>> that's all for this edition of dateline extra. i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. he was a beautiful woman, a smart woman. she didn't need to travel those paths. >> she was a mother of five with a double life. >> she lived her church lifestyle, and then her online dating lifestyle. >> we're talking about casual encounters with people who aren't using real identities. >> and then she was murdered. >> i'm appalled that she was found that way. >> somebody wanted to make a statement. >> what would her life reveal about her death? >> she had had communications with at least two other men. >> he asked me, "do you know who she was seeing?" >> from the shadows of the internet to the depths of the human heart. >> he was very controlling, and he was losing control.

december 1st, 2011. one of those days that make teeth chatter, joints creek, raw, damp, dismal. austin star buck then 21 years old was nearing the end of his shift at a glass installation park in deer park, washington half an hour north of spokane when his phone chirped, text messaged. >> it was from logan. >> logan, his younger sister at school. she said i'm cold. come pick me up. but where was the mother? wasn't she supposed to be there? austin dutifully collected his sibling as the cold gray afternoon darkened. >> i took him to my dad's house where i had a key.

>> evening came. the kids call the cell. not afraid. more like irritated. it had happened by then of course. though as the children bedded down at their father's house they never guessed it. wouldn't understand for days. everything about life was different now. nothing made any sense at all. >> unbelief. was unbelief. >> reporter: a friend named summer starks put the words to it, so impossible that she of all people. >> it was hard to wrap your mind around that it had occurred. >> reporter: but apparently it was possible. chanin starbuck, mother of five, was dead, dead in a way that made skin crawl.

she had been so many things, mother, artist, woman on the brink of something new. >> chanin was funny, she was vivacious. she liked to joke around and have a good time. but classy. always very, very classy. >> reporter: the two older sons austin and blake remember how she stood out, even if it embarrassed them a little sometimes. >> she would embroider our names and numbers on all the baseball team -- our baseball team, all our hats. >> the only team with our name and numbers on the back of our hats. >> reporter: chanin tried to stitch her deep mormon faith into their lives, too. how was she with the kids? >> i wouldn't hesitate saying she was a good mother. >> reporter: this is their dad, clay starbuck who was a boy on vacation from alaska when he laid eyes on her in florida 20 years earlier. cold and hot worlds colliding. >> i told her that i lived in alaska. she probably thought she was

lucky that she wouldn't see me again. i don't know how that. >> reporter: but she did. they married within months and settled in alaska where clay worked on the pipeline, started a family right away. and there were issues. aren't there always? clay wasn't interested in church, not the way she was. she wanted you to be there. >> yeah, i couldn't. i couldn't meet her there. it is a big issue. and i'm not sitting here saying i was right and it had to be my way or she was wrong. that's not an issue at all. we were different. >> reporter: they divorced in 2000, hot and cold. they'd lasted ten years that time. yes, that time. full of hope and good will, they tried again in 2006, they remarried, moved to washington state, set up a house in deer park. and from there clay commuted up to his job in alaska, which meant he had to be gone weeks at a time.

so when he came home -- >> the kids and i were about playing catch, playing frisbee, playing basketball. >> reporter: having fun? >> yeah. so it wasn't uncommon to -- i know chanin said it several times. make reference to me being a disneyland dad. and her eyes that probably -- that probably was true because she was making dinners and taking care of the kids and trying to maintain the house. >> reporter: though it was up and down, good and bad. >> chanin and i never fully recovered. >> reporter: it was 2010 when they filed for divorce the second time. they decided to live apart, but close to each other. he got a house near chanin. the two eldest boys, austin and blake, chose to live with him, the three youngest stayed with their mom. they saw their dad a lot, especially during the last months of 2011. clay was on disability, a back injury, he was home. his income vastly reduced, but at least able to share parenting like swapping days for taking

the kids to and from school. >> i'd go over and pick up the kids and take them to school and sometimes she'd pick them up and take them back. and we just, you know, it just worked out. >> reporter: or at least it did until that dismal afternoon, december 1st, 2011, the day chanin failed to show up after school. mind you, they weren't worried, said clay, they all knew chanin had started dating again, so maybe she went out, lost track of time. a mix-up. >> so my thoughts weren't that anything serious happened to her. >> reporter: you thought she was with a guy. >> i thought she was with a guy. i thought it just probably went late, they're having a good dinner. >> reporter: but the next day, one of the kids texted grandmother shannon's mother in florida, had she heard from their mother? she had not. and that was alarming. >> i text chanin.

and i never got anything back. and i called, and her phone box was full. and i knew something was wrong. >> reporter: she felt the panic rise in her throat, called shannon's sister amy and brother steven. >> she said it was very unlikely that chanin wouldn't return her calls. >> because they spoke every day. >> they talked every single day. >> 9:00. >> they knew everything that was going on in each other's lives. so mom continually tried to contact chanin, tried talking to the kids, finding out what was going on. >> reporter: clay called the cops, asked them to check shannon's house. >> that was december 2nd in the evening. so it's, you know, find her. >> reporter: sheriff's deputies went over there had a good look around outside and left. but channin's family in florida insisted something was wrong. it had to be. and her friend summer said she'd never not pick up her kids at school then ignore their calls.

>> i knew that she doted on her kids. she loved them. >> reporter: it was saturday morning before her mother got through to the sheriff's office and a deputy met her landlord, got him to open up the house. two deputies went inside and right away radioed for backup. they had found her dead, her body on her bed and displayed in such a way that detectives knew her killer had more than just murder on his mind. the crime scene would raise more questions than answer and so would a tip from someone close to chanin. >> he says, "look at your phone and computer. it will tell you what you need to know."

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>> reporter: flashing lights, squad cars violated the peaceful neighborhood in deer park, washington. something big going down at chanin starbuck's house. >> a bunch of crime scene tape outside of the house. >> reporter: when chanin's son blake drove up to the street where his mother lived he stopped cold. >> it was obvious something bad happened because the whole yard was blocked off. the awful news had started to spread. when chanin's friend summer starks heard all she could think of was those kids. >> do they know? do they know what's happened? they don't know they just lost their mother, they just lost their mom. >> reporter: and thousands of miles away in florida, chanin's

brother steven heard it first from the local sheriff and phoned his younger sister. >> so i called amy and told amy, you need to meet me at mom's. and she could tell something was wrong, and she started crying immediately. >> i knew. >> so i hightailed it to mom's. we walked in together. >> and he broke the news. >> looked at mom and told her she was gone. >> and i just backed up, and i screamed, no! no. it can't be true. but she was, she was gone. >> reporter: the detectives did not provide the ugly details, didn't tell anybody about that at first. that chanin had been left mostly naked on her bed posed pornographically with a sex toy, and before she took her last breath sheriff's detective mike rickets knew she suffered. >> she was strangled. i believe she was tortured.

and she was beat badly. >> reporter: inconceivable. why would anyone do such a thing? and why her when she was just starting over in life? after she and clay called it kwitsz that second time in 2010 she went back to school to become a dental assistant. >> she presented herself in a very modest, a very conservative family woman sort of way. >> reporter: these are chanin's classmates. they looked up to her as sort of a cross between a den mother and an extra-fun older sister. >> she's like the epitome of what you would expect of a dental assistant. her big beautiful teeth and her laugh and just the smile. i can still hear her laugh. love it. >> very approachable. >> reporter: busy as she was, said her school friend, she always seemed to have time for -- well, anyone who needed her. >> she was very strong, to be able to do that. because that's a very hard program. >> reporter: sure. >> especially with children. >> with a family to attend to, and she was top of the class,

which did she graduate honors or something? >> reporter: yes, she did. an excellent student with finally some prospects of her own. her ex, clay, said he was happy about that. >> we were looking forward to her achieving her independence. our whole family was. >> reporter: including you? >> absolutely. >> reporter: but here was the strange thing. it seemed to her friends that chanin was in some sort of crisis in the months before her death. she was upbeat one minute, distraught the next. >> she's not public. she doesn't want her business known everywhere. >> reporter: there aren't that many of those people left these days. >> but like we would come into school, come in for class in the morning and we'd see her crying in her truck. >> reporter: was it her ex-husband, her kids or maybe some new man? there were one or two new men, that is. >> and a couple times i'd ask her if she was dating. she showed me a picture of this one guy, her friend, that they would chat.

>> reporter: met them online, said chanin. her friend summer starks was the one that encouraged her to get out there again. >> i tried to set her up, but it didn't work out. i said why don't you go date? just go out. >> reporter: nothing serious, though. not yet. maybe she was finally having some fun. >> i thought it would have been great if she could have just focused on a little portion of herself, you know, a little bit, yeah. she deserved that. >> reporter: of course she did. and her love life wouldn't have been anybody else's business if it hadn't been for what happened, but now detectives went digging into hidden places. people she saw in private, things she did she might not want the world to know. if there were secrets, and though there were, they were about to be exposed. one of those secrets was right here on the dead woman's cell phone.

>> there was a text message to chanin asking her to pose in a specific way. >> the pose? it was one the investigators had seen before, at the crime scene. hey toothless.

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if there is such a thing as a fate worse than death, then certainly someone seemed to intend that chanin starbuck met one. lead detective mike rickets. >> chanin starbuck was there posed on her bed in a manner to bring disrespect to her. >> reporter: though chanin starbuck was blessedly beyond embarrassment, her family and close friends as you can well imagine, were not. >> she had so much going for her for it to all end like that and way it ended. she did not deserve that at all. she did not deserve that, whatsoever. >> i'm appalled that she was found that way, you know? awful, and it's embarrassing for her. i'm embarrassed for her. it makes me mad. >> reporter: who could be so

cruel? well, of course, it's the homicide detective's job to figure that out. >> it could mean many things, it could mean somebody very close to her that was very upset and angry with her, or it could mean somebody else. >> reporter: the investigation began the very day chanin's body was found. as luck would have it, among those just beyond the yellow police tape that night was a man that police surely would have looked up sooner or later, didn't have to. chanin's ex-husband clay was clearly looking for them. what was going on, he wanted to know. his ex-wife was missing. was she okay. >> he was asking to talk to the lead detective, he wanted some answers. >> reporter: first responders at the scene wouldn't tell them anything about what was found inside the house, not even that chanin was dead. an ex-husband after all is no longer next of kin. so clay went down to the sheriff's station where he met detective jim dressback.

>> come in, we need to have a chat. his response was, well, your jacket says major crimes. what's going on? nobody will tell me anything. >> reporter: the detective broke the news, chanin was gone. waited for clay to collect himself. and then -- >> i start by asking him very simple things. give me a little bit about chanin's history. is she on medication, does she have any enemies? you know? and what i ask everybody in that situation is what do you think happened. >> he asked me do you know anybody who wants to harm her, do you know when she was seen, do you know -- when were you over there? when did you see her last? do you have any idea of these things? >> reporter: clay recalled telling the detective he knew his wife had been dating again. in fact, he was pretty sure that chanin had a profile on a website that caters to mormon singles. >> i say, well, last i knew she was -- there was lds planet website, and i don't know. i don't have any idea who she's seeing. you'd need to look or talk to

somebody else. >> reporter: they would talk to plenty of others. that was just day one in the investigation. as a logical step in a case like this, the ex himself would have to be checked out thoroughly. but right then the detective had no more for clay starbuck. >> i said we'll talk to you again later. why don't you go talk to your kid. >> reporter: even as he left the station, the detectives recalled, clay starbuck seemed eager to help. >> he told jim dressback look at her phone and her computer. it will tell you what you need to know. >> reporter: no detective worth his salt needed to be told that. chanin starbuck's cell phone was right there in the bedroom. couldn't miss it, said detective lyle johnston. >> the phone was sitting on a table right next to her bed just a couple of feet from her body. >> reporter: like she'd just been using it or something. >> correct. >> i wanted to look at the cell phone right away because it would tell us who she may have been in contact with last.

>> reporter: there was a text message from clay from thursday morning telling chanin he had car trouble, asking her to take the kids to school. then later some exchanges about who would pick them up. not terribly interesting stuff except that wasn't all they found on chanin starbuck's phone and the what else that was there was very interesting. >> she had had communications with at least two other men. it appeared that she was planning on meeting with one or two of them. >> reporter: now, that got the detective's attention. then it fairly jumped at them, a particular text, a request, very specific, very explicit one. >> there was a text message to chanin asking her to pose a specific way. >> reporter: the hair rose on ricket's neck. that was almost exactly the way the killer posed chanin's body. a coincidence? the detective had to think it was anything but. investigators took a hard look

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strange the small things that can offer comfort, however cold, in the midst of horror. once, long before her death, chanin told her mother how she wanted her funeral to be. morbid talk back then. now a blessing in the midst of so much grief. >> so mom was able to give chanin what she wanted for a funeral, if that was something you really want. >> reporter: her old classmates went to the funeral and brought along the candy they used to share cramming for tests. >> i felt kind of silly, but then i didn't feel silly because somebody else brought chocolate and set it up there, too, i

wasn't the only one. >> reporter: but nothing could sweeten the bitterness, nothing. >> the children were allowed to see her, and i remember him saying -- he was looking at her and he said, it doesn't look like mom. and i don't think he even recognized her. >> reporter: that's how badly she'd been beaten. it made her family furious that someone did that to her. so in the days that followed, they seethed. quite unaware that investigators thought they had a huge break in their hunt for her killer. lead detective mike rickets. >> they were normal text messages, then they moved into more sexually suggestive text messages. >> reporter: on the last day she was seen alive, chanin exchanged text messages with men she'd apparently been seeing. rocketing to the top of the list of potential suspects was the

gentleman who sent her that sexually explicit text asking her to pose a certain way, take a picture and send it to him. >> it was alarming because the text mimicked somewhat what we found at the crime scene as far as chanin being posed. >> reporter: chanin did not take or send the picture, but the request? that wasn't just a red flag to investigators. that was a cannon shot. within a matter of hours the detective had that man on the phone. after all, his number was right there in chanin's cell. >> i told him who i was, and asked him if i could come speak with him. and he stated yes. >> reporter: he was a car salesman from spokane named tom walker and in his recorded interview with sheriff's detectives he told them he had nothing to hide. >> i texted at 8:06. good morning, sexy.

she texted me back, good morning, handsome. >> reporter: he admitted trying to sext with chanin that morning. but he was nowhere near her house. he said he was at work and at a funeral that day. >> were you at work all day thursday? >> except for the funeral. >> did you have any involvement in her death? >> no. detectives took a dna sample and started taking a hard look at tom walker's alibi. the problem was she weren't exactly sure when chanin was killed. besides they still had lots of other people to interview. that's what happens in a murder investigation. everybody gets pulled in, especially those close toast the victim. detectives even called chanin's eldest son austin in for questioning. >> they asked me how our relationship was. >> reporter: austin lived with his father and told the police that, yes, he was closer to his dad since his parents split up. and if the question seemed cruel, well, the adult son had to be looked at, eliminated, if

possible. did it feel weird to be put in the position of suspicion like that? >> yeah. he tried more leaning on me, like did you do it? did you do it? it wasn't like, i know you did it. it wasn't like that. but he made me stand up. and i worked at a glass company. i actually cut glass. i had some older cuts on my hands. where did you get that one from? >> reporter: of course they talk to the other man in the family, too, dwight, then 18 and, naturally, the ex-husband, clay. what was he doing on december 1st, the day chanin went missing, the day she likely died? >> he told me at that time that his car had broken down on high desert drive in deer park. >> reporter: clay said he spent the day fixing his car. never saw chanin at all. so who, if anyone, was chanin with that day? as detectives continued to dig, they found what might be an answer right there in chanin's phone. a message from a different man, one named john wilson.

>> chanin, this is john wilson. >> reporter: he seemed to be messaging chanin on her phone using another name just wondering 06. >> it appeared from the communications that they were trying to meet, set up a date or they were going to meet on december 1st, 2011. >> reporter: the very day detectives believe chanin was murdered. but when they traced that phone number from which this john wilson called, they found themselves looking at a public pay phone. but when they googled the name john wilson and justwondering06 they found profiles on dating sites and facebook and quickly realized this man wasn't who he appeared to be. >> it was a pretty minimal site. >> reporter: but a photograph purporting to be this john wilson guy? >> correct. we found that he'd actually stolen it from another person's website, a doctor who lived in

new york city. >> reporter: so now you know that john wilson is not the person you see on the screen? >> correct. >> reporter: a phony picture, a phantom who was clearly interested in keeping his real identity a secret, but why? exactly who was this latest mystery man? coming up -- how do you track down a guy determined to hide? one detective would try his luck with an instant message. >> i said i need to talk with you about chanin starbuck. and i bet it wasn't 20 minutes my phone rang. >> reporter: what's a

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>> reporter: what's a 40-something single woman to do if she's looking for a little romance? and who isn't? why not press a button, type in your name, see what happens? that's just what chanin starbuck did. >> i said get online. she said i'm online. i'm online on a dating site. >> it's not uncommon for this day and age to online date. so i don't know why -- >> and she wouldn't have put

herself in danger or harm's way whatsoever. >> reporter: you wouldn't think. but in fact, that was something chanin's children did worry about a lot. >> i'm sure you know "dateline nbc" and then "to catch a predator," right? i've seen that. that's where weirdos go on the internet. we were afraid she was going to meet this one weirdo on the internet. >> reporter: now those sons were eager for investigators to find their mother's killer and detectives were chasing down a new lead in connection with chanin's internet dating. >> there's a murder investigation, there's no stone unturned. >> reporter: hiding under one particular rock was one very likely suspect, the man calling himself john wilson, who planned to meet with chanin on december 1st, the last day she was seen alive. detectives quickly figured out that he was some kind of an impostor, had posted a fake picture in his online dating profile.

and had been communicating with chanin from locations clearly designed to hide his real identity. >> they were all public places, public phones, universities, places like that. >> reporter: boy, this guy's been careful? >> right, he's doing everything from public locations. >> reporter: what does all this sort of thing tell you? >> it caused us a lot of concern that this certainly could be our suspect. >> reporter: they traced one of the pay phones he used to call chanin. it was here outside the university library. it happened to have a surveillance camera. was this john wilson? only one way to find out. detective johnston sent him an instant message of his own. >> identified myself as being from the sheriff's office and said, i need to talk with you about chanin starbuck. and i bet it wasn't 20 minutes my phone rang. >> reporter: it was him, all right. and yes, he told the detective he knew chanin starbuck, yes, the two had been seeing each other, but --

>> he was very hesitant to identify himself. i asked him for his name, who it was that i was speaking to. >> reporter: sounded a bit shady to the investigator. distrustful. >> it was obvious that he didn't seem to believe that i was with the sheriff's office either. >> reporter: mike griffiths was listening in on the conversation and scribbled a note. >> tell him that we need to have his true identity shortly or i'm going to post this picture and show it all over the media and i'll find out who he is. >> at that point he told me his true name. >> reporter: suddenly wanted to cooperate. >> well, he didn't really want to, but he expressed the fact that he'd been having an affair. he was married. >> reporter: that was his explanation for the fake name, the skulking around, hiding from his wife, he said. his name, his real name, was

john kenlein. he was a school teacher. he agreed to talk to the detective in person but asked to have the conversation at the office of his lawyer. a man named robert cossey. >> he's completely stressed out. he is completely worried about his personal life, his professional life. this interview is done with your permission and your attorney's? >> yeah. >> tell me, if you can, how december 1st panned out? >> reporter: december 1st, the last day chanin was seen alive. detectives already knew the answer from messages on chanin's phone the man they were talking to had plans to meet chanin at house. but they wanted to see if he'd tell the truth. >> at 10:30, i was at her house. i knocked on the door. >> what he told us was that he made prior arrangements to meet with chanin. >> reporter: he went to her house. >> he did. >> reporter: only she never answered the door, he said. so then he went to a public phone to call, left a voice

message. hey, chanin, this is john wilson. i thought i'd call you back to see what today looks like. >> reporter: he even stopped by her house again, frustrated, peered through her windows. didn't see anything, he said. and then he told detectives he spent the rest of the day and into the evening exchanging messages with chanin. >> i texted her and i got a text message in reply from her that said, did you come over? and she says something to the effect of, how about tonight? or later tonight? >> reporter: he really wanted to see her? >> right. >> reporter: but never did. or at least he said he never did. >> right. >> reporter: it was, however, a problem with his story. for much of december 1st, john kenlein couldn't tell detectives

if anyone had seen him. in other words, no one to really back up important portions of his alibi. detective mike rickets didn't know what to think. >> here is an individual that's going to great lengths to hide his identity, but at the same time here is an individual that is being as detailed as he possibly can in providing us as much information as he can. so i was on the fence, but it was someone that we had to investigate. >> reporter: boy, did they ever. to see if the school teacher, chanin's mystery man, was telling the truth or trying to cover up a crime, detectives waded through all of his communications with her. >> we didn't let the idea go that he could still be our killer. i don't remember the number of days, but it was a week or two after the homicide that we even realized chanin had called 911. >> reporter: 911? spokane county sheriff's detectives were about to

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there is nothing quite like a murder to put the most intimate parts of life on public display. investigators had tracked down two suspicious men chanin was dating, one a married teacher was at her house on the day she

likely died. the other sent chanin a racy text message that almost mimicked the crime scene. they offered alibis, of course, but since the detectives didn't know exactly when chanin died, they couldn't check them out. funny how one little break can make all the difference. >> it hit me really hard. it was like a rock in my stomach. >> reporter: detective mike rickets wasn't expecting it, not at all, that piece of evidence that suddenly surfaced weeks into the case. his colleague detective lyle johnston had just gotten a record of the calls dialed from chanin's phone. and there it was staring back at him. >> the records that we get from the phone company reflect a 911 call. >> reporter: a 911 call. 9:17 a.m. december 1st, not long

after chanin dropped the kids off at school, the 911 operator failed to properly file the call with the sheriff's department. you may not know this, but some cell phones don't store 911 calls in their call list, an effort to protect callers in dangerous situations like somebody had been kidnapped, say. so all that meant detectives trying to solve a murder had no idea chanin called 911 until they got the records from her wireless carrier. were you able to find out what was in the 911 call, how long it lasted, when it came? >> yes, they were able to based on date and time find a recording of the exact call. >> reporter: it was just 28 seconds long. it started with a noise. could you hear it? you could. >> and, unfortunately, for the 911 call operator, i believe he talked over it and he didn't hear it. >> 911, what are you reporting? >> reporter: so brief, so garbled that listening to it now, they became convinced this

must have been chanin as she was being attacked. 9:17 a.m. >> 911, what are you reporting? hello? >> what it sounded like was if somebody was struggling over the phone. you could definitely hear a female's voice kind of urgh. but that's all it amounted to. >> reporter: but who was the attacker, the car salesman, the teacher, or somebody else? now the investigators had to go back over those alibis and compare them to the time of the 911 call. they started with the salesman, tom walker. were you at work all day thursday? >> except for the funeral. >> reporter: his phone never pings off any of the towers in the deer park region. he's at work on december 1st. he attends a funeral. we confirmed that. >> reporter: the salesman, the guy who sent that racy request for a photo, was in the clear.

that left the school teacher, john kenlein. he admitted he was actually outside the deer park house that morning, 10:30, but in the hour before that, when it appeared chanin was being attacked according to the 911 call, he said he was not at chanin starbuck's house but at a star bucks in spokane getting coffee, a specific frappuchino that the store had a record of selling. >> i hear there was a great to-do about whether he ordered some specific and unusual drink. >> correct. that's the case. he purchased coffee at about the same time the 911 call had come in. it was just a little variation in time. but well within the timeframe that he couldn't have been at starbucks and he couldn't have been in deer park at the same time. >> reporter: and so the man who once looked so suspicious convinced detectives he was telling the truth. >> they looked at him every

which way you could be looked at. they checked out every part of his story, and every single fact, everything that he told them checked out 100%. >> reporter: now he just had to deal with his wife. and detectives? they went back through the list of possible suspects. chanin's killer was still out there. a killer, judging from the story chanin's friends were telling, might have been building up to an attack. during the last six months of chanin's life, said summer stark, her friend was convinced somebody was out to get her. >> chanin's house had been broken into and minor things. moving the things or the barbecue would be messed up, knocked over, lights would be unscrewed. you could tell somebody had been in, but things weren't missing sometimes. just odd things that you would notice just weren't right when you would come home. >> reporter: chanin filed police

reports. the incidents were investigated but never solved. chanin had been accusing clay. >> chanin thought clay was behind everything that was happening, that he was either trying to scare her or trying to assess a way into her home. >> reporter: but the police didn't find any evidence of that. and clay said the idea was ridiculous. besides, he said, he was in alaska on at least one of those strange disturbances supposedly happened. >> at first i was like, no way,

i didn't do that. then the date hits me. and i'm like, well, for sure, i didn't do that. i wasn't even here. >> reporter: in fact, he said, he and chanin got along better than most divorced couples. >> chanin and i made things work. we would text or say, hey, i'll get the kids. i know next weekend is my weekend, but can you take them that weekend? >> reporter: but now that chanin was dead, detectives had to rethink her suspicions as related to them by summer. and she wasn't the only person who viewed chanin and clay's relationship through something other than rose-tinted glasses. chanin's siblings, for example, who said chanin accused clay of cheating on her, claimed that was the reason for both divorces. and the last breakup was so nasty they said that in the months before chanin died clay stopped paying child support. >> we were paying her rent. >> power. >> paying food for her children. >> she was going to the food bank for food. >> my mother was paying for her school and her computers. >> reporter: fascinating how the issues of a divorce can seem to change depending on who's doing

the looking. now the detectives were. and they were right back where they started. a home surveillance cam provides a clue that reboots the but their opinion went from bad to worse when chanin came into school visibly upset one day telling them that clay sent her a gift, a sex toy. >> it was in like a little gift bag, if you will, hanging off her door knob. >> with a note. >> with a note. from clay. >> that said -- >> that said, here, enjoy. i can't have you so you can have this.

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first time chanin wondered out loud if clay might try to hurt her. >> i told her quit being so dramatic. she's kind of being a drama queen. and you know, that's ridiculous. that only happens in the movies or on "dateline." and i just said you're just so

full of it. >> reporter: but according to summer, chanin was scared, particularly after the windows were mysteriously shot out of the car parked in her driveway. chanin changed the locks in her house, didn't even give the kids a key, telling friends she was afraid clay would find a way to steal a copy. >> she was very vocal about her fear that he would kill her. >> reporter: hardly surprising those stories would tend to put

a sinister spin on everything that police observed about clay, starting with that very first police interaction the day chanin's body was discovered. detective dressback thought something was off the minute clay arrived at the station and he told clay the news. >> and he goes, oh, my gosh, what happened to my wife. i said, well she's dead. and his knees buckled and everything became very histrionic crying and wailing, and that was okay for a while. but it became ridiculous. >> reporter: ridiculous? >> it became ridiculous. >> reporter: even more ridiculous, more suspicious, said the detective, was when clay, told he was free to go, didn't. >> then i couldn't get rid of him.

he would not leave me alone. >> reporter: kept wanting to talk. >> he kept wanting to talk. what he kept telling me was the same thing over again. look on her phone, look on her computer, that will tell you everything you need to know. >> reporter: it's suspicious to you but it's not really evidence. >> no, not necessarily. alibi for that december morning. his day started with car trouble and his text to chanin. asking her to take the kids to school. he said he spent much of december 1st walking between his home and the spot the car broke down, about a mile away. >> he told me that he had to go back and forth to his residence four times that day to work on his car and get tools, to eat, to take a nap. >> reporter: but detectives couldn't find anyone along that route who remembered seeing clay. and another odd thing, his cell phone was off for several hours, no pings to trace. but in the area clay said he walked, a little shoe leather produced a stroke of luck attached to a house. >> there was a camera on the side of the house. >> reporter: a home surveillance camera pointed in the very direction they remembered clay telling them he walked. and no sign of clay as far as they could tell. >> i mean, there's no indication that he ever passed by there that day. >> reporter: what did you think when you saw that? >> i thought that he was lying. >> reporter: one statement that looked like a lie, one dead cell phone, a complaint about overdue child support and a bunch of tales about alleged threatening behaviors, which, try as they might, they couldn't verify. the detectives didn't have

enough for an arrest let alone a murder charge. they needed something more, something to tie clay directly to the crime scene. and? enter the dna. >> i believe it was january 24th, 2012, when i obtained the initial dna report. >> reporter: they had submitted several samples from chanin's body for dna testing. thought the most important thing would be from her neck where she was strangled and her fingernails as she fought off her attacker. some of the samples came back labeled unknown male. which didn't match any of the known suspects, but some other of the dna material could be narrowed down to a very small pool of candidates. starbuck male. >> clay starbuck or austin starbuck or blake starbuck. >> reporter: there was no getting around it, dna didn't lie, after all. detectives were now convinced

that a starbuck male killed chanin. but which one? was it possible one of chanin's own sons killed her? not a chance, said detective rickets. >> we obtained records that indicated they were at work and at school. we eliminated them as suspects. >> reporter: only one man left standing now, but not for long. on february 6th, 2012, two months after they found the body of chanin starbuck, they arrested clay and charged him with murder. it was the moment chanin's siblings and mother had been waiting for.

>> reporter: it was, of course, a victory for the detectives, too, but it came at a terrible price. >> i didn't want it to be clay starbuck. i didn't want to take those children's father from them. >> reporter: chanin and clay's five children, still in shock over their mother's death, now had another blow to absorb. >> that means they have no guardian then, so we all just decided that it would be best that we try to get custody of the kids and get them out of that situation. >> reporter: but the starbuck children weren't going anywhere. austin, just 21, filed to be the guardian for his younger siblings so they could all stay together and fight together for their dad. >> it's hard to grieve, you know, over our mother when we're fighting for our dad's innocence. >> reporter: yes, they said, their dad was innocent. and if that meant sacrificing their mother's good name to save their dad, so be it. chanin's private life was about to become very public. >> we can verify at least ten men that she was meeting with

>> we can verify at least ten men that she was meeting with electronically, most of which she had met one on one. >> a string of strangers, now potential suspects. okay, paint a picture for me.

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at first the arrest of clay starbuck for the murder of his ex-wife chanin seemed to be playing out with all the predictability of a well-worn movie plot. in hindsight it all seemed so obvious, at least to chanin's close friends and family. >> we knew that clay kill katie -- killed her. just because he'd been stalking

her and causing her so much grief. we knew what he did to her. >> reporter: but you might be surprised to hear the starbuck children weren't buying any of it. so you believe that your dad is innocent? the running drama were their five kids. and those kids, every single one, including the three youngest, seth, marshall and logan, rally to their father's defense. >> he didn't do it. he's a nice, caring, loving person. why would you kill your ex-wife? >> that he still loves. >> that he still loves and leave all your five children parentless? >> reporter: yes, so often what a family looks like depends on who's doing the looking. the kids?

all their lives they said it was their father who was the long suffering one, not their mother. in fact, they said their mother chanin was not always what she seemed to be. over the years, they said, she would up and leave, taking them with her, to live with other men. more than once. for months at a time. but they said their dad would always take her back. >> even through all this, he would always say he loved her. just through this last divorce he would say that -- like no matter what, he could forgive her and take her back. >> reporter: the older starbuck boys said it was patently obvious to them that the case against their dad was a frameup from start to finish.

>> reporter: none of it, they said, beginning with the dna evidence detectives found so incriminating, that male starbuck dna, in all likelihood, they said, came from one of them, austin or blake. but it couldn't have come from the youngest, marshall, who learned in the process that he was not clay's biological son, was conceived during a relationship chanin had after their first divorce. murder, as we say, exposes all kinds of secrets. >> the evidence they have is trace dna. it's like i go up to you and touch you on the hand. it's that small. >> reporter: but there is starbuck dna. >> yeah. >> reporter: and there are some who have said, if it's not him, was it one of you guys. >> there's starbuck dna in the starbuck house. >> kind of funny how that worked. we all lived there. my dad lived there months before this happened. his hair everywhere, his sweat. >> the kids coming over back and forth from our house to her house. >> reporter: according to the

starbuck children, their father was essentially a victim of a kind of marital profiling. a suspect simply because husbands and ex-husbands of murder victims are always suspects. if not for that bias, they said, the investigators would have found the real murderer. >> the evidence is shoddy. >> reporter: and there's so many other possible suspects, they say. take this theory of blake's. not long after clay's arrest, there were news reports about a man named israel keys. he was arrested for murdering a young coffee barrista in alaska and later admitted he'd killed many more people, some in washington state. a serial killer whose family hailed from, of all places, a town just a few miles from chanin's house. well, why would you think it was israel keys? >> because he has killed over ten women. he admitted to four in washington. he was arrested a month about after my dad, so he wouldn't have been on the radar until

then. >> reporter: serial killer? maybe. but here's the biggest reason they don't believe their father is a murderer. it was the children's bombshell. their mother had been keeping a dangerous secret, they said, a secret life, one austin said he figured out when he was just 8. >> she lived a totally different lifestyle. she lived her church lifestyle, her home lifestyle and her online dating lifestyle. >> reporter: to hear the starbuck kids tell it, that the mom known to most as a prim and proper mormon home maker lived a racy and risky personal life. a secret from even her closest friends and family but impossible to hide from them, the kids. >> it wasn't normal online dating. it wasn't like she didn't meet some guy and be with him for three, four, five months to a year at a time. she was with him for, you know, just a short visit. you know, on to the next one.

>> reporter: was it true? sitting in jail awaiting trial, clay told his public defenders derek reed and jill gannon neagle, the same thing he said to sheriff's detectives, look at her phone, look at her computer. >> the things that we were able to find and confirm on the laptop were not normal dating relationships. it was sexual relationships. and most of those can be confirmed that they were only sexual in nature. >> reporter: and explicitly so. >> explicitly so. >> reporter: with videos and photos and you name it. >> yes. >> reporter: all there on the laptop, evidence of trips to meet men she had connected with online but didn't know in person until she made them completely vulnerable to them, these strangers. >> several men. i don't think that we can even give a number of the amount at least e-mail addresses. >> reporter: two, three, ten, 15? >> ten would be a minimum, i would say. >> we tried to keep it as close to the incident as possible, and in november of 2011 --

>> reporter: the month leading up to her murder. >> -- we can verify ten men she was communicating with electronically most of which she had met one on one and we can verify that. >> reporter: every one of them a possible suspect. that's what clay's public defenders thought. >> well, investigators had run down leads from chanin's phone the lawyers said. that crack team didn't follow up on any of the potential leads from her laptop. it was there. they had it, right? >> it was there. they swabbed it.

at some point somebody suspected something. i'm not quite sure why they didn't follow up. but isn't this all just a smoke screen? because the evidence is pretty clear that clay starbuck's alibi doesn't hold up and the ali buys of the other people do. 90% of women have a skincare routine. but what about a lip care routine? pay your lips some attention. the chapstick total hydration collection. exfoliate nourish naturally enhance your lips. chapstick. put your lips first.

every trial for murder has this simple question at its core -- whose version of the truth will the jury believe? and in the case of chanin starbuck, the two competing realities set for display could not have stood in starker contrast. >> we'd been waiting over a year for this moment. >> as you can say i'm an a mission. i want him put away. >> reporter: the divided family couldn't have been farther apart in the small spokane county courtroom when the trial began in may 2013. the prosecution set out to prove clay starbuck was a jealous, controlling and ultimately violent man who murdered his devout and long suffering

ex-wife. well, the defense prepared to argue that chanin herself recklessly courted danger and, quite possibly, died at the hands of one of the many strangers she met online for sex. to chanin starbucks' friends and family who heard in advance what the defense had planned, it sounded like an old fashioned smear campaign. >> that's all they had to go on. that's the only thing that they could turn chanin into was this awful person. >> she wasn't a sexual deviant. she wasn't -- she wasn't running around sleeping with everybody in deer park and spokane. >> reporter: the state presented its case first, argued in court by larry steinmetz, and he began not with sex but with that other less titillating root of all evil -- money. the jury heard from summer starks that chanin didn't have any.

>> with respect to miss starbuck's financial situation, how would you define that? >> dire. >> reporter: do you know whether or not miss starbuck had been receiving any child support or spousal maintenance from mr. starbuck during that period? >> she had told me she did not. >> reporter: clay owed more than $9,000 in back child support. eliminate the ex and his financial obligations would die with her, thus a money motive said the prosecution. and then they brought it up -- sex. or rather chanin's love life, not the life that the defense had in mind but the romantic kind that sometimes produces jealousy, the other age-old motive for murder. >> miss starbuck now a single woman dating other men, much to chagrin and dismay of the defendant clay starbuck. >> reporter: chanin's newfound romantic freedom enraged clay. one of the couple's friends

testified that clay seemed unnaturally obsessed with his ex-wife's personal life. >> he basically gave me a litany of things about chanin, about what she was doing and how she was seeing lots of other men. >> reporter: and one of the kids' teachers testified that she heard clay predict something that sounded to her quite chilling. >> he said, i wouldn't be surprised if we found her dead, i wouldn't be surprised if we found her with her throat slit open. >> reporter: then the view from the detectives who testified how it seemed to them clay was just a little too eager to direct their suspicions away from himself. and towards some anonymous online lover. >> i don't very often have people pushing at me a piece so much that it pushes everything else, all the other information out. just constantly pushing that at

me. >> reporter: jealous, resentful and on the morning of december 1st luring chanin out of her house with a phony story about a broken-down car. remember clay texted chanin, asked her to take the kids to school, then shut off his phone to avoid detection, or so said the prosecutor. laying a trap. >> taking the children out of the house, entering the house, waiting for ms. starbuck to return. >> reporter: they played that snippet of a 911 call that the prosecution said confirmed the time of the attack. >> 911, what are you reporting? >> reporter: then an expert told the jury about the dna they found on chanin's neck. >> is this match that you described an exact match to clay starbuck and the male bloodline of his family? >> yes. >> reporter: the dna had to be clay's.

he was the one with the weak alibi. and detectives had already cleared his sons, though the prosecutor called them as witnesses anyway. >> during the school week, what time would you normally go to school? >> it was just after 9:00. >> on december 1 of 2011, did you work that day, a thursday? >> yes, i was. >> reporter: and someone else cleared by his alibi, john kenlein, the married teacher, was forced to appear, admitted an affair with chanin. >> we engaged in a sexual relationship yes. >> he was not here to be ashamed but to testify about curious messages he received from chanin's phone, messages sent long after the 911 call. >> again, sir, could you read that? >> did you stop by, question mark, question mark, question mark. do you want to come over tonight? >> reporter: those messages found on chanin's phone, investigators believe, could

only have been sent by chanin's killer. and by this time you believed she was dead? >> right. based on the 911 call, we believe she's deceased and yet someone is using her cell phone to communicate. >> reporter: and to prove it must have been clay who sent those messages, they entered into evidence this seemingly innocuous text message from around 3:00 p.m. that afternoon. >> at 3:06 p.m. chanin starbuck phone to logan starbuck phone, send marsh a note, dad will be there in ten minutes. >> reporter: send marsh a note? who besides his mother might know the nickname marsh? the youngest starbuck marshall came to the stand. >> how often would your dad call you marsh? >> a lot. he also called me son and marshall. >> but he did call you marsh a lot? >> mm-hmm.

>> reporter: yes, it had been an intimate act, an angry ex-husband killing the mother of his children, then staging the scene as a humiliating sex crime, premeditated murder said the state. and as evidence of clay starbuck's twisted state of mind, the prosecution offered this final piece to the puzzle. detectives said they found chanin's death certificate on a wall in clay's house pinned up like a trophy. >> as a reminder, she's no longer in my life, she's no longer going to cause me any misery or pain. >> reporter: so no smoking gun but a pile of circumstantial evidence deep enough, the prosecution hoped, to bury any chance of acquittal. >> at the heart of this killing -- and i would submit the motive -- greed, anger, obsession and jealousy. >> reporter: and, through it all, clay and his defense waited to tell an entirely different

story about a risky life and unsolved murder. unsolved, the defense would argue, because investigators blew it right from the start at the crime scene. >> they swabbed the face of the cell phone. they got dna. it's not his. the phone doesn't have mr. starbuck's dna. >> whose dna did it have? ever notice how hard it is to clean impossible kitchen and bathroom messes with wipes and spray cleaners? try mr. clean magic eraser. just add water, squeeze, and erase. mr. clean magic eraser works great on burnt-on food in the kitchen. it's perfect for cleaning stubborn bathroom soap scum.

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>> make no mistake, there were men that she talked to the day before. >> reporter: that was the story the defense and the children were poised to tell in court. and then a ruling from the judge. the evidence was inadmissible. the children's story, the activities revealed in the laptop, the evidence pointing to other men chanin knew intimately, it was all too speculative, too prejudicial. and it was out. the jury wouldn't hear it. suddenly at the defense table, the air went out. >> i think the court was thinking we don't want to make this a forum to run somebody who was murdered down. unfortunately, this isn't something that's just being made up. we didn't create this, these allegations. >> reporter: clay starbuck's lawyers needed a plan b. so they went after the murder investigation itself.

pointing out in court all the things investigators failed to do. >> on the right hand, they found on one of the nails what tested positive for blood. they don't test it. don't even look at it. in fact, you'll hear from the crime lab that they intentionally swabbed around the blood. >> reporter: it was a recurring theme for the defense -- they didn't test it. evidence collected but untouched by lab techs. and under cross-examination detective rickets was pilloried for making the decision. >> did you direct anyone to collect any piece of evidence from the master bathroom that would be consistent? >> no. >> as far as you know have you or have you directed anybody to have that? >> no. >> and if there was any potential trace evidence or any evidence on that, we don't know? >> we don't, right.

>> the crime lab didn't test it? >> right. >> reporter: but there were also issues with the evidence that was tested, said the defense. that cell phone, for instance, the one the prosecution went to great lengths to say clay used after killing chanin -- >> they swabbed the face of the cell phone and they got dna. and they got this dna and it's not his. unidentified male. the phone doesn't have mr. starbuck's dna on it. >> reporter: and more unidentified dna found on chanin's neck, where she was strangled. >> fair to say going back to the term match, that there was another contributor on the sample referenced miss starbuck's neck male contributor that has not been identified? >> correct. >> reporter: whose dna was that, the defense asked? no one knows. but the presence of male starbuck dna at the crime scene was no mystery at all. not only had clay lived in that

house but the dna could have been transferred from children going back and forth between parents as marshall explains. only his audio could be shown not his face. do you ever share clothes with austin now? if all my shirts are dirty or something i'll borrow one of his shirts. and i use also blake's old sweatshirt. >> reporter: the matter of the alibi. neighbors in the area where clay starbuck claimed his car broke down testified that they did see a car matching that description parked by the side of the road. >> i came up early in the morning to smoke a cigarette outside. i had seen it parked up the street. >> reporter: austin told the court that the jury should not be suspicious about clay's phone being off that day. >> why would he have it off? >> so he wouldn't be interrupted when he was sleeping because he had back surgery and he needed his sleep. >> reporter: yes, the back surgery. the reason clay was in deer park and not out working on the

pipeline at the time of chanin's murder. clay was simply too weak, said his kids. didn't have the physical strength to kill their mother. >> so my mom, she's 5'10", 5'11", 180 pounds. she's not a small lady. she's not big, but she's not small. >> reporter: debilitating surgery? absolutely said clay's doctor. >> he would probably still be somewhat limited after surgery, yes. >> reporter: austin also addressed that so-called trophy the prosecution brought up, chanin's death certificate supposedly hanging on clay's wall. it was actually his, said austin. as executor of chanin's estate, he needed copies of the death certificate. and he wanted to keep one safe where it wouldn't be lost. >> and where did you put that? >> the master bedroom my dad stayed at in a closet we use for a gun safe it was behind a key locked door handle. >> reporter: but the star defense witness? clay starbuck himself.

>> mr. starbuck, you were married to ms. chanin starbuck at one time? >> yes. >> reporter: speaking in calm, deliberate tones, he told the court his back surgery forced him out of work which is how he came to be more than $9,000 behind in child support and alimony. >> i couldn't do anything about it till i went back to work. that was my goal. >> reporter: money was no motive said the defense, and as for jealousy, not him. his talk about chanin's online dating had been misconstrued. >> why did you tell people about that information? >> concerned and to see if we could help her. >> reporter: some of the officers testified that you told them about the same sort of activity after the death of miss starbuck. >> yes. and they were interested in anything that could help them with the investigation as well so that's why.

>> reporter: on the stand clay starbuck patiently followed his lawyer's lead, no gaffes, no slipups. >> did you kill chanin starbuck? >> no, i did not. >> thank you, no further questions. >> reporter: when it was over clay and his defense team felt so confident they encouraged him to talk with us about the case and some things that did not come out in court. in an exclusive interview, clay tells us why he believes he's about to go free. >> the case has been botched in your view. >> i wouldn't say botched. there's smart people that have made elementary mistakes. prestige creams not living up to the hype? one jar shatters the competition. olay regenerist hydrates skin better than creams costing over $100, $200, and even $400.

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on the stand clay starbuck was one cool customer. taciturn and stoic when pressed by the prosecutor on cross-examination. >> are you a jealous person? >> not at all. >> do you ever get angry? >> not at all. >> ms. starbuck was granted 50% of your pension. did that make you angry? >> no. >> did it bother you? >> no. >> do you think that chanin starbuck's killer was trying to send a message? >> i don't know. >> but make no mistake, clay starbuck has plenty to say about his ex-wife chanin, about the detectives whom he believed ignored promising leads in order to hang her murder on him. >> they were after me. they had their guy. they didn't want anybody else. they wanted to drive me to prosecution. >> for starters, clay starbuck told us in an interview given near the end of his trial, the

case against him is based largely on a faulty understanding of the dna evidence. >> it was not considered a match of dna. it was not a 100% match, it was not a full inclusion nor could they exclude it. >> reporter: the starbuck dna found is actually a partial strand but can occur in nearly 1 in 300,000 males in the u.s. according to the state's crime lab, not nearly as accurate as standard dna testing yet that evidence, said clay, was blown out of proportion by investigators on a mission. >> mishandling. really, i can state a lot of things. >> reporter: the case has been botched in your view? is botched a big word or is it okay in this case? >> i would concur. i would say botched is fair game. there's some smart people that have made some elementary

mistakes. >> reporter: but even if that was his dna at the scene, said clay, it proves nothing. he told us that not only had he slept in that bed for years, he'd been there since his breakup with chanin. >> i left june of 2010. was that the last time that chanin and i were intimate? no. not even close. >> reporter: really? >> absolutely. >> reporter: feelings, hopes of reconciliation perhaps? no, not that at all, said clay. he had moved on. >> at the time of chanin's death i was seeing a gal in valdez, alaska, it was a long distance relationship. >> reporter: you were otherwise engaged? >> i was otherwise engaged. >> reporter: and he disputed all the nasty stories chanin supposedly told her friends about him, wondered why detectives would listen to what he considered to be gossip. she was terrified of you and she told her friends this. and so when she winds up dead and humiliated that way, who

else are they going to look at but the person she was terrified of? >> chanin's friends that you mentioned, if they make those comments, i don't control those comments. i have no way of knowing what chanin told them, but i would hope that they would follow the evidence. i would hope that they wouldn't chase somebody down over a comment made off the cuff. >> reporter: and those were secondhand stories about clay the jury never heard anyway. as for his alibi that morning in the surveillance video, it was nothing said clay. of course the camera didn't show him on that street, he never told the cops that's where he walked and they never asked. they didn't ask you where you went. >> no. >> reporter: they say you told them. >> i did hear that. >> reporter: are you saying their memories are bad? or something, that they're lying or what? >> many statements in this that have not been true from law enforcement standpoint. >> reporter: and speaking of alibi, clay said he doesn't

believe the time of that 911 call means anything at all. >> it is so short, you can't tell what it is. >> reporter: but a call to 911, she winds up dead, they kind of go together. so the time of death makes most sense right around that time. just after because she would have been under attack at that point. >> i don't see how with any of the evidence that's been provided in statements by witnesses that anybody can make that assumption that a 911 call at a quarter after 9:00 and her death were exactly related. >> reporter: for more than two hours as he talked to us clay starbuck remained unflappable, quite determinedly so. i can see why you would be quite a hard guy to argue with. >> i'm an easy guy to argue with because i don't argue. >> reporter: that's the problem. makes me crazy. >> it doesn't make me crazy. >> reporter: no, the other person crazy. >> then i suggest you get counseling. >> reporter: never angry, never

jealous, the only emotion clay starbuck pleads guilty to is disappointment. he was disappointed, he said, when his youngest daughter told him about some explicit images she'd seen on her mother's computer. pretty upsetting for you? >> it was disappointing. i wouldn't say upsetting. >> reporter: now, according to clay starbuck, murder never crossed his mind. >> she was a beautiful woman, smart woman. she didn't need to travel those paths to find men to be with. it was senseless. >> reporter: and did you try to stop that behavior by killing her? >> absolutely not. absolutely not. i wouldn't kill her. i wouldn't harm her. i wouldn't kick, bite, scratch anything her. i've never done anything to hurt her. and i didn't kill her. >> reporter: he faulted once, only once. the question was about his children. what did you want to say to them all these months?

>> you're going to end up making me get emotional. so i'll just leave it that i'm just very proud of them. >> reporter: pretty tough thing for kids to handle. >> it is. it is. not only did they lose their mother, they lost their dad for a period of time. >> reporter: maybe forever. >> it's not going to be forever. it's going to be till next week. >> reporter: clay starbuck was, he said, a confident man, quite sure that acquittal was just days away. all he needed now, he said, was to hear the jury say those words, not guilty. coming up -- the verdict, and the emotional fallout. >> i jumped up and i screamed. i screamed. in't easy.

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for more than two weeks discussions about the murder case sounded a little like political debates these days, polarized and as the judge sent the jury out to deliberate -- >> you'll now be escorted back to the jury deliberation room. >> chanin's two families, her mother and siblings who believed clay poisoned the children against their mother on one side of the great divide. >> i hope that they learn the truth. >> and those very children on the other wanting nothing more than to have their children come home. >> to never see a courtroom again. >> but of course it was only those 12 strangers who could decide. the hours went by. people close to the question on both sides were in some kind of agony. >> i was sick to my stomach, nervous. knowing in my heart, i know clay did this.

all it takes is one person, one person not to believe and we have to start all over again. >> not easy for any of them. but austin had an especially difficult task. a new father himself and now after fighting with his uncle and grandmother over custody he was guardian of the three younger children. and until this moment he had been like a rock. funny how these things sneak up on a person. >> if you could speak to your dad and just say one thing the two of you, what would it be? >> see you soon. >> yeah. >> and then, then they were all

in court, their opposing wishes on full display. the jury was back. >> has the jury reached a verdict? >> thed bane out one full day. here was their decision. >> narrator: the matter of state of washington versus mr. clay starbuck verdict form a count one reads, we the jury find the defendant mr. starbuck guilty of the crime of premeditated murder in the first degree. >> guilty. his face looked like stone. but something else going on inside said his lawyers. how was he when that verdict happened? >> shocked. >> he actually thought he was going to be acquitted. >> absolutely. >> but chanin's mother and siblings finally felt vindicated. all along they believed it was him. and now a jury agreed. >> as soon as that first guilty verdict was read, it was like a ton of bricks were lifted off of us. >> and got the text, guilty. i jumped up and i screamed.

i screamed. i was like, yes, yes! >> how separate these worlds austin starbuck, head of the household, weight of the world on his shoulders, came to see us >> yeah but there's still appeals. there's still other things we can do. >> well, that may be so. >> so it's still not over. >> so parent and siblings >> i thought it would bring me more peace than it did. i was relieved he was found guilty but it didn't bring me the peace i thought it would. >> justice? sometimes what feels like justice to some, doesn't to others. not at all. but this we can say. once there was a fine and lovely woman whose life was good and

useful, who loved her children. >> they were her world and no matter what had happened, what was said, what's been done, what's been drug out that she loved them and she wants them to be successful and have a good life. >> she did not deserve the way her life ended on that cold, december morning in deer park, washington. this is "dateline." it's not a play, isn't it? >> are you sane? >> sane? that's relative. >> guilty, hmm. i wouldn't do anything i felt guilty about. >> you may think you know the charles manson story, but not like this. >> things that police had never seen before. >> sharon tate begged him, please don't kill me. >> he was trying tke