whatever her fate, hilberling says the jury got it wrong. court records, however, show the relationship had more than a few problems. the couple married when amber was 19 and josh was 21. almost immediately, they left their friends and family in tulsa behind. >> he had enlisted in the air force. we flew off to alaska where he was stationed. >> amber says the marriage quickly deteriorated. josh started changing, getting very angry very quickly, and it just kind of escalated. nobody can understand what it was like to be married to him. i loved him so much, but he was a jerk. >> josh was soon honorably discharged from the air force on an unrelated matter. amber was nearly seven months pregnant when the couple moved back to tulsa. >> my mom had an apartment at the university club towers that she had rented out and said we could go stay there. we were on the 25th floor, i mean, we were just arguing in the living room, and you know when you argue, you get closer and closer and closer and josh put his hands out onto my shoulders and i just -- i mea

josh hilberling was just 23 years old. officer don holloway of the tulsa police department arrived a few minutes later. can you first describe the scene? >> the scene was fairly chaotic. there were medical personnel, fire department personnel, police personnel. a crowd had gathered outside, and i saw the victim on the ground. >> reporter: two people said they witnessed josh's horrifying fall. they spoke to detective jeff felton. >> one of them described him kind of flailing. almost like, you know, riding a bicycle or pedaling. >> reporter: screaming? >> yes. >> reporter: officer holloway took amber inside, away from the horrible scene on the parking deck. and what was amber's demeanor at that time? >> she was upset. she was crying, asking for josh. wanted to know if they were working on him, trying to get him back to life or not. she seemed very distraught. >> reporter: and what are you thinking happened at this point? >> at that point i thought we had probably a suicide, maybe an accidental fall, something along those lin

that incident was eerily foreshadowed months earlier by a phone call patrick hilberling received from >> she had pushed him down the stairs. he was down in the basement. i could hear her up at the top of the stairs screaming, you know, "who you talking to?" and he goes, "dad, i don't know what to do." and i told him to leave. i said, "you need -- just leave." "get out of there." >> reporter: to support the abuse claim, the prosecutor had an explosive piece of evidence. it was a protective order detective felton found in the couple's apartment, taken out by josh against his wife just weeks before his death, and after she had cracked him over the head with a lamp. josh had told police he needed 11 stitches to close the wound. >> the order listed josh as being the plaintiff and amber being the defendant, which, you know, means that he got the protective order against her. >> reporter: the state believed that was court-ordered proof that amber was a violent woman, likely out of control the day her husband died. in fact, just before that fatal push, josh had phoned his dad patrick and plea