i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales. and this is dateline. i just collapsed. she s dead because she was my friend. first melissa disappeared. where s melissa? that s the million dollar question. i knew right then she absolutely never made it into her house. left behind in her garage signs of a struggle and a strange orange mist, then her boss went missing too. who is he afraid of am. he might have been afraid he s next. he left behind a bigger mess. we three kings be stealing the gold. a missing fortune. ballpark a billion, billion and a half dollars. a missing woman. we have know clue, no leads. some wonder was there a link? this had a twist to it. two crimes, one for money, one supposedly for love, and behind both, a lingering mystery. it s just so ugly and so wrong, and i can t fix it. welcome to dateline. hotshot florida attorney melissa lewis was living large in fort lauderdale dale, but then her seemingly charged life ended
had better evidence if you had a movie of him killing her. right. reporter: the defense had been dealt a poor hand to play, but attorney bruce fleisher chipped away at each state witness, starting with tony s housemate, the guy with the scrubbing away pepper spray story. the defense said he had 250,000 reasons to make his story up. there was a reward offered. yes. and who offered the reward? scott rothstein. and, how much was the reward in the case? $251,000. reporter: ironically, he never got the reward. the collapse of rothstein s ponzi scheme put an end to that. and as for the prosecution s theory of motive, fleisher argued it was as thin as it was nonsensical. you would think that if you were so enraged that your wife were doing this that you d wanna harm her, and not someone else. reporter: as for debra villegas, defense attorney fleisher surprised everyone when he didn t ask her a single question.
but he did go after the son, caleb, challenging him as to why he sat for so long on this story about his father badmouthing melissa. you didn t tell your mother about that when you first heard about that, did you? no. i didn t see any relevance. and when you spent time with him, things were good? yes. you love your dad? yes. reporter: would jurors notice the tear rolling down tony s cheek? so, onto the scientific evidence, the cellphone first. lawyer fleisher found a mistake in a chart the state s expert had used. was the expert analysis, in fact, sloppy? if you re such a hot shot expert right. and reporter: how does this error creep in? and he said, well, it was a mistake. reporter: the same went for the dna evidence, attack the credibility of the analysis. the defense said the dna results, returned within a few days, were rushed through the police lab because of rothstein s connections. attorney fleisher also suggested there could have been cross
and as for the prosecution s theory of motive, fleisher argued it was as thin as it was nonsensical. you would think that if you were so enraged that your wife were doing this that you d wanna harm her, and not someone else. reporter: as for debra villegas, defense attorney fleisher surprised everyone when he didn t ask her a single question. but he did go after the son, caleb, challenging him as to why he sat for so long on this story about his father badmouthing melissa. you didn t tell your mother about that when you first heard about that, did you? no. i didn t see any relevance. and when you spent time with him, things were good? yes. you love your dad? yes. reporter: would jurors notice the tear rolling down tony s cheek? so, onto the scientific evidence, the cellphone first. lawyer fleisher found a mistake in a chart the state s expert had used. was the expert analysis, in fact, sloppy?
if you re such a hot shot expert right. and reporter: how does this error creep in? and he said, well, it was a mistake. reporter: the same went for the dna evidence, attack the credibility of the analysis. the defense said the dna results, returned within a few days, were rushed through the police lab because of rothstein s connections. attorney fleisher also suggested there could have been cross contamination to tilt the scale so the results pointed at tony. our goal was to educate the jury on the rothstein connections, and the rothstein influence. reporter: had meddled with the physical evidence? contaminated it maybe? we can only speculate. but when a man is as powerful a guy as as rothstein was, people would think that they could do things. they could conjure up dna. reporter: and use it to frame tony villegas. before the defense rested, the judge asked tony villegas if he wanted to testify. is it your wish to testify or remain silent?