Transcript

Twisted Trials | “48 Hours" Full Episodes

From 48 Hours · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 2 h 5 min · 17,606 words · 479 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Twisted Trials | “48 Hours" Full Episodes", an episode of 48 Hours published November 29, 2025 (2 h 5 min, about 17,606 words). It mentions 32 people, works and ideas, including Jerry Burns, Michelle Martino, DNA, Irene Garza, John Fe.

What this episode is about

The narrative centers on the 1979 murder of 18-year-old Michelle Marteno in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after she was attacked shortly after leaving a mall. Despite initial suspicions surrounding her boyfriend Andy Sidell, the case went cold until a significant breakthrough occurred in 2005 when DNA evidence reopened the investigation, leading to the collection of samples from numerous individuals.

Key takeaways

  • Michelle Martino's tragic demise in '79 transformed Cedar Rapids from safe haven to cautionary tale about violence.
  • 29 stab wounds suggest personal vendetta; in crime lore, intimacy often fuels rage more than pure malice.
  • After decades of cold trails, DNA revitalized the case—reminding us that justice sometimes sleeps, not dies.
  • From choir concerts to cold cases, how a community's horror lingers, evolving but never fading into mere memory.
  • Investigators, echoing familial bonds, reveal how time's passage entwines legacy with relentless pursuit of closure.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 15:00: Cedar Rapids, Andy Sidell, Michelle Martino, Janelle Stonereaker
  2. – 30:00: Jerry Burns, Michelle Martino, Cedar Rapids, Parabon Nano Labs
  3. – 45:00: Jerry Burns, Cedar Rapids, Leon Spees, Nick Maybanks
  4. – 1:00:00: Irene Garza, Sacred Heart Church, Easter, John Fe
  5. – 1:15:00: Dale Tashnney, Irene Garza, Easter, John Fe
  6. – 1:30:00: Irene Garza, John Fe

Notable quotes from "Twisted Trials | “48 Hours" Full Episodes"

  • Just before Christmas in December 1979, every single police officer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was called to work on the horrific murder in the parking lot of Westdale Mall.
    about Cedar Rapids · at
  • Decades later, Matt, now a detective himself, joined the investigation into Michelle Martino's murder.
    about Matt Deninger · at
  • What did they find? a spot of blood on her dress with a full male DNA profile and it was consistent with the male DNA profile on the gear shift selector.
    about Michelle Martino · at
  • All three brothers samples were sent to the lab. Don and Kenneth were not a match, but the results showed Jerry Burns's DNA was an exact match.
    about Jerry Burns · at
  • Around that time, Irene's parents got a visit from Father O'Brien of Sacred Heart Church.
    about Sacred Heart Church · at
  • Your honor, the state of Texas were called Dale Tashnney. Dale Tashnney is 88 years old, a former monk from Oklahoma, and now the star witness at John Fight's murder trial. Tashnney has waited years to be able to take the.
    about Dale Tashnney · at
  • We the jury find the defendant John Bernard Fight guilty of the offense of murder with malice of forethought as charged.
    about John Fe · at
  • After 57 years, we have found justice for Irene. And for today, pigs are flying.
    about Irene Garza · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Jerry Burns — Person · Accused/convicted perpetrator (Michelle Martino ca · 13 mentions · first at
    Identified via genetic genealogy and covert DNA collection; arrested and convicted of first-degree murder decades later.
  • Michelle Martino — Person · Core victim / central case subject · 10 mentions · first at
    Her 1979 murder at Westdale Mall drives the first major narrative arc, including the cold-case investigation and eventual DNA-based identification of a suspect.
  • Irene Garza — Person · Core victim / central case subject (second story) · 16 mentions · first at
    Her 1960 murder at Sacred Heart Church anchors the second major narrative arc involving alleged church cover-up and later prosecution.
  • John Fe — Person · Accused/convicted perpetrator (Irene Garza case) · 8 mentions · first at
    Former priest alleged to have murdered Irene Garza; tried and convicted decades later amid claims of institutional cover-up.
  • Matt Deninger — Person · Lead investigator (second generation) · 3 mentions · first at
    Took over as lead detective in 2015, used Parabon Snapshot and genetic genealogy to identify the Burns brothers and match Jerry Burns.
  • Dale Tashnney — Person · Key witness (Irene Garza case) · 6 mentions · first at
    Former monk who reported and later testified about John Fe’s alleged confession, helping revive the cold case decades later.
  • Andy Sidell — Person · Referenced suspect / key witness · 6 mentions · first at
    Michelle Martino’s ex-boyfriend and early prime suspect; later exonerated by DNA and testified at trial.
    Did either of you know Andy Sidell?
  • Leon Spees — Person · Defense attorney (Jerry Burns) · 4 mentions · first at
    Argues against the prosecution’s interpretation of DNA evidence and attacks investigation integrity at trial.
    In his closing argument, SPE attacks the integrity of the investigation.
  • Nick Maybanks — Person · Prosecutor (Jerry Burns trial) · 4 mentions · first at
    Leads prosecution narrative emphasizing DNA certainty and community impact; delivers closing framing about Michelle’s life.
    Nick Maybanks worded it the best. he said it's not about how she died, it's about how she lived.
  • Janelle Stonereaker — Person · Family member / spokesperson · 2 mentions · first at
    Michelle Martino’s older sister who provides family background, medical history, and reaction to the arrest/conviction.
    Janelle Stonereaker is Michelle's big sister, 12 years older. Michelle was the flower girl at her wedding. She and her husband John say nothing could have prepared them for the horrible news they.
  • Brandy Jennings — Person · Genetic genealogy match (relative lead) · 2 mentions · first at
    Identified as a distant relative in the public database search; her family tree enabled narrowing to three Iowa brothers.
    Brandy Jennings, an office manager and single mom, was a distant relative to the male whose DNA was found on Michelle's bloody dress and in her car.
  • Father Joseph O'Brien — Person · Witness / church official (Irene Garza case) · 2 mentions · first at
    Assistant pastor who reported injuries on John Fe and later allegedly received an admission; his credibility is contested due to dementia claims.
    And father Joseph O'Brien, the assistant pastor, told police that fight had some injuries the night Irene disappeared.
  • Renee Gara — Person · Referenced decision-maker / former DA (Irene Garza · 2 mentions · first at
    District attorney who initially refused to charge John Fe when new witnesses emerged; later faced public pressure and electoral change.
    But it took 15 years from the time Tashnney first came forward to get him in front of a jury. And this man, Renee Gara, is a big part of the reason why.
  • Tracy Price — Person · Witness / friend of victim · 3 mentions · first at
    Choir friend who saw Michelle at the mall that night and provided key contextual details (cash, fear of being followed).
    Tracy Price went to high school and sang in the choir with Michelle.
  • Mike Hayrick — Person · Witness / ex-boyfriend / early suspect cleared · 3 mentions · first at
    Dated Michelle and was questioned; later testified at trial and described the long-term impact on those close to her.
    Mike Hayrick had dated Michelle in high school and says her murder shattered the city's all-American image.
  • Harvey Deninger — Person · Referenced investigator (first generation) · 2 mentions · first at
    Retired detective who worked the original Michelle Martino case; his long involvement frames the multi-generational investigation.
    I never seen anybody stabbed that many times, including now retired detective Harvey Deninger.
  • Gail Dawson — Person · Witness / friend of victim · 3 mentions · first at
    Friend who describes Andy Sidell’s behavior and the fear and community impact after the murder.
    Michelle's friend, Gail Dawson, remembers him, and there was this flashy sports car guy, you know. Michelle and Andy were together for 2 years and then.
  • Janet Martino — Person · Victim’s mother (referenced) · 1 mention · first at
    Provides family history (miscarriages, ‘miracle baby’) and illustrates the long-term tragedy and lack of closure.
    It was a devastating blow to parents who had been through so much with Michelle already. Janet Martino had suffered five miscarriages and was 44 years old when Michelle was born.
  • John Martino — Person · Family member (by marriage) / referenced · 2 mentions
    Identified as Janelle Stonereaker’s husband; appears in family context around receiving the news of Michelle’s death.
    For Michelle's sister Janelle, news of the DNA match and the arrest signaled hope. And a day she and her husband John thought would never come.

Companies & orgs

  • Parabon Nano Labs — Company · Forensic vendor / enabling technology provider · 2 mentions · first at
    Provided DNA phenotyping ('Snapshot') and genetic genealogy support that led to identifying relatives and narrowing suspects.
    Parabon searched a public national database called Jed Match of people who submitted their own DNA voluntarily to trace their own personal family tree. And in July of 2018, we got a.
  • Cotus — Company · Referenced DNA database (misnamed as company in pr · 1 mention · first at
    Described as the nationwide database used to search for offender DNA matches; yielded no hit, prompting broader sampling and genealogy.
    He shipped the blood samples to Cotus.

Concepts & topics

  • DNA — Concept · Core forensic evidence / enabling technology · 1 mention · first at
    Male DNA recovered from the gearshift and dress becomes the decisive evidence leading to identification, arrest, and conviction.
    The biggest break came in 2005. The DNA was the key.
  • Golden State Killer — Concept · Catalyst example / investigative precedent · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as the unrelated case that popularized genetic genealogy for law enforcement and inspired applying it to the Martino case.
    That answer came from an infamous but totally unrelated case. California's so-called Golden State Killer. Joseph D'Angelo was arrested in 2018, charged with a decadesl long spree of serial murder and rape.
  • Forensic Tool — Concept · Core investigative framing concept · 1 mention · first at
    DNA is explicitly described as a forensic tool whose evolution re-opened and advanced the cold case investigation.
    In the years since Michelle's murder, DNA had emerged as a forensic tool.
  • Scoliosis — Concept · Biographical detail (victim background) · 1 mention · first at
    Michelle Martino’s childhood diagnosis and brace treatment is used to humanize her and show earlier adversity.
    When she was 12, Michelle was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She had to wear a brace that went from her neck to her hips.

Places & events

  • Cedar Rapids — Place · Primary setting (Michelle Martino case) · 11 mentions · first at
    Community where the 1979 murder occurred and where the long-running investigation and public impact unfolded.
  • Westdale Mall — Place · Crime scene location (Michelle Martino case) · 4 mentions · first at
    Parking lot where Michelle was attacked and killed; also central to suspect questioning and later trial references.
    Every single police officer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was called to work on the horrific murder in the parking lot of Westdale Mall.
  • Sacred Heart Church — Place · Crime scene location (Irene Garza case) · 4 mentions · first at
    Site of Irene Garza’s disappearance after confession and focal point for allegations of church influence and cover-up.
  • 1979 — Event · Key year (Michelle Martino case) · 1 mention · first at
    Year of the murder and the start point for the decades-long investigation culminating in later DNA breakthroughs.
    On December 19th, 1979, Michelle Marteno was a 18-year-old high school senior.
  • Easter — Event · Temporal/religious context (Irene Garza case) · 7 mentions · first at
    Frames the Holy Saturday confession and the packed church setting; also underscores cultural power of the church in the community.
    Down here, it's a primarily Catholic community and Easter is the high holiday. Irene on Holy Saturday with the church packed with everybody trying to cleanse their soul in this.
  • April 16th, 1960 — Event · Key date (Irene Garza case) · 2 mentions · first at
    Date given for Irene Garza’s confession/disappearance and the alleged murder at Sacred Heart Church.
    On April 16th, 1960, Irene God went to Sacred Heart Church in Macallen seeking to save her soul.
  • Mason City — Place · Referenced related-case location · 2 mentions · first at
    Location tied to the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit (named in transcript as 'Jodie Husen Troop'), raised as a possible additional crime.
    Mason City police will not disclose whether they are investigating Burns in the Who's and Trude disappearance and his DNA is not connected to any other cases. But in Michelle Martino's case,.

Full transcript with timestamps

On December 19th, 1979, Michelle Marteno was a 18-year-old high school senior. She was impossible to miss. She had the big blonde hair.

She was that striking. She was striking. Just a smart, kind, nice person. She was a member of the concert choir. They had a banquet which she attended.

Afterwards, Michelle ended up going to the mall. So did a bunch of her friends from the choir.

The mall had just opened. It was 2 months old. It was the place to be in Cedar Rapids at the time.

So she would have been parked right in this area. Yeah, she would have been parked facing this direction. She left the mall shortly before it closed. It closed at 10 p.m. that night.

You're talking December in Iowa. It's very dark. It's very dark. Michelle walks out and gets in her car. This person snuck up on Michelle, opened the door, and climbed in.

She was stabbed and cut a total of 29 times. This was a real fight. It looks personal. It's a lot of stab wounds. It's overkill. It's always the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the husband, someone really, really close to the person.

Did either of you know Andy Sidell? I knew Andy through Michelle. That was her boyfriend.

I took an instant dislike to Andy. He was very possessive of Michelle. I believed Andy did it. I did not see anything from the men in her life that would give any of them motive to do something like this. I definitely didn't see that from Andy Sidell.

Entire police force dedicated time and energy to try to find answers to what happened to Michelle.

After a couple of years, the leads were starting to dry up. The case then goes cold.

Yeah. We really had given up hope. We truly had. These guys never gave up. The investigation never really stopped.

I've been through every piece of paper in here. Probably close to 8,000 pages of reports here. The biggest break came in 2005. The DNA was the key. We collected DNA from 161 people.

We were looking for a needle in a hay stack. We just need to get lucky. It took us 13 years until we had a suspect. We immediately call up the lab. Is this our guy?

What was the answer? Yes. What are you doing in that moment? I don't know what I was doing. I was speechless.

So, do you think he just all these years thought he got away with it? Well, yeah, cuz he did.

this tragic case that's been haunting this community for years. Just before Christmas in December 1979, every single police officer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was called to work on the horrific murder in the parking lot of Westdale Mall.

I never seen anybody stabbed that many times, including now retired detective Harvey Deninger.

Something like that was unheard of around here. Michelle Martino, an 18-year-old high school senior, had been found violently stabbed in the front seat of her car. Her killer unknown, confounding generations of investigators.

We couldn't come up with anything. And we just kept plugging away. How old were you?

I was 5 years old. Do you remember the case? No, not not from when I was little.

Harvey's son, Matt. But every single year on December 19th, Michelle Martino was a brighteyed blonde.

The local news would have a Michelle Martino segment. 27 years ago, her life was cut short.

So, it was really hard to miss the severity of it. Decades later, Matt, now a detective himself, joined the investigation into Michelle Martino's murder.

I love how old this map is. 36 years after his father had begun working the same case.

Wouldn't it be something if I could find our suspect and my dad is still alive?

And as he dug into the thick files, the son went to his father to help him make sense of it all.

I wanted someone to talk to about it and I wanted someone that really understood it.

The crime had stunned the small city of 110,000. It scared the hell out of us. Tracy Price went to high school and sang in the choir with Michelle.

It just hit me like a brick. It was just shocking. Mike Hayrick had dated Michelle in high school and says her murder shattered the city's all-American image.

If that could happen and the person wasn't caught, anything could happen. This one, I think, is one of our favorite pictures. She's sleeping with her dog. So cute. Here we're into the hair stage. Lots of hair pictures.

Yep. Janelle Stonereaker is Michelle's big sister, 12 years older. Michelle was the flower girl at her wedding. She and her husband John say nothing could have prepared them for the horrible news they got the morning after Michelle was killed.

We just hugged and we couldn't believe she was gone. My dad was very stoic about it, but he was angry and my mother was just brokenhearted. It was a devastating blow to parents who had been through so much with Michelle already. Janet Martino had suffered five miscarriages and was 44 years old when Michelle was born.

It was great. I mean, it was just so exciting when my sister was born and she was the miracle baby.

When she was 12, Michelle was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She had to wear a brace that went from her neck to her hips.

She felt very different, very self-conscious. So, that was a tough period. But at age 14, she was able to shed the brace. And then Janelle says everything changed for Michelle.

Farra Faucet was in with the hair and my sister always had the long blonde hair. So she thought, "Okay, I can do I can do the hair." You know,

Michelle was blissfully unaware. She was of all this uh attention that she was getting from men.

She caught the eye of Andy Sidell, who at 16 was a year older than Michelle. We met him roller skating.

Michelle's friend, Gail Dawson, remembers him, and there was this flashy sports car guy, you know. Michelle and Andy were together for 2 years and then broke up. Friends say she didn't want to be in a committed relationship. And Andy apparently didn't take it too well.

After they broke up, he wanted to know her every move, who she was dating, why she was dating that particular person. He would talk to her friends. He just wouldn't go away.

Police learned Andy had run into Michelle at the mall that fateful night. They brought him in for questioning. Did he have an alibi?

Andy did have an alibi. Andy was at home shortly after the mall closed and his mom uh provided an alibi. The problem with Andy's alibi, though, is that moms would say a lot to protect their children. Every male that knew her was a suspect that they had to clear.

You must have been a suspect. I was. Mike Hayrick was questioned as well. And even though he was more than a 100 miles away at college when Michelle was murdered, police knew he had also dated her.

All of it was a little intimidating. It was hard. It was scary. Mike says the police were tough on him. At one point they thought that I wasn't telling them everything and they laid the crime scene photos out in front of me and it was hurtful.

Mike was never considered a serious suspect because he was not in Cedar Rapids at the time of the murder, but Andy was. And Andy's behavior at Michelle's funeral only reinforced many people's suspicions about him.

He was almost in the casket. He was so emotional. He has arms around her and he was just sobbing. And he said to me, "I have to know who she loved when she died. Did she love me or did she love Mike? Who did she love when she died?"

But police had no hard evidence pointing to Andy Sidell. He left Cedar Rapids soon after high school and joined the Navy. There's a large amount of us that were convinced that he did kill her.

I thought it was just a matter of time before he was arrested and charged. There was no one else. There really wasn't another suspect. As police investigated those closest to Michelle Martino, looking for potential suspects, they were also looking at the possibility that Michelle may have been killed outside the mall by a stranger. She was out there and she was looking for a coat that her mom had put on layaway for her for Christmas and she was going to pay it off.

Michelle had $186 with her to pay for the coat, but ultimately decided she didn't want it. Tracy Price had run into her at the mall that night and gave her a protective warning when he saw her holding the cash.

Put that away. You know, don't be flashing money out here in the middle of everybody. Tracy only learned later that Michelle was a little anxious that night.

She was nervous about going out to the mall by herself and that she had told someone that she felt like she was being followed.

You didn't notice anybody watching her, paying close attention to her. I never got that feeling.

Michelle headed to her car in the dark. So, she was parked pretty far away. Yeah, she was parked a ways out here. I think she gets in. I think she probably turned that car on herself and and was warming it up for a minute to get the frost off the windows. And I think that in that moment before she puts it in drive and leaves, I think he's at the door, pops it open, pushes her over, and climbs in.

Sounds like a robbery. On the surface, it would sound like a robbery, but she did have cash on her. It wasn't taken. She did have a a bag with some items she had purchased in the back seat. Those weren't taken.

So, is it a sexual assault? It very well could have could have been the plan. Although the autopsy showed she was not sexually assaulted, Michelle had defensive slice wounds on her hands and body.

You have to assume that that pretty much any motive that you can logically think of was a possibility and that Michelle decided she wasn't going to allow that to happen. She fought.

Whatever the motive, the asalent had come prepared. They found rubber glove indentations on the outside of the car in dirt. They found them inside the car in blood. It was clear that that person was trying to conceal their identity.

Investigators had no fingerprints, no witnesses, and few leads. Although they had a blood soaked crime scene, DNA technology was still years away.

It's frustrating. By 1986, this case is sitting on ice. It's that cold. No one can think of anything uh more to do at that point.

Michelle's family was even more frustrated. It seemed that everybody had been looked at.

We thought the investigation was pretty much dead in the water. It would take almost two decades, but the case would come alive again. In 2005, Detective Doug Larrison was in charge. Coincidentally, he had gone to high school with Michelle. Although they were not close, her murder had deeply affected him.

So that had been on your mind since you were 18 years old. How do we get this solved?

Right. I felt the responsibility towards my classmates actually to get this crime solved.

In the years since Michelle's murder, DNA had emerged as a forensic tool. Technology changes, science changes. So I wanted to proceed and move the case forward.

And Larrison did just that. He was reading Michelle's file when he discovered that sometime earlier, another detective had sent blood scrapings found on the gearshift of the car out for testing, but nobody had followed up on the results. And it just stays in the file until somebody finds it

and it can get lost in the file. And until somebody actually sits down and reads the file, do they go, "Oh, wow. We have DNA."

Those different investigators don't necessarily network with one another. But Larrison found that lab report and it showed that not only did the gearshift have DNA, it was male DNA.

He had probably cut himself and that's how his DNA and his blood got mixed with her blood on the gear shift selector.

Larrison then sent Michelle's dress, which had been safely tucked away in an evidence locker, to the lab for further testing.

What did they find? a spot of blood on her dress with a full male DNA profile and uh it was consistent with the male DNA profile on the gear shift selector.

Larrison had identified a crucial piece of evidence. I think it's just common sense that that's probably your killer right there.

Detectives had the evidence. Now all they needed was the suspect. We know we just need one person. We just need to get get lucky, you know, have the sunshine on us just one day when we find one person that matches that.

But it would take many days, more than a decade. And it wasn't luck. It was cops who wouldn't quit until they finally narrowed in on one very surprising suspect.

Oh boy. This is it. We have finally gotten down to the wire on this. here in America's heartland for friends like Tracy Price who saw Michelle Martino the last night of her life.

Every anniversary it goes through your head, you know, here's another year. Still don't know

for ex-boyfriend Mike Hyrick. We all were victims in a way. Well, your innocence was stolen.

Yeah, exactly. Then the fear set in. And for close friend Gail Dawson, Michelle's murderer left a mark on all their lives.

You're scared. You're afraid to go places. The killer had vanished. But by 2005, investigators were on to something new. Science and that male DNA profile in Michelle's dress and the DNA from the blood on her car's gear shift.

Would it be fair to say you found a needle in a hay stack? I think there was a lot of needles in in a lot of hay stacks in this case.

For lead investigator Doug Larrison, old evidence suddenly had fresh potential. He shipped the blood samples to Cotus. the nationwide database of DNA collected from arrested offenders. If Michelle's murderer had a previous record,

Cotus will give us a hit and tell us who matches the profile. So, you send it to Cotus and what happens?

Well, we never got a hit. Dead end. The DNA from Michelle's dress and car did not match up with anyone in the huge government file.

So, now we had a job to do. Starting with locating all the people Cedar Rapids cops had originally interviewed.

We collected DNA samples from over a hundred different people. Cops had to convince them to take a DNA test.

It was timeconuming. Mike Hyrick and Tracy Price were tested. Both came up negative. At the top of Larrison's list was Michelle's old boyfriend, Andy Sidell.

I think he was probably the main suspect from the very beginning of this case. Andy Sidell had lived for 27 years with many in his hometown believing he was a killer.

I said, "Listen, Andy, if you give us your DNA and it doesn't match, then you're eliminated. You're cleared." So, he voluntarily gave his DNA and he was eliminated. But whoever ended Michelle's life left a different but lasting mark on Andy. Michelle's parents both died before that DNA test exonerated him. They likely went to their graves believing Andy was their daughter's killer.

I feel very bad about that. Andy was a victim himself because many, many fingers were pointing at Andy.

Larrison moved on. classmates, friends, family searching for a match with that male DNA.

So, you do a hundred different people, what comes back? Everybody's eliminated.

No matches. It had been 10 frustrating years for detective Doug Larrison. I was kind of burned out. So, I went to my supervisors and I said, "Hey, I think you need to get somebody to replace me on this case."

One of these had the FBI profile in it. And that's when Matt came in. Matt Deninger, Harvey's son. that second generation searching for Michelle's killer. In 2015, he took over as lead detective.

They would tell you our computer records only go back to 1990. Facts hadn't changed, but DNA technology had once again advanced further, offering tanalyzing possibilities.

We've got this DNA profile. How can we get more information from it? Can we find out eye color, hair color, race? Deninger reached across the country to Virginia's Parabon Nano Labs

and they said, "Yeah, we know what you're trying to do and guess what? We can make a picture of a potential suspect from that DNA sample."

Did you think that that could be possible? No. No. I had no good concept that that was possible. Um, it sounded a little bit sci-fi, but I was ready to try. We had to do something.

The portrait was striking. Parabon called the technique snapshot. It put a face on a phantom.

What we learned from that is our suspect was probably a white male, blonde hair, blue eyes.

This first image let's show you here. And so we had a press conference. Investigators had narrowed down the suspect's genetics, but they did not know his age or have a clue as to how he wore his hair. So different sketches were created, each with a different look.

A town hungry for justice searched its memory for a match. Do you get a lot of tip calls?

We got hundreds. Any of them pan out? No. It's every blondhaired, blue-eyed guy that ever walked the face of the earth and step foot in Iowa.

Are you just confused? I was really confused and I did not know where to go next. That answer came from an infamous but totally unrelated case. California's so-called Golden State Killer. Joseph D'Angelo was arrested in 2018, charged with a decadesl long spree of serial murder and rape.

That was big news. That was big national news. Then I read the article and it talked about genetic genealogy

and you went bingo. I went bingo. Genetic genealogy. the charting of DNA from one family member to another, a DNA family tree. Parabon was ready to test that same DNA one more time.

They said, "We'll use the sample you already gave us for the uh snapshot images." I said, "Let's do it."

Parabon searched a public national database called Jed Match of people who submitted their own DNA voluntarily to trace their own personal family tree. And in July of 2018, we got a report back from him. They said, "Good news. We found a relative of your killer."

Brandy Jennings is our gal in Vancouver, Washington. She's the second cousin, right? Once removed.

Exactly. Brandy Jennings, an office manager and single mom, was a distant relative to the male whose DNA was found on Michelle's bloody dress and in her car.

So, you start with her. We start with her. Deninger spent months building Bry's family tree all the way back to her great greatgrandparents.

We used genealological records, birth records, marriage records, gravestone records, anything we could find to fill in a bunch of these unknowns. As more blood relatives of Brandy Jennings provided their DNA, a genetic puzzle filled in and the detective reached out to Parabon once again

and they recalibrated things and said, "Listen, we think your best odds are these three brothers who live in Iowa.

Three brothers, all from Iowa, all likely sharing some DNA with the blood found in Michelle Martino's car. A 38-year trail was heading straight back home.

20 minutes away. I was pretty excited about this one. By October of 2018, Detective Matt Denlinger's painstaking ancestry searches had narrowed the suspects down to three brothers in Iowa, and all of them were still alive.

We immediately started doing research on these three brothers. Donald Burns, Kenneth Burns, and Jerry Burns.

Deninger and his team set up a plan. They would collect DNA samples from the brothers to see if any were a match. and they would do it without them knowing.

You think one of them's a suspect, you can't tell any of the three. Not only can I not tell any of the three, but I was careful who I told in general. Iowa is not the biggest state in the union, and you never know who knows who.

They followed one brother to lunch and grabbed his straw. For the second, a toothbrush was collected from his garbage. And then the third brother, Jerry,

we drove up to Manchester. We had already established kind of a pattern or or some locations to try to find him.

After a couple of hours, he spotted Jerry Burns at this pizza restaurant. He drank at least two sodas out of a glass with a straw.

All three brothers samples were sent to the lab. Don and Kenneth were not a match, but the results showed Jerry Burns's DNA was an exact match. For Deninger, the message was clear.

I I was definitely speechless. I'm almost speechless today thinking about it. It turns out that Parabon sketch of the suspect was very similar to a young Jerry Burns. But Burns wasn't an obvious suspect.

We are not finding any connection at all. No connection to Michelle. No connection to that car. Even more baffling, Jerry Burns's resume was the opposite of a cold-blooded killer. He had no criminal record and was even a respected businessman with a wife and three kids. Deninger picked a particular day to interview Burns at his business.

Hello. December 19th, 2018. Hey, how are you today, Jerry? My name's Matt from the Cedar Rapids Police Department. Exactly 39 years to the day after Michelle was murdered.

I wanted to rattle him. I wanted to bring that up during the interview and see if that would do anything to him. Copy of the

using a hidden camera inside a coffee mug. Deninger tried to get a confession. The reality is we have your DNA at the crime scene and so we know you were there that night this happened. How [snorts] would we get your DNA at the crime scene there, Jerry?

I don't know. But Jerry acknowledged he had been to the mall with his family in the past.

Did you go to Westdale Mall? Oh yeah, we've gone to Westdale Mall. Although Jerry couldn't remember when he was at the mall, Danglinger continued to press him.

Jerry, what happened that night? I don't know. Despite Burns's denials, the DNA was enough to arrest him for the murder of Michelle Martino.

Anything you say can will be used to get you in a court of law. On the ride back to Cedar Rapids, a camera was rolling again. This time in the police car and Deninger believes Jerry offered something revealing.

He said a few things about blocking stuff out, traumatic events. I think it's possible it's happened to something like that would be possible. Block things out your memories.

You're a homicide detective. Your gut tells you something. What does your gut say? My gut told me the second he refused to deny it or give me a plausible explanation that we had the right guy.

For Michelle's sister Janelle, news of the DNA match and the arrest signaled hope. And a day she and her husband John thought would never come.

We were just hooping and hollering and we were just talking and talking. We were just so excited. But for the Burns family, it all came as a complete shock. Jerry's daughter Jennifer and his brother Dawn could not believe the man they know and love could ever be capable of such a gruesome act.

We did not believe it. This could not be our dad. He couldn't have done it. There was just no way. I mean, he was he was always there for his family.

Circumstances just made it highly improbable from our perspective. First of all, there was no connection between Jerry and Michelle Martino. None.

Leon Spees is Jerry Burns attorney. He believes his client's demeanor during the police interview wasn't out of the ordinary.

I challenge anybody to to predict how any person is going to react, let alone react being caught out of the blue with an investigator trying to attribute them to a a horrible, horrible crime. He did not commit this murder.

In February of 2020, Michelle Martino's accused killer went on trial more than four decades after her murder. Due to the buzz surrounding the case in Cedar Rapids, the judge granted a venue change to Davenport, Iowa, an hour away.

The evidence will show that Michelle Martino was murdered that night by the defendant, Jerry Burns. Prosecutor Nick Maybanks felt the weight of his hometown on his shoulders.

A lot of eyes on this case. There are generations that grew up with this story and the generation who lived through the horror and suspicion. always seemed to be happy.

Several of Michelle's friends were called to testify, including Michelle's ex-boyfriend and once prime suspect Andy Sidell, who says he and Michelle were on good terms. The last time they saw each other,

there was no reason for us to to part ways in a bad way. We just kind of grew apart as we evolved, growing into adulthood. Do you swear or

Mike Hayrick was also called and had to relive Michelle's murder all over again.

This trial was hard on me for a lot of us. Brought it all back into focus in a way that it hadn't been in focus since those early, early days.

This was a random act of violence committed by a stranger. From the start, the prosecution faced a number of hurdles. The case and the evidence were decades old. tried to take 40 years of investigation and condense it into a story.

And a lot of things about this suspect didn't make sense. What's that like for you? You have a suspect who has no criminal background that we're aware of.

Mhm. And this heinous crime that looks extremely personal, right? Yeah. You have no story.

I don't. Yeah. And after he was interviewed, we didn't have much of a story either. A story the Burns family believes was problematic from the start.

They wanted an explanation of how his DNA got there. Well, how is he supposed to know from 40 years ago? You know, I can't even remember what I did last week every day.

So, would you say it's impossible that Jerry murdered Michelle? I'd say it is. There's absolutely no way it could have happened.

I don't think there's any way that my dad could have done this. The prosecution's case hinged on that one critical piece of evidence. Jerry Burns DNA.

We got the science. We got the guy. There's a one in 100 billion chance that it could be somebody else's. There's only 8 billion people or so in the world.

But Leon Spees argues the DNA evidence isn't foolproof. There are lots of misconceptions about DNA. It's not the silver bullet that law enforcement often portrays it to be. As the state's case wound down, prosecutor Nick Maybanks had one last card to play. He called a new witness, Michael Allison, a drug offender who had become friendly with Jerry Burns in jail.

Yes, I do. I asked him directly if I asked him, Jerry, did you do do the crime? and he said, "I can't talk about this."

But Burns did say something curious. He feels like uh no matter what happens in this case that he he wins because he had had the opportunity to be out there with his family all these years.

Allison said Jerry later made another comment while they were playing cards that disturbed him so much he volunteered to testify. He had told me if I keep beating him in peuckle, he was going to have to take me to the mall. It disgusted me.

In his defense case, Leon Spees calls only one witness, Dr. Michael Spence, a molecular biologist. He says while there is no doubt the DNA in Michelle's car belonged to Jerry Burns, how it got there was another matter.

Is it, Dr. suspense [clears throat] a plausible explanation that the DNA of Jerry Burns could have come about by a transfer.

Yes, that's a distinct possibility. Every time you come into contact with something, you're shedding DNA. You're leaving a biological trail of yourself. She was in a shopping mall before she was killed. A shopping mall that the Burns family had used. She sat down with a friend at a food court, a food court that Jerry Burns and his family may have sat at. But how did Jerry's DNA end up on the Buick's gear shift? Jerry's brother, Don Burns, believes there could be an innocent explanation.

He worked in a dealership that sold Buick cars. So, there is a possibility that if if records show that that car went through that dealership, his DNA could be in that car.

But Detective Matt Deninger isn't buying it. My question for them would be, did the dress go to the dealership, too? This is this fantasy world. Common sense says that that's not the case.

Impossible. Impossible. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, good morning. In his final arguments, prosecutor Maybanks tells the jury there was only one way Jerry Burns's DNA got into that car. There was no chance of outside contamination on this dress. We know how it happened and we know who did it.

In his closing argument, SPE attacks the integrity of the investigation. You can consider not only the evidence, but also the lack or the failure of evidence produced by the prosecution. and he tells jurors to consider how unlikely it is that a man like Jerry could commit a crime like this. The state scenario here is that Jerry Burns, a married man with two young children at home, leaves, drives to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the night, leaving his wife and children behind, armed with a knife, armed with rubber gloves, goes to Westdale Mall on the chance that he's going to encounter Michelle Marteo, designs to kill her, and then leaves and drives comes back home splattered with blood, presumably with a knife wound in his hand. That's the scenario the government wants you to believe.

The jury begins deliberations on a Monday afternoon. Remember, you are the judges of the facts.

Nerves are on edge. I was not thinking slam dunk. All it takes is one juror to have a hung jury.

But just 3 hours later, I said, "We have a verdict." So, we rush into the courtroom, sit down, [panting] and we wait.

Thank you. We, the jury, find the defendant, Jerry Lynn Burns, guilty of the charge of murder in the first degree. Guilty. The courtroom was silent. We almost couldn't breathe. It was just amazing. It was fabulous. We were aware of how quiet it was on Jerry's side and that there was no reaction. Unfair.

I'd say I was stunned. The verdict came back so fast. I don't know if the jury really took time to look at the facts.

What do you feel in that moment? Extreme relief. The weight of the world was off my shoulders now.

Harvey Deninger, the investigator who was there at the beginning of the case 40 years earlier, saw his son help end it.

I'm proud as heck of him. I really am proud to to get an answer, you know, while he can he can still appreciate it.

He said today how proud he is of you. Well, all right. We're going to take a break.

Finally, there was an answer to the question that had haunted Cedar Rapids for so long. But there is a lingering question. Was Michelle Martino Jerry's only victim?

I just seen something about Jodie Husen Troop recently. In his interview with Deninger, Burns randomly mentioned the name of Jodie Husen Troop. You are watching News Channel 3 Daybreak.

She was a blonde news anchor kidnapped near her car in a parking lot in 1995 and never found. She worked in Mason City, Iowa, 2 hours from where Burns lived, though there is no evidence he knew her.

Do you suspect that Jerry Burns was involved in other crimes? I don't know the answer to that. My gut tells me there's probably something else out there. Mason City police will not disclose whether they are investigating Burns in the Who's and Trude disappearance and his DNA is not connected to any other cases. But in Michelle Martino's case, she played a unique role in revealing her killer.

She fought so hard that she caused the murderer to cut himself. He left his DNA and so Michelle helped solve her own murder.

This human right here Four decades after Michelle's death, her friends, family, and generations of investigators gathered to celebrate her memory.

This case wasn't isn't just about her death, it's about her life. Nick Maybanks worded it the best. I mean, he said it's not about how she died, it's about how she lived.

You can't help but wonder where life would have led her. Her name will be forever etched in local history as part of Cedar Rapids most haunting crime.

You've been a prosecutor for 20 years. Is this the biggest case you've ever had?

Yeah. Every case you want justice, but a case like this touched so many people over so many years. There'll never be another one like it.

This is a case about betrayal. murder and a cover up. On April 16th, 1960, Irene God went to Sacred Heart Church in Macallen seeking to save her soul. Instead, she was suffocated. And you're going to find out that the man who did this is John Fight. There may be people who don't understand why an old man is being prosecuted. He looks like everyone's grandfather, but make no mistake, this is an evil man. He was a predator.

He was a wolf in priest's clothing, looking to attack. She was not only beautiful physically, she had a beautiful soul. I think she just loved her faith. I don't think she thought of it in terms of, oh, look how religious I am. It was like, this was my life. Down here, it's a primarily Catholic community and and Easter is the high holiday. Irene on Holy Saturday with the church packed with everybody trying to cleanse their soul in this confessional about 7 o'clock walked in. She would never again be seen leaving that church. They'd later find her body in an irrigation canal thrown like a piece of trash.

Irene was found 5 days after she disappeared. And what had the killer done to her? She was uh sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, and she died of suffocation.

Back then, the the church was very powerful. It was unheard of to be accusing a priest. You know, you just didn't do that.

My father that was a deputy sheriff at that time. He approached his superior and asked him why is nothing being done and he was told to just step away from the case. Just step away. Let us take care of it. Did the Catholic Church in those days have the power to prevent a suspect in a murder case from being arrested?

Yes. The case died. It was a cold case. Is this the man that you knew as John Fe?

Yes. He was perhaps the key witness in the case. He assaulted her, bound her, and gagged her. As he left, he could hear her saying, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe."

We got a word for that in Texas. What's that? There isn't any forensic evidence that affirmatively linked John Fight to this crime in any way.

You will see her clothing. Is there any evidence of DNA? The evidence will show you no. You will see her purse.

Is there any evidence of fingerprints? The evidence will show you no. You will see her shoes.

There wasn't enough evidence then. There won't be enough evidence now. I don't expect that there'd be another case like this ever come around in my lifetime.

The institution who was in the business of seeking salvation was complicit in covering up this murder. It was a case worth losing. It was worth taking a risk. It's a story that needed to be told. 48 hours. sins of the Father.

Assistant District Attorney Mike Garza is not part of Irene Garza's family, but Irene Garza's story has been part of almost everyone's life in Macallen for generations.

Kind of grew to folklore, kind of grew of legend about a girl that, you know, went to confession and, you know, never left. The story of the priest accused of killing a parishioner is finally being heard in a courtroom after nearly 60 years. Does your Catholicism make it more difficult for you to go after this guy?

The church seeks to do good. It's the men in the church and the men at that time that did wrong. It became clear that on April 16th, 1960, John Fe murdered Irene Gasa. He did this with malice of forethought.

At 85 years old, former priest John Fe hardly looks like the heartless killer the state says he was. In 1960, it was a rainy Easter Sunday. Sylvia Asdo Stern was then 18 when she received some news about her childhood friend Irene that she has difficulty talking about still.

We were all very scared and it was just this scary unknown that someone you knew and that you loved had disappeared. [bell] 25-year-old Irene Garza had gone to confession at Sacred Heart Church the night before and had failed to return to her parents' home where she still lived.

That was not like Irene. She checked in all the time. Parishioners had spotted Irene earlier that night putting on a lace veil, kneeling in a pew, and in a confession line, but no one ever said they saw her leaving the church grounds. Uh, people remembered her. Whether she was your neighbor, whether your wife was jealous of her, people knew her. Irene had been crowned prom and homecoming queen at the local college and Miss All South Texas sweetheart. No, Pon Seagler was part of Irene's extended family. Do Do you remember how you felt about her? I mean, what what she meant to you? She stood out. She was elegant.

But Irene was far more than just a pretty face. She was a trailblazer, says her cousin, Linda Deavvenia.

She and her sister Josie were the first uh Mexican-American twirlers in history of Macallen High School. And then ultimately she became the drum majorette, the first Mexican-American drum majorette. Irene had been the first in her family to go to college and graduate school. She became a second grade teacher and chose to work with Macallen's poorest students.

Often times she would use part of her salary to buy buy them school supplies to buy them things that they needed.

And Irene was generous with her own family. Linda was just nine, but she still remembers their last conversation. She had Easter baskets for us and my brother and I were excited and jumping up and down because we just knew that she would not have forgotten us.

But before Easter Sunday, Irene had to go to confession at Sacred Heart Church. Religion played a central role in her life.

Every Sunday she'd go to church. Every Sunday, every Saturday she'd go to confession. It was a little bit of a family thing. And Irene's going to confession whether she needs it or not. You know,

when she disappeared, the search for Irene Garza was huge. 70 members of the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Posi, many on horseback, fanned out looking for Irene. And one of them was Noamy's father.

That man wouldn't even sleep trying to find Irene. Sylvia remained at the Garza home for days after Irene vanished. She says at first everyone tried to hold on to hope, but then Irene's purse was found near a dirt road.

Is this the purse that you recall that was brought to the house? Yes. The news only got worse. Just up the road, they found Irene's shoe.

Is that Irene's shoe? Yes, sir. And the shoe was it was a killer. Then 5 days after she vanished, everyone's worst fear was confirmed when Irene's body was found floating in an irrigation canal.

And I just remember her mother just dissolving. I mean, I just saw her just bending over in pain. Irene was still partially dressed, but her blouse was unbuttoned and her underwear was missing. The autopsy showed she had been beaten and sexually assaulted.

That was showed that she was killed by exfixiation, probably suffocation. At first, there were few leads at the crime scene, just an imprint of Irene's pett coat on the canal bank and a partial heel print from a man's shoe. But two weeks later, police discovered a curious clue. They drained the canal and on the bottom, they found this, a photo slide viewer. The police turned to the public for help in identifying the owner. Two days later, they received a note from Father John Fe, a visiting priest from the missionary oblates of Mary Immaculate.

John Fe writes a letter saying that slide viewer belongs to me. Why in the world would he tell the police, "Yeah, that's that's my slide viewer." I think it was taunting.

Taunting the police. Taunting the police. Police only grew more suspicious of the 27year-old priest when he gave them different stories about that night. At first, he said he had not heard her confession at all.

He changes it by saying later, "I took her confession in the rectory." And there were other peculiarities. Fight had been staying temporarily at the rectory to help with the busy Easter holiday, but he kept going back to the pastoral house where he lived just a few miles away. Six times in a 24-hour period. He used excuses like breaking his glasses, needing to get clean clothes, u different things that became very suspicious. And father Joseph O'Brien, the assistant pastor, told police that fight had some injuries the night Irene disappeared.

He noticed some scratches on his hands, some scratches that ran vertically down his hands and on the top of his arms.

Father fight said he had been locked out of the pastoral house and had scratched his hands climbing up to the second floor balcony. They were on the back of his hands. And I guess this gentleman climbs the wall like this. But he said he got them climbing a wall.

They had a pretty good case against him. Why wasn't he arrested? He was protected

by by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. [bell] [bell] It's always been very difficult.

In the days after Irene Garza's murder, Sylvia Asdo Stern was struggling not just with grief, but also with guilt. On the Saturday she vanished, Irene called Sylvia's house, hoping she could accompany her to confession. But Sylvia wasn't home.

That day might have been different if I had been with her. She might not have gone to the rectory.

But why had Irene agreed to go to the rectory that night? Your honor, at this time, the state should call Anna Maria Hollingsworth. A new witness, Anna Maria Hollingsworth, testified that Father Fight, had pulled Irene out of the confessional before.

It's not the same, she says, going to confession anymore because I don't get to stay in the confessional.

He had pulled her out of the confessional, told her she was too good to confess in the confessional, and took her to the rectory.

Anna Maria says her friend Irene seemed confused by Fight's insistence. If that's true, why would she have gone with him to the rectory on that Saturday evening?

Because he was a priest and you didn't fear priests back then. She had no reason to suspect he was going to do something violent or sexual to her.

What angers Mike Garza is that he says the church had warning signs about fight.

Just three weeks before Irene was killed, a woman named Maria America Gara had been attacked. in a nearby church.

A man that she had seen came up behind her, tried to stuff a rag in her mouth, threw her to the ground, and at that point she was able to bite his finger so hard that she tasted blood in her mouth and get away.

Although the church suspected fight, he was not turned in. Mike Garza says a source told him the solution was to send fight a few miles away to Irene's family parish. What was the point of that?

I guess to keep an eye on him, I guess to protect him at the time. They certainly weren't going to turn to protect him.

So, did he behave himself up until the time that you believe he killed Irene Garza?

No. Is that what you look like when you were about 20 years old? Yes. Garza found another new witness, Beatatric Garcia, who says in the weeks before Irene Garza was murdered, she had a bizarre encounter with Father Fight.

I was walking to work, a car approached me and I said, "Can I help you, sir?" And he said, "I would love to take a picture of you dressed in black by the cemetery."

And that man in the car, who was it? He was um the priest. That's him right there.

He liked a certain look in a woman. You know, America Gera, Beatatrice Garcia, Irene Garza, they all looked the same. America was a violent attack and maybe he got a little taste of it then and was looking for his next victim. And Garza says that victim ended up being Irene. Yet despite the evidence against fight at the time, the case seemed to stall. No Pon Seagler recalls finding her father, one of the original investigators, very upset. One day,

I saw him sitting in a chair with a white handkerchief and he was crying. No says her father had been told his superiors would take over the investigation. Around that time, Irene's parents got a visit from Father O'Brien of Sacred Heart Church.

The church tried to plate them saying, you know, even if it is him, we're going to take care of him. He would find justice within the church if it was him. Irene's family had long suspected that there had been a conspiracy between the authorities and the church to protect fight. They could never prove it then.

I'm showing you what's been marked as states exhibit 108. But the state says there is proof now.

I was stunned. I felt like I had a smoking gun at that point. It's a letter written in 1960 from one church official to another. Garza says this is proof that the church and the Catholic sheriff at the time, EE Vickers, conspired to undermine the Irene Garza investigation.

At some point, the sheriff would meet with the DA and explain to them what a weak case uh they had against him in an effort to get it dropped.

In the letter, they were concerned about how the case might not only affect the church, but also the campaign of Catholic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. There are also political implications to this that could make this a juicy scandal for the opposition to Kennedy.

Father Thomas Doyle, a leading expert on clergy abuse, analyzed the letter for the jury.

And I believe I found in every paragraph some element that I found very unusual, but pointed to an attempt to cover this up, to make it go away. But there was no getting away from Maria America Gar's accusation because she had identified Fight. A year after Irene's death, he stood trial for attempting to rape Gar, but the jury deadlocked. Rather than face a second trial, Fight pled no contest in 1962 to a lesser charge, aggravated assault.

And what happened to him? He was fined $500. $500. 500 bucks. The state calls Daryl Davis.

And Daryl Davis says he knows how that happened. And who is that young man standing there?

That's Daryl Davis, Channel 5 News. Davis is now a local attorney. But back in 1962, he was a young TV reporter who had covered the Maria America Gara plea in this very courtroom. that the clock that's on the back of that wall there

still there after 57 years. Davis says around that time he and several other reporters were summoned to an off thereord meeting with Robert Latimore who was then the district attorney.

He said, "We know the verbatim. We know that father fight killed Irene Garza." And I remember he said and the church knows that he killed Irene Garza. So we have made some arrangements. Davis says in exchange for that plea in the Maria America Gara case fight would not be prosecuted in the Irene Garza case and the church would send him away. He said the church is going to put him in a monastery for disturbed or troubled priests and he will be kept there for the rest of his life. And so father fight disappeared from the area. The case was buried. Irene's parents died without knowing that decades later it would be brought back to the surface.

by a former monk. I covered up the evidence. I'm sorry for what I did. Your honor, the state of Texas were called Dale Tashnney. Dale Tashnney is 88 years old, a former monk from Oklahoma, and now the star witness at John Fight's murder trial. Tashnney has waited years to be able to take the stand.

Do you remember what you were feeling at that moment? Relief. Relief. This was my chance to tell what I knew, what I remembered. In 2002, 42 years after the murder of Irene Garza, Tashnney sent a letter to the San Antonio police saying he had information about the death of an unnamed woman in the 1960s on Easter weekend.

She went to confession to to the priest. After hearing her confession, he assaulted her, bound her, and gagged her.

The priest's name was John Fe. The San Antonio police knew nothing about the case, but the Texas Rangers did. It just so happened the cold case had been reopened that year and Ranger Rudy Harmo had been working on it without much luck. And then Dale Tashnney came along.

That's a huge break for you. Right. Harmo got in touch with Tashnney and was amazed by what he heard. Even though Tashnney didn't know the name of the victim and had the incorrect date and city, Haramo was certain Tashnney was talking about the murder of Irene Garza. Back in 1963, Tashnney was a monk at the Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri.

[singing] He says his superior ordered him to counsel a young priest named John Fe who had just arrived at the monastery with an unusual story.

I was told that he had killed a woman and then asked if we could see if he would fit in in the monastery and possibly become a monk. And I said

a murderer become a monk as Did that seem odd to you? to me. Yes. Tashnney says over the course of many months, Father fight told him about that attack.

After confession, he took her blouse off. He fondled her breasts and then after that he took her down in the basement and somehow she remained in the basement. I assumed that he that he tied her up down there. Tashnney says fight told him he later moved her from the rectory to another location

the next day Easter Sunday I believe it was and he put her in the bathroom put her in the tub and he had put her in a bag or something overhead

some sort of a plastic bag I don't fully remember but when he was leaving he heard her saying I can't breathe I can't breathe with Daddy, he shut the door and left. When he came back, he opened the bathroom door and she was dead. And then with the body, he dumped the body along the road by a canal.

Despite hearing all this, Tashnney says he did not call police then because he felt his only job was to counsel the priest. But it soon became clear that fight was not a good fit at the Assumption Abbey. And he eventually was sent to another monastery in New Mexico.

Send him out the door. Yes. Knowing what you knew? Yes. Buried as much of it as I could.

Tashnney eventually left the priesthood, got married, and raised a family. But in the early 2000s, he says he had a crisis of conscience and could no longer carry the burden of John Fight's story. Did you know Irene Garza?

No. As the jury listened, Tashnney shared his story and the pain he felt for denying answers to Irene's family.

Did you know her parents? No, but I knew she had parents. Okay, we move on to Centinos. But it took 15 years from the time Tashnney first came forward to get him in front of a jury. And this man, Renee Gara, is a big part of the reason why.

But you don't believe Fight ever confessed to him? I don't believe so. Gar was the DA in 2002 when Tashnney came forward. He refused to charge Fight. We spoke to him in 2013.

I mean, why would he make up this conversation? I don't know. But why what makes you think he did?

The fact that he had no specifics. But Tashnney was not the only new witness at the time. Ranger Harmo had also tracked down Father O'Brien, who said fight had also admitted guilt to him. Jammo recorded an interview with O'Brien in which he matched many of the details in Tash's account.

Did he put her anywhere that to hide her to place her in, you know, anywhere where he might have to bet? So, did he tell you how he killed her? She died from the gagging.

Garb did not believe Father O'Brien either. He says O'Brien had been diagnosed with a form of dementia. Is he misunderstanding and fabricating in his mind a story that he might have heard about, might have read about?

Harmo felt O'Brien was clear-minded, but Renee Gar would not bend. Linda de Lavinia remembers he confronted her as she and Noami Pon Seagler tried to push him to prosecute. And I'll never forget, he put his finger in my in my face and said, "You know, you'll never get an indictment. You'll get one when pigs fly."

Linda and No. Amy refused to back down. And in 2004, Gara finally seemed to give into the public pressure, and his office took the case to a grand jury. But jurors would only be given audio tapes and transcripts of what Father O'Brien and Dale Tashny told investigators. They were never called to testify in person.

The charge has been made that you could have called them and that you didn't do it in this case cuz you didn't want to prosecute this case. Irene Gar's family saying that's what the police. There's some interested parties that are saying that

the grand jury did not charge John fight and he continued to live as a free man. He had left the monastery and the priesthood by 1972. He married and became a father and a grandfather and had worked for decades at a Catholic charity when we found him near his home in Scottsdale, Arizona in 2014.

Um, well, let me just ask you straight out. Did you kill Irene Gorsa? No. Do you know who did?

Uh, no. Well, Dale Tashnney says that you told him that you did kill Dale is full of

I'm sorry. Dale is full of fight. Could not have known it then, but his time was running out.

Get lost, brother. Shortly after our conversation with him, there was a big development in Macallen. Renee Gara, who had been DA for 32 years, was defeated by Ricardo Rodriguez, who promised to look into the case. And in February 2016, Fight was arrested and brought back to Texas to stand trial. But after nearly 60 years, is it too late? After hearing her confession, he assaulted her, bound.

Dale Tashnney's testimony allowed the prosecution to piece together the last hours of Irene Garza's life.

He put the young lady downstairs in the basement of the rectory at that time. And this is the rectory?

Yes. Prosecutor Mike Garza says because of the recre's thick walls, nobody would hear sounds of a struggle or any screams for help

and left her there and left her there. And Garza says father fight went back to church to hear confessions. After parishioners left that holy Saturday, Garza says fight moved Irene a few miles away to the pastoral house. Tash's story was that he had placed her in a bathtub and had kept left her there while he was going to go back and say vigil mass. Uh and at that time she said I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Garza says when fight returned from church Irene was dead.

At the point that he left we believe she was still alive but we you know with every intent to kill her. Um that's a depraved heart. That's a pretty cold heart. That night, Easter night, Dale Tashnney believes Irene was moved one last time.

He put her in a car and put her aside of the road near a canal. Tashnney's testimony has some details, but Mike Garza knows it also has holes.

Do you recognize that, sir? Yes, sir. In his letter to police in 2002, Tashnney said the murder happened in 1962 or 1963 in San Antonio, several years after and more than 200 miles from where Irene Garza's body was found.

Why did you think it was in San Antonio? Father fight was from San Antonio. He went to school there.

Did you know what year this had happened? Since Father Fight came to the monastery in 1963, I thought it happened in 1963.

Did you later find that you were mistaken? Yes, but I wasn't easily convinced. Defense attorney Renee Flores believes Ranger Rudy Harmo fed facts to Tashy so he could close the case.

Could you have done that? Did you do that? No, sir. Harmo says he corrected Tashnney only because the former monk was racked by guilt, wanted to find Irene's family and clear his conscience.

I had to set him straight as to when it happened and where. But the defense says Tashnney isn't simply mistaken.

He assaulted her, bound her, and gagged her. Renee Flores says Tashney is simply lying.

Okay. Did you ever told my father fight that she had been bound and gagged? That's correct.

Tashnney admits he assumed that because Irene didn't escape from the rectory. After some time, he placed her in a cellophane bag and put her into a bathtub.

You also talked about a cellophane bag. We know that didn't happen. Correct. No, we don't know that that didn't happen. We know that he didn't tell me it happened.

Well, if he didn't tell you all of these different things, Mr. Tashy, why would you come forward to law enforcement and tell them that he did? There were reasonable assumptions.

The prosecutors don't think the problems Tashnney has with details make him unreliable. And they say much of his testimony is corroborated by what Father O'Brien, who has since died, told the police.

Did he tell you how he killed her? She died from the gagging association. But the defense says O'Brien, like Tashnney, got help with his story. And I think Joseph O'Brien was fed, given, or confronted with what the investigators believed. May I have a moment here?

Renee Flores is arguing Fight was never prosecuted because of a lack of evidence, not a conspiracy. And he questions Daryl Davis's testimony about that off therecord meeting with the prosecutor at the time. We were talking to the defense attorney and he doubts this meeting ever really took place.

Really? Well, I'll look him straight in the eye and tell him that I remember it parts of it as clear as a bell. [bell]

But nobody is clear, according to Flores, on exactly when Irene went missing. He says witnesses saw her on church grounds more than an hour after the prosecutors say she was abducted.

She had been seen at least an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes later. And if the jurors conclude a priest murdered Irene, Flores wants them to consider a different priest. Father Richard Junius was also hearing confessions at Sacred Heart that day and knew Irene. Is Father Junius a reasonable other suspect in your mind?

Sure. Flores says Texas Rangers interviewed Father Junius decades after the crime and he seemed nervous.

If I recall correctly, Texas Ranger Hadamu indicated that uh Richard Junius was not very happy about being interviewed. That suggests something. And why law enforcement ignored it, I don't know. But Father Junius was never considered a suspect in the case and he died in 2007. So he can't defend himself. But John fight can if he decides to take the stand at his trial.

There are several things I'd like to speak to. Mr. fight. Would you raise your right hand, sir? Do you swear from the testimony you're about to give in the case now before the court is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So, help me God. Very well, sir. For years, people have been trying to get answers from John Fe about Irene Garza's murder.

There are several things I'd like to speak to, and it looked like Fight might be considering taking the stand at his trial.

I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place here. During a break, his attorneys consulted with Fight, who finally announced his decision.

Well, it was a wrestling match between my vanity and common sense, and [clears throat] common sense prevailed.

Mr. F, do you wish to testify in your own behalf? No. You think he would have been a good witness?

I think he would have been a great witness, but I think that the prosecutor would have

done his very best to attack and eat him up. Please rise for the jury. With that settled, closing arguments can begin.

May I proceed? Yes, sir. May please the court. Prosecutor Mike Garzo reminded the jury of the women he says father fighted upon.

He was a wolf in priest clothing waiting to attack. attacked once, tried to attack again, and finally he got his prey. Ask yourselves this, what evidence was there that John Fine had any intent to kill? What evidence did you hear? You're here to find facts. And sometimes there just aren't enough to convince beyond a reasonable doubt. Fight went through the trial alone without his family. And on December 7th, 2017, after 6 days, the cold case against the former priest was in the hands of the jury.

The jury began their deliberations just this afternoon. And after I was confident. I felt we had the right jury in the box.

And that carried you through the first what, two hours of the That carried me probably through the first two hours. And then what happened?

It started taking long. We received another note from the jury and I started losing faith.

After 6 and 1/2 hours, there was a verdict. Would the defendant please stand? We the jury find the defendant John Bernard Fight guilty of the offense of murder with malice of forethought as charged.

John fight once a cleric is now a convict. Guilty. Tell me what you're feeling.

Justice was served. Irene finally got her day in court and that's all we ever wanted. After 57 years, we have found justice for Irene. And for today, pigs are flying.

Mr. Fight, any words? No comment. When you heard that Father had finally been convicted, what did that feel like to you knowing the role you played?

The debt is paid both to Irene and Father Fight. Justice has been done for the both of them. The verdict against John Fight was one thing, but the jury still had to decide on his sentence. Linda and No, Amy worried that Fight might be set free. The jury might decide because he is older and he's frail that they would be somewhat lenient.

The morning after the extraordinary verdict, something else extraordinary happened. It snowed here along the border with Mexico as the sentencing process began. It's

snowing outside morning. And one last time, the lawyers addressed the jury. It was a time where this man wasn't walking in a walker, where this man wasn't sitting here weak. It was a time when this man was strong. Prosecutor Mike Garza pulled out the photo of Irene he carried close to his heart throughout the entire trial.

She was a person that was loved. We ask that you assess punishment at 57 years. Every year that he was free, having a family, getting married, hiding behind the protection of the church. Is it a just penalty to impose a sentence upon a man who is different 60 years later? It's up to you to decide. But do you really think he's going to live 57 years?

4 hours later, would the defendant please stand? The jury announced its decision. We the jury assess punishment and imprisonment for a term of life.

It was a perfect plan. It was a perfect fight. Had the perfect result. Everybody won

except John fight. Well, he was the villain. The villain's not supposed to win. [bell]

[bell] I said, "Okay, Irene, I know what your message is. We must get back to respecting, caring, and loving each other. That's what we have to do. That's the lesson she taught us. She was so good. She was and will be my hero.

For Mike Garzup, this case tested his trust in the church, but in the end, he kept his faith.

I've probably crossed, no, I have crossed the emotional line in this case. This case was very important to me from my heart. I truly believed that faith would win and it did. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.

91 moment emergency. My wife and I had needed ambulance for bleeding. I was called at approximately 4:00 in the morning on February 3rd, 2018. There had been a home invasion robbery in the area of Hail Plantation.

You said someone was in your house? Yes. I'm being advised that the wife has severe injuries. and was currently being trauma alerted to our area hospital.

You woke up to her scream and tall figure with ski mask starts uh fighting with you. I

see. I felt something sharp. Susan Relle almost died that night. If Susan had died, the truth of what happened that night would die with her. When Susan Relle comes out of surgery, she tells investigators that there is no intruder and that the person who inflicted all of the injuries that she is suffering from is Michael Relle. This case is about the power of money. It's about the power of desire for control.

When Susan asked for a divorce, Michael Rashelle snapped. When he was faced with the prospect that he would have to give her half of his fortune, he made a calculated and premeditated decision to kill.

This is the knife that was used to stab Susan. The bending in this knife, you believe, is a result of it hitting bone and bent the blade.

That's correct. All rise for the jury. Members of the jury, we're just going to lay here until you die, Sue. We're just going to lay here until you die. Those are the words of that defendant, Michael Relle, spoken to his wife of 10 years, Susan Relle.

I got close to her right here, and her hand comes out and Was there anything in her hand?

Yeah, a knife. There's no way on God's green earth that my father would stab anyone.

Was Mike's daughter Caroline a source of conflict in the marriage? Absolutely. Didn't you tell Michael Relle that you hated Caroline?

Those words came out. Yeah. And in fact, you called her a [ __ ] Is that right? Yes.

Never in 1 million years would I think that my wedding would be the catalyst of all of this.

Who do you believe brought the knife into that incident? Susan Relle. Who do you believe was the attacker in the February 2nd incident?

Susan Rochelle. And who is the victim? My father Where were you and how did you learn that your father on February 3rd, 2018 had been arrested?

I was in Chicago with my husband and I got an incoming call on my cell phone. This is a collect call from

It was a recording that said, "An inmate from the Elatchua County Jail has called you."

An inmate at the Elatchua County Department. Minutes later, the phone rang again. Caroline Relle quickly answered and heard the voice she'd known her entire life.

And he said, "Caroline, you have to get me out of here. You need to call my lawyer." and I dropped to the sidewalk and I just sat on the sidewalk.

The events leading to the arrest of Mike Ruchelle began to unwind very early that morning after he called police.

Tell me exactly what happened. I don't know. Someone was in the house and next thing I know I wake up next to my wife and we're bleeding. Mike reported that he and his wife Sue had been stabbed by an intruder inside their home in an upscale section of Gainesville.

You're fine with the subject and he just ran off. You managed to scare him off.

Yeah, I guess Sue's injuries were life-threatening. And as medics rushed to save her, Detective David Viscanti was called to the scene.

There was no force entry initially observed by any of our deputies. No broken window, no knockdown door, nothing like that at all. No, sir.

Still, Viscanti had no doubt that something terrible had happened inside that house.

There was most certainly a struggle. There was a vast amount of blood around the bed that was located on the wall of the bedroom. But overall, the scene was missing something, Viscanti said, and he did not believe a violent intruder had been there.

Typically, we'll see many things knocked over furniture, items broken, um, indentations in the walls, in the drywall.

Did you see any of that? None of those things were present. What's more, the Rochelle's had security cameras covering the outside of the house. The intruder allegedly fleeing the house from that direction is something that would have been captured on video.

The veteran detective was becoming suspicious. Then hours later, Sue awoke from surgery and broke this case wide open, telling detectives that the story about an intruder attacking them was a lie. She claimed that Mike concocted the whole thing and that he was her true asalent. Mike was arrested and charged with attempted murder.

He could never have done anything like this. Mike's ex-wife, Dee Hoffman, was incredulous.

I have known Michael James Rochelle since I was 19. And I wouldn't be here today if I thought Mike was possibly capable of harming another person.

Dee met Mike in college. They married and had two daughters, Caroline and Kate. During your many years with Mike, was he ever physically abusive to you?

He never touched me. Not ever. Never. But like in many marriages, there were problems. Mike made millions in the technology business, but his job required him to travel all over the world.

[sighs] Truthfully, he wasn't around much, so it was it was hard. In 2005, after 25 years of marriage, Dee asked for a divorce. Dee said she moved out of the family home so their children away at college could always return to the house where they were raised. But soon, another woman unexpectedly joined the family. I moved out in July, but then all of a sudden, Susan moves into our house.

Sue is then 38 years old and a hospice nurse. She and Mike, 49, met on match.com. And Dee says Sue quickly became the lady of the manor. Dee says everything she left behind, including her dog, became Sue.

Mike and I were really opposites. He was engaging and outgoing and I was really and I think I still am more reserved, not quite so exuberant. And I think he was looking for exuberance.

Caroline remembers the first time she met Sue at a dinner. And my dad seemed to be laughing and having a good time.

But Caroline says she couldn't help but notice how much Sue was drinking. We've never seen anyone take down five to six martinis and be able to stand and speak.

Some 2 years after they met, Mike married Sue in August 2007. Mike stopped traveling and bought a local business. The couple's happier times are reflected in some of the thousands of text messages that surfaced during legal proceedings. Mike refers to Sue as his trophy bride and writes that their lives together are simply amazing. But Caroline says Sue became jealous of the close relationship she had with her father and tried to keep them apart. She had such walls around him. He wouldn't call me unless he was in a car alone.

He wasn't allowed to take my call in front of her. But surprisingly, when Caroline announced in 2016 that she was getting married, Sue was happy to help. But Caroline says Sue wanted to do it her way.

Sue was pretty adamant about throwing me a shower. My mother was invited, but none of my mother's friends were invited. So, the majority of the guests were Sue's friends and family,

but Caroline admits the shower was a lot of fun and she was looking forward to the wedding. Sue helped her pick out a dress.

I tried on a dress and I liked it and Sue kept telling me like, "This is your dress. This is your dress. It's so beautiful. You have to have this." Sue handed over her credit card and it was done. Do you mind me asking how much the dress was worth?

This is so go. I think it was 11 $11,000. The wedding itself in November 2017 would be a royallike affair. The setting was the sumptuous Oha Castle on Long Island. 160 people attended the wedding and Caroline says the day was magical.

My husband and I know how lucky we are to have had that weekend. It was beyond beautiful.

Caroline says it was nearly perfect except for something that caught her eye. An unusual mark on her father's face. The last thing I saw before walking down the aisle at my wedding was this white scar from here to here. And in my mind, I was like, "What is that?"

Weeks later, she found out. Mike revealed to Caroline what he said was a dark, disturbing secret. He claimed Sue had been physically abusing him for years. I called him on his birthday and I said, "How are you doing?" And he just started crying. It was late November 2017, just 3 weeks after her fairy tale wedding, when Caroline says her father shared a disturbing secret about Sue that he had promised not to tell.

And he said, "Sue was arrested." And he said, "She started attacking me." And I think he was so victimized that he was really scared to tell anyone.

Sue had been charged with domestic battery, but the details of what happened that day would not become public until 2 years later at Mike's trial for attempted murder. Please wear a fern at the ed

when they both testified about the last tumultuous months of their marriage. Ma'am, please be seated. Speak clearly.

What was the state of their marriage? I think it was in the lowest place that it could possibly be before a divorce.

I was upset. Sue told prosecutor David Byron that shortly after Caroline's wedding, Mike told her it had gone nearly $150,000 over budget. Was it fair to say that you were partially upset with defendant, but mostly at Carolyn?

Yes. Mike says Sue attacked him when the fight escalated. She throws the phone at him and charges around the bed, pushes into our hering like this.

But Mike didn't call 911 that day. Sue did. I just felt as though things were a little out of control. When police arrived, Sue admitted to pushing Mike and agreed to go to their beach condo to diffuse the situation, but she was arrested half an hour later when she hadn't yet left the house.

He said, "Please place your hands behind your back. You're under arrest." Sue told the jury that she was ordered to stay away from Mike. She moved to their beach condo and got counseling for alcohol and anger management. Weeks later, Mike declined to pursue the battery charge and it was dropped. Prosecutor Shawn Brewer.

Did she have a problem with alcohol? Susan Relle has testified that at times when she would drink, um, she would lose her temper.

But Mike says Sue's actions went way beyond a bad temper. He told the jury she had tormented him for years. and she'd lunge at me again, punch me in the face, um, scratch my face, punch him in the arms, and bent my glasses. Actually,

she would throw things at him, very heavy things like voses and very heavy coffee mugs.

Sue denies abusing Mike and Mike never reported any of the alleged incidents to police.

Is it true that you have seen your father with a black eye? He's sent me multiple pictures of him with a black eye.

Mike did take photos of some injuries which he shared with Caroline and later the jury.

He is a picture that he showed me of his face gushing blood and there was one mark from here to here. The prosecution admits this injury may have been caused by Sue, but they say the evidence shows Sue was fighting for her life after Mike attacked her.

There are text messages where she accuses him of smothering her with a pillow, which in fact is the same instance that she ended up scratching him in the face. Despite the alleged abuse and Sue's arrest, Mike says he still loved his wife and wanted to stay married. In February 2018, he asked Sue to come to Gainesville for the weekend.

Mike had asked me to come in. He wanted us to work on the marriage. They decided to go to their favorite steakhouse. That's Sue on home security video getting ready and enjoying a glass of wine. Mike arrives home and the two share a kiss before heading out. But over stakes and more wine, old wounds reopen.

He just received a text message from Caroline. Sue says that's when Mike admitted he had betrayed her trust by telling Caroline about Sue's arrest. He and I both agreed that we weren't going to discuss that.

Mike drove home alone. Sue followed in an Uber, her anger spilling into a series of text messages about Caroline. Good luck with your [ __ ] She will ruin any relationship you have. Once home, they went to separate parts of the house. Sue continued her angry texts. I am filing for divorce. I will leave in the morning. The last text from Sue is sent at 10:13 p.m. You have serious boundary issues with your daughter. Later, Sue says she was alone in the guest room when Mike entered. There are no cameras inside that room.

And he just hopped on top of me. And I felt like this pressure right here. And then all of a sudden, I saw a knife coming. I said, "Oh my god, did he stab me?" And he said, "Yes."

At some point, does he say something to you? He said, "Uh, Sue, we're not getting a divorce."

Sue says Mike was on top of her, pinning her arms with his legs. In the struggle, her left thumb was sliced. Then, she says Mike stabbed her again

and my neck right here. Sue says Mike then started slashing her wrist. Felt like he was mutilating me. my hand. It was like just I couldn't feel anything and I could see into my arm.

Losing blood, her life in danger, Sue says she vomited and lost control of her bodily functions. She says she tried to wrigle out from under Mike and they ended up lying sideways across the bed. He just said to me, "Sue, it's going to lay here until you die."

Sue says as she was lying there struggling to stay awake, she saw Mike raise the knife yet again. Desperate, she offered him a way out.

I said, "Mike, we don't have to divorce. I won't divorce you. Just put the knife down." Sue says after Mike put the knife down, she begged him to call for help. But he would only do that if she agreed to say an intruder had stabbed her.

When she agrees to go with his story of the intruders, she saved her life. A toxic marriage, texts brimming with hate and a bloody room. Mike [snorts] Rochelle's future will now depend on whether he can convince jurors that he is the real victim.

When first responders entered this bloody scene in the early morning hours of February 3rd, 2018, they'd been told by Mike Ruchelle that a stranger had broken into their home and assaulted his wife and then him with a knife. But in court now with his defense attorneys Patrick McInness and Anne Finel, Mike admits that story was a lie and says he's finally ready to tell the truth. He says despite Sue's drinking and violent outbursts, he was hoping to reconcile that night.

I don't care if she's a mellow drunk the rest of her life. Just the anger's got to go.

But at dinner, once again, they fought about Caroline. And that fight continued back at the house. After that, Mike and Sue's stories diverge. Mike says he came into the guest room a little after 10:00 and was startled to see Sue kneeling on the bed holding a knife.

I said, "Sue, give me the knife." And then next thing I know, I felt searing heat. That's that's all I remember. And I'm just trying to get my hands on it. And I'm on the bed with her now. We're all on our knees. Mike doesn't say how he got his hands on the knife, but he says as they struggled and fell over on the bed, he felt the blade go into Sue's stomach.

She's falling backwards and I'm falling in front on top. I felt the knife penetrate here and I I rolled off as fast as I could because I was afraid if that went in her it would kill her. Mike offers no explanation for how Sue was stabbed in the neck

or thumb, but he does say about one minute into the struggle, he somehow calmed her down and put the knife out of reach.

Now, you're both bleeding during this point in time, right? Yeah, but it's not squirting and there's no blood at all. You can see on Sue through the through here. Mike says he wanted to call for help right away, but Sue wouldn't let him because she was afraid she'd be arrested again.

I said, "Sue, we need to go to the hospital." And she said, "Then make up a story so I don't get arrested." Mike says they argued about a possible cover story, but then as bizarre as it sounds, they just laid together bleeding for several hours, having what Mike says was one of the best conversations of their lives about future vacations to Europe.

We talked about going to Germany on the Ryan and Moselle river cruise. Maybe we'll do Burgundy next. If Mike is speaking the truth, this happy conversation happened on a bed soaked with blood and human waste.

Greece because we've never been to Greece in Mike never mentions that. Tuskanyany and Florence

and prosecutor David Byron suspects why is this believable? I don't think it's believable at all. He held her there and he can't admit that. Michael Relle had months and months to go over the evidence and construct a story that fit with things that he couldn't admit.

According to Mike, at about 3:00 a.m., their dog Susie wandered into this bloody scene where violence was about to erupt again. I get up out of the bed to deal with a dog and and behind me was the knife and next thing I know she sliced her right wrist with her left hand.

Did you talk to her about why she had cut herself? Yeah. She said she doesn't want to go to jail. I said, "Sue, I'm not going to send you to jail. I'm not going to get you arrested. Calm down." She goes, "You promise? You promise?" I said, "Yes." As Mike tells it, Sue cooked up the whole idea to lie to police and he reluctantly agreed in order to protect her. I said, "Then the only chance I have is to turn the cameras off to give a window of opportunity to say someone broke in and did this to us."

Mike says after Sue cut her own wrist, he left the room to turn off security cameras and stage a break-in. 25 minutes passed before he called 911 and turned the cameras on again.

And he's doing that with the knowledge that with every beat of her heart, more of her blood is pouring into that bed.

But the defense thinks the blood at the crime scene helps to prove their case. People lie. The [snorts] forensics don't lie. And that's why the blood spatter was so important in this case. Michael Berkeland is a former doctor and blood stain pattern analyst who testified for the defense. What do you consider the most important blood evidence inside that bedroom?

The arterial spur patterns. Berkeland says he reviewed records which stated a small artery in Sue's wrist was cut that night and he believes the blood here on the pillowcase and here on the nightstand came from that artery.

The important thing about arteries though is that you get blood coming out of that with every beat of the heart.

Berkeland uses stage blood and a small syringe to demonstrate the way Sue's blood may have traveled. making a line or fine spray of drops.

So the blood in your opinion gives us a timeline as to when Sue's wrist was actually cut.

Correct. Because arteries don't close up on their own. Remember, Sue says the attack, including the cuts to her wrist, started sometime after 10:13 p.m. But Mike says Sue cut her own wrist at around 300 a.m. hours later. Berkeland says if Sue's wrist was cut before 11, she would have died long before help arrived.

How much time does she have to live in your opinion? If the wounds happen no later than 11:00, she's dead before it ever hits midnight.

Which leads you to believe what? When it comes to this injury to the wrist, Michael's story makes more sense. The defense team says if we can't trust Sue's account about what time things happened, then her entire story is suspect.

It is absolutely impossible to have happened the way she claims it did. Inside this box,

this is the knife that was used to stab Susan. Encased in protective plastic, this is a lot of blood.

This is a lot of blood. are the remnants of the vicious confrontation inside that bedroom that prosecutor Shawn Brewer is certain contain evidence of an attempted murder.

This is Mike Ruchelle's pajamas. Yes. And they are soaked in blood. And whose blood is that?

Well, Susan is the one that had the injuries that provided uh the mass amount of bleeding. So, if blood could talk, this blood is telling you what?

This blood is telling me that um Michael was on top of her while he was stabbing her and um she was bleeding quite a bit without any aid.

Prosecutors say this evidence backs up Sue's testimony that Mike attacked her. They also say the items on that bedside table help prove this was not a dynamic fight between two people. David Byron says that only one person had control of the situation. Mike Ruchelle.

There's a full glass of wine. There's some glasses. There's a lamp. And it's evidence of the fact that Michael Relle was so physically capable of constraining her that none of those things are disturbed. And the prosecution disputes defense expert Michael Berkeland's claim that these stains on the nightstand came from spurting blood from Sue's wrist. Instead, their expert says the blood was most likely cast off flung from the knife and not from Sue cutting her own wrist.

The castoff shows that he was swinging that knife as he's plunging it into her stomach and into her neck.

Call Dr. Burke to his head. Prosecutor Brewer not only attacks Berkeland's conclusions, he also challenges his credibility, letting jurors know that his medical license was suspended and he was later arrested for storing body parts from autopsies in Tupperware containers in an unusual place.

You were storing them at Uncle Bob's storage shed, weren't you? In a climate control room.

Were you storing them at Uncle Bob's storage shed? Yes. And the actual organs that you were storing included brains and hearts.

I did have some hearts and brains. Yes. Berkeland says the organs were preserved for private cases he was working on while he was still a licensed doctor.

I used the storage locker because they were safe and secure. Either that or I put them in my house. This was safer than my house.

The charges were later dropped. Prosecutors also want the jury to know that the severity of Sue's wrist wound suggests she did not do it herself.

The one that was truly life-threatening was the the cuts that the defendant made to her wrist.

She was cut all the way down to the bone. Mike's injuries were a lot less serious. As you can see, he had some small cuts on his fingers and stomach. And Sue says these larger cuts to his forearms were in fact self-inflicted.

He put the knife in my hand and he stabbed himself in the arm. And what about that story Mike told investigators that an intruder did all this? The prosecution says it was all his idea to cover up what he had done. He turned off the cameras and did things to make the police believe that there had been a burglar.

And the motive for this alleged attack, the prosecution believes it was all about money. That Mike didn't want to give up half of his fortune, millions of dollars in a divorce.

You didn't tell this jury that after all you've been through, it didn't seem fair for Susan to take half your money.

Yeah, that is true. It didn't seem fair. The prosecution refutes Mike's claims that he still wanted to reconcile the troubled marriage by pointing out that he had visited three dating sites. Ukrainian single girl arena. She's 18 years old, right?

I looked at pictures from women with clothes on. Yes, sir. Understand they had clothes on, sir. Question I'm asking is you were looking for your next girlfriend, right?

No, I'll tell you exactly what I was looking for. Sure. All I want out of a woman in my life is someone to be kind and nice to me. That's all I care about. I looked at pictures and descriptions of how they would treat their male. And Sue and I have looked at these together many times and in our relationship saying, "Sue, that's all I need from anybody. Please be nice to me. Please."

The defense counters that Mike's other internet searches prove that he was being abused by Sue. Did you visit numerous sites related to battered husbands?

Yes, I did. He has all of the economic resources. He's not cut off from any family members. Michael Relle doesn't meet any of the criteria for what a battered spouse is.

The defense also tries to counter Sue's claim that Mike's attack came after she threatened divorce. They produced dozens of text messages going back to 2015 that show Sue had made that threat many many times.

You actually say for the 50th time I want a divorce. It's just an expression like saying for the you know 100th time

but it is about 50 times isn't it? I don't know. I didn't count. And what time?

And defense attorney Anne Fenel suggests those texts also reveal Sue's destructive intentions.

Have you told him I hate you? Yes. Okay. You've said I will destroy you. Yes. And on your anniversary in 2017, hate you. Happy 10th anniversary. I'm divorcing you. You said that. Yes.

In her closing argument, Finel insists Mike would never try to kill for money. She says Sue was the aggressor that night and Mike was just defending himself.

She hates everybody. She hates his daughters. She hates his former spouse. That's how hateful this woman was and is. But the prosecution says there is no question Mike wanted Sue dead.

This is not a frenzy struggle between two adults. This is a blood bath committed by one person who has imprisoned the other on that bed.

In the War of the Rochelle's, jurors will soon decide which one they believe. as the jury goes out to deliberate. Um, what are those minutes and hours like for you?

I I just like couldn't talk to anyone. [snorts] I spent the past year and a half like mentally preparing myself for the worst and hoping for the best.

Caroline does not have long to wait. All rise for the jury. After a 9-day trial, it took little more than 4 hours for the jury to reach a verdict.

They say a quick verdict is often a prosecutor's verdict. It's a thought that creeps into your head, but you never really know what a juryy's going to do.

Members of the jury, I understand you have reached a verdict. Your honor, please pass it. We the jury unanimously find as follows the defendant Michael James Relle in this case. As to count one, the defendant is guilty of attempted first-degree murder as charged.

Guilty. Mike Rochelle is convicted of the most serious count against him. We were all so shocked.

As [snorts] to count two, the defendant is guilty of false imprisonment. in quick succession. The jury also finds Relle guilty of four additional crimes, including false imprisonment and tampering with evidence.

Jury number 51. Is this a true verdict? Yes. Jurors utterly reject Mike's story of a knife fight with his wife. Prosecutor Shawn Brewer says justice was served to a man who lied to investigators and to the jury. Michael went through great lengths to try and kill Susan. He just wasn't very good at it. And what's more, Brewer says Mike Rochelle tried to kill Sue, not once, but twice. While he was in jail awaiting trial, an informant came forward to claim Mike tried to hire a hitman to kill Sue, a charge Mike strongly denies. Do you believe that your father in jail plotted to hire someone to murder his wife?

No. Honestly, I don't mean to laugh, but it is beyond laughable. As we were interviewing Caroline, she got a phone call that surprised us.

Dad, hi. I'm good. I'm with 48 hours right now, literally with cameras. Mike Ruchelle allowed me to ask a few questions.

Mike, I just want to hear you tell me, [snorts] did you take a knife into the room that night on February 2nd, 2018 and attack your wife?

Absolutely not. And you're telling me the truth? Absolutely. On my children's lives. All I did was defend myself and I got attacked.

In December 2019, everyone returns to Judge William Davis's courtroom for sentencing. The victim in this crime, Sue Ruchelle, does not appear in person. Remain standing face judge and raise your right hand, please.

When it's Caroline's turn to speak, the moment is charged with emotion. No one is as positive, caring, and generous than this man. I will say I am and will always be a proud daughter.

One of the most caring, kind, gentle people I've ever met. Several colleagues and friends speak of Mike in glowing terms.

He's a good person. The Mike Relle I know is a standup gentleman. Then Judge William Davis took center stage.

Mr. Michelle, will you please stand? Mike was about to learn his fate. The first I heard through the evidence and the witnesses was somebody who was cold. They were brutal. On count one, the attempted u first-degree premeditated murder. I'm going to send you to 30 years imprisonment in the department.

All told, the judge gives Relle 30 years, not the 50 years requested by prosecutors. But for Mike, who is 64 years old, it is in essence a life sentence. Here are two sophisticated people, very wealthy, living in paradise in one of the most beautiful parts of Florida, and yet they couldn't work this out, it's a real tragedy, isn't it?

Absolutely. I mean, when you hear who Michael and Susan Relle were before this all occurred, they lived exemplary and mostly normal lives. And to see it get to this point really is a tragedy. The war of the Rochelle is not over. Mike and Sue are divorcing and continue to fight over the marital assets, including the house where Sue was nearly stabbed to death.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Twisted Trials | “48 Hours" Full Episodes"?

Michelle Martino, Andy Sidell (Guest), Harvey Deninger (Guest), Matt Deninger (Guest), Tracy Price (Guest), Mike Hayrick (Guest), Janelle Stonereaker (Guest), Janet Martino (Guest).

What is "Twisted Trials | “48 Hours" Full Episodes" about?

The narrative centers on the 1979 murder of 18-year-old Michelle Marteno in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after she was attacked shortly after leaving a mall. Despite initial suspicions surrounding her boyfriend Andy Sidell, the case went cold until a significant breakthrough occurred in 2005 when DNA evidence reopened the investigation, leading to the collection of samples from numerous individuals.

What is mentioned in this 48 Hours episode?

32 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jerry Burns, Michelle Martino, DNA, Irene Garza, John Fe, Matt Deninger. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Twisted Trials | “48 Hours" Full Episodes"?

The episode runs 2 h 5 min; the transcript is about 17,606 words in 479 timestamped sections.

More from 48 Hours

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.