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What goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage is not always apparent to the outside.
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My wife, she fell asleep in advance. I just came up here and she was laying face down in the pan.
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If something wasn't right, she was just unconscious. A beaming bride, a haunting death.
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He was telling me he could never, ever love another woman as much as he loved her.
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What had happened? Did she have an aneurysm? Did she have a seizure? Police were baffled.
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I expected something to be wet. I expected there to be water on the floor. Things were not adding up.
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Something was screaming to me, something's bad wrong. Could this death have been deliberate?
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She was murdered. I love Sarah. I would never hurt her. I started crying because I just felt so bad for him.
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There's just no chance that he had anything to do with it. Three trials, three juries.
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We're scared that the truth may not come out. Sometimes the shades are drawn early in a marriage,
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even for young couples so in love like newlyweds Sarah and Ryan. Everything in life was still fresh, even at home on your average Monday night.
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After his workday as a sports planner, Ryan said he plopped down on the sofa on an August night to chill with the Bengals' preseason opener against Green Bay.
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Sarah, he says, went upstairs to draw a bath in the master. She liked her calming baths.
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The young dental hygienist had been tormented with more of her headaches that afternoon.
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The young couple in the suburban Cincinnati home that evening had been married for just under four months.
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114 days to be exact. They'd vowed till death do us part, and that moment was only minutes away from arriving.
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They'd begun, the two of them, with a blind date at a pub that worked out. Sarah, Sarah Stewart, had been fixed up by her friend Dana Kist.
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Dana had an inkling that Sarah would really hit it off with her husband Chris's former college roommate, Ryan Widmer.
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I came home and I said, Sarah is amazing. I said, I think this, their personalities would really get along. He said, well, let's let them go to dinner and see what happens.
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What happened over drinks and nibbles was chemistry. Laid back Ryan, the college jock and baseball player, super organized Sarah, who needed everything just so, talked about getting together again.
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She said, well, let me check my book. So she gets out her little black book and, you know, she's looking through and he's peeking over looking, you know, and he said later he calls us and tells us, you know, there was nothing written in her black book.
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It was a fast-track courtship, and before very long, Ryan was bringing his new girlfriend home to meet his mom, Jill.
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I liked her a lot. Probably the number one thing that struck me the most was how beyond her years and maturity she was.
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Poised, huh? Yeah, and Sarah didn't have a problem telling anyone anything, so if you made Sarah mad, you knew you made Sarah mad.
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As for Ryan, he never seemed to lose it. I don't think I've ever seen him upset. He doesn't get mad, you know.
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He's so laid back and kind of easygoing, go with the flow, and she's so on it, organized.
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This is where we have to be, and he just says, okay. Jill Widmer enjoyed her days with Ryan and his new girlfriend, Sarah.
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Our family tends to do a lot of barbecues and picnics and things like that. We would spend some time down on a lake in Kentucky. They would come down there.
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Were you pleased she was becoming a serious part of the family? I was very pleased, yes.
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The inseparable couple bought a nice four-bedroom house together in a good neighborhood,
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and Ryan surprised Sarah with an engagement ring. There was a ring in a dog collar.
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Around the dog's collar. She was very excited. He was very excited. Sarah made him happy.
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And soon the wedding invitations were in the mail. The bridesmaids knew they'd better snap two.
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She's a planner, so she had everything ready to go. She wanted to make sure all the girls wore the same makeup, same eyeshadow,
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same i bought us our little makeup kits for the wedding so we all look the same how's ryan doing
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he was just as happy as i i've been happier than i've ever seen him with with her
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it cost sarah big screen tv to seal the deal but she got ryan to take ballroom dance lessons for
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the wedding and i was amazed i mean never in a million years your son dance lessons yeah she
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could get him to do more things than any woman he had ever dated. The wedding in April 2008 was a formal affair.
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The bride was beautiful. Ryan's dance came off without a hitch. And the happy bridesmaids all matched, just as Sarah won.
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Very beautiful. I mean, every detail was planned, obviously, to achieve because it was Sarah.
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And she was gorgeous. That was awesome. Probably the most fun wedding we've ever been to.
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Most fun. Ever. The newlyweds went to Costa Rica for their honeymoon and had a great time.
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Then it was back to Cincinnati to begin their journey together as Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Whitmer.
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They worked really hard. They built a beautiful deck on the back of their house.
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They had a trip planned to Cancun. They had everything to live for. So August 11th should have been just another day on the calendar.
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It should have been. In a young marriage, huh? Yes. August 11th, Monday night. Ryan remembers being downstairs watching Monday night football.
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Sarah had gone upstairs to her bath. She was in trouble. 911, what's your work, please?
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My wife, she fell asleep in the bathtub. I think I was downstairs. I just came up here and she was laying face down in the bathtub.
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I got a call. It was Ryan. Something happened to Sarah The EMTs were rushing Sarah to the hospital By then they worked on her for 45 minutes but hadn gotten a response Minutes later Jill Widmer was with her son waiting anxiously together in a room off emergency
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Finally, a woman came in, and then we said, is she gone? And she said yes. He just dropped down to his knees and was just bawling and sobbing into the chair.
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Sarah Whitmer, 24 years old, the bride of less than four months, was dead. Her husband Ryan told the emergency services people he thought she'd fallen asleep in the bathtub and drowned.
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But those EMTs doing CPR, trying everything they could to save her, didn't understand one crucial observation they made at the home that night.
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There's something here that doesn't look right. A drowning in a dry bathroom? I expected something to be wet.
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There's a towel on the floor, there's a mat on the floor, but everything's perfectly dry.
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The questions deepen. That Monday night, the Cincinnati Bengals were looking more than decent against Green Bay.
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Fans across town like Jeff Braley wondered if this could finally be a miracle season
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for the back then hapless local franchise of the NFL. But Braley didn't get to see all of the game.
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He was a cop, a detective, and you don't get to pick your downtime. Now when I'm watching the Bengals game and I get a call from my sergeant,
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Lieutenant, we're out on a drowning. The paramedics are still working on her, but something's not right here.
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As he rolled to the house that night, he knew some of what to expect. When you're a cop for more than a decade, you become familiar with the signs of a drowning,
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like the froth about the victim's nose and mouth. Your mind starts running immediately about possibilities.
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They initially tell me I've got a 24-year-old drowning victim that died in the tub.
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I'm thinking that we're going to find evidence of something. You know, we're going to find some drugs or evidence of an overdose or something.
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As he pulled up, the victim was already loaded in the back of the ambulance. The arriving police officer was still inside the house,
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and he gave the detective a fill on what he'd found when he was led to the master bedroom
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where the 24-year-old woman lay on the carpet off the bath. He felt for a pulse.
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He assisted with CPR on what he described as a completely dry body with her hair being only damp.
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Wet head, dry body. That's correct. For someone who drowned in a bathtub full of water.
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Now let me get her out of the bathtub and get her on a flat surface. Okay, okay.
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The 911 dispatcher had been quite clear about it. He had instructed the husband to get his wife out of the bathtub and put her on the floor.
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The husband went away and came back on the line to say that he just moved his wife from the tub to the bedroom.
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Okay, go ahead and get back to CPO. I'll be there in a little bit, okay? Detective Braley wondered along with the EMTs and the arriving officers
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why a woman who drowned in a bathtub would be mostly dry. He needed to see the scene.
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What story would it tell him? I started mentally preparing myself based on what they've told me.
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You know, what do I want to see versus what do I see? He headed for the master bathroom.
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I expected something to be wet. I expected there to be water on the floors or towels or whatever it might be, and it's simply not there.
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Dry, dry. There's a very small remnant of water, what you might call some droplets, on the bottom of the tub right around the drain.
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Other than that, there's nothing. You got any bath mats, wet towels on the floor, that kind of thing?
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There's a towel on the floor, there's a mat on the floor, but everything's perfectly dry.
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Now he had not only a drowning victim who didn't appear to be wet, someone who supposedly fell asleep in the tub and pitched face down in the water,
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But a bathroom itself that was both dry and undisturbed, even though presumably the husband had to wrangle her limp body out of the tub as he moved her to the bedroom.
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You know, whether it's lotions or soap or whatever's sitting on the side, they weren't knocked off.
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That bothered me if you're pulling somebody very quickly out of a tub that that's still together.
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The detective making mental notes. Something was screaming to me, something's bad wrong.
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Something bad, really, really bad has happened here. and more so than just a tragic accident where she drowned.
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The forensic techs arrived and were taking photos, cutting out sections of the bedroom carpet
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where the mixture of blood and fluid common in drownings had stained it. What they wondered is, was there another explanation for the stains?
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We wanted to get those things to our lab right away to start checking out some things.
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Even though it was early hours in an incident, and so much would depend on the findings of an autopsy,
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the detective knew that this was not a case that was going to be closed out that night.
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When I left the house at 2 a.m., I knew I had a suspicious death. Still, there were questions.
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How long had Sarah been out of the tub? And had she been out of the tub long enough for her body to air dry?
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It wasn't possible. You know, if you're pulling somebody directly out of a tub of water, the body has to be wet.
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There's no other way around it unless a substantial amount of time has passed or we're not being told an accurate story of what actually transpired.
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Question, was it possible for Ryan to lift Sarah out of the tub without knocking over those bottles that the detective noted were undisturbed?
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Was it possible for water not to be splashed around as she was moved to the bedroom?
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And that overriding question, what had happened to the young wife in her master bedroom?
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We knew that she had drowned just from the scene itself. It was the manner in which she drowned that had raised all the questions.
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But Detective Braley would have the most questions for the seemingly happily married husband.
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Was it possible there was stress in the marriage that no one knew about? I had to rely on the fact in the back of my mind that nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.
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Did she have an aneurysm Did she have a seizure Was there something medical behind this mystery She was complaining of headaches I was telling her how long has it been since she been at the doctor
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Sarah Widmer had died of drowning in her home, and her body would be examined by the county coroner.
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There was nothing for Ryan, her husband of four months, to do but leave the hospital and head home.
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His mother, Jill Widmer, took him back to the house in the wee hours. Ryan asked me, he said, Mom, I can't go back in there.
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Can you go in and grab some clothes for me? And so I went upstairs, and when I got upstairs to their bedroom,
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there were a couple pieces of carpet cut out of their carpeting, which I thought was odd.
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It hadn't occurred to mother or son that the authorities were already looking at Sarah's death
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as anything but a tragic, explainable incident of some sort. There were a million questions in our mind.
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Did she have an aneurysm? Did, you know, did something medically happen to her? Did she have a seizure?
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Daylight, and word was spreading that Sarah was gone. Dana and Chris, the couple who'd fixed the newlyweds up,
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could not believe what they were hearing. We had just gotten back from a trip, and I told her that I'd call her as soon as I got back
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so we could get together for dinner, and I didn't even get a chance to do that. Shocking news, to say the least. Shocking news.
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Dana, a nurse, tried to make some sense out of what had happened to her dear friend.
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She thought back to her last conversations with Sarah. She was complaining of headaches.
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She would call and say, you know, what do you think from a medical background? And I said, maybe you should get your blood pressure checked.
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You know, and I was telling her, I said, you just basically need a checkup. You know, how long has it been since you've been at the doctor?
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And then there was that funny trait Sarah had that people used to kid her about.
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The way she'd fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Well, maybe that wasn't so funny.
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Maybe that was part of an underlying condition that helped explain her sudden death.
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Her mother-in-law noticed it when she first got to know Sarah. It was Christmas 2007, and Jill was taking home videos.
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All of a sudden, I panned over. There's Sarah having a good time at the family Christmas.
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And Sarah was sound asleep in a chair in my family room. We were 15 or 20 people in the room.
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We're all laughing, talking, kids running around, and she could just go to sleep.
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Sarah asleep at the dinner table, snoozing in the car. Friends kidded her about it.
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She would always fall asleep in the beginning of movies. So he would always be nudging her the whole time.
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Sarah, Sarah, wake up and watch this movie. Was it so noticeable that you guys joked about it?
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Every time I went somewhere, even at the dinner table, we'd be laughing like, Sarah, don't fall asleep.
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I'd always say, Sarah, you have narcolepsy. And she'd say, Dana, I do not. I'm just tired all the time.
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Had Sarah fallen asleep and drowned in the tub? Was that even possible to do? Ryan seemed to think so.
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He said as much to the 911 dispatchers. My wife fell asleep in the bathtub and I think she's dead.
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But all the observations about sleepy Sarah, Sarah with her headaches, was just anecdotal information,
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not the stuff of real medical investigation. The medical examiner would have the first real results about Sarah's death.
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What was he finding? No evidence of a stroke, no evidence of a heart attack. But the medical examiner had discovered something else, bruising to Sarah's head and neck.
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What had caused those injuries? The investigators checked off what they had so far.
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A young woman supposedly drowned in a bathtub with a damp head of hair and a dry body.
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Didn't figure. If you're pulling somebody directly out of a tub of water, the body has to be wet.
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There's no other way around it. A victim with unexplained bruises. and a husband whose story they didn't believe about a ho-hum Monday night watching football,
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then finding his wife dead in the bath. With Ryan's story, it doesn't fit. It doesn't fit at all.
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We determined at that point we had a homicide. Sarah Widmer murdered, and the authorities believed her husband Ryan did it.
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How shocking is that to you? Oh, I can't even tell you. To charge Ryan with murder.
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I mean, you've got to be kidding me. Like, why would they think, why? and I can't even tell you what that was like.
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So on top of losing this beautiful member of our family, he didn't even get a chance to grieve
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because now we're scared to death and he's scared to death that he's going to be charged with murder.
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And that is exactly what would happen. Just two days after his new bride's death,
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a warrant was issued for Ryan Widmer's arrest. By Ryan's own admission, he was the only one in the house.
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So, Ryan murdered Sarah, or he's covering for somebody that did. It didn't seem possible at first glance, a clean-cut young couple,
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him without a criminal record of any kind, them with no clear-cut history of arguments, no problems in their marriage.
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Where was the motive for murder on a Monday night? Any boyfriend, girlfriend issues here?
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There was no evidence whatsoever to point that there was a girlfriend, boyfriend.
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Money trouble? Not that we could find. Did you find any anger issues in the guy?
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No. No, we're really not getting a negative picture of this couple. No, we're not.
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As unlikely as it may have seemed, police said there was no other explanation for Sarah's death.
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Ryan Widmer was charged with his wife's murder. This is the state of Ohio versus Ryan K. Widmer.
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His family and friends were devastated. Ryan and I were both so brokenhearted. I could not have ever conceived, nor could Ryan, that they would have had any idea that he would have been the person to hurt her and that it wasn't just a tragic accident.
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It just broke my heart. I mean, just knowing that he was feeling that grief and fear for his own life, too.
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Is there any moment when you think, maybe I don't know the guy, maybe there was this instant of something awful happened?
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Never I never even seen anything where he remotely angry Even Sarah family was behind Ryan So much so the two families decided to delay Sarah funeral until Ryan was out on bond
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Sarah's family, they were very livid about the fact that, you know, he wasn't guilty
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and that they were not going to go forward with the service until Ryan could be there.
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The families are both on the same page here. Yes. That you're four square behind Ryan.
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And you're not even going to grieve together formally. until he is there with you. Right. The dead woman's brother, Mike Stewart, asked the judge to lower
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Ryan's bond amount so he could attend the funeral. In our heart of hearts, we don't believe Ryan did
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this. But eight days would pass before the judge lowered Ryan's bond from a million dollars to
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400,000. But by then, it was too late. The funeral had already been held so out-of-town relatives
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could return home. It was a nice ceremony. Her brother got up and said a few nice words
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and I know that Ryan wrote a letter that was read during the service. The minister that did their wedding did her funeral as well.
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Chris and Dana grieved for Sarah, but also tried to comfort a shattered Ryan. And I remember him telling me, Dana, I love her so much.
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Ryan was so distraught, he felt he couldn't go back to the home he'd bought with Sarah,
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so while he waited for his trial date, he moved in with his mother. It was great to have him staying with me, but...
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There's only one topic in the household, huh? Well, there's two. One was continuing to talk about how much we miss Sarah, trying to grieve for her,
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but at the same time, this young man who lost the love of his life, he's trying to grieve for his wife,
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and he's got a murder charge hanging over his head that he might go to prison for the rest of his life.
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Ryan Widmer wondered, why couldn't everyone just see that he loved his wife, and that she died a death that perhaps even a medical examiner could never satisfactorily explain,
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but that it wasn't murder. The case goes to court and out comes the evidence. It would be virtually impossible for somebody to fall asleep and not wake up.
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And later, Ryan Widmer speaks out at last. So you think they wanted to make a case here?
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Why would they arrest me a day after if they didn't want to make a case? Sarah was wonderful.
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The most loving person. She was just a great person. Sarah Widmer had been a daughter, a wife, a loyal friend in her brief life.
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But in death, to those who would never know her, she had become simply the victim.
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And the case could be summarized as breezily as the title of a true crime paperback.
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The Bathtub Murder. On talk radio in the greater Cincinnati area, host Bill Cunningham could feel the court of public opinion responding to the story.
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The Bathtub Murder case had the phones ringing. The idea that such a young man could be watching a Bengals game
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and within a few seconds turn from a Bengals fan, long-suffering, to a murderer was a little bit shocking.
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For months, listeners debated whether the husband could have done it. I had a large number of callers who said to me, he didn't do it.
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He doesn't fit the profile. There's no history. And I said to them, wait a minute. Wait till the trial takes place.
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I'm led to believe that there's going to be clear and convincing evidence. Seven months after Sarah's death, the only jury that mattered was sworn in to hear the case against 28-year-old Ryan Widmer, a charge of aggravated murder.
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The couple's friends were sticking by him. Basically, his life hangs in the balance of 12 jurors.
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That's a scary thought. It's a scary thought. There is a chance he could go to jail.
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In the courtroom, Sarah's family sat across the room from Ryan's, much as they had the previous year during the couple's fairytale wedding.
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But now, Sarah's family's support for him had eroded. For Ryan's mom, that was just another unexpected twist
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in a situation that seemed to get stranger by the minute. Her son on trial for murder.
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I see my scared baby. That's what I see. I mean, he was scared to death. But the prosecution's message for the jury was blunt.
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There had been a violent confrontation in the Widmer house that night. Ryan Widmer purposely killed Sarah Stewart Widmer and murdered her by drowning.
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The prosecutors began with the first moments of the case. Ryan's call to 911. My wife, she fell asleep in the bathtub.
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I think I was downstairs. I just came up here and she was laying face down in the bathtub.
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On the stand, the emergency dispatcher testified that the voice on the phone that night was giving more details than normal.
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It seemed that the caller was rather calm. Usually, I can't get anything out of them.
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She's in the bathtub? Yes, she's been water-straining right now. I was out there watching TV.
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She falls asleep in the tub all the time. To prosecutors John Arnold and Travis View,
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the husband was trying to place himself as far away as possible from the bathroom where Sarah had died.
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He really gives very little information about her condition. It's really more important for him to say,
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I wasn't there and I really don't have anything to do with this. And could Sarah even be dead face down in the bathtub?
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Could a body contort that way? That seems an odd position for somebody who's, quote, fallen asleep,
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to be face down with your face near the faucet, almost bent in two? In terms of the possibilities of how the enclosed space of her bathtub
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is shorter than she is long. We're not talking about a McMansion Whirlpool tub here, are we?
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Right. And so much more of the prosecution case was built upon the observation of the first arriving officers and emergency responders.
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They noted not only was Ryan not wet, This man who had lifted his wife's body out of the tub just minutes before they arrived,
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Sarah was also mostly dry. I noticed that her body was dry, her hair was damp. And others on the scene corroborated this observation.
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Damp head, dry body. Things were not adding up. It would seem to me her body would have been wet, the floor would have been wet, the carpet would have been wet.
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You're talking about from the time he says I'm taking her out of this bathtub to the time that other people are there.
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Her hair is described as simply damp, not even wet. Carpet's not wet. There's not water dripping off of her hair onto the rest of her body.
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The floor is not wet. And the officer noticed something else, the victim's fingers and toes.
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We all know what happens to them when they've been soaking in a bathtub. It was my understanding that she'd been in the water for 20 to 30 minutes,
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and I would have thought that her fingers would have been pruned up, her toes would have been pruned up.
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And did you see any indication of that? No. From simple observations, the murder case had grown.
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The jury was being told that Ryan Widmer's story didn't jive with what officers in the scene had taken note of,
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like the bathtub and surrounding tiles that should have been soaking wet but weren't.
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And that implicitly raised a question for the jury. Is it possible that this young woman who drowned had never been in the tub in the first place?
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Bottom line is there would have been water everywhere. If there wasn't, it was cleaned up.
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And if there was a cleanup, then there was something to hide. And that was her murder.
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And an expert witness for the prosecution spoke to the issue of whether a person can actually fall asleep and drown in a bathtub.
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Her testimony was no, that can't happen. It would be virtually impossible for somebody without the influence of drugs or alcohol or something external to fall asleep and not wake up.
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So first, the sensation of water on your face would wake you up. Two would be the gag reflex, water entering your airway, just choking.
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And then three, if for some reason that didn't, the drop in oxygen would actually cause you to stimulate and wake up.
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But maybe Sarah hadn't fallen asleep. Perhaps she'd suffered a catastrophic but perfectly natural event, something to her heart, her brain.
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The coroner didn't find that. Any evidence of heart problems? No. Any evidence of brain injury or seizure?
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No. One of the amazing things about Sarah Whitmer is that she had regular medical care.
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For a person her age, she went twice in two years for just a regular physical. This is not a person who didn't have the opportunity to interact with her medical professionals.
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And to the coroner, the bruising he saw on Sarah's neck and scalp while performing the autopsy looked ominous.
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The wounds, too significant. And not in the right spot to have been caused by EMT's life-saving efforts.
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But the things that were the most disconcerting were the three bruises which were able to be seen on the right side of the scalp.
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She's got another faint bruise on her forehead. She's got this significant degree of neck hemorrhage.
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She's undergone significant CPR. However, there is no hemorrhage anywhere in the area of the chest,
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so it's difficult to try to rationalize that the hemorrhage in her neck can be the result of CPR.
00:27:19
are. As the coroner saw it, the significant bruising on Sarah's neck was caused by Ryan's
00:27:25
forceful drowning of her. Do you have an opinion as to the manner of Sarah's death? Yes, the manner
00:27:31
of death was homicide. And that took prosecutors into the realm of speculation. What had happened
00:27:39
in the bedroom that night if Sarah hadn't drowned by herself in the bathtub? This forensic pathologist
00:27:44
had one scenario explaining a damp head but dry body. Her head was pushed over the edge of either
00:27:52
the bathtub or the sink or the toilet, either forwards or backwards, either in a pool of water
00:27:58
or under running water. That's how she died. An expert also noted these strange prints invisible
00:28:04
to the naked eye. He couldn't say when they were left on the tub or even that they came from Sarah,
00:28:09
but felt confident that the prints were most likely made by a small person. If Ryan had forced Sarah over the side of the tub,
00:28:17
had she tried to brace herself as she was pushed into the water? From my experience, those are like prints that are going down in a downward motion.
00:28:26
How do you fight back? Do you try to keep your head out of the water? Do you put your hands against the back of the tub?
00:28:31
Or do you put your hands on the bottom of the tub and try to lift out of the water?
00:28:34
or do you grasp at somebody and lose your only hold on life? A stark image, the husband pushing his wife's head underwater
00:28:44
and holding her there until she drowned. This was a drowning. She had been subjected to forcibly holding her throat over some object to drown her.
00:28:54
But the jury had to wonder what the motivation could be for such an awful crime.
00:29:00
Sarah's mother, who had initially supported Ryan, was now testifying for the prosecution.
00:29:05
She said that when she was out shopping with Sarah, her daughter seemed to feel she needed to check everything with Ryan,
00:29:11
who could see her purchases on his computer. She would buy something. Ryan would call her as soon as she bought it.
00:29:17
Sometimes telling her, did you really need it? Why did you buy it or something? He thought she was spending too much money.
00:29:22
He was very concerned about her shopping habits. Correct. There were still stresses, things that were going on in their family.
00:29:28
But even the prosecutors had to acknowledge that this didn't necessarily add up to a clear motive for murder.
00:29:34
But they believed there were things happening in the little house at Crested Owl Court that no one but Sarah or Ryan knew about.
00:29:42
Anybody who's been married or in a relationship knows that what goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage is not always apparent to the outside.
00:29:50
But was the prosecution's case too thin? Too much observation light with not enough persuasive hard evidence The defense would argue passionately that it was and that Ryan had nothing to do with his wife sudden death It didn add up that this man of 27 years
00:30:09
who has never even shown anger in his entire life would all of a sudden kill his wife.
00:30:20
Ryan's side of the story. Sarah's friends take the stand. I know that she had fallen asleep in the bathtub before.
00:30:40
What was the toughest thing you had to surmount? We had a lovely 24-year-old woman who was dead, and no one could explain why.
00:30:49
The defense wasn't going to be able to tell the jury what caused Sarah Widmer to drown that night.
00:30:56
But they were going to show that Ryan Widmer had no reason to hurt his wife. And as far as damp hair, dry body, they'd explain that.
00:31:04
The bottom line for the defense... I know one thing. Ryan Widmer had nothing to do with his wife's death.
00:31:10
Charlie Ritgers, Ryan Widmer's defense attorney, argued that his client was plagued from the get-go by his unhappy choice of words on that 911 call.
00:31:19
She's still in the bathtub. Yes, she falls asleep in the tub all the time. Electing to say she fell asleep in the tub sets the alarms going.
00:31:28
Exactly. In other words, had Ryan told the 911 dispatcher only that his wife was unconscious,
00:31:34
it wouldn't have been so suspicious. The only thing Ryan knows is she fell asleep in the tub,
00:31:39
but they jump on that and say he's a liar. The defense attorney argued the coroner had been all too quick to rule the death a homicide.
00:31:48
He had no idea she had unusual sleep habits. He had no idea that she was suffering from a headache that day.
00:31:56
Remember, an expert witness for the prosecution had said it would have been impossible for Sarah to fall asleep and die in the tub.
00:32:03
But those who knew her sleep habits said it may have been a sign of an undiagnosed underlying medical condition.
00:32:09
Sarah's boss, the dentist, testified that her quirky sleep habits were well known around the office.
00:32:15
She would normally grab a quick lunch and then go out to her car and take a nap for 30 or 45 minutes.
00:32:21
It was odd because people don't generally do that. And the dentist recollected that Sarah hadn't been feeling well on that last day of her life.
00:32:29
She had a sore throat. Her stomach had been bothering her earlier in the day. She was still feeling crummy later that evening when she spoke to a friend.
00:32:37
She had a headache and the back of her neck was hurting. I mean, she sounded tired and, you know, she didn't sound like she felt very good.
00:32:46
Sarah turning off the day and retreating to her bathtub, that sounded just like the Sarah they knew.
00:32:52
She would always leave our house and say she had to get home because she had to take her bath.
00:32:56
And Sarah dozing off in the tub was a trait a friend from childhood days was very familiar with.
00:33:02
She had fallen asleep in the bathtub before. We would have talked about that because I had fallen asleep in the bathtub before, too.
00:33:09
The sleeping habits, the headaches. The defense claimed they could very well have been the symptoms of an underlying
00:33:15
and potentially fatal condition that went undetected, something an otherwise healthy young woman wouldn't take all that seriously.
00:33:22
And even with all their scientific art, argued the defense, sometimes pathologists simply cannot say why a person died.
00:33:30
A doctor who specializes in emergency medicine testified that unexplained deaths occur far more often than many of us would guess.
00:33:39
Nationwide, there are approximately 300,000 episodes of sudden death per year. And of those episodes of sudden death, 1 to 2 percent occur in young people.
00:33:49
But one-third of those young people that die have normal autopsies. In other words, people sometimes just die, and their autopsies may never reveal the cause.
00:33:59
But the issue that might decide the case was the observation by the arriving officers and EMTs of damp hair and dry body.
00:34:08
What looked suspicious was easily explainable, said the defense. Hair simply stays wet longer.
00:34:15
If they get out of a swimming pool or a bathtub, their skin dries before their hair.
00:34:19
Yes. The defense told the court you have to look at the clock, the elapsed time of the incident.
00:34:25
The defense claimed that Sarah's body dried off in the time between Ryan first speaking to the 911 dispatcher and when the police officer arrived.
00:34:33
And what about the fingers and toes that should have been pruned up but weren't?
00:34:38
Well, no one knows what time Sarah got into the tub. We don't know if she was primping in front of the mirror. We don't know any of that stuff.
00:34:44
And by the way, suggested the defense, you can't have it both ways with the dry bathroom theory.
00:34:51
If Ryan had killed Sarah in the small bathroom, there also should have been water splashed everywhere.
00:34:56
If there was a violent struggle, then there would be water on the floor, on the counter, on the walls, everywhere.
00:35:05
And if they want to claim that it was a stage scene where he cleaned up the water, well, where's the wet towel?
00:35:13
And investigators looked for wet towels. In the dryer, even in the garage, nothing.
00:35:18
and say for argument's sake there had been a struggle. You'd think Ryan would have gotten scratched up as Sarah fought for her life,
00:35:25
but Ryan didn't have a mark on him. How would Sarah have reacted if she were being attacked?
00:35:30
Sarah was a very spunky person, and she was small in stature, probably 5'1". I think she weighed around 140 pounds, but she wasn't frail by any stretch of the imagination.
00:35:42
She was a strong girl. So she would have gone for her attacker? I full-heartedly believe, yes.
00:35:48
And Sarah's French manicure was in pristine condition when the EMTs found her. No sign of a fight.
00:35:54
There was absolutely no damage to the nail She had beautiful French manicured nails None of them were damaged at all
00:36:05
She didn't have skin from Ryan underneath her. And the very notion of Ryan attacking Sarah is preposterous, say their friends.
00:36:13
Ryan's a lot like my husband, Chris. And the aspect of, you know, when there's an argument, Chris just says,
00:36:17
OK, what can we do to fix it and let's move on? And that's kind of how Ryan was.
00:36:22
And as far as accounting for the bruising noted to her neck and scalp, to the defense, they were certainly caused by the EMTs working on Sarah.
00:36:30
We're talking about 45 minutes of resuscitation efforts. Not five, not ten. 45 minutes.
00:36:37
It looked perfectly consistent to this emergency room doctor, an expert for the defense.
00:36:42
I was not surprised at the injuries at all based on the prolonged CPR and the number of innovation attempts.
00:36:50
Add it all up. Injuries the result of life-saving efforts, skin that may well have dried before the authorities showed up, and you were left, the defense argued, with an unexplained death, something that experts tell you happens.
00:37:02
And jurors, the reason you didn't hear about love affairs or out-of-control finances is because none of those things existed.
00:37:10
Motive. They don't have motive. It didn't add up that this man of 27 years who has never even shown anger in his entire life would all of a sudden kill his wife.
00:37:25
It made no sense. I hope that you agree that Ryan Whitmer is not guilty of any wrongdoing.
00:37:33
But the prosecution would tell the jury in its closing argument that while they may never know why Ryan killed his wife of only four months, that he nonetheless did.
00:37:43
and that the clock was ticking as he staged the scene before he called 911. That, they said, explains the damp hair, dry body mystery.
00:37:53
Sarah Widmer was either out of that bathtub for a longer period of time, had been dead for a longer period of time,
00:38:01
or her body was never fully in that bathtub. And they claim that Ryan spent so much time cleaning up the scene before he called for EMTs
00:38:10
that Sarah's dead body was showing signs of rigor mortis when they arrived. She was already dead by the time they got there.
00:38:18
They had difficulty intubating her because her chin kept wanting to fall. Rigor mortis is setting in.
00:38:25
Now it was up to the jury to decide if Ryan Widmer had killed his wife. We're scared that the truth may not come out.
00:38:35
We know without a doubt that Ryan did not do this. 23 hours of deliberation. The verdict and the controversy.
00:38:55
About the only fact of the case that was indisputable was that Sarah Widmer had drowned.
00:39:00
But was it a natural death in her bathtub? What about the suggestion of a neurological event, something with a heart, that the medical examiner could not find?
00:39:09
Her medical history is completely devoid of anything that even would suggest these things.
00:39:15
Or had Sarah died at the hands of her husband, Ryan? They had failed to prove the case. They had failed.
00:39:21
Inside the Warren County Courthouse, the jury was out all day. The couple's friends waited.
00:39:27
We're scared that the truth may not come out. We know without a doubt that Ryan did not do this.
00:39:34
And we pray to God that everyone else sees that too. Billy Cunningham, I am a great American.
00:39:41
Ryan Widmer might have wished that the listeners to Bill Cunningham's call-in radio show had been on his jury.
00:39:47
The call split 90 to 10 in favor of Ryan Widmer because during the trial, there was no smoking gun.
00:39:56
Ryan's mother agreed. She was cautiously optimistic. I never let myself get cocky.
00:40:02
I just felt that in having sat there and listened that there were a lot of holes and not a lot of evidence.
00:40:09
Never felt like it was a slam dunk, but I felt like there was a lot of reasonable doubt.
00:40:14
The jurors were hard at work. They asked for the tub where Sarah had been found dead to be brought to them in the jury room.
00:40:22
By the second day, Ryan's defense attorney was getting anxious. When they're out more than 20 hours, it's clear that somebody's saying that this isn't as straightforward as it seems.
00:40:32
Correct. But the prosecutors weren't worried by the long jury deliberation. We knew it was going to be a hard case for them to weigh a lot of evidence.
00:40:40
They had two counts to decide. Count one, aggravated murder. Did Ryan premeditate the murder of his wife, Sarah?
00:40:48
And count two, non-premeditated murder. Did it happen suddenly, without prior thought?
00:40:53
Finally, after 23 hours, the jurors had reached a verdict. The lawyers were summoned.
00:40:59
It's a very traumatic moment. Your heart's racing, it's in your throat, and you're anxious to hear what the jury says.
00:41:08
It's a profound moment. As Jill hurried back to the courtroom, outside, a storm hit with biblical fury.
00:41:17
She saw that as an ominous sign. The skies just opened up. There were tornado warnings, and it all just culminated when the verdict was about ready to be read.
00:41:27
Ryan Widmer took his place at the defense table. The defendant will please rise.
00:41:33
A verdict on count on aggravated murder. We, the jury, find that the defendant, Ryan K. Widmer, is not guilty of aggravated murder.
00:41:40
It was a moment of relief for Ryan Widmer. The jury did not believe that he killed his wife with premeditation.
00:41:47
But he still faced the second count of murder. The verdict reads we the jury in this case find the defendant Ryan K Widmer is guilty of the lesser included offensive murder Guilty The jury had decided that Ryan Widmer did indeed murder his wife Sarah
00:42:05
Mr. Widmer, is there anything that you wish to say? The accused, now the convicted, would kiss his wedding ring and then address the court for the first time.
00:42:14
He hadn't taken the stand, as was his right. I love my wife. I did not hurt her. I was never given a chance.
00:42:21
the day after she passes away, they charge me with murder. I didn't even... If I had an answer, I would give the answer to what happened to her,
00:42:29
but I can't. I was not in the bathroom with her. He was very upset. He doubled over when addressing the court.
00:42:38
In fact, I was surprised that he was as outspoken as he was, but he indicated to the judge and everybody that he loved Sarah
00:42:48
and he would never have hurt her. I love my wife and I did not hurt her. Ryan Widmer was given the mandatory sentence, 15 years to life in prison.
00:42:59
He was cuffed and moved to a holding cell. And he stopped next to me and he said, can I say goodbye to my mom?
00:43:05
And they said, no, just keep moving. How difficult is that? Beyond difficult. Dana Kist, who had set up her friend Sarah with Ryan, her husband's college roommate, was devastated.
00:43:16
She wasn't murdered. One of my best friends. So there isn't a whisper of doubt that says my best friend may have been killed by this?
00:43:25
Absolutely not. Close as you were to her, you still defend him? I do. Ryan's attorney took the loss personally.
00:43:31
It was awful. This was on my shoulders. It was my duty to my client to get a proper verdict, and I failed.
00:43:45
But as Ryan Widmer got processed into the Ohio prison system, it wasn't the end of the bathtub murder case.
00:43:52
The fax machine in the defense lawyer's office began to spit out other shocking information.
00:43:58
The case of Ryan Widmer was far, far from over. As we speak, it isn't the end of things.
00:44:03
That's correct. Something amiss in the jury room. He said that two or three of the female jurors
00:44:12
had done home experiments where they had showered and then air dried. Home experiments? What was that all about?
00:44:21
Ryan Widmer was about to get a break. My impression was that the community was stunned by the verdict.
00:44:48
The verdict was so unpopular in the court of public opinion that candlelight vigils were staged to protest the jury vote.
00:44:58
There has never been a case where hundreds of Americans come out of their homes carrying candlelights to listen to prayers about a condemned, convicted killer.
00:45:11
It's never happened before. Talk radio host Bill Cunningham, a lawyer by training, regards himself as a hang-em-high conservative.
00:45:18
But even he felt this was a case of justice denied. Judging this case against a hundred other murder trials, this is one of the flimsiest and one of the weakest I've ever seen.
00:45:28
My name's Mike Mayleben. I'm the creator of the website. Someone out there following the trial was Mike Mayleben, a young newlywed himself and a web page designer.
00:45:39
Even though he'd never met Ryan, he so believed in his innocence that he launched a free Ryan Widmer website.
00:45:46
The goal is for him to get a new trial. If he doesn't get a new trial, I believe it's going to outrage a lot of people.
00:45:52
Angry citizens, taxpayers, voters. Even though the real trial was over, the prosecution hadn't entirely called it quits.
00:46:00
In their post-verdict victory lap, they spoke of things that the judge had not allowed the jury to hear.
00:46:06
The weekend before his wife died, when she'd been away visiting relatives, they say Ryan had frequented a website called Adult Friend Finder,
00:46:14
an organization that bills itself as the world's largest site for swingers. We found evidence that he'd been on the site, but no evidence that he followed through.
00:46:22
If they were such a happy couple, why somebody on the computer surfing looking for a hookup spot?
00:46:28
That makes no sense to me. That would combat the idea of the happy couple. The judge had not allowed the web surfing or other pornography investigators say they found on his computer to be introduced as evidence,
00:46:40
since there was no way to know if Sarah even knew about Ryan's Internet trolling.
00:46:44
Still, was it a sign, as the detective thought, that their marriage was not as happy as friends and family believed?
00:46:51
My understanding of some of these sites, supposedly, that he visited ended up being pop-ups on a computer.
00:46:58
and I'm not the most computer literate person, but I don't think the full story was told there either.
00:47:05
And I don't understand if they got the verdict they want, why they have to continue to attack my son and my family.
00:47:11
And Ryan's mother said if the couple had thought over anything, the family would have known.
00:47:16
Sarah, always outspoken, wasn't the type to suffer in silence. Sarah told everybody, she's a chatty person.
00:47:23
She had just been with her family for an entire weekend without Ryan being there.
00:47:28
If there were any problems, believe me, they all would have known it, and I probably would have known it, because Sarah probably would have called and yelled at me
00:47:34
about something my son was doing that wasn't nice to her. But none of that mattered now.
00:47:40
The jury had spoken, and defense lawyer Ritgers still couldn't get over the guilty verdict.
00:47:45
Ryan had become more than a client to him. I absolutely believed in him. I had him to my home.
00:47:50
I had him around my wife and my kids. There was no question in my mind he was innocent. Innocent.
00:47:56
Ritgers did what lawyers often do after losing a case. He wrote a motion to have the judge let Ryan go free or order a new trial.
00:48:05
A long shot. Ryan was in prison and would likely stay there. This has been a rollercoaster ride and I just can't let myself get my hopes up.
00:48:12
He may be in prison for 15 years. He may be. And this appeal process, I mean, it can take forever.
00:48:20
The day after defense attorney Ritgers filed his motion, his fax machine started humming.
00:48:26
It was a letter from a juror. He was having problems living with himself. He said it was a moral dilemma for him to allow it just to go without bringing it up to somebody's attention.
00:48:38
The juror claimed there had been forbidden monkey business during deliberations.
00:48:43
Monkey business over nothing less than the biggest issue in the trial. Damp head, dry body.
00:48:48
He said that two or three of the female jurors had done home experiments where they had showered and then air dried.
00:48:57
They were testing out this theory of how quickly the body dries coming out of the tub or shower?
00:49:02
Yes. At home? At home. If the faxing juror was correct, the panel had directly violated the judge's instructions to consider only what they'd heard in court.
00:49:13
The allegation was jury misconduct, a serious matter. Attorney Mark Godsey runs the Ohio Innocence Project.
00:49:20
He saw the juror letter as a way to persuade the judge to grant Ryan a new trial.
00:49:25
It's unusual for a juror to come forward and reveal that the jurors had violated the rules
00:49:29
and they had performed experiments and brought that into the deliberations. The judge began reviewing affidavits from the jurors about just what went on during deliberations.
00:49:38
In one of those sworn statements, a juror said of those taboo home experiments, the times to air dry influence my decision.
00:49:46
Jurors are not supposed to go home and do experiments. In the end, the judge agreed.
00:49:51
Four months after Ryan Widmer's conviction, he ruled that the husband would get another trial.
00:49:56
The not guilty verdict on the aggravated murder count, however, would remain. So the prosecution could only retry him on the second count of unpremeditated murder.
00:50:06
His mother scraped together enough cash to post the $400,000 bond for him. Ryan was released from prison, but by then he'd already spent five months behind bars.
00:50:17
The quest for justice can deplete both bank accounts and emotions. How far are you prepared to go in this?
00:50:22
I'm prepared to go towards till the day I die. If I have to live on the street in a cardboard box at the end of this,
00:50:30
I'm going to do whatever it takes to get my son out of this. And Ryan and his family would end up not only at the very brink of financial bankruptcy,
00:50:38
but also at the edge of emotional collapse. He says he can't sleep. He says he sees her when he closes his eyes.
00:50:45
He misses her. He's still worse at the wedding ring. Everything in Ryan's life was spiraling downward.
00:50:50
He'd lost his job as a sports planner after the guilty verdict and was left to do odd jobs for supporters.
00:50:56
The house he and Sarah bought together went into foreclosure. And now another jury would be asked to peer inside the mystery of a marriage
00:51:04
and decide what exactly happened behind those closed doors on Crested Owl Court.
00:51:10
The prosecutors would have to convince another jury that Ryan Widmer had killed his wife.
00:51:15
It's got to be hugely frustrating. You've got a guilty verdict and you've got to do it again.
00:51:19
On the other hand, by that point, we knew how a jury would react to our evidence.
00:51:24
On the other side of the coin, the defense has seen your case. They certainly have.
00:51:27
And they can now counterpunch it. And we can't change it very much. Ryan Widmer trial, take two.
00:51:35
A new jury makes a dramatic return to the scene of the drowning. And later, Ryan Widmer tells his own story.
00:51:43
I'm going to fight in this until it's made right. A little more than a year after a jury had found Ryan Widmer guilty of murder,
00:52:01
only to have the verdict thrown out, it would start all over again. This time, a new defense team would take over Ryan's case.
00:52:09
Defense lawyers Jay Clark and Lindsey Gutierrez worried that even though they were starting the trial
00:52:14
with a clean slate of jurors, the verdict from the first trial would still hang over the accused.
00:52:20
While he's still innocent until proven guilty, everyone thinks and everyone knows,
00:52:25
well, he was proven guilty. Across the courtroom, the prosecution team was the same,
00:52:30
and it would hammer home the argument that a healthy 24-year-old woman just does not die alone in a bathtub.
00:52:37
Did you see any evidence that Sarah suffered a seizure to cause her death by drowning?
00:52:42
No. Sarah's body? Dry to the touch, the officers and EMTs testified, and the bathroom where her husband lifted her soaking body out of the tub,
00:52:52
it was also not wet. Towels, a rug, magazines, they all appeared to be dry. And the jury would again hear the 911 call that to prosecution ears sounded odd.
00:53:03
I was downstairs, I just came up here and she was laying face down in the bathroom.
00:53:08
The message was, my wife's dead and I wasn't around when it happened. But unlike the first trial, the defense lawyers asked to take the jurors to the home where Ryan and Sarah had lived
00:53:18
to inspect for themselves the very bathroom where she died. The lawyers had made a pretrial visit.
00:53:24
The first thing we said was, man, this is small. They wanted the jurors to see for themselves that this was a cramped space in a modest builder's home.
00:53:32
Imagine Ryan at 6'2", and Sarah at 5'1", 5'2", and imagine them actually interacting in here.
00:53:38
It was such a small bathroom, a defense expert argued, that if there had been a violent struggle, both the husband and wife would have shown more obvious bruises and
00:53:47
scratches I would have expected to see more injury if a violent struggle had occurred But the prosecutors argued that Whitmer in an explosion of anger could have overtaken his wife so quickly that she would have had no time to fight back
00:54:05
And in their closing arguments, they told the jurors that Ryan Whitmer not only killed his wife,
00:54:10
but also delayed calling 911 to buy time to cover up his crime. Things looked so nice because Ryan Whitmer had the opportunity to reset the scene.
00:54:22
He had time to put things back into place. But Ryan's defense lawyers were hopeful this jury would see the case the way they did.
00:54:31
An innocent man on trial for a murder he did not commit. Absolutely believe him. No doubt in my mind.
00:54:38
The case was given to jury number two. And it seemed as though everyone in Cincinnati was on the edge of their seat waiting for its decision.
00:54:46
But three days into deliberations, nothing. The jurors asked to see the judge. There's maybe an impasse.
00:54:54
He sent them back to deliberate some more. It is desirable that the case be decided.
00:54:59
It was turning out to be the longest deliberation in Warren County history. And as the jurors left for a long holiday weekend, the specter of a mistrial hung in the air.
00:55:10
Dana and Chris Kist once again waited with Ryan. We have to make sure that he knows we're here.
00:55:15
That's what we do as friends is support him and be hopeful and have the faith that this is going to turn out the way that it's meant to turn out.
00:55:24
The jury returned to work on Tuesday morning, but at 5 p.m. on that fourth day of deliberations, they asked to see the judge again.
00:55:32
The note reads, we have decided that we cannot agree and that further deliberations will not serve a useful purpose.
00:55:39
A hung jury, no verdict. By best count, they were deadlocked, seven guilty, one undecided, four not guilty.
00:55:48
Walking out of the courtroom, Ryan Widmer's frustration spilled out. I just want this to be over.
00:55:53
I'm disappointed, obviously. I should be found not guilty. At a press conference, Ryan's parents vowed to stand by their son.
00:56:02
They'd already spent more than a half a million dollars on his defense, tapping out bank accounts and retirement plans.
00:56:09
We know he's innocent and we're going to do whatever it takes. We'll move forward.
00:56:13
Ryan's dad, Gary, was firmly behind his son. But in another odd twist, it had taken Ryan's arrest to reunite the pair.
00:56:21
He'd been out of his son's life for 13 years, the consequence of a bitter divorce.
00:56:27
He hadn't even known there was a Sarah until he learned his son had been charged with her murder.
00:56:32
Father was reintroduced to son while Ryan was in jail. This is the first meeting you've had really with your boy in a long, long time.
00:56:40
Through a glass wall. He's on the other side of the glass and you're talking through one of those phone devices?
00:56:44
Yes, sir. That's kind of a hard thing to take right there. It was. It was hard, but it was so sweet to see him.
00:56:51
A poignant reunion, father and son. And a father who completely believes in his son's innocence and will do anything to help him.
00:56:59
If there's any avenue to take, you have to take it. It's my son. You have to take it.
00:57:04
Your son didn't do it? Sarah Widmer died for reasons unknown. Yes. Give yourself a round of applause.
00:57:11
And beyond Ryan's family and close friends standing behind him, it was a case that had galvanized a virtual army.
00:57:18
There were free Ryan Widmer t-shirts and wristbands. He was getting a lot of support.
00:57:23
Including an anonymous donor said to have contributed $60,000. Yeah. Stranger. Yes.
00:57:29
Even the prosecutors were a bit worried. So much taxpayer money would be spent on a third trial.
00:57:35
so many Ryan Widmer supporters beating very loud drums. A plea deal was floated.
00:57:41
We felt that it was a subject worth bringing up. But the kiss said there was no way Ryan was taking a deal.
00:57:48
They offered him a plea, which they hadn't done in two trials. And he turned it down.
00:57:52
Of course he turned it down. He says, I'm innocent. There's no way that I would ever take a plea.
00:57:56
Why would I admit to something I would never have done that I did not do? Ryan Widmer was gambling that the next jury would acquit him.
00:58:03
But his roll of the dice was taking its toll, not just on him, but on his family as well.
00:58:09
Ryan's mom made headlines when she was stopped for drunk driving. She had pleaded not guilty to the driving under the influence charge.
00:58:17
But police say they found two open bottles of vodka in her car. She broke down, hospitalized.
00:58:23
It's a terrible toll on her. I've lived with it many times. all the three of us are together and you can just feel her going deeper and deeper into this.
00:58:36
But it seemed for every person that came out to support Ryan Whitmer, there were those who believed just as strongly on the other side that he had deliberately drowned his wife.
00:58:46
And one of those people would soon change everything. Ten days after the jury deadlock, a phone rang in the prosecutor's office.
00:58:53
It was a woman with a hand grenade of a story. Someone who's come forward who said, this guy confessed to me.
00:58:59
We want to find out more about what she has to say and how she knows this. The prosecutors investigated and came away convinced they had the long missing pieces to the puzzle.
00:59:08
Both a confession and a motive. And Jay Clark, the defense attorney, would now have to worry overtime about the state's new bombshell of a witness.
00:59:18
Did you guys know what they had up their sleeve? Literally no. Because the new witness feared for her life, saying that Ryan Widmer had threatened her,
00:59:25
her identity would not be disclosed to the defense team until the beginning of the trial.
00:59:31
And trial three would begin with virtually everyone holding their breath. Who was this person and what did she know?
00:59:40
The mystery witness takes the stand. And what a story she has to tell. I saw the sadness and the pain and the hurt in her mom's face.
00:59:49
They needed to know the truth. Mr Whitmer is there anything that you wish to say
01:00:05
The first trial ended in a mistrial, the second with a hung jury. Would this next jury reach a verdict?
01:00:12
These three jurors from the last trial said the prosecutors had failed to convince them that Brian Whitmer had killed his wife.
01:00:18
There's just nothing to prove to me that he had anything to do with her death. And that the next group of jurors would also not be able to reach a unanimous decision.
01:00:28
We sat in jury deliberations for 30-plus hours, and the likelihood of 12 jurors coming to the same conclusion was very unlikely.
01:00:38
We really didn't think that another jury would not be deadlocked. They'd soon find out.
01:00:44
Ryan Whitmer's extraordinary third trial for the murder of his wife was about to start all over again.
01:00:50
The prosecutors felt it was their duty to argue their case for Sarah. We're committed to seeing the justice is done for the victim of this case.
01:00:58
And that's what we've got to think about. It promised to be a judicial groundhog day.
01:01:03
Repeat testimony from the EMTs and arriving officers at the Widmer Hall. The oddity of a bathtub drowning victim with a damp head and dry body.
01:01:13
A 911 call that to some listeners volunteered too much. and injuries to the wife's neck and head that spoke to the prosecutors of homicide and not resuscitation.
01:01:23
The facts which came out in this case gave rise to that idea that there had been an assault that occurred
01:01:28
which progressed into an incident of domestic violence. And this time, Sarah's own mother described the couple's relationship as more tense than she had in the previous trials,
01:01:39
telling the court that Ryan and Sarah's arguments made her very uncomfortable. They would just call each other names and get hateful with each other.
01:01:47
I even told them, I said, you guys have to stop. I can't take it. But what was really new and stunning was something that had been haunting the defense
01:01:54
since they first learned of it the previous summer. The prosecution's mystery witness who would testify that Ryan had confessed to the crime.
01:02:03
It was a woman named Jennifer Crew from Iowa. It was the first time the defense would get a good look at this person
01:02:09
who Ryan had allegedly confessed to, and they were worried. She strolls in wearing a suit with decently done hair, normal makeup.
01:02:18
But how exactly did this woman living 500 miles away from Ryan Widmer come to be involved in the case in a starring prosecution role?
01:02:27
It turned out she'd watched our coverage on Dateline of the first trial. That Dateline segment aired on September 18, 2009.
01:02:35
After watching the show, she sent Ryan an email through the Free Ryan Widmer website, telling him how bad she felt about his plight.
01:02:43
I felt sorry for Ryan. I asked him what I could do to help him. Before long, the two were in frequent touch.
01:02:50
Struck up an email, texts, and ultimately a phone relationship? Correct. As the relationship continued, Ryan sent her photos of his dogs and asked her to send him a picture of herself.
01:03:01
Initially, she sent this one of a friend. She says things got a little racy on the phone.
01:03:06
He told me that he was watching porn in his mom's basement. There was even talk of Jennifer visiting Ryan in Ohio for a three-way.
01:03:14
Ryan asked me to ask my friend, and I said I would. But the reason Jennifer Clue was on the stand was to testify about one phone conversation in particular,
01:03:23
one very different than their usual banter. It was October 26, 2009. Jennifer said she'd been asleep when Ryan called.
01:03:31
It sounded to her as though he'd been drinking. He was crying and he was saying, I did it. I did it. I killed Sarah. I did it.
01:03:41
I thought what he meant was that he didn't do enough to save her life that night.
01:03:46
He said, no, Jen, listen to me. I did it. She said Ryan told her it had started with a fight between the two of them.
01:03:54
Sarah had found out that he had cheated on her when she went away with her mom. He said that they were in the living room and they were arguing.
01:04:01
about his pornography. What happened when she came upstairs? She was getting ready for the bath.
01:04:07
Ryan said that the argument continued, that she kept saying she can't do this anymore,
01:04:11
being married. He said that Sarah told him that the marriage was over. Ryan, she testified, then told Sarah.
01:04:19
Nobody leaves me. Nobody ever leaves me, and I mean nobody. That's when Jennifer Crew says Ryan hit his wife.
01:04:27
She fell backwards and hit her head, and he said, Jen, I blacked out. I blacked out.
01:04:32
But why this story now? Jennifer Crew waited until almost two weeks after the second jury had deadlocked before coming forward,
01:04:40
even though Ryan had allegedly confessed to her eight months earlier. She said she'd promised Ryan she would not reveal his secret,
01:04:48
and says she was unnerved when he gave her a veiled threat. I promised him I would never tell anybody.
01:04:54
He said, I hope not, because I wouldn't want you to be where Sarah's at. But she also said she thought that the jury, like the first one, would have convicted Ryan.
01:05:02
And when they didn't, she contacted the authorities after seeing pictures of Sarah's mother.
01:05:08
I saw the sadness and the pain and the hurt in her mom's face. And I'm a mom and I couldn't do that to them anymore.
01:05:16
They needed to know the truth. It was a lot to absorb. Ryan confessing, fighting with a wife who was leaving him, blacking out in the bathroom.
01:05:25
Would the jurors believe any or all of it? The defense had to make certain they didn't.
01:05:31
But they were worried that they might. I think she had invented this story and started to live it and really wanted to believe it.
01:05:39
You were convicted of it. So they aimed for the jugular. Could this woman be trusted?
01:05:44
She had a jaded past. Beth convictions, stealing, that's not something that an honest, credible person does.
01:05:50
A one-time bartender at a strip club who managed the dancers. Jennifer Crew admitted to misdemeanor brushes with the law You were convicted of theft Yes sir You were also convicted of fraudulent practices correct I believe that what my record states She was also in a methadone treatment program for her addiction to painkillers
01:06:08
You were using Oxycontin for approximately five years. About five years, yes. You've used false names to get drugs.
01:06:16
Yes, I did. And the defense indicated because of her addiction to drugs, her memory was not to be trusted.
01:06:22
When the detectives talked to you, you told them that your memory's not very good, didn't you?
01:06:27
I don't recall saying that. Do you remember telling them, I don't remember exactly verbatim conversations between you and Ryan?
01:06:33
I do not remember the conversation verbatim. The defense would hammer on her confusion about what hour the phone call came through, even on what day it was placed.
01:06:43
When investigators met with you, you told them the call was in the middle of the night.
01:06:48
I was asleep and I thought that the call came in later than it did. Everything critical in terms of time and duration and any memory about the call was all different once she got to testify, but only after she saw her phone records.
01:07:00
After Jennifer Cruz stepped down, the prosecution called the woman's fiancée to try to undo any damage to her testimony caused by the defense.
01:07:09
He confirmed that she related the alleged confessional phone call to him immediately after hanging up that night.
01:07:15
She came downstairs crying, and she's like, he did it. She was scared, actually.
01:07:21
she was upset. If the jury believed Jennifer Crews' story, Ryan Whitmer was sunk. So the defense
01:07:29
called a witness to refute the Iowa woman's story about an emotional call that night from Ryan.
01:07:34
And it was another woman who became interested in Ryan Whitmer's case after seeing our first
01:07:39
Dateline report. Melissa Waller from Seattle, like Jennifer Crew from Iowa, struck up a phone
01:07:45
an email relationship with Ryan in the fall of 2009. She says she was drawn to his case after the death of her sister-in-law.
01:07:54
How often do you think you guys talk? It was a few times a week, you know, sometimes more, sometimes less.
01:07:59
It was on a frequent basis. We talked about Sarah a lot. He was having a really, really hard time accepting everything.
01:08:06
She flew to Ohio to visit a friend and to go with another supporter to a bowling fundraiser
01:08:11
organized for Widmer's Defense. She even made this video tribute to Ryan and Sarah that she posted on YouTube.
01:08:19
Melissa's husband supported her friendship with Ryan. Was it a little out there?
01:08:23
Yeah, but I'm so comfortable with her and our relationship and without a shadow of a
01:08:30
doubt I was 100% behind her. I did feel strongly about supporting him. There's just no chance that he had anything to do with it.
01:08:37
But the importance of the Seattle woman's story for the defense was that she too had
01:08:42
had a lengthy phone call with Ryan that finished just six minutes before he called Jennifer
01:08:47
Crew in Iowa, the call in which he allegedly confessed to killing his wife. Melissa Waller
01:08:52
said Ryan was perfectly composed when she spoke to him for almost two hours that night.
01:08:57
How do you know that he was not drunk, he was not upset? Every phone conversation I've had, he's never been intoxicated or emotionally distraught.
01:09:06
I knew that all the times I had talked to him that he was never drunk or upset. Melissa Waller was convinced that Jennifer Crewe had made up the whole story about the confession.
01:09:16
I was shocked that somebody would go under oath on stand and lie. But still, had the defense paid a price by putting yet another woman on the stand?
01:09:26
Is there a larger issue here? Is there a risk for you about these women getting involved with Ryan Widmer?
01:09:32
That's easy to get sucked into that, but I think you have to understand what Ryan was going through.
01:09:36
He's never been able to really grieve for Sarah. He's never been able to mourn properly for her because you can't do that when you're under the gun charged with a murder.
01:09:43
They contacted him, and it was companionship. It was time to wrap up trial number three.
01:09:48
The prosecutor saying it was a sudden violent murder. Anybody who's been in a relationship knows that sometimes things go off.
01:09:56
They snap for no good reason. I think something like that happened. At some point, Ryan saw that his perfect marriage was falling apart, and that's what left us here.
01:10:06
The defense, arguing a medically undetermined death by natural causes. It's probably going to bother me for the rest of my life.
01:10:13
What happened to Sarah? We'll never know, though. Sarah had drowned, but how? A third jury retired for deliberations.
01:10:27
Another stunner, a new Sarah enters Ryan's life. Do you love Ryan Widmer? I love him. Yeah.
01:10:33
Just who is she? Later, Ryan tells all. You guys kept it secret, didn't you? Oh, yeah, because I knew they wouldn't try to make it into something negative.
01:10:53
The jury had been out for a day. Again, it seemed everyone in Cincinnati was waiting for a verdict.
01:11:00
While Widmer still had a number of ardent supporters, trial watchers say this time things were changing in the court of public opinion.
01:11:08
You have a candlelight vigil for him now and probably you could hold him in a phone booth.
01:11:11
One strong voice that had turned against Ryan Widmer was talk radio show host Bill Cunningham.
01:11:17
He was disgusted for one thing with how he says Widmer had exploited the free Ryan Widmer website.
01:11:23
He used that website, the Internet, to pick up chicks. And now instead of using that to find his innocence, he was bringing in these hot babes from Washington and Iowa.
01:11:32
For you, it sounds like it fell apart on a character issue. It did. To me, by the third trial, the evidence didn't change.
01:11:37
The facts didn't change. But the wallpaper of the case changed. Day two and the jury in the courthouse was going round and round.
01:11:45
My stomach was cramped and my shoulders were hurt and I just felt awful. I was nauseous.
01:11:50
I didn't, I haven't felt that way for 20 years. The jurors were working their way through the evidence.
01:11:57
They parsed the 911 call. Could my wife? I'm still sleeping in the bathtub and I think she's dead.
01:12:02
The more you listen to it, the more and more it starts to sound like it was staged.
01:12:06
And there was Sarah's body. Officers had testified it was too dry. Two and a half minutes later, after being removed from a tub, you would expect the body to be wet.
01:12:15
The alleged confession as recounted by Jennifer Crue. I just don't believe anything she said.
01:12:20
The prints in the tub. In normal circumstances, you cannot leave those kind of fingerprints on the side of the tub trailing down.
01:12:27
The bruising to Sarah. I think both the defense and the prosecution put up good arguments about that.
01:12:35
That's teetering on a razor's edge with me. At the end of the second day, they took their one and only vote.
01:12:42
They had a verdict. A blast of calls went out. The kiss grabbed a stunned Ryan. We immediately jumped in the car.
01:12:51
Ryan says, I can't believe they're back this soon. This is too quick. I'm worried.
01:12:56
When everyone was gathered in the courtroom, the judge asked for the jury ballot.
01:13:01
Anxious? Very sick. Ryan Widmer stood with his lawyers, his life hanging in the ballots.
01:13:09
I can actually hear Ryan shaking. I can hear it, and it's that silent in there, and he's that nervous.
01:13:15
The verdict. We, the jury in this case, find the defendant, Ryan K. Widmer, is guilty of murder.
01:13:23
Guilty. Ryan dropped his head to the table. He was hysterical. He was crying. He was a mess.
01:13:29
A bad, bad, bad dream. Ryan composed himself enough to proclaim to the court his innocence.
01:13:35
Judge, I did not do this. I don't know why this has to keep going on. I mean, my life has been ruined.
01:13:41
I love Sarah. I would never have hurt her. Never. Outside the court, Ryan's father, Gary, slumped to the ground.
01:13:49
The son he was recently reunited with after years apart, taken from him again. It was horrifying. It was a horrifying moment.
01:13:57
And I think it just totally caught up with me at that point. The whole total shock. And I just went weak.
01:14:03
Ryan Widner, for the second time, was given the mandatory sentence, 15 years to life.
01:14:09
As court officers handcuffed him and led him away, few people were aware of a young woman on his side of the benches crying.
01:14:16
This is also a Sarah, Sarah Manhurst, and she's still another twist in a story that has had so many.
01:14:24
Do you love Ryan Whitmer? I love him. Yeah. Sarah wore an engagement ring and is the mother of Ryan's son born in the summer after trial number two.
01:14:34
What'd you name the baby? His name's Ryan. Do you see Ryan's face in the baby's?
01:14:38
Yeah. Sarah, a Canadian via New York, like Jennifer from Iowa and Melissa from Seattle,
01:14:44
also became aware of Ryan after our first Dateline program on the case aired back in 2009.
01:14:51
I thought that he was railroaded. I really did. She sent an email to Ryan saying how sorry she felt for him and he sent one back Soon they were talking on the phone A little more than a month later Sarah came to Cincinnati to visit Ryan She stayed with him at his mother house I thought it was a little
01:15:12
awkward, you know, because we had talked so much on the phone, but we hadn't met. And, you know,
01:15:16
he just was telling me how much he loved Sarah and he could never, ever love another woman as
01:15:21
much as he loved her. I think I started crying because I just felt so bad for him. Sarah went
01:15:27
back to New York and then three weeks later returned to Cincinnati as Ryan's guest at his
01:15:32
mother's Thanksgiving dinner. That was the weekend they became intimate. Like the first time we were
01:15:38
together, I got pregnant. How did Ryan take the news? He was shocked. Obviously very bad timing.
01:15:45
They kept the pregnancy a secret as Ryan's second trial would take place the following May.
01:15:50
I decided, yeah, I was going to have the baby and he was okay with that. But it was just difficult
01:15:57
because I'm thinking, here I am, pregnant, and you're facing another trial, and my child could potentially grow up without a father,
01:16:07
which now he's in jail. With Ryan sentenced to 15 years, Sarah is raising their son.
01:16:24
I'm still in shock. I can't believe this happened to him. If in your own mind you couldn't get to beyond reasonable doubt,
01:16:31
if there was a sliver of doubt that maybe he had done this thing, would you have stayed?
01:16:34
Never. I would have never stayed with him. There's no way that he could have done this ever.
01:16:42
But had he? In the course of three trials played out before three juries, Ryan Widmer's guilt or innocence has been passionately debated.
01:16:52
He is now telling his story. Widmer speaks from prison when we return. Did you kill your wife, Sarah?
01:17:02
You think they fabricated this? Oh, I know they did. This young husband is about to make a startling claim.
01:17:08
This is Ryan Widmer's story as he tells it. He remembers a loving relationship with his wife, Sarah, that was right from the first date.
01:17:29
We hit it off perfect. Was there any friction? None whatsoever. Everything was cool.
01:17:33
Perfect. Perfect. He only had one worry about Sarah. My biggest problem with her was her sleep.
01:17:40
She would just work a regular day and she'd need to go to bed earlier. She'd be taking a nap.
01:17:44
I just thought, something wasn't healthy about it. You're 24 years old. But still, he says, they fell into their everyday lives.
01:17:50
Their jobs, walking the dog, building a deck on their house. All routine, he says, until that August night.
01:17:58
Sarah had come home from work, he says, with a headache. They had dinner, watched TV.
01:18:03
She's what? On the couch? Laying on the couch, yeah. Because she doesn feel so hot She said her neck was killing her She going to go get in the bath and she going to go to bed Ryan says he stayed downstairs watching the game until he too was ready for bed Upstairs to the master bedroom and bath
01:18:18
Tell me what you see just like a videotape recording it. I walk into a room. I walk over to the nightstand.
01:18:25
And I've put some things down, turned on the TV, and then I walked in the bathroom.
01:18:30
And that's when I saw Sarah. I knew something wasn't right. She was just unconscious.
01:18:36
How did you see her? Her head was just underneath the water. I mean, I don't even remember.
01:18:40
Was she face down in the tub as you tell 911? All I remember is just finding her.
01:18:45
I mean, I knew it wasn't good. I mean, she was laying in the water. I don't know what else to say other than it wasn't right.
01:18:52
The only thing I remember certain things because of what I heard on the 911 tape.
01:18:56
But it's such a shocking image. You think you'd remember? I wasn't thinking I'm going to have to remember.
01:19:01
What did I see? What did I do? Head what? Nose, mouth down below the water? Everything, yeah.
01:19:05
What did you do next? I'm trying to get any sort of reaction out of her, and I got nothing.
01:19:10
That's when he says he called 911. My wife fell asleep in the bathtub, and I think she's dead.
01:19:16
When you chose that word, I think she fell asleep. It's not about choosing a word. It's about what I said.
01:19:22
I mean, I guess it was just the whole her sleeping issue or whatever. I don't know.
01:19:25
They would say that that 911 call is suspicious because this guy is giving us too much information.
01:19:30
He's telling us he's downstairs. He's away from all the stuff that's going on. She's upstairs.
01:19:36
Do you know why you told them you were downstairs watching the game? What else am I supposed to do?
01:19:39
Because I was watching the football game. I don't know what they wanted me to tell them.
01:19:42
Maybe I just need an ambulance as soon as possible. Get here quick. I don't know.
01:19:46
I mean, I called and that's what I said. I don't know. Prosecutors say the first arriving officer was at the house no more than six minutes after the 911 call was answered.
01:19:55
And less than three minutes after Ryan lifted Sarah's body out of the tub. The observations of the arriving officer.
01:20:02
What do we have here? Why is this woman's hair damp and is her body dry? Yeah, well...
01:20:08
It doesn't make sense, Ryan. I understand that. So how do you explain it? How do I explain it?
01:20:12
I left the house and there was cops there by themselves. And they came up with a story they wanted to come up with.
01:20:18
Oh, you think they fabricated this? Oh, I know they did. So you think they wanted to make a case here?
01:20:23
Mm-hmm. I know they did. Why would they arrest me a day after if they didn't want to make a case?
01:20:28
Why would they have it in for you? Why would they lie? EMTs and police officers don't even work for the same agency.
01:20:34
They clearly do when they get up there to testify, because they're clearly coached into what to say.
01:20:40
And what about the story of the woman who says Ryan confessed to her that he'd killed Sarah?
01:20:45
Listen to me. I did it. Here's Jennifer Crew from Iowa on the stand saying, he called me one night, he was sloppy, and he confessed to me.
01:20:54
Right. Jennifer, I did it. I'm telling you, I did it. Did that conversation happen?
01:21:01
Nope, it never happened. So Jennifer Cruz's story is made up. 100% made up. The same goes Ryan told us for Sarah mother testimony about hearing hateful arguments between the couple They would just call each other names She a liar Sarah mom a liar Yeah She making the stuff up We were never mean to each other Never A one mother
01:21:22
from an earlier life who he says is embellishing the reality of his marriage. Now Ryan Widmer has
01:21:29
a baby with a new Sarah. She's awesome. So loving, caring. There's similarities I see in Sarah, my
01:21:36
wife, as I see with Sarah now. You guys kept it secret, didn't you? Oh yeah, because I knew they
01:21:41
would try to make it into something negative. And in that court of public opinion, the women from far away places, Iowa, Seattle, New York,
01:21:49
who became involved in his case, didn't go down well with everyone. A character issue.
01:21:55
We talked to somebody who's used you of using the free Ryan Widmer website as like a dating
01:21:59
service. I don't think that it was just your way of meeting women. That's not true.
01:22:02
I don't know who would have said that, but that's not true. But investigators wondered how good the marriage really was based on what they say they found
01:22:09
on Widmer's computer. Did you have an unhealthy addiction to porn? No. You looked at porn?
01:22:15
Yeah. But Ryan says that doesn't mean anything, and certainly doesn't make him a murderer.
01:22:21
Did you kill your wife, Sarah? No, I did not. I couldn't hurt Sarah emotionally, let alone physically.
01:22:27
She didn't get in your face and tell you she was leaving you? Nope. Nope. Didn't happen?
01:22:31
Did not happen. You were watching the ballgame, went upstairs, and you found her in a bad situation?
01:22:36
Yeah. And that's it? That's it. And you don't know why she died? Nope. But you didn't put her head underwater?
01:22:41
No, absolutely not. So you're saying you're wrongly convicted? Oh, I'm 100% wrongfully convicted.
01:22:46
And if 30 jurors or more found you guilty after they heard the story, they're not getting it?
01:22:53
They're not getting it at all. But these jurors from his third trial are confident they got it right.
01:22:59
They say, among other things, it came down to what they saw as Sarah's too dry body.
01:23:04
Oddities in the 911 call, prints on the tub, and the unlikeliness of an out-of-the-blue medical event striking Sarah in the bath.
01:23:12
I went into it believing that he was innocent, but everything that was put together with the evidence came down with four or five facts that we could not deny.
01:23:23
We believe that he intentionally drowned her. And the guilt of Ryan Widmer will also never be doubted by the prosecutors.
01:23:32
Do you believe that he actually did this thing? Absolutely. She was murdered. And he killed her. And he was the only one who could have done it.
01:23:41
Ryan Widmer is still appealing his conviction. I'm not letting this stand. I mean, I'm fighting this until it's made right.
01:23:48
The passage of time hasn't made the events inside the little house on Crested Owl Court any clearer.
01:23:54
And time, of course, brings changes. It's been years since we first met Sarah Manhurst.
01:24:01
She and Ryan are no longer a couple, but she says she still believes in his innocence.
01:24:06
and more change. His mother Jill passed away. Nothing, it seems, stays quite the same,
01:24:13
except the central mystery itself, and that will likely be argued for years still to come.