matter of hours really, to solve the mystery of who and what caused this crash. in fact, the highway patrol officers who raced to this scene in the construction zone believed that justine winter s car was the one that crossed the center line and smashed into erin thompson s car. but the worst of it, the inconceivable part was, at least as investigators told flathead county attorney ed corrigan, this was not an accident at all. what was your first reaction? what did you think? nuts. this is the last thing i wanted, was to have to take a double fatality and have to now treat it as a homicide. homicide? yes. right there in justine s car officers found what amounted to a minute-by-minute narrative of the events leading up to the
march 19, 2009. night fell heavy in montana s flathead valley. something off that night. something wrong. at mary and randy winters house, anxiety spiked. where was she? it just felt like something was not right. it s hard to explain that there s something not normal. you could set your clock by their daughter justine. that reliable. but a new driver, too, just 16, due home at 8:00 from her boyfriend s house. and though she wasn t very late, the feelings seeped in like a poison. something wrong. i called her starting about 5 after 8:00 and no answer. called the house where she was at, and they said she had left 15 minutes before that. i was thinking she went off the road between their house and us. not far away, another family,
agreed. justine winter s car encroached into the northbound lane striking mrs. thompson s vehicle. but what evidence was there that justine had done it, as the law says, purposefully? investigators pulled the so-called black box out of justine s pontiac, analyzed the data, and found another sign that pointed to suicide. she had taken off her seat belt. the black box also recorded speed, acceleration, and braking and found that justine was accelerating, flooring it so to speak, in the five seconds before the crash, speeding up from 81 to 86 miles an hour before hitting the brakes at the last second. she did not swerve. and she drove head-on into that other vehicle. to back it up, prosecutors pulled the speedometer from
took responsibility for the act with which she was charged. they saw that as a way to work forgiveness. most people around town thought that was a fine idea. but from justine and her family? just an awkward silence. and then early one morning in the fall of 2010, an entirely unexpected knock at the door took emotions to a whole new level. this private investigator just hands me these papers like he s serving me papers. you know, it says they re suing erin s estate. they re suing you? suing me. for her pain and suffering. it was true. in a legal preemptive strike, justine winter s attorneys had filed a lawsuit on her behalf against erin s estate as well as three companies in charge of the construction zone where the crash occurred. the lawsuit claimed erin had negligently operated her car resulting in the collision and
and her eyes just went, poof! that was just like the most incredible feeling of, she s there, she s in there, and your heart s just beating. it was days later before justine could understand what was going on around her, but the news had to be faced eventually. and so, when she seemed ready, they told her. when you told her what happened in the accident and how those other people had died, how did she react to that? it was very emotional for her. it was very devastating. and then what was discovered was, well, quite frankly unimaginable. for, in the middle of that river of tears, relief on the one side, abject grief on the other, there was an undertow, a twist nobody saw coming. for, while justine spent 45 days in the hospital recuperating and months more here at home in montana healing, it didn t take investigators very long at all,