live your days inspired anew. >> that's all for the edition of "dateline extra". i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. i was just solving a problem. >> that's what she did, solve problems. as a busy mom and a busy executive, but her career was on the rise. her marriage was on the rocks. >> i still wanted this marriage to work. i didn't want to give up. >> soon he was gone. vanished without a word or a trace. >> he left a young daughter behind. he left a house. >> once this husband who didn't

want to be found. >> that znd soudoesn't sound li missing person. >> or could this be something sne else. >> detectives would launch an undercover operation that would lead to a long shock. >> are you ready for what's coming? >> how do you say you're ready? i know that it has to happen. >> a disappearance in the desert. could it be the perfect crime? >> i can only imagine what it would be like keeping that type of a secret. hello and welcome to "dateline extra". i'm craig melvin. for eight years, it was a husband who had simply vanished. on the surface, it didn't make sense. he had a lucrative job and a family he loved. but investigators were told he also had a secret. so was he missing or was he

hiding? that question would lead detectives to a dark discovery because someone else had a secret too. >> we never talked about what happened or why it happened. >> every marriage had its secrets and this one was no different. but what if the secret becomes bigger than you? >> i was just solving the problem. >> they were two people who had been unlucky in love the first time around. back then she was ellen sheffield in her early 30s, divorced with a young child. and looking for someone to share that next chapter of her life. then quite literally in walked mike snyder. >> and i said hi, mike, how are you doing? >> it was the fall of '91. auto mechanic mike snyder was

visiting a friend at the car dealership where ellen worked. he was curious about the red head who had greeted him with a big hello. he dnidn't remember who i was. >> turned out they had worked together years before. this time the quick encounter led to a fix up by mutual friends. >> great guy. showed interest in me. >> opposites attract. the quiet and introverted mike hit it off with the talkative and outgoing ellen. >> he would leave flowers on my car. we'd go out to dinner. he was nice to my son. >> and that was important to you? >> it was very important to me. absolutely. >> and ellen herself was submiten with mike. he was a skilled mechanic i can regarded as one of the very best in albuquerque. >> he probably worked at least six days a week. he was usually the first one there and the last one to leave.

>> dave worked alongside mike for a decade at this jeep dealership. >> if you owned a yeep ajeep an was an older jeep, mike could fix it. he had a wealth of experience. >> and that wealth of experience earned mike a six figure salary. >> were you happy for his success? >> absolutely. it's a proud thing to say mike snyder is my boyfriend. >> ellen was making a name for herself too. she was the automotive sales adviser at a neighboring dealership. >> there is a perception that women don't know about cars. >> that's correct. it irritates me to no end. >> ellen knew a lot, not just about cars but how to make the customer happy. jim calls her a problem solver. >> what can we do to fix the problem, make it go away? all she wanted to do was take care of the customer. >> this problem was work and as for her personal life, ellen's was running on all cylinder.

>> six weeks after we started dating, he bought me diamond earrings for christmas. so it was all very fast. >> so fast that after only a few months of dating, ellen and her 8-year-old son michael moved in with mike. >> did he seem like he was happy? >> he did seem like he was happy. he did. >> mike had no children of his own. now he was filling a void in young michael's life. mike's sister terry. >> he treated him almost like his own son. they shared a lot of interests. they would tinker in the garage together. >> it wasn't long until she noticed mike's affection wasn't all she wished for. >> i'm all happy that we're going to have valentine's day together. we're in love and he doesn't come home. he told me he was going to go out with his friends. >> on valentine's day? >> on valentine's day. he couldn't understand why i was upset about that. >> let's face it, not every guy makes a big deal out of

valentine's day. ellen chalked it up to simply mike not being the most sensitive of man. >> it made you sad. >> i'm not sure sad is the right word for it. i think i was a little confused at the time. >> confused or not, they stayed together and a few years later they married and then ellen became pregnant. they began to bill a 4,000 square foot house in an upscale subdivision in the foot hills of albuquerque. >> that house was our dream house. >> it was ready just in time for the baby. only mike wasn't ready. he wanted to stay at work on the day ellen was giving birth. >> so i called his boss. i said well, you know, i'm in the hospital having a baby. he says, well, mike's here. i said yeah. he is. do you think you could send him? >> once again, maybe not the most sensitive husband, but mike loved that baby girl. they named her elizabeth. >> she was just the joy of my

brother's life. he just thought the world of that child. >> ellen would come by the dealership and bring elizabeth by. mike would get her a balloon, candy, soda, and give his time to her. everything else stopped. >> but behind closed doors, mike and ellen's marriage was starting to unravel. ellen said mike seemed jealous of her success at work. >> once i was promoted to service manager, it basically became hurtful and he was standoffish. >> ellen says from the time elizabeth was conceived, mike had moved out of the bedroom permanently. >> we never slept together again. >> so mike and ellen began living two separate lives in that dream home with their children. but still they stayed together. >> i still wanted this marriage to work. i didn't want to give up. >> that is until she learned

about that secret. the big secret that would ut matly te -- ultimately tear this family apart. >> i thought after christmas and everything was done i would tell him what i knew. but we can guarantee the best price on that thar rental cabin or any hotel, home, boat, yurt, whatever. ♪ just don't get carried away with the wild west thing. hey guys. get the best price on homes, hotels and so much more. booking.com, booking.yeah

returning to the secret, although ellen and mike snyder's marriage was crumbling, they stayed together living separate lives. but ellen says she discovered something that pushed their marriage to its breaking point. here again is josh. >> on the outside you'd look at our marriage. it was this great marriage, great family, made lots of money. go in that door, that's not how it was. >> ellen snyder says it had been eight years. >> he made the rules? >> he made the rules. >> you followed them.

eight years in a marriage that was neither equal or loving. >> you were afraid to step up to him? >> absolutely. >> eight years of living a lie to the outside world in that big home that she and her husband mike had worked so hard to build. but ellen wouldn't leave. determined to make her marriage work. >> i wasn't going to be a failure at another marriage. >> mike hung on as well, but his sister terry says mike was thinking of ending it. >>ible he was in the process of trying to leave her. he was moving belongings to my mother's house. >> mike and ellen's daughter elizabeth was now 6 years old and very much daddy's little girl and michael, his son from her first marriage, was 17. she got sick and life inside that home grew much worse for

just about everyone in the snyder family. >> his body would go numb. he was in severe pain. >> it was the summer of 2001 when mike went to see a doctor. >> the doctor came in and said we believe that it's an onsetting multiple sclerosis. there's no cure and it can range from a manageable disease to paralysis and even death. mike was put on projection treatments to slow the progression of the disease. ellen gave him the shots. >> it was my place. i was his wife. i was to take care of him. >> as time went on, mike's work colleagues mike chuck wyatt noticed a physically weaker mike. >> he was just kind of struggling to make it through the day. we weren't told what actually he had or what was going on, but he was not coming in to work as often or every day. >> when he couldn't work at the

level he expected of himself, mike went on disability. >> he was really starting to face it and try to understand how his life was going to be with ms. >> which only added more stress to his marriage. >> i'm sure my brother was going through incredible emotional turmoil about his physician condition. >> maybe that was the reason mike began waking ellen up in the middle of the night to vent his anger. >> there was yelling and demeaning and calling names and telling me how worthless i was. he didn't want to necessarily have the big fights in front of elizabeth, so he would wake me up at 1:00 or 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. >> and yell at you? >> and yell at me. >> of course, she was careful not to tell her colleagues. she feared if she showed a

change in her armorr -- >> she did say she would be there for him through the good times and the best. >> she says i have to see him through this. what kind of wife would i be? >> in sickness and in health. >> right. she wasn't to leave him. >> but ellen says he had no problem leaving her. in fact, mike was spending more and more time away from ellen and his family. he was going back and forth between albuquerque and phoenix. that's where jeep held its continuing education classes in auto mechanics. >> he still wanted to go to training because he'd been going to training all along through his work history. >> but a two day trip became three days, then four days, then a week. ellen was becoming increasingly suspicious of what he was doing on those long trips away from

family and from her. >> and i felt hurt and betrayed that i had gone along all this time being the good wife. >> and then one night mike was in the shower and his cell phone was sitting there. curiosity got the best of her 37 she picked up his phone. >> so you listened to the messages? >> i listened to the messages. >> what a shock that was. one message from a man she had never heard mike mention, someone named dave simmons, a man ellen believed was the reason mike was spending so much time in phoenix. >> he would talk about how satisfied he was with their sexual contact. he would be explicit as to what they had done to each other. >> so it really wasn't any

question what was going on. >> there was no question, no. >> it was january 11, 2002. ellen says that like so many nights before, mike woke her for the nightly screeching match. this was at around 2 or 3 in the morning. there was, ellen says, a heated argument and then mike left the next morning. at the jeep dealership where mike worked, colleagues knew only that he'd been out for a while. >> we didn't know if it was cancer or he had come back or not come back. we had no idea. >> this was like losing the star player. >> pretty much, yes. >> but mike's tool box was still at work worth around $40,000, so everyone assumed he'd return. that is, until ellen broke the

news about mike leaving town. >> i'd ask ellen, how is mike doing? she said, well, mike moved to phoenix arizona. he's living in arizona. >> it was all so puzzling to mike's family. they could understand why mike wasn't talking to ellen. but why wasn't he talking to them? their calls went straight to voice mail. >> we knew that he was not doing well and we knew that he was thinking about leaving ellen, so we were very concerned as to why we hadn't heard from him. >> was everything as it seemed? was mike really in phoenix? and if so, what was he doing there? doing there? managing my type 2 diabetes wasn't my top priority. until i held her. i found my tresiba® reason. now i'm doing more to lower my a1c. once daily tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction. tresiba® is a long-acting insulin used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don't use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar,

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swelling of the arms and legs and confusion. we spoke up and it made all the difference. ask your parkinson's specialist about nuplazid. mike snyder had disappeared. friends and family wanted to know why. they also wondered why it appeared that his wife ellen wasn't missing him. once again, josh mankiewicz.

>> perhaps the loneliest place on earth was in a bad marriage which is where ellen snyder found herself. in the early morning hours of january 11th, 2002, that came to an end. she had confronted her husband mike snyder with her knowledge of his love affair with another man. in a rage, she says, mike left his home and his family and disappeared. >> it was so calm in the house. it had been a very long, lonely time. to be married and to be lonely every day and that loneliness was gone. >> what disappeared along with mike was ellen's second marriage which she says she fought so hard to save. now it had failed just like her first. on the plus side, she says, mike was no longer there to torment her, to belittle her and to shout at her. >> your husband isn't waking you up in the middle of the night to shout at. >> right.

>> just you and the kids now. >> just me and the kids. >> ellen says she tried to reach him but couldn't, and neither could mike's family. he wasn't returning their calls either. mike's sister terry. >> your mother calls and says i haven't heard from michael in a couple of weeks. >> right. we were concerned. >> terry says she knew mike was planning on leaving ellen soon. the whole family knew that much or assumed it. but he wasn't supposed to leave everyone. >> he would have never have done that to his mother. he would have at least given her, look, i don't want to be contacted, please give me my space, but i am okay. >> at work a mechanic noticed his boss ellen seemed more relax as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulder. >> she seemed happier. she seemed more content, more at ease. >> and unbeknownst to ellen, her collapsing marriage was the

topic of gossip. >> she didn't want anybody to know what was going on in her life. >> she didn't talk about her marriage, but other people did? >> yeah. >> what they said was what? it wasn't working? >> no. they said mike was a hot head. >> mike had a reputation at work for having a hot temper, for to go intimidating. mechanic dave seiler worked with him for a decade. >> there was a lot of tension. you could just feel it from him. a lot of people were very careful around him, what they said, what they did. >> because mike's fuse could blow and when it did, you didn't want to be around. >> he did blowup at dispatchers and advisers. the dispatcher would be crying. >> so it didn't come as a big surprise when ellen announced that mike had left her. >> he packed up his stuff and moved to phoenix. he's probably going to end up living in phoenix. that marriage mean it's over.

>> the rumors spread through the albuquerque auto business quicker than the latest recall. >> mike it left town. took money out of the house, took all these things, and just disappeared. and then later on i was hearing rumors that he was gay, had a male lover, went to the caribbean. >> you had any idea who the source of these rumors were? >> no. everybody heard it and it was passed along throughout the dealerships. >> did you believe it? >> disappearing i was kind of -- that was one thing, but being gay, no. >> several months passed with no word from mike. now his side of the family was so concerned, they decided to go to the police. >> i knew at some point we had to move on. we had to not just hope that he was out tlrhere, but had to at least explore other options. >> at the albuquerque police

station sister terry filed a missing person's report. she had a feeling something happened. it was one thing to leave a bad marriage but quite another to end contact with the daughter mike loved. >> i know my brother remained steadfast in his love for his daughter. she was the joy of my brother's life. i believe he fell victim to foul play. i really did not have a concrete explanation besides that's just how i felt. that was my gut. >> but terry wasn't too pleased with the response the officer gave them. >> the officer that took our report was a little arrogant and said, you know, that he's a grown adult and that he can come and go as he pleases. so he really at that time didn't even want to write our report. >> the police were essentially making the same argument ellen was making. >> right. >> mike snyder's name was entered into a national missing person's database, but there wasn't much else the police could do or frankly would do.

albuquerque police chief ray shultz. >> it's not against the law to be a missing person unless there's suspicious circumstances. >> and chief shultz was right in saying mike was totally within his rights to walk out and cut off ties with everyone in his life, the people he loved, the people he no longer loved. and so the investigation was limited to that of a missing person. winter, 2002, turned to spring. no one heard from mike snyder. his expensive mechanics tools lay unused at work. ellen, now a single mom, filed for divorce. she was awarded the house, the money in their joint account, and sole custody of their daughter elizabeth. when your daughter, mike's daughter, would say to you where's daddy, what would you say? >> i didn't know. that he had left because he was mad at mommy. >> a year after mike left her, ellen says she could no longer afford that home they built

together now that she only had her salary. so she sold the house and she and her kids, michael and elizabeth, moved to a much smaller one. it was fall, 2003 when ellen received a followup call from the albuquerque police department. the visitor wanted to know if she'd spoken with mike. you say what? >> i say that i don't consider him missing. that he is right where he wants to be. that he left me with his gay boyfriend and that i haven't heard from him since. >> police seemed to find it understandable that perhaps ellen didn't really care much about mike's whereabouts at that point. >> they never asked me more questions. >> ever show up at your house? >> no. >> whatever suspicions mike's side of the family may have had, police apparently didn't share them. and so with a few computer key strokes and without the family's knowledge or any further investigation, mike snyder's name was literally wiped out of

the national missing person's database. ellen had said he was not missing. and back then that was good enough for the police. >> there should have been obviously a little bit more investigation done, other than just the word of ellen snyder. >> so all this time that you saw police were looking for him, they weren't looking for him at all. >> they weren't looking for him at all. m at all to provide access to education for all. -to rid the world of aids, -once and for all. we have the power. to choose to include. to create clean energy. to raise capital. and be fearless entrepreneurs. to understand different perspectives. we stand behind all our partners working to make a difference. what would you like the power to do? we stand behind all our partners working to make a difference. if your moderate to severeor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough it may be time for a change.

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an 8-year-old gaut mal lan boy has died. the child seemed ill. he was taken to the hospital, diagnosed with a cold and then released. then last night he returned to the hospital vomiting and died early this morning. as president trump told reporters today, the government shutdown will not end until congress funds a border wall. he promised to break ground on one stretch of that wall next month. for now, back to "dateline".

welcome back. i'm krcraig melvin. three years had gone since mike snyder disappeared. his family suspected he hadn't gone off on his own, that he was a victim of foul play. what they did not know is all this time police hadn't been looking for him, but that was about to change. here's josh. we would call missing persons and they would say someone would get back to us. in three years we had little to no contact with the police department. >> it turns out they weren't even looking for him. >> right. during that time he was not even in the database. >> it was now 2005. it had been three years since mike snyder left his home, his family, his whole life in albuquerque. no one had heard from the master mechanic, not even his little girl who was now 9 years old, a third grader. >> that was one big red flag for me and maybe the leading one that kept me bag, because i knew

there would be no way that my brother would have ever left his daughter. ever. >> at the jeep dealership where mike had worked for ten years, his name was rarely mentioned in conversation. >> after three or four years of mike being gone, he didn't come up too much anymore. >> we knew he was sick. we didn't really know if he was still in the hospital somewhere or if he had actually just passed away from his illness. >> his tools were no longer lying there unused. ellen's son michael was using them. he followed in mike's shoes and had become a mechanic as well. and on those rare occasions when ellen would come by the shop where mike had once worked, his old colleague dave seiler would ask -- >> have you heard from mike, and she would say no. there seemed to be no concern for mike and she was just, like, no, i haven't seen mike. >> it's often said the happy

skpe -- happiest and saddest of occasions are what brings families together. when mike's family gathered together to mourn the death of mike's father, any hope the family had left for mike's return evaporated. >> that definitely was the final straw where we were all on board that my brother would have definitely shown up for his own father's funeral. >> but ellen and her children did show up. they no longer kept in touch with mike's side of the family, but they'd seen the death announcement in the newspaper and came to pay their respects. >> we weren't expecting them, so it was a little strange. kind of caught us off guard, but once again, we're in a state of mourning. we don't want to create any kind of issues. we certainly weren't going to have them escorted out. >> after all, mike's deceased father was the grandfather to elizabeth and step grandfather to ellen's son michael. >> we let them come up to the casket, you know, have their bereavement time and then all of a sudden we noticed that michael was just hysterical, just crying

uncontrollably. at that point my sister and i are just looking at each other and poking at etach other thinking what. >> michael cried so hysterically that his mother ellen had to escort the 20-year-old out of the room. >> were he and your father close? >> not close per se. i mean, he was no closer to my father than he was my mother. so it was a very odd occurrence that we all just took note of. >> and there was something else terry remembers about that day. something that enraged her. >> ellen at some point comes up to my sister and asks about my father's will and wanted to know if there was anything in the will provision for his daughter, for mike's daughter. >> and she's asking about money. >> she's asking about money. >> and the more she thought about it, the more terry had a sinking feeling that ellen knew something about mike's disappearance. >> she certainly wasn't acting

like a woman who was trying to buy in to see the father of her child and we could not understand why she didn't seem the least bit concerned about her child not having her father. >> it just didn't make sense to mike's side of the family. they pleaded with police to take a fresh look at the case. and in the spring of 2005, the albuquerq albuquerque police agreed. assigned with cold case detective mark wilson. >> the department said yes, we'll look into it. it's been three years. he left a young daughter behind. he left a house. >> the detective began digging for any information on the missing mechanic. did any record of him exist? >> personally looking at obviously the criminal end to see if maybe he'd been stopped or maybe there might be a police report on him somewhere. >> and there's nothing. >> right. there's nothing. we also look into the fact could he be dead somewhere. >> you checked the medical

investigator's office and he's not there. >> right. he's not there. then i started looking in to see if there might be any indication of financial records that might indicate he was working somewhere, and once again we came to a dead end there. >> but the detective did discover one very curious thing. it turns out mike snyder had filed state tax returns in 2004 and 2005. years after his disappearance. >> that doesn't sound like a missing person. >> no, it doesn't. >> what that sounds like to me off the top of my head is a guy who doesn't particularly want to be found. >> it suggests the possibility that he might be alive. >> is your brother the kind of person who would know how to or want to sort of live off the grid? >> he certainly had the financial means. did he have the know how? i wouldn't think so. i don't know what it takes to live underground, so to speak, and be a person of a different, you know, identity.

i don't know if he would even have considered something like that. >> could mike snyder be hiding, not living, and if so why and from whom? why and from whom?

. returning to the secret,

police investigating mike snyder's disappearance uncovered information pointing in two directions. was mike alive but in hiding, or was he dead and buried? once again, josh mankiewicz. >> out here in the new mexico desert, the land is dry and vast. there are roads that lead nowhere. and mysteries that go unsolved. cold case detective mark wilson had been trying to unravel one of those mysteries. the disappearance of albuquerque native mike snyder. >> he could have had a successful job anywhere in the country. >> one that would have shown up on your search. >> right, yes. >> but there was no trace of him. not anywhere. it was as if the master mechanic had simply vanished. >> there wasn't any indication of anything that would match-up to him. >> but mike snyder had filed

income tax returns in 2004 and 2005, years after he disappeared. it was quite simply very, very odd. as the investigation was seeming to stall, detective wilson called the local paper, "the albuquerque journal" asked if they would file a story on the cold case. maybe the attention would shake loose some leaves. journalist jeff foster. >> police were willing to say publicly they believe this may have been a homicide. >> it's no secret that in any homicide investigation the spouse is always the first to be questioned. but before the detective had a chance to reach out to ellen, she was calling him complaining about that article. >> she said where did you get this information? she was upset that it portrayed that he was just an innocent man, father, that had

disappeared. >> the article didn't implicate you. >> yes, it did. >> i read it. it doesn't lay the blame at your feet. >> yes, it does. >> what did she say to you? >> she and michael had had a heated discussion and that the next morning when she woke up he was gone and he hadn't taken a vehicle. >> ellen told the detective she was pretty sure mike had initially moved to phoenix, home of his lover dave simmons. more recently she believed he moved on to the caribbean. >> she said he was probably on an island somewhere. >> we looked at land on st. croix. as far as i knew, he had gone to st. croix. >> and that's where he was with dave simmons. >> correct. >> in fact, ellen said she had spoken with mike over the years. >> he called a couple of times and you heard his voice. >> yes. and whatever he was, he was

maybe not angry, but you were talking in a sort of nonangry way about the kids. >> i think he was still angry. i think i told him we were still angry. >> but that he was gone and he wasn't coming back. >> right. >> mike's sister terry hadn't yet learned about mike's relationship with the mysterious dave simmons or about the accusations that her brother was secretly gay. ellen didn't share any of that with terry until a few years after mike had disappeared. she told other people about it at the time. >> not us. she didn't seem to throw that out to us at first. >> any of that make any sense to you? oh, goodness, no. i don't believe for one minute my brother is gay. >> that was only one of the components to the story that detective wilson wanted to check out. he says he asked ellen to come down to the police department to meet with him in person. only she wouldn't. >> she said he's not missing. we said well, we want to find him. and even asking her to come in

to help us find him, she would not come in. >> and so ellen and detective wilson never did meet face-to-face. she claims she was giving him all the information she had. >> he wanted to meet with you. >> he didn't say that. >> he says he did. >> he never, ever asked me to come down, ever. >> instead, ellen mailed the detective some paperwork that she'd found in mike's desk. a western union money transfer from mike snyder to dave simmons in the amount of $200. a u-hall receipt with dave simmons name and number, and a copy of mike's cell phone bill from december, 2001, right before he disappeared, which showed a number of phone calls to that same telephone number. >> you gave detective wilson all the documentation you had on dave simmons. >> yes. >> unfortunately, ellen no longer had the voice mail, the one she claims to have discovered on mike's cell phone. the sexually explicit one from

dave simmons. >> i mean, the only proof that they had a relationship is the voice mails which don't exist anymore. >> well, i think people, if they knew mike, would know that he would never send anybody money, ever, unless there was some sort of relationship there. >> so mike was supporting this guy? >> i never found enough money that he was supporting him, but he was definitely helping him out. >> police tell us ellen's information didn't lead anywhere. the detective didn't locate mike in the caribbean. when he tried to contact dave simmons from phoenix, he never got a response. but that same albuquerque journal article, the one that infuriated ellen, also got ellen's former neighbors talking about something they'd seen years before. >> they'd seen michael and ellen digging out behind the garage, digging a hole. >> when was that? >> around the time that mike went missing.

the neighbor said she remembered seeing them out behind the garage with shovels. >> and that was pretty intriguing to the detective. it sounded like a viable lead. so in late spring, 2006, with the current homeowner's permission, detective wilson brought two search dogs and their handlers to the snyder's old property. a neighbor showed them where a flowering tree had been planted in 2002, a year after mike disappeared. >> my suspicion was that there was a body under the tree, that they planted a tree to hide the body. >> the handlers let the dogs loose on the property. at first they showed little interest. that is, until they went under the flowering tree. incredibly, both dogs independently of one another gave their cadaver alert. >> the dog handler said this is an indication that possibly the scent is coming up through the tree, but she did say the body

could be 10 feet down here or 30 feet in that direction if, indeed there was a body there. >> maybe mike snyder had never actually left home after all. was this the big break the case needed? the detective discussed it with mike's sister. >> and of course i get both excited and intrigued, you know, anxious, and i start asking him a bunch of questions. >> the team tried to dig deeper, but the ground was hard. >> what did you find? >> we didn't find anything. the dogs weren't excited about the hole itself. >> and soon the trail went cold. the tip had seemed like gold and mike's sister terry was crushed. the detective was deflated. >> i had to think that well, there's a possibility that maybe his body was somewhere else. i did have a feeling mike snyder was dead somewhere. >> the digging here was over, but metaphorically at least

detective wilson still held a shovel. he was trying to get to the bottom of what ellen snyder had been doing around the time her husband mysteriously disappeared. it wasn't long before he found someone ellen a gun if you'd like to use it, if that will help.

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returning to "the secret," after investigators' best lead came up empty, the mike snyder case went cold. then out of the blue, one of ellen snyder's co-workers came forward and shed new light on the mystery. once again, josh mecca wits. >> it had been four years since mike snyder had gone missing, four years since he left his family, including his young daughter, in his hometown of albuquerque, new mexico. in 2006 "the albuquerque

journal" ran an article on the missing mechanic and father. the cold case, which had been virtually dead for years was suddenly picking up steam. reporter jack proctor -- >> it triggered some tips to the police department and it got people, you know, talking about this as something other than a husband who had walked off on his family. >> reporter: for the first time, albuquerque police were publicly calling the case a potential homicide investigation and that caught the attention of a man named frank. >> he said, i'm the one who lent her the gun. if you think she's a suspect in this, i don't want my family in danger so i want to turn the bogun over to you >> reporter: frank was a straight, by the book guy, who bee friended her in february 2001. >> she was telling people he yells at her all the time.

>> reporter: it was christmas 2001. ellen said the daily fighting in the home escalated. mike's multiple sclerosis had grown progressively work. and with it, so did his anger. >> he would push me around. he hit me. >> reporter: he hit you how many times? one time? >> three or four. >> reporter: ellen now held an executive level position at a large dealership. she was the boss to 30 mechanics and making upwards of $90,000 a year. >> she would put your feet to the fire, make sure you get the job done and move on. >> reporter: she was no pushover? >> she was no pushover. >> reporter: she stood up for herself? >> right. >> reporter: but signed the wall u.s. of that nice home, ellen's rank was near the bottom. >> he became very condescending, controlling, where i could go. who i could see. >> reporter: at home mike made the rules and ellen obeyed them. you had a significant executive job at a big company.

>> yes. >> reporter: so you're not some little shrinking violet who's home cowering under her husband's direction. >> but when it came to being home and opening that door, i was that shrinking violet. that you how things were. he ran the show. it was two different ellens, two dint lives. >> reporter: detective wilson interviewed ellen's old boss, a man named james cassell. he told the detective he remembered an incident when ellen came to work with bruises. >> she was wearing her sunglasses. i said why are you wearing sunglasses? so she finally took her sunglasses off and she had a nice, big old shiner. i asked her, i said what the heck happened to you? she stated to me supposedly mike and michael got into some big old battle and mike was beating the crap out of him so she jumped in the middle of it, and, of course, she took the brunt of it. >> reporter: was she giving the

classic battered wife's explanation for her bruises? a few days later cassell says he heard yelling coming from ellen's office. >> i hear world war iii breaking loose in the office next to me. there was a guy screaming in there. >> reporter: turns out the loud, angry voice belonged to none other than mike snyder. >> he's standing on this side of the desk, she's standing on her side of the desk and he's just screaming and he stops. and i barge in and he looks at me, i told him, i said you know, you can't do this here and he basically told me i needed to mind my own f'ing business. >> reporter: her colleague frank had nothing but good intentions volunteered to loan ellen a .32 caliber semiautomatic pistol. >> showed her how to use it, explained a bunch of things to her, 10-minute please don't shoot yourself lesson. >> i never had one before. he offered me the gun after he saw my bruises. i took it home, put it in the back of the closet.

>> reporter: why not just gather up the kids and leave? >> it was christmastime. we had a 6-year-old daughter. >> reporter: detective wilson checked for any police reports of domestic abuse or calls to 911. he found none. >> did they have altercations throughout their marriage? i would imagine. most couples do. but i have never seen any violent temper in my brother. >> reporter: you know there are no documented visits of the police to your house? >> i know that. >> reporter: it was a few months later when ellen returned the gun to her colleague. >> he looked at it and looked at her and said where's the bullets? >> reporter: ellen said a friend had taken her to the gun range and showed her how to use it. shaquem get in here. take your razor, yup. alright, up and down, never side to side, shaquem. you got it? come on, get back. quem, you a second behind your brother, stay focused.

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no one had seen mike snyder, not his family, his friends nor his co-workers. had his illness grown worse? had he moved to another city with another man as his wife ellen claimed? it turns out ellen had been keeping some big secrets of her own. here's josh mankiewicz. >> reporter: mike snyder had been missing for eight long years. his family didn't know where he was, and the detective investigating the case had a hunch that mike's wife ellen was somehow involved. a co-worker of ellen's came forward saying he had loaned ellen his gun but when she returned it a few months later, there were no bullets. >> he looked at it and looked at her and said, where's the bullets? >> reporter: ellen said she went to a gun range with a friend who showed her how to use it. and detective wilson had discovered something else, ellen had actually tried to purchase another gun at a local pawnshop

one month earlier. she was turned down after a routine background check. >> and you couldn't? what happened? >> it was a fraud charge. >> reporter: what did you guy that got you in trouble? >> i was working for a company that i wrote a check on. >> reporter: it turns out that in the late '80s, ellen had pled guilty to embezzlement. the charges were dropped after her probation. suddenly ellen snyder's skeletons were starting to see the light of day. and while detective wilson was doing his investigative work, mike's sister terry, a co schoolteacher, was doing hers. she told the detective about a second home mortgage ellen took out, she claims, without mike's knowledge. >> we actually have a copy of the second mortgage and it's clearly not my brother's signature on either line. >> reporter: that's true, el ellen says, she did sign mike's name but says mike knew all

about it. the more terry thought about mike, the more she remembered his growing frustration with ellen in the months before he disappeared. >> he would intercede phone calls that collectors calling, you know, wanting to know why their credit cards passed due and all of these things he had no idea of. >> reporter: these are bills he thought ellen had run up, not some identity theft. >> right. >> reporter: not long after mike disappeared, ellen found herself in debt. she had 20 creditors and owed more than $120,000 on her credit cards. did mike know about the debt before he dropped by her work? is that why mike had showed up in a rage? had he discovered the financial mess into which she put their family? and if mike had been abusive, had ellen come to the conclusion that she could solve that problem with a gun? detective wilson was growing more and more skeptical of ellen snyder's story, and so was

mike's sister terry. but without any real proof ellen had something to do with mike's disappearance, there was nothing that could be done about those aching suspicions. >> there was nothing that could tangibly prove murder enough to get an arrest warrant for it until they had a body. >> reporter: and so another four years passed. mike's sister terry became more and more dissatisfied with the progress detective wilson was making. >> i think at first he was very zealous. he felt that you're right, a lot of this isn't adding up and i believe at first they worked very hard to find my brother. >> reporter: but as the years went by, the unknown had become unbearable for the snyder family. they wanted answers from the police. >> i think he got very upset with me that i was being pushy. our phone conversations got less and less. i would call and leave a message and my messages weren't being

returned. they kind of, i think, put the case on back burner, i believe. >> reporter: detective wilson did continue to look for mike snyder but wilson also had to focus on the 20 other cold cases that needed his attention. then one day in 2010 came a phone call that would break this case. a confidential informant who said he knew exactly where mike snyder was. >> where are you two going? out to mike now. >> reporter: you looked in the yard, not found anything. not found mike anywhere. not been able to talk to ellen. i'm not going to say this wasn't going anywhere, but it certainly didn't seem to be pointing immediately to any resolution. >> correct. >> reporter: and that's when you get this call? >> yes. >> reporter: detective mark wilson was sitting in his office when the most unexpected call came in. the caller, a confidential source, who said he had

information on mike snyder. who was this confidential source? >> somebody that was a friend with michael sheffield. >> reporter: ellen's son? >> ellen's son. >> reporter: the man's name was patrick, a 26-year-old motorcycle technician. he and ellen's son michael sheffield had gone to high school together and were close friends. >> he had been living with me in my house with my son for months. they lived there rent free. >> reporter: out of the goodness of your heart. >> because it was michael's friend, yeah. he was a good kid. they needed this break. >> reporter: not only was he michael sheffield's good friend, patrick was also ellen's employee at the r & s kawasaki motorcycle dealership where she was now working as the service manager. >> my bus was giving me a lot of heat about patrick's productivity and his comebacks.

so he told me in december i needed to let him go but he wanted to wait until after christmas. i actually kept him much longer than i would have because he was a friend. >> reporter: the first week of january 2010, ellen fired patrick. she could not have known just how life-altering that decision would be. what did he say? >> he didn't say too much. just loaded up his stuff and left. >> reporter: of course, ellen didn't know that patrick knew the secret. and he went to the police? >> and he went to the police. >> reporter: and now patrick was sitting in a starbucks with detective wilson, letting him in on the 8-year-old secret. >> reporter: this guy didn't really come forward out of the goodness of his heart or civic duty. this was revenge? >> yes. >> reporter: but you'll take it? >> yes. >> reporter: patrick told the detective that he knew that mike snyder had been killed, and that his body was buried in the yard

of the snyders' former home. how did patrick know this? his best friend michael had told him, and on more than one occasion. >> he even said the next day he told him about it. and then over the years, if they were together drinking or something, that he would break down and tell him again the story. >> reporter: do you believe him? >> yes. >> reporter: so this is one more person pointing you to the backyard? >> yes. >> reporter: but you already looked there? >> this seemed very believable this information, and it really corroborated what we suspected. >> reporter: patrick agreed to cooperate with police. he drove an undercover police vehicle with a hidden microphone to michael's home and told him they needed to speak privately. patrick said the police had contacted him about the disappearance of mike snyder and he didn't know what to do. >> they're really freaking me out. and i just want to come to you and see what the [ bleep ] do i

say? they were at my house for like two hours. so i just need to know from you like what i should do? >> tell them you don't know anything. >> i just don't want them to know they can get to you too. >> i know, man. >> i'm just scared because they seem to know a lot of things too. >> like what? >> they were saying something about hearing gunshots and they were also saying that they might know what the weapon is. you still have that? >> oh, no. >> good. that would come up right away. what do you want me to tell them when they come next week, just don't know anything? if they want information about you, your number and stuff, should i give it to them? >> yeah. >> okay. >> reporter: then came the big question, the one police coached patrick to ask. >> is he still there? >> as far as i know, under a big

slab of concrete. >> reporter: it was now time for detective wilson to play a visit to ellen's son, mike snyder's son and stepson. an 8-year-old mystery. >> wouldn't happen to have someplace to sit down and talk, would you? coming up, the interrogation begins. >> itmichael, it's time to come clean. >> can they get to the truth after all of these years? >> i can't imagine what it's like keeping that type of a secret. etm still going for my bt even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there's a better treatment than warfarin, i'm up for that. eliquis. eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. so what's next? seeing these guys. don't stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke.

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returning to our story, an eight-year secret is about to be exposed. here again is josh mankiewicz. >> reporter: it was friday, january 29, 2010, and it was business as usual in the service department of this albuquerque saab dealership located on the

west side of town. that is until detective mark wilson and three of his colleagues from the cold case team showed up. >> you wouldn't happen to have someplace we could sit down and talk would you, just have a chat with you. >> reporter: they were there to speak with 25-year-old mechanic michael sheffield, ellen snyder's son. mike snyder's stepson. >> he didn't seem to be surprised the police showed up in his work and he said sure. we have a break room we can go talk in. so he went to his break room and we conducted an interview with him there.

why don't you tell me right now what you know happened to your step dad, michael snyder, michael snyder who helped raise you? >> reporter: at first michael tells the same story that ellen, his mom has told since the day mike snyder first disappeared.

. >> he said as far as i know, he ran off with a guy and left my mother and sister and i behind, and denied that he knew anything. >> reporter: so he's still telling the story he's been telling for six, seven years. >> yes. seven years >> yes >> reporter: and the detective tells michael it's time for him to confess.

>> reporter: how long did it take him to come off that story? >> after we told him we had information that he knew where the body was and went a little further and told him that we heard him talking about it, he came forward after we showed him that we had evidence. >> tell us what happened. exactly where is the body? >> reporter: the detectives had broken him and the story came spilling out after eight years of lies. it was early morning, january 2002, michael said, when he woke to the sound of gunshots. and he called 911. he must have hung up just in time because there's no record of a 911 call from the snyder home that day.

>> reporter: a few days later in a second interview, michael told police this. >> my mom told me what had happened. >> reporter: what did she tell you? >> she said she saw him in the bed that she was scared. but could you help me with this? i was scared at the time. i didn't know what to do. >> reporter: so, he says, he reluctantly helped his he mother wrap mike snyder's dead body in a waterproof tarp, place it in a hole in the backyard and put some construction waist on top of it. >> what's going through your mind at this time? >> i don't want to get caught. i don't want to go to jail. what am i doing? >> reporter: and michael had hold detectives about the breakdown he had at mr. snyder's

funeral, the one the snyder family thought so peculiar. >> i couldn't happenedle it. i just had a breakdown then. so we leave. the family's staring at me and she's outside talking to me. and she says, is this my fault? is this about what happened? and i don't remember saying anything back. but now it was. it was about that. >> i had a feeling that he was glad to finally get his off his chest. he broke down somewhat. i can only imagine what it would be like keeping that type of secret. >> reporter: the detective showed michael photographs of the snyders' property at it looked in 2002 and had michael circle where he believed his stepfather's body was buried. did michael believe that he was on the hook legally for his part in this? >> i think he probably knew that he was. he knew that he was an

accomplice in the case. >> reporter: a few miles away, michael's mom ellen snyder was ending her workday. >> when i came out from work, his girlfriend came by. she was sitting in her car next to my car, and she says you need to get in the car. >> reporter: she told ellen that michael had called, the police had shown up at his work and they knew the secret. >> so i called my mom and i said i need to come over. and she's like are you okay? and i said no. >> reporter: and with that ellen's mother phoned an old acquaintance of hers, a defense attorney named penny adrienne. >> her mom calls me up, i think we have a problem. there was apparently something very wrong. >> reporter: the next morning ellen went to meet with adrienne. by then the story was breaking. >> breaking news, albuquerque

police have an crime scene going on. >> the remains of snyder are buried under the garage of this home. >> she sat really stiff in front of me and she said, have you heard about them digging for a body in the northeast heights? i said well, you couldn't not hear about it. it was on all of the television stations and all over the newspaper. and she said, well, my ex-husband is buried there because i shot him. my experience with usaa has been excellent. they really appreciate the military family and it really shows. with all that usaa offers why go with anybody else? we know their rates are good, we know that they're always going to take care of us. it was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. it was funny because when we would call another insurance company, hey would say "oh we can't beat usaa" we're the webber family. we're the tenney's we're the hayles, and we're usaa members for life. ♪ get your usaa auto insurance quote today.

returning to our story, after years of telling one story, ellen snyder is about to tell another. here again is josh mankiewicz. >> reporter: north albuquerque acres is known for the large subdivisions in the foot of the mountains, not newspaper helicopters flying overhead. but in january 2010 this was the scene in front of the home where ellen and mike snyder once

lived. >> out in the street it was a zoo. >> reporter: reporters like jeff proctor were staked out for three days while men with jackhammers and backhoes began tearing up the garage floor. >> we continue to follow breaking news right now. >> reporter: if you lived in albuquerque, you would have to wear earplugs not to hear about it. >> we just spoke to the police chief and he is here looking for the remains of michael snyder. >> reporter: a longtime friend of ellen's was at work when the news broke. >> i believed it. >> reporter: you believed he left her and was in phoenix? >> yeah. >> reporter: the job of finding mike snyder's remains proved difficult. the garage floor was a solid foot of steel reinforced concrete. >> police say they will resume digging tomorrow.

>> reporter: excavation resumed for two more days. finally on the third day searchers uncovered a waterproof tarp. inside were the remains of mike snyder. >> ellen had been saying mike was in phoenix, mike this, mike that, and all along, mike wasn't in phoenix. >> reporter: for mike's family, the finality was devastating. >> to not know for eight years and somewhat hold on to hope and to have that hope finally just pulled out from under you was very difficult for all of us. >> reporter: ellen snyder sat in defense attorney penni adrian's office, knowing an arrest was eminent. >> they had found the body and she wanted to get it over with. she said, we just can't go on like this. >> reporter: and so adrian informed the police that ellen snyder was ready to turn herself in. >> that following friday i met with the police detectives at

her office and gave a full statement. >> we ask you any question, i want you to understand these are your miranda or constitutional rights. >> reporter: she gave police a 2 1/2 hour confession and her version of events is quite a story. >> woke me up. i was 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. we were arguing. pushing back and forth and i told him, i know all about you and dave simmons. i know that you're day. >> reporter: ellen said she had recently grown more courageous in her dealings with mike and on this night, she confronted her husband over what she says was a secret day affair. >> and i'm yelling at him and he's yelling at me. and i told him, i said i'm going to tell everybody. i'm going to tell everybody about you. and he's telling me, you'll never tell anybody about me. you are not going to tell anything. there is nothing to tell. he's denying it. he's screaming at me. i have never seen him so angry

ever. >> reporter: she says she ran to the bedroom and got the gun from the closet. the gun her colleague frank had loaned her. >> i said i have a gun. he's laughing at me, telling me i'm a coward and i'm never, ever going to tell anybody. >> reporter: so he's like taunting you. >> he's taunting me. >> reporter: saying you don't have the courage to shoot me. >> calling me, you know, a pitch a bitch, telling me what a rottern person i am, screaming at me. >> reporter: and in that moment of fear, ellen said, she pulled the trigger not once, not twice but repeatedly. >> and i emptied the gun. i had never been so afraid in my life. >> reporter: he turn around and ran away from you. >> yes. >> reporter: and you kept shooting? >> i did. he turned and i kept shooting. >> reporter: how far did he get? >> 10 feet. >> reporter: then what happened? >> then he fell down. >> reporter: elizabeth, mike and

ellen's 6-year-old daughter was fast asleep in the bedroom. she didn't wake up but ellen's son michael who's 17 was in his bedroom and he did. >> he was calling 911. i told him to hang up, mierkal. >> reporter: and he hung up. >> and he hung up. and i sat down on the steps and waited for the police to come. >> reporter: but the police never did show. >> i covered him up. i told michael to get ready for school. i told him, i shot mike. you just need to go to school. >> reporter: how was michael doing at this point? >> i thought he was doing okay. >> reporter: evidently, michael was not okay. he skipped school that day and he told his friend patrick about the horror he had gone through. did you talk to him about this, or from the first minute that this happened, did this sort of become like the thing you're not talking about? >> right. we never talked about it. >> reporter: once you said to him, i shot mike, go to

school -- >> we didn't talk about it. >> reporter: later with michael and elizabeth at school, ellen planned to move the body into the garage. but there was a problem. >> trying to get him situated to where i could get him -- a board under him to move him to the garage. >> reporter: and you couldn't do it alone? >> i couldn't do it alone. >> reporter: so you asked your son. >> so i asked him, yep. >> reporter: you asked michael to help you move the body? >> yes. he didn't want to. i asked him, please. he said okay. >> reporter: 17-year-old michael reluctantly agreed. >> were you aware you were asking him to essentially help you commit a crime? >> i wasn't in the frame of mind to believe that as such. >> reporter: and yet at the time you were willing to do that instead of the other option,

which is call the cops and face the music? >> yes, at that point i was just solving a problem. >> reporter: so the tears and regret that i'm seeing now, you weren't feeling that then? >> no. never cried. >> reporter: because at the time ellen says she was on autopilot and needed to dispose of a body, and how did she do that? in the want ads she found a guy with a backhoe who came out to the house and dug a hole. did you tell the guy why you were doing this? >> no, he didn't ask. >> reporter: ellen and her son michael wrapped snyder's body in a tarp and put plastic bags on his hands. and then in the dark of night they moved him onto a dolly and into the hole. your son helping thank you time or not? >> yeah, i asked him to help me throw some dirt on top of him. he said okay. >> reporter: they filled the hole with leftover construction

waist so the body couldn't be seen. the next day ellen went back to the paper, found a different guy who had a bobcat and hired him to fill in the hole. and you buried the body. >> and i buried the body. >> reporter: and then she came up with her story. you got better at telling that story as time went on? >> yeah, as time went on it became a bigger and bigger story. >> reporter: it was the end of her 2 1/2-hour statement to police and ellen snyder wanted to get one last thing on the record. >> is there anything else you want to say before we turn offer the recorders? >> reporter: and with that, ellen snyder was charged with first degree murder and held on $1 million bail. >> albuquerque police announced they arrested the ex-wife of an

albuquerque man that vanished eight years ago. >> reporter: an 8-year-old cover-up was over but another story line was just beginning, did mike snyder have it coming? was ellen guilty of anything? and what could be proven after so many years? coming up -- a startling police discovery. >> it appeared to me that michael snyder was laying in his bed when he was shot. >> and something more startling still. >> she can walk away from this. >> she might have committed first degree murder and gotten away with it. (dad) it's slippery. (boy) nooooooo... (grandma) nooooooo... (dad) nooooooo... (dog) yessssss.... (vo) quick, the quicker picker upper! bounty picks up messes quicker and is two times more absorbent than the leading ordinary brand.

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in u.s. border custody died. an agent noticed the child seemed ill and was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a cold there and then released. last night he returned to the hospital vomiting and died early

this morning. after calling u.s. troops for christmas, president trump said this morning the government shutdown will not end until congress funds a border wall. for now, back to "dateline." welcome back to "the secret." i'm craig melvin. ellen snyder was arrested for killing her husband mike but there were still a lot of questions that needed answers. in this mystery, where there had been so many secrets and lies, the truth seemed as elusive as ever. once again, josh mankiewicz. >> reporter: you thought he was going to kill you even though you had the gun? >> yes. i did. i have never seen such anger, ever. i shot him because i was afraid. >> reporter: there are some things ellen snyder admitted. she admitted she shot and killed

her husband mike snyder in the early morning hours of january 2002. she admits she buried his body and lied about his disappearance for years. but she does not admit to being guilty of murder. you don't think of yourself as a murderer? >> no, i don't. i was saving my own life. it came down that night to me or him. >> reporter: she says it's a case of survival. but ask detective mark wilson, and he calls it something else. >> i believe this is an evil woman who planned this from the beginning. >> reporter: maybe she did fear for her life. there are people who say they saw her with bruises. >> sure, and it is a possibility. there's a possibility there was a bruise. there could have been something she set up to look like that to go along with her story because it was getting closer to the time when she was going to kill him. >> reporter: even if it was an act of self-defense that caused ellen snyder to shoot her husband, why hadn't she called the police? usually when abused women kill

their abusers, they call the police and they're sitting there with the gun when the police drive up. >> okay. >> reporter: they don't try to evade responsibility. they admit what they did and they say, i didn't have any choice. pretty much as you're saying to me now. but they don't bury the body. and tell a series of pretty good lies over a long period of time. that's pretty unusual. >> okay. >> reporter: which suggests to some people that there's more to this story than you're telling. >> they didn't live through what we lived through. they weren't there that night. >> reporter: with ellen snyder now sitting in jail, detective wilson was trying to determine if the shooting happened the way ellen now said it did because, after all, how believable was ellen? >> we tried to gather

information six, seven years later. we don't have the actual crime scene. at that time they would have seen blood strains from where he first got shot to where his body was laying to where the bullet projectiles stopped. >> reporter: ellen claimed michael woke her up yelling and fought in the family room where mike slept. >> i'm in the middle of the family room and he's about as far as you and i facing each other. >> reporter: and what happened? >> he came steps forward and i started shooting. >> reporter: using some creative detective work, wilson had an idea. he remember something michael, ellen's son had mentioned in his interview with police. something about a stereo speaker. >> apparently not all of the bullets had went in the body, one went through the bottom of a speaker. i still have that speaker. >> reporter: the detective went back to the house with michael,

asked him to show where the speaker was positioned on the floor and where it was in relation to where mike slept and detective wilson came to this hypothesis. >> it appeared to me that michael snyder was laying in his bed when he was shot. >> reporter: not up an advancing on ellen to do her harm? >> exactly. the office of the medical investigator reported the projectiles came up through the vic victim's body from the stomach area up to the shoulder area. >> almost as if the person was lying flat and the shooter was standing at his feet? >> yes. my estimation was that the body was on the mattress when he was being fired at. he may have gotten up and started running if it didn't kill him right away. >> reporter: and there was something the detective uncovered that appeared a lot more sinister than a woman in fear for her life.

it seemed ellen snyder had actually made a pretty penny off mike's death. th

returning to "the secret" ellen snyder claims she shot her

husband in self-defense but a detective uncovered a more sinister motive, money. here again is josh mankiewicz. >> reporter: just months after she shot her husband and filed for divorce, ellen was awarded the couple's home and the cash in their joint account. and remember those tax returns that had been filed in mike's name after he disappeared? turns out it was ellen who filed them in order to get a refund. she also cashed out mike's $61,000 401(k) and she continued to collect the disability checks mike had been getting because of his multiple sclerosis. you kept cashing those checks for a year? >> those checks were deposited into my account, yes. >> reporter: totaling about how much money? >> about 4 grand a month. >> reporter: that must have helped? >> it did. >> reporter: so the argument can be made that you made some money out of this. >> so are you implying it was

because of that, that it occurred? is that what you're implying? >> reporter: i'm not implying it, i'm saying you made money out of the death of your husband. >> i did not make substantial amount of money out of the death of my husband, no. >> reporter: it was now the job of prosecutor david wehmeyer to put together a case for a jury to hear. >> covering up the crime would be her best evidence in terms of trying to convince the jury that her intent at the time of the killing was something along the lines of a premeditated murder. >> reporter: but the prosecution found itself in a rather unusual predicament, eight years had passed since the shooting and in that time the statute of limitations had run out on any charge other than first degree murder. that meant in order to get any conviction at all, prosecutors would have to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that ellen snyder planned mike snyder's murder. and with no crime scene and little in the way of forensics, that was going to be hard to prove.

so in her view it was self-defense but maybe she was guilty of manslaughter or second degree murder, but you couldn't prosecute her for either of those offenses? >> that's correct. the statute of limitations here in new mexico on a state case like this prohibited us from going forward on any of those lesser types of offenses. >> reporter: ellen snyder's defense attorney penni adrian knew a first degree murder conviction could mean a life sentence for ellen but felt the prosecution would have a tough time making their case. >> the premeditation would be hard to prove, but even harder would be to prove that she did not act in self-defense, given all of the thing that's were going on with mike. >> reporter: adrian said ellen acted after years of emotional and physical abuse. this guy was treating her horribly. >> that's right, and had been for a long, long time. >> reporter: and she couldn't leave him? >> no, no.

and that's what the cycle of abuse is all about. there's an isolation, there's a dependency, there's a demeaning factor and those things all go together until the abuser has turned the abused into someone who thinks that he or she -- because it happens both ways -- is a worthless person. >> reporter: would ellen snyder spend the rest of her life behind bars, or had she committed the perfect murder? is it possible she's going to walk? >> i mean, that's certainly possible in this case. >> reporter: she can walk away from this? >> she might have committed first degree murder and gotten away with it. h it

and now with the conclusion to the secret, here again is josh mankowitz.

his family had waited for mike to call after he disappear disappeared. they waited for the police to call when investigators first said they'd look for him. that didn't happen either. years later with ellen snyder facing a murder charge for killing mike, they waited for justice. mike's sister, terry. >> how could you look at us, the family, in the face and tell us that you have no idea where mike is at or you just spoke to mike and mike is doing just fine? >> thus, giving all of you hope. >> thus giving all of us hope. it's beyond me how any one person can do that. it's unimaginable. >> finally, ellen snyder would pay the price for the murder of mike snyder and the cover up that followed. at least that's what mike's side of the family fully expected. but there was that problem with the statute of limitations

expired on anything less than first degree murder. there was the chance ellen snyder could be found not guilty. mike's family was willing to risk that. >> we felt that strongly that it was premeditated. you know, that was a gamble we were willing to take. >> but when it comes to murder, the prosecutor isn't willing to gamble. >> maybe she gets committed of first degree murder. but with an all or nothing where you're trying to convince beyond a reasonable doubt 12 jurors -- >> you didn't want to roll the dice? >> that's a huge risk to roll the dice and not have someone held accountable at all for the death of another human being. >> it was a risk for ellen, too. she knew that going to try could mean a possible life sentence. one month before the case was set for trial, prosecutors offered ellen a plea deal, which she accepted. ultimately, ellen snyder agreed

to waive the statute of limitations restriction and plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, admitting she shot her husband. she also pled guilty to tampering with evidence for the burying and concealment of mike's body. >> falsely filed tax returns -- >> and to one count of tax fraud for filing mike's tax returns after his death. in all, the maximum sentence possible was not life in prison, but just 11 years. mike's side of the family was devastated. whether she's sentenced to four years, five years, six years, seven years, eight years, 11 years, she's still getting away with it in your view? >> she's definitely getting away with murder. nothing is going to be long enough for us. >> family and friends of both ellen and mike gathered in the district courthouse for ellen's sentencing. ellen's son, michael, was there in support of his mom.

just as he had been on the day she shot her husband. michael was still a minor when the killing happened. and so in exchange for his cooperation, he was given immunity and faced no charges. as we sit here, you're about to go into that courtroom and a judge is going to pronounce sentence. >> yeah. >> you ready for what's coming? >> how do you say you're ready for that? i know that it has to happen. i know it has to happen for this to be over. so i don't know that i can say yes, i'm ready, but it's going to happen. >> we have what became eight years of concealment of lies -- >> the prosecution asked the judge to give ellen snyder the maximum sentence of 11 years. >> she could have been looking at a total of 339 years. >> ellen's defense attorney

asked the judge for leniency. >> she does ask your honor that the court sentence her to five years in prison. which will allow her to at least be at her daughter's graduation from college. >> the judge addressed ellen directly, focusing on that construction waste she'd buried on top of her husband's body. >> it was reported that you unceremoniously threw trash in the same hole that mr. snyder had been placed. >> with that, ellen was given the maximum sentence of 11 years behind bars. >> ms. snyder once you're released you can get things together and go forward in life. >> reporter: she hopes to. when we spoke with ellen shortly after her sentencing, ellen said she worried most about her children, her then 16-year-old daughter elizabeth was a high school junior.

she was six when her father disappeared. >> you told her you'd been lying to her? >> i did. >> what did she say? >> she was most concerned about losing her mom. she's been to see me every week. she's such a remarkable young woman. she loves me. >> but ellen says the greatest regret of her life was putting her son, michael, in the middle of a cover up. you said you always looked out for him and he always looked out for you? >> i didn't do such a good job. >> you didn't. >> he's such a remarkable man. >> i know you wish you'd shielded him from that. >> yep. >> i get the feeling you have way more regret about that than about what happened. >> absolutely. the shooting happened for a reason. the shooting happened.

there was too much to give michael. >> no one but ellen snyder will ever know exactly what happened inside the walls of that dream home in the early morning hours of january 2002. that will forever remain a mystery. one thing is clear, ellen snyder is something of an expert on how to live a life on secrets and lies. one thing we know about you for sure is that you're pretty good at telling a lie. >> okay. >> and the truth is, if you hadn't fired the wrong person, i think you'd still be telling that lie today. >> you're right. i can't dispute that. >> you have some sense of regret now? >> absolutely. i'm sorry that it ever happened. i'm sorry for mike, i'm sorry

for my family, i'm sorry for his family. >> that's all for this edition of dateline extra. i'm craig melvin, thanks for watching. g melvin, thanks for watching she was the love of my life. always. >> she was daddy's girl. the free spirit with fiery hair and a wide open heart. >> she was a very kind person. >> then she vanished. >> i called the police. something is wrong. >> and something was. days passed, then months. no leads, no clues, no progress. >> i thought i'm not going to put up with this. we've got to get going, we've