beautiful, wonderful, smart. never, never, ever said anything bad about her. never. reporter: seemed to be in love? he was. he was totally totally crazy about her. reporter: it was linda s father, wally opdycke, who owned kiket island. mark and linda lived there on wally s island and grew their very successful business together. and then in 2002, they made their union permanent. an intimate wedding ceremony in the presidential suite of the las vegas four seasons. here was wally opdycke toasting his new son-in-law. mark, welcome to the opdycke family. reporter: but maybe nothing is forever. it was just three years later when linda told the employees she was taking an extended vacation. alone. and that vacation kept extending and extending, and she just never came back. reporter: so separation. there was a brief affair. linda with one of mark s best
and he responded, according to her, by sending her a form canceling her health insurance, which was still in his name, controlling, threatening, suggested oakes lawyer. mark stover has scrawled across the front, next time do not call the cops on the guy that controls your health care. keith morrison: and then the defense attorney showed the jury this video from linda s surveillance cameras. in the middle of the night, here s a man the defense claimed is mark stover creeping around linda s house. corbin volluz: what you see is mark stover walking up the driveway and under her house, out of view of the camera. keith morrison: but that wasn t all. there was a series of odd and threatening voicemail messages, said the defense, many with a similar theme. mark seemed strangely obsessed with getting his wedding photos back from linda, just one of many transcripts of these calls the attorney read from.
keith morrison: detective dan luvera testified the vehicle spent about 16 minutes back there by the casino, out of range of the camera, on a road that leads to this channel, open water, and this dilapidated dock. later, detectives and divers searched but didn t find a darn thing. didn t find a darned thing. then, of course, there was one other key witness for the prosecution, jennifer thompson, michiel oakes ex-wife. remember, she d claimed that michiel oakes told her he had been offered a job to take out an ex-husband, that he had been asked by a father of someone named linda, and that jennifer was convinced that meant this was a killing for hire. but because that alleged conversation took place when jennifer and michiel oakes were married, that made it privileged. couldn t be used in court. the prosecution would have to make do with just part of jennifer s story. the judge would not allow her face to be filmed in court as she told the jury about her visit
but this is assuming that mr. stover is taking the time not to chase you. i m very fast. keith morrison: and finally, the prosecutor asked, if he was so afraid of mark stover, why not tell someone? why go over to his house? you never took one step to enlist anyone s aid. that is correct. and you walked into mr. stover s house on october 28th. i did. and he tried to kill you. that is correct. and you did nothing beforehand to try to avoid that. i think i did a lot to try to avoid it. keith morrison: what the jury made of the story, no one knew. but wait. the defense wasn t quite done. there was one more person, very important to all of this, who until mid-trial had refused to say one word in public, the woman at the center of it all, linda opdycke miss opdycke, raise your right hand.
and i got my car as close to that as possible and muscled him out and dropped him in the water. keith morrison: an area investigators had searched but never found anything. then, he said, he drove across the state not to his kids, but to linda s house, though he insisted he did not tell her any of what just happened, didn t tell her what he d done. i just said i had a really bad day. and when the police showed up the next night, he admitted, he did try to throw out some evidence. what was your intent? i needed i needed one more day. i didn t i was trying not to get arrested just yet. keith morrison: but of course, he was arrested and charged. and now, it was prosecutor rich weyrich s turn to challenge his story about, for example, that morning at mark stover s house. did you hear the gun go off? you know, i don t recall anything really. who pulled the trigger? i believe i did. rich weyrich: ok.