with colon cancer. a shock, of course. but one of two shocks for sandra. and to those around her, the second seemed somehow worse. her beloved son, tom, up and moved to arizona. and she was flipping out about it. yeah. just she had to go there. reporter: she demanded jack move to arizona too. that woman was off her rocker. her tone was just scary. it was like somebody else s voice coming out of her. reporter: but surely that wasn t motive enough for murder? and with plenty of suspicion but little else to go on, wyatt spent months poring over sandra and jack s phone records, bank statements, credit card bills, searching to well, he didn t know exactly what he was searching for. but he was getting basically nowhere. we couldn t establish a pattern that was suspicious. reporter: then as wyatt s investigation sputtered, sandra left. sold jack s house here in
knew each other. reporter: protocol told him look at the person who reported the crime, daughter cheryl. the daughter, we had to look at her as a potential suspect. she was the one who found him. reporter: back at the station, wyatt interviewed all of jack s relativelies, including cheryl, and jack s wife sandra, who hadn t been missing at all, just out on a shopping trip. mrs. jesse came to the station with us voluntarily, told us she would cooperate, wanted to help us solve the murder of her husband. reporter: she told him about life with jack, married 14 years, blended family, four kids between them. jack was a patriarch in the jesse clan, she said, a teddy bear of a man, well liked, well to do. jack was a very, very loving person who doted on his children, doted on his stepchildren, doted on his grandchildren. reporter: jack was ill. house bound after colon cancer surgery. sandra told the detectives she d been running a bit of a mercy mission for jack and dawdled too
he was laying facedown on the floor in a pool of blood. it was horrible. what did you think happened? i thought he had fallen because he had a big gash in the back of his head. i went to the kitchen phone and called 911. reporter: when she rolled him over, she could see wounds all across his chest. he d been stabbed many times. every time i started doing cpr, every time i d breathe into him, i could hear bubbling. air escaping. then i started to feeling oil his chest. reporter: it s not often little placentia, california, has a murder. 10:00 p.m. when i got the call. reporter: aaron wyatt was the sole homicide detective. what did the crime scene itself look like? it was pretty bloody. the kind of thing that might happen if it was a hope invasion, robbery, or something? or assault between people who
a shock, of course. but one of two shocks for sandra. and to those around her, the second seemed somehow worse. her beloved son, tom, up and moved to arizona. and she was flipping out about it. yeah. just she had to go there. reporter: she demanded jack move to arizona too. that woman was off her rocker. her tone was just scary. it was like somebody else s voice coming out of her. reporter: but surely that wasn t motive enough for murder? and with plenty of suspicion but little else to go on, wyatt spent months poring over sandra and jack s phone records, bank statements, credit card bills, searching to well, he didn t know exactly what he was searching for. but he was getting basically nowhere. we couldn t establish a pattern that was suspicious. reporter: then as wyatt s investigation sputtered, sandra left.
sold jack s house here in california, moved to arizona to be near her son tom, and soon her daughter followed too. and they all lived within a couple of blocks of each other in homes sandra helped purchase with jack s insurance money and savings. when everything was said and done, she got close to $700,000. reporter: and as the months slipped past, leads failed to connect, the investigation hit one dead end after another. wyatt was promoted out of homicide. the case bounced from the placentia pd to the orange county s sheriff s department, where before long it became a case to avoid, toxic, an unsofable career killer. so five years after his brother s murder, when david jesse met a detective named tom dove who said he picked up the case i said, oh, really? well, that s great. let me ask you a question. yeah. what are you going to do? are you going to get the case for three, four, five months, a