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[music playing] NARRATOR: A wealthy socialite
died after falling down stairs. Was it an accident?
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Or was it murder? The laws of physics and an
accident reconstructionist provided the answer.
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[theme music] NARRATOR: The Lucas family was
well-known in Tyler, Texas. The family patriarch,
Baker Lucas,
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owned a successful
real estate business specializing in
residential home sales. CONNIE CASTLE
(VOICEOVER): He owned
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a lot of real estate properties. He had a large real
estate business. And he was so respected
by the community
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that they did ask him to run
for the position of mayor. He accepted and he was our
mayor from 1970 to 1978.
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NARRATOR: The family donated
generously to charity and was so active socially
that Bette Lucas was
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known as the First
Lady of Tyler. JUNE JONES (VOICEOVER):
She was quite social. She liked parties, belonged to
a garden club and literary club.
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And Symphony League
when it began, she was one of the
first members, I'm sure, that was in it.
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NARRATOR: But the family
fortunes changed dramatically in 1985, when Baker
Lucas was killed
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in an automobile accident. Vo: It was a very
traumatic time for her, because for Bette Lucas,
her husband was her life.
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He was her connection
to everything in Tyler. JUNE JONES (VOICEOVER): He
waited on her hand and foot,
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and she was very much loved him. You know, she was
going to be by herself, and that was a real
blow, because they'd
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been together all these years. NARRATOR: Steven,
the Lucas's son, took over the family business.
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But things were never the same. DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER):
In fairness to Steve, his father was such a
charismatic, well-liked person
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that it would be very
difficult for him to step fully into
his father's shoes. I think that probably this is
something that was not lost
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on him, and he attempted
to manage the business, but not as well as Baker had NARRATOR: Three
years later, there
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was more bad news
for the family. Bette Lucas fell down a
flight of stairs in her home
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and was rushed to the hospital. Sadly, she never
regained consciousness. VANESSA CURRY
(VOICEOVER): She was
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in on life support
for at least a day. She was taken off
that and she died, and she was buried the next day.
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It happened very quickly. Even those people
who were close to her did not find out about the
funeral till the last minute.
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NARRATOR: At the time, no one
saw the need for an autopsy. JUNE JONES (VOICEOVER):
Nobody would
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have expected her
to die like that. We'd had plans for what we were
going to do in the rest home
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when we got to the
rest home together. And it was such--
just unbelievable that she would be gone.
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NARRATOR: Two people witnessed
Bette Lucas's fall-- her son Steve and his 20-year-old
daughter, Stefani.
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Steve said his
mother, a frail woman, started to carry a
VCR up the stairs. He said he tried to carry it for
her, but she wouldn't let him.
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MIKE ANDREWS (VOICEOVER): This
was one of the early VCRs, and it was large and very heavy.
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32 pounds is just
tremendously heavier than what we normally
think of now as a VCR.
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NARRATOR: At the
top of the stairs, Steve said he made one
last attempt to carry it.
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VANESSA CURRY (VOICEOVER): And
in the process of him trying to take that from
her, she jerked away,
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and the motion of
her jerking away propelled her over the
staircase banister. NARRATOR: She landed on
the lower flight of stairs
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and slid to the bottom. The VCR left a dent
in the molding, and the painting on
the wall was askew.
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But after Bette's funeral,
the ambulance crew told police that Steve
Lucas behaved suspiciously
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when they arrived at
Bette Lucas's home. CONNIE CASTLE
(VOICEOVER): They said that Steven Lucas
was standing outside.
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He was not even in there with
his mother when they rolled up. So Mrs. Lucas was laying
there on the floor,
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dying, if you will, all alone. We received several anonymous
calls at the police department
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telling us that we needed to
investigate the death of Bette Lucas, that it really
was not an accident
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and that perhaps
it was a homicide. NARRATOR: So
investigators decided to look further into
Bette Lucas's death.
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Bette Lucas, the millionaire
socialite of Tyler, Texas, was dead after a fall
down a flight of stairs.
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Her son Steve described
the fall as an accident, but not every one in the
community believed it.
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DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER): A call
came in telling the sheriff's department that they really
needed to take a hard look
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at the case, because this person
who was a friend of the Lucas family's thought that Steve
had killed his mother.
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NARRATOR: Since there
had been no autopsy, investigators
petitioned the court for permission to
exhume Bette's body.
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JUNE JONES (VOICEOVER): And
the fact that they brought her back out of the ground,
that was hard, to take, too.
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But we were happy that they
did, if they were going to find some proof of what had happened.
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-I think the town very quickly
formed two different camps. One camp thought that
Steve was a rich guy who
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was going to get
away with murder. The other camp thought it would
be unthinkable for someone
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in that social class
to be prosecuted. NARRATOR: The medical
examiner found six crescent-shaped lacerations
on the back of Bette's head.
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Nothing on or around
the stairs could produce these types of wounds. Toxicology tests for drugs
and alcohol were negative.
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But x-rays of the body
provided even more surprises. VANESSA CURRY (VOICEOVER):
It found that there's
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no broken bones of
a 66-year-old woman. There's no-- any major bruising
on the rest of her body.
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It's very suspicious in a story
about a fall down the stairs. -No one knows what the
actual murder weapon was.
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One of the things that
the pathologist speculated might have been used
was a candlestick,
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because the base
of a candlestick would fit the shape of an object
that he envisioned could cause
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the curvilinear
lacerations on her head. NARRATOR: And
investigators found similar circular indentations
on the hand railing
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in between the seventh
and ninth steps. Forensic scientists analyzed
a pair of candlesticks that
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were on the mantle
of the Lucases' home. One of them was dented. But forensic testing
found no traces of blood.
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Investigators were also
surprised by the lack of blood at the scene. DANNY ALEXANDER
(VOICEOVER): Three
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of us went up and down
that first flight of stairs on our hands and knees
and with laser lights,
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looking for tears,
blood, fibers-- anything on that runner and that carpet,
or anything on the carpet
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or on the post that
held up the hand railing, that would
have been out of place.
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NARRATOR: But they found
nothing-- and soon learned why. Members of the ambulance crew
said that Bette's granddaughter
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Stefani, along with a neighbor,
were cleaning up blood in the foyer when they arrived.
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And neighbors said it looked
like Steve had cleaned up, too. DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER):
Just after the body left,
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some of the neighbors
reported his shirt being wet. And his neighbor
across the street
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said it was actually his--
the chest area was wet. NARRATOR: So investigators
sprayed leucomalachite green
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onto the foyer floor, which
revealed a 4-foot area of blood that had been cleaned.
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DANNY ALEXANDER
(VOICEOVER): Then we interviewed the daughter,
Stefani, who was supposedly
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in the home at the time,
and her story did not match with his story, as far
as placement of where struggles
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took place, where
certain things occurred. So all that began to add it to--
something is not right here.
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NARRATOR: But if Bette had been
murdered, what was the motive? According to friends, Bette and
her son Steve never got along.
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DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER):
Best we could determine, Bette was somewhat ashamed
of Steve because of the fact
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that he was never able to
achieve the type of things that Baker was able to achieve.
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And Steve just did
not like his mother. Talked about her,
made fun of her, the way she looked in her
clothing-- just very much
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did not like her. NARRATOR: And the two had
financial disagreements, as well. Steve borrowed close to a half
million dollars from his mother
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and hadn't bothered to repay it. DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER): Bette
hairdresser, Patsy Denman,
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told the authorities
that Bette had told her in the days leading
up to the murder
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that she was very fed up with
Steve's inability to hold a job and to represent
the family well,
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and that she was going to
cut him out of the will and she was going to
tell him about it.
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NARRATOR: But Bette died before
she ever changed her will, and her son Steve
and his family were
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the beneficiaries of
her $4 million estate. So now investigators
faced a dilemma.
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The victim's son
and granddaughter both claimed Bette's
death was an accident, yet
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the preliminary evidence
suggested otherwise. VANESSA CURRY
(VOICEOVER): The problem
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with this case is you have
two witnesses who have reasons to lie, and you have no one
else, except forensic science,
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to support the claim that it was
a murder and not an accident. NARRATOR: The problem
was, investigators
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didn't have much
forensic evidence. To find out what really
happened to Bette Lucas,
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investigators asked accident
reconstructionist Alan Weckerling and physicist Mike
Andrews to compare the crime
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scene to the
witnesses' statements. The victim's son, Steve,
and his daughter, Stefani,
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both gave the same basic account
of what happened-- that Bette walked up the steps carrying
her VCR while Steve trailed
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behind her, trying
to carry it for her. At the top of the stairs,
Bette refused his help,
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pulled away from him,
lost her balance, and fell over the
railing, landing on the lower flight of stairs.
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Weckerling found a gouge
in the molding near where Steve said she
landed with the VCR.
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But a closer look
revealed an inconsistency. ALAN WECKERLING
(VOICEOVER): I had the piece
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of wood and the VCR-- we
brought that back to Dallas-- and examined it under
a stereomicroscope.
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And with close-up
photography, was able to show very
clearly how that dent had gone from the bottom to the top.
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We had the orientation and
the direction of force. NARRATOR: If the VCR fell down
the stairs, as Steve claimed,
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it would have struck the
molding in a downward direction, not upwards. And Weckerling was
confused by what
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he found at the
top of the steps, where this incident
allegedly took place. Steve and Stefani both
claimed that Bette fell over
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the 3-and-1/2-foot-high railing. But Bette Lucas was 5'5", which
meant that the railing was
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higher than her waist, higher
than her center of gravity. ALAN WECKERLING
(VOICEOVER): The center
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of gravity on this case is
important, because you can't get a body, be it a human
or a physical object,
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to go over something else unless
you have the center of gravity go above that. NARRATOR: In addition, when
Bette fell over the railing,
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she did not fall straight
down to the foyer floor through this 3-foot gap. Instead, she traversed the
gap and landed on the stairs.
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ALAN WECKERLING
(VOICEOVER): That come in at a high enough
angle that she doesn't
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hit the banister of the
stairs and break that. -Well, the laws of physics,
when an object falls it gets
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pulled towards the Earth. So any time an
object falls, it's going to fall directly
towards the Earth
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in a vertical direction. NARRATOR: In other words,
for Bette to have flown over this gap, she would have
had to pull the VCR towards her
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at about 30 feet per second
to carry her backwards at sufficient speed to
traverse the 3-foot gap.
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MIKE ANDREWS (VOICEOVER):
She was actually lower than the banister, so she had
to go up and over the banister.
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So she had to jump
up, so to speak. The landing point and the
actions of the falling body
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just didn't make sense. NARRATOR: Furthermore,
Bette's friends did not believe she would
have carried the VCR
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up the steps in the first place. DANNY ALEXANDER
(VOICEOVER): There was a lot of people
who said Bette
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would have never
picked up a VCR. She would never have
carried anything. -She wouldn't pack a
purse if it was too heavy.
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So we knew that just
didn't make any sense, that she had packed that thing. They're heavy.
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DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER): One of
the most ridiculous concepts-- and many women will
understand this-- Bette was
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in a long nightgown and the
theory is that she picked up a VCR and marched up the stairs.
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Any woman knows if
you were holding a VCR and you were going
up a staircase with a long nightgown, you
would step on the nightgown
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and fall on your face. NARRATOR: But of all
the inconsistencies, prosecutors were most
impressed with the molding
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on the side of the stairs,
where Steve said the VCR hit. If the dent was made
from the bottom up,
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it proved that the
scene had been staged. DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER): It
completely refuted the theory
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by Steve Lucas and his defenders
that the VCR somehow tumbled over the railing and caused
damage to the chair rail--
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to the railing on the stairs,
going up the stairway. It just doesn't make any sense.
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NARRATOR: In April
of 1991, Steve Lucas was arrested and charged
with his mother's merger.
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The grand jury did not
indict his daughter Stefani due to the
lack of evidence. DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER): I don't
know whether Stefani witnessed
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the murder, whether she
participated in the murder, or whether she was simply
out of the room when
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the murder took place. NARRATOR: But the
question remained-- was there enough evidence
to convince a jury?
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Prosecutors believed that the
death of millionaire socialite Bette Lucas was no accident.
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They knew that her
son, Steve, was in serious financial trouble
and owed close to a half million
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dollars to friends and
financial institutions. VANESSA CURRY (VOICEOVER): He
was borrowing money from family
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friends and failing
to pay that back. Banks had threatened
to foreclose on him, and he was reaching
a desperation point
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where it was all going
to come tumbling down. NARRATOR: And prosecutors had
witnesses who said that Bette
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knew all about
her son's problems and planned to cut him
out of her will, an estate
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worth approximately $4 million. On the day of the murder, Steve
went over to his mother's house
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with his daughter,
Stefani, to return her VCR, which they had borrowed. Prosecutors don't
believe that Bette
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tried to carry it up the stairs. Instead, they think there
was some kind of argument,
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possibly over money. As Bette started
to walk upstairs, prosecutors think that
Steve lost his temper,
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grabbed a nearby object,
and hit his mother on the head six times. As she fell, Bette grabbed
hold of her own portrait.
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Some of the blows missed
and struck the hand railing. Steve cleaned the blood from the
murder weapon and his clothes,
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then tried to make
it look like Bette fell while carrying the VCR. To support his story, he
created the gash in the molding.
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ALAN WECKERLING
(VOICEOVER): I think he thought he had it made. He didn't think anybody
would ever-- would ever
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be able to go back and look
at the mark on the wall and say that it came
from the wrong direction.
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NARRATOR: The defense submitted
an animation to prove that it was theoretically possible
for someone to fall over
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the railing backwards and land
on the second set of stairs, the way Steve Lucas described.
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MIKE ANDREWS (VOICEOVER): That's
another big issue in this case, was how you get her body
and the very heavy VCR
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both moving up and over. I assume she's carrying
it down a little bit low, and so she's got to bring it up
and over, along with her body.
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And if you're saying
that the VCR drags her over the banister, then you have
to throw the VCR pretty hard
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in order to get it to
carry you over the railing. NARRATOR: Both prosecution
experts say that Bette Lucas
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would have struck and
damaged the banister, had she fallen this way. But the banister
showed no damage.
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ALAN WECKERLING
(VOICEOVER): The lack of the breaking of the handrail
made me feel that the defense's
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story didn't hold water at all. It wasn't true. There was-- the physics
didn't back it up.
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NARRATOR: Surprisingly, after a
week of deliberations, the jury couldn't reach a verdict.
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VANESSA CURRY (VOICEOVER): The
first trial ended in a mistrial because the jury was
divided eight to four.
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NARRATOR: But prosecutors
didn't give up. Steve Lucas was retried
three years later.
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This time, prosecutors
put far more emphasis on the forensic evidence and
stressed the significance
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of the molding, which
supported their view that the crime scene was staged. DAVID DOBBS
(VOICEOVER): You really
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have to have the railing
to understand how important the damage to the molding
is to Steve's story.
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I think that having the
stair railing actually in the courtroom
for the second trial
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was very important
to allowing the jury to draw the picture of the
VCR and the path of the VCR
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as related by Steve. NARRATOR: Prosecutors
also presented experts to corroborate the findings
of the medical examiner.
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DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER):
The other thing that is important to
know, when you deal
00:19:05
with a forensic testimony
of the pathologist, is that opinion was
corroborated by Dr. Charles
00:19:12
White at the University of
Texas Southwestern Medical School, who's the director
of the neuropathological unit
00:19:18
there. And he was very clear
that it was homicide, once he saw the
forensic evidence.
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NARRATOR: Steve Lucas took
the stand in his own defense but was unable to
convince the jury.
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-Go up the stairs, of
course, to the landing, around on the upstairs. DANNY ALEXANDER
(VOICEOVER): When you're
00:19:40
able to scientifically
and forensically say with a high level certainty--
no, this is how this was made.
00:19:48
This is how this
indention was made. It was made from this
angle-- your suspect no longer has a leg to stand on.
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NARRATOR: In November
of 1994, Steve Lucas was found guilty of
his mother's murder
00:20:03
and sentenced to
35 years in prison. VANESSA CURRY (VOICEOVER):
I sat through two trials.
00:20:08
I heard all the evidence. The forensics made a
difference in this case to me, because
they-- the defense
00:20:15
could not come up with
any logical reason or any logical evidence
to support some
00:20:21
of the forensics
that doesn't lie. NARRATOR: Steve
Lucas created a story about the death of
his mother and tried
00:20:30
to convince a jury
that it was true. But forensic science
proved it was not true
00:20:38
and that Bette Lucas was
murdered by her own son. DAVID DOBBS (VOICEOVER):
Without the science,
00:20:43
I believe it would
have been an acquittal. If we did not have an objective
proof which would discount
00:20:51
the story that Steve told, I
believe that a jury would have been very hesitant
to convict him.
00:20:56
Science was key in this case. -With the science and the
physics and the forensics,
00:21:01
it proved-- it was his downfall. [theme music] [music playing]