"dateline".msnbc.com. that's all for now. i'm ann curry and for all of us here at nbc news, thanks for joining us. >> a beautiful woman. a young lover and an affair. no sunday night rolled around and i never heard from her, and i thought it was strange. strange was right for reasons no one could ever have imagined. >> you walk in and you just see a horrific scene. >> a brutal attack, the explanation incredible. >> he told us that he must have been sleep walking when it

happened. >> could someone really kill while they're asleep? it's possible. >> they're throwing their kids out of the window and husbands killing their wives in bed. >> a murder defense like no other. >> not conscious, not guilty. >> or was there another explanation? >> you have to look into everything to try to find a reason why. >> a case as dark as night. >> thanks for joining us. i'm ann curry. it's a case that would hinge on the mysteries of the mind and the sleep. we know people can talk in their sleep, walk in their sleep and drive all without realizing what they're doing or remembering it afterward, but is it possible to actually kill while being unconscious? here's keith morrison. it begins here, at the moment of birth, something unconscious, uncontrolled. the world of sleep.

the half glimpsed world of sleep, soothing, amusing. sometimes terrifying. and on the rarest of occasions, unconsciously deadly. sleep, love, sex, what is a person capable of without even knowing it? such a beautiful place, catalina. such a perfect evening for a escapist dreams, an island tryst with a younger man. her name was eva, and she was exotic, lovely and magnetic and 42. >> eva was always living like she was 22, care-free, very young for her age. she was fun and she was generous, and she'd light up a room.

she's the person you call. and no matter what, you always feel better for what she had to say. >> she told her niece, lannelle piro, about the young man. stephen was just 25, not that it mattered. >> i he is he had come over to the house one day. >> came to hang out with eva's son who made the introduction. >> i remember she called me and told me she met this really nice guy. he's really good looking, you know. >> it was instant chemistry. >> he was obviously attracted to her. who wouldn't be? she's drop-dead gorgeous. she had an enormous capacity to love people, and people were drawn to her. there was a 17-year age difference, so she was the ultimate cougar. >> stephen worked sporadically at a variety of odd jobs, sometimes even at sea as commercial fisherman. eva was a thrice married and separated, former flight attendant. >> why do i keep thinking of the cindy lauper song "girls just wanna have fun"?

>> that was us. that was definitely us, yes. april bozarth was eva's friend and flying companion back at the airline, a kind of magic time for both of them. >> everywhere we went, people would just be drawn to her. and she just had a presence about her that was just fun-loving, you know, very welcoming. she would give you the shirt off of her back. >> but as april came to understand, eva could not abide boredom. she was restless. so when she left the flying life, settling down was not easy. >> i think she was looking for the excitement in other ways. it was almost like let me stir the pot a little bit. >> along comes this young guy. >> sure. exciting. >> april was eva's bridesmaid, hoped eva would reconcile with her pilot husband and when the stephen thing began, she heard all about it. >> he's a good-looking guy, fun to be around. he was available to do pretty

much anything she wanted to do, because i don't really think he had a job. and i think they'd go on these little trips to different places. i think that he was kind of a trophy to her. being so much younger, you know, here she is in her early 40s. oh, wow, look, i'm with somebody that's in their 20s. i just said, proceed with caution, you know. >> stephen knew she was married, of course, knew the marriage was on again, off again. he was wrong for her, and she seemed to know it. 17 years younger, no career, it couldn't last. >> she really did love her husband and wanted to reconcile that and move forward with their relationship. >> and yet as the months went by, eva and stephen carried on. >> she was open to me and my sister and just a few people about her relationship with stephen. but still hiding him. still keeping the extent of their relationship just between

them. mostly because i don't think she was proud of it. >> but with stephen it was something else. >> i think he was kind of like a drug to her, in a way, like nothing that she had ever had before. >> she was, i think, extremely conflicted with what to do, how to break this off. >> and then that friday in september. >> she phoned me on friday. >> eva had promised to be with april for the birth of her baby, now just days away. >> and she said, so if sunday looks good for you, i'd like to come out. and i said that would be great, you know, let me know what time and i'll pick you up. >> already, eva's husband had invited her to catalina island when he returned from a flight the following week. an effort to reconcile. she accepted. and then eva placed another call, must have, though it was secret, to stephen. how about catalina right now, she asked him, before the trip she was supposed to take with her husband. >> and then sunday night kind of rolled around and i never heard

from her. i thought, this is getting kind of strange, you know. >> strange indeed. how strange? she had no idea. coming up, she couldn't possibly yet know that her friend's getaway had gone from romance to rampage. >> the first thing that jumped out at you was the term mayhem. when "deadly dreams" continue. we all have internal plumbing.

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20 years, i believe. >> wow. >> so it was unheard of. i mean, it's a resort area. people go there to get away. >> beside him in the helicopter was his partner, detective ken gallatin. ahead on the island, perhaps one of the most unusual case of their careers. >> we just knew we had a dead female and a boyfriend who they felt was responsible for it. >> they were the crew of catalina's fire station who early that morning had received an unexpected visitor. stephen reitz. >> he had actually gone down to the fire station and said his girlfriend was hurt up in the apartment and he may have killed her. >> paramedics rushed to the hotel and tried to revive eva weinfurtner. but it was far too late for that. and then a few hours later, detectives tomlin and gallitin arrived. they both had been here before on vacation but this was awful.

>> you walk in and you see devastation. you see a horrific scene. and you're wondering what the heck happened in here. >> that is the evidence we're going to retain. >> a police photographer pushed record and wandered through the brutal crime scene. >> she had a broken jaw three places, a fractured skull, shoulder, elbow, wrist broken. >> my god, that's not one, it's continuing assault. >> dislocated shoulder and bruising on the hand which kind of appeared maybe as a defensive wound. we don't know. >> but within minutes, detectives did know what actually killed eva, something even more shocking than all the other injuries put together. >> it was several large stab wounds in her neck. >> in her spinal column? >> in her spinal column, exactly. >> and there, not far from eva's body, detectives found a small, bloody pocketknife.

they could hardly miss seeing the large flower pot that appeared to be shattered on her head. >> the first thing that jumped out at you is, for lack of a better term, mayhem. >> but there were plenty of other clues to the crime scene that seemed to back up young mr. reitz's story, that he and eva had come to catalina to party, for romance, not violence. >> there was a $5 bill rolled up with white powdery residue, later turned out to be cocaine, on the table. >> they found cards on the table too and a score book with the result of several hand of gin rummy. strange. all kinds of evidence of an intimate evening, and yet there on the floor by the bed was the carnage of what had to be a bloody rampage. >> there was only two people there. so only he knows whether or not there was a motive and whether they got in an argument, a pushing match over something.

>> an argument is one thing. but a brutal murder like this is quite another. it didn't make any sense. why in the world would stephen reitz do such a thing, especially to his girlfriend? reitz, as it turned out, was eager to explain. >> i woke up looking at eva's body on the ground. >> next thing you know you're looking at her laying on the floor? >> i remember dreaming about being in a conflict. >> what was the conflict about? >> yeah. i think it could have been an intruder or something, i'm thinking. i knew i was -- i felt threatened for some reason. but it had nothing to do with eva. i wasn't dreaming about eva. >> he then said something chilling. there's no other way to put it. he said he was sitting on the bed and she was still alive and she was moaning. and he saw the lacerations to her neck and he said -- >> it began to occur to me that i was responsible for that.

cause of the wounds. that's what i do to shark fishing. >> i said, why would you recognize that? he said, when i was a commercial fisherman, that's how we killed the sharks. we'd sever their spinal and incapacitate the sharks. >> he must have done the same thing to eva but somehow thinking she was an intruder, must have, he told them. but it was really on a guess. reitz insisted he remembered virtually nothing of his violent attack on eva. >> i see bits and flashes of it, you know, but i don't -- but it's hard to believe. i really, i mean, it's hard to believe but i've had other roommates that have watched me sleepwalk. >> sleep walk? now reitz made the most remarkable claim. this horrible violence grew out of a completely unconscious sleep walking episode. >> i told us that he has reoccurring sleep walking episodes and this time he must have been sleep walking when it happened. >> was this a clever ruse that

reitz had cooked up in the moments after the killing? or was his claim actually legitimate? reitz's parents who by now arrived at the station in catalina also claimed that their son had a history of sleepwalking. >> they relayed at least one, maybe two incidents that they were aware of that they knew that he had slept-walked in the past. >> they also told detectives stephen was under treatment for bipolar disorder. >> he said he forgot his bipolar medicine during the interview and she had given him some kind of a prescription that she had for anxiety or something like this. >> suddenly this confession was making what seemed like a clear-cut crime a lot more complicated. >> we knew who our suspect was, if you will. there's no doubt that this occurred and there's no doubt that he did it. now the only question is, was he in his right frame of mind? was he sleepwalking? >> if he truly was sleepwalking and not conscious of his actions, stephen reitz would also walk away from any and all charges. he could not and would not be held accountable for eva's

death, a killing to which he had just confessed. coming up, could he really have killed while unconscious? science suggests it's entirely possible. >> they may be dreaming there was an intruder in the house and punch and kick and hurt their bed partner. >> when "deadly dreams" continues.

the case should have been a cake walk for detectives ken gallitin and richard tomlin. the evidence was right here, in room 2 of this small catalina hotel. and their suspect had just confessed. >> i woke up and began to get consciousness of the situation and i realized it was eva on the ground and i looked around and i couldn't believe it was her. i think i might have killed eva in my sleep. >> or more specifically, while sleepwalking.

stephen reitz claimed he was fending off an intruder and didn't remember killing his girlfriend, eva, during the deadly dream. but he did recognize his fatal handiwork. >> he told us i must have done it. and we asked him why. he said, well, i'm a commercial fisherman and that's the way we kill sharks. >> i must have done it. that's a curious way of being responsible without being responsible. without being responseible. >> absolutely. >> in situations like this, you don't want to press an individual too bad. you want to hear what they have to say. number one, you have to give them a fair shake. okay. what happened? tell us your side. >> nothing in reitz's story suggested he would ever want to harm eva, let alone kill her, especially during their stay here in catalina. >> there was no indication that they argued or fought about anything. according to him, they were having a wonderful, beautiful evening. when he was awakened by an intruder and everything else transpired after that.

>> over and over, he told detectives he couldn't quite remember. just flashes, a hazy feeling he'd fought against this intruder. >> it was eva's knife. it was a swiss army knife. the big blade was open and it was laying on the floor by her feet, near the sliding glass door. >> just the sort of thing she would carry around? >> we asked him what knife did you use? he said eva's army knife. in fact, it should be there someplace. we used it to slice cheese earlier in the night. he said that's the only knife they had in the room. >> but beating and stabbing eva, that he said he could recall nothing. this is a woman supposedly -- he's having an affair with her. if he doesn't love her, he at least likes her. >> because we didn't have a motive, an apparent and obvious motive, it's in the back of your mind, okay, is he sleepwalking? is there some validity to what he's saying? >> and maybe there was. after all, reitz claimed to have a history of sleepwalking and he was also diagnosed as being bipolar and he certainly seemed forthright, cooperative.

>> when i saw how horrific, it just amazed me. i couldn't believe it, really. i mean, there was no reason for it. >> obviously -- >> you're sorry. >> i'm sorry. i wanted to face the music. >> but who could back up his story? nobody heard the attack. nobody saw a man with vacant eyes walking the halls, carrying a flower pot or bloody knife. nobody screamed. >> that was extremely odd. because once again, if you saw the destruction, the mayhem in the room, you had to figure somebody had to hear something. >> and based on the chaos of the crime scene, detectives surmised the attack must have taken several minutes. >> this was not a quick, two-second stabbing and maybe a muffled scream or a cry for help. this took a little while to do. >> and all done according to stephen reitz completely unconsciously, while sleepwalking. >> there was no outward emotion, where there was any indication that he was remorseful for his

actions. >> then, as they wrapped up their interview with reitz, the detectives got one more surprise. >> his parting question was, do i get to go home with mom and dad? they're here to pick me up. can i go home with them? i said, i don't think so. you're under arrest for a murder. >> reitz was flown back from catalina to los angeles later that same day. so was eva's body for the autopsy. the medical examiner confirmed steve reitz's gruesome confession regarding the cause of death, the deep slash to the spinal cord. >> i attended the autopsy. that's not standard protocol for a prosecutor. i attended it because i've never seen a case like this. >> deputy d.a. chris frisco was initially assigned to look into the case. he had never encountered such an alibi. >> what i was concerned about was looking at the injuries and trying to determine if, in fact, the defendant is -- or was sleep walking --

>> frisco studied the detectives' report. it appeared that eva's murder was now both a legal and medical issue. for advice, frisco consulted another d.a., dinko bozanich, who specialized in cases involving mental defenses. >> if he truly was sleepwalking, at the time of the episode, then he was not conscious, not criminally responsible, not guilty. >> really? the idea that reitz might not be held responsible for eva's death horrified her family. >> how is that possible? how could he even get off on that type of defense? he did it. he was there. he knows he did it. we know he did it. why is this even going to trial? >> science took over then, for a while. a world recognized sleep disorder expert from stanford university joined the case.

reitz was also sent to a sleep clinic like this one for a battery of tests to see if he really did have a recognized sleeping disorder, something severe enough to produce such violence. he was wired and monitored and recorded. and as he fell asleep, cameras rolled. then the tests revealed not only a propensity to sleepwalk, reitz also suffered a significant night terror that was caught on tape and later featured in an australian documentary on sleepwalking. >> is it possible in this case there was a sleep terror episode and a sleepwalking episode which was somehow happening at the same time and thus created this tremendous violence? >> it's very likely. patients may wake up, be terrified, fulfill all the criteria for what we call sleep terror and then go on to develop a sleepwalking episode.

>> dr. alon avidan runs the ucla sleep center in los angeles. he was not involved in the case but has studied sleepwalking for years. it's one of many types of sleeping disorders. >> what happens is that patients are neither asleep nor awake. but when you look at their brain activity, terror sleep. yet they act out behaviors that are often as simple as talking to more complex episodes such as walking, as we see in sleepwalking. >> in the morning they wouldn't be aware of any of this? >> they have no recollection. >> if someone has a history of sleepwalking like stephen reitz was claiming, and who uses drugs or alcohol like those found at the crime scene, then the chances of an episode are even more likely. and there was one more risk factor that may have contributed to the violent nature of stephen reitz's alleged sleepwalking episode. he was bipolar, which made him more susceptible to violent

behavior during a sleepwalking episode. much like those seen in sleep disorder clinics. >> they may be dreaming that there's an intruder in the house and they're trying to protect themselves against the intruder. and in a way, punch and kick and hurt their bed partner. >> and perhaps even kill them? yes, says dr. avidan. it's rare, but it happens. consider the story investigators were about to encounter. it had happened before with an astonishing result. if you think you know the human mind, prepare to be amazed. or perhaps disturbed. coming up, a previous case, killing while sleepwalking. this one in canada. >> they set him free, let him go, said he was not guilty. >> and what it could mean for the killer on catalina when "deadly dreams" continues.

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hello. i'm milissa rehberger. three days before the new hampshire primary, the gop presidential candidate is criss-crossing the granite state. they have two days within the next 24 hours. watch msn nbc starting at 9:00 a.m., in switzerland many villagers have been cut off as forecasters predict 19 feet of snow this weekend. now back to deadly dreams. unfortunately, the best witness in the case is dead. eva is gone. she was the best witness in this case. >> d.a. chris frisco had a problem, stephen reitz, under investigation for killing his girlfriend eva weinfurtner.

but judging from the violent crime scene and witnessing eva's autopsy, frisco was convinced this had to be calculated, conscious. >> when people are sleep walking, it's not easy to form all of these various steps in your mind. it's not as if he had thrashed about in the room and knocked over the furniture and woke up. everything he did was directed specifically at eva to ultimately murder her. >> ultimately d.a. frisco wouldn't get a chance to make that case to a jury. he was transferred to another office and handed the case to d.a. dinko bozanich. who, remember, specialized in cases involving mental defenses. >> how many times do you hear about anybody really committing is a crime while they're sleep walking, except for the ones that have been caught and then raised that as a defense instead of something else. >> well, it turned out there was one particular case, here in toronto, canada.

it was more than two decades ago. it, too, was a violent crime, involved a man who had no apparent motive and who later on had absolutely no recollection of what he had done, just like stephen reitz. this killer's name was kenneth parks, and his story made headlines round the world. it was 1987. parks was 23, married, the father of a baby girl. it happened about 2:00 a.m. parks had fallen asleep in front of the television set. he got up, put on his coat, walked out the front door of his house, climbed into his car, drove 14 miles, a drive on which he encountered several major intersections. parked at his in-law's home, went inside, beat his father-in-law, leaving him barely alive, and then beat and stabbed to death his mother-in-law. then he got back into his car and drove away. >> and only realized what he had done after the episode and

turned himself in to the police. >> he said he had been there and he had done it and they found blood in his truck on the steering wheel. >> it was in some ways just like the killing of eva weinfurtner. a fatal beating and stabbing. the killer claiming no memory of what he had done. nor was there any apparent motive. the toronto investigation revealed parks was very close to his in-laws. was either truly horrified or was a very good actor. >> he didn't know what had happened. he didn't know how he got from his house to their house. he didn't know why he would have done anything like that, because he said i loved her. she was great to me. >> psychiatrist dr. r.h. billings was assigned the case of kenneth parks, saw him soon after the killings. >> he was believable because he was so distraught and extremely willing to talk about anything you asked him. >> dr. billings delved into his medical background and initially

found nothing unusual. >> was he psychotic in any way? >> no. >> no history of that? >> no. it was by chance when another patient told me about sleepwalking and how complicated the behavior could be. >> a lightbulb must have gone on in your head. >> right then. and i thought, i wonder if that's what it is. >> so ken parks, just like stephen reitz, underwent a series of sleep tests and also psychological exams conducted by a number of specialists. they discovered he had a family history of the disorder and tests confirmed parks had period of awakening from deep sleep and a strong propensity to sleepwalk, where anything could happen. >> there's no conscious awareness of what happens. >> so, thus, a mother could kill her child? >> yes. >> a husband could kill his wife? >> yes. there's been cases of mothers throwing their kids out a window and of husbands killing their

wives in bed. >> or perhaps even killing their girlfriends in catalina. diagnosis or no, ken parks was charged with first degree murder, just like stephen reitz was. parks spent a couple of years in jail before he went on trial here and his defense made the case that he should be found not guilty. because he was completely unconscious of what he had done. >> their argument was that he committed this crime being completely unaware of what he was doing. >> and would never have done it had he been conscious? >> would never have done it had he been conscious and aware. >> after a lengthy and well publicized trial, the case finally went to the jury. >> and they set him free, they let him go, said he was not guilty. >> not guilty. kenneth parks was allowed to walk because he was sleepwalking when the incident occurred. so what seemed like a clear case

of murder was now ruled an involuntary act. now some 15 years later and 3,000 miles away in california, that verdict in toronto resonated as the trial approached in the case against stephen reitz. >> so you see something like that, and you go, well, you know, there's a possibility it could happen here again. you know? >> we're hearing about trials that had gone on and the people were innocent. that's scary. it's very scary. there's no accountability. >> but the l.a. county district attorney's office was determined to hold reitz accountable and sought a first degree murder conviction, which seemed a bit risky, given reitz's sleep walking history, the parks case in toronto and the medical experts backing up his story. second degree murder, even manslaughter would be easier to prove. and might ensure a conviction. >> i would rather try the case and lose it, let them present their defense, as skeptical as i

am, and we don't prove it and the defendant walks. so be it. >> without some sort of motive, though, persuading a jury that reitz was fully conscious and in control might be difficult. so could anything else besides sleepwalking have triggered the attack? >> we have to look into everything, you know? we -- try to find a reason why. >> was there more to that secret love affair? perhaps there was another secret, something reitz kept to himself which just might explain what really happened the night in catalina. and why. coming up, turns out this sizzling relationship had a sinister secret. >> somehow he climbed to the third floor, to her balcony and kicked in the plate glass window with a huge knife, a machete, i heard. >> when "deadly dreams" continues.

you're thinking, god, what was she doing with him? their lifestyles were so different. she thought she was in a bad relationship with her husband. she just gott got involved and couldn't get out of it. ultimately it cost her her life. >> eva weinfurtner's secret affair with young stephen reitz had boiled along for the best part of six months, yet she was also trying to reconcile with her husband. though eva told those in on her secret that she was addicted to reitz, he was her drug. >> she couldn't let him go. >> couldn't let go of him. she confided in her sister, that their sexual relationship was very good. i'm addicted to this kid. i can't let go of him. it was just like, i need him. >> violent death has a way of

prying open the deepest secrets, especially under the gaze of two experienced detectives. the affair, it soon became apparent, was as tumultuous as it was passionate. >> my uncle called and said your aunt eva's dead. i said, steve killed her, didn't he? he didn't know at that point really details or anything, but i knew. knowing eva and steve's relationship, knowing the violence, it was obviously shocking but not surprising. >> violence? what violence? stephen reitz told detectives that he and eva had a very loving relationship. rarely, if ever, did they quarrel or disagree. odd, then, that he never mentioned the incident here in san diego a few months before eva's death.

did he think the detectives wouldn't hear about this? >> she didn't want him to be at her house. and somehow he climbed to the third floor to her balcony and kicked in a plate glass window with a huge knife. >> and he said to her, i'm going to cut a man, i'm going to gut him like a fish and i'm going to name him eva. and then she got scared and ended up leaving the house. >> eva called the police, who filed a report. then later that very same evening, reitz was arrested for driving under the influence. he was taken to jail, where he received a visitor. eva. >> she went down and bailed him out and that was it. and then they continued to see each other. so why did that happen? i don't know. i think she thought she could save him and that it would end. >> i feared for her life. i think a lot of us feared for her life with him. >> so bizarre that she would not see it that way, that she didn't see it as a threat. >> i don't think that she really

understood how capable he was of hurting her. i think that she was in denial. >> and in hindsight, one alleged incident might have been a warning. >> she had told me a time where she woke up in the middle of the night and he was on top of her choking her. bizarre, bizarre behavior. >> could that have been another sleepwalking episode, another unintended attack? perhaps even a precursor to what happened here in catalina? detectives kept digging and from eva's friends and family, they heard allegations about a dark side of stephen's personality. >> he had a temper. talking to family members of eva, friends of his, he had a temper. >> he had a history of being violent with her. she'd come home with her sister and her mother, they'd see bruises all over her body. they knew that stephen was being -- he was very violent at times. >> they were obviously bite marks on her legs or whatever. i would ask her, what is that?

oh, it's from stephen. you know, we were playing rough or, you know, wrestling around, some type of sexual thing. >> eva, conflicted, perhaps confused, ignored the advice of her friends and even as the story goes, a mystical warning. >> she had gone to a psychic. she didn't tell the woman anything about her life and she said, you're in a relationship with a younger man. that's not your husband. eva was like, yeah, that's really weird, you know. and the psychic said, if you don't break it off, he will kill you. >> i think that she knew she had gotten in a little bit too deep. i think we've all gotten in situations that we really don't know how to get out of. i think that's where she was in her life. >> they tried to get her to leave him alone, get away from him. but she'd always find her way back. >> which she had done on that last sex and blood and drug and blood-soaked night in catalina. why, when she made the plans to

go to that very same place the following week to reconcile with her husband. >> i think eva was breaking it off and telling him that this was their last time together. he couldn't handle it. if he couldn't have her, no one could. and that probably started a fight and ended up -- he ended up killing her. >> but stephen reitz, who is now facing a first degree murder charge, never once wavered from the story he told that morning in the catalina fire station. he was not conscious. he did not want to kill eva. had no recollection whatsoever of what he did. he was not in control. now, reitz and medical science would be on trial. was his lover eva weinfurtner killed in a tragic, unconscious accident or was it a cold-blooded, calculated murder?

coming up, the man who admits stabbing his lover to death heads to court. what will the jury think? >> he looked like a nice school boy in the courtroom. you look at him and you think, wow, this kid, no way could he have done what occurred. >> when "deadly dreams" continues.

there was no question. he did it. but was stephen reitz conscious or actually asleep when he killed his lover, the beautiful eva weinfurtner that night in catalina? now a jury would decide. it had taken more than three years to get here. and eva's family had mixed emotions about finally going to trial, especially such a high-profile case that featured cameras from abc's "good morning america" in the courtroom.

>> you know, you're working through healing and trying to move on with your life. and then it has to be brought back up again and you have to deal with the monster face to face. >> but stephen reitz looked nothing like a monster when he finally entered the courtroom to face a charge of first degree murder. he was 28 by then. he seemed calm, composed, didn't s appear to be at all threatening. >> he looked like a nice little school boy in the courtroom. he had his glasses on, his hair was freshly cut and you look at him and it's like, wow, this kid, you know, this young man, no way could he have done what occurred. >> prosecuting, however, would be a new d.a., the third one assigned to the case. remember, the first d.a., frisco, was transferred away, the case reassigned to dinko bozanich, who specialized in mental defense cases. and then --

>> i had the misfortune of having a heart attack and bypass surgery, that causing me to retire. if someone had asked me of the thousand deputy district attorneys in the d.a.'s office, who would be your choice to try the case, i would have said ken lamb. >> ken lamb, a former l.a. police officer. he'd never handled anything like this case before, but he picked it up fast. >> it's whether or not during this murder he was conscious or unconscious. if you're conscious, then he's guilty of murder. >> and based on what happened to eva that night, argued lamb, reitz had to have made a series of complex decisions, fully aware of exactly what he was doing. >> look at the beating. this is repeated over and over and over. that takes energy, that takes thought. that takes awareness. >> lamb proposed to the jury his theory of what must have happened that night in catalina. something, perhaps an argument, he said, must have prompted reitz to get out of bed and walk

outside and pick up a heavy flower pot and carry it back to the door of the room, which would have been locked behind him. so he must have pounded on the door until eva opened it, said the prosecutor. then he knocked her unconscious. with the flower pot. he must have beaten her and stabbed her and finally inflicted the fatal wounds to her neck. detective tomlin offered a theory of his own during testimony about the attack, and that theory did not involve sleepwalking. >> i think something went wrong, obviously, in that room and he snapped. >> then the prosecutor told the jury about reitz's episode of jealous rage a few months before. told him how reitz broke into her apartment and waved a knife around, and how her relatives noticed bruising, bite marks.

>> so you see the parallels, the very same behavior, pounding on the door, breaking into the room, wielding a pocketknife and then threatening to gut her. it's the very same thing he did in this case. how do you say that he was sleepwalking when -- on a prior occasion he had the dress rehearsal? >> at trial, reitz never denied breaking into eva's apartment with the knife. nor did he deny that he was responsible for her bruises. the ones eva's family noticed. instead, reitz said in their passion, sometimes he grabbed her too firmly. she even went to a doctor, said reitz, to ask why she bruised so easily. as for the night she was killed, reitz's attorney theodore veganes said stephen couldn't have known what he was doing, couldn't have been that angry. >> there is nothing that occurred that makes sense. the act itself is bizarre. the act itself is an act of somebody losing it. >> and then the heart of the defense. the medical expert from stanford university explained how people can and sometimes do, violent

things unconsciously while asleep. he detailed the battery of tests reitz had been given, which showed his propensity to sleepwalking. >> is it a fake? >> no, no, no. when you're in that rem sleep, there's no way you can fake it. >> the trial lasted three weeks. and now the jury would have to decide if it was conscious rage or unconscious tragedy. guilty or not? >> i was extremely worried and scared because what then? what happens then? if he's innocent, because he was sleepwalking, how do you go on? how do you move on after that? >> the jury was out for a day and a half. and then -- >> we the jury find the defendant stephen reitz guilty of murder. >> the jury rejected the science. didn't buy the data and tests that show a link between

sleepwalking and violence. at least when it came to stephen reitz. >> it was such a relief. but at the same time, it doesn't bring her back. it doesn't erase everything. >> stephen reitz is in prison now, sentenced to 25 years to life. was there ever a moment where you were sort of doubtful yourself? >> no. just -- i've seen too many dead bodies, murders and the severity of these wounds, propping the door open, steak taking a key, a conscious effort. if they were in bed in their pajamas like he said they were, there were no keys available. he remembered throwing them at them. he recognized the wounds as the type of wounds he would inflict on somebody if he would have killed somebody. that's the way he killed sharks on the fishing boat. >> and justice, if you believe the next district attorney, won the day.

>> if he had prevailed, i'm sure we would have seen a bunch of sleep walking defenses presented since. it's going to take a while for somebody to try it again. >> the verdict, you hope that that closes the book. i don't know if it will ever be closed in my heart. but at least he's not free. stephen reitz's first appeal ♪ ♪ stephen reitz's first appeal of his murder conviction in state court was rejected. he's now hoping to appeal in federal court. for more on this case and also on the phenomenon of sleep violence, logon to our website. the address is dateline.msnbc.com. for all of us here at nbc news,