Before Midnight

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Speaker 11 It's been

Speaker 11 extremely hard.

Speaker 12 The hardest part was the crime scene picture of our mom.

Speaker 11 I always told myself she didn't see it coming.

Speaker 5 Someone shot her and just let her die.

Speaker 13 Four bullets, making sure she was dead.

Speaker 14 The blinds were all pulled. The phone cords had been cut.
Who wanted this very nice, professional woman dead?

Speaker 15 This has to do something with her business.

Speaker 11 Maybe she found out something that one of her clients shouldn't have been doing.

Speaker 16 You didn't hear whispers around you. A lot of suspicion is attached to your father.

Speaker 17 Did you murder your wife? No.

Speaker 11 I know anyone's capable of doing anything, but we would know. We're his kids.

Speaker 19 Greed, hate, murder.

Speaker 11 Our mom's killer is still out there.

Speaker 20 Kind of a stunner, huh? Yes.

Speaker 14 I believe there'd be justice. There will be justice for my cousin.

Speaker 23 A few minutes after sunrise, on the morning of November 4th, 2014, David Zimmerman rose from his bed in a quiet suburb of Bloomington, Illinois, eager to dispose of a small worry that had been nagging at him all night.

Speaker 27 He padded across the room to his bedroom door.

Speaker 12 Woke up and walked out into the kind of main hallway that we have, and the lights were still on.

Speaker 26 The lights he'd left on when he went to bed, which meant what?

Speaker 23 David was 17 years old, the eldest of Pam Zimmerman's three children.

Speaker 30 They, not uncommonly, left the lights on for their their mom when she worked late at her financial planning business or when she stepped out with her new man.

Speaker 23 Typically, when she got home, she turned the lights off.

Speaker 21 But this Tuesday morning.

Speaker 12 Her bedroom was dark and it looked like no one had been there.

Speaker 21 Tell me what was going on in your mind when you saw that.

Speaker 12 My mind was probably a million different places.

Speaker 33 I

Speaker 12 thought it was the weirdest thing. I was like, all right, she didn't come home, so where is she?

Speaker 10 Had to be a reasonable explanation.

Speaker 6 Pam Zimmerman was so reliable.

Speaker 35 Two years divorced, a successful businesswoman and fully engaged mother, a pillar of the neighborhood.

Speaker 22 David and his 15-year-old twin sisters, Heidi and Rachel, tried to push their worries aside.

Speaker 11 We made up like every possible excuse there could have been for why she wasn't coming home.

Speaker 12 You don't want to focus on that.

Speaker 38 But some signs were hard to ignore.

Speaker 21 For one thing, the night before when Pam didn't respond to her kids' text messages, Heidi tried tracing her and what she found didn't make sense.

Speaker 11 My mom and I shared a like find my iPhone account, so I looked it up on her computer where her iPhone was and I saw it was in this, it wasn't at her office, it was in a weird location.

Speaker 11 I convinced myself that she was at a client's house because that was my excuse at the time for why she wasn't home.

Speaker 39 Still, their mom was a rock, center of their universe.

Speaker 40 They told themselves they'd be laughing about this later.

Speaker 40 Or they'd be relieved anyway.

Speaker 11 We said, let's just get ready for school. Let's keep on with our day.

Speaker 19 She'll be home when we get home. Yeah.

Speaker 42 Same time, same morning, and just two doors down the street, one of Pam's closest friends, Julie Cole, was still in her pajamas.

Speaker 43 My home phone rang. Which was odd because your home phone never rings that early.

Speaker 3 It hardly ever rings ever, anyway.

Speaker 43 Right, I mean, we're one of the rare people that still have a home phone. And so

Speaker 43 I picked it up and it was Scott.

Speaker 27 Scott Baldwin was Pam Zimmerman's fiancé.

Speaker 44 He lived a few hours away near Chicago.

Speaker 43 He said, I haven't heard from Pam. I'm really worried.
I don't know what's going on. I've been trying to reach her since last night.
She's not answering.

Speaker 42 So she lived just a couple of houses down here, right?

Speaker 43 Right. She's two houses down that way.
So I walked down here

Speaker 43 and knocked on the front door and David answered. And I said, where's your mom? And he said, I don't know.
She didn't come home last night.

Speaker 43 And I said, what do you mean she didn't come home last night? And he said, well,

Speaker 43 where is she?

Speaker 43 I believe they had been trying to reach her since 5:30 the night before.

Speaker 43 And she didn't answer.

Speaker 24 For the kids, she tried to hide the worry flooding into her brain.

Speaker 12 She's like, okay, just

Speaker 12 go to school like you normally would, and I'll text you later when I know something.

Speaker 9 Maybe, thought Julie, maybe there was some simple explanation.

Speaker 16 She rushed home, got dressed, jumped in her car, and headed straight to Pam's office.

Speaker 32 Maybe Pam fell asleep while working late.

Speaker 43 I don't really know. I don't really know what my thinking was.

Speaker 16 Pam's kids tried to concentrate on their schoolwork.

Speaker 19 Couldn't.

Speaker 11 I just remember going to school, and Rachel and I sat across from two of our friends at school, and I just lost it and started bawling, and the whole morning was really hard.

Speaker 27 By now, there was a tribe of frightened people.

Speaker 32 This is Pam's cousin, Vicki.

Speaker 43 I have a brother who's 18 years younger than me.

Speaker 46 He called and he said

Speaker 47 they can't find Pam and I go,

Speaker 48 what?

Speaker 47 He goes, they can't find Pam.

Speaker 14 And I said, that's not good.

Speaker 19 And he goes, no, it's not.

Speaker 9 The drive to Pam's office didn't take long.

Speaker 36 Julie Cole pulled into the parking lot and right away, she saw something that would lead her to call 911.

Speaker 37 An awful discovery at Pam's office.

Speaker 14 The lights were all off, and blinds were all pulled.

Speaker 43 All of a sudden, I hear her say, Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I remember thinking, Everything has changed in my life right now.
Everything has changed for those kids.

Speaker 11 There's David, and his cheeks are stained with tears.

Speaker 22 7 a.m., November 4th, 2014, Julie Coe, full of trepidation, arrived outside the business office of her missing friend and neighbor, Pam Zimmerman.

Speaker 25 Nobody around,

Speaker 7 except, wasn't that Pam's car in the lot?

Speaker 48 Julie called her husband.

Speaker 43 We said, call 911. So I called 911

Speaker 43 and she said, do you want to file the missing persons report? And I said, I don't even know if she's missing.

Speaker 21 And then she saw someone who could help.

Speaker 43 Right as I pulled in, Aina was parked right over there and she was getting out of her car and walking towards me.

Speaker 28 And you knew Aina was there.

Speaker 19 And I knew Ina.

Speaker 43 Right. So I jumped out of my car and I said, Pam didn't come home last night.

Speaker 34 Ina Hess was Pam's friend and longtime office manager.

Speaker 28 Aina said Pam seemed fine the day before.

Speaker 9 Said when she left around 4.30 p.m., Pam was meeting with her last client of the day behind closed doors.

Speaker 23 But Ina had a key to the building, an office, so the two women headed in.

Speaker 14 I opened the door there and the lights were all off and blinds were all pulled.

Speaker 29 Was that unusual?

Speaker 14 Very.

Speaker 14 The blinds in my area, the reception area, were never closed.

Speaker 33 But they were this time?

Speaker 14 They were closed. And I reached over and turned the light switch on.

Speaker 43 And all of a sudden I hear her say, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Speaker 43 And I walked over to where she was and we could see Pam's body kind of laying in a fetal position.

Speaker 39 Julie is a nurse.

Speaker 21 She checked for signs of life.

Speaker 43 I remember...

Speaker 43 leaning down and you know checking for a carotid pulse and I remember thinking everything has changed in my life right now everything

Speaker 43 has changed for those kids, and their life will never be the same.

Speaker 28 So there are two things going on at once. Right, right.

Speaker 43 You just, that's how you're trained. You immediately focus, emotions are put aside.
I knew something was bad. I knew something wasn't right.

Speaker 14 I knew not to move her.

Speaker 44 Ina has stared, rooted to the spot.

Speaker 14 I guess I kind of went into shock because I just, I saw her lying there.

Speaker 23 But you had no idea what had happened.

Speaker 28 No.

Speaker 37 Like, she could have had a heart attack or something.

Speaker 14 Could have.

Speaker 3 Or maybe she tripped over a footrest behind the reception desk.

Speaker 43 Kind of in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, did she hit her head?

Speaker 39 Police arrived in minutes.

Speaker 27 Julie's phone still pinging.

Speaker 43 The kids are still texting. I keep saying someone needs to go to them and tell them what's going on.

Speaker 48 Eventually, officers went to the high school.

Speaker 27 And one by one, Pam's children were called to a conference room where the police told them their mother was dead.

Speaker 11 That was the worst part, that they didn't tell us all together and they brought me into this room and there's David and his cheeks are stained with tears and I just had to see that and then they told me and then I was just bawling and then David starts bawling again.

Speaker 12 And then like half an hour later the same thing happens with Rachel.

Speaker 19 Oh Lord.

Speaker 40 Can't imagine a day like that.

Speaker 42 Did you know where your dad was?

Speaker 13 Did you know where any sort of center of your lives was?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 11 We didn't know anything after that. They just took us into questioning.

Speaker 27 But then it was hard for anyone to focus on anything other than loss, all-consuming grief.

Speaker 19 She was the neatest friend, cousin you could ever ask for.

Speaker 1 If you needed something, she'd be there in a heartbeat.

Speaker 16 Outgoing, gregarious type. Oh.

Speaker 14 She would talk to anybody. Everybody knew her.

Speaker 43 And she made everybody feel like they were, you know, one of her closest friends. That's how she was.
And she was sincere.

Speaker 6 A caregiver.

Speaker 23 Yes, that was Pam Zimmerman.

Speaker 28 But to her sister, Diane Gifford, and brother, Larry Alexander, Pam was also the family's smart, ambitious star.

Speaker 14 She was valedictorian of her class.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Graduating class.

Speaker 50 She's a straight A student her entire grade school and high school, except, I think, one B,

Speaker 50 what she got in Homec.

Speaker 11 I mean, I've always known we had the most amazing mom. Such a bright, happy person, full of wisdom, smart, funny.

Speaker 11 I could go on and on.

Speaker 12 She always made sure that we came first. She'd come home from work, she'd make us dinner, she'd stay up all night helping us with homework or doing our laundry.

Speaker 11 We call her like Supermom because she literally did everything.

Speaker 21 And yet, for all the love she inspired, Pam Zimmerman must have stirred something dark in someone or got in someone's way.

Speaker 3 It wasn't long before the police figured out that her death was no accident.

Speaker 13 What did the police tell you?

Speaker 25 Nothing.

Speaker 50 They kept the evidence very, very, very quiet.

Speaker 13 When did you find out how she was killed?

Speaker 50 A few days later,

Speaker 50 police called me and said that the newspaper is going to release some information. You should tell the kids.
And the only thing they would tell me, the cause of death, was was multiple gunshots.

Speaker 26 Pam Zimmerman had been murdered.

Speaker 48 But by whom?

Speaker 8 Police start with the men around her.

Speaker 34 Her new fiancé.

Speaker 14 He had at least two other women that he had been involved with.

Speaker 48 Her final client.

Speaker 14 He owned a 9mm gun.

Speaker 13 And she was shot with one of those.

Speaker 25 And what about her ex?

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Speaker 23 There was no doubt. Tamala Zimmerman was the victim of cold-blooded murder.

Speaker 32 Happened sometime before midnight, was the coroner's best guess.

Speaker 39 The murder weapon?

Speaker 31 A 9mm handgun.

Speaker 14 There were two bullet wounds in her chest, in the front of her body.

Speaker 27 Edith Brady Lunney is a longtime pantograph crime reporter.

Speaker 14 There was one bullet wound in her temple,

Speaker 14 and then there was one bullet wound in her back.

Speaker 13 So, somebody making absolutely sure she was good and dead.

Speaker 14 Exactly.

Speaker 48 What was that like to hear that?

Speaker 19 That news? It was

Speaker 19 the worst phone call in my life.

Speaker 19 To think that

Speaker 19 someone shot her and just let her die.

Speaker 55 And Pam's kids, when they heard that?

Speaker 11 I always told myself she didn't see it coming, just because that was the easiest way for me to cope with it.

Speaker 30 An execution is what it looked like.

Speaker 27 Or maybe an office invasion robbery didn't seem likely, but...

Speaker 14 They wanted to do a walkthrough. to see what was missing or what was out of place.

Speaker 28 Did you notice anything wrong, anything missing?

Speaker 14 The phone cords had been cut and the phones were gone. And my calendar that I kept all of her appointments on, that was gone.

Speaker 8 Pam's purse was sitting on her desk, gaping open.

Speaker 3 Her wallet was gone. Cell phone two.

Speaker 32 Its case was lying on the floor.

Speaker 35 Did you get the sense that maybe the police thought somebody wanted to steal something and they were in the process of it and got interrupted or something?

Speaker 14 They could have thought that.

Speaker 27 But there was no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 31 None.

Speaker 38 And cops found Pam's cell phone right where her daughter's Find My iPhone account said it would be, her wallet close by, with her credit cards all there.

Speaker 14 So the police believed early on that this was a staged effort to make it look like it was a robbery.

Speaker 21 But who'd want to kill Pam and then stage some strange half-hearted cover-up?

Speaker 47 Start close, is the old adage, which meant in Pam's world on that day, three men.

Speaker 16 Her last client, that last day of her life, her ex-husband, and her brand new fiancé, Scott Baldwin, the object of a whirlwind romance and perhaps too rapid engagement.

Speaker 56 After all, no one in the family really knew him.

Speaker 47 Not even her kids.

Speaker 12 I had only met Scott three times,

Speaker 12 and the third time was the party that they had to celebrate their engagement.

Speaker 35 That celebration was just days before yet when Scott heard about the murder he did not rush to Bloomington from his home just two or three hours away near Chicago.

Speaker 11 It just made me realize and think what my mom really meant to him and what we really meant to him. He sounded fake at that point.

Speaker 37 Pam's kids had questions about Scott, and so did detectives.

Speaker 14 He was asked to come down to Bloomington to meet with police, which he did the following day after Pam's body was discovered.

Speaker 32 Scott told the detectives he'd been home alone when Pam was killed.

Speaker 21 Police would look into that, but in the meantime, they discovered something very interesting about Pam's new fiancé.

Speaker 14 They spent a fair amount of time checking into who he had been communicating with.

Speaker 19 Sure.

Speaker 14 And he had at least two other women that he had been involved with that he was still having some pretty heavy amount of contact with.

Speaker 36 Pam's kids didn't know anything about that, but they did get a weird vibe from the fiancé after their mother's death.

Speaker 12 He was like, I have nothing to do with this, and I need you guys to understand that like I have to move on.

Speaker 42 I'm sorry, repeat that for me.

Speaker 12 We had dinner with him like a week after she died, and he sat us down.

Speaker 46 Did you ask him if he had something to do with it?

Speaker 11 No, he just volunteered that.

Speaker 32 And two months later, he was dating someone new.

Speaker 11 It was just very suspicious.

Speaker 47 But Pam's daughter, Rachel, thought it was much more likely her mom's murder was somehow tied to her business.

Speaker 32 She was an accountant and financial advisor.

Speaker 11 Maybe she found out something that one of her clients shouldn't have been doing and this client would have lost a lot of money.

Speaker 27 Ina Hess told the investigators that Pam's last client, the day she was murdered, was a man named Elden Whitlow.

Speaker 46 Did he have any beefs with Pam?

Speaker 14 There was no evidence that Elden had any beefs. They had a long-term professional relationship where she was helping him with his investments.

Speaker 16 Whitlow told detectives his meeting with Pam was uneventful.

Speaker 28 He left around 5.40 p.m., he said, then had dinner with his girlfriend.

Speaker 37 He was cooperative, but...

Speaker 14 He owned a nine-millimeter gun.

Speaker 29 And she was shot with one of them.

Speaker 14 That matched the type of gun that she was killed with.

Speaker 6 Now that was a development.

Speaker 14 Elden Wentlow was considered a person of interest.

Speaker 26 Detectives got a search warrant, and Eldon turned over a 9mm.

Speaker 31 The 9mm?

Speaker 24 They sent it off for testing.

Speaker 26 And as they waited for the results, they drilled down on that one more possible person of interest.

Speaker 35 The third man.

Speaker 23 The man who just might have had a motive.

Speaker 6 Pam's ex-husband, Kirk Zimmerman.

Speaker 28 Look at him, said Pam's family.

Speaker 38 There was something going on there.

Speaker 2 It definitely turned into hatred.

Speaker 14 A lot of problems.

Speaker 51 Problems?

Speaker 57 Hatred?

Speaker 31 Exactly what was the problem between Pam Zimmerman and her ex-husband, Kirk?

Speaker 31 The ex, the client, the fiancé.

Speaker 57 Revelations about them all.

Speaker 13 Who was it who said, no secrets in a murder investigation?

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 28 Police investigating the murder of Pam Zimmerman now had a short list.

Speaker 34 Her fiancé, Scott.

Speaker 35 Her client, Elden, and a third man, her ex-husband, Kirk.

Speaker 27 Some of Pam's relatives were convinced, though, that Kirk should have been the first, maybe only name on that list.

Speaker 14 She would always say that if anything ever happened to her, he should be the person we should look at.

Speaker 21 Well, you kind of wonder when she said a thing like that.

Speaker 14 Well, and you wonder and you think, oh, come on, you don't really mean that.

Speaker 14 Did you say that to her? You know, yeah, and she was, oh, no, Vicki, I mean it.

Speaker 40 Hey, how are you doing?

Speaker 39 So, in the hours after his ex-wife's murder, Kirk Zimmerman spent a lot of time with detectives.

Speaker 9 And he answered their questions calmly.

Speaker 17 And you were at State Farm, sir? Yep.

Speaker 20 Not once did he ask for an attorney.

Speaker 17 What do you do for State Farm? I'm a systems analyst.

Speaker 35 When they asked about the divorce, Kirk said his only real concern was for the kids.

Speaker 17 I would have preferred to keep going at least till the kids were off to college because by then they're adults.

Speaker 36 The detectives asked Kirk what he did the evening Pam was killed.

Speaker 40 He said he was at home, started to read, must have dozed off. I have noticed lately when I read, I tend to fall asleep.

Speaker 28 Nothing, not even this, seemed to rattle Kirk.

Speaker 17 Did you murder your wife? No.

Speaker 28 They got his fingerprints and a DNA sample.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 32 they did a gunshot residue test.

Speaker 17 Am I required to do this?

Speaker 6 He wasn't, but he did it anyway.

Speaker 27 And he didn't resist handing over his phone or his laptop or passwords either.

Speaker 20 His car and house were another matter, though.

Speaker 44 Police had search warrants for those.

Speaker 14 He was dropped off at a hotel.

Speaker 9 Because he didn't have his house?

Speaker 14 Because he did not have a house. The police were there and stayed there for six days.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 37 No discoveries, really.

Speaker 22 Except...

Speaker 39 Kirk had a girlfriend named Kate, and she revealed something very curious.

Speaker 24 She and Kirk had a date scheduled the night Pam died.

Speaker 27 Kate arrived early to Kirk's house around 6:30, rang the doorbell.

Speaker 26 No answer.

Speaker 22 Well, well, well, Kirk hadn't told them about any date and certainly hadn't revealed he didn't answer the door when she rang.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 6 second interview.

Speaker 22 They pressed him again.

Speaker 17 What was the reason why you didn't say that Kate was there?

Speaker 17 I love her and just keep her out in a

Speaker 17 piss.

Speaker 6 Still, the girlfriend's story put a hole in his alibi.

Speaker 3 Was he home the night Pam was killed?

Speaker 27 Or was he somewhere else?

Speaker 14 Well, it was one that the police really had to sort through to see if it was a credible story or not.

Speaker 6 They let him go

Speaker 5 again.

Speaker 22 Kirk's kids couldn't see their dad as a suspect.

Speaker 27 They said their parents' divorce had been drama-free.

Speaker 12 I think they both realized that they came to want different things.

Speaker 29 Kirk's brother, Zim, agreed.

Speaker 3 He was Pam's best friend, and he loved her like a sister.

Speaker 30 Saw her marriage up close, and the way it ended.

Speaker 15 There was never any hostility, open air, arguments.

Speaker 30 The kids and I, we never saw anything.

Speaker 32 If anything, they said the two seemed much happier.

Speaker 16 Kirk got a house just down the street and around the corner just to be close to them.

Speaker 11 I'm really glad he did. It made it really easy on us.

Speaker 22 And he did stay very involved in their lives.

Speaker 11 Dad videotaped all of our sporting events. A lot of sock games, a lot of basketball games, softball games.

Speaker 32 Besides, their dad now had Kate.

Speaker 36 He'd been dating for more than a year.

Speaker 11 I really liked her. Yeah, Kate's awesome.
Yeah.

Speaker 51 So, dad, a murderer?

Speaker 25 Seemed absurd to the kids.

Speaker 11 I think he was happy with where he was at.

Speaker 28 Now, days, months slid by.

Speaker 24 The detectives were busy, but very quiet about it.

Speaker 29 Well, everyone waited.

Speaker 27 They tested that nine millimeter turned in by Pam's client, Eldon Whitlow.

Speaker 14 It was not the gun that had fired the bullets that killed Pam Zimmerman.

Speaker 39 They checked his alibi, discovered he did did have dinner with his girlfriend, and then later that evening,

Speaker 31 he met another woman.

Speaker 14 He had been checked out and that he had been cleared.

Speaker 40 As for the fiancé Scott Baldwin, his secret dahlians has raised eyebrows, but wound up working for him.

Speaker 21 Police confirmed he had been miles away when his fiancée died, phoning and texting.

Speaker 6 two other women.

Speaker 13 What is it about the men in this story?

Speaker 14 Both of the men had to make some pretty embarrassing admissions.

Speaker 13 Who was it who said, maybe it was Agatha Christie, no secrets in a murder investigation.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 14 They both had to admit that they had been messing around.

Speaker 20 But Kirk, not so easy to clear him.

Speaker 6 So police followed the money.

Speaker 9 And they heard things, different things from what his kids and brothers said about the divorce, like a simmering resentment that Pam got the house after the divorce and most important

Speaker 48 more money from him.

Speaker 24 He had a goal of retiring at 55 from very early on in his 20s and it got all messed up.

Speaker 28 The dispute of the moment?

Speaker 22 Days before she was killed, Pam FedEx Kirk a demand pay close to $4,000 in expenses for the kids or else

Speaker 14 she was giving him five days to pay it or she was going to take him back to court.

Speaker 48 Office manager Ina said Pam told her she was truly afraid of Kirk.

Speaker 14 I just warned her that when she worked late at night, make sure she went out the front door where all the lights were on. Yeah.
And made sure that she was, you know, always cautious.

Speaker 6 Money, the root of all evil?

Speaker 31 And something else they found.

Speaker 56 What was that telltale residue in Kirk's car?

Speaker 8 It was enough.

Speaker 16 On a summer morning, eight months after Pam Zimmerman's death, a cop turned on his squad car lights and sirens, pulled over a motorist, read in his rights.

Speaker 8 Kirk Zimmerman was under arrest for murder.

Speaker 8 Greed,

Speaker 18 hate,

Speaker 19 murder.

Speaker 40 Prosecutors lay out their case with a dramatic eyewitness.

Speaker 50 She saw a guy coming out that back door of Pam's office.

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Speaker 29 What is so warm, so pure, so bright, as a midsummer morning in Bloomington, Illinois?

Speaker 39 Green grass, songbirds, fresh air.

Speaker 30 It was July 21st, 2015.

Speaker 26 The kids were now living in their dad's house.

Speaker 12 We woke up to the doorbell ringing and so I go down, I open the door and he's like introduces himself as a detective and he's like, we just arrested your dad.

Speaker 10 And just like that, a second parent was gone.

Speaker 21 The twins, still minors, were told they'd be living with Pam's siblings now.

Speaker 11 Rachel and I were taken into DCFS custody where we were forced to live with them for three months in our mom's house. So that was just one huge nightmare.

Speaker 14 It got to be hateful, angry all the time, no matter what we did.

Speaker 28 But of course, Pam's kids knew perfectly well that their aunts and uncles believed their dad killed their mom.

Speaker 11 I was 16 and our aunt Diane sat me down alone in my mom's family room and she just plainly said, your dad killed your mom.

Speaker 10 What do you think about the possibility that your dad could be violent like that?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 11 I know anyone's capable of doing anything, but

Speaker 11 we would know. We're his kids.
We lived with him.

Speaker 15 I honestly believe if she ever really felt threatened, she really felt at risk, the first person she would have reached out to was me. And she never did.

Speaker 27 Kirk spent four months in jail before bonding out.

Speaker 21 And for the next three and a half years, he remained under house arrest.

Speaker 12 He couldn't leave the house.

Speaker 12 Rachel and Heidi couldn't stay in the house with him alone. There had to be another person who was 18 or older the entire time.

Speaker 22 The whole time waiting for trial? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11 Up until we turned 18.

Speaker 27 Pam's neighbor and friend, Julie Coe, tried to help.

Speaker 43 You know, I took his daughter driving because they were learning to drive. I remember driving

Speaker 43 one daughter to college. She went to Mizzou, so I took her.

Speaker 44 But while friends tried to help Pam's kids, they could not protect them from a widespread and very public suspicion that their father killed their mother.

Speaker 22 And the case always seemed to be in the news.

Speaker 14 Potential evidence that came out was pretty damaging. to Kirk Zimmerman because a lot of it dealt with the exchanges he had with Pam during the divorce.

Speaker 21 Those exchanges were front and center when the state finally presented its case at trial.

Speaker 18 Greed.

Speaker 18 Hate.

Speaker 18 Murder.

Speaker 29 Assistant State's Attorney Brad Rigdan told the jury the motive was clear.

Speaker 27 Kirk Zimmerman killed his wife over money.

Speaker 18 He knew.

Speaker 18 That as long as she was still alive, he was going to go broke.

Speaker 32 The motive and the means, said the state.

Speaker 24 Kirk's cell phone put him at home the night his ex died, but the prosecutor told the jury that Kirk's car, a Hyundai, told a different story.

Speaker 20 The car, like most cars now, had an onboard computer, a kind of GPS device.

Speaker 16 And an FBI analyst said that device revealed that the car was in the vicinity of Pam's office.

Speaker 6 So.

Speaker 14 The police got some surveillance video pretty early on from a building nearby, Pam's office, and they believe there was a car that matched Kirk Zimmerman's.

Speaker 28 And said the prosecutor, there was an eyewitness,

Speaker 21 this woman,

Speaker 22 so nervous that she took the stand,

Speaker 42 she could barely get her name out.

Speaker 14 Spell your first name.

Speaker 19 Pam.

Speaker 42 But what she had to say was important, said Pam's brother.

Speaker 50 You know, she saw a guy coming out that back door of Pam's office. She didn't know that was Pam's office at the time.

Speaker 24 And that man, she said, was carrying a bag.

Speaker 46 What did he do with the bag?

Speaker 13 Put it in his car.

Speaker 14 That was the stuff he took out of the office.

Speaker 4 And who was that man?

Speaker 29 On this point, the state's emotional witness was certain.

Speaker 25 Investigators never found the murder weapon, but on the gear shift in Kirk's car, gunshot residue, said this forensic scientist.

Speaker 14 That gear shift handle either contacted a gunshot residue-related item or was in the environment of a discharge firearm.

Speaker 55 But remember the friends and family who said Pam told them she was afraid Kirk Kirk might kill her?

Speaker 37 That was hearsay, ruled the judge.

Speaker 14 They were not allowed to present that to the jury.

Speaker 16 You know, in a case where

Speaker 35 they're alleging that an angry ex-husband killed his wife, motive is everything, frankly.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 3 The jury did hear all about that letter Pam FedEx to Kirk days before her murder, demanding $4,000.

Speaker 3 Pam's ongoing financial disputes, said the prosecutor, were going to prevent Kirk from realizing his his cherished dream of retiring early.

Speaker 32 And he wasn't going to take it.

Speaker 10 So he killed her.

Speaker 18 The receipt of that October 21st report letter was the triggering event that culminated in the murder of Andrew Zimmerman on November 30th.

Speaker 10 To which Pam's children replied, ridiculous.

Speaker 12 I didn't think it made any sense at all.

Speaker 42 The defense was up next with its own case, its own take on the facts.

Speaker 28 And what a spectacle that would be.

Speaker 60 He had in excess of $240,000 in his 401k.

Speaker 6 The defense tries to blow up the money motive and another blow up on the witness stand.

Speaker 19 Yes or no?

Speaker 10 What would the jury do?

Speaker 40 There were so many little pieces, so many bits of evidence to parade before the jury.

Speaker 23 The case against Kirk Zimmerman went on for more than four weeks through 40 witnesses.

Speaker 21 And pretty much all of it, said Pam and Kirk's children, was wrong.

Speaker 11 You can put together little pieces any way you want, but the way they put it together wasn't the right way.

Speaker 13 now bloomington would hear kirk zimmerman's side of the story kirk zimmerman did not shoot and kill pamela zimmerman he didn't shoot and kill the mother of his three children over owing three thousand nine hundred dollars in child support

Speaker 35 that state theory that kirk killed pam over money

Speaker 35 nonsense said his defense attorney john rogers kirk made it clear to the police he said that fed ex from pam was no big deal.

Speaker 1 It didn't affect me.

Speaker 17 You're wondering if I disagreed or argued with her about it.

Speaker 60 Kirk had a full pension guaranteed for life, which he could have taken at any point in time. He was making $95,000 working for State Farm.
He had in excess of $240,000 in his 401k.

Speaker 21 The defense told the court, the police had tunnel vision from the very start.

Speaker 58 It's the old, let's go look at the ex-husband.

Speaker 60 He must have died.

Speaker 23 That grainy video the prosecution suggested was Kirk's Silver Hyundai Sonata.

Speaker 25 Really, said the defense.

Speaker 6 How could you tell?

Speaker 61 I don't remember the month and the year. I don't, and I don't want to hear no more.

Speaker 3 And then there was Maria Legg, the prosecution's only eyewitness.

Speaker 60 I had a very difficult cross-examination with her because she simply chose not to respond to me. No, I do not want

Speaker 22 And when she did respond, her testimony contradicted the prosecution's evidence.

Speaker 2 Like, for example, the color of Kirk's car.

Speaker 59 You said during direct examination that it was a black car that this gentleman went to with the big bag, correct?

Speaker 58 Yes, sir.

Speaker 59 All right, that's not a silver car, is it?

Speaker 14 I saw black.

Speaker 27 The defense also challenged that data taken from the onboard computer system in Kirk Silver Hyundai. Pings, the state said, put the car near Pam's office.

Speaker 21 The defense called it junk science.

Speaker 60 This type of expert testimony has never been allowed in the state of Illinois before. It should not have been allowed in this case.

Speaker 20 But how could the defense answer for that gunshot residue?

Speaker 21 found on Kirk's gear shift.

Speaker 31 A defense expert agreed there was plenty of it on that spot, But...

Speaker 58 Finding that number of

Speaker 58 characteristic of gunshot residue particles is surprising.

Speaker 24 Maybe too surprising?

Speaker 23 Especially because there was none anywhere else in the car.

Speaker 55 So it looked like some kind of mistake.

Speaker 25 Or worse.

Speaker 16 Your suggestion is what?

Speaker 60 Either gunshot residue was purposely placed on the lever or came into contact with either clothing, a firearm, or the hands of the two police officers that had been in a crime scene.

Speaker 24 Either way, Rogers suggested sloppy police work was the hallmark of the investigation.

Speaker 3 He said police should have dug deeper when they heard what this woman had to say.

Speaker 60 I heard what I believe to be gunshots.

Speaker 1 I have no idea.

Speaker 30 The defense had an ear witness of sorts who testified that, though more than a block away, she heard gunshots at the office at 5.10 p.m.

Speaker 21 Which fit the coroner's time of death window of some time before midnight.

Speaker 40 And why was that important?

Speaker 60 That's the exact time that Mr. Whitlow has himself in Pam's office.

Speaker 6 Elden Whitlow, Pam's last client of the day.

Speaker 60 I'm not contending that I had enough evidence to prove Mr. Whitlow shot Pam Zimmerman, but certainly when they claimed that they investigated Mr.

Speaker 60 Whitlow with the same intensity that they investigated Mr. Zimmerman, that was not true.

Speaker 3 But police said they investigated Whitbow thoroughly and cleared him.

Speaker 27 The lawyers made their final appeal to the jury.

Speaker 58 This is not what proof beyond a reasonable doubt looks like. We do not speculate people into murder convictions.

Speaker 18 The evidence has shown you that on November 3rd, 2014, he murdered Pan Zimmerman and he made sure his hate got carried out in that fourth shot.

Speaker 18 That one was for him.

Speaker 18 Find the defendant guilty.

Speaker 27 The family, as polarized as the most poisonous politics, waited.

Speaker 12 I was just pacing back and forth, kind of freaking out a little bit.

Speaker 31 And then,

Speaker 27 after a day and a half of deliberations, the signal

Speaker 19 verdict.

Speaker 46 All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Everyone may be seated.

Speaker 11 I was shaking. It just felt very long.

Speaker 19 The courtroom was utterly silent.

Speaker 48 A collective holding of breath.

Speaker 46 We, the jury, find the defendant Kurt Zimmerman not guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 31 Not guilty.

Speaker 22 The children exhaled.

Speaker 11 It was just this huge relief just to know that

Speaker 11 our dad wouldn't be going away for something he didn't do. And we just cried and smiled.
It was the best feeling ever.

Speaker 8 Across the aisle was a different world.

Speaker 14 I remember saying no.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 13 And they took us upstairs to the state's attorney's office.

Speaker 14 The state was just as devastated as we were.

Speaker 13 Are you used to this yet?

Speaker 6 No. Not been very long.
No.

Speaker 13 There's still a lot of anger.

Speaker 28 Because there's nothing you can do now, right?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 34 A family truly divided.

Speaker 29 Diane and Larry angry, disappointed.

Speaker 22 Their nieces and nephew elated and hopeful.

Speaker 11 My dad can actually go out to eat now, so we've been going out to restaurants. He came with me to my dentist's appointment because he hasn't been able to do that in a really long time.

Speaker 11 It's kind of awkward because I'm 20.

Speaker 12 He's just trying to make up for the lost four and a half years.

Speaker 21 Now, said David, Rachel, and Heidi,

Speaker 26 they're hoping the state will solve their mom's murder.

Speaker 11 I obviously hope that they do catch whoever did it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. what's going to happen to the family i think all of us want to move out of bloomington yeah

Speaker 11 so that's for sure

Speaker 44 something else after all the trauma these three are by the look of it fine it's because they said they had a wonderful mother pam zimmerman you three have all done pretty well so far What would she think about

Speaker 19 where you are in life and what you've accomplished?

Speaker 12 I think she'd be incredibly proud of how well we've handled everything

Speaker 12 and how it hasn't like derailed us.

Speaker 11 You think about what how she would want you to live and how she would want you to keep going. So that's what I've just been trying to do.

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