you always wake up to the fact of what exactly is going on when you watch another politician ride in to make an argument on behalf of trump. zerlina maxwell, and sam seder, thank you so much for joining me. all right that is "all in" this evening. this is a tragedy on top of a tragedy now. >> it happened so quickly. their parents in the backyard spa. their mom in trouble. >> my dad just panicked. >> a sudden slip. a fatal fall. >> you're losing your mother. you're watching her go right in front of you. >> someone else was watching her too. a curious neighbor just moments before witnessed something >> it was scary. the look on his face was almost undescribable. >> what had she seen? was this drowning really an accident?

>> she's got a huge gash on her head. something like that is not consistent with just falling down. >> a husband and father is suddenly under suspicion. >> he's crying and we're crying. he said, they think i hurt mom. >> three daughters stand by their dad. and one prosecutor stands firm. >> he's holding his wife of almost three decades under the water. hello and welcome to "dateline extra." a young woman peers into her neighbor's yard and sees something for a few seconds. a man, a woman, and a moment that was unsettling. was it some kind of accident?

a crime? maybe even a murder? what she saw and what she did would set in motion a chain of events that would divide a family and a jury. here is keith morrison. >> we know the truth.

and we know everything that happened. >> how do we know what we know? >> it's emotionally unsatisfying not to have that answer. >> though it is, even if we've seen something, or if we think we have.

and thus the question at the heart of the whole puzzle. is this woman right? >> i know what i saw. and i know the conclusion of my story. >> of course she does. of course she does. so why does this other woman think this? >> she doesn't know for sure what she saw. >> a question, we say, on which all the rest will turn. why don't we begin here. calimesa, california, riverside county. historic missions. suburbs creeping around the rim of mountains on the eastern flank of los angeles. here is why chris and cristi hall had come to live out their golden years, though they were far from old when it happened. just experienced, with life and each other. >> as far back as i can remember, it's always been chris and cristi.

>> we happened to be laying on the bed with her. we started talking. she was like, i am just -- i'm so happy that i have you girls and dad. >> it was one of those conversations that you don't have every day. >> still, there was work to be done. it was not a new house. it could use some remodeling. particularly the bathroom.

courtney was still living with her parents as the work began. >> they're going to be doing the

tile work and stuff. so we wouldn't have a shower for that day. >> so, shower out of commission, they decided to wake up early, put on their bathing suits and rinse off in the outdoor spa before the contractor arrived at 6:45 a.m. it was june 7th, 2007. chris got up first, turned on the spa to warm it up, then called brianna at her college dorm in san diego. >> your wake-up call, baby. get out and go on that run.

>> back at the house, courtney dozed through her first wake-up. while chris and cristi made their way outside to the spa. just after 6:30, chris looked in on courtney again. second call. cond call. now no fruit is forbidden. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? for all-day, all-night protection. this is why we no longer have to worry about flushing too much toilet paper. wait, so you don't flush your toilet paper at home? no yuck because that man is afraid. afraid too much toilet paper will back up our system. but dad, rid-x contains billions of enzymes proven to break down even paper to help keep your whole septic system healthy. it's science dude. for paper, grease or waste breakdown,

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accident and you need to come home right away. >> it was courtney who eventually broke the news to ashton and brianna. their mother, their father's wife of close to 30 years, was dead. but neither courtney nor countries waited at the house to tell them what happened or to comfort them. nor did they linger over the

body at the hospital. they couldn't. because father and daughter were escorted to several squad cars and driven to the police station to talk about the accident. what was that ride like? >> quiet. i remember crying the whole time. i couldn't comfort had i father. he couldn't comfort me. we got to the station and they said that my dad would be a few more minutes. >> chris, so frenzied at the scene, had calmed down by then. he was a cop among cops, after all, and he understood what was necessary to sort out what happened.

>> i can't even start to imagine what you're going through, okay? just, you know, it's a death investigation, and we have to do this.

>> happy to help, he said. whatever would get him back home to comfort his daughters as quickly as possible. >> we're all so close. >> chris told investigators what

happened. how, as courtney slept, he and cristi were in the spa bathing. >> she got out, went in, went to the bathroom, got some more coffee, tried to wake up courtney. courtney didn't wake up, apparently. she came back out. >> as cristi returned to the spa, said chris, they passed each other on the patio. he went in the house, stopped by courtney's room to make sure she was awake, then went right back outside and saw his wife floating face down in the spa. he called courtney, he said, and they began a frantic effort to revive her. >> in your gut, tell me what happened. >> she slipped or something. i don't know. that's the only thing i can think of. >> but chris apparently hadn't noticed the nasty three-inch laceration on cristi's head. and here the point of the police interview is revealed. >> she's got a huge gash on her head, okay? something like that is not consistent with just falling

down. >> not consistent with just falling down? why would the police think that? >> i mean, you've been around for a while. >> i know where you're going. and no. >> why in fact was this ex-police-chief being questioned at all about the apparently

disastrous accident that killed the love of his life? and the answer was right next door. when chris and cristi hall took their outdoor bath that morning in june, someone was watching. her. >> i got up at 6:00. >> lindsay patterson was on leave from her i.t. job in the navy, visiting her mom who lives just over the backyard wall from the hall house. lindsay was inside, in the bathroom that faced away from the hall house and out onto the street, when she heard a noise. >> it was a horrible scream. it was just, something was wrong kind of scream. >> a woman's, she thought. she went outside to tell her mom. er mom. for the mundane. the awe-inspiring. the heart racing. the heart breaking. that's what life is all about... showing up. unless migraine steals your chance to say "i am here." that's why, we created aimovig.. a preventive treatment for migraine in adults. one dose, once a month. aimovig is proven to reduce the number of monthly migraine days. for some, that number can be cut in half or more. the most common side effects are pain, redness, or swelling at the injection site and constipation. these are your days what will each one bring? doesn't matter, as long as you can say...

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death in a backyard spa, police asked chris hall to explain what happened that morning. what chris did not know was that his neighbor had also talked to police. and she told a very different

story than the one chris was telling. here again is keith morrison. >> chris and cristi hall's three daughters clung together in grief and shock, all through the dismal evening hours of that worst of all days, june 7, 2007. waiting for their father to

return from the police station. and they wondered, why was it taking so long? then the phone rang. and they had their answer.

>> you know, broken-up words, and he's crying, and we're crying. that was when he said they think i hurt mom. he was very upset. >> but he didn't sound surprised when he said -- >> no, he was crying. he was crying. he was upset. >> very upset. >> but by the time police investigators were questioning chris, remember, they had heard from lindsay patterson. and at the station, chris's version of events in the spa differed in one crucial detail from what lindsay described seeing that first time she period over the wall and into the hall's backyard. >> that specifically, me holding her down in there, there's >> but investigators were getting a good look at christie's body and saw wounds that to them suggested a struggle and more than one nasty blow to the head. so the police had to choose. which version, chris hall's or lindsay patterson's, was more likely the true story of what happened? tom dove is a senior investigator for the riverside d.a. >> i think they felt this was enough to say this was not an accidental drowning. it was purely much more suspicious than that. >> and so before the night was over, chris hall was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. the girls could stop waiting. he wasn't coming home. >> it was obviously a tragedy, losing our mother that day. but this is a tragedy on top of a tragedy now. >> because knowing our parents, it's the farthest thing from truth. >> and one that felt infected by some kind of madness, said the girls. cristi was the love of his life. how could he be accused of harming her? she was happy too, they said, as happy as she had ever been, they knew based on that mother/daughter talk they had not long before she died. >> she kept reiterating how happy it was. me and brie will always cherish that. >> that being the last time we actually saw her. >> kind of burned into your memories. >> yeah. >> but right or wrong, the legal trigger had been pulled.

chris hall spent almost two months in jail, until his daughters received the payout from cristi's life insurance policy and used the money to bail him out of jail. then he went home to prepare, with the help of his daughters, for a murder trial. >> it's very surprising to have a client in a murder case out on bail.

but he was a special man. and this was a special situation. >> these are attorneys who would

eventually defend him, although at first they only heard about the case. steve harmon and paul gretch. you've said two things. special man, special situation. >> i think both of us can say this is a man that we like and we know. we don't feel he could have done anything like this. >> chris hall and his daughters prepared for a trial which they hoped would make clear to everybody, the police, the neighbor, the world, that chris would not, could not, did not harm the love of his life. >> there was never, in 30 years

of marriage, never one moment of violence. there was no motive for this man to kill his wife. >> they had a look at the neighbor's eyewitness account and suggested it was really not conclusive at all. it was tragically incomplete. i knew about the tremors. but when i started seeing things, i didn't know what was happening... so i kept it in. he started believing things that weren't true. i knew something was wrong... but i didn't say a word. during the course of their disease

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would anything change their minds about their dad? here again is keith morrison. >> burke strunsky is a hard charging man, ex-member in good standing of the d.a.'s office, now senior deputy in riverside. that takes skill, persuasive pour. strunsky would lead them in the case against family man chris hall. >> mr. hall on the surface looks like a loving family man. he looks like a good father. he's somebody that had the

support of his family. >> but strunsky was buying the loving father and family man bit.

when he heard about chris hall's obvious grief, the wailing that went on after the so-called accident, the phrase that crossed his mind was, "it's an act." >> i think it was a wonderful performance by the defendant of

acting like a bereaved husband. but when you look at his actions, how little he did to help his wife. >> who tried harder to save cristi? not chris, said the prosecutor. but his daughter. >> she called 911. she helped him get the body out of the spa. she is the only one that did chest compression. he had no interest in truly helping his wife. >> a matter of opinion, of course. but prosecutor strunsky poked around in chris hall's past as a policeman. and what did he find? >> this man had an uncanny ability to fabricate stories. >> seven years earlier, while hall was chief of police in cascade, idaho, he was charged with and convicted of misuse of public money, embezzled $9,000, spent ten months in jail. a white collar crime, hardly murder. but what struck the prosecutor is that he says hall tried to cover it up. to plant a fraud, to lie about it, not just lie about it, but lie about it effectively. >> i think that was very telling about who we were dealing with. >> suddenly the prosecutor's prospects were looking better. at the trial, strunsky made lindsay patterson his star witness, of course. it was her story, after all, that got the whole thing started. but almost as important, he called the riverside county medical examiner who testified that those lacerations in cristi's could not in his opinion have been the result of a single accidental fall. and the bruising on her face and body was the hallmark of a homicide. >> the totality of injuries were not consistent with somebody slipping and falling and then a rescue attempt. >> and there was a clump of hair in the bottom of the spa, instinct entwined with a broken hair clip. that, he said, came from a violent struggle. >> when you lose that amount of hair, it's not explained by any fall. >> there were minor hiccups in the case. lindsay patterson, for example,

was a little inconsistent about how long she looked over the backyard wall that first time she saw something going on. was it just a few seconds? or as long as a minute? but either way, said the prosecutor, lindsay was sure she saw physical contact. that was the important thing. >> he was given the opportunity to explain any physical contact that could in any way reasonably explain what lindsay patterson saw. in other words, were they washing each other, were they involved in a sex act? was there anything she could have misinterpreted? and at the end of the day, you're not just stuck with the fact that lindsay patterson made a mistake. you have to actually believe that lindsay patterson really hallucinated about everything she saw. >> and what made lindsay's story all the more convincing, stayed prosecutor strunsky, was she told it before finding out what happened to cristi. she dialled 911 a full minute and a half before anyone from the hall house did. before lindsay had any idea how it would end. here is what the jury heard her say in that call.

>> and i saw him put her underwater and hold her there. >> and she was still on the phone with 911 when chris hall came outside and found his wife's body floating in the spa and called out for courtney. investigator tom dove. >> i heard it best described during the trial as a cosmic

coincidence that someone could see something that they perceived to be more than just some kind of kinky action in a jacuzzi in the morning, and then that actually turn out to be true, that a woman was actually drowned but that spa. that is not a coincidence. that is what she saw. >> the prosecution's theory? somehow, sitting in that spa that morning, chris was overcome by some private fury, who knows what. the hidden violence, is what strunsky called it. and then killed his spouse when he thought nobody was looking. >> chris hall ambushed his wife, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head twice into the concrete edge. he's holding his wife of almost three decades under the water, showing absolutely no mercy, no remorse. and absolute desire to end her life at that point. >> and then the piece de resistance. >> he then gets out of the spa, walks into the house where his plan is to wake his 22-year-old daughter, who he can use as an alibi witness. >> one little quibble. why? in fact, as convinced as he was of hall's guilt, strunsky conceded the why was a problem. he didn't legally have to know, he said. but he just didn't. there it was. >> it's emotionally unsatisfying not to have that answer, not to know the entire narrative of what happened. >> but you would want to know why this guy, married to this woman for almost 30 years, apparently happily, would suddenly turn on her and drown her in the pool. i had this chest cold, but my medicine kept wearing off. (coughs) ah!

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it was a lie, they said. >> it was hurtful to us to hear someone basically say he knows our parents better than we do. and he knows our father is a sociopath, and that we're blind to it, and he knows there was

hidden violence in our parents' marriage and we just didn't see it. you're basically telling us we didn't know our whole lives were a lie. >> and there's no proof of that. >> chris hall had never been violent, argued the defense, had no motive, no reason to suddenly turn on his wife, it had to be a freak accident. so, said the defense, lindsay patterson didn't really know what she saw. in fact if she really witnessed chris hall drowning his wife, why then didn't she claim to see cristi's body in the spa when she looked again? it didn't make sense. but the highlight was the daughters' testimony, emotional, quite powerful.

it put prosecutor strunsky in a strange position, at odds with the victim's own family. if we had any inkling, we would have seen it, they say.

>> they truly believe that in their hearts. this weighs on my greatly. but my job is to get justice for

cristi hall. >> after six days of testimony, two days of deliberations, the jury couldn't decide. it was a deadlock. the judge declared a mistrial. chris hall walked out of court with his family, free. but not quite in the clear. and nothing at all like a victory for the hall daughters. what was it like to get that hung jury?

what did you think then? >> that was tragic. >> that was devastating to us. >> you expected a not guilty verdict?

>> yes. not a doubt. >> deputy d.a. burke strunsky was disappointed too. he was also determined to retry the case. first he sent his investigator on a mission to explore the life and marriage of chris hall. and what do you know. in idaho, where hall had been a disgraced police chief, the investigator uncovered a startling accusation.

>> chris was a great, great con man. >> former los angeles police officer jerry winkel is a county commissioner in idaho now. but once upon a time he was chris hall's friend, that is, before a night of poker and booze when he said paul made a disturbing revelation, that he had shot himself in the leg in order to get retirement benefits. >> chris had been drinking beer. he came out and told me that he had shot himself. >> but there was more. d.a. investigator tom dove discovered a secret. not in chris's past but in cristi's. >> there had been infidelity in the past. but listen to this. the defense had one more very significant witness. a witness who oozed credibility.

the sitting medical examiner for neighboring san bernardino county, who stuck his neck way out to disagree publicly, in a court of law, with the medical

examiner from riverside. >> he found this to be an accidental death, not a homicide. >> this was not some ordinary hired gun. this was a public official who said straight out that cristi's head injuries should and perhaps should be explained by an accidental fall. he didn't rule out homicide? >> he didn't rule out homicide. but he said the preponderance of the evidence was towards an accidental drowning. rowning. [ telephone ringing ] -whoa. [ indistinct talking ] -deductible? -definitely speaking insurance. -additional interest on umbrella policy? -can you translate? -damage minimization of civil commotion. -when insurance needs translating, get answers in plain english at progressiveanswers.com. ♪ -he wants you to sign karen's birthday card. it's a high honor. -he wants you to sign karen's birthday card. ok i'll admit. i didn't keep my place as clean as i would like 'cuz i'm way too busy. who's got the time to chase around down dirt, dust and hair? so now, i use heavy duty swiffer sweeper and dusters. for hard-to-reach places, duster makes it easy to clean. it captures dust in one swipe. ha! gotcha!

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california, filed out of the courtroom, a second jury, to make a life decision about chris hall. did he murder his wife? which of the medical examiners should they believe? whose account of the defendant's character and, perhaps most important, what did lindsay patterson see when she peeked three times into the halls' back

yard. >> do you ever have those sort of little dark moments of the soul where you think, i may have misinterpreted, misremembered -- >> it's something i've thought about every day, whether i misinterpreted, whether i think i saw something that wasn't there. i didn't see everything. >> yeah. >> but i saw what i saw. and i know the conclusion of my story. i know it. i know it. right here. i know it. >> of course, chris hall's daughters say they know the truth too, real thing. in their hearts. >> i think that we were the three most critical jurors in that courtroom. believe me, if we had heard anything or had any inkling that

our father could have done this, as much as it would hurt and as much as we love our father, we would want that justice for our mother. >> the jurors deliberated two days and then broke for the long weekend. it was memorial day. halls' daughters felt good. >> things can only go so wrong before so long before something has to actually go right for us. >> we just did a lot of talking about the future and this, you know, being over, this being finished and honestly i was concerned about dad and how he was finally going to be able to grieve for the loss of his wife. >> then it was tuesday, 8:45 in the morning.

the jury gathered. and minutes later, a signal. they were ready. chris hall and his daughters rushed to court. and in the end it was very quick. guilty of first degree murder. their father would not be coming home. probably ever. >> he was being cuffed. and potentially put away for life. and yeah. it hurts. and we are angry about that. >> you can still hear those daughters. >> i can. >> thinking you unfairly convicted their father. >> absolutely. it weighs on me. but at the same time, i know who i am dealing with when it comes to chris hall. in fact, he is the one that's stolen their mother from them. >> it had been a peculiar fact of this case that the victims' and defendants' families stood solidly together against the prosecution. what no one knew was the truth was more complicated. offer the verdict at chris hall's sentencing a letter was produced from one of chris hall's brother, billy carlton who until now had said not one public word about the case. we would like to ask his honor for the maximum sentence, wrote billy. the pain that my family has suffered through this tragedy is unforgivable. >> i didn't want to hurt the girls. i had to say what was on my mind. >> there was a deep divide in the family said billy. some of the relatives believed chris was innocent but he and he said others including cristi's uncle steve mundy urged on the prosecutor silently. >> half the family was convinced he was innocent and half was convinced he wasn't. that's hard to do when you have a big family and you all have to be together once in a while. >> when it involves as member as loved as cristi was.

>> exactly. >> does that explain why this kind of group of people in the family decided to just let justice take its course? >> we talked about it quite a bit. you've got to know when to show up sometimes and when not to show up, just to keep what's left of the family as together as you can have it. >> thank you so much for coming. >> when it was over, hall convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life, some of cristi's relatives met with prosecutor strunsky and thanked him. >> thank you for putting him away because he is a murderer.

>> and the hall daughters, having lost their beloved mother, fought to save a father they adored, and having lost that fight, aren't quite sure i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." . what evidence doesn't lie? it actually tells a story. >> you're there at the crime scene. >> you can almost recreate the crime. >> right there on the wall, a mystery scrawled in blood. three cryptic letters. what would you make of this? >> is that a word? is that a