choking. three, if for some reason, that didn t, the drop in oxygen would cause you to wake up. but maybe sarah hadn t fallen asleep. perhaps she had suffered a catastrophic but perfectly natural event. something to her heart, her brain. the coroner didn t find any. any evidence of heart problems? no. any evidence of brain injury or seizure? no. one of the amazing things about sarah widmer is that she had regular medical care, for a person her age, she went twice in two years for a regular physical. this is not a person who didn t have the opportunity to interact with her medical professionals. and to the coroner, the bruising he saw on sarah s neck and scalp while performing the autopsy looked ominous. the wounds significant, and not in the right spot to have been caused by the emts lifesaving efforts. the three bruises able to be seen on the right side of the scalp, another faint bruise on her forehead. she s got a significant degree of neck hemorrhage.
what was the toughest thing you had to surmount? that we had a lovely 24-year-old woman who was dead and no one could explain why. the defense wasn t going to be able to tell the jury what caused sarah widmer to drown that night. but they were going to show that ryan widmer had no reason to hurt his wife. and as far as damp hair/dry body, they would explain that. the bottom line for the defense i know one thing. ryan widmer had nothing to do with his wife s death. ryan widmer s defense attorney argued his client was plagued from the get-go by the unhappy choice of words on that 911 call. she falls asleep in the tub all the time. had ryan told the 911 dispatcher only that his wife was unconscious, it wouldn t have been suspicious. the only thing ryan knows is, she fell asleep in the tub. they jump on that and say he s a liar. the coroner, his attorneys says, was all too quick to rule the death a homicide. he had no idea she was suffering from a headache that
named casey clark had up and disappeared. i printed it off and handed it to mark and said hey, what do you think about this? what did you think about that? it was the first time weed every heard of that name. so who was casey clark? he was funny, well-mannered. didn t take long to find out. casey was an old friend of james henrikson. he moved to the oil patch specifically to work for henrikson at blackstone, james trucking company. rick airy knew him well. what did you do we d go up to the bar and chase girls, do the normal things guys do during the boom. rick and casey were field superintendents for the trucking company. i worked with the accountant, to make sure think got signed off to make sure they got paid and i was sort of the middleman for the paperwork. were you a minor partner.
sarah didn t know which way to turn. with investigators in two states closing in, her husband, james had vanished. their marriage was on life support, and she d just been summoned by her county sheriff. so i went into his office and homeland security was waiting for me. and they were like, sit down, we need to talk to you. and they said we just received in the last ten minutes that your husband is trying to have you killed today. sarah? on a hit list? why? sarah had a pretty good idea. they wanted all the money. and he knew i had it locked up with the divorce getting ready. so getter had out of the way and we ll get all the assets. so he could run to brazil. but sayre amarkrah marked fo? yes, the sheriff told her, she
had jumped the border to see if james would chase me. he did not. but where was he? no one seemed to know. with sarah close enough so they could actually see her, investigators tried to track her husband s phone. you re sitting in a homeland security office and listening to them ping him across the state. he s on the run, he s on the move. a car backfired in the parking lot and all these agents pull their guns out and run to the windows, because they didn t know if james was in town. it s a surreal thing. even if they found him, though, they couldn t charge him with murder or conspiracy. didn t have enough evidence for that. but they did have something quite useful. a few days earlier, a search warrant enhanced federal and state agents descended on james and sarah s empty house while they were out of town. what did you find in the house? found a lot of financial records. found some firearms. some firearms?