devastated. he told me the day after, he said, the house has betrayed me. so this will be here for 200 years. paul myer has a tree farm next to the benders property. i remember ann very well, from the first meeting, beautiful woman, hair up in a ponytail. white tank top, tanned two-way radio on the hip. okay, i m living next to lara croft, tomb raider and investing legend. myers remembers his last get-together with the benders in 2009. six months before a bullet would end john s life. ann didn t look good. she looked pale, like she had lost weight. both of them seemed sad or depressed. the last six to eight weeks i was not eating, i was not drinking, i was not bathing, i wasn t doing anything to take care of myself. john began talking suicide. ann says she had to repeatedly take part in what she calls dress rehearsals.
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million, into a trust, which he established and controlled. the purpose of setting it up was to ensure that the refuge would have a structure that would protect it after we were gone. in the event of john dying first, it was also meant to provide financial security for ann. but that isn t how things went, according to milton jiminez, an alvarez employee who helped to manage the trust. translator: after john bender died, the first thing mr. alvarez did was take away ann s credit card. he declared himself the only heir of the trust, he said the trust no longer existed and now everything belonged to him. jimenez says he was so disturbed by what he calls alvarez s lying ways and soaring ego that he left the company. i found out he had quit and i
mountainous landscape and beautiful beaches, an american ann bender has fought for her dreamed. fought the charge that she killed her husband john, on january 8th, 2010. her passport taken, unable to leave the country. trapped. she spoke with me while waiting to stand trial for a second time. was it murder? or suicide? prosecutors claimed ann is a cold-blooded killer. ann is adamant she did not murder her husband. you will be tried twice on the same charge. if there were any merit to this, i could respect it. and i could have some sense of peace. peace ann bender has been seeking since she first moved to costa rica with john. they hoped to escape in the clouds of the jungle. the isolation, instead, would lead to a descent into madness.
translator: the gun powder residue only appears on ann, in her hands and in her clothes. but forensic tests found no significant residue on ann s hands. and ann s attorney says the residue on her clothes does not prove she fired the gun. translator: if someone shoots a firearm, the gun powder residue can end up coating another person s clothes. what would have been ann bender s motive for killing her husband? they were having problems because ann was frequently taking trips out of the country to buy precious stones and jewels. jewels found around the couple s mansion during the investigation. authorities removed them from the house by the suitcase load. we actually met.