True Crime Vault: Til Death Do Us Part

Speaker 1 This show is supported by Hot and Deadly, a podcast from ID. Hot and Deadly brings you American true crime that is often stranger than fiction.

Speaker 1 Every week, dive into shocking stories of murder and betrayal, from IRS impersonators in Kentucky to a South Carolina businessman deceived by those closest to him.

Speaker 1 You'll hear first-hand accounts from investigators, witnesses, and family members as they share the chilling details behind each case.

Speaker 1 If you love true crime with a southern twist, you're going to want to check this one out. Follow Hot and Deadly so you never miss an episode.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the True Crime Vault, home to 2020's most chilling stories.

Speaker 4 Test, test, test.

Speaker 5 Okay, we are hot.

Speaker 6 The tale that I'm about to tell you is that of a beautiful love story that ended in tragedy.

Speaker 7 Bob Ruff has made a career out of America's obsession with violent crime.

Speaker 6 During the struggle, the chair gets knocked over onto its back. The killer comes out with blood all over them, the bloody knife in the water of the tub.

Speaker 6 To me, that indicates that the killer, for some reason, believes that this will wash off my DNA, this will wash off my prints.

Speaker 7 His popular podcast, Truth and Justice, is a deep dive into the gruesome details of tragic and bloody murder scenes.

Speaker 7 This former small-town fire chief now attracts an audience of a quarter million listeners.

Speaker 6 This really, really seems like a case of actual innocence. Our podcast does a crowdsourced investigation or reinvestigation of potential wrongful conviction cases.

Speaker 6 If a quarter of a million people all put their minds together and all work on these projects together and investigate them as one streaming unit, we can accomplish some amazing things.

Speaker 7 And he gets results. Rough helped get this guy, Ed H, paroled out of a Texas state prison where he'd spent 20 years of a 99-year sentence.

Speaker 9 I think without Bob and the listeners of his Truth and Justice Army, Ed to this day would be sitting in prison looking at celebrating another round of holidays with Dada's family.

Speaker 7 And it didn't take long for Bob Ruff to be deluged with requests for help.

Speaker 6 We get... On an average month, probably a couple of dozen cases pitched to us through our case submission email.

Speaker 6 And then if we announce that we're looking for a new case, that number can climb into the hundreds.

Speaker 7 And out of those hundreds of emails, one story grabbed his attention. It was about a family shattered by one of the most bizarre crimes he'd ever heard of.

Speaker 6 We screened it, started gathering information, started getting a hold of documents and crime scene photos, reaching out to the DA, and within two months, we were rolling with episode one.

Speaker 7 It's a case of murder that five years later is still highly controversial when Bob Ruff starts to peel back the layers.

Speaker 6 Jaime Estuardo Melgar was born on August 10th, 1960 in Guatemala. When he was just three years old, he immigrated to the United States.

Speaker 6 Jaime was known to be very intelligent and quick with a joke, and his charms weren't lost on young Sandy McCullough.

Speaker 7 These high school sweethearts were soon married. Jim finds work as an IT specialist, Sandy as a nurse.

Speaker 7 And together they join the Jehovah's Witnesses, an austere Christian sect that demands strict rules of behavior. Their daughter, Liz, is now in her late 20s.

Speaker 7 What was it like growing up as the only child in the Melgar family?

Speaker 10 You know, I always had a lot of love and attention, and I think I might have taken that for granted as a teenager when, you know, you go through your rebellious years.

Speaker 7 Liz's cousin, Marissa, remembers looking up to them as role models when she went to visit.

Speaker 11 Sandy and Jim were just very loving towards each other, respectful. You can just tell they always had each other's back.
They were always helping each other out. I liked watching them together.

Speaker 7 As daughter Liz grew up, she became especially close to her mom, Sandy. What was her personality like in general?

Speaker 10 She's just very caring and loving and

Speaker 10 nurturing. She was also a lot of fun.
She knew... how to joke around, tell a good joke.
You know, I just felt like she was

Speaker 10 the embodiment of a mother, just, you know, the kind of person that you would picture when you think of that word. She was just such a loving person.

Speaker 7 But Sandy is also a very ill person, suffering through hip replacements, hyperthyroidism, lupus, and epilepsy. As a kid, you knew your mom was sick.
Did you know she had lupus and epilepsy?

Speaker 10 She had epilepsy before I was born. And the lupus didn't come until I was about three.
I remember that because she had to seek treatment for about six weeks.

Speaker 10 She had gone paralyzed on one side of her body. She was in a wheelchair.
She was having a really hard time.

Speaker 7 More and more, Sandy is leaning on the support of her husband. But Jim's niece, Marissa, says he never complained.
In sickness and in health was a vow they lived by.

Speaker 11 I don't think that Sandy and my uncle Jim

Speaker 11 ever really got distant. If anything, I think

Speaker 11 their

Speaker 11 relationship just grew stronger and stronger.

Speaker 7 It's a foggy night in Houston in 2012, and Sandra Melgard is feeling pretty good on this night. So she and her husband, Jim, decide to go out for a celebratory dinner.
It's their 32nd anniversary.

Speaker 10 What she just told me was that

Speaker 10 they were going to go out to dinner, and they were going to their favorite Mexican place that they go almost every weekend.

Speaker 10 And they stopped by local CVS just to grab some drink mixers on their way back home.

Speaker 10 They got home, they started getting drinks ready, they got into the jacuzzi in their bathroom.

Speaker 10 They were just, you know, they spent a few hours in there, you know, just this and that, chit-chat.

Speaker 6 Suddenly, the Melgar's four dogs started barking in the backyard. So Jim got out of the tub to bring the pups inside.

Speaker 6 Sandy continued to soak, the jets roaring as the water massaged her for about 5 to 15 minutes.

Speaker 10 I think he took a few minutes, so she decided to get out of the jacuzzi. She went to her closet, sat on her chair that she has in her closet, and started putting lotion on.

Speaker 7 That's the last thing that Sandy says she remembers that night. The next afternoon is a planned family get-together.

Speaker 7 Jim's brother Herman and his family show up at about 4:30, a little behind schedule, as usual.

Speaker 11 Here we are running late, and he would always make fun of us for that. Here's the milk our family, always running late.

Speaker 3 We knocked on the front door, and no one came to open it.

Speaker 14 All we heard were the dogs barking.

Speaker 11 I was telling my dad this doesn't feel right.

Speaker 7 What Marissa and her family are about to see will haunt them forever.

Speaker 6 17 stab wounds, 14 cutting wounds, and 20 blunt force wounds. These wounds would take time to kill.

Speaker 7 Stay with us.

Speaker 7 Jim and Sandy Melk are toasting 32 apparently happy years together. Dinner out followed by a romance in the jacuzzi.

Speaker 7 But Saturday night becomes Sunday afternoon, and their tidy brick home in suburban Houston is about to reveal a grim secret and a puzzling mystery.

Speaker 7 When no one answers the doorbell, Jim's brother Herman enters the house through an overhead garage door someone had left wide open.

Speaker 7 He continues through an unlocked interior door and into the house, unlocking the front door for the others.

Speaker 7 At first, there's only the yapping of the four dogs.

Speaker 7 But then, from deep in the dim house, comes a feeble reply.

Speaker 14 At that moment, I heard someone say, Help!

Speaker 16 Help!

Speaker 3 It was Sandra's voice.

Speaker 3 I began to think the worst.

Speaker 11 My heart dropped. I knew something was wrong.
My dad, he immediately just sprang into action.

Speaker 7 Herman follows that cry for help through the house to the master bedroom, into the master bath.

Speaker 6 Sandy's cries for help were coming from inside the bathroom walk-in closet.

Speaker 7 Podcaster Bob Ruff.

Speaker 6 The scene looked like something you'd see in the movies. A chair was propped up against the door, holding it shut from the outside.

Speaker 6 He grabs the chair, moves it out from under the doorknob, and slides it to the side so he can open the door.

Speaker 11 And when he opened it, he saw Sandy lying there, tied up.

Speaker 14 She was lying on the floor with her hands tied behind her, like this.

Speaker 5 Well tied.

Speaker 14 And her legs, too.

Speaker 6 Her arms were behind her back, but her arms were like this.

Speaker 6 And the bindings were wrapped multiple times around her forearms. Herman tries to untie Sandy's bindings from her arms, and he can't seem to find where the knot's at.

Speaker 6 Sandy tells him that there's a pair of scissors on the counter near the closet. He grabs the scissors, starts cutting her out of the bindings.

Speaker 7 Sandy seems gronky, but she's alive and apparently unharmed. But her her husband, Jim, has suffered a far more devastating fate.

Speaker 6 Jim was found nude and beaten and stabbed to death in the master bedroom closet, which is about 30 feet away from where she was at.

Speaker 7 His legs are tied with a telephone cord. A rope is loosely tied around his chest.

Speaker 17 He's got a lot of defensive wounds on both hands, which means he's trying to either disarm the attacker or block the assault.

Speaker 7 Selvestina Rossi is is a crime scene investigator who helped the authorities investigate the case.

Speaker 7 In her opinion, Jim and his assailant were locked in hand-to-hand mortal combat right here in his bedroom closet.

Speaker 17 It's my opinion that the assault and his death occurred in the closet.

Speaker 6 Aside from the 31 cuts and stabs, Jim was badly beaten in the face and head, causing serious damage to his skull, brain, and facial bones.

Speaker 7 It just sounds like a horrifically violent and bloody crime scene.

Speaker 6 This was an ugly murder.

Speaker 6 This is a murder on a man that was fighting with everything he had, fighting for his life. He's grabbing a hold of the killer's wrists.
He's hitting them.

Speaker 6 Jim is blocking them and grabbing there, and he's stopping them from ever getting a full penetration into him. And again, all these injuries, none of them are immediately incapacitating.

Speaker 6 So this just dragged on and on and on.

Speaker 7 When Sandy is freed from the closet and sees Jim's body, the family says she becomes hysterical.

Speaker 11 Sandy was very upset. She was crying uncontrollably, but my mom was holding her back.

Speaker 7 There is one question hanging over the crime scene.

Speaker 5 What the hell happened?

Speaker 11 I'm sorry, I don't know if I was supposed to say that, but that's what I was thinking. I was thinking,

Speaker 5 what could have happened here?

Speaker 11 Who could have done this to them?

Speaker 7 Detectives and crime scene investigators swarmed all over the Melgar home, taking photos and video, trying to answer that question: who could have done this?

Speaker 7 Floating in that jacuzzi tub, where Sandy says she and Jim spent some of the last moments of his life, a ghostly article of clothing, a white blouse.

Speaker 7 Also glinting in the bathwater, very much out of place, a kitchen knife, which authorities believe was used to inflict many of Jim's wounds.

Speaker 7 How to explain this horrifying mayhem? Was it burglars, a home invasion? Sure looks like it. Drawers pulled out, jewelry boxes rifled, the contents of Jim's wallet and Sandy's purse dumped on the bed.

Speaker 7 And in the closet where Jim's body was found, two items of special interest. A locked safe and, hidden on a shelf behind hanging clothes, Jim's loaded gun.

Speaker 6 There was a loaded gun in the closet where he was found. It was located where he was found directly above his head.

Speaker 6 And you can see bloody transfer marks, like from a bloody hand where he had grabbed the closet rod, the shelf, and the shirt sleeve that was right there in front of the gun.

Speaker 6 And he just never, sadly, they never quite got to it.

Speaker 7 Podcaster Bob Rough says those items could indicate robbers were trying to get Jim to open the safe or that he was fighting to reach his gun to fend them off.

Speaker 6 Jim Melgar, as is the expression in Texas, went out with his boots on. He did not go down without a fight.

Speaker 7 The gun, the safe, the ransacked rooms, said he bound hand in foot, barricaded in a closet.

Speaker 7 The crime scene seems to be telling a story, but detectives want to hear what the sole witness who somehow survived the brutal attack has to say.

Speaker 6 Sandy had survived. She could at least give him a description of the offenders who had tied her up.

Speaker 4 Do you know what has happened today?

Speaker 18 My husband was murdered.

Speaker 3 How? I don't know.

Speaker 6 And that's where things really began to break bad for Sandy Melgar.

Speaker 7 Stay with us.

Speaker 7 A thousand miles away from Sandy and Jim Melgar's Houston-area home, here in the small town of Bridgman, Michigan, where violent crimes are, ironically, few and far between, most mornings you can find true crime podcaster Bob Ruff pumping iron in his basement gym.

Speaker 7 But later, Ruff can be found giving his gray matter a workout in his backyard studio as he and his producer Mike Bussing puzzle over the subject of their latest podcast episodes, the Melgar case.

Speaker 6 We began this season with with a story because that's all we had.

Speaker 7 Remember, it was on an afternoon just before Christmas 2012 that 52-year-old Jim Melgar was found brutally stabbed to death in the bedroom closet of his suburban Houston home.

Speaker 7 Luckily, Detective Carozal must have thought they at least had an eyewitness.

Speaker 6 Sandy had survived. She could at least give him a description of the offenders who had tied her up, and that's where things really began to break bad for Sandy Melgar.

Speaker 7 Just hours after her husband's body was discovered, Sandy melgar finds herself face to face with two detectives let's start from the morning when you woke up today where were you at yes

Speaker 7 in my closet during her two-hour police interview sandy seems dazed and distraught in an unsteady voice she relays what she says happened that fateful night the anniversary celebration dinner at a mexican restaurant and then the stop at a cvs drugstore to buy some drinks

Speaker 7 after arriving at home sandy says she and Jim undressed and got into the jacuzzi for their romantic candlelit interlude.

Speaker 4 How long were y'all sitting there talking?

Speaker 19 About two hours.

Speaker 4 What were y'all talking about?

Speaker 3 He is a weekend.

Speaker 20 About my daughter, about his job.

Speaker 3 Nothing particular.

Speaker 21 Any disagreement? No.

Speaker 7 None.

Speaker 7 Sometime after midnight, Sandy tells detectives that her husband heard their dogs barking and got out of the jacuzzi to let them inside.

Speaker 22 It's taken a while, so so I got out and

Speaker 19 was going to get dressed for a change in my closet and I went in there and I started a change

Speaker 18 and that's all I remember until I woke up.

Speaker 7 As incredible as it may seem, even though her husband was brutally murdered just 30 feet away from her, Sandy says she saw nothing and heard nothing.

Speaker 7 And she blames her mind's blank slate on her epilepsy, saying she must have had a seizure.

Speaker 22 I couldn't move because I had a seizure and so I usually can't move anyway.

Speaker 6 I hurt all over and my head hurts.

Speaker 4 How often do you have seizures like that?

Speaker 19 I've been getting more lately. I'm not able to drive anymore.
How frequent?

Speaker 15 At least once a month, maybe.

Speaker 7 Sandy's daughter, Liz, says it wasn't unusual for her mother to experience epileptic seizures. Did you ever see your mother have a seizure?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I did several times.

Speaker 7 What does it look like?

Speaker 10 It's violent and it's scary, especially if you've never seen one before. And when she comes to, you help her into bed or help her off the floor or wherever she is.

Speaker 7 But the detectives clearly aren't buying Sandy's account of blacking out during the vicious attack.

Speaker 24 Isn't it ironic that

Speaker 24 you black out

Speaker 25 at the exact time when he's getting stabbed and bludgeoned?

Speaker 22 I don't have an answer for you.

Speaker 24 Multiple times like that, dying, screaming for help.

Speaker 18 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 24 I don't understand that. That doesn't sound ironic to me.

Speaker 7 Could you see why they thought it might be her?

Speaker 10 I could see that. I could definitely see that.
It does. It sounds crazy if you don't know her situation or even if you're not familiar with what epilepsy looks like.

Speaker 10 But knowing my parents, knowing my mother and her limitations, it was just crazy.

Speaker 7 The detectives relentlessly turned the screws on Sandy, pressing her on whether there was bad blood between her and her husband.

Speaker 18 Was your husband abusive towards you? Yeah.

Speaker 22 We got a a lot to find. Ask all my friends.

Speaker 25 We got a lot great.

Speaker 25 Did you stage that at your house, ma'am?

Speaker 22 Stage it? Yeah.

Speaker 24 Did you plan this?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 18 No, I did not.

Speaker 24 Would you tell me if you did?

Speaker 22 I wouldn't even know where to start to stage it.

Speaker 22 And how am I going to tie myself up like that and not even be able to get out of it?

Speaker 7 But after Sandy refuses to immediately take a line detector test.

Speaker 22 I'm so stressed right now, I can't even think straight.

Speaker 7 It appears the cops are no longer looking at her as a grieving spouse. They think she's a black widow.

Speaker 7 When you see your mother's interrogation tape, what does it make you think?

Speaker 10 It just makes me think that there were these two police officers who got tunnel vision as soon as they walked into the door and that their sole purpose was just to find a way to bring charges on my mother.

Speaker 26 It's not really an interrogation. It's just trying to find out what happened.
What do you know? I mean, she was the only one in the house. I don't think it was confrontational at all.

Speaker 10 I mean, one of the police officers is mimicking my dad calling her for help.

Speaker 25 Screaming after screaming after screaming, he's in pain. I need help.

Speaker 25 Help me, Sandra.

Speaker 25 Sandra, I need help.

Speaker 23 I didn't hear anything.

Speaker 3 Stop already.

Speaker 25 I need help, Sandra.

Speaker 25 I need help.

Speaker 25 Help me.

Speaker 22 That's it. That's it.

Speaker 22 I need a lawyer. I'm not talking anymore because you guys are just trying to torture me here.

Speaker 25 Did you kill your husband?

Speaker 19 No, I didn't.

Speaker 7 While the interview may be over,

Speaker 7 She is far from out of the investigator's crosshairs.

Speaker 26 Clearly, the evidence pointed out that she's the one that did it.

Speaker 7 Coming up, did Sandy Melgar, a fatigued woman who suffers from lupus and epilepsy, and walks with a cane, stab her husband to death, and then walk away without a single drop of blood on her?

Speaker 7 So, are you saying that the homicide detectives and the prosecution have pinned this murder on Sandy Melgar simply because it was the expedient thing to do?

Speaker 7 A prosecutor tying herself in knots to prove her case. 2020 continues.

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Speaker 7 Sandy Melgar's family says within a matter of hours, she goes from wife to widow to prime suspect in the brutal beating and stabbing of her husband.

Speaker 7 Their niece, Marissa Campos, says the very evening the crime is discovered, it is immediately obvious detectives are laser-focused on a single suspect. No manhunt, no mystery.

Speaker 7 In their eyes, she says, Jim Melgar's murderer is standing right in front of them. It's Sandy.

Speaker 11 All her questions seemed to be pointing towards her. It seemed like they just jumped straight to, how was your relationship like? Was he abusive? They were pointing the finger at Sandy.

Speaker 24 Did you love your husband?

Speaker 22 Yes, I love my husband.

Speaker 2 She wants to finally kill him? Of course.

Speaker 7 I don't think he did. Those detectives interviewing Sandy just can't accept that she could be oblivious as her husband is being murdered in the next room.

Speaker 7 You're in the house and your husband's in the house and your husband's dead.

Speaker 3 Okay?

Speaker 3 I know that. I know that.
So

Speaker 3 I know how it looks.

Speaker 9 But I was also tied up.

Speaker 7 But podcaster Bob Ruff says he doesn't see Sandy as a solid suspect.

Speaker 6 I just kept waiting for that moment of there's the lover, there's the affair, there's the $2 million life insurance policy, and it wasn't there.

Speaker 7 Even the authorities, it appears, might agree, at least at first.

Speaker 7 The detectives interviewing Sandy take a break to wake up a prosecutor in the middle of the night, but no charges, no handcuffs. Sandy is free to go.

Speaker 7 She moves on, trying to pick up the pieces.

Speaker 7 Join time with her daughter and the growing family her husband Jim never got to meet.

Speaker 7 A year and a half after the murder of her father, Liz learns of a major break in the case, a grand jury indictment.

Speaker 8 Her mother.

Speaker 10 There was a warrant out for her arrest, so we called the lawyer and we had her turn herself in.

Speaker 11 I was very surprised. I jumped out of bed.
I went to go tell my parents, you know, what's happening. We were all just in shock.

Speaker 7 In spite of the murder charges, Sandy is out on bail for three years. When her trial finally rolls around in 2017, prosecutor Colleen Barnett has a challenge.

Speaker 7 Proving that Sandy ended decades of apparently happy marriage with that kitchen knife. But Barnett admits she can't explain why Sandy did it.

Speaker 26 In Texas, we don't have to prove a motive. And I thought that I was going to be able to prove that she did what she did, but I wouldn't be able to prove a motive.

Speaker 21 That raised some red flags for me as an observer because there's this woman who doesn't seem like she could be a killer.

Speaker 21 And then there's this prosecutor who says, she's the killer, but we don't know why.

Speaker 7 Barnett says a possible motive came to her in the middle of the trial.

Speaker 26 It wasn't until the Jehovah's Witnesses testified from the defense, and I learned a little bit about the religion that I thought possibly that might have been part of it.

Speaker 7 Defense witnesses said the Melgars appeared to have had a good marriage. Nevertheless, Barnett conjures a theory.

Speaker 7 Sandy wants a divorce, but afraid of being shunned by her fellow Jehovah's Witnesses, decides the easier option is murder.

Speaker 26 I don't know what her motive was. Sometimes people kill other people for reasons that are unknown.
I'll never know why Sandra killed her husband. All I know is that she did kill him.

Speaker 7 But if the why in this case is a head scratcher, wait till you hear the how.

Speaker 7 Barnett argues in court that Sandy lured Jim into letting her tie his legs with the telephone cord, perhaps as some sort of sex game.

Speaker 26 And then all of a sudden, she pulls out a large kitchen knife and starts stabbing him. His response, I mean, just think about what his response would be total surprise.

Speaker 26 He's just trying to defend himself and she keeps coming and she's stabbing him. She stabbed him multiple times.

Speaker 26 I think probably he just backed up into the closet as opposed to trying to hurt her because that was his wife.

Speaker 7 As for all that evidence of a home invasion, the prosecutor says never happened.

Speaker 7 The ransacking looks staged, she says. Drawers still neatly arranged, not dumped.

Speaker 26 Nothing was taken out of the drawers. One of the drawers that was open had a camera in it.
They had bicycles. There were prescription drugs.
There were electronic devices that were there.

Speaker 26 It was a treasure trove of things to be stolen. And nothing was taken that Liz could account for.

Speaker 7 Sandy's defense attorneys, Max Seacrist and his niece, Allison, say there are things missing from the house. And that ransacking doesn't always look like a Hollywood movie.

Speaker 2 They tried to leave the impression with the jury that for it to be a home invasion robbery, then you have to come in and you have to literally destroy everything.

Speaker 2 And if there's an open drawer you got to pull it out you got to turn it upside down throw it on the ground

Speaker 7 then there's the question of blood everyone agrees the killer probably would have been bloodied in the death struggle with Jim but Sandy's hands are clean and there's no sign anyone washed up in the house if I'm the killer I got to wash myself off where do I do that When you go into the bathrooms or the bathtubs, his blood is not there.

Speaker 2 So if she's the killer, where's his blood?

Speaker 7 Sandy's attorneys also point out the lack of injuries on her hands.

Speaker 2 She has fingernails. None of them are broken.
None of them are chipped. So how do you hold a knife and you repeatedly thrust it and hit somebody? But she never has any injury in any way to her hand.

Speaker 2 You know, she's not Bruce Lee or something.

Speaker 7 No blood spread around the house, but there was DNA that doesn't match the Melgar family.

Speaker 30 There's unknown male DNA on really key pieces of evidence in this house.

Speaker 30 There's unknown female DNA as well found on the dresser drawer pools and on door handles and on bathroom door handles, which again corroborates the fact that there was other people in this house who did this.

Speaker 7 Sandy's attorneys tell the jury she too is a victim, knocked out by home invaders or blacked out with one of her epileptic seizures. But the prosecutor shoots holes in the seizure defense.

Speaker 26 I got the records from her physician. Every single entry that the doctor asks her, have you had a seizure? She says no.

Speaker 7 From the beginning, authorities have questioned Sandy's account of being tied up and locked in a closet, relying on a series of Houdini-style demonstrations.

Speaker 7 The very night the crime scene is discovered, officers are already reenacting for their crime scene camera how they say Sandy could have used a small rug or a pillow shamp to slide the chair into place under the doorknob, locking herself into the closet.

Speaker 7 Watch again. Rug, chair, slide, presto.
Cops say an airtight walk-in alibi. But wait, there's more.

Speaker 26 Then I thought, okay, she's tied herself up with her hands behind her back and her feet. That sounds kind of hard to do.

Speaker 26 So when I looked at the evidence and saw the tie that she actually used,

Speaker 26 I was able to replicate that and I saw how easy it is to tie yourself up and make it it look legitimate, though it's not.

Speaker 7 As she did for the jury in open court, prosecutor Colleen Barnett shows us how she believes Sandy tied her own hands behind her back.

Speaker 26 It's not whether it's really a legitimate tie, it's whether it looks like a legitimate tie.

Speaker 7 Has the prosecutor given the jury enough rope to hang Sandy Melgar? Her attorneys say no way.

Speaker 2 This idea that something must have happened and that she went crazy and subjected him to over 50 blunt force and sharp force injuries is just impossible.

Speaker 7 Still ahead, why they claim slompy police work left clues overlooked.

Speaker 21 There was audible laughter in the courtroom about how shoddy this investigation was and potential suspects unquestioned. There were people thinking, that's as good as you're going to get.

Speaker 7 Stay with us.

Speaker 31 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 19 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 31 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 31 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 9 Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know. It's not we can count me outscare.

Speaker 31 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 29 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 6 The first thing to hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 31 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 31 Two rings,

Speaker 31 surrounded by a steel cage.

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Speaker 7 Five years after Jim Melgar was found fatally stabbed in his bedroom closet, his wife, Sandy, is put on trial for his murder. After 11 days of testimony, Sandy's case is sent to the jury.

Speaker 7 Its foreman is Tom Bush.

Speaker 13 We all talked about how this case was the last thing you thought about when you went to bed at night, the first thing you thought about when you woke up in the morning.

Speaker 13 That's the gravity that we weighed this case with.

Speaker 7 At first, Bush says the jury is split down the middle.

Speaker 13 The scenario espoused by the prosecutor was extremely effective and frankly, I think, really the only viable scenario when you look at it. It was definitely a crime of passion.

Speaker 7 And by day two, the jury reaches a verdict.

Speaker 11 All of us, we were all just quiet, just holding hands, just

Speaker 5 hoping for a good outcome.

Speaker 32 We, the jury, find the defendant, Sandra Jean Milgar, guilty of murder as charged in the indictment.

Speaker 32 It's signed, the foreman of the grand jury.

Speaker 7 When you heard that word read in court, guilty.

Speaker 10 You know, know, I felt like everything just got really quiet and the room was just kind of spinning and

Speaker 10 yeah,

Speaker 10 I still feel sick to my stomach when I think about it or I hear other people talk about it.

Speaker 11 The whole courtroom just burst into tears.

Speaker 5 There were people sobbing uncontrollably.

Speaker 11 I just couldn't believe it. I remember clearly just looking at the jurors, just staring at them.
And I wanted them to look at us and, you know, just kind of

Speaker 11 so they can see what, you know, the pain that they were causing.

Speaker 7 Brian Rogers of the Houston Chronicle was at the trial nearly every day.

Speaker 21 Their reaction didn't surprise me because I was surprised too. It didn't come back the way I thought it would come back.

Speaker 26 I think it's difficult to know someone for 30 years and have an idea about them and the relationship they have.

Speaker 26 If I didn't know Sandra and I didn't know the family, I could look at it with an open idea, an open mind about what had happened. And that's what I did.

Speaker 7 Despite the verdict, Sandy's family and even Jim Melgar's family are convinced she's innocent. For help, a family member reaches out to Bob Ruff.

Speaker 7 What is so outrageous about this story to you?

Speaker 6 I saw the prosecution's case didn't have any meat to it. There were no bones behind why they convicted her.
Can I see a scenario where this happened?

Speaker 6 Can I make this make sense that Sandra Melgar killed her husband? In this case, I couldn't see it, so we jumped in.

Speaker 7 Bob Ruff is currently pouring through every crime scene photo. Chair has to be down onto the ground with the blood dropping onto it that way.
Right.

Speaker 7 Every page of testimony, no detail is too small.

Speaker 7 He believes there are a few ways an intruder could have entered the house that night. Through the open garage door or through the back door, even though it was locked when police arrived.

Speaker 6 Let's remember back to Sandy's police interview. She couldn't confirm that the back door was actually locked.
She never used it that day. But Jim had been in and out.

Speaker 6 The offenders could have entered through the door, causing the dogs to bark. Jim emerged from the master suite to check on the dogs.

Speaker 6 Jim locks the door behind him and turns around to see an unsump confronting him with some kind of weapon.

Speaker 7 And the bloody chair in the master bedroom? The prosecution says Sandy moved it there to tie her husband up and slash him to death.

Speaker 26 One of the things things that the defense cannot answer is what is the dining room chair doing in the bedroom and especially where it is.

Speaker 6 So the prosecution made a case that Sandy lures Jim into this chair outside the closet and then is going to give him a massage and takes a knife and starts the attack right there.

Speaker 6 And she drives this point home by saying, There's no reason for that dining room chair to be there. It doesn't make sense that there's a dining room chair in the bedroom, but it does make sense.

Speaker 6 The crime scene photos show us this evidence.

Speaker 7 See that mark right there? Yep.

Speaker 6 That's a carpet mark from that chair where it's normally kept right there.

Speaker 7 Indicating that the chair has been there before and for some time.

Speaker 6 Right, so they kept the chair there for the Pomeranian to get on the bed. It was always kept in that location.
There's no mystery there.

Speaker 7 At the trial, the jury saw a demonstration of how Sandy could have tied herself up. But there's only one man who saw her bindings, Jim's brother who found her.

Speaker 7 He says it wasn't Sandy's wrists that were bound together, but her upper forearms tied behind her back.

Speaker 6 Her arms were in a way behind her back that no one could possibly, especially with her.

Speaker 7 You have to be Harry Houdini in order to bind your arms that way. Right.

Speaker 7 The evidence, according to the prosecution, shows that that break-in at the Melgar home is all an elaborate ruse.

Speaker 26 The house was not ransacked. There was nothing taken.
There was a treasure trove of stuff in the house that could have been stolen. None of it was stolen.

Speaker 26 None of that added up, in my mind, to a burglary.

Speaker 7 Liz Melgar testified in court that things were stolen, and Bob says the crime scene photos support that.

Speaker 6 To begin with, there's a lot of evidence there were, in fact, items that were stolen from the house.

Speaker 6 Just to name a few, in the master bedroom, we have a nightstand with an antenna with a cable running to it, but no TV to connect to it.

Speaker 6 On the other side of the nightstand, you see another cord, looks like an S-video cord, not connected to anything. The stand's empty.

Speaker 6 Neither of those two things are documented in the crime scene investigators report.

Speaker 7 So if not Sandra Melgar, then who?

Speaker 7 At the trial, the defense claimed that other potential suspects were all but ignored.

Speaker 13 There was one individual who lived a few blocks away who had been convicted of other crimes in the past and had gotten out of jail just a few nights prior. Police looked into him.

Speaker 13 They never did establish contact with him, apparently. They went to his house.
He wasn't home. They left a cart or something.

Speaker 21 There was audible laughter in the courtroom about how shoddy this investigation was. You know, there were people thinking that's as good as you're going to get.

Speaker 21 You have what may be the best lead ever on somebody who could have actually done a home invasion in this neighborhood and you left their business card.

Speaker 26 The guy that lived down the street, the only evidence we had against him was that he had gotten out of jail and was standing at the corner looking at the house along with the other neighbors.

Speaker 26 That's the only case we had against him. That's not a sufficient case that he's the guy.

Speaker 7 It's Bob's belief that the authorities were only pursuing evidence that would lead to Sandy's guilt.

Speaker 6 The investigators were locked in to their theory. Rather than letting the evidence drive the theory from moment one, they let the theory drive the evidence.

Speaker 7 Colleen Barnett insists the investigation followed all viable suspects and leads. In the end, Sandy Melgar was sentenced to 27 years in state prison.

Speaker 7 The question now is, can Bob's reinvestigation do anything to change the ending of her story? What do you think he's found?

Speaker 10 I think he's found a lot of evidence that points away from her.

Speaker 7 Stay with us.

Speaker 7 Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 29 Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 3 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd.

Speaker 33 Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep

Speaker 18 coming.

Speaker 29 Watch Sebastian Man Escalco.

Speaker 5 It ain't right.

Speaker 29 Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundled subscribers.

Speaker 28 Terms apply.

Speaker 34 Coming to Disney Plus and Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.
Jonas, brother, you got it. It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 34 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.
If they can only make it home.

Speaker 27 What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No. We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 7 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 18 Only

Speaker 18 be alone on this trip.

Speaker 9 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 34 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right? A very Jonas Christmas movie, now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu with the TBPG DL.

Speaker 7 On this day in Los Angeles, for the first time, true crime podcaster Bob Roth is meeting Liz Melgar, daughter of convicted murderer Sandy Melgar.

Speaker 10 I'm really thankful for all the work that you and your listeners have put into this. I feel like we're actually moving forward.

Speaker 6 Right. And what you just said probably seems obvious to a lot of people.

Speaker 7 Liz is hoping that Ruff's novel approach of crowdsourcing his podcast investigations with his audience will help get her mom out of prison.

Speaker 16 Jessica from Tennessee. Honey from Crystal River, Florida.
I'm Marissa. I'm from Seattle.
With Sandy Bleeding when she was found at the crime scene.

Speaker 21 Darlene wants to know, has she confirmed that items were missing from the home?

Speaker 6 Well, our concept is 100,000 ordinary people from around the world have such a wide variety of skill sets that we can accomplish anything that maybe some very highly paid experts can't.

Speaker 9 It's something that is an absolute game changer for the innocence world. We're just beginning to see how powerful it can be.

Speaker 7 Ruff and his avid army of listeners leave no potential clue unexamined. Even honing in on the brand of that blouse found at the bottom of the jacuzzi alongside the murder weapon.

Speaker 6 One of our listeners zooms in on the tag of the shirt, figures out that designer made that specific shirt exclusively for Costco, which is huge because Costco happens to be one of the only places where you have to have a membership card for any item that you purchase.

Speaker 7 So not only would it tell you whether or not Sandy Melgar bought it, but it might also tell you who did buy it, therefore who might have discarded their shirt into that tub.

Speaker 6 Exactly right.

Speaker 26 Jewelry is still there.

Speaker 7 Prosecutor Barnett dismisses this kind of amateur sleuthing as irrelevant.

Speaker 7 She points out that all of the evidence was presented to a jury, which ultimately found that Sandy Melgar murdered her husband.

Speaker 26 It's unusual, for sure, that we have a suspect that's like Sandra, but that doesn't determine whether or not somebody commits a crime or not.

Speaker 7 But as far as Liz Melgar is concerned, her father's killer is still out there. Do you tell your kids about their grandfather?

Speaker 10 Yeah, he would have loved them very much.

Speaker 10 And it's such a shame that he couldn't be here.

Speaker 6 But do you think this is possible or plausible?

Speaker 7 Bob Roth is determined to follow the trail wherever it leads.

Speaker 10 He's put in a lot of time and a lot of hard work. Just really appreciative for everything he's done because he's given us a new hope.

Speaker 7 How far do you think he'll go?

Speaker 10 Oh, he'll go all the way. He'll just, he'll keep going until there's nothing else to look at.

Speaker 10 I know that she did not do this.

Speaker 10 I'm going to continue to fight until we can prove that.

Speaker 6 As for now, I'm signing off. I'm Bob Ruff, and this has been Truth and Justice.

Speaker 1 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault, and you can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday Nights at 9 on ABC.

Speaker 15 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 12 I know there's going to be a twist, won't they? A massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 15 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.