she was really devoted. life was good. and even as the years went by, even with the demands of work and family, stephen says he and jody still made time for each other. like that last summer sunday in september of 1992. stephen says it was supposed to be a date night. it wasn t no idea that that would be the most critical day in our life, our marriage. it was a day like any other day? yes. here was the plan. husband and wife would drive into manhattan and go to a comedy club, a lighthearted night on the town. but they made a detour here to the palisades, to their spot. stephen remembers pulling up to the scenic lookout, sitting in the car with jody, sharing a wine cooler. there were other people there sitting in their cars, and we walked up, looked over the spot where the binoculars are, and then walked up, you know, to this sort of open view.
just something dark lineham thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jody s death. he did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have reacted. and so the detective moved his investigation from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues. he quickly learned from jody s friends that this was a couple not in love but in crisis. the subject wasn t wine and roses on those cliffs. it was divorce. she was going to go through with it. yes. absolutely. jody s long-time friend marianne hilferty told detectives jody had been determined to take her 10-year-old son jonathan and leave her husband. she was convinced stephen had been cheating on her. she couldn t prove anything, but women called the house. and sometimes they d call and hang up on her.
it was jody, lying motionless next to a tree. there was a lot of blood on that tree. and the blood was actually draining down the tree. that s where the severe impact took. that s where she really jody sharp had not survived the fall. to chiofi it was clear. she had slammed into that tree. as they began to move the body he noticed something else. she had an odor of an alcoholic beverage. that emanated from her body. so when you smelled that, did you think, well, maybe she had had too much to drink and fell? that entered my mind, yes. at that moment stephen sharp was sitting in a room at the police station, waiting for someone to tell him what had happened to his wife. do you remember what s going through your mind at that point? how badly is she hurt? where is she? why isn t she calling back to me? and that s when an officer walked into the room and broke the news to stephen. jody was gone.
drinks, wine or beer, something like that. a drunken slip and fall, argued the defense. to back that up, the lawyer had his own heavy hitter. famed forensic pathologist dr. cyril wecht. wecht posted a resume of star-studded investigations too, as high-profile as the prosecution s dr. baden. only wecht had a totally different take on how jody scharf died. i would call this an accidental death. in wecht s version, which he demonstrated with of all things a teddy bear, jody fell off the cliff and on to jagged rocks just below, causing her mortal wounds. her body then catapulted. and out goes the body and it hurtles into the air. into the tree canopy, which then carried her through the abyss and into that distant tree. this is what i think happened to explain those injuries of the
she should have been right down where i got off the ropes. that s where she should have been. someone else was scratching his head about that night for different reasons. it had to do with stephen s behavior while the search was under way. officer walter sirry was surprised stephen was willing to leave the lookout as rescuers were still looking for jody. did he give any indication i don t want to leave, my wife could still be alive down there? no. none at all. sirry says he couldn t believe how willingly stephen scharf got into his patrol car. i tell you, if it was my wife, girlfriend, whoever, they would have had to pry me away from that scene if i was still at the top of the cliffs. but he willingly got into your patrol car. without a word said. stranger still was how calm the husband seemed. when the officer heard stephen describe how his wife had fallen, he made a mental note. there was no emotion in it. no emotion at all. like he was reading a script. did it oc