Unmasking Killers | “48 Hours" Full Episodes | Forensic Files

[Music] Greenwood. I lived here half my life. Everyone knows everyone and their business. I have decided to set the
story straight. It's still surreal. I still think maybe I'll wake up. We were out for my birthday. I remember
I was just sitting at the bar and he sat down beside me and we just talked the rest of the night. You were there the
night she met Davis? I was. I was there that night. Did it seem like there was chemistry? Immediately. I would
immediately. Davis, he was so kind and I mean his heart was huge. We enjoyed each other so much.
It was an amazing six months. Meredith, her and Davis, they would go on away weekends a lot. I liked him.
His smile was so contagious and he's just such a sweet guy. I would have never expected this to happen ever.
Greenwood County 911. But it's a oneperson car wreck. Okay, it was a car wreck and somebody is hurt. I pull up
right beside Davis's car and he wasn't in his car. And that's when I noticed his airbags were out. So then also
that's when I kind of started looking at the car more and noticed that his front
tire was smashed in. And I remember looking and I noticed there's a body. Merit just started like screaming like,
"Who is it? Who is it?" And you look over. Mhm. What do you think you were looking at?
Davis. He was laying there and his head was rested on the slot like a pillow and
he was shirtless and his face was covered in blood. Was there anything about the scene that struck you as odd?
Davis being all the way on the other side of the road, the car being wrecked. Like none of that. I couldn't piece
anything together. Davis's car was way over there and his body was way down here and I was like, "Well, how did he
end up down here?" That's quite a distance. Yeah. To here. It is quite a distance. Originally, it came out as a
as a possible traffic accident and then once officers arrived on scene, they realized it was more than that. A lot of
people think it was an auto accident. Well, no, it wasn't. I do believe that this was an accident and not an
intentional killing. It was a murder. I was in shock. I was like, it doesn't even make sense. The photographs of the
crime scene, the text messages from Davis's phone, the ring videos, looking at everything in the totality of the
case was very powerful. How could any of this possibly happen? There's so many things missing from the story. And once
I kind of get that out there, then I can close the chapter. [Music] [Music] Romeo
974 and 1028 Whiskey Echo Victor 253. It was May 7th, 2023, just after 1:00 a.m.
when authorities responded to a reported road accident on a secluded deadend street in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Start roping this off, cuz this is going to be a crime scene. At the edge of the
nearby woods, they would find 46-year-old Davis McClendon's body. But what they saw at first was on the road
itself. A shirt, a shoe, and a mangled sedan. and there was significant damage to the fender. It was a BMW 5 Series
similar to this one. We're using to demonstrate the position of the vehicle that night. After first responders had
locked everything down, Greenwood County Sheriff's Office investigator Patrick Durkin arrived to photograph the scene.
The front driver side wheel was turned slightly kind of whatever had transpired at this deserted crossroads. Durkid's
job was to freeze it in time. First responders had thought Davis McClendon's injuries seemed consistent with having
been hit by a vehicle, though no other vehicle relating to the collision was there. They'd found Davis's body about
50 ft away from the BMW, leading them to suspect he'd been outside his car when he was hit. There was no rain or
anything that would potentially wash anything away. So, um, the main thing I focused on was the vehicle. Durkin says
he noticed some strange damage to the BMW. Usually when we would you would think of a normal fender bender, it
would just kind of be pressed into it. And this was torn back like a tuna can in a sense. It had made authorities
wonder if it was a hit and run or something more sinister. Those airbags were out and a phone was on the front
passenger seat. Durkin saw more debris in the road, but nothing particularly telling. The assumption was that he was
struck by a vehicle. Investigator Ronnie Pal from the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office says
authorities had learned more by speaking to two women at the scene, Meredith Haney and Megan McGovern, who'd called
911. Megan often babysat for Meredith's three children. They provided statements of what they
saw and what had occurred all night long. What did Meredith say? She pretty much gave a summary of the whole
backstory that she had been dating Davis. Meredith had told authorities that Davis
left a club they'd been in that night, calling her minutes later from the road, saying he was parked at the intersection
of Avid Road and Sawrass Place. when he'd put her on hold and then failed to come back on the line. Meredith was
worried and got a ride there from Megan. It was Megan, the babysitter, who'd gotten out of her car and was the first
to see Davis's body. That news must have been stunning. Yeah, it was devastating.
It was It was crushing. Davis McClendon was the ultimate people person without an enemy in the world. Say his friends
Chip Thunderbunk. Everybody loved Davis. He was just awesome. Zack Calhoun, he he
loved Big and Johnny Coats. And what Zach said, he was everyone's best friend. He was he loved everyone. But
none of them could remember Davis ever mentioning the specifics of his love life. Not until he met Meredith Haney.
He told me that he had met somebody and they had just kind of been chatting and um you know, enjoying getting to know
each other. You know, it seemed uh seemed like a good thing. seemed like a positive thing for sure.
Calhoun says Davis had gone through a divorce, but the end of his marriage hadn't done anything to weaken his
devotion as a father and a friend, even to the residents of the retirement home where he worked. He was the most
empathetic person I've ever met. More than four months before Davis died on the night of December 23rd,
2022, Meredith was at that club celebrating her 39th birthday with her best friends. She says they were wearing
their worst Christmas sweaters when the handsome stranger struck up a conversation. And I think he text on
Christmas day and then the next day and then the next and you just kept on talking
until meeting Davis. She says she'd been keeping her head down. Just about 6 months earlier, she had left her husband
of 10 years, a local auto body shop owner named Bud Aur. and she was struggling to balance parenting their
three kids and her job as a grammar school teacher. She says she knew getting involved with someone new would
not be easy. Was there any hesitancy about moving forward with this there? I mean there was. She says first Davis
wanted to make sure she had no intention of reconciling her marriage. He didn't want to be the reason that you know we
didn't get our family back together. So, we made sure from the get-go that that wasn't
going to be an issue and it just it just happened. They would have less than 6 months together.
Could you start to guess what may have happened, how it was hit? The night of Davis's death, at the site,
investigator Patrick Durkin noticed something beyond the strangeness of the crashed car and Davis's distance from
it. There was an oil slick in the road. It's still here. Uh just over a year later, it's it's still here. Uh but
there was a number of footprints and and some tire tracks that were leading away
from this oil stand. And what did that tell you when you saw it? Well, we knew that there was some type of impact to
the vehicle and then we knew there was uh oil and and tire marks that left from here.
It looked like evidence from the vehicle that hit Davis. You guys are looking around and you realize the oil
continues. You could see it was very obvious that there was tire marks that had had gone back down the road and kind
of turned around back where the tire tracks seemed to show a vehicle had turned around. Investigators had found
oil spatters on a street light post. It was about maybe this high. And from there there was a trail of oil that had
led down the road into the distance. It's breaks basically and a man are speaking. You know, we just have to do
the investigation and and see what evidence is there and see where it leads us to.
[Music] [Music] There was a trail uh that led from from the incident location. Investigator
Ronnie Pal says by the time authorities started following that oil trail from the crash site, they had a solid hunch
where it might lead. Davis McClendon's girlfriend, Meredith Haney, had told them she'd suspected where he had been
going when he left her at the bar that night to meet her aranged husband, Bud Acur. And it turns out the oily evidence
led right to Acriman's parents' house. Garage is open. He'd been living there since separating from Meredith about a
year earlier. Sheriff's office. Yes, sir. Authorities body cameras were rolling.
He kind of walked up um and almost was expecting us. Bud Acur and his father were both standing near the garage. Are
there some kids here? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Whose kids are they? Mine. Yours and who? Uh my wife. Okay.
Bud had spent the day with his three kids at a local festival. He and his wife Meredith had a custody arrangement
and it was his night with the kids. But in the driveway, authorities noticed his
white Ford F250 pickup. That's wild. With oil leaking from the undercarriage. They also noticed a crack in the grill
and other evidence that suggested the vehicle had hit someone. That's a palm mark.
Investigators turned to Bud. Do you have your ID on you? Uh, I do not. Okay, just
step over here for me. Authorities say Bud told them he would not answer questions without his lawyer
present. But from speaking with Meredith, they learned she had a contentious relationship with her
soon-to-be ex-husband and came to suspect a jealous Bud Acur had mowed Davis McClendon
down. Looking at the scene, they deduced Davis had been standing outside his BMW,
as shown in this CBS News animation. Based on their investigation, they suspect Bud's pickup
truck sideswiped the sedan and hit Davis, carrying him on the vehicle's grill and depositing his body across the
road. Meredith says Bud had been upset since reaching out to her days earlier when he found out she was dating Davis.
He text me. What did he text you? He said something about Meredith, how could you? What was your
reaction to that text? I think it was hurt. Like I was I felt bad because I just don't like to hurt
people's family. I don't like people to be hurt. So I felt bad. What had begun years earlier as a
promising marriage that would bear three kids had fallen apart. He was a good father. He was a really
good dad. Bud was from a prominent local family and he was a business owner, but
Meredith says his work had become stressful. I started to notice like some depression and things like that
um that I've never seen before. She says he started drinking a lot and the more he drank, she says the more
unpredictable he became. There was screaming, cursing. You felt threatened. Absolutely.
Meredith says he never laid a hand on her, but destroyed her sense of self. The house was never clean enough. There
were never enough groceries. It was so loud and vulgar. It was very degrading. Then she says she noticed her husband
was starting to become paranoid. She remembers being in her closet one day and noticing a strange
pillow. They had cut a hole in it. According to Meredith, there was a hidden camera inside
and then I started finding more of them. What other places did you find cameras?
Oh. Um, there was one hidden in our dresser that faced the bed. Found one in a bush in the front
yard. He put them in all the kids' rooms. She says that was the last straw. They separated in the spring of 2022.
I could breathe. I could be me again. Meredith says the separation seemed to help Bud, too. That he'd stopped
drinking and kept going to church with her and the kids. But by then, she decided it was too
late. When I was done, I was done. And starting again with someone new seemed like a distant dream.
Meredith says, "Until that night, Davis McClendon sauntered up and sat down in her life. They tried to keep things
low-key at first. Meredith says she never wanted to rub Bud's nose in it. So, what did you all
do? We would go out of town. But Meredith says they knew they couldn't sneak around forever. And it
had started seeming like her new relationship with Davis was a forever kind of thing.
We talked about sitting on the porch rocking chairs at 80 and it was just a different kind of
relationship. But after Bud found out, there were new complications. He accused you of cheating. Yeah. Even
though you were weeks away from your divorce, right? Meredith says Bud actually called Davis and asked him to
back off until the divorce was official. What was Davis's reaction to that request?
I think he agreed, but then we talked about it and decided that was just giving him
another little piece of control. And on the night Davis died, she says Bud seemed out of control.
Back at his parents' house, investigators now had a warrant and were finding more clues that Acriman had been
at the crash site. Oily footprints. Oily footprints. At about 6:30 a.m. on May 7th, 2023, Bud
Acur was arrested. He would be charged with the murder of Davis McClendon. We think there's enough evidence at the
scene to to prove of what occurred. So, by the end of the night, you already have someone in custody. Yes.
What's left to do? Well, that's just the beginning. Because it turns out Bud Aur did have a
story to tell. He says Davis was standing near the middle of a dark road approximately shown in this CBS News
animation. Bud says he didn't see Davis until it was too late, that hitting him had been an
accident. And Bud's team says they can prove it. [Music] Investigators are confident they could
prove Bud Acur's truck had hit and killed Davis McClendon, but they knew proving Acriman had done it on purpose
might be harder. Building a case starts from that night. And when investigators looked at that night, they learned Bud
Acur had been tracking Davis and Meredith's whereabouts for hours. He was trying to find them that night, and he
was was not happy about this whole situation. Using security video, phone records, and
even data from Bud's own truck, authorities built a timeline. They began with Meredith's phone, Lieutenant
Matthew Wac of the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office. We were able to extract the information such as the
calls and the texts. A slew of calls and text messages Bud had made to Meredith leading up to the collision. At 8:54
p.m., Bud texts Meredith, "Why do you hate me? I just don't understand." She doesn't respond to him.
She's out with Davis at a local restaurant. We went to dinner um at Break on the Lake.
You see Davis and Meredith, you having dinner and being interrupted by Bud's attempts
to reach her. What was the FaceTime conversation like? Where are you? Who are you with? Why are you doing this to
me? Did you tell him where you were? I feel like it at some point in the conversation either he could tell where
I was because of what's around me or I finally did tell him was one or the other. So, at that point, he knows that
you're out with Davis. While Meredith continued her date with Davis, security cameras catch Bud
Acriving at a popular Greenwood club called Key West. You can see Bud, you know, he's talking to people,
interacting, consuming alcohol. The video shows Bud spent about an hour and a half at Key West, then called Meredith
again. How did he sound on the phone? Intoxicated. What's an intoxicated Bud sound like?
Vulgar. Soon after midnight, Acriman had left Key West. About a half hour later,
cameras show Bud's truck circling in front of Break on the Lake, but by then, Meredith and Davis were no longer at the
restaurant. You can see his vehicle drive through the parking lot as if he's looking for him.
Lieutenant Womac says before long, investigators would learn just how far Bud Acur had gone that night to find
Meredith and Davis. Though Acriman himself wasn't talking, critical information would emerge from another
digital witness, his truck. It's a box about this big that goes into the backside of the dash.
WMAC says in some cars and trucks, the infotainment systems, as they're known, store detailed information about how the
vehicles are being driven, where in a similar model to Bud's Ford F250 pickup. So on Bud's vehicle, they were able to
pull a significant amount of information. This is just a little snippet. You're talking just in in a
24-hour time period, it's over 3,000 events. Events including snap measurements of speed, acceleration, and
brake pressure. Bud's onboard computer even pinged public Wi-Fi it passed. Investigators learned that Bud had
actually driven by Meredith's house and onto Davis McClendon Street that night. But while he was driving around looking
for them, ironically, they had moved to the Key West club, he had just left. When Davis decides to call Bud, he
walked out the back of the bar. It was 12:51 a.m. A few minutes passed and I went out there to check on him and he
was gone. Did he think he could bring the temperature down? Mhm. Records show Davis called her minutes later. And what
was that conversation? Where are you? And that's when he told me that he was going to meet Bud.
Wax says other infotainment system data show that at a bit past 1:00 in the morning, Davis and Bud had their fatal
encounter. And we can tell there was actually an event at 1:11 a.m. on May the 7th. They say Acriman hit the brakes
hard. We could narrow it down to t of seconds of when the collision occurred. And according to the computer, seconds
after the collision, Acriman's truck had stopped. At that point in time, Bud's opening the door. Uh he opens the door
before he shifts it to park. WAC thinks Acriman got out of his truck, which was probably leaking from the collision.
Remember that puddle of oil in the road near the victim. Then he closes the door. Then he gets back in and then it's
shifted to drive at that point in time. Then say authorities, Aur turns his truck around near the lamp post, roughly
as you see in this CBS News demonstration based on their investigation. He then drives away,
leaking an oil trail all the way to his parents' driveway. right here. His phone
becomes unavailable. The ignition turned off and it disconnected from his device.
What does that tell you? That's when he got home and got out. It started to paint a very clear picture.
But Acriman's attorney, Jack Swirling, paints a different picture. I don't think he intended to run Davis McClendon
over. There's no indication that he's aggressive or violent individual. Sheriff's Office. Yes, sir. nor says
swirling is there much to indicate his client was drunk that night. This can I get you to step with me over here for
me, please? None of the cops who arrested him reported he seemed tipsy. The only one who said he was intoxicated
was Meredith. Was he stalking them that night? I think he was trying to find out
confirm that they were together. He wanted to talk to her. According to Swirling, Meredith and Davis had
betrayed McClendon's promise to Bud to stand down until the Acriman's marriage was officially over. She couldn't wait
another month and she's out with this guy uh and she's cheating on her husband. They are still legally married.
South Carolina law calls out adultery. And Swirling says the night Davis died, he let Bud Acriman's repeated calls and
text messages to Meredith get under his skin. Davis got upset about it and that's what led to them having this
meeting. Bud was thought they were going to meet and talk. He says Bud had suggested an innocent and safe place for
it to happen. They were supposed to meet at Bud's parents house, which is about a
half a mile from that location. Swirling says Acriman's children were sleeping there that night, so attacking
Davis would have been the last thing on his client's mind. You wouldn't meet at your parents house if you were angry and
threatening ready to kill somebody. He says it was Davis who selected the deserted intersection as a new location.
And remember how Davis was found without his shirt on that night? Well, Swirling
says he believes Davis took it off to prepare for a confrontation. He was ready to fight. Swirling insists Bud
Acriman meant no harm that night. And Bud is about to tell that story to a jury. Your name? William Grey Acriman
Jr. Um I also go by Bud. Good morning everybody. We are on the record in the state versus
William Bud Acriman. Prosecutors are determined to prove it was no accident that Bud Acriman hit Davis McClendon the
night he died. So in September of 2024, Assistant Attorneys General John Conrad and John Meadows, he intentionally drove
his car into the body of Davis McClinton. start the case off with a bang. Bam. And that's what this case is
about. They'll argue Acriman couldn't stand the fact that his aranged wife was seeing someone and Bud was searching for
Meredith and Davis all over town. Bud Akerman was not going to let Davis McClendon be with Meredith.
That's your house right there. Yes, sir. Meers and Conrad lead with their strongest evidence. There are actually
timestamped videos from the neighbors doorbell cameras at the moment of the crash that killed Davis. It shows what
they say is Bud's Ford F250 driving through the frame. Seconds later on the video, what sounds like a
crash. And seconds after that, a series of muffled sounds. What did you hear? I heard somebody
yelling. Okay. Prosecutors argue it's Bud Acur's voice yelling at Davis McClendon after running him down.
What it sounded like to me was, "What do you want to talk about now?" Bud yelling unheavenly explosives. He uh
said to Davis as he was lying on the ground, "I think he was glad he was dead." But but Acriman's defense
attorney, Jack Swirling, argues the audio is too garbled to prove anything. I've listened to it several times now,
and well, I don't believe you could conclude 100% that that is actually what he said. The prosecutor then calls Megan
McGovern, the Acriman's babysitter and friend, to describe the moment she'd seen Davis's body through traumatized
teenaged eyes. He had blood coming out of his ears and his nose. And I couldn't I'm not exactly
sure if it was coming out of his mouth or not cuz I mean there's just blood everywhere from his nose and everything.
But their star witness is the woman at the center of both men's affection. Meredith Haney who testifies with the
date night security videos as a guide. Yes sir. Is that you? Yes sir. She tells the jury Bud Acriman called her when she
and Davis were at Break on the Lake. Did you think he was trying to find you? I did worry. Yes. And kept calling after
they got to Key West Club. Is that a call from the defendant, Bun Acriman? Yes, sir. Did you reject that call? Yes.
It's 18 seconds later, you get another call. Yes, sir. Well, what did you think about all these calls coming in? I was
getting very frustrated and angry and just it was getting obsessive. But it was getting scary. And she says by the
time Davis McClendon left her at the Key West Club after midnight. And is that Davis McClendon leaving the bar? Yes.
She was worried Bud might be volatile. So when Davis later called to tell her he was going to meet with Acriman, she
says she wanted to go check on the situation in person and makes clear to the jury that when she saw the scene,
she had little doubt who killed her boyfriend. I dove back into Meg's car because I thought that the only way that
Bud would have ever killed somebody would have been to shoot. Objection. Don't go. The judge sustains the
defense's objection, but Meredith continues. I was scared that he was still out there. Okay, Mr. Swirling, you
need crossexamination. All right, go for it. You step down, ma'am. Your honor, state call special agent
Brian Hudac. Digital forensics expert Brian Hudach tells the jury about data in the infotainment system of Acriman's
pickup, including some that show Bud was driving in exactly the right place in Greenwood at the intersection of Aid and
Saul at exactly the right time between 11131 and 11:32 to be implicated in the deadly collision.
He suggests they can even tell the moment of impact. There's something that causes this truck to de accelerate very
quickly. Correct. Correct. And Hudac says the evidence shows Acriman was going 25 mph.
And the amount of detail that that truck had on what Bud did that night is is simply breathtaking. Ford vehicles on
the completely on the wrong side of the road when it strikes the BMW. Collision reconstruction expert Corporal
Christopher Bratcher testifies the dents show Bud's speeding pickup sideswiped Davis's BMW sedan as shown in that CBS
News animation based on the prosecution's theory. They say Bud was aiming at Davis who was standing near
the driver's door when he was hit and that the truck kept going with Davis on the grill until he fell off where
authorities found him. But Jack Swirling argues much of the same evidence shows hitting Davis was an accident. We
maintain that Mr. Acriman did not act intentionally in this case. He says Bud Acriman had no idea Davis
was standing outside his car and calls auto forensics expert Jonathan Nelson to testify that given Acuran's speed in the
dark over a slope in the road and into the parked BMW's headlight beams, he wouldn't have seen Davis McClendon
standing in the road until at most 2 and 1/2 seconds before the collision. Or would a person have sufficient
opportunity to avoid impact? I think most people would have little to no opportunity to begin to try to avoid.
And Swirling says Davis wasn't standing right next to his car when he was hit, but further out towards the center of
the road, and that Acriman swerved to his left into the BMW to get around him, as shown in this CBS News animation
based on the defenses theory. He's trying to avoid hitting him. Wouldn't you swerve the other way?
why he didn't go right. I can't answer that. Swirling knows there may be only one person who can. Call a come around
to stand, please, sir. Acriman's attorney begins by trying to show the jury his client was Meredith's
long-suffering but devoted husband. Did you love her? Not very much. He admits he was angry at Meredith, but
says he only wanted to talk to her and agreed to meet Davis to talk to him, too.
Do you have any intention to hurt him? I deny. Acriman says he hadn't realized how fast he was going and that he was
only trying to pull up next to Davis to talk and didn't see McClendon standing in the road until the last moment.
What action did you take, if any, to avoid hitting the person? I jerked my truck as hard as I could to the left to
try to hit his car to stop the motion of my truck from going forward. But on cross-examination, he admits something
that undercuts his claims of innocence that night. He had never called 911. I panicked. He panicked.
Instead, he left the scene and drove to his parents' house and told them what had happened. But they never called
authorities either. I've seen so many people react in abnormal ways in all the cases I've handled and I've come to
expect those kind of things. In closings, prosecutor Meadows argues Acriman is a murderer with a truck as
his weapon. This might as well be a driveby shooting with a gun. Andy says the Ford pickup's infotainment
system proves it. This is Bud's frame. This is malice. This is intent. That the state has not proven that Mr.
Acrian acted with malice or with the intent. It's the highest possible bar. And the defense insists the state has
not proven its case. That Mr. Amen is entitled to a verdict of not guilty. This is judgment day. It's verdict day.
You never know what a juryy's going to do. You got 12 people making the decision. Have you reached a verdict in
this case? [Music] Ladies and gentlemen, it's my understanding that the uh jury has
reached a uh a verdict for the Acriman jury. 6 days of testimony and evidence boil down to a deliberation less than a
half hour long. State of South Carolina versus William Gaybud Acriman. Did you have a feeling
about what that verdict might be? Yeah, a quick verdict like that is not good. Not good.
We the jury unanimously find the defendant guilty. Sign Bud Acur is guilty of the murder of Davis McClendon.
It was the right verdict. I mean, I I thought it would be fast. Not that fast. Not just fast, but too fast to be
thought through, says Bud Acriman's attorney, Jack Swirling. I don't think the jury considered everything that was
presented to him. They didn't need a lot of time to stew over the evidence. The evidence was clear and obvious.
Damning evidence of what Bud Acur did, say Davis McClendon's friends. And equally damning evidence, they say, of
what Bud Acur never did. Our friend laid there in the road. They still can't wrap their head around why
nobody in the Acriman family ever called 911. Somebody should have done the right
thing. At sentencing right after the verdict, Davis McClendon's son demands accountability from the acrimans.
It is time for this spoiled evil individual and this spoiled evil family in Greenwood to finally gain some
repercussions for their actions. Thank you. A lot's been said about why we didn't
call 911. But Acriman's father tries to explain his own lack of action by saying he was
too disoriented to know what to do at that hour of the night when his son woke him with the
news. The judge's sentence is devastating to the defendant. Mr. Acman, if you please answer.
Sentence of the court is Mr. Aman, you'd be committed to the State Department corrections period of 45 years.
It looks like the end of the road for Bud Acur. I know that where he is is where he's supposed
to be, but it may allow for a new beginning for Meredith Haney. I was worried that if he only got 5 or 10 years that
I'd never get to start a new life because I'd be scared for when he got out. With their father unlikely to get
out of prison for decades, she's determined to spare her children from the impact of that horrible night. As a
single mom, she leans on friends and family. How are the kids doing? more. Looking back, she believes Bud Acur
really wanted to target her that night and that she's only alive because he found Davis McClendon first.
Davis saved my life. You really feel that way? Absolutely. If true, Meredith Haney owes
her life, however challenging, to the new man she had once hoped to share it with. How would you like Davis to be
remembered as a hero? For the way he treated people, for his empathy, for his heart. He was just a good person.
[Music] CBS next Saturday. A soldier suspected of killing his young wife. He's been
trained on how to kill. Goes on the run. He just disappeared off the face of the
map with his 17-year-old girlfriend. If he was willing to kill his own wife, there's no telling what kind of danger
Hannah Thompson would have been in. 48 Hours is all new CBS next Saturday, 10:9 central and streaming on Paramount Plus.
[Music] on November 25th, 2020. It was the day before Thanksgiving. I received a phone call
shortly after 4:00 from the Mount Morris police chief and he asked me kind of frantically, "Is anybody at my house?"
And I said, "My daughter Melissa, there is." And so, there's a fire and it's bad.
My sister Melissa, she was 9 months pregnant, about to have a baby in 2 days. What do you remember from November 25th,
2020? It was my 17th birthday. My birthday is November 25th. Me and my mom were at a store. We're picking out a
cake and we finally got home and my brother Carl frantically is calling my mom. Have you heard from Melissa? Have
you heard from Melissa? And we're like, no. Why? Carl said the neighbor called and he said the house is on
fire. So at that point my heart just sank because we were not sure if Melissa was home or
not. I just wanted them both to be okay. And all I could think was please just have one of them at
least one of them make it through the night. When everyone said they didn't know where she was and they couldn't
hear from her, I knew I knew. Just had that gut feeling that she was gone. For a huge tragedy like that to occur
the day before Thanksgiving on Julia's birthday, right before the baby was to be born, it was just so
much. When I arrived at the scene, I was told the victim was found laying on the
floor in front of the stove. Melissa Lamish was a 27-year-old EMT. We're trying to figure out why there's a fire
in the kitchen. We couldn't tell if it was intentional or accidental. There was all kinds of possibilities running
through our heads, but we we didn't know what happened to her. My daughter Melissa, she's very
thoughtful, and that's why she got into being a paramedic. She wanted to help people.
[Music] When Melissa first told me she was pregnant, she told me a couple things
about the dad. Matt Ployd, they on and off hung out for years and had a similar click of friends. Matt Plloy was a
firefighter paramedic. He was a good firefighter. Matt was somebody that was dependable on the fire scene. He was
just one of the guys. He was keeping a secret the fact that he fathered a baby in the hopes that the
child wouldn't be born. For Matt, he never had a child before. He didn't want to make it known to other people because
he just wanted to keep that part of his life private. Matthew Ploy was a person of interest on
day one simply because he was at the scene. Matthew Poy later told investigators that he was at the house
to see Melissa to talk about um the baby. [Music] He admitted he was there. He told them
everything that they would have needed to know about his presence there. Didn't have anything to
hide. They discussed their finances and then Matt left as she was making some lunch.
She talked about trying some food or something, but we I didn't stare at her. I believe from the very beginning he was
trying to set up a story that there was an accidental houseire that she had been
cooking something which would explain why her body was found in the kitchen. When you got the call about Matthew Ploy
possibly being involved in a murder, what did you think? uh denial that it wasn't one of our
people. It doesn't chime with what a firefighter is. We put fires out. We don't start
fires. We help people. We don't hurt [Music] people. It is unthinkable. [Music] [Music]
Before the fire that set Melissa Lamish's home ablaze on November 25th, 2020, the day had started with excited
anticipation. Melissa was due to give birth to a baby boy in just 2 days, and Thanksgiving was a day away. She was
going to have a nice private Thanksgiving with dad. So, I gave her a call the morning of the 25th and uh we
talked for about 2 and a half hours. Cassie Ball and her sister Melissa had lots to chat about. We talked a lot
about the future. We talked about what was going to come with the baby. The conversation ended because she looked
outside the window. She said, "You got to be kidding me." She's like, "He's freaking here again. I told him he's got
to stop doing this." At the door was 33-year-old Matthew Ploy, the expectant father of Melissa's
baby. She said, "I'll tell you what he wanted. I'll give you a call right back. Bye." Hung up. Did she ever call back?
No, my sister never called back. Melissa Lamish and Matthew Poy met and became friends seven years earlier while
each was in college. They maintained a casual relationship. The friendship says the Lamish family cooled off once
Melissa let Matthew know about the pregnancy. Melissa told her family he did not share her interest in becoming a
parent. He wanted her to get an abortion. She didn't want that. He blamed her, ghosted her. It did come to
upset Melissa because they were friends for so long. She thought he'd at least want to be involved a little bit. Yes.
Melissa thought that he would want something to do with the baby. To that point, she thought he was a pretty nice
guy. Then she saw a different side of him and that really upset her. Deanna and Gus were fully prepared to
help their daughter with whatever she needed for the baby. I had said, "If he doesn't want to be a part of the baby's
life, you know, don't push. The baby is your child." We told her, "Whatever you needed, I'll I'll help you financially."
She knew she had plenty of family support. Everything would have been fine. The Lamish family was a large one.
Melissa had four siblings. She was already an aunt and was known for following her own path. Melissa was
unapologetically herself and that is what she was. She's perfect mix of sugar and spice. Not too spicy, not too sugar.
It was just perfect. Melissa was strong. She was fierce. She was a go-getter. Melissa liked to
reinvent herself through hairstyles and careers. Most recently, the 27-year-old had been working as an EMT. Melissa kind
of fell into the line of work. She had an experience in college that took her to a emergency room and she really
appreciated how she was treated and she wanted to do the same for other people. You're proud? Yes. That was her job and
she took it seriously. As her due date neared, Melissa had to stop working. To make things easier, she
moved into her childhood home with her dad. Her parents had divorced several years earlier. Melissa grew increasingly
excited about becoming a mom, even though she and Matthew had little contact. Melissa would continue to send
him like sonograms or when things would happen cuz sometimes he would respond a little bit, but she didn't know really
where he stood exactly. But Melissa wanted her baby to have the option of having the mother and the father. So she
kept the communication with him. He often shut down. Matthew wasn't just shutting out Melissa. He kept the fact
he was going to be a father a secret, including from his co-workers and Chief Rob Schultz of the Carol Stream Fire
District, several counties away from Melissa's home. We're here 24 hours a day and it's a
just a normal uh course of being a firefighter that you talk about your family, your personal life, and what's
going on, good, bad, or indifferent. I knew Matt as a single guy that didn't have any kids.
Even Matthew's own parents did not know about the pregnancy until Melissa told them. Melissa wanted them to have the
opportunity to be part of their grandchild's life. How did Melissa say his parents responded to the news of a
grandson? Melissa said that his parents were very nice that um they said, "Let me know what you need. I'll help you any
way we can." How did Matthew find out that Melissa had told his parents they were having a baby? I believe that the
parents then approached him, but it was not long after that that she had said, "He's mad I told them." Because he had
kept it a secret. Yeah. Melissa celebrated the upcoming birth with family and friends at a baby
shower. She had let everyone know she was having a boy. It was a happy time until nearly 2 months later on that
fateful Thanksgiving eve. It was just all so surreal. While Melissa's family tried to process their
loss, investigators were hoping to provide them with answers about what had happened. The fire debris is everywhere.
Brian Kedar, then the lead detective at the Ogle County Sheriff's Office, headed
to the kitchen where Melissa had been found. Everything's covered in smoke. Ceilings, walls have fallen down and
everything's a mess. Kedar and other investigators also headed outside to an ambulance to view Melissa.
We've noticed that she didn't have a whole lot of fire damage to her. What does that say? That the fire didn't kill
her. [Music] We needed to identify the area of fire origin and what may have caused that
fire. Michael P, then a special agent with the Illinois State Fire Marshall's office, was trying to establish whether
the fire at Melissa Lamish's home was accidental or intentionally set. What are you looking for? Where the
greatest damage is at, where the fire patterns are at. We're looking at everything and everything in this
picture that may have something to do with the origin of the fire. Where do you think the fire started? Uh, I
believe the fire is over here. Actually, it's in these cabinets where these cabinets used to be
above the stove area. But when P examined the stove, thinking that perhaps cooking flames caused the
cabinets to catch fire, he saw that neither the oven nor the burners had been turned on.
All the controls are in the off position and there is no fire damage in the interior of this oven to show that this
was some type of cooking fire. Also did not find any electrical issues. So, we're starting to run out of accidental
causes and we could identify at least three very simple and easy ways to exit this resident.
Much of the house besides the kitchen remained accessible, so pool thought Melissa could have found a way out. It
was what I would call a survivable fire. This young lady was a paramedic. She's used to dealing with
emergencies. For her to totally lose her perspective and stand there and try and
fight that fire. When you start putting all these things together that you start coming up with,
okay, this makes no sense. While P was inspecting the house, investigators talked with the Lamish family. Keter
learned about the phone call that day between Melissa and Cassie that Melissa ended when Matthew Ploy arrived at the
house. We learned from the family that he was a fireman. Melissa's brother, Carl, told
investigators he had already spoken on the phone to Ploy, telling him he knew he had been at the house that day. Carl
also told Plloy about the fire and that someone had died, but not that it was Melissa. Investigators did that when
they asked Poy to come in for an interview that evening. Moses is [Music] deceased.
Okay. As you watched his interview, what did you think about his demeanor, his responses?
emotionless, very soft-spoken. Matthew said he went to talk to Melissa. He wanted to talk about money, about being
allowed at the hospital when she was set to be induced in 2 days, and that's why
he was there. In that interview, Matthew made a reference to a deadline when explaining his decision to go to the
house that day. And there's a deadline for for that. So, we were there's a deadline for a pregnancy.
There's a deadline. It was a phrase that investigators didn't quite know how to interpret. Was Matthew a suspect at that
point? No, he was not a suspect. What are the next steps in the investigation? We need to determine the cause of
death. We don't know if if Melissa had a medical episode or if somebody did something to her or if the carbon
monoxide from the fire killed her. We don't know. To get those answers, two autopsies
would be performed. One 2 days after Melissa's death and then another about 2 weeks later while lab work was
completed. The results, normal carbon monoxide levels and no soot was found in her system. What was found was evidence
of strangulation, including hemorrhages around her neck. Melissa, it was determined, had been murdered.
We have to plan a funeral. And while we were still waiting for things, it was nearly 3 weeks.
[Music] On December 14th, 2020, the Lamish family held a funeral for Melissa and
her unborn baby, who Melissa was going to name Barrett. We didn't get to kiss his forehead,
touch his cheek. The first time we got any kind of contact, they were in a casket. And the first time I touched his
hand, I just remember gasping just and I had decided I was going to keep holding
his hand. Something Melissa didn't get to do. Melissa's family was convinced that
Matthew Poy was responsible for their profound grief. That he killed Melissa simply because he did not want to become
a father. Matthew, investigators would learn, had been juggling multiple women in his life. I believe he did it because
he's selfish and it was going to change his life having a child. Melissa wasn't asking him for anything. No money,
nothing. He could have walked away. So why? I think it was his pride. He wanted to keep it a secret. With no other
suspects, and with Matthew admitting to being at Melissa's home that day, investigators were also circling in on
Clo, but were still gathering evidence. We had collected DNA evidence at the autopsy and we sent that to the crime
lab. We had gotten search warrants for phone records. We were in the process of getting that information back. They were
also waiting to get information back from Amazon about possible recordings from an Echo Dot that Keter had noticed
and was retrieved from the fire damaged kitchen. We were hoping it would record conversations or something from the day
between the two of them. That Amazon Echo Dot could turn this case around. Could have it could have recorded
Melissa screaming for help, yelling out his name. We didn't know what it would be.
[Music] I was contacted by our police chief to give him a call immediately that he had
something very important, sensitive to talk about. When Carol Stream Fire Chief Rob Schultz returned the call, he
couldn't believe what he was hearing. One of our firefighters was being investigated in a in a suspect in a
murder that occurred about 2 hours from our fire district's boundaries. It was now 9 months since Melissa
Lamish's death in a house fire that had sent shock waves through the community in Mount Morris, where her home was
located. But firefighters where Matthew PL worked in Carol Stream about 75 miles away were
unaware of the fire. Ploy had said nothing. When you heard the name Matthew Ploy in that call, what did you think? I
was, you know, there's no way this could be Matt. They have something wrong here.
But that disbelief started to change when Chief Schultz checked to see if Ployd worked the day of the fire and
learned he had called out sick. That knot in my stomach, like literally wanted to throw up.
The fire chief's sinking feeling only got worse when he learned that investigators believed Matthew killed
Melissa and their unborn child because he did not want to be a father and then set the house on fire in
hopes of destroying evidence. We had placed Matt immediately on paid administrative leave. When I
called Matt in to to tell him, I just said, "I'm being told that you're under investigation for a murder of your
estranged girlfriend and the baby that you're a father of." Did you ask him why he hadn't mentioned it? Didn't feel that
it was uh something that he wanted to talk about and he felt it was personal matter and didn't want to disclose it.
While on leave on August 28th, 2021, Matthew Plloy was called in again for questioning.
My name is Brian. I'm a lieutenant with the sheriff's office. Floyd willingly appeared without an attorney.
I want to contribute to be in the life of her child. Over the course of the 7hour interview, he explained to
investigators why he was at Melissa's the day of the fire. So, we talked about, you know, what I could pay her
and that we'd we just said we'd work it out later to um visiting. He said when he left that afternoon,
Melissa was talking about making lunch. She talked about trying to make some food or something, but I we I didn't
stay around. Most of the seven hours was filled with investigators asking questions and
Matthew Ploy saying very little. So, did you go there to kill her or did you just
go there to talk to her and something happened? We kept accusing him of things and he never said I didn't do it. He
never said you guys got the wrong person. He was just emotionless and he wouldn't communicate. Not once in 7
hours, not once did he get upset. Most people would have told us I'm done. But he just sat and listened to us. Had you
ever experienced an interview like that before? Never. It wasn't just the lack of communication that made Lieutenant
Ketar think Ploy was guilty, but on the rare times PL did talk, the unusual way he phrased things. Did you intend to
kill her? I had no intention of hurting Melissa. During that 7-hour interview, at one point, Matthew did say, "I had no
intentions of hurting Melissa." Did that make you do a double take? Yes, cuz in our opinion that means I hurt Melissa,
but I didn't intend to do it. But it was not an admission of guilt. So Kedar wanted to see if Plo would say anything
more and made an unusual request of Fire Chief Schultz. We asked Chief Schultz if
he would wear a listening device so that he would have a conversation with Matthew. We would be able to hear it and
record it and try to gain some evidence that way. When Brian asks this of me, I'm pretty taken back and initially I
had said no way and I did some thinking about it and called him back and said yes. You have a lot of responsibilities
as a fire chief, but I can't imagine you ever thought wearing a wire tap would be
one of them. No, I don't freely talk about it. It's not something that I'm proud of. It was something that needed
to be done in the hopes of helping the investigation. There's a grieving family out there that
that's looking for answers. And so on September 9th, 2021, Chief Schultz called Matthew Ploy
and asked him to come in to talk. And he agreed. He says, "I'd like to come talk to you." Matthew came in later
that day. The fire station was quickly cleared of all other personnel, and Brian Keter and other investigators
headed over. They were able to place a device that just recorded audio on a phone on fire chief Schultz's desk and
listened in from outside the fire station and from an adjoining office. How are you feeling? Nervous.
Very nervous. Bit scared. Chief Schultz tried to learn what happened to Melissa by appealing to Ploy
on a personal level. I'm trying to find answers and I'm trying to help you. Help
me. Help me walk through. asked me what what happened. But the nearly 2-hour conversation yielded very little info
from Ploy with him again barely speaking about the day Melissa died. I remember saying, "Fill in all the blanks for me."
And isn't it odd that no one here knows that you're going to be a father? Like that's that's something we celebrate
here. What did he say? Nothing. Uh head was down uh a lot of the conversation. Did he ever say, "I didn't kill Melissa
and my baby?" He did not. With none of the interviews resulting in a confession, there was still no arrest.
Something that exasperated the Lamish family. Oh, it was excruciating. And I mean, we were pestering the uh the
police constantly. [Music] There were several reasons for the delay. There was the wait for the fire
marshall's report which concluded that the fire cause is most likely incendiary in nature, possibly the result of a fire
being intentionally set in an effort to conceal a potential homicide. And getting information from Amazon on
whether Matthew's voice was recorded on that Echo Dot they retrieved from the kitchen took time. It did reveal voices,
but nothing that proved helpful for our case. It wasn't even on the day of the murder.
Investigators had also waited to obtain Matthew Clo's DNA until after the August
2021 interview, hoping he would first confess to killing Melissa. We got the results back saying that it
was his DNA under her fingernails. Turn around. Hands behind your back. On March
9th, 2022, after a year and a half of investigating Melissa Lamish's death with a police body cam rolling, Matthew
Poy was arrested on charges including murder, the intentional homicide of an unborn child and arson. Technically,
right now you are under arrest. The motive that the state painted was just an inaccurate portrayal of Matt. By
the time of Matthew Plo's arrest, he had hired attorney John Cup. They painted him to be this monster that at the drop
of a hat after a career of saving people decided to suddenly start killing people. You were indicted by the grand
jury. The evidence doesn't show that Matthew Py murdered Melissa Lamish or their unborn child.
[Music] [Music] Melissa Lamish was loved. This is not someone who had enemies lined up around
the block who wanted to see her deceased. rather there was one person and one person only and that was Matthew
Ploy. Yesterday 16 member panel assistant states attorneys Allison Huntley and Heather Cruz were part of the team
prosecuting Matthew Ploy. All signs pointed toward Matthew Ploy from the very beginning. What we wanted to
portray to the jury is that he was a a guy saving lives for his entire career. Defense attorneys John Cup and Liam
Dixon say their client was misunderstood and as a firefighter was a responsible person, not a murderer. Matt's plan was
to financially support her. He had offered her money before. His plan was to be there.
Matthew Poy pleaded not guilty to all charges. On March 18th, 2024, more than 3 years since Melissa's murder, his
trial began in Ogal County, Illinois. The prosecution argued that Ploy murdered Melissa and their unborn child
because he didn't want to be a father. He was keeping a secret the fact that he fathered a baby in the hopes that the
child wouldn't be born. The defense told the jury there's no evidence harmed Melissa and that he had gone to see her
that day just to talk. They discussed their finances. They discussed what would happen with the birth of the
child. And then Matt left as she was making some lunch. I believe from the very beginning he was trying to set up a
story that there was an accidental houseire that she had been cooking something. I believe that was how he
laid out the scene which would explain why her body was found in the kitchen. Prosecutors called fire investigator
Michael P to testify about his findings. He told the court that he found no evidence of an electrical or cooking
fire. And you start ruling these these various different things out. How certain are you that this fire was
intentionally set? I'm certain that it was intentionally set. No doubt. No doubt.
During cross-examination, the defense suggested that Michael P was unsure of his findings, citing language in his
report such as most likely and it is believed. You use the phrase it is believed because that's an uncertain
opinion. Correct. Just the way I described it, but that's an uncertain opinion. Correct. Not to me. P says he was just
using standard terms used during fire investigations. to review information. The state also called forensic
pathologist Dr. Amanda Humans who had performed one of the autopsies. There was no soot in her
airways and her measure of carbon monoxide in the blood was within normal limits. So she was deceased prior to the
fire. Dr. Humans testified that Melissa's body showed evidence of a violent struggle. The jury heard about
the hemorrhages around Melissa's neck, a specific type of broken blood vessels called peticial hemorrhages, which
according to Dr. Humans is a telltale sign of strangulation. This is the most particular hemorrhages
I've ever seen in a strangulation case. To sit through trial was beyond devastating.
Diana Lamish came to court every day. I had been prepped by the victim's advocate. things were going to be
gruesome. I was going to see a lot. Deanna says she always kept Melissa and her baby Barrett in her thoughts. She
was so strong willed and had such pride. That baby was going to be a strong guy.
Matthew Poty's parents also attended the trial. They've been by his side throughout this. Yes. Every court date.
One of the most important witnesses to testify was Melissa's sister, Cassie, talking about the day Melissa died and
that call which Cassie says was interrupted by Matthew Ploy. What was the last thing your sister said to you
during that phone call? Sorry. She said she'd make the conversation quick and you'd call me
right back. Did Melissa call you back? No. Jurors watched those recorded interviews
with investigators where Matthew Ployd admitted he was at the house. How long were you at the
house? Wasn't more than an hour, I don't think. Prosecutors wanted jurors to hear
that phrase PL used. And there's a deadline for for that. referring to the birth of his son as a
deadline. He said there's a deadline to these kinds of things. That was his deadline to
murder Melissa. If you think about it logically, Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is her due date, his deadline.
The only time to do this was Wednesday. So, he took off work and completed his goal. The prosecutors
found even more telling what Poy didn't say, especially during that 7-hour interview, 4 hours of which were played
for the jury. What is chilling is the fact that he never denied murdering Melissa, and he never denied killing her
baby boy. Not one time. It's chilling from a personal perspective, but that's also excellent evidence that the
defendant couldn't bring himself to lie about that fact. Over the course of multiple interviews for several hours,
he was calm and reserved. His silence, defense says, actually points to his innocence, not his guilt.
He had a right to remain silent, but the police are allowed to continue to poke and prod and try to get him confused,
and he just didn't buy into any of that. They say their client, when he did speak, was open with investigators. He
told them everything about his presence there. He didn't hide any of that. He just never admitted what they wanted him
to admit, which was that he killed Melissa and his child, which he didn't do. Do you think the fact that the fire
didn't burn down the whole house, does that play in Matthew's favor or not? I believe it does. If he's a firefighter
and he's trying to destroy evidence, you would think he would have the ability to
set a fire to complete that goal. But during three days of testimony, the state laid out the case that it could
have only been Matthew Ploy who set that fire to conceal evidence of the murder of Melissa and their unborn baby.
Something the defense was about to contest. The state's fire expert deemed that this was arson. He did. And we had
an expert who directly contradicted that. What do you think of Matthew Plet's interview with investigators? Join the
conversation on Facebook and [Music] [Music] X. The state's expert didn't do a fraction of what he should have done to
properly determine the cause of the fire. This should have been an undetermined fire. To try to poke holes
in the prosecution's case, the defense called only one witness, retired firefighter and independent inspector
John Knap. He was not at the scene of the fire, but did study reports and photos. I felt like there was probably
more information that could have been gathered that wasn't there. He disputed the prosecution's claim that Ploy set
the fire. He testified that the evidence collected doesn't prove that the fire was intentionally set by anyone. I
couldn't make that determination to whether or not what the cause of the fire should be other than
determined. When you're not there at the scene, you don't see what we've seen. Not always does every little tidbit end
up in a report. Michael P says the defense's expert is wrong and that his investigation was thorough. We're
looking for anything and everything that could have contributed to the origins of
this fire. They weren't there. He needed to be there when we were doing the examination.
Matthew Ploy waved his right to testify. During closing arguments, the defense accused investigators of having tunnel
vision. The complete lack of investigation of any other individual is shocking. I've never seen such a poorly
investigated case. They didn't follow up on any other leads that may have happened, any other boyfriends, any
other anybody else. If there had been another lead, investigators certainly would have followed it. There simply
wasn't. Prosecutors told the jury that the evidence was clear. Melissa Lamish was strangled to death by the only
person who had a motive to kill her, Matthew Ploy, who was juggling multiple women and didn't want to change his
lifestyle. He clearly did not want to be involved in this baby's life. This is someone who actively hid the fact that a
woman in the community was carrying his child. He clearly had made some choices about having multiple relationships, but
did not make him a killer. The trial lasted a week and after two hours of deliberation, the jury returned
with a verdict. We have a jury find the defendant Matthew Plo guilty of first-degree
murder. Guilty of all charges. I could hear people sobbing and gasping, but like I I couldn't even lift my head.
What did you feel? Shock. Shock. The verdict was a relief for Chief Robert Schultz. He says the case had
long weighed on him and everyone at the firehouse who had worked with Ployd. There was a huge closure here when Batt
was found guilty. You still have the family out there that lost a daughter or lost a
grandson. You're never going to change that. 3 months later on June 27th, 2024, Melissa's family and friends gathered at
the courthouse for sentencing. Matthew Poy listened with little reaction as victim impact
statements were read. We lost Melissa in the prime of her life. Melissa Barrett should still be alive and enjoying life
with her loving family. I shouldn't have spent Thanksgiving that year feeling like there was nothing to be thankful
for. This shouldn't be real. But it is real. It is all real because one man decided to make the decision
that Barrett and Melissa weren't needed or wanted. None of this had to happen. All he had to do was walk away.
Matthew Poy also addressed the court with this brief statement. say anything other than that I share the
pain and the loss of Mos. Do you believe him? Oh no, definitely not for him to say I and too have pain
and loss from Wilson Bear. Like that what a joke. The judge imposed the maximum sentence.
Mr. Ploy, you are sentenced to natural life imprisonment. Life behind bars. Matthew Ploy will likely die in
prison. Does that give you any sort of peace? No. I know it's the justice system and we
received our justice, but nothing about this is just. It's not fair. Nothing about this is fair. No punishment in the
world brings them back. I miss her personality. I think it's her sass. Melissa's sister, Julia Lynn, tries to
hold on to fond memories. Melissa was, I believe, still is the best person that I've ever met. What do you miss most
about your daughter? And there's a grandson you never got to meet. Where do you start? I mean, he was he was going to
come into my home. I was looking forward to raising him. Through all of their grief, the Lamish
family honors Melissa in many ways. We took toys to a local homeless shelter to honor Barrett. To honor
Barrett. We donated money to the nokill shelter that Melissa got her cat from. They also sponsored a tree at a local
arboritum that Melissa loved. Every year at the holidays, this tree will always be lit as part of their display. Shining
brightly like Melissa always did. was so strong. She was fierce. She was powerful. Nothing was going to stop her.
And she was always going to prove herself. And she'd do whatever it takes to do [Music]
it. You've probably heard of the NCIS from the hit TV series, but we're about to take you inside its real life work.
Listen to 48 hours NCIS early and adfree on the 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.
As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did
you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story
behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. [Music] On the 13th of June
1993, I was on call as a team leader for our crime scene team. We had pagers then, no cell
phones, and u I got a page. who was a sergeant requesting our assistance on the 21st floor of this high-rise
apartment building. When you entered into the apartment, you didn't really see anything. You wouldn't have known that a
crime had occurred. When you went a little further and you ended up going into the
bedroom, it was catastrophic. When I proceeded to where the body was on the side of the bed, I looked down. I
could see the imprint in blood that looked like a left foot and a right foot. It's an actual bare foot. I mean,
wow. I turned the TV on. I saw the apartment. They said they just found a young woman in her early
30s. Oh my. I just got chills all over. Don't tell me that was Jean. I called the coroner's place and
he said, "Are you all alone? You better get somebody over there with you because
it it was your daughter." I couldn't believe it. Jeanie Childs had defensive wounds
on her hands when they found her. She had been stabbed at least 65 times, including after she had
died. Investigators took DNA evidence at the time. They could not find who it belonged to, and they hit a dead end at
some point and moved on. And it wasn't until 2015 that a cold case unit reopened the
case. A DNA profile was uploaded into myheritage.com and they found what could be a match.
Jerry Westerm is a husband, a father of three, a businessman. He attended church. He was a hockey dad. Police
expect Western to be charged with murder by noon tomorrow. Jerry doesn't have a demeanor of being a violent person. Have
you ever seen him lose his temper? No. I believe it's tip my toes. He's not capable. Okay. He didn't do it.
There was DNA from other individuals that did not belong to Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a male source.
We know that there were experts that viewed multiple footprints, and they're in her blood. The person who put the
footprint down had to step in wet blood, and it had to be after she was stabbed or bleeding. How important did those
footprints in blood become in this case? Without the footprints, we would not be
sitting here. I think that the footprints defined the path of this case. [Music]
[Music] Minnesota crime scene investigators captured this footage when they got their first look inside a
high-rise apartment in Minneapolis. The camera is pointing uh west at this time.
According to police reports, at around 5:30 p.m. June 13th, 1993, a tenant reported water seeping
into their apartment. A building caretaker and a security guard were called to check it out and discovered
the water was coming from apartment 21104. They went into the apartment and they
found that the shower was still running and causing all this flooding next door.
After the shower was turned off, they came upon a gruesome scene in the bedroom. 35-year-old Jeanie Child's body
was partially under the bed. That's when police were called to investigate. This
was a violent, bloody crime scene. This is one of the bloodiest that I'd been to.
Retired forensic scientist Bart Epstein says carefully documenting that scene was crucial. Blood stains and blood
spatter tell a story. Yes, they sure can. In this case, we could establish that Genie Child's was hit in front of
the bathroom door. Epstein says Jeanie then moved into the bathroom. She was stabbed and slashed dozens of times. She
was down on the floor smearing blood along that area. While the shower had been turned off earlier, investigators
noticed water was still running from the sink faucet. There was a lot of activity
going on there. Why was the sink faucet still dripping? Was he trying to clean up? Jeanie apparently made it back to
her bedroom where her body was found. The blood wasn't confined to just the area where she was. The blood was on the
walls. The blood was on the comforter. The blood was on the floor. Julie Rendleman is a defense attorney
and legal consultant for 48 hours. It leads one to believe that a struggle happened, that she was fighting to save
her own life. The living room appeared untouched. A sitcom was still playing on the
TV. There was no evidence of forced entry. If Jeanie knew her killer, what could have prompted so much violence?
This to me seems like more rage. Someone who got upset at the time that the crime
was committed. Jeanie's mother, Betty Ecman, was watching television news when she saw a report about a woman who had
been murdered. I called my husband at work. I said, "I just seen them on the news taking a stretcher out of that
building that she lives in." Betty soon got the news no mother wants to hear. The victim was her eldest child.
I just wanted to hold her. I couldn't believe it. Betty says she spoke with her daughter
the day before her murder. Jeanie, she says, wasn't expecting visitors because she was nursing a
toothache. What were her plans that weekend? She went to the emergency room. She was in so much pain. Jeannie always
had problems with her teeth. And I don't know why. So I said, "Let me come and get you." No, Mom. Stop worrying about
me. Jeanie was dead by Sunday afternoon. As the crime investigation continued, authorities focused on gathering
evidence. A blue washcloth, a red t-shirt, a bath towel, blood scrapings from the sink along with a comforter
were collected and taken for DNA testing. Investigators observed dishes in the kitchen sink and a knife in the
drying rack. Did you take that knife in? Did not take that knife in. I looked at
it and there was no apparent blood on there. We never found any uh actual weapon there that uh was a murder
weapon. Investigators were able to identify some blood stains found in the stairwell near Jeanie's 21st floor
apartment. Did any of the blood belong to the victim? Genie child. Do you think it's
possible that the person who stabbed her was also cut? Well, it it could be. That's why we took the samples. Epsign
says whoever murdered Jeanie Childs unknowingly left behind something investigators rarely
encounter. Bloody bare footprints under the bedroom window. That drew my attention right away. And
right next to it, I see the socked foot of Jeie Childs. The footprints were dusted with black powder at the crime
scene. When you first saw these, you said because she's wearing socks, this these belong to the killer. That that
would be my feeling. That's most likely the perpetrator's footprint. If there's the friction ridge on the feet, like the
friction ridge on your fingers, there's potential to identify the person's foot that made them. That was very, very
significant. I knew that God was going to make sure that I was going to know what happened.
[Music] Everyone said she looked like me. These are pretty [Music] precious. Very few pictures I have of us
together. Cindy Blummer remembers the deep loss she felt after the murder of her big
sister, Jeanie. A lot of sadness when you wanted to pick up the phone and call your sister. I needed my sister. I
wanted to talk to her. Wondering what actually took place. Who did this? Although her sister was 12 years older,
Jeanie's playful spirit made an impression on Cindy growing up. Lo Richie was one of her favorite. And as
soon as she would hear him play, I mean, her fingers would start snapping and she
would dance around. But those good times were few and far between. Betty Eggman says she first
noticed a change in her eldest daughter when she was a pre-teen. She kind of lost her way when she was
probably around 12, 13. Betty says it wasn't until decades later that Jeanie claimed she had been abused by a male
relative. Jeanie started running away from home. I took my life in my own hands many a times to track her down. I
could have been killed, but I had my great Dne and a gun. Would you sometimes find her? Oh, yeah. When she would come
home, she was like a cat on a hot tin roof. She was so antsy she couldn't stay very
long. [Music] As the time passed, she feared her daughter was using drugs and soon
learned how Jeanie was making ends meet. And what did your daughter do? Prostitution. I just hoped and prayed
that she would stop. At one point, it seemed she settled down long enough to get married, but her
family says it didn't last long. Soon after, she married again to a man with children, and Jeanie became a stepmom.
And they depended on her. She was the only mother they really knew. Even when Jeanie split with their father, she
remained in the children's lives. They needed anything, they knew how to get a hold of her. She was really good that
way. At the time of her murder, she was living with a man named Arthur Gray at that apartment
complex. After Jeanie's murder, he became a person of interest. Investigators immediately looked at uh
whether Arthur Gray was involved in the murder. Retired FBI agent Chris Boers would
later join the investigation. According to police reports, Jeanie, who was a sex
worker, claimed she worked for Gray and there was a history of violence between them. At the crime scene, authorities
found hairs stuck to Jeanie's left hand, and one of those hairs matched Gray. But
Boer says the case against Gray started to fall apart pretty quickly. Arthur Gray as a resident of that
apartment, uh, it makes sense that his hairs would be throughout the bedroom. And Arthur Gray said he wasn't even in
town, but on a motorcycle trip in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the weekend Genie was murdered. He had a really solid
alibi that he was out of town that weekend. Um, that was corroborated by others. Authorities compared the unknown
bloody footprints in the apartment to Gray's footprints and determined they weren't his. Do you know how many other
possible suspects, persons of interest, whose footprints were compared to those left in Jeanie's apartment? There were
multiple people whose footprints were compared to the footprints that were left in Jeanie's apartment. You could
see that in the case file that a lot of effort was put in attempting to solve Jeanie's case.
According to the case file, on the day of the murder, a witness in the apartment building told police she saw
Jeanie with a tall blonde man wearing a trench coat. We had no way to track down who that may
or may not have been. Investigators never found the man despite efforts to find Jeanie's killer.
The case slowed to a crawl. Months turned into years and then decades. How often would you call the
police trying to get an update to find out if they had anything new on this case? Many times as I could, but I never
let a year go by without reminding them. [Music] In 2015, the Minneapolis Police
Department began digging deeper into unsolved cases, and Jeanie Child's murder was one of them. Jeanie's family
had no idea, but investigators were hoping science would help them solve the case.
Technology is so much more refined and rigorous than it was in 1993. Agent Boker says they discovered that a
blood sample found near Jeanie's blood in the stairwell of her apartment building had matched to a man named John
Eswine. In 2015, investigators interviewed Eswine, who was in prison for violating
probation on a drunk driving offense. Do you have any idea why your DNA would be
in that building? Your blood would be in that building? No. Okay. My blood was in
that building. Yeah. If you found my blood somewhere, all I can think of is that I I must have fallen down
somewhere. And Eswine told investigators he was in the building once in 1991, 2 years before Jeanie's murder. He
easily volunteered his DNA. He also uh allowed himself his footprints to be taken. Then his footprints were compared
to the foot bloody footprints in Jeanie's bedroom. According to a lab report, the
footprints were inconclusive and Eswine's DNA was not found inside Jeanie's apartment. The mystery only
deepened. Investigators knew from the case file that there were DNA profiles discovered at the crime scene that had
never matched to anyone. Andrea Fya, a forensic scientist with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,
performed additional testing on the evidence that was collected back in 1993. And she noticed something unusual
about one of the unknown DNA profiles. That DNA profile repeated itself throughout the crime scene. It was on
the comforter. It was on the blue towel. It was found on the blue washcloth and the red t-shirt. Correct. And on the
sink. Yes. Those were the only areas that we tested that ended up matching each other essentially. Investigators
then turned to investigative genetic genealogy for answers. The unknown DNA profile was submitted to genealogy
websites, including myheritage.com. The forensic genealogologist indicated that she had a match, potentially two
brothers here in Minnesota. And one of the brothers was a man named Jerry Westerm.
He was a wellrespected member of the community. People were surprised. [Music] [Music]
More than 25 years after Jeanie Childs was murdered, unknown DNA at the crime scene was matched to 52year-old Jerry
Westerm. What did you know about him? He was living north of Minneapolis St. Paul. That he was working for a company
up in St. Cloud, Minnesota area. He'd been a businessman. Retired FBI agent Chris Boker says the married father of
three wasn't hard to find. Had a Facebook account that we could follow. He was leading a seemingly normal family
life. Westerm had grown up in rural Minnesota. He and I were on a 4-H trip when we were
14 to Washington DC. Wayne Triplet and Jerry Westerm were farm kids. They later became college buddies. And when Wayne
got married, he was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. That means he was a good
friend of yours. Yes, that's true. He got along well with a lot of people. Very low-key gentleman. Easily could
make friends with people. Westerm and his family were well respected inanti Minnesota about 40 miles away from
Minneapolis. They owned a Sears store. And in the year 2000, Westerm built his own Field of Dreams, a convenience store
and gas station known as Westerm's Corner. But in 2008, the turbulent economy took it all away. Was that tough
on him to lose Westerm's Corner? I think it was tough on him. It'd be tough on anybody.
Westerm returned to his roots. He began raising organic corn and soybeans and cultivating a business selling crop
insurance. He's a very good salesperson. He understands the need to fill the need. He understands how to communicate
and people have to be comfortable with you to close on business. Wayne never imagined that the
eventempered friend he's known since their teenage years would become the prime suspect in a violent murder case.
Did he have any history of violent crimes? No apparent criminal history involving violent crime. Jeie was
stabbed over 60 times and here's this man and no history of violence and this is the guy who might have killed her.
Well, it gave some pause that that level of violence and that type of crime. We kind of expected it would be somebody
that maybe had been arrested multiple times. So, yes, that does give a little pause.
Investigators were anxious to confirm that the unknown crime scene DNA was indeed Jerry Westerms. But to do that,
they needed to track him down. We needed to obtain DNA from Jerry in order to compare it to the unknown DNA from the
scene. Forensic scientist Andrea Feya. And what did you tell them would be the best DNA
if they could get it? Best DNA is something that has been in a person's mouth. Like if they drank out of a
drinking container, a straw, if they spit out chewing gum, anything that could have saliva on it. Why is saliva
the ideal? Why did you say get something that had touched his mouth? There's a lot of DNA in saliva. Westerm, a devoted
hockey dad, frequently attended his daughter's college games. In January 2019, Westerm traveled to a game in
Wisconsin. Agent Boers along with his partner surreptitiously followed him there. Westerm went out to the lobby
concession stand and made a food order. We watched him sit at the table and eat his order. And when he finished, he took
a napkin and he wiped his mouth. Westerm tossed that napkin and food container in the garbage can. And when
he returned to the rink, Agent Boers made his move. I was gloved. I just reached down and got the container and
we bagged it up for evidence. I tested and got a DNA profile from that napkin and compared it to the unidentified
profile on the comforter and the blue towel. And what was the result? They were consistent with each
other. A month later in February 2019, Jerry Westerm was arrested and charged with the murder of Jeanie Childs. As you
sit here right now, Wayne, do you believe that Jerry Westerrom is the one who killed Jeanie Child? Definite no.
Not a chance. Definite no. Definite no. Not a chance. In a videotaped interview at the jail, Agent Boers and his partner
question Westerm. Does this lady look familiar to you at all? Okay. Her name is Jeannie Childs. Okay.
And she was found in her building in her apartment deceased. Do you know anything
about that at all? No. Okay. Do Do you think you would have ever had sex with her?
I doubt it. In 93, would you have been with a prostitute? No. No. WCCCO TV senior investigative
reporter Jennifer Mayorly. He doesn't give much in the interview, but what he doesn't say almost says more. What do
you mean? He doesn't ask any questions about what happened, about why he's there, about why they're looking at him.
Jerry Westerm had no history of violent crime, but it seems he had been keeping a few secrets from his friends. Westerm
had told Wayne about two DWI arrests, but never shared he had been arrested twice for soliciting sex workers. You
didn't know anything? No. What was your reaction? It was hard to understand. That's the hard pill to
swallow. Meaning, how does a person with a good family and loving wife has the need for solicitation? What's going on
there? Investigators questioned Westerrom for 11 minutes until he asked for a lawyer.
He was then handcuffed and spent the night in jail. And the following morning, we went to the jail with
Minneapolis Crime Lab personnel and they obtained his footprints. 48 Hours legal
consultant Julie Rendleman says the footprints were important because Westerm's DNA was not the only DNA
recovered there. DNA that was recovered was from multiple individuals. If you don't have anything else, that in and of
itself does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Jerry Westerm is the person that committed this crime.
[Music] For more than 25 years, Betty Ecman had prayed for a break in her daughter's
unsolved murder case. In February 2019, her prayers were answered. I got phone call and he said, "I'm the
detective that worked on your daughter's case." And I said, "Okay, what's going on?" We found him. And I I got
goosebumps all over me. And I said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Yes, we got him." But when Cindy Blamer learned the name
of the suspect in her sister's murder, she had trouble believing it. I said, "No
way. No way." Jerry Westerm was a familiar face who lived in their town of Santi, Minnesota. I'd seen
Jerry because our boys played hockey. He's tall. He kind of stands out. He also owned the business, the gas
station. The hockey dad and local businessman was now charged with murder. Westerm was
later indicted by a grand jury and pleaded not guilty. Westerm's DNA, according to forensic scientist Andrea
Fya, found on the comforter and towel in the bathroom, was identified as seaman.
But she says her team couldn't determine the type of DNA that she says Westerm left on the red t-shirt, the bathroom
sink, and the washcloth. You can't say definitively that his blood or any other kind of DNA was found at the scene. You
know, it's his DNA, but you don't know what kind. Is that correct? Correct. I don't know how it was deposited.
Essentially, you say DNA to General Joe Q public. Well, that's a slam dunk. Wayne Triplet, however, has questions
about how and when the DNA was left there. There's no timestamp on DNA. Despite advances in DNA technology,
there's no way to know how long Westerm's DNA had been there. And Wayne says the evidence only suggests one
thing. That just doesn't mysteriously show up. He had to be there. So, you think he probably was in that apartment
at some point? You know, you can't run from that evidence. He had to been there. Don't
get there by accident. You don't believe he was there the day that Jeannie Childs
was murdered? I I don't. 48 Hours legal consultant Julie Rendleman says the evidence in this case
does raise questions. According to lab reports, there was other DNA from Seaman discovered on Jeanie's purple panties
that does not match Westerrom. Whose DNA it is remains even today a mystery. And
that wasn't all. There was DNA from other individuals that did not belong to Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a
male source. Rendleman points to that DNA found in the stairwell close to blood stains identified as belonging to
Genie Child's. Jerry Westerm's DNA is not in the stairwell, but we know that there's at least one other person whose
DNA blood is found in that stairwell. Remember that stairwell DNA matched John Eswine. When investigators
interviewed him, he couldn't recall how his blood ended up in the stairwell not far from Jeanie Child's apartment on the
21st floor. His answers were a bit peculiar. I I found and the reason I say that is because he actually describes
being there one time. And why does that bother you? So, it bothers me because how the heck would he remember when he's
interviewed all these years later that he was there but only there once and the one time he says he was there was years
before the murder. It just it felt a bit convenient. We reached out to John S. Wine for
comment, but he didn't respond. He has never been charged in this case. Rendleman also points out that before
Jerry Westerm's DNA was identified at the crime scene. Authorities had discovered a mixture of DNA types on the
comforter. According to a 2012 lab report, a man named James Luther Carlton couldn't be excluded as one of the
contributors. We know this is an individual that had committed multiple sex crimes in the past. And what makes
Carlton so significant? A little more than a year after Jeanie Child's murder in July 1994.
Sometime between last Thursday and Monday, someone entered this one-bedroom uptown apartment and murdered Jodie
Dover. 26-year-old hospital worker Jodie Dover was stabbed to death in her Minneapolis apartment. Jod's murder was
eerily similar to Jeanie's murder. Jod's killer had also left behind bloody footprints.
Authorities arrested Carlton and determined a footprint found inside Jodie Dover's apartment belonged to him.
He was convicted of her murder in 1995 and is serving a life sentence. 48 Hours can't confirm if he was ever questioned
around the time of Jeanie Child's murder. We reached out to Carlton. He declined our interview request.
Carlton's criminal history was a red flag for Westerm's defense team. Attorney Steven Meshbasher told our CBS
station WCCCO that it was a rush to judgement in this case. You need to do the investigation first. Find out what the
facts are. Find out what the evidence is and then determine the charge. Now they're charging it first.
Were the footprints Jerry Westerms? As both sides prepared for trial, it became clear that it would all come down to
this unique evidence. In Minnesota here, people are not committing crimes a lot of times with their socks and shoes off.
Mark Olrich, a supervisor with the Minneapolis Police Forensic Division, examined the footprints. He says he
focused on the friction ridge skin, the arrangement of ridges and furrows unique
to every person. Friction ridge skin is found on your fingers, your palms, and the soles of your feet. Seven bloody
footprints were photographed and labeled A through G. Defense attorneys hired their own forensic scientists, Alicia
McCarthy, a professor at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, to analyze the bloody footprints for them.
You call this case a beast. It was a beast. It was definitely very challenging. What conclusions would the
experts reach? [Music] Was Jerry Westerm just a customer who had left his DNA in Jeanie Child's
apartment previously? Or was he the one who stabbed her to death more than 60 times?
Investigators believe the bloody footprints found in her apartment would provide the answer.
That looks like a left foot. Correct. I completed the reference files. Mark Olrich at the Minneapolis Police Lab was
tasked with comparing the crime scene prints to Westerm. He determined that four of the seven prints were suitable
for comparison. One of them, he says, revealed the impression of a left foot. He labeled the heel E1 and an area below
the big toe as E2. When Alrich analyzed it, this was his conclusion. E1 and E2 were identified to Mr. Jerry Westerm.
And he says there was more. This one B, that one was identified to the right foot of Mr. Jerry Westerm. Although
believed that all four prints, E1, E2, B, and another left footprint he labeled D1 belonged to Westerm.
As the trial date approached, forensic scientist Alicia McCarthy, who had been hired by the defense, was asked to
verify work. They wanted me to come in and look and doublech checkck the work that was done by the Minneapolis lab.
McCarthy believed that only the print labeled E2, the area below the left big toe, was suitable for comparison. This
is the crime scene photo. This is E2 crime. During her analysis, she began comparing E2 to the footprints of
alternate suspects and didn't get anywhere. I was sort of in limbo for about a year where I was comparing to
other people. And then I said, I'm inconclusive. I can't say it's these people. I can't say it's not these
people. McCarthy showed us what unique characteristics she was looking for. We have um what we call a recurve. Yes. It
comes down and recurves back up. And for a friction ridge examiner, that's pretty
exciting. When she compared E2 to Jerry Westerm's footprints, she followed the curves. And finally, and who do you
believe left that footprint at the crime scene? That was Jerry Westerm's left foot. And you're sure of that? Positive.
McCarthy agreed with Mark Olrich. E2 the small area below the left big toe had been placed there by Jerry Westerm, but
she disagreed with Rick on the other three footprints. I went through and did the comparisons um that Mark had made
identifications with. I didn't agree with him. She believed those three prints didn't have enough detail. there
wasn't enough for that very high threshold to say an identification and go to court in front of a jury and tell
them that this impression belongs to Jerry Westerm. That's her decision and I have no qualms about what she did. I
just know the quality of my work and I know what I stand by. When McCarthy determined E2 belonged to Westerm, she
was immediately released by his defense team. Both experts would then testify for the prosecution. Opening statements
today in the trial of a hockey dad accused of a murder nearly 30 years ago. In August 2022, Jerry Westerm went on
trial for Jeanie Child's murder. He had been out on bond. The judge ruled there'd be no cameras in the courtroom.
48 Hours asked Westerm and his family for on camera interviews, but they declined.
Jerry's wife and three kids were there for most of the trial. Jennifer Merrily covered the trial. Jerry and his wife
would walk into the Henipin County Government Center holding hands. In the courtroom, prosecutors painted a
different picture. They said the evidence points to Jerry Westerm is the killer. The bloody footprints combined
with his DNA is proof, they said, that he was in her apartment when she was murdered.
The bloody footprint put a timestamp of when the killer was there. But the defense tried to poke holes in the
footprint evidence. They also called that witness who had told police she saw Jeanie Childs with a blonde man wearing
a trench coat the day she was murdered. And she said she saw the same man later running down the stairwell without a
coat. Jerry Westerm has dark hair. There's no evidence he ever had blonde hair or anything like that. The defense
also named Arthur Gray, who died in 2012, as an alternate suspect. Jeanie had accused him of domestic abuse. And
then when you put the hair of Arthur Gray in her hand, it starts to become more significant. The defense, who
declined our request for an interview, was dealt a blow when they couldn't introduce James Luther Carlton and John
Eswine as alternate suspects. The judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence against either man, and prosecutors
cleared them both. So, the jury never heard that expert analysis of their footprints had been inconclusive.
I think it was incredibly damaging to the defense's case. Prosecutors declined our request for an
interview. Jerry Westerm did not testify and after 8 days, the jury quickly reached a verdict. Guilty. The jury
first and second degree murder. The jury came back quite quickly and convicted Jerry Westerm of the top count, which
was murder in the first degree. They also found him guilty of murder in the second degree.
Prosecutors didn't present a motive. Wayne Triplet says he still believes his lifelong friend is innocent and says
that both families have paid a terrible price. The victim didn't deserve what they got. It's terrible sitting here and
Jerry's paying for that, but it's not Jerry. On September 9th, 2022, Jerry Westerm was sentenced to life in prison
for the murder of Jeannie Childs. As we said in the beginning and we're saying now, you've got the wrong
guy, we are sorry for the loss of Genie Child's life. Jeanie's mother, Betty, believes justice
has been served and that the right man is behind bars. But her grief will always be there. She poured her heart
out in a letter, a love letter she never got to send. My emptiness will never go
away since you were taken that fatal day. It wasn't fair you had to die. I never got to say
goodbye. I love you and miss you so much. Love and peace, Mom. [Music] [Music] I can only describe it as evil,
something horrible. From 48 hours, this is trained to kill the dog trainer. The aerys and the bodyguard. He couldn't
control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or
wherever you get your podcasts. [Music]

“48 Hours" reports on murder cases involving unexpected suspects. Watch the YouTube mini-marathon, which includes "The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon," "The Firefighter's Secret" and "The Footprint."

00:00 The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon 41:33 The Firefighter's Secret 1:22:28 The Footprint

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Davis McClendon is murdered by his girlfriend's estranged husband, Bud Acur, after a tumultuous relationship and investigation reveal shocking truths.

Key points

The Night of the Accident. Davis McClendon was found dead after a mysterious car incident. Investigators suspect foul play.
Meredith's New Relationship. Meredith shares her blossoming relationship with Davis, just months after her separation.
Meredith's Testimony. Meredith Haney testifies about her fears regarding Bud Acriman's behavior.
Verdict Day. The jury reaches a verdict in less than half an hour, finding Bud Acriman guilty.
Melissa's Excitement for Motherhood. Melissa was thrilled about becoming a mom despite limited contact with Matthew.
Autopsy Reveals Shocking Truth. The autopsy findings indicate Melissa was murdered, not a victim of the fire.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I could breathe. I could be me again.

Meredith reflecting on her separation from Bud.

15:54WatchMay 31, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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