Susan Spencer
Appearances
48 Hours
Strange Truth
That piece of carpet never was found. But the cops did recover the rest and hustled it off to the crime lab.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Further testing revealed that the blood, in fact, was Mona's, which convinced police that indeed she had come home the night she was murdered. They scrambled to get a search warrant. But in the meantime, Jeff Croteen hired a professional cleaning company to go through the house, a company with a snappy little slogan.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Why didn't you have this place cleaned by professional cleaners who normally come in after fires and floods? None of these things had happened in your house.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Two months after the murder, police finally got their warrant, and a forensic team descended on the house. Investigators found more droplets of what they believed to be Ramona's blood in the bedroom, utility room, and on a step in the garage, a step that appeared to have as many as 45 bloodstains.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The police believe that Jeff struck Mona in the bedroom, rendering her unconscious, and then carried her down the stairs to the garage, where he placed her in the backseat of her car and shot her in the head. Your contention, just to make sure we understand this in any case, is that not only did you not kill your wife, but she never came home.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The police didn't buy it. especially after a search of his office turned up four guns, one of them potentially the murder weapon. In February of 2004, Jeff Croteen was arrested and charged with Mona's murder.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But then, 39-year-old Mary Engle went to work at Jeff Croteen's insurance agency, and the rumors began.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Their affair started long before Jeff's wife's murder. You were in love with her?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
There is just no way, Mary says, that Jeff could kill his wife, hide her body, return home without a car, and clean up a bloody crime scene in just eight hours.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Police thought perhaps she didn't need to ask, that Mary may have driven Jeff home from the parking lot after he dumped Mona's body.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mary Engle had an alibi and never was charged, but the affair gave prosecutors a possible motive. Husband cheats on wife is, in fact, one of the oldest motives in the book.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Richard Drucker is Protein's defense lawyer. So basically we have an odd guy who is having an affair, and you're saying, so what?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But prosecutors moved ahead with a case that two juries so far have shown is no slam dunk, partly because it's so highly circumstantial. Lead prosecutor Steve Dever.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But this is the CSI effect, right? I mean, juries today really do expect footprints, hair, blood. It's all going to lay out and the guy from the lab is going to come in and explain how this implicates the suspect.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
In fact, jurors from the first two trials were highly critical of the prosecution's case.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The state is stuck with the evidence it has. But this time, a new prosecutor will highlight the science, and he thinks this case is winnable.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
He tells the jury Jeff's behavior after Mona's death is not just odd, it's incriminating.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Peculiar. Implying that Croteen burned the headboard to get rid of evidence. Police did find blood drops elsewhere in the house. Endeavor calls DNA expert Carrie Martin to testify.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
In what Dever insists is a blood trail, Mona's DNA also turns up in stains on the bedroom doorjamb.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
So the prosecution's contention that the blood evidence is scientific support for its case. You reject out of hand.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Especially since, as Martin testifies, those impressive 45 stains found on the garage step do not conclusively match Mona's DNA. And what about the gun police recovered from Croteen's office? Do we have a murder weapon here? Assistant District Attorney Anna Faraglia. We have a gun. A gun, not necessarily the gun.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Without direct proof, prosecutors returned to Croteen's behavior, noting that even before Mona was buried, he was on the internet looking at pornography. And they even suggest he faked the apparent heart attack that sent him to the hospital the night her body was found. The nurse who treated him takes the stand.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But she's lying? Yes. But neither push-ups nor porn prove Croteen killed his wife, says his attorney, who's about to tell the jury who he says really did.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The defense scenario is that Mona never made it home that night. That in fact, she was killed during a robbery and carjacking in the hotel parking lot. And the defense attorney has two witnesses who will support that theory. Two witnesses who never before have told their stories to a jury.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mel Twining, a friend of Mona's, says he saw something strange in the parking lot after she'd left the party.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The other new witness is Paula Smith, also at the party, also a friend, and she says she heard a gunshot.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
That's what I called it. Was there really a gunshot? Paula Smith had had more than a few drinks that night. How many did you have?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
People always say they want their day in court. But 57-year-old Jeff Croteen is way beyond that.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Then a third friend, Sue Ziegler, takes the stand. With an amazing new piece of information, saying someone left an eerie message on her cell phone voicemail. Just hours after the party ended.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
If that voice is Mona's, then she was alive long after the prosecution insists Jeff Croteen killed her. But Ziegler never has testified about this message before, and she didn't save it. Although she did play it once for Mel Twining.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
After hearing testimony about the call, Croteen says he only wishes he had heard that message.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Prosecutors insist Croteen did hear Mona's last words just before he knocked her unconscious in their bedroom. But if that's so, why did Jennifer Croteen not hear something? She was sleeping just a dozen feet away.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But Mona's co-worker Alice Smock is convinced Mona did go home because she was found in tennis shoes, not what she'd had on at the party.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Croteen, indicted for murdering his 53-year-old wife Ramona, has had too many days in court. He just wants it to end.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mona Croteen, Debra suggests, took her shoes off when she arrived home that night. And after Jeff killed her, he mistakenly put the wrong pair of shoes back on. But Jennifer is adamant. Her mother was never there.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
So is Jennifer right, wrong or lying? In the past, jurors haven't found her very believable.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Their judgment was so harsh that at trial two, neither side even called her as a witness. But this time, all three Croteen children testify. All right, come on up. Jeff Jr., 31, says all these questions about his mother's death have split the family.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Jeff's youngest son, Jason, a former Marine, tells about getting news of his mother's death while in Iraq.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
In a suddenly hushed courtroom, the jury for the first time sees emotion in Jeff Croteen, a Vietnam vet.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Two Cleveland juries have deliberated long and hard on Croteen's guilt or innocence.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
To show that the children believe their father absolutely, Drucker puts Jason on the spot.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Steve Dever highlights Croteen's alleged cover-up of the crime.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
And in her impassioned closing statements, Assistant District Attorney Ana Faraglia hammers home Croteen's strange behavior.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Praying that the third time's the charm. that after two hung juries, this one finally comes to a verdict, a not guilty verdict. What is it most that you want them to understand about you?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Local reporters who have lived with this story through three trials. This is a mini OJ trial. Are clearly astonished at the verdict. What do you think of the people who think you got away with murder?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Annoying reporters and pesky photographers aside. Tabloid. I don't want to talk to you. Jeff Croteen's ordeal finally is over.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
So now, at the start of Croteen's third murder trial... I first collapsed to the ground. Mona's family and friends are praying that this time, finally, justice will be done. You have a calculated killer here before you.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mona's brother, Greg, was the only family member who got to the courthouse in time for the verdict.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Juror Michael Lisi says he went into the deliberations convinced of Jeff's guilt. But then he began having doubts. Lisi says the jury gave a lot of weight to the testimony of Jennifer Croteen.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
And he's not the only one. After the verdict, 10 of the 12 jurors who had just found Jeff Croteen not guilty told the judge that in their heart of hearts, they thought he probably did kill his wife. But with no direct evidence, they just couldn't vote to convict. Despite the verdict, do you feel like you're still under some sort of cloud of suspicion?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
These days, Jeff, no longer an insurance agent, lives in what once was his office. Watch your feet. What do you most want to do with the rest of your life?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But that relationship has shattered his relationship with his own children, who only rarely speak to their father.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
And as long as Mona's relatives insist Jeff is guilty, the Croteen kids want nothing to do with them. Can you see a day when you might reconcile with them?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But Greg consoles himself by remembering all the things that were so special about his sister, Mona.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mona Croteen was murdered on March 21st, 2003. She and husband Jeff had lived here in this suburban Cleveland house for years, raising their three kids. Perhaps there's no such thing as a likely murder victim, but by all accounts, Mona Croteen was about the least likely you could possibly imagine.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mona's brothers, Greg and Roger Wolcheski, say that even as kids, the Wolcheskis were a tight-knit clan.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But there was one big problem with this happy picture. Namely, Jeff. How did he fit into the Waltons?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But by 2003, their kids all had left home. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Protein. Oldest son Jeff Jr. was married, middle son Jason, a Marine, was in the Mideast, and daughter Jennifer was away at college. The Croteen house was empty and Mona and Jeff were alone, though hardly together.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
And different interests. Jeff worked long hours at his insurance agency. And when not there, was often out on the water.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Mona, by contrast, loved people and reveled in her part-time job, managing a concession stand at Cleveland's busy convention hall, the IX Center.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
On the night of March 20, 2003, Mona left her job here at the IX Center and headed off to a nearby hotel for a big party, the end of the convention season bash, an event she looked forward to every year.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
While Mona was out dancing, daughter Jennifer, at home on spring break, tried to stay up until her mother got home. But by 2 a.m., she was sound asleep on the couch.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The next morning, a Friday, Jennifer woke to find her father in the kitchen getting ready for work.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
But both father and daughter say they knew the annual convention party could get a little wild.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
He had left for work already. So your mom doesn't come home all night, doesn't call, and your dad just gets up and goes to work? Pretty much, yeah. But you had gone to work that morning.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Did you try to call the hotel or call any of her friends before you went to work?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
They called the police, who said they had to wait 24 hours before filing a missing persons report.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
10.30 p.m. Greg had been out looking for Mona for hours when, incredibly, he discovered his sister's car.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The dispatcher said no. 24 hours still hadn't passed. It was at that point that Greg took matters into his own hands and made his terrible discovery. His sister, beaten and shot to death.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Police descended on the parking lot. There was blood all over the back seat, and $900 from Mona's concession stand was missing.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
At first, police suspected a botched robbery. Until, that is, they began to get some strange reports about what was going on at the Croteen house.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
From the moment Ramona Croteen was murdered, friends and family all told police the same thing. I always thought he was an odd duck.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
A crime? Perhaps not. But his behavior certainly raised questions. Why weren't you out looking for your wife? Your family was out searching for her. While the Wolcheskis were out looking for Mona, Jeff was keeping a routine appointment with his accountant.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
And police say odd things began happening the very night Mona's body was found.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
When they first tried to interview Jeff. As the night wore on, his health seemed to deteriorate. It just got numb right here. His face was flushed. He looked ill. His sister-in-law, Patty, who's a nurse, began rubbing his back. I was really concerned that he was having a heart attack.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Jeff spent the night in the hospital. Turned out he hadn't had a heart attack after all. But over the next few days, the police didn't bother him with more questions.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
Jennifer provided her father with a rock-solid alibi. But still, people began to wonder. It just didn't jive with me. Mona's close friend, Denise Tarosky. I actually said these words. Is it possible Jeff did it? And it wasn't long before the Wilczewskis were asking the same questions.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
What they heard was a jaw-dropping story that Croteen had taken a saw to the couple's wooden headboard. and then burned it piece by piece in the downstairs fireplace. You were in the house when he did this?
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The police were eager to talk to Jeff, but now, with a lawyer in tow, he no longer was talking to them.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
The investigation dragged on until one day when police drove by Jeff's house. and saw, of all things, carpet installers arriving.
48 Hours
Strange Truth
He says that during a bout of heavy drinking after Mona's death, he knocked over a bottle of cognac and a candle, ruining the carpet.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
At the hospital, Dr. Zama says, the situation was downright embarrassing. What exactly was he saying?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Miriam's friend, Leslie Smith, says there was nothing normal about it.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But did he really do it? Where was Dr. Illis at exactly 10.37 p.m. that Friday night? His years as a hunter have taught District Attorney Michael Dinges a valuable lesson. Having the quarry in sight doesn't necessarily mean it's time to act.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But investigators didn't wait to probe Dr. Illis' alibi. He told them he'd been on the road when Miriam was killed, that after picking up Richie at 5, he left for his sister's house downstate around 9.30.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Nevertheless, investigators videotaped and timed the route under good and bad weather conditions. Two minutes, 48 seconds. The key was a stop at McDonald's, 35 miles from the crime scene.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Witnesses saw Dr. Illis there, but were vague as to when, and his story changed.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
At 11.24, cell phone records show Dr. Illis called his sister. He told her the roads were so bad he was stopping for the night. And hotel records have him checking in around 1 a.m., some 90 miles from Williamsport. So what is wrong with his account of how he was spending those critical hours?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
One person may know the truth for sure. Ritchie emerges as your best alibi witness. And yet it took almost two years, in fact, for him to be interviewed. What was the problem there?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
When Dr. Illis finally did let Richie talk, the boy had little to say, and D.A. Dinges thinks he knows why.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But speculation isn't evidence, and the evidence wasn't adding up too much. Police sent the cigarette butt and three hairs found in the silencer for DNA analysis. But ironically, one of the earliest real leads came from Miriam Illis herself. As do many people during a divorce, she'd made a video inventory of household possessions. Police took special note of Dr. Illis' workshop.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
You know a lot about guns, right? I mean, you have the equipment where you conceivably could have made this silencer.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But armed with a search warrant, police found traces of material to make even an amateurish silencer.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Police also took their own pictures in Dr. Illes' house, even down to what was on his nightstand.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Strange book for a doctor, but then this case was strange, and it got a lot stranger when the anonymous letters began. The first, to Illis' attorney, proclaimed that the writer, not Dr. Illis, had killed Miriam because she was a racist. It was signed, Soldier of Equality, Soldier of God, Soldier of Death.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
especially since it was written just as the book on Dr. Illes' nightstand had recommended.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
In May of 1999, four months after the murder, a second letter arrived. This time, the author talked about himself.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
No, not a nut, police thought, but someone who was methodically leaving false clues. In fact, the last anonymous letter arrived with yet another hair stuck in the envelope flap. Search warrants had allowed the police to get a sample of Dr. Illis' DNA, and by now, they had a lot to compare it to.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
A rare Savage 23D rifle, its serial number obliterated. A gun last sold in 1949, before records even were kept.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
After the biggest break in the case, the discovery of the murder weapon in this creek bed, investigators needed to tie the Savage 23D rifle to Dr. Richard Illis. who it turns out had a long history with guns. It just came with the family. His sisters say that Dr. Illis always was an avid hunter. It was just the family sport.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But by fall of 1999, D.A. Michael Dinges was sure that Dr. Illis had used his hunting skills to shoot his wife.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Nearly a year later, while casually looking at photos with Dr. Illes' relatives, investigators were shocked to stumble on this picture of Illes' late godfather, Joe Kowalski.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Two months later, in the same woods where the rifle was found, police discovered size 14 basketball shoes, same size as the footprints at the crime scene.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But still, the DA felt not enough evidence to charge Dr. Illes, who was busy building a new life. Six months after Miriam's murder, he married his girlfriend, Catherine. Then in November 2000, he hit the road. You moved around quite a bit.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Williamsport, Pennsylvania, a small, picturesque town known around the country for the Little League World Series and not much else, which makes Williamsport a pretty pleasant place to be a cop.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
First stop, Laredo, Texas, for a job as a heart surgeon in a hospital a stone's throw from the Mexican border.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But the job didn't work out, and Dr. Illes next moved to Spokane, Washington, joined by his new wife and son. He applied for a job at a heart surgery practice there.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But then Kathy got a mysterious anonymous package stuffed with newspaper articles about the murder and a letter warning anyone to think twice about hiring Dr. Illis.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Ultimately, Dr. Illis was turned down for the job. What was his reaction?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
In time, his new wife divorced him, and the once prominent heart surgeon seemed to drop from sight, only to resurface in the Spokane newspaper and with a completely new career. You were practicing cosmetic surgery?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But reporter Carla Johnson started hearing complaints from patients unhappy with Dr. Illes' work.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Spokane police, meanwhile, were watching the doctor's house day and night. keeping tabs at the request of the Pennsylvania investigators.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Who, in December 2002, four years after Miriam's murder, finally decided they had enough evidence to make the arrest. 48 hours flew Holmes and McDermott to Spokane to retrace their steps.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The plan, worked out with Spokane Detective Mark Henderson, was for plainclothes detectives to quietly nab Dr. Illis at his office. What exactly did you expect?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But into any cop's life, even in Sleepy Williamsport, can come a case so absorbing.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Because while Holmes and McDermott waited nervously at the Sheriff's Department... Illis threw a curve.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
To their chagrin, Dr. Illis headed right into the heart of downtown, where he suddenly pulled over.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
After four long years, Dr. Illis' cat-and-mouse game with Holmes and McDermott finally was over. But when it came to the evidence, Dr. Illis wasn't giving an inch.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Nearly four years after Miriam Illis' death, Dr. Illis was back in Williamsport, charged with her murder.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
At trial, District Attorney Michael Dinges argued that Dr. Illes did it to avoid a messy, drawn-out divorce in which he might well lose both his fortune and his son.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Pennsylvania State Trooper William Holmes and Corporal John McDermott Oh yeah, you could go right down here. spent four years trying to solve the murder of 47-year-old Miriam Illis, a woman seemingly without an enemy in the world. You have a picture of Miriam Illis on your bulletin board in your office.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
In fact, Dr. Illis says, the evidence clearly points to someone else.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Do you think that some of this evidence, for one reason or another, was planted?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Well, unless all the stuff that you leave is a red herring that points to someone else, then you certainly do want to leave it.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
And what about the murder weapon, believed to be the very one in this old Illis family photo?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But explaining away the state's last blockbuster piece of evidence was more difficult. When police searched Illis' Spokane home, they found a manuscript on his computer.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
but the characters had the same names as those in the real murder investigation.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Why would you write a book from the perspective of the killer? Wouldn't that just focus more attention on you?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The jury began its deliberations. Then, after two and a half days... Do you think you'll leave a free man today?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The jury finds Dr. Illis is guilty of murder in the first degree.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Dr. Illis never wrote the final chapter in his book. In the real world, a judge wrote it for him. Life in prison.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Miriam and her husband, heart surgeon Richard Illis, were once one of Williamsport's most prominent couples.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
They lived, as Dr. Illis's sisters well remember, in a spectacular mansion on a hill. And he was happy? Oh yeah, he was. You were married in 1991?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
And around the area, people are alive today thanks to Dr. Illis. People like Fred Sortman.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
While a resident at St. Louis Medical Center in the early 90s, Dr. Illis met Miriam, who was a surgical assistant. I loved her immediately.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
A few years after they married, the Illises had a son, Richie, and moved here to Williamsport, where Miriam worked side by side with her husband in the operating room, running the heart-lung machine. She also was very active in the community, volunteering at church, at the symphony. By all accounts, an exuberant, dynamic personality who had no trouble making friends.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Friends Dottie Bailey and Karen Young say Miriam was very down to earth, despite the money and the status. He was making a million dollars. They were one of the wealthiest people in Williamsport. She wasn't the rich doctor's wife?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
In 1996, when Richie was two, Miriam became a stay-at-home mom, quit her job, and never looked back.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But Miriam's friends, who say they rarely saw Dr. Illes, had the impression that he was becoming increasingly distant and demanding.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
And the marriage, says Leslie Smith, seemed under serious strain.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Her friends say that Dr. Illis' emotional distance made Miriam miserable. In the winter of 1998, she hired a divorce lawyer, Stephen Hurwitz, although she seemed not to really want a divorce.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
At the same time, Miriam was growing suspicious. She had the feeling that her husband was having an affair because she's really highly suspected that something was going on.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
And she and her lawyer soon discovered her suspicions were well-founded.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
the best mother in the world there's no doubt about that everyone will tell you that and uh i had my freedom the marriage apparently over miriam moved out and took five-year-old ritchie with her she went from a very secure together professional woman to insecure looking over her back not sure who her friends were who her friends weren't friends of hers have said that she would have reconciled in a nanosecond but that you were not interested
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
A mess neither had a chance to clean up. On the night of January 15th, 1999, Miriam Illis would die. Miriam, it's Susan.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Where are you? Hi, Miriam, it's Susan. Give me a call when you get in. Miriam, it's Sally. Give me a call. Bye-bye.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
No one knows what Miriam Illes' life might have held that final weekend. Hi Miriam, it's Susan again. Friends who tried to reach her Saturday tried in vain.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Dr. Illes' sisters, Romaine and Sue, had spoken to her only the night before.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Miriam was pleased, Sue says, that Dr. Illes' girlfriend wasn't going to be around for a few days.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
In their call, Miriam said five-year-old Richie had just left with his father, the two planning to drive down for a weekend visit with Illis' sisters, who live some three hours south of Williamsport.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
When on Sunday, Miriam failed to show up to teach Sunday school, worried neighbors checked the house, looked through the kitchen window, and horrified at what they saw, called police. Trooper William Holmes.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
She had been shot once through the heart. Within hours of the discovery of his wife's body, Dr. Illes arrived to drop off his son after their weekend out of town.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But investigators were too busy to think much of it then, because in fact, they were awash in evidence.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
What appeared to be a homemade silencer for a rifle. These are the tracks that are leading up to where the shooting took place. And footprints in the snow. The best footprint we've got is right here. gigantic footprints from a size 14 basketball shoe. But what would turn out to be one of the best clues was the phone found next to Miriam's body. Records showed her last call Friday evening.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
She'd been talking to a friend in Montana, and the friend distinctly remembered being puzzled when their call abruptly ended. It was exactly 10.37 p.m. I mean, this would make a perfect episode of CSI. District Attorney Michael Dinges says that without that call, investigators never could have pinpointed the exact time of death.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
But knowing when the shot was fired did not tell police who fired it. The initial working theory, a sniper with a daring plan.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
And that someone, investigators began to think, was none other than Dr. Illes.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The couple hadn't yet begun to split up property. But already, a judge had ordered Illis to pay Miriam a whopping $13,000 a month in support. He insists that given his income, that was no big deal.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Anytime that he would be upset, he would come home and take it out on us. He would throw me against the walls. He would hit me in the face, the stomach, the back. He would kick until he wasn't angry anymore. This was just another fight that got really bad. I told him that I thought that he needed help. That wasn't my place to tell him that he needed any sort of help.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
She wanted it to seem like I did something horrible on purpose, and that night I was just fighting for my life.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It could go either way, but I'm not worried. I just don't think that God would have brought me this far.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
That's just not the way that our marriage was. And we began to fight. I didn't want him to die, but I didn't have a choice. I don't want to tell it. I don't want to tell it anymore.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
I would do anything in the world to be able to have them back, just to be able to watch them grow up, to know who they are.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
He put his hands around my neck and he choked me. He began to punch me in the chest over and over again. He shook me over and over again. Over and over again until he wasn't angry anymore. Until he wasn't angry. Until he wasn't angry anymore.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
There's a lot of new information, people coming forward and wanting to testify.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It's difficult to get up on a stand and tell a story, but no matter how we come across, the story's still the same. What happened did happen.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
My heart hurts for everything that happened. We had two beautiful children.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Holidays are very hard. Birthdays are hard. Sometimes just waking up and missing everyone, it's very hard.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Well, because I had gotten up on the stand and I had told them what happened, and that's just the way that life was. I expected them to believe it.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
I just thought that we were going to have that fairytale marriage with the kids in the house, you know, the same thing that every other girl dreams about.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
He told me what a fat ass that I was. He told me that I was stupid and that I was worthless.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
He threw me up against the wall and he shook me by my arms as hard as he could until he wasn't angry and he began to punch me in the chest over and over again.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
He had just gotten done with a boxing lesson and he wanted to box with Bradley.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Jeff got his hands up in a boxing motion and started making jabs at Bradley's head.
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A Fight for Freedom
That just kept frustrating Jeff. The more that he didn't want to do it, he kept calling Bradley, assisting a little girl.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
He came at me, and he swung me around and threw me against the wall, and he told me not to give him any f****** ultimatums, bitch, that I didn't have the right.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
My eyes were closed, and I heard his voice. And it was scary. It was calm. And he said, die, bitch, and I opened up my eyes.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
His head and his chest and his neck and his stomach and his leg from when he kicked me. I stabbed him in his penis for all the time. Then he made me have sex and I didn't want to. I couldn't stop because he was going to kill me and I couldn't stop.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It's a horrible story and I wish that it wasn't true. I wish that none of that happened and I wished everything was so much different. It's just the way that my life was. My name is Susan Wright. I was charged with murder. I killed my husband. I was convicted of murdering my husband. I just, I couldn't go on how things were. Our whole marriage had been just a really big cover up.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
And then he tied up his right arm to the bed so that he couldn't get up because I was afraid he was going to get up and come after me when I was putting Bradley back to sleep.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Now armed with all this new evidence, Masters lawyers have come up with their own scenario of what they think really happened to Peggy Hetrick.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
key to Wymore's theory are Peggy Hetrick's boots. If you look at these two boots, you'll see that this boot has normal wear. But in this police photo, abrasions are clearly visible on the sole of the right boot. What the right boot shows us is that she stuck her foot out of the car. In tests, the master's defense team was able to reproduce these abrasions.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
And they believe Peggy Hetrick is stabbed being pulled back into the car because, Barry Goetz says, the holes in her clothing prove it.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Wymore theorizes that her killer, or killers, next took her somewhere that gave them privacy, light, and room to work. They lay her on a table.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Back at the field, Barry Goetz says the evidence leads him to conclude that the body was dragged only a short distance down the embankment.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
You would expect, were she being dragged, to find heel marks?
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Marks like these on Goetz's own daughter after she helped him reenact a dragging scenario.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Noget says two people carried Peggy Hetrick's body to its resting place, her bloody coat painting a trail.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
If true, that makes Tim Master's drag drawing, a linchpin of the prosecution's case, a lot less relevant.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Because as damning as that list sounds, these hearings are far from over. The prosecution has yet to present its answers to the defense's many charges. This is, at the end of the day, a search for the truth. The bar for granting a new trial is very high. It's so hard to undo a conviction.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Wymore and Lew would love some new evidence to lower that bar a bit, and modern science could provide it.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
With Tim Master's future hanging in the balance, the defense team is about to go halfway around the world and risk everything to find out.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Oh, yeah. It wasn't their job to solve it. I believed in him, and I believed in the case. But Tim Master's attorneys, David Wymore and Maria Liu, knew that new evidence of another killer might be the only way to get their client out of prison.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
So in the winter of 2007, they took a huge gamble, betting that there would be DNA on the clothes Peggy Hetrick wore when she was killed, and that it would help identify her murderer. DNA was such an infant science back then that although investigators did analyze hair, blood, and fibers, no DNA tests ever had been done on the clothing. But now that testing was possible, was it also smart?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Would it help Tim Masters? My job was to exclude Tim. There's not a moment when you said, yikes, you know, what if this DNA comes back and it's Tim's?
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Former Fort Collins cop Linda Wheeler, by now a firm believer in Tim's innocence, was all for it. Go where the evidence leads you.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Richard is Richard Eichlenbaum, a DNA expert who, with his wife Selma, a forensic medical examiner, loves nothing more than a chance to use hard science to ferret out the sordid secrets of crime. And Linda was very persistent.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Show me around a little bit. The only problem for the defense... Why did you want to bring this out here? They had to travel thousands of miles to, of all places, here in the Netherlands, to a tiny lab in this quaint farmhouse some 60 miles from Amsterdam.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
What is all that? What you see there is an arterial gush. The Eichlenbaums jokingly call it the crime farm. Crime farm.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The prosecution fought hard to prevent it happening this time, but in the end... Judge Weatherby went, okay, I'm going to allow that. The judge did insist that someone had to escort the clothes to Holland.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
barry getz volunteered i assume you didn't you didn't check this right this was this was carry on getz had been with the colorado state crime lab for 22 years in january of 2007 clutching his priceless suitcase of evidence he flew to amsterdam took the hour-long drive to the eichlenbaum crime farm
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
good morning good morning you had a good trip i did and began helping richard carefully unpack peggy hetrick's clothes jeans a blouse underwear this is all the victim's clothing okay readying the individual pieces for testing so we've got the bra so the bra is it's jt47 as usual richard eichlenbaum would use a most unusual approach.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Skin cells and so-called touch DNA are Richard's specialty. He's a pioneer in this approach, the same that finally cleared the parents of JonBenet Ramsey of her murder.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The technique, which they've used in dozens of cases, involves not just being able to retrieve the skin cells, but in knowing exactly where to look. How important is force to this? Like if I just reach over and go like that, have I left...
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Before he even looks for the DNA, Richard tries to reconstruct the murder, step by step.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
After being pursued for years, Tim Masters now was in prison for life without parole.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Richard and Selma often will even reenact the crime, as they did here with the help of Barry Goetz.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
And remarkably, more than 20 years after the murder, it all paid off. What exactly did he find?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Not only was there DNA, there was enough to analyze. And the results were?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Just as his supporters expected. But they also knew that not finding Tim's DNA wasn't by itself going to set him free. So when the DNA came back and it's not him, why isn't that alone? enough to vacate the conviction.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
At his lowest point, he says he even considered suicide. But it just seemed too much like giving up.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Was it perhaps from Tim's neighbor, Dr. Richard Hammond, who eight years after Peggy's murder was arrested for videotaping women in his bathroom?
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
But they didn't have a sample of Dr. Hammond's DNA for comparison. And without it, the Dutch couldn't rule him in or out. The thing is, that was just fine with the master's defense because they needed to keep suspicion of Dr. Hammond alive. If DNA cleared him, then the spotlight would be right back on Tim.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Putting Dr. Hammond aside then, the Dutch ran more tests on DNA samples from cops, investigators, even from Matt Zollner. Remember him? Peggy Hetrick's ex-boyfriend.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Whose date gave him an alibi for the night Peggy was killed. You basically tested the ex-boyfriend's DNA in order to rule him out.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Matt Zollner, who told police that except for that brief encounter in the parking lot, he'd not even seen Peggy Hetrick for a week. Not only was Zollner's DNA on the inside waistband of Peggy's underpants, it also turned up on the cuffs of her blouse, where one might grab if picking up a body. There's no question this is the ex-boyfriend's DNA inside the waistband of her underpants?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Clearly Zollner has many questions to answer. But what, if anything, does this bombshell mean to Tim Masters, in prison for the last nine years?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
He appealed his conviction. He lost. He appealed that. He lost again. Finally, in a last-ditch effort, he appealed again, this time claiming ineffective counsel.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
For Tim Masters, that old cliche finally is true. This really could be the first day of the rest of his life.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Tim is waiting for word on whether the Dutch DNA findings will persuade the judge to grant him a new trial. Certainly, his excited lawyer thinks they should.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Tim's gigantic family packs the courtroom, joining legions of other supporters.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Not on hand is Jim Broderick, called out of town on a family emergency. But from their crime farm in Holland, Selma and Richard Eichlenbaum are here.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The state confirmed the Dutch DNA results. And with that, the prosecutor takes bold action. Instructing his deputy to move for Tim Masters' immediate release.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
With that, the hearing abruptly ends. The state's witnesses never even testify. And after more than nine years, Tim Masters is suddenly a free man. He is almost speechless.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Three days after his release in 2008, the state dropped all charges against Tim Masters. Do you think we'll ever know who killed Peggy Hetrick?
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The DNA that freed Tim Masters leaves lingering questions about Peggy's ex-boyfriend, Matt Zoellner. He today lives in Fort Collins, keeping a low profile.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Then 36-year-old court-appointed attorney Maria Liu says that when the gigantic master's file landed on her desk in 2003, she had no idea what to think.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Zoellner did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him. I mean, we're talking about skin cells inside her underpants.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Exactly. That was enough to get Tim Masters freed. It's not enough to get anybody else arrested.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The Colorado Attorney General now has the Hetrick case, but won't comment on any aspect of it. Do you think realistically anybody, absent a confession, could be convicted for this crime?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
There's no way. He still may be the defense's favorite suspect, but using a sample of Dr. Hammond's DNA provided by his wife, the state says he has been ruled out as the killer.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The court never ruled on whether the original defense lawyers did their jobs, but Eric Fisher accepts some blame.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
If the original prosecutors are upset, they're not talking. Both were publicly reprimanded and fined for failing to disclose information to the defense. But Tim doesn't blame them for what happened.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
If Jim Broderick were sitting where I'm sitting right now, what would you tell him?
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Looking back, Jim Broderick, the man who pursued Tim Masters across decades, made absolutely no apology for his actions. Do you believe he did it?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
They find the ex-boyfriend's DNA inside her underpants, on the cuffs of her blouse. Does that not give you any pause?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Ironically, Broderick says, Tim's lawyers only had that crucial information because of him and his passion for saving everything.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
she hunkered down and started reading. And I didn't think he was innocent right off the bat. Then she watched those police interrogation tapes.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Linda Wheeler, the first cop to ever suspect he was guilty.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Barry Goetz, who travels with him in Europe, beginning with Amsterdam.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Hey, what's going on? Hey, what's going on? Whose office he still visits regularly.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Not surprising then that he relishes walks in the great outdoors.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Peggy's brother, Tom Hetrick, who has long doubted Tim Masters was his sister's killer, greeted the news of his release with mixed feelings.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
And the murder that so shocked this peaceful town more than 20 years ago seems as big a mystery now as it was back then.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
With so much at stake and with little trial experience, Maria called in flamboyant defense attorney David Wymore. Usually there's some evidence that indicates somebody, right?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Even so, he knew that requests for new trials almost never are granted. When you went into this, what did you think the odds were? 100 to 1. Then 100 to 1, I'd lose. 100 to 1, you'd lose? Yes. Wymore nevertheless joined Lou in digging through 10,000 pages of police and court files, some 20 years old. It was just a lot of hard work.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
To their amazement, they soon realized that there were important items of evidence never given to Tim's original lawyers, although by law, they were entitled to them.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
By November 2007, hearings were well underway. Tim Masters' best shot at winning a new trial.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
I'm the district attorney for... Special prosecutor Don Quick and his team, representing the state of Colorado, were new faces in court, but the original investigator, Jim Broderick, was there as well to advise. He told a local interviewer at the time he had an open mind.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
On the stand, Tim's original lawyers, Nathan Chambers and Eric Fisher, who lost the case, defended the job they had done, given all they didn't know. Roderick knew about Hammond and just ignored it. Especially about the existence of Dr. Richard Hammond.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Dr. Hammond, a neighbor of Tim's, was arrested some years after the Hetrick murder for secretly videotaping women in his bathroom.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
A great alternate suspect, the defense says, but his name was never mentioned in the original trial.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
And David Wymore argues that Dr. Hammond's very existence so close to the crime scene defines reasonable doubt.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
It's over. In court, Wymore presents a long list of other crucial evidence he says was withheld from the defense, and as it turns out, from prosecutors as well. It includes Broderick's notes on conversations with a former FBI profiler.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Roy Hazelwood, according to the defense, questioned the very meaning of Tim's drawings.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Then there was the testimony of the state's star witness, Dr. Reed Beloy, who analyzed the drawings.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
but he now says his opinion was based on incomplete information provided by the authorities. Dr. Molloy also had written that Peggy Hetrick's wounds appeared to be surgical, an opinion the jury never heard because Jim Broderick didn't turn over the doctor's full 300-page report.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
And that big question of surgical skill came up with yet another expert police consulted.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
But the views of Dr. Richard Choi never surfaced in court either. Not, says former cop David Michelson, that it takes all these experts to see the obvious.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The defense says police never revealed to either side exactly how far they went to get Masters to incriminate himself.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
but this was equal opportunity withholding. Material wasn't turned over to the defense, but not to prosecutors either. Broderick concedes it may not look very good. So you're just sitting there listening to them say, there's this, this, this, and this, and this looks like a frame job.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
He says that while he may not have turned over all his notes, the defense had the same information in reports he did turn over.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
One special prosecutor's report called aspects of the police investigation disturbing.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
But Don Quick insists that not only was it not a frame-up, the work of Broderick, a 29-year veteran cop, was meticulous and detailed. But all the things that didn't get turned over are things that potentially could have helped the defense. Yes. I mean, it doesn't seem to be any omission of things that hurt the defense. I would agree with your characterization.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
And the question is, why was just exculpatory stuff withheld?
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
So any mistakes that were made here were honest mistakes? Sure.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
I want to draw your attention to page 1242 on a police report. Toward the end of the hearing, the sheer volume of Broderick's material became an issue itself.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Personal files just sitting there in court. Frustrated, the judge decides it all should be turned over immediately.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
But ironically, because Broderick kept everything... Footprint number four looks like Tom McCanshew. The defense is able to produce what it says is the most convincing argument yet, that he and the prosecutors had this murder all wrong.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Veteran crime scene investigator Barry Goetz, now working for Masters Defense, says he realized the extent of Jim Broderick's tunnel vision only as the hearings to win a new trial for Tim neared an end.
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
The showstopper emerges from Broderick's box of personal files. Where'd this thing come from?
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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Yeah, the whole envelope. I never saw it, Judge, until today. In that envelope, enhanced photographs of footprints from the crime scene, two of which the defense says are consistent with a Tom McCann dress shoe. There's two Tom McCanns along the blood trail.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
Tim Masters never owned a pair of Tom McCanns. How much of this did the original defense know? They don't know this.
48 Hours
The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2
On this point, Lieutenant Broderick is adamant. Fisher, under oath or not, is flat out wrong. Every enhanced picture there was of every footprint was turned over to them. The problem, he says, is that the prints aren't clearly identifiable as Tom McCann's. To this, the defense pulls out another note from that treasure trove of documents.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
They find a stain on a shirt that they believe at that time is blood. I mean, you know, it's not like they went in there and there was absolutely nothing here at all.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
The defendants and their families charged that the police rushed to judgment out of fear that an unsolved murder would hurt Tortola's image.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Are these four apparently clean-cut young men falsely accused, or is there more to this story?
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
More than a year after Lois McMillan's brutal death, her parents finally will see these four Americans tried for her murder.
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Murder in Paradise
Hopes the judge simply will dismiss the charges against her son, William, and his three co-defendants, Evan George, Alex Benedetto, and Michael Spicer.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Everything, including hiring a team of high-priced lawyers, six from the Caribbean and three more from the United States.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Facing them, the prosecutor, 35-year-old Crown Counsel Terrence Williams.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
His case against the defendants is based on an investigation led by Deputy Police Commissioner John Johnston, a Scottish homicide detective with 30 years experience.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Investigators pieced together the story of a fight that began in Lois McMillan's car.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Under British law, cameras are forbidden in the courtroom. But as the case progresses, Williams takes the entire court, all nine jurors, the judge, even the defendants, on a dramatic tour of the crime scene.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Williams believes she was trying to make it to this police station, less than 150 yards away from where her body was found.
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Murder in Paradise
The jury sees the precise spot where Lois McMillan's desperate struggle ended.
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Murder in Paradise
Meanwhile, the men Russ McMillan believes murdered his daughter bask in a rare moment outside prison walls, possibly their last for many years to come. Authorities think they have a strong, although circumstantial, case.
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Murder in Paradise
The police collected 85 items from the house, clothing, shoes, even nail clippings.
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Murder in Paradise
And Scotland Yard was even brought in. Tests showed that the specks on Michael Spicer's shirt were indeed blood, not barbecue sauce. The prosecution says the blood did not come from the defendants, but it could have come from Lois McMillan. A Scotland Yard geologist also inspected Spicer's sandy shoes.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Finally, there's that ATM receipt the defense is using as an alibi. Prosecutors say it actually puts the four men in the same area as Lois McMillan at a crucial time.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
Ridiculous, says the defense, which calls all this so-called evidence, like sandy shoes on an island, inconclusive and meaningless.
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Murder in Paradise
But the prosecution's case is more than physical evidence. Its biggest weapon, testimony about an alleged confession by William Labrador.
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Murder in Paradise
Jeffrey Plant, a Texas businessman in jail awaiting trial for passing bad checks, says that Labrador unburdened himself when the two were cellmates.
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Murder in Paradise
For the authorities, Plant pulled the case altogether. He fingered the killer and even provided a motive.
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Murder in Paradise
The prosecution rests after three weeks, but even before the defense starts its case, it takes a surprising turn. That's next.
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Murder in Paradise
For 475 days, William Labrador and his three co-defendants have watched beautiful Tortolan sunsets from their prison cells.
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Murder in Paradise
But tomorrow could change that. Tomorrow could bring freedom. It took the prosecution three weeks to wrap up its case. Now the defense wants the judge to dismiss all the charges, claiming there just isn't enough evidence implicating any of the four men in Lois McMillan's murder. But the parents of Lois McMillan firmly believe Tortolan Justice has found the killers of their daughter.
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Murder in Paradise
Prosecutors may have a tough time convicting anyone. Results from Scotland Yard's labs, far from being the slam dunk they expected, are inconclusive at best.
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Murder in Paradise
Defense lawyer Sean Murphy, who also is a personal friend of William Labrador, scoffs at the prosecution's evidence.
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Murder in Paradise
As for the grains of sand on Spicer's sneakers, sand traced to the same side of the island where Lois' body was found.
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Murder in Paradise
Not to say that anyone's out of the woods, especially not Murphy's friend Labrador. The other three were seen partying that night. No one saw Labrador, who says he went home early to go to sleep.
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Murder in Paradise
Now it's all up to the court to weigh a month of evidence, hours of argument over a speck of blood, a grain of sand, that alleged confession that Labrador supposedly gave to a jailhouse snitch. The judge takes a full 24 hours to think about it all and then issues a ruling that seems to surprise even the defendants.
48 Hours
Murder in Paradise
For the villa and yacht set, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands is simply paradise. a place where the well-heeled can mix and mingle and sail and sun on private beaches and private yachts.
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Murder in Paradise
After a year and a half in prison... I felt like crying right when I was told because it's been just so long. I thought it would never happen.
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Murder in Paradise
Evan George never even had been out of the country until his dream vacation in Tortola 15 months ago. Three days after arriving, he was behind bars.
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Murder in Paradise
But as pleasant as the ocean swim is, what all three want most is to get off this island. While the Benedettos steal away to the airport.
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Murder in Paradise
Spicer and George catch the first ferry to St. Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands. A forlorn William Labrador is left behind, although his family now seems more certain than ever that he, too, soon will be a free man.
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Murder in Paradise
The damning testimony of fellow inmate Jeffrey Plant that in prison, William confessed to the murder.
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Murder in Paradise
William's mother says the defense will prove beyond any doubt that Plant is lying about her son.
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Murder in Paradise
William Labrador is sitting in a Tortolan prison, largely because of the testimony of one man. Jeffrey Plant. You're absolutely telling the truth about this confession.
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Murder in Paradise
A very convincing Texan who testified that when the two shared a prison cell, Labrador told him in no uncertain terms that he killed Lois McMillan. Why would he choose to tell you this, do you think?
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Murder in Paradise
Labrador's lead attorney, Richard Hector, is about to show a different side to Jeffrey Plant.
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Murder in Paradise
He will pull back the curtain on the prosecution's star witness and reveal Plant's far from reputable past. More weddings than Elizabeth Taylor. Shannon was wife number...
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Murder in Paradise
And a rap sheet that stretches back to the early 60s. I mean, we're talking about convictions for theft or bad checks. I mean, looking at your record, people would say, why in the world would we believe this guy?
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Murder in Paradise
Well, the contention is that there certainly was potential benefit to you, that you've had charges reduced over this.
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Murder in Paradise
Defense attorney Hector knows his entire case could depend on discrediting Jeffrey Plant. And he has his own star witness, Tisha Neville, all the way from Texas, Plant's former parole officer.
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Murder in Paradise
As the defense rests, the Labradors are convinced his credibility has been destroyed.
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Murder in Paradise
But the prosecution hopes jurors will focus not on Plant's shady past, but on his specific account of the murder.
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Murder in Paradise
As the exhausting six-week trial ends... I haven't felt like this in so long. ...the Labradors are upbeat.
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Murder in Paradise
judge must instruct the jury, and under this system he is allowed to tell them his opinion of the evidence. He certainly does. He says he finds some of William Labrador's story implausible, but that much of Jeffrey Plant's detailed testimony could be true. With that, he sends the jury off to make up its own mind.
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Murder in Paradise
For more than 20 years, Josephine and Russell McMillan and their daughter Lois fled the cold winters of Connecticut for their villa here on Tortola. Lois liked it?
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Murder in Paradise
Afternoon turns to evening. A large crowd gathers outside the courtroom. And finally, after almost eight hours of deliberation, the jury decides. Guilty. Hold it there.
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Murder in Paradise
William Labrador is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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Murder in Paradise
Labrador's friends and family are furious, lashing out in court at Lois McMillan's parents.
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Murder in Paradise
The McMillans had little response that night. Mrs. McMillan simply saying, my heart has been lifted.
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Murder in Paradise
She's leaving Tortola for home, but vowing to continue to fight for her son as he begins his life sentence.
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Murder in Paradise
At the time, that seemed the final chapter in one of Tortola's most notorious murder cases. The island was quiet again. William Labrador sat in prison and he languished there for another two years after his conviction. Through it all, his mother Barbara never lost hope.
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Murder in Paradise
labrador faced his final shot at freedom he appealed to the island's highest court based in london the news could not have been better the british court threw out labrador's conviction and ordered him released it will be so nice to have him with me and not having to go
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Murder in Paradise
In its ruling, the judges labeled Jeffrey Plant, the prison informant who claimed Labrador confessed to him, a compulsive liar.
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Murder in Paradise
At the end of 1999, Russell McMillan fell seriously ill, so Lois planned a longer-than-usual holiday stay with her parents.
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Murder in Paradise
On April 7, 2003, after serving almost three and a half years for Lois McMillan's murder... 39-year-old William Labrador walked out of prison a free man. How does it feel?
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Murder in Paradise
As William Labrador returned to New York and a new life, Lois McMillan's parents and family just tried to put the case behind them.
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Murder in Paradise
And, in fact, it was. On the evening of January 14th, 2000, 34-year-old Lois McMillan told her parents she was going to a local hangout to listen to music. She never came home. At what point did you begin to get worried?
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Murder in Paradise
The body turned out to be that of Lois McMillan. Police believe she was attacked somewhere along this deserted stretch, just a few miles from where she last was seen. Her car was found less than a mile away at the ferry dock, handbag and money still inside.
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Murder in Paradise
Police think that after a violent struggle, she broke away from her attacker and took off across the seawall, down onto the rocks, leaving behind a trail of personal possessions. A gold necklace, a can of mace, a hair clip, one shoe. They found her body here in the shallow water. Shirt and bra pulled up, her breasts exposed.
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Murder in Paradise
But the medical examiner can't say whether her attacker followed her down there and held her under or whether, dazed, she simply fell, hit her head, and drowned.
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Crime of any kind is rare on Tortola. News of this murder shocked the island.
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especially because this victim seemed not to have an enemy in the world.
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Lois was the McMillan's only child. Clearly, their pride and joy. Oh, these are sweet. Oh, look at this. Oh, what a great picture. Now, how old would she have been in that one?
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Murder in Paradise
As an adult, Lois had drifted through careers, once an aspiring actress, then an artist, and graduate of the Parsons School of Design. It's a happy painting. She'd recently been living at home in Connecticut. This is Lois' bedroom. Oh, you've got to tell me about that. That looks like Salvador Dali.
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Murder in Paradise
But her sometimes quirky behavior did not provide either a motive or any clues to her murder. So the police started retracing Lois's steps the night before her body was found.
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Murder in Paradise
Louis Schwartz owns the Jolly Roger and, except for her killer, may be the last person to have seen Lois alive.
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Murder in Paradise
No one knows where or when Lois met up with her killer that night. Guys at bars always know what people are thinking. What are people here on Tortola thinking?
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Murder in Paradise
But that is not what the police are thinking. Just hours after Lois's body is found, they put four suspects behind bars for murder. Four vacationing Americans more used to country clubs than prison cells. They are Michael Spicer, a well-to-do neighbor of Lois's on Tortola, and his 23-year-old friend, Evan George. Alex Benedetto, the son of a wealthy publisher who had dated Lois a few years before.
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Murder in Paradise
And William Labrador, his best friend and partner in a New York modeling agency. News of the arrest electrified the island. Spicer and Labrador are well-known here, and their friends and family insist they are innocent.
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But these four suspects are about to find out that on the island of Tortola, different rules apply.
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Murder in Paradise
For wealthy New York publisher Victor Benedetto's 37-year-old son, Alex, Christmas 1999 ended here. In Her Majesty's Prison, he found himself charged with killing Lois McMillan.
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Murder in Paradise
The one consolation, Alex is not alone. Also charged are friends Michael Spicer, 39, a rich law school grad from Virginia, his companion, 23-year-old Evan George, and Alex's boyhood friend and business partner, William Labrador, 37.
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Labrador's mother, Barbara, echoes the outrage of all the families that the four have spent almost 16 months in prison.
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Murder in Paradise
William Labrador and Alex Benedetto grew up together. Alex spent summers in Tony South Hampton, the Long Island resort town where William lived. Barbara Labrador says that although William grew up around money, the family was not wealthy.
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Murder in Paradise
Still, William loved the New York social scene. He reveled in working for an agency representing top models. And when things didn't work out at the big agency, he and Alex, backed by Alex's dad, started an agency of their own. In late 1999, when business was slow, Christmas in Tortola seemed like a great idea. Once there, they hooked up with pal Mike Spicer, the third defendant.
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Murder in Paradise
Justin Cohen is Spicer's best friend. In the press, he's been described as, I believe the phrase is, trust fund baby.
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Murder in Paradise
The last defendant was Spicer's other house guest, Evan George, young and handsome.
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Murder in Paradise
All but Evan George knew the glamorous and eccentric Lois McMillan. She lived just down the hill and loved to go out. They all loved to party, especially at places like the Bomba Shack.
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Former New York homicide detective Jay Salpeter has been hired by Alex Benedetto's family.
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The men's defense is simple. They say they never even saw Lois McMillan on the night she died. For most of the night, three of the four were together in public places. Only William Labrador can't prove what he did that night. His friends had dropped him off some distance from Zebra House to walk home after he told them he was tired.
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Now, in an interview from Her Majesty's Prison, Labrador tells his version of what happened that night.
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No one except the police, who routinely began interviewing Lois' friends. Their search for clues led the Tortolan police here to Zebra House, where that afternoon they turned up three pair of wet, sandy sneakers and a shirt with a stain on it, thought to be blood. The police also noticed a small, fresh cut on William Labrador's nose. He said he got it the previous day while hiking.
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But the officers found their explanations very suspicious. And before the day was out, they had arrested all four.
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J. Saul Peter says it was not enough evidence to even think of an arrest.