i really do. because that implies that there is someone else that you would like to have a child with. reporter: maybe someone like jermeir s fiance, denita smith. detective pate now thought shannon crawley had the means, the opportunity and the motive to commit murder. and it got to the point we thought, this is all we re going to get right now. and it s more than enough. reporter: well, was it enough? police had no dna, no fingerprints, no murder weapon and no forensics at the crime scene that linked shannon to denita s murder. but detective pate was also thinking about denita s family. the family is suffering. let s go ahead and give them a little peace right now. reporter: five days after denita smith s murder, detective pate drove back to greensboro with a warrant to arrest shannon crawley. she and her children were staying at her sister s house
and he says let me call the police. and then she pulls off and takes off out the complex. reporter: what do you make of that? that s kind of like make the hair on the back of our neck stand up. reporter: so now police called jermeir stroud, who was on his way back home to greensboro, and asked one simple question. do you know anyone that drives a burgundy ford suv? and he said, oh, my god. i m turning around now. reporter: a secret affair. they start having a relationship that actually started kind of like friendly but then turned sexual. reporter: what, if anything, did it have to do with denita s murder?
murder and be sentenced to a maximum of 12 years in prison. denita s mother, sharon, was not happy. what d you say? no. reporter: don t let her off? uh-uh. no. my words were my daughter didn t get to plead for her life that morning, so no. no plea. reporter: she needn t have worried. shannon crawley was not going to take a deal. she insisted she wanted to clear her name and would now take her chances in court. shannon looked at me with a smirk. like she knew he was going to get off. shannon on the stand. for one he s told me since that he did. versus the man she says is jermeir on tape. you re going to kill me too? keep talking. whom would the jury believe?
decision. shannon s family was encouraged. i didn t feel that the d.a. proved his case. there were some damaging things, yes, but there was no preponderance of evidence, and i thought that she was going to be acquitted. reporter: for shannon crawley it all came down to this decision. would it be a life of freedom or life in prison? denita s mother braced herself as she stared at the woman accused of killing her daughter. i really think all the way to the end that shannon thought she was going to walk away. we the jury return the unanimous verdict as follows, guilty of first-degree murder. she didn t think she would hear what she heard, guilty. reporter: how d she look when that verdict came in? like all the life just drained out of her, like she d seen a ghost. reporter: across the aisle shannon s family was also
she was hitting a tower that placed her no less than 100 feet away from where denita would be found dead the next morning. reporter: and you think, what s going on there? i m thinking it s recon. reporter: shannon showed up a day early to find out exactly which apartment denita lived in? you have to know when to be there and where to place yourself, where to stand, without looking suspicious because if you just linger there for hours someone s going to say you don t even live here, what are you doing? reporter: police also checked jermeir stroud s cell phone and police radio and found he was nowhere near durham that day before the killing. only shannon. so police impounded her suv. we did gunshot residue tests on the car, the steering wheel, the gear shifter, and comes back there is gunshot residue. reporter: and if all that didn t look bad enough, now shannon s alibi now started to fall apart.