part of police, on the part of prosecutors. they realized suddenly that there were tools at their disposal. this is the story of a classic love triangle, husband, wife, and lover. one of these three died in what was described as an accident. a forensic computer analysis uncovered photographs and e-mails so revealing they even embarrassed a local judge. ♪ detroit, michigan, nicknamed the

motor city for its history as one of the world's largest automotive manufacturing hubs. just west of detroit is michigan state university with almost 40,000 students. in 1990, michael mcfletcher was an undergraduate student there with hopes of one day becoming a lawyer. at a campus social event, mcfletcher met leann miezner. who wasn't a student but was a telemarketer who worked nearby. for both, it was love at first sight and they were inseparable. >> it was great. three years later in september of 1993, nick and leann married. >> it was great. he was going to be a lawyer, so he'd make a lot of money, be able to buy her a nice house, and she wanted to stay home and have a lot of babies. >> that's how she wanted a life. since she was a little girl, all she wanted to do was get married and have children. >> the newlyweds settled in

hazel park, a working class suburb just north of detroit. they bought this house on hazel wood avenue and nick started law school. leann worked to support them and not long afterwards the couple had a daughter hannah. >> she was her joy. she was just crazy about hannah. >> by 1999, mick was an up and coming criminal defense attorney. working hard to build his practice. on august 12th, 1999, the couple had more good news. leeann learned she was pregnant with their second child. mick was delighted with the news and sent her a note. >> leann, i might not always tell you, but you mean the world to me. i love you so much, sweetheart. and girl or boy, so long as they are part of you, our children will all be beautiful. i love you, mick. >> that sunday night, the couple

celebrated their good fortune with leann's parents. mick asked his in-laws if they would watch their granddaughter, hannah, the next day. >> and he said i wonder if you would baby-sit for about one hour. i said one hour? he said, yeah, we want to get to the firing range. >> mick believed in having a gun in the house for protection and he wanted leeann to learn how to use it. after visiting the firing range, mick and leann decided to return home to spend some quiet time together before picking up their daughter. just a few minutes after they arrived home, mick made a frantic call to police. >> i'm sorry, i can't understand. can you calm down, please? >> my wife shot herself. >> hazel park police found leann

dead on the bedroom floor, naked from the waist down, a bullet hole through her right ear. mick told police he and leann were sitting on the bed together reloading the .45 caliber smith & wesson they just used at the firing range. >> he had trouble loading the second clip, so he gave it to leann to help him. he put the gun down in the gun box at the foot of the bed and went to the bathroom and that's when he heard the gun go off. he came running out of the bathroom and saw his wife laying on the floor. >> the last thing i ever wanted in my life was to bury one of my kids and then to have to bury one so young, so young, so beautiful. not fair. >> at first glance, it appeared to be an accident, but police decided to take a second look

and then a third.

♪ as part of the investigation into leann fletcher's death, police first needed to eliminate possibility of suicide. perhaps leann's pregnancy caused some depression. >> she was so excited. there's no way on earth that leann would ever consider suicide, let alone go through with it. not in a million years. >> mick fletcher told police his wife accidentally shot herself in their bedroom shortly after a trip to the firing range as she tried to reload their pistol. leann's mother suspected that an accidental shooting in the head was a little too convenient. >> this was a terrible accident, she would have been shot in her hand, her arm, her foot, in the wall. i said, it wouldn't be in her head. >> in the couple's bedroom,

police noticed bloodstains on the carpet under leann's body as well as under the gun and clip. and there was blood spatter on the computer stand by the bed. there was more blood spatter on the edge of the bedspread. the medical examiner performed leann's autopsy. there was no gun powder residue in the bullet wound, but there were some tiny dots of gun powder called stippling embedded in the skin around the wound. >> the stippling is a phenomena that occurs when partly burnt particles land on the surface of the skin. >> the density of this stippling pattern indicated that the mussel of the firearm was 12 to 18 inches away from the head when the gun went off and the

trajectory of the bullet was almost horizontal. an unusual path for a self inflicted gun shot wound to the head pp >> in order to accomplish that, your arm has to be about four foot long. this lady had only 23 inches or 23 1/2 inches long right arm. >> they found a brown folder in mick's office containing numerous romantic greeting cards. inside were pictures of susan shernowski, a local district court judge. investigators also discovered that mick had earned $17,000 in legal fees from cases assigned by and presided over by judge susan shernowski. if the two were romantically involved, this was a gross violation of legal ethics. investigators seized the

fletcher's home computer and susan's office computer for examination by a forensic computer expert. >> for years and years we've always been willing to look in a filing cabinet for some time of incriminating document. well, people aren't using filing cabinets anymore. they're using computers. >> sergeant duke copied the hard drives from the computers onto a forensic examining computer. sergeant duke found nude photographs of the judge and hundreds of e-mails between her and mick. >> they read as love letters. they appeared to be intimate. they appeared to be lovers. they talked about being together and wanting to be together in

the future. >> mick had been corresponding with the judge for 17 months. police also learned that before she died, leann had suspected her husband was having an affair and the couple separated. but three months later, they reconciled and moved back in together. police no longer believed that leann's death was an accident and were beginning to suspect that mick fletcher and the judge might be involved.

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♪ when investigators discovered that attorney mick fletcher was having an affair with a sitting judge at the time of his wife's death, both were considered suspects. >> he had his -- should i call her, his whore? because as far as i'm concerned, that's what she is. >> judge susan shernowski denied she had anything to do with leeann's death. she was able to provide some useful information. >> so i asked the judge, when was the last time they had sexual relations and she stated the night before the homicide. >> this meant after having dinner with leann's parents, mick dropped his wife and daughter off at home and made

some excuse so that he could secretly meet with his lover. >> she believed there was no sexual relationship between himself and leann, and she told us that if there was a sexual relationship between michael and leann, that their relationship would be over. >> and all of a sudden at the time of her death, she was three weeks, four weeks pregnant, we believe that was the motive for her death. >> mick insisted that leann's death was an accident. he claimed leann was reloading their gun and that he heard the gunshot when he was in the bathroom. but the evidence told a different story. the gun and extra clip were found on the floor and not in leann's hand. there was also blood on leann's palm. if the gun had been in her hand when the shot was fired, the gun

would have prevented the blood from striking the palm of her hand and there was blood on the carpet underneath the gun and extra clip. >> if she had shot herself, the blood would have fell on top of the gun and on top of the clip. >> and by the dresser, there was a shell casing standing on end. >> and everything looked like it was placed. we swapped leann's hands and sent it to a lab to determine whether or not there was any gun powder residue that may have been left. that came back negative. >> forensic blood spatter expert dave woodford examined the shirt mick fletcher wore the day of the shooting. a chemical test found blood on the right cuff. using a stereomicroscope, woodford saw high velocity impact blood spatter on the right cuff. a fine mist of tiny blood

particles had been driven deep into the fibers. >> to me, it was critical because there was no way that he could have been in the bathroom at the time of the shooting. >> high velocity impact blood spatter is created when a gunshot wound hits an area with blood and a fine mist of blood blows back toward the gun. >> he had to be in close proximity to leann when she was shot. >> had leann shot herself, investigators say, there would have been high velocity impact blood spatter on her hand and there was none. >> it doesn't make any difference if there are additional drops of blood that occur later or contaminate on top of it with some smudging occurs. there would still be areas that allow for this pattern to be recognized and that was not there.

>> to find out where leann was when she was shot, investigators analyzed the angle of the blood spatter on the computer stand next to leann's body. the size and shape of the blood splatter told investigators that the blood hit the computer stand at a 10 to 20-degree angle. strings, which were connected to each drop of blood splatter, revealed the exact location of leann's head when the shot was fired. >> the angle you got was 52 degrees, so then you take the spring from the blood droplet and measure up 52 degrees and bring that out in space somewhere and you do that with each blood droplet. >> where the strings intersect is the spot where the blood originated. woodforde concluded that leann was on the floor when she was shot. she was not sitting on the bed. she was on her hands and her

knees while she was shot. >> investigators also discovered fresh sperm in the vaginal swab from leann's autopsy, an indication that the couple had sexual relations shortly before the shooting. [ gunshot ] police repeatedly test fired the gun in order to recreate the same stippling patterns found on leann's head. [ gunshots ] they fired at close range and gradually moved back at six-inch intervals. the tests confirmed dr. dragovic's earlier observation, the gun was 12 to 18 inches away from leann's head when the shot was fired, too far away for leann to have held the gun herself. leann's family never believed the story that the shooting was accidental.

judge shernowski said she was out of town on the day of leann's death, which checked out and investigators did not believe she knew about mick's plans. police arrested mcfletcher and charged him with the premeditated murder of his wife. [ 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. because health is everything. will go someplace they've pealready been.el where's the fun in that? it's time to find someplace new. book the hotel you want with the flight you want,

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♪ prosecutors believe that the murder of leann fletcher was premeditate and that her husband, mick, killed her in order to protect his romantic relationship with judge susan shernowski. judge shernowski testified that mick had lied to her about his relationship with leann. mick told her he no longer was having sexual relations with his wife and so susan shernowski believed that the two had a future together. but when leann became pregnant, mick realized that the judge would discover he had been lying. >> i really do think if she wouldn't have gotten pregnant, she would still be alive. i think that panicked him when she got pregnant, you know? >> prosecutors believe the couple's trip to the firing range was probably a setup, a way to explain why the pistol was out of its case in the bedroom. >> they had to pick up their daughter, but before they picked

up their daughter, they wanted to come home and have what he quoted as a quickie. >> when they returned from the firing range and leann went into the bathroom, mick placed the gun near the gun case at the foot of their bed. the medical evidence shows that the couple had sex on the floor. as leann was getting up, mick grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger. [ gunshot ] the mistakes mick made were numerous. blowback blood splatter landed on the cuff of mick's shirt. and he placed the weapon and clip on top of a bloodstain next to leann's bloody hand, which clearly showed she hadn't been holding the gun. mick then went into the bathroom

and rinsed off leann's blood, blood that was later found in the sink trap. then, he called police. you have the evidence of the night before, where he is professing his love to another woman, not his wife. you had the blood in the trap of the sink, which would indicate that he washed his hands prior to making the 911 call. you have the high-velocity blood mist on the cuff of his shirt. you have the stippling patterns that are on the right side of leann's face. so it's a combination of all -- all of this evidence that just pointed toward him as the person that committed this crime. >> guilty of the lesser offense of second-degree murder. >> but the jury did not believe mick fletcher planned leann's murder, so he was convicted of second-degree murder. >> we were grateful that it was second degree, but it should have been first degree. it should have -- i mean, it was

clearly, clearly premeditated and anybody that knew him knew that. >> the trial judge sentenced fletcher to the maximum penalty allowed, life in prison. in this exclusive phone interview from prison, mick fletcher tells the producers of this program that he is not a murderer. >> i didn't kill my wife. am i an innocent man? i had an affair. i did something that i shouldn't have done. i did something that was immoral. all i can tell you is that i didn't kill my wife. >> unfortunately for him, all the evidence points the other direction and points to the fact that indeed, did he did commit this murder and he did commit this crime. >> it's hard when you have two people in the house and only one left to tell the story. and so you have to have the forensic evidence and that basically will tell the story for you. and i'm so glad. >> you have to look at the scene and what does the scene tell you forensically. and that's exactly what happened in this case.

the story by the defendant, oh, my god, my wife accidentally shot herself, was seen through. i hope they find him in the same humiliating way that he left high daughter, half-naked, in high daughter, half-naked, in the prison somewhere, dead. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com lyons was found in a parking lot unconscious and near death. there were no witnesses. no one knew what really happened. but vicky's mother was determined to find out. west texas is far removed from big cities like dallas and houston. the land is flat and dry, dotted