did he look okay? he looked fine. i mean, he felt i think he was more confident, as well. deanna says keith now began aggressively courting her, showering her with gifts, flowers, notes of affection. it was all, she said, a bit much. he kept pushing for more. and i kept telling him, you need to back off, you need to slow down because i m just not there. deanna said she couldn t put her finger on it, but there was something about keith that was holding her back. maybe it was the fact that he still seemed unusually bound to a woman he called his ex-wife. from the very beginning, deanna says, keith told her that he was divorced. very first conversation. i m a divorced guy. right. by the time she was sitting across from detective carter in that interview room, deanna says she and keith had never been intimate, but they were dating. and keith was talking long-term. house-hunting for them. he said, i don t want to scare you, but i want you to
you? i noticed he was staring at me. so i kind of, you know, just smiled. she says he asked her to dinner. they quickly discovered how much they had in common. he talked about both his sons and being a grandpa. so i just really connected, because i had grown kids, too. after several dates, deanna says, keith expressed interest in a relationship. but she wanted to keep it just friends. they stayed in touch but didn t see each other for a while. then just a few months back, he sent her a flirty text message. the text just said, did you cast a spell on me? and i m like, i looked down at my phone, i m like, what? he said i was in a party last night and this woman was chatting me up. he goes, and all i could think about was you. deanna who was in the throes of a traumatic romantic break-up agreed to start seeing him again for dinners. and she says, he seemed excited to show off the new post-surgery keith. he goes, you re not going to recognize me. and he goes, i ve lost over 1
all i can tell you is that i had a lot of bad thoughts, wrong thoughts, mistakes. we sat down with keith hoping for answers. but as many times as we asked him why this all happened why did you do it? i really can t tell you. i don t know. i mean, just a bad decision. we never did get a satisfying response. so this isn t some kind of delayed midlife crisis here? no. where you re trying to be with deanna or someone like her to have a final happy chapter in your life? no. new house julie and i were happy. you see how perplexing it is to hear this. i know. it s absolutely confounding. that s what i told everybody when they hear the story, they re not going to believe it. i have a hard time believing i did what i did. one thing he didn t do how about a divorce? never crossed my mind. keith now says the remorse began the moment he pulled out of his driveway. trying to get out of the subdivision, crying before i ever get out.
know that i m looking for properties here in morrisville to buy, so for us to be together. for the detective, deanna s story put a whole new spin on the investigation. keith griffith now seemed like a man with a very big secret. or thinking like a homicide detective, was she the one with the secret? you can spin it another way and say maybe she s driving events here. maybe she wants to get rid of the wife. that s correct. we were open for that being an idea or a possibility. in fact, the detective had let her tell her story without ever explaining the reason for his visit. now he laid out his cards. was he not divorced? no. he says, first of all, keith s not divorced. according to him, keith had been married to his high school sweetheart for 36 years. and i just broke down because i i couldn t believe it. but, of course, there was
didn t want to give julie griffith what she would have needed in a divorce and would have been entitled to. keith s daughter-in-law ali griffith, listened to the entirety of the prosecution s case. all she heard were theories. they spun a story. and they told a story how they wanted it to go. and they had facts that supported their story. but did not prove it. and that s what keith s defense attorney, mark bryant, hammered home for the jury. what does no evidence mean? they didn t have dna. they didn t have any kind of forensics. they didn t have a confession. they had nothing. they had circumstantial evidence. in their haste to arrest keith, the defense argued the police had gotten it wildly wrong. yes, he conceded keith wasn t the husband of the year. but he said deanna s story that keith was pursuing her for a long-term commitment was nonsense. rather what he wanted was a port in every storm. as for the life insurance, $250,000 was far from a financial windfall, he