00:00:00
The wedding was beautiful. I thought he was the love of my life. I wanted all of this to be behind us and go on happily ever after.
00:00:26
A single mom meets single dad. He was very handsome. All smiles, very outgoing, charming.
00:00:33
Everything he did just melted my heart. But there was a single question about his past.
00:00:40
He said, I should probably let you know that my wife was actually murdered. My wife is dead!
00:00:47
I just came in the house. I saw Janet on the floor. He was crying. He was in shock.
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The crime was never solved. I wanted them to find the real killer. You didn't want to believe it.
00:01:02
Who would want to believe that? She'd found plenty of the wrong guys. Now, here in front of her was someone different.
00:01:20
We met at a daycare where both of our children went to daycare. Vanessa Pond of Salt Lake City was 25 and a single parent
00:01:29
when back in 2007, she met Raven Abaroa. Like Vanessa, he was single and raising a child alone.
00:01:36
He was very charming. He would always come up with such fascinating dates. He seemed different.
00:01:43
He seemed very different. A good guy. Very good guy. And you fell for him. Hard.
00:01:50
But along with the charm and the lavish dates, Raven also had a story, a horrible, awful story,
00:01:58
that had changed his life and would also change Vanessa Ponds. The story Raven told wasn't just about himself.
00:02:06
It was about his first wife, Janet. He said, well, I should probably let you know that my wife was actually murdered.
00:02:13
The murder, Raven said, happened three years earlier, when he and Janet were living in Durham, North Carolina.
00:02:20
It happened in a home invasion, and he came home and found her, and that he didn't want to talk about it any further.
00:02:27
It was not the kind of thing Vanessa expected to hear from the man who had just stolen her heart.
00:02:33
I was beside myself. Vanessa retreated to her laptop and began searching online, looking for exactly the details Raven Abaroa had not provided.
00:02:45
I had started researching and I stayed up till 4, 4.30 in the morning. The homicide Vanessa learned occurred in April of 2005.
00:02:55
Raven had just come home from playing in a nighttime soccer game when he found his wife on the floor of their tiny second floor office.
00:03:04
Janet had been stabbed three times. Raven talked to us about that dreadful discovery.
00:03:10
When I initially look at her, I'm talking to her. like, hey, Janet, what's wrong?
00:03:16
And then it clicks on me that she's, her eyes are open looking at me, but she's not blinking her eyes.
00:03:23
Something was terribly wrong. Oh, she did. Okay, you're going to have to calm down, okay?
00:03:29
What's the address? For Janet's parents, Val and Janet Christensen, it was the worst day of their lives.
00:03:37
I pick up the phone and there's Raven screaming under the phone. She's gone. That's what he was saying.
00:03:50
She's gone. Of course, I can't breathe. I thought for sure I was having a heart attack.
00:03:55
The Christiansens race to Durham to be by Raven's side. He immediately broke down into bawling tears.
00:04:05
I remember putting my arms around it, giving me a hug and saying, we'll get through this together.
00:04:11
Everyone was left to wonder, why Janet, a woman as gentle as she was pretty? She's extremely loyal, I guess is the word, like with all of her friends.
00:04:22
I mean, when she has close friends, she's really good to them. She's really good to me.
00:04:28
She always wanted everyone to be happy. She's very supportive of people and loved to help other people.
00:04:36
That came in handy growing up in a Mormon household with no fewer than nine siblings.
00:04:42
She was a peacemaker. She didn't like confrontation. Absolutely not. In college, Janet excelled in the classroom and especially on the soccer field.
00:04:53
What was it with her in soccer? She got to kick a ball. And she loved that. She did.
00:04:59
But from a very early age, Janet had her sights set on something more. Her goal in life was to be married and have children and be a mom.
00:05:11
Having a very, well, a perfect home. Enter Janet's college sweetheart, Raven Avaroa.
00:05:21
With her, you know, I want to say I knew right away. I mean, her and I started talking about a long-term relationship three weeks into being together.
00:05:29
Brittany Romito was Janet's best friend in college. He was very handsome. And I said all the time, you're the all-American couple.
00:05:37
It was a foregone conclusion that this young couple was destined for marriage. It rained the night of the wedding, but no one seemed to care.
00:05:47
And then the perfect all-American couple completed the perfect picture, welcoming into their world a son Caden She said this is so phenomenal Oh she loved absolutely loved being a mother But just six months later that perfect picture went dark when Janet was discovered lying in a
00:06:09
pool of her own blood. Was there anyone who disliked her? Nothing I know of. She was a good
00:06:16
person. Three years later, in Salt Lake City, the news of Janet's homicide was also shocking to
00:06:24
Vanessa Pond. Vanessa had learned the killing had never been solved. She wanted more details
00:06:30
from Raven about his terrible loss. We sat down, had a conversation. I had my questions written out
00:06:38
and so we addressed every single one. How long that take? We took an entire evening just to go
00:06:45
over everything. When the evening was over, Vanessa was convinced that the horrific crime
00:06:50
back in 2005, had claimed two victims. One, of course, was Janet, but the other was Raven.
00:06:59
I felt so, so, so, so sorry for him. I couldn't imagine possibly going through that.
00:07:11
Why had this killing never been solved? Another look at the clues. A bloody shoe print,
00:07:17
mystery DNA, and a coin in the yard. We didn't know exactly what happened. All we could think was that somebody didn't expect her there and killed her.
00:07:42
The disturbing story of how Raven Aberoa's first wife had been killed did not scare off Vanessa Pond.
00:07:49
She was in love with him and committed to helping Raven get beyond both the heartbreaking loss of Janet
00:07:56
and the homicide investigation back in Durham. I wanted to... I wanted them to find the killer.
00:08:06
I wanted all of this to be behind us. But Vanessa knew that wouldn't be easy. The past seemed to haunt Raven
00:08:15
as he shared with Vanessa just how much Janet had meant to him. He laid kind of in a fetal position next to me.
00:08:25
And then he just, he started talking how mad he was after Janet died. He said, I loved my wife.
00:08:35
I loved my wife. For everyone who loved Janet, the days following the homicide back in 2005 were agonizing.
00:08:43
Raven says he found himself asking the same question over and over again. Why we could have this beautiful child, why we can have this beautiful relationship,
00:08:53
and then to have her die. Misty Foxley, a friend of both Janet and Raven, attended Janet's memorial service.
00:09:02
How did Raven look? He looked crushed, but he was trying to hold up. Soon, attention turned to finding her killer.
00:09:11
We didn't know exactly what happened. And all we could think was that somebody broke into the house, for what reason, didn't expect her there, and killed her.
00:09:21
Charles Soule, now retired, was a cop with the Durham Police Department in 2005, when he was called to the scene of Janet's homicide.
00:09:30
It was a two-story family residence. Nice part of the town? Quiet, for sure. First responders discovered Janet lying on the floor of the upstairs office.
00:09:45
She was on her back. Her shirt was raised up, exposing a wound to the center of her chest.
00:09:50
Janet also had a stab wound to her hand, suggesting she tried to protect herself.
00:09:55
The fatal wound was to her neck, and the weapon was nowhere in sight. There was literally no disturbance on the desk.
00:10:04
Suggesting there was not some violent struggle. No, not at all, which was kind of odd based on it being a stabbing.
00:10:13
Crime scene investigators began the task of swabbing the entire house. It was no surprise that most of the blood and fingerprints tested came back as either Raven's or Janet's.
00:10:25
But there were some things the techs had a harder time explaining. The first was a fingerprint found on the upstairs office closet door, not far from Janet's body.
00:10:36
That print didn't come back to anybody? No. Then there was a shoe print left in blood next to Janet.
00:10:43
Could you tell anything about this bloody footprint? It was right there by Janet, but nothing definitive about the type of shoe, the make or anything.
00:10:52
Finally, analysts found unidentified DNA mixed with Janet's blood on a storm door leading to the side entrance.
00:11:01
None of that forensic evidence could be traced to Raven, Janet, or anyone connected to the investigation.
00:11:07
Those are things, as an investigator, you absolutely want to try to figure out. While technicians processed the house, detectives began interviewing Raven,
00:11:17
hoping he could help point them in the direction of Janet's killer. Raven was visibly crying. He looked like he was distraught and upset.
00:11:26
He himself said that he knew of no enemy that she had. He realized that some items from the house were missing.
00:11:33
And they asked me, well, where was the last time you had the computer? So this would have been later that night or the next day?
00:11:40
It was later that night. It was in that initial meeting with them. His computer was gone. Robbery? It was possible.
00:11:49
He also talked about some knives being missing. Had there been burglaries in that neighborhood Yes Lisa Seeley was one of the Aberroa neighbors who had been burglarized Your car was broken into right Well yes It was unlocked as someone went into it and took out some change
00:12:08
A seemingly petty, relatively insignificant theft. Until a canine dog was called to search the grounds of the Aberroa home where Janet had been killed.
00:12:19
When the dog got to the front of the house, it stopped unexpectedly. It was in that proximity where the bottle was.
00:12:25
The dog made his alert that there was something in that area. There, amongst the weeds, the dog had found a coin.
00:12:33
One of the neighbors reported that her car had been broken into and some change had been
00:12:38
stolen. You're correct. And I guess at least one theory was that maybe this coin was from that.
00:12:44
It certainly could have been. A homicide, a burglary down the road, and a coin that could link the two.
00:12:53
Detectives needed to find out more about that coin. Scenes from a marriage and secrets from the past.
00:13:03
Had Raven and Janet been as happy as they seemed? You never knew when the coin would flip and all of a sudden everything that was wrong in the world was her fault.
00:13:16
The theory that Janet Abreuva's death may have been collateral damage from a burglary gone bad
00:13:32
was not getting much traction. Generally, when you surprise a burglar, they don't fight you or try to kill you, they run away.
00:13:40
That's correct. And there was no rummaging. None of the drawers were gone through.
00:13:44
None of the ransacking that you would see in a break-in just didn't add up. As for the coin found in front of the Aberroa home,
00:13:53
the police dog was unable to track a scent from it back to the house or anywhere else.
00:13:59
Detectives were having a hard time finding a link between the burglary down the road and Janet's killing.
00:14:06
The next step was the obvious one. Detectives took a look at Janet's husband, Raven.
00:14:12
It's pretty common to look at the spouse. in situations like this. That's correct.
00:14:17
That's, you know, part of the process. According to Raven, the day of the murder was like any other for the Aparoas.
00:14:26
Raven told investigators that a member of the church had come over the evening of the incident.
00:14:32
Later that night is when Raven said he left Janet and his son at home to go play in a nighttime soccer game
00:14:39
about a half hour away. Jason Small was one of Raven's teammates. It was business as usual, you know, a bunch of guys playing soccer together, trying to
00:14:48
beat the other team. Nothing out of the ordinary. Raven seemed normal to you that night?
00:14:52
Completely normal. After the game, Raven told police he drove to a gas station to grab a sports drink.
00:14:58
Hi, Doug. Yeah, how are you? Just to be sure, detectives checked the station's security video.
00:15:04
And there was Raven. Raven said he then headed home to find Caden undisturbed in his crib, but Janet lying in a pool of blood.
00:15:22
Detectives also talked to Raven's family and friends. By all accounts, he was outgoing, friendly, charming, and broke.
00:15:31
They don't have any money. They can't rub two nickels together. He needs every dollar he can earn.
00:15:36
Exactly. Money, or the lack of it, may have been behind something that had happened five months earlier.
00:15:42
Raven had been caught stealing sporting equipment from his employer and reselling it on eBay.
00:15:49
Raven's mother, Karen, was stunned. I just couldn't believe it. I was like, how could you be so stupid?
00:15:57
But at least he admitted it. He didn't try to get out of it. I was proud of him for that.
00:16:02
For owning up. For owning up. Along with the young couple's financial stress, friends told detectives Raven and Janet had also had a brush with infidelity.
00:16:14
According to Janet's friend Brittany, within just months of the wedding, Raven had cheated on Janet.
00:16:21
How did she sound when that happened? Devastated. And then she went back with him after that?
00:16:27
She forgave him. She made promises to love him for good, for bad, for ugly, and to support him.
00:16:34
But Brittany noticed other problems in the marriage. Janet, she said, was struggling with what appeared to be Raven's increasingly dramatic mood swings.
00:16:44
She told me that sometimes things were like perfect, and it was like holding your breath,
00:16:49
because you never knew when the coin would flip, and all of a sudden everything that was wrong in the world was her fault.
00:16:56
Things got so bad that a year before the homicide, Janet and Raven briefly separated.
00:17:04
But by itself, a marriage on the rocks did not mean Raven was in any way responsible for Janet's death.
00:17:11
Despite police suspicion, many refused to believe Raven could or would kill Janet, including Janet's own parents.
00:17:22
When you heard the police thought Raven was a suspect, what did you think? I defended him.
00:17:27
You stuck up for him? I did. I couldn't bear the fact that someone whom I entrusted my child's life with would turn on her like that.
00:17:38
I could not go there. Neither could Raven and Janet's friend, Misty Foxley. Raven could not have killed Janet.
00:17:46
He loved her. He loved her. He wouldn't have done that. Detectives had an equally difficult time convincing the district attorney.
00:17:55
who after reviewing the evidence felt there wasn nearly enough to get an indictment They the ones who make the decision if it goes in court Why they didn do it I don know
00:18:05
With no other strong leads, the investigation into Janet's homicide began to cool.
00:18:11
Raven had relocated to Utah to be closer to his family, which is where, two years later, he met Vanessa Pond.
00:18:19
He wanted to move things very, very, very quickly. With you? Yes. Despite all the things Vanessa had learned about Raven, she stood by him.
00:18:31
In part because Raven was very upfront about how police were investigating him. He said that they didn't have anybody else to look at, which is why he was the only person of interest.
00:18:45
Okay, wait a minute. You find out that a guy you're going out with was a suspect in a murder?
00:18:51
Is still a suspect in a murder? Yeah. And he gets another date? He talked me into that.
00:18:58
Everything he did just melted my heart because I felt, I felt so bad for him. And that's how Vanessa decided Raven, the person of interest,
00:19:10
remained the only person she was interested in spending the rest of her life with.
00:19:15
After a four-month-long courtship, Raven proposed. And Vanessa said yes. You don't waste any time.
00:19:23
No. But before Vanessa walked down the aisle, she sought the counsel of her father, Randy.
00:19:30
Randy Pond wasn't just Vanessa's father. He was also a retired cop with 23 years on the force.
00:19:38
Randy decided he needed a man-to-man with Raven. He just came in and was all smiles and very fun to be around, very talkative, very outgoing.
00:19:50
And you and your wife thought, good. Oh, yeah. I was very impressed with Raven, yeah.
00:19:55
So impressed, Randy gave the two his blessing. How was the wedding? The wedding was beautiful.
00:20:03
It was great. And you thought, what, we're going to be okay? Absolutely. You think, at last, justice?
00:20:15
Yes. An arrest in the case. And for this new bride, an awful surprise. she would find herself in the middle of a murder trial.
00:20:39
The Christiansen family never gave up their quest to pursue their daughter's killer.
00:20:45
They made phone call after phone call to police in Durham. We just weren't sure that they would be able to ever solve the case.
00:20:54
But detectives felt they already had. They shared with Janet's family the evidence of Raven stealing and cheating.
00:21:02
Eventually, Janet's parents agreed that Raven was responsible for killing Janet.
00:21:08
I just knew in my heart that he had done it. And it was a horrible realization. And in 2009, new, more aggressive prosecutors reached the same conclusion after taking a fresh look at the old evidence and concluding there was, after all, enough to seek an indictment.
00:21:29
Five years after Janet's killing, Raven Abaroa was arrested and extradited back to Durham to stand trial for first-degree murder.
00:21:38
When Raven was finally arrested, you think, at last, justice? Yes. Finally. In April 2013, Assistant District Attorney Charlene Franks was tapped to prosecute the case.
00:21:56
You felt in pretty good shape heading for trial. Yes, I did. Prosecutor Franks first went after Raven's character by calling women from his past.
00:22:06
She hoped the jury would start to see the defendant as an amoral, controlling man who cared little about his marriage.
00:22:14
Charlotte Ravel testified that one afternoon she went over to the Aberroa's house
00:22:21
and Raven showed her a sex tape and then Janet came home. He was like, you have to go hide, you have to go hide.
00:22:28
So he almost like physically pushed me. He didn't hurt me or anything, but he pushed me into the closet.
00:22:33
So I just stayed until she left and then I left. Next to testify was Raven's co-worker, Annabelle Havazia.
00:22:40
She said Raven flirted with her and they eventually had sex. I did say to him, what if your wife finds out?
00:22:48
And he said she won't ever know. Prosecutor Franks then got to the heart of her case,
00:22:54
hoping to prove that Janet was trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage. Now, did Janet ever talk to you about any problems she had in her marriage?
00:23:02
Yes. Best friend Brittany Romito said she heard firsthand just how destructive Janet's marriage had become.
00:23:10
I overheard him talking to Janet in a way that you wouldn't want your dog talked to.
00:23:17
What did he say? He told her that she was good for nothing, that she couldn't do anything right.
00:23:22
Brittany said Raven had taken control over every aspect of Janet's life, including her phone calls.
00:23:29
When she said, he doesn't like me talking to you, she said, I have to walk to the payphone to talk to you.
00:23:36
And like, my heart just, um... I said, but how long you been walking to a payphone and how far away is this payphone?
00:23:42
And does any of this make sense to my friend who's so smart? She was almost the perfect victim of a domestic violence situation.
00:23:51
She did exactly what she was told when she was told. You feel sorry for Janet, don't you?
00:23:56
Yes. I felt sorry that she didn't have an outlet. help with. If Janet was the perfect victim, who was Raven? He's a predator. A predator who,
00:24:07
according to Charlene Franks, lied repeatedly to police for proof. She turned to Janet's contact
00:24:16
lenses. One of the biggest things were the contacts. In his interview with police, Raven
00:24:21
said Janet was in bed watching TV and about to go to sleep when he left her to go play soccer.
00:24:27
And all the sisters, mom, dad, they were adamant that before going to bed, Janet always took out her contact lenses.
00:24:35
So on a hunch, detectives exhumed Janet's body and, according to the prosecution, unearthed the truth when they discovered she was still wearing her contacts.
00:24:46
Suggesting that she wasn't about to go to bed as her husband had suggested. Correct. She was not in that bed sleeping. When he left, she was dead.
00:24:53
Then, Prosecutor Franks turned to Raven's 911 call. Is your wife conscious? No, she's a boy.
00:25:02
She's my eyes open. He says she was dead. Her lips were blue and her eyes were open.
00:25:11
But Mike Guzman, the Aperoas church counselor, testified Raven told him something completely different about finding Janet.
00:25:18
I believe he said to me that she had asked him, why do I hurt so bad? That statement he made to Mike is extremely important because that shows she was not dead at the time he originally was with her.
00:25:34
One of those is a lie. Exactly. One item conspicuously absent from the growing pile of state's evidence was the weapon.
00:25:44
But Franks had something she felt was almost as good. the evidence that Raven was a collector of knives.
00:25:51
In an online video, Raven, with Janet by his side, proudly displays one of his recent acquisitions.
00:25:59
That's my new knife. Got it for Christmas. Thank you. Bought it myself. Raven had told detectives his collection was missing,
00:26:08
along with his laptop. Then there was the issue of motive. Prosecutors don't need to prove it,
00:26:15
but jurors have come to expect it. So Charlene Franks called Sandy Garratton, Raven's boss at the time of Janet's death.
00:26:23
Garratton told the jury Raven knew he was about to lose his job. He looked at me with a little smile on his face, got my pink slip, boss?
00:26:31
I said, no, we're going to wait until the end of the month for that to come. Charlene Franks' point was that looming unemployment and mounting debt could have driven Raven to kill.
00:26:42
She then showed the jury Janet's life insurance policy. The payout was $500,000.
00:26:49
The beneficiary was Raven Aberoa. The only way he could afford to live his lifestyle was to get that insurance policy.
00:26:59
But another piece of this puzzle was about to be presented in court, and it had to do with Raven's second wife, Vanessa Pond.
00:27:06
It turns out Vanessa and Raven were not a match made in heaven. I was way too naive.
00:27:15
Way too naive. Vanessa traveled from Salt Lake City to Durham to testify. Not for the defense, but for the prosecution.
00:27:25
She told the jury how her storybook romance with Raven ended almost as quickly as it began.
00:27:33
Would you all argue a lot? Yeah. At one point, Vanessa said Raven became physical.
00:27:41
He had me by the arms, and he threw me up against the wall. He told me how much he hated me, and how much he didn't care if I died.
00:27:54
Right after that, he calmed right down. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.
00:27:59
According to Vanessa, Raven displayed that same moody, unpredictable behavior again and again.
00:28:06
The moment he got fired up about anything, he flew off the handle with, F you, you're an effing whore.
00:28:16
That quick? Instant. Their marriage lasted only three months. You think you escaped something worse than just a bad three marriage Absolutely Charlene Franks rested her case with confidence even as she admitted there were some things she didn have
00:28:38
No murder weapon? No. No witnesses? No. No blood in his car? No. His advantage was trying to say that I'm just a bad husband,
00:28:49
I'm a criminal as far as money goes, but there's no evidence I killed my wife. Now it was the defense's turn to fire back.
00:28:59
And fire back they did on everything. His marriage. Did you love her? I did love her.
00:29:05
His alibi. He was already warming up on the field. His second wife. Vanessa has her motives for saying what she's going to say.
00:29:13
Which would be? Raven sat quietly at the defense table as the prosecutor wrapped up her case.
00:29:33
But inside, Raven says he was fuming. There's no evidence that says that I did it.
00:29:40
They're coming up with circumstantial stuff that are, quite frankly, they're lies.
00:29:44
Raven has always maintained his innocence. Did you love her? I did love her. Did you kill her?
00:29:50
I did not kill her. And Raven says he did not emotionally abuse Janet either. You've been accused of, like, dominating her.
00:29:58
Yes. Bullying her, keeping her down. Truth to that? No truth to that. No truth at all.
00:30:05
I have a strong personality, but I've never been dominating. Just as the state had done, Raven's defense attorneys called character witnesses of their own,
00:30:16
offering the jury a completely different image of both Raven and Raven's relationship with Janet.
00:30:22
They were a close couple. They really seemed to have a genuine concern and love for each other.
00:30:29
Misty Foxley also couldn't recognize the man the state was describing. I didn't know what the heck they were talking about.
00:30:37
I was shocked. I was very shocked. What are they saying, not only about Raven, but about Janet?
00:30:43
When you heard Janet described in court as kind of this, like, sort of meek little mouse who you were pushing around.
00:30:51
Yeah. That sound familiar to you at all? No. No. She's quiet and reserved, but when she did talk, you know, people listened.
00:31:00
But what about the testimony that Janet would walk a mile to a payphone so Raven wouldn't find out she was talking to her best friend, Brittany?
00:31:09
That doesn't make you look like a good guy. That didn't happen. Never happened. totally fabricated story.
00:31:16
More evidence that Janet was an independent spouse with a will of her own came from, of all places,
00:31:22
the prosecution after it made a stunning announcement. A computer hard drive had suddenly been found
00:31:28
in an evidence locker. It was an inconvenient piece of evidence. It was the hard drive from Janet's work computer
00:31:35
containing emails she sent right around the time of her death. The hard drive, to me, was Janet's voice.
00:31:43
And it was the truth about who Janet really was. Some of the emails selected by the defense exposed a flirtation Janet was having with an old flame.
00:31:53
Ravenside said those emails made it clear Janet was making decisions on her own.
00:31:59
It showed that people were taking the stand and saying things that just weren't true.
00:32:06
If the hard drive had been part of the evidence from the very beginning, we would have seen the whole picture of Janet and Janet and Raven's relationship.
00:32:16
The defense immediately made a motion for a mistrial, arguing that without this new evidence,
00:32:22
they were unable to properly cross-examine the state's witnesses. The judge did not agree.
00:32:29
Motion for mistrial on the court's discretion is denied. The defense decided to hit head on what were by now Raven's undeniable misdeeds.
00:32:39
I've done a lot of bad things in my life. I admit that. Most damaging was Raven's history of infidelity.
00:32:46
Janet knew of at least one affair. And when Janet confided in her mother-in-law, Karen says she was furious with Raven.
00:32:53
I said he doesn deserve you Leave him You told her to go Yeah They did separate And Janet called me just a few months later and she said
00:33:06
we have been through counseling and we love each other. I'm not leaving and neither is he.
00:33:10
Did you think their troubles were behind them at this point? Oh, I knew their troubles were behind them.
00:33:15
They were stronger than ever. Then came that horrible night in 2005. Almost as soon as Karen arrived in Durham,
00:33:23
She says she got a very uneasy feeling about the investigation and the way police were looking at Raven.
00:33:29
I think they immediately decided, oh, this guy's not perfect. He's embezzled. Husband always does it.
00:33:40
They wanted it to be Raven. Defense attorneys hammered crime scene analysts about the possibly exculpatory evidence they claimed was being ignored.
00:33:50
The bloody footprint near Janet's body, the fingerprint on the office closet door, and
00:33:56
the DNA on the storm door to the side entrance, all of which were never identified, and any
00:34:01
of which the defense said could have been left by an unknown killer. There was a lot of things that they didn't do, forensic evidence that wasn't pursued.
00:34:10
But defense attorneys felt jurors wouldn't have to look any further than Raven's alibi
00:34:15
to be convinced of his innocence. Gusman, the Aberroas' church counselor, was the last person to see the couple on the night
00:34:22
of the killing. On that particular night, did there seem to be any stress in their relationship?
00:34:30
No. Did they seem to be getting along just fine? Yes. Gusman says he left the Aberroas at 7 p.m.
00:34:38
It seemed like any other time that I was there. Both the prosecution and defense agreed.
00:34:44
It would have taken Raven about 30 minutes to drive to the sports arena where he played soccer that night.
00:34:50
The defense called Raven's teammate Jason Small, who testified Raven got to the game right before it started at 9 p.m.
00:34:59
Was Raven there when you got there? Yes. And what was he doing when you got there?
00:35:05
He was already warming up on the field. Add it all up, the defense says, and Raven would have had to kill Janet, clean up, and compose himself enough to appear normal on the soccer field, all within less than 90 minutes.
00:35:19
There wasn't the time for him to get it all done, change clothes, get to the game, and it just didn't make sense.
00:35:26
The defense was about to rest. But first, it needed to address the damaging testimony of Vanessa Pond, Raven's second wife.
00:35:35
She says that you put your hands on her at one time, shoved her, pushed her up against the wall.
00:35:40
Yeah, and I think I pointed my finger at her chest. Poking her? Yeah. Didn't leave bruises, though, but I poked her.
00:35:48
You want the key to the city for that? It wasn't a rage, and actually, Vanessa's story has been totally twisted.
00:35:55
Vanessa has her motives for saying what she's going to say. Which would be? She's bitter, obviously.
00:36:00
You didn't believe anything Vanessa Pond said? No. Karen suggested Vanessa's testimony was payback for a bitter breakup back in 2008.
00:36:10
It's hard to believe someone would do that, but she's doing it. Karen says she once overheard Raven on the phone with Vanessa soon after they broke up.
00:36:20
He happened to have it on speakerphone. She was screaming at him that how dare he leave her.
00:36:27
She flat out said all it takes is one phone call from me. It doesn't matter what I say.
00:36:32
people will believe me. You heard her say that? I heard her say that. You ever threatened him like that?
00:36:39
No. He threatened me. A courtroom battle between two bitterly divided families was about to come to an end.
00:36:47
Now it was up to the jury. But just after 24 hours, word began to spread throughout the courthouse.
00:36:55
There was trouble in the jury room. I had prepared to either walk out of court that day or spend life behind bars.
00:37:07
Another stunning turn was in store for both sides. Heartbroken, shocked, stunned.
00:37:15
Scared. Terrified. An investigation spanning eight years A five-week-long trial with more than 80 witnesses.
00:37:37
All building to this one moment. It was painful. It didn't feel like it was going good.
00:37:46
It didn't feel like it was going bad. It was just, I mean, it was a painful, painful three or four weeks.
00:37:51
Janet's parents felt optimistic. Were you hopeful? Yes, in one word, yes. But after just 10 hours, word came out of the deliberation room that the jury was irrevocably deadlocked.
00:38:06
The court is of the opinion that with further deliberations, this jury would not likely reach a verdict.
00:38:14
The court in its discretion will declare a misprime. The split came down 11 to 1 in favor of conviction.
00:38:25
And then they come back and they can't reach a verdict. Yes. What did you think?
00:38:28
I had prepared to either walk out of court that day or spend life behind bars. Never even crossed my mind that a mistrial could be declared.
00:38:38
The one thing that I wasn't prepared for is to sit in Durham County and do this all over again.
00:38:45
It was an outcome no one seemed to want. Vanessa Pond was back in Salt Lake City when she heard.
00:39:09
Prosecutor Franks immediately announced she would try Raven again. But almost one year after the judge declared a mistrial, and less than one week before round
00:39:21
two of jury selection was scheduled to begin, the state made a stunning announcement.
00:39:27
Late last week, the district attorney's office extended a plea to the defendant, and that
00:39:33
has been accepted. The DA's office made Raven Abarroa an offer he couldn't refuse, plead guilty to manslaughter,
00:39:42
murder and serve less than four more years in prison. Just to have a rule, can you now personally accept this plea bottle?
00:39:51
Yes. You were okay with that deal? Given the alternatives. Because if he gets tried again and it's an acquittal...
00:39:58
He walks free. Immediately. But this wasn't just any plea. Raven was offered an Alford plea, meaning he would not be required to admit to killing
00:40:09
Janet. But that didn't sit well with Prosecutor Franks. It wasn't my decision to make.
00:40:15
I try the cases. I'm not the administrator. That was up to my boss and my supervisor.
00:40:21
Why did you take the plea? I took the plea to get out, to get out, to have a guaranteed date to get out and be with my son.
00:40:33
I felt that there was so much corruption, so much lying that was going into that trial that I just knew I wasn't going to get a fair trial the second time around.
00:40:42
They denied any responsibility for this crime. We were very disappointed in that.
00:40:52
I wanted to throw up. That was like stabbing Janet all over again. He didn't mention, I'm sorry.
00:41:01
He admitted nothing, apologized for nothing, and it was so cold. In trials like this, there are no winners, just two sides bitterly divided.
00:41:16
The person who killed my wife right now thinks he's home free, but I'm trying to clear my name so that we can shift the focus
00:41:26
and know that there is still a killer out there who right now is walking on the streets.
00:41:33
Custody of Janet and Raven's son, Caden, was granted to Raven's mother. Janet's mom is left with the memories
00:41:41
of the daughter she loved and lost. Oh, what do you think about Janet? Constantly.
00:41:49
The only way I can handle it is I know she's happy. I know she is.