my first response was, how did he do it. and then he told the cops about his mother. now, you may have a serial killer on your hands. serial killer of spouses. something like that. that was the thought. two wives, one missing, the other dead. and the one thing they had in common was ralph candelario. but suspicion alone wasn t enough. it wasn t proof. so the investigation continued? yes. in an effort to shake him, or maybe even get a confession, they sought help from the one person whose presence back at the hospital made ralph break down and cry. shannon. cbi had me call him, bugged my phone and tried to get him to tell me what happened. she must have been so scared. she was terrified. it was probably one of the hardest things she s ever had to do. ralph? hey, this is shannon. but shannon did it. i ve been waking up having panic attacks. i can t deal with this. i want to know what happened.
stories, what are you hiding? investigators wondering the same thing, tried to find answers in the evidence. on a laptop they found hits for, match.com, just days before the murder. somebody had been visiting the site at least. that would have been our suspicion. it s going to be either pam or ralph. right. and then they found ralph s real life mistress. yes, he had one. and she said they carried on for most of the time he was married to pam. but now shannon thought back to the last time she saw her mother. because i asked her if she was happy. what did she say? she realized that she had given up her family, because she had destroyed this relationship with me and kelsey, and she s gotten into this new marriage, telling me that she just wasn t as happy as she should have been. lots of circumstantial
evidence, almost enough. not quite. and then the antique rugs. i was searching the kitchen area and found in the washing machine two small size rugs. and the rugs were still very wet. and they were balled up to one side. but when ralph saw the rugs during a walk-through with the police, he didn t seem to recognize them. i mean, i ve never seen these rugs. the minute we heard he had never seen them, we knew the rugs had importance. we just didn t know how. they sent the rugs to the lab. and months later they heard back. what did you find when you tested them? pam s blood was found on the rugs. they had caught ralph in an obvious lie. he must have put those rugs into the machine himself, hoping to wash away the evidence. finally they had enough. almost nine months after pam s death, officers went to the antique store with an arrest warrant. that s when we learned that
else s prints would be on the knobs of the drawers. have you ever heard of gloves with l.e.d. lights? we researched it, because i had never heard of that. they do exist. in the letter, ralph also changed the time of pam s death, backed it up by more than 24 hours. why? could that perhaps have been a response to this investigator s challenge? she didn t die at 3:00 in the morning. it had to be earlier than that. we ll know after today. we ll know that. okay. and that s going to come back to you. okay. but that s when ralph reported the invaders were in his house just a few hours. now in his letter, he remembered the ordeal lasting nearly two days. and do you remember we mentioned it a while back that broken glass in the back door? the thing was, the glass fell out the door, not in, as you would expect it would do if
shannon who had been angry at ralph for not protecting her mother, read the letter and began to have thoughts that were much more disturbing. i didn t get through more than a page and a half and i threw it, and i said, this is bull [ bleep ]. i said, this is the worst i could barely stomach to finish it. and aaron, shannon s ex-husband, ralph s son? aaron went to a very dark place indeed. oh, you have no idea. you were 11 years old when your mother disappeared. yes. coming up, secrets in the basement. i had been going through some of my dad s stuff in the basement and found a box of stuff that supposedly she had taken with her. when dateline continues. how do i check my credit score? credit karma. don t worry, it s free.