. they danced on their wedding day as beauty and the boois. to stay beautiful, she worked out. a healthy habit. then one day turned deadly. >> he found her at home, the barbell was across her throat. >> a simple tragic accident. or was it? >> getting that information at that moment, did the case change for you? >> absolutely. >> what candidate weight of the evidence show? >> i got goose bumps. >> i'm lester holt. and this is dateline. here's dennis murphy. >> the images are fud eon the old home video of the wedding

reception but everyone remembers vividly. the bride in white, the groom in the goofy beast costume, kind of a strange way to begin a marriage some gists murmured, beauty and the beast. but then, it was a union that would end strangely. the last dance still more than ten years away at that point. lisa, the bride, had no idea what was in store for the two of them. she had a 50,000 watt smile. >> you can't fake a smile like that. that was just her. >> lisa had been a single mom when show joined her sister for a rare girls night out. there in the crowd, a big guy, a body guard slipped her his business card before lisa's party called it a night. in the car going home, lisa pulled out the business card and showed it to her sister christine. >> it said jean-claude van damme

look alike. i said you're not going to call that guy are you? >> she not only called him but was soon dating him. it turned out to be scott patterson who worked in construction. within a year, they were marriage. >> very beautiful. and she was so happy that day. she was very happy. >> i'm scott patterson. i'm the groom here. this is my wife. >> as you left the wedding that night, lucy, how did you feel about your daughter? >> i was happy for her. >> the newlyweds set up housekeeping in central indiana. he eventually became a self-employed roofing contractor and she, the go-getter marketing director at a local mall. her son from a previous relationship grew to call scott dad. >> i slowly and surely called

him dad. >> and 13 years on, all were living a comfortable life together a nice, big house with acreage out in the country. there were vacations in the caribbean. soaking in hot tubs, snorkeling with the stingrays. island hopping. scott liked that people thought of him as a good-time guy. mr. big. >> if you knew scott, then you would know that he wanted everything to be the biggest and the best. >> and he kept up on his fitness regimen. the former bodybuilder didn't want to slide into flab. he kept after lisa to stay in shape with him. and her best friend from the mall, a woman named leah frasier became her workout buddy. >> she was always conscious about what she was eating, how she was exercising. she would do aerobics, the stair stepper. >> scott installed a few pieces of gym equipment in the basement of the house. a tread million and a weight

machine. it was there that something catastrophic happened on the morning of july 2, 2009. and now scott was in his truck, racing for help, calling 911. >> 911. what's your emergency? >> my wife has had an accident at home. >> as scott sped through summer cornfields, his wife lisa was in the back of the cab in very bad shape as he told the dispatcher. >> i need an escort or something to get to the hospital quicker. >> okay. what kind of an accident has she had. >> i found her in the workout room with bars on top of her. >> he would say he found his wife spradled face up on the exercise bench with the barbell weight crushing her throat. >> show's blue, not breathing, nothing. >> paramedics intercepted scott's truck minutes from the hospital. a police car followed behind, dash cam rolling. doctors could not revive her. and at the age of 36, lisa

patterson was gone. how could any of the friends and family adjust to vibrant lisa with that beaming smile being just a memory now. >> she's always in good spirits. she was always smiling. >> she was just an amazing woman through and through. >> dillen had been up early that morning off to the job site where he was helping his step dad and his crew. it had been the quickest of good byes to his mom. >> my last words to her was i love you, and she said the same thing back. >> and now suddenly they were all gathering at the hospital. dillen got the news from his dad. >> i just lost it. the one person i depended on my whole life was gone. >> lisa's mom, lucy rich, was taken in to see her daughter's body. >> i just walked around her body and kept, i couldn't believe she was gone. >> lisa's best friend from the mall, leah frazier was likewise enormously saddened. >> i've lost probably my best friend, somebody who made me a

better person. someone who was good. >> because lisa had been in her prime and in sound health her death was categorized as unattended, which meant police would take a look before it could be ruled an accident. but what else could it be? a woman home alone working out, a husband who comes back to the house for lunch only to find such a ghastly scene in the basement. it couldn't be anything but an accident, could it? >> that's what you might have thought, at first. but when we return, police do a little investigating. something just doesn't make sense. >> it had a red flag to me, yes it did. >> some things make your noise twitch. >> yes. sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering so, i'm walking down the street, sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering just you know walking, sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering and i found myself in the middle of this parade honoring america's troops. which is actually quite fitting because geico has been serving the military for over 75 years.

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when you're an on-call detective like wabash kuhn at this's mike davis, you know that days off, like the upcoming fourth of july sometimes have a way of going up in smoke. but the assignment he was catching didn't sound like one of those. check out the death of a young woman called in by the marion county hospital er. >> they said come on in. we have a case we need to work on, on a lady who passed away on a weight bench. >> the victim was a woman who worked at the local mall, lisa patterson. a sheriff's detective had taken her husband aside in the

ambulance bay for a brief recorded statement. >> talking with scott patterson in reference to the death investigation. >> scott explained what had happened. how he'd come home from work to shower and eat lunch before an afternoon doctor's appointment for his bad back. lisa had taken the day off. >> i went downstairs. that's when i saw her on the bench with the weight bar thing across her neck. >> he said he lifted the weights off and started cpr. as an exfirst responder, he'd been trained in that but said he couldn't revive her. >> so i acted out of impulse and simply picked her up, carried her upstairs and threw her in the truck and that's when i called 911. >> another officer, crime scene investigator jason page with the state police was now assigned to document patterson's truck and examine lisa's body. he found a bruise on the woman's neck and an abrasion on the left

shoulder. >> seeing those injuries, jason, did it explain to you what had happened? >> you take it at face value. her husband stated he had found her at home, the barbell was across her throat. those injuries seemed consistent with that story. >> signs were pointing towards an awful accident. some clean-up paperwork to do and on to the next case. still, the detective whose case it was, detective davis elected to bring scott down to the station that afternoon for a formal videotaped interview. >> first of all, scott, i just want you to know that i'm sorry for your loss, okay? >> the interview began with a more detailed accounting of scott patterson's day. he'd gotten up he said at quarter to 5:00 in the morning. kissed lisa good-bye and made a run to the landfill north of town. he got back home around 6:30, in time to meet his stepson dillen and an employee, and they all headed out to the job site together. >> did a couple errands.

came home, oh, probably 11:30, probably. >> he said he called after lisa, but she didn't answer. music from downstairs told him she was working out. 10 to 15 minutes went by, he said before he actually headed downstairs to discover her. >> she was on the bench. she had a bar across her neck. >> okay. what kind of bar was it? >> the bench press. >> so the bench press bar? >> she was purple. totally purple. her arms were dropped down to her sides. >> he said he lifted the bar off lisa's neck. felt for a pulse, then tried giving her cpr on the bench. >> i probably should have called 911, but at that time i didn't. just cradled her, picked her up, carried her upstairs and put her in my truck. >> as he was backing out, he told the detective he called 911. >> i had my flashers on. i was driving like an idiot. i was turning the corner, and my

wife was in the back seat. and she fell onto the floor. and it's hard to drive and reach back there and hold the body. >> he said when he saw the ambulance he rolled down his window and pulled over to the curve. >> maybe that's what happened. >> at that time, yes. we didn't know. >> but there was something about the way scott was acting that didn't pass the detective smell test. >> why don't you let me the send an ambulance to try cpr. >> i'm an ex-responder. i tried cpr. >> some things make your nose twitch. >> then he was asked fwt state of his marriage. >> how was your relationship with lisa. >> is there ever a perfect marriage? >> i don't know. >> they'd been married for 13 years, scott said, but just a few months ago they'd filed for divorce. >> when you say "we", you or her?

>> i. >> why were you going to divorce her? >> i had an affair. >> an affair. but he insisted the relationship with the other woman was over. in fact, the divorce with lisa was on hold. he said they'd had a change of heart and had been trying to work things out. >> okay. so there's something else we're going to look into. >> after taking the statement, investigator page made a physical check of the husband. noting no fresh injuries on his face, arms or hands. routine stuff. then the officers headed out to the patterson home. the camcorder documented a house in pristine condition. there were no signs of forced entry, nothing to suggest a struggle. they did note two security cameras mounted on the exterior stone facade, but they checked the recorder in the garage and the dvd tray was empty. >> you didn't get lucky here. >> didn't get lucky. >> downstairs in the workout room they found the bench. it wasn't a free weight system

but rather something called a smith machine, a professional weight device where the weight bar moves up and down on two fixed rails. the investigator took a close look at the apparatus to see if it supported scott's story. he talked us through the analysis he performed that day. >> this is the weight bench from the patterson home. >> he noticed two things right away. when he laid down on the bench, the bar lined up not with his chess but rather with his neck. >> so if you complete the lift it would align with the body in this fashion. >> bar on the throat. that matched scott's story. investigator page also made note of a circular smudge on the center of the bar itself. had that spot been left by lisa's neck? >> it looked like body oil to me or perhaps sweat. >> would that mean you suspected this part of the bar was making consnakt. >> it appeared that way to me.

>> when investigator page tried the machine it appeared to be in working order. he couldn't make it fail accidentally. and once in use the bar felt fairly easy to re-rack and secure using the hook and holds along the frame. >> you complete your repetitions and you rotate these hooks and they engage. >> two safety stoppers which would have afforded extra protection were resting unused at the bottom of each rail. >> when she's are engaged, it gives you an added layer of safety. >> that's all cool if they're in place, but if you don't have that in place you don't have that protection. >> if the bar plummeted it could have gone down with bone-breaking force. >> like a guillotine. >> it could be a fatal accident. >> oh, yes, i would certainly consider it fatal. >> there it was. perhaps lisa's death happened

just as scott had said. certainly nothing jumped out and screamed homicide. still, an important voice hadn't been heard from, yet. and that was the medical examiner. his autopsy could prove to be crucial. it was. >> coming up. a clue so small it was almost invisible to the naked eye. might have a big impact on the case. >> getting that information at that moment, had the case changed for you?

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36 year old lisa pattinson was dead, but detective mike davis and crime scene investigator jason page were not sure yet what kind of case, if any, they had. on the suspicious side of the ledger, lisa's husband scott had raised red flags when he

declined emergency services help as he raced with his wife to the hospital. likewise, what he said about that drive in a recorded interview raised eyebrows. >> it's hard to drive and reach back there and hold a body. >> i wouldn't think someone would refer to someone as their loved one as a body when you're claiming you're not sure she's even dead yet. >> still, maybe it was a freak accident. first pass look at the weight bench lisa had been on suggested an accident was plausible. and at the autopsy, the medical examiner didn't find anything to explain a sudden death. nothing like a stroke or heart attack. lisa had been in good health. >> healthy 36 year old woman who worked out. >> but the autopsy did find a quite unexpected finding, something that made the investigators very troubled. lisa had died not from a sudden crushing blow to the neck, a guillotine effect, but rather from a slow neck compression as if the barbell had rested on her

throat and gradually cut off her air supply. >> when you were testing it, when you let go of that bar it was a real convincing thunk on the neck. >> other yeah. >> and would you have expected crushed bones. >> perhaps even her neck. >> did not find that. >> no. did not find that. >> what had happened to lisa pattinson? >> we know her neck wasn't crushed. her spine wasn't fractured. didn't have a stroke, didn't have a heart attack. didn't know what we had. >> meanwhile, the people who knew lisa best wondered what in the world she was doing on the weight bench in the first place. christine knew lisa liked to work out, but she was a treadmill girl, not a weightlifter. >> she was doing more aerobic stuff. >> and the dead woman's best friend from the mall leah knew that lisa couldn't lift heavy things, not with a neck injury she'd suffered a couple years earlier from a car accident.

even the holiday ornaments were too much for her. >> i did the boxes, the carrying. the weight machine. she doesn't lift weights. >> then there was the elephant in the room. a subject her friends and family didn't feel comfortable putting words to. and that was how they felt about scott all the years he'd been married to lisa, impressions of self-centered jerk to nasty drill instructor. now that circle of friends were asking if scott had something to do with that so-called accident in the basement. >> there he is. asleep. gosh! >> he was lisa's husband. but the rest of the family didn't get it. he'd long been an awkward fit to them. >> but i have no tin foil. >> at holiday gatherings, they couldn't help but note how tough he was on lisa's stuff dillen. he bossed him around like a raw recruit and meted out tough

punishments for the smallest misstep. like what happened when the boy forgot to take out the morning mail. >> he said take your clothes off, leave your underwear on. and you're going to go walk out to the mailbox. i had a great mom, but i always wanted a better fatherly figure. >> now when it came to his mom, scott could put on the charm. >> give me a hug. >> but to lisa's mother and sister, scott never measured up. >> i wanted her to be with someone that totally respected her. and loved her with all their heart, and i didn't see that with scott. >> it wasn't a big, dark family secret that lisa and scott had been crashing into the rocks for a while. he was having an affair. and lisa found out. they'd talked divorce. when lisa visited her sister at her home in virginia about a month before she died, without saying as much, she telegraphed that the marriage was over.

sister christine acted as lisa's financial adviser. >> she said, well, i need to make some changes on my life insurance policy. and when she said that to me i knew that she was getting ready to leave. >> and how much was the policy for? >> 450,000. >> lisa wanted her policy, which named scott and her son as co-ben fisheries quietly switched to dillen alone. christine mailed the paperwork for lisa to sign, but hadn't gotten it back by the daily sa died. the day after rhesa died, the family met near the mall where she used to work. scott had gotten wind of the policy change. he pulled his sister-in-law aside and asked insurance questions. >> he's asking me did she sign it. >> he wants to know if he's off the policy. >> right. >> back at the wabash county sheriff's office, crime scene investigator jason page was still puzzling through the autopsy results. death by slow pressure to the

windpipe rather than a bone-breaking catastrophic plunge of the weight bar. >> neck compression, it was like a slow neck compression. >> then the medical examiner came up with an additional finding. and it would be as significant for investigator page as it was minute. >> on her back from her neck down to her waistline he noticed what are pa teak aye. >> minuscule bruises, hardly visible to the naked eye. not just on the eback of her neck, but along her waist and back as well. what could have caused that? >> that troubled, perhaps, somebody straddled her and sat on her chest or her torso at the time of death. >> straddling her. but she'd been home alone working out. the all but invisible bruising wasn't enough for the pathologist to officially rule lisa's death a homicide, but it did set a fire under the

investigators. >> getting that information at that moment, had the case changed for you. >> absolutely. >> you were now following a homicide. >> yes. >> a theory of homicide. but the case was mostly innuendo. they needed to come up with hard evidence they could show to a prosecutor. they needed a lucky break. and, as it turned out, one was a phone call away. >> coming up. there's been plenty of attention on that weight bench. but it's another piece of equipment that just might crack this case. >> i got goose bumps. i'm like, oh, my goodness. as a kid, i made a list of all the places i wanted to visit. i'm still not going to make it to mars, but thanks to hotwire's incredibly low travel prices, i can afford to cross more things off my list. this year alone, we went to the top of the statue of liberty... and still saved enough to go to texas-- to a real dude ranch! hotwire checks the competition's rates every day... so they can guarantee their low prices. so we got our 4-star hotels for half price. next up, hollywood!

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and belgian chocolate. discover magnum chocolate pleasure. it's funny in criminal investigations how sometimes things fall into your lap from the most unexpected places. and that's what happened in the

middle of july 2009. lisa had been dead for a couple of weeks. detective meek davis had been at his desk preparing subpoenas for the pattinson case when he took a call from a manger of a local burglar alarm company. he told the detective that one of his sales men had just gotten off the phone with a customer who had questions about how his video worked. the customer was scott pattinson. did they know something more about this? they explained how they had checked out that video set up and noticed there was no dvd. no dvd, no pictures, right? well, detective davis almost fell out of his chair when he heard what the burglar alarm man said next. >> he said you don't need one. it records to a hard drive. and my mouth just kind of opened up. >> a hard drive. the detective got a warrant and

streamed over to the house where the recorder remained untouched in the garage. what a video festival the detective was about to have. >> this is looking from his garage, the side here. >> the unblinking camera documented his landfill run then it came alive an hour and a half later to hook up with dillen and hisliy as they headed to the job site. >> so he's a good story tell, good accounting of the day. >> sure. >> then scott's timeline went haywire. remember he had told the cops he didn't get back to the house that morning until 11:30, just a few minutes before he came upon lisa in trouble. >> i came home about 11:30, probably. >> but what did scott's surveillance system have to say? a completely ditch story.

>> who's the head? >> scott pattinson. >> and the time is what? >> 8:32. >> not 11:30. 8:32. and scott patten son is walking in the door. >> you and other officers are looking at it for the first time. what are you saying to one another? >> holy cow. he really did it. he really killed her. >> fast forward. there's scott again, this time in a change of clothes, talking in his cell phone outside the garage. 11:40. scott has changed again, back in work pants. then at 12:10 he's on the move. his pickup truck backs into frame and off he goes to the hospital with lisa in the back seat. when wabash county prosecutor bill hartley ladies on the video, he knew he finally had a case. >> i got goose bumps. i'm like, oh, my goodness >> in september 2009, a grand jury convened. and a week later, scott pattinson was indicted for

murder. detective davis handcuffed scott at his mom's house and escorted him to the wabash county jail. >> anything to say? >> i'm not guilty. >> the state of indiana versus scott pattinson went to trial in late october 2010. the key, prosecutor hartley told the jury, was the timeline. scott's own security camera video was the star witness against him. no cameras were allowed in court, but the proceedings were audiotaped. >> from his own system, it shows that he had been home that whole time. >> hartley had brought the weight bench into the courtroom and planted it right before the jury. crime scene investigator jason page demonstrated for the panel how lisa should have been able to wriggle out from under the barbell, given that she was in good health and the weight hadn't thunked down on her throat with bone-breaking force. a demonstration he later reported for dateline, first securing the hooks.

>> how much effort do you have to expend to get these to catch. >> just turning were your wrists. >> and then you're out of trouble. >> she sa could have used her shoulder to shimmy off the bench to the side. >> could you wriggle out? >> yes, i could. do it like this. >> but, if someone had been straddling over her, sitting on her chest and preventing her from re-racking that bar. >> you're in a bad way. >> you're in a bad situation. >> dead within 30 seconds? or at least unconscious? >> i don't want to speculate, but i don't think it would take very long. >> if the government's theory that scott had straddled his wife and killed her was correct, the question arose for the jury, why do it? the prosecutor said money wasn't a small thing for scott. a divorce would have cost him. >> he owned some nice trucks and this business. he was probably concerned he would have to split some of that up with lisa. >> then there was the business

about being dropped from lisa's insurance policy. his share, a quarter of a million dollars wind fall. but investigators had excavated another rich mine of clues. and that had to do with the other woman scott admitted having an affair with. the jury heard scott claim it was all over by the time of lisa's death. >> do you still have a relationship with that female? >> no. >> but the prosecution responded that it wasn't, not by a long shot. and the real headline grabber was that the other woman was a prominent person in the community, the former chief of staff to the mayor of marion, indiana, a woman named stacy henderson, the wife of a local police officer. in exchange for immunity, prosecutor hartley put henderson on the stand, and she testified that she was still involved with scott on the day lisa died. >> during 2009, were you in love with scott? >> yes. >> did you tell him that? >> yes. >> did he tell you that he was in love with you?

>> yes. >> to underscore the point in bold strobes, the prosecutor introduced scott's phone records. the logs reveal that on july 2, the day of lisa's death, scott and stacy, who was away on vacation exchanged no fewer than 130 text messages. plotting those lovers' calls and texts on a timeline, you see not only is stacy the person on the receiving end of the call on the video, but she's getting a text message from scott that's three characters long while he's at the wheel driving his dead or dying wife to the hospital. >> to me, that was huge. here he is driving his wife to the hospital. but he's got the state of mind to think about his girlfriend and send her a text message. >> so there it was. a divorce in which scott would likely lose part of his business, life insurance policy from which he'd gain a bundle, and a continuing relationship with a girlfriend with whom he

seems still very much involved. add up the circumstantial pieces of this puzzle, hartley said, and lisa's death was no accident. it was now the defense's opportunity to chip away at the case. >> scott, do you have anything to say? >> no, not at this time. >> did you kill lisa? >> no, i did not. >> how can you prove you're innocent? >> time will tell. >> coming up. at trial, the defense comes out swinging. >> there was no physical evidence that proved to me that scott pattinson murdered his wife. >> when dateline continues. a boatload! ♪ foghorn sounds loudly ♪ what's seattle's favorite noise? the puget sound! ♪ foghorn sounds loudly ♪ all right, never mind doesn't matter. this is a classic. what does an alien seamstress sew with? a space needle! ♪ foghorn sounds loudly continuously ♪ oh come off it captain! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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in wabaswabash, indiana, th scott pattinson trial was riveting stuff. damaging video thought not to be recorded, and a woman receiving texts on the day of the woman's death. now the defense led by stanley campbell had a small mountain to climb. the team started with the illicit girlfriend, a fling, the defense contended, not a romance for the ages. >> there was no evidence that mr. pattinson was thinking about killing his wife or that he was going to kill his wife for this other woman. >> so what about that flurry of

text messages? just routine chitchat henderson told the prosecutor. and the three character texts as he drove to the hospital, that was benign too. >> 911. >> the number's 911? >> yes. >> simply, she suggested scott's way of signaling that he was under duress. the phone call at 10:00, him to her and seen on the surveillance video was more henderson said of the same, just checking in on each other's day so far. >> did you think he was responsible for lisa's death? >> no. >> as for the divorce, maybe it was on hold, just as scott had told the cops. a retainer fee for lisa's attorney had been returned to her bank account. and about scott being taken off of her insurance policy, the defense claims scott knew nothing of that until the son dillen told him hours after the lisa had died. >> not being husband of the year

with any of the evidence but nothing to say he was a killer. >> nothing to say he was a killer, no. >> so if you're the defense, what do you do about the weight bench? the defense team maintains the police had never understood the difficulty of getting out from under its grip. sure, a fit state trooper could wriggle out. but what about lisa, someone not used to working out with weights. maybe she was overtired or disoriented. plus accidental asphyxiation is not unheard of. they had referenced a case of a young boy working out on very similar the equipment, he suffocated, an accidental death. >> that's bizarre. that's strange. >> and in that iowa case, the safety stops had not been secured in place, just as they hadn't on the pattinson machine. the defense moved on. it would call its own expert witness, a medical examiner from

kentucky named dr. greg davis to give a counter explanation for that minute bruising with the funny name, the petechiae. >> you thought maybe it wasn't petechiae at all? >> that's correct. >> after reviewing the autopsy photos, dr. davis concluded they weren't petechiae caused by one straddling lisa when she died but rather bruises that occur naturally when blood pools after death. >> they're caused by a different mechanism. >> and the same witness offered a different picture of the murder scenario. had scott pattinson indeed been on top of lisa pressing that bar down onto her throat, dr. davis said he would have expected to see more significant damage to her neck. >> i would expect to see a fracture of that cart ladies and gentlemen right here. the adam's apple. more injury. >> and the defense introduced a new theme. they talked to the jurors about a toxicology report that lisa had a dangerous cocktail of

drugs in her system, particularly a diet drug that's known to sometimes produce the side effects like fainting spells and irregular heartbeats. she had three times the amount of the therapeutic amount of that drug. >> she's already exerting herself. that could tip her over the edge. the barcomes down over her neck. it could take anywhere from a few seconds at that point for unconsciousness to occur. >> that quick. >> that quickly. >> the conclusion from the expert witness, lisa pattinson's death is not a homicide but one of an undetermined cause. >> there was no physical evidence that proved to me that scott pattinson murdered his wife. >> but what about the defense's biggest obstacle? that damning surveillance camera video. they can see that scott had lied to the police about not coming home until 11:30 in the morning. his rationale said the defense was that scott knew right away

husbands with suddenly dead wives always look suspicious in police eyes. so he simply panicked and made the bad choice of lying about his timeline. but a liar, argued the defense, isn't a killer. >> the fact that he was there doesn't necessarily mean that he was responsible for her death. >> you know, there's a lot of people who look at this case and ask themselves the question they might have asked of richard nixon. why didn't you destroy the tapes? >> well, maybe the answer is that if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have any concern or fear about what's going to be on the tapes. >> and, by the way, wouldn't you think that lisa, fighting for her life, would have been able to put some scratches or marks on scott? and there were none. add it all up, the defense concluded, and you've got reasonable doubt. the prosecution's case, little more than theory and speculation. so the case went to the jurors. they took a straw poll and were surprised to find themselves

split 7-5. >> that's a big gap. >> it's huge. >> the jury conducts its own experiment with the weight bench. could that help them reach

after three weeks and nearly 30 witnesses, the case against scott pattinson was finally in the hands of the jury. either they believed the defense's version that lisa's pattinson's death on a weight bench was a horrible accident, or they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed his wife by suffocating her with a barbell. upstairs in the jury room, tense deliberations began. >> it was like, game on. it's time. it's your decision. >> we spoke with four from pattinson's 12-member jury. their first order of business, a straw vote. foreman larry vaughn was stunned by the results. >> 7-5.

>> wow. you're split. >> that's shocking. >> that's a big gap. >> mm-hm. >> that's huge. >> seven guilty, five not. for those in the guilty camp, the pivotal piece of evidence, they say was the surveillance tape. scott at home when lisa died, then lying about his day to the police. but those voting not guilty, like jordan ford, weren't convinced. >> okay. that makes him a liar, not necessarily a murderer. >> jurors did agree on one thing. mistress stacy henderson. she was still very much smitten. >> one of the questions was, are you still in love with scott. she said no. and i watched scott, and he was devastated. >> the petechiae, for the jury, not so much. >> the petechiae didn't do it for me. >> granted, it was there, very hard for us to see. >> as the jurors debated, the absence of evidence placing

scott in the workout room with his wife kept them locked in a near even balance. >> there was no smoking gun. no witness who saw this happen. it depended on us making what we thought was the right decision. >> eight hours of deliberations, however, swayed one side to agree with the other of the word came down that a verdict had been reached. lisa's sister christine held hands with family in the first row, praying. >> and i just kept envisioning the word guilty in my mind. it's got to be guilty. >> the verdict reads as follows. -- we the jury find the defendant guilty of the crime of murder, a felony. >> guilty as charged. lisa's family couldn't hold back the tears. >> we just couldn't stop. we hung our head in relief. >> scott hung his headstone faced as he was escorted back to jail. jurors said the foremost factor that bridged the divide was an

experiment they conducted in the courtroom. they asked the judge if they could reexamine the weight bench. one of the female jurors agreed to play lisa. they wanted to know how easy it would be for her to wriggle out from beneath that bar. >> it wasn't two seconds and she was out. we said okay, one of you ladies straddle her and do the same thing, and she couldn't move. >> lisa pattinson had died on a hot july morning. now on a cold december day, scott pattinson was sentenced. the judge cited unusual harm to lisa's son dillen in giving scott an enhanced sentence of 60 years. >> on july 2, 2009, you were a human disaster, leaving death and destruction in your wake. >> scott left the courtroom defiant and pledged continued silence. >> do you have anything to say? >> wise man knows to keep his mouth shut. that's what i'm going to do. >> scott declined dateline's

request for an interview. his appeal has been denied. so the beauty from all those years ago is gone. friends and family who toasted them are left to reflect on whether her life's companion really was the beast in more than just costume. was the last face she saw that of her husband looming over her, easing that bar down onto her throat? >> i hope not. i hope not. i hope that's not the last thought she had. someone that she loved. someone that she thought loved her. someone that she was loyal to. >> and now her son dillen has had to come to terms as best he can with that terrible day. and the man he once called dad. >> you believe scott pattinson murdered your mother? >> i do. >> pressed that bar into her throat? >> yes, sir. >> why? >> greed. money. >> stuff that really means nothing in the end. >> stuff that means nothing.

>> dillen is now in his fourth year at virginia tech. and by all accounts is doing well. with a steady support of friends and his mother's family, he's doing his best to navigate life without his guiding star. >> the worst part is not hearing i love you from her. and not hearing her words of encouragement, you know, hey, you're an awesome kid. i love you. keep up the good work. >> what's he stolen from you? >> my precious lisa. just her smile. she would call me, you know. every morning, say, hi, mom. took that away from me. and just our whole family is not complete without her. >> there will always be an empty chair at the family table. only images of the smile and memories remain. >> that's all for now. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us.