he married the woman of his dreams, beautiful and sweet. she was just angelic. and was folded into her tight-knit family headed by an elderly religious matriarch. you were either part of their family or you weren t. together they had a little girl, sydney. when their marriage fell apart, her family closed ranks. in their view, sydney was their property. one day he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again. he died right there. dad?ut who would kill a devoted the unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife or the gracious family matriarch? they seemed so loving, but was there another side. it s a monster that comes out of a closet. it s very ugly. how dark is that side? murderous. but which one was the killer? hello and welcome to dateline. he was a man suddenly confronted with something monstrous, evil at the door. this story is a mystery about a father of two young daughters. one night he left to pick up one of them an
their family or you weren t. together they had a little girl, sydney. when their marriage fell apart, her family closed ranks. in their view, sydney was their property. one day he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again. he died right there. but who would kill a devoted dad? the unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife or the gracious family matriarch? they seemed so loving, but was there another side. it s a monster that comes out of a closet. it s very ugly. how dark is that side? murderous. but which one was the killer? hello and welcome to dateline. he was a man suddenly confronted with something monstrous, evil at the door. this story is a mystery about a father of two young daughters. one night he left to pick up one of them and never came back. the question for investigators wasn t what happened. it was who did it. in the home of a god-fearing family in one of the smallest of american towns, the worst of crimes.
husband came to pick up the daughter for visitation, forced his way into the house, knocked the elderly woman down and she s having medical problems. when he arrived, he found this was no routine domestic. i walk up, open the door and walk in the house. directly in front of me was an elderly lady sitting in the chair which turned out to be shirley skinner and a person kneeling beside her holding her hand. she s crying a little bit. then a first responder motioned over to the other side of the room. i saw the body laying down there. any sign of life? no. it was stephen watkins, dead on the floor. a 9 millimeter glock handgun on a box several yards away. trying to get in my mind what happened, the ems personnel told me shirley made a statement to them that she had shot him. they reported to the chief that shirley had said a couple times is he dead? i shot him. he shouldn t have come back here.
a stunning story, but this was secondhand information. from first responders quoting an elderly woman in the midst of a medical and family crisis. were her statements reliable? had she really said that? chief birdsell asked jennifer what happened. he said stephen forced his way in the house and knocked her grandmother down and then he was coming after her and the baby and the grandmother shot him. it all seemed hard to believe. chief birdsell wanted to ask shirley what happened but never got a chance. about the time i was getting ready to, her attorney was on the phone and said he didn t want me to talk to her. she was already lawyered up? yes. shortly after jennifer also hired an attorney and stopped talking as well. jennifer s grandfather who was in the house at the time stephen was killed wasn t talking either. so what had happened in the skinner home? had stephen watkins finally
hand. she has two marks across the webbing of her hand. what s significant about that? the significance, as you can see, the slide part of the weapon is coming back over the webbing of my hand. if she s holding it wrong, something that could catch it would be the hand and the marks could be made from that slide coming back across the hand. two lines. two lines. consistent with firing this type of weapon. to investigators, those marks conclusively put the gun in shirley s hand. what s more, they learned shirley had been planning stephen s murder for a while, by trying to find somebody to kill him. about a month or so before stephen s execution, shirley approached two of her employees and offered them $10,000 to cap this guy who they identified as being steve watkins. cap this guy. this little old grandmother? yes. the one employee said he thought she was joking. at which point she said no, i m serious, i m serious.