i was very excited. they met in vegas a professional poker player. he s making good money at it. a former trapeze artist, he fell for it, but she did not gamble on this. i could smell the odor of decay, and blood. or this. at every turn there was another woman. married, with a child and women in multiple cities. what else is he capable of? capable of murder? he had an alibi. credit card transactions and phone records of me from las vegas. but could this little card holds the key? we just a shot in the dark? absolutely. we see a calculated killer? or was his lifestyle on trial? he made mistakes. that doesn t make him a monster. was there one more card up his sleeve? it goes back to him thinking, i ve bluffed some of the best. welcome to dateline. it was a perplexing double murder, with no witnesses and no physical evidence. the victims were a respected couple their son, it turned out, played poker for a living, and could
her ex boyfriend s parents had been murdered, she wanted to be there to support bernie, especially now that he said police were harassing him. i knew everything about him. we dated for a couple years. of course, he couldn t have done. this. ernie told her he could meet her on her upcoming business trip to dallas. and she arrived just as it had happened. the moment she will recall with absolute clarity for the rest of her life. i was in taxi, headed from the airport to the hotel in dallas. and my phone rings. and it is a detective. she listen to him say he was investigating the death of our needs parents, and he had a question. he said, i know that you guys broke up. but can you tell me how long this affair lasted?
there were trips. she, to vegas, and he to meet her in places like aruba, mexico. and when they, ernie told adrienne, he loved her. it was very exciting. ernie travel to adrienne s home base in north carolina, several times, and got to know her family, her mother lynn. who is charming. and he was very comfortable with us and us with him. we talked about marriage. we were looking at engagement rings. they actually talked about children. if the first one was a girl, of course he would love her, but he really wanted a boy. so, it was wonderful. not perfect, of course. what is? ernie s mother, the devout mormon, did not approve of his poker playing, apparently. even though bernie s father loved poker, in fact they often played together. he really seemed to like his father and respect his father. they seemed to be close. so, why didn t they want to meet her? it was, frankly, a little hard to understand.
he would tell me stories about him and his father and get teary eyed about it. kimberly got to know bernie, she said, very, very well. if you can drive through texas with someone and not want to strangle them in the middle of texas you get to know someone very well. he s very sweet. and eventually, he moved in with her. did you grow to love him? i did. but that other woman who had loved him, adrian solomon, was struggling. if he could lie to me every day for two years, lied to my family, look at rings, talk about having children together. what else is he capable of? of course, living a double life does not make you a double murderer. those alameda county detectives knew that perfectly well. but as they were discovering, achieving heart wasn t the only disturbing thing about this professional poker player.
but that was not the worst of it. not even close. by march of 2008, when the murders happened, real estate in california is huffing and puffing on its face to the bottom. and six months before that, ernie the son wanted to buy a house in the city of brea in southern california, but couldn t get a loan. banks were not quite so sanguine anymore about the security of a poker players income. so, he borrowed the money from ernest the father, 616,000. but then real estate started tanking. so father ernest asked son ernie to go to a bank, refinance, pay back his loan. and bernie could not. he was frantic trying to refinance his home. and at the time they were killed, he had missed a mortgage payment to his parents for the first time. so, this is approaching some sort of crisis? that s what we felt, yes. so, motive? well, maybe. investigators told ernie they wanted to talk. and he agreed to come down to the station, where he explained