Unnamed Friend

chewing sorry so what are you eating what are you eating i'm eating um toast i'm eating i'm eating raisin toast so i'm in raisin toast with butter okay so i'm on a podcast and they asked me to call a friend to describe how you would describe me as a friend as a friend as a friend i would describe you as a ride or die Like, you are down for whatever. You will always show up all the time.

You're very consistent. Like, I feel like me and you will, like, not talk or see each other for, like, six months. And then it's, like, we just pick up where we left off. And I think you're really good at keeping secrets. Gonna tell those on this pod. You're, like, actually. And you're incredibly loyal. And you're funny. You're funny as hell. And you're honest. Keep going. That's so cute.

It's true. You're welcome. Love you. Bye. Okay. You're just like, you're such a bitch. You're just like a bitch.

Really? You're the nicest person in the world.

I loved Kaylee. She was honestly such an amazing friend.

Kaylee, she was very competitive. She was very spontaneous. You could wake her up in the middle of the night and say, hey, pack your bags. We're going to Mexico in the morning. And she would be like, are you serious? Let's go.

So Maddie was the youngest out of the friend group because those girls were very, very tight knit. But Maddie just, she was always, she always seemed to be like the oldest of the group. She just had a very old soul. Just super smart and intelligent and very wise for her age, I would say.

I miss her potential and her sweetness and this grounded energy that she really made people feel seen and like what they were doing mattered and made a difference.

Zanna was beautiful. She was always smiling. There's this video we found where she's just spinning in a 360 with this huge smile. And you just want to know that person because she was just full of life.

I just want people to remember Ethan as someone who would put a smile on your face.

We all knew that he had a crush on her. Everyone knew it, but it just didn't bother anybody.

I remember the entire town was pink. Every storefront, car, light post, everything had a pink bow on it. We will miss you, Anita, written in pink marker. Everywhere, everywhere you drove, there was just pink everywhere.

Yeah. I was from Southern California, so everybody doesn't know everybody. So coming out here and just, it's definitely a smaller town and everybody was affected out here just because everybody knows each other.

Did you have anybody that you thought, that you suspected at the time? Back then, Tyler.

She makes everybody around her a better person. I knew she was something special.

She doesn't, like, judge people. But if you were, like, too persistent on things, she would tell you, like, no, like, leave me alone, back away.

that you suspected at the time? Back then, Tyler.

Me and my mom both did.

She was so beautiful inside and out. So smart. She might have said it more gently, but I just remember Anita's dead. Everything kind of stopped.

Oh, we got like thousands of signatures on it. Thousands of signatures?

She got drunk and she told you that she killed Anita.

She got drunk and she told you that she killed Anita.

Tell me about the incident with your fish tank incident.

There's just a lot of things, Nicole, that over the years... Your story has changed so many times. This has been 13 years ago.

We are on board with moving forward with criminal charges for Nicole Thomas. She's going to be arrested.

Her statements about her whereabouts the weekend of the murder. Did her statements change over time? They did.

Anytime an investigator brought up information that they had received about them fighting or arguing, she downplayed it.

The alarm clock, the fish tank. Primarily those were the issues that came up.

Like, I understand if you win a, you know, a trial like that, you don't want to be happy, but you got to have some courtesy to the family that's sitting next to you. That had to be gut-wrenching.

She was just positive and happy and just... the best. I mean, she always did what was right. She never, like, wavered in that."

It's really scary not knowing how that's going to turn out.

She literally became friends with anybody. She always went towards the people that probably never would have a lot of friends. So she always tried to be friends with everybody.

I think they just wanted to have their own space. So then they were both like, let's just get an apartment together. So they did.

If she don't want to be a wife, that's her decision.

I can accept that. you know, that's not something that I want or something, it'd be hard.

So maybe she was off with a new love interest, or maybe she'd been picked up by a stranger. And then David had one more idea.

Has anyone talked with that hog shooter?

John Hog Shooter, the Swift's neighbor.

You know, I mean, everybody's scared to death of him in the neighborhood. We will talk to him. We're going to cover all the bases.

Covering all the bases also meant searching the Swift home.

Will you give us permission to go back out there and look around?

Yeah. I mean, anything I can do to help. I just ordered to come home.

Not long after that conversation, deputies arrived at the Swift home. They went from room to room to room and looked at every little thing, but... We didn't find any evidence or anything inside the house.

And then they got to the backyard.

It was October 29th, 2011, two nights to Halloween when they gathered to celebrate in their costumes and their masks. To hide their secrets, perhaps? But certainly to make a new one, the darkest secret of them all.

That definitely got investigators' attention. The Swift's place was in the country, where one property tended to meld into the next one. So investigators moved out, poking around, and eventually something caught their eye. Something they'd been looking for since day one. Karen's cell phone.

And nearby was another one, a second phone. Now, what on earth could that mean? The mystery of what happened to Karen Swift was becoming bigger than anything this town had seen. And in the absence of answers, all kinds of rumors filled the void.

It was, to say the least, a surprise. Way off in the grass at the edge of a neighbor's property, Karen Swift's cell phone. And lying there with it, another phone. Her phone? Someone else's phone? Who knew?

The findings of which would become very important to investigators. But what was extra curious was that odd location.

That is John Hogshooter, the Swift's neighbor, the man David had told investigators about.

You know, I mean, everybody's scared to death of him in the neighborhood.

Investigators had already heard an alarming story about how Hogshooter had poisoned the Swift's family dog. That was just weeks before Karen disappeared, which made him a person of interest, to say the least. Did you bring him into the station to talk to him?

Well, he said he got tired of dogs pooping on his property. So Hogshooter put poison in his yard. One of the neighbor's dogs died because of it, and the Swift's dog became severely ill. the investigators searched Hog Shooter's home and his cars. Didn't find anything. But by then, all of Dyersburg seemed to know Hog Shooter was being looked at, and he felt the need to defend himself.

That's what everyone said they wanted. The local news was all over the story. Spoke to the friend Karen went to the costume party with, Kathy Bona.

Investigators were talking to everyone. Eager to learn all they could, it helps to know your missing person. And David, it turned out, had shared a lot.

When we first moved over there, and that's when Karen really started changing and doing this, all kinds of stuff.

Stuff, he said, was worrying him. Like how Karen had recently started leaving the house at all hours of the night, said David.

It was about 9.30 one night and Karen was sneaking out of the door. He went outside and said, Karen, where are you going?

It was a who's who of Dyersburg gathered for a Halloween party. Jason Creasy, a locally prominent lawyer and judge, was one of the hosts.

He said most of it happened with Karen's friends, the Bonas. They had a hot tub and liked to host parties. And one night,

I could see Karen was in the bed here. I went over there to the covers and I pulled them back. She did have a towel, but she was totally naked.

I asked her, why aren't you in bed naked with Kathy?

Karen's friend Robin reported the same sort of thing. Different night. What did you see?

Still no clothes on?

Oh boy.

What happened when you got in there? What did you see?

How did David react to all this?

So what exactly was going on with Karen and her good friends Kathy and Bill Bona? Rumors flew through town, of course, and into the ears of local reporters like Janice Broach of NBC affiliate WMC in Memphis.

The rumors, which the Bonas deny, were that they were swingers and that Karen was part of their group.

Shocking or maybe not. In Dyersburg, that kind of thing was well-worn gossip. There was even a name for the local swingers club that supposedly operated here years ago. The Pink Poodles Club. What can you tell me about the, what is it, the Pink Poodle Club?

Jason Creasy, one of the hosts of that Halloween party, has lived in Dyersburg for more than two decades.

Karen's friend Jenny didn't like all the swirling rumors. Anyway, wasn't Karen on her way to a divorce? Jenny remembers being happy that Karen seemed to be finding herself even as her marriage fell apart.

Including a woman named Karen Swift. Charismatic Karen. Life of the party, usually. What was she wearing?

But her family was struggling with this new Karen. Was she out at night a lot, eventually?

And she would go anyway?

But to be gone for days without word to anyone? That made no sense to nine-year-old Ashley.

Somewhere in her child's mind she knew, they all did, the awful truth they would be forced to face.

With each passing day and no news of Karen, her family and friends were enveloped by the fear of exactly what her absence meant.

Before they knew it, it was Thanksgiving.

December. Winter descended, damp and cold. Outside, around Dyersburg, the kudzu vine shrank to wait for spring. And then, six weeks after it began, the search was finally over. A caretaker walking the grounds of a nearby cemetery saw something under a steel cross in a patch of withering kudzu.

Jenny's husband gave her the news.

Do you remember hearing when they found your mother's body?

At that age, how hard does that hit?

She didn't have much fun, either. Wasn't the Karen who loved to sing and dance. She was the plus one of another couple and felt like a third wheel. So she called her friend Jenny Gurian.

And the whole family, how is everybody coping?

Investigators processed the scene. Karen's remains were sent for an autopsy. What were their findings?

Any evidence of sexual assault? No. No? So whoever left her there, left her there in her underwear, and that was that? Yes. That it was murder was obvious, and the list of people they needed to speak to was long. They had already spoken with the couple Karen had been spending so much time with lately. Did you ask the Bonas to come in for an interview?

They did come in for an interview, and they gave an interview, Bill and Kathy. Investigators learned something interesting. That second phone found near Hog Shooter's place, that was Karen's, and it was given to her by the Bonas.

Detectives discovered Karen was using it to talk to a man she met at a concert who said he wanted to get to know her better. David seemed to be concerned that she was having multiple affairs. Is that true?

For one thing, police didn't think the Bonas had anything to do with Karen's disappearance. And police knew all about the rumors in town.

No, their investigation was not focusing in on what Karen was doing outside her marriage, but rather on the man she was married to.

In their early interviews with David, they thought they saw a guy far more concerned with trash-talking his wife than fining her. There were the stories he told about what Karen and her friends were doing.

I asked her, why are you in bed naked with Kathy?

And he went on and on about how much she had started drinking recently.

There'd be times that somebody would have to drive Karen home, or I'd have to go get her and drive her home, they'd call me. And so I was always concerned and worried about her. She was so drunk once that she had passed out on the porch in her own vomit.

Like that business about Karen's secret phone.

Well, I found out yesterday that Bill and Kathy Bono had given her another cell phone.

So he did know. He did know. Had they caught him in a lie? Well, maybe. But more importantly, investigators were zeroing in on the motive. David angry over the divorce, watching Karen slip further away. But that certainly wasn't enough for an arrest. David got a lawyer and stopped talking. And then the investigation seemed to just stall.

But Karen stuck it out. It was late when she left the party with the couple who had taken her, Bill and Kathy Bona. They stopped at a McDonald's for some fries. And then they went to the Bona's house, where Karen planned to spend the night. She would rejoin her own family in the morning. But after midnight, Karen got a call from her nine-year-old daughter, Ashley.

Ashley went through her adolescence motherless.

But the question about what happened to her mother was far from over. Someone new was coming to Dyersburg and so was a whole new theory of the case.

Oh boy. Wine improves with age. Murder investigations generally not.

David Swift didn't hang around to see what Sheriff Box would do. He left Dyersburg, eventually settled in Alabama with his daughters. And that's where he found a new partner on the dating site Christian Mingle, Kelly Essman. Four years after the murder, David Swift was a married man again. Were you okay with the idea that he would marry another woman?

How involved was your dad in your life during those years in Alabama?

He's always been your guy, your rock.

The story was no longer making headlines in Dyersburg, but in 2018, seven years after some unknown person bludgeoned Karen Swift to death, a disruptor came to town, disruptor with a capital D, and her name was Heather Cohen.

Heather studied criminal justice, worked as a paralegal, and in 2016 became a licensed private investigator.

She shares a lot about her cases online and on a podcast she hosts called The Justice Warriors.

A crime blogger friend told Heather about the Swift case, and she started making calls and then heard a lot of those salacious rumors about Dyersburg.

Strange bedfellows.

And when she came to town, she did not tiptoe. She showed up with a big team and a friend recording every move as she chased down leads and knocked on doors and did interviews.

Who hired her to be that voice? Who paid her? No one, said Heather. Her first thought about David Swift was, why hadn't he been arrested?

So she called him directly, and he agreed to talk.

I would have done anything for my wife, and people just don't understand that they've just been led astray.

Yeah, well, sometimes love leads to things, as you know.

So Heather turned to all those stories about Karen's behavior in the last months of her life. What did she find rooting around in the gossip? A story about an affair, alleged affair, that is, and a man named Bentley Katermas.

She discovered that Bentley's wife, Dina, was at that country club Halloween party, and there were rumors she'd had an argument with Karen. And that led to speculation by Heather that there must have been a messy love triangle, which in turn somehow must have led to Karen's murder. There was an altercation in your mind?

You were at a sleepover, and there were like three girls there, and they were kind of making you feel like the one left out, right?

Looking into Bentby and Dina would end up being the most consequential decision of her career. Because it led her to Dina's father, Daryl Sells, a wealthy businessman. Learning all about him became Heather's obsession.

One of the leads came from witnesses who said they saw Darrell's cells poking around the crime scene with a metal detector before Karen's body was discovered. Heather recorded interviews with the witnesses.

I seen this old man and he had a metal detector. It was weird, you know.

Heather went from curious to off-the-charts suspicious. And then she got her hands on a recording of an anonymous phone call made to the sheriff's office. The caller claimed to know the location of Karen's body when she was still a missing person. Heather believed the voice on that call was Daryl Sells.

Take a look at it and see if you can find out.

Soon, Heather was convinced Daryl Sells was engaged in a huge cover-up to protect his own family.

That feels crappy, doesn't it?

Yes, it was just a theory, but that didn't stop Heather. She continued doing podcasts about the cells.

And pretty soon, people in Dyersburg knew all about Heather's theories.

So, Mom Karen wasn't the only third wheel. You called your mom then, huh? Is that what happened?

She stirred up a hornet's nest, all right. And when you do that, you'd better be ready to get stung. You're accused of repeatedly threatening Heather Cohen, and including threatening to crush her skull. Heather Cohen thought she'd found the key to unlock the Karen Swift murder mystery.

Heather's theory about the murder started with the tip alleging that Karen Swift was having an affair with Daryl Sells' son-in-law, Bentley. Heather tried to get Bentley and his wife, Dina, to talk to her. They wouldn't do it. But Dina did talk to us. Heather Cohen said that Bentley was having an affair with Karen. False. But what do you think of that? How did he react to that?

Another of Heather's lies, according to Dina, was that story about a supposed fight between her and Karen at the Halloween party.

Dina told us she and Bentley didn't even know Karen Swift.

David Swift stayed up to make sure his wife and daughter got home safely, which they did after 2 a.m. David went to bed in one room while Ashley fell asleep with her mom in another. But she remembers waking up in a different room. What happened when you woke up in the morning?

But what about those witnesses who said Dina's father, Daryl Selves, was poking around the crime scene with a metal detector? Ridiculous, said Dina.

Heather also fixed on that strange call to the sheriff's office, directing them to Karen's body.

Daryl's son, Darren, has listened to it more than once.

If somebody wanted to do a voice analysis of that call versus his voice, you're going to find out that that is not him at all whatsoever.

Heather didn't offer proof it was Sells' voice. It was just her opinion after listening to it. Sheriff Box knows Daryl Sells and came to a different conclusion.

If you're an out-of-town P.I. poking around in Dyersburg, you might want to think twice before picking a fight with Daryl Sells, a self-made man who became one of the wealthiest men in town.

So let me tell you, I'm a ninth-grade dropout from high school.

Sells was a barber who got into the fast-food business in the 1970s and built it into a burger-and-fries empire worth millions. Would you say that you are kind of the archetypal American success story?

Well, I think so. I had an opportunity to make myself successful far beyond my means, and it worked out good.

Good, until Heather started promoting an ugly new chapter to his American success story. Sells told us he has no idea what happened to Karen Swift, and anyone who says they saw him poking around the place where her body was found is either confused or lying. You were never anywhere near there with a metal detector? No.

Hell, sorry, pardon my French, but I've never... He's never owned a metal detector. I don't even know how to operate one.

When Daryl heard about the allegations, he called Heather and gave her a piece of his mind.

You are spreading some shit around my family. No, sir. Yes, you are. I'm going to fix your ass before it's over with. Okay. You lying people don't need to be doing what you're doing.

You're accused of repeatedly threatening Heather Cohen, including threatening to crush her skull.

Oh, well, I think I said I'd like to rub her nose on the concrete. And I'd still like to do that, tell you the truth about it.

Your dad is a fighter. He's kind of an unfiltered guy, isn't he?

Well, just a little. I don't know. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's my makeup. But I can't get this off my mind. You know, these people have got to pay for the lies they've told about my family.

Darrow did try to make Heather Cohen pay. He filed a lawsuit saying her entire theory of the case, the affair, the fight that somehow led to a murder and cover-up, the Sells family's influence over law enforcement, it was all malicious and defamatory. And Heather? She appeared before a grand jury to present evidence that Daryl had threatened and harassed her. One of them was arrested. Him.

What?

Daryl was charged with cyber-stalking.

So I had to go down there and sit there for this woman to fingerprint me. And it was on the front page of the newspaper the next day.

In the end, the lawsuit was settled out of court. Each side agreed not to disparage the other, and Heather conceded she had no first-hand knowledge that the Sells family was involved in Karen Swift's murder. The cyber-stalking charge against Daryl Sells was dismissed, which in Heather's book was just another example of the Sells family getting favorable treatment in Dyersburg.

It wouldn't be slow for long. David and the girls woke up around 10 a.m., but Karen wasn't there. And then a neighbor told David that she saw Karen's car less than half a mile from the Swift home. One of the tires was completely flat, and there was no sign of Karen. Did you understand then that something must have happened to your mom, that she was missing and this wasn't good?

In fact, didn't you call this the Sells family sheriff's office?

Sheriff Box is not contemplating a name change. Heather Cohen has said all kinds of things about the department, essentially saying that Daryl Sells controls you.

Heather Cohen does have her supporters in Dyersburg, people who think she has uncovered the truth. It's fair to say Sheriff Box and the Sells family are not among them. Why should we believe you and not them?

Heather kicked up a storm, all right. Got everyone talking. What new secrets about Karen's life would come to light?

With no one arrested for Karen Swift's murder, the drama between private investigator Heather Cohen and the Sells family took center stage. Heather's theories about Karen's killer went viral, in Dyersburg at least.

All the talk even reached Ashley, 300 miles away in Alabama.

Even though Heather's podcast and internet posts were pointing away from her dad as a suspect, Ashley didn't like how Heather was operating.

And while Heather said she wasn't hired by Ashley's dad, some of her information did come from David's family. I seen this old man and He had a metal detector. Heather reported talking to three people who said they'd seen Daryl Sells at the crime scene. One of them was Ashley's own brother. That whole business about Daryl Sells, the metal detector, what did you make of all that stuff?

Back in Dyersburg, Rob and Alfred heard the suspicions about David, and the possibility he may have snapped and done something to Karen did rattle around in the back of her mind. But she could not imagine David as a killer, and thought Heather's fresh take on the case was exactly what was needed. Did she change your point of view about what may have happened here?

But whatever people felt about the Heather-Daryl sideshow, it did get people talking about Karen's case again. Danny Goodman took over as DA of Dyer County in 2018.

I think the DA that was here before me was looking for that smoking gun, the one piece of evidence that would just make the case a slam dunk. But that just didn't exist, apparently. And then 2020 hit. The thing that actually worked out well for us, even though it was something that was tragic for so many people, was COVID.

We had more free time than usual, so we decided that it would be a good time just to, let's dig back into this case.

They dusted off 30 large bins, and for a year they poured over it nine years' worth of police reports and transcripts and evidence. Not to mention all the theories and allegations Heather stirred up.

There were a lot of rumors, and Heather Cohen actually brought a lot of information to me.

And when he wasn't sure Heather had given him everything, he went to a judge, got a warrant to search her house, and collected all the research she'd done on the case.

We investigated everything. We checked out... any allegation that was made. After they spoke to some of Heather's sources, Goodman said, a pattern emerged. Each witness that we would go and talk to would say, no, I didn't say that. Or, no, that's not exactly how that was. This is what I said.

Heather stands by her information. But by the end of it, Goodman said the evidence led him back to the man Sheriff's investigators had suspected all along, David Swift. As you went through those 30 boxes, did you find something that you felt was, you know, eye-opening, was going to change things?

We did not come across anything that was just the one big thing, you know, just the aha moment. It was more so of putting a puzzle together.

A big piece of which was motive.

which David certainly seemed to have in abundance. I think he saw that he was losing control because in the past he was able to control everything that Karen did, everywhere she went, he controlled the money, and he saw that that was starting to slip away.

Karen didn't answer several texts and calls that morning. So David and Karen's friends, the Bonas, called the Dyer County Sheriff's Office. Terry McCrite is chief investigator. One of your deputies went to have a look at the car, right?

Goodman saw Karen chasing a new life on the brink of freedom and David refusing to let her go. Karen, it turned out, had complained to her friends about it.

Maybe David just snapped that night after the Halloween party. Goodman reviewed David's past interviews against material they had gathered from his computer.

David made numerous statements. He went to bed and slept until the next morning at 10.30 when the children woke him up. We know that that's not true because we could prove that there was activity on his computer at 3 o'clock in the morning and after.

But if David killed Karen, he hid his tracks well. In a decade of searching, they had never found any evidence of a crime at the Swift home, and they never found a weapon that might have inflicted the deadly blows. So, in 2022, 11 years after Karen was murdered, sheriff's investigators decided to try once more. They brought excavators and dug near the rear of the property.

And there they unearthed something. A burn barrel.

During an earlier search, they found a single barbell in the Swift's home, but it was missing his mate. So was this it? Could this buried barbell be the murder weapon? Investigators sent it off for testing, but when the results came back... We didn't recover any kind of usable evidence.

Over the years, Sheriff Box had kept in close contact with Karen's mother, Carol. She was among the people who wanted to see David charged with the murder of her daughter.

What good indeed. The folks in Dyersburg were more than a little interested in what would happen next.

Every morning I get up, I think about this. Who's going to be indicted? Who's going to be arrested? Waiting and waiting and waiting.

As investigators were taking a fresh look at the Karen Swift case, David's life in Alabama seemed to be falling apart. There was tension with his second wife, Kelly.

One of the things that the deputy noted was that the seat seemed to be pushed back to a position where a tall man like himself would not have to move it to get inside, and he figured she would have had it farther up.

He tried, and she left him anyway, right? Yes. David's second wife filed for divorce. She told us David prioritized his kids over their marriage, and that took a toll on their relationship. Back in Tennessee, D.A. Goodman was quietly building his case, though investigators did pay David a visit.

And that was that?

In 2022, District Attorney Danny Goodman was up for reelection, and wouldn't you know, his opponent decided to make an issue out of the fact that the biggest murder in town was still unsolved under Goodman's watch.

Goodman won reelection. And days later, he decided it was time to take his shot on the Karen Swift case.

So much time had passed that you start losing witnesses. And we had one of the investigators that was a lead investigator who died during that period of time. We had a few witnesses who had health issues. You wait much longer, you're not going to have a case at all. Right.

That was the concern. On August 8, 2022, David was pulled over by police. They handcuffed him, took him into custody. He was charged with first-degree murder. How did you find out that your dad had been arrested?

You weren't speaking.

Do you think there's any chance in the world that your dad killed your mom? Any chance at all? Just one little inkling of suspicion sometimes?

You don't have any doubts at all?

For years, Robin hadn't been able to make up her mind about what happened to her friend.

Karen's friend Angie Gallagher always believed David was the one responsible for the murder and held on to faith he'd be arrested.

I imagine it must have been pretty good to hear that they had charged the husband David.

Well, it was, yeah. It has not been much fun for you in the last few years. Well, it hasn't been fun for me for 12 years. Every morning I get up, I think about this. What's going to happen today to make this thing go away? Who's going to be indicted? Who's going to get arrested? Waiting and waiting and waiting.

That afternoon, Karen's friend Jenny was at home in Lexington, Tennessee, when she got a call.

David could no longer afford a private attorney, so he was assigned a court-appointed lawyer named Daniel Taylor. There were a lot of documents, 20,000 documents, from what we were told. Taylor set out to acquaint himself with the evidence, and what stood out to him right away was David's bad knee. He had major surgery in April 2011 and then re-injured it about a week before Halloween.

They indicated that it was painful and that it would make it difficult for him to move around. That didn't mean he was absolutely paralyzed, but it did affect his ability to move and walk.

Robin remembers seeing David on Halloween, the day after Karen vanished.

Murder his wife, ditch her car, toss her phones, carry her body, and then dump it and clean up any evidence? David Swift was in no condition to do that. At least that's what his defense attorney thought. And even though it had taken over a decade, Taylor thought this was a rush to judgment. All that attention from podcasters, the media, the community, was just too much pressure on D.A. Goodman.

It became an election year issue. No swift justice talking about the Swift case and criticizing the D.A. 's office. I believe that Danny Goodman is an honorable person. The purpose of bringing that up is to talk about if there's pressure to do something, pressure about doing something, about making a decision, is it the right decision?

Heather Cohen had been an advocate for David's innocence, but now some people blamed her for David's arrest.

The DA denied that, of course. Instead, he got ready to tell his case to a jury. And, well, maybe he had a good case after all.

Thirteen years after Karen Swift was killed, gossip and rumors were still swirling in Dyer County. So when David Swift's murder trial began in May of 2024, it was moved to a different town.

State of Tennessee v. David Swift, indictment for first-degree premeditated murder.

Very first thing, Prosecutor Goodman warned the jury this would not be some CSI extravaganza.

This is not one of the cases where you're going to see positive DNA results. You are not going to see fingerprint analysis. We will, however, give you several pieces of a puzzle. And when we get through giving you all of those, you're going to see that complete picture of exactly what happened to Karen Swift.

Our plan was to show the jury that it was impossible for anyone else to have committed this crime. No one else had the motive to do it. No one else had the opportunity to do it.

Motive was a big focus for the prosecutors. They believed David was angry and controlling when it came to Karen. Her friend Kathy Bona testified that David hounded Karen when the two women were out together.

In what period of time? 30 minutes.

She told the jury about another incident after a day she spent shopping with Karen.

Hiding? Why would a mother of four be hiding? Good question. One of many to come.

Karen's relationship with Kathy and her husband had been the subject of speculation for years. And Kathy testified there was nothing at all to that talk. The prosecutor asked her about that night that David found Karen in her bed, naked,

You were under the covers? I was. And... Was she under the covers with you? She was not.

Totally innocent, she said. But David's reaction was over the top.

Bill Bona also testified. He said Karen was their good friend, nothing more.

Did you have a romantic relationship with Ms. Swift? No.

And the night Robin saw him with Karen after she stumbled out of the hot tub, he testified he was just trying to help.

And at that point in time, one of her friends was coming in from behind me, and I said, wait, you know, let me get you a towel.

Jason Creasy was also Karen's divorce lawyer that divorced the state content that David didn't want and couldn't afford.

Prosecutors played David's interviews with police to show how he talked about his missing wife.

She had passed out on the porch in her own apartment. I looked down, I know certain panties were in the floorboard.

David, they believed, wanted to give the impression that a drunk Karen most likely went out to meet someone in the dead of night. But the prosecution argued that just didn't happen. She'd returned from that Halloween party, remember, brought her daughter home. Assistant DA Tim Box. She comes back home. It's 2.08.

Prosecutors believed she went right to bed and to sleep, and detectives found a sleep aid on her bedside table. The drug showed up on her autopsy report.

Further proof she was sleeping? Prosecutors said both her phones were inactive in the hours after 2 a.m. David said he was sleeping too, but they had that evidence from his computer showing someone used it around 3 a.m.,

So we know that he was awake at that time, and he was accessing photos of Karen, deleting photos of Karen. So what happened in the Swift home the night Karen was killed?

Prosecutors had a theory, and it had nothing to do with the buried barbell. they said david's rage built and built and built until he decided to end his anguish and his marriage once karen and ashley were both asleep they believed david came in and picked up ashley and carried her to another room and then we felt that david swift somehow got karen swift into the garage once inside the garage

The defendant stomped Karen on her head with such violence that it caved her skull in, and it caused shards of broken bone to enter her brain.

These people have got to pay for the lies they've told about my family.

The state described a premeditated violent murder, followed by a careful and thorough cleanup and cover-up. Goodman and Box knew the defense was going to claim that David's bad knee made it impossible for him to have committed this crime. But they had an answer for that ready.

And stories of lewd, all too public behavior.

Yes, he'd had surgery earlier that year, they said. But the story about injuring it again? That was a lie. David's neighbor, who lent the Swifts hay for a Halloween hayride, testified that David seemed fine to him that weekend.

Was he using crutches? I'd never seen no crutches on Saturday.

Fakery said the prosecution that he started planning weeks before the murder.

We felt like that the knee injury was a part of the plan from the very beginning to show that it was impossible he could have committed this crime because he was injured and couldn't walk at the time.

So we see him on crutches in the police station. That's just a ruse. That's just a costume he's wearing.

There were times that he was using crutches, and then there were times that he was not.

The state ended with what it felt was its strongest evidence. Karen's phones, the ones that were found in that field. The state told the jury that Karen's secret phone was connected to the Swift house Wi-Fi. And someone called voicemail at 9.55 a.m. that Saturday morning. That's after Karen went missing.

And that adult was David Swift. Which meant, to prosecutors, David must have been the one to dump the phones.

We felt that that was going to be the nail in the coffin. It was something that we felt like there was no other explanation of how that could have happened.

But of course, that wasn't the whole story. David Swift had important defenders, including those who loved him and Karen the most.

Strange bedfellows.

What a grisly story the state told.

The defendant stomped Karen on her head with such violence that it caved her skull in.

That theory came from the medical examiner. But at the exact time Prosecutor Goodman was describing it to the jury, the ME emailed to say he had changed his mind.

So much drama. It all will obscure the long and hard search for Karen and the truth. Halloween Night, 2011. When it came time to trick-or-treat, Karen Swift was missing. Hadn't been seen for more than 24 hours. Anxiety growing all day for Karen's friend, Robin Elford.

We received an email at that time saying that's not what he thought was going to be the cause of death.

I've heard of awkward timing, but that takes the cake.

It was very difficult.

Yeah.

And we were concerned.

So that brutal theory was just that, a theory.

Prosecutor is saying to you that he took her out in the garage and stomped her head. There's no physical evidence in the garage. There's no blood in the garage.

The defense also argued that the state's claim about Karen's phone being used inside the Swift home after she disappeared was based on unreliable evidence. In fact, no proof became a theme of Daniel Taylor's defense.

There was no physical proof in the house, in the garage, in the car, on her, on him. It just didn't add up.

Rather than the angry stalker described by the state, the defense said David Swift was just worried about his wife.

You're in a relationship, and somebody you believe is not being honest with you, you check on them, you ask them questions. There's no violence.

The defense said David was not capable of violence. His bad knee made that impossible. His physical therapist took the stand.

Didn't you indicate that he would have extreme difficulty walking and lifting?

Oh, yes. He definitely had limitation and he had pain. Several witnesses testified that he actually had the injury and he was being treated for it even months after this.

It was, said defense attorney Taylor, a classic case of tunnel vision by law enforcement. One of the issues you raised was that the investigators didn't look into possible suspects. Who did you have in mind? Any particular persons?

There was an issue with Mr. Hogshooter that lived on the same street and, you know, about poisoning the dog.

Police had cleared Hogshooter, but the defense said there were other possible suspects, like the man Karen met when she was at a concert with her friends, the Bonas. And on cross-examination, the defense asked Kathy Bona about that.

From that, they started having contact.

Yes.

He's a gentleman who has a Corvette and a bar in his house.

Yep. Another mysterious suspect emerged during testimony from someone who passed Karen's abandoned car the morning she disappeared.

Did you see a person there?

Yes, sir. We thought maybe he was hunting, so we slowed down, and whenever we slowed down, he put a pistol on the hood of the car. How would you describe him? Um, he was tall, um, and he had dark hair.

And of course there was Daryl Sells, the suspect in Heather Cohen's blogs and podcasts. The defense called the three witnesses who told Heather they saw Sells at the crime scene with a metal detector before Karen was found.

I observed something that was out of the ordinary.

One of them was David Swift's son, Dustin.

I noticed somebody randomly standing in the ditch with a metal detector. He said he had lost his watch. And if I'm not mistaken, when I looked down, he's got a watch on his wrist. And I thought it was very odd.

Two neighbors of the Swifts also testified to seeing Daryl Sells at the same location.

on the side of the road, I thought, I wondered why he was there.

And the person you saw near the cross that day, what was his name? Mr. Darrell Sells.

Ashley Swift also took the stand.

I don't think anybody could possibly understand it besides you.

Are you related to David and Karen Swift?

And how old are you now?

It's all right. We're done.

As he watched his daughter, David Swift wept. Ashley composed herself and described the final moments she spent with her mother. How old were you back then?

And were you close to your mother?

Do you recall everything about that night?

Did you aware of being moved or your mother getting up?

You recall it being your mother that moved you?

Who moved Ashley was a very important issue. Innocent enough if it was her mom, but the state claimed it was David getting Ashley out of the way before murdering Karen.

Sure.

That was the last time you felt her, too.

According to the defense, David slept through the night. He did not move Ashley, did not use his computer. That must have been Karen. Whatever happened that terrible night, the defense said David Swift had nothing to do with it.

I don't know what happened, but there is no proof to support the state's theory in this case.

After the defense rested, the prosecution got one more chance with the jury.

After five days of testimony, the lawyers were finished. Up to the jury now to decide... Got to have butterflies in your stomach, that's for sure.

She was powerless now, as she waited for 12 strangers to decide the fate of her father, Ashley Swift, in a stew of anxiety.

Got to have butterflies in your stomach, that's for sure.

Prosecutors Danny Goodman and Tim Box couldn't help but speculate, too. They felt confident in their circumstantial case, but they felt there was more to David Swift than what they were able to present to the jury. David had gotten into some trouble in Alabama. In July 2023, while awaiting trial for Karen's murder, David was out on bail and was allowed to go back home to Alabama.

That's where his ex-wife Kelly still lived. Kelly contacted Karen's friend, Angie.

Where's mama? Yeah.

David was wearing an ankle monitor, and authorities could see he was near Kelly's house late at night.

David was charged with first-degree stalking in Alabama. He pleaded not guilty. His bond on the murder charge was revoked and he was sent back to a Tennessee jail. The prosecutors knew the stalking case would be inadmissible in the murder trial, so the jurors never heard about that. They deliberated for one day, and then two.

Ready to go? Ready for the jury?

The jurors sent a note to the judge. They had made up their minds, sort of.

Does the jury agree on the highest level of offense that the defendant is either guilty or not guilty? Yes. What is the verdict in that?

While his kids went trick-or-treating, David told Robin he'd keep driving around, looking for his wife. Did he seem terribly distraught?

Not guilty of first-degree murder and not guilty of second-degree murder, the charges that carried a possible life sentence. There was another charge, voluntary manslaughter, which carries a penalty of three to six years. Did the jury believe David had killed Karen in the heat of passion?

Has the jury found the defendant not guilty of voluntary manslaughter? No agreement.

A hung jury. The judge declared a mistrial. What is that like? As you're sitting there after having put all that time and effort into this case?

Extremely frustrating. Tim and I will not prosecute a case against a person unless we have no doubt that we're prosecuting the right person. It's a hard pill to swallow.

She came right out and said your family was responsible.

David Swift has been acquitted of murder and cannot be tried again. But D.A. Goodman re-indicted him on the manslaughter charge. A new trial date hasn't been set.

For now, David is still behind bars. He's facing those stalking charges in Alabama, too. How's he doing in there? Can you tell?

Hard for you too, I would think.

It's been a hard road for the Swift children, but they're finding a way through. Ashley went to college and works as a dental hygienist. She's still living in Alabama.

So no real ending for now, except one big change. Bitter enemies Heather Cohen and Daryl Sells agree about one thing. They're both looking forward to the retrial.

If he's convicted, will all this stuff go away, do you think?

Well, I think it will because they'll shut up.

Yeah, if he's found guilty on manslaughter, I think it will quieten everything down and that'll be some kind of a closure to this case.

Closure. Wouldn't that be nice? But after all this time, some of Karen's friends are more confused than ever about what happened to her.

What a strange night that must have been.

They're trying to make peace with the not knowing, and they cherish what's left. Memories of the Karen they loved, the Spitfire friend who was up for anything with her kids in tow.

She loved being a mom.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. It seemed helpful to put on a candlelight vigil, so that's what they did. And Karen's son, Preston, went before TV cameras with an emotional appeal.

And I love you, Mom. Angie Gallagher became friends with Karen when the Swifts lived in Arkansas and was desperate to do something.

Nearly 20 of them showed up on their horses. They rode for miles, scouring the woods around Karen's house. None of it was easy, mostly because of the dense kudzu vines that grow everywhere in Dyer County.

And of course, the sheriff's investigators were learning everything they could about Karen Swift.

Karen was a stay-at-home mom who didn't really care much for staying at home.

Up for anything, apparently, huh?

Including all kinds of mischief. She even joined her kids with a supply of toilet paper to do some decorating at Robin's house a few days before Halloween.

So you gave them toilet paper all over the trees, yeah?

David had a good job as a manager in a factory that made gas pipelines, shared a deep sense of faith with Karen, and was devoted to his children.

Karen told friends how much she wanted her kids to live in a happy home, something she said she didn't have growing up.

But perfect lives and white picket fences are often more ideal than real life.

Havoc was the least of it. They got a divorce. But they reconciled and remarried, together under one roof again with two sons from their first marriage. And then Ashley was born, followed by another daughter. And then more infidelity. This time it was Karen who had an affair. The swift marriage had become very messy.

But their fresh start wasn't easy. Robin watched firsthand as the relationship started to sour again.

Something big happened there. Why?

When the case landed on Sheriff Jeff Box's desk, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

That's Police Work 101. It was time to talk to David Swift.

I just want her to come home and to be a mother.

It didn't take a degree in criminology to suspect that something very bad had happened to Karen Swift, or that investigators had better talk to her husband, David. And the day after Karen disappeared, David showed right up, on crutches even.

I had knee surgery. It's been giving me a lot of problems.

David said he wanted to help any way he could.

I'm willing to do whatever I can to help and find her. I just want her home safely.

He opened up to investigators about his relationship with Karen and their four kids and their 22-year history of ups and downs.

We were having issues, and I screwed up. I personally screwed up. What kind of issue was it? We need to know. Oh, yeah. Well, I had an affair.

He told them about the divorce, followed by reconciliation.

We were married probably six years, and Karen had an affair.

And now, after their fresh start in Dyersburg, Karen was pulling away.

I still love her and care about her, and I just think she's lost right now.

Perhaps that's why Karen did what she did just a few weeks earlier, file for divorce. He thought they could work through it like they had in the past. They were sleeping in separate bedrooms, but David said things between them were amicable.

I mean, even under the circumstances, we've been still trying to be there for the kids and still communicating.

The morning before she disappeared, said David, she was helping out at a Habitat for Humanity house, and he went to see her.

Do something to drink, and I even did what I could around there to help with the light fixtures or whatever.

Then later, when Karen got home, he said she told him she was going out with her friends Kathy and Bill.

And I said, are you going to a costume party or what are you doing? Are you all having a party? She said, no, I'm just going to Kathy's.

David said Karen had been going out a lot lately. And the next time he heard from Karen, he said, was well after midnight.

She said, I'm going to get Ashley. I'm going to put her in bed with me. I said, OK, I'll leave the door.

He was a little worried about that because he knew she must have been drinking.

There must have been a little thrill in the air that autumn night in Dyersburg, Tennessee.

He was very brief. I questioned Karen about driving and getting her. I said, you know, if you can't drive, I'll go get Ashley. And that was all the conversation was. You know, as soon as I realized that Ashley and everyone were safe, I went back upstairs and went to bed.

And when he woke up the next morning, Karen was gone.

It was crazy for her. I don't know. I can't explain it, where the attraction came from.

They keep telling us, give him time or don't interfere. We hired our own world-class private detective. They said, he's not doing a good job. Who is doing it? Everything we do, they said, don't do it. We were so frustrated.

He didn't look remorseful. He looked arrogant, come out, like we were wasting his time.

That made me angry. I questioned this crazy justice system.

There is no gun. There is no, no pun intended, smoking gun. You can't find anything. There is no trace of him being in New Jersey. We thought maybe they call it mistrial, this, that. But he was extremely nervous.

It was a huge relief. You know, you got to pay for what you did. You ruined life. You took their father away. You took a nice person. He didn't do anything wrong.

That made me angry. I questioned this crazy justice system. Him, you find out he needs a second chance? Are you guys kidding me? Tony, why don't you stand up and face the group so they can see you?

Another problem for prosecutors? Pulling jurors even further into the past.

I think Roberto died so Sophie could be free. He really cared for this. He cared for all the human beings. But I don't know how that is. He fell for this woman. Obviously, there was something that clicked. And I think he died so she could be free.

Finally, we made our way to Teaneck to the house and it was horrible.

He was intelligent. He was not stupid. He wouldn't risk his life, right? Unless he committed suicide, he set himself on fire. He was not, no.

They took us in separately. Rob's friend, Mayor Dodd. He was wonderful. He was kind. He was loving. He always saw the other point of view.

He says, Murdoch, why do we make sandwiches? He was a kid at heart.

Oh, absolutely.

I've always hated you. I hate the day that I met you. I left with somebody who's much better looking than you, which isn't difficult to find, and I curse you.

On their runs, Rob confided in Merdod about life, fatherhood, his 27-year marriage to his wife Susan. They were splitting up. Obviously, I mean, they tried very hard, both of them, to save the marriage. They went through therapy and all that stuff. But it's unfortunate, you know.

He was crazy for her. I don't know. I can't explain where the attraction came from.

knocks at the door, and Rob, good person he is, he let him in. Rob said the two discussed Sophie. It was all very civil. That's when I got angry at him. I said, first of all, you don't do this. He said, you would beat him up. I said, no, I call the police. And he said, oh, Murdoch, you're too tough. His life is falling apart. His family, his wife is leaving him.

And when I got mad at him, you know, I was like a father figure now. I told him, I bet you offered him a cup of coffee too. Murdoch, as a matter of fact, I did.

They're out in my parents' yard, and Bill says to her, you know this is to be an open marriage, right? And she was taken aback. She said to me, I had the strength to tell him, no, Bill, we're going to have to not get married, you know, if you can't commit to monogamy. He backed down? Yeah, he came back and said, okay, I've thought about it, and I can commit. But did he?

It's terrifying.

Did you think it was possible?

When he was dating our daughter, he would come to the house every day. And how did you feel about the relationship? There was always something off, something we didn't care for with Adam. He was kind of off, detached.

We'd eat dinner as a family, and Adam would sit across from me and

He wouldn't make eye contact with you and he wouldn't really talk to anyone in the family.

The communication stopped a little bit between myself and him.

No, we did mention to Katie that we didn't think there was something different with Adam and we didn't really feel comfortable about it. Her sisters also recognized that fact too.

Things were good. It seemed good. And, you know, we want her to be happy and she seemed happy. And then when things started to go a little south, I think she kind of realized it, too, that it wasn't a healthy relationship to be in. So she kind of separated or tried to separate herself from it as much as she could.

Katie and Adam broke up and got back together a few times over three years. Katie just had enough of him being up, being down, being up, being down. And just some of the things he would say just weren't right. Did Adam have any issues with his mom that you know of?

I know they definitely were not as close as our family was. He would just kind of talk down about his family. He was like, I don't get it. Like, I've met your mother. She's great.

Why do you think there's such discrepancy between you two and your aunts?

Maybe this isn't the slam dunk case that some people think it is.

Were you really concerned about him?

So you actually believed your father might have framed your brother?

Things weren't perfect between Adam and Katie.

But they clearly had something because they kept going back to each other.

Yes.

Through tears, Katie went over the details in the letter.

You said it may have been an accident. Did he express that he didn't mean to do this to you?

He told you that he put the colchicine under your seat? Under his seat? Under your seat? He told you that?

I'm okay. Because if he knows that I, like, if he knows that I came to you.

Are you thinking Katie could be the killer?

Really?

Is Katie starting to panic?

Did you feel that?

Okay.

For what? For being at the office?

You guys also don't use poison.

Tamarin called me, Mary's daughter, and told you Mary was sick. Yeah, she said Mary's in the hospital. And she was desperate on the phone, and I was like, well, Mary's the healthiest woman I know. I just said, Tamarin, everything will be fine. Everything will be fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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No doctor is coming out and telling you, here's what she has, here's what we're doing about it.

You will find motive through the testimony on the part of William Yoder.

He really is the only person that I can, in good heart and faith, say had motive to actually kill his wife.

Do you remember the first time that you had sexual relations with Kathy Richmond?

I don't remember the date, no. I wasn't keeping a journal.

I have to ask you how much you inherited in total from your father's estate?

About $400,000.

Do you remember specifically ever being told, I don't want anybody to know that I'm here?

If there was a second dose, then there's no possibility, no possibility that Caitlin could have been involved because she didn't have access to Mary at that particular time.

I felt like I was drowning in it.

Dr. Mary Oter is rather soft-spoken and young-sounding and very vibrant herself.

No. I mean, Katie worked at the office. He would have been able to control these very, very important circumstances that led to her being charged.

Forever. Forever.

The prosecution couldn't say that Katie searched this particular term prior to Mary's death. It appeared that it was afterwards.

Finally, she just had enough. She didn't want to be with him anymore.

Yes. With the authorities? Yes, I did. She had the opportunity on, I believe, seven different occasions to say, you know, I think I want an attorney. But instead, she continued to cooperate and be subjected to some pretty severe interrogation tactics.

Then if you didn't do it, you know who did it?

I don't know. I wouldn't risk my life for this.

They send us two DVDs from the dates and times those were purchased. Who is not on these DVDs? That's not Adam. Who purchases the prepaid cards?

This can't be. Yeah, it was, yes. It just can't be true. I don't think you feel at that moment. It really is just a shock.

You got them? You purchased those credit cards, didn't you? Yes, yes.

Do you think that your daughter, your 23-year-old, could give an accurate statement under those conditions?

What if you're wrong? What if she really did do this? Have you thought about that?

We just... Every once in a while, and it's just so not... We have tried to wrap our heads around it a thousand ways to see if there's any way possible that we think she could have done this.

I actually thought that after I gave my closing that we'd have a... a verdict in 15 or 20 minutes of not guilty.

What was it like waiting for the verdict?

Oh, well, the first 20 minutes were okay, but then it went on for day one and day two.

This will be

There was no hesitation. We were going back. We were retrying the case. We needed to get justice for this family and for this woman.

All rise.

The evidence will show that all roads lead to Caitlin Conley.

Ladies and gentlemen, it was Adam. It was Adam.

He put the colchicine in her supplements when he was over there, either Mother's Day or Father's Day, when he had a falling out.

How do you know, first of all, that she was the one that was researching the poison, since Adam had total control of all of her electronic equipment anytime he wanted it?

You familiar with Adam's expertise in computers?

And how do you know he had her laptop?

Don't think that Adam didn't have full reign of that office, ladies and gentlemen. He came and went as he pleased any time he wanted to, okay?

He beat her, he hit her, he raped her, he used her. Why wouldn't she be scared of him?

You grabbed my right wrist and said you'd snap my wrist and break every one of my fingers. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you, Katie. The way you said it, the way you looked at me. And then I was afraid.

There's no motive in this case. She loved Mary Yoder. And there's nothing in this case to indicate that her actions were anything other than loving Mary Yoder.

Never, ever in your wildest dreams would you think that this would happen.

The people call Adam Yoder to the stand.

Did you ever cause colchicine in any way, accidentally or intentionally, to be ingested by your mother?

Ladies and gentlemen, it was Adam. It was Adam.

Oh, yes.

Good morning.

Do you have hacking skills? Are you able to break into systems?

I snapped and I slapped her a few times. I regretted it immediately. I left the house.

So was this essentially a blackout period? Yes, it was.

I was in shock. I didn't know how to react. I was panicking. Ultimately, I had drank enough to black out that night, so I couldn't defend myself. I didn't have a version of the story to say to her in response.

It all just really came out of the blue. I was like, holy cow.

She told me it's to help basically focus, boost memory. She said, make sure I take it consecutively and consistently because it works better over time.

The vomiting and the pain, I started experiencing severe abdomen pain and eventually severe back pain as well.

I asked her if she had poisoned me in a joking way. And what did she say? Said no, she would never hurt me.

Ten days later, on April 21st, he gets sick with the same symptoms of colchicine poisoning that Mary got sick with, okay?

Did you ever cause colchicine in any way, accidentally or intentionally, to be ingested by your mother?

No.

Before she actually honed in on colchicine, she looked at arsenic. She looked at thallium. She looked at cyanide. I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the evidence is clear and that the common denominator is this defendant, Caitlin Conley.

No one can ever say that this is what she did. This is not her. She's the same nice, nurturing, helping person that she was and always has been.

The note reads, hung jury.

I urge that each of you make every possible effort.

The record will reflect that the jury has reentered the courtroom indicating that they have reached a verdict.

Murder in the second degree. How do you find the defendant? Guilty or not guilty? Not guilty.

Guilty or not guilty? Guilty.

Katie, we love you.

I get a text message on my phone that says, news alert.

All rise. This tournament with Niagara County Court is now in session.

In the small community where Caitlin lived, there's signs that said, free Caitlin Conley. Caitlin Conley's innocent.

So what's actually really fascinating about this case is Katie's extremely bright. Katie had a job in the prison law library. And through that position, she just worked tirelessly on her case. And she said, listen, I'm really focused on this issue regarding the search warrant for my phone.

I mean, just the warrant on its face is probably the most insufficient, facially insufficient warrant that I've ever came across. They believed that that was a warrant to take her phone and look in it. But what it needs to be is two separate warrants. One to take her phone. and then one to actually search the contents of her phone.

And the warrant needs to say what they're looking for, what crime they think it's going to help them establish, and the timeframe.

I thought it was strange that in this really extremely rare poisoning case that neither attorney that represented her at the two trials would have hired a toxicologist to at least consult with on that type of poisoning.

That significantly expanded the potential timeframe where Mary Yoder could have been poisoned. And because it expanded the timeframe, it expanded the other potential people that could be responsible for the poisoning.

His defense was that Adam Yoder committed the crime. So he wanted to get the poison in Adam Yoder's hands.

Correct. It blew my mind that that was a strategy.

It kind of is like this last recourse in order for a court to scrutinize your criminal case. 440s are extremely challenging to win.

Would you say that you diligently reviewed the warrant?

At this point, I would say no.

Why not?

I didn't see it as an issue.

As in, you didn't identify it, or you don't think it's an overbroad?

I didn't at the time. I see it as an issue. I didn't recognize it. I failed to recognize it.

The cell phone evidence in and of itself was extremely important. They said that she had searched Colchicine on her cell phone. They questioned her. They interviewed her using information they found in her cell phone to derive statements from her. In the end, the motion was denied. But that wasn't the end of this. Correct.

I would say about two to five percent of criminal defendants get permission to appeal from the denial of a 440.

Kaitlyn Conley has this right to the effective assistance of counsel. Just a month later. The appellate division ruled in Katie's favor, granted her a new trial, and ultimately dismissed the indictment against her. I think I screamed. I ran around my office telling everybody that we had won.

Once a defendant's conviction has been reversed and the indictment dismissed, the appropriate remedy is discharge from custody. It's kindly released. Court's adjourned.

You could see tears were dripping down Caitlin's face, and you could just see the father just reached over and said, come here and give me a hug. And they kissed and hugged, and then she hugged all the other family members, her mother and one of her sisters.

I asked her, where are you going to eat? And she said, well, I got a McDonald's milkshake.

Oh, belly dancing. We costumed and choreographed a dance for a local havla, which it's an Egyptian dance, yeah.

The ruling from the appellate court says you can't use anything on Caitlin Connolly's cell phone. You take the cell phone out, what's left? Is it bare bones? Is there still meat out there that they can lock onto? Or is this totally going to make it very, very hard to argue that Caitlin Connolly did this again?

The decision did not say Caitlin Connelly's innocent. It did not say the evidence was all wrong. What it said was there was a legal mistake in the trial that violated Caitlin's constitutional rights.

So Katie's always maintained through the first and second trials or her lawyers did that, you know, potentially there's two other suspects.

The world is not as wonderful a place as it was. Mary loved life more than anyone else I ever knew. And she made a point of loving it. She really did.

They're interrogating her for murder.

Tell us about Adam. What was it like having a little brother?

Why would she want Mary dead? No explanation. She had a great relationship with Mary. Maybe this isn't the slam dunk case that some people think it is.

How much colchicine do you have to ingest for it to be deadly?

There were actually a couple of TV shows that kind of echoed this case.

Colchicine does its damage in a very specific order.

People did prefer her.

If there were problems in the marriage, was Mary the type to share with her sisters?

tonight on dateline he started coming towards me and then he lunged at me and i started pulling the trigger ashley ran to her neighbor hysterical she had shot her husband i guess he had attacked her and she shot him she's a beautiful ballerina she appears to be a great mom we wanted to find out what happened in that room

He said he never stalked Ashley, but admitted to yelling at her, punching a few walls and mistreating the pets on occasion.

But Doug denied poisoning Ashley and used his own expert to debunk the lab reports. And he was adamant he played no role in his late wife's death.

Ashley, Benefield has accused you of murdering your wife, Renee. Did you do that?

Authorities confirmed Renee's death was not suspicious.

The allegations against Doug were at worst blown out of proportion, but at best just completely untrue.

The judge seemed to agree when she issued this scathing ruling.

The judge gave Doug immediate access to his daughter and granted him sole responsibility over her medical care. That's a turning point. In all of this. It was a huge turning point.

This was the court finding that the decisions that Ashley had made up to that point for her daughter were detrimental. So she took that away from Ashley and gave it to Doug.

Four days after the ruling, Stephanie Murphy was there when Doug met Emerson.

Was there a tender moment when he lays eyes on his daughter for the first time? She was a cute, plump little baby. And so there he was just holding this little girl. The look on his face was pure love.

She was stunned by what happened next.

Doug said, we're all going to go together, me and Ashley and our daughter. I said, Doug, this is not a good idea. And he was so trusting, blindly trusting of her.

The strange ballet between the two entered its next act. Doug got a place in Florida and saw Emerson regularly over the next two years. He and Ashley also spent time together as a couple. But detectives discovered the relationship was still unpredictable. Ashley continued to confide in people that she was afraid of Doug and accused him of abusing their daughter.

Doug told his attorney he thought Ashley might be mentally unstable. Yet they decided they would all move to Maryland, where Ashley grew up, but still live separately. The night of the shooting, they were together packing Ashley's stuff.

Obviously, with domestic violence, there are times that women or men will go back to the person that's abusing them. It does happen.

But the detective was becoming convinced that this wasn't the case with Ashley. Because despite her making over a dozen complaints against Doug, something jumped out. He had no criminal record.

It's kind of a red flag that kind of goes up that says, huh, that's something we should pay attention to.

She thought he was very charming. He was smart. He was fun to talk to. It was just a click.

Meaning that you're seeing these complaints against Doug, but no arrests of Doug.

Correct. There was no evidence to suggest that a crime had actually occurred.

Detective Dickerman thought there were also red flags at the scene. Why would Ashley agree to meet with Doug alone? And inside the house, investigators noticed this.

There's a gun readily accessible in this bedroom when everything else is packed up. And in addition to that, you have another gun that's readily accessible in the pantry sitting by the peanut butter on the shelf.

Is it loaded?

It's loaded.

Then they found a third loaded gun.

It just kept building up and adding up more and more that something was going to happen this night.

One crucial piece of the puzzle was still missing. Ashley had not given a statement detailing her version of events. She wasn't telling anyone what happened, not even her therapist, Dr. Russell. Ashley actually lived with her for eight months after the shooting. Did she make any comments like I had to do it or he was going to kill me?

Anything like that. She didn't need to say anything like that. That was so evident. It was so obvious.

What had become obvious to Detective Warren and his team was that Ashley's claim of self-defense was full of holes. You're seeing this case shifting from self-defense to murder.

Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Absolutely.

After a two-month investigation, Detective Warren had reached a stark conclusion about Ashley.

We're looking at all these complaints. Everything's unfounded. She just was not believable in anything that she was saying, making these baseless accusations against Doug.

And investigators were not buying her claim of self-defense. In November 2020, she was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Some in the media started calling her the Black Swan after the movie about a diabolical ballerina. People are calling Ashley this dark ballerina who is a manipulative, cold-blooded killer.

If it wasn't so serious, I would be laughing. There's just nothing about that that's true by anybody who knows her.

13.

Yep. But one warm autumn night, it ended just as fast as it began. Left behind, four bullet casings and a love story that had spiraled out of control. September 27, 2020. As the sun was setting, a frantic 911 call came in from Lakewood Ranch, a community near Sarasota, Florida.

Doug's daughter Eva was convinced Ashley murdered her dad. And as the publicity around the case grew, she decided to let the world know.

She turned to TikTok. Her videos, dripping with sarcasm and dark humor, racked up tens of millions of views.

Ashley had supporters, too. And when her trial started in July of 2024, they came out in force, marching near the courthouse. Her daughter Emerson, now six years old, was front and center.

Well, I'll tell you the thing that was the most concerning was that the daughter was out being displayed on this picket line or whatever you would call it.

Well, that's your niece.

That's my niece. She's holding up a picket sign put out there by adults.

100%.

That was the main difficulty.

I think an average person wants to believe when somebody says they're a victim that they are, in fact, a victim.

You ready to go? Bring the jury.

The case was almost entirely circumstantial. And in Florida, Ashley's fate would be decided by six jurors. Would they think she was a domestic abuse victim or a liar?

There were also other complaints, domestic violence complaints.

In opening statements, prosecutors said at times Doug had anger issues, but he never physically harmed Ashley.

Not once did she ever say he choked her, kicked her, anything like that. There's things you can't escape.

That he's not a saint. Yes, he was definitely not a saint. You are correct. But did that day when that happened, did he do something that required deadly force? And that's what we tried to focus on.

Prosecutors had to convince jurors Ashley's life was not in danger that night. Their theory? She shot Doug because she was desperate to have Emerson to herself, fearful she might lose her.

This was a custody battle that this mother was going to win at all costs. And the cost was the life of Doug Benefield. And that is murder.

Jurors learned Ashley fired four shots at Doug. Two hit him. The county medical examiner testified the fatal bullet entered Doug's side, not his front, as you might expect if he were attacking her.

It entered here and landed here, so it was basically side to side. So he was not coming at her chest first.

Doug's daughter Eva testified Ashley was sometimes volatile, blowing up if she didn't get her way.

Whenever she had a disagreement with you, how would she act?

Detective Chris Gillum worked in the sheriff's domestic violence unit. He'd been assigned Ashley's case.

She started contacting me on a regular basis, beginning...

He testified that Ashley called him dozens of times over a three-month period. On one call, she demanded Doug be arrested at an upcoming family court hearing.

She asked for me to arrest Doug when he came inside the courtroom in front of the presiding judge.

Okay. And what was your reaction to that?

That absolutely would not occur. She was upset. And at that point, I would call it a dramatic cry, hysterical cry. And she made a comment, something to the effect of, if the judge sees you arrest him, this will help me keep my baby.

When the detective told Ashley he had no reason to arrest Doug, he said she persisted.

She let out like a screech or a high-pitched scream. And she says, I'll do whatever I have to do to keep my baby, you a-hole.

Did that include shooting Doug Benefield? The defense was ready to fight back with a bold move.

Ashley, for the first time, was finally ready to tell her story and share her secrets.

He's saying the neighbor came over, a female neighbor. It was a domestic neighbor.

Ashley Benefield's attorney, Neil Taylor, stepped up to the podium to deliver his opening statement. His objective? To turn the trial on its head.

I'm going to have some strong words about Douglas Benefield, the alleged victim.

You say he's an alleged victim.

Correct. I believe he was the instigator. I believe he was the one who put Ashley in the position that compelled her to resort to self-defense and use deadly force.

To back up his claim, he called this clinical social worker who counseled Doug and Ashley in 2020.

Doug occurred as someone who was domineering and super-controlling. he would fit the stereotype of an alpha male.

Taylor then attacked what the state said was Ashley's motive. He challenged Detective Gillum's testimony, specifically that Ashley said she'd do whatever she had to to keep her baby. Gillum admitted that wasn't in his original report citing Ashley's complaints. It was only after Doug was killed, more than two years later, that Gillum documented it.

The neighbor was 29-year-old Ashley Benefield, and she had a dramatic story to tell.

Two and a half years later, you remember the details of the conversation? Absolutely. And what, exactly what she said, quotes, you quote her? Yes.

The defense knew it would need to explain what went on inside that house the night of the shooting, but the only living eyewitness had barely said a word.

Until Ashley rose to break her four-year silence and testify in her own defense. This is the big moment in the trial.

I think so.

Ashley getting up on that stand and raising her right hand.

Yes. I thought it would be a make-or-break moment.

Neil Taylor introduced the jury to a different Ashley from the one the state had just portrayed.

He then jumped right into her relationship with Doug.

Describe for us the man you thought you'd marry.

Ashley said it wasn't long before cracks started appearing in Doug's charming, sweet veneer.

Ashley told the jurors Doug's abuse continued and escalated.

She next described a terrifying moment while she and Doug were still living together in Charleston.

Ashley testified she wasn't the only one who had seen Doug's dark side, that there was a pattern to his abusive behavior. Just a few months into their marriage, she found disturbing text messages on one of Doug's old cell phones. The texts were from his late wife, Renee.

I loved you, though finding out you weren't really what you pretended to be. You kicking me so hard on New Year's Eve on our honeymoon. Doug's prior wife accused him of being violent. It mirrored the allegations that Ashley had made about Doug.

The defense then moved on to the moment everyone had been waiting for. What would Ashley say about the night of the shooting? She explained that Doug was with her at her mother's house getting ready for the move to Maryland, and that his mood changed when they got into an argument over how to pack the truck. And he got really offended and upset.

Ashley told the jury that she tried to get Doug to leave, but it only made matters worse. And he started screaming at me.

So Ashley said she tried to leave, but Doug wouldn't let her.

Then what happens?

When the deputies first got here, when they arrived on scene, Douglas Benefield was still inside the house. In order to get to him, the first thing they had to do was make the scene safe, which they knew from the 911 call that Ashley was next door and was claiming to be the shooter.

She said she fled to her bedroom to escape.

Did you have anything in your room that could protect you?

Did you grab the gun?

Ashley, tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury why you shot Doug.

As you sit here today, Ashley, how do you feel about what happened?

How do you think she did?

I thought she did wonderful. Ashley successfully conveyed how volatile he was, how fearful she was.

Ashley took some time to compose herself, but she wasn't done. She was about to face a much more hostile inquisitor.

And he started like inching forward towards me. Well, show me. What was he doing?

Ashley Benefield had just spent two emotional hours on the stand being questioned by her attorney. Prosecutor Suzanne O'Donnell didn't buy it.

I didn't believe most of what she said. I thought a lot of it was exaggerated. She acted emotional about things that I didn't... It just didn't seem genuine to me. What was your goal, cross-examining her? Hopefully get the jury to see... what I saw. I also wanted them to focus on what happened in that room.

But first, O'Donnell needed to convince jurors that in the days leading up to the shooting, Ashley had no reason to fear Doug.

During this time, you're planning to move to Maryland. There's no violence going on.

He's not hitting you. No, ma'am. He's not choking you.

He's not shoving you around.

I want to get to the night that all this happened. You knew Doug was coming over. Yes. You invited him over. Yes. You weren't concerned about him coming over.

You weren't so afraid that you wanted your mother to stay there and watch.

Okay, so you weren't afraid.

The prosecutor then moved on to the moments right before Ashley pulled the trigger.

You say he slapped you? He hit me. Was his hand open or closed? I don't remember. And because of those things, you claim that you thought he was going to kill you? He had never hit me before. He wouldn't let me leave. I tried to leave. He stopped me. The question is, you thought he was going to kill you?

Once they secured the scene, first responders found Doug bleeding on a bedroom floor and pulled him into the living room to perform CPR. Barely alive, he was rushed to the hospital. How many times was Doug shot?

Yeah. Prosecutors say there were times when they felt something was missing from Ashley's shaking and sobbing on the stand. I kept asking her. I said, I don't see any tears. Do you see any tears? O'Donnell didn't mention it in court. Instead, she tried a more subtle way to bring it to the jury's attention. Can we turn the lights up, please? you had someone in the courtroom turn the lights up?

Oh, yeah. I did do that. I mean, that's, wow. I have never heard that before in any of the cases that I've covered on Dateline. And did she have any tears? No, not one. The prosecutor then asked Ashley to step off the stand and reenact what she said compelled her to use deadly force.

And he started, like, inching forward towards me. Well, show me. What was he doing?

Kind of like, I don't know, he got like this. And he was like making like fighting motions. I don't know. I'm not a fighter. I don't know. Okay. It was scary.

Did he have his hands in fists?

Not at that point. They were like, I don't know.

Was he coming at you like this? When he lunged at me, he came very quickly. Okay. So he lunged. Was his fist up when he lunged? I don't remember.

How do you think she did with the reenactment?

This was the one time to tell everyone. What scared you so badly that you felt like you had to take this man's life? And we got hardly any information.

In her closing, Suzanne O'Donnell asked the jury not to be swayed by Ashley's performance.

Did you ever see one tear come out of her eyes? Did you ever see one drop of liquid? One red eye? One swollen eye? That goes to her credibility.

I've presented to you everything that I possibly could to show you that her action in using deadly force was reasonable.

At this point, I believe we knew of two.

Jurors left the courtroom to deliberate. They could find Ashley guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter, or they could set her free. Six hours later, a note to the judge. The jury was deadlocked.

Members of the jury, I've received a note from you. It says, unable to come to unanimous verdict.

You've put your heart and soul into this case, and then you hear that. It was heartbreaking, to say the least, if they were in fact going towards being hung.

One of the biggest fears for us was a mistrial.

It was 10 p.m. The judge asked the jury to keep trying. And just one hour later, a verdict.