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a 40-year marriage broken up when a rich man's head is turned by a younger woman
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the age gap struck me as odd she was younger than him she probably you know came on very
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strongly sexually she saw dollar signs and she seduced him friends of charlie stevens warned him
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everybody liked charlie and they all felt that kirsten was using him using him whilst he had money
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we interviewed a casino worker who overheard kirsten saying that charlie was worth more to her dead than alive
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we don't have very many women who kill i think kirsten's actions were a response to her wanting to continue her
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lifestyle she wanted to be mrs kirsten stevens as long as mr stevens could keep her in the manner to which she would
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become accustomed [Music] [Music] charlie stevens was almost the definition of a straight-up guy
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charlie had children with his wife and they had been married for quite some time
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and then you have this relationship his character is just the type that you know he was the type of guy to stay
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married forever he was the type of guy to work a job no matter what to provide for
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his family he was the type of guy to stay at a job for or a career for 40 years because
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that's the type of person that he was um he was a a vietnam veteran and just seemed to have a really good
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nice stable comfortable life then along came kirsten a woman with a plan they had met at um their place of work
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detective chris burus of the independence missouri police department he was in the pest control industry
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she's the new girl she's 17 years younger and kind of flirtatious and she thinks charlie's a catch so she
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really flirts and she really works it although kirsten had to work really hard to turn charles's head
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she did eventually i think kirsten represented excitement to him maybe a second chance at life
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maybe an adventure i think the fact that kirsten had this very rambunctious personality and was youthful
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and gave him all the attention the world made him feel good about himself and i think she knew exactly what he was
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looking for the straight-up father the doting grandfather still felt he had some life
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in him she gets charlie's attention and pretty soon the two of them are having an
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affair this affair um i guess you would say blossomed into a full-blown relationship
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before long it gets more and more serious and charlie decides to leave his wife of
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40 years and in 2005 charlie marries kirsten 57 year old charlie stevens had left
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sandy his wife of 40 years to make a new life with his younger co-worker his heartbroken sons brian and mike would
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one day tell police that they were deeply suspicious of kirsten's motives i don't believe that charlie's family
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liked kirsten probably because of how the relationship started it was after he married kirsten that he
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became estranged from the family and didn't have a lot of contact with him the the family all believed that she was
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kind of a parasite that she had married him for his money he saved his money and
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really um put together some some nice savings i can imagine charles's family must have
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thought whoa who is this woman that's come into his life that's taken him away from his his
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marriage while kirsten had charmed charlie his friends and family doubted that the
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woman he had married was a good person with good intentions it was not just the fact that she appeared to be after
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charlie's money i don't think that they liked her because of the way she treated people
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kristin's very manipulative if she didn't get what she wanted from you she would write you off you would be
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dead to her to look at kirsten stevens um her photograph says a lot she either had a very rough life or she's got a
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very interesting story to tell about where she came from it just she exudes something's up she just she has this
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image uh you know i mean she's almost got a perma scowl on her face um she just looks hardened she looks like
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she's had a rough life motivation perhaps to take what she could from wherever she could get it
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i think kirsten has always been very goal oriented and when she saw this man that she could
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probably take advantage of and lure even though he was already in a marriage i don't think it mattered to her
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forensic psychologist dr judy ho suspects that kirsten was always motivated by her husband's new money
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she saw dollar signs and she seduced him if charlie stevens had the same suspicions it didn't put him off in 2005
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the newlyweds made a home together on the outskirts of independence so the city of independence is
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approximately 120 000 uh population and we neighbor uh kansas city the area where charles and kirsten had lived was
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on the east part of town it would be considered a small town area uh the neighbors knew them some
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it's a pretty quiet town for neighboring uh to such a major city like kansas city
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kirsten and charlie's home was a wooden clad single story house on the sparsely
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populated tree-lined south jones road it's not uncommon to have the more violent crime on the western side of the
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city the eastern side you start to get more uh rural countryside and you just don't see those things
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after 40 years of responsibility and hard craft charlie was ready to enjoy the good life
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he's about ready to retire he's got a lot of money in the bank um he set himself up really well
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when he retired he had a decent sized pension kirsten was happy to enjoy the fruits of charlie's labor
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too she had a taste for the nightlife she gambled a lot uh her and charlie went to the boats uh and gambled quite a
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bit he doesn't gamble with her but he says that he likes to watch her gamble i can
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imagine she's probably very outgoing when she's in her element especially if
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she's on a winning streak it was all new and exciting for charlie who in his former life was more likely
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to go hunting or fishing than spin the roulette wheel but he soon discovered that his new wife liked more than a
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small wager she was a heavy gambler over time it becomes really clear that kirsten's hobby isn't just a hobby
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it's it's a compulsion she has a serious gambling problem gambling addiction is a diagnosable
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clinical condition in the dsm-5 and it's a really serious condition the dsm-5 is the standard classification
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of mental disorders used in the united states the individual has the same exact types
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of addictive mechanisms as they might when it's a substance abuse where they
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basically will do anything to get to their substance or process of choice at the expense of other things in their
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life at the expense of relationships other important life domains if charlie was unaware of kirsten's
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problem before their marriage he soon realized its extent afterwards and she spent all her time at the casino
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spending all of her new husbands money and maybe in the beginning it was actually exciting for him and he would
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go with her he didn't gamble but he would watch her but it was kind of this new world that he'd never been a part of
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and perhaps in the beginning it was even kind of fun for him but i think pretty soon he saw the depths of how bad it
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really got for kirsten he's saved all this money and she's burned through it at these casinos
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i think in some ways he understood especially because of their big age difference that kirsten was probably
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with him at least partly for his money i think there was probably a part of him that was afraid what would happen if he
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cut her off maybe she would leave maybe she would stop loving on him was charlie stevens keeping tabs on
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exactly how much his vivacious new wife was spending the riverboat casinos certainly were
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the casinos here keep records every win every loss every roll of the dice that kirsten had made laid out in
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stark black and white we were able to go back through casino records and from the period of 2006 to
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2013 there was about a million dollars that was spent at the casinos this was essentially charlie savings
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charlie's loved ones will forever wonder why he didn't simply refuse to hand over
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more money she basically put up with him as long as he was going to be her money bag
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i think kirsten's plan was to just carry on gambling her husband probably believed
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that if he continued to give her everything that she wanted then their relationship
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would get better kirsten had won big by marrying a man who could finance her every risky whim but when somebody has
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an addiction it's never enough and she just needed more and more over time she
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would have probably thought that the money would have just continued to flow but charlie's nest egg was all but gone
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charlie and kirsten had met married and planned to live out their years in comfort would their marriage
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survive when that dream crumbled eight years into their marriage kirsten and charlie were miserable now kirsten
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had gambled away most of his money charlie had taken on part-time work to help make ends meet as the money dried
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up he had to come out of retirement take a job at uh hardware store but money is
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still pretty tight and now the marriage is suffering as well neighbors uh frequently heard arguing
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coming from the house charlie's not happy kirsten's not happy carolyn canville is an emmy
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award-winning journalist with a special interest in crime and investigation they're behind on their taxes and now
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they have no choice they have to put up their house for sale in november of 2013.
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cash reserves very soon no home charlie's usefulness to kirsten was running out
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financial problems are so difficult for any couple to contend with even couples who seem very happy in the first place
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because it is a practical issue that affects how you live your life every single day and for kirsten it certainly
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got in the way of her being able to gamble the way that she wanted and have fun the way that she wanted so i can
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imagine a lot of conflict over that a lot of fights over it perhaps her even freezing him out until he was able to
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give her more money as the money had dwindled so did kirsten's commitment to her marriage
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there's no money left he doesn't have anything so she sets her sights on someone new we
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found out that she had had other lovers during her marriage was charlie their home on south jones road on the
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brink of being sold kirsten started packing up their belongings but as she did she made a discovery that changed
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everything while they were moving kirsten came across the life insurance policy where
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she was found to be the beneficiary and this kind of got her motivated you know here's a solution criminologist
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brian frederick believes that kirsten stevens shows all of the hallmarks of having a severe personality disorder
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female psychopaths are actually more interested in money and finances and funding their lifestyle when kirsten
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stevens found charlie's life insurance policy the path out of her financial troubles suddenly seemed clear he would
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need to die for her to collect on that life insurance policy he's named her as
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the beneficiary bless him he's got to go people often think that psychopaths are
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clever and cunning this is not the case with with kirsten we believe that this is what really pushed her to the point
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where charlie was worth more to her you know dead than a lot kirsten may have made a plan but could
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she execute it if she was to do so she would have to learn to do something she had so far found tough
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being discreet we interviewed a casino worker who overheard kirsten saying that charlie
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was worth more to her dead than alive none of the people she said this to really took it too serious and after
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the events took place people thought oh yeah these were red flags at this point the the only way for her to get more
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money to fund her lifestyle is if he dies well she's not going to ask him to die
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she has to do it herself written off by those who heard her as the brash words of a frustrated wife was
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she really at the beginning of a plot to kill charlie stevens being forced out of their home became a
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turning point on the 7th of march 2014 they're just about to hand over the keys to their
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house around 8 o'clock in the morning kirsten gets the call from the buyer he wants to come and take a look at the
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place so the new owner of the house knocked on the door that morning introduced himself
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said hey i own the house as she's giving a tour of the house to the new owner he looks into the master
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bedroom and sees a man lying in bed and she describes him as that being her father so they don't go
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in that room i think she was just trying to identify him as an uninvolved party with
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the house it was not kirsten's father but her husband charlie we're actually believed that he was
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still alive at that time but actually asleep in the bed because it was fairly early in the morning when this man came
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to look at the house later that day kirsten went out for a while when she returned a dramatic scene
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unfolded at 816 south jones road about a little after seven that evening kirsten returns home moments later she
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stumbled out onto the street kirsten was hysterically screaming they killed him and she seemed to be inconsolable
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kirsten goes running to the neighbors help me help me the phone call that came in to our 911 operator was a call that
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described a home invasion and that the one of the residents was possibly deceased inside
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within minutes first responders were on the scene meanwhile kirsten is just in hysterics
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and you know the neighbors are all around her and she's saying oh my god oh my god you know she says i was gone all
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day and i came home and and he's dead i was sent to the scene after the initial patrol officers responded taking
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the lead on a murder investigation was a relatively new experience for detective
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chris burus obviously any type of death homicide is tragic however i was looking forward to
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digging in deep and finding out what was going on so it was dark when we got there
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um this this scene had been roped off with crime scene tape we had officers doing scene security
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inside the home a grizzly spectacle awaited that charlie was lying in bed he was
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covered up and it and it looks like he was shot when he was sleeping and he still actually still holding on
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to his sheets he was shot in the chin in the chest and the abdomen there were five shots that were fired in the room
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two of them went into the wall and the other three went into charlie 65 year old husband father and
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grandfather charlie stevens lay dead in his bed former homicide detective rod demery
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knows the subtle clues that burus and his team would have been looking for they would look for
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signs of a struggle maybe there was a fight something knocked over they looked for bruises or defensive
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wounds to see if there was some sort of struggle or was this a complete surprise
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ambush there were no defensive wounds it looked as though charlie had been shot as he lay sleeping
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this struck investigators as surprising mrs stevens had told the police that it was a robbery that what she
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believed i guess the first part of some of our suspicions were that charlie was lying in bed he was covered up
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if this was a home invasion he posed no threat to the said burglar why would you kill him
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could charlie stevens really have been killed in a robbery gone wrong a few things are kind of in disarray
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maybe a lamp knocked over here and you know something out of place there but when they ask her what has been taken
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she can't really pinpoint anything one of the the first things you're going to
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look for is how someone got inside the house so from the moment they walk into the house
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you're going to be looking for signs of fourth century then they're gonna look
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for signs of fourth century into the bedroom it looks like a staged robbery nothing has been taken there's no sign
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of forced entry uh the the locks on the doors and the outer gates are not disturbed police didn't really believe
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that it didn't look like a robbery jackson county prosecutor michael j hunt worked with police on the case from day
00:18:50
one uh they investigate enough robberies to know what a robbery looks like and that
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didn't look like one so right from the back they're looking at this as as pretty suspicious
00:19:01
while assessing the scene cops were also trying to read kirsten stephens reaction
00:19:06
to the sudden death of her husband on the phone to emergency services she had been hysterical
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while there's no true way that everyone grieves and grieving is different for
00:19:16
everyone it does appear that her reactions in the aftermath of her husband's death was a bit histrionic it
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was a bit over the top but just minutes later kirsten seemed eerily calm when the police first arrived that was
00:19:31
one of the first things they noticed that she wasn't acting like a woman who's had her husband murdered in his
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bed she wasn't crying like crazy she just wasn't exhibiting the emotions
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that you would expect from somebody who is in that situation i think it was easy for her to
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compartmentalize her needs and to kind of set aside who she really was on the inside to present a a front that would
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get her what she wants from the very beginning of detective burus's investigation he suspected that nothing
00:20:03
about the crime was as it seemed the night of uh things were not adding up the police didn't really believe her
00:20:12
from the get-go [Music] late on march 7 2014 kirsten accompanied police to the station in downtown
00:20:33
independence it would be a long night treading carefully detective buress probed the couple's background their
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lifestyle and the events of the last 12 hours it's always difficult too because when
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you have the spouse of somebody that's just been killed do you want to accuse them of things that you're not
00:20:56
sure of yet kirsten was ready with a plausible answer for every question she gave us
00:21:04
a statement about her being out a majority of the day that she had been to the mall that she
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had been to the casinos everywhere but home honestly she said that she came home found her
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husband in bed bleeding and then ran across the street and called 9-1-1 she talked about the guns that were in
00:21:26
the house they had recovered at that point two shotguns and he clearly wasn't
00:21:31
shot with a shotgun i always got those feelings when and talking to her that just something was
00:21:37
not right i couldn't necessarily put my finger on it um i guess you would call
00:21:41
it a gut reaction gut instinct kirsten's account was confident coherent but how much of it was true when you're
00:21:49
talking to somebody you can kind of just tell that they're not being forthcoming
00:21:54
with you or they have something that's weighing heavily on their mind there were plenty of other voices that
00:22:01
night echoing detective beerus's doubts about kirsten we spoke with kirsten we spoke with her
00:22:08
son charlie's stepson we spoke with her son-in-law and her daughter and then they started branching out
00:22:17
talking to the neighbors they started talking to all the acquaintances that the stevens knew
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i think it's fair to say that on charlie's side of the family they they had their suspicions that kirsten was
00:22:28
involved in kirsten's detailed responses to cops she had left out some crucial facts that
00:22:35
she and charlie were stressed constantly arguing that they were facing financial
00:22:40
ruin only as investigators interviewed friends and family did that information emerge
00:22:46
the couple's fighting a lot they're screaming the neighbors can sometimes
00:22:50
hear them fighting they found out that the house itself had been sold for back taxes uh
00:22:59
the end of the year before but the couple is really in dire straits so of course she became my person of
00:23:07
interest at that point if anyone had a motive to kill charlie stevens it was his wife but at this
00:23:13
stage there were too many questions unanswered early on in these homicide investigations we always try to keep an
00:23:20
open mind because we don't want to miss anything i recall thinking that we have
00:23:25
to look at this from all angles we have to look at this like a home invasion we have to look at this
00:23:31
as an intimate partner killing we have to look at all those options police didn't wait long for a
00:23:38
breakthrough the very next day march 8 2014 charlie stevens autopsy confirmed that he had been shot with a 22 caliber
00:23:47
rifle shell casings found in his bedroom floor from the same kind of firearm in her
00:23:53
first interview kirsten had failed to tell detectives that she and charlie owned just such a gun
00:24:02
there was a 22 caliber rifle that she made no mention of when they questioned her further uh then
00:24:09
she made mention that she had forgotten about the long gun police still hadn't
00:24:12
found the long gun when they were talking to her on the seventh in the very early morning hours of the eighth
00:24:18
the rifle was the rosetta stone of this case um had that not been found i don't think we're where we're at today
00:24:29
i think maybe potentially we have an unsolved homicide on the 8th of march armed with a warrant
00:24:35
officers returned to kirsten and charlie's home investigators go back to the scene and
00:24:40
they search further and during that search they find a 22 caliber rifle hid beneath this jacuzzi
00:24:48
the person that found that detective sergeant jason young had been a former narcotics investigator and when
00:24:56
he did searches he did searches in the main bathroom of the stephen's home the luxury bathtub was concealing
00:25:03
what would turn out to be as good as a smoking gun uh he found the access panel and our minds are blown they opened up
00:25:11
the panel and here is this long gun this long 22 rifle hidden away inside this jacuzzi tub
00:25:20
we're like what is a rifle doing in there we take the rifle as evidence have it tested
00:25:27
they swabbed it for dna and they also did ballistic tests on it detectives had a tense seven-week wait
00:25:34
for the results of those tests in the meantime kirsten's alibi was being checked out
00:25:40
she gave a detailed explanation of where she had been that day and where she had
00:25:44
gone she'd gone to the mall that day she had gone to the casinos that required
00:25:50
you know the review of video surveillance tapes review of records review of cell phone records
00:25:59
her phone did not you know give them the gps coordinates of where she said she was she said she was at a sears door the
00:26:07
video at the sears store was collected they watched every minute of that and she was never on it she said she went to
00:26:14
a a casino and as we all know casinos have very good video they didn't have her on it
00:26:21
she was a well-known gambler there her card was not used at this casino those were things that she didn't count
00:26:28
on us doing they were able to with gps tracking of her phone and video they could prove that she was nowhere
00:26:38
near where she said she was what investigators did discover when they visited those casinos was how much
00:26:45
money kirsten had blown on gambling during the course of her marriage to charlie
00:26:50
it's very unusual you're talking in excess of a hundred thousand dollars a
00:26:54
year spent at the casinos through that time period she had a gambling problem and she had
00:27:00
essentially had gambled all of charlie's money away step by step investigators were building
00:27:06
a picture of a desperate woman addicted to gambling with a husband who no longer
00:27:10
had the cash to feed her habit a husband who was also no longer of any use to her
00:27:16
i think kirsten's primary motivation as it had been from day one was financial and i don't really think
00:27:23
she saw him as a person in fact she had been heard saying that he was worth more
00:27:28
to her dead than alive it was apparent that she was with charlie for only one thing and that was his
00:27:36
money it was a theory but could the evidence be found to prove it part of the investigation we conducted
00:27:47
searches of the computers in the home on kirsten's ipad investigators find some interesting searches they find that
00:27:55
she has searched for how to kill your spouse huge red flags obviously there were searches for
00:28:05
how to cut break lines how to stay in a sexless marriage and she's pulled up kelly blue book
00:28:15
values and has listed in there the two vehicles that charlie and she own clever individuals would probably delete
00:28:27
their browsing histories she didn't her skills at planning were very underdeveloped if this were a motion
00:28:33
picture we'd be why did you just do that you know but this is the person that
00:28:38
kirsten stevens is now police have collected quite a bit of evidence all of it pointing to kirsten
00:28:47
a month later they call her in for questioning again presented with all of this kirsten
00:28:52
stevens continued to deny having anything to do with her husband's death she insisted that he had died in a
00:28:59
botched robbery she gives some more statements and they contradict her earlier statements so
00:29:07
clearly the case is building against her i remember talking with the prosecutor several times i'm like when are we going
00:29:16
to charge her this is what you would call a circumstantial case there was a lot of police work that had
00:29:23
to be done before we believed we had enough to charge her with uh charlie's murder
00:29:28
i would say that when you take a case to a jury you have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to
00:29:35
12 jurors in that room i think in any case the discovery of evidence is is key but
00:29:43
in in this case it was ultra important detectives got one step closer to proving their case in may 2014 when
00:29:53
results arrived from the forensic ballistics lab about the 22-caliber gun found hidden in kirsten's bathroom
00:30:01
the ballistic test came back first saying that this in fact was the murder weapon the shell casings that were
00:30:07
recovered in charlie's bedroom were fired from the 22 long rifle the bullets that had killed charlie
00:30:13
stevens were fired from the 22 caliber rifle it was a remarkable breakthrough followed by another weight this time for
00:30:22
the kansas city police crime lab which was processing the swab taken from the rifle
00:30:28
it wasn't until later that the dna came back the dna came back to christian stevens
00:30:35
kirsten's dna and there is no other dna on that only kerstins so the circle is narrowing here she
00:30:46
thought she was clever and that's why she left it under the jacuzzi tub behind
00:30:50
an access panel thinking that we would come to the scene do our investigation and be done with it
00:30:57
and say oh it's a home invasion we don't have any suspects we'll go about our
00:31:01
merit wait but that's not how we do things you know that that was in june when the
00:31:05
dna results came back the balance was tipping from circumstantial evidence to hard proof
00:31:12
all the signs were pointing to the fact that kirsten stevens had killed her husband but kirsten stevens was not
00:31:18
prepared to give up the fight just yet she had actually kept in contact with the police
00:31:25
she even called in at one point trying to give them another suspect in june 2014 police and prosecutors
00:31:43
decided it was time to bring charges in the death of charlie stevens we had the evidence from the gun we had
00:31:49
the dna on the gun we believe we had the motive uh for her crime we believe we had enough uh there was a arrest warrant
00:31:58
that was issued for her kirsten made a last-ditch attempt to stay out of jail once the police started coming up to the
00:32:05
house to actually arrest her she took off running at the time she was out at her
00:32:11
daughter's house and the police went out to that residence they sat up on it
00:32:17
kind of half believing that she might run and in fact she did she didn't get
00:32:21
very far they tricked her down and took her into custody kirsten stevens had tried everything to
00:32:28
evade justice lies deception even escape was justice finally about to catch up with her
00:32:35
on the 6th of june now we're talking three months after charlie was murdered kirsten is arrested and charged
00:32:44
with her husband's murder when she was arrested on the warrant she didn't talk uh we got no further
00:32:50
statements from her at that point she exercised her rights and didn't speak to
00:32:54
the police if mr hunt was hoping for a confession at this point he was to be disappointed
00:33:00
she pleads not guilty she knows the evidence is stacked against her but kristin's a gambler so what the heck
00:33:10
it appeared she was kind of nervous but uh i don't think she was uh worried too
00:33:14
much i think she thought she could talk her way out of this kirsten was charged with first-degree
00:33:19
murder and armed criminal action on october 1st 2016 in the dying days of a hot humid kansas summer she stood up in
00:33:28
the jackson county courthouse to proclaim her innocence it was the prosecutor's task to prove to
00:33:33
the jury that kirsten was lying we went into the case thinking that it was going
00:33:37
to be a whodunit that we were going to have to prove our case as a circumstantial case whenever you close a
00:33:42
case like this and it's charged and you're waiting for your day in court you
00:33:46
always have questions about yourself as an investigator did i do this did i not do this should i have done this better
00:33:53
you know we didn't have a confession we had a gun we had a lot of good circumstantial evidence
00:33:58
but it was not a case that you would say this is a slam dunk case uh not to mention the fact that you've got
00:34:06
a female defendant who juries tend to give the benefit of the doubt to but as the trial got underway kirsten's
00:34:13
defense team dropped a bombshell she was no longer claiming that her husband had
00:34:18
been the victim of a trigger-happy burglar it was a date that she testified on her
00:34:23
behalf in court where she admitted that she shot charlie yes she had shot him but she was arguing
00:34:31
now that she had to she was in fear for her life she got on the stand and she said it was
00:34:38
self-defense she said that you know charlie had abused her had beaten her uh she made the claim that the gun was
00:34:46
underneath the bed and that charlie was beating her and you know she got the gun
00:34:52
and was pointing it up and shooting charlie as he stood on the bed over her and he fell to the bed
00:34:59
suddenly prosecutor michael j hunt's job had become much tougher we knew we had
00:35:05
one issue that was going to be proving deliberation which is cool reflection upon the matter for any
00:35:11
length of time no matter how brief that was what we had to do to get a jury to convict her of murder in the first
00:35:18
degree and that was my biggest you know worry that i wasn't going to be able to
00:35:22
overcome that if kirsten could persuade the jury that she had acted in the heat of the moment
00:35:28
to protect herself they would clear her of first degree murder but mr hunt had cold hard evidence on his side and a
00:35:36
defendant nobody in the courtroom seemed to find credible she gave a depiction of how the crime
00:35:43
occurred that just didn't match the physical evidence my first thought was i was going to be
00:35:48
very nice with her and i didn't want the jury to think i was beating up on her
00:35:52
because i'm about a foot taller than her and you tend to you know worry the juries are going to
00:35:58
think well here's this big guy beating up on her well that changed kirsten claimed that she had shot
00:36:05
charlie as he stood over her and that then he had fallen onto the bed you know i put up a couple of pictures of him
00:36:11
laying in bed trying to show the jury how ridiculous what she said it looked like he had been in bed asleep
00:36:18
when he was shot the covers were up and he was clenching the sheets we started off very calm and i was just
00:36:26
kind of pointing out the inconsistencies in her story and then it just became obvious that we
00:36:32
were going to have a knock down drag out you know brawl here right there in the courtroom and we did
00:36:38
we were going back very hot and heavy i even got i was laying down on the floor with the gun holding it up showing how
00:36:45
ridiculous it was what she was saying the way charlie's body was positioned and the location of the gunshot wounds
00:36:53
suggested kirsten's version of events was a complete fabrication in fact over several months of
00:36:59
questioning by detectives she had had ample opportunity to claim that her late husband was abusive one of the things
00:37:06
that we do in cases like this is we we ask are you the victim of abuse when we key
00:37:12
in on domestic violence related issues we ask those questions because i think it's pertinent to the case we asked her
00:37:19
are you a victim of abuse was charlie doing anything to you and she never took the bait um she never
00:37:29
she never once said that he was abusive towards her the one thing about charlie is that you
00:37:35
know everybody who spoke of him just talked about him being just a nice guy uh who would just do anything for you
00:37:43
you could and ms stevens tried to paint him as this ogre who was just a horrible person to her
00:37:51
would yell at her and scream at her and just that was not the charlie that anybody
00:37:57
else knew that was more like what kristen stevens was kirsten stevens struggled to convince
00:38:04
the court that she was an innocent victim the jury just hated her they really did
00:38:09
when she got on the stand you know she made us so many mistakes that it just really pretty much handed
00:38:16
the case to us kirsten's motive had always been financial it was apparent that she was with
00:38:22
charlie for only one thing and that was his money and once his money was gone that was why
00:38:30
she killed him once the money started to dry up she realized that the only way that she could continue to make her
00:38:37
lifestyle happen was to dip in on his accounts and perhaps life insurance and anything else that would be an asset
00:38:43
only after his death yeah she had a lot to gain she believed that that was the last part
00:38:49
that she was going to be able to get from charlie was his insurance after she was arrested and put in jail she fought
00:38:57
hard to get that insurance money she's trying to get the insurance money knowing good and well that she killed
00:39:03
him it is a scenario that forensic psychologists like judy howe have come across countless times
00:39:09
particularly when they murder their loved ones female murderers generally have a financial motive more
00:39:16
often than male murderers i don't think she saw a person there when she saw him several times i think
00:39:22
she just saw the dollar signs just like she did when she first met him motive established self-defense claims
00:39:29
debunked it was now down to the jury to decide if they trusted kirsten stevens when when the jury went out yeah we i
00:39:37
was pretty confident that we had a conviction you're never sure if you've
00:39:40
got murder 1 or murder in the second degree the deliberation is always the tricky
00:39:45
part but we felt pretty good about it much better than what we did when we first started the trial before she
00:39:51
testified on october 5th 2016 kirsten stevens is found guilty in the murder of her
00:39:59
husband guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action once the jury comes back with the guilty
00:40:08
verdict on both the murder and the armed criminal action uh it was a good feeling
00:40:14
and i think that was the best vindication not for myself not for my team but for charlie and charlie's family
00:40:25
she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole life without parole for murder plus 50
00:40:31
years for armed criminal action with the murder in the first degree there's only one punishment and that's
00:40:37
life in prison without parole but the jury at the point of sentencing for the armed criminal action
00:40:44
that kind of tells us a little bit of what they feel about mrs stevens it is a little unusual for them to send someone
00:40:50
to 50 years that's a long time and i think they were making a statement with
00:40:54
it uh i think they didn't like her you know it's ironic because kirsten was the gambler right
00:41:03
but charlie he's the one who bet it all and he lost he lost his stable marriage
00:41:11
he lost his savings he lost his house and eventually he lost his life [Music] [Music]
00:42:11
you