ernie scherer is charged with murdering his parents. the evidence against him was largely circumstantial except for a small slip of paper discovered at the crime scene that could be the key to blowing the case wide open. here again, keith morrison. it was september 2010, just months before ernie scherer iii was to go on trial for the murder of his parents. prosecutors pored over the evidence scott dudek and his detectives had collected. was there anything else? anything they missed, they might use to seal the case against ernie scherer? and that s when they saw it. something quite odd. they came across a piece of paper that we had collected that had blood droplets on it. just one small piece of paper, which one of the
mcdonald s and the gas station, there was a cash purchase at the nike outlet. one pair of size 12 nike impact tomahawk sneakers, a ripken youth baseball fat and junior match soccer gloves. i m thinking even the most skeptical jury in the world has to realize, put it all together, the book has just finished, that s the ending of the book. in january 2011 the alameda county prosecutor told jurors ernest scherer iii was a narcissistic sociopath who savagely murdered his parents in cold blood. he is sheer evil. he thinks he s smarter than everybody. heavily in debt and desperate for minute, ernie s house of cards was collapsing before his very eyes, said the prosecutor, and so he killed his parents for the money, for his inheritance. even ernie s own family unanimously turned against him, including ernest scherer sr.,
he asked me if i would do something slightly illegal for $300. david is a professional piano player in vegas. he says, oh, i m looking to get a gun because i m a professional gambler and i carry a lot of money. i thought, you know, no. i m not going to do that. and investigators discovered ernie also asked david s performance partner to buy him a gun and offered another friend $50,000 to point the finger of suspicion away from ernie and towards someone else. and even if none of it was definitive, it all added up and it looked bad for ernie. and so finally nearly a year after the murders, the alameda county d.a. made the decision to roll the dice. it was february 2009. kimberly olson was at home with ernie in their las vegas apartment. there was a knock on the door and ernie answered the door and i came out and there was fbi agents with guns drawn. ernie scherer was charged
ernie s grandfather, who took the stand on his 95th birthday to testify against his own grandson, his namesake. and once again, adrian had a date to see ernie in court. they asked you to testify. they did. it was overwhelming and terrifying. adrian told the jury about ernie s two years of deception, the double life, all those lies. i made it a point not to look at him during the entire time i was in the room and during the entire testimony. he. was it enough for the jury? ernie s defense jumped to its task, arguing that the evidence, the red chevy camaro on the surveillance video, the dead cell phone at the time of the murders, asking his friends to buy a gun, all of that could have been simply coincidence, it could be explained away. and besides, said the defense, there was actual physical evidence to prove someone other than ernie could have committed the crime, the speck of bloody dna found number one of the shoe prints at the crime scene.
and wasn t that the very same make, model, and color of ernie scherer s car? sure looked like his car to a cop s eye, anyway. trouble was they couldn t see the license plate or the driver s face. could have been coincidence. and even that, the car and the other evidence they gathered, wouldn t be enough to persuade the d.a. to file murder charges. the cops brought everything they know to the forgotten woman in this story, ernie s wife robin. she had been left behind when ernie took off a couple of weeks after the murders. when she saw what investigators had, she was not only ready to divorce ernie, she told the police she d help them by attempting to bluff the poker player. be [ phone ringing ] hello? hi. hi. how are you? detectives recorded this phone call in which she tells ernie about the video but chooses to embellish the facts a bit. telling him his face was visible.