Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 32 - Stephens - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a 40-year marriage broken up when a rich man's head is turned by a younger woman
the age gap struck me as odd she was younger than him she probably you know came on very
strongly sexually she saw dollar signs and she seduced him friends of charlie stevens warned him
everybody liked charlie and they all felt that kirsten was using him using him whilst he had money
we interviewed a casino worker who overheard kirsten saying that charlie was worth more to her dead than alive
we don't have very many women who kill i think kirsten's actions were a response to her wanting to continue her
lifestyle she wanted to be mrs kirsten stevens as long as mr stevens could keep her in the manner to which she would
become accustomed [Music] [Music] charlie stevens was almost the definition of a straight-up guy
charlie had children with his wife and they had been married for quite some time
and then you have this relationship his character is just the type that you know he was the type of guy to stay
married forever he was the type of guy to work a job no matter what to provide for
his family he was the type of guy to stay at a job for or a career for 40 years because
that's the type of person that he was um he was a a vietnam veteran and just seemed to have a really good
nice stable comfortable life then along came kirsten a woman with a plan they had met at um their place of work
detective chris burus of the independence missouri police department he was in the pest control industry
she's the new girl she's 17 years younger and kind of flirtatious and she thinks charlie's a catch so she
really flirts and she really works it although kirsten had to work really hard to turn charles's head
she did eventually i think kirsten represented excitement to him maybe a second chance at life
maybe an adventure i think the fact that kirsten had this very rambunctious personality and was youthful
and gave him all the attention the world made him feel good about himself and i think she knew exactly what he was
looking for the straight-up father the doting grandfather still felt he had some life
in him she gets charlie's attention and pretty soon the two of them are having an
affair this affair um i guess you would say blossomed into a full-blown relationship
before long it gets more and more serious and charlie decides to leave his wife of
40 years and in 2005 charlie marries kirsten 57 year old charlie stevens had left
sandy his wife of 40 years to make a new life with his younger co-worker his heartbroken sons brian and mike would
one day tell police that they were deeply suspicious of kirsten's motives i don't believe that charlie's family
liked kirsten probably because of how the relationship started it was after he married kirsten that he
became estranged from the family and didn't have a lot of contact with him the the family all believed that she was
kind of a parasite that she had married him for his money he saved his money and
really um put together some some nice savings i can imagine charles's family must have
thought whoa who is this woman that's come into his life that's taken him away from his his
marriage while kirsten had charmed charlie his friends and family doubted that the
woman he had married was a good person with good intentions it was not just the fact that she appeared to be after
charlie's money i don't think that they liked her because of the way she treated people
kristin's very manipulative if she didn't get what she wanted from you she would write you off you would be
dead to her to look at kirsten stevens um her photograph says a lot she either had a very rough life or she's got a
very interesting story to tell about where she came from it just she exudes something's up she just she has this
image uh you know i mean she's almost got a perma scowl on her face um she just looks hardened she looks like
she's had a rough life motivation perhaps to take what she could from wherever she could get it
i think kirsten has always been very goal oriented and when she saw this man that she could
probably take advantage of and lure even though he was already in a marriage i don't think it mattered to her
forensic psychologist dr judy ho suspects that kirsten was always motivated by her husband's new money
she saw dollar signs and she seduced him if charlie stevens had the same suspicions it didn't put him off in 2005
the newlyweds made a home together on the outskirts of independence so the city of independence is
approximately 120 000 uh population and we neighbor uh kansas city the area where charles and kirsten had lived was
on the east part of town it would be considered a small town area uh the neighbors knew them some
it's a pretty quiet town for neighboring uh to such a major city like kansas city
kirsten and charlie's home was a wooden clad single story house on the sparsely populated tree-lined south jones road
it's not uncommon to have the more violent crime on the western side of the city the eastern side you start to get
more uh rural countryside and you just don't see those things after 40 years of responsibility and
hard craft charlie was ready to enjoy the good life he's about ready to retire he's got a
lot of money in the bank um he set himself up really well when he retired he had a
decent sized pension kirsten was happy to enjoy the fruits of charlie's labor too
she had a taste for the nightlife she gambled a lot uh her and charlie went to the boats uh and gambled quite a
bit he doesn't gamble with her but he says that he likes to watch her gamble i can
imagine she's probably very outgoing when she's in her element especially if she's on a winning streak
it was all new and exciting for charlie who in his former life was more likely to go hunting or fishing than spin the
roulette wheel but he soon discovered that his new wife liked more than a small wager
she was a heavy gambler over time it becomes really clear that kirsten's hobby isn't just a hobby
it's it's a compulsion she has a serious gambling problem gambling addiction is a diagnosable
clinical condition in the dsm-5 and it's a really serious condition the dsm-5 is the standard classification
of mental disorders used in the united states the individual has the same exact types
of addictive mechanisms as they might when it's a substance abuse where they basically will do anything to get to
their substance or process of choice at the expense of other things in their life at the expense of relationships
other important life domains if charlie was unaware of kirsten's problem before their marriage
he soon realized its extent afterwards and she spent all her time at the casino spending all of her new husbands money
and maybe in the beginning it was actually exciting for him and he would go with her he didn't gamble but he
would watch her but it was kind of this new world that he'd never been a part of
and perhaps in the beginning it was even kind of fun for him but i think pretty soon he saw the depths of how bad it
really got for kirsten he's saved all this money and she's burned through it at these casinos
i think in some ways he understood especially because of their big age difference that kirsten was probably
with him at least partly for his money i think there was probably a part of him that was afraid what would happen if he
cut her off maybe she would leave maybe she would stop loving on him was charlie stevens keeping tabs on
exactly how much his vivacious new wife was spending the riverboat casinos certainly were
the casinos here keep records every win every loss every roll of the dice that kirsten had made laid out in
stark black and white we were able to go back through casino records and from the period of 2006 to
2013 there was about a million dollars that was spent at the casinos this was essentially charlie savings
charlie's loved ones will forever wonder why he didn't simply refuse to hand over
more money she basically put up with him as long as he was going to be her money bag
i think kirsten's plan was to just carry on gambling her husband probably believed
that if he continued to give her everything that she wanted then their relationship
would get better kirsten had won big by marrying a man who could finance her every risky whim but when somebody has
an addiction it's never enough and she just needed more and more over time she would have probably thought that the
money would have just continued to flow but charlie's nest egg was all but gone charlie and kirsten had met
married and planned to live out their years in comfort would their marriage survive when that dream crumbled
eight years into their marriage kirsten and charlie were miserable now kirsten had gambled away most of his money
charlie had taken on part-time work to help make ends meet as the money dried up he had to come out of retirement take
a job at uh hardware store but money is still pretty tight and now the marriage is suffering as well
neighbors uh frequently heard arguing coming from the house charlie's not happy kirsten's not happy
carolyn canville is an emmy award-winning journalist with a special interest in crime and investigation
they're behind on their taxes and now they have no choice they have to put up their house for sale in november of
2013. cash reserves very soon no home charlie's usefulness to kirsten was running out
financial problems are so difficult for any couple to contend with even couples who seem very happy in the first place
because it is a practical issue that affects how you live your life every single day and for kirsten it certainly
got in the way of her being able to gamble the way that she wanted and have fun the way that she wanted so i can
imagine a lot of conflict over that a lot of fights over it perhaps her even freezing him out until he was able to
give her more money as the money had dwindled so did kirsten's commitment to her marriage
there's no money left he doesn't have anything so she sets her sights on someone new we
found out that she had had other lovers during her marriage was charlie their home on south jones road on the
brink of being sold kirsten started packing up their belongings but as she did she made a discovery that changed
everything while they were moving kirsten came across the life insurance policy where
she was found to be the beneficiary and this kind of got her motivated you know here's a solution criminologist
brian frederick believes that kirsten stevens shows all of the hallmarks of having a severe personality disorder
female psychopaths are actually more interested in money and finances and funding their lifestyle when kirsten
stevens found charlie's life insurance policy the path out of her financial troubles suddenly seemed clear he would
need to die for her to collect on that life insurance policy he's named her as the beneficiary bless him he's got to go
people often think that psychopaths are clever and cunning this is not the case with with kirsten we believe that this
is what really pushed her to the point where charlie was worth more to her you know dead than a lot
kirsten may have made a plan but could she execute it if she was to do so she would have to learn to do something she
had so far found tough being discreet we interviewed a casino worker who overheard kirsten saying that charlie
was worth more to her dead than alive none of the people she said this to really took it too serious and after
the events took place people thought oh yeah these were red flags at this point the the only way for her to get more
money to fund her lifestyle is if he dies well she's not going to ask him to die
she has to do it herself written off by those who heard her as the brash words of a frustrated wife was
she really at the beginning of a plot to kill charlie stevens being forced out of their home became a
turning point on the 7th of march 2014 they're just about to hand over the keys to their
house around 8 o'clock in the morning kirsten gets the call from the buyer he wants to come and take a look at the
place so the new owner of the house knocked on the door that morning introduced himself
said hey i own the house as she's giving a tour of the house to the new owner he looks into the master
bedroom and sees a man lying in bed and she describes him as that being her father so they don't go
in that room i think she was just trying to identify him as an uninvolved party with
the house it was not kirsten's father but her husband charlie we're actually believed that he was
still alive at that time but actually asleep in the bed because it was fairly early in the morning when this man came
to look at the house later that day kirsten went out for a while when she returned a dramatic scene
unfolded at 816 south jones road about a little after seven that evening kirsten returns home moments later she
stumbled out onto the street kirsten was hysterically screaming they killed him and she seemed to be inconsolable
kirsten goes running to the neighbors help me help me the phone call that came in to our 911 operator was a call that
described a home invasion and that the one of the residents was possibly deceased inside
within minutes first responders were on the scene meanwhile kirsten is just in hysterics
and you know the neighbors are all around her and she's saying oh my god oh my god you know she says i was gone all
day and i came home and and he's dead i was sent to the scene after the initial patrol officers responded taking
the lead on a murder investigation was a relatively new experience for detective
chris burus obviously any type of death homicide is tragic however i was looking forward to
digging in deep and finding out what was going on so it was dark when we got there
um this this scene had been roped off with crime scene tape we had officers doing scene security
inside the home a grizzly spectacle awaited that charlie was lying in bed he was
covered up and it and it looks like he was shot when he was sleeping and he still actually still holding on
to his sheets he was shot in the chin in the chest and the abdomen there were five shots that were fired in the room
two of them went into the wall and the other three went into charlie 65 year old husband father and
grandfather charlie stevens lay dead in his bed former homicide detective rod demery
knows the subtle clues that burus and his team would have been looking for they would look for
signs of a struggle maybe there was a fight something knocked over they looked for bruises or defensive
wounds to see if there was some sort of struggle or was this a complete surprise
ambush there were no defensive wounds it looked as though charlie had been shot as he lay sleeping
this struck investigators as surprising mrs stevens had told the police that it was a robbery that what she
believed i guess the first part of some of our suspicions were that charlie was lying in bed he was covered up
if this was a home invasion he posed no threat to the said burglar why would you kill him
could charlie stevens really have been killed in a robbery gone wrong a few things are kind of in disarray
maybe a lamp knocked over here and you know something out of place there but when they ask her what has been taken
she can't really pinpoint anything one of the the first things you're going to look for is
how someone got inside the house so from the moment they walk into the house you're going to be looking for signs of
fourth century then they're gonna look for signs of fourth century into the bedroom
it looks like a staged robbery nothing has been taken there's no sign of forced entry uh the the locks on the
doors and the outer gates are not disturbed police didn't really believe that it didn't look like a robbery
jackson county prosecutor michael j hunt worked with police on the case from day
one uh they investigate enough robberies to know what a robbery looks like and that
didn't look like one so right from the back they're looking at this as as pretty suspicious
while assessing the scene cops were also trying to read kirsten stephens reaction
to the sudden death of her husband on the phone to emergency services she had been hysterical
while there's no true way that everyone grieves and grieving is different for everyone it does appear that her
reactions in the aftermath of her husband's death was a bit histrionic it was a bit over the top
but just minutes later kirsten seemed eerily calm when the police first arrived that was
one of the first things they noticed that she wasn't acting like a woman who's had her husband murdered in his
bed she wasn't crying like crazy she just wasn't exhibiting the emotions that you would expect from somebody who
is in that situation i think it was easy for her to compartmentalize her needs and to kind
of set aside who she really was on the inside to present a a front that would get her what she wants from the very
beginning of detective burus's investigation he suspected that nothing about the crime was as it seemed the
night of uh things were not adding up the police didn't really believe her from the get-go
[Music] late on march 7 2014 kirsten accompanied police to the station in downtown
independence it would be a long night treading carefully detective buress probed the couple's background their
lifestyle and the events of the last 12 hours it's always difficult too because when
you have the spouse of somebody that's just been killed do you want to accuse them of things that you're not
sure of yet kirsten was ready with a plausible answer for every question she gave us
a statement about her being out a majority of the day that she had been to the mall that she
had been to the casinos everywhere but home honestly she said that she came home found her
husband in bed bleeding and then ran across the street and called 9-1-1 she talked about the guns that were in
the house they had recovered at that point two shotguns and he clearly wasn't shot with a shotgun
i always got those feelings when and talking to her that just something was not right i couldn't necessarily put my
finger on it um i guess you would call it a gut reaction gut instinct kirsten's account was confident coherent
but how much of it was true when you're talking to somebody you can kind of just
tell that they're not being forthcoming with you or they have something that's weighing heavily on their mind
there were plenty of other voices that night echoing detective beerus's doubts about kirsten
we spoke with kirsten we spoke with her son charlie's stepson we spoke with her son-in-law and her daughter
and then they started branching out talking to the neighbors they started talking to all the acquaintances that
the stevens knew i think it's fair to say that on charlie's side of the family they they
had their suspicions that kirsten was involved in kirsten's detailed responses to cops
she had left out some crucial facts that she and charlie were stressed constantly
arguing that they were facing financial ruin only as investigators interviewed friends and family did that information
emerge the couple's fighting a lot they're screaming the neighbors can sometimes
hear them fighting they found out that the house itself had been sold for back taxes uh
the end of the year before but the couple is really in dire straits so of course she became my person of
interest at that point if anyone had a motive to kill charlie stevens it was his wife but at this
stage there were too many questions unanswered early on in these homicide investigations we always try to keep an
open mind because we don't want to miss anything i recall thinking that we have to look at this from all angles
we have to look at this like a home invasion we have to look at this as an intimate
partner killing we have to look at all those options police didn't wait long for a
breakthrough the very next day march 8 2014 charlie stevens autopsy confirmed that he had been shot with a 22 caliber
rifle shell casings found in his bedroom floor from the same kind of firearm in her
first interview kirsten had failed to tell detectives that she and charlie owned just such a gun
there was a 22 caliber rifle that she made no mention of when they questioned her further uh then
she made mention that she had forgotten about the long gun police still hadn't found the long gun when they were
talking to her on the seventh in the very early morning hours of the eighth the rifle
was the rosetta stone of this case um had that not been found i don't think we're where we're at today
i think maybe potentially we have an unsolved homicide on the 8th of march armed with a warrant
officers returned to kirsten and charlie's home investigators go back to the scene and
they search further and during that search they find a 22 caliber rifle hid beneath this jacuzzi
the person that found that detective sergeant jason young had been a former narcotics investigator and when
he did searches he did searches in the main bathroom of the stephen's home the luxury bathtub was concealing
what would turn out to be as good as a smoking gun uh he found the access panel and our minds are blown they opened up
the panel and here is this long gun this long 22 rifle hidden away inside this jacuzzi tub
we're like what is a rifle doing in there we take the rifle as evidence have it tested
they swabbed it for dna and they also did ballistic tests on it detectives had a tense seven-week wait
for the results of those tests in the meantime kirsten's alibi was being checked out
she gave a detailed explanation of where she had been that day and where she had
gone she'd gone to the mall that day she had gone to the casinos that required you know the review of video
surveillance tapes review of records review of cell phone records her phone did not you know give them the
gps coordinates of where she said she was she said she was at a sears door the video at the sears store was collected
they watched every minute of that and she was never on it she said she went to a
a casino and as we all know casinos have very good video they didn't have her on it
she was a well-known gambler there her card was not used at this casino those were things that she didn't count
on us doing they were able to with gps tracking of her phone and video they could prove that she was nowhere
near where she said she was what investigators did discover when they visited those casinos was how much
money kirsten had blown on gambling during the course of her marriage to charlie
it's very unusual you're talking in excess of a hundred thousand dollars a year spent at the casinos through that
time period she had a gambling problem and she had essentially had gambled all of charlie's
money away step by step investigators were building a picture of a desperate woman addicted
to gambling with a husband who no longer had the cash to feed her habit a husband
who was also no longer of any use to her i think kirsten's primary motivation as
it had been from day one was financial and i don't really think she saw him as a person in fact she had
been heard saying that he was worth more to her dead than alive it was apparent that she was with
charlie for only one thing and that was his money it was a theory but could the evidence be found to prove
it part of the investigation we conducted searches of the computers in the home on kirsten's ipad investigators find
some interesting searches they find that she has searched for how to kill your spouse
huge red flags obviously there were searches for how to cut break lines how to stay in a sexless marriage
and she's pulled up kelly blue book values and has listed in there the two vehicles that charlie and she
own clever individuals would probably delete their browsing histories she didn't her
skills at planning were very underdeveloped if this were a motion picture we'd be why did you just do that
you know but this is the person that kirsten stevens is now police have collected quite a bit of
evidence all of it pointing to kirsten a month later they call her in for questioning again
presented with all of this kirsten stevens continued to deny having anything to do with her husband's death
she insisted that he had died in a botched robbery she gives some more statements and they
contradict her earlier statements so clearly the case is building against her i remember talking with the prosecutor
several times i'm like when are we going to charge her this is what you would call a
circumstantial case there was a lot of police work that had to be done before we believed we had
enough to charge her with uh charlie's murder i would say that when you take a case to a jury you have
to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to 12 jurors in that room i think in any case
the discovery of evidence is is key but in in this case it was ultra important detectives got one step closer to
proving their case in may 2014 when results arrived from the forensic ballistics lab about the 22-caliber gun
found hidden in kirsten's bathroom the ballistic test came back first saying that this in fact was the murder
weapon the shell casings that were recovered in charlie's bedroom were fired from the 22 long rifle
the bullets that had killed charlie stevens were fired from the 22 caliber rifle
it was a remarkable breakthrough followed by another weight this time for the kansas city police crime lab which
was processing the swab taken from the rifle it wasn't until later that the dna came back the dna came back
to christian stevens kirsten's dna and there is no other dna on that only kerstins
so the circle is narrowing here she thought she was clever and that's why she left it under the jacuzzi tub behind
an access panel thinking that we would come to the scene do our investigation and be done with it
and say oh it's a home invasion we don't have any suspects we'll go about our merit wait but that's not how we do
things you know that that was in june when the dna results came back the balance was
tipping from circumstantial evidence to hard proof all the signs were pointing to the fact
that kirsten stevens had killed her husband but kirsten stevens was not prepared to give up the fight just yet
she had actually kept in contact with the police she even called in at one point trying
to give them another suspect in june 2014 police and prosecutors decided it was time to bring charges in
the death of charlie stevens we had the evidence from the gun we had the dna on the gun we believe we had the
motive uh for her crime we believe we had enough uh there was a arrest warrant that was issued for her kirsten made a
last-ditch attempt to stay out of jail once the police started coming up to the house
to actually arrest her she took off running at the time she was out at her daughter's house
and the police went out to that residence they sat up on it kind of half believing that she might
run and in fact she did she didn't get very far they tricked her down and took her into
custody kirsten stevens had tried everything to evade justice lies deception even escape was justice
finally about to catch up with her on the 6th of june now we're talking three months after
charlie was murdered kirsten is arrested and charged with her husband's murder when she was arrested on the warrant she
didn't talk uh we got no further statements from her at that point she exercised her rights and didn't speak to
the police if mr hunt was hoping for a confession at this point he was to be disappointed
she pleads not guilty she knows the evidence is stacked against her but kristin's a gambler so what the heck
it appeared she was kind of nervous but uh i don't think she was uh worried too much i think she thought she could talk
her way out of this kirsten was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action on
october 1st 2016 in the dying days of a hot humid kansas summer she stood up in the jackson county courthouse to
proclaim her innocence it was the prosecutor's task to prove to the jury that kirsten was lying we went
into the case thinking that it was going to be a whodunit that we were going to have to prove our case as a
circumstantial case whenever you close a case like this and it's charged and you're waiting for your day in court you
always have questions about yourself as an investigator did i do this did i not do this should i have done this better
you know we didn't have a confession we had a gun we had a lot of good circumstantial evidence
but it was not a case that you would say this is a slam dunk case uh not to mention the fact that you've got
a female defendant who juries tend to give the benefit of the doubt to but as the trial got underway kirsten's
defense team dropped a bombshell she was no longer claiming that her husband had
been the victim of a trigger-happy burglar it was a date that she testified on her
behalf in court where she admitted that she shot charlie yes she had shot him but she was arguing
now that she had to she was in fear for her life she got on the stand and she said it was
self-defense she said that you know charlie had abused her had beaten her uh she made the claim that the gun was
underneath the bed and that charlie was beating her and you know she got the gun
and was pointing it up and shooting charlie as he stood on the bed over her and he fell to the bed
suddenly prosecutor michael j hunt's job had become much tougher we knew we had one issue
that was going to be proving deliberation which is cool reflection upon the matter for any
length of time no matter how brief that was what we had to do to get a jury to convict her of murder in the first
degree and that was my biggest you know worry that i wasn't going to be able to overcome that
if kirsten could persuade the jury that she had acted in the heat of the moment to protect herself they would clear her
of first degree murder but mr hunt had cold hard evidence on his side and a defendant nobody in the courtroom seemed
to find credible she gave a depiction of how the crime occurred that just didn't match the
physical evidence my first thought was i was going to be very nice with her and i didn't want the
jury to think i was beating up on her because i'm about a foot taller than her and you tend to
you know worry the juries are going to think well here's this big guy beating up on her
well that changed kirsten claimed that she had shot charlie as he stood over her and that
then he had fallen onto the bed you know i put up a couple of pictures of him laying in bed
trying to show the jury how ridiculous what she said it looked like he had been in bed asleep
when he was shot the covers were up and he was clenching the sheets we started off very calm and i was just
kind of pointing out the inconsistencies in her story and then it just became obvious that we
were going to have a knock down drag out you know brawl here right there in the courtroom and we did
we were going back very hot and heavy i even got i was laying down on the floor with the gun holding it up showing how
ridiculous it was what she was saying the way charlie's body was positioned and the location of the gunshot wounds
suggested kirsten's version of events was a complete fabrication in fact over several months of
questioning by detectives she had had ample opportunity to claim that her late husband was abusive one of the things
that we do in cases like this is we we ask are you the victim of abuse when we key
in on domestic violence related issues we ask those questions because i think it's pertinent to the case we asked her
are you a victim of abuse was charlie doing anything to you and she never took the bait um she never
she never once said that he was abusive towards her the one thing about charlie is that you
know everybody who spoke of him just talked about him being just a nice guy uh who would just do anything for you
you could and ms stevens tried to paint him as this ogre who was just a horrible person to her
would yell at her and scream at her and just that was not the charlie that anybody
else knew that was more like what kristen stevens was kirsten stevens struggled to convince
the court that she was an innocent victim the jury just hated her they really did
when she got on the stand you know she made us so many mistakes that it just really pretty much handed
the case to us kirsten's motive had always been financial it was apparent that she was with
charlie for only one thing and that was his money and once his money was gone that was why
she killed him once the money started to dry up she realized that the only way that she could continue to make her
lifestyle happen was to dip in on his accounts and perhaps life insurance and anything else that would be an asset
only after his death yeah she had a lot to gain she believed that that was the last part
that she was going to be able to get from charlie was his insurance after she was arrested and put in jail she fought
hard to get that insurance money she's trying to get the insurance money knowing good and well that she killed
him it is a scenario that forensic psychologists like judy howe have come across countless times
particularly when they murder their loved ones female murderers generally have a financial motive more
often than male murderers i don't think she saw a person there when she saw him several times i think
she just saw the dollar signs just like she did when she first met him motive established self-defense claims
debunked it was now down to the jury to decide if they trusted kirsten stevens when when the jury went out yeah we i
was pretty confident that we had a conviction you're never sure if you've got murder 1 or murder in the second
degree the deliberation is always the tricky part but we felt pretty good about it
much better than what we did when we first started the trial before she testified
on october 5th 2016 kirsten stevens is found guilty in the murder of her husband
guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action once the jury comes back with the guilty
verdict on both the murder and the armed criminal action uh it was a good feeling
and i think that was the best vindication not for myself not for my team but for charlie and charlie's family
she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole life without parole for murder plus 50
years for armed criminal action with the murder in the first degree there's only one punishment and that's
life in prison without parole but the jury at the point of sentencing for the armed criminal action
that kind of tells us a little bit of what they feel about mrs stevens it is a little unusual for them to send someone
to 50 years that's a long time and i think they were making a statement with it uh i think they didn't like her you
know it's ironic because kirsten was the gambler right but charlie he's the one who bet it all
and he lost he lost his stable marriage he lost his savings he lost his house and eventually he lost his life
[Music] [Music] you

Kirstin Stephens seduced her co-worker Charlie and then spent all his cash. She started to plan for life after Charlie.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Kirsten Stevens murdered her husband Charlie for financial gain after gambling away his savings.

Key points

A Marriage Torn Apart. Charlie Stevens leaves his wife of 40 years for a younger woman, Kirsten.
The Gambling Addiction. Kirsten's gambling addiction spirals out of control, straining their marriage.
A Chilling Discovery. Kirsten finds a life insurance policy that changes everything.
The Night of the Murder. Kirsten returns home to find Charlie dead, claiming it was a robbery.
Suspicion Arises. Detectives begin to doubt Kirsten's story after observing her behavior.
Kirsten's Financial Motive. Kirsten's primary motivation for killing Charlie was financial gain.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Kirsten represented excitement to him, maybe a second chance at life.

Reflecting on Charlie's feelings towards Kirsten.

2:48WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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