your feet. yes, it does. what did she tell? you she and michael had a heated discussion and that the next morning when she woke up, he was gone, and he hadn t taken a vehicle. ellen told a detective that she was pretty sure that mike had initially moved to phoenix, home of his lover, dave simmons. but, more recently, she believed he had moved on to the caribbean. she said, he s probably on an island somewhere. we had looked at land on saint craw. as far as i knew, i forget that he had gone to saint crawl. and that s where he was, with save simmons? correct. in fact, ellen said she d actually spoken with mike over the years. mike had called a couple of times. yes. and that wherever he was, he was, maybe not angry, but at least the two of you weren t talking, and a non angry way about tickets. oh, i think we were still angry. i think i told him that we were
statement. before we ask you questions, i want you to understand these are your miranda and constitutional rights. she gave police a 2 1/2 hour confession and her version of events is quite a story. woke me up. it was 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. we were arguing. pushing back and forth and i told him, i know all about you and dave simmons. i know that you are gay. ellen said she had recently grown more courageous in her dealings with mike, and on this night she confronted her husband over what she says was a secret gay affair. i am yelling at him and he s yelling at me and i said i m going to tell everybody. i m going to tell everybody about you and he s telling me, you will never tell anybody about me. you are not going to tell anything. there s nothing to tell. he s denying it. he s screaming at me. i have never seen him so angry.
conviction at all, prosecutors would have to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that ellen snyder planned mike snyder s murder and with no crime scene and little in the way of forensics, that was going to be hard to prove. in her view, it was self defense, but maybe she was guilty of manslaughter, second-degree murder. but you couldn t prosecute her for either of those offenses. that s correct. the statute of limitations here in new mexico on a state case like this prohibited us from going forward on any of those lesser types of offenses. ellen snyder s defense attorney penny adrian knew a first-degree murder conviction could mean a life sentence for ellen, but felt the prosecution would have a tough time making their case. the premeditation would be hard to prove, but even harder would be to prove that she did not act in self defense given all of the things that were going on with mike.
the other option which is call the cops and face the music. yes. at that point i was just solving the problem. so the tears and regret that i m seeing now, you weren t feeling that then. no. never cried. because at the time ellen says she was on auto pilot and needed to dispose of the body. and how did she do that? in the want ads she found a guy with a backhoe who came out to the house and dug a hole. did you tell the guy why you were doing this? he didn t ask. ellen and her son michael wrapped his body in a tarp and put plastic bags on his hands and in the dark of night they move him on to a dolly in to the hole. is your son helping you or not. i asked him to help me throw some dirt on top of him. he said okay. they filled the hole with leftover construction waste so
she could have been looking at a total of 339 years. ellen s defense attorney 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 had 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. and with that, ellen was given the maximum sentence of 11 years behind bars. ms. snyder, hopefully once you are released you can get things together and go forward in life. and she hopes to. when we spoke with ellen shortly after her sentencing, ellen said that she worried most about her children.