what this was. yeah. i wasn t thinking at that point, oh, this man just murdered his wife. but now, based largely on that account, chris hall would go on trial for murder. and it was a trial for his daughters, too. he loved her. they were each other s best friends. and this is just this is not fair to him because he truly loved her more than more than anyone. and yet the prosecutor was going to try to prove that this family man and former cop murdered his wife. could it be done? dateline returns, after the break. ter th break.
we have an update on our breaking news out of walker s show wisconsin. a warning that the video we are about to play maybe disturbing. according to authorities at least five people were killed and more than 40 were injured after an suv drove through a holiday parade. officials say a person of interest is in police custody for questioning, they believe the person may have been involved in a knife fight and fled the scene before crashing into the crowd. police are expected to update later today. now back to dateline. now back to dateline welcome back. i m craig melvin. chris hall was charged in the drowning death of his wife cristi. as prosecutors
chris had been drinking beer. and he came out and told me that he had shot himself. but there was more. d.a. investigator tom dove had discovered a secret, not in chris past, but in cristi s. there had been infidelity in the marriage in the past, six years prior. while chris hall was in custody in idaho. cristi s affair was relatively brief, years earlier. but she had been in phone contact with the man just days before she died. had chris found out? impossible to know. but when investigator dove talked to cristi s co-workers at the clinic where she was an x-ray technician, several said they noticed a sudden change in her usually vibrant personality. one co-worker offered them more. she told us that she was contemplating a divorce. if true, and it was only an if, it might well persuade a jury. but also, prosecutor
help his wife. who tried harder to save cristi? not chris, said the prosecutor, but his daughter. she called 911. she helped him get the body out of the spa. he had no interest in truly helping his wife. a matter of opinion, of course. but prosecutor strunsky poked around in chris hall s past as a policeman. and what did he find? this man had an uncanny ability to fabricate stories. seven years earlier, while hall was chief of police in cascade, idaho, he was charged with and convicted of misuse of public money, embezzled $19, 000, spent ten months in jail. a white collar crime, hardly murder. but what struck the prosecutor is that he says hall tried to cover it up. to plan a fraud, to lie about it, not just lie about it, but lie about it effectively. i think that was very telling about who we were dealing with.
were laying out their case, hall s daughters stood by him, proclaiming his innocence. would anything change their minds about their dad? here again is keith morisson. this is a hard-charging man, ex-member in good standing of the san francisco d.a. s office, now senior deputy d.a. in riverside. that takes skill, persuasive he would need them in the murder case against the former police chief and family man, chris hall. mr. hall, on the surface, looks like a loving family man. he looks like a good father. he is somebody that had the support of his family. so he did. but he wasn t buying the loving father and family man bit. no. when he heard about chris hall s very obvious grief, the wailing that went on after the so-called accident, the phrase that crossed his mind was it s an act. i think it was a wonderful performance by the defendant of acting like a bereaved husband, but when you look at his actions, how little he did to