had some insurance money and he d be better to you dead than alive. she said, well, i might have and at that point i kind of looked at her and i thought, man, did this not give somebody a motive somewhere along the line? was this a case of angry words having unintended consequences or as some suspected, had brenna actively recruited russel s killers? the family couldn t know for sure, but that question now complicated their relationships with brenna and the grandchildren. and we tried to be as supportive as we could for the kids, but i know she listens to all of their conversations. so it s a very controlled conversation. when it comes to awkward telephone conversations none could have been more strained than the ones that took place between jim huden s lover and jim huden s wife after he fled
not telling you that his side is wrong or that my side is right. i want you to address the facts critically because the facts will show you more than one outcome. among those, that russell douglas had shot himself. did anyone request that you test or preserve his hands for possible gunshot residue? no. we do preserve things for trace evidence and that s why the sheet was used inside of the body bag. so no one tested his hands for gunshot residue? not to my knowledge. a gotcha, perhaps. but no gun was found in the car and the fatal bullet had been traced to a gun known to have belonged to jim huden. was mr. douglas body still in the vehicle at that time? it was. next, montoya suggested, russel douglas was killed
be a significant payout of life insurance. it was the evidence they were lacking. just when the investigation seemed stalled, a tip came in. but who was on the other end of the line? here again was josh mankowitz. in the spring of 2004, the detective had been calling for months but getting nowhere. i decided to do the entire investigation from step 1 all over again. ztz he had a murder at a good address on his hands, and many more questions than answers. what would have brought russell to this unknown area of whi db ey island on the day after christmas? who put a bullet between his eyes and why? we ran out every lead i could run out and none of them connected to russel douglas. money, love, pride. talk to homicide detectives and they say any of those themes
yeah. because of bill jean gave up her dream of re-joining jim huden, but it wasn t until the spring of 2011 that bill bruner convinced her to give up the addiction that was jim. i had to finally i had enough, you know? i know jim doesn t love me. he didn t care about me when he did what he did and he still doesn t care about me and probably less so now that i m out of money. more than that, jean had herself gotten into some legal trouble after jim fled to mexico. in exchange for immunity from prosecution on some drug and check forgery charges, jean told authorities all she knew about the murder of russel douglas and just where jim huden could be found. they re not interested in me. they wanted jim. they said they would not prosecute me and i certainly
the sort of thing you might have talked to peggy about? they talked to most people about probably too much. why did you say that that you talk to people too much. are you a person who likes to chat. i just chat. do you know james huden? i met him. how is it that you met james huden? through peg. it was on that connection to huden and the woman to woman conversations between brenna and peggy that the prosecutor based his theory of the murder. brenna told peggy her husband was violent. peggy told jim and jim pulled the trigger. the prosecutor explained why. mr. huden pulled the trigger on russel douglas as a way of exercising his own personal demons. that point was underscored when huden s old bass player bill hill took the stand and told the court about the day jim