dennis murphy: but he did love her.t would look at me the way john looks at susan. dennis murphy: the question for the jury was did he love her to death?

here's dennis murphy. >> broad daylight, morning in a busy parking lot. then pop, pop, pop, pop. >> several shots were fired. >> a man gunned down at close range outside a nursery school in a wealthy atlanta suburb. a silver minivan screeched from the lot. startled witnesses saw the victim slumped on the ground. >> right now his condition is unknown. >> parents and teachers recognized the man who had been shot as a dad who had just dropped off his 2-year-old son. a preschool, of all places, had become a crime scene. >> we are told all the children are perfectly safe. >> the shooting victim being rushed to the hospital turned out to be 36-year-old rusty sneiderman, a married father of two. >> i just hung my head and cried. >> rusty's older brother steve was on a plane to hawaii when he got the shocking news. rusty was dead. >> walking around the plane, pacing around the aisles. i mean, i looked at the -- i went to the bathroom and i looked at the door and i thought about jumping. >> he was desperate to get home to his family, desperate to find out what had

here's dennis murphy. >> broad daylight, morning in a busy parking lot. then pop, pop, pop, pop. >> several shots were fired. >> a man gunned down at close range outside a nursery school in a wealthy atlanta suburb. a silver minivan screeched from the lot. startled witnesses saw the victim slumped on the ground. >> right now his condition is unknown. >> parents and teachers recognized the man who had been shot as a dad who had just dropped off his 2-year-old son. a preschool, of all places, had become a crime scene. >> we are told all the children are perfectly safe. >> the shooting victim being rushed to the hospital turned out to be 36-year-old rusty sneiderman, a married father of two. >> i just hung my head and cried. >> rusty's older brother steve was on a plane to hawaii when he got the shocking news. rusty was dead. >> walking around the plane, pacing around the aisles. i mean, i looked at the -- i went to the bathroom and i looked at the door and i thought about jumping. >> he was desperate to get home to his family, desperate to find out what had

here's dennis murphy with "diabolic." >> locked in a cage. the shrieks of women howling in the night. >> this isn't real. this is like something you would see in a movie. this doesn't happen in real life. >> how did a self-described goody two shoes, des any princess, get swept away in a conspiracy to convoluted, so twisted? >> this is one of the most well thought out plans, and it's scary. >> diabolical. >> absolutely. >> a tangled web and bizarre. >> completed scheme. >> very complicated. very creative. >> this is the most shocking form of love rivalry i've ever seen. >> there would be aelgss of harassment, assault, cyber stalking, and attempted rape. someone was going to get hurt. someone was going to go to jail. at the end of the nightmare, well, no one saw that coming. you describe whether it was a love rivalry. in the beginning it was clearly a boy meets girl love story. >> it was an intense period of my life in the sense of just a very kind of whirlwind type of romance. >> august 2013 20-something michelle hadley met a u.s. marshall nam

here is dennis murphy with "secrets in seattle." >> seattle was raw after a week of relentless winter rain. a woman lost had been found in the tangle of the blackberries. a naked body. a small tattoo on the back. a necklace and signs of strangulation. the detectives sent to a patch of trees and boggy undergrowth near the seattle airport's runways guessed it was her. they would soon be proved correct. nine days to find her, the answer to where. another seven years still ahead to answer the questions of all homicide -- who? and why? but we have to go back, before the crime scene photos and the medical examiner's findings, before she became those chilly words, "the victim." to find the dearly loved person named nici. nici pietz, wife and daughter, sister and friend. >> she seemed to be able to uplift people in ways that none of us knew how to do. >> she had a way to make you smile. she had a way to let you know that everything was going to be okay. >> gayle was her mother. >> nici was sunshine. she was the kind of person that when she walked in a room, the room lit up. >> gayle raised ni

here is dennis murphy with house of secrets. ♪ >> cayuga in ithaca, new york, and it's where you'll findne of the most competitive, most prestigious universities in the nation. cornell, the ivy league big red. ♪ >> more than 15,000 undergrads here working towards degrees. there's no doubt a cornell education can be a gold plated entrance to adult life, and only the best need apply. students like charlie tan. he was so kind his high school classmates featured him in a video giving gifts to perfect strangers, random acts of kindness. >> not just a great kid but the greatest of great kids. >> he was the son of chinese immigrants who became mr. were everybody in his high school. scholar, athlete, class president. the guy with the cool friends. and anna valentine opened up her parents' lake house to charlie and other guys. >> he was always energetic. >> the guy who comes in a room and tells jokes. >> he is the one that everybody knows him. walk in and the room lights up. he starts telling funny stories. >> so you would think charlie tan was another ivy league over achiever poised for takeoff

here's dennis murphy with "down the back staircase." >> reporter: you might take him for a retired english professor from one of the universities in the raleigh-durham area. preppy. witty. back when a sparkling storyteller welcome at so many of the best dinner tables. but nowadays in this part of north carolina, michael peterson is known not as the novelist he in fact is, but as that man, the notorious husband, the one with the wife dead at the bottom of the staircase. you were not only the prime suspect, you were the only suspect. >> the only one. >> there was massive amounts of blood. how do you explain it? was this a fall, or was this murder? >> reporter: exactly what did happen on that staircase? and what is the truth about michael peterson? a man once sentenced to die in prison for the commission of a homicide he has always maintained was nothing but an accident. innocent, he asserts, but the novelist in him knows full well the irresistible appeal of the storyline he says he got swept up in. >> sex, money, murder, my god! what more could you have? >> reporter: tonight, one of the most

here's dennis murphy with "the house on sidney's cove." >> reporter: there's never a good day to search for a missing woman. but this rainy, muggy saturday in the heat of july made an unhappy task all but unbearable. >> take some fliers with you. >> reporter: they'd decided, the friends and family, that they'd all wear red-shirts. they got themselves organized in the parking lot of a walmart in lawrenceville, georgia, about an hour outside of atlanta, and then set out to find any trace of a petite corporate executive named nique leili. >> she's been missing for a week now. she's got three kids that would love to see her home. >> reporter: amy robinson told reporters that her 44-year-old sister, mother of three, was hardly the kind of person who'd just up and disappear without a word to anyone. of a petite corporate executive named nique leili. >> she's been missing for a week now. she's got three kids that would love to see her home. >> reporter: amy robinson told reporters that her 44-year-old sister, mother of three, was hardly the kind of person who'd just up and disappear without a