00:00:03
[music playing] Imagine this. A husband moves a mistress into
a family home, but guess what?
00:00:15
His wife is there too. She's upstairs. ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON VIDEO): She has [bleep] moved into my
house with me and my five kids.
00:00:23
The [bleep] should have
stayed up in [bleep] Michigan. She shouldn't have
moved down here.
00:00:27
She shouldn't have
moved into my house. How could she have
probably have thought
00:00:30
that was going to go well? MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: That's
the voice of Ann Marie Anastasi
00:00:37
who decides to do something
about her cheating husband, Anthony, and his
mistress, Jacqueline Riggs.
00:00:45
The police department
receives a 911 call reporting that, my
husband is not breathing.
00:00:56
And it's just that. This mystery starts unraveling
the minute 911 is called. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Who's done what?
00:01:08
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg, and
this is "Meet, Marry, Murder." [music playing] In 2015, Maryland,
and the Anastasis
00:01:29
look like a typical family. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Ann
Marie and Anthony Anastasi had been married for 18 years.
00:01:36
They had five kids. They lived in a rented
home in this little town called Lothian, Maryland.
00:01:42
It's about less than an
hour from Washington D.C. JASON KNIGHT: It's a nice house.
00:01:46
I mean, it's a nice probably
four, five-bedroom home on a sizable chunk of
land in the southern part
00:01:53
of the county, which
is pretty rural. Nothing out of the
ordinary, apparently. But things are not
quite as they seemed.
00:02:02
They had a rather
unconventional marriage. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Unconventional?
00:02:08
You got that right. Younger woman in the basement. She isn't the nanny, she
isn't a relative or a friend.
00:02:16
She's a lover. So when did the twosome
become a threesome? It's a story which starts
700 miles away when Anthony
00:02:30
first meets Jackie Riggs. The Anastasis lived in
Saunt Ste Marie, Michigan, on the upper Peninsula.
00:02:40
Anthony was a volunteer
youth hockey coach. During his coaching
he met Miss Riggs.
00:02:47
CAROLYN CANVILLE:
She's 25 years old. Now Ann Marie's 43, and her
husband is a few years younger.
00:02:52
And at some point
along the way, some sort of
romantic relationship developed that was extramarital
to his relationship
00:03:01
with Ann Anastasi. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: What
do we know about Jackie? Everybody says she's
a straight up woman--
00:03:08
loves kids. But she's a woman Ann Anastasi
never wanted to see again. JASON KNIGHT: At
some point in time
00:03:18
the Anastasis left Michigan
and moved as a family to Lothian, Maryland,
in Anne Arundel County.
00:03:24
Mrs. Anastasi
believed at the time that that would
be the end of Mr. Anastasi's extramarital
relationship with Miss Riggs.
00:03:34
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Ann
and Anthony came from Maryland and want to go home. Why?
00:03:40
Ann wants to put 700 miles
between her and Jackie. JASON KNIGHT: Subsequent to the
Anastasis moving to Maryland,
00:03:50
Miss Riggs was moved by
Mr. Anastasi from Michigan down to Maryland, and moved
into the Anastasi's basement.
00:03:59
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Anthony decides he wants to move
Jacqueline into the house,
00:04:02
let's have her live
with us and we can all live happily ever after. ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON VIDEO): She
00:04:06
shouldn't have moved down here. She shouldn't have
moved into my house. How could she
possible have thought
00:04:10
that was going to go well? Once she was there, she was-- maybe not quite a member of
the family, but lived there.
00:04:18
And Mrs. Anastasi, actually
from what we understand, made dinner and Miss Riggs
would join the entire family
00:04:26
for dinner in the evenings. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Does Jackie Riggs know what she's getting into?
00:04:32
She's 25 and moving in
with a family as a lover to the dad and husband? Crazy, right?
00:04:39
And it's no five-star
hotel either. JASON KNIGHT: The physical
environment in which Miss Riggs
00:04:45
lived with the Anastasis did not
objectively look very pleasant. Concrete floors, no walls,
you know, no real privacy
00:04:54
in the basement. The basement was
unfinished but it had a bed and some of the other--
00:05:00
some furniture that you would
put in a place to make it look like a bedroom. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Anthony
Anastasi has got it made.
00:05:08
A young lover downstairs, the
Mrs looking after the kids-- guess what? Ann Marie put up with
it, but she hates it.
00:05:20
She clearly hoped that the
relationship terminated when they moved to
Maryland, and was very
00:05:26
disappointed when
Miss Riggs moved back in with them subsequently. But there was-- we
never saw anything
00:05:34
where she put up some
sort of resistance and tried to prevent it. Ann Marie may
be disappointed--
00:05:39
that doesn't stop
her joining Jackie and Anthony for a literal
three-way in the basement.
00:05:46
JASON KNIGHT: The little
bit that I know about it was that Mrs. Anastasi stated
that at one point in time
00:05:53
Mr. Anastasi had convinced her
to engage in sexual activity with him and Miss Riggs, but
Mrs. Anastasi said that only
00:06:01
ever happened the one
time, she didn't like it, and refused to participate
in that ever again.
00:06:06
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
And guess what? Anthony focuses on the
25-year-old downstairs.
00:06:12
The mother of his
kids, and his wife, she's out of the sexual picture. Now, suddenly, this threesome
is becoming a twosome.
00:06:23
It's like three's a crowd
and Ann Marie isn't invited. Now, Anthony and Jacqueline
are having sex more often
00:06:32
and Ann Marie is on the outs. Pretty soon, before
she knows it, Ann Marie's husband is basically
living with this younger woman
00:06:41
down in the basement. MAN (ON RECORDING): I have
to ask this question in. Do you think that your
husband and Jacqueline
00:06:46
were messing around? ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): Oh I know they were. MAN (ON RECORDING): They were?
00:06:50
And how do you know they were? ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): Because he'd spend most--
00:06:53
Well, not most. He spent a lot of nights down
there with the doors locked. Like a lot of them.
00:06:58
MAN (ON RECORDING): Did you
ever confront them about it? ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING):
00:07:01
I was told that, basically,
to mind my own business. He's going to do what he wants
to do, and if I don't like it
00:07:05
I can get the [bleep]
out of the house. And I'm not going
to abandon my kids and leave them in that
kind of situation.
00:07:13
JASON KNIGHT: Mrs. Anastasi
was questioned by the police in some detail,
essentially along the lines
00:07:19
of, you're a human,
you cannot be OK with the behavior in
which your husband was engaged with Miss Riggs.
00:07:27
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
One day the cops are going to need to prove
Ann doesn't like
00:07:30
Anthony having sex with Jackie. This phone secret recording
is going to help their case.
00:07:37
ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): Problem is, it's not only him. There's also a 24-year-old girl
who is dead at my basement.
00:07:44
She's a [bleep] who
moved into my house with me and my five kids. [bleep] should have stayed
up in [bleep] Michigan.
00:07:51
And Ann Marie is
basically, my 18-year marriage is basically over. I've just lost him to
this younger woman.
00:07:59
The information we
developed subsequently when we were listening
to her phone calls
00:08:03
while she was
incarcerated certainly demonstrated that
she was incredibly devastated emotionally,
and that's what drove
00:08:10
her to commit these crimes. Ann Marie wants her husband to
stop cheating in her own home.
00:08:16
Enough is enough. She elected to just become
the judge, jury, and executioner on her own, and decided that
Mr. Anastasi was going to die,
00:08:25
and Miss Riggs was going to die. It's the planned. It's the blueprint for murder.
00:08:47
Half of women killed are
murdered by their partners. Honestly, we should be careful
who we get into bed with.
00:08:54
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg, and
this is "Meet, Marry, Murder." Men can be victims
too, like Anthony
00:09:03
Anastasi, whose wife discovers
he's been spending her cash. She had this
million-dollar trust fund.
00:09:11
They spend it all,
and he's telling her to go back to her family
and get even more money.
00:09:16
And whenever they get more
money he spends it on himself, he buys himself flat screen
TVs, and Harley-Davidson
00:09:22
motorcycles. It's all about Anthony
and what Anthony needs, what Anthony wants. JASON KNIGHT: She
certainly seemed
00:09:28
to be someone who was
suffering from some sort of emotional abuse. What makes this so difficult
is that she elected
00:09:34
to not avail yourself of
any resources whatsoever, to not seek help. She elected to just become the
judge, jury, and executioner
00:09:43
on her own, and decided that
Mr. Anastasi was going to die, and Miss Riggs was
going to die, and that
00:09:49
was the only resolution
to this problem. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Maybe she's happy to be judge and
jury, but she isn't
00:09:56
happy to pull the trigger. So Ann reaches out
to her daughter. MAN (ON RECORDING):
We got some records,
00:10:06
and that night you and [bleep]
talk to her for 582 seconds-- 3:00 in the morning.
00:10:12
That's about 10 minutes. ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): That might have
been a butt dial.
00:10:15
MAN (ON RECORDING):
That's not a butt dial, that's a long conversation. BRIAN HARRIS: Ann
Marie convinced
00:10:20
her daughter that
Anthony was discarding Ann Marie as a piece of trash. She tells her
13-year-old daughter,
00:10:28
your father has to die. Her mother talks
her into this. She gets involved
in this murder plot.
00:10:35
She's a kid, and she's just
trying to please her mother. The teenage girl has her
own reasons to be angry.
00:10:43
She overhears her father and
Jackie talking about starting their own family. So now, his daughter faces
seeing her dad having a baby
00:10:53
with a woman young enough to
be her sister, all while living in their house. Mother and daughter
agree Anthony
00:11:04
and Jacqueline should
die, and they know someone who could do the job. Messages on Ann
Marie's phone tell
00:11:12
us who agreed to be the hitman. They examine
Ann Marie's phone, and they find these text
messages between Ann Marie,
00:11:22
her 13-year-old daughter,
Sarah, and Sarah's 18-year-old boyfriend, Gabriel Struss.
00:11:28
In those text messages
they're talking about a gun and the murder of two people.
00:11:36
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But
what's in it for Gabriel? He has nothing against Anthony
Anastasi and Jacqueline Riggs.
00:11:42
But this is a kid with a past-- not a good one. JASON KNIGHT: Gabriel
Struss was a young man who
00:11:50
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
00:11:59
from the time he's seven. JASON KNIGHT: He was
adopted as a young man, subsequently left his
adoptive family to return
00:12:10
to his biological family. He wound up at the time
of the murder living in very unfortunate
conditions a few miles away
00:12:20
from the Anastasis. And he's basically
raised himself, period. He really didn't have a
great growing up life,
00:12:27
basically kind of
a homeless guy, and kind of a guy
who could be led. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Ann Marie sees
00:12:32
Gabriel Struss as a sucker,
hers to boss around. CAROLYN CANVILLE:
This young boy--
00:12:38
he's 18, but he's not terribly
sophisticated, hasn't had a great upbringing, doesn't--
00:12:43
he's kind of gullible. JASON KNIGHT: Mr.
Struss was uniquely positioned to fall victim to
Mrs. Anastasi's manipulations.
00:12:54
So now you have the story
of this scorned wife who has convinced her daughter
to join her in this plot,
00:13:04
and, Oh, let's
get your boyfriend to do the dirty work for us. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The
messaging between these three,
00:13:11
don't think they're
not going to be found. Cell phones break secrets. He was communicating
over Kik--
00:13:17
it's one of those apps that
if you use it it's supposed to delete after you used.
00:13:22
Like so he was communicating
with her over Kik and Snapchat, the things that teenagers do.
00:13:27
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The
texts are a dead giveaway, a blueprint for murder. CAROLYN CANVILLE: In
those text messages,
00:13:34
they're talking about a gun
and the murder of two people. Mr. Struss told us that
the night of the murder he
00:13:45
was picked up by Mrs.
Anastasi in her car and driven to the Anastasi home. He got out of the car and hid
in the yard for some amount
00:13:56
of time that he could not
specify, because he claimed to have actually gone
to sleep out in the yard
00:14:01
while he was out there. At some point in the
middle of the night, he received a
message on his phone
00:14:07
calling him into the house. Gabriel Struss goes into
the Anastasi house that night,
00:14:13
and he's ready to kill. He's following the order
of his girlfriend's mother. She knows that she has
to make Jacqueline's death
00:14:24
look like a crime
of passion, of rage. It was a very, just brutal,
gruesome scene in the basement.
00:14:48
This is "Meet, Marry, Murder,"
and I'm Michelle Trachtenberg. We are in Lothian, Maryland,
and an 18-year-old kid Gabriel
00:14:56
Struss is following his
girlfriend's mother's plan to kill Anthony Anastasi. He creeps into the family home.
00:15:04
BRIAN HARRIS: On
October 4, 2015, Ann Marie hands Gabriel
the handgun and a knife.
00:15:15
Why? You see, Ann Marie's
already thinking. She knows that she has to
make Jacqueline's death
00:15:25
look like a crime
of passion, of rage. CAROLYN CANVILLE: So he meets
Ann Marie in the kitchen
00:15:32
of the home, she
gives him a knife, and then that night
Gabriel goes down the stairs to Jacqueline's
bedroom where she's sleeping,
00:15:43
and he attacks. JASON KNIGHT: Miss
Riggs did not die right away from one stab wound.
00:15:54
A common misperception
is that-- from movies and TV-- is that
if you stab someone
00:15:59
once that they just die. But the reality is that Miss
Riggs was stabbed and woke up,
00:16:07
and fight or flight kicked in,
and Miss Riggs started putting up quite a fight, and Mr. Struss
had to stab her multiple times
00:16:14
all over the chest, the
head, the face, before he was able to actually kill her.
00:16:21
And he stabs her 42 times. He just keeps stabbing her, and
stabbing her, and stabbing her.
00:16:29
And then when he's
done she's not moving-- she's clearly dead. It was a very-- just brutal,
gruesome scene in the basement
00:16:40
with the amount of
times he had to stab and the amount of
force he had to use to actually kill Miss Riggs.
00:16:44
She was fighting for her life
and she did everything she could to ward off Mr. Struss.
00:16:51
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Ann Marie
has figured everything out, including her version
of what's happened,
00:16:56
down to the last detail. When the police come she wants
them to think her husband
00:17:03
has first killed Jackie
and then himself. Once he had killed Miss
Riggs, he went back upstairs.
00:17:13
He then was given the . .380
handgun by Mrs. Anastasi. Gabriel Struss-- he's
covered in the blood
00:17:21
of Jacqueline Riggs. He heads up to the
first floor to finish the job he had started.
00:17:28
JASON KNIGHT: He then went
upstairs and stood a couple of feet away from
Mr. Anastasi's bed
00:17:35
and fired the one round
into Mr Anastasi's head. He then left the
home and went back
00:17:48
over to his home in
the Annapolis area for the rest of the night. Miss Anastasi, from what
we were able to gather,
00:17:58
went and took the .45 caliber
handgun that Mr. Anastasi had under his pillow at night
out from under the pillow
00:18:05
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
00:18:12
the police, she
subsequently went and crawled in bed
in a different room and slept until the morning.
00:18:20
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Nobody finds out what's happened in that big
house on W Bay Front Rd.
00:18:26
CAROLYN CANVILLE: It all looks
normal until around lunchtime on October 5, 2015.
00:18:35
The police department
receives a 911 call. It's not a frantic
call, but it's a 911 call reporting that,
my husband is not breathing.
00:18:50
And it's just that. This mystery, if one
can call it that, starts unraveling the
minute 9/11 is called.
00:18:59
ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): I just spent the day taking
the kids to the dentist
00:19:04
and then going grocery shopping. I'm supposed to be leaving to
take my husband to a doctor's
00:19:07
appointment right now. This 911 call-- what a bizarre call. The person is conversational,
there's not a sense of panic,
00:19:19
there's no heavy breathing. It's very matter of fact, hey,
I came home and my husband's
00:19:26
not breathing. He's laying on the bed. So he's not responding at
all, and he's got his gun
00:19:32
lying next to him in the bed. 911 DISPATCHER (ON RECORDING):
Do you think he shot himself?
00:19:35
ANN MARIE ANASTASI (ON
RECORDING): I don't know. I didn't turn the
lights on in the room.
00:19:38
Yeah, I think
he killed himself. You know, just very nonchalant,
matter of fact, conversational.
00:19:46
Not panic. Where's that sheer panic? MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: She may
not have realized at the time,
00:19:52
but from the very
first moment she starts talking to the 911
dispatcher, Ann Marie is incriminating herself.
00:20:01
BRIAN HARRIS: When the
suspect themselves call 911, it's often in that
first minute--
00:20:06
that first 2 minutes of that
911 call that either the motive will be revealed, or the alibi.
00:20:14
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Brian Harris knows murder. He's investigated plenty
as a homicide detective.
00:20:19
They'll repeat over and over
again what their alibi is. It's no different in this case.
00:20:26
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.
00:20:35
ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): But he's not responding at
all, and he's got his gun
00:20:39
lying next to him in the bed. BRIAN HARRIS: So
she clearly wants to establish that all
these series of events
00:20:46
that would take
place in the home happened when she wasn't there. Now this emergency dispatcher
is thinking, this is bizarre.
00:20:57
JASON KNIGHT: So a
couple of patrol officers from the Southern
District of the Anne
00:21:01
Arundel County Police Department
responded to the scene. When they arrived at
the Anastasi home,
00:21:06
Mrs. Anastasi came outside
and reported that her husband was dead inside. The police rush to
this home and they
00:21:15
see this, this charming house on
the outside and they go inside and there's this house that
is just filthy and full
00:21:22
of clutter. When the officers get
there and they go upstairs to the master bedroom, They find
Mr. Anastasi lying on his back
00:21:33
in his bed suffering
from a single gunshot wound to the head with
a pistol in his hand.
00:21:41
CAROLYN CANVILLE: And
Ann Marie says, well, you know, he was depressed. I mean-- so he obviously
killed himself.
00:21:48
So as a detective, if
that's my scene I'm coming to, if somebody's trying
to say it's suicide
00:21:58
I'm going to look at
that person's life. Sure Anthony's been depressed. Sure Anthony's had
some dark things
00:22:04
going on in his life, kind
of a bizarre lifestyle to begin with. But Anthony's own body
would tell me a story.
00:22:14
CAROLYN CANVILLE:
Anthony is lying face up with a single bullet wound. He's dead, there's a
gun lying next to him.
00:22:21
You see, if there's suicide,
you would have what's called stippling or tattooing from
a close gunshot wound--
00:22:29
contact wound. Now, that bullet is hot, it's
kind of like a branding iron. You have this huge explosion.
00:22:38
Typically anywhere
between 12 and 18 inches-- if I'm further away
than that distance
00:22:44
when I pull the
trigger, the entry wound will be nice and clean. If I'm closer than that, I
would expect to see what's
00:22:55
called stippling or tattooing. That big explosion that comes
out of the barrel of a gun,
00:23:00
it has to go somewhere. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The cops
don't see what they expect.
00:23:04
If it's a suicide
they should see the stippling around the wound. From the minute they get
in things aren't adding up.
00:23:13
Now police aren't sure what
they have on their hands. Is this a suicide? Is there anyone else
living in the home?
00:23:20
No, my kids aren't
here, but, Oh, we have this woman who lives with us. She lives in the basement,
but come to think of it
00:23:26
I haven't heard from her today. Suspicion grows. BRIAN HARRIS: But again,
it's very conversational.
00:23:34
And so what are the officers do? They're sweeping
that home going room to room looking
for other bodies,
00:23:41
perhaps maybe even suspect. They take Ann Marie
aside, they're going to take her downtown and question her.
00:23:47
Meanwhile, officers are
running down the stairs. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
She's casual and cool.
00:23:52
So the officers are just
not prepared for what they're about to see. As they creep down the stairs
hands on their weapons,
00:24:02
who knows what is down there? What do they hear? Heavy metal music? [heavy metal music playing]
00:24:09
Then they open the door. They go downstairs
in the basement, they find Miss Riggs
laying on the ground.
00:24:17
And they open the bedroom
door and it's like a scene from "Helter Skelter." BRIAN HARRIS: And it's a bloody,
brutal scene that they find.
00:24:26
They find the body of
yet another victim, Jacqueline Riggs. CAROLYN CANVILLE: There
is blood everywhere,
00:24:34
and there is
Jacqueline Riggs lying dead on this blood soaked rug. She's been stabbed 42 times.
00:24:45
40 plus stab wounds
all across your 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,
00:25:04
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.
00:25:27
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Ann Marie
is cooperating with the police. She is calm but the
scene in the basement
00:25:34
tells detectives of an
out of control rage. It is chaos down there. And they ask themselves,
where does Ann Marie
00:25:43
Anastasi fit into all of this? Is she the killer? JASON KNIGHT: Mrs.
Anastasi presented herself
00:25:51
in her interviews to the police
as the grieving widow who loved her family, loved her husband,
was willing to tolerate
00:26:00
his indiscretions. MAN (ON RECORDING): The gun that
was found next to your husband
00:26:04
was tested, OK? And compared to the bullet that
was found in his skull, OK? There is no possible
way that that weapon
00:26:14
fired that bullet that was
in your husband's head. We've got two
blood-soaked bodies,
00:26:34
Anthony Anastasi and
Jackie Riggs, lying in the Anastasi family home. The medical examiner arrives
to remove them for the autopsy.
00:26:44
CAROLYN CANVILLE:
Meanwhile police are questioning Ann Marie. They've got her downtown and
they're asking more questions,
00:26:50
and Ann Marie keeps saying,
my husband committed suicide. I know he was depressed.
00:26:56
It was a suicide. And they said, well, what
about the other woman? The what? What about Jacqueline Riggs?
00:27:03
She's got 42 stab wounds. What! MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Anne Marie seems shocked and distressed
by what she's hearing
00:27:11
from the detectives,
but she gives them a ready made explanation. Mrs. Anastasi's initial
statement to the police
00:27:19
was that she had heard
Mr. Anastasi and Miss Riggs engaged in
a heated argument in the basement of the home.
00:27:25
He then came upstairs
to the master bedroom, kicked her out of the bedroom
and then shut the door,
00:27:32
and she never saw
him alive again. Ann Marie-- when
the cops are talking to her they want to know,
what do you think happened?
00:27:43
Which is a great
question, What do you think happened Ann Marie? She buys into it and she says,
I think that Anthony killed
00:27:54
Jacqueline, that he went down,
they have a relationship, he kills her, and he can't live
with himself for what he did,
00:28:04
and he's so remorseful that
he shoots and kills himself. Miss Anastasi presented
herself in her interviews
00:28:14
to the police as the grieving
widow who loved her family, loved her husband, was willing
to tolerate his indiscretions,
00:28:24
and was just devastated
that this horrible event had befallen her and her family.
00:28:30
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Is she
going to get away with this? She's been living in a broken
marriage with her husband
00:28:35
and his mistress--
plenty of motive. But some of the
evidence might support her story of a murder-suicide.
00:28:43
She could walk. Based on just what the
officers found at the scene-- just by looking at it before
they performed any sort
00:28:51
of crime scene investigation,
and based on that statement, it presented as a murder-suicide.
00:28:57
Might be a viable story. But, you see, the evidence
would show that that's completely different.
00:29:05
As a detective, I often
warn other detectives, don't judge people on
the way that they grieve.
00:29:12
However, when you look at
the behavior of Ann Marie, is it just bizarre behavior
and she's in shock,
00:29:26
or is this well thought
of responses to questions? JASON KNIGHT: During the
course of Mrs. Anastasi's
00:29:35
first interview with the
police, they advised her that they discovered Miss
Riggs's body in the basement,
00:29:42
and that she had
also been murdered. Mrs. Anastasi hardly registered
any response or emotion at all.
00:29:52
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Police
discover that the gun lying next to Anthony doesn't
match the bullet
00:29:59
that came from his body. There's no way that that bullet
could have come from that gun.
00:30:05
JASON KNIGHT: Mr Anastasi had
a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol in his hand. Police could not
find a .45 caliber
00:30:11
shell casing in the bedroom. They subsequently were able
to find a .380 caliber shell
00:30:19
casing in the bedroom that
was subsequently analyzed by the firearms examiner for
the Anne Arundel County Police
00:30:27
Department, who gave a
definitive conclusion that you could not
fire a .380 bullet
00:30:33
from the .45 caliber handgun. Ann Marie didn't
count on that. Mr. Anastasi's
autopsy came back
00:30:43
to reveal that the
round in his head was, in fact, a
.380 caliber bullet. Once you know Mr. Anastasi
was killed by the .380 caliber
00:30:51
bullet, they knew
that the .45 caliber handgun that was in
Mr. Anastasi's hand was not the murder weapon.
00:30:58
MAN (ON RECORDING): The gun that
was found next to your husband was tested, OK? And compared to the bullet that
was found in his skull, OK?
00:31:06
There is no possible
way that that weapon fired that bullet that was
in your husband's head.
00:31:15
It's a completely different
weapon, so that means somebody planted that weapon there.
00:31:21
This is murder-- has
murder written all over it. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The
detectives make a breakthrough.
00:31:28
But does Ann Marie fold? No. She's unemotional,
even a little detached. What does she care?
00:31:35
She's got nothing to do with it. INTERVIEWER (ON
RECORDING): Two people were murdered in your home--
00:31:40
brutally murdered, OK? And you didn't
know what happened. ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): No.
00:31:45
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But
the evidence is building. The cops can prove this is
murder, not murder-suicide.
00:31:52
It is not looking
good for Ann Marie. And any murder scene,
one of the basic things you
00:31:59
would do if there's
gunshots that are involved-- we would do what's called a GSR
test, a gunshot residue test.
00:32:08
She consented to having
her hands and her clothing tested for the presence
of gunshot residue,
00:32:15
so she voluntarily
gave up her clothes. MAN (ON RECORDING):
There's a couple of things
00:32:19
I need to clear up real quick. ANN MARIE ANASTASI (ON
RECORDING): Certainly. MAN (ON RECORDING):
The tests that they
00:32:23
took from your clothes
and your hands-- well, they were all sent off. ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING):
00:32:27
How, they probably found
lots of cat milk on there. MAN (ON RECORDING): Well, we
found a lot of gunshot residue
00:32:30
on you and on the clothes. ANN MARIE ANASTASI (ON
RECORDING): Really? MAN (ON RECORDING): Yeah.
00:32:34
ANN MARIE ANASTASI (ON
RECORDING): That's weird. She's got a lot
of explaining to do.
00:32:38
So now you have a gun
that's not matching up, you've got two
people dead, you've
00:32:43
got gunshot residue
on the wife, and what do they have on their hands? Now this is clearly not
just a murder-suicide.
00:32:57
JASON KNIGHT: They
also took her-- while she was at the police
station on the first night,
00:33:01
and she agreed to undergo
a polygraph examination. MAN (ON RECORDING): You
have a failed polygraph.
00:33:07
You've not just failed it, you
flunked the hell out of it. POLYGRAPH EXAMINER
(ON RECORDING):
00:33:11
Have you been untruthful
during this investigation? ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): No.
00:33:15
POLYGRAPH EXAMINER
(ON RECORDING): Did you shoot your husband? ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): No.
00:33:19
During the course of
the polygraph examination she did poorly on questions
regarding what happened,
00:33:25
and the exact details
whether she was involved, if she knew what happened. It's a tense time for Anne
Arundel County detectives.
00:33:33
They know she did
it, but do they have enough to charge
Ann Marie Anastasi with a double homicide?
00:33:41
The combination of
the failed polygraph, Mrs. Anastasi's story not
being completely logical,
00:33:49
and the subsequent evidence that
the police developed regarding the firearm,
regarding the gunshot
00:33:56
residue, that all
led to identifying her as the prime suspect. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Ann Marie refuses to talk.
00:34:03
But when the cops track down
18-year-old Gabriel Struss, he crumbles. Gabriel, when he's
confronted, a rock could
00:34:14
have taken his confession. Gabriel right away,
freely, starts flowing with the story
of what took place, takes
00:34:24
responsibility, lays it
all out, and explains exactly what happened. When they go to Gabriel
Struss he confesses right away,
00:34:35
I did it. I'm involved. Yes, I killed them, but I'm not
the one who masterminded it.
00:34:43
It was her idea. And then the story
starts coming out. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Gabriel can't stop talking,
00:34:50
so investigators piece together
Ann Marie's plan for murder and how she intended
to get away with it.
00:34:57
JASON KNIGHT: Mrs. Anastasi
got up in the morning, went through her
family's normal routine,
00:35:00
got the children off to school,
she subsequently had a doctor's appointment, and then she
went to a grocery store,
00:35:07
she came back to the home,
and somewhere in the 12 or 1 o'clock hour called
911 want to report
00:35:13
that Mr Anastasia was dead. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Turns out as plans go, this one isn't good.
00:35:21
ANN MARIE ANASTASI
(ON RECORDING): But he's not responding at
all, and he's, got his gun
00:35:25
lying next to him in the bed. 911 DISPATCHER (ON RECORDING):
Do you think he shot himself?
00:35:29
JASON KNIGHT: Her actions after
both Mr. Anastasi and Miss Riggs were dead were exactly
that of someone who had a plan.
00:35:37
And that's one of the
main things we relied on in determining to charge
her with first degree
00:35:43
premeditated murder. Because, you know, obviously,
she had this plan leading up to Mr. Anastasi and
Mrs. Riggs's death,
00:35:51
but then she clearly had thought
through the entire crime, not just how to commit
it, but then she
00:35:56
had a plan for after it
was committed for how to try to get away with it. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Gabriel
Struss get 60 years in prison.
00:36:03
He tells Jacqueline Riggs's
family that he wishes he could take back what he had done.
00:36:08
The prosecutors say
he was just a puppet. It was the angry wife
who planned everything,
00:36:14
but Ann Marie won't
accept blame for her part in the killing of her
husband and his lover.
00:36:21
Anne Marie takes
this special plea, this Alford deal, that allows
her to avoid saying I did it.
00:36:27
She never has to admit it. She doesn't take
responsibility for it. What it tells me has a fellow
human being, as a homicide
00:36:35
detective, Ann Marie-- she never accepts
responsibility, never shows any remorse.
00:36:44
There's never an
opportunity to see any kind of human side human
emotional side of Ann Marie.
00:36:53
What kind of a
mother does this? She's so angry at her husband,
she's feeling so betrayed
00:37:00
because he's left her and
her 18-year marriage is over with because of this
woman-- this younger
00:37:06
woman, where you are so
mad you want them gone, but you can't do it. So you actually get
your young daughter
00:37:15
involved in this murder
plot, and get her boyfriend involved in this murder plot.
00:37:22
How can a mother
live with herself? How can a mother
do this and then never accept responsibility for
it, and never show any remorse?
00:37:31
The havoc she left
behind, and she could still never take full responsibility. But she also receives
a 60-year sentence,
00:37:40
as if she was the one
that pulled the trigger, as if she was the one
who plunged the knife
00:37:46
42 times into Jacqueline Riggs. Crazy story, right? Remember, the person most
likely to kill you could
00:37:57
be the person you married. I'm Michelle Trachtenberg
and I'll see you next time on "Meet, Marry, Murder."
00:38:04
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