Lester Holt

They found the suicide story fishy from the outset.

Jake's son said he had been with his dad just before the shooting, and he told us that his dad seemed in a good mood.

They were talking about the future.

And it all made the family dig deeper into their suspicions.

They were suspicious of Susan from the get-go.

They were really suspicious of Susan from the very beginning.

Jake's family told us that Susan tried to isolate him from the family.

She took over his finances and his email accounts.

That's something that Susan denies doing.

And one of the big things that had really stood out to them is that their dad, since he had married Susan, seemed to be getting sicker and sicker.

Can you walk us through the timeline?

Yeah.

So about a month or two into their relationship, Jake had a heart attack and Susan became his caregiver.

She was handling his meals.

And then from that point on, Jake's children said he started complaining about nausea, diarrhea, constant vomiting, and even sudden seizures.

But the real turning point in the case came when Rachel, Jake's daughter, gave her dad's hairbrush to a private investigator.

And that investigator handed it off to the DA's office, who submitted it to a crime lab for testing.

What did the lab find or determine?

The results came back and showed several toxic chemicals in his hair sample, things like DEET, antifreeze, arsenic, and other heavy metals.

And in the first trial, the prosecutor said that Susan was poisoning Jake by putting the chemicals into his food since she was the one giving him all of his meals.