both: i know! jinx! double jinx! triple jinx! [laugh] ♪ troy and abed sewn together ♪ [thunder] the middle of the night, you know that feeling of dread. >> i remember saying, no, no, no. >> nothing will ever feel right. >> their b beautiful daughter dead, everyone heartbroken. >> she was my best friend, kindrid spirit. >> found her, victim of a hit-and-run. or is that what someone wanted them to think? >> there are findings consistent with strangulation. i said, you have to treat this as a homicide. >> homicide? how could a girl like this have enemies? or was there more to justine?

>> she's an accomplished teacher and then she had a separate life. >> clues missed. >> you're seeing your daughter come unglued right before your eyes. >> absolutely. >> i knew it with every fiber of my being that he had killed her. >> secrets she kept. >> she never told us that. >> but only a complete stranger could reveal what really happened on that lonely road. >> it was a crazy night. >> dennis murphy with "shattered." welcome to "dateline," everyone, i'm lester holt. i felt the agony of the parents. the call that every parent fears. this this case, their beautiful, young daughter killed by a hit-and-run driver, they were told. but to find out what really happened, they soon found themselves on a road of their own, full of twists and turns

that led to a place darker than they ever could have imagined. here's dennis murphy. >> the yellow buses pulled up as the grade schoolers head for their classrooms. the principal inside was calling it an unexpected meeting. it was about mrs. abshire, the pretty young kindergartner teacher. >> he said, there's no easy way to tell you this. and then he said, justine was killed last night. she was hit by a hit-and-run. and i was silent. >> fellow kindergartner teacher could not believe what she was hearing about her friend, justine abshire, the newlywed who taught one door away.

another fellow kindergartner teacher was devastated. >> i was just shocked. just in disbelief that she was gone. she was my best friend. i mean, she was my kindrid spirit. we were the same person. >> 27-year-old justine had married her long-time boyfriend eric just that spring. she loved being a teacher and by all accounts, the little kids in her classroom loved her back. >> she was a very darling teacher. she was the kind of teacher that you would want for your own child. >> but on that november morning, the stunned teachers had few details. it seemed justine had been out driving after midnight and her car had broken down. she was apparently struck by a vehicle as she walked down a dark, country road in the rural county where she and her husband lived north of charlottseville. >> amber had been up late at her

grandmother's when she her a raucous at the door. a stranger, a man, was asking her to call 911. >> 911, what is your emergency? >> some man knocked at my door and said that his wife got hit by a car. >> amber followed the man, eric abshire, into the shown light. she watched as he fell to the blacktop and embraced the body of the young woman sprawled there. >> he was laying over top of her. >> the 5-month marriage of eric and justine abshire ended with that embrace. his bride clearly gone. they barely had time to make a scratch of a life together. they had a modest little house. he was working on getting a construction business going while she taught at the grade school. they told friends they were looking forward to taking a delayed honeymoon over the upcoming holidays. but the crew cruise, like everything else for them, was

not going to happen. it was just after 2:00 in the morning when virginia state trooper ben hobbs -- >> i got a call that we had a motor vehicle crash, possible fatality. >> he raced to the scene to join the first responders and county cops. >> i'm talking to debbie and said, okay, where is my vehicle at that struck the person that's laying in the road? the deputy looks at me satisfied, well, i guess your dispatch didn't tell you, this is probably going to be a hit-and-run. we don't have a vehicle. >> for you as the investigator, it's a long night in front of you? >> it's a very long night. >> you have a victim and no vehicle? >> exactly. >> i begin to look at the scene, what i have, what i don't have. >> one of the first things he saw was the devastated husband. >> as i approached, he was knelt down beside justine, very upset, seemed very concerned about his wife laying in the road. >> it was up to trooper hobbs to gather what he found at the

scene to identify the driver who struck and killed this young woman and kept ongoing. it wasn't going to be easy. >> nobody tried to stop. you know, if they saw this lady, why didn't they slam on the brakes? as a trooper's emergency lights stabbed at the darkness, a home was ringing at a home in chattanooga, tennessee. >> it's just like your whole world caves in. it's like a black hole. >> justine's dad, steven schwartz, and her mom heidi, were getting one of those awful calls in the middle of the night, a voice telling them that their daughter was laying dead on a back road in virginia. >> it's devastating, as you can imagine. it's the kind of thing that parents dread. >> i remember him putting the phone down and saying, it's justine, she's dead. i just -- you know, there's no way to describe that feeling.

>> steve and heidi call their daughter lauren living in philadelphia. she was younger than justine by two years. sisters always inseptembaccept >> i couldn't stand. you get these pangs in your gut and you can't breathe. >> in the predawn hours, the family made a plan to meet. >> at that moment you think, this can't make sense. >> back at what was now a crime scene in virginia, trooper hobbs was trying to figure out the sequence of events as to how this young woman came to be dead in the road. the husband told the trooper that after his wife called him to tell him she was broken down by the side of the road, he hopped on his motorcycle to go help her. >> he's coming down the road, comes up on her, stops, he told me he got out, cradled her in his arms. >> justine's car, a mustang, was

discovered parked by the side of the road about a distance of two football fields from where her body was found. >> it was a wooded area, unlit highway, unmarked road, backroad in the middle of nowhere. >> the investigators wondered why she would leave the safety of her car when help was on the way. >> she left behind her purse? >> she left behind her purse. >> a nice warm coat? >> a nice warm coat. >> flashlight? >> flashlight was in the glove box t had fresh batteries still in it. >> had a routine auto malfunction turned suddenly crazy? was justine in her last moments being pursued, fleeing an attacker? trooper hobbs said things were not adding up. >> the scene was telling me that something wasn't right. >> a scene, a set of lives and families it would take years to untangle. the mystery of the kindergartner's puzzling death had only just begun. when we come back,

investigators troubled by what they didn't find. >> no tire marks on the road, no broken glass, no broken lights. >> you almost always find those debris? >> yes, sir. ome on. walmart can now convert your favorite dvds from disc to digital. so you can watch them on your laptop, tablet, phone...anytime, anywhere. cool, huh? yea! yea! what'd you guys think that it would cost? i thought it'd be around $10. it's only $2 per disc. that's a great price. bring in your favorite dvds. see for yourself. -boooom! -boooom! [ host ] sign up at walmartentertainment.com today and get six free movies. that's the walmart entertainment disc to digital service. and get six free movies. the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks lunching. at olive garden just $6.95. fresh, crisp salad made when you order it, four soups made fresh daily, baked breadsticks right out of the oven! just $6.95 for a limited time.

[ female announcer ] weak, damaged hair needs new aveeno nourish+ strengthen. active naturals wheat formulas restore strength for up to 90% less breakage in three washes. for strong, healthy hair with life, new aveeno nourish+ strengthen. support team usa and show our olympic spirit right in our own backyard. so we combined our citi thankyou points to make it happen. tom chipped in 10,000 points. karen kicked in 20,000. and by pooling more thankyou points from folks all over town, we were able to watch team usa... [ cheering ] in true london fashion. [ male announcer ] now citi thankyou visa card holders can combine the thankyou points they've earned and get even greater rewards. ♪

kindergartner teacher and newlywed was found dead on a rural road after midnight five miles from her home. little about the accident scene made sense. trooper hobbs scoured the roads for looking for tell-tale signs. >> i'm looking for skid marks, debris, i have nothing like that. no taint chips, no broken glass,

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

>> an already strange hit-and-run case is now looking even more complicated. the husband, meanwhile, eric abshire, had been out in the road for hours. >> he wanted it hurried up. it was, you need to hurry up and get her out of the road. >> but an emotionally exhausted husband who wanted to get his wife off the road and into a funeral home was perhaps understandable. the trooper's work was wrapping up. he turned his notes over to senior investigator mike jones of the virginia state police. jones would run the case from here out. >> what did i think i had here? i thought i had a lot of work to do. >> one of jones' first act was to accompany the school teacher's body to the medical examiner's office. with little forensic value from the scene itself, the scene would start to explain what happened to this young woman. an accident, foul play? just hours after he came upon justine's body, he talked about a grim scenario that had occurred to him.

maybe someone unknown had happened upon his wife, a woman in distress? >> he offers a theory that justine was out on the side of the road and that some unknown individual was attracted to her, her beauty, pulled up and tried to abduct her. maybe she was running off. >> do you have any suspicion of what might have happened? >> i'd like to think she got hit and i think someone drove by, saw a beautiful girl on the side of the road and tried to put her in their car, they saw that she -- saw her face and i think they hit her. >> but at this stage of the investigation, it could be anything. >> the range is wide open and we had to start tracking in a direction that made sense.

>> the medical examiner, dr. todd luckosevic had performed dozens of autopsies of victims hit by cars but this one appeared to be different. >> you're unzipping the bag. is there a moment where you're saying, i don't like what i'm seeing? >> yes, almost instantly when i saw the lack of blood on her clothing. i turned to my technician and said, this doesn't appear to be a typical hit-and-run. she had gaping less ragss to her head and face. those bleed profusely and she had no blood on her skin or within the body bag. >> so there's an absence of blood that catches your interest right away? >> correct. >> and equally troubling, while there were more than 113 external injuries to her body, they weren't, he thought, consistent with someone standing and being struck by a vehicle. was it possible justine hadn't been a hit-and-run victim at all? how could that be? >> you typically see a bump or

bruce where the bumper hits the calf, the knee, and it's also going to cause a fracture underneath that bruce. >> and when you see that injury, you say, i know what that is? >> correct. >> and did you see that on justine? >> no, i did not. >> there was no evidence of glass, no evidence of transfer of paint chips or metal. there's no evidence whatsoever. there is actually no evidence of debris from the road, no pebbles, no asphalt, anything like that. >> yet, with injuries this severe, he wasn't ruling out that a vehicle was somehow involved in justine's death. >> you have a mystery. your best guess is that there was a vehicle involved in causing these injuries? >> yes. >> but it didn't appear that that person was standing? >> that is correct. >> but if a vehicle had been involved in the kindergartner's death, how? the m.e. needed a cause of

death. >> the manner of death we needed an investigation. >> he turned to mike jones who was taking notes throughout the autopsy. >> i said, you have to treat this as a homicide. this is homicide until proven otherwise. >> a homicide? a murder case. but where to start? if she had been killed, by whom and for what reason? with so little to go on, agent jones called in all of the troopers from the scene for a brainstorming session. >> after we finished the autopsy, the division headquarters and had a roundtable. everybody was parted out to run in different directions. >> what had happened to justine abshire? the crime scene and the autopsy could only tell the investigators so much. >> i didn't, by any means, have enough to make any conclusions that i walked away with, well, i need to come back and inquire further. coming up -- justine's husband says he blames himself. >> he says, well, you know, we had an argument.

if i wouldn't have argued with her, none of this wouldn't have happened. >> -- when "dateline" continues. ? gave it greater horsepower and best in class 38 mpg highway... ...advanced headlights... ...and zero gravity seats? yeah, that would be cool. ♪ introducing the completely reimagined nissan altima. it's our most innovative altima ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪ i love the fact that quicken loans provides va loans. quicken loans understood the details and guided me through every step of the process. i know wherever the military sends me,

i can depend on quicken loans.

the death of beloved kind abshire on this central road in virginia is becoming a mystery for investigators.

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

and porcelain skin, that drew a lot of attention. >> not that justine welcomed the look she was getting. hardly. she was shy by nature and had no interest in becoming the cool girl at school. she was content to hang out with a few close friends and to dote on her pets. >> she was always passionate about animals and little kids and she was a natural-born nurturer. >> and it seemed just yesterday they were sending her off to a woman's college in virginia. holly boardman was assigned to be her freshman roommate and the two became instant friends. >> we would actually walk arm and arm everywhere. we would do everything at the same time. >> dress alike? >> yes. when we bought clothes we would buy them at the exact same time in two. >> if justine wanted to learn martial arts, she would sign up and holly, too.

that's how it goes when you're best friends forever. >> she was the best friend, sister combined. we really couldn't get any closer. >> eric was always a loved member of an extended family. tracy ladd is his cousin. >> eric has always been a very loving, sweet, nice kid. just always good. >> it made it all so hard, such a cute poum everyone thought. and now eric a widower after only five months of marriage. tracy was utterly heartbroken by justine's death. almost too much to comprehend how an accident like that could happen. >> horrible news? >> horrible news. >> eric's family began gathering at the couple's home to comfort him the morning of the accident. cousin tracy remembers looking in on him in the bedroom. so forlorned. >> he had his left arm propped up looking out the window and just crying uncontrolly.

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

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

road to home. >> we've got to go back into the epicenter and the epicenter is justine and eric. >> when "shattered" continues. [ indistinct conversations ] ♪

♪ [ female announcer ] mango pineapple real fruit smoothie from mccafé. two of your favorite fruits come together to create a smoothie made just for you. a simple joy of refreshing memories. ♪ asend a note of refreshing memories. stay informed catch a show. make your point

.. . it was just after 2:00 in the morning when trooper ben hobbs had come upon eric abshire cradling his wife's body beside this road. >> he was kneeling beside her and crying. >> did he put his leather coat over her? >> he had put his leather coat over the top of her. >> after the couple's quarrel earlier in the night, she had taken off to blow off some steam. >> she had left and then called

him shortly before i got there, said, hey, i'm broke down, i need you to come and get me. >> eric assumed the whole storming out and i broke down story was a ploy by justine to get some attention, a pout and a little snit. >> a big sir kell and then come home. >> he told anyone who would listen, he was haunted by that split second decision to let her walk out of the house. he hoped investigators could find the person who struck and killed his new wife. >> in situations like this -- >> but eric worried investigators had too little to work on. >> never tapped their brakes, tried to swerve. >> and the lead investigator

would tell mike jones that justine's injuries were not consistent with being hit by a car while standing. >> it didn't add up. we left with more questions than we did answers. special agent jones needed he needed to hear more of the human story if he was ever going to find out what had really happened on this road. >> we got to go back into the epicenter and the epicenter is justine and eric and we've got to understand these two individuals. >> the couple had met when justine was in college and to earn a little pocket money she got a cash register job at a lowe's. it is there that she stuck up a relationship with eric. >> what do you think she saw in him? he's a very strong person and he's very decisive and determined. he did have two children but he was working owe taking care of them and she liked that. she really respected that about eric. >> but here was the complication

about eric. with two children from a previous relationship, disease disease sif eric was determined to have no more. justine on the other hand wanted children. lauren said to say good-bye to eric and move on. >> what are you doing with him? those are the two things that you ultimately want in your life. >> but justine stayed with eric. they had been a couple for months but she still wasn't introducing him to the parents. >> he's the phantom boyfriend? >> yeah. when you know your child is seeing someone on a steady or on an exclusive basis, you would kind of at least like to see who they are. >> finally after a year and a half of nudging her daughter, heidi got to meet the boyfriend for dinner. >> eric swirmed as though he wanted to be a thousand miles away. >> my feelings were, well, okay, i don't really get it, you know, but it's really not mine to get,

you know. it was justine's boyfriend. >> did you think that he was the guy? >> no oh. >> that this was the intended? >> no. >> and justine and eric had their ups and downs. they were one of the chronic on again and off again couples. at one point her former college roommate holly thought they might finally break up for good. for years she had been trying to convince justine to leave eric and come live with her on the west coast. >> all she needed was a boarding pass? >> yes. and i told her i would pay for the plane ticket, fly out there, pick her up, and bring her to oregon. >> after one particularly bad justine and eric period, holly was so convinced that justine was finally coming, she rented a two-bedroom apartment for them. but in the end, her plan not only went nowhere, it backfired. >> i just feel her distances herself. >> perhaps justine thought holly was interfering too much in her relationship.

but there was one breakup where justine went to stay with her parents in tennessee. still, the two managed to patch up their difficulties. >> i never thought that there was a match. it didn't seem like a good fit to me. >> so you thought he'd just disappear from the scene? >> i thought eventually it would run its course, they would break up and she would move on. >> but she never did. for years, justine and eric slogged through their on again/off again relationship. >> there were times she would come see me on the weekends and figure out what she wanted to do next and know that this wasn't the right relationship for her. but they never really broke off communication. there would always be the phone calls. >> he was always in the orbit there? >> yes. >> finally, justine gave eric, who, remember, had started the relationship saying he wasn't the marrying kind, an ultimatum. give me a ring or be gone. >> he came home late on christmas eve and gave her the ring back and said, you win. >> oh, come on. >> that's what he did.

>> here at the 11th hour? >> uh-huh. and she showed up with a gorgeous 5,0$5,000 diamond on h hand. >> and it would be a wedding no one would forget. coming up -- it looked perfect. her family says, far from it. >> he left the next day and he never came back. he didn't stay with her. >> we never saw him again. -- when d

. o, sweet butternut. we're roasting, and grilling to create must-have meals with no preservatives. . . . [ male announcer ] it would be easy for u.s. olympian meb keflezighi

to deposit checks at the nearest citibank branch. ♪ like this one. ♪ or this one. ♪ or, maybe this one. ♪ but when it's this easy to use citibank mobile check deposit at home...why would he? ♪ woooo! [ male announcer ] citibank mobile check deposit. easier banking. every step of the way.

special agent jones' investigation was moving beyond bore in on just who this couple, justine and eric really was. con el fin de saber qué es lo >> it was a mystery. it was. >> at the close of the christmas holidays, two years before her sudden death, justine remembered to emerald hill elementary. on her finger, that diamond engagement ring she fought so hard for from the man she loved and dated for six years. >> everybody is thinking, well, is she really going to marry him? is he really going to marry her? and some of it was, he finally came to his senses and realized what a precious person he was. >> eric was getting ready to start a construction business. to justine, his new venture and

their marriage would be the beginning of the life she dreamed of since she was a little girl. a husband, a house in the country, and a baby. to her friends, it was a disaster waiting to happen. >> consensus was that eric was not the guy for her. >> they didn't seem to match. she was a very sweet young thing that taught kindergarten and he was mr. tough guy. so where's the match? you know, it's like you have to have some cross-ties to connect. and i never could see what the cross-ties -- what was the connection. >> still, pat and kathleen, her teacher friends, came around. >> we planned a really nice shower and we were excited and she wasn't. >> she wasn't? >> no. >> pat hosted the shower with all of the crepe paper you would expect from fellow kindergarten teachers but her gloom never lifted. perhaps it was just a bad case of bridal jitters. >> she didn't seem very happy. the whole time during the shower i wanted to get her aside and say, you don't have to marry this person. but that conversation didn't

happen. >> justine's mom, meanwhile, was fearful her daughter was heading into a train wreck of a marriage. the may wedding was two weeks away. they had booked a charming bed and breakfast in the rolling hills of the virginia countryside but justine was the opposite of a bridezilla. >> i just didn't feel right. part of me was concerned because i had heard for years about eric's opposition to get married that she was going to get left standing at the alter, that he was going to get cold feet and there would be 100 people there and she would be in her pretty white dress and he would not show up. obviously if that's a possibility, you want to protect your child. >> heidi and steve got in their car and drove to virginia. surprise intervention, it would seem. it turned out poorly. >> what did you see? >> blind rage. she stormed into this row tell room and -- i've never heard to talk to anybody like that.

she just screamed at me and called me names and said she hated me and she would never, ever forgive me for intruding on her life. i was shocked. i was absolutely shocked. >> you're seeing your daughter come unglued right before your eyes. >> absolutely. absolutely. >> was eric the elephant in the room? >> at one point in the conversation before she had calmed down, she said something to the effect of, do you understand how hard you have made things for me by coming up here? that stuck in my mind. what did she mean by that? >> maybe she was telling her parents to back off, that she had come of age. she was, after all, 27 a. woman with a profession she loved and her decisions from here on out would be her own. >> we pushed as far as we could and so now the only strategy available to us us was the opposite. let's have the wedding, let's

make it as nice as we can, let's make it as enjoyable as we can and that's exactly what we tried to do. >> and they pulled out all of the stops. the beautiful ceremony went off without a hitch. sister lauren, the maid of honor. there was a dancing and a private chef. a picture perfect mayday in a charming setting. >> and it looks like weddings in thousands of different family albums. >> that's what it looked like. >> there was a lack of joy. mostly i would say that was it. there was a lack of joy. it was like you're going through -- it was just very strange. >> the bride posing with her new husband would be dead in five month's time. some of the guests would never see justine alive again. the day after taking his vows, eric took off on his motorcycle. >> he left the next day and he never came back.

he didn't continue to stay at the bed and breakfast with her. >> he wasn't there for the gathering of the opening of wedding presents. justine saw her family off alone. >> we never saw him again. >> stranger still, holly, justine's closest sister's college roommate wasn't even told that there had been a wedding. >> i didn't know she was getting married. she didn't send me an invitation. >> you're her best friend. >> uh-huh. yeah. >> but maybe not so surprising since holly had never made much of a secret of her dislike of eric. >> i honestly hated him from the first second i saw him. >> really? >> gut instinct. i felt sick. i felt nauseous. >> to be in his presence? >> uh-huh. >> what was it about him that made you make that decision so quickly? >> i didn't like the way he looked at her, treated her, and he kind of acted like he was better than she was. i didn't ever see him valuing her. >> from the moment justine met eric, holly thought her friend was taking a stumble into an

abyss. this dear friend from their private women's college, nice upbringing with a loving family was now living in a dreary cinder block house. >> she was living in a world so different than the world essentially we came from. it wasn't even really reality. >> and to eric's cousin tracy, that was all part of the problem. in her opinion, justine's friends and family flat out didn't think eric was good enough for her. >> i just think that from the beginning they didn't approve of eric and -- >> and as you remember, that was really the source of all of that anxiety at the wedding? >> yes. >> the simple fact was, she said, this was a guy and girl in love, newlyweds. >> they seemed happy. >> they were looking at buying a big piece of land in the country. eric was planning on building his new bride a fine new house and justine all mopey, not in august. only three months before she

died when cousin tracy snapped this picture of her at her brother's wedding. the whole abshire family had embraced eric's bride and made her feel welcome. >> they had a great time. justine and eric really had a good time at the reception. >> agent jones sifted through these stories told of a couple's life that ended on this road. eric, her husband cradling her body. >> we were starting to determine that, okay, she's an accomplished teacher during her daytime and then she has a separate life and the two hardly mixed. >> and investigators needed to know exactly how justine had spent her final day. >> nothing was totally -- >> what did you think was going on with her, as you look back? she was a wreck, huh? >> yes, she was. coming up -- was justine afraid for her life? >> she doesn't cry.

she had been crying uncontrollably. she had told me, if i'm not at school, if i'm not here, this is where you can find my lesson plan. >> -- when "shattered" continues. no problem. you want to save money on rv insurance? no problem. you want to save money on motorcycle insurance? no problem. you want to find a place to park all these things? fuggedaboud it. this is new york. hey little guy, wake up! aw, come off it mate! geico. saving people money on more than just car insurance. i'm good. alright. [ male announcer ] every time you say no to a cigarette, you celebrate a little win. nicorette mini helps relieve cravings in minutes. so you can quit one cigarette at a time. . . our town had a "brilliant" idea. support team usa and show our olympic spirit right in our own backyard.

so we combined our citi thankyou points to make it happen. tom chipped in 10,000 points. karen kicked in 20,000. and by pooling more thankyou points from folks all over town, we were able to watch team usa... [ cheering ] in true london fashion. [ male announcer ] now citi thankyou visa card holders can combine the thankyou points they've earned and get even greater rewards. ♪ a digital scanning system five times more precise. helping you see perfectly. that's precision. ♪ lenscrafters. my crowning achievement thus far. mom took a bunch of amazing pictures. but she can't share them. it's her data plan. she's stressing about overages because she already downloaded a fifteen megabyte cat video. [ laughing ] aww. you have to see this. i've already seen it, nana.

like a hundred times. [ male announcer ] why limit your iphone? switch to sprint. the only network with truly unlimited data for your iphone. don't start by lifting 400 pounds, running a marathon your first day out or jumping on some crazy fad diet. start small, because small changes are easier to stick with than the big ones the more you know.

here was the investigator's big headline so far. they had a hit-and-run accident that looked nothing like a hit-and-run. >> none of it made sense. it didn't look legitimate. >> so the red flags go off by what you're not seeing? >> it looked like a staged failed attempt to make it look like a hit-and-run. >> not a standing person hit by a vehicle? >> not at all. >> so if what occurred was staged, why go through all of the trouble? even eric new in an unnatural death like this one the spouse can be the number one suspect. that's law & order 101. >> always question the husband. >> but he was talking to the police and with his help they would build a time line of the day for both him and justine. justine, as usual, had shown up

that morning in her classroom but her teacher friends were struck by how troubled she appeared on the last day of her life. kathleen knew something was wrong the moment she went to see kathleen the moment school started that day. >> i could see her sitting in the classroom with her back to the door when she was on the phone. and i went to open the door and it was locked. >> at recess, justine stayed inside. >> she didn't come outside that day. so i didn't see her again until lunchtime. when i saw her at lunchtime, she had been visibly crying. her eyes were just red and puffy and her face was blotchy. >> any idea what was going on with her that day, what had caused it? >> she had told everybody that she was sick, that she had allergies. but i didn't buy it. >> she had been crying? >> she had been crying. she had been crying uncontrol blee. >> pat was taken aback when she saw justine as they walked the children to the bus at the end of the day. >> i turned to say something to

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

>> as for the husband's day, eric told investigators that after a routine workday doing construction, he had taken his kids to the mall and then in the early evening stopped by the hoy ill mother and then was called back to the hospital where his mother was in rapid decline. eric recounted the final part of his night for investigators. >> after i left my mom i went and got my motorcycle out. >> surveillance footage from the storage facility shows what investigators believe is him getting his bike at 12:04 a.m. following his motorcycle ride, eric says he got home not too long after. >> you know, i didn't look at the clock. i know it was late. >> was your wife here? >> yes. i didn't want to talk to her about my mom and she started saying that i'm emotionally unattached and i told her, i don't want to talk about it. i want to be left alone. >> that's when eric said justine

got ticked at him. >> saying maybe i need some time by myself and i said, maybe you do. that's when she got in her car. >> and records do show justine's cell phone calling eric's at 1:19 a.m., he says the come get me call. but the cell phone records show investigators something else. even though on a typical day he made a lot of calls, his phone calls go completely silent at two points that justine is killed. >> we have two extensive blackout periods, from 1:01004 to 11:00 p.m. until justine's call for help. we weren't having any activity. >> eric tells investigators he's not sure when he left the hospital the second time. >> i want to say it's around 10:30 or 11:00, give or take.

it may be later. >> but investigators say his cell phone was pinging off towers north of the hospital starting a little after 9:30 that night. >> the phone information and his story just don't go together? >> correct. it just -- >> he says i'm in start lotsville and the phone says, no, you're half an hour north? >> correct. we're not connecting the dots. >> but air eric's cousin tracy would come forward to say that she was certain she was at the hospital with eric late into the night. >> what time do you think you would have left the hospital? >> i think i left 11:30. >> and eric was still there at that point? >> i found him and said good-bye to him? >> at 11:30 at night at the hospital? >> it was around 11:30. >> that would make it difficult for eric to pull off a time-consuming elaborately staged hit-and-run if that's what investigators were starting to theorize. there was another reason that

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

everyone around her had been keeping her secrets, scary secrets. coming up, friends and family ready to spill. >> he pinned her up against the wall. i said, if you don't get your hands off of her i'm calling the police. >> -- when "dateline" continues. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] you've been years in the making. and there are many years ahead. join the millions of members who've chosen an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. go long.

insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks lunching. at olive garden just $6.95. fresh, crisp salad made when you order it, four soups made fresh daily, baked breadsticks right out of the oven! just $6.95 for a limited time.

a beautiful young newlywed moued down by a car on a back road. now those close to her are going to start talking, sharing troubling secrets that reveal why for years this beloved kindergarten teacher may have been on collision course with a killer.

again, here's dennis murphy. >> while justine's parents had never been overly fond of eric, they always tried to keep an open mind about it. yet a few days after the funeral, they say he blurted out just some awful things. >> he told me, i never wanted to get married or have any more children any ways. he thought he would be just fine without justine in his life. >> and in their grief, as the friends and family gathered, stories started to tumble out. and not your typical recollection about a loved one that suddenly passes away. justine's friends had never shared with each other what they call their violent eric stories. they worried if they spoke about them they would lose their friendship. yet lauren is talking about the day that eric stormed into the apartment that the two sisters were sharing for the summer. >> he pinned her against the door and so i came out and said, get your hands off of her and he

was extremely startled to see me. i said off her. get out of here. >> and a few months before the wedding, justine confiding in her that she was scared of the man she was about to marry. >> i encouraged her to walk away. i gave her the option to come live with me and she denied that, telling me that she feared for my well-being. >> for you, too? >> yes. >> did you ever say to her, justine, this is a crazy situation? you've got to get yourself out of this? >> i did. i told her she could do better. she was beautiful, she was young, she still had her whole life ahead of her. she could meet somebody else. she told me she had invested too much time in the relationship, nobody else would want her, she would never find anybody else, which i just thought was crazy. >> while eric denied having any stormy physical fights with

justine, there was talk of other women in his life. >> did you hear stories that he was running around on her? >> i did. >> how did she deal with that? >> i think she just tried to push it to the back of her mind. >> do you think she was happy? >> i don't. >> and when investigators looked at eric's cell phone records, there was one call in particular at 11:46, the night that justine died, that caught her attention. it's a call to the mother of his two children. >> it ended with eric asking her if there was any chance for them romantically and she said, no, not as long as you're married or that you're married. he said that he thought he made a mistake in getting married. >> is that important to hear or is that just somebody shooting a breeze with an old girlfriend? >> well, the timing of it is very peculiar and the fact that it's only an hour and 10 or 20 minutes before our victim's alleged call for help.

>> but that woman, alison crawford, says that midnight call that had gotten investigators suspicious was being miss interpret treted. she's a nurse at the very hospital where eric's mother laid dying and says it only made sense for him to call her. >> i believed that it was easier for eric to ask me questions about his mother. >> even the part when eric told her that his marriage had been a mistake and asking if they had a chance as a couple wasn't out of the ordinary and certainly not a watershed moment signaling he was going to kill his wife, if that's what investigators were thinking. >> i think that it was dramatized for reaction and i don't think it was really looked at just two people exchanging information. i think we underestimate our emotions and the things that we say when we're upset and i think that it's very easy to go from point a to point b and not really know how you got there.

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

the funeral. steve confronted him about the rumors running around on his daughter. >> i said, there was never any other woman? >> he said, there was one after justine was killed. i got drunk one night and slept with a woman. >> and while eric would say later he was only acting out of grief, it was when steven schwartz, ever the businessman, started looking into the finances that he got really worried. it was starting to look as though his daughter may have just been a piggy bank that got cracked open on a cold back country road. when we come back, a husband who needs money and a wife -- well, you'll see. >> when you add up all of the money, she was worth quite a lot dead? >> yes, sir. >> when shattered continues. smoe from mccafé! ♪ like the flavorful fusion of mango/pineapple... ♪

...bursting with fresh flavors and blended with creamy low-fat yogurt. the simple joy of exhilarating refreshment. ♪

there were the stories of other women, the stories of eric's volcanic temper. but for steve schwartz, the corporate businessman, it was when he started looking into his daughter's finances, he began to nurse his darkest suspicions about his former father-in-law. the husband and wife were $130,000 in debt. >> it was like five or six times her take-home salary.

it was credit card rates at high interest rates. no way would you ever pay that off. >> a big chunk of that debt was a dumptruck that eric bought to buy a hauling business. he put the loan for the truck in justine's name. >> between the dumptruck payment and the insurance on the dumptruck and the upkeep on the dumptruck, that was just enough to tip them over the edge financially to where things became unsustainable. after that point is when she began to have insufficient fund charges show up in her checking account. >> they are running on fumes. >> that's right. >> justine paid for everything. >> even, they would sadly discover, the big rock of an engagement ring, she triumphantly brought home that christmas holiday. >> she bought and paid for it. she never told us that. she indicated to us that eric, you know, picked it out and surprised her with it. >> but perhaps more ominously, when it came to the couple's finances, about three months before she died, justine had

called her father to ask for a $40,000 loan. eric wanted to expand his fledgling construction business. had he no idea how deeply in debt his daughter was. >> she was very upset when i told her i couldn't do it. and it wasn't upset in a pet tu lant kind of way. she seemed kind of devastated by it. i could hear her voice cracking on the other end and then she started to cry. >> is this a watershed moment where eric maybe realizes, justine is not going to be my bank anymore? >> i think so. because by that time it was already evident to him that he had pretty well tapped out all of her resources. i mean, her credit lines were all run up. >> and if you can't give us that $40,000, what use are you? >> right. >> well, that's exactly right. he had gotten everything that he could get out of her and now she was just a liability. >> steve schwartz shared the results of his financial digging with special agent jones and

investigators hadn't forgotten how in those early interviews with eric he weirdly bragged about justine's credit rating. >> anything else that we should know or you need to tell us? >> no. when you look it up you're going to see that her credit was absolutely spotless and mine was slowly because we made sure the house and the land went in her name. >> eric initially told us that his credit was slow and they protected her credit. >> justine, good for credit? >> good for credit. >> investigators were piecing together their own picture of the couple's finances. they had come upon some insurance. there were four policies on justine and it was the one on the dumptruck bought in justine's name that really caught their eye. if sherp struck by an uninsured motorist, say in a hit-and-run, that one policy could pay out a million dollars. >> when you add up all of the money, do you have enough there

for motivation? >> i think so. it was a very substantial amount. >> she was worth quite a lot dead? >> yes, sir. >> and investigators discovered that eric was familiar with how insurance worked. they found had he suck sus fully filed several high dollar vehicle claims in the six-year period before justine died. >> over a period of time there was more claims than what you'd normally find with somebody. >> interesting money angles for sure but agent jones knew he didn't have enough to build a case on and eric, while cooperating, also made it clear to the investigators he would only go so far. >> the question is, um, if need be, would you submit to a polygraph examination? >> no. i'm not taking it. >> any reason for that? >> just because i know they are completely pointless in court. >> the case always seemed to end up back at square one and special agent mike jones knew that his suspicions, no matter

how deep, were not enough to secure an arrest warrant. >> it's a difference in knowing and proving. >> but justine's family wasn't waiting. they would public volley the most direct charges. they were coming to believe not only that their former son-in-law killed their daughter but that he might just get away with it. >> he's very clever. he's much smarter than most people give him credit, too. coming up -- investigators focus on a black suv. >> the question was, is this the vehicle that could have been used to run her over? her injuries were consistent with being crushed under the wheels of a large vehicle. >> -- when "dateline" continues. we're pausing our story for a moment for some breaking news. there's just been a verdict in the closely watched trial of jerry sandusky, former penn state assistant coach charged with sexual abuse. a jury has found sandusky guilty

of 45 counts against him. the verdict was announced just a few minutes ago in petition after two days of deliberations. he faced a total of 48 counts abusing boys for ten years. telling dramatic emotional stories but prosecutors did not identify two others. sandusky himself never took the stand. again, jerry sandusky guilty on 45 of the 48 counts against him. we have a team of reporters at the courthouse now. they will bring you more on all of this later. again, the vertd verdict, mostly guilty verdicts. we'll continue with "dateline" right after this. re no marathon. but thanks to the htc one x from at&t, with its built in beats audio, every note sounds amazingly clear. ...making it easy to get lost in the music... and, well... rio vista?!!

[ male announcer ] ...lost. introducing the musically enhanced htc one x from at&t. rethink possible. let'"that looks hard"oject from enhanced htc one x from at&t. to "that didn't take long". let's break out behr ultra... ...the number one selling paint and primer in one, now with stain blocker. each coat works three times harder, priming, covering, and blocking stains. let's go where no paint has gone before, and end up some place beautiful. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. right now at the home depot, buy four gallons of paint and get the fourth one free. aren't just a "show." [ sizzling ] that sound means freshly prepared ingredients are searing and caramelizing right there at your table. all new sizzling entrees! like the new n'awlins skillet, and more. starting at just $9.99. only at applebee's.

mine hurt more! mine stopped hurting faster... [ female announcer ] neosporin® plus pain relief starts relieving pain faster and kills more types of infectious bacteria. neosporin® plus pain relief. for a two dollar coupon, visit neosporin.com.

but when it comes to what you really love, you shouldn't have to sacrifice. and that goes double for ice cream. now you don't have to give up. you can give in with edy's slow churned light ice cream. we churn it slowly for all the rich and creamy taste with just half the fat. so now you can have your ice cream and it eat it, too. ♪ nestlé -- good food, goolife.

as time passed after justine's tragic death on this country road, eric's mother finally passed away. and while he seemed to be moving on with his life, justine's family was falling apart. heidi was hospitalized for two months for clinical depression. >> just couldn't get up and get going? >> uh-huh. posttraumatic stress. >> lauren, too, found life

meaningless life without her older sister. not long after justine died, she left her job. >> it was just too overwhelming to try and figure out how to get up in the morning and how to go through a normal life and also be dealing with this. >> they had all sunk into a black hole of would a, could a, should a. >> what do you tell yourself? >> not having been more involved and attentive. >> you're a career-driven guy? >> yeah i always have been and i'd trade all of that away in a heartbeat having a second chance to get things right with justine. >> on the one-year anniversary of her death, justine's parents organized a vigil in a downtown park to bring attention to their daughter's unsolved case. they initially posted a $10,000 reward for any information

leading to justine's killer but had now upped it to $50,000. they were determined to do whatever they could to jump-start an investigation that they worried was grinding to a halt. >> we were like, okay, next week, next month. >> eric came to the vigil. the schwartz family hadn't seen him in months. in steve and heidi's minds he had migrated from being undeserving of their daughter to the prime suspect in her death. holly joined them at the vigil. she had been convinced he was the one from the moment she got the letter notifying her that her good friend was dead. >> i remember i was just reading tragic death. as soon as i got to the word death, just instantly, not even half a second, my mind just said, he finally killed her and i just knew with every fiber of my being that he had killed her. >> yet even though justine's family firmly agreed with holly

about eric's culpability, they were less certain he would ever be charged with the murder. >> he's very clever. he's much smarter than most people give him credit and that's made the investigator's jobs much harder. >> they tried to become their own detectives of sorts. after all, they knew their former son-in-law best and were determined to figure out what really had happened to their daughter. with no criminal charges in sight, they file a wrongful death civil suit pointing to eric as their daughter's killer. courtney stewart, a reporter for the hook had launched her own investigation into justine's death. she said everyone understood where the family was coming from, justine's parents believed eric had brutally killed their daughter and were going to do everything they could to bring him to justice. >> it's a pretty blunt allegation but i think that civil suit is part of this maneuvering that her parents felt like they were going to do whatever they could to make sure he did not get away with her

murder. >> they are squeezing him. they are putting pressure on eric? >> yes. >> the schwartz family wrongful death civil suit alleges nine others, most of them unnamed, had conspired with eric to kill their daughter. he denied the allegation and so did alison crawford, his former girlfriend and one of the named defendants in the lawsuit. and while sympathetic to the sha wart's mission to find answers to their daughter's death, she believes they crossed the line by filing the civil suit. >> although initially this situation was a pursuit for justice for justine, it has transitioned into a punishment for the people that are associated or connected with eric. >> the focus became nailing eric and getting him put away? >> correct. >> and eric's family says he found himself living in a very uncomfortable investigative limbo. >> eric is a guy with a bull's eye around him?

>> right. >> people pointing a finger, he killed his wife, getting away with it? >> yes. >> crawford said that it put so much pressure on eric that it erupted in their investigation. she ended up receiving a protection of order against him. >> it ended with eric touching me physically and i simply wanted to make sure that that wouldn't happen again. >> but alison chalks up the behavior to the inkrens scrutiny because of the investigation and says it has been taken out of context. >> it was used in a manner that manipulated the public opinion. >> the story is that he went for you by the throat. >> eric's life was turned upside down and in an effort to turn against him. the eric i know was an active participant in his children's lives. he was not abusive. >> but it was the medical examiner's final findings that helped tie things together for agent jones. maybe he hadn't seen debris or

much blood on the road because justine wasn't killed there. >> there was findings that are considered consistent with strangulation. telling me that she was incapacitated in some which and placed in the middle of the road. my theory and the body tells me that she was likely manually strangled to near death, transported to the location that she was found and then run over. >> the m.e. believed justine's injuries pointed to a large vehicle, something much bigger than her mustang. >> the vehicles lower to the ground you're going to see more skraks and drags and whereas the larger vehicles the vehicles grab you and drag you a little bit. probably an suv. some lift to it. >> it made its way into the investigator's case file. a big black ford expedition like this one that eric looked at the week before justine died. an ignition key went missing and

the suv went missing a few days later. >> and the theory of foul play, what might this black suv, what role might it play? >> i think the question is, is this the vehicle that could have been used to run her over? >> big, heavy, gigantic suv? >> righter. her injuries were consistent with essentially being crushed under the wheels of a large vehicle. >> the suv turned up in a storage unit about a mile from where justine's body was found. >> it has less than 50 miles on the odometer. there was no damage to the ignition but it's not connected with justine's death for a couple of months and, in fact, before police ever get to look at it, it's detailed, clean, and sold. >> eric indicated to the investigators he had nothing to do with the missing suv. but did say something else that caught their attention. >> he tells them that, oh, yeah, she came to look at the car with

me and she crawled all through it. >> leaving dna? trace evidence? >> right. that would be perfect if they happened to find one of her hairs, well, she was crawling through it when we were thinking about buying it. >> again, investigators were left with a little more than suspicions. they couldn't tie the suv to eric. >> we were far from saying homicide. >> the case, once again, seemed to be at a standstill. and not the least part of the dilemma was the commonsense problem with the crime itself. step back and look at how complex the investigator's operating theory was. that eric strangles justine within an inch of her life, runs her over with a large vehicle. now he has to get her body, her car, and his motorcycle all out here to the scene. that was a scenario with a lot of moving parts, one that needed time to execute and maybe one with several vehicles. it just seemed motorcycle r like more than one man could handle in a narrow opportunity. so the investigation sputtered for more than two years when an

odd thing happened. someone came forward with a very bizarre tale of happenstance involving a parade float. when we come back, a motorist lost and then found by a stranger with a request. >> this gentleman comes around to my car and he says, can you follow me? my wife's car is almost out of gas. >> when "shattered" continues. good evening on a busy news night. breaking news from pennsylvania. there's a verdict in the jerry sandusky trial of the expenn state assistant football coach. he's been convicted of 45 counts in hi sex abuse trial. that news just out. again, jerry sandusky is

convicted of 45 counts in his sex abuse trial. also, strong storms leaving damage across the region. [ male announcer ] olympic tennis players bob and mike bryan

do a lot of sending... and receiving. sending...and receiving. sending...and receiving. sending...and receiving. sending...and receiving. [ bob ] i got the tickets. [ male announcer ] and with citibank popmoney, it's even easier to keep sending...and receiving. let me get you back. no, it's on me. i insist. no way. yes way. well let me chip in. [ male announcer ] send money from one bank account to another, with citibank popmoney. easier banking. every step of the way.

sometimes things happen out of the blue and sometimes out of the dark. and that's what occurred next in the investigation into the death of justine abshire. a man had stepped forward with a strange tale but he inadvertently became involved in the case one november night. he said he found himself hopelessly lost on these windy roads. >> i was way out in the middle of somewhere i had never been before. >> sicil pursued his passion for building parade floats. here he was after work only two months away from his deadline to finish the float for the new year's eve parade and he was in dire need of one more old school bus chassis to build upon.

>> that was a normality of my life, looking for something to put this last unit on. >> his float building partner led him to a school bus that he heard was for sale but instead of going south from charlottseville mistakenly headed north. >> you were upside down? >> yes. >> lost and late, he said he did finally spot one school bus parked in his headlights but there was no for sale sign in it. he was turning around when a man approached out of the night. >> i was turning around and a man said, my wife's car is almost out of gas. can you follow me to a gas station? i said, well, it would be great because i'm totally lost. and he said, well, no problem. we'll get to the gas station and this is going to be right on the main road. >> so you can do each other a little bit of good here? >> exactly. absolutely. so i pull out, he pulls out, i follow this little car all the

way through these little winding roads. >> a few miles down the road, he says, the man pulled over. >> i pulled out from behind him and said, i ran out of gas. so can you take me back home? >> i said, well, i can run you up the gas station? >> oh, no, it's fine. just take me back home. >> that would make sense, let's go to the gas station and get a five-gallon -- >> yes, that's what i thought. he said he could take care of it from there. i took him back home, left his driveway. >> as you dropped him off -- >> hopped out of the car. >> and went into his house? >> went right away. >> helping out the man with the car was a story quickly forgotten, forgotten until two years later when a friend sent him a news about an unsolved case. the few details, the victim who walked away from her car, the picture of the husband took secil back to that night. he was sure that the man under suspicion for killing his wife was the same person who had asked him for help the night he

was lost. cecil got in touch with the authorities. >> all i knew was that the guy that was in the picture was the guy that was sitting next to me in my car when i drove him back. >> it had always been a missing link for investigators. if eric abshire had killed his wife, how did he do it alone? at a minimum, staging the hit-and-run it required getting their vehicles out here five miles from the home. now the parade float builder's story provided a possible solution to those complex logistics. as a good sam mare continue motorist he followed eric to where justine's body was later found. convenient but what are the chances that that story was true? you had to believe that he appeared at the very moment that eric staged help. >> it's a nice story but without anything to go along with t. it's just a story. >> special agent mike jones

started to follow the account. >> i wanted to check the area to see if there might be a school bus that said where he was going and that proved to be true. >> next, he wanted him to trace the road he took. >> put him in the car, said, okay, this is where you said you started that night. now tell me where to go. >> you're in charge. >> i didn't give him any feedback. there was always one way and i was on the receiving end of it. if he told me to turn, i turned. if he told me to stop, i stopped. >> in his show and tell re-credit asian, cecil did not point to the spot. >> he didn't get it to the right spot? >> he didn't. if he would have picked that up in the media or something like that -- >> well, what about that? didn't everybody in the county know where all of these things had happened? >> well, that's the thing. it wasn't too perfect. sometimes when it's too perfect it can be regurge stated. i thought he has enough room of

error in there that he might be credible. >> nor did he have anything to gain by coming forward. >> was he interested in any of the reward money that had been posted? >> he's never asked about it. >> and cecil willingly underwent a polygraph? >> so you took a lie detector test about your story? >> absolutely. >> how did you do? >> i passed it. no problems at all. >> and yet it all seemed so pack. a solution to a miss vee in the movies but not in real life. even cecil saw the problem posed by his story. >> what was he going to do if you hadn't appeared in his driveway? >> i have no clue. >> the information that he had was fascinating but the information that mr. abshire provided was fascinating. >> do you think the story is true? >> i do. >> did he become the guy that had helped him get the car out on that back road? >> i do. >> the investigators had another piece to the intricate puzzle that they were piecing together and when they looked at it all,

the medical examiner's findings, the insurance, troubled relationship, and the story of the lot of parade float builder, a special grabbed jury was convened. after four long years of investigation, they finally felt they had their case. >> when we were able to get all of the information that we felt that we were able going to be able to get, we looked at the picture and it was clear to us what had happened and that who was responsible. >> go arrest abshire? >> yeah. >> news of an arrest that justine's family thought might never come. >> it felt like this huge bag of rocks i had been carrying on my back for four years was lifted off of me. >> eric abshire would stand trial for the killing of his wife. but a conviction was anything but certain. coming up -- justine's family waits for the family's decision. and then -- >> steve, we have a verdict. >> got to go.

>> -- when "shattered" continues. then you and your family will love netflix. netflix lets you watch unlimited movies and tv episodes on your pc or tv via game console or other devices connected to the internet. search by age, or character, and get information that helps you make the right choices for your family. it's instant, it's unlimited. and it's only 8 bucks a month. start your free trial today. where tonight we switched their steaks with walmart's choice premium steak. it's a steakover! tender. really tender. the steak itself is phenomenal. it's so juicy. this steak is perfect. these are carefully aged for flavor and tenderness. it's probably the best steak i've had. tonight you are actually eating walmart steak. are you serious? wow. i'll get some steaks from walmart. walmart choice premium steak in the black package. it's one hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed. try it and check us out on facebook. hey! [ gasps ] ♪

[ backfires ] [ female announcer ] girl power to go. new citrus crystal light energy. 5 calories. because you never know. a digital scanning system five times more precise.

helping you see perfectly. that's precision. ♪ lenscrafters. aflac! ha! isn't major medical enough? huh! no! who's gonna help cover the holes in their plans? aflac! quack! like medical bills they don't pay for? aflac! or help pay the mortgage? quack! or child care? quack! aflaaac! and everyday expenses? huh?! blurlbrlblrlbr!!! [ thlurp! ] aflac! [ male announcer ] help your family stay afloat at aflac.com. plegh! hmm. let's just share a 20 piece. [ internal ] 20 mcnuggets, for only $4.99? oh, man. she's beautiful smart and sensible. jackpot. [ crewperson ] anything else? [ male announcer ] mcdonald's crispy, juicy chicken mcnuggets are now part of the extra value menu.

so you get the tastes you love at a price you'll love even more. guess who's going to the game? [ internal ] thank you. [ male announcer ] the simple joy of having more to love. almost five years from the night when justine abshire was found lying dead on this dark,

country road, her husband would finally stand trial for her murder. it had been a long wait for justine's parents, who had come to believe the worst about the man who had married their daughter. >> my personal belief is that eric intended to kill her when he married her. he had made up his mind before they even got married, that at some point he would do that. >> prosecutors diana wheeler and rick moore were committed to finding justice for the family but knew they faced an uphill battle. there was no physical evidence linking eric to the scene. >> a guilty vote was not guaranteed in this? >> no. >> the prosecution's theory was that she was strangled and clinging to life when eric ran her over in the road. the problem with this theory is it raised as many questions as it answered. reporter courtney stewart

covered the trial. >> you don't really even have a crime scene. if she did not die on that road, where did she die? they don't know. they were never able to determine where this happened or even exactly what happened. they are just quite certain that she's dead and he did it. >> and charles weber, eric's defense attorney, would dissect the prosecution's case. he challenged the medical examiner's findings that justine could have been strangled and then ran over. >> i do not see that scientifically. >> the defense attorney called his own forensic pathologist to the witness stand. he testified that justine was struck in the road by a large vehicle that hit her hard enough to pro tell her threw through the air. >> it would account for the neck injury. >> it's an area of the spine that is attached directly to the

brain that controls heartbeat and breathing and would cause that to stop immediately. >> so scientifically and medically you're saying there's no reason to believe she wasn't standing in that roadway? >> the evidence cannot rule out the possibility of a hit-and-run. >> and webber says there was a report of a large vehicle on the road that night that could have caused her injuries. >> there was a witness statement that was jacked up toyota yet somehow that vehicle disappears and the police don't see it. >> as the case heads to the jury, reporter courtney stewart thought it too close to call. she could see how the defense may have seeded the jury with reasonable doubt. >> a circumstantial case, when there's no eyewitness, no nothing, it could go either way. it's going to be up to the jury to decide, what's reasonable doubt. >> and after about two hours of deliberation, word went out that the jury had a verdict. >> steven, we have a verdict. >> got to go. >> i felt like i was just going

to explode. about as tense as i've ever been in my life. >> the jurors walked back into the courtroom. they announce their verdict. eric abshire guilty of murder in the first degree, sentenced to life in prison. >> it's a huge feeling of relief, release. >> as steve and heidi schwartz walk out of the courthouse, they hug. the justice for their daughter findly had ended with the guilty verdict. >> it was a lot of work but it was worth it. >> and the prosecutors knew without the family and the dedicated investigators, eric abshire likely would have never been charged. >> i think eric almost got away with murder. it would have been easier to say, what a tragedy. a young groom has lost his beautiful bride, what a shame. we're so sorry. >> abshire is appealing the jury's verdict. but all of justine's friends and family are tough on themselves for not intervening even more forcefully in what to them had become a miserable marriage.

>> it's the guilt club. we're all in the guilt club. my parents, everybody. and that's the hardest thing for me. i could have just flown out there. because in my heart i felt that it was wrong. so, you know, sometimes you say you can't borrow trouble but i guess after years of it you have to put your foot down and do something. >> lauren, the long-term domestic abuse she believes her sister suffered is watching her slowly die from a chronic illness. even with the guilty verdict in, the agony hasn't faded. >> peace and justice seems to lack ideals and they are going to be blue skies and sunshine but that's not the case. >> at the elementary school where justine taught, they've planted a tree in memory of the kindergarten teacher whose happiest moments in her final year were probably spent in the comfort of the children that she loved.

when we come back, a late report from pennsylvania, where a jersey has found jerry sandusky guilty. n backyard. so we combined our citi thankyou points to make it happen. tom chipped in 10,000 points. karen kicked in 20,000. and by pooling more thankyou points from folks all over town, we were able to watch team usa... [ cheering ] in true london fashion. [ male announcer ] now citi thankyou visa card holders can combine the thankyou points they've earned and get even greater rewards. ♪ are so amazingly good,rewards. you'll get lost in an all-beef hot dog world. what was i supposed to wish for? why am i wearing a bow-tie? where did i leave my bicycle? after all, when you're enjoying the beefiest, juciest bite of pure kosher beef, nothing else matters. goodness gracious, that's kosher. with no fillers, by-products, artificial flavors or colors. hebrew national. the better-than-a-hot dog- hot dog.

the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks lunching. at olive garden just $6.95. fresh, crisp salad made when you order it, four soups made fresh daily, baked breadsticks right out of the oven! just $6.95 for a limited time. the radical new macbook pro with retina display. ♪ innovation...in every dimension. ♪

[ chuckles ] ♪ [ honk! ] ♪ [ honk! ] ♪ [ honk! ] ♪ [ male announcer ] now you'll know when to stop. [ honk! ] the all-new nissan altima with easy fill tire alert. [ honk! ] it's our most innovative altima ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪

next jerry sandusky found guilty on 45 counts. led away from the courthouse in handcuffs. we will have a liv welcome back. and now to the latest in the trial of former assistant coach jerry sandusky accused of abusing ten young boys. the verdict tonight, sandusky found guilty of 45 of the 48 counts against him. joining us now from the

courthouse in bellefonte, pennsylvania, is michael who was in the courtroom for the verdict. he was immediately taken into custody. describe the scene in the courtroom as the verdict was read. >> reporter: hushed courtroom. jerry sandusky rose, his hand tucked in his left pocket, showed no emotion has the jury foreman read off the counts, guilty, guilty, guilty, 45 out of the 48. his lawyer, joe amendola, immediately moved to have him stay in -- under house arrest after the commonwealth attorney tried to have him remanded immediately into custody. the judge immediately ruled, remand jerry sandusky into the custody of the county sheriff. he was escorted away, looked sort of twarts his wife but never made eye contact, almost a shrug as though he was expecting this, lester, and then jerry sandusky was escorted out of the

courtroom moments later in handcuffs. he was lead out of the courthouse on the way to jail. jerry sandusky looked almost dazed and close to tears at that point, realizing that for all intents and purposes, he is going to jail for the rest of his life. >> and that was my next question, in terms of sentencing, given the number of counts, what's the possible sentencing that we're looking at here? >> reporter: well over 100 years maximum. it's very hard to see any configuration will leave any possibility that jerry sandusky will ever have a free day for the rest of his life. the overwhelming totality of this evidence just makes it almost mandatory that he will be going to prison for the rest of his life. >> michael isakoff. jerry sandusky's attorney, joseph amendola, spoke to reporters.

>> we had a tidal wave of public opinion against jerry sandusky and the charges filed against him that he had been determined to be guilty by the public and the media from the very outset of the charges and that we had an uphill battle. i used the analogy that we were attempting to climb mt. everest from the bottom of the mountain. >> sandusky's attorney after that stunning verdict tonight. the allegations went back years. there wasn't a lot of physical evidence. so how did jurors reach their verdict? tonight, inside the courtroom, the prosecution, the defense, and what the jury heard. the trial of jerry sandusky, which began two weeks ago, culminated seven excruciating months for everyone connected with penn state and its football program. savannah gut ree has followed this case from the beginning. >> it felt like a collective wound to the penn state community because so much resolves around the football

program and joe paterno and even jerry sandusky. and to have this allegation, that the worst kind of crime happened in their midst and this most beloved part of penn state, it was just so much for the community to bear. >> with practically no physical evidence available, the prosecution's case boiled down to the credibility of alleged victims who claim jerry sandusky had sexually molested them years before. but what prosecutor's lacked in specifics, they made up for in numbers. michael isakoff was in the courtroom every day. >> the sheer volume of witnesses, having eight separate alleged victims step forward and get up on that witness stand and describe being abused by jerry sandusky at some point the sheer number becomes overwhelming and it makes it really hard to imagine that all of these people are making this up. >> attorney justine represents

two of the alleged victims. >> not every victim is going to describe abuse in the same way with the same emotional affect but each he every one of them in their own way told a story of absolute betrayal. >> travis weaver feels the same way. he did not testify in the trial, though he has spoken to a grand jury about sexual abuse he says took place in the early 1990s. weaver is currently suing sandusky, penn state, and second mile. he is the first of sandusky's accusers to speak publicly. >> you were, what, about 9, 10 years old? >> yes. >> weaver told kate snow of nbc's rock center that he met jerry sandusky through second mile, a foundation sandusky started in 1977 to mentor at-risk kids. >> it was like a summer camp. they had the big diving boards, had sports activities.

that's when i first met jerry was at the swimming pool. >> like other accusers, weaver says sandusky began taking him to work out at penn state during off-peak hours. eventually he said they would end up in the showers. >> he would dry me off with a towel, you know, say he was trying to wrestle with me and then he would just -- had me lay on top of him while we were both still naked. >> what would he do when he had you down on top of him? >> rub by backside, sometimes he would roll over on top of me and blow on my stomach and rub my genitals. and then it progressed in oral sex. >> the most dramatic moment in the defense's case was when sandusky's wife dorothy took the stand. >> she came on and said she didn't hear anything or see anything and couldn't corroborate the reports of one boy that he was screaming for help. >> dorothy sandusky had the potential to be a powerful witness because she's not just a character witness. she was also somebody who was in

a position to hear something. on the other hand, every juror will understand, this is somebody who was obviously biased in favor of her husband. so her testimony only goes so far. >> jerry sandusky did not testify at the trial. but jurors had heard his voice when prosecutors played parts of this interview he did with bob costas on "rock center". >> how would you define the part you played? what are you willing to concede that you've done that was wrong and you wish you had not done it? >> well, i shouldn't have showered with those kids. you know, so -- >> that's it? >> yeah. well, that's what's hit me the most. >> are you a pedophile? >> no. >> are you sexually attracted to young boys, to underage boys? >> am i sexually attracted to

underage boys? >> yes. >> sexually attracted? no. i enjoy young people. i love to be around them. i -- but, no, i'm not sexually attracted to young boys. >> on wednesday, the defense abruptly rested while the jury deliberated, prosecutors made a shocking revelation. matt sandusky, who had always supported his dad, changed his mind. matt, who first met sandusky through second mile, was prepared to testify that he had been sexually abused by his adoptive father, jerry sandusky. >> and what's amazing is the wednesday that jerry sandusky was going to have to make the decision whether to go on the stand or not, matt sandusky is secretly escorted into the back of the courtroom by state troopers to be available, to be

called as a rebuttal witness to his own father. pretty dramatic, pretty shakes spearian. >> and now sandusky likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. more on the verdict coming up and i'll have the latest tomorrow morning on "today." you can also see more of that interview with accuser travis weaver tomorrow on a special edition of "rock center" with brian williams at 2:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. that's all for this edition of "dateline" friday. we'll see you again for "dateline" sunday at 8:00, 7:00