>> this was about as textbook of a forensic case as you can think of. there was no smoking gun in this case. it was all the little bits of forensic evidence that connected the dots. and it all led detectives in one direction, and that was toward daphne wright. up next, a music teacher is found dead. was it an accident or murder? >> there were forensic teams going in and out of the house for days on end. >> luminol provides the answers. >> it just lit up like a christmas tree. it was phenomenal. >> it was thought to be an intruder case. >> but sometimes, friends are more dangerous than enemies. >> secrets kept for years finally caused the whole thing to explode. music played an integral part in the lives of ken and his

wife christine. they met as young people, and i think they shared a love of music. that's kind of what got their relationship going and they married a couple of years after that. >> ken and christine lived in palo alto, california, where they raised two sons. christine was a music teacher in the local public school. ken was a real estate consultant. life was going well for the couple until one day in 2000 when ken got a call from christine's school. >> christine had failed to show up for her 1:00 music class. >> and this was very unusual. she was very punctual. she was very much a perfectionist. >> ken had no idea where she was. so he and two co-workers drove to the house to see if she was there. when they arrived, they found christine's car in the driveway. >> christine.

christine! >> inside, they found christine lying in a pool of blood. one of ken's co-workers called 911. >> what's going on? >> just fallen down the stairs. she fell down the stairs and hit her head. >> is she still breathing? >> i don't think so. >> when paramedics arrived, there was little they could do. >> she was dead by the time they had arrived. >> at first glance, it looked as if christine had tripped while carrying the laundry down the stairs. apparently, her head hit a ship's bell that they stored in the basement near the steps. >> he said that she was wearing some sort of dangerous black shoes that she had tripped on once before. >> but to investigators, something about the placement of the shoes didn't seem right. >> halfway up the staircase, it

was a right shoe on the left side of the staircase as you're descending. going up the stairs it's not going to fall in this position. that was a little odd to me. >> during christine's autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence inconsistent with a fall. >> she had seven lacerations at the back of her head at multiple angles. what it told us she had some type of impact to the back of her head, multiple blows. >> we knew she didn't get that many wounds falling down the stairs. >> and they found more than head injuries. >> she also had been manually strangled. we had a homicide situation, an assault against this woman. ♪

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news of public schoolteacher's christine fitsue's death spread quickly throughout the palo alto community. at fist, christine's death appeared to be an accident, but when the medical examiner found evidence consistent with a homicide, investigators took

over the scene. >> there were forensic teams going in and out of the house for days on end, and we kept asking the police how much longer is this going to go on. >> investigators believed that christine was murdered sometime between 12:20 p.m. and 1:40 p.m. >> we were able to get the receipts, so we knew that, you know, at 12:20ish that she was alive and buying coffee at a local coffee house. >> christine's husband and two co-workers found her body and called 911 at 1:40 p.m. >> the murder had to have occurred relatively close in proximity to this attempted resuscitation. if it happened earlier, you're going to get a lot of coagulation of that blood. >> six months before christine's murder, there had been six home burglaries in the neighborhood. >> there was a lot of talk that this might have been the result

of some burglary gone bad, that christine might have surprised a burglar and this is what happened to her. >> all of the robberies had occurred in the daytime, and like christine's case, there was no forced entry into any of the homes. those roberies were still unsolved. but nothing had been stolen from the house. and something bothered investigators. they found no blood spatter on the stairs or on the adjacent walls. >> when a beating takes place, when blood comes to the surface, subsequent blows start to disperse that blood. those characteristic patterns weren't seen down if in the basement. >> this meant, christine hadn't been killed in the basement where her body was found. upstairs in the kitchen,

investigators found small drops of blood on the legs of a chair, indicating she might have been attacked while eating her lunch. >> we were comfortable with some blunt forced injury with an edged surface like the edge of a two by four. and the obvious object that was right in the center of that crime scene was the table itself. and the table had supports and then a cross member that served as the footing, if you will, of the able, that was something her head was forcibly struck against that type of an object. the room was sprayed with luminol and even crime scene seasoned analysts couldn't believe what they had seen. it was clear, the chair in the kitchen had recently been

covered in blood. a nearby kitchen wall also showed evidence of is a brutal confrontation. the landing between the kitchen and the basement looked as if christine had been lying there in a pool of blood. >> there were some shoe print patterns in the area of the kitchen door. >> and the stairs left no doubt she had been dragged there after she sustained massive injuries. >> it was obvious we were standing where a very brutal event had taken place. >> an event that was followed by an extensive clean-up. >> to the naked eye, you could see nothing. it was clearly clean. >> but why would a killer spend all this time cleaning the crime scene? >> it was a who done it? a murder in a beautiful place. and we just knew that at that

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no one in palo alto, california, could imagine who would want to hurt christine fitsue. she had no known enemies and on the surface, they appeared to

have a storybook marriage. ken and christine inherited a large sum of money from ken's family and rarely had to worry about finances. by the time they moved to palo alto, they had about $2 million in real money. >> but investigators learned the troubling fact about their finances. because of failed business ventures and overspending, they were virtually bankrupt. >> they had financial problems. they were not going to make their mortgage. >> christine's closest friends told police the stress of impending bankruptcy was eating away at their marriage. >> christine was thinking of leaving ken and taking her half of the house and separating herself from his life completely. >> but there was something else that bothered investigators. >> going up the stairs, there's

a large photo of the victim, her husband, and their two children. i comment to my supervisor, one of the children don't look like the other or the parents. that don't look quite right. >> and later, during ken fitsue's interrogation, ken referred to his son in an odd way. >> her oldest son graduates from college in a couple of weeks. she wanted to be there for that, too. it's really a sad time. >> you said her other son. is he not your son? >> no, he's our son. >> further investigation helped explain this slip. shortly after ken and christine were married in 1966, ken became friends with a co-worker named bob brown. they both worked at the san diego aerospace contractor back in the late 1960s.

>> ended up, the three of them hanging out together all the time. >> as a result, bob brown's relationship with christine soon went beyond friendship. >> as bob put it, he thought christine was starved for affection. they have this affair that goes on for many years. when christine got pregnant and gave birth to her oldest son justin, sources told police that ken was not the boy's biological father, it was bob brown. >> robert maintained his friendship. as a matter of fact, he was justin's godfather. >> to confirm justin's paternity, investigators tracked down robert brown. >> we end up finding robert brown, he says yes, i am the father of her oldest son. we get dna testing done and confirm that he is the father of the oldest boy. >> but as justin got older and

was about to go out on his own, christine decided it was time to tell him the truth. >> justin was about to graduate and christine wanted to invite his biological father to the graduation, and it was going to be sort of at the graduation that she was going to reveal to everybody that this other man was his father, not mr. fitsue. >> ken claimed he was unaware justin was not his biological father. >> i, of course, ask him, and he claims he had no idea about it. and the friends all seemed to think he didn't know. certainly the son didn't know. >> i believe ken knew about the affair, and i believe ken knew who juice tin's biological father was. there's no way christine would have gone and told justin that robert brown was his father and think that ken wouldn't have known. she certainly would have told him that i'm going to tell him. >> in the meantime, police

didn't tell ken fitsue that the autopsy findings indicated christine's death was a homicide. ken remained under the impression her death would be ruled an accident. during questioning, ken had difficulty playing the role of bereaved husband. >> i must have told her six times to get rid of the black shoes. and then she bought some red ones just like them. and she would get dressed and she would say how do i look? i would say fine, but i wouldn't wear those damn black shoes, you're going to fall. and there they were on the stairs. >> he was doing a bad job of acting because he was overacting. >> then i saw the black shoes. the god damn black shoes! >> i think he was acting the whole day.

>> but there was just opinion, not proof of murder. and ken had never hurt anyone in his life, unless police could find forensic evidence to tie ken fitsue to the crime scene, a jury probably wouldn't believe it either. [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪ sweets become salaries. an oven heats up a community

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>> ken fitsue denied any involvement in his wife's murder. police found no evidence of his involvement inside the house, but when they got a search warrant for ken's suv, that was another story. >> we found bloody shoes and a bloody shirt underneath the driver's seat of the suburban. >> there was also a paper towel soaked in blood, blood that matched christine's dna. ken said there was a simple explanation. >> he tells me that this blood came from a gardening accident. he said christine and him were in the backyard the previous week and she had hit her hand with a gardening tool. >> christine's body was still in the morgue.

investigators asked pathologists to check her hands. >> there was no wounds on her hands. >> and even though there was no blood on the souls of ken's shoes, this luminol pattern made it clear he had stepped in christine's blood in the kitchen before it had been cleaned. >> the shoe print patterns shown in the luminol were consistent with the pattern of the bottom of the shoes that were found in mr. fitsue's vehicle. >> the blood stains found on ken's shirt and shoes were medium velocity blood spatter. this definitely didn't support ken's story. >> the stains are all consistent with being near the source of blood at the time that the beating took place. >> even more damning was the fact that the blood and the sides and tips of ken's shoes had been diluted, consistent with standing nearby as blood was being cleaned with water. >> dilute blood is often easy to

recognize because when it dries, the edge of the stain will be darker than center of the stain. >> and where was ken between 12:20 p.m. to 1:40 p.m., the time of his wife's murder? >> mr. fitsue says that he had left the house around 11:30ish and had driven up to belmont, an area about 40 minutes north of where he lived to examine a vacant lot. >> no one saw ken at this lot, and ken's cell phone records showed he wasn't in that area when the school called to tell him his wife was missing. >> so ken's story, his alibi of where he was located, he was actually in the palo alto area when he received the phone call. >> prosecutors believe ken's motive was secrecy. he didn't want the divorce or anyone to know he wasn't the biological father of his oldest son, and he didn't want anyone to know they were virtually

bankrupt. >> it was almost like a clock exploded and all the little springs and levers and wheels of the clock that had been so tightly wound up in that clock just exploded all over the landscape. >> two weeks after christine's murder, ken was arrested. prosecutors said the evidence showed ken planned his wife's death. the evidence suggests he parked a short distance away from his house and found his wife in the kitchen where she was having lunch. he attacked her in the kitchen. blood landed on his shirt, his shoes, the kitchen chair, the floor and the walls. the autopsy also revealed he strangled her. ken wanted to make christine's death look like an accident.

to stage the scene, he dragged her body down to the basement, leaving blood all over the steps. as he attempted to clean the blood, water splashed on his bloody shoe, diluting the stains, which proved he was there during the clean-up. then he took christine's shoes and placed them on the steps to support the fake story that she tripped. ken put his bloody shirt, shoes and towel in suv. he never imagined police would search his vehicle since christine's death would be ruled an accident. he picked up two co-workers to support his alibi, but he was much later than he expected since the clean-up took more time than he anticipated. his cell phone records showed he was still in palo alto when christine's school called to say

she missed her afternoon class. everyone agreed ken did an extraordinary job cleaning the scene, but he couldn't clean everything. luminol revealed the extent of the clean-up. and the autopsy results left no doubt. >> he thought, i'll make it look like an accident. nobody is going to believe i committed the crime. >> one year after the murder, ken fitsue was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in prison. ken still maintains his innocence, but the forensic evidence left no doubt he was christine's killer. >> you get the luminol and you see that there's, you know, this clean-up. you know, you've got somebody lying about where they were,

you've got evidence pointing to no one but him. >> you never really know what's going on behind closed doors. you never really know what people's lives are like. they have a face, they present a face well, but you scratch below the surface and sometimes you find these ugly things that are going on. > up next, a suburban housewife is gunned down outside her church. >> i have seen brazen murders in my career, but i have never seen one this brazen. >> the investigation reveals some long-held secrets. >> you have a lesbian affair, you have corruption. you have murder. >> a love triangle points in one direction. the evidence points in another. >> this had a lot of twists and turns. >> what the hell else was going to go on here?