at the time. confused or not, they stayed together and a few years later they married and then ellen became pregnant. they began to bald 4,000 square foot house in an upscale subdivision in the foothills of albuquerque s mountains. that house was our dream house. it was ready just in time for the baby. only mike wasn t ready are. he wanted to stay at work on the day ellen was giving birth. i called his boss and said i m in the hospital having a baby and he said, well, mike s here and i said, yeah, he is. do you think you could send him? once again, maybe not the most sensitive husband, but mike loved that baby girl. they named her elizabeth. she was just the joy of my brother s life. he thought the world of that child. ellen would come by the dealership and bring elizabeth by. mike would get her a balloon,
just disappeared. and then later on i was hearing rumors that he was gay, had a male lover, went to the caribbean. do you have any idea who the source of the rumors was? no. everybody heard it and it was passed along throughout the dealerships. did you believe it? disappearing? it is one thing but being gay, no. several months passed with no word from mike. now his side of the family was so concerned they decided to go to the police. i knew at some point we had to we had to move on. we had to not just hope that he was out there, but had to at least explore other options. down at the albuquerque police station, sister teri filed a missing person s report. she had a feeling that something had happened to her brother. it was one thing to leave a bad marriage, but quite another to end contact with the daughter mike loved. i know my brother remained steadfast in his love for his daughter.
with ms. which only added more stress to his marriage. i m sure my brother was going through incredible emotional turmoil about his physical condition. maybe that was the right that mike began to wake ellen in the middle of the night to vent his anger. yelling and demeaning and calling names. and told me how worthless i was. he didn t want to necessarily have the big fights in front of elizabeth. so he would wake me up at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. and yell at you? and yell at me. of course she was careful not to tell her colleagues this. ellen feared if she showed a chink in her emotional armor she would never be effective. they see she s emotional and that is the focus. it is all about the women thing. and they won t respect you anymore she said that now that mike was sick she would be there for him, as she promised through
asked the judge for leniency. she does ask your honor that the court sentence her to five years in prison. which will allow her to at least be at her daughter s graduation from college. the judge addressed ellen directly, focusing on that construction waste she d buried on top of her husband s body. it was reported that you unceremoniously threw trash in the same hole that mr. snyder had been placed. with that, ellen was given the maximum sentence of 11 years behind bars. ms. snyder once you re released you can get things together and go forward in life. reporter: she hopes to. when we spoke with ellen shortly after her sentencing, ellen said she worried most about her children, her then 16-year-old daughter elizabeth was a high school junior.
eight years of living a lie to the outside world in that big home that she and her husband mike had worked so hard to build. but ellen wouldn t leave, determined to make her marriage work. i wasn t going to be a failure at another marriage in mike hung on as well but his sister teri says mike was thinking of ending it. i believe he was in the process of trying to leave her. he was moving belongings to my mother s house. mike and ellen s daughter elizabeth was now 6 years old and very much daddy s little girl. and michael, ellen s son from her first marriage, was 17, a high school junior. how was mike as a father toward michael? the older michael got the more harsh he was with him. then mike snyder got sick and life in the home grew much worse for almost nempb the snyder s family. his body would go numb. he would pass out. he was in veer pain.