memories fade. evidence is lost. witnesses die. but time can also put evidence in a new light. such was the case in the trial of stephen scharf accused of killing his wife nearly two decades ago. there is no statute of limitations on murder. reporter: the prosecutor promised the evidence would tell a story as simple as it was brutal. a husband determined to avoid a costly divorce lured his wife to the edge of a cliff and forced her off it. if he has lied he is guilty. reporter: the state marshaled familiar facts to tell its story starting with the crime scene where the prosecutor said the cliffs showed no sign of an accidental tumble. no debris, no clothing, no blood, no hair, no tissue. reporter: and then there was the husband himself, cool and collected in the back of a
palisades cliff to take in the view. but a short while later, jody fell over the edge and questions about what really happened that night began to mount. here s chris jansing. reporter: it was the worst night of his life and now steven sharp in the early morning hours of september 21st, 1992, had to tell his 10-year-old son jonathan his mother was dead. i said, come on, jonathan. we need to take a walk and i told him and he immediately burst into tears and i cried. i cried like a baby and i wasn t ashamed. reporter: he remembers his distraught son s reaction but little else from those dark hours. were you sleeping? were you eating? drinking. you were drinking? i lost my wife, my son lost hi mom. reporter: there was plenty of sympathy among family and friends to be sure for the man newly widowed with a small child to raise on his own.
police car. i didn t see any emotion from him at all, sir. reporter: who later confessed the prosecutor said to killing his wife. and then i said, it was an accident? and he said, no. reporter: but those facts were not where the case ended. the prosecutor argued that they simply set the stage for the real case. a story told by the victim s friends, family and most importantly by a star witness. my opinion is that the manner of death is homicide. reporter: dr. michael baden, the famous forensic pathologist told jurors the crime scene spoke of a murder, not an accident. if a person falls accide accidentally, the individual will be, you know, within a couple of feet of the base of the building. reporter: and that didn t happen in the case of jody scharf. her body landed 50 feet out from the top of the cliff and 30 feet
sharing a wine cooler. we walked up, looked over the spot where the binoculars were, walked into this sort of open view. he then turned and took a narrow well warn path to those rocks. they sat there as the night fell around them, he with his back against the rock, holding her as she sat directly in front of him. at some point something goes terribly wrong. yes. he says he stood up intending to go back to the car to get wine and a blanket. for whatever reason jodi stood up too. the edge of the rock was at her feet. what was your last glimpse of your wife? just standing up and stumbling forward. jodi had gone off the cliff. i didn t know how bad things were, but i was stunned. what did you do? i got down on my stomach, i
the jury is about to decide the fate of stephen scharf. here s chris jansen with the conclusion of our story. reporter: 18 years after a night that ended in his wife s death off a cliff, stephen scharf stood accused of murder by the state of new jersey. and through it all, one thing he wants you to know is this he would never have laid a hand on his beloved jody. never. stephen, did you kill your wife, jody? i did not hurt jody. i did not. reporter: did you throw her off the pad salpalisades? i did not hurt her.