asked him to show where the speaker was positioned on the floor and where it was in relation to where mike slept and detective wilson came to this hypothesis. it appeared to me that michael snyder was laying in his bed when he was shot. reporter: not up an advancing on ellen to do her harm? exactly. the office of the medical investigator reported the projectiles came up through the vic victim s body from the stomach area up to the shoulder area. almost as if the person was lying flat and the shooter was standing at his feet? yes. my estimation was that the body was on the mattress when he was being fired at. he may have gotten up and started running if it didn t kill him right away. reporter: and there was something the detective uncovered that appeared a lot more sinister than a woman in fear for her life.
maybe not angry, but you were talking in a sort of nonangry way about the kids. i think he was still angry. i think i told him we were still angry. but that he was gone and he wasn t coming back. right. mike s sister terry hadn t yet learned about mike s relationship with the mysterious dave simmons or about the accusations that her brother was secretly gay. ellen didn t share any of that with terry until a few years after mike had disappeared. she told other people about it at the time. not us. she didn t seem to throw that out to us at first. any of that make any sense to you? oh, goodness, no. i don t believe for one minute my brother is gay. that was only one of the components to the story that detective wilson wanted to check out. he says he asked ellen to come down to the police department to meet with him in person. only she wouldn t. she said he s not missing. we said well, we want to find him. and even asking her to come in
about it. the more terry thought about mike, the more she remembered his growing frustration with ellen in the months before he disappeared. he would intercede phone calls that collectors calling, you know, wanting to know why their credit cards passed due and all of these things he had no idea of. reporter: these are bills he thought ellen had run up, not some identity theft. right. reporter: not long after mike disappeared, ellen found herself in debt. she had 20 creditors and owed more than $120,000 on her credit cards. did mike know about the debt before he dropped by her work? is that why mike had showed up in a rage? had he discovered the financial mess into which she put their family? and if mike had been abusive, had ellen come to the conclusion that she could solve that problem with a gun? detective wilson was growing more and more skeptical of ellen snyder s story, and so was
no one had seen mike snyder, not his family, his friends nor his co-workers. had his illness grown worse? had he moved to another city with another man as his wife ellen claimed? it turns out ellen had been keeping some big secrets of her own. here s josh mankiewicz. reporter: mike snyder had been missing for eight long years. his family didn t know where he was, and the detective investigating the case had a hunch that mike s wife ellen was somehow involved. a co-worker of ellen s came forward saying he had loaned ellen his gun but when she returned it a few months later, there were no bullets. he looked at it and looked at her and said, where s the bullets? reporter: ellen said she went to a gun range with a friend who showed her how to use it. and detective wilson had discovered something else, ellen had actually tried to purchase another gun at a local pawnshop
mentioned in his interview with police. something about a stereo speaker. apparently not all of the bullets hit him. another went through a speaker, like the bottom of a speaker. i still have that speaker. the detective went back to the house with michael. asked him to show where the speaker was positioned on the floor and where it was in relation to where mike slept and detective wilson came to this hypothesis. it appeared to me that michael snyder was laying in his bed when he was shot. not up and advancing on ellen to do her harm. exactly. the office of the medical investigator reported the projectiles came up through the victim s body from down, stomach air up to the shoulder area. almost as if the person was lying flat and the shooter was