and according to humphries, willing to do anything for her. you ve got the daughter and boyfriend who seem to be in some sort of conspiracy? the theory goes. an agreement to accomplish a goal. the alibi bambi and rick gave detectives that they were at home during the hours leading up to the murders was difficult to prove. each gave the other as a witness. she said, we were at home. you know, rick was there, i was there, my boys were in the other room. the prosecutor began to wonder, could those mysterious blood droplets at the crime scene be linked to rick and bambi. dna results did not come back. you knew somebody else was in the house. it could have been rick. as humphries waited for the results, he obtained a search warrant and took another look at some of rick and bambi s belongings. including their shoes. there s blood on the shoe. what did the lab analysis say about that? it was big charlie s blood. the prosecutor didn t buy rick s story about having ste
but he had a story for it, didn t he? he did. it didn t hold water, but he had a story about it. humphries recited rick s version of how blood had got on his shoe, how he had went into the parker house to get a set of car keys after the crime scene techs had finished up. he looked to his right which was the window leading in to the bathroom where big charlie had died and noticed the blood. rick said he worried bambi pacing outside might look in the window and freak out all over again. he went in and stepped through the bathroom and closed the blind. and, oops, i stepped in the blood. yeah. that s his story, though, right? yeah. but it didn t hold up? no. because they were already closed. that was the gotcha. this crime scene photo, said the prosecutor, was taken hours before rick supposedly stepped inside that house. notice the bathroom blinds are drawn. humphries argued that rick could not have closed the blinds because they were already shut.
purse and on her body. and tina arranged a meeting. she told eric that after the domestic violence call, sheriff s homicide detectives came in to ask questions about eric. this dinner date, tina told eric, was to get their stories straight in case the cops questioned her again. tina, wired up, picked up eric from his home and drove to a restaurant called el torito. were you worried about this? not really. i was more worried that i wasn t going to get him to confess again. i have two stories in my head. i don t want to screw up at all. there s no story to tell. you weren t there. it was an accident. reporter: once inside the restaurant, tina tried to get eric to repeat the details of pegye s death. eric wouldn t go there. details aren t important. reporter: so tina tried to get him to say why he did it. reporter: it s no confession but it s not a denial, either.
the jury had just heard a drama of southern gothic proportions. dripping with family greed and hatred. now it was time for an entirely different story. none of the puzzle pieces fit. rick s defense team, including attorney barbara pratt, told the court that the state s case was heavy on fiction, light on facts. they had a puzzle, they had neat little pieces, but the pieces weren t exactly right. the state was so desperate to prove its case, she said, it clung to the word of a jailhouse snitch and career criminal. a fellow that is there to cut himself a deal and get himself some assistance, i guess, in his own case, is not likely to be credible. not only was the snitch not to be believed, the defense told the jurors, but the state was also trying to confuse them about the mystery blood found at the crime scene. the bottom line, said pratt, the dna from that blood cleared their client from the murders. the dna didn t match. and we knew the dna was not going to match rick.
theories as to motive. what always bothered me about this case, when you look at the gunpowder residue, there was none on bambi. he said that one bit of hard evidence detectives thought they had against bambi, what they thought was blood on her boot, turned out to be nothing. detectives said, we ve got her dna on this boot. it s going to belong to one of the two people. they couldn t even say it was dna. as for the polygraph test, detectives said bambi failed to pass, according to irvin, those results were suspicious. the last question they asked her, have you told me everything you know about this case? if i ask a detective that same question, he couldn t pass it either. it s too broad a question. bambi sat in jail for six months. they were hoping she would flip and tell them the story? that s exactly what they were hoping. finally, the judge said, enough is enough. prosecutor humphries had to let bambi go.