over the years i had someone be a lone wolf. i do take my faithfulness really seriously. i am passionate. i have been known to maybe get a little too wound up as i watch the games and they make myself miserable after a loss or maybe

happy after a win. >> chris willis is also in his 20th year at nfl films as the head of their research library. chris's profession means he is immersed in the history of the game every day. this is nothing new to chris. he has been preparing for this his entire life. >> being a big football fan in ohio one of my other passions was reading and writing. i got that from my mom and dad. my mom ran a used bookstore for years. besides being a football junk ki was sitting in the sports section and reading almost any football book i could. one of my favorite years of football was the 20s and 30s. i love the sand lots and paying

23 for $20 a game. when they plaid for $50 and you see the context now, so that's how i gravitated towards reading and writing. i never really plan today write a book. i loved the history part and working at nfl films contribute to that. old laeather is based on interviews i did with players from the 20s and 30s. >> one thing lead to another and the young kid who used to it in his dad's bookstore consumed in profootball was now thoring tau them. >> i went a different way of researching. you have to do a lot of microphone research. there wuasn't a lot of people alive. i wanted a different research

angle. i started looking at my favorite team. i started looking at the history of san francisco 49ers. it was around end of 2011 and 2012 and i saw the 1984 49ers was about to celebrate. the team went 15-1. [ cheers and applause ] they had a great play off run. i was like wouldn't it be great to interview the players and coaches from that team and sort of preserve their story of that season instead of going to the stone age and doing the 20s and 30s again i chose the 49ers as my next book project.

>> so chris was able to connect with the team starting with one of the players from that year, line backer turner. turner was a direct and aided in his journey to reach out to the men that were part of that. >> the one thing i found out in the process was this was a great punch of players. they gave me the time and lot of them had great stories about that year. craig told me going to training camp was heaven. he had a smile on his face when he said it. this is when they were doing two-a-days. he had two brothers about six years apart from each other. they were both inciteful of this was a once in a lifetime

student. they had a bad taste in their mouth from 1983 when they lost to the redskins. they kdedicate that had whole season to getting back to the super bowl. those stories were just priceless. >> game ball. >> coach. >> it was a wonderful experience. i wouldn't trade it for anything. >> faithful to me means you just believe. it doesn't make any difference what you believe, the worst day or the best day. >> holding true to his words he flies the flag of faithfulness on a weekly basis. >> i don't gloat. if you come in on mondays it's

usually after a 49ers loss that i wear the colors. i think it's easier after a win to get a little mihype but afte they lose i need to show the support more and wear the colors. >> here is to hoping that after every game chris will be seen without a shred of red and gold clothing on.

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members of the faithful, trust us to share yours by reaching out to 49ers studios at fns@49ers.com . a couple of years ago when he set up shop at 49ers studio he gave me a call. a couple of years he said i'm taking that new job in san francisco. can you help me? we got highlights together, we were able to put sort of care pacts together. he was very grateful for that.

anything for the 49ers but anything for the nfl family. it was my pleasure to help the 49ers get started at their studio. ♪ ♪ ♪

a worried family converged on the medical center in erie, pennsylvania, on august 13th, 2009. there, in the icu, ray lay deathly ill. doctors tried to determine what was killing him. and bloodwork told the story. ray had somehow ingested a toxic dose of ethylene glycol, anti-freeze. it looked as if they had figured

it out too late. even in small amounts, just a few ounces, anti-freeze is almost always fatal. ray's daughter monica, was with her dad. >> he was laying in beed. >> how did he look? >> horrible. >> what were you thinking? >> i didn't know what to think because nothing was making any sense. >> ray had missed the narrow window in which anti-freeze poisoning can be reversed. end of life discussions with doctors began. as his wife, it was teresa's call. three days after he was admitted to the hospital, teresa told the doctors to let him go. her son, josh, watched teresa make that agonizing decision. >> she was devastated. absolutely devastated. i could see it in her face. >> hard to do? >> uh-huh. >> ray's death was referred to the medical examiner in the erie county coroner's office.

>> by the time ray had gotten to you, anti-freeze poisoning was already suspected. >> my job in autopsy was to confirm the crystals in the kidney which indicated he had e e them on board. >> he had the chrislrystalcryst? >> no doubt. >> the manner of death, was listed as undetermined. teresa said ray told her he drank something sweet around the time he got sick. and antifreeze had a very sweet taste. she told the er doctor in the ohio hospital that ray had been threatening to kill himself. it was looking like suicide. ray's children didn't buy it. what were you thinking? >> the only thing i was thinking was i didn't believe the whole he tries suicide by antifreeze.

my dad would never do that. all of us knew that. >> when ray died, the wheels of justice began to slowly spin. taylor cleveland is a detective with the sheriff's office. >> we are received a call from the erie county coroner's office and they want today give us the earliest heads up they could there was probably something in this case that was not natural. something that was quite possibly a homicide. >> if this was homicide, investigators had plenty of work to do. >> raymond had been a corrections officer and had unquestionably during his career dealt with some pretty bad guys who were locked up? >> yes. >> cops started looking into ray's past to see if someone was settling an old score. three days after his death, techs processed teresa and ray's house as a crime scene. it had been cleaned by the time they got there. ray's bedding was in an outside

crash can. there were numerous crushed beer and dr. pepper cans, in the garage were two containers of antifreeze, one sealed and one open. that told investigators nothing. because there were no fingerprints or dna on either container. how long after raymond died did you speak with teresa? >> couple days after. >> typically when investigators start looking back at somebody's marriage, they see either a great marriage or a bad marriage or something in between. this was what? >> according to teresa, this was not a good marriage. >> she admitted that? >> yes. >> she had to be a suspect pretty much from the get go. >> unfortunately, wives kill their husbands. and we see that quite often. so you have to at least look at her. >> teresa laid out for investigators her actions in the days leading up to ray's death. she, again, said she tried to

get ray to seek medical assistance when he first got sick but he refused. she said ray had been miserable and unhappy and she speculated he committed suicide. this was looking like intro to detective work 101. teresa, the suspect's spouse had means, motive and opportunity. when investigators dug deeper into the strange life and times of teresa and ray, their case took a head snapping turn. in the direction of a totally new suspect. coming up. a blast from the past. >> this man sent my dad a bomb. >> turns out, there was someone who had tried to kill ray once before.

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ray was dead and his wife, teresa, believed it was a suicide. but law enforcement thought this smelled like a murder. but someone had poisoned ray with antifreeze. detectives looked for his killer among the thousands of the worst of the worst criminals that ray had spent a career guarding in pennsylvania's maximum security prisons. >> raymond was not the corrections officer that all the inmates hated. you know, vowed to get even with once they got outside?

>> quite the opposite. raymond and the people that raymond associated with during his time at the prison were generally respected. and did not run into a lot of problems with inmates. >> so to the cops, it didn't look like anyone from back in the day had it in for ray. but there was someone from his and teresa's recent past who had once wanted ray out of the way, if not dead. detectives learned that in the winter of 2003 when ray and teresa were first getting to know one another. she was also seeing another man she'd met online. a fellow by the name of robert, and she left ray for a few weeks to be with robert. when teresa went back to ray, robert did not take that well. not at all. >> robert was infatuated with

tere teresa. >> robert stalked teresa, and then it escalated. >> robert sent ray a bomb, a functioning working bomb. he went to his mail box and found the odd package. >> if raymond have opened that package would he have been killed? >> severely injured if not killed. robert said at the time that he had wanted to be with teresa and he thought that raymond was in the way. >> when i look at teresa, i guess i don't see the femme fatale that guys want to kill for. >> neither do i. >> but it's there. >> in? fashion, yes. >> ray's daughter monica remembers a phone call from her

father about the bomb. >> his voice was shaky, it was something i'd never heard before. >> what did you say, what did you think? >> i didn't know what to think. i think at first i couldn't believe it. >> robert pleaded guilty to manufacturing a firearm and was sentenced to five years in prison. he was patrolled months before ray became mysteriously ill. did you wonder whether he had anything to do with it? >> yeah. absolutely. teresa was the last one with him, but this man sent my dad a bomb. >> monica wasn't the only one wondering about that. when you discovered somebody else try todied to kill your vi and is now out of prison, that changes everything? >> it does. we had one of two options in this case, either it was a wife killing her husband, or some elaborate plot to finish what robert had started and was

unsuccessful with. >> detectives tracked down their new suspect. >> he was living what appeared to be a normal life in western pennsylvania. >> you or other investigators probably spoke with his employer, co-workers, family. >> investigators from our office spoke with a lot of people associated with robert. >> could you track his movements? >> he was not on gps monitoring at the time. >> if he was going to see teresa or stalk raymond nobody would have known about it? >> fair assessment. >> he certainly would have had access to antifreeze. >> everybody has access to antifreeze. >> detectives were trying to find out if teresa's ex-boyfriend turned letter bomber had anything to do with ray's death. they dug deeper into teresa's past, but the investigation went slowly. weeks became months. and ray's family counted the days. >> it just felt like we were

getting swept under the rug. >> some people would have given up in that instance. >> how could you? it's your father. your father was murdered, you're not going to give up. >> what did you do? >> i pressed on. i did what i had to do. i made sure that there was justice. >> that was easier said than done. hard times were coming to the county. coming up. the case goes cold. because instead of looking for killers, detectives are looking for work. >> all kinds of things go wrong in murder investigations, but the police department running out of money is usually not one of the things you think of. >> no. ♪

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in america, our do it yourself culture extends even to killing. there are more than 40,000 suicides each year in the united states. far more than the number of homicides. that was the issue, there wasn't any question what killed ray. that was antifreeze. but by whose hand? ray's widow, teresa and her family maintained a despondent ray killed himself when teresa left him.

ray's children and the cops, thought it was murder. two theories, and with murder, two possible suspects. teresa, the grieving wife, and teresa's fresh from the slammer ex boyfriend who once tried to mail bomb ray out of the way. but his story was checking out. >> we just couldn't find anything other than his prior association with raymond that would suggest that he did this. >> what kind of vibe did you get off of him after ray's death? >> the last thing he said to me, was that could have been me and he looked concerned. looked like somebody dodged a bullet. >> i'm guessing now she and robert changed places in the suspect pantheon? >> 100%. >> she's at the top of the list? >> yes. >> but the investigation into the death of ray was about to turn as cold as afebruary.

for an odd reason. >> shortly after this case was investigated by our department. there was a financial collapse and we laid off about 90% of our officers. >> county what, ran out of money? >> yes. >> and the result was? >> murders were not getting solved. >> ray's case was one of them. his children, were not happy. >> i wasn't trying to be a pain in the butt. >> the county runs out of money. the police department running out of money is usually not one of the things you think of? >> no. >> and like, for almost two years, nothing happened. >> yeah. >> monica's two children were out of the house. she was able to take time off from helping her husband with his construction business and devote hours to her mission. >> i sent letters to everybody. i was constantly calling the sheriff's department for new information and whatnot but wasn't getting anywhere.

>> and meanwhile, back in ohio, life went on. what was teresa doing during those 18 months that you weren't able to investigate? >> filing for life insurance. collecting life insurance from raymond. >> some of the $150,000 in insurance went to buy a house where teresa was raising her grandchildren. and about a year after ray's death, there was a new man in her life. tim shoemaker was an over the road trucker when he and teresa found each other. how did you and teresa meet? >> on the internet. >> what did you like about her? >> she was attentive, just a sweet lady. >> before long, tim and teresa were living together. tim gave up long distance trucking for a job closer to home. did she tell you she was a suspect in a murder investigation? >> she told me. >> and she said, i didn't do it, didn't have anything to do with

it. >> she didn't have to say she didn't do it, i knew she didn't do it. >> ray's daughter, monica was in action. e-mailing, cajoling, pleading. >> i wrote letters to the ohio attorney general. then i got a phone call. and they said they were looking into it. >> ohio attorney general had recently started a cold case unit. and in september 2012, three years after ray's death, his office reopened the case with teresa, the prime suspect. >> i didn't want her to get away with murder. my prosecutors and detectives didn't want to see that happen either. >> those investigators were glad to be back in business. there were reasons they liked teresa for ray's murder. one had to do with a story they heard about her first marriage. >> her previous husband, roy,

told us that teresa had put rat poison in his mashed potato. >> he knew that how? >> roy said that he took two bites and fed some to their son, teresa reached into her son's mouth. pulled out the mashed potatoed. roy said he got ill after that. >> the son was okay? >> son was okay, yes. roy said the other thought he gave then was when his german shepherd was poisoned. roy said he never connected the two until raymond was poisoned. >> teresa's son from that first marriage is roy jr. and he says that never happened. there's a story out there that your mom try today poison your father. >> it's all lies. >> why would your father lie about this? >> maybe he is jealous, maybe he feels that she ruined his life.

i don't know. maybe this is his way of getting back at her. >> and there was a polygraph exam she took early in the investigation. the examiner had asked teresa two questions. did you poison ray with antifreeze and do you know who poisoned ray. teresa's answer to both, no. which was also the answer to whether teresa was telling the truth. >> she failed her polygraph test. >> that lie detector failure was inadmissible in court but helped convince cops they were on the right track. they turned the heat back up on teresa. >> and they told her that they know that she snapped and she killed him. she needed to confess so they kind of threatened her. >> she didn't bend to that? >> no. she said i want a lawyer. >> teresa's family and friends like beth rallied around her. they felt ray's family just wouldn't or couldn't face the

fact that he committed suicide. >> i think they don't want to believe that ray would do that. i really do. >> they're just looking for somebody to blame? >> yeah, other than ray. >> but on march 28th, 2014, five years after ray's death, officers surrounded teresa's house. >> knocked on the door early in the morning. told teresa we had a warrant for her arrest and she was under arrest for the murder of ray. she didn't look surprised. >> she kissed me and she almost started balling. but something come over her and she was okay. >> i was crazy happy. it was like, wow, we finally got somewhere. >> after a few days in jail, teresa was released on bond. law enforcement officials knew the case had problems. ohio attorney general's people gave ray's family a depressingly realistic appraisal. >> we told them all along this

was going to be a tough case. be prepared. be prepared for a loss. >> we might not win this. >> we might not win this case. coming up. proof teresa is innocent or proof of the perfect crime? >> did you find any dna on the part of her? >> we found no dna. >> we found no dna. >> and you found no it's about time the taco... came out of its shell. it's baking season. warm up with pillsbury. you can never tell from the outside just how many warm, flaky layers are on the inside. but let's just say it's more than ever. share the warmth of grands biscuits, now with even more flaky layers it's baking season. warm up with pillsbury. to prove how authentic my new brewhouse bacon burger is i'm going undercover, at an actual brewhouse.

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to protect your kids from predators and bullies. the more you know. it was july of 2015. almost six years after ray's death. when his wife, teresa went on trial. there were two charges, contaninaticonta contaminating a substance and murder. she was accused of slipping antifreeze into something he ate or drank. teresa's lawyer was confident. >> there is no question in my view she was absolutely innocent of the crime. >> prosecutors offered teresa plea deals which would have resulted in little jail time.

>> she was absolutely categorically convinced that she did not commit the crime and she felt, you know, god was in his corner. she was not going to be convicted of any crime. she did nothing wrong. >> another twist. the attorney asked for bench trial. no jury. the judge alone would rule on teresa's guilt or innocence. if she killed ray, or if he committed suicide. in her opening statement, the prosecutor attacked the idea that ray killed himself. >> he was planning for his future. he loved his grandchildren. >> the doctor who treated ray in the hospital where he died, testified teresa herself said ray was not suicidal. >> she had indicated that he had not mentioned anything about feeling suicidal at that time. >> no, the state argued, this was murder. the medical examiner testified

antifreeze killed ray. >> he died as a result of toxicity. >> how antifreeze kills was critical to the state's case. when somebody ingests antifreeze deliberately or because somebody else gave it to them. what's the progression of system? >> initially they'll appear to be drunk or stuporous and then they'll become progressively lethargic and comatose then they'll have heart failure and pulmonary emdedema and eventual die. >> you can estimate when they ingested antifreeze based on their systems? >> it's possible to get a rough estimate of when the ingestion occurred. >> the keystone was the progression of systems which prosecutors would show when ray ingested the antifreeze.

>> you were able to establish a ti timeline. >> when emt's arrived at his residence. he was almost comatose. he know then he's 12 to 24 hours en. >> ray must have ingested the antifreeze the day they took the outing with the grand children. this voicemail was left for a friend several hours after the state says teresa poisoned him. on the tape, the prosecution argued ray sounds drunk. >> yeah, i think you're a nice person. >> prosecutors say he was really in the stuporous stages of antifree antifreezeni

antifreeze poisoning and they argued it had to be teresa who gave it to them. no one else was with ray then. how did they know that? well, from what she told this fbi agent. >> she stated over that week he did not have any visitors and she was the only one there. >> in addition to that science based time line that put teresa in the bulls eye, the state wanted the judge to consider teresa's behavior while ray was dying. in the gallery, monica wept as her younger sister, kimberly testified, how teresa ended life support for their father without consulting ray's side of the family. and the term she said teresa dictated for releasing ray's body to her. >> the conditions were i had to have him cremated and she wanted to make sure i wouldn't be the beneficiary. >> it was all part of a pattern prosecutors argued that added up to murder. >> the state contends there is

no evidence it is reasonable to conclude than anyone other than the defendant is the one who provided that anti-freeze to her husband. >> when the defense had its turn, her attorney told the judge the state had no case, not a scrap of evidence. he got the fbi agent who took teresa's initial statement to concede she may have been confused about whether she was even with ray on the day the state says she poisoned him. >> she may have been wrong about that, correct? >> she could have been wrong about that. >> this was suicide he argued. not murder. and what practically proved it according to the defense, was the fact that ray did nothing to save himself. >> one could conclude if you became ill, you could call the hospital, that never occurred. >> he then attacked the state's

most glaring weakness a total lack of physical evidence connecting his client to containers of anti-freeze. the lead detective was cross-examined about the absence of forensics. >> did you find any dna on the part of teresa? >> we found no dna. >> you found no fingerprints on the can, correct? >> that's correct. >> teresa's attorney went after the prosecution's timeline. he got one of the state's medical witnesses to concede she couldn't tell exactly when ray drank the anti-freeze. >> you don't know how long he suffered from it nor do you know how much he ingested? >> correct. >> under cross-examination the m.e. admitted he couldn't answer the question at the heart of the case. >> you don't know whether it was a homicide or a suicide? >> that is correct, yes. >> he produced his own expert

witness to refute the state's toxicity timeline as suspect science. >> it's impossible to determine when the ethylene glycol may have been ingested. it may have been ingested as one dose or several smaller dose over an undetermined period of time. >> in his close, he suggested all of it amounted to, at the very least, reasonable doubt. >> i'm suggesting to you that it's a suicide. and if the facts don't add up, then you have to rule in favor of the defendant. >> teresa never testified. her family and ray's waited. as the judge retired to his chambers to make his decision. coming up. >> i was so afraid that she was going to get away with it. >> i have faith in her. >> the verdict. and. >> can i get it? >> a surprise phone call. >> they have no evidence on me.

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judgment day. the judge had reached his decision. the families of accused murder teresa and her dead husband, ray, made their way to the courthouse. >> at the time i got to the courthouse my whole body was literally shaking. i was so afraid, like i worked up to that. almost six years. and i was so afraid that she was going to get away with it. >> it looked as if ray's daughter's fears were justified. >> the court finds the defendant teresa not guilty of contaminating a substance for human sconsumption. >> the judge reads the first count, tampering with food, not guilty. and you think, well that's it? >> yeah, we're done. she got away with it. >> it's a moment monica will look back on for the rest of her life. >> were you looking at teresa?

>> yeah. >> and thinking what? >> i had hate. i did. >> the judge reads the second count. >> the court finds the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is the person who administered the antifreeze. the court finds the defendant guilty of murder. do you wish to make a statement at this time? >> your honor, i want you to know i did not hurt my husband. i did not give him poison. i did not give him anything to harm him at all. i loved my husband. i swear before god i never ever would hurt anybody. especially my husband. >> the sentence, was mandatory. >> indefinite term of imprisonment of 15 years to life. >> i love her and want to be with her y. ha. i have faith in her.

i don't think she's guilty. >> while teresa's attorney appeals her conviction, tim shoemaker, teresa's boyfriend of five years is standing by his woman. and not long after teresa began serving her sentence, tim asked her to marry him. teresa said yes. >> you meet this woman, she's already a suspect in a murder investigation, and then she's arrested. and tried. and convicted. you could find somebody who wasn't locked up. but you don't want anybody else, you want her? >> i want her. >> why is that? >> because i love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her. i think she's an awesome woman. she's everything that a man looks for in a woman. >> while we were talking with tim, he got a call. >> she went into details -- can i get it? >> yeah. yeah. it was teresa calling from

behind bars. she and tim caught up for a few minutes and then he put her on speaker. teresa. >> hi. >> hi are you? >> could be better, could be worse. >> i understand you and tim are engaged. >> yes, we are, ain't that awesome? >> congratulations. >> thank you. thank you. i appreciate it. >> is there anything you want to say? >> i just want everybody to know that, you know, i'm innocent. i didn't do what they're accusing me of doing. i loved my husband. someday we'll know why he did what he did. >> you think he killed himself deliberately? >> i think it was an accidental suicide. i think he took in that antifreeze enough to make himself sick and called me out there, thinking i would feel sorry for him because that's the type of person i am. >> this call is originating from an ohio correctional facility. >> you think ray took the antifreeze deliberately to make

himself sick and get you to come back to him? >> yes, yes. i believe his intentions were to get me to come back. >> do you think you'll be out of there one day? >> i believe i'm going to be out of here. i believe the truth will set me free. i hope somebody goes over this and finds out i had no part of it. they have no evidence on me. they have none because there's no evidence there. >> i love you. we're going to get cut off. >> thank you for using -- >> well, thank you for letting us talk to her. we wanted to interview teresa in person but our request was denied by the department of corrections. teresa's hypothesis that ray took antifreeze so she'd come back to him is one that her family and friends, to a person, are on board with. they say teresa as a decent person who somehow attracts men who through no fault of hers, become obsessed with her. >> let me make sure i

understand. one guy wants to kill to have teresa. another guy, roy, makes up a story that she's a murderer. because he doesn't want anybody else to have her. and ray tries to kill himself to get her to come back. have i got that about right? >> yeah. >> do you know anybody else around here who leads that kind of life and who drives men to do those kind of things? >> no. not at all. >> what's her secret? >> i have no idea. i think she's just a good woman. >> that's pretty much the opposite of what ray's daughter, monica, thinks. for her, this was all very personal. >> this was my dad. this was justice. this is the way it should be. you killed my father. somebody's going to pay for this. and damn well right she's going to. >> that's all for now. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. right now.

an explosion -- sending shockwaves across the country. evidence it may have been part right now at 11:00, an exploegs sending shock waves a i cross the country. tonight there's evidence it could have been part of a widespread attack. good evening. thank you for joining us tonight. the story developing by the minute tonight. the fbi is questioning several people who maybe tied to the attack in new york. there's a new investigation underway in new jersey. nbc bay area is live with the latest. is this all connected? >> right now they don't know. preliminary stages of the investigation. but i can tell you tonight another suspicious package was discovered. police found it in