a young attractive college student named Sarah Dutra
00:04:49
the outgoing daughter of deeply religious parents who soon became a friend as well as a sort of personal
00:04:56
and office assistant and together Elisa and Larry enjoyed the high life She was into the same thing that Larry loved, and style.
00:05:08
They went out and bought Viper cars together. They also shared Larry's newest passion, quarter horses.
00:05:17
Larry would show horses and show himself, which fit in with Larry looking good and feeling good.
00:05:26
Larry could do more of what he liked, while young Sarah pitched in to help Elisa run the business end of Larry's law practice.
00:05:33
Just about perfect. Though Larry's friend Fred was a bit of a stick in the mud about it.
00:05:39
The fact that she took control of his business allowed him to engage in drinking and partying.
00:05:45
Which is not really what Larry needed. No, he didn't need that. Because his appetites would run amok.
00:05:53
So when after nearly seven years of marriage Larry suddenly dropped out of sight close friends weren extremely alarmed at first After all Larry had gone on drunken benders before
00:06:07
But this time, as days stretched into weeks, it seemed different. Extremely odd.
00:06:14
Ginger Miller started working at the law firm as a secretary in September 2001, just about the time Larry went missing.
00:06:20
Elisa kept the business going in his absence, but couldn't seem to settle on what the staff should tell people about Larry.
00:06:28
I was told to tell his kids and different people in his family different things.
00:06:32
So I was told that he was golfing or skiing someplace they probably couldn't get a hold of him at.
00:06:37
So it was all obvious BS. Yeah, yeah, and then if it was a client, I would have to say that he was working on the deposition,
00:06:43
he was with another client, and he had to fly out. Larry's kids didn't know what to think.
00:06:49
And I said to my brother, this doesn't sound right. Why do the stories keep changing?
00:06:55
October arrived. Still no Larry. Thanksgiving. In December, he was always with family on his birthday.
00:07:03
But still no sign of Larry McNabney. I didn't get a good feeling. And what I worried about was, had something gone wrong and Dad was scared and he took off?
00:07:15
Had Larry offended the wrong person? Tavia had a friend in law enforcement who told her.
00:07:22
You have to look at it two ways. Either if he's in hiding, he's not going to be happy you found him.
00:07:28
Because obviously he's hiding for a reason. Or something's happened to him. Meanwhile, back at the office, Ginger was hearing things.
00:07:39
Worrisome things. Until she just couldn't keep it in anymore. I went to the sheriff's department and wasn't sure what to do.
00:07:48
So I just asked for a piece of paper, and I slid it under the window. Detectives got her note all right, and thus figured they should have a chat with Elisa McNabney.
00:07:59
But by the time they went looking for her, just like Larry, she was gone. Coming up, investigators begin to fill in the missing pieces about the mysterious and now missing Elisa.
00:08:15
He called me up and said, Fred, I don't know who she is, if her name is what she says it is or anything.
00:08:34
By the dawn of 2002, while the rest of us were getting used to a post-9-11 new normal,
00:08:40
It seemed pretty clear that something very abnormal must have happened to that successful personal injury attorney, Larry McNabney.
00:08:48
Nobody had seen him in five months. He'd never been on a bender for this long. And now his wife, Elisa, was missing too.
00:08:56
By this time, Ginger had dropped off her note at the sheriff's office, and detectives were poking around in the abandoned remains of Larry's law practice,
00:09:05
talking to employees, like Sarah Dutra, the attractive 21-year-old art student from Sacramento
00:09:12
State who worked at the McNabney Law Firm as an office secretary. She brought her little dog,
00:09:18
Ralph, with her to the sheriff's office. Sarah told the detectives that she and Elisa had become
00:09:23
close friends, and so she, Sarah, certainly noticed how erratic Elisa became after Larry went missing.
00:09:31
things will start as not seem right like you know Elisa won't come to work all the time
00:09:37
there you know Sarah confirmed what Ginger Miller said that Elisa kept changing her explanations for Larry's whereabouts
00:09:46
and Sarah said she saw Elisa signing Larry's name on checks and day to day business transactions
00:09:52
I figured she's keeping business going for him so he can go play or do whatever he's doing
00:09:59
In early January 2002, said Sarah, Elisa planned a trip to Arizona to attend a horse show.
00:10:08
And in the absence of Larry, invited Sarah to go along. I was going to fly down the next day.
00:10:16
And she told me I needed to get paid for and all about. But when Sarah got to the airport, the ticket was not paid for.
00:10:26
And that was that, said Sarah. She hadn't heard from Elisa since. Thomas Testa was the San Joaquin County prosecutor.
00:10:52
He'd handled a number of missing persons cases, and so when he heard about the case of Larry and Elisa McNabney,
00:10:58
he gravitated toward it. He was an attorney with a caseload who just disappeared.
00:11:04
This isn't someone who's a homeless person who just vanishes and you think maybe they took a greyhound and went to Nevada.
00:11:09
Testa began by taking a good hard look at Elisa. She was a person out of a 40s film noir movie
00:11:18
in that she was a stunner physically. Everyone said that, but more importantly, she had a control over men that just amazed me.
00:11:27
She was able to say jump and the men would say how high. It certainly seemed true for Larry.
00:11:34
So said his old friend Fred Acheson. She was controlling him to the extent that she was keeping him away from his family and his former friends.
00:11:44
Did that include the relationship he had with you? No question about it. You found yourself shut out?
00:11:49
Yeah. So did Larry's daughter, Tavia. Elisa completely cut me out of the picture and I was devastated But why Why was Elisa keeping Larry away from his family and friends What did she have to hide He called me up once on the phone and said Fred I don know
00:12:08
who she is. And, you know, I thought he meant, well, we don't really ever know who our spouses
00:12:15
are deep down. And he said, no, I don't even know if this is who she is, if her name is what she
00:12:21
says it is or anything. By then, said Fred, Larry had discovered ample reason to stop trusting Elisa.
00:12:28
He couldn't keep his wallet in his pants. He told you that? Yeah. She would steal money out of his
00:12:34
wallet. He had to hide his wallet in his own house. Turned out she was also stealing from the law firm.
00:12:42
She'd ripped him off for how much? Any idea? Over a hundred thousand dollars. Larry told Fred all
00:12:49
about his troubles with Elisa. And yet, he kept her around. Not like he hadn't divorced women before,
00:12:56
but not this one. Tavia didn't get it. I mean, he always said she has this hold over me,
00:13:03
and I never understood what that meant. And Larry's comments to Fred about not knowing his wife?
00:13:09
Well, his suspicions turned out to be true. A little research told detectives that the real
00:13:15
woman behind the name Elisa McNabney had a considerable criminal rap sheet, including stolen
00:13:21
property, credit card fraud, grand theft. She really had a way of ingratiating herself with men and
00:13:30
using her female charms, and she was very, very good at it. She was a true and true con artist.
00:13:37
So was Elisa just conning Larry? Surely, thought Fred, she wouldn't have done away with him,
00:13:44
Would she? It wouldn't make any sense even for a dedicated polecat to do anything like that
00:13:50
because he was the goose that laid the golden egg. It wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.
00:14:01
It was a farm worker who noticed a flock of vultures or buzzards drifting above grape fields.
00:14:10
Saw something sticking out of the ground. And soon, a missing person's case turned into something much, much worse, and considerably more bizarre.
00:14:23
It was February 2002. A remote vineyard up in the northern end of California's Central Valley.
00:14:45
A farm worker, checking the outer reaches of a giant field of grape, couldn't help but see the big birds
00:14:51
wheeling round and round. Something out there. Vultures were circling. He spotted the vultures,
00:14:59
and so he went out to see what they were circling. Investigator Javier Ramos and Lieutenant Robert Bookwalder
00:15:08
worked with the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department at the time. They were among the first on the scene.
00:15:14
Must be some dead animal or something. Well, I believe he said that. That's what he figured he was going to find.
00:15:18
just some dead animal out there. But it wasn't a dead animal. The leg that was sticking out of the ground
00:15:25
was decidedly human. And soon Larry's daughter, Tavia, heard the news. I got a call from the sheriff's department.
00:15:34
I felt myself get really hot and nauseous. And she said that the body they found,
00:15:43
the dental records, it was him. and I remember I never swear and I yelled out this cuss word
00:15:51
and I slammed down the phone and I just started shaking was a moment in time that I've never felt
00:16:00
such anguish it's still raw even now it is because I thought I don't know I thought
00:16:08
I guess I was hoping he was in hiding Very fortunate that the body was discovered, and now we can move on and investigate it as a homicide.
00:16:24
Homicide? Oh, yes. Ample proof now, five months after he vanished. Larry had been murdered and left to rot out in the middle of nowhere.
00:16:36
There weren't any stab wounds or any bullet holes. There were no obvious signs of Larry's cause of death, so they looked further and found something very unusual.
00:16:48
The medical examiner was able to find out that the cause of death was poisoning with a horse tranquilizer.
00:16:55
Horse tranquilizer? Yes. Now that was strange, but get this. He'd been dead for an extended period of time.
00:17:04
However, the body had not decomposed consistent with the time frame that we were looking at.
00:17:09
Meaning? Meaning that it was preserved. Kept cold. One of the first things that I thought is where would the person that killed Larry,
00:17:17
where would they have access to like a walk-in refrigerator? Large enough to hold a human body.
00:17:23
Detectives wanted answers. And so did Larry's daughter, Tavia, who sometimes believed she could hear her father in her sleep.
00:17:31
When I would go to sleep at night, I would wake up and I would hear him calling for me to help him.
00:17:37
And I didn't know what to do. And I didn't understand what was going on. Sometimes people get a sense of knowing either what or who was responsible.
00:17:48
Did you? I knew Elisa had done something. Larry much younger wife Elisa she vanished a few months after he did and now that Larry was dead she was the prime suspect in his murder Sheriff deputies and the FBI finally tracked her down in March 2002 in Florida
00:18:10
She cut her hair short and changed her name. Lisa was now going by the name of Shane Iveroni and was working as a paralegal at a Florida law firm.
00:18:22
Elisa was a very smart person. She had, I believe, 140 IQ. She could talk anybody into anything.
00:18:29
Right. But now that she was finally exposed for the con artist she was and was in custody,
00:18:36
Elisa decided to tell her story, starting at long last with her legal name. My whole name is Laren.
00:18:45
L-A-R-E-N. L-A-R-E-N. My middle name is Renee, R-E-N-E-E. Okay. My main name is Sims, S-I-M-S.
00:18:57
Okay. And Elisa, where did that come from? Change, or you just wanted a different name?
00:19:02
No, I don't. Florida, man. You know, I mean, I was a kid that came from Florida.
00:19:09
Elisa, or Lauren, was from Massachusetts and was a mother of two. She was wanted in Florida for violating probation on a burglary and theft charge
00:19:19
and had been on the run for nine years, she said. She eventually settled in Las Vegas, where she met Larry
00:19:25
and by this time had changed her name to Elisa. She told the police that she was at the horse show in Arizona
00:19:32
when she found out police wanted to talk to her about Larry. And so she took off in her Jaguar, drove from state to state.
00:19:41
Where have you met her at this point? I'm just away. So, with the preliminaries out of the way, now came the big question.
00:19:52
What happened to Larry McNabney? Elisa, without hesitation and without even being asked, spilled the beans.
00:20:02
Did I kill my husband? Yes, I killed my husband. There it was. No apology, no evasion.
00:20:08
She simply confessed to killing her husband, Larry McNabney. But, and this was a but with a capital B, that wasn't the whole story.
00:20:20
Not even close. Coming up, the rest of the story. Did Elisa have help? And I was freaked.
00:20:31
She was not thrown me the whole lot. Yes, and I was freaking out. She? Who was she?
00:20:38
When Poison continues. There is a purity to confession, a real cleansing of the soul.
00:20:57
And now, after months on the lam, Elisa McNabney, a.k.a. Laryn Renee Sims, etc., etc.,
00:21:05
was finally in custody and offloading the secrets of a lifetime. Didn't hold back.
00:21:10
Yes, she killed Larry, her husband of nearly seven years, she said. But it wasn't her idea.
00:21:19
I said, I don't know who you're doing. She said, we have to kill him. And I said, we can't kill him.
00:21:27
She said, who was this other woman who pushed Elisa to commit murder? Turned out detectives had already talked with her.
00:21:37
Remember Sarah Dutra, the young secretary, Elisa's friend, who came in with her little dog and had been so helpful to detectives
00:21:44
after Larry and Elisa disappeared? Now Elisa was saying that killing Larry was Sarah's idea.
00:21:55
Elisa told the story this way. Larry was a heavy drinker and drug user. He was abusive, she claimed, and she feared for her life.
00:22:04
One day she said she confided in her young friend Sarah, and Sarah said there was just one thing to do,
00:22:10
kill Larry McNabney. And now in a three-hour-long interview, Elisa went into detail after gruesome detail
00:22:18
of how she and Sarah did it. Elisa and Larry were at a horse show in Los Angeles, she said,
00:22:25
and Sarah flew down to meet them, or rather to meet Elisa, since Larry didn't like Sarah, said Elisa.
00:22:32
That was September 9th, 2001. According to Elisa, Larry had already passed out after imbibing a little horse tranquilizer on his own for fun.
00:23:00
So Sarah decided, according to Elisa, to just give him more. And no one would ever find out.
00:23:09
Oh, God. It seemed like a good idea at the time, guys. Oh, my God. It's so horrible. I think it's taken somebody's life.
00:23:18
Well, Larry slept, said Elisa. She and Sarah squirted drops of horse tranquilizer into his mouth.
00:23:25
But Larry didn't die. Instead, the next day on September 10th, Larry got up, showed his horse, and then went right back to bed.
00:23:36
Next morning, he's like lying there and I thought he was dead. And so I wake Sarah up and say, I think it's dead.
00:23:46
And she pushes him and she says, no, he's not dead. But he was so heavily drugged, he couldn't walk.
00:23:53
So we went down the street and rented a wheelchair. And I got him dressed and put him in the wheelchair
00:24:00
I went out to my truck, our truck, and put in the back seat of the truck. And we drove.
00:24:07
This, by the way, was September 11, 2001. Everyone else in the known world preoccupied elsewhere.
00:24:14
Well, Elisa and Sarah drove north through California, with Larry slowly dying in the back seat of the truck.
00:24:22
We stopped in Yosemite, somewhere in Yosemite, and Sarah got out and started digging a hole.
00:24:28
I figured so. alive, okay? And I freaked out. She was going to throw me the whole lot. Yeah. And I was freaking
00:24:36
out. I said, we can't put him in there. He's alive. We can't do that. So, she said, they drove on.
00:24:45
They thought Larry would die in the car, but he didn't. So, when they finally made it back to
00:24:51
Larry and Elise's home near Sacramento, Larry was slipping in and out of consciousness, still alive.
00:24:58
And then like 6 o'clock in the morning, the sun starts coming up. And Sarah sleeps late, you know, and so I immediately go out there and he was dead.
00:25:13
That was the morning of September 12. And Sarah said, well, we can't leave him lying here.
00:25:20
so we take the sheet that he was lying on and we wrapped it around him and then we took duct tape and wrapped it around him
00:25:32
and he was like in a crotch position and then in my garage he had this wine refrigerator
00:25:39
you know like a regular refrigerator but he literally kept lining it so we took the wine out of it
00:25:45
and we took the racks out of it and we put them in it They stuffed Larry's body in the refrigerator while they decided what to do with it.
00:25:55
We talked about marrying my backyard. We talked about marrying my trainers. We talked about taking it in a desert and burning the body.
00:26:05
But they couldn't quite decide. And so they kept Larry's body in the refrigerator for three months.
00:26:13
And then they decided to take it to Las Vegas. Find some place there to bury it How much does he weigh?
00:26:22
He weighed a lot I'm having a hard time seeing you two picking up this big guy We need to lay the trailer tire down
00:26:29
In front of the refrigerator Open the refrigerator and lay the trailer tire down
00:26:33
Slide them up, put them on the trailer tire And then back the jack up really close to the trailer tire
00:26:39
And then it was only like that much different So then we just pushed off the tire into the trunk.
00:26:48
Exactly, and he was like, shaped like this, you know. So then we put him in the trunk, and he was like this,
00:26:56
and we closed the trunk, and we went to Las Vegas. En route to Las Vegas, with their two dogs in the back seat,
00:27:04
Larry in the trunk, along with two shovels. Once there, Sarah hung out at a hotel with the dogs.
00:27:11
Elisa went out looking for a burial place for Larry, but when she started digging, she said, the ground was too hard.
00:27:30
So, Elisa said, they drove back to California. And the next morning, at 4 o'clock, she drove out to a vineyard,
00:27:38
dug a hole, and buried him. It's not even her coffee as well. That was Elisa's story.
00:27:50
And just a few hours after she finished telling it, California detectives hauled in Sarah Dutra,
00:27:55
the alleged driver of the whole plot. And her story? Well, it was a little different.
00:28:05
Coming up is Sarah Dutra a cold killer Or an innocent who was just trying to survive I didn want to end on my ass
00:28:18
When Dateline continues. I'm here tonight to encourage you to let the chips fall where the chips fall.
00:28:36
do not protect Elisa anymore don't protect yourself either just tell the truth but is she like you criminally somehow?
00:28:46
Sarah Dutra appeared confused no little dog to keep her company now her close friend Elisa McNabney
00:28:53
had confessed to murdering her husband Larry and claimed that Sarah just 21 years old at the time
00:28:58
not only helped with the murder but was actually the driving force behind it What do you think Elise is doing right about now?
00:29:10
She is lying about what really happened. Are you a cold-blooded killer? Or are you somebody that got caught up in some stuff and made some mistakes?
00:29:21
They confronted her with Elise's written confession. Basically, it says, I, Lauren Jordan, along with Sarah Dutra,
00:29:29
planned to overdose Larry McNamney with horse tranquilizer. Now, I'm not denying that that conversation couldn't have happened,
00:29:38
but I never thought that she would have carried it out and taken me along with her unknowingly.
00:29:44
She's evil, and she's trying to do this, to pull me down with her, because she's been jealous of me. I know she has.
00:29:53
Explain that to me, Ben. Why is she doing this? Make me believe it, Sarah. Sarah Dutra broke down and told detectives her side of the story.
00:30:10
And in this version, it was Elisa, not Sarah, who was the cold-blooded killer. It was Elisa, she said, who dosed Larry with horse tranquilizer.
00:30:19
Elisa, who ordered Sarah to bury him in Yosemite, even before he was dead. I was just going to get out.
00:30:32
Okay. I wanted you to know I was so afraid. I thought you wanted me to. Elisa, who was eerily calm when Larry finally did expire.
00:30:44
And he was laying there on the ground. I said, what is he laying on the ground for you?
00:30:49
Why is he not laying in bed? And she said, he's dead. And I'm not. That was the morning of September 12th,
00:31:04
after the long and harrowing drive home from the horse show in Los Angeles, said Sarah.
00:31:09
And through her tears, she told the detectives how Larry's body ended up in the refrigerator.
00:31:14
her. crazy thing? For one reason, she said, she was deathly afraid of Elisa. Was it possible? An innocent young woman in the thrall of a con artist and killer?
00:32:03
Sarah Dutra seemed so frightened, so emotional. And yet, thought the detective. I felt a little bit over the top.
00:32:12
She was a little over the top. Yeah. You mean she was acting putting it on I believe so After more than nine hours of questioning Sarah Dutra was arrested and charged with Larry murder
00:32:32
It was a classic crime story. Two killers, mutual finger-pointing. And prosecutors knew they could use each woman's testimony against the other.
00:32:41
An easy checkmate. That is, until Elisa took herself off the board. On March 30th, 13 days after her arrest, a jailer found her hanging by the neck in her cell.
00:32:54
A suicide. A million questions for Lisa. And now that door has been slammed shut.
00:33:05
And now Sarah, left holding the bag, would face murder charges alone. Coming up, the prosecutor had to prove that Sarah was equally responsible for Larry McNabney's
00:33:21
death. But with Elisa gone, whose story would the jury believe? When you try only one defendant, it's very easy, as it was for Sarah Dutra, to point
00:33:31
the finger at the one who's not there. It was the winter of 2003, more than a year after Larry McNabney was poisoned with horse tranquilizer.
00:33:52
His admitted killer, his wife, Elisa McNabney, chose her own destiny. And her alleged accomplice, Sarah Dutra, alone,
00:34:01
faced the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars. You attended the trial every day?
00:34:08
Yes, 11 and a half weeks. Why? Why? Our DA had talked to us about the importance of our family being represented,
00:34:17
that my dad not being forgotten. Tavia believed that her father died at the hands of both Elisa and Sarah.
00:34:24
But while Sarah admitted to being there when Larry died, and in the days and months that followed,
00:34:30
she adamantly claimed she never went to the police because she was so afraid of Elisa
00:34:35
and of ending up just like Larry. A theory that even prosecutor Thomas Testa found...
00:34:42
Huh? ...believable. When I first got this case, people in my office will tell you that's exactly what I was saying walking up and down the halls.
00:34:50
Poor Sarah, she's a victim here. Poor Sarah, she's just an aider and a better. But as I got deeper into the case, I totally turned around on this.
00:34:57
But I started with that very mindset. As Testa reviewed the evidence in preparation for trial,
00:35:03
he became convinced that Sarah Dutra was in fact the woman in charge. Sarah did not like Larry
00:35:10
She always accused him of being full of himself Talking about himself all the time
00:35:15
Self-centered She didn't like him So Larry didn't want Sarah around Sarah did not like Larry
00:35:22
You know, this sounds to me like two people Who both love Elisa and want the other out of the way
00:35:27
That's it, that's exactly it It was a love triangle And one of them had to go Sarah, said Prosecutor Testa
00:35:36
was enjoying a very fancy life with Elisa, and Larry was simply in the way. If your theory is right,
00:35:44
these are two kind of good-time girls who have got this great relationship, and they're living off the proceeds of Larry.
00:35:51
Why get rid of him? They have no motive. Larry was Elisa's golden goose, but Elisa was Sarah's golden goose.
00:35:59
And Sarah was about to be cut out of this whole triangle. Larry had just told her the day before he was killed,
00:36:05
two days before he was killed, that he wanted her gone, he wanted her fired. So, said Testa, it was Sarah who had the motive to kill Larry.
00:36:16
Sarah's lawyer, of course, saw it differently. It seems like a classic instance of evil sort of wrapping around a sweet young little baby.
00:36:31
At the trial defense attorney Kevin Climo portrayed Elisa as a black widow a sophisticated con artist who wanted her husband dead And Sarah was her innocent and terrified pawn
00:36:56
Really? Now, Prosecutor Testa introduced Ginger Miller. Remember her, the other secretary who worked alongside Sarah and Elisa?
00:37:05
She said in the days and weeks after Larry vanished, Elisa and Sarah seemed to feel anything but remorse.
00:37:12
They're laughing together. They're shopping together. They're eating together. They're sleeping in the same bed together.
00:37:18
She's living at her house. So they were not really working, were they? They were. They would get maybe two hours of work done a day.
00:37:25
And what'd they do the rest of the time? Just party? shop, hang out, sleep late, go flirt with boys.
00:37:32
All the while spending the firm's money, Larry's money, a lot of money. Elisa got a red Jaguar, Sarah got a red BMW.
00:37:42
Such close friends, or maybe more than friends. They bought matching underwear together.
00:37:49
Come on. No, my first week they're like, look what we bought. They pulled up, they both had wearing matching underwear.
00:37:56
They were best friends. They were blowing through money so fast they fell behind on rent payments for the law office.
00:38:04
Got evicted. So they moved the office into Elisa and Larry's home. Which, according to Ginger, now seemed more like Elisa and Sarah's home.
00:38:14
Yep, in the rooms they had no clothes of Larry's. The closet was cleaned out. And in the bathroom, hers and Sarah made the sinks hers and hers instead of his and hers.
00:38:24
Like they knew he wasn't coming back. Well, she said, yeah, they were pretty much moving him out.
00:38:29
Well, not quite, because all this time, remember, Larry's body was still in the garage, still in the refrigerator.
00:38:37
And as for the idea that Sarah was an innocent child, Elisa's puppet, that was nonsense, said Ginger.
00:38:44
Everybody knows that she wasn't terrified of her. Sarah had as much say as Elisa had in the whole situation.
00:38:50
But at her trial, Sarah, the daughter of those devout Christians, sat quietly at the defense table, a wide-eyed innocent.
00:38:59
Elisa wasn't around to be cross-examined, so her videotaped confession didn't get played for the jury.
00:39:06
And with no DNA, no prints, no trace evidence, no living eyewitnesses, the case against Sarah was entirely circumstantial.
00:39:16
It's first-degree murder. It's first-degree murder, yeah. But would the jury see it the way he did?
00:39:23
After four days of deliberations, the jury found Sarah Dutra guilty of voluntary manslaughter and accessory to murder, not first-degree murder.
00:39:35
Hedging up in a young, attractive, tall blonde whose parents were clutching Bibles crying in the first row, one wonders if this verdict would have been the same.
00:39:45
Sarah Dutra was sentenced to 11 years served 8 and in the summer of 2011 at age 31
00:39:54
she was released it's painful to know that such little time was given for such a horrific crime
00:40:04
and one that seemed so premeditated to me and so thought out and so callous to the end
00:40:11
Sarah Dutra has not responded to our interview request and Tavia says she has forgiven Sarah
00:40:19
as much for her own sake as anything. Will I ever forget what she's done? Never.
00:40:27
But I don't want to have my whole life be their cruelty and the things they chose to do to him.
00:40:36
I'd rather remember the loving times we had together and they're not going to take that away from me.
00:40:45
you