Love of her life, steve. they were crazy for each other. sharon ands is steve sister. she was kind of a natural fit for the family. she was immediately as sister to all of us. all of us being the family. hired traverse all of them. sharon is a doctor. it s an accomplished bunch. my friend said there is not a weak link in this group. they got married in his parents backyard overlooking lake ontario near rochester new york. an outdoor wedding for a crumple who loved attention. steve was the one who started the adventuring. first there was hiking, skiing, planning, kayaking. they moved around a bit as people do. and wound up, eventually, in prescott. which proved to be the perfect place to raise their two daughters, katie and. they re amazing.
That s a whole separate trial, a whole separate issue. reporter: the defense tried to keep all that out of the trial. did not succeed. yeah, because it makes him look like a bad, evil guy who forced his daughters to use their inheritance money to pay for his attorneys, a low, scummy thing to do. but none of that put him in the house. none of that put any dna on him, in his house car, person, anything along those lines. judge, at this time, the defense rests. thank you. reporter: all along, steve s family remained rock solid in his corner. as sister sharon said. i wanna think the best of my brother. the other part of it is that no one showed me anything that changes my mind. there is no evidence to say, well, you know, you re not thinkin about this. show me something. but do you see your own kind of understandable family bias
Oh boy. she told me that mr. democker had informed them during one of their in-person visits at the jail to bring some pencil and paper. there was a glass between them. mr. democker had brought a document with him that he placed on the glass, so that they could view it. reporter: according to renee, steve himself wrote that document. then asked his daughter charlotte, just 17 at the time, to copy it down. mr. democker then asked them to send that document which became known as the anonymous e-mail to mr. sears and to the prosecutor s office. reporter: mr. sears was john sears. one of steve s defense attorneys. steve s reasoning, according to steve s sister sharon, he d heard that story from an inmate in that air-vent conversation and desperately wanted to get
i sent an anonymous e-mail. reporter: anonymous. so that it could not be traced back to her or her father. her older sister katie wasn t aware the e-mail had come from charlotte. but she was at the center of the story about life insurance. steve had signed a disclaimer saying he would not benefit from the proceeds of carol s life insurance. but katie was forced to testify that wasn t true. my father was asking me for various things related to that money. reporter: once carol s life insurance paid out, katie transferred her share to her grandparents. but you knew that your grandparents were going to use that money for attorneys fees? that was my understanding, some or all of it. reporter: the prosecution called close to 50 witnesses to portray steve democker as a man who plotted to kill his wife. plotted his escape. and used his own children to fund his defense. and even hoodwink his lawyers
His ex-wife s place, miles away, babysitting his son. didn t they find out the alibi was, in fact, pretty solid? no. actually, it was not. what the suns said was that, yeah, they had gotten a video, and the sun was watching it. he didn t know where dad went. he wasn t sitting beside him in the room? no, dad was not watching with him. so, he doesn t know where data was. the son got bored watching this movie, and i believe he went and got on his computer. so, there s a period of time that we don t really know. he might have been in the house, but nobody saw him. so, maybe the solid alibi wasn t. remember how he told everyone he had cancer? sharon, a doctor, discovered something about that. i ve seen the medical records. and? he had a superficial type of skin cancer or one point, and it had been removed. so, no, he didn t. steve s family even recorded