and this is dateline! this is a tragedy on top of a tragedy now. it happened so quickly. their parents in the backyard spa. their mom in trouble. my dad just panicked. a sudden slip. a fatal fall. you re losing your mother. you re watching her go right in front of you. someone else was watching her. a curious neighbor. it was scary. the look on his face was almost undescribable. what had she seen? was this drowning really an accident? she s got a huge gash on her head, something like that is not consistent with just falling down. a husband and father is suddenly under suspicion. he s crying and we re crying. he said, they think i hurt mom. three daughters stand by their dad, and one prosecutor stands firm. he s holding his wife of almost three decades under the water. my job is to get justice for cristi hall. was it murder? hello and welcome to dateline a young woman peers into her neighbor s yard and sees something for a few mysterious seconds, a
and she was still on the phone with 911 when chris hall came outside and found his wife s body floating in the spa and called out for courtney. investigator tom. i heard it best described during the trial as a cosmic coincidence that someone could see something that they perceived to be more than just some kind of kinky action in a jacuzzi in the morning, and then that actually turn out to be true, that a woman was actually drowned in that spa. that is not a coincidence. that is what she saw. the prosecution s theory? somehow, sitting in that spa that morning, chris was overcome by some private fury, who knows what. the hidden violence, is what strunsky called it. and then killed his spouse when he thought nobody was looking. chris hall ambushed his wife, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head twice into the
Editor’s note: It is the long-standing policy of the Crossville Chronicle not to publish the name of victims in sexual assault cases or information that would lead to the identity