she s starting to lose jobs. it s like all hell broke loose in her head. reporter: but murder? remember, the police went to see dawn just a couple of hours after ben was killed, found her fast asleep. what time did you think you went to sleep? oh, god. i watched the movie the depart departed and i don t know, about 4:00. in fact, she happened to be sharing her bedroom with a 21-year-old family friend named james matlian. we watched a movie and went to bed. yeah, that s her story. that s it. reporter: not exactly a convincing alibi. any more than the obvious fiction that james, the new man in her life, was just a friend. even less convincing, when detective ron elgis learned about a trip to a 7-eleven store, middle of the night, about an hour and a half before the murder. why are they hiding little pieces that s seem insignificant to what is going on? then we started to do surveillance on them. now they re starting to get
the facility in the past week according to north korea s academy of defense science. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. melissa oxley could now breathe a little easier. while still on their radar, detectives no longer considered her the primary suspect in her husband ben s shooting death. they d shifted their focus to another woman in ben s life. someone they believed held a grudge. investigators were about to bring her in for questioning. and the story she d tell would send the case in a stunning new direction. here again is keith morrison with while they were sleeping. if you knew ben, there s no way that you d want him dead. i couldn t think of anybody that would want him dead, you know, besides dawn.
reporter: finally, the story of ben oxley s murder, bit by bit, was leaking out. but could dawn s version be believed, that she had nothing to do with it? here s what dawn s mother sherry thought. i can see her sitting there saying, god, i wish he was dead. yeah. and i can see james going you want me to go kill him for you and her going whatever? it was more of a disbelief than an affirmation. reporter: that s the story dawn told, too, that she did not want james matlian to kill her ex-husband. do you want to talk about this case? you know i do. okay. reporter: it was now the fall of 2009. dawn was in jail for a dui and agreed to talk in more detail about the night of ben oxley s murder. and he said do you want me to go do that? i m sitting there going are you serious? are you kidding me? all i know is he s on the phone. he s asking me if i wanted him to go take care of ben and i was saying no. reporter: and then she went
this is a case built on lies and deception and cat and mouse. who knew what it was? but the story when it began back in 2005 was about love. or what certainly felt like it. in fact, fair to say it was two kinds of love. there was what happened to ben when he met melissa. as soon as he met melissa, he was something i had never seen. just, you know, just for no reason he d kale her and say i love you. reporter: he was a changed man. absolutely.s he was happy. melissa really made the difference.ss reporter: and if anybody would know, his best friends would. cindy and scott graham.d ben was family. i mean, he was family. reporter: and then there was ben s other love, brightest r thing in his life, the one good thing that came from his first marriage, alyssa. everybody said that he loved me more than anything. and i think it s true. reporter: quite true, of
ben was a good guy. they had their problems. everybody loved him. he didn t deserve to die. reporter: so for the time being it s a he said/she said story. and the d.a. s deal with dawn to the dismay of james matlean s attorney means she may never face a murder charge. the prosecutor made a deal with the devil. now we just need to show him how far in hell she is. deal with the devil? the d.a. says without dawn s testimony at the preliminary hearing, the murder charge against james would never have stuck. but dawn wasn t totally off the hook because there was one possibility still. if the d.a. could find hard evidence that dawn lied when she was given that get out of jail free deal for implicating james it s still an open book on dawn oxley for murder. if somebody comes in today with credible evidence that shows she did in fact go, we could prosecute her. reporter: in 2011 dawn was