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Tonight on Dateline. She was a loving mother, a wife. A remarkable human being. 911, what is your emergency?
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I'm at a friend's house. I came here to check on his wife. And she's dead on the floor.
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This was not your average call. This beautiful woman who wanted to give and help,
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why is she dead? At that point, everybody was a suspect. Oh my God, Teresa. Her husband was in Connecticut.
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If I was with you, this wouldn't have happened. I was like, are you guys watching this?
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Do you guys swing occasionally? Very occasional. You're now opening a suspect pool even wider.
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Did you directly have any planning to do with killing Teresa? No, I didn't. He looked like Mark.
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He has the goatee, just like Mark. Was he wanting Teresa for himself? Who are these guys?
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This was like a movie, but it's not a movie. She recited the entire story of everything that happened.
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I'm like, well, I know you went down and killed somebody. And then he said, yeah.
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It's a very tangled web. A doctor thought she was home alone. What she didn't know would kill her.
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That fuse had been lit somewhere, huh? He was just waiting to explode. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Dennis Murphy with The Road Trip. We talk about our physical health, we talk about our mental health, but then there's our spiritual and energetic health.
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She was a doctor, making a name for herself in the field of holistic medicine, spreading her message on YouTube.
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Take the food prescription instead of the pill prescription. Low sugar diets, lots of plant-based foods, getting good exercise.
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A healer whose charisma made her a natural fit for TV. You might have seen her as a guest on cable shows like Know the Cause.
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But really what we're trying to do is prevent age-related illnesses, all the things we're afraid of.
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Or hosting guests on her own YouTube channel. Lanka is an entuologist. Or featured in South Florida magazines and newspapers.
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Dr. Teresa Severs was hoping, fingers crossed, that it might all one day lead to national fame and a TV career.
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the Dr. Oz of homeopathic medicine. Getting you healthy is my passion. Being healthy is your choice.
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Some patients, like Julie Rojas Butcher, regarded Dr. Seavers as nothing less than a miracle worker.
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I had tried so many different medicines. I had tried so many different doctors. And no one can figure the root of the problem out.
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But Dr. Seavers, sometimes spending four hours at a time with Julie, ultimately diagnosed a spectrum of food allergies.
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Her beloved shellfish was out, but this doctor was in, in her life, in her affections.
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There's something about her caring about my family, about my career, about my life.
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So you don't find that very often. It means pain relief without surgery, pills, or injections.
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So how is it that the dreams of this adored physician and aspiring TV doctor never came to be?
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Well, settle back because there's a story therein, an exceedingly grim one. Go back to June 29, 2015, another muggy Monday dawning in the southwest coastal town of Bonita Springs, Florida.
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Teresa had been away for the weekend for a family celebration up in New York with her husband Mark and two young daughters.
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Teresa's mother had turned 75, but she flew home early to see her Monday morning patients, leaving her husband and daughters up north.
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These security images, so poignant now, captured Dr. Sievers arriving at the airport in Fort Myers Sunday night.
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When she failed to show up for her morning patients, the clinic contacted Mark to tell him something was off.
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He tried and tried again, but could not reach Teresa. So he called a family friend, a doctor who worked nearby, and got his voicemail.
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I just thought maybe if you were not at work, you could possibly swing by the house.
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It's just not like her. You know, in all the years, I've known him to be a half hour late for work.
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and not answer her thoughts. Mark then called his mom, Bonnie, who lived just across town.
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He was concerned. Maybe she overslept or whatever. Can you go to the house and check and see if Teresa's okay?
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Bonnie and her friend got in her car and started toward Mark and Teresa's house.
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But before they could get there, her son called back. Dr. Mark Petritus had gotten the message and was already on the way.
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You don't have to go. So we're almost at the house. So we turned around and go back home.
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At the Seavers' house, Dr. Petritus let himself in, and what he found, ghastly. It looked as though she'd been murdered.
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It was by then 9.45 in the morning. First responders were on their way. Dr. Petritus waited outside.
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I'm afraid somebody's in the house. I mean, somebody killed her. The doctor called Mark and told him he'd need to get back home immediately.
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Mark broke the horrible news to his mom. Mark calls crying. Teresa's dead. I should have been there.
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I should have protected her. It's my job to protect her. And that was his soulmate.
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Mark also called Teresa's friend, Dr. Steven Stoller. The phone rings on my cell phone and I pick it up and he said,
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I just wanted you to know, want to be one of the first people to know that they found Teresa
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and there been a crime you know or she been you know she dead That so nonsensical How do you wrap your brain around that Well I mean she wasn sick She was super vibrant I mean sometimes you prepared for those kinds of things But this was not something I was prepared for
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Carmine Marcino, then undersheriff of the Lee County Sheriff's Department, was at a restaurant when he heard the news.
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We knew immediately this was not your average call. This was not something that we were going to respond to and say,
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okay, this was a drug deal gone bad. Zip code doesn't correspond with that kind of crime, huh?
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It doesn't. Usually very quiet over there. But at first we're like, okay, is it a burglary?
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Is it a burglary with somebody's home? The sheriff's department sent a dozen officers to start working the scene.
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As darkness fell, it was clear no one was going to be sleeping that night. A killer was on the loose.
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When we come back, the mystery deepens. So the cops are playing this very close to the vest.
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Very close. And later, a long, strange road trip to a dead end. Just smiling, shopping, 30-gallon trash bags, a Budweiser T-shirt,
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some plan to be used for the homicide, some plan for leisure time in between. By Monday night, word had spread about a murder in Bonita Springs.
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Crime scene tapes surrounded the house of Mark and Teresa Seavers. Jacqueline Beavis covered the story for NBC2.
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We got the call that law enforcement had been at Jarvis Road for about 10 hours.
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So every news crew in the community headed out that way. But reporters didn't have much to go on.
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So the cops are playing this very close to the vest. Very close for quite a while.
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Viewers in southwest Florida were alarmed. And none more so than Mark's stepmom, Jenny Weckleman, who'd just come home from work in time to catch the news.
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So kind of in my peripheral vision, I saw Mark's house on the screen. How awful. You saw the house and...
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And I heard dead body. And that was, you know, the part of the conversation from the television that I heard.
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Jenny was desperate for answers. Who's dead? Is it Mark? Is it the girls? Is it Teresa?
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And I didn't know. I just saw a body being wheeled out of the house. After a series of phone calls, Jenny learned it was Teresa.
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How could this be? She contacted Mark's stepsister, Connie, who, like so many, was dumbfounded.
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What in the world happened here, right? It's impossible to wrap your head around that.
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Who could have imagined life would end like this for Dr. Teresa Seavers? She and her husband, Mark, seemed to have the perfect life.
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They looked like they had it all. They looked happy in what they were doing. They looked focused, looking forward to what the next step would be.
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Teresa and Mark met about 12 years earlier. Teresa was a physician in Florida, and Mark was trained as a nurse and living in Missouri.
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The two met when Mark was visiting Florida, and they hit it off. Mark's mom, Bonnie, thought Teresa was a good fit for her son.
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Teresa's a genius and very organized. She knew Mark was kind and gentle, compassionate.
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it. They also had a lot of the same interest of wanting to help people. And Connie could tell
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Teresa made her stepbrother happy. I totally understood why he loved her. I mean, she was
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charismatic. She had that same caring nature, although in a pretty feisty, you know, feisty way.
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She wasn't a wallflower. No, no, no. Mark's approach to the world was a little softer.
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He's very nurturing, not afraid to, you know, worried about being a, you know, a macho guy on the outside.
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Dating soon became, we're engaged. Mark popped the question by printing a jokey ad in the newspaper.
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It wasn't long before the two were exchanging sunset vows on the beach. Handsome groom, pretty bride.
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Yeah, you know, she had a beautiful dress. And Mark is just smitten. He has been ever since.
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Around 2005, Mark and Teresa moved to Bonita Springs, and Teresa opened her own practice.
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And they welcomed two little girls along the way. And they're very special kids. Very special.
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I mean, how could they not be with a mom like Teresa and a dad like Mark? Mark ran the medical office and took care of their daughters so Teresa could focus on patients and expanding her practice.
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He stepped right into the shoes, and whatever Teresa's dream was, Mark supported her in that.
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She got involved with local charities and was even featured on the cover of E-Bella magazine as one of the top healers in the area.
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She had the charisma. She had the science. I think she could inspire people. Chiropractor Steven Stoller met Teresa at a conference, and they shared a similar holistic approach to health care.
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Her original training was internal medicine, but she was a seeker, and she was really on this path to help people and not just process patients.
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You've met one of those patients she helped, Julie Rojas Butcher. She's had major influence on your life.
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On every aspect of it. Teresa not only got Julie's health back, but she also guided her through a career change.
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And when Julie was ready to expand her family, Teresa encouraged her to consider adoption.
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Got your back on your toes feeling good, and now you have a son, maybe with her encouragement.
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Yes. She was the first person to have that conversation with me. But the petite Dr. Severs, just shy of five feet, could also be a dress-you-down
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sergeant major if she thought a patient was slacking off. She would get frustrated when she would be like, I told you to exercise three times a
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week and you clearly are not doing that. I think that was her delivery method And Dr Severs felt her message was too important to reserve just for her patients That why she and Mark were developing her TV show and YouTube channel
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And Teresa's friend, Dr. Stoller, said for her it wasn't about fame. She saw it as a chance to bring her message to the masses.
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She wanted to empower people, give people the freedom, and instill purpose in them
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so that they were in charge of their own health care. But now that would never happen. The kitchen, the hammer. Who could have murdered Teresa and in such a brutal way? The sheriff's department was desperately trying to find answers.
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This is a case of whodunit, which is for us a nightmare. Coming up. No footprints, no fingerprints, no DNA left on scene.
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And a burglar alarm that for some strange reason didn't ring. You were sure you'd said it when you left?
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Oh, I know I said it. When Dateline continues. The case of Teresa Seavers, a well-known doctor bludgeoned to death in her kitchen,
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was a top priority for the Lee County Sheriff's Office. Homicide detectives David Leavitt and Michael Downs were assigned the case.
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Detective Downs arrived shortly after the 911 call. He knew there was at least one victim and thought just possibly the killer was still about.
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Do we still have an active crime scene? Is there a potential of somebody else being in the house or still in the neighborhood?
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But Downs looked around, didn't find any other victims, and no one else was inside.
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Whoever killed the doctor was gone. There's more vehicles outside. That afternoon, detectives took a closer look at the scene to fill in the story.
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They started at the front of the house. The garage is open. I can see a minivan on the inside, but nothing stood out of me at that point from the street.
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Inside the garage lay Teresa's suitcase. It appeared to have been rifled through.
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Downs entered the house through the laundry room and noticed a dog mole slightly blocking his path.
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In the kitchen just beyond was Teresa's body. When I looked at the body, she was face down. She was wearing a black dress. She was in a large pool of blood.
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It seemed to detectives that she'd just arrived home when she was attacked. Her purse on the bar stool looked as though someone had gone through it.
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I saw Dr. Teresa Seaver's wallet open. I could see her ID. It appeared that one of the cards had been thumbed up in there.
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Do you think maybe I'm looking at a home invasion? This woman walked in in a bad moment.
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Oh, absolutely. And the purse wasn't the only evidence of a possible break-in. The side garage access had been tampered with, as if somebody tried to break into it.
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There was damage to the door, but on closer inspection, the lock still worked. What's more, the Seavers had valuables in their home there for the taking.
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Cash, guns, electronics. Teresa was wearing jewelry, but all of that was untouched.
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Nothing immediately appeared to be missing, so it begged the question, was this a targeted event for this person, or was something interrupted?
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Crime scene investigators carefully processed the house. There was little evidence pointing to the killer.
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No bloody footprints leaving the garage saying they went that away. No footprints, no fingerprints, no DNA left on scene that we were able to recover.
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Late Monday afternoon, Teresa's husband Mark landed back in Florida. Two other members of the investigative team sat down with him at his mom Bonnie's house.
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He seemed to be still trying to process the news. What am I supposed to do with all this?
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Well, so it's a lot to get sorted out as time goes. They get the basic information that we get from anybody, like, you know, when's the last time that you talked to her?
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Mark said he last heard from Teresa just before 11 Sunday night. She was in the van at that point.
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She was in the car. She said, I'm in the car and I'm getting ready to pay at the parking.
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But that was it. He never got a text or call from Teresa saying, I'm home. Did she have any problems with anybody on the plane?
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She made no reference to anything at all. They questioned Mark about who had access to the house.
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As it turns out, Mark's mom, Bonnie, was watching the family pets, and she'd been in and out of the house all weekend.
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And she'd been having some trouble with their security system. My mom, God bless her.
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My mom has a hard time pushing the button where it's to stay, waiting for people to leave.
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Naturally, investigators wanted to speak with Bonnie, too. While you were at the house, did you have to press in a code to disarm their alarm?
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I pressed, yeah. Okay. But Bonnie was certain that she set the alarm when she left Saturday night, when she came back Sunday morning.
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It wasn't on. I didn't have to cancel it. And you were sure you'd set it when you left?
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Oh, I know I set it. And you're the last person in there. There's no one else but me.
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Bonnie, thinking the alarm system must be on the fritz, contacted Mark, who told her not to worry about setting it.
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He says, just forget it because we've been having problems with that alarm. Sometimes it would go on, sometimes it wouldn't.
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And because of the dog's motion detection, forget it, don't even bother with it then.
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But the more Bonnie thought about the alarm system, the more it weighed on her. Teresa was murdered that Sunday night.
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Maybe someone was able to get into the house and do this horrible thing because she left the alarm off.
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So I really feel that it's my fault. You cannot blame yourself. The next day, detectives asked Bonnie back to the station.
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They needed to go over her timeline again. The investigator gave her a printout showing the alarm was turned off at 6.09 Sunday morning.
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I was not there at 6.09 in the morning. It was turned off at 6.09. Did that mean someone else had been there That what we trying to work for Oh my God It certainly seemed as though someone was in the house Sunday morning before Bonnie
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But who? Coming up, was Teresa killed by someone she had helped? Did one of those kids find their way back into her kitchen?
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One of those kids' friends because they said that there was money in the house. She was incredible.
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She was a good friend. She was a good mom. She was a great doctor. She was a great person.
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Reality started to set in as family, friends, and patients gathered at Teresa Seaver's funeral to reflect on the person who was lost.
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Hundreds of people came to say their goodbyes. The outpouring of people that filled this church was incredible.
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I kind of thought to myself, wow, every one of these people in this room was personally touched by her.
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While Teresa's loved ones mourned their loss, her killer was still on the loose.
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And the community around Bonita Springs was on edge. I mean, I'm shocked. I don't know what to tell you.
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Are you scared? Because whoever is responsible for this is still out there. Kind of nervous about it.
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It grasped this entire community, and no one could take their eyes off of it, because everyone just wanted to know who and why.
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And are they coming in my door? Absolutely. No one had any clue. The medical examiner by then had taken his look at Teresa's injuries
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and found she'd been bashed on the head 17 times. Tips were flooding into the sheriff's department, and some of the theories were really out there.
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Some people are connecting it online to the deaths of two other doctors with ties to Florida.
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Her friend, Dr. Stoller, heard about it. There had been, you know, innuendos or rumors
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of kind of holistic doctors, people that were really speaking against the dogma.
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Is someone killing? Yes. Homeopathic holistic doctors, huh? That was a thought. Detectives did look into it.
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At first, we were like, oh, wow, this is actually pretty interesting. And then the more you look at it
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and the more you dissect it, it just didn't fit with what we were looking at at that time.
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Instead, they were focusing their attention on those closest to the victim. The spouse, of course, usually tops that list.
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But remember, Teresa's husband, Mark, was 1,300 miles away when she was killed. It couldn't have been him.
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And besides, Teresa's sister, Annie Lisa, told detectives Mark was a good husband.
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Mark worshipped the ground Teresa walked on. He was Mr. Mom. And Teresa's mom, Mary Ann Groves, felt the same way.
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They were a happy couple. They were a happy couple. I mean, she used to get upset with him because he was always, he kept his office a mess,
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but she finally realized that that was always going to be Mark, you know. You know, she knew that, you know, they were together for life.
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So what about the man who made the 911 call, Dr. Petritus? Of course, anybody that comes upon a murder scene, as he does,
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has got to explain maybe in a little more detail about why he's there. Oh, especially, and that's another investigative step that we take,
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and we have to take a sworn statement from him. We took DNA from him. Dr. Petritus didn't act like a man with something to hide.
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He was cooperative. He was everywhere where he was supposed to be. And he gave us no real cause for concern.
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So ultimately, he didn't make it onto your list. He was on the list for a short time until we were able to exclude him from the investigation.
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Then detectives started to look at some of the people Teresa had helped through her charity work.
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She'd been on the board at Our Mother's Home, a shelter for struggling teen moms.
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She and Mark even opened their doors to some of the girls and their children. Did one of those kids find their way back into her kitchen?
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Right. Could have been a possibility. Or did one of those kids' parents want some payback because they were upset that you were able to give my kids something?
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I never could. These are all possible things. We're one of those kids' friends because they said that there was money in the house.
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Deputies talked to a fellow board member of the shelter, Karen Watson, someone who had known Teresa for years.
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She told them in an audio interview about one teen mom who'd grown particularly close to Teresa.
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She was very troubled. The mom had been arrested for drugs, and Teresa was trying to help her.
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But Karen didn't think that mom had anything to do with it. Is there any other children or anybody else that had an extra grind with Ms. Severs,
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was upset with Ms. Severs for any reason? No. Maybe have been to the house and saw what she had, and they're going to go down there and take it?
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Some reason, money, jewelry, any reason like that? No. Okay. But Karen did have one possible lead, and it was something detectives talked to Teresa's mom about, too.
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She ever complained about any of her employees? Oh, yeah. She mentioned one woman, a nurse, whose name came up a few times in police interviews.
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No, she had told Sandra, I think it was she had told Sandra that, you know, you really need to try to find another job because I really need to replace you.
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Sandra was bad-mouthing Teresa. You may not like your boss, but you don't bad-mouth them to patients that are coming in the doors.
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And a year earlier, Dr. Seavers had laid off Sandra's husband, Frank, who'd also worked at the practice.
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Detectives wondered, could all this have angered her enough to hurt Teresa? But when Sandra spoke to a local reporter, she seemed heartbroken about what happened.
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I learned a lot from her. When you're with somebody for seven years, it's your second home.
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It wasn't a job to me. Detectives talked to Sandra, too. By the end of speaking with her, we were able to eliminate her.
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And like anything, hey, where were you? Were you here? Were you there? And everything wrapped up itself. She wasn't a likely suspect.
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The leads were running dry. And after days of investigating, detectives seemed no closer to knowing who killed Teresa.
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Coming up... Oh my God, Teresa. What could I have done if I was with you? This wouldn't have happened.
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A husband struggles with his emotions and shares a secret. Do you guys swing occasionally?
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Very occasional. When Dateline continues. The beating death of Teresa Severs was all anyone could talk about in Southwest Florida.
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The Bonita Springs community wanted answers. Yet several days on, the sheriff's office remained tight-lipped about its investigation.
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Reporter Jacqueline Beatus. What was known at that point, as you recall? Quite frankly, absolutely nothing.
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She was a doctor, a loving mother, a wife, and she was murdered, and we're working to find out how.
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Pretty thin gruel for a reporter. Yeah. Behind the scenes, frustration was setting in for the detectives.
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The overkill aspect of the murder looked personal, but without a theory of the case, they couldn't rule anything out.
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A lot of homicides can either be pinned down to a domestic-related incident or a drug-related incident.
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It's isolated. And you can put out a briefing and say you're safe to go about your business.
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Exactly. In this case, we're not... You couldn't do that. You can't do that in this case, exactly.
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Mark Seaver's family says the not knowing was wearing on him, too. I was really most concerned for my brother.
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He was the one who was looking out for all of us, making sure we were okay, and trying to keep it together for the girls, even though he was afraid.
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At that time, he was afraid mostly for the girls. With little to go on, detectives asked Mark to come down to the station for an interview.
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State UNI one more time for me. Mark. Severs. Now that he'd had time to think about it, they wanted to know had he come up with any additional leads.
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I've been wrapping my brain around this since Monday morning. I figure you think about it all the time.
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I can't think of anybody, any situation that would want to hurt Teresa to take her life.
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It doesn't make sense. Family and friends had described Mark and Teresa as a rock-solid couple.
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But detectives wanted to hear about the marriage from Mark himself. Now, talking about your relationship, have you guys been contemplating any kind of separation or divorce?
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Has there been any marital problems? No. But that wasn't the next-door neighbor's take.
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You're hearing from the neighbors little snippets of information about marital turmoil coming out the windows.
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They're fighting again. And that was the most consistent thing that came through.
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and they would hear them arguing and, you know, screaming at each other. Okay, Mark admitted, they might fight, but no big deal.
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He was used to her eruptions. She gets mad. She has her temper. Sure. Which is not temper. She just yells.
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Your office looks like a mess. Our whole life, our whole house is chaos. Clean your office.
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You know. Right. This is the kind of thing that's going to make us have a divorce.
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That was just Teresa the Spitfire being Teresa. Mark said it never affected their loyalty to one another.
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Have you ever had an issue in the past with any infidelity in your marriage that you're aware of?
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No. Have you ever cheated on your wife? I've never cheated on her, and she's never cheated on me.
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Throughout the interview, Mark struggled to contain his emotions. She had so much to offer the world.
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She was really, everyone says this about their wife, their kids are special, my kids are phenomenal.
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I should have been home. well she really is on track to change the world she has her own tv show she's gonna
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take health care to a whole nother level mark certainly appeared the grieving husband
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but there was something about all that emotion that made the detectives wonder i'm so mad you have to go through you will his demeanor is very all over the place from the
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second he came in he was crying and then he's doing breathing exercises breathe breathing
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me. Slow me down. My wife is so much better at this than I am. And when he was left alone in the room, Mark spoke directly to his dead wife, like a Shakespearean
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actor. Oh my God, Teresa. What could I have done if I was with you? This wouldn't have happened.
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If I came back, this wouldn't have happened. So I was actually listening to the interview on my computer in my office, and I came out and I was like, are you guys watching this?
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I love you, Teresa. While it is a well-known thing, everybody reacts differently.
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Is he going over the top? He's going over the tie-ins. He's putting on a performance.
00:29:05
This is hard. This really should be nothing. This is unreal. Exactly. If it's going to help solve, relax. Stop hurting yourself.
00:29:14
Perhaps that's why, toward the end of the interview, Detective Leavitt steered the conversation back to the question of fidelity.
00:29:21
The answer he got this time was a wow of a take-two. Just to iron out what I was talking to you about before,
00:29:28
Or you said there's been no extramarital affairs on your part? When you say extramarital affairs, I will split lines.
00:29:37
I'm not an attorney, but I always focus on details of what you're actually saying.
00:29:40
Do you guys swing with anyone? Okay. Is that considered an extramarital affair? No.
00:29:44
Okay, then there's been no extramarital affair. Okay, do you guys swing occasionally?
00:29:50
Very occasional. That's right. According to Mark the couple had an open marriage He said they invited other women into their bedroom And then eventually he be allowed to be with girls when she wasn present as long as he told her about it So an open what swinger kind of relationship maybe
00:30:07
Yes. But he seemed reluctant to offer details, names, frequency. How many times?
00:30:14
Oh, God, maybe two. One, two, two or three times. So it's two different girls a couple different times?
00:30:20
Only two girls? I'm trying to think. I think it's just two. Mark, come on. You've got to remember this stuff.
00:30:26
It's not something you're going to forget. The more the detective leaned in, the more sexual partners Mark recalled.
00:30:35
What? Caroline. Caroline what? One more woman. Number four? Yeah, but she was actually number one.
00:30:42
I feel like I just betrayed her. You're not. You're helping to try and solve this.
00:30:46
That's why I told you. I know. Mark said he wasn't concerned that any of these women could be involved in Teresa's murder.
00:30:53
He said he hadn't been with any of them in a long time. But for the detectives, the investigative implications were clear.
00:31:00
Basically, by the end of that conversation, all we said was our suspect pool became even larger.
00:31:05
You may have a lot of potential people who would want to do somebody in, right? A spurned, jealous lover?
00:31:10
Absolutely. Hey, Mark, we're going to let you get out of here, okay? Mark Seavers had thrown detectives a major twist, but another, even bigger one, was on the way.
00:31:19
Coming up... He had pictures on his phone, women he'd taken home? Pictures and video, yes.
00:31:25
The pool of possible suspects grows, and a new lead from over a thousand miles away.
00:31:32
Why would he not take his phone with him to this foreign agent? Well, I thought that, and I found it kind of odd.
00:31:49
mark severs had just jolted the thus far meandering investigation into his wife's murder
00:31:56
with a rush of fresh adrenaline the husband revealed a major bit of intimate history
00:32:01
he said he and theresa had an open marriage now detectives had new leads to pursue so do you have
00:32:08
to actually find all those people that sat next to him on a bar stool on a given friday night
00:32:12
we started that process and as best we could based on the limited information that he provided us
00:32:18
But detectives did get an assist from Mark's cell phone. He'd willingly handed it to them before his interview,
00:32:24
and the contents were an investigative trove. Any pictures on his phone? Women he'd taken home?
00:32:30
Pictures and video, yes. In fact, there were many explicit images in his phone, not to mention flirty text messages and notes describing the hookups.
00:32:39
Reaching out to these women would be a delicate task. That's a great thing to try and introduce yourself to one and say,
00:32:45
hey, how do you know these people? Remember the night at the boom-boom room? Right. So you're trying to find a unique approach depending on who you were dealing with.
00:32:53
But then, before that search could really take off, an unrelated tip came in that detectives could not ignore.
00:32:59
It would, as they say, change everything. The out-of-the-blue lead came over 1,000 miles away from the Florida crime scene.
00:33:07
A police chief from the Southern Illinois Airport Authority was on the line. He basically said, I have an acquaintance who gave me some interesting information.
00:33:15
However, she's a little afraid to come forward. The woman's story as relayed to the detectives was vague,
00:33:22
but the information was both tantalizing and credible. Maybe they could talk this anonymous source into sharing details with them.
00:33:30
I got a gut feeling, and I pulled my lieutenant aside and said, can we please go tomorrow or tonight?
00:33:36
This seems legit. This feels like the strongest lead. So 11 days after Teresa's body was found,
00:33:43
the detectives hit the road for Illinois. Up to this point, it's just been leads to follow, document, put it away.
00:33:52
And now we're hearing someone who's saying, I'm not going to cooperate with you, but I'll listen to you talk to me in person.
00:33:58
And you want to sit down and look them in the eye as you talk? Yes, I want them to hear what we have to say.
00:34:03
It was literally a Hail Mary pass. They met in a hotel conference room. Detectives Leavitt and Downs, the police chief tipster,
00:34:10
and his friend, the woman with the information. Her name is Rose. She says any reluctance about coming forward dissolved
00:34:18
when Detective Leavitt appealed to her to think about the loss suffered by Teresa's two young children.
00:34:24
When he said that, it's just kind of like, you know, I had no problems with anything from that point on.
00:34:32
The detectives got their audio recorder out to tape what turned out to be a case-changing story.
00:34:37
Get ready for this one. You'll need a flowchart. Do you mind if I call you Rose, ma'am?
00:34:41
Yes. Okay, Rose. It goes like this. The weekend Teresa Severs was murdered, Rose said she was at a friend's house across the river in Missouri.
00:34:50
That friend's daughter, Angie, was there too. And she was upset because her husband of only a few weeks had just left on a trip without her.
00:34:58
So she's a newlywed on Saturday night sitting around a kitchen table she doesn't want to be at.
00:35:02
She wants to be with her husband. Correct. That is correct. Angie's husband was an IT tech who said he had to troubleshoot a buddy's office computers.
00:35:10
The job site? Florida. Did he say where? Do you remember her saying where he was going to be working at?
00:35:15
She just said Florida. In Florida, working on somebody's computer. His best friend's computers.
00:35:20
To make matters worse, Angie, the ticked-off newlywed, said she had no way to reach her husband.
00:35:25
He'd left his cell phone behind. Why would he not take his phone with him to this Florida job?
00:35:29
Well, I thought that, you know, especially being fairly newly married, that's something that you just take with you is your phone for communication.
00:35:38
And I found it kind of odd myself. Odd maybe, but Rose didn't give the situation much more thought until a couple of days later
00:35:46
when she got a call from her friend. Turns out the computers Angie's husband had driven to Florida to fix were the office gear
00:35:53
of Dr Teresa Seavers And even more intriguingly this IT guy best friend was Mark The first thing she said to me is I guess you heard about the doctor And I like what doctor What are you talking about
00:36:08
Well, Angie's husband's best friend's wife, she was killed. Just kind of stunned me.
00:36:17
Rose started to connect the dots in the middle of the night when she awoke to a Nancy Grace segment on the murder.
00:36:24
Mystery surrounding the murder of a gorgeous young doctor, a mother of two little girls.
00:36:29
Angie's husband, the trip to Florida, was it possible that he was somehow involved in Teresa's murder?
00:36:36
I was feeling very uneasy about it. Laid back down, could not go to sleep. I ended up staying up the rest of the evening.
00:36:43
She decided to phone a friend, Jeff Hamilton. He's the airport authority's police chief who called the Florida detectives with the tip.
00:36:50
By the time we finished our conversation, I had a pretty good idea that the person she was telling me had an opportunity to have committed this crime.
00:36:58
Now, as detectives Leavitt and Downs listened to Rose's story, they were thinking the same thing.
00:37:03
Right there, it's like somebody rings a bell. You're like, whoa, finally, we have a good lead, finally.
00:37:09
Time to pay Angie's husband, the fix-it computer guy, Mark's best friend, a visit.
00:37:16
Coming up, look-alike besties. I'm like, wow, they have the same facial hairstyle, like almost identical.
00:37:23
Both wear glasses. They frequently dress similar, too. So it was very odd. And later, an acquaintance nicknamed the Hammer.
00:37:32
And you had indicated me that's because that's his weapon of choice whenever he has to do something?
00:37:36
Yes. When Dateline continues. Hillsboro, Missouri, 40 miles south of St. Louis, sits in rolling hills, fishing and hunting country.
00:37:56
It's where Florida detectives Levitt and Downs headed next in the hunt for Teresa's killer.
00:38:01
You're moving states and jurisdictions here. Yes, we are. You're leaving Illinois and you're going across the river to Missouri, huh?
00:38:06
That's correct. We're completely out of our element. Their target? Angie's husband, Curtis Wayne Wright.
00:38:13
He was the friend of Mark's who'd supposedly taken a trip to Florida the weekend Teresa was murdered.
00:38:19
He also looked just like him. Before the recent tip, detectives had never heard of him.
00:38:25
He hadn't really come up as anything up to that point. A background check revealed Wayne, as he liked to be called, had a record.
00:38:32
Three convictions for drug possession and a stint in jail. So they decided not to take any chances.
00:38:38
They enlisted the help of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, which sent a SWAT team early one Sunday morning to pick Wayne up at his trailer.
00:38:46
So flashbangs and knock on the door stuff? I'm sure if they deployed flashbangs or not, but they did make an entry on their trailer here.
00:38:56
And inside was Curtis Wayne Wright, Angie Wright, and one of their younger family members.
00:39:02
Wayne was yanked out of bed and brought down to the station as he was, shirtless.
00:39:07
He sat down with Detective Leavitt. With these rights in mind, will you still talk to me now?
00:39:12
Sure. How does he seem to be? Is he cooperative? He was very cooperative. He acted very confused that the police were in his house and he didn't understand why this was happening to him.
00:39:24
However, Wayne was more than aware of Teresa's murder. He said he and his wife Angie had just returned from Florida where they'd attended her funeral.
00:39:32
I know you guys had talked to Mark and Bonnie and them. That's why I asked them while we were down there.
00:39:38
I was like, I was kind of surprised you guys didn't want to talk to us. Right. As a longtime family friend, he said he had to be there for old buddy Mark and the girls.
00:39:48
First thing we thought of was, we've got to be down there. Oh, yeah, no. Mark needed you and you guys were there?
00:39:54
Yeah, he would have done it for us. Yes. Well, you've known him how old? Since ninth grade.
00:40:00
Ninth grade, okay. Wayne said the two were so close, Mark had even been the best man at his wedding a couple of months earlier.
00:40:07
Congrats, by the way. It's nice. It's cool. Is that your first marriage? As for Mark and Teresa's office computers, Wayne said that yes, he did manage them.
00:40:16
They'd had some trouble with their IT person a while back, and he'd stepped in to help.
00:40:21
I have a computer science and electrical engineering degree. Where'd you get that?
00:40:25
Rala. And that's in Missouri? Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm sorry. I forget you're not sure.
00:40:30
I just got a water. Rala is one of the top schools in the country. Cool. And not shy about bragging on himself, right?
00:40:37
Big contracts for IT work. That's what he relayed to me at the time, yes. Are you familiar with Build-A-Bear?
00:40:43
Mm-hmm. I wrote all of the software for all Build-A-Bear stores. Wow. I've got to ask, how does that pay?
00:40:50
It was great. I was a contractor, so I made tons of money doing that. I'd like to hear about who I'm talking to,
00:40:57
but he took it very far talking about his martial arts training and fighting ability.
00:41:03
I used to box. I used to do fighting. Wow. I wasn't undefeated, but I fought. I retired with the title.
00:41:09
It was interesting because with all of those accomplishments, where we were was kind of confusing to me.
00:41:15
The single-wide trailer in the middle of nowhere, huh? Right. The detective was also blown away by how much Wayne looked like Mark physically.
00:41:23
To his eye, the two could have been twins. I'm like, wow, they have the same facial hairstyle, like almost identical.
00:41:29
They both wear glasses. Similar, you know, they both have the receding hairlines where they just gave up and shaved their head.
00:41:36
They frequently dress similar, too. So it was very odd. If Wayne had been unnerved by that early morning raid at his house, he didn't show it.
00:41:44
He was even happy to help the out-of-town detective with restaurant recommendations.
00:41:49
I'm really well-known for their steaks, and I'm not a big steak eater. Right. But I've seen them bring them out.
00:41:54
I mean they like that big and that thick Wow Sounds impressive With the getting to no use out of the way Detective Leavitt cut to the chase Where was Wayne the weekend Teresa was killed
00:42:06
His wife Angie told the detectives he was in Florida. But Wayne had a different account.
00:42:11
Well, that weekend was one of the weekends that I was down for the weekend, pretty much.
00:42:17
Angie worked. What do you mean down? Like pain? Hurting, yeah. Wayne said a flare-up of injuries from an old car crash had laid him up in bed that weekend.
00:42:26
He'd never gone to Florida. He was in Missouri the whole time. When's the last time you've been to Mark's house?
00:42:31
A year ago. However, he did say he'd rallied briefly to help his landlord fix his car.
00:42:37
That part of his alibi would be easy enough to check. What's his name? Chris Taylor.
00:42:42
Chris Taylor? Yeah. So he's got a little shop, and it has an empty bay right now.
00:42:50
While Wayne was talking to Detective Leavitt at the station, other investigators were digging through his home,
00:42:57
collecting cell phones and computers, looking for evidence that could link him to the murder.
00:43:03
In the driveway, they noticed a rental car. There was nothing obviously helpful there.
00:43:07
So you don't find, like, a fast food bag discarded from Bonita Springs? No, we wish, but no.
00:43:13
But inside the console, they found an old Garmin GPS device. The memory had been wiped, but they bagged it anyway for a forensics review.
00:43:22
Now we've got to go out and try and track everything down. The detectives headed out, trying to meet anyone they could find who was connected to Wayne.
00:43:30
So you're going from friend to friend to figure out what they know? Yeah. They visited the shop owned by Chris Taylor, the guy whose broken-down car was Wayne's alibi.
00:43:39
Not only did he say Wayne hadn't worked on his car the weekend in question, but he also had surveillance video to prove it.
00:43:46
We got the video of his shop where Wayne told us that he was at that weekend. He's not there the entire weekend.
00:43:53
They also spoke to a friend of his named Jerry Lubinsky. Jerry contradicted Wayne's alibi, too.
00:43:59
Did he tell you he was going to go to Florida that weekend? Yes, he told me he was going to go to Florida.
00:44:03
To do what, Jerry? He said it was a one-day short trip. Jerry said he even offered to help Wayne buy a plane ticket.
00:44:10
I said I have enough miles to go ahead and fly down. It's got to be a 12-hour drive, right?
00:44:13
And he says, no, he says, I just want to drive and come back. So Wayne seemed to be lying.
00:44:19
That much was becoming clear. Did that mean he killed Teresa? And if so, why? The detective still had miles to go to figure that out.
00:44:29
Coming up. It looked like they bought towels, shoes, a Budweiser T-shirt. Wayne's road trip, shopping for souvenirs and dumplings.
00:44:40
He did a review on a Chinese food restaurant. You're kidding. Good dumplings. He was not happy.
00:44:57
Detectives Leavitt and Downs were turning Hillsborough, Missouri inside out, trying to tie Curtis Wainwright to Teresa's murder.
00:45:05
A two-day trip was now more than a week. So we're packing a small bag. We're going to go to Missouri for a night or two.
00:45:10
It's turning into a longer commitment here. Yeah, that fell apart very quick. The longer they were in town, the more they felt a target on their backs.
00:45:19
Residents didn't seem keen on two Florida cops trying to pin a murder on one of their own.
00:45:25
Nights in their hotel room were tense. It gets really quiet at night, especially when you're in a place you don't belong and you're by yourself.
00:45:32
And people don't like you. And people don't like you. And I would take a chair from the table we had in the room and I would put it underneath the door lock at an angle
00:45:39
just to buy a little extra time if somebody decided to kick a door in on us. The detectives were running out of people to talk to,
00:45:47
but there was one more prominent name in Wayne's phone records, someone named Jimmy Rogers.
00:45:53
He was a 25-year-old guy living in a mobile home park some 30 minutes away. While we're pulling up, there's literally a disturbance going on outside
00:46:02
between two or three people that look like they've been having a very hard time in their life
00:46:09
and maybe under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Are you guys scared? It's okay to be scared?
00:46:13
Are you looking over your shoulders? Absolutely. We're in an unmarked rental vehicle, but there's plenty of cops.
00:46:19
Screams cop. And they immediately key in on us, and I'm basically like, I'm like, hey, we're not here for you.
00:46:24
Jimmy's girlfriend, Taylor, greeted them at the trailer door. She was perfectly pleasant, but Jimmy was another story.
00:46:31
But he shows up in like a storm, and he's shaking, he's uncomfortable. You can tell something's definitely off.
00:46:38
Jimmy was on probation for weapons charges. Maybe he just didn't like cops. So they tried to defuse the situation.
00:46:44
We're immediately like, hey, no problem. We're here, it's following up. We know you're friends with so-and-so.
00:46:49
And he starts downplaying his relationship with Curtis Wainwright and saying that I don't really talk to him that often.
00:46:55
We know that's a lie now. It felt like Jimmy wanted nothing to do with him. So Detective Leavitt tried to leave on friendly terms.
00:47:02
And I said, hey, listen, we're going to be back because, again, we're from Florida.
00:47:06
we don't belong here, but we're here right now, which means we have the ability to come back.
00:47:11
After nearly two weeks, the detectives headed home. They'd collected bags of evidence and stories suggesting that Wayne had something to do with Teresa's murder,
00:47:21
but nothing concrete. So back home, their tech experts started deep dives into those digital devices seized at Wayne's trailer.
00:47:29
A few weeks later came a major break. That erased GPS they'd found in Wayne's rental car,
00:47:35
representatives from garmin told the sheriff's tech team the data could not be recovered they
00:47:40
basically said to our guys to paraphrase if it's deleted it's gone it's been wiped it's gone but
00:47:46
their text kept after it and sure enough buried inside was the evidence they'd been waiting for
00:47:52
there mapped out mile by mile was the route wayne had taken from hillsborough missouri
00:47:57
to bonita springs florida the weekend of the murder. Wayne had even written a Yelp review along the way. He did a review on a Chinese food
00:48:06
restaurant. That was in Georgia, yeah. You're kidding. Wayne Wright actually made a Yelp review.
00:48:12
Good dumplings? Yeah, I don't think he was not happy. But that wasn't all the GPS revealed.
00:48:18
It also told them that Curtis Wayne Wright hadn't traveled alone. I get a call from our tech guys,
00:48:24
and they say, hey, we had this device paired with an email address. I was like, what's the email
00:48:29
address. They're like, listen to this, JimmyRayRogers90 at gmail.com. And I was like, Jimmy, you son of a
00:48:35
gun. Had Jimmy and Wayne road tripped together to murder Teresa Seavers. The sheriff's department
00:48:41
sent detectives out to gather more evidence based on the GPS. Sheriff Carmine Marcino. We canvassed
00:48:48
from the toll booth on I-75 in Naples to Georgia. You're pulling video from? That means every point
00:48:56
of entry or exit on I-75, we went out two miles on either side to obtain video surveillance,
00:49:03
and that's what we did. Sure enough, the canvas paid off. Right there in Fort Myers, just 15 miles
00:49:09
from Bonita Springs, they found video of Wayne and Jimmy at a Walmart the morning of the murder.
00:49:15
Just smiling, shopping. They picked up a couple items, a couple things to go to the beach. Of
00:49:20
course, they have arrived in a beach town. Exactly. Why not? So what did the cash register
00:49:25
receipt for their purchases tell you? It looked like they bought a lock pick kit,
00:49:31
30-gallon trash bags, towels, shoes, a Budweiser t-shirt, some planned to be used for the homicide,
00:49:39
some planned for leisure time in between. The GPS also put them at the Seavers' house.
00:49:45
The detectives had it. Time to make some arrests. Back up in Missouri, Leavitt and Downs arrested Jimmy on a traffic stop and got Wayne two days later. Again,
00:49:55
he was brought in shirtless. Did you directly have any planning to do with killing Teresa?
00:50:00
No, I didn't. Leavitt gave Wayne one more chance to admit it, showing him the video of him and Jimmy at Walmart, but he wouldn't take the bait.
00:50:08
I was not there. I see that you think that that's me on that video, but that's not me.
00:50:15
I was in Missouri. They tried to speak to Jimmy as well, but he was likewise a dead end.
00:50:20
With these rights in mind, will you still talk to me now? No. But detectives had much more luck with that friendly girlfriend of Jimmy's, Taylor.
00:50:28
Detective Downs was serving a search warrant on Jimmy's trailer when he took a run at questioning the girlfriend pregnant with Jimmy's child.
00:50:35
I said, Taylor, listen, we're here. I know you're involved. You know you're involved.
00:50:40
If there's something here that I need to know about or you know something more, Now is the time to tell me.
00:50:46
She took a minute, smoked a cigarette. I went about my business because I didn't really think it was going anywhere.
00:50:51
And out of nowhere, she starts crying and says, I know everything. Those two weeks in Missouri had paid off in a major way.
00:50:58
They brought Taylor in to record a statement. Taylor, would you just take a dinner for me?
00:51:02
And what a statement it was. Taylor said that after the detective's visit, she'd become suspicious of Jimmy.
00:51:09
So one night when they were lying in bed, she confronted him. And I told him that I knew that he had something to do with it.
00:51:15
Okay. And then he started asking me questions like, what do I know about? And I'm like, well, I know you went down there to kill somebody.
00:51:22
And then he said, yeah. It was a straight-up confession. And then I said, did you shoot her?
00:51:29
And he said, no. And I said, then how did you kill her? And he made a stupid little chuckle that he does and then said with a hammer.
00:51:40
He said with a hammer? Yeah. That's literally a confession to her. A happy confession, almost like he was proud of doing it.
00:51:49
Even more chilling was the nickname Taylor said Jimmy went by. Everybody calls him Jimmy the Hammer, all of his friends back home.
00:51:57
And you had indicated to me that's because that's his weapon of choice whenever he has to do something?
00:52:01
Yes. Taylor knew all about evidence, too. She pointed them to items he brought back home with him from Florida,
00:52:09
including that Budweiser shirt he purchased at Walmart and a plaque for her about motherhood.
00:52:14
She also said Jimmy later had her throw a coverall jumpsuit he'd worn in Florida
00:52:18
out the window of a moving car. She took Detective Downs out to look for it. I remember riding there. I was like, there's no way we're going to find this thing.
00:52:26
What are the odds? Yeah, and she's like, oh, I think that's it over there. Just please don't touch him or pick him up, but if you can point to him,
00:52:32
is that the item in question? Yes. Detective Downs memorialized the moment in a video.
00:52:37
And did he instruct you to throw these out of the window? Yes. Jimmy and Wayne still weren't talking, but the case against them was getting better and better.
00:52:46
But they weren't the only two the detectives had in their sights for Teresa's murder.
00:52:52
Coming up, pointing a finger at a soon-to-be former best friend. He came straight out and said that he wanted to have her killed.
00:53:02
When Dateline continues. For two months, Southwest Florida waited and wondered. Who killed Dr. Teresa Seavers?
00:53:21
Then, just like that. A break in the case in the murder of a Vanita Springs doctor.
00:53:26
Two men from Missouri were under arrest. Lee County Sheriff announced the arrest of Jimmy Rogers and Curtis Wayne Wright.
00:53:34
Residents were relieved, but also confounded. Who are these guys? Reporter Jacqueline Beavis.
00:53:40
We quickly learned that both Jimmy Rogers and Curtis Wainwright lived very basic lives
00:53:46
in Missouri. They went to work, they went home, they both had criminal histories.
00:53:51
And had done time. Both of them had done time. They had done time together and that was the basis of their friendship The name Jimmy Rogers meant nothing to Mark stepmom and stepsister I say well who this guy and what he got to do with it
00:54:05
And then almost immediately they said, Curtis. What did you think? Wayne Wright.
00:54:10
Curtis. I was equally dumbfounded. Of course, I knew him. What I knew of him, he was just a meek, you know, quiet man.
00:54:19
I couldn't see it. Mark's mom, Bonnie, was just as confused. She'd just hosted Wayne and his wife for Teresa's funeral two months before.
00:54:29
He hugged the girls. He joked with the girls. How can you kill someone and joke with their children as if you're innocent?
00:54:38
But why would Mark's best and oldest friend in the world murder Teresa? Bonnie racked her brain.
00:54:44
Was he jealous of Mark? He looked like Mark. He shaved his head. He has the goatee just like Mark.
00:54:52
Bonnie had even joked about their resemblance the night before Mark and Teresa's wedding.
00:54:57
Honey, you have a wonderful wedding. Oh, my God, that's not Mark. Oh, no, it's mine now.
00:55:05
I can't tell them. It's mine now. Oh, my God. Did he want to live his life? I don't know.
00:55:14
There's something wrong with Wayne. There's one I can come up with. But reporters thought the answer had everything to do with Mark, not Wayne.
00:55:21
To them, the fact that his best friend was accused of killing his wife meant Mark must be involved.
00:55:27
We started following Mark Sievers even more closely at that point. Everyone had questions for him then.
00:55:32
Do you think your best friend would do this? Why would he do this? How could this happen?
00:55:36
What was your relationship like with Curtis Wayne Wright? Any comment, Mark? No comment.
00:55:42
Mark wasn't talking to the media or to investigators. He'd lawyered up not long after the murder.
00:55:47
And truth was, by the time of Jimmy and Wayne's arrest, detectives fully believed Mark was in on it.
00:55:53
But they had little proof. So they continued investigating until, a few months later, a breakthrough.
00:56:00
We get contacted by Curtis Wright's lawyer, who says that Curtis wants to speak with you guys.
00:56:06
Curtis Wayne Wright wanted a deal. His attorney, Elizabeth Parker, says it was his best and only move.
00:56:13
There was GPS evidence showing that he had traveled to the Seavers' home the very day she was murdered.
00:56:19
That's tough evidence to get over. And I have to have the come-to-Jesus meeting with him and say,
00:56:25
listen, we may have an opportunity to approach the prosecutors. To save your life. It's as simple as that, huh?
00:56:31
To save his life and to do the right thing. Wayne agreed to confess in exchange for consideration of a lesser sentence.
00:56:38
Once again, he found himself face-to-face with detectives. Prosecutors were in the room this time, too.
00:56:44
Can you identify yourself with the recording? Curtis Wayne, right? You could cut the tension in that room with a knife.
00:56:50
My client was extremely nervous. I was nervous for him. Wayne now walked them through a chilling story,
00:56:58
how he and Jimmy murdered Teresa. He said they'd driven to Florida just as the GPS showed,
00:57:05
snuck into Mark's house, and then Jimmy bashed Teresa's head in with a hammer. Wayne said he was outside when the murder occurred.
00:57:13
I wasn't there when she was being killed. The detectives weren't buying it. If I had to build money, I would say that you were in the house, for sure.
00:57:25
Do you need a break to talk to us? Yeah. Parker took Wayne outside and told him it was time to come clean, now or never.
00:57:34
I was very stern, probably the most stern that I have ever been with any client and expressed the consequences of lying.
00:57:44
I think obviously he really took what I said to heart because when we walked back in that room, he told me he was going to tell the truth.
00:57:51
They started again and Wayne's story changed. I wasn't planning to have anything to do with it.
00:57:58
It was what I did. Yes, he was in the house, he said. And that's not all. Jimmy wasn't the only one with a hammer in his hand.
00:58:09
How many times did you hit? I don't know. It was a couple. It was, you know, it was when it first started.
00:58:21
And then Jimmy went berserk, so. But the real headline was the reason they'd killed Teresa in the first place.
00:58:28
He said he'd been offered money to do it by none other than his best friend, Mark.
00:58:33
He came straight out and said that he wanted to have her killed. I asked him what kind of time frame he was looking at.
00:58:42
He said, ASAP. It was the confirmation detectives were waiting for. A tale of a murder for hire between best friends.
00:58:53
In late February 2016, eight months after Teresa's murder, they showed up at Mark's house once again.
00:59:00
We get there, knock on the door, there's glass window. I see his head, you know, pop out.
00:59:07
When he saw me, I'll never forget it because it looked like he saw a ghost. Like, oh, this is real.
00:59:12
It's happening. This is happening. And he has his phone in his hand like, oh, I have to call.
00:59:16
I'm like, nope, you're not calling anybody right now. He's going to jail. You're under arrest for the murder of your wife, Teresa Seavers.
00:59:22
The sheriff's department was certain they'd gotten their man. Watching Mark Seavers being arrested, the smirk he had on his face, I'll never forget.
00:59:31
And I said, there is no blood in his veins. This is a cold-blooded killer. But Mark's family was just as sure he was innocent.
00:59:39
I know in my heart he wouldn't do that. He would never do anything that his girls would be without their mother.
00:59:48
It had taken eight months for detectives to crack the case. It would now take years more for Mark Seavers Jimmy Rogers and Curtis Wainwright to appear in court Do you have a message for your daughters Mark Coming up the trials begin This case was about the perfect marriage the perfect friendship the perfect alibi
01:00:12
the perfect murder. Three men had been arrested for the murder of Dr. Teresa Severs.
01:00:31
And now all three were about to appear in a Florida courtroom. And one of them had flipped.
01:00:36
This case was about the perfect marriage, the perfect friendship, the perfect alibi, the perfect murder.
01:00:47
It was almost perfect. In October 2019, Jimmy Ray Rogers, pleading not guilty, was the first to go on trial.
01:00:55
He faced a possible death penalty for first-degree murder and conspiracy. Prosecutors Cynthia Ross and Hamid Hunter said he made the number one mistake he could have made
01:01:05
when he accompanied Curtis Wainwright to Florida. How could anybody be so stupid as to take their personal cell phone with them
01:01:11
on a mission to murder somebody? I don't think people realize, one, how much our phones connect in so many fashions.
01:01:18
I don't think Mr. Rogers anticipated that he would be discovered. Oh. Rogers took photos of the trip with his phone and used it to search for a place to stop along the way.
01:01:29
As for those coveralls Rogers allegedly wore to commit the murder, prosecutors introduced evidence from an FBI analyst that showed fibers from them matched fibers found on Teresa's body.
01:01:40
And those coveralls also had a hair. Your testing concluded that Mr. Rogers or another person descended from his mother left that hair.
01:01:51
Yes, that Mr. Rogers or anyone in his maternal line could have been the source of that hair.
01:01:57
Rogers' former girlfriend, Taylor Showmaker, took the stand to recount his bedroom confession.
01:02:03
I asked him if he killed her, and he said, yeah. And then I asked him how, and he said with a hammer.
01:02:13
When Rogers and the attorneys approached the judge for a bench conference, Taylor turned her back on her one-time boyfriend and cried.
01:02:21
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the... Finally, prosecutors called Curtis Wayne Wright to the stand.
01:02:27
Mr. Wright, who killed Dr. Teresa Severs? Uh, I did, Jimmy Rogers. When it was the defense's turn, Rogers' attorneys Kathleen Fitzgeorge and Donald McFarlane
01:02:41
didn't dispute that he had come to Florida with right, but not for the reason prosecutors suggested.
01:02:47
He thinks that this is going to be a little holiday in Florida. Right. All expenses paid.
01:02:51
Sure. A little weekend. It's coming down here. It's close to Fourth of July. Go to the beach.
01:02:55
He's never seen the ocean. And when they're here, they're purchasing souvenirs, going to Walmart.
01:03:02
But they were adamant. Rogers had no idea his friend was planning a murder. He thinks he's coming down with his friend who needs someone to drive him down here.
01:03:11
He knows that Curtis Wright works doing computer work and is told, well, you can do some work on the side, maybe earn some money.
01:03:20
And the defense insisted the witnesses against Rogers were motivated to lie, especially Wright, whose cooperation guaranteed a prison sentence of 25 years.
01:03:29
You were all in this together. Yes. Yes. Yes. The only difference is with this plea deal, you get a big benefit.
01:03:37
The difference is that I'm telling the truth. The jury got the case, and it took them more than a day to come up with a verdict.
01:03:45
It was not what the state had hoped. Jimmy Rogers was found guilty, but only of second-degree murder.
01:03:52
And in another blow to the state, he was acquitted of conspiracy. Jurors found no evidence to tie him directly to Mark Seavers.
01:04:00
So what would that mean for Mark's case? It wouldn't take long to find out. Please be seated.
01:04:06
When Mark Seaver's trial began a few weeks later, prosecutors presented a motive, money,
01:04:11
in the form of a financial windfall Mark would receive with his wife dead. Here's his wife, the breadwinner, mother of his children.
01:04:19
In what ways is his life better with her dead in the kitchen if he's commissioned it?
01:04:23
Well, that's 5.8 million dollars. Yeah, there was 5.8 million motives. There were insurance policies here.
01:04:32
And to carry out the plot, prosecutors said Wright and Seavers communicated using so-called burner phones,
01:04:38
prepaid cells that weren't registered in their names. An analyst from the sheriff's office explained how they also developed a code texting the word other
01:04:47
when it was time to switch from their normal cell phones to the burners. He sent a text to Mr. Wright saying, whenever you want to use the other one, just text me.
01:04:57
other quote other unquote and then when i can i will call she showed jurors another one of those
01:05:05
texts a message that says hello brother from an quote other unquote mother you've got to
01:05:13
check other hello brother from an other mother uh we've got all those which you now think is code
01:05:20
for pick up that other phone get get your go get your burner phone within a few minutes the burner
01:05:25
phones, prepaid phones, would actually activate and there would be a call. The analyst also found those burner phones pinging off of cell towers near Wright's trailer
01:05:34
and Seavers' house at the same time. The conclusion the prosecution suggested was that
01:05:41
Seavers and Wright were discussing something they didn't want anyone to know about, a murder.
01:05:45
And finally, the weekend Teresa was murdered, Curtis Wainwright's burner phone pinged off a
01:05:50
near the Seavers home Within a day of the murder both burner phones had gone silent Curtis Wayne Wright never pinged again as of June 29th and Mark Seavers never pinged again as of June 26th midday when he flew off to New York
01:06:05
But none of this evidence could prove definitively that Mark Seavers was the head of a conspiracy.
01:06:10
There was only one person who could do that. State, next witness. State calls Curtis Wayne Wright.
01:06:17
Mark was about to come face-to-face with his oldest and closest friend. Coming up, tears in the courtroom as a killer shares the chilling details.
01:06:31
When she started to turn towards you, what did you do? I hit her. I hit her with the hammer.
01:06:36
Where did you hit her? In the head. She put her hands up and was trying to defend herself.
01:06:45
When Dateline continues. Best friends from high school, best man at his wedding.
01:07:02
Mark Seavers' relationship with Curtis Wayne Wright ran deep. Now in a Lee County courtroom, Seavers sat just 20 feet away from his childhood friend,
01:07:11
the state's star witness against him. Can you please state your full name for the record?
01:07:16
Curtis Wayne Wright, Jr. Seavers had pleaded not guilty. Whether he walked free or faced a possible death sentence rested largely on Wright's credibility.
01:07:27
Mr. Wright, who killed Dr. Teresa Seavers? Jimmy Rogers and I physically did it, but Mark Seavers was also involved in the planning.
01:07:37
Why did you do it? I was asked to do it. By whom? Mr. Seavers. Wearing a prison jumpsuit and shackles, Wright spoke softly and appeared meek.
01:07:50
But the prosecutor wanted jurors to know who this man was. At the end of the day, Mr. Wright is still a killer.
01:07:57
You don't care if the jury wants to invite him for Thanksgiving. You just want him to believe him.
01:08:00
Right. And there's really nothing good that you're going to hear me say about Mr. Wright.
01:08:06
But the story of the origins of the murder plot was in itself quite unbelievable and bizarre.
01:08:11
It was May 2015, a very special day for Curtis Wayne Wright. He was getting married, and Seavers was in Missouri to be his best man.
01:08:21
But Wright said Seavers wasn't just there to celebrate a marriage. He was also trying to end one.
01:08:28
So, on your wedding day, Mr. Seavers was telling you that he wants to have his wife killed.
01:08:33
Yes, he asked me to help him. Wright was surprised. To him, the Seavers seemed to have it all.
01:08:39
But Mark said Teresa was threatening to take everything he loved away from him. He and Teresa were having problems, marital problems,
01:08:49
and that they were having financial problems as well. That she was leaving him, that he couldn't let her take the kids away from him.
01:08:58
Wright says Seavers' solution was cold and simple. He told me that really the only option that he had was for her to die.
01:09:06
And Seavers told his high school friend there was something in it for him, too. A big payoff.
01:09:12
He had told me that he had at least $100,000 to offer to have it done. Wright hired Jimmy Rogers to help him, and says Mark eventually settled on a plan.
01:09:23
While Mark was with Teresa's family celebrating her mother's birthday in New York,
01:09:28
Wright and Rogers would drive to his Florida home and kill his wife. He told me that Teresa was going to be returning home on Sunday night, late Sunday night, by herself.
01:09:39
And that Mark and the kids were staying for an extra three days. Wright testified that he and Rogers arrived at Seavers' home around 6 a.m. Sunday.
01:09:49
Teresa wouldn't be home for another 18 hours. He said Mark gave him the alarm code.
01:09:55
What did you do once you got inside? Kind of looked around in the garage. Jimmy was kind of poking around stuff
01:10:02
found a hammer and it made a crude joke about it being Teresa's destiny, made a hammering
01:10:10
While Rogers joked about the hammer the two still weren't sure how they would kill her. After scoping the house
01:10:18
out, they left for the day. Later that night when they returned Wright said he pried the door open to make it look like a break-in to police
01:10:26
as they awaited her arrival. They still hadn't decided how they would commit the murder.
01:10:32
We should have been better prepared. We weren't. Shouldn't have done it. We're not very good at it, obviously.
01:10:38
Wright expected Teresa to be home around midnight, but at 1130, her car pulled into the driveway
01:10:45
and the garage door went up. He and Rogers hid. Teresa didn't see them and walked into the kitchen.
01:10:50
When you followed her into the house, did you pick up anything? It was unplanned.
01:10:56
but there was a hammer. I just grabbed it. Even when I had it, I still intended to use my hands,
01:11:03
but it was a backup. Wright seemed to shrug off their incompetence with a laugh as Teresa's mother and sister listened to the brutal details.
01:11:15
They'd heard it once before during Roger's trial. This time, it would be no easier.
01:11:20
Wright described how he followed Teresa into the kitchen, accidentally kicking a dog bowl on the way.
01:11:26
She jumped and started to turn towards me. And when she started to turn towards you, what did you do?
01:11:35
I hit her. I hit her with the hammer. Where did you hit her? In the head, specifically.
01:11:43
She put her hands up and was trying to defend herself. She fought for her life? Yeah, she was surprised.
01:11:53
I actually think that she thought I was Mark. She said, why? Teresa's mother reacted
01:12:00
horror to hearing of her daughter's last moments of life. On the other side of the courtroom,
01:12:05
Mark Seavers appeared to cry and wipe tears away. Jimmy came from my right side and just started blasting her over and over and over.
01:12:15
I asked him a couple of times, I said, Jimmy, stop. I said, enough. But he wouldn't stop.
01:12:23
Wright said as they prepared to leave, Rogers laughed and then hit Teresa one last time.
01:12:29
Now Teresa's sister Annie Lisa shook and sobbed uncontrollably. A week after the murder, Wright made the trip from Missouri back to Florida again, as though nothing had happened.
01:12:40
My wife and I drove back down for the funeral and to help out, to help the family with arrangements and things.
01:12:50
So after you were involved in the death of Dr. Seavers, you drove down to help her family?
01:12:56
Yes. At the funeral, Wright said he tried to tell Seavers what happened that night, but he said Seavers didn't want to hear it.
01:13:04
Cold, calculating, and brutal. Now Seavers had heard it, and his defense would do everything it could to make sure the jury wouldn't believe it.
01:13:15
Coming up, the best defense is a good offense. You have never taken a polygraph about this case, have you?
01:13:23
I wasn't asked to. That wasn't what I asked. There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode,
01:13:36
listen to our Talking Dateline series with Josh and Dennis, available Wednesday.
01:13:51
Mark Seaver's defense was facing a monumental task. The state had laid out a comprehensive case with phone records, insurance policies, and damning testimony from his lifelong friend.
01:14:02
The entire case came about from one witness. That was Curtis Wainwright. Mark Seaver's attorney, Mike Mummert.
01:14:09
This case is what happens when the police look to prove guilt rather than exclude innocence.
01:14:16
Mummert went after Wright on the stand. You have never taken a polygraph about this case, have you?
01:14:22
I wasn't asked to. That wasn't what I asked. And then in quick order, the defense highlighted the lies Wright had told police.
01:14:30
You told Detective Leavitt I did not help Mark kill his wife. Do you recall telling Detective Leavitt that?
01:14:36
Yes. When you talked about the actual murder you said that Jimmy committed the murder while you stayed outside Do you recall saying that Yes in the beginning
01:14:49
Defense attorney Mummert also had a personal theory about the case, that Wright, envious of his lookalike best friend's life, acted on his own to destroy it.
01:14:59
So you think Curtis is some kind of psychopath lone wolf? I do. Who took it upon himself to come down here, kill Teresa Seaver to go home?
01:15:07
Curtis had multiple felonies, had been to prison, was living in a trailer. It's really not too hard to imagine.
01:15:17
Curtis just said, who do you think you are? I'm going to take you down a peg or two.
01:15:23
Then Attorney Mumbert took on the most damning evidence, those burner phones, and got the analyst to admit she only knew when the burner phones were connected, not what was said.
01:15:32
Is it possible for us to determine or discern any of the content of these voice calls between the prepaid phones?
01:15:42
All I have is documentation that they talk to each other or where they ping from.
01:15:47
I don't have text or voicemail. Do you know what they were talking about? Oh, absolutely not.
01:15:53
Mummert says those burner phones weren't used to plot a murder. Rather, he suggests the calls may have concerned sensitive IT information at Teresa's medical practice.
01:16:02
And then there was Taylor Showmaker, the girlfriend of Jimmy Rogers. The defense argued that despite hearing Rogers confess to the murder,
01:16:10
she didn't have direct knowledge of Seaver's alleged role in the conspiracy. And she had a motivation to lie. Money.
01:16:17
They said that there's $55,000 in money from crime stoppers out there. And that you might be eligible to get some of that $55,000 if you cooperate. Is that correct?
01:16:27
Yes, I did. Okay. Showmaker never got the reward, but she did get $400 a month to help her relocate and pay her rent.
01:16:35
The defense said that amounted to about $20,000. And as far as those hefty insurance policies that amounted to nearly $6 million being a motive for the murder,
01:16:45
Mummer called the Seavers estate planner. She said the payout figure made absolute sense for a doctor with a growing practice.
01:16:52
I just felt that she personally was going to be very successful, that she needed more life insurance.
01:17:00
Looks like a motivator. Well, it does look that way, but in fact, it was not excessive.
01:17:06
And in fact, for I think most doctors, they will say that that's actually insufficient.
01:17:13
Mark Seavers declined to testify, and the defense rested its case. It was now up to a 12-person jury to determine
01:17:20
if he was a grieving husband or plotting killer You had to believe Curtis or there was no case If you didn believe Curtis you not guilty Over the course of the trials Teresa family sat on one side of the courtroom
01:17:33
Mark's on the other. Two families once united by a marriage, now divided by a murder.
01:17:40
This becomes a painful story at some point of two mothers. One has lost a daughter, the other potentially losing a son.
01:17:46
Do you see her mother? Yes, I ran into her in the restroom once, and she started crying, and I hugged her,
01:17:54
and we stood there crying and commiserating with just emotion. There really wasn't a lot said.
01:18:02
Now both families waited for a verdict. The jury was set to go home at 6.30. At 6.20, just four hours into deliberations, a verdict.
01:18:11
We'll let the clerk publish the verdict. Verdict. The defendant is guilty of first-degree murder.
01:18:19
And guilty of conspiracy. From the defense table, little reaction from Mark Seavers.
01:18:25
After jurors left, Teresa's family hugged and cried. Then they embraced prosecutors and cried some more,
01:18:34
the prosecutors themselves finding little to celebrate in the verdict. We had just convicted the father, and children had lost both parents,
01:18:42
so my reaction was one of melancholy. It's the first time I've ever had that reaction to a verdict.
01:18:48
For Mark's family, the news was devastating, but not surprising. I kind of had a sinking feeling because I looked at the jurors' faces often,
01:18:59
and I didn't see any compassion there. It was almost like they had their mind made up.
01:19:07
Those jurors would now listen to arguments as to whether Mark Seaver should be sentenced to death
01:19:12
or spend the rest of his life in prison. Teresa's mother, Mary Ann Groves, described her loss to jurors.
01:19:19
My daughter Teresa was an extraordinary woman, a powerful force determined to change the world.
01:19:26
I used to call her my modern-day Mother Teresa. In an effort to save his life, Mark's family, who stood staunchly behind him, spoke to the jury.
01:19:36
He's my baby. He's my son. And I would always be there for him. The jury recommended the death penalty, but it was up to the judge to make the final decision.
01:19:47
Four weeks later, as the judge prepared to rule, he received a letter written by Mark and Teresa's now teenage daughters
01:19:53
asking that their dad not be sentenced to death. Those girls explicitly asked to not have their father taken from them.
01:20:02
And now bearded, Mark Seavers appealed to the judge. I innocent of all charges Our girls have tragically lost their mommy and now they are about to lose their daddy as well Therefore I respectfully ask the court for life
01:20:17
as not to compound their loss and suffering. I am grateful, however, that the court can only determine my fate on earth
01:20:26
while my soul is in God's hands. Then Judge Bruce Kyle gave his decision. I judge people's actions, not their souls.
01:20:34
and it's the order of the court that you be sentenced to death, sir. Teresa's family, convinced of Mark's guilt, spoke to the media.
01:20:46
Her sister, Annie Lisa, acknowledging that with this verdict and sentence, another life will be taken.
01:20:52
It feels like justice, but it's hollow because it's so terrible for Mark's family
01:20:58
and we have tremendous compassion for them. Her focus now, she said, is Teresa and Mark's two daughters.
01:21:07
If there's any two girls in the world that can come out of this like stars, it's these two girls.
01:21:16
After nearly five years, the murder case of Dr. Teresa Seavers was over. Jimmy Rogers was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.
01:21:25
His appeal was denied in 2022. Mark Seavers' appeal was also denied. He remains on death row.
01:21:32
For his cooperation, Curtis Wayne Wright was sentenced to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder.
01:21:38
For the detectives who worked so hard to find Teresa's killers, the case will always feel bittersweet.
01:21:45
We should feel good about what we were able to do because we brought some form of justice to the family.
01:21:54
But you can't bring her back. Exactly. and to think how different the investigation may have been but for a woman named rose i don't feel
01:22:05
like a hero i felt like um i did the right thing and guess what folks if you really want to tap
01:22:14
into your body's innate ability to heal you can still find dr theresa sievers even today on those
01:22:19
youtube videos promoting health healing and a good life she had helped so many spreading her gospel
01:22:27
Tragically, her message, like her life, cut short before she was finished. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:38
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:22:45
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.