The Day the Music Died

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Speaker 1 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 16 Sheriff someone has been shot.

Speaker 17 Okay, who shot him?

Speaker 18 I don't know. I immediately had a mental picture of guys with guns right down the front door.

Speaker 19 Did it jump out at you as anything in particular?

Speaker 20 He's He's not your average victim.

Speaker 21 I can't imagine who would have ever been mad at Buddy enough to do that.

Speaker 22 Could this be a suicide?

Speaker 23 He's doing everything.

Speaker 23 We were going to grow old together.

Speaker 19 Home invasion, they're not likely to shoot you when you're sleeping.

Speaker 26 Something wasn't not quite right.

Speaker 22 Agents had come and served a summons on them requesting tax records.

Speaker 28 The walls were closing in.

Speaker 30 First murder trial.

Speaker 17 Yes, sir.

Speaker 31 A dead doctor. Deceit and doubt.

Speaker 33 We didn't have DNA. We didn't have it on video.

Speaker 18 A lot of people do bad things and get away with it. Then they read the verdict.

Speaker 17 Somebody's life is about to change.

Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dade Live.

Speaker 14 Here's Keith Morrison with The Day the Music Died.

Speaker 35 Oh, how he loved it here.

Speaker 36 Chose it, after all.

Speaker 37 Few places lovelier.

Speaker 3 And none with a past like the past that delighted him here.

Speaker 15 The history that still echoed in the green hills all around.

Speaker 40 But most of all, he simply loved the music.

Speaker 42 The music rooted in these Blue Ridge Mountains.

Speaker 43 The mountains that roll and rise and dip into one of America's loved little cities, Asheville, North Carolina, the adopted home of Dr.

Speaker 35 Frank Bukutchin, the man everybody here knew as simply

Speaker 15 Buddy.

Speaker 14 The doctor part was Buddy's day job, plastic surgery his specialty.

Speaker 6 But in his heart, he was a true musician, prominent and popular enough to appear on local TV.

Speaker 46 In a way, Buddy was a preservationist of the music that made America.

Speaker 10 Banjo, bagpipes, more common instruments, he knew them all.

Speaker 19 And he knew all about the people behind that famous line, The Day the Music Died.

Speaker 10 Which, in Buddy's case, was a Friday night in July 2016.

Speaker 32 Sticky, hot.

Speaker 5 Tourists brought by the summer and the town filled the music clubs, crowded into the brew pubs.

Speaker 22 Well, a few miles away, in a fine house on an uncrowded road in a suburb just outside of town, Buddy McCutchen and his wife Brenda settled down in the air-conditioned quiet and went to bed.

Speaker 51 Was it sealed by then, the fate that awaited them?

Speaker 44 Someone waiting out there in the

Speaker 53 Silence reigned.

Speaker 45 1 a.m.,

Speaker 30 2 a.m.,

Speaker 15 3 a.m.

Speaker 55 And then.

Speaker 16 Sheriff Sam One, what is the address of your emergency? My husband's been shot.

Speaker 17 Okay, who shot him?

Speaker 5 Please, Charis.

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 16 What is your husband's name?

Speaker 16 Franklin Tutchin.

Speaker 16 And what is your name?

Speaker 23 Brenda. Frank Hutchinson.

Speaker 36 Brenda was a nurse, Buddy's partner in life and work.

Speaker 16 Okay, where was your husband shot at?

Speaker 16 Um, on the stouch in the in our TV room.

Speaker 16 Is he still alive? Is he still breathing?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 10 Brenda could barely talk, but did manage to get out that she had gone to sleep upstairs while Buddy...

Speaker 24 had dozed off downstairs in front of the TV.

Speaker 35 And then she awoke to a sound like a sharp thunderclap, and the dog barked.

Speaker 10 So she rushed downstairs, and

Speaker 36 there he was.

Speaker 16 Do you know where on his body he was hit?

Speaker 16 Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath, sir.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 42 Dawn was still hours away

Speaker 46 when sheriff's deputies headed to the house.

Speaker 5 Their body cams were rolling as they encountered Brenda in the pitch-black darkness.

Speaker 1 What's going on?

Speaker 28 Where's he at? Is it

Speaker 22 going on in the residence? He's supposed to be in here, unknown if there's anybody else in there. Sheriff's Office!

Speaker 28 Inside, it was dark, except for the glow of the TV screen.

Speaker 58 Sheriff's Office, if you're in the home, come out with your hands up.

Speaker 59 Barely visible, sprawled on the couch, was the body of 64-year-old Buddy McCutcheon.

Speaker 23 There's a shotgun here in the corner.

Speaker 22 We're going to go check the backyard.

Speaker 22 This door was unsecured when we came in to see.

Speaker 44 Detective John Ledford, roused from sleep, drove through the early morning light to the McCutcheon house and tried to prepare for whatever he might find.

Speaker 20 You're nervous. You're bracing yourself.
We knew that going into this, this was probably going to be very complex in nature, and I don't think anything prepared us for what we would encounter.

Speaker 41 Ledford went inside.

Speaker 20 He was lying on the couch, facing the rear of the couch.

Speaker 19 Was it obvious what kind of injury he'd received?

Speaker 20 It was obvious there was a gunshot wound. There was no exit wound, but it was fairly apparent it was an entry wound at the top of the head.

Speaker 8 Ledford wasn't sure what to make of it.

Speaker 63 Violent crime like this was uncommon in Asheville and rarely involved a victim like Dr.

Speaker 44 Buddy McCutcheon.

Speaker 20 You've got a doctor, a plastic surgeon, in an upper-middle-class neighborhood deceased in his living room. That in of itself is somewhat unusual.

Speaker 15 Ledford's partner, Detective Walt Thrower, arrived next, armed with a warrant to search the house.

Speaker 64 There was some early

Speaker 19 speculation.

Speaker 22 Could this be a suicide?

Speaker 22 I hadn't seen one.

Speaker 53 Or something more sinister.

Speaker 19 Soon, the horrible news traveled at the speed of phone calls 800 miles west of Buddy's hometown, Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Brenda reached Buddy's brother, Clutch, and his fiancé, Becca.

Speaker 19 She just had

Speaker 25 stated that there had been a home invasion and some kind of

Speaker 25 struggle, and Buddy had been shot and killed.

Speaker 19 What was it like to hear that?

Speaker 65 You know, it was horrible.

Speaker 65 Terrible.

Speaker 10 Almost physiologically, that must do something to you, right?

Speaker 25 Well, I did.

Speaker 65 I just, I dropped down on the floor.

Speaker 25 I dropped the phone, and I told Becca, I said, come get the phone. And I just dropped down on my knees.

Speaker 25 I was just saying no, no, no.

Speaker 59 Clutch was once a Marine fighter pilot and tough.

Speaker 4 But this.

Speaker 66 Now he had the grim task of calling his two other brothers.

Speaker 6 First John, followed by Mark.

Speaker 45 And then John called Melissa, the youngest member of the family.

Speaker 18 What he said to me was, some home invaders broke into Buddy's house and he's dead.

Speaker 19 Do you remember what it was like to hear about your brother's death?

Speaker 18 That didn't make sense. I couldn't have been more confused if I'd gotten a phone call saying, Buddy got attacked by a shark in his living room and he's dead.
And so I said, what happened?

Speaker 18 And he was crying, I don't know. And then I started crying.
And then that was was the end of inquiring at that moment.

Speaker 46 For the detectives, of course, the inquiry was just beginning.

Speaker 12 The autopsy should tell them something.

Speaker 59 Did Buddy McCutcheon take his own life?

Speaker 8 Sheriff's office.

Speaker 45 Did Home Invaders shoot him dead?

Speaker 19 Calls of that stuff.

Speaker 56 Or was it something else altogether?

Speaker 3 The first question would be easy.

Speaker 47 The second two,

Speaker 6 not easy at all.

Speaker 35 When we come back,

Speaker 69 the mysterious death of a man who loved life.

Speaker 18 Buddy got them involved in different social groups. He got them involved in the Civil War reenactments.
He decided to take up sailing, decided to learn to fly a plane.

Speaker 69 So, what had happened in that house?

Speaker 18 I immediately had a mental picture of guys with guns break down the front door, come in, be violent.

Speaker 45 Buddy McCutcheon's whole family was in a state of shock.

Speaker 10 Buddy had been something of a patriarch among the siblings.

Speaker 47 At this, it was almost too much to take in.

Speaker 18 I immediately had a mental picture of guys with guns break down the front door, come in, be violent. So my next question was: is Brenda okay?

Speaker 50 Brenda was physically okay, but in one awful second, her husband of over 30 years was taken, and life as she had known it was over.

Speaker 10 When she met him, he was, to say the least, an eligible young man.

Speaker 18 They were both working at the same hospital. She was a nurse.
He was a young doctor, single, good looking with those dimples he had, that jet black hair.

Speaker 18 Before too long they were living together and after a few years they were married.

Speaker 53 A traditional Scottish wedding in fact.

Speaker 67 Kilts and bagpipes.

Speaker 44 Buddy's idea, naturally.

Speaker 19 Did it seem from the beginning like, okay, this is a match made in heaven?

Speaker 18 I thought it was more like a case of opposites that must have attracted. Buddy was

Speaker 18 more of a reserved person.

Speaker 18 He wouldn't use a lot of words when a few words would do.

Speaker 70 I'll be.

Speaker 18 But Brenda was very chatty and solicitous and what can I do for you? They seem to compliment each other and seem to get along great. They love each other.
They're happy together.

Speaker 10 Brenda was a true southern bell,

Speaker 10 born in Memphis and grew up in Tennessee.

Speaker 18 My brothers loved her. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say they loved her.
They even adored her.

Speaker 25 She was very caring and a very

Speaker 25 so sweet. She was a wonderful wife

Speaker 5 and loyal.

Speaker 66 When Buddy wanted to move or try something new,

Speaker 35 she was game.

Speaker 18 Buddy got them involved in different social groups. He got them involved in the Civil War reenactments and she kind of tagged along with that.

Speaker 18 He decided to take up sailing and he was the one that decided to learn to fly a plane. So Brenda went along with him while he flew a plane.

Speaker 42 Brenda went along too when Buddy later opened his own medical practice called Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville.

Speaker 45 Instead of continuing her nursing career full-time, Brenda eventually became the office manager, freeing Buddy up to focus on doing the surgeries.

Speaker 18 Buddy was meticulous.

Speaker 18 And I guess you need that in a plastic surgeon.

Speaker 19 Did he live well? Did he live an expensive lifestyle?

Speaker 18 You know, appearances weren't important to Buddy, but he would be more likely to pull up in his Toyota and get out of the Toyota wearing blue jeans.

Speaker 45 They never had kids, but they had each other, and their dog and a fine house close enough to nature that bears sometimes wandered into their yard.

Speaker 17 Yeah, tear that bird figure up.

Speaker 27 That's what it's for.

Speaker 15 So, life in Asheville was good.

Speaker 72 We must have been doing something right.

Speaker 21 He was excellent.

Speaker 21 He was a great doctor.

Speaker 7 Scott Lunsford was Buddy's best friend growing up.

Speaker 21 He had a great mind.

Speaker 21 Really sharp, really quick.

Speaker 21 I heard his brother say he made straight A's all the time.

Speaker 73 Did he talk about

Speaker 19 why he wanted to be a plastic surgeon?

Speaker 21 I know that he worked on people that had become disfigured. by crashes, and so I think that tugged at his empathy gene.
And I think he liked making

Speaker 21 things beautiful.

Speaker 14 But he also liked, loved making music.

Speaker 74 That was his true passion.

Speaker 25 He started playing guitar when he was probably seven or eight. He taught himself.

Speaker 25 By the time he's in high school, he'd been in a band with Scott Lunsford.

Speaker 49 beginning with a very successful local Arkansas-based band called the Viscounts.

Speaker 21 We did all the local gigs,

Speaker 21 dedication of the opening of Montgomery Ward or spaghetti dinner dances, even in the basement of churches. We loved playing.

Speaker 22 Would have made you the coolest guys in the room, right?

Speaker 21 We were popular. I can say that.

Speaker 70 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Buddy, with his long rock star hair and 60s threads, played the guitar.

Speaker 10 and was the unquestioned leader of the group.

Speaker 21 Buddy had an ear. He could pick out any melody, any chord.
He could score the chord changes for us all.

Speaker 19 Could he have been a professional musician if he wanted to?

Speaker 21 Oh yeah, there's no question. And he has said that he was using his medical career to pay for his music career.
And eventually he had set up a studio.

Speaker 35 But now Buddy's studio was silent.

Speaker 6 He'd make music no more.

Speaker 21 You can't really grasp

Speaker 21 that he's gone. It's a great loss.
It was a great loss.

Speaker 10 As the afternoon heat began to set in, investigators completed their initial search of Buddy and Brenda's place.

Speaker 15 But the clues that might tell them what happened remained hidden in plain sight.

Speaker 76 Coming up.

Speaker 76 We were going to grow old together.

Speaker 31 Brenda has a theory about what happened and who might have killed Buddy. Nobody that has ever come into our house would want to kill my husband.
I mean, you know, the,

Speaker 31 maybe it was, I don't know. A junkie wants something.
I don't know.

Speaker 69 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 22 Don't see anything behind you, because I see nothing in the carpet.

Speaker 59 In the dim light cast by Buddy McCutcheon's TV, nothing was obvious.

Speaker 62 Not right away.

Speaker 53 First responders simply saw a man lying on his side facing the back of his living room couch.

Speaker 9 There was a single gunshot wound to his head. And around him, nothing seemed disturbed.

Speaker 28 So, suicide?

Speaker 45 Sadly, it happens, even among the outwardly successful.

Speaker 11 And then, a closer look and listen to what they're saying, picked up by their body cams.

Speaker 22 The projectiles had to go somewhere.

Speaker 19 The guns had to go somewhere.

Speaker 10 The gun had to go somewhere.

Speaker 19 If Buddy had shot himself, wouldn't the gun still be in or close to his hand? It had to be somewhere.

Speaker 9 It just wasn't here.

Speaker 41 Besides, the entry wound was in the top rear of Buddy's skull.

Speaker 36 Hard for a man to reach while lying on the couch.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 19 option number two,

Speaker 19 homicide.

Speaker 19 Which is what Brenda McCutcheon thought it must be. An intruder must have shot Buddy.

Speaker 22 She said that somebody had came in, is what she told me.

Speaker 23 36742.

Speaker 22 She was a little bit frantic originally. Wasn't sure if there was somebody inside the residence.
Deputy went inside and began clearing the residence to ensure that nobody else was inside there.

Speaker 19 Brenda, meanwhile, stayed outside, waiting to talk to detectives.

Speaker 20 The thing I distinctly remember about her, she was barefoot. She had left the residence barefooted.

Speaker 45 Was still wearing her nightclothes.

Speaker 21 I think we ought to do a GSR on her if she's willing to do one.

Speaker 36 GSR, gunshot residue, something that can be detected.

Speaker 68 So Brenda willingly cooperated as they swabbed her hands.

Speaker 19 That's just a normal, a routine thing to do, right?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 22 Then it's packaged up, and that will go to the crime lab to be analyzed.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, the detectives had to know what, if anything, Brenda knew about what happened.

Speaker 14 She was clearly upset, but readily agreed to go to the Sheriff's Department to answer questions, whatever questions she could.

Speaker 14 I appreciate you agreeing to come down here with us and talk to us and see if we can bring some resolution. What's your full name? Brenda.

Speaker 14 K-K-A-Y.

Speaker 16 Brenda Kay. McCutcheon, M.C.

Speaker 16 C.

Speaker 44 Brenda recounted what happened in the final hours of Buddy's life.

Speaker 16 I guess about 7.30, I went to a Subway sandwich and got us a sub sandwich.

Speaker 22 Came back home.

Speaker 23 Came back home.

Speaker 16 Ate, watched a little TV. Buddy got on the computer for a little while.
I don't know what he was doing, Facebook or something. He's been posting.
We had a bear in our backyard a couple of nights ago.

Speaker 42 Then a little after 9 p.m., said Brenda, she went upstairs to bed.

Speaker 48 Well, Buddy lay down on the couch.

Speaker 22 You normally think of a husband and wife sleeping together in the same room, or perhaps, you know, they had difficulty sleeping together.

Speaker 46 Which was certainly true of Buddy and Brenda.

Speaker 45 He'd taken to sleeping on the couch during his days as an on-call medical resident.

Speaker 32 They just got used to it.

Speaker 16 I know that sounds really weird, but the reason for it is he can't sleep without a TV and I can't sleep with a TV.

Speaker 12 Anyway, they tucked into their respective places.

Speaker 10 Brenda, upstairs in the bedroom, fell asleep.

Speaker 7 And then suddenly, a few hours before dawn.

Speaker 16 Something woke me up really loud.

Speaker 22 You stayed asleep and you were awakened by a loud noise.

Speaker 80 Yeah, and I thought,

Speaker 16 I truly thought it was thunder. that we've been having some really bad thunderstorms.

Speaker 57 But it wasn't raining.

Speaker 46 So Brenda said she went downstairs to see what happened.

Speaker 3 Maybe a picture fell off the wall or something.

Speaker 36 But that wasn't it.

Speaker 41 It was her nose that told her first.

Speaker 41 I could smell that smell.

Speaker 41 I know what gunpowder smells like from Civil War reenacting.

Speaker 16 So I went over to him

Speaker 16 and said his name. I didn't touch him, though.

Speaker 16 And I looked at him and he wasn't brave.

Speaker 30 But Brenda knew there was no point in trying to revive him.

Speaker 5 She knew very well what death looked like.

Speaker 16 I've been a nurse for

Speaker 16 since 1975, and I lost it.

Speaker 16 I

Speaker 16 blew out the front door, which was locked.

Speaker 23 It was locked.

Speaker 16 In which my neighbor...

Speaker 7 Neighbor didn't answer.

Speaker 44 So Brenda ran back into the house and grabbed the phone and rushed out and called 911 from the street.

Speaker 16 My husband's been shot.

Speaker 17 Okay, who shot him?

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 45 Now, a few hours later, sitting in that police interview room, Brenda finally had a chance to reflect on what happened and who could have killed Buddy.

Speaker 68 Why would anybody?

Speaker 28 Nobody that has ever come into our house would want to kill my husband. I mean, you know,

Speaker 28 maybe it was, I don't know. A junkie wanting something.
I don't know.

Speaker 45 A junkie?

Speaker 38 An intruder?

Speaker 64 Perhaps someone who actually knew the McCutcheons?

Speaker 42 But Buddy had no known enemies.

Speaker 23 What they said.

Speaker 24 He was admired.

Speaker 68 People liked him.

Speaker 5 Loved him.

Speaker 15 Most especially Brenda. He's been everything to me.

Speaker 15 We were going to grow old together. We were going to retire.

Speaker 16 We were going to sit on a front porch in a rocket chair.

Speaker 15 But that would never happen now.

Speaker 67 In one split second, that life was yanked away.

Speaker 36 As Brenda and the detective struggled to understand, a message came in from the McCutcheon house.

Speaker 39 A clue had turned up.

Speaker 35 Weird, ambiguous, and maybe

Speaker 15 Important.

Speaker 76 Coming up.

Speaker 22 Didn't touch a gun, didn't fire a gun.

Speaker 16 Didn't fire a gun?

Speaker 22 Didn't shoot your husband. No.

Speaker 31 Questions that have to be asked, leaving Brenda demanding answers.

Speaker 16 I am telling you the truth that happened to me. I'm hoping you can find the truth that happened to him and give me some closure

Speaker 16 because I'm starting to get really mad.

Speaker 10 As the hours passed on that first terrible day, Brenda McCutcheon worked with detectives downtown and tried to process sudden widowhood.

Speaker 7 And she reflected on those first moments after discovering Buddy was dead.

Speaker 14 At that point,

Speaker 14 I was

Speaker 14 also scared.

Speaker 16 I didn't know if somebody was in the house.

Speaker 9 Investigators searched inside and outside the McCutcheon house and found

Speaker 77 no one.

Speaker 54 But they did uncover a few possible clues.

Speaker 12 A back gate was open.

Speaker 10 An exterior door near Buddy's couch was ajar.

Speaker 15 So,

Speaker 39 intruder?

Speaker 47 No, there was no sign of a robbery.

Speaker 47 That point, they checked with Brenda.

Speaker 22 Did you see that as as if something had been taken, like

Speaker 22 something like, you know, they had rummaged through anything, like somebody had broken it?

Speaker 16 I truly didn't notice anything.

Speaker 3 Brenda did say Buddy kept guns, some loaded, around the house.

Speaker 7 One of them, a silver-colored.38-caliber pistol.

Speaker 45 Officers found the guns, plenty of ammo, too.

Speaker 13 Found them all, except the pistol.

Speaker 20 One of the last times she had seen the firearm, she thought it was in a kitchen drawer.

Speaker 20 One of the things that was kind of odd about it was the drawer was so full of household items, it didn't appear like the gun would fit in there.

Speaker 10 Anyway, it was missing.

Speaker 68 Or maybe buddy had moved it.

Speaker 10 The interview stretched well into the morning.

Speaker 46 Question after question.

Speaker 16 I do not truly believe anyone would want to hurt him. He was faced in the back of the couch.
I'm trying to think

Speaker 16 if I saw anything.

Speaker 23 He was shot right here.

Speaker 7 As Brenda kept talking, news came from an investigator at the house.

Speaker 45 They found the gun.

Speaker 77 And where they found it was,

Speaker 9 well, it was curious.

Speaker 22 It was found along a, like a little small path, a break in some ivy that went in between her residence and her neighbor's residence where she ran.

Speaker 63 And soon after, cops at the house found a receipt that matched the gun, confirming confirming it belonged to Buddy.

Speaker 14 Detectives couldn't wait to tell Brenda the news.

Speaker 22 What we've located is one of the guns that you've described.

Speaker 16 Okay, good.

Speaker 22 Who had it? I'm not with anybody. It was found outside the residence.

Speaker 28 It's found on the cartridge of the residence, but not in the house.

Speaker 23 Okay. And

Speaker 16 that's what I'm asking you. I want you to walk me through in your mind how that might have gotten there.

Speaker 23 You're the detective. I am.
You know, if somebody shot him

Speaker 23 and ran out of the house and threw him away, I don't know.

Speaker 45 Thing was, the detectives were aware of cases where a family member trying to protect reputations hides the suicide gun.

Speaker 20 We asked Ms. Percutchin if there was any possibility Dr.
McCutcheon might have committed suicide and she moved the weapon.

Speaker 9 But she was adamant.

Speaker 20 She was adamant. She did not move the weapon.

Speaker 22 He never would have killed himself. I didn't move a weapon.

Speaker 16 I didn't move a gun. I didn't pick any gun.

Speaker 22 Didn't touch a gun, didn't fire a gun.

Speaker 16 Didn't fire a gun.

Speaker 22 Didn't shoot your husband. No, no.

Speaker 22 No.

Speaker 22 He was everything

Speaker 22 to me and has been for all my dark life.

Speaker 68 It was a standard question.

Speaker 45 Though it always sounds like an accusation, and loved ones sometimes don't take it so well.

Speaker 16 I am telling you the truth that happened to me. Okay.

Speaker 23 I do not know the truth that happened to him.

Speaker 16 I'm hoping you can find the truth that happened to him and give me some closure.

Speaker 16 Because I'm starting to get really mad.

Speaker 23 Don't get upset, Brenda. Let me ask you.

Speaker 7 They took a break, and after.

Speaker 23 Hey, Brenda. How are you?

Speaker 66 I'm good. Another cop continued the interview.

Speaker 66 So

Speaker 23 you and Buddy's relationship is good.

Speaker 23 If anybody said otherwise, they'd be lying.

Speaker 80 It would be.

Speaker 23 Nobody's ever seen you fuss, argue, or anything like that.

Speaker 18 We have our disagreements, but we talk about it.

Speaker 16 We don't

Speaker 16 get spat at each other. You know, we've been together 35 years, so of course we're going to have some disagreements once in a while, but it's a good relationship.

Speaker 36 Apparently devoted to each other.

Speaker 22 Everything was fine between the two. You know, they were still intimate with one another.

Speaker 45 And together 24-7.

Speaker 12 They worked together every day at the clinic, so maybe she knew about this.

Speaker 23 While we were there at her house, I think there were some documents there and some information that had come to light that there,

Speaker 23 is it the IRS?

Speaker 23 No, state. The state.
Department of Revenue.

Speaker 42 The North Carolina Department of Revenue was seeking financial statements from Buddy and Brenda's medical practice.

Speaker 3 Oh, yes, she said she knew about that.

Speaker 3 They said,

Speaker 3 you need to get these documents. Here's the date they need to be there.

Speaker 23 It was W-2s, 1099, check stubs, withholding, filings.

Speaker 7 It wasn't a big deal. They were sorting it out.

Speaker 49 So after that long, grueling interview, detectives were done, except for a few routine procedures.

Speaker 20 There are photographs taken over body to make sure there's no injuries or anything that's visible.

Speaker 20 DNA swabs taken, and the clothes were actually submitted to the crime lab and tested for gunshot residue.

Speaker 42 Brenda was taken home and decided to stay at the neighbors for the night, afraid of that big empty house.

Speaker 49 It had been a whirlwind 15 hours for both Brenda and the detectives.

Speaker 37 They were just getting started.

Speaker 31 Coming up, is Brenda in the clear?

Speaker 22 She didn't have gunshot residue on her hands. We arranged to polygraph her on the question of whether she had shot her husband.

Speaker 69 When dateline continues.

Speaker 22 I guess we just decided we were going to do something for fun.

Speaker 8 Buddy Bukutchin never liked being the center of attention.

Speaker 15 Quiet, humble,

Speaker 35 understated.

Speaker 41 But now, in death, he was suddenly big news all over town.

Speaker 81 Dr. Buddy McCutcheon, who was shot.

Speaker 82 Buddy McCutcheon Jr. was found gunned down at his home.

Speaker 83 Buddy McCutcheon's death remains a mystery.

Speaker 39 From the beginning, detectives had to consider all the possibilities.

Speaker 15 Accident, suicide, or murder.

Speaker 41 When the autopsy was complete, there could no longer be any doubt.

Speaker 53 Buddy did not take his own life.

Speaker 20 There was no way this was accidental, and according to the autopsy, it could not have been self-inflicted.

Speaker 45 Murdered in his own home with his very own gun.

Speaker 15 And more than that,

Speaker 52 whoever killed him made absolutely sure of it.

Speaker 14 The doctor was shot in the top of his head.

Speaker 10 Somebody wanted Buddy McCutcheon dead in the worst possible way.

Speaker 35 There was no ambiguity about it.

Speaker 20 It was a homicide and ruled a homicide.

Speaker 52 Word that Buddy had actually been executed traveled fast to Fayetteville, where Buddy's family and friends, already reeling, now had to absorb this.

Speaker 19 He was brutal.

Speaker 23 Cold-blooded.

Speaker 21 I can't imagine who would have ever been mad at Buddy enough to do that.

Speaker 21 I couldn't imagine what he could have done that would have threatened someone to that level that they felt like they needed to get rid of Buddy to be safe. That it just didn't equate to me.

Speaker 19 And bad enough he's dead, but to hear that he was murdered violently.

Speaker 70 Yeah.

Speaker 21 I knew that it was a gunshot to the head.

Speaker 21 What a waste.

Speaker 65 What a horrible loss.

Speaker 63 So now a killer really was on the loose in Asheville.

Speaker 51 And Buddy's family didn't think Brenda should be living in that big empty house all by herself.

Speaker 35 Were you worried about her, too?

Speaker 19 Like, if this is a home invasion?

Speaker 25 I was. I told her she should come here.
And she said, no, I'm going to stay.

Speaker 7 So, after that long night when her husband was killed and the exhausting round of interviews that followed, Brenda got what rest she could.

Speaker 41 And then,

Speaker 52 well, there were issues to deal with at work, a staff to inform, an office to close, a plastic surgery business business to shut down.

Speaker 15 She returned to work, had to.

Speaker 45 And, knowing there'd be more questions about Buddy's death, she had asked his and her attorney, Sean Devereaux, to represent her.

Speaker 49 Because isn't the spouse always a person of interest?

Speaker 15 Attorney Devereux, to quickly dispel any doubt about her innocence, had an idea.

Speaker 22 We arranged for a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation polygraph examiner to polygraph her on the question of whether she had shot her husband.

Speaker 22 She passed, the needle never flickered on the machine.

Speaker 10 If that wasn't enough, those gunshot residue tests also had a lot to say.

Speaker 8 Remember, Brenda's hands were swabbed right after Buddy died.

Speaker 15 And...

Speaker 22 She didn't have gunshot residue on her hands.

Speaker 52 Meaning, no evidence she fired a gun.

Speaker 53 At least, no evidence on her hands.

Speaker 20 As for for her clothes, there was a trace amount of gunshot residue on the clothing.

Speaker 36 Which really didn't mean much.

Speaker 41 Lots of ways that little bit could get on the clothes of a woman bending over a husband who'd just been shot to death.

Speaker 20 They could be secondary transfers. She could have touched something or particles in the air when she entered the room.

Speaker 20 So there are a lot of different explanations on how the gunshot residue might have arrived on her clothing.

Speaker 61 So, with no real evidence connecting Brenda to the crime, detectives moved on, kept digging, checking every lead while looking for a pattern or profile of that possible intruder who may have murdered Buddy.

Speaker 20 We followed up with the reported crimes within the community in the area, breaking enterings or any other type of crime in close vicinity to the residents.

Speaker 20 Those people were sought out and interviewed. Yeah.
It's a process of elimination.

Speaker 19 You checked, I'm sure, to see if he had any other enemies. Anybody?

Speaker 20 No, sir.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 8 Murder makes a terrible wound in a family.

Speaker 42 And in Buddy's family, along with the pain, a great yawning absence of any information at all.

Speaker 18 We've all been left bewildered and trying to make sense of something that you can't make sense out of. It's like a bad Kafka short story.
I began to feel dismayed.

Speaker 18 I began to think this was going to be one of those cases that they never get an answer for.

Speaker 15 Mind you, things were happening.

Speaker 44 Whether Whether they made sense or not was another question.

Speaker 31 Coming up, a sudden sale at the doctor's office.

Speaker 22 They were selling everything down to gauze bandages. All the equipment was all being liquidated.

Speaker 84 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 85 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 34 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years, and we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 85 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 82 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 84 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 85 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 86 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 I need you, girl.

Speaker 87 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 89 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 90 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 91 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 75 Check out Zen.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 72 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 93 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast.

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Speaker 39 A few days after Buddy McCutchin was murdered, the investigation shifted from his house to his office as detectives Walt Thrower and John Ledford showed up to talk to the staff, see if they knew anything, or anyone who could have killed their boss.

Speaker 7 Perhaps a disgruntled patient.

Speaker 36 They wanted to look at the paperwork, too, for any possible clues.

Speaker 41 All normal parts of a homicide investigation.

Speaker 45 Brenda had stepped out, but soon arrived to finish something she had started.

Speaker 53 Something that, to the detectives at least, did not seem normal.

Speaker 22 She was actually disposing of records. Some were being thrown in a dumpster there in the parking lot of the complex.

Speaker 19 Just a couple of days after his death.

Speaker 22 Yeah, they were selling everything down to like gauze bandages. All the equipment was all being liquidated.

Speaker 10 Brenda was polite to the cops as she facilitated the liquidation sale and disposed of patient records.

Speaker 19 Did you ask her about these things?

Speaker 22 We were there to search the business. We inquired about speaking with her further.
She consulted an attorney. She wanted the attorney present and the attorney asked us to delay our interview with her.

Speaker 7 That, you'll recall, was attorney Sean Devereaux.

Speaker 22 She called me because they wanted some documents or, you know, whatever it was, and she was perfectly happy to cooperate with them, but she wasn't clear exactly why they were asking the questions they were asking.

Speaker 15 They seemed to be suspicious, said Attorney Devereux, about the abrupt office sale and the disposal of records and closing up shops quickly after the murder.

Speaker 39 But Devereux pointed out that Brenda had very good reasons for all that.

Speaker 22 She had a $13,000 a month nut between his medical practice that was shut down and their mortgage and bills that they had to pay. She had to deal with all that.

Speaker 53 Thing was, Buddy and Brenda's business was not exactly robust.

Speaker 18 He shared with me that since the recession that hit in 2008, 2009, 2010, half of his business, the purely cosmetic side that people pay cash for because insurance won't cover, had dried up because of the recession.

Speaker 59 Even in 2016, the year Buddy was killed, finances were tenuous.

Speaker 77 There were debts.

Speaker 41 Were the McCutcheons' money problems somehow related to his murder?

Speaker 45 The man was not flush.

Speaker 22 He wasn't bringing in a lot of income. It was very, very modest for a plastic surgeon.
So I think his passion was being a musician and that he did the other just to pay the bills.

Speaker 45 And remember, Brenda's specialty was nursing, not being a business manager.

Speaker 46 But it did seem a little strange to detectives that Brenda was also tossing out what appeared to be Buddy's personal stuff.

Speaker 20 His medical certificates from his graduation from medical school and different things like that that might have been on the wall of his office. All that was disposed of.

Speaker 20 So we were actually retrieving files out of the dumpster and C's computers.

Speaker 46 Which she'd already thrown away.

Speaker 20 That she'd already thrown away.

Speaker 50 But that wasn't all.

Speaker 37 There were files in an off-site storage unit, too.

Speaker 16 records patients files a lot of different information yes this is Brenda McCutcheon and you guys are scheduled to do some shredding for me this coming in fact Brenda had been calling around to hire a shredding company

Speaker 20 she was very determined to liquidate herself of anything surrounding the business or Mr.

Speaker 16 McCutcheon it's just unusual behavior I was going to see if I could add a second facility

Speaker 16 onto that shredding as well.

Speaker 22 If you you could give me a call back, we prepared a search warrant to recover all those files and take them in as evidence.

Speaker 14 Again, said Attorney Deborah, there were good reasons for Brenda pulling all those files out of the office.

Speaker 22 She was besieged at that moment. He was a solo practitioner, and she was the de facto office manager, in addition to being a practicing nurse herself.
So,

Speaker 22 what she needed to do

Speaker 22 was to get patient charts to other doctors or to patients.

Speaker 44 The detectives shut down the sale, and then they spoke to Brenda and Buddy's office staff, who were there watching it all.

Speaker 42 The murder had hit them hard, and seeing what Brenda was going through, they felt for her.

Speaker 20 The office workers were cooperative with us, passed information to the investigation.

Speaker 51 Information about Buddy and Brenda and how they ran their business.

Speaker 20 They described Ms. McCutcheon as almost obsessive about anyone coming into the office with any type of financial record.
They could only speak with her.

Speaker 20 Then you start to talk to the accountant and you find out that all the interactions as far as the preparation of tax information, he dealt with Ms. McCutcheon.

Speaker 20 And you start to see a pattern evolve that, in fact, she took care of all the finances.

Speaker 19 Did Buddy have anything to do with it?

Speaker 70 Did he even know about what was going on?

Speaker 20 There was no indication that Dr. McCutcheon was involved in the financial business of the office.
He did the surgeries, and she was the office manager.

Speaker 53 But that wasn't the only story about money.

Speaker 41 There was another one, too,

Speaker 32 rather more serious.

Speaker 55 In fact,

Speaker 15 it was criminal.

Speaker 8 There's nothing flashy or glamorous about the North Carolina Department of Revenue Office in Asheville, just a nondescript red brick building.

Speaker 3 And their mission statement, which reads in part, collect the taxes due, is even more mundane.

Speaker 6 But a few days after the murder, Detectives Thrower and Ledford discovered that DOR had been having a little problem collecting taxes due from Buddy McCutcheon's medical practice.

Speaker 22 Agents had come and visited Dr. McCutcheon and Ms.
McCutcheon at their place of business and served a summons on them requesting some tax records related to the business.

Speaker 19 What did you think about that when you saw that material?

Speaker 22 That was concerning.

Speaker 7 The more the detectives learned about the meeting between the McCutchens and the Department of Revenue, the more concerned they became.

Speaker 22 We were able to speak with one of their agents, and that's when they kind of laid the foundation that this is not something that just came up. We've We've been involved with Ms.

Speaker 22 McCutche almost since the business has been opened.

Speaker 74 It turned out cosmetic surgery of Asheville was a few years behind in filing corporate tax returns.

Speaker 45 But according to the Department of Revenue, there was evidence of something even worse.

Speaker 7 It seemed the business had deducted payroll taxes from its employees' paychecks, but did not send that money on to the state.

Speaker 20 They've had accountants who were preparing tax information to be turned into the Department of Revenue, but there were no indication any payments were ever being made.

Speaker 7 That's why the DOR issued this summons ordering Buddy to explain why his practice didn't pay the state employee withholding tax.

Speaker 45 Total about $39,000.

Speaker 27 Not a huge sum, but if true, a serious crime.

Speaker 19 So this was fraud on a fairly significant scale.

Speaker 20 It had to be fairly significant to get into the Criminal Division Department of Revenue.

Speaker 22 They were actually

Speaker 22 criminal investigators.

Speaker 44 Criminal investigators from the Department of Revenue.

Speaker 42 That's who showed up unannounced at the medical office.

Speaker 46 Staff members told the detectives, the visit seemed to catch Buddy off guard.

Speaker 19 This would have come as a big surprise to him, as a shock.

Speaker 22 It seemed to be.

Speaker 20 Maybe not so much to Miss McCutcheon.

Speaker 7 Not so much to Brenda, maybe, because as detectives learned, she did all the bookkeeping, often by hand, and provided all the financials to the accountant for filing their taxes.

Speaker 20 Ms. McCutcheon had been delinquent in paying state withholdings on employees' taxes for many years.

Speaker 22 This was an ongoing problem, and all of a sudden, Dr. McCutcheon's aware of it.

Speaker 45 And soon after, Buddy put the brakes on that meeting.

Speaker 22 And he's completely surprised, stops the interview, and requests to be able to consult an attorney.

Speaker 46 That's how attorney Sean Devereaux got involved.

Speaker 61 Buddy and Brenda knew him socially, so Buddy called him right after he met with those agents from the revenue department.

Speaker 19 So he was worried about it. He didn't know what to do.

Speaker 22 You get a subpoena from the Department of Revenue in a tax investigation. Most people are probably going to talk to a professional.

Speaker 74 But Attorney Devereux told us, contrary to what the police heard, Buddy was not surprised by the tax issues.

Speaker 22 For years and years, there had been problems with taxes. I mean, Buddy clearly knew what was going on with the taxes.
There were lots of confirmed communications to Dr. McCutcheon about the problems.

Speaker 10 In fact, the very same day after the DOR visit, Buddy sent Attorney Devereux an email saying they were dealing with it.

Speaker 44 Brenda has gotten the documents from our tax guy and has made copies. She and I will go through them this weekend and make sure things are in order.

Speaker 9 That distinction, whether Buddy knew or didn't know about the tax issues, turned out to be a very big deal.

Speaker 9 Because what really caught detectives' attention wasn't just the taxes, it was the timing of the Department of Revenue's visit.

Speaker 19 Was it your assumption that this might have had something to do with what occurred?

Speaker 22 It did because the Department of Revenue agents came and visited him on the 11th. It was a Monday.
It was a Monday, and then he was killed on a Saturday morning.

Speaker 24 The very same weekend, Buddy said they'd be going through the tax records.

Speaker 36 Coincidence?

Speaker 68 Quite possibly. Or possibly not.

Speaker 71 No way to prove it either way.

Speaker 45 And Brenda?

Speaker 71 She was leaving Asheville in her rearview mirror.

Speaker 76 Coming up.

Speaker 31 An unexpected visit may hold a clue.

Speaker 23 When I heard her say, we always leave the back door open and unlocked. I'm going, oh,

Speaker 19 wow, that's not true. No,

Speaker 19 that wasn't true.

Speaker 84 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 2 I'm Gabe Weedman.

Speaker 34 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years.
And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 85 It's called, I Need You Guys.

Speaker 82 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 84 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 85 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 86 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 I need you, girl.

Speaker 87 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 88 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 89 Zen is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 90 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 92 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 89 Check out Zen.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 72 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 94 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast.

Speaker 94 Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, ONDEC delivers funding you can count on.

Speaker 90 Apply in minutes at on Deck.com.

Speaker 58 Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDEC or Celtic Bank. ONDEC does not lend in North Dakota, all loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Speaker 56 Autumn 2016, the loveliest time of the year in Asheville.

Speaker 19 But 800 miles away in Arkansas, Buddy McCutcheon's brother Clutch was in a deep depression.

Speaker 19 What did Buddy's death do to you? How devastating was it? How did you handle the grief?

Speaker 25 You wake up and the first thing you do

Speaker 25 is think about that loss.

Speaker 95 I think it was like almost six weeks.

Speaker 18 It was just home and in your room and you didn't really come out of that.

Speaker 25 Yeah, it was the way

Speaker 65 that he left

Speaker 65 this earth.

Speaker 25 Wasn't his time.

Speaker 44 While clutch was grieving, he was also thinking about Brenda.

Speaker 45 Clutch adored Brenda.

Speaker 44 They'd been close for years.

Speaker 19 But something one of the investigators said about Buddy's murder kept floating around in his tortured mind, and it seemed to conflict with Brenda's account.

Speaker 25 I was was under the impression from her description that there had been a home invasion. And I remember asking the deputy, was it one guy, two, three?

Speaker 65 I mean, how bad was it?

Speaker 25 And that's when he said, well,

Speaker 26 your brother was asleep.

Speaker 19 Home invasion, they're not likely to shoot you when you're sleeping.

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 25 That got me thinking that something wasn't not quite right.

Speaker 22 I didn't look at the front door enough when I came by.

Speaker 8 If the murder wasn't part of a home invasion, why would Brenda say it was?

Speaker 19 That's when his grieving mind began to go to an even darker place.

Speaker 19 And before long, he was making his views known around the family.

Speaker 18 Clutch was definitely the first one to suspect her.

Speaker 19 What did you think when you heard about that?

Speaker 18 I don't know if Brenda did it or didn't do it. I just felt we needed facts in front of us before we just accused her.

Speaker 42 But Missy and her siblings did find it suspicious that Brenda didn't respond to Missy's texts and voicemails about organizing Buddy's funeral.

Speaker 10 Eventually, they took on the planning themselves.

Speaker 16 Okay, where was your husband shot at?

Speaker 23 Um, on the couch in the in our TV room.

Speaker 16 Is he still alive? Is he still breathing?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 50 But then one of Clutch's daughters discovered online the recording of Brenda's 911 call.

Speaker 55 Take a deep breath.

Speaker 7 She listened and then urged him to do the same.

Speaker 8 It took a few days of convincing, but then Clutch finally hit the play button.

Speaker 16 What is your husband's name?

Speaker 23 Franklin Hutchins.

Speaker 16 And what is your name?

Speaker 23 Brenda McHutchin.

Speaker 41 Clutch listened closely and then heard Brenda say something that made his head snap.

Speaker 23 He never likes a backdoor. The back door was open.

Speaker 15 Five little words, the back door was open.

Speaker 42 And with that, Clutch flashed back to a trip he and Becca had taken to Asheville, visiting Buddy and Brenda at their home just a few days before the murder.

Speaker 25 It was just Providence that we were there that weekend.

Speaker 25 Buddy lived in a nice neighborhood, but everybody had an acre or two of land, you know. But there were a lot of bears.

Speaker 25 And he made a point in the evenings, whenever I'd go out back, and he'd say, lock the door, because we have bears that come up here. We always keep it locked.
And he was that way every night.

Speaker 5 Sun bears.

Speaker 18 Sun bears, yeah. That's what he looks like.

Speaker 14 But he even showed them that home video of the bears in the backyard.

Speaker 45 The bears, the back door, Brenda's 911 call.

Speaker 42 Her clutch, suddenly it all clicked.

Speaker 23 When I heard her say, We always leave the back door open and unlocked, I'm going, oh,

Speaker 23 wow.

Speaker 19 That's not true.

Speaker 65 That wasn't true.

Speaker 15 Melissa listened, too.

Speaker 77 She hadn't been quite sure what to think about Brenda's possible role in Buddy's killing.

Speaker 42 But when she heard that 911 call...

Speaker 18 At that point, I believed she did it.

Speaker 19 What was it about the 911 call that made you think that?

Speaker 18 It sounded like she was a junior high girl reading a script from the play that she tried to memorize the lines for.

Speaker 18 Putting that aside, if I found my husband, God forbid, murdered in our home in the middle of the night and I called 911,

Speaker 18 I would be a blithering idiot. I would be freaking out.
Oh my God. Whereas she was expounding upon the theory of how the intruder must have gotten in.
And when I heard this, my thought was

Speaker 18 she's making her alibi. She's using the 911 call to make her alibi.

Speaker 19 Except Detectives Thrower and Ledford could find no physical evidence that Brenda killed Buddy.

Speaker 31 Their case was stuck.

Speaker 11 All they really had was this.

Speaker 20 This was a case of, if not Miss McCutcheon, then who would it have been?

Speaker 52 By now, Brenda was long gone from Asheville.

Speaker 3 Gone back to Tennessee where she'd grown up, still had family.

Speaker 57 And because of Buddy's sudden death, the tax investigation had stalled.

Speaker 45 One less thing for Brenda to worry about.

Speaker 63 But Buddy's siblings were all on the same page now.

Speaker 35 They believed Brenda killed their brother.

Speaker 15 To them, her every move seemed suspicious.

Speaker 18 She sold the home he lived in, went home to every day. She sold the business he drove to every day.
She sold anything of value he had.

Speaker 10 So maybe it was no surprise the McCutcheons rarely heard from Brenda anymore.

Speaker 53 Meanwhile, the detectives remained relentless.

Speaker 10 They searched for anything that might definitively connect Brenda or someone else to the murder.

Speaker 53 Then, as Halloween approached,

Speaker 15 they found something buried deep in a computer, a long-held secret, and a possible new suspect.

Speaker 31 Coming up, a closer look at Buddy's past leads detectives to someone new.

Speaker 22 We interviewed her, and we were going to also have to interview her husband.

Speaker 69 When Dateline continues,

Speaker 56 Buddy McCutcheon had been dead for almost three months when they found it, thanks to this search warrant.

Speaker 53 It had been hidden all along inside one of Buddy's computers.

Speaker 22 We were able to find emails going back and forth between Dr. McCutcheon and this particular staff member.

Speaker 19 Did it seem to rise to the level of something that needed to be included in the investigation?

Speaker 22 Definitely.

Speaker 74 The emails told a story which stretched over a few years.

Speaker 46 An office romance.

Speaker 7 Buddy had an affair with a member of his staff, a married woman.

Speaker 22 That was something that we needed to nail down. When did the affair take place? How long ago? Could the husband have found out about that and potentially he had something to do with that?

Speaker 42 Question being, did an angry husband have a motive for murder?

Speaker 19 So what do you do about a thing like that?

Speaker 22 We interviewed her and then we were going to also have to interview her husband.

Speaker 19 Did he know about this? No, he didn't.

Speaker 22 We had hoped that she was going to share that with him so that we would not have to be the individuals to tell him what had taken place between

Speaker 22 his wife and Dr. McCutchin.

Speaker 14 But you were.

Speaker 22 We were, that's correct.

Speaker 70 What was that like?

Speaker 20 Uncomfortable.

Speaker 59 Still, both the office worker and her husband insisted they had nothing to do with Buddy's murder.

Speaker 20 We were able then to go through phone records. We could pretty well tell at the time of Dr.
McCutcheon's death, he was not involved.

Speaker 22 Both he and his wife were at home when this took place.

Speaker 45 And one more thing about the affair.

Speaker 14 It was over long ago.

Speaker 22 It had happened several years ago and nobody seemed to know that it had taken place.

Speaker 10 So now detectives refocused on the only person of interest they still couldn't eliminate, Brenda McCutcheon.

Speaker 45 There was still one test pending that might provide some answers. Remember the murder weapon found in the ivy near the house?

Speaker 7 It had been swabbed for DNA.

Speaker 45 Now, months after the murder, the results were finally in,

Speaker 27 which indicated three contributors, one of whom was Buddy.

Speaker 7 The second one did not match Brenda, and the third sample was inconclusive.

Speaker 22 I don't think there was sufficient enough information to build

Speaker 27 a full profile.

Speaker 22 So it was unable to determine who that could have belonged to.

Speaker 42 Remember, there was no gunshot residue on Brenda's hands.

Speaker 8 Only a speck on her clothes could have got there from just being in the house that night.

Speaker 42 And now, no DNA connection to the gun that killed her husband.

Speaker 29 The investigation cooled.

Speaker 19 As the first anniversary of Buddy's death approached, the McCutchen family began to lose hope that Buddy's murder would ever be solved.

Speaker 25 We just pretty much gave up. There came a point, after a certain amount of time, you had to move on.
I felt like she was never going to be charged with anything.

Speaker 19 Got away with it.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I thought she was going to get away with it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 But detectives weren't about to let the case go.

Speaker 20 I think you just try to follow the evidence where it leads.

Speaker 20 Each time we received information that could have taken the investigation any number of directions, we tried to follow those leads and everything always came back to Brenda.

Speaker 46 During their investigation, detectives had presented the case to the DA, Todd Williams.

Speaker 7 He'd been following it.

Speaker 44 He was eager to get justice for the McCutcheon family.

Speaker 45 But Williams needed something more, something to persuade a jury it actually was Brenda who killed Buddy.

Speaker 33 This was a case characterized by an abundance of caution. We didn't have the DNA.
We didn't have it on on video. We didn't have those things that, you know, juries are expecting.

Speaker 5 They want that stuff.

Speaker 33 Ironclad evidence, right? Ironclad evidence.

Speaker 29 Didn't seem ironclad or jury-proof to the DA.

Speaker 64 So Detective Thrower compiled an exhaustive PowerPoint presentation laying out the entire case clue by clue.

Speaker 19 What were the key points of this circumstantial case against her?

Speaker 22 Where the gun was found, who the gun belonged to.

Speaker 22 The gun happened to be in the same proximity in which she supposedly ran to to knock on her neighbor's door.

Speaker 42 And there was something else about that gun.

Speaker 20 Miss McCutcheon stated that one of the last times she had seen the firearm, she thought it was in a kitchen drawer.

Speaker 19 Somebody would have had to know where that handgun was.

Speaker 20 Yep, that's not a normal place you would keep a firearm.

Speaker 55 Once more, Brenda's story that Buddy left the back door open didn't add up because of those bears in his backyard.

Speaker 5 Sun bears. Sun bears, yeah.

Speaker 10 And she was a nurse.

Speaker 28 Shouldn't she have tried to help him before calling 911?

Speaker 62 And finally.

Speaker 22 The behavior of her in days follows. Desperate to get the business closed, to get it liquidated, to get the house sold so she could move away.

Speaker 37 The DA took a long, hard look at Detective Thrower's PowerPoint.

Speaker 33 He did a really good job of putting all the pieces together that basically said that if this were a who done it, there's only one person who could have done it.

Speaker 22 Brought it into focus for you.

Speaker 33 He brought it into very clear focus. This is a case with no other suspect than Brendan McCutcheon.

Speaker 44 But Williams wanted to be sure, and he called a meeting of his assistant DAs to get their opinions.

Speaker 8 One of them was Megan Locke.

Speaker 17 To me, it was obvious from the beginning that it was going to be a difficult case.

Speaker 19 Do you recall what you felt like as you read through that material? Did you have an opinion about it yourself?

Speaker 17 There was no doubt in my mind that Brenda was the one who had murdered Buddy.

Speaker 44 Canvassing your office staff is one thing.

Speaker 52 Going to trial with 12 unknown jurors, that's quite another.

Speaker 44 So now DA Todd Williams had to make a big decision.

Speaker 24 about whether to take this highly circumstantial case to trial.

Speaker 33 We do take risks in the DA's office. We don't just try the slam dunks.
There's a lot of complexity to this case, but the case needed to be tried. It needed to be presented to a jury.

Speaker 76 Coming up,

Speaker 56 the arrest.

Speaker 22 She knew it was coming.

Speaker 35 The prosecutor.

Speaker 29 First murder trial.

Speaker 17 Yes, sir.

Speaker 31 And a furious family.

Speaker 18 She doesn't get to kill my brother and then use the money she inherits from killing him to get herself out of jail for killing him.

Speaker 2 Hell no.

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Speaker 35 It didn't take long.

Speaker 44 After reviewing all that circumstantial evidence, D.A. Todd Williams referred the Buddy McCutcheon case to a grand jury jury seeking to indict Brenda for murder.

Speaker 30 And in less than a day,

Speaker 33 the grand jury found a true bill.

Speaker 7 Which meant Brenda McCutchin would be charged with first-degree murder and could face life in prison.

Speaker 83 It's a murder that rocked in North Carolina town. Now investigators want to arrest the wife of a plastic surgeon.

Speaker 11 Brenda had been living quietly outside of Memphis.

Speaker 22 She was in Tennessee because both of the sisters lived fairly close by. She spent a lot of time with her nieces and her sisters.

Speaker 10 But now, almost a year and a half after Buddy's murder, she was officially accused of killing her husband.

Speaker 81 The arrest warrant for first-degree murder from North Carolina lists this address for Brenda McCutcheon, wanted in the death of her plastic surgeon husband.

Speaker 22 I don't think she saw the indictment as inevitable or she was surprised by it, but it was like just one more bad hand that she'd been dealt that she was going to deal with. And she did.

Speaker 22 She got in her little Honda and she drove all the way across Tennessee to Western North Carolina and turned herself in.

Speaker 35 To the Buncombe County Jail, where she was greeted by Detective Walt Thrower.

Speaker 22 As a matter of putting a set of handcuffs on her, she'd be processed.

Speaker 28 How'd she hold up?

Speaker 22 She was fine.

Speaker 70 Cool.

Speaker 19 Didn't seem terribly upset, in other words.

Speaker 22 It was kind of like vanilla the whole time. Didn't appear to be upset.
She knew it was coming.

Speaker 47 But Buddy's family didn't see it coming, especially after waiting so long for an arrest.

Speaker 18 I felt good. The prosecutors must think they have a case or an arrest wouldn't be happening.
And that gave me hope that she wasn't going to get away with it.

Speaker 49 67-year-old Brenda sat in jail, unable to make bail, set at $750,000.

Speaker 10 She wanted to access money from Buddy's IRA, which had enough cash to cover the bail bond fee.

Speaker 66 But because of the pending murder charges, Brenda was not allowed to access the account.

Speaker 18 After she'd been in jail about a year awaiting trial, Brenda's attorney had requested a hearing and was going to ask the judge if Brenda could tap into those frozen assets to make bail and get out.

Speaker 10 That's kind of a conundrum, doesn't it?

Speaker 18 The judge wanted to know Buddy's siblings' opinions. My opinion was,

Speaker 18 hell no. She doesn't get to kill my brother and then use the money she inherits from killing him to get herself out of jail for killing him.
Hell no.

Speaker 47 So, no bail, at least from Buddy's estate.

Speaker 35 Another year passed.

Speaker 66 But through her attorney, Brenda got a surety company to help cover the bail.

Speaker 7 And then she returned to Tennessee to await her day in court.

Speaker 22 We were able to get her on a kind of a home detention. She had to call in.
I think she wore a GPS tracking monitor for a little while.

Speaker 63 Meanwhile, back in Asheville, D.A.

Speaker 13 Todd Williams had another decision to make, picking his prosecutors.

Speaker 8 One of whom was in that meeting when he first evaluated the case, Megan Locke.

Speaker 17 Mr. Williams came to me one day and just said, would I like to be a part of that case and help prosecute it? And I said, absolutely, I would love to.

Speaker 29 First murder trial.

Speaker 17 Yes, sir.

Speaker 19 And what does it do to the pit of your stomach? Does it give you kind of, holy cow, this is it?

Speaker 17 It was nerve-wracking.

Speaker 17 There was certainly a lot of internal pressure. I mean, you have the pressure of wanting to be successful for the family and to get justice for the victim.
So taking a difficult case as the first one,

Speaker 17 that was hard.

Speaker 44 Hard also because Locke would be squaring off against two savvy, experienced defense attorneys, Steve Cash and Sean Devereaux, who were emphatic.

Speaker 42 There was no case against Brenda.

Speaker 22 There was just absolutely no evidence, regardless of motive that she had pulled the trigger that killed her husband. In fact, there was evidence that absolutely contradicted that.

Speaker 14 All of this would be hashed out at trial.

Speaker 10 While the attorneys on each side were preparing, the McCutcheon family kept asking Brenda to give them Buddy's personal items, which they had been seeking ever since his murder.

Speaker 18 At this point, it's been three and a half years since he was murdered. My brothers had been begging Brenda, could they please have some of Buddy's mementos?

Speaker 45 But Brenda kept them and rarely talked to Buddy's family until one day when Brenda was out on

Speaker 18 Brenda phones my brother John and says, yes, it's all in a storage unit and I've made arrangements. You can show up and get whatever you want out of that storage unit.

Speaker 51 But when Buddy's brother John got there,

Speaker 18 he calls me crying

Speaker 18 because not only did he find Buddy's cherished, prized possessions ruined by vermin. Rodents had peed and pooped and chewed up, the things that meant the most to Buddy.

Speaker 18 But Brenda had tossed Buddy's remains in that storage room.

Speaker 7 Buddy's ashes from his cremation three years earlier in a box like this one had never been interred.

Speaker 29 Just left it there. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Three and a half years after he's gone, who puts their spouses remains in a rented storage unit? It was horrible. And can you imagine what it was like for him? I'm sorry.
I'm just...

Speaker 18 my brother john driving down the highway at night with his murdered brother's remains in a seat beside him

Speaker 23 crying

Speaker 10 we asked brenda's attorneys about this

Speaker 97 she had the ashes in her apartment she had kept the ashes and because of the fallout between her and and the mccutchin family she went and left those ashes in the storage unit for them to pick up and it was only in there a very brief period of time, I mean, hours.

Speaker 40 But when prosecutor Megan Locke heard about all this, well.

Speaker 17 I don't really know how you respectfully put your dead husband in the storage unit for any period of time.

Speaker 10 The ashes incident set the stage.

Speaker 29 The trial would be contentious.

Speaker 10 And one of the key witnesses would be Brenda McCutcheon.

Speaker 76 Coming up.

Speaker 22 She would tell us, I want to have a moment when I can stand up in public and tell people what really happened.

Speaker 31 Brenda tells her story to the jury.

Speaker 15 Will they buy it?

Speaker 17 Who breaks into a house, decides to just shoot somebody while they're sleeping, and then doesn't take anything?

Speaker 69 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 68 The Asheville Courthouse is a stately old place, built nearly a century ago.

Speaker 67 Here in January 2020, Brenda McCutcheon went on trial.

Speaker 45 She was almost 70.

Speaker 19 Did she look like a different person to you?

Speaker 23 Well,

Speaker 25 I'll be honest with you, I didn't pay much attention to her.

Speaker 26 I couldn't.

Speaker 65 I just didn't.

Speaker 70 Didn't or couldn't?

Speaker 26 I couldn't. I didn't.

Speaker 25 Both. I just didn't.
I chose not to.

Speaker 19 So, emotionally, what was it like to be in there?

Speaker 26 It was not good.

Speaker 7 Cameras were not allowed, and the prosecutors began presenting their case, which featured all that circumstantial evidence they said pointed only to Brenda.

Speaker 17 She was given every benefit of the doubt at every turn of the corner until there was nowhere left to turn.

Speaker 16 Hey, what's going on? My husband's been shocked.

Speaker 63 They played Brenda's 911 call, insisting it wasn't true. He never liked the fact that the fact that

Speaker 7 Brenda's entire police interview was also shown. Why would anybody, nobody that has ever come into our house would want to kill my husband?

Speaker 14 Where she claimed an intruder entered the house and killed Buddy.

Speaker 17 A pretty unbelievable possibility.

Speaker 19 Why do you say it's unbelievable?

Speaker 17 Who breaks into a house to rob somebody, digs around, finds a gun, decides to just shoot somebody while they're sleeping, and then that entire process doesn't take anything.

Speaker 50 Then Megan Locke detailed what the prosecution believed was Brenda's motive for murder, contending it unfolded after she and Buddy learned they were under investigation by the Department of Revenue.

Speaker 17 It was a criminal investigation. There were real consequences at play at this point in time.

Speaker 45 Serious consequences, possible prison time.

Speaker 68 The tax agent agent testified Buddy was surprised and had no clue about the withholding tax issues.

Speaker 41 It was all Brenda's doing.

Speaker 17 She was concerned she would not only be in trouble, but she would be the only one in trouble.

Speaker 19 So why would she kill him then?

Speaker 17 Because she was able to pin it all on him. She was able to, it fixed all her problems.
If she killed him. She didn't have to stay in Asheville.
She didn't have to keep cosmetic surgery afloat.

Speaker 17 She didn't have to worry about anything to do with the Department of Revenue. Once he was dead, it could be Buddy that did it.

Speaker 19 Isn't that really just speculation?

Speaker 17 The evidence in the Department of Revenue file was going to point to Brendan McCutcheon as being the one that embezzled. That's a motive.

Speaker 8 In fact, the IRS found over $385,000 in federal taxes were never paid.

Speaker 77 But when the defense's turn came up, It argued the so-called motive was bogus, no substance at all.

Speaker 22 The state was fishing for a theory, and and ultimately, everything that was brought in by this huge net that the state tried to employ fell out of the net.

Speaker 15 Fell out for one simple reason, said the defense.

Speaker 45 An utter lack of physical evidence tying Brenda to the murder.

Speaker 97 They didn't come in and say, aha, Brenda, your DNA is on this weapon. They didn't say, aha, Brenda, your fingerprint is on this gun.

Speaker 97 They didn't say, aha, Brenda, you have blood splatter all over your blouse. They didn't say, aha, Brenda, you're covered in gunshot residue.
None of that was reality.

Speaker 22 But what we suggested to the jury is the police, the DA's office, detectives, Department of Revenue, they haven't brought you enough evidence here to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did that.

Speaker 46 Back in Arkansas, Buddy's sister Melissa was getting daily updates on the trial.

Speaker 11 The lawyer herself, she knew juries were unpredictable.

Speaker 45 So to ease her anxiety during the trial, she painted.

Speaker 18 Art is my therapy.

Speaker 45 She painted pictures of her feelings, including this one done during the trial.

Speaker 18 It's called waiting. And it's a person

Speaker 18 waiting.

Speaker 19 What does that feel like to be that person waiting? You painted it, but can you describe it with words?

Speaker 18 I really couldn't describe it with words. The painting is my best expression of what it felt like, to be honest.

Speaker 45 Everyone in the courtroom also waited and wondered, would she testify?

Speaker 74 Would Brenda McCutcheon take the stand and tell the jury her story?

Speaker 22 Brenda insisted on testifying. From the very beginning, she would tell us that I want to have a moment when I can stand up in public and tell people what really happened.

Speaker 42 Putting any defendant on the stand is risky.

Speaker 39 But Brenda's attorneys first did a little test run.

Speaker 7 They had her take another polygraph test before the trial.

Speaker 3 And once again, she passed, said Attorney Deverell.

Speaker 22 Absolutely. No question at all.
Not even, there wasn't a gray area.

Speaker 3 Polygraph exams are not admissible at trial, but it was an assured Brenda who took the stand, reciting much of the same story she told detectives after Buddy was murdered.

Speaker 66 Didn't shoot your husband. No, no,

Speaker 66 no.

Speaker 66 He was everything to me

Speaker 66 and has been for all my adult life.

Speaker 97 We always think about whether or not to put on a defendant to testify, but we were confident that she was going to say the same thing she always did, and she did.

Speaker 22 I thought she did fine, and I think she did make a good witness.

Speaker 19 But as Prosecutor Locke listened to Brenda tell her story of her life with Buddy, it suddenly came to her. Motive.

Speaker 24 Maybe she'd only got it half right.

Speaker 19 It wasn't just the alleged tax fraud.

Speaker 48 It went deeper than that.

Speaker 47 Much deeper.

Speaker 19 Megan Locke felt sure of it.

Speaker 17 It was just very clear that everything she had ever done was for Buddy, built around what Buddy wanted, built around what Buddy's dreams were.

Speaker 17 And so he sticks her in this office, having to do this paperwork, not even utilizing her as a nurse in that office, even though that's what she truly was.

Speaker 17 And she very much, I believe, resented him for that.

Speaker 3 Which gave the prosecutors an idea.

Speaker 66 The night before they began their cross-examination.

Speaker 17 We decided we need to make her map. They need to see that she is capable of this, that nice people can do bad things.

Speaker 19 Getting her mad was an intentional thing on your part.

Speaker 60 Yes.

Speaker 7 Prosecutor Locke thought she knew just how to push Brenda's buttons.

Speaker 17 I referred to her as a secretary, and she got very upset about it and snapped back, I'm not a secretary. And you could see

Speaker 17 in her demeanor and hear in her tone this resentment about leaving her career.

Speaker 19 So why? Would that tax issue have led to that shooting that night?

Speaker 17 I think it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Suddenly, this business that she never wanted, that she had put her whole life into,

Speaker 17 that she had been made to figure out how to operate, was in trouble. And she was about to be solely responsible for what had happened.

Speaker 7 Fueling even more resentment, the prosecutors argued, adding to what already had been brewing for decades.

Speaker 15 And that last night.

Speaker 17 I think she lay down in that bed that night and thought about everything that had been making her mad. And I think that she snapped.
And she went downstairs and shot him in the head while he slept.

Speaker 56 It was only a theory, of course.

Speaker 15 There was no proof.

Speaker 10 And then the case went to the jury, a largely female jury.

Speaker 6 They would decide if Brenda was going home or to prison.

Speaker 45 Twelve people were about to decide the fate of Brenda McCutcheon.

Speaker 46 When you said it off to the jury, how confident were you?

Speaker 22 As confident as I've ever been with a burden.

Speaker 97 Same for me. I've never been as confident sending a case back as I was that day.

Speaker 15 And prosecutor Megan Locke?

Speaker 17 I was cautiously optimistic at that point.

Speaker 19 Yes, because when it comes down to giving it to a jury, you just really never know, right?

Speaker 17 You cannot predict juries.

Speaker 57 So we talked to a few of the jurors.

Speaker 95 When you realize your decision is sending someone to prison for life or letting someone off, you have to make sure that justice is served, and that is a huge responsibility.

Speaker 98 It was one of the most difficult things I've done in my life.

Speaker 96 And I found myself waking up at night thinking about this thing and

Speaker 96 having nightmares about it.

Speaker 50 When they got to the jury room, they took a preliminary vote.

Speaker 96 It was four not guilty and eight guilty.

Speaker 46 So they kept talking about the circumstantial evidence, about the possible motive, about Brenda's story that an intruder must have killed Buddy.

Speaker 98 It was a difficult process.

Speaker 98 There were many moving pieces. There was a lot of witnesses and there was a lot of evidence that was brought out for us to review.

Speaker 6 They voted again

Speaker 7 and still couldn't agree.

Speaker 95 We still need to talk about this because this woman's life is on the line. Buddy deserves justice.

Speaker 96 And then we had to drag in more evidence.

Speaker 15 They kept reviewing it.

Speaker 6 And then by day two, Valentine's Day, they voted one more time.

Speaker 17 The moment they walked back into the room, the nerves hit. I was very nervous.

Speaker 22 Your heart's pounding in your chest. That's about as nerve-wracking as it gets.

Speaker 17 I remember looking at the family. I remember looking to the other side of the courtroom and seeing Miss McCutcheon's sisters there.

Speaker 65 And

Speaker 17 there was a heaviness in the air. Somebody's life is about to change.
And then they read the verdict.

Speaker 60 And to breaking news, the jury in the Brenda McCutcheon murder trial finds her guilty.

Speaker 45 Finally, justice for the McCutcheon family.

Speaker 5 But there was no celebration.

Speaker 25 We had left the day before

Speaker 23 the verdict. I didn't want to be there.

Speaker 23 Why?

Speaker 70 It really didn't matter.

Speaker 25 I mean, it mattered, but in the big scheme of things, it didn't bring Buddy back.

Speaker 18 I wasn't gleeful or joyous that she got convicted,

Speaker 18 but I would have been outraged had she walked off scot-free and gotten away with it.

Speaker 67 Her defense attorneys watched devastated.

Speaker 97 It was a gut-wrenching moment in my life. to hear them say guilty.

Speaker 22 I believed entirely and continue to believe in the innocence of Brenda McCutcheon.

Speaker 97 I wish I could look back and think of the decision that we made that lost the case or the piece of evidence that, you know, convinced the jury that she was a murderer.

Speaker 3 So we asked the jurors, who were very clear about how and why they convicted Brenda.

Speaker 22 Sheriff's office.

Speaker 98 An intruder wouldn't come running in the house, go to that drawer, grab the gun, and shoot Buddy, and then run out and throw the gun in the yard.

Speaker 98 There's no one else that could have come in and shot Buddy. It had to be Brenda.

Speaker 96 This woman did not act normal to me. She should have been an emotional roller coaster when they started showing all this evidence.
She didn't show no emotion at all.

Speaker 95 I am certain that we got it right. No regrets.

Speaker 2 No regrets. No regrets.
No second thoughts.

Speaker 95 No. Would you bet your life on it? And I thought, well, yes, I really would.
And I am betting Brenda's life on it. I have no doubt in my mind.

Speaker 32 Brenda was stoic as she was sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 22 As she was walking out, Buddy's cousin and his wife stepped out of the audience. Buddy's cousin hugged her.
And what she said to them was, I didn't kill Buddy.

Speaker 22 That happened in the courtroom as she's being led away to life in prison with handcuffs on.

Speaker 6 The verdict won't bring Buddy back, of course.

Speaker 42 And among his siblings, the pain lingers.

Speaker 25 It's tough.

Speaker 14 It'll always be hard.

Speaker 25 The tears dry up a little bit, but if we think about it very often,

Speaker 25 you know, it still breaks your heart.

Speaker 10 Buddy's sister, Melissa, couldn't quite find the words for what she feels.

Speaker 46 So she painted it.

Speaker 64 This one's called Erasure.

Speaker 18 There's a cold blue hand holding a gun shooting and there's a figure falling back and then there's a giant pencil with an eraser already erasing part of that person

Speaker 18 Because I felt like that's what she did to buddy

Speaker 46 But the McCutcheon family does take solace in finally having a place to honor Buddy.

Speaker 63 They brought his ashes here to his hometown, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Speaker 66 The final resting spot of Buddy McCutcheon, medical doctor, musician, Renaissance man.

Speaker 6 No erasing him or his voice,

Speaker 45 which will live on in digital perpetuity forever.

Speaker 1 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 22 Thanks for joining us.

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