passion? i'm sorry, that causes me the grief that i feel today for him. while on a business trip in 1986, ed post spent the morning jogging near his hotel in downtown st. louis. when he returned to his hotel room, he discovered his wife dead in the bathtub. the medical examiner ruled the death was by drowning, presumably accidentally. but homicide investigators were not so sure.

ed post met julie thigpen when they were both students at the university of mississippi in the '60s. they married in 1967, had two daughters and moved to new orleans. ed went to work in the real estate business. his outgoing personality and sophisticated manner made him a successful salesman right from the start. >> if thought ed was a good fellow, what you would expect a real estate salesman to be, kind of cheerful. >> after a few years, ed post became the owner of the real estate firm. julie post also joined the company and was very successful, selling over a million dollars of real estate from 1982 and on. in june of 1986, the posts attended a real estate conviction in st. louis, missouri, at the omni hotel at

union station. on the morning of june 3rd, ed post decided to go jogging before the meeting started. he said he drew his wife a bath and woke her before leaving around 7:00 a.m. on his way out, he thanked the hotel's concierges for a suggestion she made to the posts the day before. >> really wonderful. >> ed post jogged past busch stadium. around the city's famous arch and returned to the hotel at 7:40. when he entered his hotel room, he said he discovered his wife lying face down and unconscious in the bathtub. after pulling her body from the water, he called for an ambulance at 7:43. >> could you send an ambulance, please. >> it looked as if julie post lost her footing and grabbed the towel ring which pulled out of

the wall. at the hospital, julie post was pronounced dead. she was 39 years old. the autopsy revealed that death was due to drowning. ed post immediately phoned his brother, who was a lawyer, together, they photographed the broken towel ring and wall mount for a lawsuit against the hotel. >> his brother told the policemen here in st. louis i'm going to sue them for $450 million, you watch. >> ed post was convinced that had it not been for the faulty towel ring, his wife, julie, might still be alive. ♪ i am a lot of things. i am his guardian. i am his voice. so i asked about adding once-daily

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after julie post was pronounced dead, an autopsy was performed in st. louis before the body was transported to new orleans for burial. the autopsy found no sign of alcohol or drugs in her system. there were no skull fractures or bleeding in the brain that would have been present if the victim had been struck in the head before drowning. in short, the pathologist could find no evidence of foul play. >> i was certainly not convinced

that it was an accident. on the other hand, i couldn't prove that it was anything else. >> on the death certificate, the manner of death was undetermined. when the st. louis post dispatch reported the news of julie post's death, there were some interesting reactions. dee joyce hayes was a prosecutor in the district attorney's office, her husband, gary, was a detective in the st. louis police department. >> he had just read an article about a woman who was -- who had drowned in a bathtub at the omni hotel. and she said gary make sure you read this. it doesn't sound right to me. >> we both read the article and looked at each other and said no, no way. >> the hotel management found it hard to believe that a 120-pound woman like julie post could have pulled the towel ring from the wall since the ring had been

designed to withstand more than twice that weight. >> we went to the two adjoining rooms and i probably weighed close to 220 pounds at the time. with all of my weight hung onto both towel rings in the rooms and neither one of them gave, nothing. >> ed post told police that he and his wife had a very good relationship. but a background check of the post's finances revealed an interesting coincidence. >> we went to the insurance company. and lo and behold, i don't know, 27, 29 days prior to julie post's death, ed had increased her insurance like 4 or $500,000. now, this is a woman who is making in the low to mid-20,000 a year range in salary. and he has got this 6, $700,000 life insurance policy on his

wife. that is when i began to believe maybe we have something here. >> police also discovered that ed post was enamored with a married woman who worked in his office. her name was kim botan. on the day of julie post's funeral, ed made an unusual request to kim otang. >> kim otang had a twin sister and at the time of the funeral of julie, ed post said to kim otang, maybe when this is over you can set me up with your sister. and that seemed a most inappropriate thing to be saying, and particularly at the time he is alleged to have said it. >> police were also suspicious about the way ed post told the story of finding his wife's body. the story never varied, almost as if it had been rehearsed. st. louis police tape recorded

the conversations. >> and then when she came over the edge of the tub, being as wet as she was in the water then at that point, once i got her partially out of the tub i was not prepared for what happened next which was she literally slid out at that point. and she did hit her head on the front portion. >> is the fact that ed post, in his golden tongue glib manner came off as a -- as a non-caring person that had had this alibi, who had everything down pat. i mean, he didn't change his story one iota from the first time he told it to the second time he told it. >> and some of the hotel employees noticed that ed post was acting suspiciously on the morning of the accident. before leaving the hotel for his morning run, ed post made sure

that the concierge knew who he was, thanking him for the favor she did for them before. and the hotel manager said he introduced himself by name before going out for his run. >> my name is ed post, i'm going on for a run for about 30 minutes. watch out for me. >> he made it a point to say who he was and what room he was in and he was going out to jog. it was from the book of who cares? the doorman didn't care. why would you do that? >> but all of these incidents simply raised suspicions. homicide investigators had no hard evidence that ed post played any role in his wife's death. investigators decided to conduct more sophisticated tests on the broken towel ring to see if a woman julie post's size could have pulled it from the wall during a fall.

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prosecutors in st. louis were starting to wonder whether the death of julie post in the hotel bathtub was truly an accident. the autopsy did not find any evidence of foul play. so prosecutors decided to exhume julie post's body for further

examination. the water is so high most people are buried in above-ground vaults. but julie post had been buried in the ground and her body was placed in a wooden casket. investigators feared that water damage to the body would be significant. when they opened the grave, it was almost completely filled with water. fortunately the foot of the casket was the part that sunk, her head was the only part of her body that was not submerged in water. >> and her head was in perfect shape. the casket had collapsed and pushed down and it flattened her nose from the pressure but that was the only disfigure. >> the second look at the autopsy found bruises that were not noted during the first autopsy. that is not unusual because some bruising continues to develop on after death. ed post's attorney said that the

additional bruises proved nothing. that they could have been caused by the removing of her organs and bones for donation shortly after her death. but the pathologist found two new bruises in a critical area. >> the only additional finding at the autopsy was an area of bruising that was very low, far down on the back of the head in the upper neck region, where in a normal autopsy i usually don't take the scalp down quite that far. >> i'm looking at the bruises, and as far as i'm concerned it is from a thumb and a hand. if you're holding somebody under water you have to hold them at the base of the neck if they're going to drown. >> next, prosecutors turned their attention to the metal towel ring found next to julie's body. the towel ring was attached to metal studs inside the wall with one and a half inch screws, the

ring in the wall was made to withstand hundreds of pounds of force. the prosecutors hired an accident reconstructionist to recreate the situation. kelsey conducted his search in the room, with an identical towel ring, the same one in julie post's room. and for the test, kelsey used a woman who was the same height and weight as julie post. kelsey asked the woman to simulate grabbing the towel with all of her weight. nothing happened. then she was asked to wrench the ring back and forth. again, nothing happened. >> what we found was that doing some calculations, based on the information we had on the ultimate strength of the ring

that a person couldn't remove it that size unless she fell nearby and grabbed the towel. and of course the towel ring has an eight foot ceiling so there was no way that could have happened. >> finally, kelsey asked the model to remove the towel ring any way she could. after considerable effort the ring came off. >> the concept that julie post somehow grabbed this towel ring during a fall and pulled it off the wall was impossible. it could not physically have happened that way. >> next, prosecutors sent an identical towel ring and wall mount to dr. william wines, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university of nebraska in lincoln. dr. wines was asked to determine how much force was required to remove the towel ring from the wall attachment. those tests revealed that it

took between 400 and 500 pounds of force to remove it from the wall. >> it was also very obvious early on the testing that those types of modes, stretched down, clearly didn't match the evidence. the failed towel ring didn't look anything like the towel ring in question here. >> the base plate had damage underneath the stand. and on the left side the towel ring itself also had been damaged. dr. wines performed 23 different tests to reproduce the damage found on the base plate and towel ring, all without success. but, on test number 24, dr. wines produced something very close. that test indicated that the towel ring was removed from outside the bathtub. >> our conclusion was that it was taken off the wall by

someone with considerable strength. and it was you know, the type of action where one would grab it and pull outside the tub. and it was -- if you look at the location of it, it would be consistent with somebody putting their foot on the edge of the tub and grabbing the towel ring and then pulling it off outside the tub. >> prosecutors now had scientific proof that julie post's death was no accident. [ hoof beats ] i wish... please, please, please, please, please. [ male announcer ] the wish we wish above all...is health. so we quit selling cigarettes in our cvs pharmacies. expanded minuteclinic, for walk-in medical care. and created programs that encourage people to take their medications regularly. introducing cvs health. a new purpose. a new promise... to help all those wishes come true. cvs health.

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only from xfinity. in 1986, new orleans was going through its worst economic downturn since the great depression, many local businesses were affected, and real estate was just one casualty. ed post was part owner of the real estate business and was responsible for the losses which in 1985 and 6 were substantial. and the post's marriage was going through a downturn as well. friends said that ed and julie fought frequently, fights which were sometimes physical. and kim botang who worked with them said ed post made advances

towards her in the months before julie's death. >> i think that ed fell in love with kim otang, just him being a free man wouldn't get kim. he had to be a free man with lots of money to compete with her husband. and he hatched this plan. >> prosecutors believe that plan was in motion one month before julie's death when ed post increased his wife's life insurance. on june 3rd, 1986, before going out for his morning run, prosecutors believe that post drowned his wife in the hotel bathtub. afterwards, he pulled the towel ring from the wall, not only to corroborate his cover story that julie fell while holding onto the towel ring but also for the money. the potential settlement from

the hotel in a civil lawsuit. after the murder, post made sure to speak with both the hotel concierge and the doorman to help cement his plan. >> that is what killed him, not literally but figuratively. you know, he had to go pull that off the wall. he had to go pull that off the wall so he could set up a lawsuit against the omni hotel so he could get more money. the greedy sob. >> three years after julie post's death, ed post went on trial for first degree murder. ed post pled not guilty and took the stand in his own defense. >> he was very well dressed. he was very articulate, spoke at a very sophisticated level. including his use of the

language. spoke, i think, far differently than the jurors were used to speaking or hearing. he did not speak with a southern accent at all, although he was from new orleans. and he came across as ed off came across as condescending. and i think that those things did not play well. >> and the scientific experts provided powerful testimony that julie post was not capable of removing the towel ring during a fall. it took the jury less than a day to reach its verdict. ed post was found guilty of first degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. ed post and his attorneys appealed the conviction. and in a plea bargain, post agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder and confess to the murder of his wife in exchange

for a 30-year prison sentence that included the possibility of parole. >> if he doesn't take the towel ring off he gets away with it. it is just an accidental drowning. and -- look at how it happened. almost everybody classified it as undetermined or accidental. but for that, ed post would probably be on his merry way, probably sue the omni and have several thousand in life insurance. >> in my opinion, the most important thing in the trial was the science, the towel ring. when you can show that it is ripped back and forth, back and forth until it broke or until it came loose. that convicted him. if he would have left that out of there he might be a free man today.

for 15 years, a serial rapist preyed on single woman in the small college town of lafayette, louisiana. although his m.o. was always the same, investigators had few clues to his identity. the masked assailant would break into women's homes late at night, blind them with a flashlight, and assault them at gunpoint. but when the locations of all these crimes were entered into a new computer program, police learned more about the perpetrator than they were prepared for. in august of 1995 in