the jury s about to decide the fate of stephen scharf. here s chris jansing with the conclusion of our story. 18 years after a night that ended in his wife s death off a cliff stephen scharf stood accused of murder by the state of new jersey. and through it all one thing he wants you to know is this. he would never have laid a hand on his beloved jody. never. stephen, did you kill your wife, jody? i did not hurt jody. i did not. did you throw her off the palisades? no, i did not. i did not. i didn t hurt jody. i didn t push her. i didn t cause her to get hurt. i didn t kill my wife. we talked to stephen scharf at the bergen county jail, where he was held for more than two years after his arrest in 2008.
the police are paid to be suspicious. maybe their view of stephen was too jaundiced. there really was nothing to indicate that jody s fall was anything but an accident. a few months later the ruling was in. the bergen county medical examiner concluded the manner of jody scharf s death could not be determined. an accident was as likely as anything else. case closed. or was it? coming up so you didn t think this was a horrible accident? no. the suspicions grow. was there a weapon at this romantic rendezvous? you have your wine, cheese, crackers, claw hammer. red flares are going up. they ve reached the top of the pole by that point. when over the edge continues.
was dead. terry now sees that cryptic statement in a dreadful light. i was like oh, no, the end of september, and then the light bulb went off immediately. it also went off for marian hilferty. in perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecution s case, hilferty told the jury that when she heard her friend was gone she immediately remembered something jody said just weeks earlier. she said that during this conversation i have with him if anything happens to me you ll know who did it. she said, you ll know it was him. the prosecutor s position was clear. a husband with a motive. the perfect setting. the violent intent to kill his wife. or was there another way of look at that couple perched high on those cliffs on a summer night? stephen s new wife says the prosecution has it all wrong.
or pushed to her death, he said, and likely from another spot entirely on those cliffs. he wasn t the only expert who saw it that way. the head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbles down the cliff face. reporter: dr. marianne clayton was the bergen county medical examiner who first ruled the circumstances of jody s death could not be determined. now on second look she said the victim s wounds, or lack of them, told her something different, something vital. if jody had tumbled innocently down the palisades, she would have had broken bones everywhere. she did not. there were no visible injuries on the back of mrs. scharf s body. but why would stephen have killed his wife? the biggest reason, the prosecutor argued, was that stephen did not want a divorce.
service testified that jody s name was on an application. she even checked off the interests she d like to share with a mate. the attorney offered that as proof of stephen and jody s open marriage. but what really rankled the defense, what had torn at the heart of stephen scharf, was the testimony of his son, jonathan. i remember her showing me her bruises. he had painted his father as a brute and possibly a killer. i never hit jody. it made me sick to my stomach. the young man wasn t to be believed, said the lawyer. for one thing, when police interviewed jonathan back in 2008, the young man described his dad as a good guy. he was a, you know, fairly decent, you know, fairly decent parent. it was only after detectives told him his dad had just been