atop a cliff. but romance turned to danger. she fell from the edge. i would call this an accidental death. but whas it? she said that if anything happens to me, you ll know who did it. a mystery of nearly 20 years heads into court and the husband is on the precipice. did you kill your wife, jody? i did not. what happened on the cliffs edge? hello and welcome to dateline. when police got word that someone had fallen off a cliff, they weren t surprised. the place was known to be dangerous. but even they could not guess that it would take almost 20 years to find out what really happened to a woman out on an evening hike with her husband. here s chris jansen. every couple has it. a shared song, a favorite movie, or maybe a special place. stephen scharf says that for his wife and him jody, this was it. two rocks forming a lover s chair on the edge of a cliff. that was our spot. we would bring a couple of long chairs, a cooler, and she would bring her work
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saw it that way. the head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbles down the cliff face. doctor marianne clayton was the bergen county medical examiner who first ruled the circumstances of jody s death could not be determined. now on second look, she said, the victims wounds, or lack of them told her something different. something vital. if jody had tumbled innocently down the palisades, she would have had broken bones everywhere. she did not. there were no visible injuries on the back of mrs. scharf s body. but why would stephen have killed his wife? the biggest reason, the prosecutor argued, was that stephen did not want to divorce. he did not want to custody fight. and he didn t want to split assets with jody. and there was yet another motive for stephen, said the prosecutor. a potential payout. usa a life insurance company. an insurance representative
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