Ashley Flowers

And what I can tell you after deep diving into this case is that it doesn't all point to Dave.

This is the story of Laura Sweetman.

So let's start with the elephant in the room, Dave Sweetman.

When we first started poking around trying to ask questions about Laura's case, we were surprised by how many people were afraid to talk to us.

They were afraid of Dave because the prevailing theory among those who knew Laura seemed to be that somehow, some way, Dave was involved in her death.

They didn't have proof, of course, or they would have gone to police with that.

But what they had were decades of stories about a man who scared them and who was scaring Laura right before her death.

So to understand that fear and before I ever get into how Laura died, I need to take you all the way back to the 1980s when Dave and Laura first started dating as teenagers at Fallbrook Union High School in California.

As a junior in high school, Laura was a future homemaker of America and part of the swim team and the yearbook club.

And Dave was a varsity football player in the grade above her.

This is like a real all-American California dream kind of couple.

Now, after graduating, Laura went on to get her master's in biochemistry.

She went to med school, completed her residency in pediatric neurology, and then worked at Phoenix Children's Hospital.

And Dave became a small business owner.

Now, they got married, and around 2004, they had the first of their three sons.

So from the outside, everything seemed picture perfect.

But people who knew Laura knew that that was not the case.

Laura's close friend, who we're going to call Emily, told us that the Sweetman's marriage was always tumultuous.

Laura and Emily first met around 2009 when Emily started training Laura at the gym.

And in those early days, Emily said that Laura, I mean, originally had like no confidence.