save christi? not chris, said the prosecutor, but his daughter. she called 911. she helped him get the body out of the spa. she is the only one who did chest compressions. he had no interest in truly helping his wife. a matter of opinion, of course, but prosecutor strunsky poked around in chris hall s past as a policeman, and what did he find? this man had an uncanny ability to fabricate stories. seven years earlier, while hall was chief of police in cascade, idaho, he was charged and convicted of misuse of money, embezzled money, spent time in jail. a white collar crime, hardly murder. but what struck the prosecutor is that he says hall tried to cover it up. to plan a fraud, not just lie about it but lie about it effectively. i think it was very telling about who we were dealing with. suddenly the prosecutor s prospects were looking better. at the trial, he made lindsay patterson his star witness, of course. it was her story, after all,
if true and it was only an if it might well persuade a jury. but also prosecutor strunsky needed to explain what lindsay patterson saw or didn t see. why didn t she see cristi s drowned body when she peeked over the wall a second time? we were not able to explain to the jury why she didn t see cristi at that point. and i think that allowed the defense to make the argument that cristi hall was inside. the prosecution hired a water expert to do a re-creation of the halls spa. andrea zafaris has been assisting law enforcement nationwide in drowning investigations for the past 20 years. she got in the spa while strunsky videotaped from the spot where lindsay was watching. from the center of the pool and towards where lindsay was standing, anywhere i was laying you could not be seen from lindsay s viewpoint. so once i sank below the surface and hit that bottom, you could not see me at all from lindsay s viewpoint. now the prosecution was ready. in may 2011, one year after e
about who we were dealing with. suddenly the prosecutor s prospects were looking better. at the trial, he made lindsay patterson his star witness, of course. it was her story, after all, that got the whole thing started. but, almost as important, he called the riverside county medical examiner who testified that those lacerations on christi s head could not, in his opinion, have been the result of a single accidental fall and the m.e. argued that the particular type of bruising on christi s face and body was a hallmark of homicide. sure. totality of injuries were not consistent with somebody slipping and falling and then a rescue attempt. and there was a clump of hair in the bottom of the spa, still intwined with a broken plastic hair clip. that, said the prosecutor, could only have come from a violent struggle. when you lose that amount of hair, it s not reasonableably explained by any kind of fall. reporter: there were some minor hiccups in the case. lindsay patterson, fo