to more than one billion. friday s drawing was the fifth largest in u.s. history. and real housewives of salt lake city has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for a multi marketing elderly s game that defied people out of their savings. she returns to prison february 17th. now back to dateline! ck to dateline i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales. and this is dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m natalie morales. what happened to michele neurauter? a sharp-eyed detective spotted signs of a struggle in michele s bedroom. now investigators suspect that her death had been staged to look like a suicide. they were eager to have another chat with michele s ex-husband, lloyd. meanwhile, a distraught family member was about to gets a startling view into michele s final years. here again is dennis murphy with the ultimatum.
was among the first on the scene, thought not so fast. my gut was telling me there s something wrong here. it wasn t just cop intuition. there was physical evidence in his experience inconsistent with a suicide. starting with a position of the thin nylon rope on michele s body. the way that it went around her chin did not seem consistent with a hanging. he noticed wounds on michele s head, too. on her face it looks like scratch marks, like maybe she s pulling at whatever is around her neck, trying to get it off. and then there was michele s friend rose. she rushed up to the scene with something urgent to say. apparent suicide. did that make any sense to you? no. she had told me, she s like i know her friends, she would never do this to herself. we were just with her the other night. we were having a great time. she wouldn t do this. it s not exactly evidence, but it s a piece. it s not evidence at that point. and when police formally interviewed the friends she
like commandos synchronising their watches they swooped down. nice to meet you. in new jersey, two fbi agents appeared at lloyd s workplace. he agreed to meet with them in a conference room. the agents gave him an update on the case. the medical examiner determined it to be a homicide, not a suicide. my god. and in conjunction with that, i want to ask you, did karrie have something to do with her death? no. i just don t think karrie has it in her to kill another person. can you think of something, whether it was things get out of hand. she gets in a fight. it s a self-defense thing? i mean, can you see that happening with karrie? it s hard to imagine. but can i picture it? i can. and instead of jumping and saying no, this is my daughter, she wouldn t do something like that. but can i picture it? it s the longest pause in the entire time he talked. i can.
dad, lloyd neurauter. every saturday he d not only drive his daughter to class in corning, new york. he d stay to help out. he was the only father there that was bringing the kids in the morning at that time. mena s mom, cynthia, would see him on those saturdays but rarely his wife. instead of doing the children s hair at home, he would always sort of bring them there and brush their hair out and put these buns together. with some skill and art? yes. and he definitely enjoyed the admiration of the other mothers around him. as their daughters rehearsed for the annual nutcracker, cynthia and another friend, rose coluccio, became friendly with lloyd. lloyd was, i would say eccentric. always the center of attention. of course we eventually asked about his wife, and he said that saturday was really her day off. lloyd s wife, michele, had a full plate of her own. she had a master s degree in literature but chose to be a full-time mom. home-schooling their kids and taking an
with kevin, and karrie and i very much bonded. but as with so many people, the neurauter family ran into lean times, diminished prospects during the great recession. lloyd moved out of state to find work as an engineer. what happened is lloyd, it was a tough time in corning, new york, and he took a job in new jersey. michele stayed behind with the girls out in the country in corning. but the separation put a strain on the marriage, and in time michele and lloyd divorced. she was always positive and going to make the most of everything, and then one day out of the blue she called me and said we re divorced. like okay. right, it was very random. after the divorce, michele sold the farm and the kids split up. the oldest went to live with her dad in new jersey, while karrie and the youngest daughter stayed in corning with mom in a new house. but the divorce was hard on everyone.