Joe Hunter

The husband is saying, my wife did this out of the blue.

In the report, Mark said he last saw his wife at 1 p.m.

and the church member who called 911 said he and Mark had been outside the house playing basketball and talking about their faith starting at 3 p.m.

until Mark went inside and found Joanna dead.

Joanna's mother, Patricia, knew nothing of what was unfolding at her daughter's house that night.

She wasn't called.

A day later, a deacon from the church went to see her.

At around the same time, Joe, a Sacramento, California firefighter, was taken aside by the captain of his house.

First, the gut punch.

And then, almost instantly, one thought, one name.

What did he do to her?

Mark Lewis.

A few weeks later, when Patricia and her late husband spoke to an officer, he showed her the note.

Joanna had tried to leave Mark many times before, says Patricia.

There was a history of abuse and a cycle that began not long after the couple started seeing each other in high school.

At 17, Patricia says, Joanna came home with a black eye.

Joanna documented Mark choking her and got a restraining order against him.

Even so, Joanna returned to him.

At 21, after she reported that Mark grabbed my neck and twisted it, Joanna got another restraining order.

In 1996, when she was 22, Joanna was hospitalized with a sprained neck.