this murder he was conscious or unconscious. if you re conscious, then he s guilty of murder. and based on what happened to eva that night, argued lamb, reitz had to have made a series of complex decisions, fully aware of exactly what he was doing. look at the beating. this is repeated over and over and over. that takes energy, that takes thought. that takes awareness. lamb proposed to the jury his theory of what must have happened that night in catalina. something, perhaps an argument, he said, must have prompted reitz to get out of bed and walk outside and pick up a heavy flower pot and carry it back to the door of the room, which would have been locked behind him. so he must have pounded on the door until eva opened it, said the prosecutor. then he knocked her unconscious. with the flower pot. he must have beaten her and stabbed her and finally inflicted the fatal wounds to her neck. detective tomlin offered a theory of his own during
then later that very same evening, reitz was arrested for driving under the influence. he was taken to jail, where he received a visitor. eva. she went down and bailed him out and that was it. and then they continued to see each other. so why did that happen? i don t know. i think she thought she could save him and that it would end. i feared for her life. i think a lot of us feared for her life with him. so bizarre that she would not see it that way, that she didn t see it as a threat. i don t think that she really understood how capable he was of hurting her. i think that she was in denial. and in hindsight, one alleged incident might have been a warning. she had told me a time where she woke up in the middle of the night and he was on top of her choking her. bizarre, bizarre behavior. could that have been another sleepwalking episode, another unintended attack? perhaps even a precursor to what
doctor. a federal judge is ordering casey anthony to return money used to search for her daughter, caylee. now, back to our program. unfortunately, the best witness in the case is dead. she was gone. d.a. chris frisco had a problem, stephen reitz, under investigation for killing his girlfriend, eva. he claimed to be sleep walking, not in control when he beat and stabbed her to death. but judging from the violent crime scene and witnessing eva s autopsy, frisco was convinced this had to be calculated, conscious. when people are sleep walking, it s not easy to form all of these various steps in your mind. it s not as if he had thrashed about in the room and knocked over the furniture and woke up. everything he did was directed specifically at eva to ultimately murder her. ultimately d.a. frisco wouldn t get a chance to make that case to a jury. he was transferred to another office and handed the case to
but beating and stabbing eva, that he said he could recall nothing. this is a woman supposedly he s having an affair with her. if he doesn t love her, he at least likes her. because we didn t have a motive, an apparent and obvious motive, it s in the back of your mind, okay, is he sleepwalking? is there some validity to what he s saying? and maybe there was. after all, reitz claimed to have a history of sleepwalking and he was also diagnosed as being bipolar and he certainly seemed forthright, cooperative. when i saw how horrific, it just amazed me. i couldn t believe it, really. i mean, there was no reason for it. obviously you re sorry. i m sorry. i wanted to face the music. but who could back up his story? nobody heard the attack. nobody saw a man with vacant eyes walking the halls, carrying a flower pot or a bloody knife. nobody screamed. that was extremely odd. because, once again, if you saw
testimony about the attack, and that theory did not involve sleepwalking. i think something went wrong, obviously, in that room and he snapped. then the prosecutor told the jury about reitz s episode of jealous rage a few months before. he told them how he broke into her apartment and how he waved a knife around and how eva s relatives noticed bruising, bite marks. so you see the parallels, the very same behavior, pounding on the door, breaking into the room, wielding a pocketknife and then threatening to gut her. it s the very same thing he did in this case. how do you say that he was sleepwalking when on a prior occasion he had the dress rehearsal? at trial, reitz never denied breaking into eva s apartment with the knife. nor did he deny that he was responsible for her bruises. the ones eva s family noticed. instead, reitz said in their passion, sometimes he grabbed