the issue and tell three different stories, what are you hiding? reporter: investigators, wondering the same thing, tried to find answers in the evidence. on a laptop, they found hits for match.com just days before the murder. so somebody had been visiting the site at least. that would have been our suspicion. reporter: well, it s got to be either pam or ralph? right. reporter: and then they found ralph s real life mistress. yes, he had one. and she said they carried on for most of the time he was married to pam. so now shannon thought back to the last time she saw her mother. because i asked her if she was happy. reporter: so what did she say? she realized that she had given up her family because she had destroyed this relationship with me and kelsey. and she s gotten into this new marriage. telling me that she just wasn t as happy as she should have been. reporter: lots of circumstantial evidence.
reporter: shannon, who had been angry at ralph for not protecting her mother, read the letter and began to have thoughts that were much more disturbing. i didn t get through more than page and a half and i threw it. and i was like, this is [ bleep ]. this is the worst. i could barely stomach to finish it. reporter: and aaron? shannon s ex-husband? ralph s son? aaron went to a very dark place indeed. oh, you have no idea. you were 11 years old when your mother disappeared. yes. coming up secrets in the basement. i had been going through some of my dad s stuff in the basement. i found a box of stuff that supposedly she had taken with her. protect your pets from fleas and ticks with frontline plus for dogs and frontline plus for cats. its two killer ingredients work fast
can you tell me anything? yeah, the only thing you know that i know is that a lot of stuff was stolen from the house. okay. reporter: ralph stuck to his story. a deadly home invasion. and then i found her. yeah. and that s you know yes. and i try to deal with that. reporter: shannon pressed ralph for details. the one guy that hit me that i saw from the front was taller than me. okay. and he had a dark complexion. you know, he had marks on his face. reporter: and then, something that didn t sound quite right. and i don t know and that s and then i just saw him for, like, a split second. reporter: a split second? remember in his letter ralph said his captors held him and abused him for nearly two days. in my mind, if you re not going to tell me what happened, and you re going to dance around
thing was the glass fell out the door, not in, as you d expect it would do if somebody was breaking into the house. the police, of course, brought that up with ralph. and what did he write in his letter? i went out the back, and the rear door glass was broken. some pieces fell out when i opened the door. ralph even had answers to questions he wasn t asked, like why was the fireplace poker exactly where it belonged by the fireplace? normally if you used a weapon, you re going to find it somewhere around where your victim is. uh-huh. and it looked like the poker had been put back in its original place. reporter: here s what ralph wrote. i picked up the poker to stir up the fire. i saw blood on the end of it and put it down. so investigators studied ralph s manifesto for clues and, thanks to the huerfano world journal, so did everybody else in town. neighbors like mike and dena. it sounded like a novel to me. a bizarre one, at that.
investigation was there to meet her along with aaron. how did she take it? about as well as you d expect anybody, you know, to get hit by a sledgehammer, whatever. first, she was kind of shocked, then a little bit of denial. then suddenly i realized that last conversation i had with her was that was it. reporter: no fresh start now. her mother was dead. and then shannon saw ralph. and he lost it. he just turned into a sobbing, shaking maniac. reporter: ralph s face was banged up. he had bruises in several places. he was confused like a man coming out of a concussion. just exhausted. and i m just my head just still hurts. reporter: and then, soon as he was able, and still in his hospital clothes, ralph talked