i think he's still pushing us. that's all for this edition of "dateline extra" i'm tam ra hall, thanks for watching. she was a married mother of two. >> there was nothing about her life that would raise any red flags. >> she amazed them all, her whole group of girlfriends at the gym. >> she was totally dedicated. >> heather, turn around. you've gotten smaller. >> a stunning 200-pound weight loss and a whole new life came with it. >> you can see that transformation. you could see the confidence in her. >> then, she was gone, missing at school. >> i called all the girlfriends.

>> the clues and an e-mail to her husband and a secret she was reluctant to share. >> kind of a bomb shell. heather was possibly seeing another man. >> what was really behind her sudden disappearance? that would be the most mind blowing twist of all. >> do you think either would still be alive if she had not gone through this transformation? hello, welcome to "dateline extra" heather jones' friends called her the butterfly, motivational kindergarten teacher with an inspiring story of her own. she had shed pounds and her past. she was starting to live the happy life she'd dreamed of. then suddenly, she went missing. investigators had questions, but answers were not easy to find. here is andrea canning with the last dance. >> there was a place in downtown

memphis, tennessee, a little hot spot not far from nearby beal street. they'll play the memphis blues in this club. in this darkness of the rum ber room, bodies swayed to the beat of latin sounds. in april 2013, a woman named heather jones came in with her friend to dance the night away wearing a brand new dress. >> how did she look that night. >> she had her head up so high and her shoulders back and she beaming and she felt absolutely beautiful. >> there was a time, not too long ago, when heather didn't feel very beautiful at all. but on this evening, she had the night of her life. >> she really didn't sit down very much. she was being spun around and danced. >> just two nights later, everything spun out of control. >> breaking news about a missing

german town teacher. >> heather jones suddenly and inexplicably disappeared from her home. >> her car is in her driveway. >> thinking of her being scared and hurt, made you sick. >> what happened, the answer was sickening. >> you think, oh my god, is that her? >> the why, more twisted and surprising than anyone could fathom. >> that's not normal, natural, right. >> how could all this darkness fall on a woman so sunny? >> i loved her. i loved her energy. she was -- if you can think of like a color that is a person, like she would be like bright yellow. >> friends say heather could always light up a room. her cousin, diane perry, says that upbeat attitude is what drew them together from the time they were young. >> you two are more like sisters. >> definitely, very close. >> a bond that only grew as

teenagers when heather moved from florida to tennessee, closer to diane, they became an inspralble pair. so it was only fitting diane was there the night heather fell instantly in love with a guy name chris jones. >> she went to a party on 1999 and she came home and we sat down and talked and giggled about this new guy she had met, chris. >> diane recalls that heather found chris fascinating. >> he dazzled over this knowledge of wine and just his knowledge of the world. >> she liked that? >> she loved that. she absolutely loved that. >> diane was surprised to see how fast the new couple was moving. within weeks heather and chris were living together. not long after, she noticed a change. >> they got involved in online gaming, they had a very sedentary lifestyle, that's when she gained about 250 pound. >> over how much time are we

talking about. >> maybe a year and a half. i meecan, it was a very short amount of time. >> that's life changing. >> did she seem depressed about the life change? >> absolutely, yes. >> he said he didn't mind what size heather was, a few years into their relationship, he asked heather to marry. it seemed the love on the scale continued to rise after the birth of their two children. >> did he make her feel good? >> she felt beautiful, loved, wanted, she felt taken care of. >> chris also took on the role of stay at home dad while heather worked and attended college part time. >> it took her about ten years to get her degree from college. and it was almost to the day that she graduated from college that everything changed. >> at one point before graduati graduation, heather tipped the scales at 400 pounds, but diane

said that hard one diploma now became a road map to heather, pointing her to a brighter and lighter future. >> she saw a different life for herself. she immediately started working on her weight. >> step up. here we go. >> and that's when she found a special group of new friends, women like her who joined this high powered dance exercise class each week to improve their physic and their lives. >> everyone in heather's life notice that happy hour was doing wonders for her. >> heather, turn around. i said, you've gotten smaller. >> she's like, yeah. >> were the pounds just melting off of her. >> melting off. >> melting off. >> it was nothing short of a total transformation. in 18 short months, she went from this to this. >> i remember she brought a picture of a before and where

she was now and was so proud. she was like, what i've done. she was so proud of herself. >> no one was surprised when heather soon landed her dream job, teaching at an elementary school in memphis. fellow teacher, jessica, was in awe of the amount of energy ms. jones poured into her classroom. >> heather loved being a kindergarten teacher. from the moment they stepped foot into the door, to the moment that they left, they were dancing, they were singing, they were playing. >> by april 2013, it was all coming together for heather jones. on a saturday night she hit that dance floor to try out some move she picked up at the gym and to show the world what she had become. >> it was just so much fun. we were there for probably about a good three hours of just dancing. >> three days later on tuesday morning, teacher jessica headed to school, expecting to see her energetic coworker heather already there.

>> our school day didn't start until 8:00 or 8:30 that year, she was here every morning by 6:30, 6:45. >> she usually couldn't wait for the school day to begin, so jessica was surprised by what she didn't see that morning. >> i pulled into the parking lot and i didn't see her car. i'm like, oh, what is going on. >> thinking maybe she caught a ride to school, jessica made a b line for heather's class room. >> and i remember her door was closed, her lights were off. and i remember thinking her lights are off. and then say it again, her lights are off. she's gone. >> gone. what could that mean? as the search began to find the missing teacher, investigators would soon uncover a disturbing connection between heather's dramatic weight loss and her mysterious disappearance. coming up, the very first clues, a disturbing e-mail to heather's husband. >> i was concerned.

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heather jones had transformed her life and her body and devoted teacher, she was never absent, so where was she, an e-mail she had sent the night before her disappearance, offered clues, here, again, as andrea with the last dance. >> when heather jones, the newly felt new by teacher didn't show up for her kindergarten class that morning back in april 2013, alarm bells went off among her fellow teachers and friends. >> heather would never miss the day of school, she was totally dedicated. >> home, sick, didn't seem likely, best friend new heather was not about to be sidelined by a little sniffle. >> there was no excuse for her not to be there. >> school officials couldn't

reach heather on the phone. when her cousin diane heard she was a no show, she headed right over to her home where she saw an encouraging sign. >> there was relief when i saw the car, i thought she was there. i thought, oh, she's sick. >> diane thought heather was probably just sleeping. >> knocking, knocking, knocking, please answer the door. >> but no answer, alarmed, she called heather's mother to bring over a key, soon german town police arrived, opened the door and went in first. >> they say she's not in there. they say nothing looked disturbed. >> is that a relief in any way? >> no, no. it was terrifying. something is very much wrong. >> it was now a missing persons case. detective kno detective tony kemp took the lead and did his own walk through of the house. >> did you find any signs of something that might have happened in that house? >> no, i did not see any weapons. i did not see any blood or

anything in that house. >> but heather's car still in the driveway, stuck in detective camp's mind. >> obviously, if she left, she had to be on foot or she had made contact with somebody for them to pick her up. >> the grapevine was now working over time. friends from heather's dance class soon heard she was missing, one of them was kerry cooper, the class instructor. she also went over to the house, turns out, kerry new about crime scenes as she did as dance moves, that's because she's a cop in nearby memphis. >> i kind of took on that police officer mode at that moment, i combed every inch of her property. >> i looked all along the railroad and behind her house and there was nothing. >> the afternoon heather disappeared, chris came to the police station wanting to help zbh you've been up all night. >> yeah, i can't miss an

opportunity -- i didn't want to miss a call, a chance i didn't know if she was going to come by, i didn't want to miss the knock on the door. >> sure. >> i'm worried. >> chris told detectives something that could be vital to the investigation. he said heather had written him an e-mail the night before, the subject read, i'm sorry. in it, she mentioned their little girl ava. it read, come get ava, i cannot face everyone with this. please forgive me. it is too much. please raise them to remember me as their loving mommy. >> how concerned were you when chris told you about this e-mail that his wife had sent, that heather had sent. >> i was concerned. it did not sound good to me. >> kemp thought the e-mail was open to all kind of interpretations, all bad, it seemed. >> it basically sounded like, i'm throwing in the towel. >> throwing in the towel. detective kemp asked chris if heather might be suicidal. >> has he ever talked about

warranting to harm herself or anybody else that you can remember? >> i can't recall. >> friends and family police spoke to were addiment, heather would never take her own life, not after striving so hard to transform it for the better. but there was another possible explanation for what might have happened to this woman who had built such a promising future, police were about to uncover a secret she had kept hidden from almost everyone. >> i didn't even know his name. >> just as heather was headed off into that bright new future, her past came calling. >> coming up. >> i told all the girls, y'all be prepared. >> the search heats up, and the secret is out. >> kind of a bomb shell that heather was possibly seeing another man. >> this was definitely, you know, person of interest that we needed to speak with.

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welcome back to "dateline extra" continuing our story, here is andrea canning with the last dance. >> heather jones had been missing for 24 hours, her loved ones prayed for the best and launched into action the memphis mother had recently lost 200 pounds with the hell f of a dance aerobics class and now her gym friends pasted the after photo she was so proud of all over town. >> putting up flyers. >> we had flyers. we stopped at restaurants around german town. >> kerry, heather's friend and dance instructor who also happened to be a cop, organized a search party. >> then we had our backpacks on and we had good walking shoes and we had snacks and towels and water. >> kerry at the other women searched methodically not knowing what they might find. >> i had told all the girls, y'all beprepared bauds we might

find her. okay. >> your foot hit something hard, you think, oh my god is that her, it's a branch and you just never know with each step. >> her bether friend melissa struggled we are this worst fears. >> it was absolutely terrifying because just thinking of her being scared and hurt made you sick. >> to put together the puzzle of what happened to heather and what she meant by that disturbing good-bye e-mail, detective kemp wanted to know more about heather, starting with her relationship with kemp. >> i wanted to know more about their marriage and what's been going on between them the past year. >> he knew the major event in their marriage in the past year was heather's dramatic physical change, friends and fayly said it was about so much more than

just dropping pant sizes, as heather lost the weight she gained a whole new outlook on life. >> she was kind of a quiet and reserved. back then when i very first met her, to see that contrast from then to where she decided, i'm going to make some healthy decisions the butterfly description with her, it's very -- it's a great description. just her coming out of her shell and becoming who she was created to be, you know, and that just -- you could see that transformation in all different aspects of her life. >> yes. >> her cousin diane explained that once heather, the butterfly, started spreading her wings, she felt that just like her old clothes, her husband, chris, wasn't fitting any more. >> she was -- he was not really part of it. >> exactly. >> the new life. >> the future. >> exactly. i think he saw the writing on the wall. >> she saw that i'm young, i'm hetier now that i've ever been. i'm feeling good and confident

and i'm feeling independent. she didn't have just one choice any more, the world was hers. >> detectives learned that in january 2013, heather moved out on chris without telling him. >> she had a name for it. >> she did. >> almost like ninja style that she was going to move out on her own. >> it was. it was. >> she moved into this rental house with the help of family and friends. >> she was backed by a lot of awesome girls, she was ready. >> she would say, you know, i don't want anything in my house, my matches, my brown boots, that's okay because i'm happy. >> in his interview with police, he said that after nine years of marriage, he and heather began to have some differences, but he said, he had no clue she was going to move out on him and was more shocked when he found out she had filed for divorce. >> i was totally sideswiped.

i did not see it coming. >> chris told detective kemp he had been trying to patch things up with heather ever since. >> i want my wife home. i want the family dynamic that we had. i want us to be together. i want to work things out. >> okay. >> kemp questioned what heather had been up to while chris was trying to win her back. >> it's common, a lot of times when a couple is going through a divorce that maybe that somebody was seeing somebody. and i asked him that. >> that's when chris confided in the detective that he feared heather had in fact moved on. >> is she seeing anybody else? does she have a boyfriend right now? >> yeah. >> could you tell me about what you know about that? >> the only thing i know they were friends from younger age. and it's been going on for some time. >> when you're talking to chris, he brings up kind of a bomb shell that heather was possibly

seeing another man. >> yes, he did. he did tell me that he believed that she was seeing somebody and i tried to get information from him about that person. >> i really don't know anything about the guy other than they've been corresponding heavily. >> does she talk about him much. >> she doesn't talk about him at all. >> kemp discovered heather had been talking about this new guy just not with her husband. >> it had started texting, i think initially, kind of facebooking and just hey, how are you. i think slowly, those text messages and facebook messages became very flirtatious. i didn't know his name. all i knew she was talking to somebody who was making her happy. >> that was making her happy. >> and she felt very special and very beautiful. >> but police did need a name fast. chris was able to provide at least part of that crucial detail. >> can you tell me about him? start me off with a name.

what's his name. >> edward. >> edward. >> did you think that this other man could be a game changer in this investigation? >> to me, this was definitely, a person of interest that we needed to speak with. >> detectives now launched a hunt for a man edward. they wanted to know, did heather, the butterfly, leave behind the old life to build a new one with the other man. coming up, the other man revealed. >> you know, i'm a flirtatious person. >> he has some intriguing information for police and for us. >> i would hide her if that's what she wanted. >> when "dateline extra" continues. and on that day you will walk into a room where 15 people will be waiting... 12 behind the sofa, 2 behind the table and 1 and a half behind a curtain. family: surprise! but only one of them will make a life long dream come true.

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responsibility. those bombings kept a week of terror attacks that took place in turkey, today the death toll from saturday's suicide bombing from baghdad rose to 200. back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline extra" heather jones was a beloved teacher and mother in the sent ir of misstory you missing persons case. her husband wondered if she had moved on with another man. could a love triangle have had something to do with her disappearance? we return to andrea canning with the last dance. >> this is where she was. >> time and investigators worst enemy in a missing persons case was ticking away, days past and heather jones hadn't returned to her rented house, the place where she hoped to start a new life without her husband. >> sounds cliche, she really

vanished without a trace. >> yes, that's what was making this so difficult. >> and she still wasn't answering her cell phone. the one police learned she had used to exchange flirtatious text with a mystery man. >> she's process of having an affair with local long distance. >> chris jones couldn't tell detectives much else about this other man who he only knew by the name of edward. >> i've just seen their correspondence. >> were you able to see some of the texting yourself? >> yeah. >> on her phone. >> you must have had concerns about this other man? >> yes, i did. because he was one of the first names that we had come up with. >> detective kemp new, if heather had split town as her good-bye e-mail suggested, she hadn't driven away in her car, it was still parked in her driveway. >> do you know what kind of car edward drives.

>> i don't know anything about him. >> does he live here locally? >> no. >> memphis? do you know? >> not that i know of. >> detectives had to find edward another way, so they accessed heather's facebook account and looked for clues and there it was, a profile with a last name attached. >> what was that name? >> edward rober some. he told him he lived 500 miles away in eastern tennessee and agreed to make the 8 hour drive to german town to be interviewed. detectives wondered had he made the trip once already that week to take heather away, most importantly could he tell them where she was now. >> just because you've got somebody living 500 miles away does not mean that they didn't have anything to do with this disappearance. >> police recorded ed's interview. during questioning, ed made a potentially important admission.

>> i love her to death. i will do anything for her, you know, when the detectives asked me who would she call if she wanted to disappear and it would be me. he insisted heather never made that call. there was more. ed told detectives he was surprised by the first question he was asked when initially contacted by the police? >> detective cook called me and he said, is your girlfriend there? and i said, yeah, she's in the backyard. he said, okay, so heather's okay. >> i said heather is not my girlfriend, she's a friend of mine, we've been friend for 20 years. >> if ed and heather weren't an item, what exactly was going on. >> the detective wanted to hear from you immediately. once they learned the name -- >> once they knew who i was. >> you were an important piece of the puzzle to them. >> yeah. >> detectives learned from ed

that his relationship with heather went back decades, long before heather married chris. ed said he and heather met in 1993, when they were both teens living in florida. ed remembers they fell fast for each other. >> it was young love. they say you don't know what love is, but i do. >> ed said they dated for two years before he moved away. but that puppy love was never he got over, even after heather married. >> were you still carrying that torch? >> yeah, but i didn't really let it show. i respected heather too much. >> around heather's birthday in the spring of 2013 after she had lost all that weight, ed told detectives he reached out to wish her well and got more than a thank you. heather had big news, she and chris had separated. >> at that moment in her life she needed a friend and that was

what i was there for. . i was there right when she needed me the most. >> ed said that shoulder to lean on soon turned into something more. >> listening to her problems, you know, it just progressed from there. >> progressed in what way? >> you know, i'm a flirtatious person and, you know, just became flirtatious. >> detective kemp scanned the recent text between the two from heather's cell phone and it appeared that things had heated up even more a few days before she went missing. >> there was some sexual content that i had noticed. >> ed said it was heather who first turned the texting into sexting. >> what did you think? >> it was partly that, you know, she was in a highly flirtatious mood that day i wasn't really quite sure. >> did you bite? >> i did.

>> detectives wanted to know how much and whether ed was truly willing to drop everything to help heather start a new life in secret. >> no matter what it took, i would protect her. >> ed knew it probably didn't look good to police. >> i guess me admitting that i would hide her if that's what she wanted, you know, i can understand them saying that, you know, maybe he's hidden her. >> did you hide her? >> i wish. >> did you drive to see heather that night? >> no. >> were you with her that night? >> no. >> did you have anything to do with her disappearance? >> no. >> ed told police he was at home, far away in eastern tennessee and revealed that despite those steamy texting, he and heather hadn't actually seen each other in person in years. >> we had discussed seeing each other, i guess it would have been, about another month. >> ed insisted to police he had

no idea where heather was, but he did give them a big clue. he told investigators that, in fact, he spoke to heather on the phone the very night she disappeared. he heard something on that call that was alarming then and even more alarming now. >> i called her. she answered. and immediately i could hear kind of arguing. >> ed said he heard a man's voice in the background during that call, but whose voice was it? coming up. >> are you thinking, this could potentially be our last chance to solve this? >> this was our shot. >> the pieces of the case are about to fall into place. and all those flirtatious texts turns out they aren't at all what you think. >> i need to put that out of my mind. >> when "dateline extra" continues.

welcome back. here, again, is andrea with the last dance. >> as one day slid into the next and the next, it was still no sign of heather jones. her jim friends got back to exercise class with the hope heather would dance with them once again. >> i kept the back door open to the jim. i said heather if you can hear us, we're dancing, we're looking for us. if you're out there, you dance with us. . we're going to find you one way or another. >> detective vowed to find her. he was convinced heather did not run off with her old boyfriend ed, he asked her friends, what else would cause heather to leave her husband and children, that's when kemp began to flush

out what really happened when heather moved out on chris. >> it was very scarey. and it -- it only continued to deteriorate. >> friends and family told him how at first chris tried to woo her with flowers and chocolates. >> he would text her and call her, this time they were violent, you're not taking my kids from me. i'm not going to let you live. i will come after you. you won't get awhat with this. >> then friends said chris started acting more desperate and they started getting really scared. >> he would show up at her work, at the jim. he started showing up at the house in the middle of the night. i just remember thinking like, this is insane. like, you're literally stalking her. >> i got a lot of information on chris, on what these people thought of him and it was not good. >> detectives decided they would

do more than just keep an eye on chris, they secretly attached a gps device to a car to track his movements. >> we wanted to know, possiblily, could he take us to where heather was at. >> they also asked chris to come in for a second interview. detective brian wallace would lead the interrogation. >> are you thinking, this could potentially be our last chance to solve this? >> certainly. >> this was our shot. >> detectives watched as chris's car made his way towards the police station, but then it stopped a quarter mile away at a nearby mall. police thought he might be running anner regard, but moments later, he popped up at the station, why had he parked so far away. chris was escorted in? >> anything i can do? >> he told detectives he went to heather's house the nice she disappeared before he. she's like, this is a call that

i've been waiting for. and i said, well, you know, i've really kind of a pertinent matter to discuss with you, if there's any way you could possibly, you know, have them call you back. >> it was letter her know that i discovered she had been having an affair this entire time. >> is that who was calling her. >> i kind of got that feeling that that's who was calling her. >> in fact, it was ed f. >> i called her, she answered. and immediately i could hear, you know, her and chris kind of arguing. so she's telling him to get out and he's constantly saying, i need to talk to you. i just need two minutes. >> he heard something else come out of chris's mouth. >> he's talked to her it's a matter of life and death. >> she asked him, what do you mean a matter of life and death. >> in his interview, chris admitted he and heather continued arguing when she hung up with ed, she insisted she was

alive when he went home and, he said, she sent that disturbing good-bye e-mail only after he left. >> i'm freaking out. you know, because i still -- i don't know this isn't a game. >> detectives had been analyzing that strange e-mail and they asked forensic experts to comb through chris's computers seized at his apartment, a theory began to emerge. investigators believe chris had written the e-mail himself. >> did you suspect that chris was posing as heather, sending that e plal? >> yes, i did because chris was an expert when he it came to computers. >> they suspected it was chris who actually sent those sexy texts to ed, not heather. he believed he had stolen her phone and pretending to be her. >> that is really weird. >> oh, yeah. >> you're getting, sexting from her husband. >> her husband. >> kind of one of those things,

i need to put that out of my mind. >> chris's plan, detectives thought, was to throw them off the trail, to make it look like heather ran off and was having an affair. but they didn't believe 0 word of his story or that his concern for heather was genuine. >> the reason you're freaking out was because she was dead. your actions after that -- make no sense. everything else after that was alibi. >> what did i do with her? >> chris was sticking to his story, but the biggest break in the case was about to happen. what chris didn't know while detectives were turning up the heat inside the interrogation room, outside they sent some dogs over to the mall to sniff around his car and now the team at the mall wanted to speak with detectives immediately. >> they said the dog just hammered his car. they said they're all over it. >> they found the scent of human remains. >> i don't know why cadaver dogs

hit on my car? >> i do. they don't pick cars out of the blue. >> what is us it they're trained to detect? >> the odor of decomposition. >> he had chris against the ropes and he was finally going to get some answers, not just about what happened, but why, the startling revelation. heather's radical make over of her body and life had put her life in imminent danger. coming up, a whole new story from chris, was this all some awful accident, or could it be murder with a mind blowing motive. >> do you think heather would still be alive if she had not gone through this transformation? >> yes. >> when "dateline extra" continues.

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welcome back to "dateline

extra" heather jones is a estranged husband maintained he didn't know about what happened to her. he made a suspicious move and that's when they thought they were hot on his trail. but what it lead them to heather, here is andrea canning with the conclusion of the last dance. >> would love to help you, i really would. >> for hours chris jones had been going over his story with detectives about what happened the night his heather disappeared but after the dogs found the scent of human remains, detective brian wallace wasn't buying his story. >> your story about what happened the night she disappeared, total bs. >> wallace pushed him for the truth. how did it happen? did she fall? she did? was she drunk?

what happened? that's exactly it. we were struggling over the phone. and, huh, only this time we were outside on the steps. and she fell. hit the step. and i heard the -- heard the crack. >> he said they were struggling over a cell phone. she slipped, fell backwards and hit her head and died. >> did you believe this new story? >> no. no. no way. >> finally, chris admitted heather was dead. but insisted it was only an accident, still the most important evidence was missing, heather's body. chris told detectives he dumped her at a gas station. police went there, found nothing

and checked security cameras. >> they got videos from the last 15 days they've looked at everything from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., your car never pulled on the lot. >> chris changed his story and he paid someone to get rid of the body. >> i jokingly asked, hey you want to make a couple of hundred bucks. >> no. no. chris. stop. this isn't working. that's crazier than the first one. >> four hours into the interview, wallace sensed chris was out of stories and out of options, so the detective gave him one last chance. >> i said, let's cut it out chris, your time is running out. you need to tell us where she is and you need to tell us now. >> the room went quiet and chris motioned for a pen and paper, and then he drew a map. >> i said this is where she is. >> he said that's where she is. >> detectives race today area

and followed chris's directions down a path into the woods that led to a clearing. >> once we could see an area on the ground where a fire -- what had looked like fire had taken to place, we could tell there was still a human form there. >> seven days after she disappeared, detectives had found heather, her body had been badly burned. >> we were broken hearted we had lost her. she was a big smiling big beautiful part of our group. >> chris jones was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. now, the woman who had helped heather, supported their friend in death, stairing down chris jones at every court appearance. >> there's a monster inside that hurt our friend and that we want justice. >> prosecutors rejected chris's story that heather had died from

an accidental fall. they believed he argued with her at the house that night, strangled her and then burned her body in the woods. but the question remained, why? heather friends provided a surprising answer. they were con vipsed heather's dramatic weight loss got her killed. >> do you think that heather would still be alive if she hadn't gone through this transformation and bettered herself? >> yes. >> heather's friend and family said over the course of their relationship, chris used heather's weight as a tool to control her. >> at the beginning he wanted her to be bigger, that he felt like that would be more attractive to him and then as she got bigger, then he would say to her, nobody else would want her because she was so obese. >> when heather finally achieved her unbelievable transformation, she confided to her friends that chris didn't have the reaction she expected.

>> she told me, chris wants me to gain the weight back. >> i said, heather that's a control technique, okay. he doesn't want you to get out there. he doesn't want anyone else looking at you. >> according to her best friend, heather said brought fatty foods to her, hoping she would pack the pounds back on. >> he would come up to the school with food and she would not want any part of it. >> with the sole purpose of trying to get her to gain weight. >> is what she had told me, yes. >> the new and improved heather never took the bait. after enduring years of increasing unhappiness in her marriage, they say heather found out something for her was the last straw. >> she discovered that chris was having an affair with another woman. >> that's when she finally spread her wings and found the courage to leave her marriage. and she never looked back. >> you could see just her spirit just lighting up and her sense

of security and what all the future was going to hold for her. >> in february of 2015, chris jones went on trial. >> at this time -- >> heather's friends took the stand to help prove the prosecution's theory when chris realized he lost control of heather, he took control in another way. >> find that man guilty of first-degree murder. >> prosecutors laid out their case to the jury. >> it wasn't an accident. >> assistant district attorney, daniel mccollum. >> she didn't fall down. there was a struggle. he did strangle her, either with his hands or however he did it. he was up close and personal to her and he was there watching that breath go out of her. >> the defense stuck to the story chris told on tape, that heather fell and died after they struggled over a cell phone. >> he never admits to killing her. >> the judge asked chris if he wanted to tell his story to the jury? >> i think that i will choose to

not testify. it was now up to the jury to decide his fate. friends and family filled the courthouse waiting for word, but there would not be a quick verdict. finally, after deliberating for a day. >> we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder degree. we find the defendant abuse of a corpse. >> tears flowed for a woman who worked so hard to shape her own life, free of chris jones, who will now likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. >> heather is at peace. he will never hurt anybody again. >> even after his conviction, chris jones insist thadd he didn't kill heather, he told dateline in a phone call from jail he never tried to control heather, that he is absolutely innocent of murder of any type and that his taped statements to police were coerced. >> hi, how are you doing? >> detectives said chris jones talked the to them voluntarily

and could have ended the interview at any time. as for cousin diane, she has obtained legal custody of heather and chris's two children. heather's gym friends, they find comfort knowing before her death, heather achieved that remarkable journey, becoming the person she was always meant to be. >> she got to experience that before she left the earth. she got to experience what it was like to be as beautiful as she wanted to be, inside and out, i'm glad she did. >> that dance class where heather spread her wings still keeps a place for her. a heart with heather's name on it. a reminder of a woman's whose transformation of all who knew and loved heather jones. >> and we believe that, you believe in angels, there is one dancing, i promise you. and every time we have class, she's dancing. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline extra."

thanks for watching. it was tough. it was tough to think that anybody could do that to someone. to look at the pictures of what they did to her and hear details of how it was carried out. it's just, it's devastating. >> reporter: shauna tiaffay, loving mom by day, vegas cocktail waitress by night. >> i was at one of the bars and i saw her walk by. every single head turned. it was after her shift, that they found her, the victim of a