Peace, Love and Murder

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I am

a peaceful person.

Meditation is

a gift.

It's about being right there in the now.

Stopping everything else around you and and come into yourself.

Meditation helped me deal with Tony's death.

Toni was a beautiful woman, smiled a lot, laughed,

just full of life.

Tony was smart, strong physically and emotionally. She was personality plus.

I remember my wife from meeting her the very first day with her her eyes. I had seen her eyes for all of my life.

I think I have always been in love with her.

I came home five o'clock and I went around to the front door. The front door was locked.
Then I walked around to the side.

My whole world just completely ended.

The crime scene in my 30 years of law enforcement was one of the bloodiest I had ever reviewed.

There was excessive violence to the victim. I must say this case consumed me.
It was your typical housewife that was so viciously and brutally murdered right in her home.

This case needed to be solved. My fear is a guy like this could be doing it again.
Somebody did it. She didn't kill herself.
He'd have to be the most horrible monster in the whole universe to do that.

Bob's accurate. A monster did commit this crime.

I had a handful of suspects in this case. They were eliminated one by one.
The person left at the end came about being Bob Hartzong.

I know I'm innocent. Most people that know me know that I'm innocent.

Peace, love, and murder. Tonight's 48 Hours Mystery.

An incredibly beautiful little girl knocked at my door.

Her name was Tony, and we talked for

must have been six or seven hours. Bob Eckhart and Tony Soren began their whirlwind courtship when she was just 23.
He was 28. We could connect completely without any

no walls, no shields, no nothing went up. Everything was just magic.

It was the uninhibited early 70s.

Within 48 hours of meeting, the two young lovers eloped.

That's me and her.

That was the wedding day.

Obviously,

hippies.

And they had a hippie wedding.

This was my rabbi.

I was always amazed that I was married to her.

She was my lover, my wife, my sister, my mother.

Everything rolled into one.

Bob and Tony were so entwined, they even created their own lyrical last name,

Heart Song. by fusing their two given names.
We took the heart out of Eckhart and the song out of Sora and we made heart song.

We had blended together and become one person.

Toni had lost both her parents as a teenager and was raised as a young adult by her older brother Barry Soren.

I did everything I could for her and our relationship was tight enough that she wasn't spun out about the terrible events, the terrible way her life started.

But Tony seemed to have found with Bob a path to her own happy family. Her cousin, Mel Sorkowitz, admired Bob's ambition.
Bob impressed me as being a very hard-working guy.

Another cousin, Deb Schepp, liked Bob's calm personality. He was a very peaceful person, very spiritual.

I know he and Tony practiced meditation. It seemed like the ideal life for her.

Bob and Tony eventually settled in Jupiter, Florida, where they did everything together. They were strict vegetarians and wrote a tofu cookbook.
It was a lot of fun.

It was just a lot of work, but a lot of fun. They also were both artistic.
This was a drawing I did of Tony's eye, and this was her drawing. We kind of merged these things together.

We beaded necklaces for stores, and we produced thousands and thousands and thousands of beaded necklaces.

They used their artistic talents to start a company building stone waterfalls for homes and businesses.

And they became dedicated parents to two sons, Jake and Eli. Tony was a happy mother.
She loved those boys. I think she was my best friend.
She'd help me out in whatever troubles I have.

I love my mom. My parents loved each other.

Through 27 years of a generally happy marriage, Bob and Tony did have some rocky periods.

Were there ever any times where you or Tony were unfaithful to your marriage? I've never had sex with another woman during my marriage, but there were times where I was sorely tempted.

There's no question about that. I think she had sex with another man once or twice.
Bob says Tony's affair happened in the early 80s.

They got through that period, but the tough times occasionally returned. Tony kept a journal that chronicled her frustrations.
Her cousin Deb Schepp reads excerpts written in the early 90s.

He doesn't seem to really show me any love. Not in ways that are important to me, like calling.

I'm constantly angry and frustrated. I hate it.
He hates it. I feel so trapped.
Not enough money to leave. Not enough care to work it out by both of us.

Did you have your share of tough patches? Yes, absolutely. How did you deal with them? Kept working.

Kept working on it. You know, tried to find out what I was not doing that made sense, what I was not communicating, what I was not connecting with.
That's what I meant. She was very upfront.

She'd tell me that this is, I don't like this. I said, okay, what can I do about it? Even her cousins acknowledged Tony was not the easiest person to live with.
Tony had a tough side.

She inherited that from her mother.

She could come across as being aggressive.

But by all accounts, there were never any physical confrontations. Tony's brother, Barry Soren, says Tony would have said something if she ever felt threatened by Bob.

You think your sister would have called you and told you about it? Yep. No doubt.
No doubt. No,

she would have used me to come in and protect her.

The Hardsongs worked through the rough patches of their marriage. And by the late 90s, Bob says, things got better.
The business was thriving, and they were happy again.

We're all diamonds that need to be shaped.

And that's what I am, is a diamond that's being shaped in my life. You know, and so I listened.

Tony wrote about their reconciliation in her journal: quote, things were better, and Bob is back to his sweet self.

It was the most incredible relationship.

I used to describe it as living in Nirvana. You loved her a lot.

Do you miss her?

Yes.

Sorry.

The heart songs' life together ended on September 26, 2000. Bob says he came home at 5 p.m.
and found Tony lying in a pool of blood.

I lifted her up with my arm like this, and I held her up. And when I saw her face, I freaked out.

And

when I saw that, and her eyes were beaten closed, I was just

destroyed by it.

I gently laid her back down

and I said to myself, I don't want to remember this.

Tony's cousin, Sandra Sorkowitz, was shocked by the carnage. Somebody had to be very, very angry to do what they did to Tony.
It was too violent. No valuables were taken.
She wasn't raped? Nope.

Another cousin, Alyssa Lejeune, thinks this was not a random murder. Do you think she knew her killer?

I think... that she probably did know her killer.
And others began to wonder about the person Tony knew best, Bob Hartzong. I never would have believed he personally did this to Tony,

but I began to wonder if maybe there wasn't something we as a family didn't know.

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Los prees de la promión pueden sermonores que los de las comidas.

Heart-shaped cool.

If you stood up on top of the waterfall, you'd see it perfectly as a heart. Just days after he found his wife, wife, Tony, murdered in their home.
Her body lay around, she was half in and half out.

Bob Hartzong led local media on a tour of the crime scene. I just want to know who and why.

You invited the media into your home. Why'd you do that? They kept asking me, and I finally said, okay, let's talk about it.

I was, you know, I could not believe that somebody in the world had done this.

Literally, every part part of Tony's body had a bruise to it.

Tim Valentine investigated the case for the state attorney's office. Tony initially was beaten in this area.

We determined that by the amount of blood on the wall here and the amount of blood on the cement.

We theorized that somebody was holding her by the back of the head and just literally smashing her head against the cement.

But Tony, described by everyone who knew her as one tough lady, did not stay down. Tony had time to stand up.
Tony had time to reach across the door.

There was a little table there and grab a beach towel that was clutched in her hand when she was found dead.

It was after collapsing again, investigators believe from the blood evidence that Tony was stabbed seven times in the neck. Making sure she wouldn't wake up.
Definite overkill.

The brutality associated to this case was well beyond the norm I had found in any case.

Bob knew investigators would suspect him of the murder. I'm the husband.
Homicide 101. Right.
Check the surviving spouse out thoroughly. Right.

But Bob cooperated fully. He took and passed a lie detector test.
He did two taped interviews with police, never asking for a lawyer. He told them he left the house in the early morning.

I got on the 95 and I went to Delray to my job in Delray.

Bob says he spent most of the day at a job site in Delray Beach, 43 miles south of Jupiter. Investigators say the murder happened around 1 p.m.

I was there until about 2.30.

I mean, I've got five witnesses that are verifying that I was there. Bob was later seen at this Mazda dealership in Del Rey at 2.45, and he says he didn't get home until 5 p.m.

when he discovered Tony's body.

Police apparently bought Bob's alibi. Barry Soren, Tony Hartzong's brother, met with the lead homicide detective to ask about progress in solving his sister's murder.
He said to me,

we don't think Bob Hartzong did this. He's just a hippie.
He's harmless. And in answer to your question, no, I don't believe your brother-in-law had anything to do with this.

Police now looked harder at other suspects. A homeless man had been seen in the neighborhood for several weeks.
There had also been a spate of burglaries in the area.

And police found an unidentified fingerprint on the door lock of the Hartzong home. None of these leads went anywhere.
There was no prime suspect.

There was not enough evidence to charge anybody in this case.

The case went cold, but members of Tony's family were still troubled by some of Bob's behavior. Elijah and Sherry Hartzong.

Like bringing a woman to his son's wedding just six months after the murder. God forbid, if something so horrible had happened to my husband.

I'm pretty confident six months later, I would not be ready to dance with another man at our child's wedding.

The woman I took to my son's wedding was a friend of my wife and I was in tears the whole wedding. And while some who knew Bob found it hard to believe he was capable of murder.

Did you ever see Bob Hart's Long Angry? Never. No, no.

I never really saw him raise his voice. Never violent? Nope.

Others say Bob had a mean streak. He gets out of the car, he walks up to me, and he says, I hate the bitch.

Steve Kachakian says Bob once referred to Tony that way while Kachakian was working for Bob. He says he saw Bob's temper another time directed at him over a minor business matter.

I've never seen anybody get so angry

at anybody.

I've been a bouncer. I mean, I've seen people angry, but never like this.

But with the case at a standstill Bob was moving forward with his life

two months after the murder he bought a motorcycle he sold his business a year later and he started dating it's not that often you go out with somebody and find out that their wife's been murdered the case is still open

and you know he did tell me they suspected him and whatever so if there ever is a customer related Susie Goldstein who owns a marketing business met Bob through an online dating service in 2002.

Tell us about Bob. What kind of man is he? He's gentle, kind,

totally unconditional, which I have never met a man like that in my life.

Bob and Susie got married a year later and settled into their new life together.

Yet even living with his new wife, Bob kept a shrine to Tony's memory in his den. The rock that's painted was painted by an artist that we worked with.

And he has a trunk full of memories in the living room. This is a coloring book that my wife put together.
This was a wedding necklace that I wore.

This was

the garter,

you know.

Tiny mementos of the time we were together. My wife was cremated.
She is in here.

And one day, my children, when I die, will take a moment and they'll put my remains where her remains go. Tony's unsolved murder continues to be a part of Bob's new life with Susie.

Whoever did this crime, if he could do it once, and this might not have been the first time,

he could be doing it many more times. There's an excellent chance there is somebody out there still doing this.

But while Bob and Susie were still wondering who killed Tony six years after her death, Palm Beach County cold case detectives had found new evidence.

DNA in the right palm and his blood under her thumb. And they were closing in.
That to me was the killer.

John Van Houghton has spent years tracking deer through the Georgia woods.

But he finds most of his prey in the urban setting

of Palm Beach County, Florida, as a detective in the Cole case squad. The attack was so brutal on the victim, Tony Hotsong.

99% of them are domestic when the violence is so overwhelming.

In 2006, six years after Tony Hartsong's unsolved murder, the coal case was reopened and landed on Van Houten's desk.

DNA testing in 2000 was not conclusive enough to charge anyone, so Van Houten had all the samples from Tony's body retested using newer, more precise techniques. And he made two striking discoveries.

A trace of Bob's blood was under Tony's left thumbnail, and his DNA was on her right palm. That's what convinced Van Houten's boss, Sergeant Bill Springer, the coal case could now be solved.

When I reviewed this case, and I looked at the physical evidence, and I said, this is a good case.

Armed with the new forensic evidence, police brought Bob Hartzong back in for another interview. I don't think it's my blood.
Bob, I don't know why it matches me, but I did not do it.

He denied it and denied bleeding, was very

adamant that he didn't bleed that day.

Convinced Bob was lying and convinced they had the DNA evidence to prove it, the Cole Case squad came to an inescapable conclusion. Detective, who do you think killed Tony Hartzong?

Her husband, Robert Hartzong.

In September 2006, Bob's quiet new life with Susie got a jolt.

I got out of my car.

All of a sudden, the black car comes rocketing into the driveway and says to me, hands up, and points a gun at me.

Bob was arrested for the murder of his wife, Toni, six years earlier. Then he was held without bail for 20 months as preparations for his trial dragged on.

20 months in jail is not something any one of us want to do.

Yes, sir, I sure will. In May 2008, Bob was released, but he was far from free.
He was sent home and kept under house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet.

The whole concept of killing somebody, of harming somebody else, is just beyond me.

Is it even conceivable in your mind that Bob could be guilty of the murder for which he's accused? No.

No. If I thought in any way, And I'm talking about in any way, there was any possibility

he could be a man that was capable of doing something like that.

And with all we've had to face, I would have walked away.

Finally, in September 2008,

I'm ready. Nearly eight years to the day after Tony's murder, this is the most difficult day.
Bob is headed to court.

We're fighting for Bob's life, our family.

Tony's cousins arrive at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, hoping for some resolution. I'm sure as the trial unfolds, we're all going to learn things that we wish we could erase, but we can't.

The evidence presented by the state will show how the defendant orchestrated the events. of the day.
Prosecutor Barbara Burns will try to convince the jury that Bob is the murderer.

Is Bob Hartsong a cold-blooded killer? In my opinion, absolutely. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Burns calls to the stand a neighbor of the Hartsongs named Carol Parkman.

She testifies she heard Bob and Tony arguing around one o'clock, the time investigators believe the murder occurred.

Were you familiar with their voices? Yes. Had you heard them raise their voices at each other in the past?

A couple times.

Investigators say lunchtime was Bob's window of opportunity. His cell phone records show no calls between 12.30 and 1.41,

even though he was on the phone constantly the rest of the day. That's when Burns believes Bob was at home arguing with Tony.

He confronted his wife with whatever the confrontation was that turned violent. As for the knife used to stab Tony, Burns believes it came from this open kitchen drawer in the crime scene photos.

Under questioning, Bob told detectives that was the drawer where he and Tony kept their favorite knife, which they used to cut tofu. Slightly serrated, but it was a very smooth

knife. Was it like a pairing knife? It was a little longer than a pairing knife.
It was about, what, five or six inches, something like that. And Bob tells investigators that knife is missing.

The last time you saw it, was it in the sink or in the drawer? The only time I would ever, other than I when I used it, it would be in a drawer.

A stranger is going to go to the knife block if that's what they're looking for. Because they're not going to have any idea that a knife is kept anywhere else in that kitchen, except on a knife block.

So you think the murder was committed with that tofu knife? I absolutely do. But Burns' most compelling piece of evidence is that trace of Bob's blood found under Tony's left thumbnail.

The jury, welcome back. Everyone may be be seated.

Tense moments in court as the jury listens to the tape of his interrogation by Springer and Van Houten. Is that we can't get over your blood on her body?

I have no explanation for it because I didn't touch her. A plausible reason.
I didn't know why your blood would be on her body. No idea.
I have no idea at all.

Outrageous, really.

Today, Bob admits the blood might be his,

but he he has an explanation. There, you can have a picture of me taking my finger off there.
That was close. It's possible that I cut myself slightly at work.
I might have cut myself on

anything. Her nail might have gotten into an old cut.
I don't know. Then there is the other critical piece of evidence.
Bob's DNA was found on the palm of Tony's right hand.

And that means one thing from all the experience I have.

That's the last person that she touched or touched her.

Bob admitted touching Tony when he found her body here in the doorway of the Hartsong's home. But did he just touch her or did he bleed on her?

It becomes a key question because if Bob's blood is on Tony's palm, it almost certainly got there the day of the murder. She didn't leave the house with blood on her hand.
No woman does.

If she noticed there was blood on her hand, she has immaculate hands. She would have washed it off.
A blood expert testifies about the breakdown of DNA on Tony's palm.

She says it's a mixture of Bob and Tony's DNA, and some of it is blood. But it still could be a combination of skin cells plus blood, or blood plus blood.
I just know blood's there.

I don't know what the other component would be. Barry Soren takes this to mean it's Bob's blood.
And after eight long years, he thinks his sister's murder has finally been solved.

I cannot find a way out for Bob.

He had to have done this. I'm sorry to say that.
But Bob's defense attorney says the blood evidence isn't conclusive at all. And he's about to punch some big holes in the prosecution's case.

As I sit here, I am adamantly telling you that this man did not kill his wife of 27 years.

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Welcome to Radio Rental.

The scariest stories you've ever heard in your life. All told by real people.

And off we go.

This wasn't a human being that I saw. There's something here in this house.
Something out of this world. There was a woman moving through the hall.
I stepped back and I was completely alone.

Radio Rental is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I got on 95 and I went to Delray. From the very beginning.
It was a very, very large project. We were building a shark pond.

Bob Hartzong has said he could not have murdered Tony because he was down in Delray Beach working on one of his water projects. It was at this mansion, later featured in the movie, Bad Boys 2.

Do you know Robert Hartzong?

Yes. Do you remember Mr.
Hartzong being present at the Delray Beach site? Yes, sir. Do you remember what?

Five men who worked with Bob at the job site that day testify, and they all say they saw him at various times throughout the day. Do you know how long he stayed that day at the job site?

About 3 o'clock, 3.30. Do you think they were lying or mister Harris? I don't think they were lying.
I think they were mistaken. It was a very large construction site.

But because they saw him at one point and then sometime later on, they just kind of assumed that he was there. So I think it was a mistake.

Remember, police say the murder happened around 1 p.m. in Jupiter, 43 miles north of Del Rey.
Bob's lawyer, Barry Maxwell, says it's a stretch to believe Bob could have pulled it off.

Witnesses place him in Del Rey at various times in the morning and the afternoon.

So bottom line, in order for him to have left the construction site, headed back home, which is a good 45-minute drive away, commit the murder, clean himself up, drive another 45 minutes back to the Aldel Rey Beach construction site.

Superman couldn't have done that. He would have had to flown like Superman.
And as for Bob's blood under Tony's fingernail, Maxwell cross-examines the blood expert.

And from your analysis, ma'am, can you tell this jury how long this sample of Mr. Hartzong's blood DNA was existing underneath the left nail of Mrs.
Hartzong?

No, DNA does not tell you how long it's been there.

We're talking a husband and wife married for 27 years. We don't know when that blood was placed under that fingernail.
We don't know if it was the morning of, a couple mornings before.

You know, let's talk about this blood. Maxwell tells jurors there could be all kinds of explanations.
How do we know Mr. Hartstong didn't cut himself

shave air a couple days before? Oh, Mrs. Hartstong, oh, honey, you got some blood.
Let me wipe that. How do we know? You don't.

You sure?

Yeah. And remember prosecution witness Carol Parkman, the neighbor who testified she heard Bob and Tony arguing?

Well, it turns out, in previous interviews with investigators and attorneys, she told a different story. Now, do you remember your answer when I asked, could you recognize the voices that you heard?

You stated no, didn't you? Right. And Maxwell discredits her previous testimony.

You also stated that the pitch of the tone of of the conversation you heard was not aggravated, but was a normal conversation, correct? That's correct.

There's another big problem for the prosecution. Crucial mistakes by the initial investigators after the crime.
Mistakes even the prosecutor acknowledges. Nobody asked him to take his shirt off.

Nobody inspected him under his clothing for any injuries or fresh injuries. Isn't that standard procedure? Shouldn't that have been done? Yes.

The original investigators also failed to request records from cell phone towers that would have pinpointed Bob's location throughout the day by tracking the signal from his phone.

Those records are now gone. It would have either given him the airtight alibi that he wanted or it would have given us the airtight case that we've needed.

Let's talk about this microchondrial. Maxwell points out to the jury other unexplained pieces of evidence.
Unidentified hairs found on Tony's body. There were foreign hairs all over this woman's body.

Tests showed none were Bob's hairs, and Maxwell tries to create doubt in jurors' minds. So as we sit here today,

we don't know whose hair was found on Mrs. Hartzong's body.
That's crucial for the state's case, and they haven't met that.

And there are more forensic questions that investigators never answered.

That unknown fingerprint on the deadbolt lock and bloody footprints in the house that the original detective on the case could not identify.

Well, to the best of your knowledge, have we ever matched the footprints walking through the home? No.

And then there is Ronald Gagne, a schizophrenic homeless man seen near the Hartsong house around the time of the murder. He left Florida soon afterwards.

Investigators tracked Gagno down in California, where local police interviewed him. Hear your voice has ever told you they killed somebody?

Gagno mutters incoherently in this police video, talking vaguely about hearing voices and dreaming about murder. You think he might have killed somebody?

Yeah. California police claim that off-camera, Gagno talked of details that police say might be related to Tony Hartzong's murder.

Directing your attention to the details they reported to Palm Beach County Detective David Bradford. Mr.
Gagno talked about a blonde woman, correct? That's correct. Mrs.

Hartzong was blonde, wasn't she? That's correct. Mr.
Gagno talked about the blonde woman being stabbed, didn't he? Yes, he did. I don't have any other questions, Joe.
Thank you.

But Gagno's DNA was not found at the crime scene, and he was dismissed as a suspect.

Who killed Tony Hartzong? We don't know, and we'll never know.

While the lawyers offer different explanations of the evidence and different theories about how Tony was killed here at our home in Jupiter, one big question continues to hang over the entire case.

If Bob Hartzong did kill Tony, what was his motive? It's greed to me is what it is. Investigators think Bob's motive was mercenary.

They speculate he was planning to divorce Tony and didn't want to pay for it. He's the type of person that it's my business, my house.

I've worked hard all these years, and I'm not going to share it because it's mine. But Barry Soren believes Bob's motive was years in the making.
He's married. What do you mean?

Marriage is the motive. People are married, they have a thousand insults, a thousand things that happen in a marriage, a thousand hurts.

If you're not careful and you don't have a good core morality after 27 years,

people lose it.

Good afternoon, members of the jury. Welcome back.
Everyone may be seated. But in court, the prosecution has no clear-cut motive to offer.

Good afternoon. Raise your right hand.
And the jury is about to hear from one last witness who knows more than anyone about Bob and Tony Hartsong's marriage.

Please introduce yourself to the members of the jury. Their son, Jake.
Me and my mom, she was like my best friend, like better friends with her than my dad at the time.

Jake was 16 when Tony was murdered. And if I had any inclination that my dad did this, I would be the first one to tell you that he did this.

And trust me, he did not do this. I watched him thoroughly more than anybody would because I lived with him before and after this.
And I could tell you frankly that he didn't do it.

Frankly. As convinced as Jake is of his father's innocence, he paints an existence for his father's.
Prosecutor Burns tries to convince the jury of his guilt.

The evidence is clear that for some reason, whether it was financial, whether it was infidelity, whether it was just a silly argument,

he lost it.

And after one last plea from Barry Maxwell, the jury will decide Bob's fate. Come back with a verdict which is just with the evidence or lack of evidence before you.

Give Mr. Hartstong his freedom back.

I don't believe that any human being in the whole world has a right to harm any other human being in any way.

Which picture of Bob Hartzong will the jury believe? The peace-loving former hippie who claims he lived in Nirvana with his wife?

Or a man authorities believe exploded in rage and brutally killed her after 27 years of marriage?

What would be your reaction if the jury finds you guilty? I have to accept the life that's given to me. I have to continue to walk on my path.

And if it happened that way, I'm certainly I'm going to be very, very sad. Innocent man be going to jail? Yeah,

absolutely. It would be a

travesty.

As the jury deliberates, Tony's family thinks either outcome will be a sad one. I never came here gunning for Bob.
I never did. I mean, it's a family that's been torn to pieces.

The jurors had deliberated for less than three hours when they asked the judge for clarification on one of the state's most important but confusing pieces of evidence.

Was it Bob Hartstong's blood that was found on Tony's right palm? The judge's answer? The evidence is inconclusive. And that answer is all the jury needs to hear.
Everyone please rise.

Corners back in side. Just moments later, the jury reappears to announce its verdict.
We, the jury, find as follow. We find the defendant not guilty.

So say we all this 10th day of October, 2008, in the West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Florida. Jury for person number eight.
For Bob Hartsong and his loved ones,

the verdict brings not only relief, but vindication.

All I want to say to you is I'm free, as I should be. I didn't do it.
I never could have done that to anybody.

It's impossible for the kind of person that I am. You can't imagine what it's like to spend 24 months in jail

and finally be free

for something that you didn't do, for losing somebody in your life that was more important to you than air.

And

here I am. I'm going to live.

But the jurors say the verdict does not reflect what they truly believe about Bob Hartzong.

Out of 12 jurors, 10, 11 of us, if not all of us believed he did it. We just did not have the evidence to convict him.

So even though there wasn't enough evidence, you can't convict somebody based on your feelings. You're saying that Bob Huntsong got away with murder? Yes, I am.

And for foreman Tony Alberto, that inconclusive DNA on the palm was what turned this case around.

If it had been his blood, there is no way, no way that I would have entered a knock verdict, not guilty verdict. Thank you for listening to me.

The jurors say it's the state's fault that Bob Hartzong isn't going to prison. A lot of things were left unturned or uninvestigated.
I'm angry. I'm angry at the state.
I think

they were irresponsible in the investigation. The state didn't have enough case against them.
That's why we couldn't do our job and convict him.

For Tony's family, the verdict is a mixed bag. In your heart of hearts, do you think Bob Hartzong killed Tony? You know what? It doesn't matter.
what's in my heart of hearts. The jury has spoken.

Whoever murdered her is going to have something in their heart of hearts for the rest of their life. I'm not completely unhappy with the result.
He gets to go back to his kids.

I don't know the answer.

Listen, what my sister would have wanted for her children

is more important than my instinct to a vendetta.

It's just good to have my dad back. My good to be back.
James, my dad.

Thank you. I'll go stand by my pawn.

Back at home, Bob sets foot into his backyard for the first time in two years.

God, I can't believe I'm free. It's fabulous.
It's like, I can't even imagine it right now. Like, all the time, I kept saying, I know they'll be able to see the truth.

I really know they'll be able to see the truth. But you got to know the people out there who still think you killed your wife.
Yeah, but I know what I did and what I didn't do.

And I know I didn't kill my wife. So what they think, that's their problem to deal with.
Hopefully somewhere along the line,

I can create,

there'll be enough truth that'll be brought out in this case that exoneration will be complete.

Bob Hartzong says he still lives with the stigma of having been accused. And he believes his name won't be completely cleared until the real killer is found.

They're going to have to find the people that did this incredible act. I won't rest until that's brought out.

I miss her terribly. I'll miss her all the rest of my life.

My relationship with Tony will go on

just the way it is.

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