this time it happened at sandra s preliminary hearing. judge ruled there wasn t enough evidence to hold her. she was free to go. oh, i sobbed all the way home. i don t know how i made it back to marietta from santa ana. reporter: only brett schrauben was to face a murder trial. it was the summer of 2006, eight years after jack jessee s murder. and justice? not yet, if ever. coming up finally, the break detectives had been waiting for. she wanted jack dead. she wanted it done at the house and make it look like a robbery. the information that he provided would blow the case wide open. until something slammed it shut again. when deadly conspiracy continues. ve me. but you can believe this, real esurance employee nancy abraham. look her up online. esurance, it s surprisingly painless.
a get your questions answered by awesome experts store. it s a now there s one store that connects your life like never before store. the xfinity store is here. and it s simple, easy, awesome. welcome back. much had changed for the jessee clan in the years since jack jessee had been stabbed to death. his wife sandra had moved to arizona to be near her son, tom. jack s murder investigation, once big news in the little town of placentia, had gone cold. but now there was a new detective on the case and as he began to dig, he uncovered what looked like a clue. a single name scrawled on a slip of paper. could this be the key to finding jack s killer? here s keith morrison. reporter: after five years
crime, which was his daughter cheryl. the daughter, we had to look at her as a potential suspect. she was the one who found him. back at the station, wyatt interviewed all of jack s relatives, including cheryl and jack s wife sandra, who hadn t been missing at all, just out on a shopping trip. mrs. jesse came to the station with us voluntarily. told us she wanted to cooperate and wanted to help solve the murder of her husband. and she told him about life with jack, married 14 years, blended family, four kids between them. jack was a patriarch in the jesse clan, she said, a teddy bear of a man. well-liked and well to do. jack was a very, very loving person who doted on his children, stepchildren, grandchildren. but jack was ill. housebound after colon cancer surgery. sandra told the detectives she had been running a bit of a mercy mission for jack and dawdled too long at the mall. five minutes one direction, five minutes the other, traffic, so maybe on the road a total of
and a string of homicide detectives, the jack jessee murder case had become a game to avoid. then one day the whole impossible business was handed off to tom dove. i can t tell you how many times that i thought, just move on. give up. move on. reporter: there was no hope of any new evidence, of course, like fingerprints or dna. there was just the infuriating puzzle which had become more difficult with each passing year. after i reviewed the case, i had no feeling for the family, no feeling for jack jessee. reporter: so to get his head in the game, dove met with the people closest to jack. like his brother david. and when i met with david, he inspired me. his determination not to let the love for his brother go was a big motivating factor. reporter: but david also had some provocative information. something jack told him after arguing with sandra about moving to arizona. if anything ever happens to
matter of proving it is a different story. until someone found the perfect bait. hey, dude, it s me. you need to [ bleep ] call me asap. could they set the perfect trap? these people might literally get away with murder. deadly conspiracy. hello and welcome to date line: extra. i m craig melvin. with doting grandfather jack jesse at the helm, his big and blended california family seemed like one big happy bunch, then jack was found stabbed to death in his living room and police wondered if the jesses 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 is keith morrison. the same is called mousetrap. a little ball on its track, the