00:00:05
NARRATOR: A husband
moves his younger mistress into the family home. Desperate not to lose him, at
first his wife accepts what is
00:00:13
a rather unusual arrangement. NARRATOR: Ann Marie
Anastasi decided to do something about her
cheating husband Anthony
00:00:33
and his mistress,
Jacqueline Riggs. The police department
receives a 911 call reporting that my
husband is not breathing.
00:00:47
And it's just that. This mystery starts unraveling
the minute 911 is called. NARRATOR: Hell hath no
fury like a woman scorned.
00:00:58
And this was a woman who had
been pushed to her limits. [music playing] The Anastasis of
Arundel County, USA,
00:01:23
looked like a typical family. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Ann
Marie and Anthony Anastasi had been married for 18 years.
00:01:30
They had five kids. They lived in a rented
home in this little town called Lothian, Maryland.
00:01:36
It's about less than an
hour from Washington DC. JASON KNIGHT: It's a nice house.
00:01:40
I mean, it's a nice,
probably four or five bedroom home on a
sizable chunk of land
00:01:46
in the southern part of the
county, which is pretty rural. NARRATOR: Nothing out of
the ordinary, apparently.
00:01:52
But matters were not
quite as they seemed. They had a rather
unconventional marriage.
00:01:59
NARRATOR: Unconventional
is putting it lightly. A young woman was living
in their basement.
00:02:03
She wasn't the nanny. She wasn't a
relative or a friend in need of somewhere to stay.
00:02:08
She was a lover. Uncovering the dynamics
of a complicated marriage starts some 700 miles away
on the US-Canada border
00:02:19
and a meeting between
a sports coach and a much younger
woman, Jackie Riggs. The Anastasis
lived in Sault Ste.
00:02:28
Marie, Michigan, on
the upper peninsula. Anthony was a volunteer
youth hockey coach.
00:02:33
During his coaching,
he met Ms. Riggs. She's 25 years old. Now, Anne Marie's 43 and her
husband is a few years younger.
00:02:43
And at some point
along the way, some sort of
romantic relationship developed that was extramarital
to his relationship
00:02:52
with Ann Anastasi. NARRATOR: Jacqueline Riggs'
family would later describe her as someone with a
soft and gentle nature
00:02:58
and as a loving
sister and daughter. She worked in child
care and doted on her nieces and nephews.
00:03:05
At some point in
time, the Anastasis left Michigan and
moved, as a family, to Lothian, Maryland
in Anne Arundel County.
00:03:13
Ms. Anastasi
believed at the time that that would
be the end of Mr. Anastasi's extramarital
relationship with Ms. Riggs.
00:03:22
NARRATOR: Ann Marie and Anthony
had both grown up in Maryland. If Ann Marie hoped that
the move would bring
00:03:27
her husband's affair
to an end, she would soon be bitterly disappointed. Subsequent to the
Anastasis moving to Maryland,
00:03:37
Ms. Riggs was moved by
Mr. Anastasi from Michigan down to Maryland and moved
into the Anastasi's basement.
00:03:45
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Anthony
decides he wants to move Jacqueline into the house. Let's have her live
with us and we can
00:03:50
all live happily ever after. Once she was there, she
was maybe not quite a member
00:04:02
of the family, but lived there. And Ms. Anastasi, actually,
from what we understand,
00:04:08
made dinner. And Ms. Riggs would join
the entire family for dinner in the evenings.
00:04:15
NARRATOR: Did
25-year-old Jacqueline have a clear idea of what she
was involved in in the summer
00:04:21
of 2015, when, in
effect, she became a second wife and de facto
member of the Anastasi family.
00:04:28
The physical environment
in which Ms. Riggs lived with the Anastasis did not
objectively look very pleasant.
00:04:35
Concrete floors, no walls, no
real privacy in the basement. The basement was unfinished.
00:04:43
But it had a bed and
some of the other-- some furniture that you would
put in a place to make it
00:04:47
look like a bedroom. NARRATOR: It was clearly an
arrangement that suited Anthony
00:04:52
Anastasi, his young
mistress just a couple of flights of stairs away. But his wife,
according to friends,
00:04:58
was angry, though she didn't
complain to her husband. She clearly hoped that the
relationship terminated when
00:05:06
they moved to
Maryland and was very disappointed when
Ms. Riggs moved back in with them, subsequently.
00:05:12
But there was-- we
never saw anything where she put up some
sort of resistance and tried to prevent it.
00:05:19
NARRATOR: Ann Marie seems
to have tried to make the best of a bad situation. She even agreed one night
to join the couple for sex
00:05:27
in the basement. The little bit that I know
about it was that Ms. Anastasi stated that at
one point in time,
00:05:36
Mr. Anasazi had convinced her
to engage in sexual activity with him and Ms. Riggs.
00:05:42
But Ms. Anastasi said that only
ever happened the one time, she didn't like it, and
refused to participate
00:05:47
in that ever again. NARRATOR: The love triangle
between Ann Marie, Anthony, and Jacqueline didn't last long.
00:05:53
Ann Marie was soon
sidelined, as Anthony focused all of his affections
on his 25-year-old mistress.
00:06:00
Now, suddenly, this threesome
is becoming a twosome. It's like, three's a crowd
and Ann Marie isn't invited.
00:06:08
Now, Anthony and Jacqueline
are having sex more often. And Ann Marie is on the outs.
00:06:15
Pretty soon before she knows
it, Ann Marie's husband is basically living
with this younger woman
00:06:22
down in the basement. DETECTIVE (ON TAPE): And I
have to ask this question, Ann.
00:06:54
Ms. Anastasi was questioned
by the police in some detail, essentially, along the
lines of, you're a human,
00:07:01
you cannot be OK with the
behavior in which your husband was engaged with Ms. Riggs.
00:07:08
NARRATOR: A secretly recorded
prison phone call would later reveal to prosecutors that
when Jacqueline Riggs moved in,
00:07:14
Ann Marie was both
brokenhearted and furious. And Ann Marie is
basically, my 18-year
00:07:33
marriage is basically over. I've just lost him to
this younger woman. The information we
developed subsequently
00:07:42
when we were listening
to her phone calls while she was
incarcerated certainly demonstrated that
she was incredibly
00:07:48
devastated emotionally,
and that's what drove her to commit these crimes. NARRATOR: It would not be
long before Ann Marie wanted
00:07:54
to put an end to the indignity
of her husband cheating on her, and under her own roof.
00:08:00
Most murders can be broken
down into a few areas-- love, drugs, greed. She elected to just become
the judge, jury, and executioner
00:08:16
on her own and decided that
Mr. Anastasi was gonna die and Ms. Riggs was gonna die.
00:08:21
It's the plan. It's the blueprint for murder. NARRATOR: In 2015,
Anthony Anastasi
00:08:35
was living with his younger
lover Jacqueline Riggs and his wife in their family
home in Lothian, Maryland.
00:08:41
Soon after the move from
the upper peninsula, Ann Marie Anastasi discovered
a double indignity.
00:08:46
Her husband was also bleeding
the family coffers dry. She had this million
dollar trust fund.
00:08:53
They spent it all. And he's telling her to
go back to her family and get even more money.
00:08:58
And whenever they get more
money, he spends it on himself. He buys himself flat screen
TVs and Harley-Davidson
00:09:04
motorcycles. It's all about Anthony
and what Anthony needs, what Anthony wants. She certainly
seemed to be someone
00:09:11
who was suffering from some
sort of emotional abuse. What makes this so difficult
is that she elected
00:09:17
to not avail herself of
any resources whatsoever, to not seek help. She elected to just become the
judge, jury, and executioner
00:09:25
on her own and decided that
Mr. Anastasi was gonna die, Ms. Riggs was gonna die.
00:09:30
And that was the only
resolution to this problem. NARRATOR: She may have decided
to become judge and jury,
00:09:37
but Ann Marie Anastasi
wasn't comfortable being a double executioner. So she recruited her daughter.
00:10:01
She has convinced her
13-year-old daughter that daddy has really not been
fair to mommy and daddy
00:10:07
has been abusive to mommy. Ann Marie convinced
her daughter that Anthony was discarding
Ann Marie as a piece of trash.
00:10:16
NARRATOR: Her 13-year-old
daughter was told, your father has to die. How can we get this done?
00:10:23
We got to-- this is not right,
what your father's done. Her mother talks
her into this.
00:10:29
She gets involved
in this murder plot. She's a kid. And she's just trying
to please her mother.
00:10:37
NARRATOR: The teenage
girl had her own reasons to be angry with her father
and his lover Jackie Riggs.
00:10:42
She would later tell
police that she'd overheard her father
and his mistress talking about starting a family.
00:10:48
And police found a
used pregnancy test in Jacqueline's room. The girl was facing
the prospect of her dad
00:10:54
having a baby with
a woman young enough to be her sister,
and all the while, living in the family home.
00:10:59
Mother and daughter
agreed that Anthony and Jacqueline had to die. Neither of them was willing
to get their hands dirty,
00:11:07
but they knew
someone who might be. Messages on Ann Marie's
phone would later reveal who
00:11:12
had agreed to be the stooge. They examined Ann Marie's
phone and they find these text
00:11:20
messages between Ann Marie,
her 13-year-old daughter Sarah, and Sarah's 18-year-old
boyfriend, Gabriel Struss.
00:11:29
In those text messages,
they're talking about a gun and the murder of two. It's the plan.
00:11:38
It's the blueprint for murder. So those text messages
point to the murder plot. They point to a plot that
has Ann Marie and Sarah
00:11:48
convincing Sarah's
boyfriend Gabriel to carry out these murders. NARRATOR: Why would this
young man, a teenager
00:11:56
with no personal
grudge against Anthony Anastasi and Jacqueline
Riggs, get involved
00:12:00
in such a horrific scheme? The answer lies in
his troubled past. Gabriel Struss
was a young man who
00:12:09
had a very difficult childhood. Now, here's a guy who
has no criminal record. He's basically sort of
raised himself on the streets
00:12:18
from the time he's seven. He was adopted as a
young man, subsequently left his adoptive
family to return
00:12:28
to his biological family. He wound up, at the
time of the murder, living in very unfortunate
conditions a few
00:12:38
miles away from the Anastasi's. And he's basically
raised himself period. He really didn't
have a great growing
00:12:45
up life, basically, kind of a
homeless guy and kind of a guy who could be led. He lived in a home
that had no central heat.
00:12:51
It had a wood burning stove. The walls were
covered in cardboard. Had no money. Unfortunately, Mr.
Struss seemed to not
00:13:03
have much hope for the future. And Ms Anastasi
promised Mr. Struss that upon carrying out
these murders for her,
00:13:14
he would be welcomed
into the Anastasi home. NARRATOR: Ann Marie
saw Gabriel Struss
00:13:20
as somebody she could exploit. Because of Mr. Struss'
extremely unfortunate upbringing and background, that
seemed like a worthwhile deal
00:13:31
to make. CAROLYN CANVILLE: This
young boy, he's 18, but he's not terribly
sophisticated,
00:13:37
hasn't had a great upbringing. He's kind of gullible. Now, Gabriel's probably not
the sharpest tack in the box.
00:13:45
He wants one thing. And he's gonna do whatever
he has to do to please Sarah. And by doing so, if he gains
the favor of Ann Marie,
00:13:57
he's gonna do it. JASON KNIGHT: Mr.
Struss was uniquely positioned to fall victim to
Ms. Anastasi's manipulations.
00:14:08
So now you have the
story of this scorned wife who has convinced her daughter
to join her in this plot.
00:14:17
And oh, let's get your boyfriend
to do the dirty work for us. Ann Marie knows
she can't do it.
00:14:25
So who are they
gonna to turn to? Gabriel. And if Gabriel wants
a relationship, he, by golly, better do this.
00:14:33
NARRATOR: Forensic
experts tasked with scouring Ann
Marie's phone would later piece together
the development
00:14:39
of a homicidal plot. He was communicating over Kik. It's one of those apps
that if you use it,
00:14:43
it's supposed to delete
after you use it. So he was communicating
with her over Kik
00:14:48
and Snapchat and the
things that teenagers do. NARRATOR: The text messages
reveal the bare bones
00:14:53
of a macabre plan. In those text messages,
they're talking about a gun and the murder of two people.
00:15:02
BRIAN HARRIS: A plan to
kill Jacqueline and a plan to kill Anthony. And as this story
unfolds even further,
00:15:13
we find that Anthony is
attacked while asleep. Never has any idea what hit him. Laying on his back.
00:15:25
Mr. Struss told us that
the night of the murder, he was picked up by
Ms. Anastasi in her car
00:15:32
and driven to the Anastasi home. He got out of the car and hid
in the yard for some amount
00:15:40
of time that he could not
specify because he claimed to have actually gone
to sleep out in the yard
00:15:45
while he was out there. At some point in the
middle of the night, he received a
message on his phone,
00:15:51
calling him into the house. NARRATOR: Gabriel Struss entered
the Anastasi house that night
00:15:56
ready to carry
out, to the letter, the murder plot masterminded
by his girlfriend's
00:16:01
vengeful mother. She knows that she has
to make Jacqueline's death look like a crime
of passion, of rage.
00:16:10
It was a very brutal,
gruesome scene in the basement. NARRATOR: In Lothian, Maryland,
18-year-old Gabriel Struss
00:16:26
carefully follows
the plan that he's agreed with his girlfriend's
mother Ann Marie Anastasi.
00:16:31
In the dead of night
when everyone is asleep, he creeps into the family home. Only Ann Marie is
awake to greet him.
00:16:38
On October 4, 2015,
Ann Marie hands Gabriel the handgun and a knife. Why? You see, Ann Marie's
already thinking.
00:16:53
She knows that she has to
make Jacqueline's death look like a crime
of passion, of rage.
00:17:01
So he meets Ann Marie in
the kitchen of the home. She gives him a knife. And then that
night, Gabriel goes
00:17:12
down the stairs to Jacqueline's
bedroom where she's sleeping. NARRATOR: And he attacks.
00:17:21
JASON KNIGHT: Ms.
Riggs did not die right away from one stab wound. A common misperception
from movies and TV
00:17:31
is that if you stab someone
once, they just die. But the reality is that Ms.
Riggs was stabbed and woke up.
00:17:40
And fight-or-flight kicked
in, and Ms. Riggs started putting up quite a fight. And Mr. Struss had to
stab her multiple times
00:17:48
all over the chest,
the head, the face before he was able
to actually kill her. And he stabs her 42 times.
00:17:58
He just keeps stabbing her and
stabbing her and stabbing her. And then when he's done, she's
not moving, she's clearly dead.
00:18:09
It was a very brutal,
gruesome scene in the basement, with the amount of times
he had to stab her,
00:18:15
the amount of force he had to
use to actually kill Ms. Riggs. She was fighting for her life.
00:18:19
She did everything she could
to ward off Mr. Struss. NARRATOR: The
wrecked marriage had
00:18:26
left Ann Marie bitter,
mad, but smart enough to have her own version
of events ready.
00:18:31
When police came, they'd see
this as a murder suicide. First it would appear that
her husband had killed Jackie.
00:18:39
It's all part of
her premeditated plan to lay out to the police that
Anthony and Jacqueline were
00:18:47
involved, that their
relationship was ending, that he couldn't handle
it and went crazy on her.
00:18:55
And then he couldn't
deal without living with his love of
his life Jacqueline, so he killed himself.
00:19:03
Once he had killed Ms.
Riggs, he went back upstairs. He then was given the .380
handgun by Ms. Anastasi.
00:19:14
NARRATOR: Gabriel Struss
was covered in the blood of Jacqueline Riggs. He continued to the
first floor of the house
00:19:20
to finish the job
that he'd started. He then went upstairs and
stood a couple of feet away
00:19:27
from Mr. Anastasi's
bed and fired the one round into Mr. Anastasi's head. He then left the
home and went back
00:19:42
over to his home in
the Annapolis area for the rest of the night. Ms. Anastasi, from what
we're able to gather,
00:19:52
went and took the .45 caliber
handgun that Mr. Anastasi had under his pillow at night
out from under the pillow
00:20:00
and put that into
his hand to make it look as if he had shot himself. And then according to the
statement that she gave
00:20:07
the police, she
subsequently went and crawled in bed
in a different room and slept until the morning.
00:20:15
NARRATOR: The world was
oblivious to the horrors that had taken place
in a large family
00:20:19
home on West Bay Front Road. Until around lunchtime on
the 5th of October, 2015.
00:20:29
The police department
receives a 911 call-- it's not a frantic call,
but it's a 911 call--
00:20:38
reporting that my
husband is not breathing. And it's just that. This mystery, if one
can call it that,
00:20:50
starts unraveling the
minute 911 is called. 911, what's your emergency? This 911 call,
what a bizarre call.
00:21:11
The person is conversational. There's not a sense of panic. There's no heavy breathing.
00:21:19
It's very matter of fact. Hey, I came home and my
husband's not breathing. He's laying on the bed.
00:21:26
ANN MARIE (ON TAPE): But
he's not responding at all. And he's got his gun laying
next to him in the bed.
00:21:30
911 OPERATOR: Do you
think he shot himself? ANN MARIE (ON
TAPE): I don't know. I didn't turn the
lights on in the room.
00:21:35
I think he killed himself. You know, just very
nonchalant, matter of fact, conversational, not panic.
00:21:44
Where's that sheer panic? And there's this
gun next to him? Do you think he shot himself?
00:21:51
NARRATOR: She may not
have realized at the time, but from the very first
words that she uttered
00:21:56
to the emergency dispatcher,
Ann Marie Anastasi was incriminating herself. When the suspect
themselves call 911,
00:22:03
it's often in that first
minute, that first two minutes of that 911 call that either
the motive will be revealed
00:22:12
or the alibi. NARRATOR: It's something that
top homicide detective Brian Harris has seen dozens of times.
00:22:19
They'll repeat over and over
again what their alibi is. It's no different in this case.
00:22:26
What's the alibi? Oh, I came home, was
wondering where my husband was and he's laying in the bed
and he's not breathing.
00:22:36
ANN MARIE (ON TAPE): But
he's not responding at all. And he's got his gun laying
next to him in the bed.
00:22:40
So she clearly wants to
establish that all these series of events that would
take place in the home
00:22:47
happened when she wasn't there. Now, this emergency dispatcher
is thinking, this is bizarre.
00:22:53
Here you have somebody
reporting that their husband isn't breathing, not moving.
00:22:59
Oh, and by the way,
there's a gun next to him. But this case would
even get more bizarre
00:23:07
and would even take
more strange twists. The 911 call was
just the start of it. So a couple of patrol officers
from the Southern District
00:23:20
of the Anne Arundel
County Police department responded to the scene. When they arrived at
the Anastasi home,
00:23:25
Ms. Anastasi came outside
and reported that her husband was dead inside. The police rushed
to this home and they
00:23:35
see this charming house on the
outside, and they go inside and there's this house that
is just filthy and full
00:23:41
of clutter. When the officers get
there and they go upstairs to the master bedroom, they find
Mr. Anastasi lying on his back
00:23:53
in his bed, suffering
from a single gunshot wound to the head with
a pistol in his hand.
00:24:00
And again in a
conversational manner, the officers are concerned. Is this the result
of a home invasion?
00:24:06
Is this a suicide? What's going on here? And Ann Marie says, well,
you know, he was depressed.
00:24:14
I mean, so he obviously
killed himself. What do the officers see? They're seeing Ann Marie.
00:24:24
They're listening to
her tone of voice, her very conversational tone. And in front of them is Ann
Marie's husband Anthony.
00:24:36
He's laying on
his back, face up. He's got a gunshot
wound, a gunshot wound to his head and a gun nearby.
00:24:47
So as a detective, if that's
my scene I'm coming to, if somebody's trying
to say it's suicide,
00:24:56
I'm gonna look at
that person's life. Sure, Anthony's been depressed. Sure, Anthony's had
some dark things
00:25:02
going on in his life, kind
of a bizarre lifestyle to begin with. But Anthony's own body
would tell me a story.
00:25:12
Anthony is lying face up
with a single bullet wound. He's dead. There's a gun lying next to him.
00:25:19
You see, if
there's suicide, you would have what's
called stippling or tattooing from a close
gunshot wound, contact wound.
00:25:29
Now, that bullet is hot. It's kind of like
a branding iron. You have this huge explosion,
typically, anywhere
00:25:37
between 12 and 18 inches. If I'm further away
than that distance, when I pull the
trigger, the entry wound
00:25:46
will be nice and clean. If I'm closer than that, I
would expect to see what's called stippling or tattooing.
00:25:55
That big explosion that comes
out of the barrel of a gun, it has to go somewhere.
00:26:00
NARRATOR: There was no
stippling or tattooing. As they continued to
examine the scene,
00:26:05
investigators were struck
with the realization that nothing about this incident
could be taken at face value.
00:26:12
Now police aren't sure what
they have on their hands. Is this a suicide? Is there anyone else
living in the home?
00:26:19
No, my kids aren't here. But oh, we have this
woman who lives with us. She lives in the basement.
00:26:24
They first have to make
sure nobody else is injured. I mean, Ann Marie's the
mother of five children.
00:26:29
Who else is in the home? They want to make sure
nobody else is hurt. And so that's their natural
question, who else lives here?
00:26:39
And that's when Ann
Marie says, oh, yeah, we have somebody who
lives downstairs.
00:26:45
They live in the basement. She might be home. She hasn't even
inquired herself. But come to think of it, I
haven't heard from her today.
00:26:55
Suspicion grows. But again, it's
very conversational. And so what do the officers do?
00:27:04
They're sweeping
that home, going room to room looking
for other bodies, perhaps maybe even a suspect.
00:27:10
They take Ann Marie aside. They're gonna take her
downtown and question her. Meanwhile, officers are
running down the stairs.
00:27:16
NARRATOR: Casual, nonchalant,
Ann Marie's words did nothing to prepare those
officers for the scene
00:27:20
that they found in the basement. As they crept down the stairs,
hands on their weapons,
00:27:25
alert to any movement
in the darkness, heavy metal music
was blaring out. Then, they opened the door.
00:27:33
They go downstairs. In the basement, they find Ms.
Riggs laying on the ground. And they open
the bedroom door.
00:27:41
And it's like a scene
from "Helter Skelter." And it's a bloody, brutal
scene that they find.
00:27:49
They find the body of
yet another victim, Jacqueline Riggs. There is blood everywhere.
00:27:57
And there is
Jacqueline Riggs lying dead on this blood-soaked rug. She's been stabbed 42 times.
00:28:08
40-plus stab wounds
all across her body. 40-plus stab wounds,
imagine that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
00:28:27
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.
00:28:48
NARRATOR: Could
this calm, seemingly cooperative mother
of five really be responsible for such brutality?
00:28:55
The scene in the basement
spoke to the police of uncontrollable rage,
of chaos, of a situation
00:29:00
that had got out of hand. Where did Ann Marie Anastasi
fit into that scenario? Ms. Anastasi presented herself
in her interviews to the police
00:29:11
as the grieving widow who loved
her family, loved her husband, was willing to tolerate
his indiscretions.
00:29:44
NARRATOR: The blood-soaked
bodies of Anthony Anastasi and his young lover
Jacqueline Riggs were lying
00:29:49
in the Anastasi family home as
the medical examiner prepared to remove them for the autopsy.
00:29:55
Meanwhile, police are
questioning Ann Marie. They've got her downtown, and
they're asking her questions.
00:30:01
And Ann Marie keeps saying
my husband committed suicide. I know he was depressed.
00:30:07
It was a suicide. And they said, well, what
about the other woman? The what? What about Jacqueline Riggs?
00:30:14
She's got 42 stab wounds. What? NARRATOR: Ann Marie seemed
shocked and distressed by what
00:30:21
detectives were telling her. But she had a plausible
explanation for the carnage
00:30:25
that they'd found
within her home. Ms. Anastasi's initial
statement to the police
00:30:30
was that she had heard
Mr. Anasazi and Ms. Riggs engaged in
a heated argument in the basement of the home.
00:30:36
He then came upstairs
to the master bedroom, kicked her out of the bedroom,
and then shut the door.
00:30:42
And she never saw
him alive again. Anne Marie, when the
cops are talking to her,
00:30:51
they want to know, what
do you think happened, which is a great question. What do you think
happened, Ann Marie?
00:30:57
She buys into it. And she says, I think
that Anthony killed Jacqueline, that he went down,
they have a relationship,
00:31:10
he kills her. And he can't live with
himself for what he did, that he's so remorseful that
he shoots and kills himself.
00:31:19
What do you mean
she's been stabbed? Well, you know,
come to think of it, I think I heard them arguing.
00:31:25
I thought I heard their voices
in the middle of the night. That's what happened.
00:31:29
On the surface, it's
not that crazy of a story. Perhaps, it is Anthony,
he kills Jacqueline.
00:31:40
And then after killing
Jacqueline, he kills himself. Ms. Anastasi presented herself
in her interviews to the police
00:31:52
as the grieving widow who loved
her family, loved her husband, was willing to tolerate
his indiscretions
00:32:01
and was just devastated
that this horrible event had befallen her and her family.
00:32:06
NARRATOR: Would she
get away with murder? She had clearly been living
in a dysfunctional marriage
00:32:10
with a husband and his mistress
who showed her little respect. The evidence might support her
suggested murder-suicide theory
00:32:18
had credibility. But that would be
one viable story. Love gone wrong,
he's so distraught,
00:32:25
he gets in a personal
attack and then he can't live with what he did. If I can't have you, nobody
will, so he kills himself.
00:32:32
Based on just what the
officers found at the scene just by looking at it
before they performed
00:32:37
any sort of crime
scene investigation and based on that statement, it
presented as a murder suicide.
00:32:44
Might be a viable story. But you see, the evidence
would show that that's completely different.
00:32:53
As a detective, I often
warn other detectives, don't judge people on
the way that they grieve.
00:32:59
However, when you look at
the behavior of Ann Marie, is it just bizarre behavior
and she's in shock?
00:33:13
Or is this well thought
of responses to questions? During the course of Ms.
Anastasi's first interview
00:33:23
with the police,
they advised her that they discovered Ms.
Riggs' body in the basement
00:33:29
and that she had
also been murdered. Ms. Anastasi hardly registered
any response or emotion at all.
00:33:40
Police discover that the
gun lying next to Anthony doesn't match the bullet
that came from his body.
00:33:48
There's no way that that bullet
could have come from that gun. Mr. Anastasi had a .45
caliber, semi-automatic
00:33:55
pistol in his hand. Police could not
find a .45 caliber shell casing in the bedroom.
00:34:02
They subsequently were able
to find a .380 caliber shell casing in the bedroom that
was subsequently analyzed
00:34:11
by the firearms examiner for
the Anne Arundel County Police Department who gave a
definitive conclusion
00:34:17
that you could not
fire a .380 bullet from the .45 caliber handgun. Ann Marie didn't
count on that.
00:34:27
Mr. Anastasi's
autopsy came back to reveal that the
round in his head was in fact a .380
caliber bullet.
00:34:36
Once you know that Mr. Anastasi
was killed by the .380 caliber bullet, they knew
that the .45 caliber
00:34:42
handgun that was in
Mr. Anastasia's hand was not the murder weapon. It's a completely
different weapon.
00:35:05
So that means somebody
planted that weapon there. This is murder. It has murder
written all over it.
00:35:12
NARRATOR: For
homicide detectives, it was a discovery that
changed everything. But presented with the
fact that her husband had
00:35:18
in fact been murdered,
Ann Marie remained unemotional, even detached. NARRATOR: But the
ballistics findings
00:35:33
proving that Anthony had been
murdered were just the start. After that, the incriminating
evidence just kept piling up.
00:35:41
At any murder scene,
one of the basic things you would do if there's
gunshots that are involved,
00:35:49
we would do what's called a GSR
test, a gunshot residue test. She consented to having
her hands and her clothing
00:35:59
tested for the presence
of gunshot residue. So she voluntarily
gave up her clothes.
00:36:22
She's got a lot
of explaining to do. So now you have a gun
that's not matching up.
00:36:28
You've got two people dead. You've got gunshot
residue on the wife. And what do they
have on their hands?
00:36:36
Now, this is clearly not
just a murder-suicide. They also took her while
she was at the police station
00:36:46
on the first night and
she agreed to undergo a polygraph examination. During the course of
the polygraph examination,
00:37:07
she did poorly on questions
regarding what happened and the exact details,
whether she was involved,
00:37:14
if she knew what happened. NARRATOR: It was a
tense time for Anne Arundel County detectives.
00:37:18
The net was closing
in, but did they have enough to charge
Ann Marie Anastasi with a double homicide?
00:37:24
The combination of
the failed polygraph, Ms. Anastasi's story not
being completely logical,
00:37:32
and the subsequent evidence that
the police developed regarding the firearm,
regarding the gunshot
00:37:39
residue, that all
led to identifying her as the prime suspect. At this point in
the investigation,
00:37:46
you have the 911 call, you
have the bizarre explanation and story from Ann Marie, and
then her explanation that, I
00:37:54
think Anthony killed himself. So you have the gun that
doesn't match the bullet.
00:37:59
You have the gunshot
residue on Ann Marie. But that's not enough. You need more than a
detective's gut feeling
00:38:08
that this woman's involved. NARRATOR: Ann Marie
refused to talk. But when the cops tracked down
18-year-old Gabriel Struss,
00:38:16
the teenager crumbled. Gabriel, when he's
confronted, a rock could have taken his confession.
00:38:24
Gabriel, right
away, freely starts flowing with the story
of what took place, takes
00:38:32
responsibility, lays it
all out, and explains exactly what happened. When they go to
Gabriel Struss,
00:38:42
he confesses right away. I did it. I'm involved. Yes, I killed them. But I'm not the one
who masterminded it.
00:38:52
It was her idea. And then the story
starts coming out. NARRATOR: As Gabriel talked,
homicide investigators
00:38:58
were able to piece together
the final stages of Ann Marie's plan to get away with murder.
00:39:04
Ms. Anastasi got
up in the morning, went through her
family's normal routine, got the children off to school.
00:39:10
She subsequently had a
doctor's appointment. And then she went to
the grocery store.
00:39:14
She came back to the home,
and somewhere in the 12 or 1 o'clock hour
called 911 to report
00:39:20
that Mr. Anastasi was dead. NARRATOR: It was a plan
that was deeply flawed. Her actions after
both Mr. Anastasi
00:39:37
and Ms. Riggs were
dead were exactly that of someone who had a plan. And that's one of the
main things we relied on
00:39:45
in determining to charge
her with first degree premeditated murder. Because, you know,
obviously she had
00:39:51
this plan leading
up to Mr. Anastasi and Mrs. Riggs's death. But then she clearly had thought
through the entire crime,
00:39:58
not just how to
commit it, but then she had a plan for after
it was committed, for how
00:40:03
to try to get away with it. NARRATOR: Gabriel Struss was
sentenced to 60 years in jail,
00:40:07
expressing regret
for his actions, and telling Jacqueline
Riggs' family in court
00:40:12
that he wished he could
take back what he'd done. Prosecutors described
him as a puppet
00:40:17
in a sinister plot, one that
masterminded by a scorned wife who has never accepted
the blame for the deaths
00:40:23
of her husband and his lover. Ann Marie takes
this special plea, this Alford deal, that allows
her to avoid saying I did it.
00:40:32
She never has to admit it. She doesn't take
responsibility for it. What it tells me as
a fellow human being,
00:40:39
as a homicide
detective, Ann Marie, she never accepts
responsibility, never shows any remorse.
00:40:49
There's never an
opportunity to see any kind of human side, human
emotional side of Ann Marie.
00:40:58
What kind of a
mother does this? She's so angry at her husband. She's feeling so betrayed
because he's left her.
00:41:07
And her 18-year marriage is
over with because of this woman, this younger woman, where you
are so mad, you want them gone,
00:41:14
but you can't do it. So you actually get your
young daughter involved in this murder plot
and get her boyfriend
00:41:25
involved in this murder plot. How can a mother
live with herself? How can a mother
do this and then
00:41:31
never accept responsibility for
it and never show any remorse? The havoc she left
behind, and she could still
00:41:39
never take full responsibility. But she also receives
a 60-year sentence, as if she was the one
that pulled the trigger,
00:41:48
as if she was the one
who plunged the knife 42 times into Jacqueline Riggs. NARRATOR: They had met
and fallen in love,
00:41:58
married, had children, but
from the moment that Anthony Anastasi took a lover
into the family home,
00:42:04
murder was never very far away. She wanted this done. She was willing to set
the wheels in motion.
00:42:11
But then she
destroyed other lives in the process of doing what she
was not willing to do herself.
00:42:25
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