♪ ♪ >> a phone rings in the middle of the night. >> i remember just saying, no, no, no, no. >> there's this giant hole and nothing will ever fill that. >> a beautiful young daughter, dead. mowed down by a car that took off. or, was that what someone wanted them to think? >> it looked like a staged attempt to make it look like a hit and run. >> there was findings that are consistent with strangulation. i said, you have to treat this has a homicide. >> reporter: who would want to kill justine? >> she's an accomplished teacher, and then she has a

separate life. >> reporter: to learn the truth, they'd have to uncover her secrets. revisit clues they'd missed. >> that stuck in my mind. what did she mean by that. >> you're seeing your daughter come unglued right before your eyes? >> absolutely. >> i knew with every fiber of my being that he had killed her. >> but maybe only a complete stranger could reveal what happened on that lonely road. >> it was a crazy night. ♪ ♪ >> the yellow buses pulled up. as the grade schoolers headed for their classrooms, the principal inside was calling an unexpected meeting of the teachers in his office. it was about mrs. abshire, the pretty young kindergarten teacher. he had dreadful news to share. he said, there's no easy way to

tell you this. and then he said justin was killed last night. she was hit by a hit and run. and there was silence. >> fellow kindergarten teacher pat hammons could not believe what she was hearing about her friend justine, the newly wed who taught one door away. kathleen whitley, another teacher was devastated. >> it was just shock. just in disbelief that she was gone. she was my best friend. i mean, she was my kindred spirit. we were the same person. >> 27-year-old justine had married her long-time boyfriend eric just that spring. she loved being a teacher. and by all accounts, the little kids in her classroom loved her back. ♪

>> she was a very darling teacher. she was the kind of teacher that you would want for your own child. >> but on that november morning, the stunned teachers had few details. it seemed justine had been out driving after midnight and her car had broken down. she was apparently struck by a vehicle as she walked down a dark country road in the rural county where she and her husband lived north of sharltsville, virginia. >> amber had been up late at her grandmother's when she heard a ruck us at the door. a stranger, a man was asking her to call 911. >> this man came up to my door and said had his wife got hit by a car. >> amber followed the man, eric abshire, into the chilled night. she watched as he fell to the black top and embraced the body of the young woman sprawled there. >> he was laying over top of her upon.

>> the five-month marriage of eric and justine abshire ended with that embrace, the husband weeping, his bride, clearly gone. they'd barely had time to make a scratch on a life together. they had a modest little house. he was working on getting a construction business going, while she taught at the grade school. they told friends they were looking forward to taking a delayed honeymoon over the upcoming holidays. but the cruise, like everything else for them, was now never going to happen. it was just after 2:00 in the morning, when virginia state trooper ben hobbs was awakened at his home. >> i got a telephone call from my dispatch saying, we've got a motor vehicle crash, possible fatality. >> he raced to the scene to join the first responders and the county cops. >> i'm talking, i said, okay, where's my vehicle at that struck the person that's laying in the road? the deputy looks at me and says, well, i guess your dispatch didn't tell you. this is probably going to be a hit and run. we don't have a vehicle.

>> for you as an investigator, this is a long night ahead of you, you got a victim and no vehicle? >> exactly. then i began to look at the scene, look at what i have, what i don't have. one of the first things he saw was the devastated husband. >> as i approached, he was knelt down beside justine, crying, seemed very distraught about his wife laying in the road. >> it was up to the trooper to gather what he could at the scene to help identify the driver who'd struck and killed this young woman and kept on going. it wasn't going to be easy. >> nobody tried to stop, if they saw this lady at the last minute, why didn't they slam on the brakes? >> as the trooper's emergency flashers stabbed at the darkness, a phone was ringing at a home in chattanooga, tennessee. >> it's just like your whole world just caves in on you. it's like a black hole. >> justine's dad, steven schwartz, and her mom heidi,

were getting one of those awful calls in the middle of the night. a voice telling them their daughter was lying dead on a back country road in virginia. >> it's completely devastating. the worst thing that you can imagine. it's the kind of thing parents dread. >> i remember him putting the phone down and saying, it's justine, she's dead. and just, you know, there's -- there's no way to describe that feeling. >> steve and heidi called their daughter lauren in philadelphia. she was younger than justine by two years. sisters who'd always been inseparable. >> i remember just saying, no, no, no, no, no, over and over. i've turned into a puddle on the floor. you can't stand. you get these pangs in your gut and you can't breathe. >> in the predawn hours, the family made a plan to meet at the airport in charlottesville. >> the fact that she's dead

seems impossible, but at that moment, you think, that can't make sense. >> back at what was now a crime scene in virginia, the trooper was trying to figure out how the young woman came to be dead in the road. the husband told the trooper that after his wife called him to tell him she was broken down on the side of the road, he hopped on his motorcycle to help her. she's coming down the road, comes up on her, stops, he told me he got out, cradled her in his arms. justine's car, a mustang, was discovered parked by the side of the road about two football fields from where her body was found. >> it was a wooded area, unlit highway, back road in the middle of nowhere. >> the investigators wondered why'd she even leave the safety of her car when help was on the way. >> she left behind her purse and a nice warm coat. >> nice warm coat. >> flashlight? >> flashlight was in the glove box and had fresh batteries still in it. >> had a routine auto

malfunction turned suddenly crazy? was justine in her last moments being pursued, fleeing an attacker? trooper hobbs' gut told him things were not adding up. >> the scene was telling me something wasn't right. >> a scene, a set of lives and families it would take years to untangle. the mystery of the kindergarten teacher's puzzling death had only just begun. investigators are troubled by what they didn't find. >> no tire marks on the road. no broken glass, no broken plastic from headlights. >> and you almost always find that kind of debris? >> yes, sir. imes the concentration of epa and dha as the leading omega-3 supplement. plus, it's the only brand with progel technology

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♪ ♪ >> justine abshire, the kindergarten teacher and newly wed was found dead on a rural virginia road after midnight, five miles from her home. an apparent victim of a hit and run. but little about the accident scene made sense. trooper hobbs scoured the road looking for any of the signs he usually sees from a car accident. >> i'm looking for vehicle debris, any kind of skid marks, things like that. i've got none of that. no paint chips on her clothing. no tire marks on the road, no broken glass, no broken plastic from headlights.

>> and you almost always find that kind of debris? >> yes, sir. >> so you were curious about things you weren't seeing? >> correct. >> not only was there no debris, there was relatively lit blood in the road. >> she had huge lacerations on her head. should have been blood everywhere and basically there were two small puddles of blood. not a lot of blood for what should have been there. >> and that didn't make sense either? >> right, correct. >> the victim's husband, eric, told the trooper he and his wife had a minor spat that night and she was driving around to blow off some steam when her car broke down. okay, but when trooper hobbs checked out the mustang, he found nothing apparently wrong with it. >> i've got the keys to her car. let's see if the car is broken down. so i put the keys in the ignition, it starts right up. we think, well, maybe it won't go into gear, so i put it into gear, it rolls forward. >> car's working fine? >> car's working fine. >> an already strange hit and

run case was now looking even more complicated. the husband, meanwhile, eric abshire, had been out in the road for hours. >> he wanted it hurried up. you need to hurry up and get her out of the road opinion. >> an emotionally exhausted husband who wanted to get his wife's body off the road and into a funeral home was perhaps understandable. the trooper's work was wrapping up. he turned his notes over to mike jones with the virginia state police who would run the case from here out. >> what did i think i had? a lot of work to do. >> one of his first tasks was to accompany the teacher's body to the medical examiner's office. with little forensic value from the scene, the m.e. science would start to explain what happened to this young woman, an accident or foul play. when the trooper spoke with eric hours after he'd come upon justine's body.

he talked about a grim scenario. maybe someone unknown had happened upon his wife in distress. >> he offers a theory that justine was on the side of the road and some unknown individual was attracted to her, her beauty and pulled up and tried to abduct her. maybe she was running off. >> do you have any suspicion of what might have happened? >> i'd like to think she got hit and she wasn't aware of the last seconds of her life. but i think that being one of these people out there driving, i think they drove by, saw a beautiful woman on the side of the road, went down, turned around and tried to get her in the car, i think she got scared and started running. they saw that she saw their face and i think they hit her. >> but at this stage of the investigation, it could be anything. >> the range was wide open. and we had to start tracking in a direction that made sense.

>> the medical examiner, had performed dozens of autopsies on pedestrians hit by cars. but this victim appeared to be different. >> you're unzipping the bag. is there a moment when you say something like, i don't like what i'm seeing here? >> almost instantly with the lack of blood on her clothing. i turned to my technician, this does not appear to be a typical hit and run. she had gaping lacerations to her head, her face, those types of lacerations bleed profusly and she had no blood on her clothing, no blood on her skin, and really no blood within the body bag. >> so there's an absence of blood that catches your interest right away? >> correct. >> and equally troubling, while there were more than 113 external injuries to her body, they weren't, he thought, consistent with someone standing and being struck by a vehicle. it was possible justine hadn't been a hift and run victim at all? how could that be? >> you typically see a bumper bruise where the bumper hits the calf, the knee.

and it's also going to cause a fracture underneath the bruise. >> when you see that kind of injury, you say, i know what that is? >> correct. >> did you see it on justine abshire? >> no, i did not. >> and there was more he wasn't finding. >> you see tire tread on the skin or on the clothing. there was no evidence of glass, no evidence of transfer of paint chips or metal. no evidence whatsoever. there was no evidence of debris from the road, no pebbles, no asphalt, anything like that. >> yet with injuries this severe, he wasn't ruling out that a vehicle was somehow involved in justine's death. you got a little bit of a mystery. your best guess is there was a vehicle involved causing these injuries? >> correct. >> but it doesn't appear that person was standing? >> that is correct. >> but if a victim had been involved in the teacher's death, how? the m.e. needed more tests. >> i was prepared to fill out the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head, trunk, and extremities, but the manner

of death needed further investigation. >> he turned to agent jones who was taking notes. >> i said you have to treat this as a homicide. this is homicide until proven otherwise. ♪ >> a homicide? a murder case, but where to start. if she'd been killed, by whom, and for what reason? with so little to go on, agent jones called in all the troopers from the scene for a brain storming session. >> after we finished the autopsy, at division hked, we had a round table and everybody was slated to run in different directions. >> what had happened to justine abshire? the crime scene and the autopsy could only tell the investigators so much. >> i didn't have enough to make any conclusions that day. i walked away with, i need to come back and inquire further. >> justine's husband said he blamed himself. >> he said, we had an argument. if i wouldn't have argued with her, this wouldn't have

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♪ ♪ >> the death of beloved kindergarten teacher justine abshire on this dark country road in central virginia was becoming a mystery for investigators. what started out as an apparent hit and run accident was turning into a potential murder investigation. but for her family, trying to grapple with the news of her sudden death, it was all threatening to become a personal tsunami, sweeping away everything in its path. >> we're both in shock. i remember standing in our bedroom and steve and i just holding on to each other and just saying, you know, we have to take care of each other. we can't let this destroy us.

>> the four had always been so close. now, the sudden death shattered them like so much broken glass. ♪ pretty little justine, a golden child child. in the years the girls were growing up, steve swartz was an executive in the telecom industry. [ laughter ] >> heidi worked for the airlines. >> here we are in the house. >> and in steve's field, frequent corporate relocations came with the territory. new states, new houses, new schools for the girls. lauren remembers thinking how easily justine handled all that uprooting of their lives. she'd arrive at a new school and immediately become the center of attention. >> it was impossible to not notice her. she was pretty in sort of a barbie doll type of quality, long blonde hair and blue eyes and porcelain skin, that drew a lot of attention.

>> so embarrassing! >> not that justine welcomed the looks she was getting. hardly. she was shy by nature and had no interest in becoming the cool girl at school. she was content to hang out with a few close friends and dote on her pets. >> she was always passionate about animals and little kids. and she was a natural-born nurturer. >> and it seemed just yesterday they were sending her off to a women's college in virginia. holly boardman was assigned to be her freshman roommate and the two became instant friends. >> we would walk arm in arm everywhere. >> dressed alike? >> yep. when we buy clothes, we'd buy them in twos, so i could have one and she could have one. >> if justine wanted to learn martial arts, she'd sign up holly too. when holly wanted to learn to fly a plane, justine went along

worry the lessons. that's how it goes when you're best friend forever. >> she was the best friend sister clind. we couldn't get any closer. >> eric was from a large extended family. tracy is his cousin. >> eric has always been a caring, sweet, nice kid. just always good. >> it made it all so hard, such a cute couple, everyone thought. and now eric, a widower after only five months of marriage. tracy was utterly heart-broken by justine's death. almost too much to comprehend how such an awful accident like that could happen. >> horrible news? >> horrible news. this this. >> this is a loved woman in your family? >> yes. >> eric family gathered to comfort him the morning after the accident. cousin tracy remembers looking in on him in the bedroom. so forlorn. >> standing up against the wall, left arm propped up looking out the window and just crying uncontrollably. >> by the afternoon, justine's

family arrived at the couple's home to comfort their son-in-law. >> i remember all of us hugging. i remember steve putting his arm around him and saying, eric, you know, we want you to understand that we know that accidents happen and we are not blaming you for what happened to justine. and he said, well, you know, we had an argument. you know, if i wouldn't have argued with her, she wouldn't have left and this wouldn't have happened. we tried to make it very clear, that it was an accident and we didn't hold him responsible. >> there were arrangements to be made. flowers, music to be selected. the two families gathered at the packed funeral home where so many turned out for the beloved teacher taken away from them too soon. pat hammons spoke at the service. >> i wanted people to understand, this was a terrible thing that happened, but she was a wonderful gift. and sometimes people don't value the gifts that we're given. >> justine's sister lauren

recalls looking at eric and thinking how crushed he was by this sudden turn of fate. his two young daughters, children from a previous relationship by his side. >> eric was crying. he was really emotional, holding on to his two children. >> and among the mourners that day, there was a stranger, especially agent mike jones. the investigator was the son of a grade schoolteacher himself and went to justine's funeral to pay his respects to the family and see how eric was holding up. >> he's a victim. it's his wife that's gone. >> and as the wife's friends would soon be telling the troopers as the investigation moved forward, the justine they knew and loved had been gone for a while. the sunny good looks aside, justine abshire had somehow lost her way long before she'd broken down on this virginia road. investigators shift focus from road to home.

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♪ >> it was just after 2:00 a.m. when trooper ben hobbs had come upon a sobbing eric abshire cradling his wife's body on this country road. >> he was kneeling beside her and crying. >> put his coat over her? >> he had put his leather coat over top of her. >> after the couple's lover's quarrel earlier in the night, she had taken off to blow off some steam. >> she had left and called him shortly before i got there, said, hey, i'm broke down, i need you to come and get me. >> eric assumed the whole storming out and i broke down story was a ploy by justine to get some attention. a pout and a little snit before making up. >> i have no doubt in my mind she was just going up, making this big circle and coming back home. >> he ruefully told anyone who would listen he was haunted by

the split-second decision to let her walk out of the house. he hoped investigators could find the person who struck and killed his new wife. >> in situations like this, what's the percentage that you'll actually find the people? >> well, we'll work on it. >> but eric worried investigators had too little to go on. >> they said there wasn't not a single black mark, like whoever did it, did not tap their brakes, try to slow down or swerve. >> and the medical examiner would tell mike jones that justine's injuries were not consistent with a person being hit by a car while standing. >> it didn't add up. we left with more questions than we did answers. >> special agent jones knew he needed to hear more of the human story if he was ever going to find out what had really happened on this road. >> we got to go back into the epicenter, and the epicenter is justine and eric. and we've got to understand

these two individuals. the couple had met when justine was in college. and to earn a little pocket money, she got a cash register job at a lowe's. it was there that she struck up a relationship with eric, a store manager and marine veteran. >> what do you think she saw in him? >> he's a very strong person and he's very decisive. and determined. he did have two children, but he was working and taking care of them, and she liked that. she really respected that about eric. >> but here was the complication about eric. with two children from a previous relationship, decisive eric was determined to have no more. he was equally opposed to marriage. justine, on the other hand, wanted both a husband and children. sister lauren advised justine to say goodbye to eric and move on with her life. >> it's like, what are you doing with him? those are the two things that you ultimately want in your life. >> but justine stayed with eric. they'd been a couple for months,

but she wasn't introducing him to the parents. >> he's the phantom boyfriend? >> yeah. when you know your child is seeing someone on a steady or exclusive basis, you'd like to see who they are. >> finally after a year and a half of nudging her daughter, heidi got to meet the boyfriend for dinner. >> i just insisted that i meet him. >> dinner was awkward. eric squirmed as though he wanted to be a thousand miles away. >> my feelings were, well, okay, i don't really get it. you know, but it's really not mine to get. you know, it was justine's boyfriend. >> did you think he was the guy? >> no. >> that this was the intended? >> no. >> and justine and eric did have their ups and downs. they were one of those chronic on-again, off-again couples. at one point her college roommate holly thought they might break up for good. for years, she'd been trying to convince justine to leave eric and live with her on the west coast? coast. >> you had a plan in place.

>> i told her i would pay for her tickets, fly out there, pick her up, get her bag and bring her to oregon. >> after one particularly bad justine and eric period, holly was so convinced that justine was finally coming, she rented a two-bedroom apartment for them. but in the end, her plan not only went nowhere, it backfired. >> i just feel her distancing herself. >> perhaps justine thought holly was interfering too much in her relationship. but there was one break-up when justine did leave eric and went to stay with her parents in tennessee. still, the two managed to patch up their difficulties. >> i never really thought there was a match. it didn't seem like a good fit to me. >> so you thought he'd just disappear from the scene? >> i thought it would run its course and they would break up and she would move on. >> but she never did. for years, justine and eric slogged through their on-again, off-again relationship. >> there were times she'd come

to see me on the weekends and figure out what she wanted to do next and know this wasn't the right relationship for her. but they never really broke off communication. there would always be the phone calls. >> he was always in the orbit there? >> yes. >> finally justine gave eric, who remember, had started the relationship saying he wasn't the marrying kind, an ultimatum. give me a ring or be gone. >> he came home late on christmas eve, gave her the ring box and he said, you win. >> oh, come on. >> that's what she said. >> here at the 11th hour. >> and she showed up with this gorgeous, like $5,000 diamond on her hand and said, we're engaged. and that was how we found out. >> and it would be a wedding no one would forget. ♪ >> it looked perfect. her family says, far from it. >> he left the next day and he never came back. he didn't stay with her. >> we never saw him again.

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♪ ♪ >> special agent jones' investigation was moving beyond the autopsy and crime scene to bore in on just who this couple,

justine and eric, really was. the strange stories he was starting to gather would turn out to be as important as any lab result. >> you had a mystery to solve. >> it was a mystery. it was. >> at the close of the christmas holidays, two years before her sudden death, justine rusheturned to emerald hill elementary. on her finger, that engagement ring. what are people thinking? >> everybody's going, well, is she really going to marry him? is he really going to marry her? some of it was like he came to his senses and saw what a precious person she is. >> eric, by now, had left his store manager job at lowe's and was ready to start a construction business. to justine, his new venture and their marriage would be the beginning of the life she dreamed of since she was a little girl. a husband, a house in the country and a baby. to her friends, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

>> consensus was that eric was not the guy for her. >> they didn't seem to match. she was a very sweet young thing that taught kindergarten, and he was mr. tough guy. so where's the match? you know, it's like, you have to have some cross ties to connect, and i never could see what the cross ties -- what was the connection. >> still pat and kathleen, her teacher friends came around. >> we planned a really nice shower and we were excited and she wasn't. >> she wasn't? >> no. >> pat hosted the shower with all the crepe paper and ribbon you'd expect from fellow kindergarten teachers, but justine's gloom never lifted. perhaps it was just a bad case of bridal jitters? >> she didn't seem very happy. the whole time during the shower i wanted to get her aside and say, you don't have to marry this person. but that conversation didn't happen. >> justine's mom was fearful her daughter was heading into a train-wreck of a marriage. the may wedding was two weeks

away. they'd booked a charming bed and breakfast in the rolling hills of the virginia countryside. but justine was the polar opposite of a bride zila. she hadn't picked up the dress, ordered the cake, or finished sending out invitations. >> part of me was concerned that she was going to be left standing at the altar. she would be in the pretty white dress and he wouldn't show up. you want to protect your child. >> heidi and steve got in the car, drove to virginia, surprise intervention of sorts. it turned out poorly. >> what did you see in her? >> just blind rage. >> really? >> oh, my god, yeah. she stormed into this hotel room and i've never heard her talk to anybody like that. she just screamed at me and called me names and you know, said she hated me and she would never, ever forgive me for intruding on her life.

i was shocked. i was absolutely shocked. >> you're seeing your daughter come unglued right before your eyes? >> absolutely. absolutely. >> was eric the elephant in the room? >> absolutely. >> at one point in the conversation, before she had calmed down, she said something to the effect of, do you understand how hard you have made things for me by coming up here? that stuck in my mind. what did she mean by that? >> maybe she was telling her parents to back off, that she'd come of age. she was, after all, 27, a woman with a profession she loved and her decisions from here on out would be her own. >> we pushed as far as we could. so now the only strategy was available to us was the opposite. let's have the wedding, make it as nice and enjoyable as we can. that's exactly what we tried to do. >> and they pulled out all the stops. the beautiful ceremony went off

without a hitch. sister lauren, the maid of honor. there was dancing and even a private chef picked out by heidi. a picture-perfect mayday in a charming setting. >> and it looks like weddings in 100,000 different family albums. >> yeah. >> that's what it looked like. >> it was a rock off lack of joy. it was like you're going through per funktery motions. it was like, wow. it was just very strange. >> the bride posing with her new husband, would be dead in five months' time. some of the guests would never seen justine alive again. the day after taking his vows, eric took off on his motorcycle. >> he left the next day, and he never came back. he didn't continue to stay at the bed and breakfast with her. >> he wasn't there for the gathering, for the opening of wedding presents. justine saw her family off alone. >> we never saw him again.

>> stranger still, holly, justine's closest college roommate wasn't even told there had been a wedding. >> i didn't know she was getting married. she didn't send me an invitation. >> you're her best friend. >> yeah. >> but maybe not so surprising since holly had never made much of a secret of her dislike for eric. >> i honestly hated him from the first second i saw him. >> holly, really? >> despised. just gut instinct. i felt sick, i felt nauseous. . >> to be in his presence? >> yes. >> what was on your radar? >> i didn't like the way he looked at her and treated her, he just kind of acted like he was better than she was. i didn't see him ever valuing her. >> from the moment justine met eric, holly thought her friend was taking a slow-motion tumble in an abyss. this dear friend from their beautiful private women's college, nice homes, solid upbringing with a loving family,

was now living in a dreary little cinder block house. >> she was living in a world that was so different essentially from the world we came from. it wasn't even really reality. >> and to eric's cousin tracy, that was all part of the problem. in her opinion justine's friends and family didn't think eric was good enough for her. >> i just think from the beginning, they didn't approve of eric. >> and that was the source of all that anxiety at the wedding? >> yes. >> the simple fact was, this was a guy and a girl in love. newlyweds. >> whenever i would see them together, they always seemed happy. >> the couple was even looking at buying a big piece of land in the country. eric was planning to build his new bride a fine new house. and justine all morose and mopey. not in august only three months before she died, when cousin tracy snapped this picture of the couple at her brother's wedding.

the whole big abshire family had embraced eric's bride and made her feel welcome. >> they had a great time. justine and eric really had a good time at the reception. >> agent jones sifted through the stories told about a couple whose days had ended on this road. eric, her husband cradling her body while investigators started the long search for answers. >> we were starting to determine that, okay, she's an accomplished teacher during heridateherday time and sthee has a separate life and the two hardly mixed. >> and investigators needed to know exactly how justine had spent her final day. >> something was totally wrong. >> what do you think was going on with her as you look back? she was a wreck? >> yeah, she was. >> was justine afraid for her life? >> she had been crying. she had been crying uncontrollably. she had told me, if i'm not at school, if i'm not here, this is where you can find my lesson

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♪ >> here was the investigator's big headline so far. they had a hit and run accident that looked nothing like a hit and run. >> none of it made sense. it didn't look legitimate. >> so the red flags go off by what you're not seeing out here? >> it looked like a staged failed attempt to make it look like a hit and run. >> not a standing person hit by a vehicle? >> not at all. >> so if what occurred out here was staged, why go through all the trouble? even eric knew in an unnatural death like this one, the spouse can be the number one subject. that's law and order 101. >> i know that y'all always have to question the husband. >> but he was talking to police and with his help they built a timeline for the day. justine as usual had showed up that morning in her classroom, but her teacher friends were troubled by how she appeared on the last day of her life. kathleen knew something was wrong.

>> i could see her sitting in the classroom, with her back to the door. she was on the phone. i went to open the door and it was locked. >> at recess, justine stayed inside. >> she didn't come outside that day. so i didn't see her again until lunch time. when i saw her at lunch time, she had been visibly crying. her eyes were just red and puffy and her face was blotchy. >> any idea what was going on that day, what had caused it? >> she had told everybody that she was sick, that she had allergies, but i didn't buy it. >> she had been crying? >> she had been crying. she had been crying uncontrollably. >> pat ammons was taken aback when she saw justine as they walked the children to the bus at the end of the day. >> i turned to say something to her and looked at her, and her eyes were so incredibly swollen that they looked like little slits. >> before leaving justine told

the principal she'd be out sick the next day, but still shee went to the after-school graduate class she was taking with kathleen. they were both working on their master's degrees. >> she came into the class upset still. wearing sunglasses, carrying a box of tissues. she cried a little bit here and there through the class. >> kathleen made a point to catch up with her during the break. >> she had said something that made me wonder what was going on with her. she had told me, if i'm not at school, if i'm not here, this is where you can find my lesson plans. >> this sounds like more than i'm just not going to be in tomorrow. >> it sounded like she was going to be gone for a while. >> when classes ended at 7:00, justine hurried out. >> we said our goodbyes in the parking lot. >> is that the last time you saw her? >> it was. >> as for the husband's day, eric told investigators after a routine day doing construction, he took the kids to the mall and

in the early evening, stopped by the hospital to visit his terminally ill mother. he said he got home around 8:00 p.m., saw justine briefly and was called back to the hospital where his mother was in rapid decline. eric recounted the final part of his night for investigators. i went up there and got my motorcycle i i don't remember exactly what time it was. >> surveillance footage from the storage facility, seen here, shows what investigators believe is him getting his bike at 12:04 a.m. following his motorcycle ride, eric said he got home not too long afterwards. >> i didn't look at the clock. i couldn't tell you. >> was your wife here? >> yes. she starts saying stuff. and i said i don't want to talk about it. i just want to be left alone. >> that's when eric said justine got ticked at him. >> her version of being smart was maybe i need some time by

myself. i was like, maybe you do. that's when she got in the car and left. >> records show justine calling eric at 1:19 a.m. but the records also showed something else. even on a typical day he made a lot of calls. his phone goes completely silent at two points on the night justine is killed. >> we had two extensive black-out periods, i think around 10:04 to 11:23 p.m. and then another one shortly after midnight until justine's alleged call for help. >> interesting gaps for you? >> during those black-out periods, we weren't having any activity. >> eric tells investigators he's not sure when he left the hospital the second time. >> i want to say it's around 10:30 or 11:00, give or take. it may be later. >> but investigators say his cell phone was pinging off

towers north of the hospital starting after 9:30 that night. >> the phone information and his story just don't go together? >> correct. >> he said i'm in charlottesville and the phone said you're half an hour north? >> correct. we're not connecting the dots. >> but eric's cousin tracy would come forward to say she's certain she was with eric late into the night at the hospital. what time do you think he would have left the hospital? >> i think i left around 11:30. >> and eric was still there at that point? >> i found him and i said goodbye to him. >> at 11:30 at night at the hospital? >> it was around 11:30. >> that would make it difficult for eric to pull off a time-consuming lab rattly staged hit and run, if that's what investigators were starting to theorize. essentially he'd have to be in two place at one time for that to work easily. and there's another reason he doesn't drop in neatly as a suspect in his wife's death. the cousin said eric had a grave family responsibility that night, the authority to say yes

or no to a do not resuscitate order on his mother. he was basically on call. >> why would you choose the night that your mother is dying to set up this plan and action, when you could be called back at the hospital at any minute? you know, they didn't clear you and say, she'll be good for a week or two. >> eric himself gave perhaps the best reason he shouldn't be regarded as a suspect. a fundamental point. he loved his wife. they got along great. >> you can speak to anybody that's ever seen us and i'll bet you in five years, maybe ten arguments. if there was, like i said, the definition of nice was her. >> yet soon the investigators would start to hear stories disputing eric's sunny take on his relationship with justine. it would turn out that almost everyone around her had been keeping her secrets. scary secrets. >> friends and family, ready to

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>> while justine's parents had admittedly never been overly fond of eric, they tried to keep an open mind about it. yet a few days after the funeral, when they went to pick up a few things at the house, they say he blurted out some awful things. >> he told me, you know, i never really wanted to get married or have any more children anyway. and he thought he'd be just fine without justine in his life. >> and in their grief, as the friends and family gathered, stories started to tumble out, and not your typical recollections about a loved one who suddenly passes away. justine's friends had never shared with each other what they call their violent eric stories. they worried if they spoke about them, they would lose her friendship. yet now lauren was talking about the day eric stormed into an apartment the two sisters were sharing for the summer. >> he sort of pushed his way into the door and pinned her up against the wall until i came out. and i said get your hands off of her.

and he was extremely startled to see me. i said if you don't get your hands off her, i'm calling the police. get out of here. >> kathleen remembers a few months before the wedding justine confiding in her, that she was scared of the man she was about to marry. >> i encouraged her to walk away. i gave her the option to come live with me. and she denied that, telling me that she feared for my well-being. >> for you too? >> yes. >> did you ever say to her, justine, this is a crazy situation, you got to get yourself out of this? >> i did. told her she could do better. she was beautiful. she was young. she still had her whole life ahead of her. she could meet somebody else. she told me she had invested too much time in the relationship. nobody else would want her. she would never find anybody else, which i just thought was

crazy. >> while eric denied having any stormy physical fights with justine, there was talk of other women in his life. >> did you hear stories that he was running around on her? >> i did. >> how'd she deal with that? >> i think she just tried to push it to the back of her mind. >> do you think she was happy? >> i don't. >> when investigators looked at eric's cell phone records, there was one call in particular, at 11:46, the night justine died that caught their attention. it's a call to the mother of his two children. >> it ended with eric asking her if there was any chance for them romantically, and she said no. not as long as you're married, or that you're married. he said he thought he made a mistake in getting married. >> is it important to you, or is that just somebody shooting the breeze with an old girlfriend? >> well, the timing of it is very peculiar. and the fact that it's only an

hour and ten or 20 minutes before our victim's alleged call for help. >> but that woman, alison crawford, says that midnight call that had gotten investigators suspicious was misinterpreted. she she's a nurse at the hospital where eric mother lay dying. and said that it made sense for eric to call her. even the part where eric told her his marriage had been a mistake and asking if they had a chance as a couple wasn't out of the ordinary and certainly not a watershed moment signaling he was going to kill his wife, if that's what investigators were thinking. >> i think it was dramatized for reaction and i don't think that it was really looked at as just two people exchanging information. i think we underestimate our emotions and the things that we say when we're upset. and i think it's very easy to go

from point a to point b and not really know how you got there. >> and if we talk about eric feeling he has regrets in his life, this is not a one-time conversation with you? >> no. we talked many times. and throughout many phases of his life. so that would not have been uncommon. >> including after he got married? >> correct. >> and even though eric tried to call her many times that very day, she points out, they had two children together. so of course they'd talk. it didn't mean there was still a romantic connection between them. >> eric and i cared for one another for a long time. and then he decided to choose another path. and we became co-parents. i've always cared for him. i will always care for him. in a different way now. >> but it's still there? >> we have children together. there will always be a connection. >> yet another woman would tell investigators that she did have a romantic connection with eric. she said she'd slept with him a few weeks before he married

justine, then again a few days after the funeral. steve confronted him directly about the rumors he'd been running around on his daughter. i said, there was never any other women? and he said there was one not long after justine was killed. i got drunk one night and slept with a woman. >> and while eric would say later he was only acting out of grief, it was when steven swartz started looking into the couple's finances that he got really worried. it was starting to look as though his daughter may have been a piggy back that got cracked open on a cold back-country road. >> a husband who needs money and a wife -- well, you'll see. >> when you add up all the money, she was worth quite a lot dead? >> yes, sir.

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♪ >> there were the stories of other women, the stories of eric's volcanic temper, but for steve swartz, it was when he started looking into his daughter's finances that he nursed suspicions about his former son-in-law. the husband and wife were $130,000 in debt.

>> that was something like five or six times her take-home salary. it was mostly credit card debt at high interest rates. there's no way you'd ever pay it off. >> a big chunk of that was money paid for a dump truck that eric bought two months before they got married to start a hauling business. he put the loan for the truck in justine's name. >> between the dump truck payment and the insurance on the dump truck and the upkeep, that was just enough to tip them over the edge financially to where things became unsustainable. after that point was when she began to have insufficient funds charges on her accounts. >> they're running on fumes? >> yeah, that's right. >> justine paid for everything. >> even they would sadly discover, the big rock of an engagement ring she brought home. >> she bought and paid for it. she never told us. she indicated that eric picked her out and surprised her with it.

>> but perhaps most ominously, when it came to the couple's finances, about three months before she died, justine had called her father to ask for a $40,000 loan. eric wanted to expand his fledgling construction business. steve had no idea at the time how deeply in debt his daughter was? >> she was very upset when i told her i couldn't do it. and it wasn't upset in a petulant or angry kind of way. she seemed kind of devastated by it. i could hear her voice cracking on the other end, and then she started to cry. >> is this a watershed moment, where eric realizes justine is not going to be my bank anymore? >> i think very much so. because by that time, it was already evident to him that he had pretty well tapped out all of her resources. i mean, her credit lines were all run up. >> and if you can't give us that $40,000, what use are you? >> that's exactly right. he had gotten everything he could get out of her, now she

was just a liability. >> steve swartz shared the results of his financial digging with special agent jones. and investigators hadn't forgotten how in the early interviews he'd weirdly bragged about justine's credit rating. >> anything else that we need to know, or you should tell us? >> no. i can tell you that when you look it up, her credit is spotless, and mine was slow. because we made sure that any time we always paid hers and the house and everything was going in her name. >> eric told us that his credit was slow and they protected her credit. >> justine, good for credit? >> good for credit. >> investigators were piecing together a picture of the couple's finances. they had come upon some insurance. four policies on justine. it was the one on the dump truck in justine's name that caught their eye. if she were truck by an

uninsured motorist in a hit and run, that one policy could pay out a million dollars. >> when you add up all the money, do you have enough there for motivation? >> i think so. it was a very substantial amount. >> she was worth quite a lot dead? >> yes, sir. >> and investigators discovered that eric was familiar with how insurance worked. they found he had successfully filed several high-dollar vehicle claims in the six-year period before justine died. >> over a period of time, there was more claims than what you'd normally find with somebody. >> interesting money angles for sure, but agent jones knew he still didn't have enough to build a case on. and eric while cooperating made it clear to the investigators he would only go so far. >> the question is, if need be, would you submit to a polygraph examination. >> no. >> is there a reasoning for that? >> just because i know they're completely inadmissible in court so it's pointless to take one. >> the case always seemed to end

up back at square one. and special agent mike jones knew his suspicions no matter how deep, were not enough to security an arrest warrant. >> it's the difference in knowing and proving. >> but justine's family wasn't waiting. they would publicly volley the most direct charges. they were coming to believe, not only that their former son-in-law killed their daughter, but that he might just get away with it. >> he's very clever. he's much smarter than most people give him credit to. investigators focus on a black suv. >> the question was, is this the vehicle that could have been used to run her over? her injuries were consistent with being crushed under the wheels of a large vehicle.

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♪ >> as time passed after justine's tragic death on this country road, eric's mother finally passed away. and while he seemed to be moving on with his life, justine's family was falling apart.

at one point heidi was hospitalized for two months with clinical depression. >> just couldn't get up and get going? >> post-traumatic stress, severe depression. >> lauren too found work and life in general meaningless without her older sister. not long after justine died, she left her job. >> it was just too overwhelming to try to figure out how to get up in the morning and how to go through a normal life and also be dealing with this. >> they'd all sunk into a black hole of would have, could have, should have. what are you tough on yourself about? >> not having been more involved and attentive. >> you're a career-driven guy? >> yeah. always have been and i'd trade all that way in a heart beat to have a second shot at getting things right with justine.beat to have a second shot at getting things right with justine. on the one-year anniversary of

her death, justine's parents organized a vigil in a downtown park to bring attention to their daughter's unsolved case. they had initially posted a $10,000 reward for any information that would lead to justine's killer, but by now had upped it to $50,000. they were determined to do anything they could to jump-start an investigation that they worried was grinding to a halt. >> we were, like, okay, next week, next month, you know. >> eric came to the vigil. the swartz family hadn't seen him in months. in steve and heidi's minds, he'd migrated to simply being undeserving of their daughter to the prime suspect in their death. someone else who felt that way was college roommate holly boardman. she'd been convinced he was the one, from the moment she got the letter notifying her that her good friend was death.

>> i remember reading "tragic death," just the word death, i knew he had killed her. even though justine's family firmly agreed with holly about eric's culpability. they were less certain he'd ever be charged with the murder. >> he's very clever, much smarter than most people give him credit to. i think that's making the investigators' job harder. >> with the investigation seemingly stalled, they tried to become their own detectives of sorts. they knew their former son-in-law best and were determined to find out what really happened to their daughter. with no criminal charges in sight, the swartzes filed a wrongful death civil suit, pointing to eric as their daughter's killer. courtney steward, a reporter for the local newspaper, the hook, had launched her own investigation into justine's death. she said everyone understood where the family was coming from. justine's parents believed eric had brutally killed their daughter and were going to do

everything they could to bring him to justice. >> it's a pretty blunt allegation, but i think that civil suit is part of that maneuvering that her parents felt like they were going to do whatever they could to make sure he did not get away with her murder. >> they're squeezing him, they're pressuring him? >> yes. >> the swartz family's wrongful death civil suit eals alleges up to nine others, most of them unnamed, had conspired with eric to kill their daughter. he denied the allegation and so did alison crawford, his former girlfriend and one of the named defendants in the lawsuit. and while sympathetic to the swartz family mission to try to find answers to their daughter's death, she believes they crossed the line by filing the civil suit. >> although initially this situation was a pursuit for justice for justine, it has transitioned into a punishment for the people that are associated or connected with eric.

>> the focus became nailing eric and getting him put away? >> correct. >> and eric's family said he found himself living in a very uncomfortable investigative limbo. >> he's got a bull's eye around him? >> right. >> people are pointing their fingers, that's the guy? >> yes. >> killed his wife, he's getting away with it? >> yes. >> crawford said the investigation put so much pressure on eric that erupted in their relationship. she eppeded up receiving an order of protection against him after they had an argument. >> it ended with eric touching me physically. and i simply wanted to make sure that that wouldn't happen again. >> but alison chalks his behavior up to the intense scrutiny he was under while the investigation dragged on, and says it's all been taken out of context. >> it was used in a manner that manipulated public opinion. >> the story was that he went for you by the throat. >> eric's life was turned upside down, in an effort to turn public opinion against him. he wasn't perfect by any means,

but the eric that i know was an active participant in his children's lives. he was not abusive. >> but it was a medical examiner's final findings that helped really tie things together for agent jones. maybe he hadn't seen debris or much blood on the road because justine wasn't killed there. >> there was findings that are consistent with strangulation. that she was incapacitated in some way and placed in the middle of the road. my theory and the body tells me that she was manually strangled to near death, transported to the location she was found and then run over. >> the m.e. believed her injuries pointed to a larger vehicle. much larger than her mustang. >> with a taller vehicle, the wheels catch and you grab you a little bit. this case is more consistent with probably an suv. >> something with heft to it? >> yes, and some lift to it. >> as it turned out, there was a

vehicle like that that made its way into the case file. a big, black, ford expedition, eric had looked at at a car dealership the week before justine died. an ignition key for that vehicle had gone missing and the suv itself disappeared a few days later. >> and the theory of foul play, what might this black suv, what role might it play? >> i think the question was, is this the vehicle that could have been used to run her over? >> big, heavy, gigantor suv? >> right. her injuries were consistent with being crushed under the wheels of a large vehicle. >> a little over a week after justine died, the suv turned up in a storage unit about a mile from where justine's body was found. >> it has less than 50 miles on the odometer, there's no damage to the ignition, which suggests that somebody used a key. but it's not connected with justine's death for a couple of months. and in fact, before police ever get to look at it, it's

detailed, cleaned, and sold. >> eric indicated to the investigators he had nothing to do with the missing suv. but did say something else that caught their attention. >> he tells them that, oh, yes, she came to look at the car with me, and she crawled all through it. >> leaving dna, trace evidence? >> right. that would be perfect. if they find her hair, well, she was crawling through it when we thought about buying it. >> investigators were again left with suspicion. they couldn't tie the suv to eric. >> we were far from saying homicide. >> the case once again seemed to be at a standstill. and not the least part of the dilemma was the common-sense problem with the crime itself. step back and look at just how complex the investigator's operating theory was. that eric strangles justine within an inch of her life and runs her over with a large vehicle. now he has to get her body, her car and his motorcycle all out here to the scene. that was a scenario with a lot

of moving parts, one that needed time to execute and maybe several vehicles, just seemed like more than one man could handle in a narrow window of opportunity. >> so the investigation sputtered for more than two years, when an odd thing happened, someone came forward with a very bizarre tale of happenen stance involving a parade float. a motorist lost, and then found, by a stranger with a request. >> this gentleman comes around to my car and he says, can you follow me, my wife's car is almost out of gas?

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♪ >> sometimes things happen out of the blue. and sometimes out of the dark. and that's what occurred next in the investigation into the death of justine abshire. a man had stepped forward with a strange tale about how he inadvertently became involved in the case. it was late when the man cecil

robe uk said he found himself hope willy lost on these winding country roads. >> it was a crazy night. i was way out in the middle of somewhere i'd never been before. >> he worked at the hospital during the day, but at night, he pursued his passion for building parade floats. here he was two months way from his deadline for the charlottesville new year's eve parade in dire need of one more old school bus chassis to build upon. >> i had been to many places looking for buses. that was a normality in my life at this point, looking for something to put this last unit on. >> his partner left him directions to check out a school bus he heard was for sale. but instead of going south from charlottesville, mistakenly headed north. >> you were upside down? >> correct. >> right was left and left was right? >> yes. >> he said he did spot one school bus in his headlights,

but there was no forsale sign on it. he gave up, he was pulling in a driveway to head for home when a man approached out of the night. >> i was turning around. this gentleman comes to my car and says, can you follow me, my wife's car is almost out of gas. can you follow me to a gas station? i said, it would be great because i'm totally lost. he said no problem, we'll get to the gas station and it's going to be right on the main road. >> so you can do each other a little bit of good here. >> exactly. so i pull out, and he pulls out, follow this car through the winding roads. a few miles down the road, he says the man pulled over. >> i pulled behind him, and he said, it ran out of gas. so can you take me back home? and i said i can run you up to the gas station? oh, no, take me home, that's fine. >> go to the gas station, get a can and get the car off the road.

he said he could take care of it. so i took him back home, dropped him in his driveway. >> and he went into his house? >> right away. >> helping out was a man quickly forgotten until two years later when a friend sent him a news report on an unsolved hit and run case. the few details, the victim who'd walked away from her car, the picture of the husband took cecil back to that night. he was certain that eric abshire was the same person who had asked him for help the night he was lost. cecil got in touch with the authorities. >> all i knew is that the guy was in the picture was the guy that was sitting next to me in my car when i drove it back. >> it had always been a missing link for investigators. if eric abshire had killed his wife, how did he do it alone? at minimum wage, staging the hit and run required getting his motorcycle and her car out to the scene five miles from their home. now the parade float builder's

story provided a possible solution to the complex logistics. as a good samaritan motorist, he followed eric to the place where justine's car was later found. convenient, but what were the chances that story was true? you had to believe that he appeared in abshire's driveway at the moment the husband needed help in staging a faked hit and run? >> i was skeptical. it's a nice story, but without anything to go along with it, it's just a story. >> special agent mike jones started the long process of trying to verify the float builder's account. >> the first thing i wanted to do was go check the area to see if there might be a school bus that was where he said he was going, and that proved to be true. >> next, he wanted him to trace the route he took. >> put him in the car and i said, okay, this is where you said you started that night. now tell me where to go. >> you're in charge, which way are we going? >> i didn't give him any feedback. it was always one way and i was on the receiving end of it. if he told me to turn somewhere, i turned.

if he told me to stop, i'd stop and pull off, i'd pull off. >> and his show and tell recreation, cecil did not point to the very place where justine's car had been found. >> he didn't get the x mark on the spot. >> he didn't. i thought if he would have picked that up in the media or something like that -- >> what about that? didn't everybody in the county know where all the things had happened? >> that's the thing. it wasn't too perfect. and generally, i don't know, sometimes when it's too perfect, it can be regurgitated and i thought that, all right, he has a enough room of error in there that he might be credible. >> nor did it seem to jones that cecil had anything to gain by coming forward. >> was he interested in any of the reward money that had been posted? >> he's never asked about it. >> and cecil underwent a polygraph. >> you took a lie detector test about your story? >> yes. >> how did you do? >> i passed it 100%, no problems at all. >> why the it all seemed to pat.

a solution to mysteries in the movies, but not in real life. even he saw the problems posed by his story. >> we're told this guy is staging a murder and cecil shows up in the driveway, he can't plan on you showing up. what was he going to do if you had not appeared in the driveway? >> i have no clue. >> i felt like the information he had is fascinating, but the information that mr. abshire provided was fascinating. >> do you think robe uk's star is true? >> i do. >> that he accidentally helped be the guy to get the car on the back road? >> i do. >> the investigators now had an intricate piece to the puzzle they were piecing together. when they looked at it all, the medical examiner's findings, the insurance, the troubled relationship, and the story of the lost parade float builder, a special grand jury was convened. after four long years of investigation, they finally felt they had their case. >> when we were able to get all

of the information that we felt that we were ever going to be able to get, we looked at the picture, and it was clear to us what had happened and who was responsible. >> go arrest abshire? >> yes. >> news of an arrest that justine's family thought might never come. >> it felt like this huge bag of rocks i've been carrying on my back for four years was lifted off me. >> yet they knew the arrest was only step one and that their former son-in-law could easily beat the charge. there wasn't a shred of physical evidence to link him to the murder. it was entirely circumstantial. >> we were nervous, but we had to put our faith into the system that this was the right time to roll the dice. >> eric abshire would stand trial for the murder of his wife, but a conviction was anything but certain. the defense gets ready to dismantle a particular part of the prosecution's case. >> there's so many holes in it,

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♪ ♪ >> almost five years from the night when justine abshire was found lying dead on this dark country road, her husband would finally stand trial for her murder. >> as we speak, we're awaiting trial. what do you want out of trial? out of the process? >> the truth. i want to know. >> the truth and i want justice. >> it had been a long wait for justine's parents who had come to believe the worst about the man who married their daughter. >> my personal belief is that eric intended to kill her when he married her. he had made up his mind that at some point he would do that. >> they knew there was a big gulf between what they believed and what could be proved at trial. there was no eyewitness, no confession, nothing evidence linking him to the scene. >> i know circumstantial cases are hard to win. it's a difficult case. they didn't have the smoking gun. >> the prosecutors were

committed to finding justice for the swartz family, but it had taken them so long to bring the case to trial because they knew they had only one shot at a conviction. if eric abshire was acquitted, double jeopardy would kick in and he would walk out of the courtroom a free man forever. >> i guilty vote was not guaranteed in this? >> no. >> the prosecution's theory was that justine had been strangled and was clinging to life when eric ran her over and placed her in the road as part of a plot to stage a hit and run for the insurance money pay-out. the problem with the theory was that it raised as many questions as it answered. courtney stewart covered the trial. >> you really don't even have a crime scene, where if she did not die on that road, where did she die? they don't know. they were never able to determine where this happened or even exactly what happened. they're just quite certain that she's dead and he did it. >> the prosecutors called their witnesses.

the medical examiner told the injury what he believed had caused justine's death. other witnesses testified about cell phone records and insurance policies while justine's friends and family talked about the troubled marriage. and there was that parade float builder who said he helped eric get his wife's car out to the crime scene that night. at the end of their case, the prosecutors felt they'd done the best they could with what they had. >> it was all the evidence together. and he's the last person to see her alive, the first person to find her, the only person to have any access to her between 7:00 p.m. and 1:00 in the morning. >> but charles webber, eric's defense attorney would dissect the prosecution's case. he told the jury that even if his client wasn't always a model husband, it didn't make him a murderer. >> the case is not about emotion. it's about facts and evidence. it's not a beauty or personality contest. >> he challenged the medical examiner's finding that justine could have been strangled and run over.

>> it's felatious. >> medically, scientifically, you do not see that? >> i do not see that scientifically. >> and he called his own forensic pathologist to the witness stand to pose an alternative theory for how justine died. he testified justine was struck in the road by a large vehicle that propelled her through the air. >> it would have been sufficient to snap the neck. >> causing instant death virtually? >> it's an area of the spine that is attached directly to the primitive portions of brain that control heart beat and breathing. >> so you have no reason to believe she wasn't standing in that roadway? >> the evidence from our perspective cannot rule out the possibility of a hit and run. >> and webber said there was a report of a large vehicle on the road that night, that could have caused justine's grievous injuries. >> there was a witness that said there was what they called a jacked up toyota and yet somehow that vehicle disappears and

nobody ever sees and the police don't see it. >> he also didn't believe the story of the parade float builder who said he got lost and ended up in abshire's driveway that night. webber wrote him off as a wannabe, way off course for someone who lived in the area for years. >> there's so many holes in it, it's unbelievable. >> the prosecutors had also argued that eric's country tracy was mistaken when she testified that she saw him at the hospital. but the cousin held firm. >> at trial, they said, we think you're confused about your evening. >> i'm not. >> you were at the hospital that night, not the night before? >> no. >> and the family was lined up saying their goodbyes and eric was there? >> yes. >> eric's family believes he's wrongfully accused. >> he tells me he's innocent. >> did you ask him flat out, did you do it? >> yes. and he said no. >> courtney stewart thought it

too close to call. >> how can you convict somebody when there's not one shred of physical evidence tying him to this? i mean, how can you be sure? >> you hear the courtroom buzz, this guy may walk this. >> it's tough. a circumstantial case, when there's no physical evidence, no eyewitness, no nothing, it can go either way, because it's going to be up to the jury to decide what's reasonable doubt. >> and soon they would have their verdict. >> jurors struggle. >> i spent a lot of nights laying there, trying to put it together. >> and then -- >> they have a verdict! >> gotta go.

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>> after two weeks of testimony, the case was in the hands of the jury. justine's family fretted. >> oh, i felt so nervous. it only takes one person on a jury to not be sure, and that seems pretty likely. that just one person would say, i'm not totally convinced, guys, i'm not going to vote with you.

>> they waited for the verdict. >> you see movies and everything happens like this in the movies, and it's just not the way it is. >> and whenever they could, they visited the make shift roadside memorial where justine had died. >> it's hard. it's a peaceful place for me in one way, in another way, it's a sad place, this was her last place on earth. >> but nothing had ever been the same since getting that call in the middle of the night that justine was dead. >> what was the impact to your family? >> it's like the big bang. we sort of exploded and went in different dreckedzs. >> grief consumed them. the swartzes' marriage of three decades fell apart. >> eventually our marriage crumbled. if goes on and on. it's endless. >> an unstoppable shock wave. >> there's a giant hole. nothing will ever fill that. >> the prosecutors hoped the trial would bring the family

some issue m of peace. but from years of experience, they knew that even a guilty verdict would only do so much. >> there's collateral damage everywhere. >> absolutely. we can't avoid that. it's not a pleasant thing, but it's a fact of the world we live in. >> the trial had been an uphill fight. the prosecutors hadn't been able to tell the jury precisely how or even justine had been killed. >> you'd like to be able to explain exhibitly what happened step by step. >> but these jurors would be the people to say guilty or not, and they were having a hard time figuring out how one man could pull off suf an elaborate murder plot. eric would have had to run over here, move her body to the road and gotten both justine's mustang and his motorcycle to the crime scene, all in a short window of time. >> i spent a lot of nights lying there, trying to put it together. >> there are a lot of moving parts here. >> there were.

>> and the jurors didn't see the parade-float maker as the solution to eric's problem of moving all the vehicles around? >> could that happen? possible anything can happen. how likely? one in a million chance would be my guess. >> we didn't really weigh that in on our decision. he kind of put that towards the back. >> so it was not a decider, you're saying? >> no, no. >> but they also weren't persuaded by the testimony of eric's cousin tracy, who said he was with him around 11:30 the night justine died as he cared for his mother. >> she could have been confuse on the dates. the mother was in and out of the hospital a lot. >> they returned to the courtroom to ask the judge to define circumstantial evidence. >> he said use our common sense. and take in all the evidence and make our decision that way. >> so many unanswered questions. from the complexities of an elaborate plot, to the mysteries of the human heart. >> how someone could do that to someone they claim that they love so much. >> they struggled to reach a

decision. >> we had a timeline up on the board, so that we could kind of look at what happened, who said what, you know, to try to figure out what was -- what we could believe and what we couldn't believe. >> finally, they decided to take a vote, they were unanimous. >> we were kind of stunned for a minute. >> word went out, the jury had a verdict. >> they had a verdict! >> gotta go. >> i felt like i was going to explode. about as tense as i've ever been in my life. >> the family had been waiting almost five years to the day for this moment. a moment they thought might never come. >> i remember having my hand on steven's forearm and i felt the muscle pulsing, and i kept saying it's going to be okay, it's okay, it's okay. >> the jurors walked into the courtroom and announced their verdict. eric abshire, guilty of murder in the first-degree, sentenced to life in prison.

>> it's a huge feeling of relief and release. >> as steve and heidi walked out of the courthouse, they hugged. the long ordeal, the five-year pursuit of justice for their daughter finally had ended with a guilty verdict. >> it was a lot of work. it was worth it. >> and the prosecutors knew without the family and the dedicated investigators, eric abshire would likely have never even been charged. >> i think eric almost got away with murder. it would have been easy to say, what a tragedy. a young groom has lost his beautiful bride, what a shame. we're so sorry. >> in the end, the jurors acknowledged the case did have unanswered questions, but they felt confident with their verdict. >> we don't have to know exactly how it happened. we just know from the circumstantial evidence that he was the one that did it. >> his cousin tracy believes the jury got it wrong, that eric did not kill justine. >> i don't believe he could do something like that. >> you read the articles that are out there, everybody can read them. it's pretty easy to put together

a picture of eric as a monster? >> it is easy. >> the guy goes around looking for bar-room fights, women get restraining order, runs up a lot of debt. it's easy to put together a bad picture of eric. what do you think it incomplete here? >> it doesn't make him a murderer. a lot of men are like that. i hadn't seen that side of him act that way towards her. but a lot of men make mistakes, act certain ways, but it doesn't make them murderers. >> for justine's family and friends, one of the greater unsolved mysteries has always been why she stayed in the relationship with eric. they speculate that she was planning to leave him the night she was killed. after the funeral, they discovered her luggage was missing. she had also left behind two months of lesson plans in her drawer at school. >> i think she realized that if she stayed, something terrible was going to happen to her. >> and you think she did try to get out? >> i think that that's what she was doing. >> but didn't make it?

>> but didn't make it. >> but all of justine's friends and family are tough on themselves for not intervening even more forcefully in what to them had become a miserable marriage. >> it's the guilt club. we're all in the guilt club. her parents, everybody. that's the hardest thing for me. i mean, i could have just flown out there. because in my heart, i felt that it was wrong. so sometimes you say you can't borrow trouble, but i guess after years of it, you have to put your foot down and do something. >> lauren likens the long-term domestic abuse she believes her sister suffered to watching her slowly die from a chronic illness. even with the guilty verdict then, the agony hasn't faded. >> peace and justice seem like lofty ideals and they're going to be, you know, blue skies and sunshine. but that's not the case. >> at the elementary school where justine taught, they

planted a tree in memory of the kindergarten teacher whose happiest moments in her final year, were likely spent in the company of the children she loved. were you looking forward to your new position in rome? kneel!! in the presence of your new emperor!! saul has become a follower of jesus. you can't preach the word of jesus inside the synagogue. that is exactly what we have to do. barnabas: he's gonna get us all killed! [ indistinct shouting ] man: saul of tarsus! we know you're h