when she was born, he doted over her. he was just excited about every little thing. he would sleep right by alex s bed, holding her little hand. that s just how he was. the former girlfriend regularly took alex to visit stephen in virginia and the bond between father and daughter grew strong. alex s mother then realized stephen could offer more stability and a better home life for their daughter than she could, and she gave him full custody of her. that says a lot about him as a dad. yes. stephen was responsible, and that says that he was determined to be part of his children s life. when alex was 2, stephen moved her to virginia to live with him full time. he made sure she was in a good day care. there was always times when he had to make sure he run out and got her at the right time. did he complain he didn t have freedom? absolutely not. he was content with that. but stephen also wanted a wife. when his coast guard service ended, he returned home, living
crimes. please come and help us. okay. i ll get a hold of the ambulance. all right? yes. the crime became a mystery, a whodunit? it s a puzzle. almost a game of three card monte. it made many people in town wonder about one particular family, about what had been going on behind the closed doors of their home. how well do you really know your neighbors? how well do you really know the people that surround you? get one? want me to feed it to him? our story begins with stephen watkins who had grown up in tiny chandlerville in rural central illinois, population 700. he d had the kind of ideal childhood he wanted to recreate on his own. i think that was probably his biggest goal in life, was to have that family that he grew up with. stephen s parents, penny and dale, say even as a kid their boy was always holding his younger sister ashleigh or cousins playing with him, showering them with attention. he loved kids, loved people, and he was going to have kids
and he was going to be part of their family. the whole family raved about stephen and alex. the whole family, that is, except jennifer s uncle ed. he says he didn t approve of the whirlwind romance. he didn t like that stalker steve became the one so quickly. he did not attend the wedding. i was told within a month after they started dating they was going to get married. and that s just not the way that our family ever did it. you get to know somebody, you did them a long time before you just commit to something in life. i felt she jumped out of the skillet into the frying pan. did you feel stephen was jumping out of the skillet and into the frying pan? yeah. he didn t know what he was getting into. their life together unfolded like a storybook marriage. not long after the wedding they bought a home on horseshoe
how many fathers do that? everyone thought stephen was such a great guy, such a great dad. who would kill him? ultimately mike vujovich, then with the state attorney s appellate prosecutors office and sergeant kelly walter, now a colonel with the illinois state police took over the investigation. they focused on a key question, who pulled the trigger. the forensic evidence was no help. was the weapon tested for dna? it was. was anything found? nothing. no fingerprints on it at all? no fingerprints on it. were gun residue tests performed on the people inside that house at the time of the shooting? they were not. no blood spatter was found on any of the family s clothing. investigators had no physical evidence proving any one person had murdered stephen watkins, even though he was clearly shot to death inside the skinner home. all they had was statements from first responders claiming shirley skinner, an elderly
adventists, in the last several years multiple generations lived together in a large home, one of the biggest in the neighborhood. they stuck together, kept to themselves, to the point where some people say they seemed almost clannish. brandy says not only were they tight-knit, but family successful as well, the result of a family business. they always had nicer things. i remember one summer they had a garage sale and it was like a gold mine. jennifer was beautiful, well off, came from a close family like stephen had and yearned for a family as stephen did. what could be better? in the end, the real question what could be worse? he didn t know what he was getting into. coming up, stephen s family starts to wonder exactly what kind of woman he s gotten involved with. it was a disgrace that she would even do something like that. when dateline continues.