he married the woman of his dreams, beautiful and sweet. she was just angelic. and was folded into her tight-knit family headed by an elderly religious matriarch. you were either part of their family or you weren t. together they had a little girl, sydney. when their marriage fell apart, her family closed ranks. in their view, sydney was their property. one day he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again. he died right there. dad?ut who would kill a devoted the unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife or the gracious family matriarch? they seemed so loving, but was there another side. it s a monster that comes out of a closet. it s very ugly. how dark is that side? murderous. but which one was the killer? hello and welcome to dateline. he was a man suddenly confronted with something monstrous, evil at the door. this story is a mystery about a father of two young daughters. one night he left to pick up one of them an
their family or you weren t. together they had a little girl, sydney. when their marriage fell apart, her family closed ranks. in their view, sydney was their property. one day he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again. he died right there. but who would kill a devoted dad? the unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife or the gracious family matriarch? they seemed so loving, but was there another side. it s a monster that comes out of a closet. it s very ugly. how dark is that side? murderous. but which one was the killer? hello and welcome to dateline. he was a man suddenly confronted with something monstrous, evil at the door. this story is a mystery about a father of two young daughters. one night he left to pick up one of them and never came back. the question for investigators wasn t what happened. it was who did it. in the home of a god-fearing family in one of the smallest of american towns, the worst of crimes.
prosecution had no physical evidence to prove she was the shooter, no dna, no fingerprints, no gunshot residue, no blood spatter, no photos of the scripts on shirley s hands. basically, all they had were descriptions of the hands and statements from first responders that surely told them she had shots east even. now it was time for the defense to make its case to the jury, mostly young and female from small town rural illinois. lawyers for shirley emphasized the fact that there was no physical evidence linking her to the weapon, and they argued surely statement to the first responders is he dead, i shot him, were made when she was having a medical emergency. how reliable could those statements be? the defense focus on what they called a sloppy inept investigation by the police chief, pointed at jennifer the innuendo and implications with her ugly divorce and custody battle as the one with the motive to kill stephen. they didn t directly argue jennifer pulled the trigger,
you? looks like somebody decided to shoot him in the back of the head. but who was the somebody who shot him? members of the skinner family obviously knew who did it, but none of them were talking, complicating matters, chief birdsell had never handled a murder before. most of his law enforcement career had been spent on vehicle code violations. he thought he would be able to handle the case on his own but he couldn t. the case dragged on for months. people all over the community are saying why hasn t there been an arrest. yes. i was hearing that a lot. as the case dragged on, the whodunit became the talk of the town. people are very, very aware of the killing in this community. bruce rushton covered the case for the springfield paper register. any time we write about this in the newspaper, it s the most clicked on thing, or close to the most clicked on thing. it s a puzzler. it s almost a game of three card monte. rushton said no one thought stephen instigated the vi
a stunning story, but this was secondhand information. from first responders quoting an elderly woman in the midst of a medical and family crisis. were her statements reliable? had she really said that? chief birdsell asked jennifer what happened. he said stephen forced his way in the house and knocked her grandmother down and then he was coming after her and the baby and the grandmother shot him. it all seemed hard to believe. chief birdsell wanted to ask shirley what happened but never got a chance. about the time i was getting ready to, her attorney was on the phone and said he didn t want me to talk to her. she was already lawyered up? yes. shortly after jennifer also hired an attorney and stopped talking as well. jennifer s grandfather who was in the house at the time stephen was killed wasn t talking either. so what had happened in the skinner home? had stephen watkins finally