but three weeks later, she ran into him at that daycare and innocently said hello. back at the office he went nuts on her. very, very arrogantly and very mad. just pointed his finger at me and said, i thought we had this conversation. i thought i told you never to talk to me outside of this office. i mean to the point that i was very scared. even his good friend michael hertz thought paul was starting to lose it. after all, the divorce and custody issue had been settled. he had no reason to fear his ex. i said, paul, you know, really, i think you re being a little melodramatic. you think the guy s paranoid. absolutely. and he said, no, this is really happening. i know nobody believes me. with all this drama going on, when stacey took the kids for vacation the second week in august of 2006, paul was all but convinced he would never see them again.
answered and told them her husband was away and had no idea how to reach him. he is essentially out of touch for 24 hours from the time of the murder, and he s the person that we re looking to talk to, and when you have that type of situation, it starts throwing up red flags. the night after the murder, thursday, ed ates did return the police s calls. he told them he was currently in louisiana at his elderly mother s. obviously the new jersey detectives were eager to interview ates in person, so they flew to louisiana. by the time they arrived, the father-in-law had already hired a lawyer and invoked the right not to talk. but the detectives did get in a few words with ates sister brenda that night. she told them that her brother had arrived at their moms in louisiana that tuesday evening, one day before the murder of paul duncsak. did you think she was telling the truth? i wasn t certain. it was still very early on in the investigation.
did you see his beige honda that week? yes, i did. what day? on wednesday. he said 17 times i am certain it was wednesday. this man had no reason to lie. he is intelligent. awake. sitting right there staring at the house. the lawyer was trying to show that ed ates could not have been killing paul duncsak in new jersey and been in louisiana on the same day at virtually the same hour, physically impossible. and he was about to show why he thought the prosecution s theory was also straining reality. his abdomen was obviously obese at that time. in a novel defense that made headlines across the nation, the lawyer called an expert witness, a doctor to the stand, to show that edward ates could not have committed this particular murder. why? because the creaky grandfather was too fat to have pulled it off. too old, too fat, too sick. yes. i mean we proved it.
involved in this murder. instead the prosecutors said the evidence gathered in the months after the murder showed that the killer was far from a nameless intruder. it was, in fact, someone who knew paul duncsak well and plotted his death carefully. what we have here as a search string is how to commit a perfect murder. a forensic expert provided damning testimony against the defendant. he explained how a computer used by edward ates and later seized by police yielded the ghosts of past online searches. is it true that on the hard drive they found a search asking the question, how do you commit the perfect murder? that is true. he researched how to pick a lock and purchased a lock pit set. he researched silencers, and he would purchase two books on silencers. he researched .22 caliber weapons. and not only did edward ates research guns, the prosecutors said he owned them, too. please raise your right hand. to emphasize that point, he called an extremely reluctant witness
the kids, my brother was always and behind that fear of losing his kids was an even darker threat. paul shared it with his friend nancy bagley one afternoon as their kids swam in his backyard. he said that earlier that summer his pool had been sabotaged, its heater cranked up to a piping 101 degrees. he was convinced it was no accident. he said i am afraid for my life. i remember looking at the other mom, and we were just frozen. i mean we really were. pretty soon word was getting with his new business associates that paul duncsak was a man looking over his shoulder. co-worker janie who used the same daycare as paul could not fathom why he was so hush-hush about anyone learning who his new employer was. downright weird. please do not notice me if you ever see me over at the day care. i don t want anybody to know where i am working.