it not an abstract discussion, but the daily business of life. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com for the first time in american judicial history, a trial was held on the edge of a cliff overlooking the pacific ocean. for three days, a judge and jury heard the forensic evidence interpreted very differently by the prosecution and by the defense. was the death of a beautiful young woman an accident or was it cold-blooded murder? big sur, california. 90 miles of high wind-swept cliffs, sparkling ocean water,

and some of the most spectacular coastlines in north america. sightseers come from all over the world just to enjoy the magnificent scenery. but you have to be careful. it can be dangerous. >> you won't get a few months in the summer going by without someone falling and seriously being hurt or killed. >> three tourists from san diego were walking along the cliff side overlook known as seal beach. the couple started walking towards their car. their friend stayed behind to enjoy the spectacular view just a little longer. when the couple turned around, she was gone. they rushed to the cliff's edge and they were horrified to discover that she had apparently fallen some 500 feet down the cliff. they ran to a store nearby for help. rescue workers found the woman at the bottom of the cliff.

she was dead. there was no way she could have survived the 500-foot drop. unfortunately, accidents here do happen. >> everybody wants to climb out and get that picture of the ocean behind them. so they're out on the edge, on the precipice, and things happen. >> one other fellow said people fall off the cliff like logs out here. >> the victim was 20-year-old donna hartman. >> it was absolutely horrible. when you know that one of the almost phobias that this young woman had was heights, and she dies in this manner, it's particularly a horrible event. >> she recently separated from her husband and had been living and traveling with her friends, virginia and b.j. mcginnis. >> donna was a wonderful young lady, but she was challenged. her iq was probably 85 or 90, somewhere in there. she was wonderful and friendly and thoughtful. her husband was in the navy. >> at the scene, the mcginnises

told investigators that donna was wearing high-heeled shoes which might have caused her to lose her footing as she stood at the edge of the cliff. in the photographs taken by the mcginnises shortly before the fall, donna was wearing high-heeled shoes. the autopsy of donna hartman was routine. >> the autopsy on our victim was not a true forensic autopsy. it was an autopsy and it did show cause of death, but it was not in the greater detail you would want had you suspected foul play from the get-go. >> the cause of death was a basal skull fracture, a massive blow to the back of the head, skin with someone falling 500 feet to their death. but donna's family in louisville, kentucky, had questions about what happened, so they hired a civil attorney named steve keeney to help them get answers. >> i wish the coroner had done a better job.

i don't know what california standards are, but you would think that california would be closer to the cutting edge. this was far behind the cutting edge. and those responsibilities made it very difficult to show with any certainty to the insurance company or to a court or anyone else exactly what the cause of death here was. >> what troubled keeney were the photographs taken of donna shortly before her death. they told a story that was much different from the mcginnises' account.

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local authorities took no photographs at the scene of donna hartman's fatal fall because rescue workers believed it was an accident. so investigators asked donna's traveling companions, virginia and b.j. mcginnis, for a copy of the photos they took that day. >> they're using a disc camera, which has a rigid film on a circle. so we know the sequence of the photographs where they were taken. >> early in the sequence, donna appears happy and alert. but photos taken later show something different.

>> the later photographs show a person who is docile, who looks exhausted. >> her hands are down. her facial muscles are slack. she just doesn't -- and the eyes are somewhat droopy. it appears as if she is either intoxicated or stoned. >> the next photo in the sequence shows b.j. mcginnis and donna standing at the edge of the cliff. >> the victim's eyes quite appropriately are looking at the waters below. mr. mcginnis is behind the victim. the victim is a few feet from the edge of the cliff. mr. mcginnis' left hand is on the victim's left shoulder. >> investigators thought b.j.'s position was extremely suspicious. >> the only reason he is looking to the right is we would

speculate to look for vehicles, look to see if anyone can see. and that's the last photograph taken of her alive. >> it's almost as if she is in motion then, and the husband's hand is up against donna's shoulder. >> and the last four pictures were even more unusual. >> i think those four photos are surveillance video pictures. i think that was virginia mcginnis looking through the viewfinder of her camera to make sure nobody saw what they did. >> they're not photographs a tourist is going to take. and particularly the fact that the sequence to this day, i don't understand why they would take it. >> there is a shot looking down the cliff where donna fell. then three panoramic views. one to the left, another to the right, and the last behind them. >> now, if she has slipped and fallen, then who is taking sightseeing photographs? i mean, who cares about a camera. let's see if we can save her.

>> that film says they saw her when she fell off the cliff, and they kept taking pictures. >> investigators now suspected that b.j. mcginnis deliberately pushed donna over the cliff to her death. but what was the motive? investigators discover that the mcginnises had taken out a $35,000 life insurance policy on donna hartman just one day before her death. the insurance agent said that virginia mcginnis asked him a curious question. >> she turned to him on the way out of the door and said "this is applicable to an accidental death, isn't it?" it was. >> i don't deal with too many claims for life insurance, but that doesn't sound appropriate to me, almost as a matter of fact. >> the beneficiary was virginia mcginnis' son, who was in prison. he was listed as donna's fiance

even though he and donna were already married to other people. the mcginnises filed a claim to collect on the life insurance policy just one day after donna's death. >> virginia plopped the insurance policy down on the desk of the agent. he looked up and said you're kidding. she is dead? well, it's a pretty incredible story, but, you know, in the end, you have to pause. surely somebody somewhere bought a life insurance policy and had the bad luck to have the deceased die the next day. it's not proof, but it sure stinks. [ kevin ] this is connolly, cameron, zach, and clementine.

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investigators wanted to know why donna hartman looks so alert and vivacious in pictures taken earlier on the day she died, but later on that day she seemed drowsy and disoriented. >> the circumstances that we had indicated a homicide, not an accidental death. and our job was to prove it or disprove it. we had virtually no evidence. >> donna's autopsy was fairly routine, and the toxicology tests were routine, as well. >> i would characterize the autopsy as meeting minimal

professional standards. if i had to object, it would be that it appeared that the possibility that foul play was really not taken into account. so that extra measure perhaps was not done in this case. >> the doctor who performed the autopsy was not a forensic pathologist, but he did something virtually unheard of at the time. for reasons not entirely clear, he kept a vial of donna's blood in refrigerated storage, and two years after her death, it was sent to the forensic lab for testing. a sample was placed in a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. which broke the blood down into its chemical components. traces of a common antidepressant known as elavil were clearly present in donna's blood. >> in someone who had never taken the drug before, i believe

even one pill could cause them to be very drowsy, dizzy, possibly disoriented. >> but how did elavil get into her system? >> the presence of elavil in the victim's body was crucial because she had no prescription for it. mr. mcginnis had prescription for it. moreover, the effects of elavil are evidenced by her behavior as seen in the photographs, dizziness, disorientation, sluggishness. >> the dose of elavil is determinative. a tiny dose may have little or no effect. a large dose can be so disorienting, you will be so drowsy you might fall asleep standing on your feet. at the very least you won't be alert. >> investigators discovered donna and the mcginnises had lunch about two hours before she died. the waiter who served them said donna ordered a soft drink. >> it's anyone's guess, but if i had to speculate, i would say at that point they put the elavil

in her coke. but it's speculation. >> but there was no way to prove it. so investigators turned to another set of pictures, the ones taken during donna's autopsy. they were analyzed by forensic pathologist dr. barbara weekly jones. she noticed two things which were barely mentioned in the original autopsy, wounds on the back of donna's hands, but not on her palms, and her fingernails were broken. >> she is up like this, and she is grabbing hold of the edge, the nails would break off. you should then have abrasions on the palm surface of your hands as you're going down, and she did not have that. all of her injuries are on the back of her hands. >> why would someone who slid down a cliff have bruises on the backs of her hands, but virtually no marks on her palms? dr. weekley jones said it was impossible to be sure, but she

had a theory. >> i think that she was pushed off the cliff and didn't make it, and her hands were stomped on in order to get her to continue her fall off the cliff. but the injuries on her hands were more consistent with a struggle or that scenario than a simple fall off the cliff. >> this was a harrowing possibility. it meant that while donna was hanging on to the cliff's edge, one or both of the mcginnises sent her to a certain death. >> there was no what we call pattern injury to help determine as to what she was struck with. she could have been struck with a fist for all i know, or she could have been struck with an instrument. >> these were the wounds of someone who was fending off an attack and then died, as opposed to somebody who flopped down a cliff and had some things break along the way.

>> but were the mcginnises capable of cold-blooded murder? and if they were, could it be proven? to find out, investigators did a background check and were shocked by what they found. virginia mcginnis was no stranger to deaths that looked like accidents. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, like me, and you're talking to your rheumatologist about a biologic... this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain. this is humira helping me lay the groundwork. this is humira helping to protect my joints from further damage. doctors have been prescribing humira for ten years.

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from various insurance companies for other deaths and several suspicious accidents. >> she had been involved in tragedy after tragedy, residence residences had burned down, relatives and loved ones had died in her care. >> every house she lived in burned to the ground, and her daughter, her second husband, and probably others all died under mysterious circumstances. they all had incredible accidents. >> with all the upheaval in her life, there seemed to be one constant, virginia made sure all of her husbands and children had life insurance. >> you know jay leno says that what he loves is stupid criminals, and one thing about criminals is they're not holding a job. every one of her life insurance policies was for the same amount, $35,000. >> because the face amount of

the policies were so low, insurance companies didn't question the settlement. the insurance policy virginia purchased on donna hartman's life was also suspicious. >> every single piece of that policy was either forged or fake except for the name of the person who would die. >> donna hartman signed the policy and her signature was witnessed by alice kessain. alice lived next door to the mcginnises but she denied signing the insurance form. as proof she pointed out her name was misspelled on the document. >> people don't misspell their own names when they sign their names. that's a red flag to the document examiner, to the prosecutor, to anyone involved in the case. >> alice kessain's signature did not match her own signature samples and it had an unusual backward slant.

>> backhand slanting isn't necessarily evidence of forgery but it is evidence of someone trying to change the way they write. >> with a court order, investigators forced virginia mcginnis to provide a handwriting sample. >> i asked her to write alice kessain's name first in her own natural handwriting and then i asked her to write it in a backhand slant because that's how it appeared on the question document. >> forensic document examiners concluded virginia mcginnis had signed alice's name on the insurance policy. >> it was not any different from her handwriting. she merely had changed the slant in order to disguise her writing and make it indistinguishable from the rest of the writing on the form. >> two years after the murder, virginia and b.j. mcginnis were arrested and charged with donna hartman's murder. virginia now claimed she wasn't at the scene of the accident and as proof she reminded prosecutors she wasn't in any of the photographs.

but one of the photographs showed the shadow of the photographer. was it possible for science to identify the photographer from the silhouette? >> we knew what day it was and we knew what time it was because we had the 911 call. that gave us the position of the sun, and with the position of the sun and the distance to the rocks, we were able to do the old high school pythagorean theorem, a squared plus b squared equals c squared. >> the distance between donna and the photographer was calculated by analyzing the millimeter of the camera lens. by measuring the length and angle of the shadow and determining the exact location of the sun at the time the mcginnises called police, investigators reached an interesting conclusion. the photographer was 5'6" tall, the same height as virginia

mcginnis. and if virginia was the photographer, why did she take what was perhaps the most incriminating photo of all? a photograph of donna just before she was pushed over the cliff. >> i think virginia wanted a souvenir. i think virginia wanted to revisit the death of donna and enjoy it over and over again. i think she believed that by having that picture she would have something that would arouse in her the same excitement and the same violation of rules that she had felt live on the cliff when donna died. >> virginia had apparently picked donna as an ideal victim. just as donna was separating from her husband, virginia befriended her. donna was vulnerable and an easy mark for an experienced con artist like virginia. 52-year-old b.j. mcginnis never made it to court. he died in prison while awaiting

trial. during virginia's trial, the jury was taken to seal beach. for three days court was held high above the beautiful pacific ocean an a wind-swept cliff where donna hartman had fallen to her death. the trial lasted for three days. the longest time a court had been in session at a suspected crime scene in american history. jurors were asked to examine the cliff to determine for themselves whether virginia's story of an accidental fall made sense. after a four-day deliberation, jurors said it didn't, and virginia was found guilty of first-degree murder. she was sentenced to life in prison. >> what it really got down to was putting the facts together in a scientific communicated fashion to a jury, and they were able to make the decision based upon the totality of the facts. >> without forensic science, virginia mcginnis today would

still be looking for victims. she probably would still be killing. she would be burning houses and she would be collecting insurance with your premiums. a late-night street fight left one man dead. and contradictory accounts of what took place. some said the victim was murdered. others said it was self-defense. it took a member of the wrestling hall of fame, a blood spatter expert and forensic animation to reveal how a world-class athlete lost one of the most important fights of his life. san diego, california, is a mecca for both athletes and outdoor enthusiasts.