anything. >> that's all for this edition of ""dateline" extra." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. ng she was a person out of a '40s film noir movie. which a life full of mystery to match. >> she was a stunner physically. she was able to say jump and the men would say how high. >> married to a wealthy lawyer. >> he always said she has this hold over me. >> but there was someone she seemed even closer to. >> they bought matching underwear together. >> they shared everything.

>> the eating together, they're sleeping in the same bed together. she's living at her house. >> did they also share a deadly secret? >> it was a love triangle, and one of them had to go. >> but was it her idea? >> oh, god, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but oh, my god. >> or her's? >> oh, god, get out. >> and who would take the fall for evil? >> how deep of a hole did you dig? >> "poison." hello and welcome to "dateline extra." i'm craig melvin. larry was a successful trial attorney with a thriving practice, a wife he adored, and a lavish lifestyle. then the 53-year-old vanished in a mystery as twisted as they come. at its center, three lives tangled together in a deadly love triangle, and only one of

them would survive. here is keith morris. >> reporter: it was september 11th, 21. just about everybody knows where they were that awful day, like the glamorous trio that was traveling north through california's yosemite park. even as the rest of the world's attention was focused on new york city, they were intent on their own urgent needs, their desires, their fears, their deadly love triangle. so they probably didn't appreciate the passing wonders, the astonishing cliffs, the waterfalls, the giant sequoias any more than the one in the back seat through fading eyes saw anything at all. here is one of them. his name was larry mcnabney, and he was a tall handsome man, a

well respected man from nevada. loved the big life, loved being in control. >> there was never a hair out of place. there wasn't dust on his desk. his pen was always in the same spot. >> larry's daughter octavia was crazy about him. in all of his type a personality, his joy of life, his courtroom presence. >> i loved to go to the courtroom and watch my dad. it was mesmerizing to me. he was completely confident. not an ounce of shyness. he commanded the courtroom. >> i've been a trial lawyer for over 20 years. >> larry's long-time friend fred. >> he could open 50 files a month in personal injury litigation, which made him a rich man. >> but nobody is perfect, of course.

and for all of larry's unquestioned talents, the man carried around with him a raft of corresponding demons. >> i know he had a difficult childhood. and a lot of your personality is shaped when you're a child. >> and as an adult, larry struggled with alcohol and women. had been married and divorced several times. >> it was like a void he was trying to fill, and he never could fill it. >> in fact, from time to time, larry had gone on benders and just vanished, weeks at a time. everybody worried and wondered, and sure enough, he would show up again. >> i had a t-shirt made up once, yellow with black letters saying "where is larry mcnabney." >> then finally larry, well into his 40s seemed to get his act together for real. he set up new office in las vegas. everything clicked, possibly for an attractive reason, as octavia

discovered. >> i went by the office one day, and he said i have someone i want you to meet. he said this is elisa. >> elisa, 17 years younger than larry, and he was in love. intercontinental he said she is fun and vivacious and she is young and it's just we have a good time. >> octavia didn't stand in the way. she wanted her dad to be happy. >> we welcomed the new person in. >> it's my dad. i didn't want anything that would inhibit me from spending time with him. >> and he really cared for this woman? >> he did. larry and elisa thrived. they got married. elisa became his office manager. they opened another firm in

sacramento, another big success. so they hired sarah dutra, the outgoing daughter of deeply religious parents who soon became a friend as well as a personal and office assistant. and together, elisa and larry enjoyed the high life. >> she was into the same thing that larry loved, style. and they went and bought viper cars together. >> they also shared larry's newest passion, quarter horses. >> larry would show horses and show himself, which fit in with larry looking good and feeling good. >> larry could do more of what he liked while young sarah pitched it to help elisa's running the business of larry's law practice. just about perfect. though larry's friend fred was a bit of a stick in the mud about it. >> the fact that she took control of his business allowed him to engage in drinking and partying. >> which is not really what larry needed. >> no.

appetites would run amok. >> so when, after nearly seven years of marriage, nearly dropped out of sight, close friends weren't extremely alarmed at first, after all larry had gone on drunken benders before. but this time has days stretched into weeks, it seemed different, extremely odd. ginger miller started working at the law firm as a secretary in september 2001 just about the time larry went missing. elisa kept the business going in his absence, but couldn't seem to settle on what the staff should tell people about larry. >> i was told to tell his kids and different people in his family different things. so i was told that he was golfing or skiing, someplace they probably couldn't get a hold of him at. >> it's obvious bs. >> yeah. if it was a client, i would have to say that he was working on the deposition, he was with another client, he had to fly out. >> larry's kids didn't know what to think.

>> and i said to my brother, this doesn't sound right. why do the stories keep changing? >> october arrived. still no larry. thanksgiving. then december he was always with his family on his birthday, but still no sign of larry mcnabney. >> i didn't get a good feeling. and what i worried about was had something gone wrong and dad was scared and he took off? >> had larry offended the wrong person? tavia had a friend in law enforcement who told her -- >> you have to look at it two ways. either if he's in hiding, he's not going to be happy you found him, because obviously he's hiding for a reason. or something's happened to him. >> meanwhile back at the office, ginger was hearing things, worrisome things, until she just couldn't keep it in anymore. >> i went to the sheriff's department. i wasn't sure what to do, so i asked for a piece of paper and i

slid it under the window. >> detectives got her note all right and figured they should have a chat with elisa mcnabney. but by the time they went looking for her, just like larry, she was gone. >> who exactly was elisa mcnabney? and what did she know about her husband's disappearance? the investigation heats up when police uncovered dark secrets in a elisa's past. coming up -- >> she was a person out of a '40s film noir movie. she was a stunner physically, but more importantly, she had a control over men that just amazed me. >> when "poison" continues. perts say is #1 in the nation? perts sure. they probably know what they're talking about. or, the one that j.d. power says is highest in network quality by people who use it every day? this is a tough one. well, not really, because verizon won both.

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unstopand it's strengthenedting place, the by xfi pods,gateway. which plug in to extend the wifi even farther, past anything that stands in its way. ...well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. welcome back. where was larry mcnabney? he was known to be a heavy

drink and had gone on benders before, but according to coworkers, this time seemed different. a secretary at his firm contacted the sheriff's office. detectives were now eager to talk to his much younger wife, elisa, but oddly, she had disappeared too. and when investigators started digging into her past, they quickly uncovered that elisa mcnabney didn't really exist. here, again, is keith morrison. >> by the dawn of 2002 while the rest of us were getting used to a post-9/11 new normal, it seemed pretty clear something very abnormal must have happened to that successful personal injury attorney larry mcnabney. nobody had seen him in five months. he had never been on a bender for this long. now his wife, elisa, was missing too. by this time ginger had dropped off her note at the sheriff's office and detectives were

poking around in the abandoned remains of larry's law office, talking to employees like sarah dutra, the attractive 21-year-old art student from sacramento state who worked at the mcnabney law firm as an office secretary. she brought her little dog ralph with her to the sheriff's office. sarah told the detectives that she and elisa had become close friends and so she, sarah, certainly noticed how erratic elisa became after larry went missing. >> things were starting to not seem right. like, you know, elisa wouldn't come to work all the time there, you know? >> sarah confirmed what ginger miller said, that elisa kept changing her explanations for larry's whereabouts. sarah said she saw elisa signing larry's name on checks and dated a business transaction. >> i figured she's keeping this business going for him. you know, so he can go play or do whatever he was doing. >> in early january 2002, said sarah, elisa planned trip to

arizona to attend a horse show. in the absence of larry, invited sarah to go along. >> i was going to fly down the next day and then she told me, you know, your ticket's paid for and all that. >> but when sarah got to the airport, the ticket was not paid for. >> you called her cell phone number and what did you get. >> nothing. it was this number is no longer in use. >> and that was that, said sarah. she hadn't heard from elisa since. >> i called ginger and i said, ginger, you know, i'm going to look for a new job. i don't know about you, but elisa is gone. >> thomas testa was the san joaquin county prosecutor. when he heard about the case of larry and elisa mcnabney, he kbr

gravitated toward it. >> he was an attorney with a case load who just disappeared. this isn't someone who's a homeless person who just vanishes and you think they took a greyhound and went to nevada. >> testa began by taking a good hard look at elisa. >> she was a person out of a '40s film noir movie in that she was a stunner physically, everyone said that, but more importantly she had a control over men that just amazed me. she was able to say jump and the men would say how high? >> it certainly seemed true for larry, so said his old friend, fred atchison. >> she was controlling him to the extent that she was keeping him away from his family and his former friends. >> did that include the relationship he had with you? >> no question about it. >> you find yourself shut out. >> yeah >> so did larry's daughter, tavia. >> elisa completely cut me out of the picture, and i was devastated. >> but why? why was elisa keeping larry away from his family and friends? what did she have to hide?

>> he called me up once on the phone and said fred, i don't know who she is. you know, i thought he meant we don't really ever know who our spouses are deep down. and he said, no, i don't even know if this is who she is, if her name is what she says it is or anything. >> by then, said fred, larry had discovered ample reason to stop trusting elisa. >> he couldn't keep his wallet in his pants. >> he told you that? >> yeah. she would steal money out of his wallet. he had to hide his wallet in his own house. >> turned out she was also stealing from the law firm. >> she had ripped him off. >> for how much? any idea? >> over $100,000. >> larry told fred all about his troubles with elisa, and yet he kept her around, not like he hasn't divorced women before, but not this one. tavia didn't get it. >> i mean, he always said she has this hold over me, and i never understood what that

meant. >> and larry's comments to fred about not knowing his wife, well, his suspicions turned out to be true. a little research told detectives that the real woman behind the name elisa mcnabney had a considerable criminal rap sheet, including stolen property, credit card fraud, grand theft. >> she really had a way of ingratiating herself with men and using her female charms, and she was very, very good at it. she was a true and true con artist. >> so was elisa just conning larry? surely, thought fred, she wouldn't have done away with him, would she? >> it wouldn't make any sense, even for a dedicated pole cat to do anything like that because he was the goose that laid the golden egg. it wouldn't make sense whatsoever. >> it was a farm worker who

noticed a flock of vultures or buzzards drifting above one of these grape fields, saw something sticking out of the ground. and soon a missing persons case turned into something much, much worse and considerably more bizarre. >> "poison" returns after the break.

welcome back to "dateline" extra. detectives looking into the disappearance of larry and elisa mcnabney had made a startling find. a friend of larry's claimed elisa had ripped her husband off for more than 100 grand, and it appeared he wasn't her first mark. the young woman was a felon with a long criminal history of theft and fraud. but was she capable of even darker crimes? here, again, is keith morrison. >> it was february 2002, a remote vineyard up in the northern end of california's central valley, a farm worker checking the outer reaches of a

giant field of grape couldn't help but see the big words going round and round. something out there. >> vultures were circling. he spotted the vultures so he went out to see what they were circling. >> investigator javier ramos and lieutenant robert bookwalter worked with the san joaquin sheriff's department at the time. >> he thought he was going to find just some dead animal out there. >> but it wasn't a dead animal. the leg that was sticking out of the ground was decidedly human, and soon larry's daughter, tavia, got the news. >> i got a call from the sheriff's department. i felt myself get really hot and nausea. and she said that the body they found, the dental records, it was him.

and i remember i never swear and i yelled out this cuss word and i slammed the phone and i just started shaking. it was a moment in time that i've never felt such anguish. >> that's still raw even now. >> it is because i thought -- i don't know. i thought -- i guess i was hoping he was in hiding. >> very fortunate that the body was discovered. now we can move on and investigate it as a homicide. >> tavia's hopes, crushed. police had ample proof five months after he vanished that larry had been murdered and left to rot out in the middle of nowhere. >> there weren't any stab wounds or any bullet holes. >> there were no obvious signs of larry's cause of death, so they looked further and find something very unusual.

>> the medical examiner was able to find out the cause of death was poisoning with a horse tranquilizer. >> horse tranquilizer? >> yes. >> now, that was strange. but get this. >> he had been dead for an extended period of time. however, the body had not decomposed consistent with the time frame we were looking at. >> meaning? >> meaning it was preserved, kept cold. >> one of the first things i thought, where would they have access to like a walk-in refrigerator large enough to hold a human body? >> detectives wanted answers, and so did larry's daughter, tavia, who sometimes believed she could hear her father in her sleep. >> when i would go to sleep at night, i would wake up and hear him calling for me to help him, and i didn't know what to do, and i didn't understand what was going on. >> sometimes people get a sense of knowing either what or who was responsible. did you?

>> i knew elisa had done something. >> larry's much younger wife elisa. she vanished a few months after he did, and now that larry was dead, she was the prime suspect in his murder. sheriffs deputies and the fbi tracked her down in march 2002 in florida. >> she cut her hair short and changed her name. >> elisa was now going by the name of shane ivaroni and was working as a parallel at a florida law firm. >> elisa was a very smart person. she had, i believe, 140 iq. >> she could talk anybody into anything? >> right. >> but now that she was finally exposed for the con artist she was and was in custody, elisa decided to tell her story, starting at long last with her legal name. >> my whole name is laren. l-a-r-e-n.

l-a-r-e-n. my middle name is renee, r-e-n-e-e. >> okay. >> my maiden name was sims, s-i-m-s. >> and elisa, where's that coming from. a change or you just wanted a different name? >> no, i left florida. you know, i mean, i was a fugitive from florida. >> elisa or laren was from massachusetts and was a mother of two. she was wanted in florida for violating probation on a burglary and theft charge, and had been on the run for nine years, she said. she eventually settled in las vegas where she met larry, and by this time had changed her name to elisa. she told the police she was at the horse show in arizona when she found out police wanted to talk to her about larry. and so she took off in her jaguar, drove from state to state. >> where were you headed at this point. >> i didn't -- just away. >> so with the preliminaries out

of the way, now came the big question. what happened to larry mcnabney? elisa, without hesitation and without even being asked, spilled the beans. >> and did i kill my husband? yes, i killed my husband. >> there it was, no apology, no evasion. she simply confessed to killing her husband, larry mcnabney. but, and this was a "but" with a capital "b," that wasn't the whole story, not even close. coming up, the rest of the story. did elisa have help? >> and i freaked out. >> she was going to -- >> yeah, and i was freaking out. >> she? who was she? when "poison" continues. use of . but we still had to have a cigarette. had to. but then, we were like. what are we doing?

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our top story, president trump remains adamant about nearly $6 billion needed to fund the border wall to end the government shutdown. the president said he could declare natural emergency to build segments of the wall along the border. and authorities in houston have arrested two suspects in connection with the shooting death of 7-year-old jazmine barnes. one suspect 20-year-old eric black jr. was arrested saturday. police have not yet charged the other suspect. now back to dateli"dateline." welcome back to "dateline extra." i'm craig melvin. elisa mcnabney answered the question before police had even asked, yes, she killed her husband larry. it would have seemed like a straight forward case if not for what elisa told investigators next, that she wasn't the mastermind behind the murder. so who was? she said it was someone police had already met.

here again is keith morris. >> there is a purity to confession, a real cleansing of the soul. now after months on the lam, elisa mcnabney, akalaren renee sims was off-loading the secrets of a lifetime. didn't hold back. yes, she killed larry, her husband of nearly seven years, she said. but it wasn't her idea. >> i said, i don't know what i'm going to do. and she said, we have to kill him. and i said, i can't kill him. >> she said? who was this other woman who pushed elisa to commit murder? turned out detectives had already talked with her. remember sarah dutra, the young secretary elisa's friend who came back with her little dog who had been so helpful after larry and elisa disappeared?

now elisa was saying that killing larry was sarah's idea. >> i never would have done it on my own. >> elisa told the story this way. larry was a heavy drinker and drug user. he was abusive, she claimed and she feared for her life. one day she confided in her young friend sarah, and sarah said there was just one thing to do, kill larry mcnabney. now in this three-hour long interview elisa went into detail after gruesome detail of how she and sarah did it. elisa and larry were at a horse show in los angeles, she said, and sarah flew down to meet them, or rather, to meet elisa since larry didn't like sarah, said elisa. >> what did you guys decided to do with him? >> we said if we -- if we kill him, nobody's going to miss him. >> were you going to do it, like, that day or some other time in the future? when were you planning on doing it? >> right then. >> right then and there? >> yeah.

>> that was september 9th, 2001. according to elisa, larry had already passed out after imbibing a little horse tranquilizer on his own for fun. so sarah decided, according to elisa, to just give him more. and no one would ever find out. >> oh, god. it seemed like a good idea at the time. but, oh, my god, it's so horrible to think of taking somebody's life. >> while larry slept, she and sarah squirted drops of horse tranquilizer into his mouth, but larry didn't die. instead, the next day on september 10th, larry got up, showed his horse, and then went right back to bed. >> next morning he's like lying there. and i thought he was dead. and so i wake sarah up and i say, i think he's dead. and she pushes him and she said, no, he's not dead.

>> but he was so heavily drugged he couldn't walk. >> so we went down the street and rented a wheelchair. and i got him dressed and put him in the wheelchair and rolled him out to our truck. and put him in the backseat of the truck. and we drove. >> this, by the way, was september 11th, 2001. everyone else in the known world occupied elsewhere. while elisa and sarah drove north through california with larry slowly dying in the backseat of the truck. >> we stopped in yosemite, somewhere in yosemite. and sarah got out and started digging a hole and he was alive, okay? and i freaked out. >> she was going to say throw him in the hole alive? >> yeah, and i was freaking out. i said we can't put him in there. he's alive. we can't do that. >> so, she said, they drove on. they thought larry would die in the car, but he didn't.

so when they finally made it back to larry and elisa's home near sacramento, larry was slipping in and out of consciousness, still alive. >> and then when 6:00 in the morning rolls around, the sun starts coming up, and sarah sleeps late, you know? and so i immediately go up there. and he was dead. >> that was the morning of september 12. >> and sarah says, well, we can't leave him lying here. so, you know, we take this sheet that he was lying on. and we wrapped it around him. and then we took tape and wrapped it around him and he was in a crouched position. and then in my garage he had this wine refrigerator, you know, like a regular refrigerator? but he ordinarily kept wine there. we took the wine out of it and took the racks out of it and put

him in it. >> they stuffed larry's body in the refrigerator while they decided what to do with it. >> we talked about burying him in the backyard. we talked about burying him over at my trainer's. um, we talked about taking him to the desert and burning the body. >> but they couldn't quite decide, and so they kept larry's body in the refrigerator for three months. and then they decided to take it to las vegas, find someplace there to bury it. >> how much does he weigh? >> he weighed a lot. i'm having a hard time seeing you two picking up this ambition guy. >> we laid the trailer tire down in front of the refrigerator. opened the refrigerator door, laid the trailer tire down. slide him out, put him on the trailer tire, and then back the jag up really close to the trailer tire. and then it was only like that much difference. so then we just pushed.

>> all the tire into the trunk? >> exactly. and he was like, shaped like this, you know? so then we put him in the trunk. and he was like this. and we closed the trunk and we went to las vegas. >> en route to las vegas with their two dogs in the backseat, larry in the trunk along with two shovels, once there sarah hung out at a hotel with the dogs. elisa went out looking for a burial place for larry, but when she started digging, she said, the ground was too hard. >> and so i went back to the hotel and told her, i can't do it. and then all this time he's in the trunk, you know? and the valet's parking and it's not good. >> so elisa said they drove back to california. and the next morning at 4:00 she drove out to a vineyard, dug a hole, and buried it. >> how deep a hole did you dig? >> not deep enough, obviously. >> that was elisa's story.

and just a few hours after she finished telling it, california detectives hauled in sarah dutra, the alleged driver of the whole plot. and her story? well, it was a little different. >> coming up, is sarah dutra a cold-blooded killer or an innocent who was just trying to survive? >> god. i didn't want to end up like him. >> when "poison" continues. d yoe the experts at rootmetrics say is number one in the nation? sure, they probably know what they're talking about. or the one that j.d. power says is highest in network quality by people who use it every day? this is a tough one. well, not really, because verizon won both. so you don't even have to choose. why didn't you just lead with that? it's like a fun thing. (vo) chosen by experts. chosen by you. get six months apple music on us. it's the unlimited plan you need on the network you deserve. now buy the latest galaxy phones, get galaxy s9 free.

welcome back. elisa mcnabney's confession was as chilling as it was thorough. she described to police in detail how she and sarah dutra poisoned larry with horse tranquilizer, then buried his body in a california vineyard. but why would sarah a young

secretary barely out of college want to harm larry? she was about to tell detectives her side of the story. then something no one saw coming, and sarah would suddenly be the only one facing charges. continuing with our story, here's keith morrison. >> i'm here tonight to encourage you to let the chips fall where the chips fall. do not attack elisa anymore. don't protect yourself either. just tell the truth. >> is she, like, incriminating me somehow? >> sarah dutra appeared confused, no little dog to keep her company now. her close friend elisa mcnabney has confessed to murdering her husband larry, and claimed that sarah, just only 21 years old at the time not only helped in the murder, but was actually the driving force behind it. >> what do you think elisa's doing right about now? >> she is lying about what really happened. >> are you a cold-blooded

killer? >> no. >> or are you somebody that got caught up in some stuff and made some mistakes? >> they confronted her with elisa's written confession. >> basically it says we planned >> to -- >> i'm not denying. i'm not denying. that conversation couldn't have happened. i never thought she would have carried it out and taken me along with her unknowingly. she's evil and she's trying to do this to pull me down with her because she's jealous of me. i know she has. >> explain that to me then. why is she doing? make me believe it, sarah. >> because she's an evil person. anyone who can kill her husband is evil. >> sarah dutra broke down and told detectives her side of the story. and in this version it was elisa, not sarah, who was the

cold-blooded killer. it was elisa, she said, who dosed larry with horse tranquilizer. elisa, who ordered sarah to bury him in yosemite, even before he was dead. >> get out and grab the shovel and go check that ground. i said, i don't want to do this. get out. i wanted you to know i was so afraid to not do what she wanted me to. >> elisa, who was eerily calm. when larry finally did expire. >> he was laying there on the ground. and why is he laying on the ground? why is he not laying in bed? and she said, he's dead, and i thought, what do you mean he's dead? >> that was the morning of september 12th after the long and harrowing drive home from the horse show in los angeles, said sarah. and through her tears she told

the detectives how larry's body ended up in the refrigerator. >> she put him in a sheet. oh, my god. i've never seen anything like this, okay? and she said, okay, grab the sheet and then grab him downstairs. i said, what are you doing? we have to call the police. this is not right. she said, we are not calling the police. if you call the police, you will be so sorry you did. >> this was the heart of sarah's version. she went along with the whole awful crazy thing for one reason, she said. she was deathly afraid of elisa. >> god, i didn't want to end up like him. >> was it possible an innocent young woman in the thrall of a con artist and killer? sarah dutra seemed so frightened, so emotional. and yet, thought the detective --

>> i thought a little bit over the top. >> she was a little bit over the top? >> yeah. >> i know. >> you mean she was acting? putting it on? >> i believe so. >> after more than nine hours of questioning, sarah dutra was arrested and charged with larry's murder. it was a classic crime story, two killers, mutual finger pointing, and prosecutors knew they could use each woman's testimony against the other, an israel easy checkmate, that is until elisa took herself off the board. on march 30th, 13 days after her arrest, a jailer found her hanging by the neck in her cell, a suicide. >> a million questions for elisa. and now that door has been slammed shut. >> and now sarah, left holding the bag, would face murder charges alone.

>> the prosecutor had to prove that sarah was equally responsible for larry mcnabney's death. >> but with elisa gone, whose story would the jury believe? coming up -- >> when you try only one defendant, it's very easy as it was for sarah dutra to point the finger at the one who's not there. >> when "poison" continues. ♪here you come again lookin' better than♪ ♪a body has a right to ♪and shakin' me up so applebee's all you can eat is back. now with shrimp. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood.

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welcome back. in the wake of a lisa mcnabney suicide, prosecutors were preparing to make their case against sarah dutra. was the 21-year-old innocent or was she the cold blood mastermind that elisa portrayed? it was a question for jury would soon answer. here with the conclusion of our

story is keith morrison. >> it was the winter of the 2003, more than a year after larry mcnabney was poisoned with horse tranquilizer. his admitted killer, his wife. admitting her own poisoning. you attended the trial every day. >> yes, 11 1/2 weeks. >> why? why? >> our d.a. had talked to us about the importance of our family being represented, that my dad not being forgotten. >> tavia believed that her father died at the hands of both elisa and sarah, but while sarah admitted to being there while larry died and in the months and days that followed, she adamantly claimed she never went to the police because she was so afraid of elisa and of ending up just like larry. and theory that even the prosecutor thomas testa found believable. >> when i first got this case

people in my office were telling you that's exactly what i was saying walking up and down the halls. >> poor sarah, she's a victim. >> poor sarah. but as i got deeper into the case, i totally turned around on this. >> testa reviewed the evidence in preparation for the trial. he became convinced that sarah was in fact the woman in charge. >> sarah did not like larry. she always accused him of being full of himself, talking about himself all the time, self-centered. she didn't like him. so larry didn't want sarah around. sarah did not like larry. >> you know, this sounds to me like two people who both love elisa and want the other out of the way. >> yes. that's it. that's exactly it. it was a love triangle and one of them had to go. >> sarah said prosecutor testa was enjoying a very fancy life with elisa and larry was simply in the way. if your theory is right, these are two good time girls who have a great relationship and they're

living off the proceeds of larry, why get rid of him? they have no motive. >> larry was elisa's golden goose, but elisa was sarah's golden goose. and sarah was about to be cut out of this whole triangle. larry had just told her two days before he was killed, two days before he was killed, you know, that he wanted her gone. he wanted her fired. >> so said testa, it was sarah who had the motive to kill larry. sarah's lawyer, of course, saw it differently. >> this seems like a classic instance of, you know, evil sort of wrapping around a sweet, young little baby. >> at the trial the defense portrayed elisa as a black widow, a sophisticated con artist who wanted her husband dead. and sarah was her innocent and terrified pawn.

>> the most horrible thing ever. not because i wanted to. not because i wanted to. i want you to know that. not because i wanted to. >> really? now prosecutors introduced ginger miller. remember her? the other secretary who worked alongside sarah and elisa. she said in the days and weeks after larry vanished, elisa and sarah seemed to feel anything but remorse. >> they're laughing together. they're shopping together. they're eating together, they're sleeping in the same bed together. she's living at her house. >> so they were not really working, were they? >> they were. they would get maybe two hours of work done during the day. >> what did they do the rest of the time? party? >> shop, hang out, sleep late, go flirt with boys. >> all the while spending the firm's money, larry's money, a lot of money. >> elisa got a red jaguar. sarah got a red bmw. >> such close friends or maybe more than friends. >> they bought matching

underwear together. >> come on. >> no, my first week, they're like look what we bought! they both were wearing matching underwear. they were best friends. >> they were blowing through money so fast they fell behind on rent payments for the law office, got evicted. so they moved the office into elisa and larry's home, which according to ginger now seemed more like elisa and sarah's home. >> up in the rooms they had no clothes of larry's. the closet was cleaned out. and in the bathroom, hers and sarah made the sinks her and hers instead of his and hers. >> like they knew he wasn't coming back. >> yeah, they're pretty much moving him out. >> well, not quite. because all this time, remember, larry's body was still in the garage, still in the refrigerator. and as for the idea that sarah was an innocent child, elisa's puppet, that was nonsense, said ginger.

>> everybody knows that she wasn't terrified of her. sarah had as much say as elisa had in the whole situation. >> but at her trial, sarah, the daughter of those devout christians sat quietly at the defense table, the wide-eyed innocent. elisa wasn't around to be cross-examined. so her videotaped confession didn't get played for the jury. and with no dna, no prints, no trace evidence, no living eyewitnesses, the case against sarah was entirely circumstantial. >> first degree, yeah. >> but would the jury see it the way he did? after four days of deliberations the jury found sarah dutra guilty of voluntary manslaughter and accessory to murder, not first degree murder. >> had not she been a young attractive tall blonde whose parents were clutching bibles, crying in the first row one wonders if this verdict would have been the same. >> sarah dutra was sentenced to

11 years, served 8 and in the summer of 2011 at age 31 she was released. >> it's painful to know that such little time was given for such a horrific crime and one that seemed so premeditated to me and so thought out and so callus to the end. >> sarah did not respond to our interview request. and tavia, she told us she'd forgiven sarah as much for her own sake as anything. >> will i ever forget what she's done? never. but i don't want to have my whole life be their cruelty and the things they chose to do to him. i'd rather remember the loving times we had together. and they're not going to take that away from me.

>> that's all for this edition of "dateline extra." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. don't grab my wrists like that! what is wrong with you? >> an inmate's troubled past leads to angry outbursts inside the jail. >> if i'm to the point i'm mad at you here in my face, we're going to have a problem. >> i put him in segregation from the moment he got here because of his combative nature and the way he was acting. >> another inmate arrives in the jail after an alleged crime spree that sounds like it's right out of a movie.