tv Dateline MSNBC April 6, 2019 2:00am-3:00am PDT
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boy, i am motivated. >> i mean the enthusiasm coming eat -- it's nosoright. out of you is kind of >> if you could think a color inspirational. that was a person she would be >> i'm ready to roll. i got plans for this eyesight. ♪ yellow. >> her cousin says that upbeat attitude is what brought them close, a bond that only grew as teenagers when heather moved from florida to tennessee. they became an inseparable pair she's a married mother of two. and even went to dlej together there was nothing about her life that would raise any red flags. in memphis. >> she amazed them all. her whole group of girlfriends heather went to and she came ho at the gym. >> heather, you've gotten talked about the new guy that she had met, chris. smaller. >> a stunning 200 pound weight >> diane recalled that health loss. and a whole new life came with ere called him fascinating. >> she liked that. >> she loved that.
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it. >> cow would see the new life. >> diane was surprised to see . how fast the couple was moving. we're going to find you. within weeks heather and chris an e-mail to to her husband and was living together and sh she a secret she was willing to noticed a big change in her shear. >> she was possibly seeing another man. cousins. >> what was behind her secret >> so they had a very sedentary appearance. >> do you think that heather lifestyle and that's when she would gain 2350 pounds. would still be alive? >> maybe a year and a half. i mine frs it was a very short >> yes. amount of time. >> it was tough. >> did she seem depressed about the weight gain? >> absolutely, yes. welcome dateline. >> a fua years into their she had shed pounds and her past. she had started to live the life of her dreams and then she relationship he asked heather to marry him. vanished. >> she felt butte. here's the "last dance." she felt taken care of. >> hi took on the role of stay
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little hot spot. at home dad. >> it took her about ten years they don't play the femme misblues in this club. to her degree from college and it was almost to the day that in the sultry darkness of the she graduated from college that rumble room bodies sway to the everything change. >> at one point before beat of lat p sounds. graduation, heather tipped the in april 2013 a woman named scales at 400 pounds but diane heather jones came to dabs the says that diploma now became a night away. road map for heather pointinger >> she had her head up so high h to a brighter and lighter and her shoulders just beaming future. >> she saw a different life for and he felt absolutely beautiful. >> there was a time not so long herself. >> and that's when she found a ago that heather didn't feel to special group of new friends, women like her who joined the beautiful. >> she was being someone around and danced. exercise class each week to >> just two nights later improif thyrolaifs. everything spun out of control. >> breaking news about a >> you leave that stress misteacher. >> heather jones disappeared deboind.
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>> everyone in heather's life from her home. noticed that happy hour was her purse, keys an cell phone doing wonders for her. are missing. >> thinking of her being scared >> i said you've gotten smaller. >> were the pounds just melting off of hr? >> melting offer. and hurt made you sick. >> it was nothing short of a a >> what happened, the answer was total transformation. sickening. the why, more twigsed an surprisingnyone could in 18 short months she wept from this to this. fatho >> she brought a picture from a before and when she is now and she was so proud of herself. >> no bun was surprised when she landed her dromojob fellow teacher was in awe of amount of nrms poured into her classroom. >> they were dancing, they were singing, they were playing. >> by april 2013 it was all coming together for heather
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jones. she hit that dance floor to try out some moves she'd ryed out at the gym. >> it was so much fun. we were there for problem bring about a good three hours of just dances. >> three days later she expected to see her energetic school worker there are already. >> she was here every morning by 6:30, 6:4 # a. jessicad by whate morning. >> i didn't see her consider. >> thinking she maybe caught a ride to school, jessica made a bee lun for heather's clads room. >> her door was closed and i ren thinking her liegss are off and i remember thinking her lights
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are off, she's gone. what could that mean? as serge began to find the missing teacher. teacher. coming up, a closely guarded secret. >> i didn't know his name. >> when "dateline" continues. n s they're both durable, flexible and nice to have at parties. but quilted northern is not a bouncy castle. it's just really nice toilet paper. ♪ ♪
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>> when she didn't show up fur her class that morning alarm bells wentz off among her scheduled teacher and friends. >> home sick? it didn't seem cliekly. best friend knew she was about to be side ever sidelined by a sniffle. when her cousin diane heard she was a no show she head over to her house. >> there was relief when i saw her car in driveway. >> diane thought heather was probably just sleeping. >> snooking, please answer the the dar, but no answer. she called hetder's monther to bring over key. soon police arrived, opened the
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>> i kinds of took on that police officer role and acombed everybody ere every inch of her property. iooke through her storasheds ane was nothing. >> you eve been up all night. >> yeah. >> i mean i can't miss an opportunity. i didn't want to miss a knock on the door. >> chris told detectives something that could be vital to the investigation. he said heather had written him an e-mail the night before. the subject read, i'm sorry. in it, she mentions their little girl ava. it read, come get ava.
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i cannot face everyone with this. please forgive me. it is too much. please raise them to remember me as their loving mommy. how concerned were you when chris told you about this e-mail that his wife had sent, that heather had sent? >> i was concerned. it did not sound good to me. >> kent thought the e-mail was open to all kinds of interpretations. all bad, it seemed. >> it basically sounded like i'm throwing in the towel. >> reporter: throwing in the towel? detective kemp asked chris if heather might be suicidal. >> has she ever talked about wanting to harm herself or anybody else that you -- since you've known her? >> not that i recall. >> reporter: friends and family police spoke were to adamant that heather would not take her own life. not after striving so hard to transform it for the better. but there was another possible explanation for what might have happened to this woman who had built such a promising future. police were about to uncover a secret she'd kept hidden from almost everyone.
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>> i didn't even know his name. >> reporter: just as heather was headed off into that bright new future, her past came calling. coming up -- the search heats up and the secret is out. >> kind of a bomb shell that heather was pozs possibly seeing another man. . . "i am here." and i aim to say that more. aimovig... a preventive treatment for migraine in adults... reduces the number of monthly migraine days. for some, that number can be cut in half or more. the most common side effects are pain, redness or swelling at the injection site and constipation. aim to be there more. talk to your doctor about aimovig.
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>> heather jones had been missing for hours. her loved ones prayed for the best. now her gym friends pasted the after show photo she was so proud of all over town. >> her friend and dance instructor organized a search party. >> behad good walking shoes and we had knacks and towels and water. >> reporter: around lakes,
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parks, and railroad tracks, cari and the other women searched methodically not knowing what they might find. >> and i told all the girls, "y'all be prepared because we might find her, okay?" >> your foot hits something hard and you think, "oh, my god, is it her?" but it's a branch. you never know with each step. sect kemp -- detective temp wanted to know more about them. they wanted to know what went on between them the last year. >> health ear's dramatic physical change. but friends and family says it was about so much more than just dropping pants sizes as heather lost the weight she gained a whole new outlook on life. >> she was quiet and reserved and to sew that contrast from them until when she decided i'm
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going to make healthy decisions in my life. >> reporter: in all different aspects of her life? >> yes. >> reporter: her cousin diane explained that once heather the butterfly started spreading her wings, she felt that just like her old clothes, her husband chris wasn't fitting anymore. he was not really part of -- >> exactly. >> reporter: -- the new life? >> exactly. >> reporter: the future? >> exactly. and i think he saw the writing on the wall. >> she saw that, i'm young. i'm healthier now than i've ever been. i'm prettier now than i've ever been. and i'm feeling good. i'm feeling confident. and i'm feeling independent. she didn't have just one choice anymore. the world was hers. >> reporter: detectives learned that in january 2013, heather moved out on chris without telling him. she had a name for it? >> she did. ninja style. >> reporter: so it was almost
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like "operation ninja style." >> yes. >> reporter: that she was going to move out on her own? >> it was, it was. >> reporter: heather moved into this rental house with the help of family and friends. >> she was backed by a lot of awesome girls. so she was ready. >> she would say, "you know, i don't have anything in my house but my crockpot, and my mattress, and my brown boots. but, that's okay because i'm happy." >> reporter: in his interview with police, chris said that after nine years of marriage, he and heather began to have some differences. but he said he had no clue she was going to move out on him and was even more shocked when he found out she had filed for divorce. >> i was totally side-swiped. did not see it coming. >> reporter: chris told detective kemp he'd been trying to patch things up with heather ever since. >> i want my wife. i want the family dynamic that we had. i want us to be together. i want to work things out.
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>> reporter: kemp questioned what heather had been up to while chris was trying to win her back. >> it's common a lot of times when a couple's going through a divorce that maybe that somebody was seeing somebody. and i asked him that. >> reporter: that's when chris confided in the detective that he feared heather had, in fact, moved on. >> is she seeing anybody else? does she have a boyfriend right now? >> yeah. >> and can you tell me what you know about that? >> the only thing i know is that they were friends from a younger age, and it's been going on for some time. >> reporter: when you're talking to chris, he brings up kind of a bombshell that heather was possibly seeing another man. >> yes, he did. he did tell me that he believed that she was seeing somebody. and i tried to get information from him about that person. >> i really don't know anything about the guy other than they've been corresponding heavily. >> did she talk about him much?
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>> she hasn't talked about him at all. she doesn't want me or anyone else to know about him. >> reporter: kemp discovered heather had been talking about this new guy, just not with her husband. >> they had started texting, i think, initially and, kind of facebooking. and just, "hey, how are you?" i think slowly those text messages and those facebook messages became very flirtatious. >> i didn't even know his name. all i knew was that she was talking to somebody. >> reporter: who was making her happy. >> that was making her happy, and she felt very special and very beautiful. >> reporter: but police did need a name, fast. chris was able to provide at least part of that crucial detail. >> can you tell me about him? can you start me off with a name. what's his name? >> edward's all i got. >> edward? >> yeah. >> reporter: did you think that this other man could be a game-changer in this investigation? >> to me, this was definitely, you know, a person of interest that we needed to speak with. >> reporter: detectives now launched a hunt for a man named edward. they wanted to know, did heather
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the butterfly leave behind her old life to build a new one with another man? coming up, the other man revealed. i can't believe it. that we just hit the motherlode of soft-serve ice cream? i got cones, anybody wants one! oh, yeah! get ya some! no, i can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on my car insurance with geico. ed! ed! we struck sprinkles! [cheers] believe it. geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.
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the most inspiring minds, the most compelling stories, the best place to listen. to start your free 30-day trial, text listen5 to 500500 today. ♪ president trump traveled to the must/mexico border and declear decle declared our country is full. >> the jet has been grounded worldwide as the company works to fix the software problems alleged to have aided in two crashes. now here's back to "dateline."
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>> time was ticking away. theys passed and heather jones hadn't returned to her rented house, the place where she hoped to start a new life without her husband. >> it sounds cliché, but she really vanished without a trace. >> yes. and that's what was making this so difficult. >> reporter: and she still wasn't answering her cell phone. the one police learned she used to exchange flirtatious texts with a mystery man. >> she is in the process of having an affair, whether local, long distance, i don't know. >> reporter: chris jones couldn't tell detectives much else about this other man, who he only knew by the name of edward. >> i've just seen their correspondence. sweetie and love you. >> how do you know about the correspondence? were you able to see some of the texting yourself? >> yeah. >> on her phone or? >> yeah. >> you must have had concerns about this other man? >> yes, i did. because he was one of the first
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names that we had come up with. >> reporter: detective kemp knew if heather had split town, as her good-bye email suggested, she hadn't driven away in her car. it was still parked in her driveway. >> you know what kind of car edward drives? >> i don't know anything about him. i really don't. >> does he live here locally, obviously, in germantown? >> no. >> memphis? do you know? >> not that i know of. i don't think he lives in memphis. >> reporter: detectives had to find edward another way, so they accessed heather's facebook account and mined it for clues. and there it was, a profile with a last name attached. >> and what was that name? >> edward raulerson. >> reporter: police dialed a phone number they found for ed. he told them he lived 500 miles away in eastern tennessee and agreed to make the eight-hour drive to germantown to be interviewed. detectives wondered had he made the trip once already that week to take heather away? and most importantly, could he tell them where she was now?
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>> just because you've got somebody living 500 miles away does not mean that they didn't have anything to do with this disappearance. >> reporter: police recorded ed raulerson's interview. during questioning, ed made a potentially important admission. >> i love her to death. i would do anything for her. you know, one of the detectives asked me, you know, who would she call if she wanted to disappear. i said, me. i'd be here in however many hours it took for me to get here today. >> reporter: but, he insisted, heather never made that call. and there was more. ed told detectives he was surprised by the first question he was asked when initially contacted by the police. >> detective cook called me and he said, "is your girlfriend there?" and i said, "yes, she's in the backyard." and he said "good, okay, so heather's, okay?" and i said, "heather's not my girlfriend. she's a friend of mine. we've been friends for 20 years." >> reporter: so if ed and heather weren't an item, and he
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was dating someone else, what exactly was going on? >> the detective wanted to hear from you immediately once they learned a name. >> oh yeah, once they knew who i was. >> reporter: detectives learned from ed that his relationship with heather went back decades, long before heather married chris. ed said he and heather met in 1993 when they were both teens living in florida. ed remembers they fell fast for each other. >> it was young love. they say you don't know what love is, but i do. >> reporter: ed said they dated for two years before he moved away. but that puppy love was something he never got over, even after heather married. >> were you still carrying that torch? >> yeah. but i didn't really let it show. i respected heather too much. >> reporter: around heather's birthday in the spring of 2013, after she had lost all that weight, ed told detectives he reached out to wish her well and
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got more than a thank you. heather had big news. she and chris had separated. >> at that moment in her life, she needed a friend. and that was what i was there for. i was there right when she needed me the most. >> reporter: but ed said that shoulder to lean on soon turned into something more. >> talking. just, you know, listening to her problems. and then it just, you know, progressed from there. >> progressed in what way? >> oh. you know, i'm a flirtatious person. and just became flirtatious. >> reporter: detective kemp scanned the recent texts between the two from heather's cell phone, and it appeared that things had heated up even more a few days before she went missing. >> there was some sexual content that i had noticed. >> reporter: ed says it was heather who first turned the texting into sexting. >> what did you think?
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>> it was partly that, you know, she was in a highly flirtatious mood that day. i wasn't really quite sure. >> did you bite? >> i bit. >> reporter: detectives wanted to know how much and whether ed was truly willing to drop everything to help heather start a new life in secret. >> no matter what it took, i would protect her. >> reporter: ed knew it probably didn't look good to police. >> i guess me admitting that i would hide her, if that's what she wanted, you know, i can understand them saying that, you know, maybe he's hidden her. >> did you hide her? >> i wish. >> did you drive to see heather that night? >> no. >> were you with heather that night? >> no. >> did you have anything to do with her disappearance? >> no. >> reporter: ed told police he was at home, far away in eastern tennessee and revealed that despite those steamy texts, he and heather hadn't actually seen
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each other in person in years. >> we had discussed seeing each other. i guess it would've been, well, about another month. >> reporter: ed insisted to police he had no idea where heather was, but he did give them a big clue. he told investigators that, in fact, he spoke to heather on the phone the very night she disappeared, and he heard something on that call that was alarming then, and even more alarming now. >> i called her. she answered. and immediately i could hear kind of arguing. >> reporter: ed said he heard a man's voice in the background during that call. but whose voice was it? fall in those texts aren't at all what you a about to think.
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detective tony temp vowed to find her. he was convinced she did not run off with her boyfriends. temp began to flush out what really happened when heather moved out on chris. >> it was very skaurry and it continued to deteriorate. >> this tomb they were like violent, you won't get away with this. i will come after you.
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>> reporter: then, friends said, chris started acting more desperate, and heather started getting really scared. >> he would show up at her work. he would show up at the gym. he started showing up at the house in the middle of the night. i just remember thinking, like, this is insane. like, you're, literally, stalking her. >> i got a lot of information on chris, on what these people thought of him, and it was not good. >> reporter: detectives decided they'd do more than just keep an eye on chris. they secretly attached a gps device to his car to track his movements. >> we wanted to know possibly if he could take us to where heather was at. >> reporter: they also asked chris to come in for a second interview. detective bryan wallace would lead the interrogation. >> are you thinking this could potentially be our last chance to solve this? >> certainly. this was our shot. >> reporter: detectives watched toward the police station, but then it stopped a quarter-mile away at a nearby mall. police thought he might be running an errand, but moments
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later, he popped up at the station. why had he parked so far away? chris was escorted in. >> thanks for coming out. >> hey, my pleasure. anything i can do. >> reporter: chris told detectives he went to heather's house the night she disappeared to talk. but before he could say much to her, he said her phone rang. >> and so she's like, "this is a call i've kind of been waiting for." and i said, "well, you know, i've really got a pertinent matter to discuss with you if there's any way you could possibly, you know, have him call you back or --" >> what was it? the pertinent matter? >> it was letting her know that i'd discovered that she'd been having an affair this entire time. >> is that who was calling her, the person you suspected? >> i kind of got that feeling that that's who was calling her. >> reporter: in fact, it was ed raulerson. >> i called her. she answered. and immediately i could hear, you know, her and chris kind of arguing. so, she's telling him to get out and he's constantly saying, "i
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need to talk to you. i need to talk to you. i just need two minutes." >> reporter: and ed said he heard something else come out of chris' mouth. >> he's talking to her. it's a matter of life and death. she asked him, "what do you mean, 'a matter of life and death?'" >> reporter: in his interview, chris admitted he and heather continued arguing when she hung up with ed, but he insisted she was alive when he went home. and he said she sent that disturbing good-bye email only after he left. >> i'm freaking out because i still, i don't know if this is a game. >> reporter: detectives had been analyzing that strange e-mail and asked forensic experts to comb through chris' computers seized at his apartment. a theory began to emerge. investigators now believed chris had written the e-mail himself. >> did you suspect that chris was posing as heather, sending that e-mail? an expert when it came to computers.
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>> reporter: and what's more, they suspected it was chris who sent those sexy texts to ed, not heather. they believed he'd stolen her phone and was pretending to be her. >> that is really weird that you're getting sexting from her husband. >> yeah, her husband. it's kind of one of them things, okay, i need to put that out of my mind. >> reporter: chris' plan, detectives thought, was to throw them off the trail, to make it look like heather ran off and was having an affair. but they didn't believe a word of his story or that his concern for heather was genuine. >> the reason you were freaking out is because she was dead. your actions after that make no sense. everything else after that was alibi. >> okay. so what did i do with her? >> that's what we're asking, chris. >> reporter: chris was sticking to his story, but the biggest break in the case was about to happen. what chris didn't know is that while detectives were turning up the heat inside the
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interrogation room, outside they sent some cadaver dogs over to the mall to sniff around his car. and now the team at the mall wanted to speak with detectives immediately. >> they said the dogs just hammered his car. they said they're all over it. >> reporter: they found the scent of human remains. >> i don't know why cadaver dogs hit on my car. >> i do. they don't just hit. they don't just pick cars out of the blue. >> what is it they're trained to detect? i mean -- >> the odor of decomposition. >> reporter: wallace had chris against the ropes, and he was finally going to get some answers. not just about what happened, but why. the startling revelation, heather's radical makeover of her body and life had put her life in imminent danger. coming up -- a whole new story from chris. was this all some awful accident? or could it be murder with a mind-blowing motive?
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you know reliable support when you have it,ping. and that dependability is what we want to give our customers. at comcast, it's my job to constantly monitor our network. prevent problems, and to help provide the most reliable service possible. my name is tanya, i work in the network operations center for comcast. we are working to make things simple, easy and awesome. welcome back to "dateline extra." heather jones' estranged husband maintains he knew nothing about what happened to her.
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here's andrea canning with the conclusion of "the last dance." >> reporter: for hours, chris jones had been going over his story with detectives about what happened the night his wife, heather, disappeared. but after cadaver dogs found the scent of human remains in chris' car, detective bryan wallace wasn't buying his story. >> your story about what happened the night she disappeared is total bull [ bleep ]. >> reporter: wallace pushed him for the truth. >> how did it happen? did she fall? she did. was she drunk as [ bleep ]? what happened? >> that's exactly it. we're struggling over the phone, only this time we're outside on the steps.
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and she lost her footing, and she fell and hit the step, and i heard the crack. >> he said they were struggling over a cell phone. she slipped, fell backwards and hit her head and died. >> reporter: did you believe this new story? >> no, no. no way. >> reporter: finally, chris admitted heather was dead but insisted it was only an accident. still, the most important evidence was missing -- heather's body. chris told detectives he dumped her at a gas station. police went there, found nothing and checked security cameras. >> they've got videos from the last 15 days. they have looked at everything from 10:00 a.m. till 4:00 a.m., and your car never even pulls on the lot. >> reporter: chris then changed his story and said he paid someone to get rid of the body. >> i jokingly asked, "hey, you want to make a couple hundred bucks?" >> uh-huh. nope, nope. stop, stop, stop, chris.
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stop, this isn't working. that's crazier than first one. >> reporter: four hours into the interview, wallace sensed chris was out of stories and out of options. so the detective gave him one last chance. >> i said, "let's cut it out, chris. your time is running out. you need to tell us where she is, and you need to tell us now." >> reporter: the room went quiet, and chris motioned for a pen and paper. then he drew a map. >> i said, "this is where she is?" he said, "that's where she is." >> reporter: detectives raced to the area and followed chris' directions down a path into the woods that led to a clearing. >> once we could see an area on the ground where what had looked like a fire had taken place, once we got closer to that, we could tell that there was still a human form there. >> reporter: seven days after she disappeared, detectives had found heather. her body had been badly burned.
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>> we were brokenhearted. and we had lost her. and she was a big, smiling, beautiful part of our group. >> reporter: chris jones was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. now, the women who'd helped heather jones find the courage to leave her husband supported their friend in death, staring down chris jones at every court appearance. >> there's a monster inside who hurt our friend and that we want justice. >> reporter: prosecutors rejected chris' story that heather had died from an accidental fall. they believed he argued with her at her house that night, strangled her, and then burned her body in the woods. but the question remained -- why? heather's friends provided a surprising answer. they were convinced heather's dramatic weight loss got her killed. do you think that heather would
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still be alive if she hadn't gone through this transformation and bettered herself? >> yes. >> reporter: heather's friends and family said over the course of their relationship, chris used heather's weight as a tool to control her. >> at the beginning, he wanted her to be bigger, that he felt like that would be more attractive to him. and then, as she got bigger, then he would say to her that nobody else would want her because she was so obese. >> reporter: and when heather finally achieved her unbelievable transformation, she confided to her friends that chris didn't have the reaction she expected. >> she told me, "chris wants me to gain the weight back." i said, "heather, that's a control technique, okay? he wants you to stay at home. he doesn't want you to get out there. he doesn't want anyone else looking at you." >> reporter: according to her best friend, melissa, heather said chris even brought fatty foods to her, hoping she would pack the pounds back on. >> he would go up to the school
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with food, and she would not want any part of it. >> reporter: with the sole purpose of trying to get her to gain weight? >> is what she had told me, yes. >> reporter: friends said the new and improved heather never took the bait. and after enduring years of increasing unhappiness in her marriage, they said heather found out something that for her was the last straw. >> she discovered that chris was having an affair with another woman. >> reporter: that's when she finally spread her wings and found the courage to leave her marriage. and she never looked back. >> you could see just her spirit just lighting up, and her sense of security and what all the future was going to hold for her. >> reporter: in february of 2015 chris jones went on trial. heather's friends took the stand to help prove the prosecution's theory. when chris realized he'd lost control of heather, he took control in another way. >> find that man guilty of
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first-degree murder. >> reporter: prosecutors laid out their case to the jury. >> it wasn't an accident. >> reporter: assistant district attorney danielle mccollum. >> she didn't fall down. there was a struggle. he did strangle her either with his hands, or however he did it. he was up close and personal to her. and he was there watching that breath go out of her. >> reporter: but the defense stuck to the story chris told on tape, that heather fell and died after they struggled over a cell phone. >> he never admits to killing her. >> reporter: the judge asked chris if he wanted to tell his story to the jury. >> i think that i will choose to not testify. >> reporter: it was now up to the jury to decide his fate. friends and family filled the courthouse waiting for word, but there would not be a quick verdict. finally, after deliberating for a day -- >> "we, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder first degree." in count two, it reads, "we, the jury, find the defendant guilty
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of abuse of a corpse." >> reporter: tears flowed for heather, a woman who worked so hard to shape her own life, free of chris jones, who will now likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. >> heather is at peace. heather is at peace. he will never hurt anybody again. >> reporter: even after his conviction, chris jones insisted that he didn't kill heather. he told "dateline" in a phone call from jail that he never tried to control heather, that he is absolutely innocent of murder of any type, and that his taped statements to police were coerced. the detectives said chris jones talked to them voluntarily and could have ended the interview at any time. as for cousin diane, she has obtained legal custody of heather and chris' two children. and heather's gym friends, they find comfort in knowing that before her death, heather achieved that remarkable journey, becoming the person she was always meant to be. >> she got to experience that
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before she left this earth. she got to experience what it was like to be as beautiful as she wanted to be, inside and out. i'm glad she did. >> reporter: that dance class where heather spread her wings still keeps a place for her, a heart with heather's name on it. a reminder of a woman whose transformation continues to inspire all who knew and loved heather jones. is she dancing? >> absolutely. >> we believe that. if you believe in angels, there is one dancing up there, i promise you. and every time we have class, she's dancing. that's all for this edition of "dateline extra." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. good morning, i'm phillip mena. it is 6:00 in the east, 3:00 out west and here's what's happening. tax return fight. the new mood made by the
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president's lawyer and the one word the president keeps bringing up as the reason to keep those documents private. back at the border. the president inspecting part of the wall after walking back a big threat. the security breach at mar-a-lago and the secretary of state linking it to a broader threat from china. plus the hip-hop radio show that's become a key stop for 2020 hopefuls. the legal battle over the president's tax returns is escalating. hi l
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