for that baby. she wanted to be a mom. this wasn t somebody thinking about suicide. exactly. it made me wonder was he a murderer? you are trying to prove a murderer with pretty much no evidence. correct. is he kind of gloating he got away with it? he is thinking, well, catch me if you can. we are going to do her and her family justice. we are going to solve this murder. hello, and welcome to dateline . meg purk was a young mom to be, over the moon to be having her first child. then, just days before her due date, she died of an apparent suicide. her family struggled to understand why, but in a strange twist, a house fire set decades later would point to a possible answer and put investigators on a trail towards the truth. here is josh mankiewicz with secrets from the grave . wander through any graveyard, and you will find them, mysteries etched in stone. lives cut tragically short by war, disease, misfortune, and sometimes murder. many who arrested in
Who would want to murder you . And i just kind of looked at him like, what . I couldnt believe it. Was he watching me . That fire was set. Very calculating. Years before his wife killed herself. Yes. He claimed she committed suicide days before she was due to give birth to her first child. She was extremely excited for that baby. She wanted to be a mom. This wasnt somebody thinking about suicide. Exactly. It made me wonder was he a murderer . You are trying to prove a very old murder with pretty much no evidence. Correct. Is he kind of gloating he got away with it . He is thinking, well, catch me if you can. We are going to do her and her family justice. We are going to solve this murder. Hello, and welcome to dateline. Meg purk was a young mom to be, over the moon to be having her first child. Then, just days before her due date, she died of an apparent suicide. Her family struggled to understand why, but in a strange twist, a house fire set decades later would point to a possible ans
at them like what? i could not believe it. was he watching me? that fire was set to throw us off. he was very calculating. years before, his wife killed herself. yes, he claimed she committed suicide days before she was due to give birth to their first child. she was extremely excited for that first baby. it made me wonder okay, is he a murderer? so, now you are trying to prove a very old mother with pretty much no evidence. is a kind of gloating that he got away with it? he is thinking well, catch me if you can. we re going to do her and her family justice. we re going to solve this murder. hello, and welcome to dateline. meg purk was a young mom to be, over the moon to be having her first child. then, just days before her due date, she died of an apparent suicide. her family struggled to understand why, but in a strange twist, a house fire sat decades later would point to a possible answer and put investigators on the trail toward the truth. here is josh m
one block away. and almost exactly a year before? at almost the same time in the morning. for the past year, jim had lidel analyze the evidence from the blaze at scott purk s home. he was convinced that fire had been an inside job. and based on what he knew about arsonists, this fire was likely set by the same person. it s unusual for them to switch method once they have a pattern that works for them. find something that works. the will do something very, very similar on each of their fires. it had to be scott. we took that was also another scott was trying to show us that there is a serial arsonists in the neighborhood, but it wasn t him. because he left on the other side of town now. investigators were not fooled. mifflin and went lidel to the apartment complex where the purks had been living says their house burned down. the family car parked outside and still warm on that freezing night reeked of gasoline. and then in the apartment, we find a gas can sitting right
who would want to murder you? and i just kind of looked at him like, what? what are you talking about? and then they asked me, don t you smell the gasoline? and that s when i stopped and i realized that that s all you could smell, was the strong odor of gasoline. you involved in anything illegal? no. anything extramarital? no. anything that s going to make somebody angry enough to make you make them want to do away with you? nothing that i could think of at all. investigators heard the seam story from the older woman who lived in the other half of the complex. jim lidel was there that night. he says even the landlady was checked out to see if she might have had her own building torched for the insurance money. obviously we had to go look at that, at her. she lived nearby, but she was