a "dateline" exclusive. >> i walked in the bathroom am i knew something wasn't right. >> he's the young husband at the center of a sensational mystery. married just four months to his sweetheart bride. >> she was gorgeous. >> one night he says he was watching the game, she was taking a bath. and then -- >> 911. what's your emergency? >> my wife fell asleep in the bathtub i think. i was downstairs. >> his new wife dead. >> did she have an aneurism? did she have a seizure? >> a sudden, unexplained drowning, except for one strange

thing. her body was dry. >> if you pull someone straight out of the water, the body is wet. the story doesn't fit. >> accident or murder? her husband was charged but was there proof. you think they fabricated this. >> i know they did. >> he tells his story in his first interview ever. >> did you kill your wife? three years, three trials and way too many twists to count. >> do you love ryan? >> i love him, yeah. >> "the bathtub mystery." good evening. welcome to "dateline." i'm ann curry. it is a case so controversial it brought people from a quiet community out to the streets in protest. it centers on a pair of newlys weds who had just settled into a new life together but what began at a typical night at home ended in a heartbreaking mystery. now the husband in the middle of this case is speaking to "dateline" in his first and only

tv interview. here's dennis murphy with a "dateline" xmrus oif. >> sometimes the curtains are drawn early for couples. everything in life was still fresh, even at home on your average monday night. after his workday as a sports planner, ryan said he plopped down on the sofa an august night to chill with the bengals' preseason opener against green bay. sara, he says, went upstairs to draw a bath in the master. she liked her calming baths. the young dental hygienist had been torn with headaches that afternoon. the couple in the suburban cincinnati home that evening had been married 114 days, just under four moz. they vowed 'til death do us part, that moment was only minutes away from arriving. they'd begun, the two of them,

with a blind date at a pub that worked out. sarah, sarah stewart, had been fixed up by her friend dana kist. dana had an ink mring that sara would really hit it off with her husband chris' former college roommate, ryan. >> i came home and said, sara is amazing. i think their personalities would really get along. he said, let's let them goo to dinner and see what happens. >> what happened was chemistry. laid-back ryan, the college football player, super organized sara who needed everything just so talked about getting together again. >> she said, let me check my book. so she gets out her little black bei book. she's looking through and he's look over. he said later, there was nothing written in her little black book. it was a fast-track courtship and before very long ryan was bringing his girlfriend home to meet his mom jill. >> i liked her a lot. probably the number one thing that struck me the most is how beyond her years in maturity she

was. >> poised, huh? >> yeah. and sara didn't have a problem telling anyone anything. if you made sara made, you knew it. >> as for ryan, he never seemed to lose it. >> i don't think i'd ever seen him upset. he doesn't get mad. >> he's so laid-back and easy going, go with the flow. she's so on it, organized. this is where we have to be, and he just says okay. >> jill widmer enjoyed her days with ryan and his new girlfriend sara. >> our family does a lot of picnics, barbecues and things like that. we spent a lot of time on a lake in kentucky. they could come down there. >> were you pleased she was becoming a part of the family? >> i was very pleased, yes. >> the inseparable couple bought a house together in a good neighborhood and ryan surprised sara with an engagement ring. >> a ring if a dog collar. >> a ring around a dog's collar. >> she was very excited. he was very excited. sara made him happy. >> and soon the wedding invitations were in the mail.

the bridesmaids knew they better snap to. >> she's a planner so she had everything ready to go. she wanted to make sure the girls all wore the same makeup, bought us all the same makeup kits. >> how's ryan doing? >> just happier than i've ever seen him, with her. >> he bought sarah a big-screen tv for the wedding. >> i was amazed. >> dance lessons? >> she could get him to do things than any woman he had ever dated. >> the wedding in april 2008 was a formal affair. the bride was beautiful. ryan's dance came off without a hitch. and the happy bridesmaids all matched just as sarah wanted. >> very beautiful. i mean, every detail was mrned, obviously, to a "t" because it was sarah. and she was gorgeous. >> it was awesome. >> probably the most fun wedding we had ever been to, ever.

>> the newlyweds went to costa rica for their honorly moon and had a great time, then back to cincinnati to begin their journey together as mr. and mrs. ryan widmer. >> they worked really hard, built a beautiful deck on their house, they had a trip planned to cancun. they had everything to live for. >> so august 11th should have just been another day to live for. >> august 11th, monday night, ryan remembers being downstairs watching "monday night football." sarah had gone upstairs to her bath. she was in trouble. >> 911. what's your emergency? >> my wife, she fell asleep in the bathtub i think. i was downstairs. i just came up here and she was laying facedown in the bathtub. >> i got a call from ryan, something's happened to sarah. >> the emts were rushing sarah to the hospital. by then they had worked on her for 45 minutes but hadn't gotten a response. minutes later, jill widmer was with her son waiting anxiously together in a room off

emergency. >> finally, a woman came in and then we said, is she gone? and she said, yes. he just dropped down to his knees and was just bawling and sobbing, you know, into the chair. >> sarah widmer, 24 years old, the bride of less than four months, was dead. her husband ryan told the emergency services people he thought she had fallen asleep in the bathtub and drowned. but those emts doing cpr, trying everything to do to save her didn't understand one crucial observation they made at the home that night. there's something here that doesn't look right. >> i expected something to be wetment there's a towel on the floor, mat on the floor, but everything's perfectly dry. >> a drowning in a dry bathroom? the questions deepen. when "the bathtub mystery" continues.

that monday night, the cincinnati bengals were looking more than decent against green bay. folks around town like jeff braillely wondered if this could be a miracle season for the back-then hapless local franchise of the nfl. but braillely didn't get to see all the game. he's a cop, a detective, and you don't get to pick the downtime. >> i get a call, lieutenant, we're out on a drowning. the paramedics are working on

her, but something's not right. >> as he rolled to the house that night, he knew something to what to expectment when you're a cop for more than a decade, you get familiar with the saigns of the grownings, like the froth around the victim's mouth. >> your mind runs with possibilities. they initially tell me they had a 24-year-old drowning victim that drown in the tub. i'm looking for evidence of an overdose or drugs or something. >> as he pulled up being, the victim was already loaded in the back of the ambulance. the arriving police officer was still inside the house, and he gave the detective a fill on what he had found when he was led to the master bedroom where the 24-year-old woman lay on the carpet off the bath. >> he felt for a pulse. he assisted with cpr on what he described as a completely dry body with her hair being only damp. >> wet head, dry body. >> that's correct. >> for someone who drowned in a bathtub.

>> go ahead and get her out of the bathtub and get her on a flat surface. >> okay. >> the dispatcher was clear, get his wife out of the bathtub and put her on the floor. >> i'm -- i'm dropping the phone. >> the husband went away and came back to the line saying he moved his wife fub to the bedroom. >> okay. go ahead and get back to cpr. they'll be there in a little bit, okay? >> detective wondered along with the arriving officers why a woman who drowned in a bathtub would be mostly dry. he needed to see the scene. what story would it tell him? >> so i start mentally preparing myself based on what they tell me, what do i want to see versus what i see. >> he headed for the master bathroom. >> i expected there to be water on the floor or towels or whatever it might be. it's simply not there. >> dry, dry. >> there's a very small remnant of water, droplets on the bottom of the tub right around the drain. other than that, there's nothing. >> you got any bath mats, wet towels on the floor, that kind

of thing? >> there's a mat on the floor, towel on the floor but everything is perfectly dry. >> he not only had a drowning victim who didn't appear to be wet, someone who supposedly fell asleep in the tub facedown in the water but a bathroom itself that was both dry and undisturbed, even though presumably the husband had to wrangle her limp body out of the tub as he moved her to the bedroom. >> do you know whether it's lotion, soap whatever on the side, they weren't knocked off. that bothered me. if you're pulling somebody very quickly out of the tub that that's still together. >> the detective making mental notes. something was screaming to me, something really, really bad has happen happened here, and more than just a tragic accident where she drowned. >> the forensic techs were taking photos, cutting out sections of the carpet. what they wondered, was there another explanation for the stains? >> we wanted to get those things to our lab right away to start

checking out some things. >> even though it was early hours in an incident, so much would depend on the findings of an autopsy, the detective knew that this was not a case that was going to be closed out that night. >> when i left the house at 2:00 a.m., i knew i had a suspicious death. >> still, there were questions. how long had sarah been out of the tub and had she been out of the tub long enough for her body to air-dry? >> it wasn't possible. you know, if you're pulling somebody directly out of the tub of water, the body has to be wet. unless a substantial amount of time has passed or we're not being told an accurate story of what actually transpired. >> question -- was it possible for ryan to lift sarah out of the tub without knocking over those bottles that the detective noted were undisturbed? was it possible for water not to be splashed around as she was moved to the bedroom? and the overriding question, what had happened to the young wife in the master bedroom? >> we knew she had drowned, just from the scene itself, it was

the manner in which she drowned that raised all the questions. >> but the detective would have the most questions for the seemingly happily married husband. was there possible there was stress in the marriage no one knew about? >> i had to rely on the fact in the back of my mind that nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. coming up -- >> did she have an aneurism, a seizure. >> was there something medical behind this? >> she was explaining of headaches. i said, how long has it been since you've been to the doctor? promise me low prices.

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sarah widmer had died of drowning in her home and her body would be examined by the county coroner. there was nothing for ryan, her husband of four months, to do but leave the hospital and head home. his mother, jill widmer, took him back to the houses in the wee hours. >> ryan asked me, mom, i can't go back in there. can you go in and grab some clothes for me? so i went upstairs and when i got upstairs to their bedroom there were a couple of pieces carpet cut out of their carpeting which i thought was odd. >> it hadn't occurred to mother or son that the authorities were already looking at sarah's death at anything but a tragic, explainable incident of some sort. >> there were a million questions in our mind, did she have an aneurism, you know, did something medically happen to

her? did she have a seizure? >> daylight and word was spreading that sarah was gone. dana and chris, the couple who had fixed the newlyweds up, could not believe what they were hearing. >> we had just gotten back from a trip, and i told her that i would call her as soon as i got back so we could get together for dinner and i didn't even get a chance to do that. >> shocking news to say the least. shocking news. >> dana, a nurse, tried to make some sense out of what had happened to her dear friend. she thought back to her last conversations with sarah. >> she was complaining of headaches. she would call and say, what do you think from a medical background? and i said, maybe you should get your blood pressure checked. i just said, you basically need a checkup. how long has it been since you've been to the doctor? >> then there was that funny trait sarah used to kid her about, the way she'd fall asleep at the drop of a hat. maybe that wasn't so funny. maybe it was part of an already underlying condition that explained her death. her mother-in-law noticed it

when she first got to know her. it was christmas 2007 and jill was taking home videos. >> all of a sudden, i panned over, there's sarah having a good time at the family christmas, and sarah was sound asleep in a chair in my family room. we were 15 or 20 people in the room, all laughing, talking, kids running around, and she could just go to sleep. >> sarah, asleep at the dinner table, snoozing in the car. friend kidded her about it. >> she would always fall asleep in the beginning of movies. he would be nudging her the whole time, sarah, wake up and watch the movie. >> was it so noticeable that you guys joked about it? >> we'd joke about it, even at the dinner table, sarah, don't fall asleep. >> i would say, sarah, you have nark lepcy. she would say, no, i don't. i'm just tired all the time. >> did she fall asleep and drown in the tub? was that even possible to do? ryan seemed to think so, he said as much to the 911 dispatcher. >> my wife fell asleep in the tub and i think she's dead.

>> all the talk of sarah with headaches, being sleepy, was anecdotal. the medical examiner would have the real results about sarah's death. >> what was he finding? >> no evidence of a stroke, no evidence of a heart attack. >> but the medical examiner had discovered something else, bruising to sarah's head and neck. what had caused those injury? the investigators checked off what they had so far. a young woman supposedly drowned in a bathtub with a damp head of hair and a dry body. didn't figure. >> if you're pulling somebody directly out of the tub of water, the body has to be wet. no other way around it. >> a victim with unexplained bruises and a husband whose story they didn't believe about a ho-hum monday night watching football, then finding his wife dead in the bath. >> ryan's story, it doesn't fit. it doesn't fit at all. we determined at that point we had a homicide. >> sarah widmer murdered, and the authorities believed her husband ryan did it. >> how shocking is that to you?

>> oh, i can't even tell you. >> when she charge ryan with murder. >> you've got to be kidding me. like why would they say -- why? i can't even tell you what that was like so, on top of losing this beautiful member of our family, he didn't even get a chance to grieve because now we're scared to death and he's scared to death that he's going to be charged with murder. >> and that is exactly what would happen. just two days after his new bride's death, a warntd was issued for ryan widmer's death. >> by ryan's only admission, he was the only one in the house. so ryan murdered sarah or i he's covering for somebody that did. >> it didn't seem possible at first glance, a clean-cut kunl, him without a criminal record, them with no history of problems, arguments. where was the motive for murder on a monday night? >> any boyfriend/girlfriend issues here? >> there was no evidence to

point to a girlfriend/boyfriend issue. >> money trouble? >> not that we could find. >> did you find any anger issues in the guy? >> no, no. >> really not getting a negative picture of this couple. >> no, we're not. >> as unlikely as it may have seemed, police said there was no other explanation for sarah's death. ryan widmer was charged with his wife's murder. >> this is the state of ohio versus ryan k. widmer. >> his family and friends were devastated. >> ryan and i were both so brokenhearted. i could not have ever conceived, nor could ryan, that they would have had any idea that he would have been the person to hurt her and that it wasn't just a tragic accident. >> just broke my heart. i mean, just knowing that he was feeling that grief and fear for his own life, too. >> is there any moment when you think, maybe there was -- >> never. >> no way. >> this santa ana of something awful happening? >> never. i've never even seen him when he was remotely angry. >> even sarah's family was

behind ryan, so much so the two families decided to delay sarah's funeral until ryan was out on bond. >> sarah's family, they were very livid about the fact that he wasn't guilty, and they were not going to go forward with the service until ryan could be there. >> the families are both on the same page here. >> yes. >> that you're four-square behind ryan and you're not even going to grieve together formally until he is there with you. >> right. >> the dead woman's brother, mike stewart, asked the judge to lower ryan's bond amount so he could attend the funeral. >> in our heart of hearts, we don't believe ryan did this. >> but eight days would pass before the judge lowered ryan's bond from $1 million to $400,000. but, by then, it was too late. the funeral had already been held so out-of-town relatives could return home. >> it was a nice ceremony. her brother got up and said a few nice words. i know that ryan wrote a letter that was read during the service. the minister that did their

wedding did her funeral as well. >> chris and dana grieved for sarah but also tried to comfort a shattered ryan. >> and i remember him telling me, dana, i love her so much. >> ryan was so distraught he felt he couldn't go back to the home he had bought with sarah. so while he waited for his trial date, he moved in with his mother. >> it was great to have him staying with me, but -- >> there's only one topic in the house hold, huh? >> well, there's two. one was continuing to talk about how much we missed sarah, trying to grieve for her, but at the same time this young man who lost the love of his life is trying to grieve for his wife and he's got a murder charge hanging over his head that he might go to prison the rest of his life. >> ryan widmer wondered, why couldn't everyone just see that he loved his wife and she died a death that perhaps even a medical examiner could never satisfactorily explain but that it wasn't murder? coming up -- the case goes to court, and out comes the evidence. >> it would be virtually

impossible for somebody to fall asleep and not wake up. and later -- ryan widmer's first television interview. >> so you think they wanted to make a kaips here. >> why would they arrest me a day later if they didn't want to make a case?

sarah was wonderful, the most loving person. she was just a great person. >> sarah widmer had been a daughter, a wife, a loyal friend in her brief life. but in death, to those who would never know her, she had become simply the victim. and the case could be summarized as breezily as the title of a true crime paperback, the bathtub murder. on talk radio, host bill cunningham could feel the court of public opinion responding to the story. the path tub murder case had the phones ringing. >> the idea that such a young man could be watching a bengals game and within a few seconds turn from a bengals fan, long-suffering, to a murderer, was a little bit shocking. >> for months, listeners debated whether the husband could have done it. >> i had a large number of callers who said to me, he didn't do it. he doesn't fit the profile.

there's no history. and he said to them, wait a minute. wait until the trial takes place. i'm led to believe that there's going to be clear and convincing evidence. >> seven months after sarah's death, the only jury that mat r mattered was sworn in to hear the case against 28-year-old ryan widmer, a charge of aggravated murder. the couple's friends were sticking by him. >> basically, his life hangs in the balance of 12 jurors. >> it's i scary thought. >> very scary. >> in the courtroom, sarah's family sat across the room from ryan's, much as they had the previous year in the fairy wedding earlier. now sarah's family's support for him had eroded. for ryan's mom, just another unexpected twist in a situation that seemed to get stranger by the minute. her son on trial for murder. >> i see my scared baby, that's what i see. i mean, he was scared to death. >> but the prosecution's message for the jury was blunt. there had been a violent confrontation in the widmer house that night.

>> ryan widmer purposely killed sarah stewart widmer and murdered her by drowning. >> the prosecutors began with the first moments of the case, ryan's call to 911. >> my wife, she fell asleep? the bathtub, i think. i just came up here and she was laying face down in the bathtub. >> on the phone, the emergency dispatch testified that the voice on the phone that night was giving more details than normal. >> it seemed that the caller was rather calm. usually i get anything out of them. >> she's in the bathtub? sh yes. the water is draining right now. i was downstairs watching tv. she falls asleep in the tub all the time. >> to the prosecutors, he was trying to place himself as far from the bathtub as he could. >> he doesn't give information about his condition.

it was important for him to say, i wasn't there and didn't have anything to do with it. >> and could sarah even be dead facedown in the bathtub? could a body contort that way. >> it seems an odd position for a person who was fallen asleep to be face down with your face near the faucet, almost bent in two. >> in terms of the possibilities of how the closed face of the bathtub is shorter than she is long. >> we're not talking about a whirlpool tub here, are we? >> right. >> and so much more of the prosecution's case was built upon the observation of the first arriving officers and emergency responders. they noted, not only was ryan not wet, this man who had lifted his wife's body out of the tub just minutes before they arrived, sarah was also mostly dry. >> i noticed that her body was dry, her hair was damp. >> and others on the scene corroborated this observation. damp head, dry body. >> things were not adding p ii. it would seem to me her body

would have been wet, the floor, carpet would have been wet. >> you're talking from the time he was taking her out of the bathtub, to the time people were there, her hair is described as damp, not wetment the. floor's not wet. >> and the officer noticed something else. the victim's fingers and toes, we all know what happens to them when they've been soaking in a bathtub. >> it was my understanding that she had been in the water for 20 to 30 minutes. and i would have thought that her fingers would have been pruned up, her toes would have been pruned up. >> did you see any indication of that? >> no. >> from simple observations, the murder case had grown. the jury was being told that ryan widmer's story didn't jive with what officers had taken on the scene, surrounding tiles and the bathtub that should have been soaking wet but weren't. that implicitly raised a question for the jury. is it possible that this young woman who drowned had never been in the tub in the first place?

>> bottom line is, there would have been water everywhere. if there wasn't, it was cleaned up. if there ways cleanup, there was something to hide. and that was hefr murder. >> an expert witness for the prosecution spoke to the issue of whether a person can actually fall asleep and drown in a bathtub. her testimony was, no, that can't happen. >> it would be virtually impossible for somebody, without the influence of drugs or alcohol or something external, to fall asleep and not wake up. so, first, the sensation of water on your face would wake you up, two, it would be the gag reflex, water entering your airway, just choking, then, three, if for some reason that didn't, the drop in oxygen would actually cause you to stimulate and wake up. >> but maybe sarah hadn't fallen asleep. perhaps she had suffered a catastrophic but perfectly natural event, something to her heart, her brain. the coroner didn't find that. >> any evidence of heart problems? >> no.

>> any evidence of brain injury or seizure? >> no. >> one of the amazing things about sarah widmer is she had regular medical care. for a person her age she went twice in two eyears for a regulr physical. this is not a person who didn't have the opportunity to interact with her medical professionals. >> and to the coroner, the bruising he saw on sarah's neck and scalp while performing the autopsy looked ominous. the wounds too significant and not in the right spot to have been caused by emts' lifesaving efforts. >> but the things that were the most disconcerting were the three bruises which were able to be seen on the right side of the scalp, another faint bruise on her forehead. she's got this significant degree of neck hemorrhage. she's undergone significant cpr. however, there is no hemorrhage anywhere in the area of the chest so it's difficult to try to rationalize that the hemorrhage in her neck could be the result of cpr. >> as the coroner saw it, the

significant becausing on sarah's neck was caused by ryan's forceful drowning of her. >> do you have an opinion as to the manner of sarah's death? >> yes. the manner of death was homicide. >> and that took prosecutors into the realm of speculation. what had happened in the bedroom that night if sarah hadn't drowned by herself in the bathtub? this forensic pathologist had one scenario explaining a damp head but dry body. >> her head was pushed over the edge of either the bathtub or the sink or the toilet, either forward or backwards, either in a pool of water or under running water. that's how she died. >> an expert also noted these strange prints invisible to the naked eye. he couldn't say when they were left on the tub or even that they came from sarah, but felt confident that the prints were most likely made by a small person. if ryan had forced sarah over the side of the tub, had she tried to brace herself as she was pushed into the water? >> from my experience, those

look like prints that are going down in a downward motion. >> how do you fight back? do you try to keep your head out of the water? do you put your hands against the back of the tub or put your hands on the bottom of the tub and try to lift out of the water? or do you grasp at somebody and lose your only hold on life? >> a stark image. the husband pushing his wife's head under water and holding her there until she drowned. >> this was a drowning. she had been subjected to forcibly holding her throat over some object to drown her. >> but the jury had to wonder what the motivation could be for such an awful crime. sarah's mother, who had initially supported ryan, was now testifying for the prosecution. she said that when she was out shopping with sarah her daughter seemed to feel she needed to check everything with ryan, who could see her purchases on his computer. >> she would buy something, ryan would call her as soon as she bought it sometimes, telling her, did you really need it? why did you buy it?

or something. he thought she was spending too much money. >> he was very concerned about her shopping habits. >> there were stresses, things going on in the family. >> but even the prosecutors had to acknowledge this didn't necessarily add up to a clear motive for murder. but they believed there were things happening in the little house that no one but sarah or ryan knew about. >> anybody who's been married or in a relationship knows that what goes behind the closed doors of a marriage is not always apparent to the outside. >> but was the prosecution's case too thin? too much observation-like without persuasive, hard evidence. the defense would argue passionately and ha it was and that ryan had nothing to do with his wife's sudden death. >> it didn't add up that this man of 27 years who had never even shown anger in his entire life would all of a sudden kill his wife. coming up -- ryan's side of the story.

sarah's friends take the stand. >> i know that she had fallen asleep in the bathtub before.

p. >> what was the toughest thing you had to surmount? >> that we had a lovely

24-year-old woman who was dead and no one could explain why. >> the defense wasn't going to be able to tell the jury what caused sarah widmer to drown that night, but they were going to show that ryan widmer had no reason to hurt his wife and, as far as damp hair, dry body, they'd explain that. bottom line for the defense -- >> i know one thing. ryan widmer had nothing to do with his wife's death. >> charlie ritt gerz, ryan's defense attorney, argue that his client was plagued from the get-go because of his choice of words on the 911 call. >> she's still in the bathtub? >> yes. she falls asleep all the time. >> electing to say she fell asleep sets the alarms going. >> exactly. >> in other words, if ryan had told the 911 dispatcher only that his wife was unconscious, it wouldn't have been so suspicious. >> the only thingyan 0 knows is she fell asleep in the tub.

>> he argued that the coroner had been all too quick to rule the death a homicide. >> he had no idea if she had unusual sleep habits. he had no idea she was suffering from a headache that day. >> remember, an expert witness for the prosecution had said it would have been impossible for sarah to fall asleep and die in the tub. but those who knew her sleep habits say it may have been a sign of an undiagnosed underlying medical condition. sarah's boss, the dentist, testified that her quirky sleep ha habits were well known around the office. >> she would normally grab a quick lunch and go out to the car and take a nap for 30 or 45 minutes. it was odd because people don't usually do that. >> and the dentist recalls she didn't feel well on that last day of her life. >> she had a sore throat, her stomach hurt. >> she felt bad that evening when she spoke to a friend. >> she had a headache and the back of her neck was hurting. she founded tired. she didn't sound like she felt

very good. >> sarah turning off the day and retreating to her bathtub? that sounded just like the sarah they knew. >> she would always leave our house and say she had to get home because they had to take her bath. >> and sarah dozing off in a tub is a trait a friend from childhood days was very familiar with. >> she had fallen asleep in the bathtub before. we had talked about that before because i had fallen asleep in the tub before. >> the sleeping habits, the headaches. the defense claims they could very well be the symptoms of an underlying and poe materially fatal condition that went undete undetected, something an otherwise healthry woman wouldn't take all that seriously. and even with their scientific art, argued the defense, sometimes pathologists simply cannot say why a person died. a doctor who specializes in emergency medicine testified that unexplained deaths occur far more often than many of us would guess. >> nationwide, there are approximately 300,000 episodes of sudden death per year. and of those episodes of sudden

death, 1% to 2% occur in young people. but one-third of those young people who die have normal autopsies. >> in other words, people sometimes just die and their autopsies may never reveal the cause. but the issue that might decide the case was the observation by the arriving officers and emts of damp hair and dry body. what looked suspicious was easily explainable, said the defense. hair simply stays wet longer. >> you get out of a swimming pool or bathtub, skin dries before hair. >> yes. >> the defense told the court, you have to look at the clock, the elapsed time of the incident. the defense claimed the body dried off between the dispatch call and when the officers arrived. what about the fingers and toes that should have been pruned up and weren't? no one knows what time sarah got in the tub. >> we don't know if she was primping in front of the mirror.

we don't know any of that stuff. >> by the way, you can't have it both ways with the dry bathroom theory. if ryan had killed sarah in the small bathroom, there also should have been water splashed everywhere. >> if there was a violent struggle, then there would be water on the floor, on the counter, on the walls, everywhere. and if they want to claim that it was a staged scene where he cleaned up the water, well, where's the wettowel? >> and investigators looked for wet towels in the dryer, even in the garage. nothing. and say, for argument's sake, there had been a struggle, you would think ryan would have gotten scratched up as sarah fought for her life. but ryan didn't have a mark on him. >> how would sarah have reacted if she were being attacked? >> sarah was a very spunky person and she was small in stature, probably 5'1", i think she weighed around 140 pounds. but she wasn't frail by any stretch of the imagination. she was a strong girl. >> so she would have gone for

her attacker. >> i full heartedly believe, yes. >> and sarah's french manicure was in pristine condition when the emts found her, no sign of a fight. >> there was absolutely no damage to the nails. >> she had beautiful french manicured nails. none of them were damaged at all. she didn't have skin from ryan underneath her. >> and the very notion of ryan attacking sarah is preposterous, say their friends. >> ryan is a lot like my husband chris in the aspect of, when there's an argument chris just says, okay, what can we do to fix it and let's move on? that's kind of how ryan was. >> as far as accounting to the bruising to her neck and scalp, to the defense they were certainly caused by the emts working on sarah. >> 45 minutes of resuscitation efforts, not 5, not 10. 45 minutes. >> it looked perfectly consistent, to this emergency room doctor, an expert for the defense. >> i was not surprised at the injuries at all based on the

prolonged cpr and the number of intubation attempts. >> added all up, injuries the result of lifesaving efforts, skin that may well have dried before the authorities snow shoeed up, and you are left, the defense argued, with an unexplained death, something that experts tell you happens. and jurors, the reason you didn't hear about love affair or out-of-control finances is because none of those things existed. >> motive, they don't have motive. it didn't add up that this man of 27 years who had never even shown anger in his entire life would all of a sudden kill his wife. it made no sense. i hope that you agree that ryan widmer is not guilty of any wrongdoing. >> what the prosecution would tell the jury in its closing argument, while they may never know why ryan killed his wife of only four months he nonetheless did and that the clock was ticking as he staged the scene

before he called 911. that, they said, explains the damp hair, dry body mystery. >> sarah widmer was either out of that bathtub for a longer period of time, had been dead for a longer period of time, or her body was never fully in that bathtub. >> and, they claim that ryan spent so much time cleaning up the scene before he called for emts that sarah's dead body was showing signs of rigor mortis whether they arrived. >> she was already dead by the time they got there. they had difficulty int baiting her because her chin kept wanting to fall. rigor mortis setting in. >> now it was up to the jury to decide if ryan widmer had killed his wife. coming up -- >> we're scared that the truth may not come out. we know, without a doubt, that ryan did not do this. >> 23 hours of deliberation. the verdict and the controversy, next.

about the only fact of the

case that was indisputable was that sarah widmer had drowned. but was it a natural death in her bathtub? what about the suggestion of a neurological event that the medical examiner could not find? >> her medical history is completely devoid of anything that would suggest these things. >> or had sarah died at the hands of her husband ryan. >> they had failed to prove their case. they failed. >> inside the warren county courthouse, the jury was out all day. the couple's friends waited. >> we're scared that the truth may not come out. we know, without a doubt, that ryan did not do this. and we pray to god that everyone else sees that, too. >> billy cunningham, i am a great american. >> ryan widmer might have wished that the listeners to bill cunningham's call-in radio show had been on his jury. >> the calls split 90/10 in favor of ryan widmer because during the trial there was no smoking gun. >> ryan's mother agreed.

she was cautiously optimistic. >> i never let myself get cocky. i just felt that, in having sat and listened, there were a lot of holes and not a lot of evidence. never felt like it was a slam dunk, but i felt like there was a lot of reasonable doubt. >> the jurors were hard at work. they asked for the tub where sarah had been found dead to be brout to them in the jury room. by the second day, ryan's defense attorney was getting anxious. >> when they're out more than 20 hours, it's clear that somebody is saying this isn't as straightforward as it seems. >> correct. >> but the prosecutors weren't worried by the long jury deliberation. >> we knew it was going to be a hard case for them to weigh a lot of evidence. >> they had two counts to decide, count one, aggravated murder. did ryan premeditate the murder of his wife sarah? and count two, nonpremeditated murder. did it happen suddenly, without prior thought?

finally, after 23 hours, the jurors had reached a verdict. the lawyers were summoned. >> it's a traumatic moment. your heart is racing. you're anxious to hear what the jury says. it's profound moment. >> as jill hurried back to the courtroom, outside, a storm hit with biblical fury. she saw that as an ominous sign. >> the skies just opened up. there were tornado warnings in it. all just culminated when the verdict was about to be read. >> ryan widmer took his place at the defense table. >> the defendant will please rise. the verdict on count one, aggravated murder, we the jury find the defendant ryan k. widmer is not guilty of aggravated murder. >> it was a moment of relief for ryan widmer. the jury did not believe that he killed his wife with premeditation. but he still faced the second count of murder. >> the verdict reads, we the jury in this case find the defendant ryan k. widmer is guilty of the lesser included

offense of murder. >> guilty. the jury had decided that ryan widmer did indeed murder his wife sarah. >> mr. widmer is there anything you wish to say? >> the accused, now the convicted, would kiss his wedding ring and then address the court for the first time. he hadn't taken the stand, adds was his right. >> i loved my wife. i did not hurt her. i was never given a chance. the day after she passes away they charge me with murder. i didn't -- if i had an answer, i would give the answer to what happened to her. but i can't. i was not in the bathroom with her. >> he was very upset. he doubled over when addressing the court. in fact, i was surprised that he was as outspoken as he was. but he indicated to the judge and everybody that he loved sarah and he would never have hurt her. >> i love my wife and i did not hurt her. >> ryan widmer was given the mandatory sentence, 15 years to

life in prison. he was cuffed and moved to a holding cell. >> and he stopped next to me and said, can i say good-bye to my mom? they said, no, just keep moving. >> how difficult is that? >> beyond difficult. >> dana kist, who had set up her friend sarah with ryan, her husband's college roommate, was devastated. >> she wasn't murdered. one of my best friends. >> so there isn't a whisper of doubt that says, my best friend may have been killed by this -- >> absolutely not. >> as close as you were to him, you still defend him/. >> i do. >> ryan's attorney took the loss personally. >> it was awful. it was on my shoulders. it's my duty to my client to get a proper verdict, and i failed. >> but, as ryan widmer got processed into the ohio prison system, it wasn't the end of the bathtub murder case. the fax machine in a defense lawyer's office began to spit out other shocking information.

the case of ryan widmer was far, far from over. >> as we speak, it isn't the end of things. >> that's correct. coming up -- something amiss in the jury room. >> said that two or three of the female jurors had done home experiments where they had showered and then air-dried. >> home experiments? what was that all about? ryan widmer was about to get a break. [ male announcer ] pizza hut's unmatched lover's pizzas

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♪ of. >> my impression was that the community was stunned by the verdict. ♪ amazing grace >> the verdict was so unpopular in the court of public opinion

that candlelight vigils were staged to protest the jury vote. >> there has never been a case where hundreds of americans come out of their homes carrying candlelights to listen to prayers about a condemned, convicted killer. it's never happened before. >> talk radio host bill cunningham, a lawyer by training, regards himself as a hang em high conservative. but even he felt like this was a case of justice denied. >> judging this case against a hundred other murder trials, this is one of the flimsiest i've ever seen. >> i'm a creator of the web site. >> someone out there following the trial was mike, a young newlywed himself as a web page designer. even though he had never met ryan, he so believed in his innocence that he launched a freeryanwidmer web site. >> the goal is for him to get a new trial. if he doesn't, i believe it's going to outrage a lot of

people. >> angry citizens, taxpayers, voters. even though the real trial was over, the prosecution hnadn't entirely called it quits. in their post victory lap they spoke of things the jury wasn't allowed to hear. the week before the wife died, ryan had frequented a web site called adult friend finder, it bills itself as the larger site for sbingers. >> we had evidence he visited the site, not that he followed through. if they were so happy, why is somebody looking for a hookup spot? that makes no sense to me. that would combat the idea of a happy couple. >> the judge had not allowed the web surfing or other pornography investigators say they found on his computer to be introduced as evidence. since there was no way to know if sarah even knew about ryan's internet trolling. still, was it a sign as the detective thought that their marriage was not as happy as friends and family believed? >> my understanding of some of these sites, supposedly, that he

visited ended up being pop-ups on a computer. i'm not the most computer literal person, but i don't think the full story was told there eencither. i don't understand why they got the verdict they want they have to continue to attack my son and family. >> ryan's mother said, if the couple had fought over anything, the family would have known. sarah, always outspoken, wasn't the type to suffer in silence. >> sarah told everybody everything. she is a chatty person. she had just been with her family for an entire weekend without ryan being there. if there were any problems, believe me they would have known it and i probably would have known it because sarah probably would have yelled at me for something my son was doing that wasn't nice to her. >> but none of that mattered now. the jury had spoken and defense lawyer rittgerz still couldn't get over the guilty verdict. ryan had become more than a client. >> i absolutely believed him. i had him to my home, around my wife and kids.

there was no question in my mind he was innocent. >> ritgers did what lawyers often do after losing acase. he wrote a motion for a new trial or be acquitted. ryan was in prison and would likely stay there. it was a long shot. >> this is a roller coaster ride. i can't get my hopes up. >> he may be in prison for 15 years. >> he may be. the appeals process, it can take forever. >> the day after defense attorney ritgers filed his motion, his fax machine started humming. it was a letter from a juror. >> he was having problems living with himself. he said it was a moral dilemma for him to allow it just to go out bringing it to somebody's attention. >> the juror claimed there had been forbidden monkey business during deliberations. monkey business over nothing less than the biggest issue in the trial -- damp head, dry body. >> he said that two or three of the female jurors had done home experiments where they had

showered and then air-dried. >> they were testing out this theory of how quickly -- >> that's correct. >> the body dries coming out of the tub or shower. >> that's right. >> at home. >> at home. >> if the faxing juror was correct, the panel had violated the judge's instructions to consider only what they heard in court. the allegation was jury misconduct, a serious matter. attorney mark godcy runs the ohio innocence project. he saw the juror letter as a way to persuade the judge to grant ryan a new trial. >> it's unusual for a juror to come forward and reveal that the jurors had violated the rules and performed experiments and brought that into the deliberations. >> the judge began reviewing affidavits from the jurors about what wept on in the deliberations. in one of the sworn statements, a juror said of the taboo home experiments, the times to air dry influenced my decision. >> jurors are not supposed to go home and do experiments. >> in the end, the judge agreed. four months after ryan widmer's conviction, he ruled that the

husband would get another trial. the not guilty verdict on the aggravated murder count, however, would remain. so the prosecution could only retry him on the second count of unpremeditated murder. his mother scraped together enough cash to post the $400,000 bond for him. ryan was released from prison. but by then he had already spent five months behind bars. >> the quest for justice can deplete both bank accounts and emotions. >> yes. >> how far are you prepared to go in this? >> i'm prepared to go until the day i die if i have to live on the street in a cardboard box at the end of this, i'm going to do whatever it takes to get my son out of this. >> and ryan and his family would end up not only at the very brink of financial bankruptcy but also at the edge of emotional collapse. >> he said he can't sleep. he says he sees her when he closes his eyes. >> he misses her, still wears the wedding ring. >> everything in ryan's life was spiraling downward. he had lost his job as a sports planner after the guilty verdict

and was left to do odd jobs for supporters. the house he and sarah bought together went into foreclose you're. and now another jury would be asked to peer inside the mystery of a marriage and decide what exactly happened behind those closed door on crested owl court. the prosecutors would have to convince another jury that ryan widmer had killed his wife. >> it's got to be hugely frustrating. you got a guilty verdict, then you have to do it again. >> on the other hand, by that point we knew how a jury would react to our evidence. >> on the other side of the coin, the defense has seen your case. >> they certainly can. >> and they can counter punch it. >> and we can't change it much. >> ryan widmer trial, take two. coming up -- a new jury makes a dramatic return to the scene of the drowning. and later -- >> i'm going to fight this until it's made right. >> ryan widmer tells his own story.

a little more than a year after a jury had found ryan widmer guilty of murder, only to have the verdict thrown out, it would start all over again. this time a new defense team would take over ryan's case. defense lawyers jay clark and lindsay gutierrez worried that, even though they were starting the trial with a clean slate of jurors, the verdict from the first trial would still hang over the accused.

>> well, he's still innocent until proven guilty, but everyone thinks and everyone knows, well, he was proven guilty. >> across the courtroom, the prosecution team was the same, and it would hammer home the argument that a healthy 24-year-old woman just does not die alone in a bathtub. did you see any evidence that sarah suffered a seizure to cause her death by drowning? p. >> no. >> sarah's body? dry to the touch, the officers and emts testified, and the bathroom where her husband lifted her soaking body out of the tub, it was also not wet. >> towels or rugs, magazines, they all appeared to be dry. >> and the jury would again hear the 911 call that to prosecution's ears sound odd. >> i came down here and she was lying facedown in the bathtub. >> the message was, my wife's dead and i wasn't around when it happened. >> but, unlike the first trial, the defense lawyers asked to take the jurors to the home where ryan and sarah had lived to inspect for themselves the

very bathroom where she died. the lawyers had made a pretrial visit. >> the first thing we said was, man, this is small. >> they wanted the jurors to see for themselves that this was a cramped space in a modest builder's home. >> imagine ryan at 6'2", sarah at 515'2", imagine them interacting in here. >> a defense expert argued, if there had been a violent struggle, both the husband and wife would have shown more obvious bruises and scratches. >> i would have expected to see more injury if a violent struggle had occurred. >> but the prosecutors argued that widmer, in an explosion of anger, could have overtaken his wife so quickly that she would have had no time to fight back. and, in their closing arguments, they told the jurors that ryan widmer not only killed his wife but also delayed calling 911 to buy time to cover up his crime. things looked so nice because ryan widmer had the opportunity

to reset the sceneme. he had time to put things back in to place. >> but ryan's defense lawyers were hopeful this jury would see the case the way they did, an innocent man on trial for a murder he did not commit. >> absolutely believe him. no doubt in my mind. >> the case was given to jury number two, and it seemed as though everyone in cincinnati was on the edge of their seats waiting for its decision. but three days into deliberations, nothing. the jurors asked to see the judge. >> there's maybe an impasse. >> he sent them back to deliberate some more. >> it is ziesdesirable that thee be decided. >> it was turning out to be the longest deliberation in warren county history. as the jurors left for a long holiday weekend, the specter of a mistrial hung in the air. dana and chris kist once again waited wiryan. >> we have to make sure he knows we're here. that's what we do as friends is support him and be hopeful and

have the faith that this is going to turn out the way that it's meant to turn out. >> the jury returned to work on tuesday morning, but at 5:00 p.m. on that fourth day of deliberations, they asked to see the judge again. >> the note read, we have decided we cannot agree and that further deliberations will not serve a useful purpose. >> a hung jury. no verdict. by best count, they were deadlocked seven guilty, one undecided, four not guilty. walking out of the courtroom, ryan widmer's frustration spilled out. >> i just want this to be over. i'm disappointed, obviously. i should be found not guilty. >> at a press conference, ryan's parents vowed to stand by their son. they had already spent more than $500,000 on his defense, tapping out bank accounts and retirement plans. >> we know he's innocent and we're going to do whatever it takes. >> we'll move forward. >> ryan's dad, dpar gary was fi behind his son. but in another odd twist, it had

taken ryan's arrest to reunite the pair. he had been out of his son's life for 13 years, the consequence of a bitter divorce. he hadn't even know there was a sarah until he learned his son had been charged with her murder. father was reintroduced to son while ryan was in jail. >> this is the first meeting you've had really with your boy in a long, long time. >> through a glass wall. >> he's on the other side of the glass and you're talking through one of those phone devices. >> uh-huh. >> that's kind of hard to take right there. >> it was. it was hard, but it was so sweet to see him. >> a poignant reunion, father and son. and a father who completely believes in his son's innocence and will do anything to help him. >> if there's any avenue to take, you have to take it. it's my son. i have to take it. >> your son didn't do it. >> uh-huh. >> sarah widmer died for reasons unknown. >> yeah. >> a round of applause. >> and beyond ryan's family and close friends standing behind him, it was a case that had galvanized a virtual army. there were free ryan widmer

t-shirts and wrist bands. >> he's go ae's getting a lot o support. >> including anonymous donor said to contribute $60,000. >> yes. >> stranger. >> yes. >> even the prosecutors were a bit worried. so much taxpayer money would be spent on a third trial. so many ryan widmer supporters beating very loud drums. a plea deal was floated. >> we felt it was a subject worth bringing up. >> but the kists said there was no way ryan was taking a deal. >> they offered him a plea, which they hadn't done in two trials. >> and he turned it down. >> of course he turned it down because i'm npt, there's no way i would ever take a plea. why would i admit to something i never would have done, that i did not do? >> ryan widmer was gambling that the next jury would acquit him. but his roll of the dice was taking its toll not just on him but his family as well. ryan's mom made headlines when she was stopped for drunk driving. she's pleaded not guilty to the driving under the influence charge but police say they found

two open bottles of vodka in her car. >> she broke down. hospitalized. terrible toll on her. i lived with it many times, all three of us are together and you could just feel her going deeper and deeper into this. >> but it seemed for every person that came out to support ryan widmer there were those who believed, just as strongly, on the other side that he had deliberately drowned his wife. and one of those people would soon change everything. ten days after the jury deadlocked, a phone rang in the prosecutor's office. it was a woman with a hand grenade of a story. >> someone who's come forward who said, this guy confessed to me. we want to find out more about what she says and how she knows it. >> the prosecutors investigated and came away convinced they had the long missing pieces to the puzzle. both a confession and a motive. and jay clark, the defense attorney, would now have to worry overtime about the state's new bombshell of a witness. >> did you guys know what they had up their sleeve?

>> literally, no. >> because the new witness feared for her life, saying that ryan widmer had threatened her, her identity would not be disclosed to the defense team until the beginning of the trial. and trial three would begin with virtually everyone holding their breath. who was this person? and what did she know? coming up -- the mystery witness takes the stand. and what a story she has to tell. >> all of a sudden -- i needed to tell the truth. ♪

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>> the first trial ended in a mistrial, the second a hung jr. would the next jury reach a verdict? these three jurors said the prosecutors failed to convince them that ryan widmer had killed his wife. >> there is just nothing to prove to me that he had anything to do with her death. >> and that the next group of jurors would also not be able to reach a unanimous decision. >> we sat in deliberations for 30-plus hours and the likelihood of 12 jurors coming to the same conclusion was very unlikely. >> we really didn't think that another jury would not be deadlo deadlocked. >> they'd soon find out. ryan widmer's extraordinary third trial for the murder of his wife was about to start all over again. the prosecutors felt it was their duty to argue their case for sarah. >> we're committed to seeing that justice is done for the victim of this case. and that's what we've got to think about. >> it promised to be a judicial

groundhog day, repeat testimony from the emts and arriving officers at the widmer home, the oddity of a bathtub drowning victim with a damp head and dry body. a 911 call that, to some listen irs, volunteered to much, and injuries to the wife's neck and head that spoke to the prosecutors of homicide and not resuscitation. >> the facts which came out in this case gave rise to that idea that there had been an assault that occurred which progressed into an incident of domestic violence. >> this time sarah's own mother described the couple's relationship as more tense than in the previous trials, telling the court that ryan and sarah's arguments made her very uncomfortable. >> they would just call each other names and get hateful with each er. i even told them, you guys have to stop. i can't take it. >> but what was really new and stunning was something that had been haunting the defense since they first learned of it the previous summer. the prosecution's mystery witness who would testify that ryan had confessed to the crime.

it was a woman named jennifer crew from iowa. it was the first time the defense would get a good look at this person who ryan had allegedly confessed to. and they were worried. >> she strolls in wearing a suit with decently done hair, normal makeup. >> but how exactly did this woman living 500 miles away from ryan widmer come to be involved in the case in a starring prosecution role? >> it turned out she had watched our coverage on "dateline" of the first trial. that aired on september 18, 2009. after watching the show, she sent ryan an e-mail through the freeryanwidmer web site telling him how bad she felt about his plight. >> i felt sorry for ryan. i asked him what i could do to help him. >> before long, the two were in frequent touch. >> struck up an e-mail, text, ultimately a phone relationship? >> correct. >> as the relationship continued, ryan sent her photos of his dogs and asked her to send him a picture of herself. initially, she sent this one of

a friend. things got a little racy on the phone. >> he told me that he was watching porn in his mom's basement. >> there was even talk of jennifer visiting ryan in ohio for a three-way. >> ryan asked me to ask my friend and i said i would. >> but the reason jennifer crew was on the stand was to testify about one phone conversation in particular. one very different are than their usual banter. it was october 26, 2009. jennifer said she had been asleep when ryan called. it sounded to her as though he had been drinking. >> he was crying, and he was saying, i did it, i did it. i killed sarah. i did it. i thought what he meant was that he didn't do enough to save her life that night. he said, no, jen. listen to me. i did it. >> she said ryan told her it had started with a fight between the two of them. >> sarah had found out that he had cheated on her when she went away with her mom. he said that they were in the living room and they were arguing about his pornography.

>> what happened when she came upstairs? >> she was getting ready for the bath. ryan said that the argument continued, that she kept saying she can't do this anymore, being married, that sarah told him that the marriage was over. >> ryan, she testified, then told sarah -- >> nobody leaves me. nobody ever leaves me, and i mean nobody. >> that's when jennifer crew says ryan hit his wife. >> she fell backwards and hit her head, and he said, jen, i blacked out. i blacked out. >> but why this story now? jennifer crew waited until almost two weeks after the second jury had deadlocked before coming forward, even though ryan had allegedly confessed to her eight months earlier. she said she had promised ryan she would not reveal his secret, said she was unnerved when he gave her a veiled threat. >> i promised him i would never tell anybody. he said, i hope not because i wouldn't want you to be where sarah's at. >> but she also said she thought that the jury, like the first one, would have convicted ryan.

and when they didn't, she contacted the authorities after seeing pictures of sarah's mother. >> i saw the pain and the hurt in her mom's face, and i'm a mom. i couldn't do that to them anymore. they needed to know the truth. >> it was a lot to absorb. ryan confessing. fighting with a wife who was leaving him. blacking out in the bathroom. would the jurors believe any or all of it? the defense had to make certain they didn't. but they were worried that they might. >> i think she had invented this story and started to live it and really wanted to believe it. >> you were convicted -- >> so they aimed for the jugular. could this woman be trusted? >> she had a jaded past, convictions, stealing, that's not something an honest, credible person does. >> a one-time bartender at a strip club who managed the dancers. she admitted to misdemeanor brushes with the law. >> you were convicted of theft. >> yes, sirs. >> you were also convicted of

fraudulent practices, correct? >> i believe that's what my record states. she also was in a methadone treatment center for her addiction to painkillers. >> you were using oxycontin for approximately five years. >> yes. >> you've used false names to get drugs. >> yes, i did. >> the defense indicated that because of her addiction to drugs her memory was not to be trusted. >> when the detectives talked to you, you told them that your memory is not very good, didn't you? >> i don't recall saying that. >> do you remember telling them, i don't remember exactly verbatim the conversation between you and ryan? >> i don't remember the conversation verbatim. >> the defense would hammer on her confusion about what hour the phone call came through, even on what day it was placed. >> when investigators met with you, you told them the call was in the middle of the night. >> i was asleep, and i thought that the call came in later than it did. >> everything critical in terms of time and duration and any memory about the call was all different once she got to testify but only after she saw her phone records. >> after jennifer crew stepped

down, the prosecution called the woman's fiance to try to undo any damage to her testimony caused by the dense. he confirmed that she related the alleged confessional phone call to him immediately after hanging up that night. >> she came downstairs try krooiinkrooi i crying. she was, like, he did it. she was scared actually. she was upset. >> if the jury believed jennifer crew's story, ryan widmer was sunk. so the defense called a witness to refute the testimony. it was another woman who became interested in ryan widmer's case after seeing our first "dateline" report. melissa waller from seattle, like jennifer crew from iowa, struck up a phone and e-mail relationship with ryan in the fall of 2009. >> how often did you guys talk? >> a few times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. it was on a frequent basis. we talked about sarah a lot. he was having a really, really hard time accepting everything.

>> she flew to ohio to visit a friend and to go with another supporter to a bowling fund-raiser organized for widmer's defense. she even made this video tribute to ryan and sarah that she posted on youtube. ♪ what i'd do with one more day with you ♪ melissa's husband supported her friendship with ryan. >> was it a little out there? yeah, but i'm so comfortable with her and our relationship that without a shadow of a doubt i was 100% behind her. >> i did feel strongly about supporting him. there's just no chance he had anything to do with it. >> but the importance of the seattle woman's story for the defense was that she, too, had a lengthy phone call with ryan that finished just six minutes before he called jennifer crew in iowa. the call, in which he allegedly confessed to killing his wife. melissa waller said ryan was perfectly composed when she spoke to him for almost two hours that night. >> how do you know that he was not drunk, he was not upset?

>> every phone conversation i've had he's never been intoxicated or emotionally distraught. i knew that all the times i had talked to him he was never drufr drunk or upset. melissa waller was convinced that jennifer crew had made up the whole story about the confessi confession. >> i was shocked that somebody who go under oath on the stand and lie. >> but, still, had the defense paid a price by putting yet another woman on the stand? is there a larger issue, is there a risk for you with these women getting involved with ryan widmer? >> it's easy to get sucked into that, but you have to understand what ryan has gone through. he haept been able to grieve. they contacted him and it was companionship. >> it was time to wrap up trial number three. the prosecutors saying it was a sudden, violent murder. >> anybody who's been in a relationship knows that sometimes things go off, they snap, for no good reason. i think something like that happened. at some point, ryan saw that his

perfect marriage was falling apart and that's what led us here. >> the defense, arguing a medically undetermined death by natural causes. >> probably going to bother me for the rest of my life, what p happened to sarah, we'll never know, though. >> sarah had drowned, but how? a third jury retired for deliberations. coming up -- another stunner. a new sarah enters ryan's life. >> do you love ryan widmer? >> i love him, yes. >> just who is she? later, ryan tells all. you guys kept it secret, didn't you? >> oh, yeah. because i knew they would try to make it into something negative.

the jury had been out for a day. again, it seemed everyone in cincinnati was waiting for a verdict. but this time things were changing in the court of public opinion. ryan widmer was starting to lose some of those ardent supporters of years before. >> you have a candlelight vigil for you now and you could probably hold it in a phone booth. >> one strong voice that turned against ryan widmer was bill cunningham. he was disgusted for one thing about how widmer exploited the free ryan widmer web site. >> he used that internet to pick up chicks. instead of using that to fight his innocence, he was bringing in these hot babes from washington and iowa. >> for you, it sounds like it fell apart on a character issue. >> it did. to me, by the third trial, the evidence didn't change, the facts didn't change, but the wallpaper of the case changed. >> day two in tand the jury was

going around and around. >> my stomach was cramping. i felt awful. >> i was nauseous. i haven't felt that way for 20 years. >> the jurors were working their way through the evidence. they parsed the 911 call. >> my wife fell asleep in the bathtub and i think she's dead. >> the more you listen to it, the more and more it starts to sound like it was staged. >> and there was sarah's body. officers had testified it was too dry. >> 2 1/2 minutes from being removed from the tub, you would expect to be wet. >> the alleged confess recounted by jennifer crew. >> i don't believe anything she said. >> the prints in the tub. >> under normal circumstances you cannot leave those kind of fingerprints on the side of the tub trailing down. >> the bruising to sarah. >> i believe both the defense and the prosecution put up good arguments about that. that's teetering on a razor's edge with me. >> at the end of the second day, they took their one and only

vote. they had a verdict. a blast of calls went out. the kists grabbed a stunned ryan. >> we immediately jumped in the car. ryan says, i can't believe they're back this soon. this is too quick. i'm worried. >> when everyone was gathered in the courtroom, the judge asked for the jury ballot. >> anxious? >> very. sick. >> yeah. >> ryan widmer stood with his lawyers. his life hanging in the balance. >> i can actually hear ryan shakingment i can hear it. it's that silent and he's that nervous. >> the verdict. >> we the jury in this case find the it defendant ryan k. widmer is guilty of murder. >> guilty. ryan dropped his head to the table. >> he was hysterical. he was crying. he was a mess. >> a bad, bad, bad dream. >> ryan composed himself enough to proclaim to the court his innocence. >> judge, i did not do this. i don't know why this has to keep going on. i mean, my life has been ruined. i love sarah.

i would never have hurt her. never. >> outside the court, ryan's father gary slumped to the ground. the son he was recently reunited with after years apart taken from him again. >> it was horrifying. it was a horrifying moment and i think it just totally caught up with me at that point, the whole total shock. i just went weak. >> ryan widmer, for the second time, was given the mandatory sentence, 15 years to life. as court officers handcuffed him and led him away, few people were aware of a young woman on his side of the benches crying. this is also a sarah, sarah manhurst, and she still is another twist in a story that has had so many. do you love ryan widmer? >> i love him, yes. >> she wears an engagement ring and is the mother of ryan's son, born in the summer after trial number two. what did you name the baby? >> his name is ryan. >> you see ryan's face in the baby's. >> yeah. >> sarah, a canadian via new

york, like jennifer from iowa and melissa from seattle, also became aware of ryan after our first "dateline" program on the case aired in 2009. >> i thought that he was railroaded. i really did. >> she sent an e-mail to ryan saying how sorry she felt for him and he sent one back. soon they were talking on the phone. a little more than a month later, sarah came to cincinnati to visit ryan. she stayed with him at his mother's house. >> i thought it was a little awkward, you know, because we had talked so much on the phone, but we hadn't met. you know, he just was telling me how much he loved sarah and he could never, ever love another woman as much as he loved her. i think i started crying because i just felt so bad for him. >> sarah went back to new york and then three weeks later returned to cincinnati as ryan's guest at his mother's thanksgiving dinner. that was the weekend they became intimate. >> like the first time we were together i got pregnant. >> how did ryan take the news?

>> he was shocked. obviously very bad timing. >> they kept the pregnancy a secret, as ryan's second trial would take place the following may. >> i decided, yeah, i was going to have the baby and he was okay with that. but it was just difficult because i'm thinking, here i am pregnant, and you're facing another trial and my child could potentially grow up without a father, which -- now he's in jail. >> with ryan sentenced to 15 years, sarah is raising their son alone. >> i'm still in shock. i can't believe this happened to him. i feel like a piece of me is gone. i love him, and i'm not going to leave his side. i'm going to do whatever i can. >> if in your own mind you couldn't get to beyond a reasonable doubt, if there was a sliver of doubt that he had done this tng, would you have

stayed? >> never. i would never stay with him, be with him now. there's no way that he could have done this, ever. >> but had he? in the almost three years since sarah's death, and the course of three trials played out before three juries, ryan widmer's guilt or innocence has been passionately debated. he's never sat down to tell his story to the public until now. widmer speaks from prison when we return. >> did you kill your wife sarah? a "dateline" exclusive. you think they fabricated this. >> oh, i know they did. >> this young husband is about to make a startling claim. and coming up sunday on "dateline," father and son. >> what noise did he make? it was a headline-making battle. david goldman fighting to bring his boy sean home after his mother abducted him to brazil. we were there for the harrowing reunion and on the plane home.

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and if you asked us, we'd say it's just getting started. this is ryan widmer's story as he tells it. he remembers a loving relationship with his wife sarah that was right from the first date. >> woe hit it off perfect. >> was there any friction? >> none whatsoever. >> everything was cool. >> perfect, perfect. >> he only had one worry about sarah. >> my biggest problem with her

was her sleep. she would just work a regular day and she needed to go to bed early or she'd be taking a nap. i just thought something wasn't healthy about it. you're 24 years old. >> but still he said they fell into their everyday lives, their job, dog, building a deck on their house, all routine until that august night, he said. sarah had come home from work with a headache. they had dinner, watched tv. >> she's, what, on the couch? >> laying on the couch because she didn't feel so hot? >> she said her neck was killing her. she was going to take a bath and go to bed. >> ryan said he stayed downstairs until he was ready for bed up p upstairs to the bathroom. >> i walk into the room, i walk over to the nightstand and i put some things down, turn on the tv, and then i walked in the bathroom. that's when i saw sarah. i knew something wasn't right. she was just unconscious. >> how did you see her? >> her head was just underneath

the water. i don't even -- >> was she facedown in the tub as you tell 911? >> all i remember -- i knew it wasn't good. she was laying in the water. i don't know what else to say other than it wasn't right. the only thing i remember certain things is because what i heard on the 911 tape. >> it's so shocking you would think you would remember. >> i wasn't thinking to remember what i saw. >> head, mouth, everything below the water? >> yeah. >> what did you do next? >> i tried to get reaction out of her and i couldn't. >> that's when he called 911. >> when you choose the word she fell asleep in the tub. >> it's not about choosing a word. it was her sleeping issue or whatever. >> they say that call is suspicious because this guy is giving us too much information. he's telling us he's away from what's going on. do you know why you told them you were downstairs watching the

game? >> because i was watch willing the football game. i don't know what they wanted me to tell them. >> maybe just i need an ambulance, get here quick. >> i don't know. i called and that's what i said. i don't know. >> prosecutors say the first arriving officer was at the house no more than six minutes after the 911 call was answered. and less than three anyones after ryan lifted sarah's body out of the tub. >> the observations of the arriving officer, what do we have here? why is this woman's hair damp and her body is dry. >> yeah. well -- >> it zntd make sense, ryan. >> i understand that. >> so how do you complain it? >> how do i explain it? i left the house and there were cops there by themselves. they came up with the story they wanted to come up with. >> oh, you think they fabricated this? >> i know they did. >> you think they wanted to make a case? >> i know they did. >> why would they afrs me a day after if they didn't want to make a case? >> why would they lie? they don't work for the same agency. >> they do when they get up

there to testify. they're coached into what to say. >> what about the story of the woman who says ryan confessed to her that he killed sarah. >> listen to me. i did it. >> here's jennifer crew from iowa on the stand say, he called me one night, he was sloppy and he confessed to me. >> right. >> jennifer, i did it. i'mi i'm telling you i did it. did that conversation happen? >> nope. it never happened. >> so jennifer crew's story is made up? >> 100% made up. >> the same goes, ryan told us, for sarah's mother's testimony about hearing hateful arguments between the couple. >> they would just call each other names. >> she's a liar. >> sarah's mom is a liar? >> yeah. >> she's making this stuff up? >> we were never mean to each other. >> a one-time mother-in-law from an earlier life who she says is embellishing the reality of his marriage. now ryan witnedmer has a baby w a new sarah. >> she's awesome, so loving, caring. there's similarities i see in sarah my wife as i see with

sarah now. >> you guys kept it secret. >> because i knew they would try to make it into something negative. >> and in that court of public opinion, the woim from faraway places, iowa, seattle, new york, who became involved in this case didn't go down well everyone. a character issue. we talked to someone who accused you of using the free ryan widmer web site as a dating service, it was just your way of meeting women. >> i don't know who said that, but it's not true. >> investigators wonder how good the marriage was based on what they found on widmer's computer. did you have an unhealthy addiction to porn? >> no. >> you looked at porn? >> yeah. >> but ryan says that doesn't mean anything and certainly doesn't make him a murderer. >> did you kill your wife sarah? >> no, i did not. i couldn't hurt sarah emotionally let alone physically. >> she didn't get in your face and tell you she was leaving you? >> nope. nope. >> did not happen? >> didn't happen. >> you were watching the ball game, went upstairs and found her in a bad situation.

>> that's it. >> you don't know why she died did but you didn't put her head under water. >> that's right. >> you're saying you're wrongfully convicted. >> that's right. 100%. >> if 30 jurors or more found you guilty after they heard the story, they're not getting it. >> they're not getting it at all. >> but these jurors from his third trial are confident they got it right. they say, among other things, it came down to what they saw as sarah's too dry body, oddities in the 911 call, prints on the tub, and the unlikeliness of an outof the blue medical event striking sarah in the bath. >> i went into it believing he was innocent, but everything that was put together with the evidence came down with four or five facts that we could not deny. we believe that he intentionally drowned her. >> and the guilt of ryan widmer will also never be doubted by the prosecutors. do you believe that he actually did this thing? >> absolutely. >> of course. >> she was murdered and he killed her. >> he was the only one who could

have done it. >> ryan widmer is appealing the verdict. >> i'm not taking it as it is because i'm not letting it stand. i'm fighting this until it's made right. >> whatever happened in that evening in the little house on crusted oil court, and it will be argued both ways for years to come, failing a new trial, ryan widmer cannot even expect to appear before a parole board for at least 14 more years. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline" friday. we're back again for "dateline" sunday at 7:00/6:00 central. i'm ann curry. for all of us here at nbc news, i'm ann curry. for all of us here at nbc news, good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com pnc virtual wallet gathers your spending and saving in one place. credit and debit purchases, checks, bills, and other financial information. it lets you see the details as well as the big financial picture. so you can do more with your money.