stunned, and then furious. and now my daughter, who is the perfect victim for someone like jermeir stroud, has now been convicted of a murder that he committed. of course, miss smith s family is still in pain, too, i m sure. and we prayed for them constantly. they ve lost a child, but so have we. reporter: and now, nearly five years after that verdict have a seat. reporter: shannon herself has a lot more to say about jermeir stroud and about what happened the day denita died. her very first interview. i don t know jermeir but the voice on the tapes does not sound to me like him. it s him. that s all i can tell you. it s him. and believe it or not, denita s mother has an apology for shannon. i know that was wrong, and i never should have said it.
he said she did it. she was saying he did it. shannon had been charged with murdering smith and that s when she shared a new version of events claiming he was the real killer. authorities were intrigued but skeptical. shannon captured a series of recordings that she was sure proved her innocence. what would investigators make of this tale of the tape? it is rare for women to murder. more often they convince their men to do it for them, a kind of homicidal honey-do list. that was exactly what investigators were debating in june 2007. it had been six months since denita smith s murder. and sitting on the desk of assistant d.a. david saacks was a series of phone recordings