keith morrison: sometimes the worst thing a person can do. is try to influence his own fate. as michael oakes sat in the back of a police car, under arrest on suspicion of the murder of dog whisper, mark stover, he was given an unusual opportunity. he was allowed to make several calls from his cell phone. he decided, for reasons of his own, to place one of them to a woman named jennifer thompson, his ex-wife. why? well, we can only speculate that the result of that call may have been the very opposite of what he intended. here s what happened. not long after oakes phoned her from the police car, jennifer placed a call of her own to the county jail. she asked to speak to an investigator. and not long after that call, this was the story she told in an audio taped interview. on october 24, 2009, four days before mark stover disappeared,
immediately started trying to find out who this michael oakes guy was that was seen behind the grange by the two witnesses. keith morrison: once police had michael oak s id, they discovered he was spending time with linda opdycke, mark s ex-wife. so now, two officers from the okanagan county sheriff s department paid a visit at linda s house here in winthrop, washington. and sure enough, there was michael oakes suv in her driveway. once in the house, the officers asked to speak to oakes. he agreed, but then he said he needed to find his pills. he became agitated or frustrated. kept on asking for his medication. and the chief, not knowing if michael was having some sort of a medical issue, allowed him to look around for his medication. keith morrison: and while supposedly hunting for pills michael then secretly snuck out the basement area of the house and went to his vehicle.
who until mid-trial had refused to say one word in public, the woman at the center of it all, linda opdycke miss opdycke, raise your right hand. keith morrison: whose long silence was about to end. coming up, and end it would, with a bang, with stories of who she said was the real mark stover. and he had a pistol in his hand and laid it on the pillow next to my head. i see mark on a hillside behind my house. he s looking through the scope, pointing the rifle at me. keith morrison: when dateline continues. the beautiful thing about care, is knowing that it s always there.
the person who s dead here is mark stover. yeah. he s the one against whom the violence was committed. here s something that we ve learned in this country, haven t we, you don t negotiate with terrorists. michiel didn t know that. or michiel felt he could negotiate with terrorists. linda felt she could negotiate with terrorists. the reality is you can t negotiate with a terrorist. and mark stover was a domestic violence terrorist. keith morrison: mark s friends and clients had by now gathered around the courthouse here in mount vernon determined to tell the world, anybody who would listen, that those claims were both unfair and untrue. most of all these reports that we hear are filed by her alone and by her eyewitness alone and absolutely no one else s. so you ve got to weigh that in at some point too, that it doesn t have that much meat to it. woman: i just knew that wasn t true about him. there was there was nothing in him that was malicious or vindictive.
was mark, as clients could clearly tell. he just thought she was beautiful, wonderful, smart. never, never ever said anything bad about her, never. keith morrison: seemed to be in love. he was, he was totally, totally crazy about her. keith morrison: it wasn t his father, wally opdycke, who owned kiket island. mark and linda lived there on wally s island, and grew their very successful business together. and then in 2002, they made their union permanent, an intimate wedding ceremony in the presidential suite of the las vegas four seasons. wally opdycke: mark, welcome to the opdycke family. keith morrison: but maybe nothing is forever. it was just three years later when linda told the employees she was taking an extended vacation, alone. and that vacation kept extending and extending. and she just never came back.