and this is dateline! this is a tragedy on top of a tragedy now. it happened so quickly. their parents in the backyard spa. their mom in trouble. my dad just panicked. a sudden slip. a fatal fall. you re losing your mother. you re watching her go right in front of you. someone else was watching her. a curious neighbor. it was scary. the look on his face was almost undescribable. what had she seen? was this drowning really an accident? she s got a huge gash on her head, something like that is not consistent with just falling down. a husband and father is suddenly under suspicion. he s crying and we re crying. he said, they think i hurt mom. three daughters stand by their dad, and one prosecutor stands firm. he s holding his wife of almost three decades under the water. my job is to get justice for cristi hall. was it murder? hello and welcome to dateline a young woman peers into her neighbor s yard and sees something for a few mysterious seconds, a
a sudden slip, a fatal fall you losing your mother, watching her go right someone else was watching her too, a curious neighbor. it was scary. the look on his face was almost indescribable. what had she seen? was this drowning really an accident? she s got a huge gash on her head. consistent with just falling down. a husband and father is suddenly under suspicion. who is crying, were crying. he said, they got three daughters stand by their dad, and one prosecutor stands firm. he s holding his wife of almost three decades under the water and justice for christie hall. was it murder? hello, a young [inaudible] yard in 1 million and the moment it s unsettling. what she saw and what she did would set in motion a chain of events that would divide a family and a jury. here is keith we know the truth. and we know everything that happened. how do we know what we know? emotionally unsatisfying not to have that answer. so it is. even if w
A woman peers into a neighbors yard and sees something for a few mysterious seconds a man, a woman and a moment thats unsettling. What she saw and what she. What had she seen . Was this drowning really an accident . Shes got a huge gash on her head. Something like that is not consistent with just falling down. A husband and father is suddenly under suspicion. Hes crying and were crying. He said, they think i hurt mom. Three daughters stand by their dad. And one prosecutor stands firm. Hes holding his wife of almost three decades under the water. My job is to get justice for cristi hall. Was it murder . Hello and welcome to dateline extra. Im craig melvin. In this hour, a story that calls to mind the master of suspense. A plot straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. A young woman peers into her neighbors yard and sees something for a few seconds. A man, a woman, and a moment that was unsettling. Was it some kind of accident . A crime . Maybe even a murder . What she saw and what she d
concrete he s holding his wife of almost three decades under the water, showing absolutely no mercy, no an absolute desire to end her life at that point. and then the piece de he then gets out of the spa, walks into the house where his plan is to wake his 22-year-old daughter, who he can use as an alibi witness. one little quibble. why? in fact, as convinced as he was of hall s guilt, strunsky conceded the why was a problem. he didn t legally have to know, he said. but he just didn t. there it was. it s emotionally unsatisfying not to have that answer, not to know the entire narrative of what but you would want to know why this guy, married to this woman for almost 30 years, apparently happily, would suddenly turn on her and drown her in the pool. right. and i m not sure we got the answers to that specific kind of an important question, isn t it?
course. but prosecutor strunsky poked around in chris hall s past as a and what did he find? this man had an uncanny ability to fabricate stories. seven years earlier, while hall was chief of police in cascade, idaho, he was charged with and convicted of misuse of public money, embezzled $19, 000, spent ten months in jail. a white collar crime, hardly murder. but what struck the prosecutor is that he says hall tried to cover it up. to plan a fraud, to lie about it, not just lie about it, but lie about it effectively. i think that was very telling about who we were dealing with. suddenly the prosecutor s prospects were looking better. at the trial, strunsky made lindsay patterson his star witness, of it was her story, after all, that got the whole thing started. but almost as important, he called the riverside county medical examiner who testified that those lacerations in cristi s