senior investigator for the riverside d.a. i think they felt this was enough to say this was not an accidental drowning. it was purely much more suspicious than that. and so before the night was over, chris hall was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. the girls could stop waiting. he wasn t coming home. it was obviously a tragedy, losing our mother that day. but this is a tragedy on top of a tragedy now. because knowing our parents, it s the farthest thing from the truth and one that felt infected by some kind of madness, said the cristi was the love of their father s life. the center of everything for him. how could he be accused of harming her? she was happy too, they said, as happy as she had ever been, they said, based on matt mother/daughter talk they had not long before she died.
filed out of the courtroom, a second jury, to make a life decision about chris hall. did he murder his wife? which of the medical examiners should they believe? whose account of the defendant s character and, perhaps most important, what did lindsay patterson see when she peeked three times into the halls backyard? do you ever have those sort of little dark moments of the soul where you think, i may have misinterpreted, misremembered it s something i ve thought about every day, whether i misinterpreted, whether i think i saw something that wasn t there. i didn t see everything. yeah. but i saw what i saw. and i know the conclusion of my story. i know it. i know it. right here. i know it. of course, chris hall s daughters say they know the truth too, real thing. in their hearts. i think that we were the three most critical jurors in
through every miserable minute of their dad s trial for murder. here at the courthouse in riverside, california, their review of the prosecutor s portrait of their father, it was a lie, they said. it was hurtful for us to hear someone to say he knows our parents better than we do and he knows our father is a sociopath and that we re blind to it and he knows that there was hidden violent in our parent s marriage and we just didn t see it. you re basically telling us that we didn t know our whole lives were a lie. to top it off, there s no proof of that. chris hall had never been violent, argue the defense, had no motive, no reason to suddenly turn on his wife. it had to be a freak accident. so,
but he didn t sound surprised when he said no, he was crying. he was he was upset. very upset. but by the time police investigators were questioning chris, remember, they had heard from lindsay patterson. and at the station, chris version of events in the spa differed in one crucial detail from what lindsay described seeing that first time she peered over the wall and into the hall s backyard. that specifically, me holding her down in there, there s nothing that took place in that jacuzzi that would explain that. there was no sex. there was no i don t even think we had any contact while we were in the jacuzzi other than when i was getting her out. but investigators were getting a good look at cristi s body and saw wounds that to them suggested a struggle and more than one nasty blow to the head. so the police had to choose. which version, chris hall s or lindsay patterson s, was more likely the true story of what happened? tom dove is a
a fall? must have been. in your gut, tell me what you think happened. i m thinking she slipped in. she slipped or something. i don t that s the only thing i can think but chris, apparently hadn t noticed the nasty three-inch laceration on cristi s head. and here suddenly, the point of the police interview is revealed. the gash she has on her head she s got a gash on her head? she s got a huge gash on her head, okay? something like that is not consistent with just falling down. not consistent with just falling down? why would the police think that? i mean, you ve been around for a while. i know where you re going. and no there s nothing why in fact was this ex-police-chief being questioned at all about the apparently disastrous accident that killed the love of his life? and the answer was right next door. when chris and cristi hall took their outdoor bath that morning in june,