he said okay. they filled the hole with leftover construction waste so the body couldn t be seen. the next day, ellen went back to the paper. found a different guy who had a bobcat and hired him to fill in the hole. you buried a body. i burr riffed a body. and then she came up with her story. you got better at telling that story as time went on. yeah, as time went on. it became a bigger and bigger story. it was the end of her 2 1/2 hour statement to police. and ellen snyder wanted to get one last thing on the record. is there anything else you want to say before we turn off the recorder? i want to say i m not a horrible killer. and with that 50-year-old ellen snyder was charged with first-degree murder and held on
snyder could be found not guilty. mike s family was willing to risk that. we felt that that strongly that it was premeditated. it was a gamble we were willing to take. when it comes to murder, prosecutor isn t willing to gamble. maybe she gets convicted of first-degree murder and maybe that s what he did all along and that would have been justice but with all or nothing when you try to convince beyond a reasonable doubt 12 jurors. you didn t want to roll the dice. a huge risk to roll the dice and not have somebody held accountable at all for the death of another human being. it was a risk for ellen, too. she knew going to trial could mean a life sentence. one month before the case was set for trial, prosecutors offered ellen a plea deal, which she accepted.
snyder admits. she admits that she shot and killed her husband mike snyder in the early-morning hours of january 11th, 2002. she admits that she buried his body and lied about his disappearance for years, but she does not admit to being guilty of murder. you don t think of yourself as a murderer? no, i don t. i was saving my own life. he came down that night to me or him. she said it was a case of survival. but ask detective wilson and he calls it something else. i believe this is an evil woman who planned this from the beginning. maybe she did fear for her life. there are people who say they saw her with bruises. sure. it s a possibility. possibility there was a bruise. or it could have been something she set up to look like that to go along with her story.
problem with a gun? detective wilson was growing more and more skeptical of ellen snyder s stoimpl and so was mike s sister teri. without any real proof that ellen had something to do with mike s disappearance, there was nothing that could be done about those aching suspicions. there was nothing that could tangibly prove murder enough to get an arrest warrant for it until they had a body. and another four years passed. mike s sister teri became more and more dissatisfied with the progress detective wilson is making. i think at first he was very zealous. he felt that, you are right, a lot of this isn t adding up and i believe at first they worked very hard to find my brother. as the years went by, the unknown had become unbearable for the snyder family. they wanted answers from the police.
was because of that that it occurred? is that what you are implying? i m not implying it. i m saying you made money off of the death of your husband. i did not make substantial money out of the death of my husband, no. it was the job of the pror to put together a case for a jury to hear. covering up the crime, i think would be our best evidence in terms of trying to convince a jury that her intent at the time of the killing was something along the lines of a premed tatd murder. the prosecution found itself in an unusual predicament. eight years had passed since the shooting and in that time the statute of limit takes had run out on any charge other than first-degree murder. that meant in order to get any conviction at all, prosecutors would have to prove to a jury