and this time he left the court, not only a free man, but a fully exonerated one. [applause] >> i'm thankful that my mother will know but this last name is fully. that's the most important thing to me in this world. >> brian dripps on the other hand, who had lived to free all those years, atlas faced the consequences. he pleaded guilty to both the rape and murder of angie dodge. and was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years to life. as for carol dodge, the idaho falls police department called her a warrior. adding that over the years, many of their investigators said they were inspired to do more. try harder. and innovate. because of her fierce love for her daughter he. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline". i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. >> she was a person out of a forties film or movie. >> with a life full of mystery to match. >> she was a stunner, physically. she was able to say jump, and

the men would say how high? >> married to a wealthy lawyer. >> he always said, she has this hold over me. >> but there was someone she seemed even closer to. >> they bought matching underwear together. >> they shared everything. >> eating together. sleeping in the same bed together. she's living at her house. >> did they also share a deadly secret? >> it was a love triangle and one of them had to go. >> but was it her idea? >> oh, god, it seemed like a good at the data at the time. but oh, my god. >> or hers? >> i said, oh god, i don't want to do this. she said, get out. >> and who would take the full for evil? >> how deep a hole did you dig? >> not deep another, obviously. >> hello. and welcome to "dateline". attorney larry mcnabney had been living fast and loose, but things were finally slowing down for him. he had a thriving law practice, a wife he adored, and plenty of money. then, a new friend entered the

picture. and a love triangle took shape. the murder was a who done it, involving three tangled lives. one of them was hiding a secret identity. but to untangle this mystery police needed to know, who was the mastermind pulling the strings? here is keith morrison with "poison". >> it was september 11th, 2001. just about everybody knows were they were that awful day. like the glamorous trio that was traveling north through california's yosemite national park. even as the rest of the world's attention was focused on new york city, they were intent on

their ruin urgent needs, their desires, their fears, their deadly love triangle. so, they probably didn't appreciate the passing wonders, the astonishing cliffs, the waterfalls, the giant sequoias, any more than the one in the backseat through fading eye saw anything at all. here is one of them. his name was larry mcnabney and he was a tall, handsome man, a well-known and respected attorney from nevada, a personal injury specialist, made buckets of money. loved the big life, loved being in control. >> there was never a hair out of place. there wasn't dust on his desk. his pen was always in the same spot. >> larry's daughter, tavia, was crazy about him in all of his type a personality, his joy of life, his courtroom presence. >> not an ounce of shyness. he commanded the courtroom. >> i've been a trial lawyer for over 20 years -- >> larry's-long time friend,

fred atcheson, -- >> he could open 50 files a month in personal injury litigation. which were made him a rich man. >> but nobody is perfect, of course. and for all of larry's unquestioned talents, the man carried around with him a raft of corresponding demons. >> i know he had a difficult childhood. and that a lot of your personality is shaped when you are a child. >> and as an adult, larry struggled with alcohol, women. he married and divorced several times. >> it was like a void he was trying to fill and he never could fill it. >> in fact, from time to time, larry had gone on benders and just vanished. weeks at a time. everybody worried and wondered.

but sure enough, he would show up again. >> i had a t-shirt meet up once. yellow, with black letters saying, "where is larry mcnabney? " >> but then, finally, larry well into his forties, seemed to get his act together for real. he set up a new office in las vegas. everything clicked. possibly for an attractive reason, as tavia discovered. >> i went by the office one day and he said, i have someone i want you to meet. he said, " this is elisa. >> elisa, 17 years younger than larry. and he was in love. >> and he said, " she's just fun and vivaciously. she's young. and it's just we have a good time." >> tavia did it stand in the way. she wanted her dad to be happy. >> i welcomed the new person in. it's my dad, so i didn't want anything that would inhibit me from spending time with him. >> and he really cared for this woman? >> he did. >> larry and elisa thrived,

both personally and professionally. they got married. elisa became his office manager. they opened up a firm in sacramento, california. another big success. so, they hired a young, attractive college student named sarah dutra. the outgoing daughter of deeply religious parents. who soon the came a friend as well as a sort of personal and off his assistance. and together, elisa and lowry enjoyed the high life. >> she was into the same things that larry loved. and style. and they went out and bought viper cars together. >> they also shared larry's newest passion, horses. >> but larry would show horses and show himself, which fit in with larry looking good and feeling good. >> larry could do more of what he liked while young sarah pitched in to help elisa run

the business end of larry's law practice. just about perfect. though larry's friend fred was a bit of a stick in the mud about it. >> the fact that she took control of his business allowed him to engage in drinking and partying. >> which is not really what larry needed. >> no, he didn't need that. because his appetites would run amok. >> so, when, after nearly seven years of marriage larry suddenly dropped out of sight, close friends were not extremely alarmed, at first. after all, had larry gone on drunken benders before. but this time, as days stretched into weeks, it seemed different. extremely odd. ginger miller started working

at the law firm as a secretary in september, 2001. just about the time larry went missing. >> elisa kept the business going in his absence. but couldn't seem to settle on what the staff should tell people about larry. >> i was told to tell his kids and different people in his family different things. so, i was told that he was golfing or skiing. someplace they probably couldn't get a hold of him. >> so it was all obvious bs? >> yeah, and then if it was a client i would have to say that he was working on the deposition. he was with another client. had to fly out. >> larry's kids didn't know what to think. >> i said to my brother, this does not sound right. why do the stories keep changing? >> october arrived.

still no larry. thanksgiving. and december, he was always with family on his birthday. but still no sign of larry mcnabney. >> i didn't get a good feeling. and what i worried about was, had something gone wrong and dad was scared and he took off? >> had larry offended the wrong person? tavia had a friend in law enforcement who told her -- >> you have to look at it two ways. either if he is in hiding, he's not going to be happy you found him. because obviously, he's hiding for a reason. or, some things happen to him. >> meanwhile, back at the office, ginger was hearing things. worrisome things. until she just couldn't keep it in anymore. >> i went to the sheriff's department. i wasn't sure what to do. so, i just asked for a piece of paper and i slid it under the window. >> detectives got her note, all right. and figured they should have a chat with elisa mcnabney. but by the time they went looking for her, just like larry, she was gone. >> who exactly was elisa mcnabney? and what did she know about her husband's disappearance? the investigation heats up when police uncover the dark secrets in elisa's past. coming up -- >> she was a person out of a forties film noir movie. she was a stunner, physically. but more importantly, she had a control over him that just amazed me. >> when "dateline" continues.

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the rest of us were getting used to a post 9/11 new normal, it seemed pretty clear that something very abnormal massive happened to that successful personal injury attorney larry mcnabney. nobody had seen him in five months. he'd never been on a bender for this long. and now, his wife elisa was

missing too. by this time, ginger had dropped off her note at the sheriff's office and detectives were poking around in the abandon remains of larry's law practice. talking to employees like sarah dutra, the attractive 21 -year-old art student from sacramento state, who worked at the mcnabney law firm as an office secretary. she brought her little dog, ralph, with her to the sheriff 's office. sarah told detectives that she and elisa had become close friends and so, she, sarah, certainly noticed how erratic elisa became after larry went missing. >> things were starting to not seem right. like, you know, elisa wouldn't come to work all the time. you know? >> sara confirmed what ginger miller said. that elisa kept changing her

explanations for larry's whereabouts. sara said she signed saw a elisa signing larry's name on checks and day-to-day business transactions. >> i figured it she's keeping this business going for him. so he can go play and do whatever. >> in early january, 2002, said sarah, elisa planned a trip to arizona to attend a horse show. and in the absence of larry, invited sarah to go along. >> i was going to fly down the next day and then she told me, your tickets been paid. >> but when sarah got to the airport, the ticket was not paid for. >> so then you call her cell phone number and what did you get? >> nothing it was, "this number is no longer in use." >> and that was that, said

sarah. she hadn't heard from elisa since. >> i actually called ginger and i said, "ginger you know, i'm going to look for a new job. i don't know about you, but elisa's gone." >> thomas testa was the san joaquin county prosecutor. he'd handled a number of missing persons cases. so when he heard about the case of larry an elisa mcnabney, he gravitated toward it. >> he was an attorney with a case low that just disappeared. this isn't someone who's a homeless person who just vanishes and you think maybe they took a greyhound and went to nevada. >> testa began by taking a good hard look at elisa. >> she was a person out of a forties film noir movie. in that she was a stunner physically. everyone said that, but more importantly, she had a control over men that just amaze me. she was able to say jump, and the men would say how high. >> it certainly seemed true for larry, so said his old friend fred atcheson. >> she was controlling him to the extent that she was keeping him away from his family and his former friends. >> did that include the relationship he had with you? >> no question about it. >> you found yourself shut out? >> yeah. >> so did larry's daughter, tavia. >> elisa completely cut me out

of the picture and i was devastated. >> but why? why was elisa keeping larry away from his family and friends? what did she have to hide? >> he called me up once on the phone and said, fred, i don't know who she is. and i thought he meant well, we don't really ever know who our spouses are deep down. and he said no, i don't even know if this is who she is, if her name is what she says it is, or anything. >> by then, said fred, larry had discovered ample reason to stop trusting elisa. >> he couldn't keep his wallet in his pants. >> he told you that? >> yeah. she would steal money out of his wallet. he had to hide his wallet in his own house. >> turned out she was also stealing from the law firm. >> she'd ripped him off. >> for how much, any idea? >> over $100,000. >> larry told fred all about his troubles with elisa. and yet, he kept her around.

not like he hadn't divorced women before, but not this one. tavia didn't get it. >> i mean, he always said she has this hold over me. and i never understood what that meant. >> and larry's comments to fred about not knowing his wife? well, his suspicions turned out to be true. a little research told detectives that the real woman behind the name elisa mcnabney had a considerable criminal rap sheet, including stolen property, credit card fraud, grand theft. >> she really had a way of ingratiating herself with men and using her female charms, and she was very, very good at it. she was a true and true con artist. >> so was elisa just conning larry? surely, thought fred, she wouldn't have done away with him. would she? >> it wouldn't make any sense,

even for a dedicated pole cat to do anything like that because he was the goose that laid the golden egg. it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. >> it was a farm worker who noticed a flock of vultures or buzzards drifting above one of these grape fields, saw something sticking out of the ground. and soon, a missing persons case turned into something much, much worse and considerably more bizarre. >> "dateline" returns after the break. help yourself man. dude? dog food in the fridge? it's not dog food. it's freshpet. real meat. real veggies. real weird. he was bad luck anyway. freshpet, it's not dog food. it's food - food.

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remote vineyard up in the northern end of california's central valley. a farm worker checking the outer reaches of a giant field of grapes couldn't help but see the big birds wheeling around and around. something out there. >> vultures were circling. he spotted the vultures and so he went out to see what they were circling. >> investigator javier ramos and lieutenant robert bookwalter worked with the san joaquin county sheriff's department at the time. they were among the first on the scene. >> must be a dead animal or something. >> i believe he said that. that's what he figured he would find, just some dead animal out there. >> but it wasn't a dead animal.

the leg that was sticking out of the ground was decidedly human. and soon, larry's daughter tavia heard the news. >> i got a call from the sheriff's department. i felt myself get really hot and nauseous. and she said that the body they found, the dental records, it was him. and i remember, i never swear, and i yelled out this cuss word. and i slammed down the phone and i just started shaking. it was a moment in time that i've never felt such anguish. >> still raw even now. >> it is because i thought i don't know, i thought, i guess i was hoping he was in hiding. >> very fortunate that the body was discovered. and now we can move on and investigate it as a homicide. >> tavia's hopes crushed.

police had ample proof now, five months after he vanished, that larry had been murdered and left to rot out here in the middle of nowhere. >> there were not any stab wounds or any bullet holes. >> there were no obvious signs of larry's cause of death. so, they looked further and found something very unusual. >> the medical examiner was able to find out that the cause of death was poisoning with a horse tranquilizer. >> horse tranquilizer? >> yes. >> now that was strange. but get this -- >> he had been dead for an extended period of time. however, the body had not decomposed consistent with the timeframe we were looking at. >> meaning? >> meaning that it was preserved, kept cold. >> one of the first things i thought is, where would the person that killed larry, where would they have access to a walk in refrigerator large enough to hold a human body? >> detectives wanted answers. and so did larry's daughter tavia, who sometimes believed

she could hear her father in her sleep. >> when i would go to sleep at night, i would wake up and i would hear him calling for me to help him. and i didn't know what to do. i didn't understand what was going on. >> sometimes people get a sense of knowing either what or who is responsible. did you? >> i knew elisa had done something. >> larry's much younger wife, elisa. she vanished a few months after he did, and now that larry was dead, she was the prime suspect in his murder. sheriff's deputies and the fbi finally tracked her down in march, 2002, in florida. >> she cut her hair short and changed her name. >> elisa was now going by the name of shane ivaroni and was working as a paralegal at a florida law firm. >> elisa was a very smart person. she had, i believe, 140 iq.

>> she could talk anybody into anything? >> right. >> but now that she was finally exposed for the con artist she was and was in custody, elisa decided to tell her story, starting, at long last, with her legal name. >> my full name is laren. l-a-r-e-n. my middle name is renee. r-e-n-e-e. my maiden name was sims. s-i-m-s. >> and where did elisa come from, a change or you just wanted a different name? >> no, i left florida. you know, i mean i was a fugitive from florida. >> elisa, or laren, was from massachusetts and was a mother of two. she was wanted in florida for violating probation on a burglary and theft charge and had been on the run for nine years, she said. she eventually settled in las vegas, where she met larry and

by this time had changed her name to elisa. she told the police that she was at the horse show in arizona when she found out police wanted to talk to her about larry. and so, she took off in her jaguar, drove from state to state. >> where were you headed at this point? >> just away. i don't know where. >> so with the preliminaries out of the way, now came the big question. what happened to larry mcnabney? elisa, without hesitation and without even being asked, spilled the beans. >> and did i kill my husband? yes, i killed my husband. >> there it was. no apology. no evasion. she simply confessed to killing her husband, larry mcnabney. but, and this was a with a capital "b", that wasn't the whole story. not even close. >> coming up -- did elisa have help?

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here's what's happening. the striking united auto workers union announced it tentative deal with automaker stellantis on saturday. this comes after the w. reached a similar agreement on the forward last week, voting to expand their strike against general motors. authorities say the initial autopsy results for actor matthew perry have come back inconclusive pending a toxicology report. perry died in an apparent drowning at his home in los angeles saturday. now, back to dateline. >> welcome back to "dateline". i'm craig melvin. larry mcnabney's wife had confessed to murdering her husband and burying his body in a california vineyard. it would have seemed like a straightforward case if not for what she told investigators next.

elisa was mcnabney a killer, all right, but did she act alone? here again is keith morrison with "poison." >> there is a purity to confession, a real cleansing of the soul. and now after months on the lam, elisa mcnabney, aka laren renee sims, etc, etc, was finally in custody and offloading the secrets of a lifetime. didn't hold back. yes, she killed her husband of nearly seven years. but it wasn't her idea. >> i said, "i don't know what i'm going to do." and she said, "we have to kill him." and i said, "we can't kill him." >> she said? who was this other woman who pushed elisa to commit murder? turned out detectives had already talked with her.

remember sarah dutra? the young secretary, elisa's friend, who came in with her little dogs and was so helpful to the detectives after larry and elisa disappeared? now elisa was saying killing larry was sarah's idea. >> i never would have thought that upon my own. >> elisa told the story this way. larry was a heavy drinker and drug user. he was abusive, she claimed, and she feared for her life. one day, she said, she confided in her young friend sarah. sarah said there was just one thing to do, kill larry mcnabney. now, in this three hour long interview, elisa went into detail after gruesome detail of how she and sarah did it. elisa and larry were at a horse show in los angeles, she said, and sarah flew down to meet them. or rather to meet elisa, since larry didn't like sarah, said elisa. >> and what did you guys decide to do with him? >> we said if we kill him, nobody's gonna miss him.

>> were you going to do it that day? or were you going to do it sometime in the future? when were you guys planning on doing it? >> right then. >> yeah. >> that was september 9th, 2001. according to elisa, larry had already larry had already passed out after imbibing a little horse tranquilizer on his own, for fun. so, sarah decided, according to elisa, to just to give him more and no one would ever find out. >> oh, god, a seemed like a good at that idea at the time. but oh, my god, it's so horrible to think of taking someone's life. >> while larry said slept, said elisa, she and sarah squirted drops of horse tranquilizer into his mouth. but larry didn't die. instead, the next day on september 10th, larry got up, showed his horse, and then went right back to bed.

>> next morning, he's lying there and i thought he was dead. and so i waked sarah and and i say, i think he's dead. and she pushes him. and she said, no he's not dead. >> but he was so heavily drugged he couldn't walk. >> so we went down the street and rented a wheelchair. and i got him dressed and put him in the wheelchair. and we rolled him out to my truck, our truck, and put him in the back seat of the truck and we drove. >> this, by the way, was september 11th, 2001, everyone else in the known world preoccupied elsewhere. while elisa and sarah drove north through california with larry slowly dying in the back seat of the trunk. >> we stopped in yosemite, somewhere in yosemite. and sarah got out and started digging a hole while he was alive. okay? and i freaked out. >> she was going to throw him in the whole alive? >> yeah. and i was freaking out.

i said, we can't put him in there, he's alive. we can't do that. >> so, she said, they drove on. they thought larry would die in the car, but he didn't. so when they finally made it back to larry and elisa's home near sacramento, larry was slipping in and out of consciousness, still alive. >> and then when 6:00 rolls around in the morning, the sun starts coming up, and sarah sleeps late, you know? and so, i immediately got up there. and he was dead. >> that was the morning of september 12th. >> and sarah says, well, we can't leave him lying here. so, you know, we take him in the sheet that he was lying on and we wrapped it around him. and then we took duct tape and wrapped it around him. and he was in a crouched position. and then, in my garage he had

this wine refrigerator, like a regular refrigerator. but he ordinarily kept wine in. so we took the wine out of it. and we took the racks out of it, and we put him in it. >> and stuffed larry's body in her refrigerator while they decided what to do with him. >> we talked about burying him in the backyard. we talked about burying him over at my trainers. we talked about taking him in the desert and burning the body. >> but they couldn't quite decide. and so, they kept larry's body in the refrigerator for three months, and then they decided to take it to las vegas, find someplace there to bury it. >> how much does he weigh? >> he weighed about -- a lot. >> i have a hard time seeing you two picking up him. >> but we laid a trailer tire down in front of the refrigerator. opened the refrigerator door, lay the trailer door down. slide him out, put him on the trailer tire. and then back their jack up

really close to the trailer tire. and then it was only like that much difference. so then we just pushed. >> off of the tire into the trunk? >> exactly. and he was shaped like this, you know? so then we put him in the trunk. and he was like this. and we close the trunk. and we went to las vegas. >> en route to las vegas, with their two dogs in the back seat, larry in the trunk, along with two shovels. once there, sarah hung out at a hotel with the dogs. elisa went out looking for a burial place for larry. but when she started digging, she said, the ground was too hard. >> and so i went back to the hotel and i told her, i can't do it. and all this time he's in the trunk. you know? and the valet's parking us. it's not good, you know? >> so, elisa said, they drove back to california. and the next morning, at 4:00,

she drove out to a vineyard, dug a hole, and buried him. >> how deep a hole did you dig? >> not deep enough, obviously. >> that was elisa's story. and just a few hours after she finished telling it, california detectives hauled in sarah dutra, the alleged driver of the whole plot. and her story? well, it was a little different. >> coming up -- is sarah dutra a cold blooded killer or an innocent who was just trying to survive? >> god, i didn't want to end up like him. >> when "dateline" continues. ♪ alka-seltzer plus powermax gels cold & flu relief with more concentrated power because the only thing dripping should be your style. plop plop fizz fizz winter warriors with alka-seltzer plus.

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encourage you to let the chips fall where the chips fall. do not protect elisa anymore. don't protect yourself either. just tell the truth. >> but is she, like, incriminating me somehow? >> sarah dutra appeared confused. her close friend elisa had confessed to murdering her husband larry and claimed sarah, just 21 years old at the time, not only helped with the murder, but was actually the driving force behind it. >> what do you think elisa's doing right now? >> she's lying about what

really happened. >> are you a cold blooded killer? or are you somebody that got caught up in some stuff and made some mistakes? >> they confronted her with elisa's written confession. >> basically, it says, i laren and jordan along wish sarah dutra planned to to overdose larry mcnabney, with horse tranquilizer. >> no i'm not denying. i mean -- but i never thought that she would have carried it out and taking me along with her, unknowingly. she's evil and she's trying to do this to pull me down with her because she's been jealous of me. i know she is. >> explain that to me then. why is she doing this? make me believe it, sarah. >> because she's an evil person. anyone who could kill their husband is evil.

>> sarah dutra broke down until detectives her side of the story. and in this version, it was elisa, not sarah, who was a cold blooded killer. it was elisa who ordered sarah to bury him before he was dead. >> she said, get out and grab the shovel and dig a hole. and i said oh god i don't want to do this, she said get out. i was -- i want you to know that i was so afraid to not do which want to me to. >> elisa, who was eerily calm when larry finally did expire -- >> and he was lying on the ground. what is he lying on the ground? for you know why is he not lying in bed? and she said, he's dead. and i thought, what? oh my god, he's dead? what do you mean he's dead? >> that was the morning of september 12th, after the long and harrowing drive home from the horseshow in los angeles, said sarah.

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

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

the bag, would face murder charges alone. >> coming up. >> when you try only one defendant, it's very easy as it was for sarah dutra to point the finger at the one who was not there. >> when dateline continues. not found in traditional dish soaps that remove food and grease 5 times faster. and, because it cleans so well you can replace multiple cleaning products for counters, stoves, and even laundry stains. try dawn powerwash dish spray. brand power, helping you buy better. my husband and i have never been more active. shingles doesn't care.

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sarah dutra was behind bars, charged with the murder of

larry mcnabney. larry's wife elisa told detectives they killed the attorney together, but insisted it was sarah's idea. then elisa committed suicide, leaving sarah to face trial alone. sarah's defense claimed she was the pawn forced to commit the horrendous act and it was elisa who was the real mastermind. which story would the jury believe? here's keith morrison with the conclusion of "poison." >> it was the winter of 2003, more than a year after larry mcnabney was poisoned with horse tranquilizer. his admitted killer, his wife elisa mcnabney, chose her own destiny. and her alleged accomplice, sarah dutra, alone faced the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars. >> you attended the trial every day? >> yes, 11 and a half weeks. >> why? why? >> our da had talked to us about the importance of our

family being represented, that my dad not being forgotten. >> tavia believed that her father died at both the hands of elisa and sarah. but while sarah admitted to being there while larry died and in the days and months that followed, she adamantly claimed she never went to the police because she was so afraid of elisa. of ending up just like larry. a theory that even prosecutor thomas testa found, well, believable. >> when i first got this case, people in my office will tell you that's exactly what i was saying. walking up and down the hall. >> poor sarah, she's the victim. >> she's just an aider and abettor. but as i got deeper in the case i totally turned around on this. i started with a very mindset. >> as testa reviewed the evidence in preparation for trial, he became convinced that sarah dutra was in fact the woman in charge. >> sarah not like larry. she always accused him of being

full of himself, talking about himself all the time, self-centered. e didn't like him. so larry didn't want sarah around. sarah did not like larry. >> you know, this sounds to me like to people who both love elisa and want the other out of the way. >> that's it. that's exactly it. it was a love triangle and one of them had to go. >> sarah, state prosecutor testa said, was enjoying a very fancy life with elisa. and larry was simply in the way. >> if your theory is right, these are two good time girls who've got this great relationship and they're living off the proceeds of larry. why get rid of him? they have no motive. >> larry was elisa's golden goose. but elisa was sarah's golden goose. and sarah was about to be cut off this whole triangle. larry had told her two days before he was killed that he wanted her gone, he wanted her fired. >> so, said testa, it was sarah who had the motive to kill larry.

sarah's lawyer, of course, saw differently. >> it seems like a classic instance of evil wrapping around a sweet, young, little baby. >> at the trial, defense attorney kevin climo portrayed elisa as a black window, a sophisticated con artist who wanted her husband. and sarah was her innocent and terrified pawn. >> this is the most horrible thing that i've ever had anything to do with, but not because i wanted to. not because i want you to know that. not because i wanted to. >> really? now, prosecutor testa introduced ginger miller. remember her, the other secretary who worked alongside sarah and elisa? she said in the days and weeks after larry vanished, elisa and sarah seemed to feel anything but remorse. >> they're laughing together.

they are shopping together. they're eating together. they're sleeping in the same bed together. she's living at her house. >> so, they were not really working, were they? >> they were, they would get maybe two hours during the day. >> what they do the rest of the time? just party? >> shop, hang out, sleep. go flirt with boys. >> all the while, spending the firm's money, larry's money, a lot of money. >> elisa got a red jaguar. sarah got a red bmw. >> such close friends, or maybe more than friends. >> they bought matching underwear together. >> come on? >> no, my first week, they're like, look what we bought. they pulled out and showed they were both wearing matching underwear. they were best friends. >> they were blowing through money so fast they fell behind on rent payments for the law office, got evicted. so, they moved the office into elisa and larry's home, which according to ginger, now seemed more like elisa and sarah's

home. >> up in the room, they had no clothes of larry's. the closet was cleaned out. they made the sinks hers and hers instead of his and hers. >> like they knew he wasn't coming back? >> well, she said, they're pretty much moving him out. >> well, not quite. because all this time, remember, larry's body was still in the garage, still in the refrigerator. and as for the idea that sarah was an innocent child, elisa's puppet, that was nonsense, said ginger. >> everybody knows that she wasn't terrified of her. sarah had as much say as elisa had in the whole situation. >> back at her trial, sarah, the daughter of those devout christian, sat quietly at the defense table a wide-eyed innocent. elisa wasn't around to be cross-examined, so her videotaped confession didn't get played for the jury. and with no dna, no prints, no trace evidence, no living eyewitnesses, the case against sarah was entirely

circumstantial. >> the first degree murder? >> first degree murder, yeah. >> but would the jury see it the way he did? after four days of deliberations, the jury found sarah dutra guilty of voluntary manslaughter and accessory to murder, not first degree murder. >> had she not been a young, attractive, tall blonde, whose parents were clutching bibles crying in the first row, one wonders if this verdict would have been the same. >> sarah dutra was sentenced to 11 years, served eight. and in the summer of 2011, at age 31, she was released. >> it's painful to know that such little time was given for such a horrific crime. and one that seemed so premeditated to me. and so thought out. and so callous to the end. >> sarah dutra did not respond

to our interview request. and tavia? she told us she'd forgiven sarah, as much as for her own sake as anything. >> will i ever forget what she's done? never. but i don't want to have my whole life be their cruelty and the things they chose to do to him. i would rather remember the loving times we had together. they're not going to take that away from me. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. this sunday, next stage. israel expands its ground operation in gaza as president biden pushes for a humanitarian pause. >> the israelis should be incredibly careful. >> concerns also grow for a