reporter: so why would police focus on her? the beautiful socialite, ex-wife number two. she s very intoxicating. i think she was cold and calculating. reporter: maybe her former husband was worth more dead than alive? it s easy to blame the rich, beautiful woman. she s the person everybody loves to hate. but she is completely innocent. reporter: or maybe it was someone else entirely. he was obsessed with gary triano. obsessed with him. it s a case we ve investigated for more than 5 years. reporter: now a stunning new end. we go back on the rollercoaster. i m lester holt and this is dateline. here s josh mankiewicz with mystery on sunrise drive. reporter: spend a little time in tucson, arizona and here in the shadows of the majestic saguaros you ll find a thriving metropolis of a million people with a surprising small town feel. it s the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone. and if you ask anyone from tucson where they were on nov. 1,
To kill him. you heard him say that? many, many times. neil said he have would kill gary triano. hundreds of times. he was obsessed with him. that was the case the defense made to the jury. they argued neil mcneice had the means, the mmotive, and the stated desire to kill triano. any evidence that investigators looked at this guy as a possible suspect? no. they ignored this whole line of investigation completely. completely. the defense even connected neil to a potential bomb-maker. his close friend jerry capuano happened to be a master wood-worker and handyman. one of jerry s hobbies was, he was an avid radio control airplane operator, and he would build his planes from scratch. he would do it using the same types of components found in the bomb that killed gary triano.
this friend of gary triano told detective keith st. john about neil mcneice not long after the murder. did you tell them about a person by the name of neil mcneice? yes. they asked you about a lead, and you gave hem a lead. is that correct? a friend of mine, something he had said. so why didn t the detective at least go talk with neil mcneice? it s just something that fell through the cracks, or because you were so focused on pam phillips? that s what the defense would have you believe, that we were focused on pam phillips. i would say there were eight to ten, what i felt, were viable leads in addition to pam phillips. and neil mcneice wasn t one of them? no. in hindsight, do you wish you had dragged him in a room and asked him some questions? of course. and if you d done that, what do you think you would have found? based on the evidence that i ve seen, both from our investigation and from the defense investigation, we would have cleared him in some way. it w
Before the trial, the defense inspected jerry capuano s former wood shop. the new owner allowed us to go into that shop and we found items in that shop that everything there could have been used to build a bomb, cut pipes, wires, several units for the model planes. this is something they could have found in 1997. there s just one problem with this defense theory. it s pretty hard to check out. where s mr. capuano now? he died. and neil mcneice died? right. so they re the perfect third-party defense for you, that s true. they re dead. they can t stand up and call you a liar. but the evidence is what it is. the evidence is there. and the defense argued, dr. dantonio was not the only person to mention neil mcneice as a potential suspect in the case. gregory seiffert.