tv Dateline MSNBC April 8, 2024 12:00am-1:00am PDT
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we still can't talk with her. >> know. they tried to remember 9/11 not as a murder victim, but as the beautiful young woman she was, the vibrant center of her family, but grief, real and painful, comes to visit every day. >> you know, people will say oh, she is your spirit and she is your angel and she's in a better place and all this other stuff is like yeah, i want her here. i don't want my 28-year-old sister to be my angel. i want her to be right here in the thick of it with me. >> that is all for this edition of dateline. i am craig melvin. thanks for watching. i am craig. thanks for watching. hello, i am craig melvin and this is dateline. it is never good news when the phone rings at 5:00 in the morning.
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i knew something was not right. he just began sobbing and saying no. >> it was just before midnight when the shooting started. >> he had been shot multiple times. he was on the ground face down. >> a man was dead but not just any man. >> how do you kill superman? >> he was a olympian and a father killed by a intruder in his own backyard according to his wife. his wife. and what other secrets were hidden away? if her husband was dead ike, outside, why was the gun found hidden inside and what other secrets were hidden away? >> sometimes she would say things like i would be better off if he was not around. >> was the husband defending the family war was she?
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the mystery may not be who did it but why. >> the truth will come out and justice will be served. i have to believe that. eve tha county, california, >> welcome to dateline. e he the elite athlete dave took him a bronze medal from the olympic games, home was ventura county, california where he grew up, where he met his wife and where he lost his life. jean said there was a prowler and then gunfire, police found dave dead and troubling holes in jane's story. what happened that night? here is keith morrison with the hometown hero and the homecoming queen. >> it was late when it happened. very late. the sky had already fallen.
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nobody saw it coming. nobody heard the warning but now in the night, it was done. they work hard here in their homemade garage jim because in part it is not just a gym, it is a kind of shrine. >> i look at the wall in there is a bunch of photos. that is what makes it special i think. >> these were the moments before they were born, when a shot putter named dave became his family's superman and his little brother watched him get a bronze medal at the 84 olympics. >> after i just cried. how do you not? when you see your brother up there getting a metal. he was like my superman. >> don is dave's younger brother by 9 1/2 years. dave and don inherited a
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passion of athletics and olympics from their brother. >> this is built into your dna almost. >> it really is. >> here is where the dna was planted, oxnard, california. a farm town on the beach. they grow mostly strawberries now, lima beans back then. they were different those days. >> when we grew up you could ride your bike anywhere. >> she knew them growing up. that big farming family of her childhood best friend, jane. >> our dads were both farmers. old farming families. >> they were big here in oxnard. >> there was a lot of them around.
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they multiplied. >> helen's friend jane grew up to be especially beautiful. featured as homecoming queen. >> she was never concerned with that. she is also very shy. >> how are you homecoming queen if you are shy? >> she is also a kind and gentle person. >> as the yearbook shows, a star volleyball player as well. >> she could spike. >> jane soon met the other gifted athlete, dave, already on his way to becoming one of the best shot putter's in california. they began dating after high school and sometimes let don tagalong. >> she was wonderful, she was fun. they got along so well. >> when they got married in
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1980, jane's friend helen was a bridesmaid. >> going that morning to the wedding them into chains parents house and all of the girls getting dressed up, that was really fun. it was sweet and jane was excited. she looked gorgeous. >> he had her on a pedestal. >> this is don's wife, rebecca. >> we would talk once or twice a week on the phone. probably four hours. we hit it off. >> jane was there by dave's side as he became a national and then world competitor. dave took the bronze medal of the 84 games but after, his career faded quickly. he kept trying but knee injuries. he did not make the team in 88. >> he was disappointed but he
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knew. it is a point of your career when you know something is done. it is okay. you know you have gone as far as you can and that door closes. >> another door opened. dave became a high school biology teacher, coach and athletic director. >> he was better as a teacher and coach. >> if dave missed his former glory he never showed it and of course remained a legend to his niece and nephews. >> one phrase that could describe him is a gentle giant. he had so much patience, so much kindness. >> at home dave and jane struggled to have children. >> she wanted a family. i felt bad when i got pregnant. >> and 99 they adopted a baby boy from south korea and named him michael. >> we were happy. i have tons of photos of them
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together. >> moments of time, inspiration on the garage wall which these days is about all that is left. >> this does not make sense. it is not right. >> ever since that august night in 2009. >> there are shots being fired? >> when a superman fell to earth. >> coming up. did a run in with a prowler turn deadly? >> describe how fast they were. >> when dateline continues. lin
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keith morrison: midnight august 28, 2009, oxnard, california. “download the gametime app to get great deals midnight, august 28, 2009. oxnard, california. the woman in full panic. >> there are shots being fired? >> the woman on the phone was jane. the wife of the hometown hero. dave was still outside she said where she heard shots fired.
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>> where did you last see your husband? >> he told me to get back in and then i heard the shots. stay with me, i have two officers there. >> the officers had to lockdown and call in a homicide team to investigate further. >> the ventura county das investigator, by the time first responders arrived, there was no sign of a prowler but they did find dave. >> he was shot multiple times, he was on the ground face down with obvious gunshot wounds to his back in the back of his head. >> jane was a mess, she told investigators she had no idea
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who would do this. michael, 10 years old at the time, slept through it and jane's brother took charge of him while jane went to the police station to offer a more complete statement. it was a normal evening she said, in bed by 10, dave in the master bedroom and she and michael's room where she often slept because dave had a bad back. then it was a hour later she said, around 11:00. dave came down the hall she said, worried about the dog. >> he said what is wrong with her i said i do not know. >> so 11:15 pm, she and dave crept over to a sliding glass
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door to the yard. >> so you're walking toward the sliding glass door with a flashlight in your hand right? what happens? >> i heard something like -- >> did you see somebody else? do you think you did? was it in front of or behind? how far behind him are you? you see shadows by the trashcan? then what happened?
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>> the gunshots -- >> what did they sound like? >> like a pop. >> how many pops did you hear? >> three. >> described to me how fast they were. >> pop pop pop. >> no hesitations? >> as jane talked to investigators into the early morning hours. the awful news was getting around. >> we get a call at 5:00 in the morning. >> what happens to a person when you go to bed and everything is fine and then your phone rings at 5:00 in the morning and your life is a different thing. >> it is like a earthquake. it shakes your whole foundation and being and things are never the same after.
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>> he fell to his knees. he was on the phone and he began sobbing and saying no. it was horrible. >> you do not believe it but how do you kill superman? how is superman dead? >> a few days later, dave's friends and family held a candlelight vigil. >> he was so loved. every step we take is because people like you reach out to us and support me my husband and family and we appreciate that. >> they did not know then, what the police had discovered. a key piece of evidence, almost
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overlooked at first. to make the lead investigator of the case walks in and is looking around and you have a dining room table, a hutch, a grandfather clock. he opened the clock and it was a wow moment. >> why would a prowler leave something so important in there? >> if the intruder was outside, how did a piece of evidence get inside? something else seemed odd, jane's behavior. >> coming up. >> she tried to keep one of the officers out of the laundry room. >> when dateline continues. caplyta is proven to deliver significant relief across bipolar depression. unlike some medicines that only treat bipolar i, caplyta treats both bipolar i and ii depression. and in clinical trials, movement disorders and weight gain were not common. call your doctor about sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts.
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keith morrison: jane laut told the police for free help, a harrowing story of a backyard prowler and gunshots right outside her door. on jane told police a harrowing story of a backyard prowler and gunshots outside of her door and now her husband dave was dead. some things seemed a little off, for example, when police were still questioning jean at the house, she stepped into the laundry room. >> she tried to keep one of the officers out of the laundry room. she tried to close the door with him in and him out. >> why? jane was wearing pajamas when police arrived but in the laundry room they found her jeans rolled up in a towel tucked between the washer and
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dryer, her top was removed as well, inside out. they were stashed away. when the officer tried to administer a gunshot residue kit to jane's hands -- >> when the officer began getting the test ready she did go into the bathroom and either washed her hands or wiped her hands on a towel before coming back to the table before the test was done. >> odd things. anyway police scoured the place and did not see a murder weapon lying around. they were ready to take dave's body to the morgue when some instinct told the lead detective to look here. he cracked open the doors of the grandfather clock in the dining room and looked down the side and there it was. >> this is more than likely the murder weapon. >> a ruger six shot revolver,
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surely no prowler would have dropped a weapon right here in the dining room clock. >> the prowler theory did not make sense whatsoever with a hidden gun in the house. >> it was not long before investigators shifted the focus from unknown prowler to the woman who reported one. jane. remember the clothes they found? when they tested them they found gunshot residue so did jane shoot dave and then change in her pajamas before calling 911? remember jane mentioned a red flashlight so police bagged it, tested it and found gunshot residue as if she was holding the flashlight while shooting her husband. investigators said dave had been shot six times. >> we came up with a logical
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explanation of how it was done. >> shot one grazed his head from several feet, deposited pieces of scalp on a garbage can. that shot brought him to his knees where the killer fired shots two and three to his face at close range. >> one goes through the cheekbone, bounces off of the concrete. it knicks the fence and that bullet we matched on the sidewalk. >> shots four through six hit the upper arm, the back and the back of dave's head. >> we believe the final shot was the shot to the back of the head. >> from the beginning jane denied she had anything to do with it. they did not believe her. especially when they found out the bullets that killed dave
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matched the gun in the grandfather clock. now don and rebecca began to look at a lot of things differently. things jane told them through the years which may be did not add up. >> i felt like she was family so i am going to dismiss the strange feeling i get sometimes. >> like the time jane told her two men put a knife to her throat and demanded money. >> i said did you call police or yellow? she said no, i just came home. i just wanted to get home. i said this is the middle of the day? >> then there was a claim the summit he was leaving threatening notes on the car. >> you would ask her what kind of notes and she would not tell you. >> now when they look back at the things they noticed over
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the years, it was like something fell into place for them. >> there was a separation, it was like jane was the parent and michael was the child and dave was in the way. i think that was a stress on the marriage. >> the stress was clear said rebecca. >> for a while every time she called me it seemed like it was to vent about something she did not like about what dave was doing. >> so evidence was sifted through four months. in february of 2010 jane was arrested and charged with murder. the story said investigators, was clear. >> this was a execution. she lowered him out, shot him from behind, then shot him a second and third time close, stepped back shot him a few times and then came up close and shot him one more time.
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>> there was plenty of evidence, jane's odd behavior, her lie about a prowler and on top of it all, the gun in the grandfather clock. so jane hired a lawyer and pled not guilty. the story that came out then turned the case on its head. >> he was a monster. >> coming up, what had been happening behind closed doors? >> she decided to fight. >> when dateline continues. by dermatologists and allergists, you can stay ahead of your eczema. it helps block a key source of inflammation inside the body that can cause eczema to help heal your skin from within. many adults saw 90% clearer skin.
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87-75 is the final. now back to dateline. gun that killed him inside, tiwelcome back, dave was murdered outside of his home and then police found the gun that killed him inside calling the story his wife told detectives into question, but what she told them next would send the investigation hurtling in a new direction, a stunning allegation points to another explanation for dave's debt. again, here is keith morrison with the hometown hero and the homecoming queen. >> suite jane, now accused murderer and now that dave was dead, stories emerged. >> it seemed like she was controlled in my opinion. >> a neighbor. >> he is standing there while she is pulling weeds, cleaning
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gutters and washing his truck and he is not helping her. >> jane seemed nervous. >> like a scared rabbit. >> i was leery about what was going on in the home. >> this friend said jane's fear reminded her of another vulnerable creature. >> jane looked like a scared cat. constantly looking over her shoulder. >> this from jane's former coworker. >> he was very aggressive. he was very demanding and when he said jump she would say how high. >> how strange it was she thought that jane always wore long sleeves even when it was hot outside but more disturbing -- >> there were times she would come in and i would notice her face looked swollen.
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she would never comment how it happened. >> there was several times i saw bruising on her. one time on her face. her arms, her legs. >> he is just a monster. >> ron, jane's defense attorney and according to him, dave is far from the hometown hero so many believed him to be. the real truth about dave, for nearly three decades, he subjected his wife to horrific abuse. >> like all abuse it is power and control. verbal abuse, the names he called her, the emotional abuse, the way he treats her and we have physical abuse, everything from the punching and kicking, throwing her down, spitting on her. >> jane was not the only victim, dave was angry that his
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adopted son was not athletic. >> we have witnesses of dave yelling racial names toward michael. >> all of those years, jane was afraid to report dave, afraid of what he might do to her loved ones so she covered up his abuse and her injuries. we obtained a summary from a police report from the 80s in which jane reported a intruder attacked her while she was alone at work. in fact, dave inflicted those injuries. then ordered jane to lie and blame a nonexistent intruder. a pattern of covering up dave's abuse, abuse by the summer of 2009 was getting worse. >> from june 2009 through august it was escalating. >> jane continued to take it
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until that august night when something changed. that night, for the first time according to him, dave threatened michael's life. >> she really believed he was going to kill michael. >> jane took michael to the beach that day and they were late getting home. >> dave was upset. started screaming, nobody respects me. >> jane put michael to bed, got into pajamas herself and waited for dave's anger to subside. >> he was not calming down. at 1030 or 11:00 he came out of the room upset and angry. >> that is when she saw the gun. >> he starts talking about michael, how they do not respect him and he will blow his head off. he grabs her and throws her against the wall and she falls down and crawls backwards with her hands and feet toward the
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back door. somehow she gets him out onto the patio. >> and out in the darkness dave stumbled on the patio. >> he loses his balance and that is her opportunity. she tries to grab the gun, the go to the ground and the gun goes off. she eventually gets the gun and empties it. >> then she said she ran back into the house, put the gun inside the grandfather clock and called 911. >> she has no idea he is dead, she thinks he is getting back up. >> so yes she lied about the prowler but did it almost automatically, her conditioned response to his abuse but once police discovered chains lie, their minds were made up. that she was a cold and
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calculated killer. so when police found the clothes shop in the laundry room, they believed it must've been jane's attempt to hide evidence of the crime but those clothes only had a fragment of gunshot residue and police never bothered to test the pajamas jane was wearing. he did and the tests revealed the pajama was covered. proving that jane was wearing the pajamas when she fired the gun. >> it all supports her story. >> as for the claim that jane jumped up to wash her hands before the gunshot residue tests, that never happened. that was the police covering up a mistake. >> the cop lost the test, they could not find it. >> anyway investigators looked at the evidence and got it wrong. once they concluded she was a murderer, they actually distorted the evidence to fit their story. >> deposited eight scalp med on
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the garbage can. >> were saying that is impossible. >> it violates the law of physics. >> what's more, the dna on the gun was dave's, once again supporting jane's contention that he had the gun and he struggled for it. >>'s dna is on the trigger. there is no getting around that. >> one more thing. one more bit of evidence the police missed even though it was under their noses, bruising on jane's upper left arm, photographed the morning after dave was killed. >> if you look at the bruise closely it is a handprint. >> it helps prove he said, this was not murder, it was self- defense. >> you are fighting for your life reasonably, you have to conclude that if you are fighting for a gun you get to use lethal force. >> now looking back says jane's
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childhood friend, things began to make sense. >> we saw her less and less. >> more than two decades past, helen had a long career as a social worker and lost touch with jane. >> i would always send christmas cards and say call me or whatever and i would never hear from her. >> then helen heard about dave's death. >> everybody was pointing to jane and like a light bulb, it went off. my god, she was a battered wife. you did not get it. you did not see it. >> the very idea that jane was a abused spouse, that she killed dave in self-defense? ludicrous said his family and a outrageous allegation about dave. >> i know my brother, he is just a good man. he would give you the shirt off
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of his back. >> can you see him losing his temper with the woman he is married to and abusing her? >> no. >> never. >> no set his family, no said police. besides, maybe jane had another motive for killing dave, a financial one. >> coming up. borrowed money. and even more money if dave was dead. >> sometimes she would say things like i would be that are off if dave was not around. >> went dateline continues. lin try dietary supplements from voltaren, for healthy joints. [inner voice] is it menopause or something else? the menopause journey has stages. learn about yours with clearblue menopause stage indicator that tracks your fsh hormone levels combining them with your cycle data.
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keith morrison: olympic glory does not always download gametime. translate into material wealth. olympic glory does not always translate into material wealth. in fact said detectives as they sifted through their financial records, they found evidence they were struggling. >> their finances, they were living beyond their means. it was for bookkeeping, poor management of the bills, it did not happen just before the shooting, it has been going on for years. >> after dave was killed, said don and rebecca, they found out that jane had been growing money from their mother-in-law. >> jane asked for a lot of money coming having her different excuses.
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>> to pay mortgages? >> mortgages, doctor bills, school tuition, school supplies. >> how much money? >> thousands and thousands of dollars. it was a lot. >> when they found out dave had three life insurance policies -- >> we totaled it all up and i think it came to 350 thousand or somewhere in that neighborhood. she was likely to see it if a prowler had done this. >> was there a indication that she was capable of violent acts? >> she said some things to me and i dismissed them because maybe i did not want to believe that she was capable but sometimes she would say things like i would be better off if dave was not around. >> meanwhile, justice crawled.
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a year passed, then 2-4. jane remained free on bond and dave's niece, megan, fumed. >> she calls my family so much pain and it is horrible. i hate it. >> nephews aaron and cody took it out on the garage weight room. >> i have a way of bottling it and i get it out when i left. >> it is september 2013. don pleaded with the judge to get the case before a jury. >> i wanted the court to note that there is family and friends behind my brother and it has been four years. it has been very difficult. >> then in january of 2015, more than five years after
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dave's death, in a move that shocked jane's defense attorney, the prosecution indicated it would be open to making a deal. >> i was blown away. >> a plea deal? what a deal it was he said, if jane pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, she would be sentenced to six years and would most likely serve only three. seemed like a admission of weakness from the prosecution and the opportunity of a lifetime for a woman facing first degree murder and 52 life. >> i gave her my strong recommendation that she take it and she said no. i was stunned. i said the you understand and she said i understand fully. she was crying and she said i have to fight for this. this. by then jane had powerful moral support from her old friend
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helen. >> she rose that night, she did not fall. she rose that night. she became a very strong and powerful woman and defended the life of her son. >> then at last, in january 2016, jane went on trial for murder. her friend helen sitting right behind her. >> do you think she will go to jail? >> i do not. >> you believe the jury will believe her story and see it as a case of self-defense? >> i do. i believe that. >> i sincerely believe her and i do not say that about many people. >> do you usually get this personally invested in a case? >> i am always invested in my cases, but do i care as much about my clients like i do about jane? i would be lying if i said i
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years to life for the murder of her husband, when prosecutors offered to cut her since 26 years if she pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter, she said no, will she regret that decision? here is keith morrison with the final chapter of the hometown hero and the homecoming queen. >> dave was a son, a father, a colleague, a friend. >> more than six years after the death of olympic bronze medalist dave, the murder trial of his wife jane finally began in this california court room. the prosecutor told the jury that jane was a calculating killer. >> if you look at each of the six shots, they were administered by this defendant as she was executing her plan to murder her husband, there is only one reasonable conclusion. to find the defendant guilty.
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>> defense attorney ron countered, the real victim was jane, who suffered the upmost cruelty at the hands of her husband. >> he is not the hero of the olympics. he is the monster that abused her for 27 years. >> the defense called family and friends and neighbors who all testified that jane was a abused spouse but the attorney said the most important witness with the defendant herself. >> if you want to get not guilty she has to testify. to make the judge would not allow cameras to roll when the first time publicly jane told her story. she said she took dave's abuse for three decades until the night he threatened their son. >> she could live with the fact he would kill her but not michael. >> on the stand jane admitted
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she lied in her 911 call. later to the police about a prowler as well. she denied she had any financial motive for killing her husband. after all she did not ask for or receive a penny of dave's life insurance. >> jane would not be about finances, that is not her values. jane is about relationships, family, children, it is never about money for her. >> of course, a prosecutor got his turn to cross-examine jane. there were a lot of i do not remembers about that night. she could not recall what happened after firing the first three shots but she did admit she was familiar with the gun, in fact used it several times before. >> this single action gun in
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the hands of this defendant, required her to pull back that hammer and fire. pulled back the hammer, and fire. each and every time for the six times she aimed the weapon at her husband and shot him. >> like this said the prosecutor as he played a video of a woman firing that very gun but said the defense attorney, that is not the only way to fire the gun. >> if you hold the trigger done you can pull the hammer back and it will fire. >> this is called fanning the gun but a prosecution expert countered a movie is the only place you would see that. >> every expert said that was absurd. the accuracy of hitting the target six times in the dark is astronomical.
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>> after seven weeks of testimony, final arguments from both sides. the defense attorney made a impassioned plea to the jury. >> why would jane do this? why would she do this? when you think about it, there is only one real reason. it is what anybody would do to protect their child. any one of us. >> while the prosecutor urged the jury to look past the emotion and focus on the evidence. >> the defense testimony is false. it is unbelievable. it is a story conjured up to raise a battered woman self- defense claim in a murder case. it is a lie. >> jurors deliberated for 3 1/2 days and then finally march 30, 2016, they announced they were ready.
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jane, supported by helen and other friends that stood by her walked to the courthouse and what we did there. >> it appears to be in order, i will read the verdict. we the jury find the defendant jane guilty of the crime of first degree murder. >> guilty of first-degree murder. a shock ran through the room. ron, who so believed in her innocence looked distraught and jane comforted him. the woman who turned down a deal to do six years for voluntary manslaughter received a mandatory sentence, 50 years to life. end of story? not so fast. in 2021 jane case was back in court. at issue, a gun enhancement portion of the sentence that was mandatory in 2016 was no longer. judges can now use their discretion and jane's judge did just that, cutting her sentence
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in half to 25 years to life. the conviction was a victory for dave's family yes but not want to celebrate. >> our faith calls us to forgive and we do. >> forget? no. not there superman. >> it is very difficult. i miss him every day. i think i will always grieve. he is always a part of me. it is hard. >> that is all for this edition of dateline. thank you for watching. watchin will be toughest on crime, and yet part of his grand p
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