on with my life. it doesn't define me anymore. i'm not a victim. >> reporter: no. she is a survivor. focused on raising her son, gabriel. and giving back, somehow. it's phenomenal actually that you go from feeling like a worthless piece of meat victim, to wonder woman. >> yes. >> you got the guy. >> i feel empowered now. i actually feel a sense of hope now, and i feel like i have a future ahead of me. and i feel like i am meant to help people, and i know i'm going to do that. i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is dateline!

♪ ♪ ♪ >> i was very excited. >> they met in vegas a professional poker player. >> he's making good money at it. >> a former trapeze artist, he fell for it, but she did not gamble on this. >> i could smell the odor of decay, and blood. >> or this. >> at every turn there was another woman. >> married, with a child and women in multiple cities. >> what else is he capable of? >> capable of murder? he had an alibi. >> credit card transactions and phone records of me from las vegas. >> but could this little card holds the key? >> we just a shot in the dark? >> absolutely. >> we see a calculated killer? or was his lifestyle on trial? >> he made mistakes. that doesn't make him a monster. >> was there one more card up his sleeve? >> it goes back to him thinking, i've bluffed some of the best.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> welcome to dateline. it was a perplexing double murder, with no witnesses and no physical evidence. the victims were a respected couple their son, it turned out, played poker for a living, and could that lifestyle have had something to do with the crime? the case was a mystery until prosecutors examined bloodstain evidence from the crime scene. could that be the key? here's keith morrison? >> it was your first time in las vegas. her first look at that famous strip outside -- it's gaudy, cavernous casinos. but for endless electronic clatter, and darker places, where many suits hounded hovered over the studied calm of wishful thinking. >> and there was adrien solomon.

and he was here on business. >> i was excited to go and see what the city was all about. >> adrian came to las vegas to plan a medical conference, and meeting planted planning was her business. a road job -- >> i was probably gone 50% of the time. >> and now the job had brought her here, to a vast casino, all alone. exciting, of course, the breaking down compared to her previous, more exotic -- teaching the flying trapeze. >> i went to work for club mid, and we're told the vacation was up for seven years, living all over the world. >> i can't imagine what it would be like to have a job where your responsibility is to teach people how to relax and have fun and do it in a wonderful setting. >> it was the best job. >> in which, she learned to embrace moments of fun, new experiences, but learned something too about how to read people, or so she thought. and now, here she was, april 2006, a noisy casino, observing

a craps game. >> the gentleman right to my side turned around and said, do you want me to explain the game to you? so, he did, and we started chatting. and like any woman in her mid 30s is going to do, i look to make sure as he didn't have a wedding ring, as he flirted with a bit. he asked if i wanted to go to dinner that night. he said i'm going to dinner anyway, why not? >> her dinner day? and it's the third. >> there is not that awkward silence sometimes you have been the first date. >> ernie, that's what he called himself. he was good-looking, college educated, a former eagle scout who had been raced in a moment household. though his -- professional poker player. >> it kind of surprise me that his background would be a professional poker player. >> of course you had done

something kind of out for a while to. >> which is why i have no judgment about it whatever. i found a very interesting. yeah, so he was making good money at it. >> ernie explained how he had mastered the poker skill of carefully hiding any details, any clues about the card he was holding. >> who is good at reading people, which, of course, is very important in the poker world. >> he kept an apartment in southern california, he told her, but spent much of his time in las vegas. >> he gambled enough at the tables. he had a high enough status that he got free rooms, free meals, show tickets. >> and he seemed to be doing it all rather responsibly, saving money, he told her, for those times when the cards were not so lucky. >> it was almost like somebody having a serious job, that they know sometimes they're getting a lot of retails, and sometimes they are not. >> she fell for him over the last few days of managing time in vegas. and soon, a long distance relationship blossomed. they were on the phone every day.

there were trips. she, to vegas, and he to meet her in places like aruba, mexico. and when they, ernie told adrienne, he loved her. >> it was very exciting. >> ernie travel to adrienne's home base in north carolina, several times, and got to know her family, her mother lynn. >> who is charming. and he was very comfortable with us and us with him. >> we talked about marriage. we were looking at engagement rings. >> they actually talked about children. >> if the first one was a girl, of course he would love her, but he really wanted a boy. >> so, it was wonderful. not perfect, of course. what is? ernie's mother, the devout mormon, did not approve of his poker playing, apparently. even though bernie's father loved poker, in fact they often played together. >> he really seemed to like his father and respect his father. they seemed to be close. >> so, why didn't they want to meet her? it was, frankly, a little hard to understand.

>> the way he explained to me, his mother did not approve of our relationship because i was not mormon. and we traveled around together, and we were living a life of sin or whatever. >> the scarlet woman. >> exactly. >> and when she did meet or needs that once, i did not go so well. >> we wear in the lobby a caesars, and he started to say. this is adrienne. and he said i know who she is, and turned his back to me. >> wow. >> i don't think i've ever been so offended in my life. >> by then, the bloom had faded. there wasn't going to be a marriage or children. >> for probably the last six months of our relationship, i think we both knew that it wasn't going anywhere. >> and in february of 2008, they broke it off. so, maybe that's why you would figure, she didn't hear right away about what happened. >> we need emergency. we need everybody now. >> what kind of a problem? >> i do not know.

>> did not hear about the grisly double murder, or that one of the victims was named earnest shiver. >> coming up -- was one of the victims the man she had loved? >> it didn't seem like something like that could really have happened to something on someone i know -- >> when dateline continues -- so you're always ready for the unexpected. cetaphil. we do skin. you do you. always dry scoop before you run. the hot dog diet got me shredded! the world is full of "health experts"... it's time we listen to science. one a day is formulated with b vitamins to help convert food into fuel. science that matters.

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>> adrian salman was putting life pieces back together. her two year romance with professional poker player ernie shearer, once by all appearances marriage bound head deflated and finally failed. and a couple weeks later she was in san francisco on a business trip, when your phone tripped. text message from an acquaintance. >> she said, i heard about his plans, let me know if there is anything that i can do. >> she got herself to a computer, one online, and saw the appalling story. >> and learned that they had been murdered. it was surreal. it didn't seem like something could happen like that to someone i know. >> not her ernie, thankfully, but ernie's parents. earnest shearer and his wife charlene found dead in their house, which was, coincidently, in an upscale country club right across the san francisco bay from adrian's hotel.

and now, of course, the house was a crime scene, we are even the seasons lead detective scott -- was horrified by what he saw. >> it was probably the most gruesome, brutal homicide scene i've ever seen. >> it was march 14th, 2008, when the call came in -- a country club employee had seen what looked like a body through the shivers window. detective kirsten tucker was one of the first at the scene. >> as i approach the front door of the home, i could smell the odor of decay and blood from quite a distance away. >> and inside was like a war zone. blood everywhere. and the battered bodies of two people who had clearly fought for their lives. >> the bodies had suffered extensive, extensive injuries. >> it wasn't just the odor that told investigators the bodies had been here a while. >> there was a week's worth of newspapers that had been uncollected. >> they narrowed the time of death had to be sometime between friday evening, march 7th, last time anyone saw them,

and saturday morning, march 8th. method of death? it's hard to be sure. no murder weapon lying around. but they had been hit repeatedly by some sort of blunt instrument and sliced by what must have been a very big knife or sword. what happened here? what is it a home invasion robbery? possible, judging from the mess. and earnest shiver was a wealthy read the state investor who is known to carry cash around. detective mike norton -- >> in the victims bedroom the jurors had been pulled out and a lot of clothes had been thrown on the floor. >> a decorative sword was missing. and to jade statues, likely expensive. but wait a minute. maybe it wasn't the robbery. >> her purse was present on the kitchen table. there was jewelry. >> in the fathers pants pocket, which was in the bedroom, there was a large amount of cash. >> $9,000 in cash, rolled up in his jeans pocket. and that was untouched? >> untouched.

>> so, was the crime scene staged, to hide something more sinister? why, for example, did they find the very odd an obvious pattern of bloody shoe prints, but only around the body? >> the shoe prints would go back and forth to each victim but they just disappeared. you are thinking, how did this person get out? >> still, it's easy enough to i. d. the shoe prints. there was an obvious nike smoosh right there in the middle. and there was a nike impact tomahawk, big, maybe close to size 12. but who wore them? who would do such an awful thing? and why? >> in our area, we just did not have a husband and wife in their 60s in a multi million dollar neighborhood killed for no reason. >> investigators poked around the scherer family background, looking for enemies with motive, and then it turns out that they

had some, or at least ernest did. >> ernie was a very passionate person and -- he wasn't afraid to let you know how he felt. >> guy houston, a former california state assemblyman, new ernest scherer for his extreme fiscal conservatism in his work with the republican party and with a local school board. >> he did make people angry, but there was a lot of political, it wasn't on a personal basis, it was all political. >> besides, what happened to them was too ugly even for politics. and as for charlene -- >> i didn't know anybody who didn't like her. >> here was her friend from the mormon church. >> her confidence, her command, her good heart, her ability to reach out and help people. >> which she had also been doing professionally for decades as in the county teacher, said this colleague at cal state, east bay. >> she not only wanted to help the students with the particular subject area, and the class, she also wanted to help the students with their career and their life. >> so, who was responsible?

who knew? not a suspect insight. >> i instantly got my phone out and sent him a text message. >> the minute adrian solomon heard what happened, she reached out for her ernie. they decided to meet in san francisco for dinner that very night. >> even though we weren't in a relationship anymore, we had been friends for a long time. i felt good that i was able to be there for him. he got really upset during dinner. i was there to be a listening board for him. >> and that was that. until a few days later, when ernie phoned again, very upset. >> and he said that the cops are starting to harass him a little bit. >> and again, adrian calmed him down, all normal police procedure, he told her. >> they usually have to look at family first, and so that's just what they were doing. >> but ernie was a mess, and as to see her again. so, adrian arranged to meet him at her next business stop in dallas -- >> via support again, exactly.

>> but adrian had no way of knowing what was coming or what that news would do to her. >> it was horrible. i think i started shaking -- what was wrong with me that i did not see is? >> was it about the murder? no, no it was something else altogether. >> coming up -- revelations of the double life of, the man that she thought she knew. he >> did it in las vegas, he did it in new orleans. he did it everywhere he went. >> what else had he done? >> when dateline continues! line continues respiratory disease from rsv in people 60 years and older. rsv can be serious for those over 60, including those with asthma, diabetes, copd, and certain other conditions. but i'm protected. arexvy is proven to be over 82% effective in preventing lower respiratory disease from rsv and over 94% effective in those with these health conditions.

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her ex boyfriend's parents had been murdered, she wanted to be there to support bernie, especially now that he said police were harassing him. >> i knew everything about him. we dated for a couple years. of course, he couldn't have done. this. >> ernie told her he could meet her on her upcoming business trip to dallas. and she arrived just as it had happened. the moment she will recall with absolute clarity for the rest of her life. >> i was in taxi, headed from the airport to the hotel in dallas. and my phone rings. and it is a detective. >> she listen to him say he was investigating the death of our needs parents, and he had a question. >> he said, i know that you guys broke up. but can you tell me how long this affair lasted?

>> a fair? why did he use that word? >> why do you say that? we dated exclusively for two years. you don't know what you are talking about, she told him. >> he said, so you did not know that he is married and has a child? and i said, what are you talking about? and i said why would i believe you? >> by the time she hung up the phone, adrian knew she did believe him. >> all of the puzzle pieces came together. in my head. >> suddenly, it all makes sense, why he never wanted her to see his apartment. or meet his parents. why his dad snubbed her that time at the casino. he had been married all along to a woman named robin, and have a young son, ernest the fourth, and every good opinion adrian had of him, and her, and her own judgment, flew out the window of that dallas cab. >> i'm a smart person. how could i not put all these pieces together? we talked about having kids together. and he wanted to have a boy?

he already had a boy. what is going on? >> things happen quickly, then. quickly and painfully. >> my phone rang, it was him. listen, the cops just called. and so he asked, what did they tell you. i said well, i know you are married. and he said no not really. and i said, you're not really married? it's not a true marriage? he said let me come there and explain the whole thing to you. he wouldn't he, refused, so she met him in the lobby. >> and then he wanted to explain everything away. >> he couldn't, of course. and she sat there, hapless. her equilibrium gone in a world of bad feeling. >> i was hurt and angry with him and myself. and it was just -- it was unbelievable to think that those two years had been a sham. >> oh, yes. and, in fact, more than one sham. a whole quilt of shams.

detectives back in northern california had begun to uncover details of a double life which appeared to be, shall we say, prodigious. >> it seemed like at every turn there was another woman that this guy had some involvement with. >> just coming out of the woodwork? >> there was quite a few of them. >> he said he was recently single. >> like pamela, for example, who responded to ernie's ad in march of 2008 on the dating section of craigslist in las vegas. she met him for drinks. >> ernie's personality was very nice, very friendly. >> the two made plans to have dinner, july 14th, 2008. but about two in the afternoon, said pamela, ernie called to cancel. >> saying that he needed to go home, that his parents house was broken into and burglarized and they were both murdered. >> that in the weeks after the murder, ernie's craig list

context resumed. >> he did it in los angeles, he did it in orleans. >> he did it everywhere he went, and he got lots of responses. >> that surprise you? >> it surprised me that he was able to form the level of intimacy very rapidly with so many different women that he did. >> kimberly olson was one of them. kimberly formed a very intimate relationship with ernest scherer, met him in september 2008, six months after his parents murder. she was at a casino in mesquite, nevada. >> he came over and said that he needed a pretty girl to roll on the dice at his craps table. so he was a smooth talker. >> that's a line. >> it is, i fell for it. >> from day one, kimberly said their relationship was based on honesty, full disclosure, all the dirty laundry. >> he would tell me the stories about his wife and his girlfriend and going back and forth and i told him that he was a jerk, i think he knew he made a lot of mistakes. >> of course, ernie also told her about his parents murder. >> he missed his parents.

he would tell me stories about him and his father and get teary eyed about it. >> kimberly got to know bernie, she said, very, very well. >> if you can drive through texas with someone and not want to strangle them in the middle of texas you get to know someone very well. he's very sweet. >> and eventually, he moved in with her. >> did you grow to love him? >> i did. >> but that other woman who had loved him, adrian solomon, was struggling. >> if he could lie to me every day for two years, lied to my family, look at rings, talk about having children together. what else is he capable of? >> of course, living a double life does not make you a double murderer. those alameda county detectives knew that perfectly well. but as they were discovering, achieving heart wasn't the only disturbing thing about this professional poker player.

>> coming up -- it turned out he had some other secrets, and he was battling some long odds. >> why did he want to get in the house so badly? >> he wanted the well. >> when dateline continues! teline continues on more surfaces than lysol disinfectant spray. [girl coughs] and when it comes to your laundry, adding lysol laundry sanitizer kills 99.9% of illness-causing bacteria detergents leave behind. lysol. what it takes to protect. how long have you been tracking the value of our car? should we sell it? we hold... our low mileage is paying off. you think we should... hold... hoooold!!! hooold! now!!!! i'm on it. i'm, on it. already sold to carvana. go to carvana and track your car's value today. ♪ (cheery music) - they get it. they know how it works... and more importantly... it works for them. - i don't have any anxiety about money anymore. - i don't have to worry

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combining them with your cycle data. what's your menopause stage? i think he's having a midlife crisis i'm not. you got us t-mobile home internet lite. after a week of streaming they knocked us down... ...to dial up speeds. like from the 90s. great times. all i can do say is that my life is pre-- i like watching the puddles gather rain. -hey, your mom and i procreated to that song. oh, ew! i think you've said enough. why don't we just switch to xfinity like everyone else? then you would know what year it was. i am katie phang.

i know what year it is. here is what is happening. the northeast bracing for its first major snowstorm of the season. heavy precipitation is expected by saturday afternoon leading into sunday with snowfall totals up to eight inches in parts of new england. and the supreme court has agreed to review colorado's decision to disqualify donald trump from the primary ballots. the case will be heard on a accelerated schedule, with arguments that first february 8th, and the ruling to follow soon after. in the meantime, ballots will be printed with donald trump's name. now back to dateline! dateline >> welcome back to dateline. i'm craig melvin.

as a poker player, was ernest scherer a professional bluff, or a keeper of secrets. he had shown that he was practiced in deception away from the table as well, holding his cards close. but was he a killer? here, again, with our story is keith morrison. >> it was, to say the least, eye-opening when detectives encountered adrian solomon, and heard her account of the secret life of ernest scherer the third. >> i thought, he stole two years from me. >> not to mention the truly audacious extent of ernie's philandering. but this after all was not some tabloid smackdown. ernie's parents had been callously, brutally, murdered. not the sort of thing you would expect from some hormone hopped up loverboy. and as detectives poured over this county evidence, they encountered lots of the victims blood, but very few useful clues. >> we were looking for

everything, every bloodstain fingerprints. >> and they found nothing that pointed to or any. after all, those mysterious bloody nike shoe prints were consistent with a size 12. and already wore a nine a half nine and a half or ten. also, the csi people found in one of those prints a speck of human dna that did not belong to either ernie or his parents. early on, there was only that curious incident just a little odd that happened the day after the bodies were discovered. ernie showed up at the house, all distraught, insisting officer tucker give him entry. no can do, she said. active crime scene and all -- >> he became demanding and even condescending very, very quickly. what surprised me. >> why did he want to get in the house so badly? >> he wanted the will. >> he told you that? >> he did. >> his parents will, which investigators found in a desk drawer. >> and the will indicated that they're fairly significant to state would be divided equally between their two children, catherine and earnest, and that

they would receive their inheritance at the age of 30. >> did you determine how old ernest was? >> i did. ernest scherer iii the third would turn 30 in july. and his parents were killed in march. >> bernie's father had a couple million invested in real estate, though at the time of his death the value of the state was certainly shrinking right along with housing prices. still, was it even remotely possible ernie would kill his parents to cash in on an inheritance? the detectives had a look at bernie's financial decision. and you know how some professional poker players claim claim they win a lot? maybe not. at least not in ernie's case. >> we learned that he had 60 some odd thousand dollars in credit card debt. and he also, in talking with different casinos, he had lost a significant amount of money in the tune of 80,000 or $90,000 in his play in the last year.

>> but that was not the worst of it. not even close. by march of 2008, when the murders happened, real estate in california is huffing and puffing on its face to the bottom. and six months before that, ernie the son wanted to buy a house in the city of brea in southern california, but couldn't get a loan. banks were not quite so sanguine anymore about the security of a poker players income. so, he borrowed the money from ernest the father, 616,000. but then real estate started tanking. so father ernest asked son ernie to go to a bank, refinance, pay back his loan. and bernie could not. >> he was frantic trying to refinance his home. >> and at the time they were killed, he had missed a mortgage payment to his parents for the first time. >> so, this is approaching some sort of crisis? >> that's what we felt, yes. >> so, motive? well, maybe. investigators told ernie they wanted to talk. and he agreed to come down to the station, where he explained

that their suspicions were groundless. ernie had an alibi. >> there would be a credit card transactions, and phone records of may driving from las vegas back to bray, a california. >> the night of the murder, said early, he was in california, hours an hours away from his parents house. he had driven from las vegas that afternoon, stop for gas and a bite to eat at mcdonald's in -- nevada. and yes, there were credit card records to prove it. he arrived home around five p m, fellow sleep on the couch for a bit, watch the movie on tv, and went to bed. wife and son were away, he said. and bright and early the next morning, he made his elderly grandfather for a bridge tournament, which his grandfather ernest the first confirmed. still, detectives had some questions that ernie surely should have been able to answer, shouldn't he have? >> so we asked him, what roe did you take to get you home

and he was not able to tell us. we asked him, what television show did you watch? he wasn't able to tell us. >> and then, when they checked ernie's cell phone records, they found an unusual gap in transmission, right around the time of the murder. from the afternoon of march 7th to the early morning of march 8th, 17 hours 46 minutes ernie's phone did not register on any self power anywhere. >> he was just a guy that was constantly talking on his cell phone. so, the fact that there is a 17 hour window window where he is not using it was definitely suspicious to us. >> but as the investigators suspicions grew, just as they felt they might possibly be closing in on something, ernest scherer iii disappeared. >> following the trail, connecting the dots, police turn up a strange story. coming up -- >> he asked me if i would do something slightly illegal for $300. >> but was the smoking gun they needed?

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2008. ernie shearer iii, that person of interest in a particularly violent murder of his parents had suddenly got out of dodge. >> he was gone. >> a guilty conscience or an innocent man fed up of negative attention from the cops? but detectives back in alameda county, california did not panic.

ernie probably didn't know it by then enterprising officer fitted his car, his deceased father's car with a gps tracking device. >> for majority of the time when you hear he was. >> and the car, plus attorneys visits to social media dating sites led the police to a number of young people, he met, like the one in new orleans who call the police after strange night with a man who first told her he was writing a novel about a gambler who was a suspect in his parents murder, and who then told her his own parents had been murdered. and when she went back to his hotel room, he had rigged it with bungee cords, so if someone came to get him, he had a plan to escape. >> who is going to break the window of the hotel room, and he was going to basically repel out the hotel room window. >> so, did she, quite understandably, hightail it out of there? >> no, she chose to stay. >> stayed the night. >> she did. >> meanwhile, lead detective dudek called in reinforcements,

and before long starts some of the most boring of all police work paid off. a deputy board from the local jail for the investigation, for two hours of video taken by a security camera at the scherer's country club. and finally, there it was. a red chevrolet kamara approaching the sheriff home on march 27th, and leaving at 12:42 am on march 8th. just when the murders were thought to have occurred. a red chevy kamara with a black top. and wasn't at the very same make, model and color of ernest scherer's car. it looked like his car to a cops i anyway. the trouble was, they couldn't see the license plate of the drivers face. could have been a coincidence. and even then, the car and all the evidence that they gathered would not be enough to persuade the d a to file murder charges. so, the cops brought everything they knew to the forgotten woman in our story, ernie's wife, robin. she had been left behind when already took off a couple of

weeks after the murders. when she saw what investigators had, she was not only ready to divorce ernie. she told the police she would help them by attempting to bluff the poker player. [bell ringing] >> hello? >> hi. >> hi. how are you? >> detectives recorded this phone call in which he tells ernie about the video, but chooses to embellish the facts a bit, telling him his face was visible. >> the video was sent to his studio like this may or something, and it was enhanced. and it looks like you and your car, and they're basically saying that you are there friday night. were you in the bay area on friday nights? because i thought you were driving back home. and there's this video that they have and it clearly looks like it's your car. >> and then a long pause. >> hello? >> i'm here. i'm just thinking.

the video from like, somebody's house? is it from a gas station? what kind of video is it? >> no, it's going into the country club area. >> going into the country club area? >> and it looks like your car. and it looks like you in it. >> you can see the face of the driver? >> yes. were you there? and if you were, you will be a good explanation as to why you were there. are you lying to me? >> i understand why you are asking the question. i mean, obviously -- the police are listening to this phone call, i'm assuming. right? >> i guess. i have no idea. >> and in this game of poker, it was hard to say who is playing who. in the end, it was no smoking gun. but with bernie spooked a little? was that why he reached out again to adrian solomon with this request? >> i'm really hoping we can end up back together.

>> he told her, said adrian, he was thinking of changing his lifestyle, quitting poker, if only she would take him back. but she was a different adrian now. >> i think i kind of felt more powerful in that conversation than i had with him in a long time. because i know that i don't trust a single word that he says. >> meanwhile, back in vegas, detectives learned that, just days before the murders, ernie had made a rather unusual request of this man. his name is david mark. >> he asked me if i would do something slightly illegal for $300. >> dave it is a professional piano player in vegas. >> he says, oh, i'm looking to get a gun. because i'm a professional gambler. and i carry a lot of money. i thought, no. i'm not going to do that. >> and investigators discovered ernie also asked david's performance partner to buy him a gun, and offered another friend $50,000 to point the finger of suspicion away from

ernie and toward someone else. and even if none of it was definitive, it all ended up. and it looked bad for ernie. and so, finally, nearly a year after the murders, the alameda county d. a. made a decision to roll the dice. it was february, 2009. kimberly olson was at home with ernie in their las vegas apartment. >> there was a knock on the your, and ernie answered the door, and i came out and the fbi agents with guns drawn. >> ernie was charged with two counts of murder. and kimberly olson thought the whole world had gone crazy. >> he was a poker player, and he had made his mistakes, obviously, with the women in his life. but, i mean, that is a very far jumped from being a poker player to murdering your parents. >> but back home in northern carolina, when adrian solomon had learned of ernie's arrest. >> do you believe that he could've done such a thing? >> i believe he could have, and

for me that it was enough. >> a date was set for trial based on circumstantial evidence. even though the mystery dna at the crime scene was never identified. even though not one piece of direct evidence connected ernie to any murder weapon, or those mysterious nike footprints. remember, they were consistent with a size 12. and bernie wore nine and a half or ten. and you knew that one of the lines that was coming had to be, a defense attorney couldn't resist it, if those shoes do not fit you must acquit. >> absolutely. >> and a jury might just look at that. >> and that went through my mind several times. >> and then someone noticed that little piece of paper right there. what was that? >> coming up -- >> and i was just a shot in the dark? >> absolutely. >> and it hit its mark. a bull's-eye -- >> i think that's the ending of the book. >> but does the gamble have one more bluff in-store? when dateline continues --

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and that's a good thing? great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. >> welcome back. home of the xfinity 10g network. ernest scherer we're charged with killing his parents. the evidence against him was largely circumstantial except for a small slip of paper discovered after the crime scene that could be the key to blowing the case wide open. here's keith morrison with the conclusion of the player. >> it was september 2010, just months before ernie shearer iii

was the trial go on trial for the murder of his parents. prosecutors poured over the evidence, scott do that and his detectives had collected. was there anything else? anything they had missed? that might be used to seal the case against bernie sure? and that's when they sought. something quite odd. >> they came across a piece of paper that we had collected that had blood droplets on it. >> just one small piece of paper which one of the detectives picked up from the bloody floor of the murder scene, a few feet away from the lifeless body of ernie's father, ernest scherer jr. -- it was a warranty card for a baseball bat. that's all it was, it was no big deal, except when police searched through that, has searched search everywhere for, it's one thing they did not find was a baseball bat. >> and they just thought it was

odd. why would 60 something-year-old people have a warranty for a bat? >> and mind you, the warranty was not just for any old bat. it was for nike baseball bat. right on the warranty card, they could help us see that same distinctive nike smoosh just like the ones they saw printed on the floor in blood those size 12 nike impact sneakers. were they on to something here? >> so, they kind of backtracked, and they wondered hey, was there any kind of nike store around where we had him getting gas and the hamburger. and they found, across the street, there was, in fact, and nike outlet store. >> so, it was just kind of a shot in the dark? >> absolutely. >> and there, was a nike outlet store in prim, nevada, i just yards away from the gas station where ernie used a credit card to fill his tank and very close to the mcdonald's where he used plastic to buy a burger. this is maybe 12 hours before the murders. possible hitch? ernie did not use a credit card at this or any other nike store

that day. so, maybe he didn't buy a baseball bat to use on his parents. unless -- did he use cash in an effort to hide a purchase at nike? one of the d. a.'s investigators asked nike to check purchase records for march 7th, 2008. and as they say in vegas, jackpot. at 11:38 a. m., just before ernie used his credit card at the mcdonald's on the gas station, there was a cash purchase at the nike outlived, one pair of nike 12 impact tomahawk sneakers, a baseball bat, and junior match soccer gloves. >> i'm thinking, even the most skeptical jury in the world has to realize, put it all together, and the book is just finished. that's the ending of the book. >> in january 2011, the alameda county prosecutor told jurors that ernest scherer iii was a

narcissistic sociopath who savagely murdered his parents in cold blood. >> he is sheer evil and he thinks he smarter than everybody. >> heavily indebted desperate for money, ernie's house of cards was collapsing before his very eyes, said the prosecutor, and so he killed his parents for the money. for his inheritance -- even though his own family unanimously turned against him including earnest shearer senior, his grandfather, who took the stand on his 95th birthday to testify against his own grandson. his namesake. and once again, adrian had a date to see ernie in court. >> they asked you to testify? >> they did, it was overwhelming and terrifying. >> adrian told the jury about ernie's two years of deception, the double life and all those lies. >> i made it a point not to

look at him during the entire time i was in the, room during the entire testimony. >> was it enough for the jury? ernie's defense jumped to its task, arguing that the evidence the red chevy camera and the surveillance video, the dead cell phone around the time of the murders, asking his friends to buy a gun? all of that could have been simply coincidence, it could be explained away. and besides, said the defense, there was actual physical evidence to prove someone other than ernie committed the crime. that speck of unidentified dna and found one of those bloody shoe prints at the crime scene. the prosecution argued it was just a mistake of contamination. but did it point to the real killer? as for the so-called jackpot evidence, the cash purchase of the nike sneakers and baseball bat and glove? who knows who bought those said the defense, but it was not ernie. anyway, those nike sneakers were a size 12, but ernie wore a nine and a half or a ten.

proves he did not do it right? and at that point, the prosecution had only this. >> he's very proficient at misinformation and disinformation. and i think that he intentionally bought shoes there were too large for him. >> ernie took the stand himself, sat up there for the better part of seven days, confident, often smiling, and the claiming it was his lifestyle the prosecution put on trial. >> he's a human. he made mistakes like everybody else does. that doesn't make him a monster. >> would he convince the jury? >> i think it goes back to him thinking, i'm at the table, and is all kinds of chips at the table. and you know what? i've bluffed some of the best. these people, they're nothing compared to some of the poker players that i have bluffed, so i'm going to give it my best. >> the jury stayed out for two and a half days. we spoke with one of the trial jurors who deliberated, and an alternate who sat through the case.

the defense would argue that in a way, the prosecution put this man's lifestyle on trial. i mean he was raised as a mormon. >> somebody should? >> yes, all other things being equal, his lifestyle counted against him. >> all other things being equal his life still counted as not equal. of course, all things that equal, and they were a couple of jurors that held up for a while. in the end, it came down to this. >> too many coincidences, way too many. >> just taken by themselves they could be explained? >> they could be. but you put them all together and it doesn't work. >> and so earnest scherer iii was found guilty. two counts of first degree murder, two consecutive life sentences with no parole. his sister catherine, daughter of the victims, spoke publicly for the first time outside of the courtroom. >> it's hard. to have to talk about my parents, and the loss, they are

no longer with me at all. just here. >> do you feel justice was served? >> i don't know. that's hard. it's hard to admit that anybody could do something like that. >> and adrian solomon, the one-time teacher of the flying trapeze, the woman who thought she learned a thing or two about meeting people, still wonders why she just did not see it. >> i don't trust my judgment. i don't trust other people telling the truth. and that's hard. >> will you ever get that back? >> i don't know. i'm sure, over time, everything has been getting better. but i'm still not ready to be trusting everyone so easily. >> that's all for this edition of dateline. i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. ♪ ♪ ♪ happy