this is dateline. the first time i saw her, i thought she was beautiful. we just loved being together, we were always together. our kitchen back door was opened and the glass was broken. i need an ambulance now. my wife, oh my god. it was him who found her. i said i don t know how to handle that. i wish i could ve been there to protect her. a wife murdered, and later, a husband under suspicion. he was such a nice guy that you would ve never guess that he would ve done something like that. you think he faked that burglary and killed his wife? yes. he wanted the house, he wanted her money, and if he divorced her, he would lose everything. in court, a stunning verdict. this could not be happening, i did not kill my wife. but more stunning still was what came after, a mysterious witness with a secret. this is a woman who essentially says i saw the murderer. and it wasn t tom folly. would her story be the ultimate twist? hello and welcome to dateline.
prosecutor, i wanted to convince the police, i wanted to convince my wife s family. i wanted them to know and look at me and hear me. tom started by answering some still nagging questions, like how did a yellow plastic bag with shotgun shells in it get into tom s basement? did you have dunham s bags in your home? yes. how do you explain the bag in the basement, with the shotgun shells in it? they weren t ours. that bag is probably ours. my fingerprints are on the bag. but three clean shotgun shells in my basement? it just doesn t make sense. you have no idea where those came from? absolutely not. tom said he has never owned or used a shotgun. never. wouldn t know how to operate it. wouldn t know the first thing about it. tom schaeffer then asked why tom failed to call his home when dar didn t show up at the birthday celebration.
i think there s evil in him. prosecutor terri norris agreed. who killed dar foley? tom foley. there is nobody else. a year and a half after tom foley s conviction, both sides file back into the courthouse to one again determine tom s fate. circuit court is now in session. as before, the state opened its case with the crime scene analysts. why is it that you found? yellow dunham s bag. located in the bag was three shells. these are phone records norris also showed the jury the records from around the time dar was killed. there were no phone calls that either came in or left. your wife doesn t show up somewhere, why not call home and see, have you left yet? where are you? we re waiting for you. that s what i would do. according to detective carbon, tom did not bother calling dar at home because he
the ground around the farmhouse was unusually wet and muddy. so you would expect there to be muddy footprints from inside the residence from somewhat come through that door? absolutely. and was there anything? there was nothing. but it was the yellow bag found in the basement, the bad containing shotgun shells, that interested carbon in the most. downstairs in the basement, okay, we found a dunham s bag that had some shotgun shells in it. okay. have you ever seen that before? no. the foleys didn t own a shotgun, as far as we know? that is correct. carbon sent the bag to the lab for analysis. and what technicians found on the bag surprised even this veteran detective. tom s fingerprints were on the bag? yes. suddenly, detective carbon felt like he needed to take a closer look at tom folly and his seemingly picture perfect marriage. i think they did a lot of things together, however, i don t consider them the picture perfect couple.
carbon had almost abandoned the theory that this was a random act of violence. it appeared to me that this was a staged break and intering to hide a homicide that took place. but according to detective carbon, whoever staged the burglary didn t factor in the weather that day. it got really warm. we had a huge snow meltoff. the ground around the farmhouse was unusually wet and muddy. so you would expect that there would be muddy footprints from inside the residence where somebody would come through that door? absolutely. was there any footprints, anything? there was nothing. but it was the yellow bag found in the basement, the bag containing shotgun shells, that interested carbon the most. downstairs in the basement we found a dunham s bag that had in shotgun shells in it. okay. did you ever see that before? no. the foleys didn t own a shotgun as far as we know?