so what was the story? the story was a pretty pretty detailed and amazing story. reporter: schrauben described the whole affair on tape, laid detail. anatomy of a murder. the conspiracy was launched with a phone call from tom. he told me he d offer $50,000 to kill his dad. reporter: he met with sandra in a parking lot. she gave him a $5,000 deposit. she wanted jack dead and she wanted it done at the house and to look like a robbery. she told me she would leave for x amount of time and that s when it would need to be done. reporter: schrauben said he hired his good friend, a local drifter, to be the getaway driver. and on the afternoon of august 13th, 1998, while sandra was out having her nails done, schrauben claimed he and his friend drove to the jessee house to murder jack. i was already having a cold feeling on the way there. by the time i was walking down the street, i was really having cold feet.
realize, this is going to work. we are going to find what we re looking for. reporter: but there was yet again a problem. schrauben s phone was in another name. to get a wiretap, he would have to prove schraben was the primary user. what we ended up having to do was literally follow brett schrauben around until we saw him on his telephone. we later took that even further in that i went into the target store that he was working at one day. i noticed he was stocking shelves in a certain section of the store so i started randomly picking up items and looking like i was interested. at that point i called on my cellular phone to one of my other investigators outside and said, put a call in now to the phone. i heard him answer the phone. so i was able to say that is his phone, he talks on it. we ve put the phone in his hand. reporter: but as they continue to sift through trash they find something more important than the phone bill, something quite unexpected. this day planner.
it was a ridiculous feeling. you can t even put it into words. just soul-wrenching. schrauben testified against them. in court it was argued sandra had a variety of motives for killing jack. she wanted his money before medical bills ate up their savings. and she couldn t bear being away from her son tom. do you think the case had gone well? i thought the case had gone extremely well. except once again that little ball came off the track. what happened? dateline returns after the break. that needs to change. so, i did something. i created a black business accelerator at amazon. and now we have a program that s dedicated to making tomorrow a better day for black businesses. i am tiffany. and this is just the beginning.
i got in the house, i m standing in the garage now. i put on a rubber glove. and reach inside the door and unlocked it and shut it. i was chicken. i couldn t do it. i called tom. i told tom, the door s locked. and he said he would call his mom and get back to me. reporter: and according to schrauben, tom called back within minutes with a backup plan. he told me his mom was going to go out that night and that they needed it to happen tonight because his mom can t take it anymore. he said, we didn t do it tonight, his mom was going to do it. reporter: they returned that night about 9:00. schrauben s stor by was he schrauben s story by was he dropped his friend off and drove around the neighborhood while his friend snuck inside and stabbed jack jessee to death. we had walkie-talkies. afterward he called when he was done and told him to pick him up. so i m turning to go back. he had a little blood on his legs. we looked for a place to clean
hour-long journey to his neighborhood where a trash truck used just the schreubin s garbage to a nearby parking lot. we would have them dump it in somewhat of a people, regardless of the size. right on the tarmac? scatter everything out, sit down on our knees and look at every piece of paper that looks like a do you mean of some kind. reporter: and that s how dove s team found this coffee-stained phone bill showing call after call from schrauben to sandra s son, tom in arizona. and that number, tom s number, how often would that pop up? i think the average we figured out was about 24 times in a billing cycle about a month. almost every day? every day, correct. it was almost like going through a crime scene and finding pieces of evidence. it s an excitement that you