hit heidy. i was trying to think of the noise and how it wasn t very loud and, you know, maybe someone could have shot something at the house. reporter: it seemed farfetched but he said neighborhood vandals had recently been shooting the back of his house with paint balls. i was utterly confused. reporter: within minutes, sergeant crook arrived. conrad by now had moved to the doorway of his home to wave crook down. he had blood on his hands and he was screaming and shrieking. reporter: conrad led the sergeant through the front door, up the stairs, and then into a scene straight from a horror movie. i could see heidy laying there. she was naked, blood everywhere, just right at the top of the stairs, just this horrific scene. reporter: what s conrad doing? he s screaming and he s yelling. reporter: and, as these police photos make clear, covered in blood. i m asking him, like, conrad, what s going on? what happened here? he said, she was in the bathroom, you know, a
gunshot residue tests, conrad s lawyers were ready to argue that heidi took her own life. but a witness who knew her as long as anyone would tell a different tale, with at conclusion of our story, here s josh mankiewicz. conrad had been convicted of murder and served more than three years. now the revelation of the flawed police measurements led to his new trial. that stunned everyone in the utah county danc y d.a. s offi. the defense said you had to have known. well, that s their take and they re doing their job to zealously represent their client. just as stunned was the man who took the measurements, lead
story went like this conrad was in the kitchen. heidy was in the bathroom. at some point conrad heard a pop, and when he turned, he saw heidy standing somewhere between the kitchen and the bathroom hallway bleeding. and he either runs over and catches her or she falls down. reporter: wallace then went back to the truman home, making detailed measurements of the kitchen and surrounding rooms. he wanted to see if conrad s story checked out. his conclusion it did not. her body s at the top of the staircase. it doesn t add up that she would have traveled that distance he said she had gone then fallen in that location. reporter: it was hard for wallace to believe that heidy could have traveled from the bathroom to the stairs after sustaining such a head wound. she would have fallen immediately to the ground. reporter: wallace shared his findings with assistant district attorney craig johnson. johnson agreed. everything pointed to conrad.
detective tom wallace. what went wrong? from transposing numbers wrong. he admit the error and said it was minor, that conrad truman did not deserve a new trial. . did that change anyone s opinion? they didn t change my opinion. nor did it change the opinion of the deputy d.a. tim taylor, who decided to take on the task of prosecuting coleman once again. i wanted fresh eyes. i went through all the evidence. even with the medical examiner changing his opinion, i still felt there was enough to go forward. we knew going into it, it was going to be tough. at trial, the prosecution s case was familiar, starting with the officers who testified about conrad s rambling off an
believe that you could be right there with her in a very small area mm-hmm. reporter: and she s shot, and you don t know what happened. yeah. maybe in their heads. in mine, i was confused. reporter: could this be an accident? what i say to that is i didn t see. i don t know what happened. reporter: that s how he felt just hours after the shooting, but as the months passed, conrad came to the conclusion heidy may have taken her own life. his wife, he said, wasn t as tough as she appeared. was she a sad person? was she a depressed person? when she drank a little bit, you could see it come out. it wasn t every time. but it did. reporter: heidy s friend sandi sanchez also saw another side to heidy. that strong, funny, you know, person also had some things inside that were very painful.