Death Without Mercy

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Speaker 5 911, wise emergency. Hey, we have smoke coming out of the house at Kilani and Eastern.

Speaker 6 It was Tuesday, November 29th, 2005, 10:27 a.m. in the morning when the call came out.

Speaker 7 Heavy smoke on the second floor. Okay, we got the fire department on the way.

Speaker 8 My name is Shelley Michael. I'm 35 years old.
I am a registered nurse.

Speaker 6 When I arrived, the fire was venting through the roof.

Speaker 6 There was a hole burned through the roof.

Speaker 8 I pick up the phone, and my friend Kelly is on the line, and she says, Shelly, your house is on fire. And I just

Speaker 8 threw the phone down and said, I have to go.

Speaker 6 It was a very intense fire and it was very difficult to extinguish.

Speaker 8 As I'm driving to the house, I'm shaking, I'm nervous. I'm calling Jimmy on the phone saying, honey, where are you? Our house is on fire.

Speaker 8 Call me back.

Speaker 9 My name is Dennis Michael. I'm the father of James Michael.
And when they contacted, they said there was a fire and Jimmy was in the fire. But they wouldn't give us any details.

Speaker 8 I see Jimmy's car in the garage and

Speaker 8 I start yelling, what's going on? Why is Jimmy's car in the garage? I just remember saying, please go find him, please go find him.

Speaker 6 You had a fully involved fire in that bedroom, which had reached the flashover stage, which means everything in that room was pretty much on fire at that point.

Speaker 8 I was in the police car, and

Speaker 8 a fireman, I believe, said, we found your husband. He didn't make it.

Speaker 9 And I was driving over 80 miles an hour all the way and you're just thinking you want to get there as soon as you possibly can. And of course we,

Speaker 9 my wife, Ruth, and myself, we both realized that in our hearts that Jimmy was gone.

Speaker 8 I have

Speaker 8 not taken my wedding set off ever

Speaker 8 since we've been married and

Speaker 8 I'm not ever going to take it off.

Speaker 8 Jimmy gave it to me, and

Speaker 8 I'll always be his wife.

Speaker 6 There were a lot of red flags concerning this fire. The position of the body was unusual for a fire inside of a bedroom.

Speaker 11 When I made it up the stairs and I saw the damage to that bedroom and I walked in, it actually took me a couple seconds to find the body on the bed. That's how bad it was devastated.

Speaker 11 My name is Paul Meznott. I'm a Morgantown police detective and on November 29th, 2005, I became involved in the death investigation of James Michael.

Speaker 11 From an investigative standpoint, there was just something really wrong.

Speaker 8 I am the wife of Jimmy Michael, and I am charged with first-degree murder and first-degree arson.

Speaker 8 And I'm wrongly accused.

Speaker 10 Death without mercy.

Speaker 5 Opening game for the 2007 West Virginia Mountaineers, pride of the entire state.

Speaker 5 From small towns to remote mountain valleys, kids here dream of being part of the excitement in Morgantown.

Speaker 5 Young Michelle Goots, raised in nearby Clarksburg, was no different, and her dream came true.

Speaker 5 Shelley, as she liked to be called, was a straight A student and cheerleader in high school. And it was clear to everyone, including her mom, that she had what it takes.

Speaker 13 She would go into the backyard and do backflips and cartwheels and getting herself ready for cheering. Cheering was her first love as far as sports.

Speaker 5 When she got to West Virginia University in 1990, her looks, brains, and talent paid off. She won a coveted spot on the cheerleading squad.

Speaker 5 And Shelly also had a more serious side.

Speaker 8 Wanted to be involved with children somehow. So that was never a question.
I always wanted to be a pediatric nurse.

Speaker 5 After graduation, she landed a job at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown. Respiratory therapist Stephanie Estel remembers Shelly well.
Hard not to, she says.

Speaker 14 Cheerleader moves in the unit, and she was all about flirting with the boys that we worked with.

Speaker 5 What do you mean cheerleader moves in the unit? You're in an intensive care unit.

Speaker 14 Right. I can remember she just came over and did this high kick to her ear and just kind of giggled and kept on walking.

Speaker 5 This did not endear her to Stephanie.

Speaker 14 Thought she was slightly annoying and she's not a person I would have picked to be my friend.

Speaker 5 But what Stephanie found annoying apparently made a very good impression on another therapist in the unit, Jimmy Michael.

Speaker 8 Jimmy was

Speaker 8 very handsome.

Speaker 8 He was very kind and loving and very generous, very family-oriented, very

Speaker 8 Christian man.

Speaker 5 But a very married Christian man. Married, in fact, to her colleague Stephanie Estel.
Yes, that's Stephanie Estel, who had two kids.

Speaker 5 And did we mention that Shelley by then was married too, to Rob Angus, and Shelley also had two kids? None of which appeared to deter her or Jimmy in the slightest.

Speaker 8 Jimmy and I would talk off and on at work and I knew that he and Stephanie were having issues and Rob and I were not getting along very well and

Speaker 8 we kind of

Speaker 8 just connected that way. We would just kind of sit around in chairs around work when it was slow and talk, chit-chat.

Speaker 14 What you doing?

Speaker 5 By the fall of 1998,

Speaker 5 Stephanie suspected something was up.

Speaker 14 The phone rang and I I said hello and there was a hesitation and then there was a dial tone.

Speaker 14 And I hit the return call code and this number came back and I wrote it down and when I went to work a couple days later I said to one of the girls, hey whose phone number is this?

Speaker 14 And she opened up the nurse's phone number list and it was the very first number on the top of the page was Shelly Angus.

Speaker 5 Soon, both couples divorced. And just eight months after hers was final, Shelly and Jimmy, both 28, got married, moving to the house on Killarney Drive, only minutes away from her job at the hospital.

Speaker 8 We had a whole future plan together.

Speaker 5 So you saw yourselves getting old together. Oh yes.
And this blended family was working out fairly well.

Speaker 5 I mean that can be pretty difficult when you've got somebody else's kids, your kids and so forth.

Speaker 8 Right and I

Speaker 8 thought it was working out very well.

Speaker 9 We thought a lot of her. She was more outgoing than Stephanie, and she was friendly.
I mean, she seemed like she was good for Jimmy.

Speaker 5 It seemed a perfect match and Jimmy's parents, Dennis and Ruth, say that perfect was very important to Shelly. When they walked out that front door it was like perfection.

Speaker 9 Hair was neat, everything was just perfect and she wanted everybody to think that they were the perfect model family.

Speaker 5 Jimmy had left the hospital to start a medical supply business, coaching football in his spare time, while Shelly coached the cheerleaders and, true to form, made sure everyone knew it.

Speaker 5 What did she do? Oh, back flipped right across this floor.

Speaker 9 Flipped all the way down through my yard. You know, one raid after another.
It was just

Speaker 5 November 28th, 2005. A quiet evening.
The Michaels were alone in the house, the kids staying with their exes. Jimmy turned in early, Shelly says, and was still asleep when she left the next morning.

Speaker 8 I left to go to work around 6-ish.

Speaker 14 I got there about 6.10, 6.15.

Speaker 8 And I went in and just did my normal routine work.

Speaker 5 Shelly says it was hours later, about 10.30 a.m., when that horrible phone call came, telling her that her house was on fire.

Speaker 5 So the adrenaline takes over, you race to the house. What's the scene like when you get there?

Speaker 8 Crazy.

Speaker 8 Firemen everywhere. I was saying where's Jimmy? Where is he? And they just kept saying we don't know, we can't find him, we don't know.

Speaker 5 Firefighters fought the blaze for half an hour before finding him. Jimmy Michaels' charred remains were in the master bedroom still lying in what was left of the bed.

Speaker 8 I remember crying in the police car. I don't know who was there with me.
I remember yelling, go get him, go do CPR. I remember telling Jeremy to ask God to give him back.

Speaker 11 Just thought that at that time we had a fire with a fatality.

Speaker 5 But his impressions changed, says Detective Paul Mezzanot, the minute he got to the scene and began watching Shelly Michael.

Speaker 11 The people that were showing up, they seemed to be more upset than she was. And it was just kind of different when we talked to her that day.

Speaker 5 The more they talked, the more he was sure that this was a person of interest.

Speaker 11 She didn't have a reaction.

Speaker 5 She didn't have a reaction?

Speaker 11 You mean?

Speaker 5 Was she a surprise?

Speaker 11 I never saw her cry.

Speaker 11 There was something that just kept drawing me to be around her because something never sat right with me from the beginning of the investigation.

Speaker 5 And then there was the crime scene itself, with Jimmy Michael's body simply lying on the bed.

Speaker 11 When we saw the body, something just stuck out to me that there wasn't something right with this.

Speaker 5 Just three days later, the medical examiner confirmed why all these somethings weren't right. Jimmy Michael, he found, had not died in the fire.
No, he was dead before the blaze even started.

Speaker 5 This was murder.

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Speaker 5 Morgantown, West Virginia prides itself on being just a little bit sleepy. A quiet place.

Speaker 5 So we will have a short for tomorrow.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 5 And says editor Jerry Ferrara of the local Dominion Post, it is a place where nothing much happened.

Speaker 12 Morgantown still maintains a small hometown flavor. Everyone knows everyone.

Speaker 5 So imagine the shock in town

Speaker 5 when police discovered the charred body of a popular businessman and peewee football coach in his burned out home.

Speaker 5 And he'd been murdered in his bed.

Speaker 12 Premeditated murder of that nature with all the bells and whistles doesn't happen. Not in Morgantown.

Speaker 5 But Detective Mezzanod says investigators suspected murder from the minute they saw Jimmy Michael.

Speaker 11 The body looked as if he was asleep. There was like no fire damage I'd ever seen on a body.

Speaker 5 It just struck you as bizarre. Very bizarre.
Bizarre because intense heat normally causes muscles to contract.

Speaker 5 Not only was Jimmy Michael lying flat on the bed, this healthy 33-year-old man apparently made no effort at all to escape.

Speaker 11 The house was pretty much salvageable, other than just some water and smoke damage. And I thought that was very weird.

Speaker 5 When the medical examiner found no soot in Jimmy's breathing passages, police knew this was murder.

Speaker 5 The fire set by someone to destroy evidence.

Speaker 5 Rumors began that that someone was Shelly Michael. One anonymous caller even naming a drug she might have used.

Speaker 11 Everybody that we talked to, you know, are you looking at the wife? Are you looking at Shelly? Shelly's this, Shelly's that.

Speaker 11 Check for drugs. She's got access to this.
You know, was he poisoned? Everybody that we talked to wanted to talk to us about her.

Speaker 5 Toxicology results would take weeks. But meanwhile, investigators interviewed family and friends.
And when they checked out the Michaels perfect marriage, they hit pay dirt.

Speaker 11 They thought that there was possibility of an affair.

Speaker 12 Often speculation like that though is just sheer gossip because who could believe it's true? Not here.

Speaker 5 The perfect family wasn't so perfect after all.

Speaker 11 We were able to confirm that there was an affair

Speaker 11 and then that kind of started driving the investigation.

Speaker 5 Shelly Michaels' lover was a man named Bobby Teets, who worked for her husband. When questioned, Teets admitted the affair.

Speaker 5 It started, he said, at this Chicago hotel

Speaker 5 when the two supposedly were on a business trip. And it was ongoing.
Teets said they'd had sex just three days before the fire in the very bed where Jimmy Michael was found. Did he have an alibi?

Speaker 11 He had an alibi. for the day of the fire.
He was making deliveries and he was at the warehouse and we have people that are putting him there.

Speaker 5 Investigators also briefly looked at Jimmy Michael's ex-wife, Stephanie. But although she and Jimmy had had an ugly divorce, Mezanot couldn't see her killing her children's father.

Speaker 11 She has a new husband. At the time this murder happened, she had a four-month-old baby.
You know, she has no motive to do this.

Speaker 5 No, every lead led him to the same place.

Speaker 5 But Shelly had an alibi.

Speaker 5 She'd been at work when the fire was discovered.

Speaker 5 Apparently, sure that that would clear her, she actually asked to come in and chat with detectives a second time.

Speaker 5 And she came without a lawyer.

Speaker 11 The interview took place for about nine hours. Did you see Jimmy before you left?

Speaker 7 I gave him a kiss on the forehead.

Speaker 13 Okay. Anything weird about that?

Speaker 7 Okay, and you're at the hospital by what time?

Speaker 19 I think I was there by 6.10 or 6.15.

Speaker 5 The only time she left, she said, was to retrieve a forgotten pager from her truck. Now, how did you know that this wasn't the case?

Speaker 11 With video from the hospital, security video.

Speaker 5 Something Shelly

Speaker 5 apparently overlooked. On the video, she is seen leaving the hospital at 8.11 and returning at 8.28 a.m.

Speaker 5 17 missing minutes.

Speaker 11 Surveillance cameras don't lie.

Speaker 11 We got your car leaving the hospital grounds.

Speaker 19 I didn't leave the hospital grounds.

Speaker 5 Complicating her denials, a neighbor actually saw her pull out of her own driveway at 8.20 when she insisted she was at work.

Speaker 11 Why did you go home?

Speaker 14 I didn't go home.

Speaker 11 That's something that we can't explain away. We got your car leaving the hospital grounds.

Speaker 19 I didn't leave the hospital grounds either.

Speaker 5 In the end, Shelly finally admitted it, saying, okay, okay, she did leave briefly for an errand around 8. But that was a full two hours before the fire was discovered.

Speaker 5 And she doggedly stuck to her denial of the affair, not knowing that Bobby Teets already had fessed up.

Speaker 9 Have you ever had an affair with him?

Speaker 7 Why would Bob say that he did?

Speaker 5 The detectives were flabbergasted at her denials and completely unpersuaded.

Speaker 11 She brought the investigation to herself. We didn't center it around her.
You know, everything that she did was a lie. You know, everything that she did was a lie.

Speaker 5 Then in February of 2006, the toxicology results finally came back. And just as that anonymous caller had suggested, Jimmy Michael did indeed die of a lethal dose of a drug.
a drug called Rockuronium.

Speaker 5 Rockuronium is used in hospital procedures when doctors need to temporarily paralyze muscles, but the patient always is put on a ventilator to help him breathe.

Speaker 5 Because without a ventilator, an injection of rockuronium causes slow suffocation.

Speaker 11 The way that it was explained to me that made the most sense would be that you would be awake and kind of watch yourself die.

Speaker 5 Can you imagine a more agonizing way to die than that? No.

Speaker 5 For police, it was the last piece of the puzzle

Speaker 5 and on March 10th 2006 they charged nurse Shelley Michael with first-degree murder and arson.

Speaker 5 It was front page news.

Speaker 12 Our readers wanted every single detail. Our single copy sales were phenomenal.

Speaker 5 Morgantown was reeling again.

Speaker 12 People look at her as a cool cucumber.

Speaker 12 That's the word around town is that they thought that she was so cold.

Speaker 5 Yet there were questions. Could Shelly Michael really leave work, kill Jimmy, ignite a fire, and return to the hospital in just 17 minutes? And why was it two hours before any sign of fire?

Speaker 5 The whole story, says her attorney Tom Dyer, is preposterous.

Speaker 10 The defense is able to contend that the murderer and the arsonist are one and the same person.

Speaker 10 And we know, absolutely, this young lady is not the arsonist.

Speaker 10 So it's going to be our position she's not the murderer.

Speaker 12 This is the type of case that people didn't want anyone to get away with.

Speaker 5 And no one was more determined to make Shelly Michael pay than District Attorney Marcia Ashdown, especially given how rock uronium kills. It's like being buried alive,

Speaker 5 not being able to move. What an awful way to die.
Exactly. It's unconscionable.

Speaker 5 The lead prosecutor on the case, Ashdown, says that as paralysis slowly crept over him, a terrified Jimmy Michael would have been totally helpless. That's like Edgar Allan Poe.

Speaker 5 Not being able to cry out, right?

Speaker 5 The state's theory of the crime is this. Shelley lifted the vial of rock uronium from the hospital, injected Jimmy probably while he slept, and then around 6 a.m.

Speaker 5 left for work as usual, only to secretly return home some two hours later.

Speaker 5 So you think she had time to leave the hospital, go back to her house, set this fire, and get back to the hospital in 17 minutes? Yes.

Speaker 5 It only takes, even by her own accounting, maybe four or five minutes one way. And how long does it take to flick a bic?

Speaker 5 But why then was the fire not spotted until 10.30, two hours after Shelley was seen at the house?

Speaker 5 Ashtown says it's very significant that all the windows and doors to their bedroom were closed.

Speaker 5 This was an oxygen-deprived fire, meaning that it could burn

Speaker 5 in a limited area for a period of time until some smoldering is sufficient to burn into something else that then becomes fuel.

Speaker 5 A fire that smolders for hours and then suddenly bursts into flames? To Shelley's lawyer, Tom Dyer, that makes no sense.

Speaker 10 This fire had to have started sometime after 10 o'clock. There's no evidence of any delayed combustion device or anything like that.

Speaker 5 Not only is there no hard evidence against Shelly, Dyer insists she had no motive, not even the affair. Shelley's reputation, after all, was for loving and leaving her men, not killing them.

Speaker 10 She has had affairs and run around on other men previously. She's divorced previously.
She's taken advantage of her relationships with men in the past and never harmed any of them.

Speaker 5 Prosecutors say the motive is obvious. Turns out Jimmy had recently taken out a half million dollar life insurance policy.
But despite the money, despite the affair, Shelly swears she's innocent.

Speaker 5 You had absolutely nothing to do with his death? Nothing at all. With this drug that you work with all the time?

Speaker 7 I work with it every day.

Speaker 8 I have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 5 And she has another suspect in mind. Is there a scene in your mind that puts anybody else in that room with him when this is happening?

Speaker 7 Kind of, yeah.

Speaker 5 Then who would that be?

Speaker 8 I know that that there was

Speaker 8 one person that

Speaker 8 gave him a lot of trouble all the time, constantly,

Speaker 8 made him miserable.

Speaker 8 Seemed like it was her point in life to make him miserable.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 5 it worked. Shelly is talking about Stephanie Estel, Jimmy's ex-wife, but she has an alibi.
Stephanie was at home with her new baby.

Speaker 5 Making trouble for somebody is a long way from injecting them with rockeronium and setting the house on fire. You can't believe that about her.

Speaker 8 I can believe that she is capable of it. Yes, I can.

Speaker 5 But the challenge for the defense is to convince the jury that Shelly isn't capable of it. And her lawyer is worried.

Speaker 5 Worried that jurors may decide to punish her for the affair, for lying, or for simply not really being the bubbly ex-cheerleader and perfect mother she tried to present to the world.

Speaker 10 She has a reputation for being a bit abrasive, a bit of a disciplinarian around her children and those who are working with her and for her, under her at the hospital.

Speaker 5 Is the jury going to like this woman? Does it matter to you?

Speaker 10 Sure, absolutely. I mean, it's especially important when the state's case

Speaker 10 is

Speaker 10 entirely circumstantial.

Speaker 5 But Shelly doesn't always make herself easy to like.

Speaker 5 Out on bail, she was put on strict home confinement by the court. Not that Shelly seemed to care.

Speaker 12 We have people calling saying, I think I saw Michelle Michael drive by the Killarney house. Is it possible? She was getting her nails done?

Speaker 5 A pedicure. All right.

Speaker 5 She stopped by a nail salon and got a pedicure. Did you just figure that wouldn't get noticed or what?

Speaker 8 I think so.

Speaker 12 Think about it. You've got children without a father.
You have parents who lost their son and in a terrible way. And you have someone who's been accused who just went and got her nails done.

Speaker 5 Did she not understand?

Speaker 10 Honest to goodness, Susan.

Speaker 10 She is indignant

Speaker 10 that

Speaker 10 she's on home confinement during this period of time.

Speaker 10 She is highly indignant that she's being accused of her husband's death.

Speaker 5 An equally indignant judge threw her in jail a month before the trial, which was moved 150 miles to Charleston because of all the publicity.

Speaker 5 If that phased Shelly, you'd hardly know it, even as the trial began.

Speaker 12 Can I tell you that that photo that we used where she's gone like this,

Speaker 12 people couldn't believe it.

Speaker 12 How could she?

Speaker 7 She's on trial for the murder.

Speaker 12 How could she give the thumbs up? You'd think her attorney would have warned her not to do that.

Speaker 5 I just sort of wonder as you look at your life and what's happened here.

Speaker 5 You were really rocketing along there, and it's sort of come to this. I mean, what do you think happened?

Speaker 14 I have no idea.

Speaker 8 I've been asking that question over and over again.

Speaker 5 Where did things sort of turn the other way?

Speaker 8 When I got arrested. When Jimmy died.

Speaker 5 How this drama ultimately unfolds soon will be up to a jury.

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Speaker 5 20 months after the fire on Killarney Drive,

Speaker 5 all that's left is an impromptu memorial to to Jimmy Michael.

Speaker 5 That and a prosecutor totally convinced that it was his wife, Shelly Michael, who killed him. What do you think your strongest evidence is going into this? The manner of death, the murder weapon.

Speaker 5 But prosecutors have no evidence directly linking Shelly Michael to the murder weapon or any aspect of this crime. And her lawyer, Tom Dyer, insists the circumstantial case is a weak one.

Speaker 10 This is my first whodunit. This is the first case that doesn't involve either direct evidence of guilt, an eyewitness, a smoking gun, so to speak, or a confession.

Speaker 5 Prosecutors Marcia Ashdown and Perry DeChristopher wasted no time providing jurors with painful details of Jimmy's death. James Michael died of an intentional

Speaker 5 poisoning

Speaker 15 of a substance called rock uronium, a death without mercy.

Speaker 5 And lurid testimony of Shelley's infidelity.

Speaker 11 We were, you know, kissing and holding hands and flirting.

Speaker 5 Shelley's lover, Bobby Teets, says the affair started at this Chicago hotel. The pair caught on tape checking in, and was still going on just three days before the fire.

Speaker 11 I stopped over there in the morning.

Speaker 15 Okay, why did you stop over there in the morning?

Speaker 11 Once again, be, I guess, intimate with her.

Speaker 10 Call your next witness.

Speaker 5 During excruciating testimony, Jimmy's dad wonders if even his son's murder ended the affair.

Speaker 9 I came in the back door and I went into the rec room.

Speaker 9 Bobby Teets was in his pajamas and he had his arms around Shelly, kissing her on the cheek. She immediately shoved him away when I walked in.
And this was the night before the funeral.

Speaker 5 Admitting that the affair makes their client look bad, Defense Co-Counsel Jim Zimorowski reminds jurors that motive without opportunity means nothing. And Shelly has an alibi.

Speaker 5 She has been at work, even under the state's theory, for several hours.

Speaker 5 The defense suggests the fire started shortly before it was spotted, around 10:30. Prosecutors say Shelly said it when she was seen at the house, shortly after 8 o'clock.

Speaker 5 But if that's so, it would have had to have smoldered for two full hours before bursting into flame.

Speaker 5 To sort it all out, the state called on arson experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Speaker 5 They built six models of the Michael bedroom, exact replicas down to the mattress, carpet, and paint and set them on fire.

Speaker 5 In the tests, the bedroom erupts into flames after smoldering for two hours and 12 minutes.

Speaker 5 Although, as the defense points out, that result came only after several failed tries.

Speaker 10 They keep manipulating these things. In the first five tests, they don't get anywhere near what they're looking to prove, they can't squeeze the square peg into the round hole.

Speaker 5 Still, the prosecution has scored points simply by showing it's possible for a fire like this to smolder undetected for two hours.

Speaker 11 There was never another person that we investigated with motive to do this and there was never another suspect that was developed.

Speaker 5 She's the only one. And that, the defense argues, was the problem.
Police really investigated no one else, not even others who had access to rock uronium, like Jimmy's ex-wife.

Speaker 5 Stephanie Estel listens as the defense tries to finger her for this murder. From what I heard, she was unaccounted for between 7.30 and 9.30.

Speaker 5 And her only other alibi between the hours of 6 and 10 were her husband Dan.

Speaker 5 You verified all that?

Speaker 10 Yes, sir.

Speaker 5 And you took them at their word.

Speaker 11 Why wouldn't I take them at their word?

Speaker 5 Why wouldn't you take Michelle Michael at her word?

Speaker 11 Because every time I gave her an opportunity to do that, she lied.

Speaker 5 Courtroom dramas on TV often feature dramatic moments when the defendant takes the witness stand to try to undo damaging testimony like that. But in real life, it rarely ever happens.

Speaker 5 Certainly not to a defendant who's been caught on tape lying repeatedly. But Shelly Michaels' case is in seeming shambles, and so she rolls the dice and steps into the witness box.

Speaker 10 Please call your next witness.

Speaker 10 Was there another matter that you were not truthful about in your meeting with Detective Mezinot?

Speaker 5 Yes. Her lawyer, Tom Dyer, sympathetically elicits all the reasons she chose to lie.

Speaker 10 Why did you not tell them the truth about leaving the hospital that morning?

Speaker 17 I didn't want my boss to find out I left.

Speaker 8 I didn't want to get fired.

Speaker 5 As for not admitting her affair to the detective.

Speaker 10 And why would you lie to him about that?

Speaker 17 I was ashamed of myself. I just cheated on my husband and I just didn't want to cause any more pain.

Speaker 8 Make it worse.

Speaker 5 The life insurance, Shelly insists, was for the children, though she was the beneficiary. She testifies the couple had no debts and she had no motive to kill Jimmy.

Speaker 10 Shelley, did you have anything at all to do with the death of your husband?

Speaker 14 No, I did not.

Speaker 10 How about the fire at your house?

Speaker 14 No, I did not.

Speaker 5 But prosecutor de Christopher is merciless.

Speaker 15 That, in fact, was a lie to cover up a lie.

Speaker 5 Saying Shelly killed out of greed. And she points to her initial 34-page insurance claim to show just how greedy Shelly could be.

Speaker 15 You claimed reimbursement for 12 bottles of nail polish, totaling $72.

Speaker 8 I had a big basket of nail polish. Actually, that's probably an understatement.

Speaker 15 You requested reimbursement for the value of Jim's dress socks, 30 pairs, totaling $240. Is that right?

Speaker 8 I guess so if it's on there.

Speaker 15 You put a price on your framed wedding bows, $40.

Speaker 17 It was in Michael's frame, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 5 Over and over, DeChristopher ridicules Shelly's claim that, at heart, she really is an honest person.

Speaker 15 And in your interviews with Detective Mezanot, you lied to him over 100 times, correct?

Speaker 8 I lied a lot.

Speaker 15 Well, would you doubt that it was over 100 times? Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 8 I actually counted.

Speaker 15 Well, so did I. 52 times on December 8th regarding the car, you lied five times on December 7th about moving your car.
Does that sound about right? Probably.

Speaker 15 You lied 28 times on December 7th regarding the affair. Probably.
You lied 20 times on December 8th about the affair. Does that sound about right?

Speaker 8 Sure.

Speaker 15 So that adds up to over 100.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 15 But the most important lie, the prosecutor says, You took Flame to the bed where Jim's body lay already dead, correct?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 5 Cross-examination was brutal, but Shelly says she had to testify.

Speaker 8 I didn't do it and I wanted everybody to hear me.

Speaker 5 The ex-cheerleader who had twirled and charmed her way through life could only hope that when the jurors saw her struggling in that witness box, they saw an innocent person.

Speaker 5 Do you feel like taking the stand helped?

Speaker 5 I don't know if it did or not.

Speaker 5 The jury is about to get the case, and nothing less than Shelly Michaels' future is on the line.

Speaker 10 It's all or nothing. First-degree murder.
Guilty or not guilty.

Speaker 5 The decision may rest on how jurors see Shelly. Is she still the perky cheerleader whose white lies made her the easy target of investigators?

Speaker 5 Or is she a psychopath, a murderer of unimaginable cruelty?

Speaker 8 I'm still scared to death because I'm not those 12 members and I don't know what's in their head.

Speaker 5 As the trial winds down, Shelly insists again she only lied because she was scared, not because she was guilty.

Speaker 11 Surveillance cameras don't lie.

Speaker 11 We got your car leaving the hospital grounds.

Speaker 19 I didn't leave the hospital grounds.

Speaker 8 My honest value in life is honesty, and I know it didn't show that day, that's for sure.

Speaker 5 To be honest, if you will, I mean, looking at the testimony, that's laughable.

Speaker 8 I know.

Speaker 5 But I do want to respond. All those lies figure mightily in closing arguments.
Her lies are a symptom of her guilty knowledge.

Speaker 5 Prosecutor Marcia Ashdown dramatically recreates her version of the crime. She had injected her husband with rock uronium.
All she had to do

Speaker 5 about a second. And to get the fire started,

Speaker 15 this is all she had to do.

Speaker 5 The evidence may be circumstantial, but Ashdown says it is overwhelming. Who had access to the murder weapon? Who had access to the victim's home? Who had access to the victim's body?

Speaker 5 Who had motive or something to gain from Jimmy Michael's death?

Speaker 10 She's guilty of lying,

Speaker 9 cheating.

Speaker 10 There's no question about that.

Speaker 10 Is she guilty of murder and arson?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 5 In a last-ditch effort to plant doubt, the defense shocks the court by suggesting that perhaps no one is guilty. Perhaps this isn't even a murder.

Speaker 10 So, why is this guy found in bed?

Speaker 10 Could it be suicide?

Speaker 5 Perhaps Tom Dyer continues: Jimmy Michael killed himself,

Speaker 5 making it look like a murder so his family would get the life insurance money.

Speaker 10 He knows what rock uronium does.

Speaker 10 He's a respiratory therapist. He knows it's going to give him a little bit of time

Speaker 9 to start a fire.

Speaker 10 It won't look like suicide.

Speaker 10 This evidence alone is all the reasonable doubt you would ever need in a case like this.

Speaker 5 Jimmy's family is appalled.

Speaker 9 That's the most unbelievable part that my son would ever commit suicide.

Speaker 5 Never, ever would he do that. Never.

Speaker 5 Finally, after eight days of testimony, the judge gives the case to the jury.

Speaker 5 As you wait for the jury, what are you most concerned about?

Speaker 9 We're always worried that she'll come back not guilty or even guilty with mercy because she's guilty. And we don't hate Shelly, if you can believe that, but we hate what she did.

Speaker 9 I'm not looking for revenge, just justice.

Speaker 5 There's not long to wait. The jury has a verdict in a day and a half.

Speaker 7 All right.

Speaker 10 Has the jury reached a verdict in this case?

Speaker 10 Is the verdict unanimous in each case? Yes, sir, it is.

Speaker 10 Will the defendant please stand?

Speaker 10 With respect to the charge of murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant Michelle Michael guilty with a recommendation of mercy.

Speaker 5 And guilty as well on the arson charge.

Speaker 10 Guilty.

Speaker 5 The murder conviction alone carries an automatic life sentence. With mercy, only means parole is theoretically possible.

Speaker 5 Shelley seems stunned, emotionless. Her family takes it hard.

Speaker 13 My daughter did not do this, could not have done this, this, would not have it in her to do it.

Speaker 5 But Shelley never convinced Morgantown.

Speaker 12 There are an awful lot of people who would love if Michelle Michael never saw the light of day again.

Speaker 12 Again, because of the type of crime that it was.

Speaker 5 And she certainly hasn't convinced the Michaels. Was justice done?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 5 Yes. I don't know how a person becomes the person she is to be able to do what she did.

Speaker 9 She had planned this thing out to what she thought would be maybe the perfect crime.

Speaker 5 She will have ample time to consider what went wrong.

Speaker 5 Why someone so good at living the picture-perfect life fared so badly at the perfect prime.

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From the beginning. All the angels are gone, son.

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