eve party. we took off and then short later after my gut was telling my feet to run back to that house. this can t be happening. when the party ended, the mystery began. it was just crazy, i didn t understand what was happening and why. his wife, the hostess, had seemed fine the whole night. then my wife just shot herself in the head. please! help me! please help me! her death was ruled a suicide. but not everyone agreed. i was always afraid he was going to hurt her. always. always. did a fight that night lead to something much worse? i knew that ashley wouldn t take her own life. a troubled woman or a troubled marriage? that wound on the back of her head isn t one she could do it herself, tom. it is not. oh [bleep] [bleep]. suicide or murder? i didn t do this. i just knew that my whole world is never going to be the same again, ever. hello and welcome to dateline. it was december 31st, and by all appearances, ashley fallis was in the mood to
weeks, tom remained free. ashley s parent became convinced that something about the investigation was not right. joel and i sat down and said look, if for some crazy reason she walked in the house and shot herself and they can show that, we will accept it and support tom. we didn t feel like that was, you know, the case. they weren t alone, remember on the night it happened former deputy brian spencer saw tom rolling around freely with blood and other potential evidence all over him. police 101 very basic thing. any scene that you respond to, you want to treated us the highest level of what it could possibly be. sure. so he would be a suspect. and he needed to be preserved. he needed to be controlled. but, none of that was done at the scene. pretty soon, ashley s parents began to suspect it was a cover-up to protect home. perhaps the so-called blue wall of silence, looking out for a
policing that would put police on the hunt and to celebrate the kill. that s what that represents for me. in the break i said the same thing at the table. i wonder if you re confident that all the facts will emerge and we ll have the truth about how this came to pass. i m not confident. there s nothing in our past to suggest we ought to be confident. the blue wall of silence is real really. we need to unpack what that means in all its detail. it s from the paperwork filed from the description of the event and the encounter from the people who back up the description. the blue wall of silence is real. and also we need to understand what president biden tried to do. he tried to thread a needle. he said two things that were really important. he said everyone believes in equal justice under the law. that s a covenant among americans. we know that s not true historically. and he says those people who act wrongly need to be held accountable. so we need to live up to equal
it was not that long ago that we can recall the idea of having a police chief, let alone another police officer in general speaking out about the conduct of other officers. we talk about the blue code and blue wall of silence. we were awestruck when chief arradondo in minnesota, was speaking out about the officers, including derek chauvin. of course, we see the idea people can t hide behind the badge. people will speak out. i was really struck by that moment. and frankly, his mother. just the amount of grace and empathy she even had for the officers involved. as a mom, i could not imagine what she is going through, let alone to hear her in those moments. reporter: she says, i feel sorry for them. speaking of the police chief and what happened, the way this