Collision Course

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Speaker 6 Denver, 911, where's your mother?

Speaker 5 Two people in the car, I think.

Speaker 7 Oh, can you tell, was anybody injured?

Speaker 5 Yeah, they were really jacked up. I mean, the lady looks dead.

Speaker 8 The car crash happened on November 17th of 2009 on a dead-end street in West Denver.

Speaker 8 It was about 1.40 in the morning.

Speaker 7 There was a loud bang outside. So I actually jumped up, I came out, and when I came out, I looked over towards the street and I saw a vehicle.
I came down, started dialing 911. He's freaking out.

Speaker 7 She's laying in his arms, okay?

Speaker 7 Okay,

Speaker 7 she's dead, I think.

Speaker 8 Okay. In the driver's seat was a female.
And in the passenger seat was a male holding the female in his arms and was shaking her. Kept saying, Brittany, Brittany.

Speaker 8 She was later identified as Brittany Brashiers.

Speaker 11 Brittany was an incredible person, an even better friend. After she graduated high school, she didn't really know what she wanted to do.
She just told her dad one day, hey, I'm going in the Air Force.

Speaker 11 And that's how we originally met. She loved everything outdoors.
She was really into fitness. Her passion for life was just, it was huge.
She didn't talk about it. She did it.

Speaker 12 She was amazing. She would just catch every pass and it's like she had done it before, like it wasn't her first day.

Speaker 11 I guess it was a pretty legit girls' football team that she was playing for.

Speaker 13 Brittany Brushiers is my older sister.

Speaker 13 She got to be one of my best friends and

Speaker 13 my role model. You miss her.

Speaker 5 Oh, every day.

Speaker 8 The night of the crash, Brittany had been drinking. Her toxicology levels came back above the legal limit.

Speaker 6 Could you in your mind come up with any conceivable reason why they would have come here?

Speaker 15 No, no.

Speaker 8 The closest thing I could come up to is they just got tragically lost.

Speaker 5 Her car ended up right back at about this angle here.

Speaker 13 At first glance, it looked like an accident. Like she'd been drinking and she'd been driving and she crashed.

Speaker 16 She didn't have her seatbelt on and sitting next to her was someone by the name of Robert Walters. He did have his seatbelt on.

Speaker 14 She's staring straight up at me. There's just blood everywhere.

Speaker 14 And I'm staring at her, and I'm yelling at her to breathe.

Speaker 14 I'm yelling at her to breathe.

Speaker 8 Brittany, breathe.

Speaker 11 When I learned that Robbie Walters was in the car with her, I knew that something was wrong. Something wasn't right.
There was something more to the story.

Speaker 17 I got a phone call in the middle of the night, two o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 6 The call to Barry Brashere's Illinois home was the call parents dread the most. It was about his daughter, Brittany.

Speaker 17 Traffic officer had said that Brittany had been in Iraq

Speaker 17 and told me that I should go to the hospital.

Speaker 6 That hospital was half a continent away in Denver. So we got the terrible news long distance.

Speaker 17 I talked to the doctor and he told me that she was no longer with us.

Speaker 5 I was like,

Speaker 5 wow. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it was.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Brittany's brother John was there with his dad.

Speaker 9 Honestly, you both just kind of sat there.

Speaker 13 I know I couldn't cry. Like that night, I couldn't.
I was just in so much shock, like there's no way it's actually happening.

Speaker 6 They learned someone else also was in the car. Brittany's one-time boyfriend, Robbie Walters, who miraculously survived the wreck unhurt.
Barry had met him once and was not impressed.

Speaker 17 Guys come and go. I'll be honest, I don't even remember one word Robbie said.

Speaker 6 And did she ever say anything about, you know, dad, I really like this guy.

Speaker 17 I really like this guy. But she wouldn't have said that to me.

Speaker 6 Brittany didn't tell him much about her personal life. He says she always had confided in her mom.

Speaker 6 A vibrant woman who shared her passion for the outdoors, her mother died of cancer when Brittany was 17.

Speaker 6 What was the impact of her death?

Speaker 13 It affected Brittany the most.

Speaker 14 They were best friends.

Speaker 13 Like they did everything together, talked about everything.

Speaker 6 She took it hard and began running with a crowd that in her father's eyes partied a bit too much.

Speaker 6 So he was thrilled when at age 20 Brittany suddenly signed up for the Air Force.

Speaker 17 She really needed the discipline, being a part of something.

Speaker 6 So you felt this would give her some direction.

Speaker 9 Exactly.

Speaker 6 And she seemed really committed to it?

Speaker 13 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 19 She was

Speaker 13 one of our top performers, so that's how I looked her.

Speaker 6 Retired Master Sergeant Art Figueroa was her boss at the Air Force Dental Lab in Colorado Springs, where Brittany was a technician.

Speaker 13 She loved what she did.

Speaker 19 I mean, she helped people out. She was easy to like, and everybody liked her.

Speaker 6 In February 2009, Brittany was deployed to Iraq. Assigned to non-combat security, she ended up spending a lot of time with a cute airman from Southern California, Robbie Walters.

Speaker 14 She had so much energy. She was such a free spirit and

Speaker 14 amazing girl.

Speaker 6 But you pretty much immediately clicked.

Speaker 14 Yeah, right away, right away. She was all smiles every time I talked to her.

Speaker 6 Brittany's best friend, Tiffany Peoples, watched the relationship grow.

Speaker 11 My impression of him was, you know, this is a really, he's a funny guy. He always has to be, you know, the clown.

Speaker 6 But Brittany was not amused when she learned that Robbie was married. No problem, he told her.
It was a marriage in name only.

Speaker 14 Going to Iraq, they give you family separation pay. They give you all this incentive to get married, like this extra pay.

Speaker 6 So that's the only reason you got married?

Speaker 14 That's the main reason I got married.

Speaker 6 And Brittany believe that?

Speaker 14 There was no reason for her to believe anything else.

Speaker 6 That July, fun-loving Robbie's disciplinary problems got him kicked out of the service with a less than honorable discharge.

Speaker 6 After a four-month stint in Iraq, Brittany returned to the Air Force dental lab in Colorado and Robbie was right behind her.

Speaker 11 It was all good for probably a month and then Brittany went from being this vibrant girl and being the superstar airman to just showing up to work late, wanting, you know, calling in sick, just kind of pushing everybody out of her life.

Speaker 6 Everyone, that is, except Robbie.

Speaker 11 I started to really dislike Robbie.

Speaker 6 What kinds of things was he doing?

Speaker 11 He would do crazy things like park her car in the middle of a four-lane in traffic with her in the passenger seat, take the keys out, and run with her sitting there in the car.

Speaker 6 Robbie denies ever doing that, but contrary to all his assurances, his marital status was a problem. Adultery is a serious offense in the military, and Brittany's boss found out about the marriage.

Speaker 6 When you looked into it, what did you discover?

Speaker 19 We had a nice conversation. I was like, I understand if you guys have feelings for each other, fine.
I said, but let this situation with his wife play out.

Speaker 19 When he's away from her, they're divorced, and then maybe you can pursue a relationship. But anytime in between now and then, I said, it's not legal.
So I suggest you not do that.

Speaker 6 Still, the affair continued on and off.

Speaker 11 I asked her a hundred times, why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you staying in this relationship when you know it's not healthy? And it was, I love him, I love him.

Speaker 6 Then on October 24th, 2009, just eight months after they'd met, an overheated argument outside Brittany's home turned into a physical fight.

Speaker 6 Brittany ended up with bruises and Robbie ended up with a few days in jail. Sergeant Figueroa issued a formal no-contact order.
Now, if Brittany saw Robbie again, the Air Force could kick her out.

Speaker 11 And she had told me that she had broken up with Robbie. He was coming to get his stuff.
He was moving back to California. She was completely done with him.
She was ready to move on.

Speaker 6 Three weeks later, Brittany, always an athlete, had a new passion, football. She signed up to play in an all-female league.

Speaker 6 The night before her team's photo shoot, Robbie sent her a text. begging to see her just one more time.

Speaker 19 He knew her weaknesses. They were close enough to where he knew what to say, what button to push to get them to meet up.

Speaker 19 You know, I think she loved him enough at one point where she would honor what he said this one time, and then everything would be okay.

Speaker 6 She could not have been more wrong.

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Speaker 12 It was a sport that we didn't get paid to do it, we just did it because we loved it. It was something for us to do as women.

Speaker 6 Brittany Austin Goyne says the Foxy Football League was serious stuff.

Speaker 6 Coming through.

Speaker 12 It's eight on eight, and it is full-on tackle football. We had helmets, we had mouth guards, shoulder pads.
It was awesome.

Speaker 6 As team captain, she was delighted when another Brittany, Brittany Brashiers, signed up in 2009.

Speaker 12 She seemed so dainty. She just looked fragile.
And then when practice started, Brittany was a natural.

Speaker 7 She was very athletic.

Speaker 12 Very much so.

Speaker 6 On November 16th, both Britneys drove to Denver for the team's publicity photo shoot.

Speaker 12 We all at one point eventually had no top and we would have the body part of someone else covering so you couldn't really see anything but it's supposed to be like a sexy kind of football league.

Speaker 6 And everybody was having a good time.

Speaker 12 We had an amazing time. We really did.

Speaker 6 Not everybody. Although the shoot was supposed to be closed, Robbie Walters tagged along.

Speaker 12 He was kind of hunched over, kind of covering his face like this.

Speaker 12 You know, he had his hand or his phone in his hand. And he kind of looked like he was like shaking or panting or just, you know, when you kind of laugh.

Speaker 12 And then all of a sudden, I saw just tears coming down his face, dripping to the ground.

Speaker 13 He's sobbing.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Sobbing and texting. Robbie was sending text messages to Brittany's boss that night.

Speaker 14 I was sad the relationship was coming to an end.

Speaker 6 He was turning her in for seeing him against orders.

Speaker 14 This is my way of getting back at her. She put me in jail.
I figured if I got her in trouble, that would be the end of it and I could just leave and go to California.

Speaker 6 Whatever anger Robbie Robbie was feeling about the photo shoot, about the breakup, the couple was seen leaving together around 12.30 a.m.

Speaker 6 Was Brittany drunk?

Speaker 5 Oh yeah,

Speaker 5 were you?

Speaker 14 I put my head down and I was listening to the music and I wasn't paying attention to the driving at all.

Speaker 6 About an hour later, Brittany's car slammed into a parked vehicle on a dead end street. That's when Steve Sanchez heard the crash, ran outside, and called 911.

Speaker 6 Hello, this is the paramedic. You guys, I got two people in this car right here, and their one don't look very good at all.
Are you with the person that's hurt now?

Speaker 6 I'm standing right outside of the car.

Speaker 7 He was shaking her, and when I came out, he

Speaker 7 told him, You're going to hurt her. Quit shaking her.
She might be hurt. And then he looked over at me like surprised and started crying her name out.

Speaker 6 Do you remember the actual crash?

Speaker 5 No, no.

Speaker 6 Why was she off the freeway in this strange neighborhood?

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 14 I don't even know where we're at.

Speaker 6 And you were asleep?

Speaker 14 I wasn't asleep. I was in the process of going to sleep.
I was slipping into unconsciousness, definitely.

Speaker 6 Detective Troy Bisgard says at first, Robbie's story seemed to make sense.

Speaker 8 He said that he just woke up and Brittany was in his lap and unconscious.

Speaker 8 And you can see the windshield there.

Speaker 6 So that's her head hit right there. Yeah.
But homicide was called in because the cops at the scene thought something just didn't look right.

Speaker 8 They're the ones telling me, look, it was a car accident, but it wasn't so significant that she should be dead from it.

Speaker 6 Medical examiner John Carver was baffled.

Speaker 8 Here's this accident.

Speaker 10 I don't understand why this person is dead, but maybe the toxicology will show something.

Speaker 6 Brittany's blood alcohol level was over the legal limit, but only barely. There were no drugs in her system, and she didn't hit the windshield all that hard.

Speaker 10 Brittany didn't have any significant injuries of long bones or internal organs or the base of the neck or the spinal cord or the skull or the brain.

Speaker 6 The injuries Brittany did have weren't what Carver expected to see.

Speaker 10 There's extensive bruising around her temple and over her right cheek.

Speaker 6 More alarming, he saw telltale signs that she might have been strangled.

Speaker 10 The main thing were these pinpoint hemorrhages on the skin of the face and surrounding the eyes.

Speaker 6 But strangulation was hard to confirm.

Speaker 10 Brittany's anatomy was different.

Speaker 6 She was missing a piece of cartilage in the throat that usually is crushed when someone is strangled.

Speaker 10 There was nothing to injure or to break.

Speaker 6 So Dr. Carver was in a bind.
Without more proof, he couldn't rule Brittany's death a homicide, but it sure didn't seem like an accident.

Speaker 10 The cause of death to me was undetermined, and the manner of death to me was undetermined.

Speaker 6 Undetermined?

Speaker 10 Undetermined. I don't know.

Speaker 6 Undetermined meant no ruling of homicide, so officially no crime and no grounds for arrest. But the more Bisgard learned about Robbie, the more convinced he became that this was murder.

Speaker 6 First off, there was a statement Brittany gave police after the October fight that landed Robbie in jail.

Speaker 8 The officer's report specifically stated that the victim told them

Speaker 8 that he had threatened to crash the car and hurt or injure them both.

Speaker 6 And Bizgard had discovered something else. A hidden recording on Britney's phone left after that fight.

Speaker 6 You, I hate your fing gun.

Speaker 5 I'm tired of offending you. You f me over.
I fing hate you.

Speaker 8 She had actually disguised the recording as the name of a ringtone. And

Speaker 8 that's where it was. So it was just pure luck that we found it.
I hope you fing die. I fing hate you.

Speaker 6 Why would you leave a message like that?

Speaker 14 Why would I leave a message like that?

Speaker 14 That That message was left after Brittany called the cops on me and I went to jail. And I was angry.

Speaker 6 Bizgard also wondered why Robbie couldn't remember anything about the crash, but was crystal clear about one specific detail from that night.

Speaker 8 He told me at some point during that photo shoot that she took her top off.

Speaker 13 What did that have to do with anything?

Speaker 8 I don't know, and that struck me as odd.

Speaker 8 Why would you say that?

Speaker 8 I didn't get that.

Speaker 6 In his grief, Brittany Brashier's father, Barry, was confused. So when you heard that she had not been wearing a seatbelt?

Speaker 17 Oh, that was absolutely a red flag went up. She would never move a car without putting her seatbelt on.
Never.

Speaker 6 You were convinced that he had had something to do with it.

Speaker 17 Oh, that he had some.

Speaker 17 She was dead because of him. To what extent, I had no idea what.

Speaker 6 Barry soon was urging Bizgard to keep investigating, find something, but undetermined on that autopsy report meant Bisgard's hands were tied.

Speaker 8 It just, it didn't matter what I thought, it didn't matter what anybody else thought. We had nothing.
Without a cause of death for Brittany,

Speaker 8 I had nothing. I just did not see a chance of proving this case.

Speaker 6 It may not be everyone's idea of a dream wedding outside a parking garage in the dead of winter.

Speaker 11 I now pronounce you husband and wife.

Speaker 6 But that's where Robbie and Elena Walters tied the knot on a frigid day in January, 2009.

Speaker 14 I was like, Elena, I love you. You're my girlfriend.
We've been together for several years.

Speaker 14 If I get married right now, I can get paid more before I go to Iraq. And she was like,

Speaker 14 well, I don't really want to get married for money. I want to get married because I love you.
And I was like, well, I love you.

Speaker 6 Days later, the groom was deployed to Iraq, where he soon would both lie to and cheat on his wife, Elena, whose face we've agreed not to show.

Speaker 6 She apparently took her wedding vows much more seriously than her new husband. After Brittany died and knowing all about their affair, Elena took Robbie back.
The couple reunited in California.

Speaker 6 In Denver, meanwhile, Detective Troy Bisgard was frustrated, convinced that Robbie was getting away with the murder of Brittany Brashiers.

Speaker 8 All I could think about was Barry.

Speaker 8 I'm talking to the guy whose baby girl was murdered, and I am never going to be able to prove this. Never.

Speaker 6 Then, four months into the investigation, Bisgard got word that Robbie had had a big fight with his wife. Looking for any possible shred of new evidence, he gave Elena a call.

Speaker 8 And I said, it's time for you to tell me what you know.

Speaker 6 And what did she say?

Speaker 24 Hello. Hi, is Elena in? This is her.
Hi, Elena. This is Detective Troy Bisgard.
I'm a detective with the Denver Police Department. Hi.

Speaker 8 She started telling me everything.

Speaker 8 And then he's like, I did it. I'm like, did what? He had confessed to strangling Brittany and covering it up with a car accident.

Speaker 8 He's like, I killed her. I was like, Robbie, you're talking crazy.
You've been through a lot. He's like, no, he's like, I did it.
I didn't have to pry this stuff out of her.

Speaker 8 And once she started talking, she didn't stop talking for a couple hours.

Speaker 24 I think he said that they were on the freeway. Okay.
Or the highway, something like that. And then that's the first time that he reaches over, he punches her in the face.

Speaker 8 She started telling me

Speaker 8 how many times he had told her this. He just kept telling her over and over again.
First thing is he tried to

Speaker 8 stop her from breathing, so he kind of pinned, pushed down his forearm.

Speaker 6 Elena was in a quandary, reluctant to believe that the love of her life was capable of murder. He's always had an imagination.
He's always been different in the head.

Speaker 6 Like, so it's hard to think that this is this person that I know who I've known my whole life.

Speaker 24 Something like that, right. Right.

Speaker 6 And as she unburdened herself, she dropped another bombshell.

Speaker 24 One night I had my phone, it was in my boot, and I turned it on, I hit the record, and I got about a good 20 minutes of him talking about the whole entire thing.

Speaker 6 With her cell phone, she had captured these grainy, fuzzy images and Robbie's confessions more than a dozen times. Did you grasp the volume of this and what she's talking about?

Speaker 8 I don't think I grasped him at that point until I heard him, his voice,

Speaker 8 on those recordings. We'll go right into the shot in the dark.
We're ahead with me.

Speaker 8 I watched it go all my money. She's

Speaker 6 What was her reason for not having come forward on her own?

Speaker 8 She's hearing this information from Robbie. Yet, in her mind, there's no detectives beating down her door.

Speaker 6 She's hearing her husband confess to murder.

Speaker 8 She's talking to his friends. In fact, at one point, a good family friend of theirs says

Speaker 8 they're not stupid. If he killed her like this, they can tell.

Speaker 8 He would be in jail.

Speaker 8 So I see that wall that she was up against.

Speaker 6 John Carver, the medical examiner, says Robbie's confessions explained everything that had puzzled him at the autopsy.

Speaker 10 The fact that most of the bruising on the right side of the head fit very well with his descriptions of punching her several times from the passenger side.

Speaker 10 The description of the forearm across the neck was entirely consistent with the lack of fingernail marks,

Speaker 10 these larger hemorrhages on the whites of her eyes. All of a sudden, there is the best possible explanation I can think of for their presence.

Speaker 6 Elena's information was all Carver needed to change the manner of Brittany Brashere's death from undetermined to homicide.

Speaker 6 And three days after talking with Elena, Bisgard flew to California and arrested Robbie Walters.

Speaker 8 Do you know what you're under arrest for?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 8 First-degree murder.

Speaker 6 In custody, Robbie again told his tale of dozing off before the car crash.

Speaker 14 The very last thing I said to Brittany was, I love you, Ray.

Speaker 15 And the very last thing she said to me was, I love you, too, Robbie.

Speaker 8 I believe that he was trying to act very sincere. And I said, it's just not going to work with me.
I'm a homicide detective, and I look at,

Speaker 8 well, you know, I've seen all that stuff before.

Speaker 8 The stuff on her neck, the stuff on her face, all the right side.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 8 Because you're sitting on her right side.

Speaker 6 He doesn't know that you have seen the recordings. Right.

Speaker 8 And once that stuff came up, he didn't want to talk anymore. She recorded you when you were telling her what you did to Brittany.

Speaker 5 I don't know what I'll tell you anymore.

Speaker 6 Walters still refuses to talk about what he actually said in those recordings, except to say it was all a big misunderstanding. He claims it was Elena.
who started the whole thing.

Speaker 14 She would come over to these accusations and then there were times where I just agreed with her to get the conversation to end. If I just was like, yeah, Elena, you're totally right.

Speaker 14 Totally right, Elena. I broke her neck.
It's totally my fault. Little did I know she was recording the conversation.

Speaker 14 So evil.

Speaker 6 Prosecutors Phil Geigel and Helen Morgan now had plenty of ammunition to build a case around Robbie's own words. Britton, I never once thought about you telling her anything,

Speaker 6 ever. Until she took us off that night, and I was like, I'll tell you tonight.

Speaker 23 When he got in that car, I think he confronted her. And for all that we know about Brittany Brashiers, we know that she's her own woman.

Speaker 16 I can imagine her telling you it's none of his business anymore.

Speaker 6 The first blow, they say, came while Brittany was driving on the highway.

Speaker 23 But once he hit her, as he described it himself, he has to kill her because he can't take her to the hospital. I'm surprised she hasn't been conscious right here.

Speaker 6 Robbie took control of the car, stopped someplace, and continued the assault.

Speaker 6 Then he tried to cover up his crime by staging the accident.

Speaker 16 So he turns into this very dark street, gets in the passenger seat himself, puts his seatbelt on, unclips her, puts her back to where she was, and then he guns it.

Speaker 6 Did that ever happen?

Speaker 14 Do you think that even sounds logical?

Speaker 6 Did that ever happen?

Speaker 14 No. Do you think that even sounds logical?

Speaker 6 I'm asking you, did you kill her?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 6 Robbie Walters was sent to a Denver jail to await trial. And even then, prosecutors believe he was scheming for a way to avoid punishment.

Speaker 16 He is a dangerous, dangerous man.

Speaker 6 And this time, they say, he had his sight set on the state's star witness, the woman who betrayed him.

Speaker 16 No question, he wanted her dead.

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Speaker 8 I took a shot in the dark.

Speaker 23 I took a swing where I thought her head would be

Speaker 23 like a ton of bricks, like a house fell on her.

Speaker 23 Bam.

Speaker 6 August 2011. Prosecutor Phil Geigel's opening statement at Robbie Walters' trial stuns the courtroom as he simply reads Robbie's own words.

Speaker 23 And she screamed,

Speaker 5 Robbie,

Speaker 5 Robbie.

Speaker 23 And I hit her again and again and again.

Speaker 23 She slammed on the brakes.

Speaker 23 As long as I do this job, I'll never forget this case in those words.

Speaker 6 The defense insists all that was just bravado, just Robbie being Robbie, an immature, smart Alec who made up a story to scare away his annoying wife.

Speaker 6 Did you kill Brittany Brittany Brashiers?

Speaker 14 No, ma'am. And I hope to make that apparent.

Speaker 6 What was it like to walk into that courtroom and see Robbie Walters sitting on the bank?

Speaker 17 Oh, you don't know how bad I wanted just to go hit him.

Speaker 17 Just go hit him. Just like he...

Speaker 9 Boom, how does that feel?

Speaker 17 Didn't see that one coming, did you?

Speaker 17 Oh, it was so hard.

Speaker 6 Prosecutors point to the fact that Brittany's car crashed around 1.40 a.m.

Speaker 6 Odd because witnesses said she and Robbie left the photo shoot an hour before that.

Speaker 16 We know that it takes them an hour to get about five miles.

Speaker 6 Shortly after they left, two 911 callers reported a car stopped in the middle of the highway.

Speaker 15 The car next to me all of a sudden just locked up their brakes completely and came to a stop.

Speaker 23 And that's how we know when that first punch happened.

Speaker 6 There is some physical evidence, notably blood spatter in the car, a sign that Brittany was bleeding before the crash, says state expert Jonathan Priest.

Speaker 8 There is blood that is in the car that has to occur before she hits the windshield. And those two places are the airbag and the dashboard.

Speaker 6 Predictably, the defense's blood experts argue just the opposite.

Speaker 6 But this is not a forensics case. This case will rise or fall on Elena.
And she's had a long, complicated history history with Robbie.

Speaker 28 Again, no idea what to do, no idea what to say, no idea to believe it or not.

Speaker 6 Before the trial, when Elena spoke with police, she told them that while Robbie was confessing to murder, he was also threatening her.

Speaker 8 How does he threaten you?

Speaker 28 Telling me how he'll kill me if I say anything, how he'll, if he thinks he's done it once before, he'll do it again, how he'll just punch me in the face, and how he'll snap my neck.

Speaker 15 I'm so close to killing you, son.

Speaker 15 I want to punch you out or bad.

Speaker 6 Despite that, Elena stayed with him. Even when he was in jail, awaiting trial, she took Robbie's calls, apparently eager to believe that he simply made it all up.

Speaker 15 I wish you never recorded me.

Speaker 29 Oh, you should have never told me any story that was never true, because that was not cruel to you to me.

Speaker 23 She loved Robert Walters, and that's beyond dispute. She was in her early 20s.
She'd been with him since she was in high school. He was all she knew.

Speaker 29 Robbie, I love you. I love you so much.

Speaker 29 You're going to be given an opportunity to prove that.

Speaker 23 You can see

Speaker 23 Robert Walters evolving. You see his plans evolve.

Speaker 6 At first, the prosecutors believe Robbie thought he'd just control what Elena would say when she testified.

Speaker 23 I think initially he would say things along the lines of just tell him I was drunk or something something like that.

Speaker 6 They say then that his plan grew more sinister, that Robbie enlisted a fellow inmate to help him arrange to have Elena killed.

Speaker 6 He thought this was really going to happen?

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 23 Robert Walters is the smartest guy in the room in his own mind.

Speaker 6 That inmate turned state's witness in exchange for less prison time. And Robbie Walters was charged with another crime, soliciting Elena's murder.

Speaker 6 Remarkably, Robbie still seemed to think she'd stick by him.

Speaker 6 I hope you don't believe anything that these people are saying. I don't know if they're true.

Speaker 6 And by the time Robbie stands trial, there is no doubt Elena is firmly on the state's side.

Speaker 14 Probably like the second most painful thing that I've ever had to go through is watching Elena get on the stand and just cold-blooded, cold-blooded, no emotion, totally heartless, didn't even look at me not one time.

Speaker 14 Even when they said, point out Mr. Robert Walter, she didn't even look.
She said, he's over here.

Speaker 6 But she can't be trusted?

Speaker 14 No, she was like a puppet.

Speaker 6 What was her motive?

Speaker 14 Oh, that was, oh, revenge, for sure. I fell in love with someone else and broke her heart.
She broke her heart, tore her to piece, tore it to pieces, and

Speaker 6 you think she would have cooperated if he'd been nicer to her?

Speaker 16 I think she would have done everything in her power to convince herself he didn't do it.

Speaker 6 What gave her the most trouble?

Speaker 16 Explaining why she stayed over

Speaker 11 and over and over again.

Speaker 6 Through it all, Elena finds an unlikely new friend, the father of her one-time rival.

Speaker 17 Very, very good girl. Very, very much so stuck in a bad place.

Speaker 17 I'm glad that she did what she did, but if she was my daughter, I would have wished she would have just got the hell out of there and not worried about recording how Brittany Brushiers was dead.

Speaker 6 Robbie Walters does not take the stand. His attorneys argue the medical examiner got it right the first time.
The cause of Brittany's death just can't be determined.

Speaker 6 But now it's up to the jurors.

Speaker 16 In the middle of the night, do you think could 12 people walk this man?

Speaker 16 Oh my God.

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Speaker 6 So the jury goes out, there you are, right?

Speaker 5 You're just waiting.

Speaker 6 What was that like?

Speaker 9 It's terrible.

Speaker 6 The hours tick by as the jurors deliberate Robbie Walters' fate and Barry Brashiers steals himself.

Speaker 17 One of us is going to do a life sentence because he's not getting away with this.

Speaker 6 Are you serious?

Speaker 9 I'm absolutely serious. He couldn't.

Speaker 11 How could you do that?

Speaker 17 As a father, you couldn't allow that.

Speaker 11 You couldn't.

Speaker 6 You couldn't.

Speaker 6 Two days later, the jury finds Robbie Walters guilty of murder.

Speaker 6 Do you remember the second that you heard that word?

Speaker 6 Guilty.

Speaker 17 Just instant relief.

Speaker 6 Were you shocked when the jury came back with guilty?

Speaker 14 Oh, definitely. What was that like? Definitely, definitely.

Speaker 14 Totally hopeless, helpless.

Speaker 6 Robbie does score one small victory. Jurors acquit him of conspiring to murder his wife, Elena.

Speaker 16 No question in my mind that Robert Walters solicited Elena's death.

Speaker 16 I understand that 12 people who haven't been living it the way you've been living it say you have not met your burden, and I respect that.

Speaker 6 But for practical purposes, the murder conviction is enough. Walters is sentenced to life without parole.
You know, you don't want to say, yeah, and cheer, because it doesn't really change anything.

Speaker 17 I mean, my daughter's not going to come back.

Speaker 6 Brittany's brother, John. Is there a part of you that feels like justice was served?

Speaker 13 Maybe a little bit, but no.

Speaker 6 Not when you don't have your sister, right? right yeah

Speaker 6 they're great people i i just my heart goes out to them they have a loss that can never be filled detective troy bizgard admits he got lucky in this case and shudders to think what might have happened had things gone just a little bit differently

Speaker 6 Had her neck in fact been broken by that impact, you would have had no case. No, absolutely not.
Because you couldn't have proved it wasn't an accident.

Speaker 8 It would have, it most likely would have proved that it was an accident. With that on the windshield like that.

Speaker 6 Robbie has nothing nice to say about Detective Bizgard.

Speaker 6 What specifically did Bizgard do that you feel that you felt was unfair?

Speaker 14 Oh wow, there's a list. The guy's just a villain.
This guy goes behind the scenes and he just twists everything up. He gets Dr.
Carver to change his autopsy.

Speaker 14 He flies out to California, convinces Elena that I tried to have her killed to get her to testify because because she wasn't going to testify originally.

Speaker 6 As for Elena's recordings, in California, it is usually illegal to record someone secretly.

Speaker 6 Robbie believes the Denver trial judge should not have made an exception to allow the recordings in as evidence.

Speaker 14 I think I've got a really good chance of getting a retrial on appeals because of the illegal recordings.

Speaker 6 Would Robbie Walters be in prison today if he'd kept his mouth shut? No. No.

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 16 Robbie Walters convicted Robbie Walters.

Speaker 16 Thank you, Robbie Walters.

Speaker 6 Elena is now divorced from Robbie. My sense is that she may have moved on.

Speaker 14 Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Nobody knows where she's at. Now, I really hope that Elena's watching this.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry for breaking her heart.

Speaker 14 But I'm not a murderer.

Speaker 6 Elena had known him since childhood, but Brittany's tumultuous time with Robbie Walters was far more brief. Just nine months after she happened to meet him in Iraq, she was dead.

Speaker 16 Brittany Brashiers was a young woman who should be alive today

Speaker 16 and was that close to being alive today. She was doing well.

Speaker 16 She met somebody who sucked her in, but she was getting out.

Speaker 16 And she just didn't have another night to do it.

Speaker 13 The one thing I always think of when I think of her is she lived every single minute.

Speaker 6 Yeah, could she make you laugh?

Speaker 13 Oh, always.

Speaker 6 What did she teach you?

Speaker 13 Just have as much fun as you can because tomorrow could be the last day.

Speaker 6 How do you want people to remember her?

Speaker 9 Full of life.

Speaker 17 Full of life.

Speaker 17 That's all.

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