captions paid for by nbc-universal television captions paid for by nbc-universal television we have an assassination

here at the country club. >> reporter: it was an explosion that rocked the city. not just the murder, but who was murdered? >> he was bigger than life. >> reporter: real estate mogul, lif of the party, loving father. he was also a high-roller and casino builder. was it a mob hit or something more personal? his ex-wife, an astrologier had a taste for five-star living and a motive worth millions. >> gold-digger wife plus insurance policy equals suspect? >> there you go. >> reporter: police find the suspect, her former lover, they say? >> did you place that bomb? >> no. >> reporter: but they don't find her. what does the horoscope say about her fate? >> the nice thing about a homicide case, they never go away. >> reporter: "star-crossed." >> good evening and welcome to "dateline." i'm ann curry.

it was a man who took a desert boom town by storm. a billionaire builder who made a lot of money and a lot of friends. no one would have foretold he would be the victim of an assassin but there was someone who already knew. here's josh mankiewicz. >> reporter: in the foothills of tuscon's santa catalina mountains lies a mystery and st maybe the answer is in the stars. gary triano was born a scorpio, fashion gnat, fiery, a big man in a growing city. >> his personality fit his stature. >> reporter: lupita murillo has covered tuscon for kvoa for more than 30 years. and she says triano, a real estate developer, was simply magnetic. >> he was bigger than life. he would walk into a room and everybody would immediately look at him and just grabvitate to

him. >> reporter: one of those was a huge believer in how the stars can explain life and point the way to happiness. but not even astrology could have predicted the tragedy that would unfold. gary triano didn't look to the zodiac for guidance. he knew only one way to live life -- ♪ i did it my way >> reporter: forceful and determined, gary liked doing things his way, riding the wave of tuscon's real estate boom. >> always looking for a deal. not that he had so much, but i think the chase of the deal. >> reporter: ron and kola janoff considered him a friend. >> gary was one of those type of people that could be best friends with a ditch digger or s.e president of the >> aepr:tested ,n >> reporter: and gary, who was twice divorced always seemed to have an attractive woman at his

side. but that never got in the way of his kids. >> he was a fun dad. >> reporter: triano's oldest children from his first marriage, heather and brian, say despite his busy social life and never-ending business deals, gary was always around for them. >> was definitely someone who would make you laugh, hang out with you and all your friends. my father would sit in the middle of the room and say, so what's up, guys? tell me what's going on. >> reporter: sounds like you guys were pretty close? >> exactly. >> reporter: he was also generous with his money, serving on the boards of several charities and performing random acts of kindness. >> my brother said it one time at a new year's eve and he bought the staff drinks. most people don't do things like that. i remember talking to someone who said that he would tip him $100 to go get his car. when he was living large, he was living large. >> reporter: then came november 1st, 1996, just days away from

gary's 53rd brd. the planets all seemed to be aligned, but gary's horoscope for that day told him, you could lose something important. and this time at least, the stars were right. gary had just played a round of golf at a top-tier tuscon country club called la paloma and was headed to meet ron and kola janoff at a local bar. >> we had planned a surprise party for gary for his birthday. as a ruse, we told him we'd meet him at this bar and take him out for dinner. >> reporter: gary's friends had gathered at his house, already pouring the beaujolais, ready to surprise the life of every party. >> we weresupposed to get him and take him up to his house. >> reporter: they waited, but gary didn't arrive. a tv bulletin made it clear why. >> it was a very horrible bomb. >> reporter: ron and kola janoff headed straight to the country club filled with equal parts

hope and dread. >> place was -- >> place was just a madhouse. >> must have been 200 cars, police, fbi, sheriff. >> reporter: heather was on her way to her father's birthday party when she got a call from her mother, gary triano's first wife. >> i said, i'm late, i'm going to dad's surprise party. i'll go after. she said, listen to me, come home right now or are the their mother's house, heather and brian were told the horrible truth. >> she told me and i said, what? why -- what happened? >> reporter: their father was dead, killed by an explosion inside his lincoln continental, a blast that was now all over the news. reporter lupita murillo was on the scene that night and put ron and kola on the air. >> letting him know that we had a big party planned for him. >>t's shocking to think that today he was there and now he's

not. >> reporter: if it was hard for them to understand, it was impossible for heather and brian triano. >> just baffled. what makes a car do that. >> we thought maybe some random explosion. we didn't know. >> reporter: you were thinking accident, not homicide? >> yeah. >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: but to the pima county sheriffs detectives dispatched to the scene, it was clear that the blast was no accident. >> it would appear from preliminary observation that we have an assassination in the parking lot here at the country club. >> reporter: pima county sheriffs detective lieutenant michael o'connor. >> it became clear quickly that this was something done. >> reporter: the movado watch on gary's wrist stopped dead at 5:38 p.m. >> i can't remember a bigger story that has ever come to tuscon like this that has

impacted the community the way this did. and i think party because he was so well-known and also because the manner in which he was murdered. >> reporter: but why would anyone want to kl the life of the party? investigators quickly determined that the bomb was triggered by remote control, but whose finger was it on the button? the answer wouldn't come from the heavens. it was right here on earth. coming up, finding answers in gary triano's past. >> here's a man who made millions, died with 22 cents in his pocket. >> reporter: did he lose someone else'sillions and was that a motive fga when "star-crossed" continues. from the northeast, try our new maine lobster and crab bake, with garlic-roasted tender maine lobster, jumbo shrimp, scallops, and a full half-pound of snow crab legs.

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gary triano, the businessman, the father, the philanthropist, none of it made sense. he had just played a round of golf. then the man who loved living large died a spectacular death. >> it was a crime scene no one will soon forget. tuscon businessman, gary triano's car, was blown to pieces. >> reporter: a witness said gary had just gotten into his car when the explosion happened. investigators later found that a homemade bomb had been placed on the passenger's seat and was detonated by remote control. that made an impression on the sheriff. >> i've never seen an assassination of this kind. if in fact it was a hit, it probably was a professional hit. >> reporter: and a professional investigation began in its wake. lieutenant michael o'connor from the pima county sheriff's department was there. >> there was a lot of debris in the immediate area of where the vehicle was.

>> so this was a pretty powerful bomb? >> clearly, no doubt afs. there was a swimming pool about 100 yards away, the windshield from the vehicle was in that pool. reporter: the smoke had barely cleared at the country club when the rumors began to swirl all around tuscon about the say sass nation of gary triano. the sheriff here said it looked like a professional hit. but if that was true, what was the motive? who was angry enough at gary triano to want to kill him? >> normally, if someone wants to kill somebody, they take a gun and shoot them. in this case, it was a bomb. that's very unusual and i think it's a calling card that's something to do with a gong land hit. >> reporter: because it was so sophisticat sophisticated? >> yes, and because it was so flam boifenlt this was done in an upscale resort in tuscon. >> reporter: in a public place with gary triano's friends waiting for him at a birthday party? >> exactly. it was almost like they wanted to make a statement. >> reporter: that statement led investigators to look underneath

the polished image of gary triano. what they found only reinforced what the zodiac could have told them. that scorpios by nature can be secretive. >> the times that i met him, he was very nice, very charming and very likable. but obviously there was another side to gary that his friends and peop that had met him on a social basis didn't know about him. >> reporter: gary still had plenty of charm, but by the late '80s, that smile may have seemed a little forced. the tuscon real estate market had crashed and gary's bottom took hit after hit. investigators learned that in 1994, saddled with more than $26 million in debt, triano filed for bankruptcy. gary triano also owed two vegas casinos more than $60,000. by the time he died, the man who had become rich developing thousands of acres o land in tuscon was all but dried up.

>> here's a man who made millions and lost th as well, died with 22 cents in his pocket. >> reporter: authorities discovered that gary was involved in more than 70 civil suits and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of investors' money on two casino bids in china and the caribbean that didn't pan out. >> he was a well-to-do businessman in tuscon who had fallen upon some bad luck and made bad choices and in many case, there were times when he was not very well-liked by some of the people that he did business with. when you're talking about multimillion-dollar ventures and somebody loses a great deal of money, sometimes that requires a retaliation that might take someone's life. >> reporter: detectives track down an investor who had lost money in gary's casino deals. >> he'd gone to this individual and the guy said, sure, i'll do this. and put venture capital forward and it disappeared and went away

and the deal fell through and money was lost. >> reporter: how much money was that? >> i believe it was in the range of $200,000. he said, i'm not going to kill somebody over that amount of money. >> reporter: authorities soon eliminat that person of interest. but just the talk of why gary might have died made his children wince. so when you heard the police were investigating this as a possible sort of organized crime hit -- >> that's crazy. >> that's crazy. my father had nothing to do with anything like that. >> reporter: police were now also looking at those closest to gary. was gary's fate guided by the stars or was it a cruel blow by a familiar hand? coming up, a complex web of former lovers and ex-wives, including a very bitter astrologier. >> he said, well, she's so in love with a manoo m m h a lotf money. and i no longer have the money. >> reporter: when "dateline" continues.

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tuscon, arizona, a vital part of the booming sunbelt with a trace of the iconic wild west. just an hour north of the mexican border, tuscon drew outlaws and rough-riders well into the late 20th century. reporter lupita murillo describes it as a place where mobsters come to retire. >> tuscon, for many years, was the home of the bonanno family. also it was home to a lot of reputed mafia bosses. but tuscon was always the safe place for everybody to be. for some reason in the mob world, this was neutral. >> reporter: gary triano's spectacular death by car bomb in 1996 shook that perception, for a while. >> i aukd to a couple of people

who are involved in that kind of business. and they didn't think so. they didn't think it was a mob hit. >> reporter: police came to the same conclusion. and now instead of focusing on gary triano's business ties, they started looking at his intimate business. how, sort of, complex and tangled were his personal relationships? >> to say it was complicated was probably a little bit of an understatement because there was some things we had to work through. >> reporter: gary, who had been divorced twice, had five children with three different women. heather and brian triano were children from gary's first marriage. and there was pam phillips, gary's second wife, with whom he had two children. after pam, there was robin gardner. she and gary dated for a year and had a daughter together. but they had broken up months before gary was killed. the police came knocking on her door. the detectives wouldn't have been doing their job if they

didn't ask you, who would want to kill gary? >> i had no idea. things like that happen in the movies. things like this don't happen to a friend. things like this don't happen to the father of your child. >> reporter: pima county investigators dismissed robin as a person of interest. but some things they heard made them ask questions about gary's second ex-wife. pam phillips. >> she was now living in aspen, colorado. we realized the relationship wasn't the best and the divorce was a little sticky over money issues, primarily. . >> reporter: it seemed like a good match back in 1986, an expensive black-tie wedding on a yacht at sunset off the coast of san diego. at the time, the couple made a very pretty picture. they did look happy and at least one of them was. >> i know gary was mad abou her. i was positive that he was madly in love with her. >> reporter: it was love for the real estate developer and the real estate agent turned astrologer.

it's hard to believe pam didn't know that her beloved astrology foretells trouble in the matching of an aries woman and a scorpio man. but at the time, they seemed compatible. according to the wedding photographer, a friend of gary's named davies bean. >> they looked like they really did love each other and cared about each other. >> reporter: at first, brian and heather, gary's kids from his first marriage, were less than thrilled about their father remarrying. but that soon changed. >> when we saw them together, they were happy and he seemed happy. >> singing love songs. >> happy birthday, marty. how did milyn do it? how did marilyn do it? >> reporter: gary and pam had their honeymoon years. gary had plenty of money then, and he helped pam launch an astrology website, starbabies.com. a business she started after

their children, trevor and lois, were born. >> what did you say, tre,v? cow? . >> reporter: heather and brian said those babies brugt braugt them closer to their new stepmother? >> we grew to like her, then love her as a stomach and mother of our brother and sister. >> she was great. she was very sweet. and also being a girl, she'd help me fix my hair or get some clothes or purses, shoe, things like that. girly stuff. >> reporter: but by the early '80s, tuscon's image as a boom town started to fade, and with it, gary and pam's marriage. they were done after just seven years. . >> and i asked, what happened? and he said, well, she fell in love with a man that had a lot of money, and i no longer have the money that i had when she

fell in love with me. >> reporter: in other words, maybe pam's life wasn't ruled by astrology. maybe what she really cared about was the sun, the moon -- and the stores. gary and pam fought over property, over custody and mostly over money. things changed dramatically after gary and then girlfriend robin came back from a vacation to mexico. >> when we came back into town, gary was really upset to know that pam and the children had left tuscon and had moved to aspen. >> reporter: without telling him? >> from what i understand, without telling him. he was very upset. >> reporter: gary started commuting to aspen, often piloting his own plane over the rockies so he could see his children. >> he flew as often as he could to aspen. i know that when the children were here, he stayed with them the whole weekend. >> reporter: those trips became

strained as gary and pam quarrelled over visitation and child support payments. but bitter divorces are not pl pmaeeoho w eysuepeopled w had mssoney with gary triano.s and certainly pam didn't seem ke a bomb-maker, which left investigators right back where they started. who wanted to kill gary? coming up, turned out there was someone else and clues found in an abandoned car. >> i found a map of the tuscon arana d then dnhe list a sawed-off shotgun. >> reporter: when "star-crossed" continues. applebee's 2 for $20!

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aspen, colorado, a winter playground for the rich and famous. on november 1st, 1996, pam phillips was living here with her two children, gary's children, 9-year-old trevor and 6-year-old lois. the aspen air was cold and crisp that day when news came of her ex-husband's bombing death. one of those reports caught the

eye of an aspen police detective named jim crowley. >> the blast killed 52-year-old gary triano, a prominent tuscon businessman. >> reporter: gary triano, it was a name crowley had seen before in a fraud investigation involving a man named ron young. and who brought young to crowley's attention? none other than pam phillips, gary's ex-wife. the connection was the website, starbabies.com. pam hired her then neighbor ron young has the business manager for the site. but it wasn't long before pam accused ron of skimming money from starbabies. she went to detective youty. did she have a case? >> we don't know because she never came back and she refuse today answer my calls after that. >> reporter: so she originally came to you and made a complaint and then -- >> backed off, yes. >> reporter: and never told you why? >> no. >> reporter: and that struck him as strange, until the detective

discovered ron young was her boyfriend. pam denied this, but police found evidence to the contrary. love letters and notes from pam were found in ron young's aspen apartment. in the meantime, two other businesses had complained about ron young, and crowley soon had enough evidence to arrest him on fraud charges. as far as you could tell, he'd stolen how much money? >> between $80,000 and $120,000. >> reporter: but ron young must have read his horoscope. the day his arrest warrant was issued, it read, you don't get much sympathy if you try to blame someone else for your mistake. he skipped down in a rented minivan. that van was found in southern california in october of 1996. ron young himself was nowhere to be seen. but he left a lot of things inside that minivan that he probably should have thrown out. >> during my search, i found a map of the tuscon area and a

note in the car that was kind of like a laundry list, buy toothpaste and further down the list was sawedoff shotgun. >> reporter: when police found a shotgun and a taser in the car, it made detective crowley matha collar crime might possibly be armed. and investigats found something else peculiar. divorce documents dissolving the marriage of pamela phillips and gary triano. and at the time, the name gary triano meant what to you? >> nothing. >> reporter: nothing a month later when crowley heard about gary triano's murder in tuscon. watching the news, the detective's instincts kicked in. >> i was aware that gary was pam's ex-husband and that pam had a real relationship with ron young and ron young fled the area. that's what rocky mountains prompted me to call tuscon. >> reporter: investigators were beginning to raise nair

eyebrows. >> we also learned there was an insurance policy, a $2 million insurance policy that was to be paid upon his death to his children with his wife -- former wife, pamela phillips, being the beneficiary. >> reporter: seems plausible an ex-wife would want to maintain a life insurance policy for the kids that she had with her ex-husband? >> correct. and again, that's the way we looked at it, too. >> reporter: but according to reporter, lupita murillo, the rue morris going around the tuscon all revolved around pam phillips. >> she wanted more money and she was a socialite in aspen and wanted to keep up with the joness, so to speak. >> reporter: but gary's ex-wife, robin gardner, could not imagine that pam had anything to do with gary's murder despite their bitter split. it was an unpleasant divorce but -- >> it was an unpleasant divorce -- >> reporter: but there's a lot of ground between that and murder. >> not only murder, but such a

violent murder, such a violent murder. i don't think me, gary, any of his other friends, family, would have ever envisioned something like this happening. >> reporter: but maybe gary did suspect something. he talked about it to his friends, the janoffs. >> the day before he was killed, he and i were having drinks and he was very nervous, uneasy. >> reporter: did he say why? >> he said he was very nervous about going to get his children. he felt uneasy about the relationships that were there with pam. >> reporter: relationships meaning the relationship he had with pam or the relationship pam had with somebody else? >> that pam had with somebody else. >> reporter: the janoffs also told investigators that gary felt as if he were under surveillance. >> he reported to his friends that he thought he might be being followed or someone was looking at him or following him.

>> reporter: of course it could have been anyone following gary a bill collector or someone serving him court papers. but investigators also learned something else -- gary had tried to cancel his $2 million life insurance policy that named pam phillips the beneficiary. >> he knew this policy was out here. he knew his relationship with pam was not good and he wanted to have her name taken off the policy br are you the insurance policy had pam's name on it as the owner. gary could not change it without her consent. and to the investigators, the insurance policy supply add motive. >> i truly believe that pam phillips was in this for the money. this was $2 million cash that was like -- just sitting out erthe. she wasn't making as much money as she had before. and all of a sudden she's looking at this $2 million there and all she has to do is dip into it. >> reporter: pam phillips, ron young, gary triano -- money and a homemade bomb. it sounded like something from a soap opera, but investigators

believed it was a formula for murder. >> i think we had a pretty good idea what was going on. >> reporter: and that was what gary's friends had been telling lupita murillo all along. >> from the get-go, everyone that i spoke with, everyon said, they need to be looking at pam phillips. she had a $2 million policy and she was named as beneficiary. >> reporter: so gold-digger wife, plus insurance policy, equals suspect? >> there you go. >> reporter: this was all more than rumors now. authorities constructed this theory. pam phillips hired ron young to kill her ex-husband for the $2 million insurance money. and ron young had gone to tuscon and placed the lethal bomb in gary triano's car. but ron young was in the wind. without him, there was suspicion but little evidence. and so the triano investigation languished for almost ten years.

>> we all know if a homicide case isn't solved within 24, 48 hours, the hours tick by, months go by, years go by, the chance of solving the case almost becomes zero. the nice thing about a homicide case, they never go away. >> reporter: and gary's case would come back in a big way with a tip from 1,000 miles away. coming up, thehrbre. eaktghou police have been waiting for. >> didl oughil kgary triano, sir? did you place that bomb? >> reporter: when "dateline" continues. with decadent chocolate and whipped cream... sweeping sweetness into my soul, i'm ready to spice things up. iced cold or steamy hot, i feel ready to take it all on. my mafé is about setting aside the past... and making room for the new. new sensations. i'm all about 'em. ♪ ba da ba ba ba ask the experts.

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a decade has passed and still no one had been charged with the murder of businessman

gary triano. for years, investigators suspected that gary's ex-wife, pam phillips and someone they believed was her lover, ron young, were involved in gary's death. but they had little proof. young was underground, a fugitive on the run from fraud charges while pam was thriving in aspen, colorado. after gary's death, pam collected the $2 million in insurance money. not long after that, she bought a million-dollar home in this exclusive area. she had the house renovated. her deck was featured in the glossy "aspen sojourner" magazine. >> she was kind of nouveau in the '90s. >> reporter: jay cowan is the magazine's editor. he says that pam was on a fasttrack up the aspen social ladder. >> she certainly didn't arrive here as a trust funder or a

business mogul or a hollywood star. i think maybe she was attracted by it. >> reporter: pam was dabbling in aspen real estate and trying to make starbabies.com a success. to help with the site, she invited heather triano to come live with her in aspen. >> it was a company my father purchased for her when they were married. so i felt like, oh, this is great. this is something my father started. i'll come and restart it because it wasn't developed. >> reporter: in the time that heher lived with pam, she took care of her younger half siblings but never once had a discussion with pam about gary's unsolved murder. >> we didn't talk about it. >> reporter: she was basically a member of your family, at least for a while, and clearly felt very close to the two of you. and she never once ersd,saie' what i think happened? >> no, i don't think so. >> no. >> reporter: through the years, heather and brian maintained their relationship with pam, even as they had families of their own.

>> she was at my wedding. >> she was at my wedding. we were friends. >> reporter: it all started to unspool in 2005. the television show "america's most wanted" featured gary triano's case, naming pam phillips and fugitive ron young as suspects. >> if you've seen them, please call the hotline right now. >> reporter: and a tip came in from florida about ron young. >> he was given up by his chiropractor who told the ft. lauderdale police department when he was going to be coming in for his next appointment. >> behind your back! what's your name? >> ron young. >> reporter: betrayed by a bad back, ron was arrested on the ol charges of fraud plus illegal possession of a handgun. he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in prison. detectives didn't have enough to charge young with the murder of gary triano. but his capture was the break they had been waiting for.

>> what came from that arrest is what moved this case along. and it was really because of the information and the evidence that he kept. >> reporter: inside ron young's apartment and storage locker, investigators found a computer with saved e-mails, fedex tracking numbers from aspen and a stash of audiotaped conversations young had with pam phillips, conversations young had secretly recorded. >> reporter: authorities say the audio tapes captured conversations that ranged from threats to blackmail.

and there was always talk about money -- >> reporter: there's nothing on the tapes, as far as i know, that says, you hired me to kill your husband. >> right. there are points that are made on there, though, where he says, i did something for you that no one else would do, i could literally dig up some evidence and you'll spend the rest of your time in a women's prison for murder. >> reporter: according to police, these conversations were recorded during the time ron young was a fugitive from

justice -- that, and the material stored in his computer was enough for authorities to take this to the next step. >> from what i understand, he kept meticulous records. all of it led to pamela phillips. >> reporter: in september 2006, pam's horoscope read -- new problems appear. and sure enough, detectives showed up at her aspen home with a search warrant. after seizing computers, bank statements and other documents, investigators were convinced they had the evidence that pam phillips had hired ron young to kill her ex-husband, gary triano. but remarkably, it would take another two years before the d.a.'s office would finally announce charges against the two. ron young, who was out of prison after serving a year on fraud charges, was re-arrested in california, this time for the murder of gary triano.

the day he was flown to tuscon, his horoscope read, this is a tricky period in which it becomes necessary to focus on reality. lupita murillo was there to greet him. >> so, mr. young, how does it feel tbe back in tuscon, sir? >> well, not too good. i'd rather not be. >> did you kill gary triano, sir? did you place that bomb? >> no, of course not. >> where's pamela phillips, is she your accomplice? >> reporter: where was pam phillips? ron young was about to face justice, but pam may have o outsmarted everyone. coming up, did the astrologer see what was coming? >> she committed conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. >> reporter: but will she, when "star-crossed" continues.

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did you kill gary triano, sir? did you place that bomb? >> no, of course not. >> reporter: it was october 2008, a scorpio moon was rising. to come astrologists, this new moon was about truth-telling. someone had finally been charged with the notorious 1996 car-bombing murder of gary triano, a crime that had become e of tuscon's legendary unsolved mysteries. but it turned out, organized crime wasn't involved. instead, investigators believed in a motive almost as old as the stigs of marriage. pam phillips was accused of hiring ron young to kill her ex-husband for the sinz pn money. it was a case that took authorities a decade to put

together. >> this case was complicated. we knew this was not going to be a smoking gun case with fingerprints and dna. this was going to be made with phone call, the e-mail, the fedex tracking numbers. it was clearla circumstantial case. that takes a lot of time. >> reporter: and their evidence came from ron young, who, it turns out, was both a packrat and a meticulous businessman. stored in his compuer were records of transactions between him and pam phillips. >> he kept a spreadsheet, if you will, of what she's paid him, how much she paid him. >> reporter: and based on young's records, investigators say it was a financial relationship that had lasted for years. and it all added up. the cash pam doled out via fedex to ron young totaled $400,000. if you're a criminal, why hang on to information that helps convict you? how much o this case was made

by the fact that mr. young was one of these people that never threw anything away, and in fact, deliberately hung on to information that helped incriminate him? >> he was looking at this as not only, okay, the guy's murder and i was associated with it and did that, but i'm also a businessman. >> reporter: that's what ended up making the case against him? >> absolutely. >> reporter: and the case against pam phillips. br gary triano's children, heather and brian, it was almost impossible to believe that their former stepmother, the woman who attended both their weddings, could be responsible for their father's murder. >> i was her friend. i lived with her, so, no, i didn't think she was a suspect at all. >> reporter: then they read the search warrant affidavit which detailed the audiotaped conversations.

>> it's at that point that we realized something was wrong, that the whole thing wasn't right. >> reporter: what was it like for you to read that this woman who had been your stepmother and later your friend -- >> yeah, very good friend. >> reporter: was implicated in your part's murder? >> i wanted to throw up. ye yeah, it's a really hard thing to think, a horrible thing to think. >> reporter: but while ron young sits in a tuscon jail, pam phillips is in a much better place. pam didn't wait for the authorities to act. it turns out she left the united states just a month before charges were filed. how could she not be in custody? this is not some hardened criminal? >> it's certainly not. we want her to surrender. we have a conspiracy to commit first-degree murder warrant for her so she needs to surrender herself. we believe she's in switzerland. >> reporter: and in fact, she is. last february, "dateline" found

pam phillips living in the lap of luxury in the lakeside town of lugano where her daughter attends college. the area is known as switzerland's version of monte carlo. pam and her attorneys declined "dateline's" request for an interview. but we discovered that she lives in a $5,000 a month apartment, and she seems to have found a new friend. a well-healed widower with whom she often dines, overlooking the lake at this five-star hotel. pima county prosecutors have begun the extradition process. but it could take years for the u.s. government to peel pam away from the comfort of switzerland. do you think she's going to return to the united states voluntarily? >> i'm not convinced of that. >> reporter: ron young pleaded not guilty to murder charges. his trial is set for february 2010. pam was charged with

first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. but the possibility of justice in their father's case is of no comfort to heather and brian. if this thing ends with pam being convicted, is that for the two of you like -- is that pretty much the worst way this could have come out? >> yeah. >> yeah. >> yeah, of course. >> we don't want someone we know and cared about to be a murderer, if that's the case. that's horrible. >> yeah. my brother and sister won't have even a mother or a father. that's horrible. >> reporter: have either of you spoken with pam? >> no. >> no. >> reporter: gary triano's loved ones are left with their sorrow and their memories. robin gardner was gary's girlfriend. they had a daughter together who is now 12. >> i am sad that my daughter is

never going to get to meet him. my daughter isn't going to be educated in the manner of life, if you will, the way she would have been if gary were still alive. >> he's dead. it never goes away. i know my father will never see my daughter. i know every time my daughter sees a picture of my father, she thinks it's me. and i have to explain, no, that's daddy's daddy. i miss him, he was a good guy, it would have been a great grandfather. >> he would have been an amazing grandfather. >> reporter: pam phillips believed that the answers to a happy, successful life could be found in the stars. and she might be right. her ex-husband is dead. the insurance money is hers. ron young is facing a murder

trial, and pam is living in switzerland. on the day we saw her, her horoscope read, the frustrations and challenges that must be met are not likely to have a dynamic impact on your personal life. >> and there was more of those audiotaped conversations between pam phillips and ron young on our website. "dateline" is now also on twitter. go to twitter.com/datelinenbc for updates on the broadcast and proves for upcoming programs. i'm ann curry. and for all of us here at nbc i'm ann curry. and for all of us here at nbc news, good night. -- captions by i have clies say to me, "all you insurance companies are... "you know, all you do is you take my money. "and then, when i have an accident there's a problem." jackie walker, nationwide insurance nationwide does offer what's called