but he was the type of guy that could take bad luck and turn it into fortune. reporter: so most everyone in the building seemed to be living large in those good old premeltdown days when into the mix was introduced a new ingredient. a businessman with real money. it was noefb ak, said bianca, who did the introductions. christopher had an office about two or three blocks from here. and there was a starbucks i had always went to. and he went over there and novak was there with ken dolezsar and he introduced them. reporter: ken dolezsar lived in a wealthy enclave just south of salt lake city. a very nice guy by all accounts with a big extended family and money to invest. truckloads of money. he d already loaned novak 1.85 million to make a movie about his prison consulting business. and soon ken and chris began working on a real estate deal. they spoke sometimes and they had contacts back and forth. i m really i m a girl.
if so, they now had his voice because earlier that caller left this phone message. hey, ken, this is robert. i talked to dave. he said when you get to reporter: detectives traced the cell and went to the store where someone bought it. this phone was purchased with cash with no identifying information provided to the carrier. reporter: but the family did have a suggestion for the detectives, something they actually agreed on. he should look carefully at a man named david novak. yes, that david novak. remember novak s consulting business for prison-pound executives? guess what? dee mower was incarcerated in federal prison. reporter: tax fraud. ken s wealthy wife dee was novak s client. that s why ken dolezsar knew ken novak. and something made ken s relatives suspicious. so detectives drove over to the loft where they spoke with mr. novak.
he was. i m satisfied with that. reporter: chris wright is serving a sentence of 15 to life. he is preparing an appeal, hoping for a new trial. and david novak? he s not been charged with or accused by the police of anything. though whether or not authorities want to talk to him is less clear. you know where he is? i don t know where he is, no. reporter: are your people trying to track him down? well part of the rules i m constrained by is i don t speak with ongoing investigation ors the existence of ongoing investigations. reporter: but if law enforcement is mum about david novak, ken dolezsar s widow is not. out of prison since 2008, dee mower has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against novak. a suit that alleges a third theory that novak paid chris wright $25,000 to kill ken dolezsar. novak has yet to answer the
he faked his death in order to avoid insurance audit. that was not a crime of passion. that was a crime of calculation. reporter: or so the loft friends believed. and if that was true, what might he have done here in salt lake? their suspicion only grew when the friends found out novak left town without mentioning it was he who fingered chris in that surveillance photo. did he ever tell you that i identified christopher? no, no. reporter: that prepaid cell phone was the very clue that led police to chris. a phone which chris bought, said bianca, after novak assured him novak said that this guy routinely used these throw-away phones. reporter: what s more, chris could not have left that voice mail because, by the time of the murder, she says, he d given the phone away. he gave it to novak. reporter: and novak gave it to dolezsar. yes, yes.
john fife of a conversation with novak one night after they dined together. john posed a question. he said, mostly in jest, of course, just hypothetical i said, david, have you ever contemplated committing the perfect murder? and he said yes. the key element to that is making sure that someone is caught and charged for the crime. once they have somebody, they ll stop looking, and that s how you can really get away. reporter: and now novak had taken off. and even though their questions didn t amount to hard evidence, of course, chris defense attorneys wondered as they prepare fofrd the trial, why the police had so readily dismissed novak as a suspect. dismissed him and a few other puzzling discoveries, like the one about ken s widow dee. remember, she was in prison at the time of his murder. when she first talked to police, she told them she had no idea her husband had a meeting the morning of his murder.