We three kings be stealing the gold. A missing fortune. Ballpark . 1 billion, 1. 5 billion. A missing woman. We have no clues, no leads. Some wondered, was there a link . This had a twist to it. Two crimes. One for money. One supposedly for love. And behind both, a lingering mystery. Its just so ugly and so wrong. And i cant fix it. Welcome to dateline. Hot shot Florida Attorney Melissa Lewis was living large in ft. Lauderdale, but then her seemingly charmed life ended in tragedy, her body was discovered in a drainage canal. She had been murdered. But who would want her dead . With few clues, fewer suspects and the scandal involving her law firm, investigators had their work cut out for them to unravel the mystery of what had happened to melissa. Here is Dennis Murphy with betrayed. Reporter if you ask someone in town where the buzziest part of ft. Lauderdale lies, theyll probably steer you here. Las olas boulevard. And way up there in this highrent district is a penthouse office suite
Left behind in her garage signs of a struggle and a strange orange mist. Nd we didnt know what it was. Then, her boss went missing, too. Who was he afraid of . He might of been afraid that he was next. At h, he said, if i dont get this taken care of, these people are gonna put a bullet in my head. He left behind a bigger mess. We three kings be stealing the gold. A missing fortune. Ballpark . 11. 5 billion. He th a missing woman. We have no clues, no leads. Some wondered, was there a link . This had a twist to it. Two crimes. One for money. One supposedly for love. And behind both, a lingering mystery. Its just so ugly and so wrong. And i cant fix it. Welcome to dateline. Hot shot Florida Attorney melissa lieu wigs was living large in ft. Lauderdale, but then her seemingly charmed life ended in tragedy, her body was discovered in a drainage canal. She had been murdered. But who would want her dead . With few clues, fewer suspects and the scandal involving her law firm, investigators ha
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is this woman, melissa, killed because she knew too much? after we think we had this solid, buttoned-up case, we do have the whole scott rothstein ponzi scheme comes into play? reporter: the fbi combed through the detectives files looking into a melissa-rothstein-ponzi link. they spent a week going through every inch of that case to find out if there was a connection to scott rothstein. reporter: with all these messy complications, tony s defense attorney, bruce fleisher, thought about two words, reasonable doubt. a lot of people thought that because of the rothstein ponzi scheme, that he had something to do with the murder of melissa lewis. reporter: and debra villegas was back in the hot seat herself, being grilled by homicide detectives who bluntly asked her about scott, the ponzi scheme and melissa s murder. she had her lawyer with her this time. was melissa aware of anything that scott was involved with? and i m i m gonna use a term the ponzi scheme. no. repo
had better evidence if you had a movie of him killing her. right. reporter: the defense had been dealt a poor hand to play, but attorney bruce fleisher chipped away at each state witness, starting with tony s housemate, the guy with the scrubbing away pepper spray story. the defense said he had 250,000 reasons to make his story up. there was a reward offered. yes. and who offered the reward? scott rothstein. and, how much was the reward in the case? $251,000. reporter: ironically, he never got the reward. the collapse of rothstein s ponzi scheme put an end to that. and as for the prosecution s theory of motive, fleisher argued it was as thin as it was nonsensical. you would think that if you were so enraged that your wife were doing this that you d wanna harm her, and not someone else. reporter: as for debra villegas, defense attorney fleisher surprised everyone when he didn t ask her a single question.