entitled to. reporter: 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. reporter: and that s what keith s defense attorney, mark bryant, hammered home for the jury. what s no evidence mean? they didn t have dna, they didn t have any kinda forensics, they didn t have a confession. they had nothing. they had circumstantial evidence. reporter: 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. reporter: as for the life insurance, $250,000 was far from a financial windfall, he said.
we are conducting an investigation, and this investigation involves what we believe to be a homicide of his wife. i was in shock. i was like, oh my gosh. i couldn t believe what he just said to me. i had no idea. reporter: so you believed she had been played by this guy? i believe that she had. reporter: so, detective carter wondered, if keith griffith had manipulated and lied to this woman. had keith lied to him, too? maybe it was more about what keith hadn t said. rewind to that moment when the detective had dropped what should have been devastating news on keith. the investigation s showing that, that foul play is involved. okay. reporter: did he ask you the questions, what happened? what are you tellin me here? she was killed? no. reporter: i mean, you d expect that, right? julie was shot by an intruder?
man who by all accounts loved his wife, actually do it? the prosecutor turned to two age old motives. almost every case involving a husband and a wife, it s lust and greed. one or the other, and this one had both. reporter: the lust part of the equation, he said, was deanna. she took the stand and told the jury that not only was keith house hunting for them, he was also making plans to bring her down to paducah for a concert and introduce her to his family. i d love for you to come for the weekend, stay for the weekend. we ll go to the concert and i would really like for you to meet my dad. reporter: as for the greed part, that was life insurance money, two policies on julie s life worth $250,000. one of them, the prosecutor said, had taken effect just eight days before julie died. keith griffith got to the point in his life he just wanted to start something new. and he didn t wanna give julie griffith what she would have needed in a divorce and been
we were all frantic, we had no idea what was happening, how it could have happened. because at that point, we knew that there was there was no way that he had anything to do with it. so this is nightmare country? yes. but again, we thought it would all be explained. you know, they would do their job, they would take him and the truth would come out. i was 100% convinced that he was innocent and that they were taking the wrong person in. meanwhile, the person who actually did it was getting away. reporter: family and friends were, for sure, distressed to learn that keith had another woman on the road but the revelation wasn t enough to shake their support for him. it was a shock, but it was something that we accepted as a mistake. but that did not mean that he killed julie. there s just no way he did it. yeah, this is not to julie. definitely. his wife, you know, kids mother, there s no way keith did it. reporter: but when keith griffith went to trial in feb