I hope i could do somethin different, but it s not goin to change. it s at me it eats at me. i can t sleep most of the time as for the estate bruce harkey had so fervently hope to inherent, that seem to be gone with the texas wind in the wake of bonnie s death, the orchards faded, and ther were no longer any harkeys living in the harkey home. and that s all for this edition of dateline. i m craig melvin thanks for watching. i m craig melvin. i m natalie morales this is dateline
Were, how he did it, why he di it, and it was - originally, he did not do it? well, i did not do it, i di not deal with. and if i did do it, it was because this and finally - exactly sort of at the point wher prosecutors and police started to talk about the death penalty? and my question, and in any case where there is a statemen from a witness, was a lot to lose, what s the most likely t be the truth joe is my question karl presley s credibility, but the prosecutors had a bombshell in his arsenal. turns out, jurors, this was no bruce harkey s first time. mcafee told the jurors juror the ten years earlier he had done prison time for his rol in another murder plot, and in an unsuccessful one that targeted one of his many exploits i think there s a lot o things that were extremely similar in it.
And the main one is that h gets somebody else to do wha he wants done and he does it through influence. i will simply say that that is a devastating bit o evidence yes, because that makes m think, well, they got to tha guy just hypothetically speaking, let s say the case i purely circumstantial, and i looks kind of that, and then there is proof in front of the jury, this is by the way, he did it before that makes all the other evidence see much more important. if you are a prosecutor - that s great stuff. that is the end of this stor whether it should be or should not. it took the jury only one hour to reach a guilty verdict bruce harkey was steve day lif sentence as did karl pressley. lilian king was sentenced to 4 years for her role in th murders. i m not a violent person. i m not. and i loved miss harkey like she was my own grandmother and yet - i know.
Constant drama the boys took different career paths john became a businessman. bruce had a number of differen jobs at various times, he was a cop in reno, a medicaid frau investigator for the texas attorney general s office, and a nursing home administrator along the way, he married an divorced eight, count them eight women. still, as the years roll by, the brother s feelings for bonnie seemed to fester. there were a lot of reasons fo that, but maybe the biggest on was a will their father, riley had drawn up shortly before he died and 1997. riley s will specifically said that bonnie good live o that property as long as she was a lie. and then when she died, th land would go to the boys.
Testify against bruce harkey in exchange for lighte sentences, prosecutor sunn mcafee felt confident that h had a solid case against bruce the facts of the crime were so horrendous that i did not think once the jury believed that he was pardoned of th crime, that they did not hav any difficulty at all findin difficulty she and bruce harkey an karl pressley talked about killing bonnie many times. what she told us, she didn t learn what actually set in motion until the friday before the murder that is when she says sh overheard a phone conversation between bruce harkey and kar pressley because after he got off th phone with, facilitate me an said was gonna bruce was gonna pay me to lillian testified that whil bonnie and her caretaker wer in church that sunday morning, carl slipped into the house an hid. once bonded we turned home