details. that was the worst day of my life that i found out about my mom. a loving couple. a romantic hike. a secluded spot. she was turning to look at the bird. it s like her feet just went out from under her. all of a sudden i hear yelling coming from downstream. there was mrs. muller floating face up. a wife falling to her death. her husband falling apart. he was panicking and shaking. crying. the evidence at the scene makes you believe something entirely different happened. he told me she fell 20 feet. where were the injuries? why did i not see what i expected to see? a search for truth in the woods and water. if your theory is right, it is. loo like she was being hunted. almost like a hare and a wolf. two chilling accounts of what happened to the mom they adored. one seemingly unsolve able mystery. you either believe crazy story a or crazy story b. both stories are crazy. which one do you want to go with? winding down a mountain in southwest col
there is ice on the rocks. it s slippery. it seemed perfectly plausible that she had fallen and floated . the defense brought in a canine behavior expert who analyzed that last photo of leslie and said, the young border collie looked spooked and ready to bolt . the dog is under stress, pushing back . he is pushing back from mrs. mueller. she is trying to control him with an ear pinch, and the dog is looking totally off in another direction. to the defense, it was clear, fred s story was entirely plausible and the prosecution s was not. why would he do this? why would i got married 27 years, with no history of violence, no history of any sort of domestic disputes, all of a sudden decide on his vacation that he was going to murder his wife with his bare hands? it just seems, that part of
know. a few times. i m sure i hit something coming down a few times. reporter: he told how he had left the camera with the last images of his wife behind. i imagined i just dropped it while i was screaming. reporter: unable to locate leslie, he abandoned his search of the creek bed and made the decision to go for help. hauled butt down to justice s house. i m honking and screaming at him. i think my wife is dead. reporter: after listening to fred s story, the sheriff wanted to go up to the site of the accident. you take fred back up to the mountain? yes, we did a walk through on the scene. reporter: up at the scene, fred repeated how the dog seemed to cause leslie s fall. it was that dog tangled up in her legs is what i think it was. reporter: gracie ran off into the woods right after the accident. a member of the sheriff s department found her and took her back to his house. everything changed that day. reporter: changed forever.
reporter: but sheriff bruce says fred mueller might have underestimated the hensdale county sheriff s department. that s what he thought. he was going to get a bumbling buffoon to show up and he was going to walk away on this. what do you say to someone who says you are a small town sheriff with tunnel vision who focused on this rich outsider and just like a dog with a bone would not let go? i would say they are wrong. i have thick skin. we did the right thing. reporter: they kept working and testing and poking around. not sure if it would ever amount to anything. as the years moved on, investigators were continuing to build a case against fred. though his children were one aware their father was under such intense suspicion. they were trying hard to remember the happy moments with their mother and put the colorado tragedy behind them. what became of the cabin
although so-called evidence that proved fred s story was possible, the defense that it was useless. the testing you did in 2009 will not be reflective of what did or did not happen in 2008. the bottoms of the creek change, the walls of the creek can change, there was erosion of crete. every time you go up there, it seemed a little different . and the defense attacked the state s expert for what it said was another lot with the mannequin test. they did not start that test with the mannequin falling from the ledge, right? absolutely not . and therefore, your testing did not account for any kinetic energy that would have been initiated from the fall, correct ? that s correct. and what about fred s story? a jumpy dog distracted by a blue jay and a swan dive toward the rocky water? the defense said, it was the truth and not at all far- fetched. it is steep and angular.