eyeball, and she still has her hands over her face. and he says, ma am, did you hear a shot or something? and she shakes her head up and down yes. and he says, where d it come from? and she points her head in one direction and he says, why are you nervous? and she s like, you heard the shot. 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?
what might have just happened there? i didn t see anyone. just to hear how she presented the information, her poise and her demeanor and all that kind of stuff, she s a credible witness. i mean, she tells a credible story. reporter: and the defense did have those phone conversations shannon recorded in which she insists jermeir threatened her and incriminated himself. you know i already got away with murder once. you think i can t do it again? i m sure you can. reporter: but shannon s defense attorney ultimately chose not to play them. instead they were presented by the prosecution as proof that shannon s story was all one big lie. you going to kill me, too? you keep talking, you know i will. reporter: the jury had already heard jermeir testify with his deep, gravely voice. it s possible, but i don t recall how many times i called. reporter: now they listened
he said, yep, that s the vehicle that i saw. reporter: and that wasn t the only thing the witness noticed, says assistant d.a. david saacks. he remembers a patch or some kind of something, you know, on the shirt. reporter: a patch like on the uniform shannon wore as a 911 dispatcher. and there was more. investigators discovered shannon clocked in at about 10:00 a.m., some two hours after denita smith had been murdered. more than enough time for the 55-mile drive from durham to her job at the 911 center in greensboro. so police obtained a search warrant for shannon s house. and we do find greensboro communication 911 center uniforms. and they are exactly as described by the maintenance supervisor down to the color of the patch and the shape. reporter: you find a gun? no gun was found. no bullets were found. nothing incriminating other than that.
i m not going to do it just because she says she didn t do it. reporter: shannon and her attorney were emphatic that jermeir was the killer and also said that even now, months after the murder, he was making threatening phones calls to shannon, telling her to stay silent about his role. i told them that i m more than willing to look at anything they have if they want to bring me something. but i can t just accept her word for it. that s the problem i m having, i need some kind of proof to back her up. reporter: so the prosecutor challenged shannon, bring me proof. he could not have imagined what was coming next. sex. lies. and audiotape. and maybe shannon crawley s ticket to freedom. a killer conversation. i spent four months in jail because of you, because you lied. i told you to shut the [ bleep ] up. now says shannon s father there s no question his daughter is innocent.
she embodied everything that was positive and about supporting people. reporter: there was no one who didn t like her? right. she was well respected and well loved. reporter: especially by her fiancé, jermeir stroud, who appeared devastated by denita s death. jermeir didn t say anything. jermeir cried. we all cried. he didn t really say a whole lot. reporter: jermeir and denita had met back in college and became the it couple on campus. they had been dating for a few years. and you know, before i even met him denita spoke very highly of him. reporter: what d she say? like he s a gentleman, he s intelligent. he s active, involved, well-rounded, he s kind, he respects me. he protects me. he s loving. reporter: the perfect guy? the perfect guy. the perfect guy. reporter: he was apparently even perfect enough for denita s cautious mother, sharon smith, who came to trust that jermeir was the right guy for her