world. so i just kind of think of him out there, you know? he's out there somewhere. >> reporter: out there like the happy-go-lucky free spirit on the radio. >> that's a good one. >> reporter: the man they called steven b. >> have a good weekend. bye!

. hello o, and welcome to date line. jake doty, a member of a large, blended and by all appearances, loving family. but when he was stabbed to death, police wondered if the jesses weren't quite as happy an as they seemed. those who loved jack never gave up hope, neither did the relentless detect relentless detective who was

determined to catch the killer. here's keith morrison with deadly conspiracy. >> the game is called mousetrap. unless every lever works in unison, will not be caught and how often things go wrong to allow the mice to get away. what really happened could so eerily mimic a children's game. these are the people it happened to. the jesse clan of orange county, california. they vacationed together. shared birthdays. even got together for a monthly game of ten-pins. but what these videos don't show is what is yet to come, murder,

conspiracy, a game so twisted, mice so clever that the crafty plot to catch the conspirators might be impossible. it was 1998, the monica lewinsky was freshly famous. cheryl got a strange call from her dad, jack jesse. >> i was getting ready for bed and the phone rings, and it's my dad on the phone. >> what time is it. >> 20 after 9:00. >> he was worried about sandra. she was missing. >> what did he think was wrong? >> he thought she'd gotten into an accident or something. >> could cheryl please find her. >> went to the burger king, came

back. >> when she went back into her dad's home she found -- >> one of the worst sightsivy ever seen in my life. he was laying face down in the pool of blood. >> what did you think had happened? >> i thought he had fallen, because he had a gash in the back of his hid. i went to the kitchen and called t 911. >> i could hear bubbling. >> it's not often this little town in california has a murder. what did the crime scene itself look like? >> it was pretty bloody. there was evidence of a violent struggle between jack and his killer. >> the kind of thing that might

happen if it was a home invasion robbery or something? >> or an assault between people who knew each other. >> he said look at the one who reported the crime, his daughter cheryl. >> she was the one who found him. back at the station, he interviewed all of his relatives, including cheryl and jack's wife sandra who hasn't been missing at all, just off on a shopping trip. >> told us she would cooperate and wanted to help us solve the murder of her husband. >> and she told him about life with jack, married 14 years, blends bloe blended family. jack was a teddy bear kind of a man. >> he was a very lovinged man who doted on his children and stepchildren. >> but jack was ill, house

bounds after coloned canc cance surgery. >> she was very specific about where she had gone at what times and why she had gone there. >> as for cheryl, she said she'd do anything to find out what happened to her dad in those 5 a minutes she was' w away from th house. >> her actions are consistent with the police are look at me now. i'm going to do everything i can to give full disclosure. >> a guy walked into a bar, sat down on the barstool and told the bartender a story about how the mushrder happened, who did , what the motive was, the whole story, but of kwoshs that was

just a story in the bar. sandra announced she had helped as much as she would. she was done. same thing happened with sandra's children. while jack's blood relations practically begged to help solve the murder. living with sandra said jack's daughter share and cheryl was like a fairy tale, like those written by the brothers grimm. but when it came to her own children, sandra was indulgent, eerily so with son tom. >> he was a mama's boy to the foints was strange. >> very weird. >> they're always walking into the other room and closing the door. >> yeah.

>> though jack seemed quite happy with sandra, until the spring of '98, that is, just a few months before the murder when jack was diagnosed with colon cancer, a shock, of course, but one of two shocks to sandra. and for those around her, the second seemed somehow worse. her beloved son tom up and moved to arizona. >> and she was flippin' out about it. >> yeah. >> she had to go there. >> she demanded jack move to arizona too. >> that woman was off her rocker. her tone was just scary. it's like someone else's voice coming out of her. >> but surely that wasn't motive enough for murder. and with plenty of suspicion with littles to go on, wyatt spent months poring over their bank statements, credit card bills, searching for, well, he didn't know what he was searching for, but he was getting basically nowhere.

>> we couldn't establish a pattern that was suspicious. >> then as wyatt's investigation sputtered, sandra left. sold jack's house in california, moved to arizona to be near her son tom and soon her daughter followed too. and they all lived within a couple of blocks of each other in homes sandra helped purchase with jack's insurance money and savings. >> when everything was said and done, she got close to $700,000. >> and as the months slipped pass. the investigation hit one dead end after another. the case bounced from the pd to the sheriff's department where before long it became a case to avoid, toxic, an unsolvable career killer. until five years after his brother's killer, he met an investigator who picked up the case. >> that's great.

let me ask you a question. yeah. what are you going to do? are you going to get in the case for three, four, five months, a year, then move up? become a sergeant or something and move on? and tom says to me, listen, buddy, nobody likes me in my department. he says i'm not goin' nowhere. he says, i got five years to put into your brother's case. i retire and i'm out of here, but i'll give it my all. i will give everything to this case that i have. i looked over at him, and i said you're the man. >> what david didn't know but clearly sensed was that detective tom dow was the real deal, who seemed to step out of his prime time drama. >> there weren't any eyewitnesses. >> in other words, the perfect challenge. >> perhaps. >> coming up. that bar tendser wier who liked

talk. now he's talking too. >> this person had specific details unknown to the general public. >> not only that, he's naming names when dateline continues. g names when dateline continues. and your sister-in-law's... tennis partner's... chatty coworker's... youngest daughter's... entire judo class. one shot can make a world of difference. walgreens has specially trained pharmacists, that know which flu shot is right for you. protecting the world... over 60 million flu shots and counting. starts with protecting yours. walgreens trusted since 1901. with uncontrolled moderor atopic dermatitis, you never know how your skin will look. and it can feel like no matter what you do, you're itching all the time. but even though you see and feel your eczema on the surface of your skin, an overly sensitive immune system deep within your skin

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then one day the whole impossible business was handed off -- to tom dove. >> i can't tell you how many times that i thought, just move on, give up, move on. >> there was no hope of any new evidence, of course, like fingerprints or dna. there was just the infuriating puzzle who had become more difficult with each passing year. >> after i reviewed the case i had no feeling for the family, no feeling for jack jesse. >> to get his head in the game, dove met with the people closest to jack like his brother david. >> when i met with david he inspired me. his determination not to let the love for his brother go was a big motivating factor. >> david had provocative information. something jack told him after arguing with sandra about moving to arizona. >> he says, it's her. >> not the only time jack said such a thing. >> he told me, i wouldn't be

surprised if she killed me. he said that. >> so dove picked through the original files hoping he might come across something that was overlooked. then he found this -- a simple two-page report apparently unread by any detective. remember the guy who walked into the bar who told a story about the jesse murder? years later when the case went cold the bartender decided to call the cops. an officer took the call, typed up the report and stuck it away in the file where it sat unseen until tom dove came along. >> two things caught in my mind when i read it. one, whoever the caller is knew how many stab wounds were involved. two, the caller stated that the person used the back door or a window to enter the residence that night. that was significant in that this person had specific details

unknown to the general public about the murder of jack jesse. >> most of the tipster's information was vague like a riddle. yet another game to be played. there were two killers. he gave no names. one had a knife. the other had the getaway car. both worked at a big box department store. the man who told the story in the bar that day had been the driver of the car and with the blood money he bought a truck and a sea-doo. but on the question of who was behind the plot the story named names. two of them. they were sandra's son tom, the mama's boy jack raised as his own under the direction of the mastermind herself, jack's wife sandra. so with that new perspective on the case dove revisited sandra's interview, hours of mostly

useless chatter. how many times did you listen to the interview. >> at least ten times. >> then it jumped out. right about here she was going through her day planner. she looked at one and said -- >> my son's friend. >> this is my son's friend. one comment that got doug's mind racing. if the bar tendser was right, could that slip of paper hold the key? doug tore through bags of evidence. there it was, the day planner seized five years earlier just after the murder. >> i went through the planner for a day or more. went through every piece of paper, every notation, everything put into place in the day planner was looked at. there was a small piece of note paper with the name which appeared to me at that time to say schreiber with no telephone number or significance. >> just schreiber? >> yes.

>> where would he find this schreiber? doug went back to the interview. and unearthed one more clue. when asked about tom's friend sandra said the boys were once work buddies. >> they worked together. >> detective doug criss-crossed california searching the employment records of every target for a guy named schreiber, but nobody ever had heard of him. >> we were starting to come to the end of our rope. it was a dead end. >> then jack's daughter got strange packages in the mail from sandra, he said they were keepsakes jack wanted his girls to have. >> like what? >> ashtrays, bowling ball bachlgt weird stuff that was coming. >> which provoked the kind of reaction they felt. >> hatred. more than i had before. >> sandra seemed to be telling

them she had beaten them, got away with it, won the game. >> we thought were we cursed? was there something with the case that it won't be solved? >> it's frustrating for him putting the work in. to think these people may literally get away with murder. >> patty is tom's wife. been together since high school, knows him better than anyone. she was used to his perfectionism. >> it's comforting to me. >> his nothing out of place sense of order. >> he's a stubborn man. for him to take a case he's going to do it and solve it. >> so detective dove decided to start over. take a different approach this time. he immersed himself in sandra's old phone bills seized years before. >> i went through every phone call looking for somebody

related to this case. there had to be some communication. >> get anywhere? >> yeah. >> what he found was a cluster of calls not long before the murder, all short, within minutes of each other. one call was to a target store, one to a pager and one to a boardinghouse. he called the last number, asked if anyone there knew a guy named schreiber and the landlady said, nope. but there was once a tenant named schrauben. could he be the man the detective was looking for? >> not schreiber. >> doug tracked him to a distant suburb in the mojave desert. right there parked in the driveway was a 1999 pickup truck and a sea-doo, just what the anonymous bartender said. >> this was a huge break for us. we now had a name of somebody

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the jack jesse investigation was six years of dead ends, bad breaks, blind alleys. now on the trail of a suspect dove was about to start a new game where he could write the rule book but it would be complicated.

dove wanted more than just the getaway driver. he wanted everybody related to the murder. >> the only way to tie them together in the conspiracy was a wiretap. >> wiretaps are difficult to get. dove needed permission from a judge, and to get that, he needed to prove schr amount uau still in contact with tom and tom's mom. it was a catch-22. time to get creative. >> it was uh my experience in the narcotics section of the sheriff's department that often people throw away valuable evidence. >> dove asked his fellow detectives to help him because he decided to search the garbage. what did they tell you? you're crazy? >> the first idea was that i'm starting to lose it. i'm going to dig through somebody's trash. >> faithfully once a week on garbage pickup day dove made the hourlong journey to the

neighborhood where a trash truck used just for schrauben's garbage brought it to a nearby parking lot. >> the truck would dump the trash in a pile here regardless of the size. >> right on the tarmac. >> right on the tarmac. scatter everything out. open every bag. get down on our hands and knees and slowly sift through every piece of paper that looked like it might be a document of some kind. >> that's how dove's team found this coffee-stained phone bill showing call after call to sandra's son tom in arizona. that number, tom's number -- how often would it pop up? >> the average we figured was 24 times in a billing cycle a month. so -- >> almost every day. >> correct. it was almost like going to a crime scene and finding pieces of evidence. it's an excitement that you realize this is going to work. we are going to find what we are looking for.

>> but there was yet again a problem. the phone was in someone else's name. to get the wiretap schrauben had to be the primary user. so how would he prove that? >> we had to literally follow him around until we saw him on the telephone. we later took it further. i went into the target store he was working at. i noticed he was stocking shelves in a certain section of the store so i randomly picked up items to look like i was interested in them. then i called one of my other investigators outside and i said, put a call in now to the phone. i heard him answer the phone. i was able to say, that's his phone. he talks on it. we put the phone in his hand. >> as they continued to sift through trash week after week they found something even more important than the phone bill. something unexpected. this day planner.

>> from the years 1996, 97 and 98. >> here, six years later was the day planner from 1998,the year jack jessee was murdered, crucial evidence tossed in the garbage. >> a treasure we didn't expect. it connected all the people back in 1998 that were associated. >> what did you think? >> this is too good to be true. i thought good things were going to happen. somebody is back on our side. >> with this evidence, dove got a judge to approve a wiretap on the phone. then dove waited for the wiretap to go into effect. he continued to go through the trash hoping to find something more. indeed he did. and it turned the case upside down. he found rental listings in arizona. brett was moving out of the state. would be gone before the wiretap ruling took effect.

in arizona, california warrant was worthless. >> this completely took all that work -- and we are talking six months of work -- and threw it out the window. >> the killers had slipped the trap. game over. >> but the detective is not giving up. his team builds a new and better mousetrap, and guess who takes the bait? coming up. >> it's me. you need to call me asap. >> when dateline continues. >> when dateline continues game changer. the moment you take staining to the next level.

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telling constituents at a town hall that she would take a hard look at running for president after the midterm elections. she says time's up and more women need to go to washington

to fix or broken government. the fbi has reached out to debra ramirez about her allegations against prbrett kavanaugh. now back to dateline. brett kavanaugh. now back to dateline welcome back to dateline. detective tom dove had just secured a wiretap. but schrauben was moving to arizona. so he hatches another plan. could he spur his targets to talk about jack jesse's slaying, or would his prey slip through the snare again. after two years of

relentless police work tom dove's investigation of the murder of jack jesse generated enough evidence to fill this mail cart, all apparently for nought. the suspect and his key to cracking the case had skipped the state and detective dove's jurisdiction. >> we were so close. >> the jesse family sensed dove was beaten and sandra had gotten away with murder. >> i put his pictures away. it's tough. he was so fantastic. >> put his pictures away? >> i had to. >> couldn't look at them. >> i couldn't. >> at the dove home tom's wife patty began to worry about he is husband's help. >> he tends to hold things in. you can't hold in that frustration and emotion without it affecting you. with that kind of stress it takes a toll on them physically and mentally. >> that's what you worry about? >> exactly. >> she knew if he didn't solve the case he might die trying. >> he's like a dog with a bone.

he's going to take it and do it until it's done. >> dove wasn't alone. a prosecutor shared his dogged conviction. a man named michael murray who wanted sandra and her group just as badly as dove. >> this case seemed to be full of obstacles. >> it would have been probably forgivable just to let it go at that stage, on some level. >> maybe to some people. >> murray and dove flew to phoenix to present evidence to the state attorney general, pleaded for an arizona wiretap warrant and -- they got it. the game was back on, if they could make it work. >> we were going to try to set a trap for three people and keep track of those three people. i wasn't sure if it would work or not. >> if it didn't -- >> in the back of my mind, i gave it probably a 30% chance of success.

>> you're giving yourself a 70% chance of being a goat. >> it had to be perfect. we were going to try. >> he put together investigators, even called the first detective on the case, daron wyatt to see if they wanted in. >> i said, let me do what we can to help. you know, i felt like, hey, this is going to be good. >> the phoenix p.d. also provided scores of officers. by game day he had close to a hundred cops working the case. >> i reminded them of the mousetrap game you played when you were a kid. this huge ball bearing was going to have to go through a tremendous amount of obstacles that were kind of thrown together in order to lower the trap and catch the mouse. anywhere along the line there could be a snag, something that we hadn't planned for that could throw the ball completely off

the board. >> okay. what was the plan? what was the nature of the mousetrap? >> we believed that if we did something to get these people uptight, if we were able to rattle the tree. if we were able to put fear into them maybe the police were onto them that they would talk about the murder of jack jessee. >> what was the little piece of cheese you put into the trap? >> we mailed a simple copy of the newspaper article when jack jesse was murdered anonymously to sandra jessee, tom and brett. the significance of that was they didn't know we knew about brett. and they're going to know something is up. >> sure enough. as soon as tom heard brett got the anonymous letter he called sandra. >> whoever was sending out that crap sent one to brett, too. >> give me a break. >> really. >> you're kidding. >> no.

why would i kid about that? >> they sent one to brett? >> yeah. >> why would they -- how would they even -- >> i have no clue. >> next, dove started poking brett's friends in california who of course called brett. >> leave your name and number and i'll get back to you. >> dude, it's me. you need to [ bleep ] call me asap. this is no [ bleep ] joke. some guy from the sheriff in orange county sheriff's department homicide division is calling me asking about you. >> brett, in turn, called tom. >> hello? >> hello. >> tom? >> yeah. hey, what's up. >> i just got a call from scott. the orange county homicide division. >> uh-huh. >> called scott. they want to talk about me. >> about you? >> yeah. >> what are you on now? >> my cell phone. >> are you comfortable or no? >> no. >> that little mouse trap ball

was making its way through the maze. >> after a few days sandra, tom and brett began to wonder if they were being played. suspected the phones were tapped, the houses bugged. >> i want to talk -- >> no, no. i would rather pick you up and go to the church or something. >> well, i mean, somewhere outside. >> oh, okay. >> away from your place or mine. >> okay. >> not on a cell phone. >> okay. when do you have time? >> now. >> so they started meeting in shopping centers. >> we decided to put surveillance teams on each of the individuals, sandra, tom and brett. during the duration of the wiretap to capture things they may do that may not be normal while the wiretap was in place. >> they would stand shoulder to shoulder in a parking lot watching out in the parking lot

and not looking at each other. >> there it was like a scene from a mafia movie. the suspects out of range of recording devices apparently deep in conversation as they peered out into the parking lot. >> i think the photographs of tom and sandra was worth a million words a as to the depth of their involvement and how far they would go to conceal what they had done. in their minds they thought they got away with the perfect crime. >> meanwhile, dove would hop on flights back to orange county to pressure friends of brett for information. he chased down anyone who knew the man. followed one tip to another until dove encountered the man he had been hunting for years -- the bartender who called in the anonymous tip years earlier. >> the first words out of my mouth were, hi, mike. i'm here about brett. his face went completely flush. he said, i knew you were going to find me sooner or later.

>> what story did he tell you? >> for whatever reason schrauben confided in him and told him specific details of the murder of jack jessee including his involvement. that was a huge quantum leap for us in putting the case to rest. >> now the time had come to spring the trap. brett was arrested. soon thereafter, sandra jessee herself was in handcuffs. finally to be held accountable for jack's murder. >> that was wonderful. best three-day weekend i had. >> oh, me, too. >> that was a good day. >> didn't last. >> for one thing, tom wasn't arrested. insufficient evidence, said the prosecutor. as he rolled out the case against the others, that little ball came off the track again. this time it happened at sandra's preliminary hearing. the judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence to hold her. she was free to go. >> i sobbed all the way home.

i don't know how i made it back. >> only brett was to face the murder trial. it was the summer of 2006, eight years after jack jesse's murder. justice? not yet. if ever. >> coming up, finally, the break detectives had been waiting for. >> she wanted jack dead. >> the information he provided would blow the case wide open. >> until something slammed it shut again. when "dateline" continues. sleep, try new nyquil severe with vicks vapocool and vaporize it. ahhhhh! shhhhh! new nyquil severe with vicks vapocool. the vaporizing, nightime coughing, aching, stuffy head, best sleep with a cold, medicine. ...that's why i've got the power of 1-2-3 medicines with trelegy. the only fda-approved 3-in-1 copd treatment. ♪ trelegy. the power of 1-2-3

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sitting in a cell month after month can do a lot to alter a person's take on the world. even more so if the inmate is looking at a possible life sentence. that's when brett had an epiphany. days before the murder trial was to begin he said he was finally willing to testify against tom and sandra, but he wanted out now. the deal had to be for time served or nothing at all. >> what did you think when you heard what he wanted? >> i thought it was outrageous, but it's not a perfect world. the people with the best, most detailed information about what takes place inside a conspiracy is a coconspirator. we needed brett. >> what was the story?

>> it was detailed and amazing. >> schrauben described it on tape, laid it out in chilling detail. anatomy of a murder. the conspiracy was launched with a phone call from tom. >> he told me $50,000 to kill this guy. >> he met with sandra in a parking lot. she gave him a $5,000 deposit. >> she wanted jack dead. she wanted it to be done at the house and look like a robbery. she said she would leave for x amount of time. that's when it needed to be done. >> he hired his good friend t.j., a local drifter, to be the get away driver. in 1998 while sandra had her nails done the men drove to the house to murder jack. >> i was already having cold feet on the way there. by the time i was walking down the street i was really having

cold feet. i got in the house, standing in the garage and i put on a rubber glove, reached inside the door and locked it. i was chicken. i didn't do it. i went back to the car. i told t.j. the door was locked so that way it wouldn't look like i chickened out. i called tom. i told tom that the door was locked. he said he would call his mom and get back to me. >> according to schrauben, tom called back within minutes with a backup plan. >> he said his mom would go out that night and it needed to happen tonight because his mom can't take anymore. he said, if we didn't do it tonight his mom would do it. >> so they returned that night about 9:00. schrauben dropped t.j. off and drove around while his friend snuck inside and stabbed jack to death. >> we had walkie-talkies. he called when he was done and told me to pick him up. he had blood on his legs. we looked for a place to clean himself up.

i believe it was a del taco with an outside place to clean up. >> the information he provided, if we could corroborate what he said would blow the case wide open. >> police questioned his friend, he said he didn't kill jesse. so he was allowed to walk. investigators focused on building their case against tom and sandra by documenting money transfers, phone calls, air travel. >> when you added it all together, what did you think? >> i thought we were starting to put together a good case. >> good enough that murray had tom and sandra arrested. in the summer of 2009, 11 years after the murder, the mother and son team went on trial for the murder of jack jessee. >> going to court was like going to my dad's funeral every day. it was. >> to be around people you know killed your dad was a ridiculous feeling. you can't even put into words.

just soul wrenching. >> schrauben testified against them. in court it was argued sandra had a variety of motives for killing jack. she wanted his money before medical bills ate up the savings and she couldn't bear being away from her son tom. >> do you think the case went well? >> i thought it had gone extremely well. >> except -- once again that little ball came off the track. what happened? >> dateline returns after the break. with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe eczema, or atopic dermatitis, you never know how your skin will look. and it can feel like no matter what you do,

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welcome back to dateline. brett shrauben had struck a deal with prosecutors. in exchange, he explained how tom and sandra orchestrated a plan to kill jack jesse and his friends carried it out. there were a couple of big surprises in store. were t here's keith morrison. >> when the jury went in to

deliberate, the family thought justice was hours away. no word, same them the neing thy and the day after that. the problem? there was a hold out. >> it got very heated. >> these members of the jury told us 11 voted for conviction. >> she was concerned that his illness would eat up their nest egg. >> kind of felt like she was enjoying the control she had. >> there was nothing, nothing we could do or say. >> she started to shut down even more. >> that scene played out for three and a half days until the judge said enough and declared a mistrial. >> i was in tears. i was in tears. >> i was, too. >> and thinking of the family and what they've gone through,

that was heartache, just heartache. >> i thought i was going to pass out. >> it was horrible. >> it was just soul, soul eating. >> like the night happened all over again. >> that one juror, i saw her, i wanted to talk to her. >> what did you say? >> i said she was an idiot. >> it was certainly difficult for me. it was fash mor more difficult the family. >> murray promised justice for the family. and weeks before trial he got a call from tom's attorney saying his client was ready to cut apron strings and testify against his mom. >> there's no way that we ever suspected that tom would ever turn on his mother. he was known to be a mama's boy. >> but a mama's boy who decided he didn't want to die in prison. tom pleaded gel toy secouilty se murder.

he had someone else he wanted to give up. that friend of brett shcrauben's. despite the fact there was no forensic evidence to indicate owe w he was involved, his case went to trial. a jury found him not guilty. his defense attorney believed he'd been set up to take the fall as part of that conspiracy. that friend is now a free man. as for sandra, her case went to court. would a jury believe tom's story? and as the jury deliberated and the family waited, there was no euphoria. they knew from bitter experience that anything could happen. >> a lot harder this time, not knowing what's going to happen. >> on the second day they got word. the jury had a verdict. >> my stomach's in knots. >> i'm shaking. >> we're really very nervous at

this employmemoment. >> 13 years after the murder, sandra was found guilty. finally, that little ball stayed on its track. the key mouse was caught. >> i hope that she rots in hell. i just really do. i'm glad it wasn't the death penalty. i want her to stay there and suffer with all the other miserable people who go to prison. >> what does it feel like to get just snis. >> it feels good, but not complete. lost a guy, nicest guy i ever met. >> and for tom dove? he's now retired from the sheriff's department and, at his going away party, his fellow detectives gave him this. it honors his commitment to the jesse case. >> it means more to me than any other plaque or award i've ever received in my life.

>> in retirement, tom planned to set up a shelter for stray dogs. the urge to rescue runs deep. >> that's all for this edition of god, no, please, no. this can't be real. >> a teenager, home alone in a night of terror. >> i would just stair and try to figure out how scared she was to death. >> on her body, like a signature, a hand print in blood. >> it was a crime of passion. there's a lot of anger involved in this. >> but hang on, because that hand print doesn't belong to the man police put in prison.