he married the woman of his dreams, beautiful and sweet. she was just angelic. and was folded into her tight-knit family headed by an elderly religious matriarch. you were either part of their family or you weren t. together they had a little girl, sydney. when their marriage fell apart, her family closed ranks. in their view, sydney was their property. one day he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again. he died right there. dad?ut who would kill a devoted the unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife or the gracious family matriarch? they seemed so loving, but was there another side. it s a monster that comes out of a closet. it s very ugly. how dark is that side? murderous. but which one was the killer? hello and welcome to dateline. he was a man suddenly confronted with something monstrous, evil at the door. this story is a mystery about a father of two young daughters. one night he left to pick up one of them an
their family or you weren t. together they had a little girl, sydney. when their marriage fell apart, her family closed ranks. in their view, sydney was their property. one day he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again. he died right there. but who would kill a devoted dad? the unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife or the gracious family matriarch? they seemed so loving, but was there another side. it s a monster that comes out of a closet. it s very ugly. how dark is that side? murderous. but which one was the killer? hello and welcome to dateline. he was a man suddenly confronted with something monstrous, evil at the door. this story is a mystery about a father of two young daughters. one night he left to pick up one of them and never came back. the question for investigators wasn t what happened. it was who did it. in the home of a god-fearing family in one of the smallest of american towns, the worst of crimes.
prosecution had no physical evidence to prove she was the shooter, no dna, no fingerprints, no gunshot residue, no blood spatter, no photos of the scripts on shirley s hands. basically, all they had were descriptions of the hands and statements from first responders that surely told them she had shots east even. now it was time for the defense to make its case to the jury, mostly young and female from small town rural illinois. lawyers for shirley emphasized the fact that there was no physical evidence linking her to the weapon, and they argued surely statement to the first responders is he dead, i shot him, were made when she was having a medical emergency. how reliable could those statements be? the defense focus on what they called a sloppy inept investigation by the police chief, pointed at jennifer the innuendo and implications with her ugly divorce and custody battle as the one with the motive to kill stephen. they didn t directly argue jennifer pulled the trigger,
that his estranged wife, jennifer, was keeping stephen watkins became increasingly frustrated his estranged wife jennifer was keeping their daughter away from him. they had been battling in court, but things were about to turn violent. we continue with the mystery on horseshoe drive. it s not just corn that grows quickly in rural illinois. so did the family of stephen and jennifer. they met, married and had a baby in about a year s time. and just as quickly, their relationship fell apart. they were fighting over baby sydney when stephen went to jennifer s one november evening to pick up the child. within minutes, jennifer was on the phone with 911, hysterical. 911, what s your emergency? my, my, my grandmother needs help. my husband came to pick up my child because we re getting a divorce, and he come after her and tried to come after the baby and i, he s on the floor shot.
people that surround you? get one? want to feed it to me? 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 be around them. he was patient and kind and had a smile for everyone. you could always see the smile in his eyes. i could just look at him and see the joy of life. brandy ran cross country with stephen back in the 90s.