we have now have a gentleman who is friends with the family, is having an affair with the wife, drives the same type of vehicle that we have on that video next to our victim the morning he s found. reporter: this is now a murder investigation. yes. 100%. reporter: they called linda back down to the station for more questions. they asked me if i knew, you know, what drugs were in tom s system. they asked me, you know, more about the relationship with gil. this they asked me what i knew of that morning. reporter: they also decided to tell her about their suspicions that they believed tom was murdered and her ex-lover, gil, was their prime suspect. i found it hard to accept because in my mind, he loved us. he loved me. he loved tom. would he do that? would he do something like that? reporter: was a part of you saying, oh, he couldn t have done this ? when i first found out about
felt, i don t wanna use the word good, but you got it off your chest, you weren t carrying yeah. around this secret anymore? it did. because then, because then at least i could talk to tom about it. at one point he said to me, linda, i can see he has some kind of hold of you. he s like, i see it. and he did. reporter: and linda told us what detectives had found so hard to believe. how did it affect tom, the fact that it was gilberto, and he was friends with both of you? strangely enough, they still continued to be friends. that is so hard to grasp. i know it is. but they did. they cared, they cared about each other. they were, like, buddies. tom would invite him over for sunday dinners. i know it sounds nuts. yeah. i know it does. a little bit. yeah. i i know. and what are how are you handling that? i mean i m just, like, in the middle, like, what do i do? you re the object of both of their affection.
giants games. and like tom, gil was a hands-on dad. he went to all his son s karate classes, where he would see linda. so gil and i would sit next to each other and just talk. and this was, like, three times a week for an hour. what was it about gilberto that you liked? very friendly, very personable. reporter: a year went by before linda says she realized something was happening between them. every time he would leave, he would give me a kiss goodbye and on the lips? for him to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, you know, see ya next week. kinda thing, really wasn t that big of a deal to me. like, it was kind of his culture but then as the weeks started goin by, and i noticed when i was leaving, the kiss was no longer on the cheek. so i would go back to my car, like, was that an accident? lingering or just quick? no, fairly quick. reporter: linda said nothing
i have nothing to do with whatever was in tom s system. i had nothing to do with any of that. reporter: did you give him a polygraph, as well? we offered. reporter: did he take it? no. the next day after that interview, we were contacted by a lawyer stating that there d be no further contact with his client. reporter: meanwhile, linda was reeling from all that police had told her. from the images of the white s-u-v in the video, to the drug in her husband s system that a dentist like gil would have access to. like investigators, she now believed her lover had killed her husband. i didn t ever wanna s speak to him again. reporter: but saugerties is a small place, and within days linda says she found gil waiting for her outside a chinese restaurant. he s sittin in the parkin lot and gets out of his car and starts screamin at me and we d get in a huge fight. and he s, like, they re tryin to pin this on me and they say you were involved. and i m, like, i wasn t. yo
mom, shunned by her husband s family and eagerly waiting for a break in the case. reporter: a lot of time passed without an arrest. torturous. reporter: every day are you wondering, is today the day or is it never going to happen ? you would kind of get through a point where you d say, okay, we re going to live our lives and when it happens, it happens, you know? and then they d need something from me. and i d get pulled back in again. reporter: one of those times police met with linda to explain there was a problem with the original autopsy. turns out it was incomplete because back then, no one suspected poisoning. many samples like the contents of tom s stomach that might have proved midazolam as the actual cause of death weren t saved for testing. so the d-a s office decided to do something radical. he said, we need to exhume tom s body tomorrow. i just started sobbing. and i was, like, oh my god.