Chapter 1: What happened on June 28th, 2014, regarding Jake Embert?
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Tonight on Dateline. He says, I'm so sorry, but your dad has passed. The coroner is telling me. This is a suicide. This is a suicide.
There's no freaking way. My husband just shot himself. I ran down the hallway. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
She was like, don't go back in the bedroom.
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Chapter 2: How did the initial investigation conclude Jake's death?
To protect him.
You know, from not seeing that sight. Don't go back there, they said. Don't go back there. Don't touch nothing. The ambulance is on the way.
I was like, why? She wouldn't tell me why. And eventually, she told me that my dad shot himself.
Oh, God. Mm-hmm.
What did you do? I fell on the ground. I think I blacked out. I was very upset. I was crying.
I remember I looked up.
Well, I remember Susan saying that the police are here. I remember I opened my eyes and the Doherty County police car pulling up the driveway.
Will got on the phone with his older sister, Rachel. She was 30 at the time. He said, calm as can be. I'll never, ever, ever forget it. I don't know how to tell you this. Instantly, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, my little brother's about to tell me that he got his girlfriend pregnant. Because you could hear in his voice something was off. Yes, something was just off. And he just paused.
He didn't say anything.
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Chapter 3: What evidence led the family to suspect foul play?
Nobody ever asked you, hey, what did you see? What happened? You didn't think his body needed another look? Didn't need any more testing, any more anything? Nothing went upstairs on in your head? Nothing did? Nothing? There's blood splatter on the floor. Never cleaned up. You basically have a detective's mind at this point. No. I just watch. Daylight.
Jake and Brooke's sister Yvonne lived 600 miles away in North Carolina. Jake's daughter Rachel called her.
She said, hey Yvonne, my dad shot himself. And immediately I thought he was cleaning his gun and it must have went off. So I started screaming at her and asking her. Where is he? I just kept screaming, where is he? And she said, he's not here anymore. I felt like I left my body.
I said, this can't be. It can't be. It was a cruel mixture of pain and sheer disbelief that Jake was suddenly gone. He had always been dedicated to his family. Did he have a philosophy or a special way that he lived his life? Yeah, you know, he just always put himself full force in anything. If he committed to something, he was going to just see it through. And that was just with everything.
He was also a jokester who loved to make others laugh. So he would throw a joke in any situation.
Any situation. No matter what.
Yes. Even if it wasn't really appropriate. Yes.
Yes.
That part. But what really made Jake light up, his family says, being a dad. Jake wasn't Rachel's biological father. He married her mother when Rachel was just a baby. He was never a stepfather or an adoptive father.
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Chapter 4: How did the family go about seeking a private investigator?
They'd had coffee together and made plans to go to the racetrack. In fact, Jake's old car was set to be raced that very afternoon, a 1975 Firebird.
It wasn't even a question. It was like, we're going to go see it. We're going. Because he loved that car. He did. I said, okay, I'm going to go pick up my girlfriend and come back, and then we can go.
When you left, what was his demeanor like? Was he excited?
Yeah. I just expected him to go shower and get dressed, and by then I'd be back.
That timing seemed especially puzzling to Rachel. She just couldn't wrap her mind around her dad ending his life then, when Will was on his way back to the house and would likely see the aftermath. The relationship that my dad and my brother had together was so... When I say best dad award, I mean that in all capital letters.
He never, ever, ever, knowing that Will was coming right back, never would have done that to my brother. Confused and looking for answers, Rachel and Will went back to the house that night after the shooting. They went into the bedroom where their dad died.
I went back there, saw it. The sheets were stripped off, the mattress was still there. There were two towels laid on top of the blood, but the blood was still soaking through the towels.
And then so my brother and I were just standing in the room and we just started crying.
Rachel tried to imagine what her dad had been thinking. It wasn't easy. My dad was sick. He was experiencing health issues. You know, I try to put myself in everybody's shoes. Okay, you're sick. All of this stuff is transpiring. And everything, I just kept being right to the back. There's no freaking way.
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Chapter 5: What were the significant findings from the private investigation?
He'd never seen a dead body?
He had not seen a dead body, from my understanding, before that day.
So he walks into that, having never seen a dead body, fresh out of police academy.
And his comment to me was, Mr. Lee, I just wanted to get out of there.
As for the more experienced officers... I'm not no CSI kind of person or nothing like that, but... Lee learned they didn't do much more.
I mean, it's obvious, you know.
Here's Lee talking to one of them.
When you went into the bedroom, did you do any kind of investigative work or make any observations to determine whether it was suicide or not?
I looked at the body. Of course, I saw the deceased with the gun in his hand. laying back on his bed pretty much soon.
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Chapter 6: What inconsistencies arose in Susan Embert's story?
That is what signified why my dad married her. Was she in fact pregnant? Oh, absolutely not. And once they were married, there was something else that bothered the family. They had always known Jake to be responsible with his money. But Susan took over the bills and soon they had serious financial problems. Jake called Yvonne for help. And I could hear her telling him to do it.
This is on the phone. What was she saying? Ask her for money. Ask her for more money. And this is something your brother has never done. Never. In all your years. Never. Not ever. And then there was Jake's life insurance. They weren't even married six weeks when he said, Susan's pressuring me to change my life insurance beneficiary.
To her? To her. And I said, Jake, you have an underage son.
I think you should think about that. He said, I already did it. And he said, Yvonne, Susan will take care of Will if anything happens to me. Yvonne wasn't so sure, and she was apparently right to not trust Susan.
My investigation showed there was actually a completely different side of this woman that the family didn't know, and they had strong reason to believe Jake didn't know.
A different side meaning what?
Well, she wasn't who she portrayed herself to be.
Susan had been married three times before. Lee spoke with two of her ex-husbands.
She used to drink. But I don't know what she does now. Right, but when y'all were married, it was the drinking.
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Chapter 7: How did the trial proceedings unfold for Susan Embert?
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I don't have nothing to hide from nobody and I still don't. Susan Embert's story was entirely different than the one being told by her husband's family. She says when she and Jake first got married, their life was nearly perfect.
I had a good husband and he had a good wife and I had a stepson that I loved.
It was nice. Susan says she felt accepted by her husband's family and insists they were all invited to the courthouse wedding. She remembers Jake even moved up the date to accommodate their schedules. Will is saying that he had no idea that he would have been there. He wanted to be there and be his father's best man, but that he was blindsided when he found out after the fact.
He knew the date that we were going to get married, and he also knew the date was moved up. Are you saying that Will is mistaken?
I think so, yes.
There were some Facebook messages between you and Jake where you told him that you were pregnant. Did that play a role in the timing of your wedding?
I never told him I was pregnant. That I know of.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of Susan Embert's trials and her current status?
One of the jurors had some criminal history.
So you see this information and you knew that you had found something major? Absolutely, yes. The juror was a felon. And while there is a process to restore rights to serve on a jury, that had not happened. And no one from the court or the district attorney's office caught it. That was grounds to overturn Susan's conviction.
Should your office be taking a closer look, double-checking things like this when you're seating a jury?
Yes. We now require documentation indicating that they are not disqualified from serving as a juror. So we just double down on making sure that that's reviewed.
An important fix, but too late for Jake's family. And the mistake was costly.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, family. Thank you, attorneys. I love y'all. Thank you.
After more than four years in prison, Susan Embert walked out a free woman. They called me and they told me that Susan was being released. And that is like, I was astounded. What do you mean she's being released? How do you even process this? You know, I'm angry. I'll be honest. Yeah. I'm very angry. How did this transpire? How?
Jake's family felt the mistakes and wasted time had plagued the process from day one. And now with Susan's release, they would have to start again. What do you even do with that news? Question the whole judicial system. Are you just thinking to yourself, there's this pattern of people just missing things, folks not doing their jobs? Exactly.
Susan would have to stand trial all over again, this time with a new jury. But her new attorney had a plan. We immediately started working on the motion to get the case dismissed. On what grounds? So it's a speedy trial violation. A lot of people are probably familiar with the fact that you have a right to a speedy trial, but most probably aren't familiar with how that actually works.
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