that causes me the grief that i that causes me the grief that i feel today for him. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com 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 accidental, but homicide investigators weren't so sure.

ed post met julie thigpen when they were both students at the university of southern mississippi in the 1960s. 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. >> i thought ed was a good fellow, what you'd expect a real estate salesman to be, kind of relentlessly cheerful. >> after a few years, ed post became part owner of the wagner truax real estate firm. julie post also joined the company and was very successful, selling over a million dollars of real estate every year from 1982 on. in june of 1986, the posts attended a real estate convention 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 concierge for a suggestion she made to the posts the day before. 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 unconsciousness 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.

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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 haze was a prosecutor in the district attorney's office. her husband, gary, was a detective in the st. louis police department. >> dee 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, nah, 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 my weight, hung onto both towel rings in both 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, um, i don't know, 27, 29 days prior to julie post's death, ed had increased her life insurance like 4 or $500,000. this is a woman who is making in the low to mid $20,000 a year in salary. and he's got this $600,000 life insurance policy on his wife.

that's when i begin 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 otan. on the day of julie post's funeral, ed made an unusual request to kim otan. >> kim otan had a twin sister. and at the time of the funeral of julie, ed post said to kim otan, 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 saying at the time that he's 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 those conversations. >> and then when she came over

the edge of the tub, being as wet as she was in the water, it was 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. >> it's the fact that ed post, in his golden tongue glib manner, came off as a non-caring person that 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 the concierge knew who he was, thanking her for a favor she did for him the day before.

>> i believe you're the one that told us about the botanical gardens. >> and the hotel doorman said that post introduced himself by name before going out for his run. >> my name is ed post. i'm going out for a run this morning. i'll be gone for about 30 minutes. watch out for me, please. >> he made a point to say who he was and what room he was in and he was going to go out and jog. it was from the book of "who cares." the doorman didn't care. why would you do that? >> but all of these instances 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 remains for a second autopsy. she had been buried in a cemetery outside of new orleans. the water table is so high in new orleans that most people are buried in aboveground 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 had flatten her nose from the pressure, but that was the only disfiguration from the collapsing of the casket. most of the casket collapse had been at the foot end. >> the pathologist who performed the second autopsy found

numerous bruises that were not noted during the first autopsy. that's not unusual because some bruising continues to develop even 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 these bruises, and as far as i'm concerned, it's from a thumb and a hand. if you're holding somebody under water, you got to hold them by the base of their neck if you're going to drown them. >> next, prosecutors turned their attention to the metal towel ring found in the tub next to julie's body.

the towel ring was attached to metal studs inside the wall with 1 1/2-inch screws. the ring and wall mount had been designed and manufactured to withstand hundreds of pounds of force. prosecutors hired an accident reconstructionist to attempt to recreate the accident. kelsey conducted his experiments at the hotel omni in a room with an identical towel ring attached to the wall in the same way as the towel ring in ed and 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 model to simulate a fall by grabbing onto the towel ring 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 what information we had on the ultimate strength of the ring, that we could not remove it, or a person couldn't remove it of that size unless she fell about 64 feet and grabbed the towel ring as she went by. and, of course, the hotel room has an eight-foot ceiling, so there's no way that could happen. >> finally, as a last resort, kelsey asked the model to use both hands to remove the towel ring in 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 weins, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university of nebraska in lincoln.

dr. weins was asked to determine how much force was required to remove the towel ring from the wall attachment. those tests revealed it took between 480 and 500 pounds of force to remove it from the wall. >> it was also obvious very early on the testing that those types of modes of force applications, straight pulls, pulls down, clearly didn't match the evidence. the deformed towel ring, the towel ring didn't look anything like the towel ring in question here. >> the base plate had damage underneath the stem. and on the left side, the towel ring itself also had been damaged. dr. weins 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. weins

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, for instance, somebody putting their foot on the edge of the tub, pulling it off out toward the outside of the tub. >> prosecutors now had scientific proof that julie post's death was no accident. to enhance your eyes. introducing a whole new way it's 1-day acuvue® define™ brand contact lenses. the eye enhancement lenses that comfortably accentuate your eyes' natural beauty. ask your doctor today about 1-day acuvue® define™ brand.

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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 more casualty. ed post was 10% owner of the wagner truax real estate business and was responsible for 10% of the losses, which in 1985 and '86 were substantial. and the posts' marriage was going through a downturn of its own. friends said ed and julie fought frequently, fights which were sometimes physical. and kim otan, who worked with

the posts, said that ed post had made advances towards her in the months before julie's death. >> i think that ed fell in love with kim otan. 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 doorman to cement his alibi. >> the whole business with the towel ring, which was really 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 and get more money. the greedy s.o.b. >> three years after julie post's death, ed post went on trial for first-degree murder. ed post pleaded 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 accustomed 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 often 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's just an accidental drowning. i mean, look at how it happened. almost everybody classified it as undetermined or accidental. but for that, ed post would be on his merry way. he would probably sue the omni and got a couple million dollars and $700,000 in life insurance. we wouldn't have known who he was. >> in my opinion, the most important thing in the trial was the science. it was the towel ring. when you can show that it was wretched back and forth, back and forth until it broke or until it came loose, that convicted him. if he had 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.