usaa we provide retirement planning for our military, veterans and their families. now more than ever, it's important to get financial advice from people who share your military values. for our free usaa retirement guide, call 877-242-usaa. 911. >> has the jury reached a verdict? >> a doting mom loses control at the wheel. >> i saw a black car cross over the center and i'm thinking what is this woman doing. >> when it was all over, she was dead. her tight-knit family united in grief, except for her doctor house land julie called and said nobody can find him. >> he disappeared. leaving behind his children and soon stories of a double life no one suspected.

>> he would use the apartment to bring his lady friends. >> but cheating does not a murderer make. his wife died after tragic but routine car crash. nothing to do with him. right? >> calcium pills. what were they filled with? >> did the doctor do it? "bitter pill." >> thousands of americans are killed in car accidents every year. when a mother of two died after a miner fender bender her loved ones were shaking their heads and looking for answers. the more they learned, the more they learned it wasn't her accident that needed investigating, but her marriage. here's dennis murphy. >> so ironic that rosie was just idling away a few hours that afternoon when she had only a few precious minutes remaining, but we never know do, we? it was february, 2005. she was dashing to the movies to meet her sister at a matinee.

>> but the last minute, i mean i was already in the movie theater. she had called and said all right, i'm on my way, i'm leaving now. >> nobody knew it then rosie's nice trip to the movies that day would set in motion an international manhunt. something that became an excruciating five-year ordeal that would expose mistresses, secret bedrooms and new identities and would involve the fbi, the middle east and murder. and all the intrigue and the lifetime of sorrow for so many began on the streets of a perfectly pleasant moms, dads, kids and dogs neighborhood. gates mills, ohio. rosie and her handsome doctor husband yazeed or yaz, as he was known to one and all, lived here. she was a nurse. they met while working at the same hospital. at 36, he was proud that he, a man of humble roots, was able to

provide his family with so much. the big house. the backyard pool. money for whatever they needed. >> once upon a time. >> reporter: the kind of son-in-law rosie's parents rocco and gigi dipuccio could regard as heaven sent. >> she sent him for two jars of baby food he came home with 36. everything he had had to be big and lots. >> reporter: in a showoff kind of way? or was he being generous? >> no. he was just -- you know, i used to say to him, i think yaz is so good to you in everything you do because you're so giving to people. now, it rosie, her family would say could, not have cared less about the house, the cars, the stat us. she was down to earth and content with what she always had. not the least of it, her close italian-american family. where sunday dinner at her parents was don't miss. >> silly. where's your teeth, silly?

>> and, of course, the sun and moon of her life, daughter and son. was she happy to be a mother? >> oh, my god. are you kidding? she would just pinch their cheek and say, i can't believe i got these beautiful kids. i just love them. her eyes lit up when she looked at her babies. they were her life. >> happy birthday. say happy birthday. >> sorry we're missing your party. >> in fact, rosie and yaz married for almost six years were hoping for another child. she was taking prenatal vitamins. but she would never get to have another baby because rosie's ten-minute drive to the movies in her black volvo suv was going poorly. her waiting sister had no idea what had gone wrong. >> i wondered, where is she? >> how come she's not calling? i held my phone the whole time waiting for it to ring. >> as it turned out, for a few minutes anyway, rosie was on her cell with her friend of many

years, a woman named eva. she drove on interstate 271 for one exit, to wilson mills road. that's when rosie's suv started veering erratically. another driver noticed it. >> i saw a black car cross over center and go back into the lane and hit a car, and the car just kept going. i'm thinking to myself, what is going on here? what is this woman doing? >> the volvo eventually stopped. that's when tara, a medical technician, pulled over and ran to see if she could help the woman in the car. she found a person in desperate shape. >> when i got in the car, the woman was limp. and next thing you know, she started vomiting. >> meanwhile, patrol officer of the highland heights police department had happened by. his dashboard camera recorded the accident. >> the female driver was sitting back, and she's just gasping for air. >> rosie was rushed to the hospital. when word reached her family,

they, too, raced to the emergency room worried about her condition. >> i just prayed, you know, please, let her live. no matter how bad she's broken up, we'll take care of her, you know? just please let her live, god. >> in the e.r., the doctors working frantically on rosie almost an hour now allowed her husband yaz, an emergency room doctor himself, to observe. rosie's brother would be the one to deliver the bad news to his parents. >> he looked at me. he was crying. he went like this to me. and i just went down. it was sadly over for rosie essa at the age of 38. family was brought to a private room for a viewing. >> when i saw her, i think she looked like she was sleeping. i mean, there was not a mark on her. rosie's mom remembered her

daughter was born a preemie. she asked yaz, the doctor, about the possibility rosie might have had some physical ailment that no one knew about. >> and i'm saying, oh, my god, she was so premature. what if there was something wrong with her heart. >> all those years, huh. >> that nobody caught. and he says, no, i don't think so. this is yaz to you. >> yes. but he may never find out what happened. >> reporter: as the stunned family began to prepare for unspeakably sad arrangements, just hours after she passed away, that friend, named eva, who had been on the phone with rosie right before the car crash got hold of dominic, rosie's brother. she repeated what were very probably rosie's last words. it was literally unbelievable what eva was suggesting. >> first thing i did was went in the house and pulled my brother out. and i told him, you are not going to believe what i just heard. repeated the story to him. we looked at each other, like, now what the hell do we do? what eva said would nearly rip dominic and his brother rocky apart.

how could they keep such a monstrous thing a secret? >> we wouldn't tell my parents, we wouldn't tell my sister deanna, we wouldn't tell anybody. they wouldn't tell anybody what eva had said and what she had begged them to do. >> she kept insisting, promise me you'll get a full autopsy. >> when "bitter pill" continues. ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] entune mobile technology. ♪ stronger! ♪ stand a little taller [ male announcer ] stay seamlessly connected to your smart phone. available on the reinvented 2012 camry. from toyota. ♪ give you effective ] can onanti-aging results? challenge that with regenerist micro-sculpting cream. it hydrates better than creams costing as much as $500.

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the dipuccio family turned to their church for strength in dealing with the loss of their rosie. at just 38, snatched away far too soon in a slow motion car accident no one could comprehend. their beloved daughter and sister, mother of two and wife of yaz. >> look at mama. look at mama. >> yaz, yazeed, had been born in detroit.

a first generation palestinian-american, son of a ford autoworker. after medical school he'd become an emergency room doctor, but one with an entrepreneurial itch. he and his brother had become wealthy as partners in a satellite dish installation company. and back in 1999 when they married, rosie's parents felt it was a dream come true for their daughter. >> and i just think we got a beautiful future together. >> in the years they were married, rosie's mom and dad saw only a solid relationship. >> when she got married, it was like a fairy tale. we loved him and we cared about him because there was nothing we could say we disliked. >> but now, after rosie's death, there was trouble brewing in the dipuccio family. and it brought rosie's two siblings, dominick and his younger brother rocky, nearly to blows. >> i won't say it was confrontational because in 41 years we never had a physical -- it didn't come to this.

>> no, but it was close one night though. >> it all started after a conversation hours after rosie's death that dominic had with eva. i said, rosie died. rosie died. she's hysterical. she proceeded to tell me that rosie was talking to her on the way to the movie and said that yaz had given her a calcium pill before she left the house and she started to feel queasy. rosie told her i'm going to call yaz to see if maybe this calcium pill is making me sick. >> i'm hearing about some kind of a pill, he gave it to her. she is being made sick by it. and he was talking to her on the phone and within an hour, she's dead. >> right. >> after the eva conversation, dominic called a family council of just the two brothers and their wives. they needed some place private. so they got into one car and drove to their church's parking lot. eva's story seemed incomprehensible. could there have been something

wrong with the calcium capsule yaz had given rosie. if anybody's in town, i could go to the moon and weed through and figure somebody out, it would have been rosie. we all feel we have that ability. i think we all felt the same way about him. >> and you thought he was a good guy, and a good match for rosie, huh? >> that's right, yeah. >> did you ever say what does she see in him? >> i thought they were a great couple. he was a great brother-in-law. we talked about it and we called eva again. she kept insisting promise me you'll get a full autopsy, promise me you'll get a full toxicology report. >> julie's wife was dumbfounded. >> how do you have this information come to you? there was no way they were going to accuse him. >> let alone a guy in our family that we loved. >> we trusted. >> the brothers found themselves in opposite camps as far as strategy.

dominick, the lawyer wanting to go slow. first let the coroner do his report, then see where they stood. >> rocky and his wife rachel were eager to take eva's story to the cops. everyone though hoped that yaz was blameless. >> i remember he feeling suspicious, like we need to do something with this information. >> in the dark of the parking lot, they made a compromise. rocky would call the coroner the next day and ask for a thorough and full examination of rosie's body. there wouldn't be any mention of eva's suspicions. >> the coroner's going to find out how she died. i mean, this was a matter two of days, three days, four days. the coroner would come back and say this is what happened. >> and that's what everyone waned. they were desperate to know what had happened to rosie. the accident she had been involved in had been a miner fender-bender and there appeared to be no serious trauma to rosie's body.

the next day the coroner performed an autopsy coughs death, unknown. more tests would be needed. the wait would only add more stress to an already stressful situation between rosie's two brothers. their parents felt the tension. >> they were going at each other. and i couldn't understand this. >> you could see it? >> i could see it. they were arguing and arguing and i'm telling rocco, talk to dominick and rocky. i don't know what's going on with them. >> but how long could the brothers keep their secret from the rest of the family? >> especially when someone else was also growing suspicious. >> as soon as i got off the phone, i said i think he killed her. >> when "bitter pill" continues. it seems like for every anti-aging problem,

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own decided to get involved. and it's that involvement that would later prove invaluable to the police. >> i didn't want to be the nosy neighbor in "bewitched", the gladys kravitz of the neighborhood coming up with these wild convoluted ideas. >> christine is a nurse who once worked with both rosie and her husband yaz at the hospital. she hadn't seen much of either of them in the previous five years. by coincidence, christine lived right next door to rosie's friend eva. eva told her about that last phone call with rosie, about yaz giving her a calcium capsule. >> it was odd to me that just prior to leaving for a movie in the middle of the afternoon in a hurry that that was so necessary that he give her the pill. as soon as i got off the phone with eva, i looked at my husband and i said, i think he killed her. >> gut instinct? >> immediately. >> so going simply on her gut instinct that something wasn't right, and unknown to rosie's brothers, christine called the authorities. but if you were wrong -- >> well, where could they take it if i was wrong.

there was no harm-no foul. they could politely tell me i was wrong and thank you for my help and i would go away. >> christine's urgent request to check yaz made it to the desk of this detective. gary mckee of the highland heights police department was already investigating rosie's car accident. >> i never had met christine. i didn't know if she had an ax to grind with him. whatever reason she didn't care for him may not have been a valid reason. so i wasn't approaching him as a suspect or even thinking that, you know, this guy's a murderer. >> still, the detective had some facts that didn't add up. 38-year-old woman in good health suddenly dead in a fender bender. what's more, the coroner couldn't give him a cause of death. at minimum, he had to find out more about those calcium capsules christine had told him about. you're wondering if there's a sad but benign reason for her death. is this tainted stuff or is she allergic to whatever was in it. >> exactly. i didn't know exactly what i had.

>> the detective called rosie's husband and he agreed to come down to the police station. that interview was recorded on an audio tape. the detective questioned the doctor about the calcium capsules. doctor about the capsules. >> two weeks before i was at my mom's house and i thought about this as well. my mom had this other woman that had osteoporosis. and whatnot. rosie was there that she should probably -- you know, she's over 35. she should probably start take a calcium supplement. >> so she's not under the care of any specialist or anything? was she experiencing any unusual stress recently? >> no, life was good. >> did you have any stressors in your marriage? >> our marriage was fine. >> what's your impression of this doctor, the guy everyone calls yaz? >> he's clearly a smarted individual. very low key. >> are the calcium pills and the prescription vitamins still at home? >> mm-hmm. >> would you mind if i followed you back to your home and collected those?

>> no, not at all. >> that would be great. >> remember, rosie and yaz were trying to have another child. and she was prescribed prenatal vitamins. detective mckee wanted all the pills rosie was taking gathered up for testing including the calcium capsules that yaz said he bought for his wife. the interview over, the detective followed yaz home. when you got to the house, did his demeanor change at all? as you're about to take a look at things? >> no, we entered the home. there was a female seated at the kitchen counter on a stool. she was marguerita montanez. >> margarita was the daytime nanny. yaz had hired her to look after his kids after rosie died. he also hired another woman to be the nighttime nanny. at the time, the detective thought nothing of margarita the nanny, although eventually that would change. for now he was only there to get the pills from yaz. >> before he retrieved the pills, he asked me, have you found the cause of death for my

wife, and i said no, we haven't. then he reached up to the cabinet, retrieved the pills. but before he handed them to me, he said, why do you want these? and my response was, i just want to cover all the bases. >> the next day, yaz asked rosie's sister to watch his kids overnight. then in the middle of that night, she got an urgent call from him. >> at 4:00 in the morning he left me a voice mail saying that his friend's brother was in a bad car accident and they didn't think he was going to make it so he was going to go to north carolina. >> the friend's brother was apparently in bad shape. yaz asked the dipuccio family to watch his children through the weekend. but on monday when the doctor was to return came a bombshell none of the dipuccios could ever have imagined. rosie's brother got a call from his wife. >> julie called and said, nobody can find yaz. i said what do you mean? she said, nobody can find him. they found his friend, called. i said, how is your brother? he said, what are you talking

about? yaz told us he was down with you because your brother has been in a really bad car accident. he said, i haven't seen yaz. yaz hasn't been here all weekend. >> dominic went to rosie and yaz's house and discovered something on the kitchen counter. >> it was an envelope that had obviously recently been opened. postage stamp was a couple days before. it was an envelope that a passport would come in. i said, he's gone. he's gone. >> but could this father really have left behind his two children, children who just lost their mother three weeks before. >> i said, he may have done something. >> yeah. >> then i said, you know, forget that. i've just lost my head. you know, pretend i didn't say that. >> but the dipuccios did have questions. what killed rosie? and why did yaz disappear? coming up -- some answers are on their way. the autopsy comes in along with

a stunning revelation about those calcium pills. what were they filled with? when "bitter pill" continues. [ male announcer ] drinking a smoothie with no vegetable nutrition? ♪ [ gong ] strawberry banana! [ male announcer ] for a smoothie with real fruit plus veggie nutrition new v8 v-fusion smoothie. could've had a v8.

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hey there. here's what's happening. a body of annelderly couple were submerged from the ship off the coast of italy. bringing the number killed to five. earlier today rescue crews were able to pull a survivor from the hull of the wreckage. jon huntsman is getting a boost today from an endorsement from south carolina's estate newspaper, editorial called huntsman a true conservative. more news later. i will see you in an hour. dr. yazeed essa was gone. three weeks after his wife rosie had died a puzzling death, he up and abandoned their two young children.

his job as an e.r. doctor. just flat vanished. rosie's brother dominic filed a missing person report with the police. then headed down to yaz's house and started his own investigation. >> my entire family spent the week at that house. and we were playing detectives, trying to figure out what happened. >> what does the puzzle piece tell you? >> rosie died on a thursday. less than 24 hours later he sends a blast e-mail to all his friends that says just wanted to let you know that rosie died yesterday in a minor car accident. she will be missed. >> that's it? >> that was the e-mail. >> she will be missed. >> the mother of his two children. >> that was his last e-mail. >> through credit card transactions, dominic learned that yaz had bought a plane ticket. final destination, cyprus, the island in the mediterranean. dominic knew it was time to tell the entire family everything he and his brother rocky had been keeping back, about the conversation their sister had with eva just before she died.

the story about rosie feeling sick after taking a calcium capsule given to her by yaz. are you the family saying out loud in one voice, yaz killed rosie? >> some of us are. took me a while. really took me a while. >> suddenly dominic and his wife's family had grown. caring not only for their own four children, but now rosie's two children as well. >> they have not a mother, not a father. we don't even know where to tell them where he went. what happened to him? where did daddy go? how do you answer that question? >> then came even more devastating news. about four weeks after rosie's death, test results were in for the calcium pills that police took from yaz's home. >> we had suspicions, but that, of course, nailed it. >> and what were they filled with? >> potassium cyanide. >> cyanide, a lethal poison. nine pills were in the bottle that yaz had turned over to police. it's from that same bottle that he gave rosie a capsule.

and sure enough, there was enough cyanide in each pill to kill a person within minutes. rosie's death was a homicide. but how could the man the dipuccios loved so much, the son-in-law they thought had a near perfect marriage with their rosie, ever have killed her? nonetheless, dr. yazeed essa was now a murder suspect and international fugitive. the local police called in the fbi. >> initially he fled from cleveland to cyprus and then eventually we also obtained information through various sources that he had traveled to beirut, lebanon. >> phil is a seasoned fbi manhunter. the agent immediately knew he had a major problem. yaz was virtually untouchable in lebanon because that country doesn't have an extradition treaty with the u.s. so rosie's husband was living freely in beirut. the fbi knew it, and there was nothing they could do about it. even if we have eyes on the

ground, you got an agent say i just saw him leave his apartment, he red the paper and went home, you can't move in and serve papers on him? >> right. >> back in the u.s., rosie's family desperately tried to get yaz to turn himself in. they held news conferences. >> what we're doing today is making a plea to yazeed, if he is watching, to come back to cleveland and answer to the charges before him. >> by then, the doctor had officially been charged with aggravated murder in the death of his wife. but it appeared he had no intention of coming back. officials would later learn that yaz took on a new identity. maurice khalife. he was a single good looking guy always up for a party. here he's seen at a wedding. months went by. then a year. did you ever get the feeling he was thumbing his nose at you and all the other people looking for him? >> yeah, i think so. >> and what you have to do is lure him off the security of his home base where he's safe in beirut? >> we hope at some point he leaves the country. >> in october 2006, a year and a

half after rosie's death, her mom and dad got a phone call from their local police chief. >> and he said, are you sitting down? he says, i have big news for you. he said, we got him. >> yaz had finally slipped up. he'd left the security of lebanon. the fbi was aware he was going to be on a flight into cyprus' airport. how they knew, they won't say. but cypriot police were waiting for him. when he got off the plane. and in cyprus, unlike lebanon, a person can be extradited to the u.s. but yaz would fight every inch of the way to avoid facing aggravated murder charges in ohio. >> that's our guy. >> it wasn't until january 2009 that yazeed essa, the man in this grainy footage, was finally brought back to the united states. and detective mckee, the

highland heights, ohio, officer who first started investigating rosie's death four years before was waiting for him. >> we put him in the backseat of the car. i didn't say a word to him. >> you didn't say, remember me? >> i think he did. i don't think i had to say that. >> coming up, the one question no one had yet answered. why would the doctor have wanted his wife dead? are you asserting there's a little love nest, a little pad? >> oh, yeah, i thought it was a play house. >> love shack. >> love shack, that was it. >> when "bitter pill" continues. ♪ you and me and the big old tree ♪ ♪ side by side, one, two, three ♪ ♪ count the birds in the big old tree ♪ ♪ la la la [ male announcer ] the inspiring story of how a shipping giant can befriend a forest may seem like the stuff of fairy tales. ♪ ♪ you and me and the big old tree side by side ♪ but if you take away the faces on the trees... take away the pixie dust. take away the singing animals,

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for nearly five years, the dipuccio family had been waiting for this day. dr. yazeed essa would finally face a jury for allegedly poisoning his wife rosie with cyanide. steve and anna would prosecute the aggravated murder case for ohio. what's the mission?

how are you going to going about it? >> the mission is to define his character and let the jury get another glimpse of who he is as opposed to how he appears there in the courtroom. >> as the trial started, the prosecution's challenge was to convince the jury that yazeed essa was a jekyll and hyde, one face showing the emergency room doctor who saved lives and seemed the ideal husband. the other, an evil poisoner who planned the murder of his wife, the mother of his two children. >> so when you look across this room and you look at this man that you see here in the courtroom wearing that wedding ring, the picture that you're going to get is that yazeed essa was living two lives. >> rosie's sister-in-law may have seen one of those masks slip. right after rosie had died. she testified as to how cold and disrespectful yaz had seemed in the way he treated his wife's body lying on the hospital bed. >> yaz walked over to rosie. and very abruptly lifted her up and pulled the sheet down.

and she was naked underneath. and he exposed her breasts. and he tried to get the necklace off. and he just kind of got it off. and he just treated her very disrespectfully. i remember thinking, why is he doing that? why is he treating her like that? that's his wife. >> the state calls eva mcgregor. >> if the prosecution had an indispensable star witness, it would be this woman taking the stand. eva mcgregor had been the friend on the phone with rosie just moments before her car accident and death. only eva could point to yaz as the source of that cyanide laced calcium capsule rosie had taken. >> she had taken a calcium pill right before she left her house. she didn't really want to take it. and she said as she was rushing out the door, he said, here, take it. take your calcium.

now, i don't know if that's what's making me sick. >> the jury would get a lesson in poisoning. the court was told that cyanide isn't something you can just buy over the counter. but the lethal stuff, according to this poison expert, is available only a mouse click away online. >> there is a study done where they actually looked at ebay. there's two times when it came up that you could buy on ebay cyanide. >> it turned out to be a snap to shake out the calcium in the capsule and replace it with cyanide. >> you can literally just take a pen cap and you can scoop it with that and pour it right in. >> that may have been the killer's methodology, but in the big picture, the most damning fact against yaz was his decision to flee. would an innocent father have left his two children behind just weeks after their mother had died? for the story, the courtroom was taken to the middle east to account for yaz's missing months in lebanon. >> good morning, sir. this man, jamal khalife, a kind

of godfather, mr. fix-it character, testified about how he helped yaz live on the lam, with virtually a new life and identity. >> i got the phone call from my brother that there's somebody coming over and to take care of him. >> the brother of jamal the fixer had known yaz's family back in the united states. jamal testified he put yaz up in a beirut apartment, got him a new passport and a new name, maurice khalife. as he got to know the american doctor better, the stunning story about rosie spilled out. >> he told me the whole story, that his wife was leaving the home, going to, i think, to a movie. he told me he ground the cyanide, refilled the pills, he give her two pills. down the street she had a car accident and she died. >> a severe blow for the accused. a second hand account of a confession from yaz. and another witness was about to deliver an even more dramatic

roundhouse punch. >> good afternoon. mr. essa. >> firas essa, none other than his own brother and business partner took the stand. >> i asked him if he was responsible for her death and he said yes. >> when you found out that information, what did you say to your brother? >> i called him a [ bleep ]. >> why did you say that? >> because he took rosie's life, and i loved her. he just ruined his whole family. >> it was crippling testimony. the brother, once an inseparable blood friend, had given yaz an evidentiary kill shot. nonetheless, there were still core problems in the prosecution's overall case. it was entirely circumstantial and seemed to beg for a motive. why would the doctor do it? prosecutors answered by arguing that yaz the family man wasn't really when you took a closer look. it turned out he had scads of

women on the side. he was a doctor with a first degree cheating heart. >> every wednesday night he would spend with his girlfriend, with his mistress at her apartment. >> girlfriends, mistresses, sex jurors were even shown photos of a hidden-away bedroom in the building where he and his brother had their business. are you asserting that there's a little love nest, a little pad? >> i thought it was a play house. >> love shack. >> yeah, that was a place he would use the apartment over there from time to time to bring his lady friends. >> good afternoon. >> and one of those lovers had been margarita, the daytime nanny. she was the woman that detective saw sitting in the kitchen when he first went to collect the calcium cap. margarita it turned out had had a long-term sexual affair with yaz, an affair that rosie evidently knew nothing about. >> in 2001, we began a sexual relationship. >> why did you become involved in a relationship with the defendant when you were married?

>> me and my husband were having problems. and i thought i was going to get a divorce. >> did this begin an affair with the defendant? >> on occasion. it wasn't a love affair or anything. >> marguerita described it as a friends with benefits type of relationship with yaz. y had a deeper more complicated relationship with another woman. michelle madalein. she was the so-called nighttime nanny for his children. michelle was also someone prosecutors say who fell in love with the doctor and he with her. >> state's exhibit 125. >> to make the point, jurors were shown a camisole like that one, an intimate valentine's day gift from yaz to michelle just two weeks before rosie's death. a representative of the company that shipped the nightie read the card that was enclosed. >> next valentine's day will be all ours. i love you with all of my being. yaz.

he's indicating that this paramour next year this will be all ours. a shadowing that she won't be around next year. >> the mistress was called to the stand. michelle testified that she was a nurse who had met yaz on the job. she asked for and received a court order to obscure her image while testifying. >> he was telling me that he was so unhappy in his marriage and i was the love of his life and i was his dream come true. and he was going to leave her so that our relationship could continue. >> she's pushing back saying no, i can't be with a married man. and he can't take no for an answer. and that's his motivation. that's what puts him on this path. >> a path the prosecution argued that led directly to murder. the one-time mistress shared with the court yaz's supposed true feelings for his wife rosie. >> he wasn't in love with her, according to what he told me.

and that he was in love with me. he would say, she was a good person but she was cold. he would call her amana. >> what does that mean? >> the refrigerator brand. >> rosie's family were devastated by the mistress' recollections. >> way he humiliated her. and on top of everything he'd done to her, to belittle her or to make fun or to mock her with his mistresses, you know. sick. >> your honor, at this time, the state of ohio would rest its case. >> the prosecution had put together a compelling story about a deceitful murderous husband. but the defense was about to rise and offer a completely different theory of the crime. in fact, the jury had already met the true killer in court, and it wasn't yaz essa. after all, the defense will argue, if the doctor was guilty, why hadn't he dumped those cyanide filled pills? >> if he has successfully killed his wife with it, why hold on to this stuff.

>> precisely. >> who else had the motive and the means to kill rosie? when "bitter pill" continues. ♪ ♪ baby, baby, come along ♪ baby, baby, come along with me ♪ [ air horn blows ] ♪ i love you and i need you ♪ just to hug and squeeze you ♪ baby, why can't you see? [ female announcer ] the space of a small suv. the fuel efficiency of a prius. ♪ well, baby, can't you see the all-new prius v from toyota. ♪ come along with me fantastic! [ man ] pro-gresso they fit! okay-y... okay??? i've been eating progresso and now my favorite old jeans...fit. okay is there a woman i can talk to? [ male announcer ] progresso. 40 soups 100 calories or less. that's good morning, veggie style.

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what a good marriage rosie had with yaz. our mandate is to do the best job that we can and to bring home that "w," bring home that not guilty. >> the defense for yaz essa came down to this. sure, he had lots of women on the side and he got away with it. so why did he need to kill his wife? his two defense lawyers mark marein and steve bradley told the jury straight out the defendant was never going to be a husband of the year. >> yazeed essa regularly always maintained numerous sexual relationships with other women. >> but, they insisted, a cheater

doesn't necessarily make a murderer. especially a doctor who was planning a bigger family. >> yazeed essa did not commit this crime. he did not intentionally poison the mother of his two young children. the woman with whom he was actively trying to conceive a third child and add to their family, something they both wanted. >> if he were the heartless philanderer portrayed by the prosecution, then how come rosie's family liked him so much? >> did she have a good life? >> yes. >> it appeared that they had a pretty sound marriage, yes? >> yes. >> the marriage to their friends and to her family is a loving, good, viable marriage. >> by all accounts, they had a great marriage. >> the prosecution theorized that he killed rosie to be with his mistress named michelle. the defense's response was that michelle was just another take a number girlfriend. >> michelle meant nothing.

>> add it up, argued the defense, and you had a respected doctor with no money worries, nice family, and as many girlfriends on the side as he could juggle. bottom line, he had no reason to kill rosie. >> there's no reason for him to have separated his children from their mother and their father. to do something as dramatic and extreme as poisoning your wife requires some strong motive, and it wasn't present here. >> then there was the way he behaved early on. would a guilty man have turned over to police that bottle of calcium capsules if he knew full well the lab would find cyanide in nine of them? maybe the biggest puzzler. >> right. >> if he's contaminated these caplets and successfully killed his wife with them, why in the name of all things we know from television shows would you hold on to this stuff? >> precisely.

>> the police went after them for sloppily collecting the evidence. >> the detective who poured the capsules into his bare hand after collecting them? >> are you telling us that you made a mistake? >> in hindsight, yes. >> the forensic expert who didn't check for prints. >> the pill bottle itself would have been conducive to leaving ridge detail, correct? >> yes. >> to be clear, nobody made that request. >> there was a catastrophe in terms of forensics here. >> and even though the court had learned how easy it was to obtain cyanide, there was no evidence presented that yaz had actually done that. still, the stark fact at the epicenter of the case was his decision to flee the country. how could that be anything other than the action of a guilty man? the defense spun it that way. yaz early on had talked to a lawyer who advised him he might be facing the death penalty if charged with a murder. >> yaz was led to believe that he could be charged with capital

murder, and he just freaked out. >> then, of course, his lawyers had to defuse those explosive allegations from the lebanese fixer and his own brother that he had admitted to poisoning rosie. >> i asked him if he was responsible for her death and he said yes. >> both witnesses had lied on the stand, according to the defense, because each had cut a deal with the prosecution for leniency on charges they were facing. >> it was the proverbial get out of jail free card. >> you are free to step down. >> the brother, for instance, was looking at almost 12 years in prison for helping yaz on the lam. he took a deal. >> he's got five kids all under the age of 12 years. he employs 100 people. he's got a lovely wife, a beautiful home, and his world is about to collapse on him. >> so firas well advised in terms of his own survival strategy to sing for his supper? >> that's what we believe. >> jamaal the fixer had been a fugitive wanted by the united states. >> were you wanted in a 29-count indictment.

>> just listen to my question. >> don't scream in my face. >> sir! listen to my question. the more he talked the better off we felt we were. >> bad guy trying to cut a deal? >> precisely. >> if yaz essa didn't do it, who did? the jury had already met her, argued the defense. it offered up marguerita, the daytime nanny. as the true killer. >> she is one of the women that yazeed maintaior wanting rosie out of the picture, argued the defense. she and yaz had kept their sexual relationship going even after both had married. and don't believe this portrait of her as a casual friends with benefits lover claimed the defense. >> marguerita very much wanted to marry yazeed. >> and they claim marguerita was so obsessed with yaz that she scheduled her own wedding as the same day as yaz's marriage to

rosie. >> are you telling us that it is an absolute coincidence that you selected the same wedding date as yazeed? is that what you're telling us? >> absolutely. >> marguerita worked for yaz's brother and had access to yaz's house. the theory, did she sneak over there once, place the cyanide in the capsules so she'd have yaz for herself? >> the police themselves did very, very little to eliminate her as a suspect. >> despite that assertion, the authorities had investigated marguerita and dismissed her as a suspect. she emphatically denied having anything to do with rosie's death. but by introducing the girlfriend theory, had the defense raised enough reasonable doubt? >> the defense would respectfully rest. >> after a seven-week trial and over 60 witnesses, the case was concluded. now it was up to the jurors. they deliberated for three days and announced they had reached a

verdict. >> breathe. that's the most important. nice deep breaths. >> i couldn't stop shaking. i got exactly the same way i did the day rosie died. >> please rise. >> the lawyers, the families on both sides were summoned to the courtroom for the reading of the verdict by judge deena calabrese. >> we the jury in this case being duly impaneled and sworn do find the defendant yazeed essa guilty of murder. >> guilty. it was almost over. at sentencing a few days later, rosie's family confronted the man they once loved as a son and brother. >> we lost our rosie for no reason. the only thing i'm hoping that from now on maybe there will be less nights that my wife cries herself to sleep. >> i challenge him to find the

courage today to admit what he did, to provide the apology to my mother, my father, my sister, my wife, my brother rachel deserve. are you man enough? are you? this is your last chance to save your soul right here, right now. >> yaz kept his silence. >> i sentence you to life in prison. >> the judge had sentenced the doctor to the maximum. all along, the detectives, the prosecutors, had wondered about the ifs. if rosie hadn't called eva on the way to the movies. p if rosie lost control of her suv on the freeway and not a local street. >> had it been a high speed impact on the highway, the coroner and the pathologist probably won't have looked any further than for some blunt force trauma from the automobile accident. in a way, it could have been a perfect crime. >> but yaz hadn't plotted the perfect crime, as the jury saw. he killed, he ran, he was caught by tenacious lawmen. yazeed essa will be eligible for parole in 20 years.