dummies the exact same size and weight as liana and eric and threw them off the cliff. we were trying to determine whether there was a difference as to the resting place or point of impact, if someone were pushed with some lateral force or whether someone just slipped off. but in the end, it didn t matter if the dummies were hurdle off or gently dropped off the face of the cliff because they were funneled to the very same landing place each time. you guys were really desperate. yeah. i think at that point we knew that we weren t going to get a lot of additional forensic or physical evidence. so we knew our case hinged on the credibility of roger brauberger. roger brauberger, who was certain bob duke had murdered his wife and child but whose reputation as drug addict and peddler was terrible. would a jury believe him?
bob took great care choosing the headstones and bob was a pallbearer and carried eric s coffin with a heavy heart and worried mind. it was brutal. it was emotionally brutal. reporter steve, also attended the funeral in support of his old acquaintance, bob duke. i had known him a couple years. i felt saddened by this whole thing. i felt the need to support him and the loss of his wife and child. i really deep down felt it was an accident. even as grief swept through the small desert town, support for bob was accompanied by whispered questions. why had he taken his family up to that remote forbidding place. why did he let eric play up there on the lip of a deadly cliff? i knew enough about liana to know she was an overprotective mother. if her son was outside, she
roger wasn t a choir boy. he had some past. still, he decided to take the chance. five years after liana and eric plunged off a cliff to their death, bob duke, father and husband, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. i think the general feeling among people in green river was, it s about time. and the trial here at the sweetwater county courthouse, rescue workers testified when they arrived on the cliff top that day, bob duke seemed oddly unemotional for a person who just witnessed the deaths of his wife and son. liana s parents said their daughter wasn t the sort of mother who would let her little boy play around on the cliff top like that. still, others testified bob was unhappy in his marriage and they heard him be verbally abusive to liana. then there was the most important witness, roger brauberger. he would testify in a case that
was going to do the right thing. i went to school with a kid named mark meekam, his father was detective meekam, in narcotic, someone i could trust. i received a call from roger. he was in total panic. they ll kill me. they ll kill me. who is going to kill you? i m not sure. he tried to talk roger down. he wanted to meet by the river, in the cover of darkness. they met the following morning. what was the next thing out of roger s mouth. basically, he knew bob had killed his wife and kids. there was more. this new plot to kill bob s parents. that was a shocker? that was the shocker. only one thing to do now, said detective meekam, he would have to do the one thing he never thought he would do, cooperate with the police. the fbi was called in, they put
i asked him a few times, if you re that miserable, why stay? get a divorce. he wanted to find a way out of getting divorce without having to pay child support. the prosecutor put crystal on the stand, of course. then he told the jury bob dukes way out of his marital dissatisfaction was to shove his wife and child off that cliff and then claim it was an accident and collect the $60,000 in insurance. when that money ran out, said the prosecutor, then bob and his brother concocted the scheme to have their parents killed for their insurance money. bob duke took the stand himself to deny the allegations against him. denied, for example, crystal s story, although he agreed they did hang out together. reporter steve core found his testimony flat, expressionless. he came across as arrogant, he came across as not remorseful. but the jury apparently had a