Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 6 - Anastasi - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: A husband moves his younger mistress into the family home. Desperate not to lose him, at first his wife accepts what is
a rather unusual arrangement. NARRATOR: Ann Marie Anastasi decided to do something about her cheating husband Anthony
and his mistress, Jacqueline Riggs. The police department receives a 911 call reporting that my husband is not breathing.
And it's just that. This mystery starts unraveling the minute 911 is called. NARRATOR: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
And this was a woman who had been pushed to her limits. [music playing] The Anastasis of Arundel County, USA,
looked like a typical family. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Ann Marie and Anthony Anastasi had been married for 18 years.
They had five kids. They lived in a rented home in this little town called Lothian, Maryland.
It's about less than an hour from Washington DC. JASON KNIGHT: It's a nice house.
I mean, it's a nice, probably four or five bedroom home on a sizable chunk of land
in the southern part of the county, which is pretty rural. NARRATOR: Nothing out of the ordinary, apparently.
But matters were not quite as they seemed. They had a rather unconventional marriage.
NARRATOR: Unconventional is putting it lightly. A young woman was living in their basement.
She wasn't the nanny. She wasn't a relative or a friend in need of somewhere to stay.
She was a lover. Uncovering the dynamics of a complicated marriage starts some 700 miles away on the US-Canada border
and a meeting between a sports coach and a much younger woman, Jackie Riggs. The Anastasis lived in Sault Ste.
Marie, Michigan, on the upper peninsula. Anthony was a volunteer youth hockey coach.
During his coaching, he met Ms. Riggs. She's 25 years old. Now, Anne Marie's 43 and her husband is a few years younger.
And at some point along the way, some sort of romantic relationship developed that was extramarital to his relationship
with Ann Anastasi. NARRATOR: Jacqueline Riggs' family would later describe her as someone with a soft and gentle nature
and as a loving sister and daughter. She worked in child care and doted on her nieces and nephews.
At some point in time, the Anastasis left Michigan and moved, as a family, to Lothian, Maryland in Anne Arundel County.
Ms. Anastasi believed at the time that that would be the end of Mr. Anastasi's extramarital relationship with Ms. Riggs.
NARRATOR: Ann Marie and Anthony had both grown up in Maryland. If Ann Marie hoped that the move would bring
her husband's affair to an end, she would soon be bitterly disappointed. Subsequent to the Anastasis moving to Maryland,
Ms. Riggs was moved by Mr. Anastasi from Michigan down to Maryland and moved into the Anastasi's basement.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Anthony decides he wants to move Jacqueline into the house. Let's have her live with us and we can
all live happily ever after. Once she was there, she was maybe not quite a member
of the family, but lived there. And Ms. Anastasi, actually, from what we understand,
made dinner. And Ms. Riggs would join the entire family for dinner in the evenings.
NARRATOR: Did 25-year-old Jacqueline have a clear idea of what she was involved in in the summer
of 2015, when, in effect, she became a second wife and de facto member of the Anastasi family.
The physical environment in which Ms. Riggs lived with the Anastasis did not objectively look very pleasant.
Concrete floors, no walls, no real privacy in the basement. The basement was unfinished.
But it had a bed and some of the other-- some furniture that you would put in a place to make it
look like a bedroom. NARRATOR: It was clearly an arrangement that suited Anthony
Anastasi, his young mistress just a couple of flights of stairs away. But his wife, according to friends,
was angry, though she didn't complain to her husband. She clearly hoped that the relationship terminated when
they moved to Maryland and was very disappointed when Ms. Riggs moved back in with them, subsequently.
But there was-- we never saw anything where she put up some sort of resistance and tried to prevent it.
NARRATOR: Ann Marie seems to have tried to make the best of a bad situation. She even agreed one night to join the couple for sex
in the basement. The little bit that I know about it was that Ms. Anastasi stated that at one point in time,
Mr. Anasazi had convinced her to engage in sexual activity with him and Ms. Riggs.
But Ms. Anastasi said that only ever happened the one time, she didn't like it, and refused to participate
in that ever again. NARRATOR: The love triangle between Ann Marie, Anthony, and Jacqueline didn't last long.
Ann Marie was soon sidelined, as Anthony focused all of his affections on his 25-year-old mistress.
Now, suddenly, this threesome is becoming a twosome. It's like, three's a crowd and Ann Marie isn't invited.
Now, Anthony and Jacqueline are having sex more often. And Ann Marie is on the outs.
Pretty soon before she knows it, Ann Marie's husband is basically living with this younger woman
down in the basement. DETECTIVE (ON TAPE): And I have to ask this question, Ann.
Ms. Anastasi was questioned by the police in some detail, essentially, along the lines of, you're a human,
you cannot be OK with the behavior in which your husband was engaged with Ms. Riggs.
NARRATOR: A secretly recorded prison phone call would later reveal to prosecutors that when Jacqueline Riggs moved in,
Ann Marie was both brokenhearted and furious. And Ann Marie is basically, my 18-year
marriage is basically over. I've just lost him to this younger woman. The information we developed subsequently
when we were listening to her phone calls while she was incarcerated certainly demonstrated that she was incredibly
devastated emotionally, and that's what drove her to commit these crimes. NARRATOR: It would not be long before Ann Marie wanted
to put an end to the indignity of her husband cheating on her, and under her own roof.
Most murders can be broken down into a few areas-- love, drugs, greed. She elected to just become the judge, jury, and executioner
on her own and decided that Mr. Anastasi was gonna die and Ms. Riggs was gonna die.
It's the plan. It's the blueprint for murder. NARRATOR: In 2015, Anthony Anastasi
was living with his younger lover Jacqueline Riggs and his wife in their family home in Lothian, Maryland.
Soon after the move from the upper peninsula, Ann Marie Anastasi discovered a double indignity.
Her husband was also bleeding the family coffers dry. She had this million dollar trust fund.
They spent it all. And he's telling her to go back to her family and get even more money.
And whenever they get more money, he spends it on himself. He buys himself flat screen TVs and Harley-Davidson
motorcycles. It's all about Anthony and what Anthony needs, what Anthony wants. She certainly seemed to be someone
who was suffering from some sort of emotional abuse. What makes this so difficult is that she elected
to not avail herself of any resources whatsoever, to not seek help. She elected to just become the judge, jury, and executioner
on her own and decided that Mr. Anastasi was gonna die, Ms. Riggs was gonna die.
And that was the only resolution to this problem. NARRATOR: She may have decided to become judge and jury,
but Ann Marie Anastasi wasn't comfortable being a double executioner. So she recruited her daughter.
She has convinced her 13-year-old daughter that daddy has really not been fair to mommy and daddy
has been abusive to mommy. Ann Marie convinced her daughter that Anthony was discarding Ann Marie as a piece of trash.
NARRATOR: Her 13-year-old daughter was told, your father has to die. How can we get this done?
We got to-- this is not right, what your father's done. Her mother talks her into this.
She gets involved in this murder plot. She's a kid. And she's just trying to please her mother.
NARRATOR: The teenage girl had her own reasons to be angry with her father and his lover Jackie Riggs.
She would later tell police that she'd overheard her father and his mistress talking about starting a family.
And police found a used pregnancy test in Jacqueline's room. The girl was facing the prospect of her dad
having a baby with a woman young enough to be her sister, and all the while, living in the family home.
Mother and daughter agreed that Anthony and Jacqueline had to die. Neither of them was willing to get their hands dirty,
but they knew someone who might be. Messages on Ann Marie's phone would later reveal who
had agreed to be the stooge. They examined Ann Marie's phone and they find these text
messages between Ann Marie, her 13-year-old daughter Sarah, and Sarah's 18-year-old boyfriend, Gabriel Struss.
In those text messages, they're talking about a gun and the murder of two. It's the plan.
It's the blueprint for murder. So those text messages point to the murder plot. They point to a plot that has Ann Marie and Sarah
convincing Sarah's boyfriend Gabriel to carry out these murders. NARRATOR: Why would this young man, a teenager
with no personal grudge against Anthony Anastasi and Jacqueline Riggs, get involved
in such a horrific scheme? The answer lies in his troubled past. Gabriel Struss was a young man who
had a very difficult childhood. Now, here's a guy who has no criminal record. He's basically sort of raised himself on the streets
from the time he's seven. He was adopted as a young man, subsequently left his adoptive family to return
to his biological family. He wound up, at the time of the murder, living in very unfortunate conditions a few
miles away from the Anastasi's. And he's basically raised himself period. He really didn't have a great growing
up life, basically, kind of a homeless guy and kind of a guy who could be led. He lived in a home that had no central heat.
It had a wood burning stove. The walls were covered in cardboard. Had no money. Unfortunately, Mr. Struss seemed to not
have much hope for the future. And Ms Anastasi promised Mr. Struss that upon carrying out these murders for her,
he would be welcomed into the Anastasi home. NARRATOR: Ann Marie saw Gabriel Struss
as somebody she could exploit. Because of Mr. Struss' extremely unfortunate upbringing and background, that seemed like a worthwhile deal
to make. CAROLYN CANVILLE: This young boy, he's 18, but he's not terribly sophisticated,
hasn't had a great upbringing. He's kind of gullible. Now, Gabriel's probably not the sharpest tack in the box.
He wants one thing. And he's gonna do whatever he has to do to please Sarah. And by doing so, if he gains the favor of Ann Marie,
he's gonna do it. JASON KNIGHT: Mr. Struss was uniquely positioned to fall victim to Ms. Anastasi's manipulations.
So now you have the story of this scorned wife who has convinced her daughter to join her in this plot.
And oh, let's get your boyfriend to do the dirty work for us. Ann Marie knows she can't do it.
So who are they gonna to turn to? Gabriel. And if Gabriel wants a relationship, he, by golly, better do this.
NARRATOR: Forensic experts tasked with scouring Ann Marie's phone would later piece together the development
of a homicidal plot. He was communicating over Kik. It's one of those apps that if you use it,
it's supposed to delete after you use it. So he was communicating with her over Kik
and Snapchat and the things that teenagers do. NARRATOR: The text messages reveal the bare bones
of a macabre plan. In those text messages, they're talking about a gun and the murder of two people.
BRIAN HARRIS: A plan to kill Jacqueline and a plan to kill Anthony. And as this story unfolds even further,
we find that Anthony is attacked while asleep. Never has any idea what hit him. Laying on his back.
Mr. Struss told us that the night of the murder, he was picked up by Ms. Anastasi in her car
and driven to the Anastasi home. He got out of the car and hid in the yard for some amount
of time that he could not specify because he claimed to have actually gone to sleep out in the yard
while he was out there. At some point in the middle of the night, he received a message on his phone,
calling him into the house. NARRATOR: Gabriel Struss entered the Anastasi house that night
ready to carry out, to the letter, the murder plot masterminded by his girlfriend's
vengeful mother. She knows that she has to make Jacqueline's death look like a crime of passion, of rage.
It was a very brutal, gruesome scene in the basement. NARRATOR: In Lothian, Maryland, 18-year-old Gabriel Struss
carefully follows the plan that he's agreed with his girlfriend's mother Ann Marie Anastasi.
In the dead of night when everyone is asleep, he creeps into the family home. Only Ann Marie is awake to greet him.
On October 4, 2015, Ann Marie hands Gabriel the handgun and a knife. Why? You see, Ann Marie's already thinking.
She knows that she has to make Jacqueline's death look like a crime of passion, of rage.
So he meets Ann Marie in the kitchen of the home. She gives him a knife. And then that night, Gabriel goes
down the stairs to Jacqueline's bedroom where she's sleeping. NARRATOR: And he attacks.
JASON KNIGHT: Ms. Riggs did not die right away from one stab wound. A common misperception from movies and TV
is that if you stab someone once, they just die. But the reality is that Ms. Riggs was stabbed and woke up.
And fight-or-flight kicked in, and Ms. Riggs started putting up quite a fight. And Mr. Struss had to stab her multiple times
all over the chest, the head, the face before he was able to actually kill her. And he stabs her 42 times.
He just keeps stabbing her and stabbing her and stabbing her. And then when he's done, she's not moving, she's clearly dead.
It was a very brutal, gruesome scene in the basement, with the amount of times he had to stab her,
the amount of force he had to use to actually kill Ms. Riggs. She was fighting for her life.
She did everything she could to ward off Mr. Struss. NARRATOR: The wrecked marriage had
left Ann Marie bitter, mad, but smart enough to have her own version of events ready.
When police came, they'd see this as a murder suicide. First it would appear that her husband had killed Jackie.
It's all part of her premeditated plan to lay out to the police that Anthony and Jacqueline were
involved, that their relationship was ending, that he couldn't handle it and went crazy on her.
And then he couldn't deal without living with his love of his life Jacqueline, so he killed himself.
Once he had killed Ms. Riggs, he went back upstairs. He then was given the .380 handgun by Ms. Anastasi.
NARRATOR: Gabriel Struss was covered in the blood of Jacqueline Riggs. He continued to the first floor of the house
to finish the job that he'd started. He then went upstairs and stood a couple of feet away
from Mr. Anastasi's bed and fired the one round into Mr. Anastasi's head. He then left the home and went back
over to his home in the Annapolis area for the rest of the night. Ms. Anastasi, from what we're able to gather,
went and took the .45 caliber handgun that Mr. Anastasi had under his pillow at night out from under the pillow
and put that into his hand to make it look as if he had shot himself. And then according to the statement that she gave
the police, she subsequently went and crawled in bed in a different room and slept until the morning.
NARRATOR: The world was oblivious to the horrors that had taken place in a large family
home on West Bay Front Road. Until around lunchtime on the 5th of October, 2015.
The police department receives a 911 call-- it's not a frantic call, but it's a 911 call--
reporting that my husband is not breathing. And it's just that. This mystery, if one can call it that,
starts unraveling the minute 911 is called. 911, what's your emergency? This 911 call, what a bizarre call.
The person is conversational. There's not a sense of panic. There's no heavy breathing.
It's very matter of fact. Hey, I came home and my husband's not breathing. He's laying on the bed.
ANN MARIE (ON TAPE): But he's not responding at all. And he's got his gun laying next to him in the bed.
911 OPERATOR: Do you think he shot himself? ANN MARIE (ON TAPE): I don't know. I didn't turn the lights on in the room.
I think he killed himself. You know, just very nonchalant, matter of fact, conversational, not panic.
Where's that sheer panic? And there's this gun next to him? Do you think he shot himself?
NARRATOR: She may not have realized at the time, but from the very first words that she uttered
to the emergency dispatcher, Ann Marie Anastasi was incriminating herself. When the suspect themselves call 911,
it's often in that first minute, that first two minutes of that 911 call that either the motive will be revealed
or the alibi. NARRATOR: It's something that top homicide detective Brian Harris has seen dozens of times.
They'll repeat over and over again what their alibi is. It's no different in this case.
What's the alibi? Oh, I came home, was wondering where my husband was and he's laying in the bed and he's not breathing.
ANN MARIE (ON TAPE): But he's not responding at all. And he's got his gun laying next to him in the bed.
So she clearly wants to establish that all these series of events that would take place in the home
happened when she wasn't there. Now, this emergency dispatcher is thinking, this is bizarre.
Here you have somebody reporting that their husband isn't breathing, not moving.
Oh, and by the way, there's a gun next to him. But this case would even get more bizarre
and would even take more strange twists. The 911 call was just the start of it. So a couple of patrol officers from the Southern District
of the Anne Arundel County Police department responded to the scene. When they arrived at the Anastasi home,
Ms. Anastasi came outside and reported that her husband was dead inside. The police rushed to this home and they
see this charming house on the outside, and they go inside and there's this house that is just filthy and full
of clutter. When the officers get there and they go upstairs to the master bedroom, they find Mr. Anastasi lying on his back
in his bed, suffering from a single gunshot wound to the head with a pistol in his hand.
And again in a conversational manner, the officers are concerned. Is this the result of a home invasion?
Is this a suicide? What's going on here? And Ann Marie says, well, you know, he was depressed.
I mean, so he obviously killed himself. What do the officers see? They're seeing Ann Marie.
They're listening to her tone of voice, her very conversational tone. And in front of them is Ann Marie's husband Anthony.
He's laying on his back, face up. He's got a gunshot wound, a gunshot wound to his head and a gun nearby.
So as a detective, if that's my scene I'm coming to, if somebody's trying to say it's suicide,
I'm gonna look at that person's life. Sure, Anthony's been depressed. Sure, Anthony's had some dark things
going on in his life, kind of a bizarre lifestyle to begin with. But Anthony's own body would tell me a story.
Anthony is lying face up with a single bullet wound. He's dead. There's a gun lying next to him.
You see, if there's suicide, you would have what's called stippling or tattooing from a close gunshot wound, contact wound.
Now, that bullet is hot. It's kind of like a branding iron. You have this huge explosion, typically, anywhere
between 12 and 18 inches. If I'm further away than that distance, when I pull the trigger, the entry wound
will be nice and clean. If I'm closer than that, I would expect to see what's called stippling or tattooing.
That big explosion that comes out of the barrel of a gun, it has to go somewhere.
NARRATOR: There was no stippling or tattooing. As they continued to examine the scene,
investigators were struck with the realization that nothing about this incident could be taken at face value.
Now police aren't sure what they have on their hands. Is this a suicide? Is there anyone else living in the home?
No, my kids aren't here. But oh, we have this woman who lives with us. She lives in the basement.
They first have to make sure nobody else is injured. I mean, Ann Marie's the mother of five children.
Who else is in the home? They want to make sure nobody else is hurt. And so that's their natural question, who else lives here?
And that's when Ann Marie says, oh, yeah, we have somebody who lives downstairs.
They live in the basement. She might be home. She hasn't even inquired herself. But come to think of it, I haven't heard from her today.
Suspicion grows. But again, it's very conversational. And so what do the officers do?
They're sweeping that home, going room to room looking for other bodies, perhaps maybe even a suspect.
They take Ann Marie aside. They're gonna take her downtown and question her. Meanwhile, officers are running down the stairs.
NARRATOR: Casual, nonchalant, Ann Marie's words did nothing to prepare those officers for the scene
that they found in the basement. As they crept down the stairs, hands on their weapons,
alert to any movement in the darkness, heavy metal music was blaring out. Then, they opened the door.
They go downstairs. In the basement, they find Ms. Riggs laying on the ground. And they open the bedroom door.
And it's like a scene from "Helter Skelter." And it's a bloody, brutal scene that they find.
They find the body of yet another victim, Jacqueline Riggs. There is blood everywhere.
And there is Jacqueline Riggs lying dead on this blood-soaked rug. She's been stabbed 42 times.
40-plus stab wounds all across her body. 40-plus stab wounds, imagine that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.
NARRATOR: Could this calm, seemingly cooperative mother of five really be responsible for such brutality?
The scene in the basement spoke to the police of uncontrollable rage, of chaos, of a situation
that had got out of hand. Where did Ann Marie Anastasi fit into that scenario? Ms. Anastasi presented herself in her interviews to the police
as the grieving widow who loved her family, loved her husband, was willing to tolerate his indiscretions.
NARRATOR: The blood-soaked bodies of Anthony Anastasi and his young lover Jacqueline Riggs were lying
in the Anastasi family home as the medical examiner prepared to remove them for the autopsy.
Meanwhile, police are questioning Ann Marie. They've got her downtown, and they're asking her questions.
And Ann Marie keeps saying my husband committed suicide. I know he was depressed.
It was a suicide. And they said, well, what about the other woman? The what? What about Jacqueline Riggs?
She's got 42 stab wounds. What? NARRATOR: Ann Marie seemed shocked and distressed by what
detectives were telling her. But she had a plausible explanation for the carnage
that they'd found within her home. Ms. Anastasi's initial statement to the police
was that she had heard Mr. Anasazi and Ms. Riggs engaged in a heated argument in the basement of the home.
He then came upstairs to the master bedroom, kicked her out of the bedroom, and then shut the door.
And she never saw him alive again. Anne Marie, when the cops are talking to her,
they want to know, what do you think happened, which is a great question. What do you think happened, Ann Marie?
She buys into it. And she says, I think that Anthony killed Jacqueline, that he went down, they have a relationship,
he kills her. And he can't live with himself for what he did, that he's so remorseful that he shoots and kills himself.
What do you mean she's been stabbed? Well, you know, come to think of it, I think I heard them arguing.
I thought I heard their voices in the middle of the night. That's what happened.
On the surface, it's not that crazy of a story. Perhaps, it is Anthony, he kills Jacqueline.
And then after killing Jacqueline, he kills himself. Ms. Anastasi presented herself in her interviews to the police
as the grieving widow who loved her family, loved her husband, was willing to tolerate his indiscretions
and was just devastated that this horrible event had befallen her and her family.
NARRATOR: Would she get away with murder? She had clearly been living in a dysfunctional marriage
with a husband and his mistress who showed her little respect. The evidence might support her suggested murder-suicide theory
had credibility. But that would be one viable story. Love gone wrong, he's so distraught,
he gets in a personal attack and then he can't live with what he did. If I can't have you, nobody will, so he kills himself.
Based on just what the officers found at the scene just by looking at it before they performed
any sort of crime scene investigation and based on that statement, it presented as a murder suicide.
Might be a viable story. But you see, the evidence would show that that's completely different.
As a detective, I often warn other detectives, don't judge people on the way that they grieve.
However, when you look at the behavior of Ann Marie, is it just bizarre behavior and she's in shock?
Or is this well thought of responses to questions? During the course of Ms. Anastasi's first interview
with the police, they advised her that they discovered Ms. Riggs' body in the basement
and that she had also been murdered. Ms. Anastasi hardly registered any response or emotion at all.
Police discover that the gun lying next to Anthony doesn't match the bullet that came from his body.
There's no way that that bullet could have come from that gun. Mr. Anastasi had a .45 caliber, semi-automatic
pistol in his hand. Police could not find a .45 caliber shell casing in the bedroom.
They subsequently were able to find a .380 caliber shell casing in the bedroom that was subsequently analyzed
by the firearms examiner for the Anne Arundel County Police Department who gave a definitive conclusion
that you could not fire a .380 bullet from the .45 caliber handgun. Ann Marie didn't count on that.
Mr. Anastasi's autopsy came back to reveal that the round in his head was in fact a .380 caliber bullet.
Once you know that Mr. Anastasi was killed by the .380 caliber bullet, they knew that the .45 caliber
handgun that was in Mr. Anastasia's hand was not the murder weapon. It's a completely different weapon.
So that means somebody planted that weapon there. This is murder. It has murder written all over it.
NARRATOR: For homicide detectives, it was a discovery that changed everything. But presented with the fact that her husband had
in fact been murdered, Ann Marie remained unemotional, even detached. NARRATOR: But the ballistics findings
proving that Anthony had been murdered were just the start. After that, the incriminating evidence just kept piling up.
At any murder scene, one of the basic things you would do if there's gunshots that are involved,
we would do what's called a GSR test, a gunshot residue test. She consented to having her hands and her clothing
tested for the presence of gunshot residue. So she voluntarily gave up her clothes.
She's got a lot of explaining to do. So now you have a gun that's not matching up.
You've got two people dead. You've got gunshot residue on the wife. And what do they have on their hands?
Now, this is clearly not just a murder-suicide. They also took her while she was at the police station
on the first night and she agreed to undergo a polygraph examination. During the course of the polygraph examination,
she did poorly on questions regarding what happened and the exact details, whether she was involved,
if she knew what happened. NARRATOR: It was a tense time for Anne Arundel County detectives.
The net was closing in, but did they have enough to charge Ann Marie Anastasi with a double homicide?
The combination of the failed polygraph, Ms. Anastasi's story not being completely logical,
and the subsequent evidence that the police developed regarding the firearm, regarding the gunshot
residue, that all led to identifying her as the prime suspect. At this point in the investigation,
you have the 911 call, you have the bizarre explanation and story from Ann Marie, and then her explanation that, I
think Anthony killed himself. So you have the gun that doesn't match the bullet.
You have the gunshot residue on Ann Marie. But that's not enough. You need more than a detective's gut feeling
that this woman's involved. NARRATOR: Ann Marie refused to talk. But when the cops tracked down 18-year-old Gabriel Struss,
the teenager crumbled. Gabriel, when he's confronted, a rock could have taken his confession.
Gabriel, right away, freely starts flowing with the story of what took place, takes
responsibility, lays it all out, and explains exactly what happened. When they go to Gabriel Struss,
he confesses right away. I did it. I'm involved. Yes, I killed them. But I'm not the one who masterminded it.
It was her idea. And then the story starts coming out. NARRATOR: As Gabriel talked, homicide investigators
were able to piece together the final stages of Ann Marie's plan to get away with murder.
Ms. Anastasi got up in the morning, went through her family's normal routine, got the children off to school.
She subsequently had a doctor's appointment. And then she went to the grocery store.
She came back to the home, and somewhere in the 12 or 1 o'clock hour called 911 to report
that Mr. Anastasi was dead. NARRATOR: It was a plan that was deeply flawed. Her actions after both Mr. Anastasi
and Ms. Riggs were dead were exactly that of someone who had a plan. And that's one of the main things we relied on
in determining to charge her with first degree premeditated murder. Because, you know, obviously she had
this plan leading up to Mr. Anastasi and Mrs. Riggs's death. But then she clearly had thought through the entire crime,
not just how to commit it, but then she had a plan for after it was committed, for how
to try to get away with it. NARRATOR: Gabriel Struss was sentenced to 60 years in jail,
expressing regret for his actions, and telling Jacqueline Riggs' family in court
that he wished he could take back what he'd done. Prosecutors described him as a puppet
in a sinister plot, one that masterminded by a scorned wife who has never accepted the blame for the deaths
of her husband and his lover. Ann Marie takes this special plea, this Alford deal, that allows her to avoid saying I did it.
She never has to admit it. She doesn't take responsibility for it. What it tells me as a fellow human being,
as a homicide detective, Ann Marie, she never accepts responsibility, never shows any remorse.
There's never an opportunity to see any kind of human side, human emotional side of Ann Marie.
What kind of a mother does this? She's so angry at her husband. She's feeling so betrayed because he's left her.
And her 18-year marriage is over with because of this woman, this younger woman, where you are so mad, you want them gone,
but you can't do it. So you actually get your young daughter involved in this murder plot and get her boyfriend
involved in this murder plot. How can a mother live with herself? How can a mother do this and then
never accept responsibility for it and never show any remorse? The havoc she left behind, and she could still
never take full responsibility. But she also receives a 60-year sentence, as if she was the one that pulled the trigger,
as if she was the one who plunged the knife 42 times into Jacqueline Riggs. NARRATOR: They had met and fallen in love,
married, had children, but from the moment that Anthony Anastasi took a lover into the family home,
murder was never very far away. She wanted this done. She was willing to set the wheels in motion.
But then she destroyed other lives in the process of doing what she was not willing to do herself.
[music playing]

Anthony Anastasi moved his lover into the family home. His wife Ann Marie pretended to accept this while plotting his demise.

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

Ann Marie Anastasi plotted the murders of her husband and his mistress after feeling betrayed, leading to a shocking double homicide.

Key points

A Husband's Betrayal. Ann Marie discovers her husband Anthony has moved his mistress into their home.
The Plan for Murder. Ann Marie decides to take matters into her own hands, plotting revenge against her husband and his mistress.
A Disturbing 911 Call. Ann Marie's calm demeanor during the 911 call raises suspicions about her involvement.
The Bloody Discovery. Officers find a gruesome scene in the basement, revealing a shocking murder.
Unraveling the Truth. Detectives uncover evidence that contradicts Ann Marie's story, leading to her suspicion.
The Mastermind Revealed. Gabriel Struss confesses to the murders, implicating Ann Marie as the mastermind.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

NARRATOR reflects on Ann Marie's emotional state.

0:55WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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