Chapter 1: What happened on the night of Melissa Recuba's shooting?
At the end of the day, I put my son to sleep, and I went to bed. And I remember my phone going off, and it was my father. There's been an accident. Your mom's okay. The ambulance is on the way. And I was like, whoa. And I just ran out the door. I lived right next door. I had no idea what happened until I got over there. As soon as I walked in, you could see right here, she was laying on the bed.
The blood was just all over the floor, the side of the bed. Where's your dad at this time? He was on the phone somewhere, maybe downstairs. And I couldn't really see what he was doing. And then I grabbed a towel off the floor, and I held a towel on her head. I just remember yelling to him to please help me and I remember asking her, please mom, just like squeeze my hand.
Did your mom respond to you? No. Do you remember asking him what happened? Not that night. At one point I remember him saying he was putting the gun away under the bed and she sat down and the gun went off. Did you know at the time that he had also been shot? I remember his hand being wrapped up.
I didn't know if he was just holding a towel or what he was holding. He had shot through his hand when he shot my mom. He just said it was like this freak accident. And we thought, like, well, who's going to shoot themselves?
He never wavered from the story that it was an accident.
Trooper PJ McGurran, we're here at the residence with the homeowner, Bruno Rakuba.
Why do you think your father was so open about talking with the police? I think he was trying to prove that he was innocent.
So we were both in bed, and I reached over. I grabbed it. My wife was sitting on the bed on that side. I was on this side. And I pulled the trigger by accident.
My sister, Melissa, died Saturday morning.
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Chapter 2: How did the family react to Melissa's tragic accident?
Her then 22-year-old daughter Chelsea was already there when the helicopter arrived. I had no idea how I got down there. I was just panicked and frantic. Her sister Sabrina, who lives in Wisconsin, sped to the airport in tears.
It was just a lot of me just praying to God that my mom was going to be okay.
Melissa's sister Joanne and their father, then a police sergeant in another county, raced to Melissa's bedside. It's a few hours of driving. Not that night. We got there really fast. Bruno was being treated at a different hospital, where specialists operated on his hand.
He had a hole through the middle of his hand.
Pennsylvania State Police detectives wanted to know how the bullet went through Bruno's palm and hit Melissa in the head.
Got home from work at 3.30 in the afternoon.
Less than 15 hours after the shooting, with Bruno's hand freshly bandaged and Melissa on life support, Detectives asked Bruno to walk them through his house and explain what happened after the couple arrived home from a night out with friends.
And we came home just before 10. And after that, we went downstairs, washed up, and came up to go to bed.
Using a toy gun provided by police, Bruno demonstrated how he claims his .40 caliber pistol went off accidentally.
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Chapter 3: What inconsistencies arose in Bruno's account of the shooting?
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The daughters of Melissa and Bruno Recuba say they grew up believing they had the ideal family.
So did all my friends. I remember my best friends were like, your family's so loving and happy and you guys do everything together. I always wanted my sister's life. She had the kids, she had the marriage, the good guy.
The couple met in the summer of 1988. Back then, Melissa, who was just 19 years old, was a police officer. Bruno, 22, was enlisted in the Navy. And what did you think of Bruno when you met him? I loved him. He seemed to love my sister.
She loved being a wife and she loved being a mother.
She was an amazing mom. And Bruno was a great dad, says Sabrina.
My dad was wonderful. I mean, I can't complain about him as a dad. We went hunting together. We went fishing together.
When I was really young, I wanted to cut my hair to be like my dad. Like, that's how close we were. But as the girls grew older and became parents themselves, they say they began to see flaws in their parents' marriage.
We had moved in there, me and my ex-husband, with my parents when my daughter was about nine months old. And it was like all the time they were constantly arguing. The breaking point was when they got really drunk one night and my dad grabbed her by the back of the hair and he whipped her into the wall. It made a really loud thud and she couldn't breathe. I was like, we can't stay here anymore.
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Chapter 4: What evidence was discovered that changed the case?
He's like, I can't go home to that. I don't want to see all the blood and... Here I am, 21, 22. Now as an adult, I'm like, wow, I can't believe he asked us to do that. But I just kept going and I kept wanting to make sure he was okay.
We were so concerned because he kept making comments that he was going to take his own life, that he couldn't deal with this. How did you get rid of that mattress?
We took it in the back of a truck and we burned it in the woods. Chelsea and Sabrina say that before their mother was even buried, their father asked for help purging all traces of her. He wanted us to get rid of everything. It's like he wanted her erased. All my sister's clothes.
We had to go down to the thrift store where they donated the clothes, and I had to get clothes for my sister to bury her in. Bruno even got rid of Melissa's dog, Zeus.
My mom loved that dog, and my dad got rid of him. right after my mom died.
It wasn't long before Joanne says she began to suspect that Bruno had another motive for erasing the memory of Melissa.
My sister's best friend said that Bruno contacted her not too long after my sister had passed away and said, how long do you think it is before, you know, you can kind of like go public with dating someone? And she said, are you freaking kidding me? And he was dead serious.
Bruno was talking about Tonya Wilczewski, Jack Wilczewski's wife, the couple that Bruno and Melissa were out to dinner with on the night of the shooting.
We were together 15 years at that time.
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Chapter 5: How did the investigation evolve after new evidence was found?
About that time, Bruno threatened her with a gun when she refused to be intimate with him. It took a lot for you to go down there. What were you hoping would have happened? I was hoping they would have reopened it. And what actually happened? Nothing happened. Chelsea recalls being told that it was her word against her father's.
And she says an investigator suggested her coming forward could have been motivated by money. And at that point, I had no idea I was even entitled to... my mom's inheritance. Melissa left behind a will and over $300,000 meant to be divided between her husband and daughters.
But not long after Melissa's death, Bruno had his daughter sign paperwork that gave him complete control of their mother's estate.
He had sent me a paper in the mail, said, do not look at it. Go get this notarized and sign and send it back to me, which I did. I didn't question it. It's my dad.
Sabrina says she knew she was signing away her rights to the money, but felt pressured to do it. He was so good at manipulating me and making me feel guilty. Chelsea signed those same papers, but says she was in shock and didn't understand the consequences. That hurt that he would take from us and especially from his grandson.
The sisters say they began to wonder if money had been the motive for their mother's shooting. But without police action, they felt they had to move on. So I kind of started letting it go. Chelsea says she even let her son Greg build a bond with his grandfather. I hated him for taking my mom from me, but I loved how good he was to my son.
Four years later, in 2020, Corporal Greg Allen was assigned to investigate open cases for the Pennsylvania State Police and says this case caught his eye. What about this case stood out to you?
To me, it was the original 911 call.
What's the problem there? A gunshot wound in my wife.
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Chapter 6: What were the implications of the surveillance audio?
There is a small piece of the trigger that has to be depressed in order for the gun to fire. So both things need to occur.
There were also questions about where Bruno and Melissa were sitting when the fatal shot was fired.
So you see the way that he's holding the gun. He's pointing it to the opposite side of the bed.
But Nylon and Allen say there was blood and ballistics evidence on the wall behind Bruno.
Directly behind him.
So the evidence is here and here.
Yes. Everything is behind him.
But he says he shot this way. Correct. They would need DNA testing and a forensic expert to confirm their suspicions that Bruno was lying. But in the meantime, Corporal Nylon found a key piece of evidence that he says no one had ever examined. Video and audio from the night of the shooting, recorded on a home security system.
Turns out that a security camera mounted on the front of the house had recorded Melissa Recuba's last words. These are the final images of Melissa Recuba, recorded on this home security camera and this DVR. Dan Nylon says when he first discovered the recording, he could see Melissa and her husband Bruno arriving home from their night out.
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Chapter 7: What led to Bruno Recuba's arrest nearly nine years later?
I was horrified. Of course I cried.
And I can picture my sister yelling at him and screaming and those very last few moments realizing that this is it.
Also horrifying is the sound of Chelsea screaming after her father called her over and she first discovered her mother. She says she doesn't remember questioning her father that night, but she did.
Dad, why did this happen?
And Bruno's answer gave police yet another version of his story.
She came home, she wanted to take the gun out of the place, and I told her, no, we're not doing that.
He implied that Melissa had been the one holding the gun.
You want to go too? No. She's all right. I know. I know.
A little over two weeks later, Mark Powell says forensic expert Dr. Wayne Ross confirmed what Greg Allen and Dan Nylon had suspected about how all the blood got on the wall behind Bruno.
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Chapter 8: What were the outcomes of the trial and sentencing?
Recuba once again hired Joe D'Andrea and pled not guilty. Is Bruno still telling you the same story?
He never wavered from the story that it was an accident.
But D'Andrea says he was now seeing... and hearing the evidence for the first time and says there was a lot to explain to a jury, like the various versions of Recuba's stories.
I went like this and she was sitting in the bed there.
All captured on tape.
Any discussions or any arguments or anything before that happened? No.
The most challenging, says D'Andrea, that police walked through.
Now, if Bruno didn't make a statement, he probably would never have gotten charged.
Also concerning to D'Andrea was how a jury would feel about Rakuba's relationship with Tanya Wilczewski and the question of when it began. Possible motive?
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