reporter: so, had the insurance paid out or hadn t it? sechez took another look, a much harder look at the money trail. not only was the insurance paid out, but it was paid to the two daughters who then transferred it to several accounts, including wire transfers to mr. democker s parents account in new york, who then wire transferred it back to mr. democker s defense team. reporter: remember steve democker was a highly-paid financial adviser. the prosecutors now believed he was using that expertise to try to get away with murder. here is a person that murdered his ex-wife then collected her life insurance of over $750,000 and is using that life insurance to pay his defense team in the murder prosecution. so then prosecutors added fraud to the charges steve was facing.
reporter: mornings dawn cooler in the arizona mountains, the summer flags in the town square were stored away for another year. and the murder trial of steve democker ticked into its fifth, fitful month. the prosecution had amounted to circumstantial bits and pieces to that point. and investigator mike sechez knew that steve was likely to mount a strong defense. mr. democker is a very intelligent individual. mm-hm. but he s also a very narcissistic personality. you put those together and you can make it difficult to solve a crime. narcissistic? that s what it seemed like to the detective. also seemed to him like steve s girlfriend, renee girard, was protecting him. knew more than she was telling. then renee broke it off with steve. and sechez interviewed her one more time.
the mysterious dna found under carol s fingernails after she was murdered. one thing for sure, it was not steve. we exhausted so many man hours and looked at any and all alternatives. reporter: and then it was during the long months of waiting for a new trial to begin, the prosecution had an idea. what if that 603 sample was a simple mistake. what if something just got mixed up in the lab? so investigator mike sechez looked up the autopsy done just before carol s. and submitted a sample from that for re-testing. and? nearly three years after carol s murder, a call from the crime lab. the sample dna that we sent had matched the dna under carol kennedy s fingernails. we finally were able to discover and verify who mr. 603 is. reporter: mr. 603, it turned out, was another dead soul, the man lying on the autopsy table
window, saw a bookcase toppled over, and blood. everywhere. that s when investigator mike sechez was pulled into the strangest case of his career. the kind of thing he had moved to prescott to avoid. it s a quaint little community nestled in the pines and not a whole lot of crime, especially from what i was used to. reporter: sechez put in 27 years in the phoenix police. this job with the yavapai county attorney s office was supposed to be an escape from big city crime. and here he was, middle of a july night, looking at one very brutal homicide. what did it look like? it was certainly a gruesome scene. not only a large of amount of blood on carol s body but also on the furniture that was nearby, blood spatter that had been cast off in on to the walls
steve s sister sharon, he d heard that story from an inmate in that air-vent conversation and desperately wanted to get the story out, and investigated. the death penalty was still on the table. so, steve was terrified. we were terrified. i can certainly appreciate when you re terrified, maybe you do some stupid things. well, it s when you start making mistakes, and that was a doozy of a mistake. uh-huh. reporter: and uncovering that fraud led investigators to what they thought was another, even bigger one. remember carol s life insurance money? $750,000 worth. steve s defense attorney talked about it during his opening statement. he disclaimed, he signed over any interest to the girls and the money was paid out to the girls. that s what happened in this case. reporter: that statement caught investigator mike sechez by surprise. we had made contact with the life insurance company several times throughout the investigation and we had been informed that the life insurance h