at trial, jason s cheating would take center stage. and a jury would decide if its discovery drove him to kill. once again, here s dennis murphy with the farm. on a december day in 2017, two and a half years after shirley carter s murder, in this courthouse in knoxville, iowa. father faced off against an. bill carter had spent almost a billion dollars to get to this courtroom and to this moment. there s not a more important courtroom anywhere in this state and this courtroom today, right now. bill carter s lawyer, mark opened by telling the jury only one person wanted surely dead. the killer is sitting a few feet from here. that s the killer right there. jason carter. it started like a murder case, but remember, this was a civil trial. a wrongful death lawsuit. the father, the plaintiff. his son, the defendant.
shirley, the farm wife and mother, had been gunned down in her own kitchen and there was no obvious explanation for the crime. as investigators began digging into the carter family background, though, they came across a detail that became the focus of investigation. it concerned the son jason. the one who d found his mother s body. we found out jason carter was having an affair. how had you find that out? a friend during the interviews. so who s this girlfriend? we locate her, we bring her in and we determine there s another phone in play. another phone? a phone that they just had. the lovers had, what they call burner phones, off the book. burner phones, we call it the sexting phone. jason kept it stashed away hidden under the hood of his pickup truck. jason not only didn t mention the affair in his first interview, he also
that jason carter was troubled on the morning of june june 19th? no. then there was the timeline of that morning to deal with. all along, based on statements of first responders and crime scene techs, it was estimated shirley had been murdered sometime just before 11 am. when jason admits he was at the farmhouse. to counter the time of death, one of the nation s most famous pathologist for hire, cyril wecht, took the stand. cyril has been involved in thousands of cases from the jfk assassination to o. j. simpson. you are at asked attempt to determine approximate time of death for shirley carter? is that correct? yes. were you able to do that to medical certainty? yes. he told surely that may shirley have been killed two hours earlier than anyone thought possible. if you ask wreck, then shirley was murdered around 9 am, when jason was seen on video, clearly still at the greenery. he could not have killed his
the harvet, corn and soy mostly. so that june morning in 2015 dawned with no particular omens. shirley carter and her husband bill, started their day as they always did with coffee at the general store. they went to coffee every morning to casey s. that was a ritual. after coffee, saying hello to neighbors, bill and shirley went back home. bill dropped off shirley at the top of the driveway. i let her out of the pickup and she said i think i ll finish my coffee before i chore. and i said, honey, i ll see you between 11:00 and 11:30. you never know do you, bill? you don t know. bill headed off to sell corn at a granary. by 11:00 a. m. he remembers being just a few miles from home when he got a call from his daughter. and she said, dad, mom s
i love my husband. and we have reconciled. as for the motive, the lawyer argued jason didn t have one. shelley conceded that at one point, the old the bank more than half 1 million dollars on their loan. but she said, that was business as usual for farmers. repeat that off, just like repeat it off every year, so we could renew our line and start again. and then steve bullock offered the alternative to theory of the case. steve is right. the killer of shirley carter is in this room. and it s not jason carter. it s him, the accuser. bill carter, he said, was the likely killer. shirley, he argued, complained about him all the time. she had to get permission for everything. jason s wife testified that shirley told her, bill was to