from miss ryan i didn t think they were gonna charge her. you know, from the defendant the facts are always a little different. i believed her. she seemed very believable. cara and her attorney waited to see what would come next. and meanwhile, detectives continued their investigation. one thing that struck them was the reaction of j.j. s family and friends. daughter meghan. i said, was it her? and they said, was it who? i said, was it cara? and they said, yes. and my whole world crumbled. girlfriend lonnie lancto. my very first words were, it was a setup. she set him up. j.j. s older brothers rick and bill rush. i told him to take the guns out of the house, cause that s how much i did not trust her. my first words were, that right out of my mouth without even hesitation, because i knew in my heart that this was not gonna be an accident.
more evidence. soon after the murder police asked j.j. s daughter meghan to call cara. they recorded the call. it too was played for the jury. why did you shoot him though? i didn t know if it was him coming back to kill me like he said he would or if it was a stranger coming in and that s what he always said, if anyone came in the house unannounced, to shoot to kill. the monotone, the you know, the lack of sympathy. how are you doing? horrible. i m sorry. i don t know what to say. she s talking to the daughter of the man she just shot and killed. the jury also saw these selfies from cara s phone, they were taken three days after the shooting. she just killed her lover of so many years and here she is out drinking. it seemed very odd. and remember all those stories about cara s control over j.j.?
she was simply scared and fired. somebody was in my house that i didn t expect to be in it. but see how you re explaining this now to me? cara, you re telling me the condition he was in, what what jay had done, what what jay had threatened to do. but then it goes to someone was in my house. i i mean, it it can t be both. did you think this was jay or did you think this was a masked marauder breaking i thought into your home? i was going to die. what made you think that? somebody was in my home. whether it was jay or jack the ripper, i was scared. there were more variations. the door was locked, or it wasn t. j.j. would always call her before he came over, but this time didn t. the detectives counted them all up. cara s versions of what happened in this tiny bedroom. they got to ten, ten different stories. as you looked at those different stories, what did you think you were dealing with here? if you are in a situation that calls for self-defense, and if
that s nowhere near my house and i say, the next man i walk into he s the one. yeah. and it ends up being j.j. it wasn t maybe in the movies, i guess, that might happen. calculating, said the detectives. and in keeping. a lot of the description to us of their relationship was she was more controlling. and especially, without exception she controlled the money. when j.j. retired from the police department, he collected a pension as well as his salary at the medical examiner s office. but he never saw any of the money. both checks went directly into a bank account controlled only by cara. all he did was deposit his checks. he couldn t tell you how much they even were. he was very controlled. he couldn t go out to lunch without bringing home a receipt.
opening statements began. the strategy, at least. attorney rodger futerman, remember, had put cara through a couple of mock trials and discovered the majority of women convicted her, and the majority of men didn t, and the women s rationale was all emotionally based. they wanted to hear much more emotion in her. they want to hear her crying. and this client is not like that. that s not her. it s just not how she is. so futerman worked hard to ensure there were mostly males in the jury. in florida, second degree murder cases have six-person juries, and he succeeded. 5 of the 6 were men. we believed the men wouldn t be focused on the emotion, but more on the facts. what else did you look for in the jury? gun owners. people that were not afraid to shoot someone if they came into their house unannounced, and almost every one of our jurors had a gun, and was not afraid to use it. once the trial began, futerman told those jurors that cara had no choice but to use her gun to