Lester Holt

The minute the defendant takes the stand, we now have the government's proof versus the defendant's credibility.

A gamble his defense team said Ferranti was willing to make.

He wanted jurors to see him for the man he was, one who loved his bright, complicated wife.

Yes, he conceded he had been a jealous husband for a brief moment, but then he and Autumn had kissed and made up in the weeks before her death.

They go on a trip to Puerto Rico with their daughter.

As the neighbors described, when they come back, they're glowing, they're in love, they're holding hands.

Those actions speak a thousand words.

In the moments after his wife collapsed, he said he honestly thought she was having a stroke.

When she died, he wanted simply to honor her wishes and donate her organs.

And that's why he did not want an autopsy.

He was aware that if an autopsy is done, a full autopsy is done, it will destroy the ability to donate the organs, which was his wife's request.

A loving and loyal husband to the end, according to the defense.

Not a mad scientist treating his wife like a lab rat, killing her with cyanide.

Speaking of which, they said, the prosecution's claim of how Autumn died was all wrong.

There is not evidence that my client had anything to do with her death, let alone her death caused by cyanide.

An age-old poison, its connection to a medical researcher and his doctor wife, were about to be analyzed beneath a very different kind of microscope, the unforgiving eye of the law.

Coming up...

Would someone as smart as Robert Ferrante really use something as obvious and easy to trace as cyanide?

That's like me buying a shotgun, telling everybody, hey, I just bought a shotgun, and two hours later my wife is deceased from a shotgun shot.

He would be the dumbest guy in the universe.