reporter: tony s attorney is bruce fleisher. they sought the death penalty. reporter: police and prosecutors were confident they had a solid case against tony villegas, but something happened that threw the whole investigation into freefall. that s because new crimes were about to be revealed. and new questions were about to be raised about who really killed melissa. and in the midst of it all, scott rothstein, like melissa, would disappear. coming up were melissa and scott rothstein s disappearances connected? we three kings be stealing the gold. the dark secret buried beneath all these rothstein riches. he said if i don t get this taken care of, somebody is going to put a bullet in my head. each day justin chooses to walk. at work. and after work. he does it all with dr. scholl s. only dr. scholl s has massaging gel insoles that provide all-day comfort. to keep him feeling more energized. dr. scholl s. born to move.
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 messy complications, tony s
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. reporter: later that afternoon, the jury sent out a
he voluntarily answered them. 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
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 case? $251,000.