years in prison. but one big question emerged, speculation about that woman in the firm who d been killed. whether melissa knew about the ponzi scheme is one of those great mysteries. reporter: scott had started his ponzi scheme three years before melissa was murdered. is it time to take a fresh look at the whole melissa lewis murder? is there something more sinister? reporter: detective brian kendall now had a whole new problem with his fairly straightforward case against tony, the jealous train engineer. 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
before the defense rested, the judge asked tony villegas if he wanted to testify. is it your wish to testify or remain silent? silent, sir. reporter: in closing arguments, prosecutor tate said all the evidence pointed to tony. the pepper spray, cell phone records, and the dna. there is not one other person on the planet earth that could leave the dna on this jacket. reporter: the defense reminded jurors that the pepper spray evidence was weak, and that both phone records and dna results could be manipulated. the pieces of the puzzle do not fall into place, because reasonable doubt prevents them from falling into place. reporter: the jury now had the case. outside the courtroom debra villegas saw melissa s family for the first time in eight years. all these years later and it just washed over me like like it had just happened. you know, that that i caused these people a kind of pain that s unimaginable.
signal was lost. either the battery died or the killer dumped the phone. all told by thursday, the day after the murder, the phone or whoever had it travelled a distance of about 60 miles. so obviously, who s with that cell phone, was most likely the last person that was with with melissa. reporter: detectives also focused on those five hours the phone was stationary in miami gardens. was the killer home in bed? we have to identify if melissa knows somebody that lives in this area. reporter: does anything come up at that point? no. we have no reason to believe anybody she s dating, anybody she knows lives there. reporter: melissa s family confirmed that. police asked everyone remotely involved in the case and the answer kept coming up no. by now, police had also cleared the ex-husband of melissa s sister. he had no connection to the area either. but when they asked debra if she knew anyone who lived around there, her jaw dropped. she said she did know someone.
did he tell you that it was melissa s fault? he he believed that she had a part in it. yes. did he tell you that he was mad at melissa about this? yeah. he was mad about the whole situation. reporter: oh, and there was one more thing. remember melissa s jacket, the one found in her suv? tests showed tony s dna on the jacket. prosecutors believe tony wiped his nose with it after being pepper sprayed. odds of finding an unrelated individual with that profile are rarer than one in 30 billion. reporter: you couldn t have 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
he had been released from prison in the past. reporter: so you haven t ruled him out yet? not yet. reporter: with the list of possible suspects shrinking, detectives shifted their focus to something that might provide their first break in the case. with melissa s iphone missing, detectives put in an emergency request to the phone company to see if it could help track her cell. when he got the report, detective kendall couldn t believe what he saw. melissa s iphone had been active after the murder and someone had actually gone into her voicemail and played back messages, read texts. we try to make sense as to why he would want to do something like this. reporter: police were dumbfounded that someone wouldn t know that a smartphone was a detective s best friend and police could track them using cell towers. it was either bold or stupid or both. people know this concept of pinging off towers. it s the cell phone is telling the towers, here i am ? yeah.