call. reporter: aaron wyatt was the sole homicide detective. what did the crime scene itself look like? it was pretty bloody. the kind of thing that might happen if it was a hope invasion, robbery, or something? or assault between people who knew each look at her as a potent she was the one who found him. reporter: back at the station, wyatt interviewed all of jack s relativelies, including cheryl, and jack s wife sandra, who hadn t been missing at all, just out on a shopping trip. mrs. jessee came to the station with us voluntarily, told us she would cooperate, wanted to help us solve the murder of her husband. reporter: she told him about life with jack, married 14 years, blended family, four kids between them. jack was a patriarch in the jessee clan, she said, a teddy bear of a man, well liked, well to do. jack was a very, very loving person who doted on his children, doted on his stepchildren, doted on his grandchildren. reporter: jack was ill. housebound after c
heard what he wanted in order to get his cooperation? i thought it was outrageous. but it s not a perfect world. and the people who are likely to have some of the best, most detailed information about what takes place inside a conspiracy is a coconspirator. we needed brett schrauben. so what was the story? the story was a pretty pretty detailed and amazing story. reporter: schrauben described the whole affair on tape, laid it out in all its chilling tale. anatomy of a murder. the conspiracy was launched with a phone call from tom. he told me he d offer $50,000 to kill his dad. reporter: he met with sandra in a parking lot. she gave him a $5,000 deposit. she wanted jack dead and she wanted it at the house and to look like a robbery. she told me she would leave for x amount of time and that s when it would need to be done. reporter: schrauben said he hired his good friend, a local drifter, to be the getaway driver. and on the afternoon of august 13th, 1998, while sandra
is. just a few months before the murder when jack was diagnosed with colon cancer. a shock, of course. but one of two shocks for sandra. and to those around her, the second seemed somehow worse. her beloved son, tom, up and moved to arizona. and she was flipping out about it. yeah. just she had to go there. reporter: she demanded jack move to arizona too. that woman was off her rocker. her tone was just scary. it was like somebody else s voice coming out of her. reporter: but surely that and tom dove says to me, listen, buddy, nobody likes me in my department.
get away with murder. deadly conspiracy. hello and welcome to dateline extra. i m craig melvin. with doting grandfather jack jessee at the helm his big and blended california family seemed like one happy bunch. then jack was found stabbed to death in his living room and police wondered if the jessees weren t as close as they seemed. the case went unsolved for years until an ace detective hatched an unconventional plan to catch jack s killers. here s keith morrison. reporter: the game is called mousetrap. a little ball on its track. the tiny taunting mice which, unless every lever works in unison, will not be caught. and how often things go wrong to allow the mice to get away. so odd that what really happened
surgery. sandra told the detectives she d been running a bit of a mercy mission for jack and dawdled too long at the mall. five minutes one direction, five minutes in traffic, maybe i was on the road almost 15 minutes she was very, very specific about where she had gone, at what times, and why she had gone there. reporter: as for cheryl, she told detectives she d do anything to find out what happened to her dad in those 15 minutes she was away from the house. her actions were very, very consistent with somebody who understands, the police are looking at me right now, i know i didn t do anything, i m going to do everything i can and give full disclosure. the day after the jack jessee murder, a guy walked into a bar, sat down on the barstool, and told the bartender a story about how the murder happened, about who did it, about what the