In the Light of Day

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Speaker 11 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 12 Tonight, on Dateline.

Speaker 13 We went home and had cocktails, more cocktails.

Speaker 15 And got kind of carried away. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Dramatic new developments in a deadly mystery that begins with cocktails and ends with a twist.

Speaker 18 They started drinking. One of them wound up dead.

Speaker 19 He shot himself. I don't get it.
He shot himself.

Speaker 13 I remember walking out and just saying, what?

Speaker 13 What are you doing?

Speaker 21 It came down as a possible suicide. Red flag went up immediately in my mind.

Speaker 22 Things didn't make sense.

Speaker 18 I never believed that my brother, with his daughters 20 steps away sleeping, would take a gun and shoot himself in the eye.

Speaker 21 I key down that gun that was in his right hand. It looked like it was placed there.
It just kind of made the hair and back my neck stand on it.

Speaker 13 Why didn't I do anything to stop it?

Speaker 18 It was disbelief, shock, anger. We just asked why.

Speaker 23 Why?

Speaker 13 It wasn't about the truth. It was about them winning a case.

Speaker 13 And we paid the price for it.

Speaker 12 Here's Keith Morrison with In the Light of Day.

Speaker 24 Some people blamed the booze.

Speaker 26 That is, when it was all over in the hard light of a winter morning here in Phoenix, Arizona.

Speaker 28 He was extremely intoxicated.

Speaker 30 When the body bag made its way to the morgue, and the folks from CSI craned their necks around fallen furniture and telltale pools of blood, and the survivors struggled to explain.

Speaker 33 I'm trying to remember it as best I can.

Speaker 17 That it must have been the booze with a gun.

Speaker 21 A pistol. A semi-automatic handgun.

Speaker 36 Where did that come from?

Speaker 34 With that email.

Speaker 26 The one that preceded so much vodka.

Speaker 13 And I was like, why are you trying to worry about this now? Like, there's nothing you can do.

Speaker 26 Something had to be going on that no one understood.

Speaker 18 This doesn't make sense. My brother would never do this.

Speaker 28 When you start putting all the pieces together, you only get one explanation, and that's murder.

Speaker 39 Well,

Speaker 40 to understand any of it, this is as good a place as any to begin.

Speaker 42 San Clemente, California.

Speaker 45 Time, the morning of the previous day.

Speaker 47 A Wednesday, December 29th, 2010.

Speaker 49 A man named Rob Fisher, ex-police officer turned attorney with a thriving practice in family law, got into his car and pointed east to Phoenix, six hours into the desert, where his grandchildren were eager to see their papa.

Speaker 33 It was a short trip just to kind of exchange presents.

Speaker 15 This, every Christmas, was one of his favorite errands of the year.

Speaker 33 I'm sure every grandfather says this, but you know, they throw up their hands and scream papa and come and run and almost knock you over.

Speaker 17 There's nothing quite like that, is there?

Speaker 33 It's pretty wonderful.

Speaker 54 In fact, Rob Fisher felt like a lucky man again.

Speaker 36 Didn't for a long time.

Speaker 56 Not after an injury prematurely ended his police career, and certainly not when his then-wife suffered so horribly through her cancer and then died holding onto his hand.

Speaker 17 But now he was surrounded by good friends, his career was finally back on track, he was happily remarried and still cherished the relationship with his former wife's family.

Speaker 13 He was going to come and see the girls and spoil them like he always did.

Speaker 13 Take him shopping for Christmas.

Speaker 35 This is Rob's one and only stepdaughter, Belinda.

Speaker 13 They would run,

Speaker 13 run and jump in his arms.

Speaker 13 Papa, screaming, and it would just brighten his day. You could see that it was just genuine, the love between them.

Speaker 17 The brief Christmas holiday visit from Rob would be, for Belinda, another chance to work through the grief, the searing grief she still felt for the mother lost to cancer.

Speaker 48 this is something that you still had with Rob afterwards, is that you had your mother.

Speaker 71 And you helped each other work through that loss.

Speaker 13 It was hard for me because that was still

Speaker 20 a connection to my mom.

Speaker 72 Rob is also looking forward to seeing Belinda's husband.

Speaker 74 What would you call him, his stepson-in-law, Lee Radder.

Speaker 75 Hardly a classic son-in-law relationship.

Speaker 13 They were only

Speaker 64 like a year and a half apart in age.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 73 Do they behave like friends or like

Speaker 13 father and son? No, not like father and son. More like buddies.

Speaker 33 I don't have any biological children, so that was my family.

Speaker 77 Rob, like Belinda, loved Lee's outsized personality, his bursting confidence and charisma.

Speaker 13 Loud-talking New Yorker, big salesman, always filled up the room.

Speaker 78 I'm macho kind of guy.

Speaker 46 This is Lee's sister, Lisa.

Speaker 18 He was a self-made entrepreneur. No college degree.
Started several companies.

Speaker 17 Sometimes they did reasonably well.

Speaker 39 Sometimes, often in fact, not so much.

Speaker 54 But give up?

Speaker 64 No.

Speaker 30 In fact, even as Rob drove across the desert to Phoenix on that 29th of December, Lee Ryder was waiting for news about his latest venture.

Speaker 81 A big one.

Speaker 34 The big one.

Speaker 54 Waiting for what he believed could be the best news of his whole business life.

Speaker 13 It was going to make us boatloads of money.

Speaker 14 And that was where things were when Pop-Pop came to visit.

Speaker 82 Yep.

Speaker 32 Rob arrived a little after noon.

Speaker 17 Belinda was at work when he picked up the girls and took them shopping for their belated Christmas presents.

Speaker 32 Then the whole family got together for dinner at this restaurant and afterwards went back to the house, where happy little girls were tucked into bed and Lee poured the nightcaps.

Speaker 40 Lee was a good host.

Speaker 33 Huh. Okay.

Speaker 72 The night was never empty.

Speaker 33 He liked to make sure that you had, you know,

Speaker 33 that there was beverages there if you wanted to partake.

Speaker 85 Then, well into their evening of liquid refreshment, Lee received an email.

Speaker 79 A moment you want to remember as you hear this story.

Speaker 2 And after, he drank quite a lot.

Speaker 59 Belinda wine, the men, vodka.

Speaker 13 Cocktails, more cocktails.

Speaker 15 And got kind of carried away with cocktails.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 86 A great deal of vodka.

Speaker 18 They started drinking, and the girls went to bed, and Robert and my brother stayed up.

Speaker 87 One of them wound up dead.

Speaker 18 One of them wound up dead.

Speaker 26 What happened in those boozy, bleary hours between midnight and dawn?

Speaker 48 Well, that's the mystery, isn't it?

Speaker 68 And a very strange tale it will be.

Speaker 80 911, what's the emergency?

Speaker 19 He shot himself.

Speaker 88 I don't get it.

Speaker 7 He shot himself. Okay, who shot himself?

Speaker 12 When we come back,

Speaker 12 an evening of holiday cheer ending in gunfire.

Speaker 33 It is horrific and numbing

Speaker 33 to see someone you love lying there dead.

Speaker 12 A tragic scene.

Speaker 16 And for Belinda, a haunting question.

Speaker 13 I remember walking out and

Speaker 13 just not even believing this, just saying,

Speaker 13 what are you doing?

Speaker 35 It was an early winter morning, December 30th, 2010.

Speaker 27 Outside, it was very dark.

Speaker 30 Inside, ice melted in glasses half full of vodka. And finally, silence descended on the house.

Speaker 36 Do you remember going to bed that night?

Speaker 13 I remember saying, I got to go to bed because I got to get up early.

Speaker 15 Any idea how much you had to drink?

Speaker 13 Probably quite a bit of wine.

Speaker 42 And then a single gunshot.

Speaker 27 It was Rob who discovered his son-in-law Lee, clearly dead, lying on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 33 It is

Speaker 33 horrific and numbing

Speaker 33 to see someone you love

Speaker 33 lying there dead.

Speaker 13 I remember walking out

Speaker 13 and

Speaker 13 looking

Speaker 20 and

Speaker 13 just not even believing this, just saying, what,

Speaker 13 what are you doing?

Speaker 67 It didn't look real, said Belinda.

Speaker 26 Certainly not in her still inebriated days.

Speaker 30 You thought they were putting out some sort of act for you?

Speaker 13 I thought it was like a

Speaker 13 bad joke. I really did.

Speaker 34 But it wasn't, of course.

Speaker 26 Not a joke at all.

Speaker 36 Instinct kicked in then. Rob, the cop, turned attorney, called 911 around 5 a.m.
911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 36 He shot himself.

Speaker 19 I don't get it. He shot himself.

Speaker 29 Sergeant Chris Lafko of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office got the call, rushed over there.

Speaker 21 It came down as a shooting call, a shooting victim, a possible suicide.

Speaker 29 Once inside the house, the sergeant took a good look at the victim.

Speaker 56 There was an entry wound at Lee's eye.

Speaker 23 His hand was grasping the gun.

Speaker 40 And there was Rob Fisher, still kneeling beside Lee, still holding the phone he used to call 911.

Speaker 21 Mr. Fisher stood up and said,

Speaker 21 I'm a retired police officer. I'm a police officer.

Speaker 90 And there was Belinda.

Speaker 21 She was going, what's going on? What's going on?

Speaker 45 She was in shock then, or so she said later.

Speaker 35 Still, perhaps unwilling to get her brain around what happened.

Speaker 13 I don't think in your worst nightmare, you wake up

Speaker 13 and see someone you love on the floor with blood around them.

Speaker 56 And then, to be told he shot himself?

Speaker 61 Sure, he seemed a little upset by the news he got in that email the night before, but business troubles were nothing new to Lee and Belinda Ratter.

Speaker 27 They'd been on the financial roller coaster for years.

Speaker 15 Lee was always chasing the next big thing.

Speaker 27 And even when they suffered, When the car was repossessed or when he couldn't pay the electricity and the power was off for five days, they got along.

Speaker 17 But during the years you were together, the big thing wasn't happening.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 71 Pretty frustrating, I would think.

Speaker 13 It was frustrating. It was frustrating.

Speaker 46 And on occasion, Lee turned for financial help to his stepfather-in-law, Rob Fisher.

Speaker 33 In the years I knew him, he went from owning a very successful company to being bankrupt and needing our help.

Speaker 32 That's why Belinda went back to school, got her nursing degree.

Speaker 40 Her paycheck maintained some stability.

Speaker 36 Well, Lee kept trying.

Speaker 29 Did you ever have any regrets about being with Lee?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 13 We did the roller coaster. Did I want him to get a staple job? Hell yes.

Speaker 17 Everyone who knew Lee was used to the roller coaster, but never saw it get Lee down.

Speaker 52 What did you admire about him?

Speaker 18 I think his ability to always see the glass half full. He was not a negative person.

Speaker 66 This is Lee's friend and sometimes business associate, Eric Lampel.

Speaker 22 I've seen Lee be rich, rich, rich with a new Jaguar. I've seen him in bankruptcy and losing the house.

Speaker 24 And besides, that latest thing looked so promising.

Speaker 22 Well, we started this company called CeneCon. He came up with this technology that uses computers to track gaming trends.

Speaker 34 This time, Lee was on the verge of scoring big, closing a big deal that would make them both rich.

Speaker 22 Lee was certain it was going to happen

Speaker 34 in the new year.

Speaker 26 So that evening, said Rob, Lee was in a very good mood indeed.

Speaker 33 He was enthusiastic.

Speaker 54 And then, it was late.

Speaker 37 They were already well into their cups.

Speaker 36 Lee got that email and left the room to make a phone call.

Speaker 71 So this wasn't just a little quickie he was called away for.

Speaker 13 It was a longer period. No, it was a longer period of time.
And I remember him coming back and showing me something on his phone, like the email or something,

Speaker 13 and being upset about it. And I was like, there's nothing you can do.
It's 11 o'clock at night or whatever it was.

Speaker 13 Like, save it for tomorrow.

Speaker 25 And that was it, she said.

Speaker 56 She didn't give it a lot of thought because she and Rob were in deep conversation about her late mother. Though Rob did notice me seemed a little thrown.

Speaker 33 He did make comments that night that, again, I took as sarcasm.

Speaker 33 In retrospect, I wished I would have paid more attention.

Speaker 15 About his situation.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 25 But really, what could have been in that email that was so bad he'd decide to kill himself?

Speaker 33 There was probably a lot more pressure on him than he would let on.

Speaker 52 But that conclusion, reasonable or not, came later with sobriety.

Speaker 85 When the cops arrived that early bloody morning, the rod they encountered was clearly plastered, barely coherent.

Speaker 32 But how is this for a red flag?

Speaker 17 He acted, said the sergeant, like he didn't even know who was dead.

Speaker 21 He asked me, is that Lee in there? Meaning his son-in-law. And it's just in the back of my mind, well, why wouldn't you know who this person is?

Speaker 55 So, what was really going on here?

Speaker 32 A detective named Michael Brooks arrived, took one look at two intoxicated adults, and suggested a ride to the sheriff's department for a few questions.

Speaker 31 Something about this did not look right.

Speaker 96 Coming up.

Speaker 12 And somebody wasn't acting right either, according to investigators.

Speaker 21 If my spouse was lying on the ground suffering a fatal wound, I'd make every effort to at least look at my spouse.

Speaker 71 She didn't do that.

Speaker 97 When dateline continues.

Speaker 47 It was still early morning when police descended on the house where Lee Ratter was shot dead on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 34 And a detective told Belinda Belinda he wanted to meet her privately.

Speaker 67 Didn't give her a choice, actually.

Speaker 13 We're taking you to downtown Phoenix, and we need you to drop off your daughters somewhere.

Speaker 85 Detective Michael Brooks.

Speaker 10 If apparently he has shot himself, why'd you take Belinda down to the station?

Speaker 28 In suicides, in

Speaker 37 any

Speaker 28 death investigation, that could be grandma that dies in her bed.

Speaker 63 You're going to talk to the people that are there to find out what happened.

Speaker 46 There was a reason.

Speaker 24 The arriving officer thought something was off about the way Belinda was reacting.

Speaker 21 I mean, to me, if my spouse was lying on the ground suffering

Speaker 21 an injury, a fatal wound,

Speaker 21 I'd make every effort to find out, look at, at least look at my spouse.

Speaker 71 She didn't do that.

Speaker 32 So, there was Belinda being interviewed by the detective.

Speaker 32 I'm trying to figure out

Speaker 32 what happened. happened.

Speaker 98 You and me both. I don't know.

Speaker 53 So asked Detective Michael Brooks.

Speaker 25 Why would Lee have killed himself?

Speaker 98 We've had financial trouble. We always seem to make it through.

Speaker 98 You know, it's like...

Speaker 98 I just... I just don't get it.
I don't get it.

Speaker 98 We don't own a gun.

Speaker 81 Which was another question.

Speaker 57 Not only why, but how when he didn't have a gun.

Speaker 25 So, to the beginning, asked Detective Brooks.

Speaker 56 Don't leave anything out.

Speaker 98 We went to dinner at about

Speaker 98 7.

Speaker 98 You came back to the house, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you talked for a little bit and the girls went to sleep.

Speaker 98 About what time did the girls go to sleep? 10.30.

Speaker 61 And that was about the time Lee got that email about the big business deal he was banking on, said Belinda.

Speaker 91 And then the phone call with his business partner.

Speaker 98 And he went in the other room and talked to him, and Rob and I just sat at the table and, you know, just kept talking. And

Speaker 98 he came back.

Speaker 98 I got up to go to the bathroom

Speaker 98 and came back and

Speaker 98 there he was.

Speaker 98 About what time did this happen? The girls went to bed about 10.30.

Speaker 98 so it was after that. I don't I don't know.

Speaker 31 Wait, sometime after 10.30?

Speaker 46 Detective Brooks was baffled.

Speaker 36 After all that 911 call reporting Lee's death came in at 5 a.m.

Speaker 42 Was Belinda saying she couldn't account for what happened from 10.30 p.m.

Speaker 85 until 5 the next morning?

Speaker 36 Didn't make sense.

Speaker 98 Okay, were you

Speaker 98 intoxicated?

Speaker 98 Probably. Oh yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 98 We got our first call on this

Speaker 98 at five o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 98 Okay, I am.

Speaker 98 That's pretty significant from

Speaker 98 10.30, right, from the kids going to bed at 10, 10.30

Speaker 98 to 5 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 100 But was she just confused, the detective wondered?

Speaker 15 Or was she hiding something?

Speaker 15 There's something more to this.

Speaker 98 Do I need to have a lawyer or something?

Speaker 35 Boom, it came out of her fog.

Speaker 26 She could sense where this was going.

Speaker 98 I'm just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Right.
Okay. Um,

Speaker 98 I didn't kill my husband. I didn't want him bed.

Speaker 98 I would never do anything like that.

Speaker 98 Was there an accident? No.

Speaker 98 No.

Speaker 98 Nothing. I mean,

Speaker 98 nothing. Wouldn't you agree that there's a big difference between

Speaker 98 10.30 at night and 5 o'clock in the morning? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you would know if this is.

Speaker 98 And I also know that I didn't tell my husband that that's what this is going, that's what this is about, then.

Speaker 101 Before sending her home, Detective Brooks kept Belinda in this little room with the sheriff's office for hours.

Speaker 78 I don't know what happened.

Speaker 81 That business of the time shift bothered him immensely.

Speaker 15 He didn't feel like she was necessarily being straight with you.

Speaker 80 I didn't want to jump to any conclusions at that point.

Speaker 56 If the detective was suspicious, so was Lee's family back in Buffalo.

Speaker 72 Or at least they were when Belinda finally called to break the news to them two whole days after Lee died.

Speaker 36 Lee's mom, Liz Ratter, described her memory of that phone call.

Speaker 25 It was New Year's Day.

Speaker 102 Liz, yes, this is Belinda. Yes.

Speaker 102 Lee shot himself.

Speaker 102 Then in the course of talking to them, we found out that it happened Thursday morning.

Speaker 70 And this was a Saturday night?

Speaker 26 This was Saturday night.

Speaker 102 I said, what took you so long? Why didn't you, you know, I could have gone there immediately. Oh, well, the police confiscated our phones.
I didn't know your phone number.

Speaker 24 The call was brief, said Liz Rader.

Speaker 102 And that's the last thing. Probably the last words I heard from her.

Speaker 26 But that shocking word, suicide, it was a word Lee's family did not buy.

Speaker 36 Not for a minute.

Speaker 18 This doesn't make sense. My brother would never do this.

Speaker 18 I don't believe that he killed himself. There's just no way.

Speaker 53 No, thought the family.

Speaker 42 Something else must have happened in the house that night.

Speaker 90 But what?

Speaker 96 Coming up.

Speaker 12 Why police thought this might just be a major clue.

Speaker 21 I key down that gun that was in his right hand, and it just didn't look right. It looked like it was placed there.

Speaker 37 The mystery surrounding the untimely death of Lee Ratter should not, by rights, have been so terribly difficult to solve.

Speaker 25 If it wasn't suicide, that is, and within minutes of his arrival, the first officer of the scene strongly doubted that it was.

Speaker 21 I was pretty certain in my mind that this was going to be a homicide investigation.

Speaker 27 So if he was right, it would be the first homicide he'd ever seen in that little Phoenix suburb.

Speaker 81 But why murder and not suicide?

Speaker 21 I keyed down that gun that was in his right hand, and it just didn't look right. It looked like it was placed there.

Speaker 26 In fact, it looked to him like somebody moved a bunch of things around.

Speaker 21 It just kind of made the hair and back my neck stand on it.

Speaker 58 Which perhaps explains what felt to Belinda like an inquisition down at the sheriff's office.

Speaker 13 They wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. They wouldn't let me have water.
I was freezing. I asked for a blanket, nothing.

Speaker 46 Was Belinda involved?

Speaker 2 Too soon to say, perhaps.

Speaker 49 They turned the same focused attention then on Papa, or if you will, Rob Fisher.

Speaker 33 I loved him as the father of my grandchildren, the husband of my stepdaughter. and

Speaker 33 a friend of me.

Speaker 49 Rob was still in his pajamas and stewing in an alcohol level that was still twice the legal limit when the detective ushered him into the interview room.

Speaker 98 Can you tell me what happened?

Speaker 98 Samuel

Speaker 98 came out

Speaker 98 and took him all around.

Speaker 15 What condition was he in when you talked to him?

Speaker 80 Well, he was intoxicated. He wasn't fall-down stupid drunk in that I carried on a conversation with him.

Speaker 80 He was answering questions.

Speaker 58 Rob told the detective he was asleep in the guest room when it happened.

Speaker 98 You heard a pop?

Speaker 98 Did you come out of it?

Speaker 98 And then,

Speaker 98 what did you see?

Speaker 33 You know,

Speaker 33 still to this day difficult to

Speaker 33 think of Lee lying there dead.

Speaker 85 But remember, Lee did not have a gun, nor did Belinda. So where did it come from?

Speaker 56 Sergeant Lafkoe may have answered that question himself when he looked in Rob's gym bag in the guest room.

Speaker 21 I find the blue nylon duffel bag, and I see a gun holster.

Speaker 17 An empty holster?

Speaker 23 Rob admitted it was his gun that killed Lee.

Speaker 56 Always took it with him on the road.

Speaker 65 After all, he was an ex-cop, was fully licensed.

Speaker 98 Your bag was in your room.

Speaker 59 But how did Rob's unloaded gun get from a holster in the guest room into Lee's hand and with bullets in it?

Speaker 11 Good question.

Speaker 11 Rob couldn't seem to answer it. Mike, I was remembering,

Speaker 11 and I don't remember a lot without

Speaker 11 two balls a lot.

Speaker 26 After a round of questions, they paused and standard procedure took Rob's clothes for testing.

Speaker 81 And then the detective bored in for answers.

Speaker 81 Where did I shot him? Where was it ever shooting?

Speaker 81 We love them.

Speaker 98 We've never fired. We hadn't fired.

Speaker 33 I'm trying to remember it as best I can.

Speaker 33 You know, I will say I don't remember everything.

Speaker 33 And it is, it's,

Speaker 33 and that's maddening in and of itself.

Speaker 36 Maddening indeed.

Speaker 55 So many I don't knows from both Rob and Belinda that morning.

Speaker 69 By the end of the interviews with both Belinda and with Rob, what were you thinking about their stories taken collectively?

Speaker 29 Were there questions

Speaker 37 that I had? Absolutely.

Speaker 80 I didn't know know what I was dealing with. Right.

Speaker 45 But for all the immediate suspicion, the police investigation didn't seem to go anywhere.

Speaker 54 Ra went home to his law practice in California.

Speaker 50 How much do you beat yourself up that you allowed yourself to take that gun into their home?

Speaker 33 It was my normal practice. Do I wish on that one particular trip I wouldn't have? Of course.

Speaker 81 And Belinda went to California too with her girls to be with her biological father, Jerry.

Speaker 65 and it was there she tried to explain that they lost their father.

Speaker 13 We are on

Speaker 13 my dad and my stepmom's couch and we were just like a little powwow circle

Speaker 2 and just told him that daddy was in heaven.

Speaker 56 Sorry. Up in Buffalo, meanwhile, Lee's mother and siblings were suffering from their own brand of agony of the mushroom in the dark variety.

Speaker 103 They kept asking what was going on, and nobody told them anything.

Speaker 18 It was an open investigation.

Speaker 18 And it remained an open investigation for a very long time.

Speaker 101 Even the coroner maintained an official silence.

Speaker 49 For months, there was no ruling on the question of suicide or homicide. And then, half a year after Lee's death, Belinda organized a celebration of life.

Speaker 35 Lee's Buffalo relatives got the invitation and flew out to attend.

Speaker 70 The tension was palpable.

Speaker 30 Lee's sister Anne confronted Belinda.

Speaker 18 I went up and said, you know, I just, I need answers. You were there.
You must be able to, you know, just tell me what happened.

Speaker 62 You'll never know what happened.

Speaker 61 Not, I don't know what happened myself, but you'll never know what happened.

Speaker 18 You'll never know what happened.

Speaker 30 We asked Belinda, what did she remember of that conversation?

Speaker 13 Not what I said. I would never say that.
What I said was, this is not the time or the place to have that kind of discussion.

Speaker 34 And Rob, He was there too, but...

Speaker 105 Never said a word to us.

Speaker 102 If my gun killed your son, I would certainly apologize to you.

Speaker 17 So, as we say,

Speaker 70 tension.

Speaker 33 I don't know if I could ever say anything that would change how they feel.

Speaker 66 Lee's family was more frustrated than ever.

Speaker 24 Seemed like a cover-up to them.

Speaker 30 Do you have any firm ideas about what happened to your son?

Speaker 102 Somebody killed him.

Speaker 31 Beyond that?

Speaker 102 There were only two adults in the house besides him

Speaker 76 and if nobody else would tell her what happened lee's sister decided she was going to find the answer herself

Speaker 12 coming up lee's family gets hold of the entire 911 call who is this person i thought is it a family friend

Speaker 19 he is my

Speaker 19 daughter-in-law's husband i see

Speaker 102 triggering new suspicions about rob's behavior it doesn't make sense to me I mean, if you've known a guy for 12 years,

Speaker 102 you certainly knew who it was that was laying there.

Speaker 97 When dateline continues.

Speaker 23 It was a dark time for Lee Router's family at Buffalo.

Speaker 18 We're not in Arizona, so all of our

Speaker 18 angst is almost compounded because we're so far away from it all.

Speaker 36 A beloved son and brother gone.

Speaker 77 No answers to satisfy their deep suspicion.

Speaker 93 It was Lisa who decided, if nobody else will give us answers, I'll find them myself.

Speaker 18 It's just my detectiveness inside of me.

Speaker 41 How'd you go about doing that?

Speaker 18 I called the sheriff's office and said I'd like to request the 911 tape.

Speaker 64 Got it.

Speaker 18 Got my CD in the mail.

Speaker 26 Then the family gathered to listen.

Speaker 55 And what they heard on that 911 recording seemed very odd indeed.

Speaker 55 911, what's the emergency?

Speaker 55 He shot himself.

Speaker 19 I don't get it. He shot himself.
Okay, who shot himself? I don't know who he is. He's like my

Speaker 19 wife's cousin.

Speaker 82 What was that?

Speaker 65 Rob told the 911 operator and later the police he wasn't sure who the dead man was.

Speaker 56 Might have been his wife's cousin.

Speaker 19 And who is this person I shot?

Speaker 80 is it a family friend

Speaker 19 he is

Speaker 19 my

Speaker 102 daughter-in-law's cousin i think it doesn't make sense to me i mean if you've known a guy for 12 years

Speaker 102 you certainly knew who it was that was laying there do you know how old he is

Speaker 102 he looks

Speaker 19 no i don't know his age but i'm looking at him

Speaker 73 the family thought they were hearing a cover-up in progress some kind of act the call was disconnected rob called 911 again.

Speaker 19 Who is this person to you? What? Who is this person to you?

Speaker 19 He,

Speaker 19 who is.

Speaker 54 And what was also strange?

Speaker 46 Belinda's voice in the background.

Speaker 107 To them, it seemed far too calm.

Speaker 19 Is it a friend or a relative?

Speaker 19 He is my

Speaker 19 daughter-in-law's

Speaker 19 friend. How old is he?

Speaker 19 How old is he?

Speaker 19 50.

Speaker 102 50.

Speaker 102 I don't have a frantic wife in the background screaming, oh my God, my son, my husband's dead.

Speaker 18 It was

Speaker 18 heart-wrenching.

Speaker 18 Heart-wrenching. I think it really kind of solidified our belief that my brother did not commit suicide.

Speaker 34 So they went back and forth.

Speaker 56 Was Belinda covering up for Rob?

Speaker 27 Was Rob covering for Belinda?

Speaker 79 Back at home, Rob did the prudent thing.

Speaker 33 He hired an attorney just to let

Speaker 33 Maricopa County know that I was willing to cooperate.

Speaker 27 In fact, said Rob, his attorney called the police in Arizona to check on the investigation, but as far as Rob could tell, nobody was interested in talking to him again.

Speaker 33 We made those types of inquiries multiple times with them.

Speaker 44 Oh, but the same was not true for Belinda.

Speaker 13 They came to my house. five, six, seven times.
I wasn't resisting anything. I didn't have what they wanted.
I didn't have any answers.

Speaker 36 Lee had life insurance.

Speaker 66 Belinda was the beneficiary.

Speaker 36 It was blocked for months while the police investigated.

Speaker 37 And when the DA summoned Belinda's children to a deposition, she, for a while at least, resisted.

Speaker 13 And it wasn't until the harassing got to a point that they

Speaker 13 that the district attorney threatened to call child protective services on me if I didn't have my children forensically deposed that I ended up hiring an attorney. And that was the only reason.

Speaker 26 But it wasn't harassment at all, said the sheriff's deputies.

Speaker 77 Asking questions was just their job.

Speaker 55 And eventually, they heard Belinda's sobered-up answers of going to bed by midnight and being woken up by Rob right before his 911 call around 5 in the morning.

Speaker 13 I remember getting up,

Speaker 13 him

Speaker 13 shaking me, waking me up, and saying, where's Lee? Where's Lee?

Speaker 13 And I'm thinking what do you mean how is it that you didn't hear the shot i myself am a very sound sleeper praise god my daughters are very sound sleepers because they didn't hear it either so if her demeanor seemed off on the 911 call or later to the arriving officer she said remember at first she thought the bloody scene in the kitchen was a prank i was thinking that it wasn't real yeah that it was fake about 10 30

Speaker 101 and not knowing the difference between 10 30 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Speaker 36 in her first police interview, well, that she blamed on the wine.

Speaker 58 And later, Belinda told police a timeline that made sense.

Speaker 69 Why was your story different later than it was early?

Speaker 13 I don't think that I was remembering everything that had transpired. I don't think that I was really thinking of the...
you know, the chronological order of things.

Speaker 25 And after many sessions with Belinda, investigators investigators were finally satisfied that she was telling the truth.

Speaker 103 And then, almost six months after Lee's death, May 2011, the medical examiner finally issued an autopsy report.

Speaker 65 In Buffalo, beliefs confirmed.

Speaker 18 It was not ruled a suicide, it was ruled a homicide.

Speaker 81 But in Phoenix?

Speaker 13 That was completely surprising.

Speaker 85 And at Rob's Place in California?

Speaker 33 There's a level of disbelief. It's, you know, how do you,

Speaker 33 how did that happen kind of thing.

Speaker 60 Good question.

Speaker 59 And here's another one.

Speaker 61 Why still wasn't anybody arrested?

Speaker 56 In spite of the medical examiner's ruling that it was homicide, a whole year went by.

Speaker 15 Rob thought this might be a case they simply weren't going to pursue.

Speaker 33 You're looking for it in your life. You're not looking over your shoulder.

Speaker 13 Maybe he should have been or would have been had he known the questions Belinda was being asked back in phoenix arizona they kept saying well do you think there was a fight between them that night like no no way they wouldn't they'd never fought

Speaker 41 no the case wasn't dead at all the murder suspect still under the microscope was rob fisher

Speaker 12 coming up why rob though he claimed he was nowhere near lee when the gun went off Evidence seems to tell a different story.

Speaker 28 There were two glasses with ice in both of those glasses. Tells us that two people are up drinking.

Speaker 42 Rob Fisher was a busy man in the spring of 2012, tending to his thriving law practice and his horses in Southern California.

Speaker 54 Almost a year and a half after Lee Ratter's sudden demise, Rob had begun to put the whole sad business behind him.

Speaker 29 Though...

Speaker 33 In the back of your mind, there's always a part of you that knows there's no resolution to this yet.

Speaker 40 But of course, Rob did not know what investigators had been saying about him since those very first hours after the shooting.

Speaker 21 A red flag went up immediately in my mind.

Speaker 54 Didn't know what the prosecutor was hearing.

Speaker 42 That just like Lee's family, detectives believed Rob may have been faking the extent of his drunken confusion. I don't know who it is.
He's like,

Speaker 19 wife's cousin.

Speaker 21 I would think he would be able to identify him. I mean, the wound wasn't that disfiguring that he shouldn't have been able to tell that was his son-in-law.

Speaker 107 Investigators also believe that it wasn't the haze of inebriation, but a deliberate lie.

Speaker 73 When Rob said here during his only interview, the one conducted that morning, that he was nowhere near Lee when the gun, Rob's gun, went off in the kitchen.

Speaker 18 You went the front bedroom in the bed.

Speaker 45 Problem was, cops snapping pictures of the house didn't think the guest bed looked slept in at all.

Speaker 49 And when Prosecutor Jay Rademacher was shown photos of the kitchen table, it looked to him like Rob Fisher was caught in his lie.

Speaker 28 There were two glasses, one on the table, one on the kitchen counter. With ice in both of those glasses, tells us that two people are up drinking.

Speaker 2 And then it was a fine May morning and Rob walked out of his house to go to work.

Speaker 33 I was in the driveway and I saw people running up at me with both sides with guns pointed at me. At first I didn't recognize them as law enforcement.
I wasn't thinking of law enforcement.

Speaker 33 And so you, you, you kind of, my split second initial reaction is, you know, I'm being attacked.

Speaker 56 And in a way, he was not by thugs, by cops.

Speaker 33 They put me down on the ground and,

Speaker 33 you know, handcuffed me.

Speaker 84 And then Rob Fisher was carted off to jail and extradited right away to Arizona and charged with second-degree murder.

Speaker 102 My phone rang. I answered the phone.

Speaker 82 It was Detective Brooks.

Speaker 102 He said, I just want to tell you that we've arrested Rob Fisher. that we have Rob Fisher in custody.

Speaker 18 And that was

Speaker 18 almost like disbelief, like finally. Like we waited 490 days from the day of the accident to the day that he was charged.

Speaker 30 Finally, some satisfaction for Lee's family in Buffalo.

Speaker 46 But when word of the arrest raced around Rob's circle of friends, not a single one of them could believe it.

Speaker 56 Like fellow attorney Chris Miller, who was appalled, she said.

Speaker 18 Absolutely the last person in the world.

Speaker 108 I mean, if you told me these 20 other people did it,

Speaker 79 yeah, okay.

Speaker 63 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 108 But not Rob. Not the Rob I know.

Speaker 90 Not our Rob.

Speaker 18 He didn't do it.

Speaker 66 Somebody made a big mistake, said Chris, and as a former sheriff, she ought to know.

Speaker 14 But aren't the law enforcement officials and officers just trying to get out the truth here?

Speaker 13 Possibly, but even wanting to get out of the truth doesn't prevent you from making mistakes.

Speaker 108 I mean, I saw it when I was a sheriff.

Speaker 48 From his jail cell, Rob found a Phoenix-based defense attorney, a man named Dwayne Cates.

Speaker 89 I don't think Robert Fisher should ever have been charged with a crime.

Speaker 26 Why not?

Speaker 89 Based on the evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that he killed the ratter.

Speaker 55 Cates got Rob released on half a million dollars bail.

Speaker 46 But Rob was ordered to stay put in Arizona.

Speaker 17 That's where we talked to him as he waited for his trial.

Speaker 61 And Belinda, she had no idea whether or not she might be charged, too.

Speaker 48 Were you afraid you were going to be arrested?

Speaker 13 Oh, sure. You're just in knots all day long.
You just don't know what to expect.

Speaker 13 And, you know, you think,

Speaker 13 if they think Rob's capable of this, Rob, like this super good guy, then they for sure think I'm capable of it.

Speaker 101 And Belinda had to face the fact that either her husband took his own life or he was murdered by her stepfather.

Speaker 91 She found both options very hard to believe.

Speaker 49 But as time went on, she began to think

Speaker 42 maybe the prosecutor knew something she didn't.

Speaker 40 They wouldn't arrest him if they didn't have some evidence.

Speaker 82 Right.

Speaker 13 And where I, you know, I was brought up that we believe the police officers, we believe that my grandfather was a police officer. Rob was a police officer.
Like, they don't just charge people.

Speaker 13 He had to have done it.

Speaker 96 Coming up.

Speaker 12 At trial, the blood expert's bombshell theory, why he says the evidence points to only one conclusion.

Speaker 88 Mr. Fisher glooped Mr.

Speaker 109 Rider's body to make it look like Mr.

Speaker 88 Rider had suspended the shot and it had fell backwards.

Speaker 97 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 66 It was the morning of November 6, 2013, a Wednesday, when Prosecutor Jay Rademacher rose in the Phoenix courthouse to present his murder case against Rob Fisher.

Speaker 28 This case

Speaker 28 is about a cover.

Speaker 36 Lee Ratter's family watched from the gallery, hoping, three years after Lee's death, for justice.

Speaker 102 Will we ever find out what happened?

Speaker 37 Truthfully, I don't know.

Speaker 102 Do I want somebody to pay for his death? Yes.

Speaker 102 Most seriously, because he didn't deserve to die.

Speaker 51 Good morning. At the defense table,

Speaker 14 Rob Fisher was confident there was simply no case against him.

Speaker 33 I've never heard a theory. I've never heard a motive.
I've never heard anything.

Speaker 75 That was about to change.

Speaker 85 Point number one, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 54 Lee Ryder's death was clearly not a suicide.

Speaker 28 Lee loved his family, especially his girls. Lee would have never done something like this inside of his home.

Speaker 34 Evidence of that?

Speaker 5 This is Lee's childhood best friend, who told the jury Lee never got depressed about money.

Speaker 111 One of his favorite sayings to me that I've tried to be motivated by is just, Adam, you can always make more money.

Speaker 64 And there was this.

Speaker 101 Lee spoke with his business partner, Donovan Durbin, that night. And Durbin told the jury Lee did not sound suicidal at all.

Speaker 113 He was happy. He said he had family over.
He was going to go have a couple cocktails and he'd call me tomorrow.

Speaker 51 The prosecutor called Belinda to the stand, too.

Speaker 49 Later, she told us she wanted to testify, but was not happy to be a prosecution witness.

Speaker 49 She told the jury that though Lee did fret a little about the email he received that night, he was otherwise the same old Lee.

Speaker 13 Just like a regular night.

Speaker 105 Nothing was different.

Speaker 19 Not that I recall.

Speaker 26 So Lee had no reason to take his own life, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 47 Now the only possible explanation was that he was murdered.

Speaker 28 See, the physical evidence, the blood, the trajectory,

Speaker 28 all of that, that doesn't lie. Murder explains all of it.

Speaker 65 His theory?

Speaker 107 As Lee Ratter and Rob Fisher sat at the kitchen table drinking vodka into the wee hours of that morning, something must have happened.

Speaker 54 Something that so aroused Rob, he went and got his gun and came back and shot Lee through the right eye and then panicked and went about staging the scene.

Speaker 28 The science doesn't lie. People do.

Speaker 64 So, forensics.

Speaker 25 The arriving officer told the jury how he got suspicious when he saw the gun.

Speaker 56 still wrapped in Lee's dead hand.

Speaker 21 To me, it appeared that it was placed in his hand.

Speaker 51 A very important first discovery, the prosecutor told us.

Speaker 28 How is gravity not taking its course? From either pulling Lee's body forward or allowing that gun to drop out of his hand.

Speaker 46 But it doesn't really work with Robert putting a gun in his hand either, does it?

Speaker 93 I mean, why would a cop, for example, put the gun in his hand that way with a thumb through?

Speaker 30 This is the next cop we're talking about.

Speaker 28 The next cop that's drunk.

Speaker 56 But, said the prosecutor, not so drunk he wouldn't know who his son-in-law was when he made that 911 call.

Speaker 54 That was pure theater.

Speaker 38 Review knew

Speaker 66 that was Lee on the ground.

Speaker 66 But

Speaker 86 he's trying to cover up on furniture.

Speaker 47 There was more, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 74 Rob did something any ex-cop should know you don't do.

Speaker 46 He disobeyed a direct order.

Speaker 21 And he said, hey, I'm sorry, police officer. I said, okay, just step away.
He says, I didn't wash my hands. He said, no, don't wash your hands.

Speaker 17 But Rob washed his hands anyway. The prosecutor showed the jury the pictures in the scene that seemed to prove Rob lied about being in the guest bedroom asleep when the gun went off.

Speaker 67 The neatly made bed, those two glasses in the kitchen, with ice still fresh in the wee hours of the morning.

Speaker 13 Did you find it odd that there was ice in the glasses at 5.15 in the morning?

Speaker 37 Yes.

Speaker 52 But the key piece of evidence, said the prosecution, was the story told by the blood at the scene.

Speaker 52 There was blood on the pants Rob was wearing that when examined certainly looked like Rob had been sitting very close to Lee when the gun went off.

Speaker 46 And there was blood on the floor, which, said the state, proved Rob was involved.

Speaker 88 Mr. Fisher moved Mr.
Ryder's body and

Speaker 19 manipulated the

Speaker 109 area to make it look like

Speaker 88 Mr. Ryder had sustained the shot and it had fell backwards.

Speaker 54 The prosecution's blood spatter expert, Rudy Acosta was his name, demonstrated how, in his opinion, Lee's body would have slumped forward in the chair after the gun went off, not backward the way his body was found.

Speaker 29 Meaning, Rob must have moved Lee's body.

Speaker 86 I believe he didn't.

Speaker 26 I think he just dragged him out of the ground.

Speaker 81 What's more, said the expert.

Speaker 58 As Rob moved around the body, he left his footprints in Lee's blood.

Speaker 109 When friends tell me that he obviously stepped into blood

Speaker 114 where

Speaker 109 the origin of blood happened, the left foot was in the blood.

Speaker 114 Obviously said that, so that.

Speaker 109 We show there's an interruption of blood at least more than once.

Speaker 58 But as we heard the state's case, we couldn't help but wonder, was some of it guesswork? Did it really amount to proof that Rob shot Lee or walked around in the blood in order to move Lee's body?

Speaker 58 We challenged the prosecutor on that.

Speaker 50 So

Speaker 38 those footprints don't show culpability, though.

Speaker 25 They show movement.

Speaker 58 They show movement, yeah, but that's all they show, right?

Speaker 39 I mean, he may have been surprised by, he may have been sitting there, he shoots himself, he gets up, walks, and, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's manipulating the scene, just because his footprints are there.

Speaker 28 You keep coming up with these possibilities.

Speaker 40 Well, so do you.

Speaker 28 I don't come up with possibilities. I have the physical evidence that supports the state's theory of this case.

Speaker 60 So, said the prosecutor, the forensic said murder, even though there's no evidence of a disagreement between the two of them.

Speaker 31 There's nothing like that.

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 49 But that wasn't the issue, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 49 Hard evidence was.

Speaker 28 Murder is supported by the blood evidence, by what the ME testified, by the blood experts.

Speaker 28 Murder is supported by common sense and gravity in this case.

Speaker 82 Oh, but of course, it wasn't quite that simple.

Speaker 32 There was another possibility altogether, as the jury was about to hear.

Speaker 12 Coming up, a defense witness reveals that a big business opportunity went up in smoke before Lee died.

Speaker 89 Did you tell him no?

Speaker 105 Yes, I need somebody who has distribution centers worldwide.

Speaker 86 So he was

Speaker 86 told no, but that was not going to happen.

Speaker 12 And then testimony that the blood spatter evidence actually makes the case for suicide.

Speaker 115 This is a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Speaker 40 Rob Fisher's attorney, Dwayne Cates, has stood up for a long parade of clients over the years, many of them guilty of sin.

Speaker 77 But this case, this was different, said Mr.

Speaker 15 Cates.

Speaker 89 Innocent people are the hardest to represent. I don't sleep at night representing innocent people because losing is not an option.

Speaker 46 Rob's supporters, including fellow attorney and good friend Chris Miller, traveled to Phoenix for the trial.

Speaker 100 What's your expectation of the eventual result here?

Speaker 108 I believe that Rob will eventually be found not guilty.

Speaker 91 Ladies and gentlemen, this case

Speaker 89 is all about whose finger was on the gun that the night that Lee Ratter died.

Speaker 89 You know, Rob didn't have any motive to shoot Lee, and Lee certainly had some reasons to commit suicide.

Speaker 91 Wait, he did have reasons for suicide?

Speaker 101 Yes, said Rob's attorney.

Speaker 40 This time, Lee's life was spinning out of control.

Speaker 89 There's no money coming in, and Lee doesn't know what he's going to do.

Speaker 51 Lee's friends had no idea how bad it was, said Cates.

Speaker 54 Tens of thousands in loans and unpaid credit cards, $15,000 owed to the IRS, another $25,000 still owed to a former employer.

Speaker 13 No doubt that we,

Speaker 13 you know, had some financial troubles ahead of us.

Speaker 51 Belinda was a prosecution witness, remember?

Speaker 37 But she told the jury that Lee, with his $100,000 life insurance policy, told her, joking or not, that he was worth more to her dead than alive.

Speaker 13 He would say that numerous times over his life.

Speaker 57 Then, that night, December 29th, he got that email, remember, and excused himself from the table to take a call from his business partner.

Speaker 27 You'll remember that business partner told the prosecutor Lee seemed to be in good spirits at the end of the call.

Speaker 45 But he also had to admit that when the conversation started, Lee was not happy.

Speaker 13 And how was he acting?

Speaker 89 So he was kind of upset.

Speaker 52 The jury never got to read the email.

Speaker 49 No one seems to have a copy.

Speaker 52 But Lee showed it to Belinda that night, and she recalled it was bad news about the deal.

Speaker 13 Something about he had introduced these two companies together, and now he was kind of being squeezed out of it.

Speaker 27 Well, he was frantic.

Speaker 106 He felt betrayed, but the two companies were trying to cut him out of the deal.

Speaker 51 Also, said the defense, Lee had been exaggerating for everybody the size and value of the deal.

Speaker 15 This man is from the company IGT,

Speaker 61 with which Lee was hoping to make his multi-million dollar deal of a lifetime.

Speaker 85 And he testified he had told Lee prior to that night there wasn't going to be a deal.

Speaker 89 Did you tell him no?

Speaker 105 Yes, I need somebody who has distribution centers worldwide.

Speaker 37 So he was told no, that that was not going to happen.

Speaker 89 He communicated that clearly to Lee, and Lee was telling everybody

Speaker 76 that there was this big deal pending.

Speaker 56 And it was living a lie.

Speaker 60 And it was all about to come crashing down on him.

Speaker 89 Lee Ratter's worth more more dead than alive. He knew it.
For some reason, he couldn't bring himself to tell his partners and his friends that this big deal wasn't coming.

Speaker 5 So, the defense theory of what happened?

Speaker 51 After all those drinks with Lee, Rob passed out right there at the kitchen table.

Speaker 89 His blackout starts as a un blanc. Blackout, meaning he has no memory.
It's like, nothing writes to the hard drive.

Speaker 85 But Lee kept right on drinking.

Speaker 54 And drunk and discouraged, he went and found the gun he knew Rob always traveled with and turned it on himself and pulled the trigger.

Speaker 85 And then, at the sound of the gun, Rob was startled into a confused consciousness and merely assumed when he spoke with police he must have been in bed.

Speaker 89 Imagine you're still drunk.

Speaker 14 There's somebody laying on the floor in a pile of blood with a gun in their hand.

Speaker 89 And you look down, you're in your pajamas, you're barefoot, you know, and you're standing in the hall facing away from your bedroom.

Speaker 89 Wouldn't your first thought be, geez, I must have been in bed?

Speaker 85 Later, when he sobered up, said Rob, he realized he must have been at the table with Lee.

Speaker 71 What is it about you that should make us think that you aren't the sort of person who might have been showing Lee the gun and you're,

Speaker 50 you know, both five sheets to the wind and

Speaker 76 you went off accidentally and killed him?

Speaker 33 Whether we're drinking or not, I don't believe that I would ever be so irresponsible as to introduce a a gun into that environment.

Speaker 33 It goes against my core being.

Speaker 49 The defense called this doctor, an expert in alcohol abuse, to explain some of Rob's strange behavior.

Speaker 59 Around the time of the 911 call, Rob's blood was three times the legal limit.

Speaker 114 In my opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, he was in a blackout.

Speaker 61 Which certainly explained not recognizing Lee, said the expert.

Speaker 15 As for the big deal the state made about Rob washing his his hands when the officer told him not to.

Speaker 89 Have you ever told a drunk friend to do something?

Speaker 43 Hmm. Kind of like herding cats.

Speaker 17 I know, but he's a lawyer and an ex-cop.

Speaker 89 Right. He's an extremely drunk lawyer and ex-cop.

Speaker 72 But what about the forensic evidence, the very heart of the state's case?

Speaker 60 The state's expert, remember, told the jury the law of gravity dictated that the gun should have dropped out of Lee's hand as soon as he fired a bullet into his head.

Speaker 60 But the defense medical expert produced statistics showing that guns actually remain in the hands of suicide victims 25% of the time.

Speaker 89 Have you ever seen the gun stay in the hand of somebody that committed suicide?

Speaker 73 Yes, sir.

Speaker 107 In fact, said Attorney Cates, it would have been almost impossible for Rob, from where he had to be sitting in the kitchen, to shoot Lee and produce the actual route the bullet followed.

Speaker 14 Rob would have had to have gone something like this

Speaker 89 in order to have done it.

Speaker 81 Then attorney Cates attacked directly the state's blood spatter expert.

Speaker 95 You have really have no idea what happened to the chair.

Speaker 39 Other than it was moved.

Speaker 109 How that chair gets from point A to point B,

Speaker 38 I'm not, I don't know.

Speaker 89 He would say one thing and then on cross-examination I would ask him and he'd say well I really don't know how it happened.

Speaker 26 You don't know how mr.

Speaker 89 Fisher picked up Mr.

Speaker 55 Rather, correct?

Speaker 86 Yes,

Speaker 109 it's assumptions.

Speaker 46 There's too many variables.

Speaker 89 after my cross-examine and redirect of that witness i thought we won the trial

Speaker 41 still the confident cates wasn't done making his case he called his own blood spatter expert too who looked at the very same evidence and said there was no doubt in his mind the state had it wrong that this is a self-inflicted gunshot wound

Speaker 57 finally said defense attorney cates the case came down to one crucial question whose finger was on the trigger of the the gun?

Speaker 41 Cates put the question to the state's crime analyst.

Speaker 95 You at least said you couldn't exclude Mr.

Speaker 89 Ratter, correct?

Speaker 94 That's correct.

Speaker 95 And that's because there were portions of this print that matched portions of Mr.

Speaker 114 Ratter's print.

Speaker 110 There was, yes.

Speaker 81 And the person whose prints did not match was Rob Fisher.

Speaker 89 His fingerprints weren't on the gun. His DNA wasn't on the gun.
And Lee's was. They didn't find any fingerprints that matched Rob Fisher Fisher anywhere on the gun.

Speaker 50 Well, what did that say to you?

Speaker 89 Lee was the last one that handled the gun.

Speaker 56 Because, said Dwayne Cates, Lee Ratter shot himself.

Speaker 37 True?

Speaker 75 Up to the jurors to decide that.

Speaker 87 Their turn now.

Speaker 96 Coming up.

Speaker 116 Have you reached a verdict? Yes, we have, ma'am.

Speaker 16 The news that would rock this traumatized family all over again.

Speaker 13 Joy called me, my attorney, and said, are you sitting down?

Speaker 97 When dateline continues.

Speaker 61 It was December 2013 when the murder case against Rob Fisher went to the jury.

Speaker 27 Rob said he felt at peace then, or at least as much as a person could be, given.

Speaker 54 Anyway, he knew, he said, he knew that he didn't deserve to be hauled off to the slammer.

Speaker 33 I knew I should be going home.

Speaker 33 And so

Speaker 33 I was hopeful that the jury would have seen it the same way.

Speaker 32 You had to be doing some strategic thinking, too, if this, if that.

Speaker 73 So what was in your head?

Speaker 33 I did feel very confident.

Speaker 25 No surprise, the prosecutor read the tea leaves

Speaker 29 rather differently.

Speaker 28 I knew when the jury was going back with this case that they had enough information to come to the right conclusion. And they were going to realize that murder explains all the evidence.

Speaker 85 Practically everybody thought it would be over soon, including Rob's attorney.

Speaker 89 I thought they'd be back in a couple hours with a not guilty verdict.

Speaker 42 Didn't happen.

Speaker 46 The hours ticked by as the jurors apparently wrestled with something.

Speaker 81 One day became two days. Two became three.

Speaker 38 Yeah, you had to be thinking, what are they talking about back there?

Speaker 33 Huh? Exactly.

Speaker 67 As the debate went on in the jury room, outside Lee's New York family was desperate for a guilty verdict, so the world would know their Lee didn't take his own life, didn't do what the defense said he did.

Speaker 17 Lisa Radner.

Speaker 18 I want to put my head down in my pillow at night saying

Speaker 18 that was a terrible, terrible thing that happened. And no, my brother did not commit suicide, that his life was taken by somebody else.

Speaker 18 And that will give me closure.

Speaker 35 And then it was December 19th.

Speaker 67 Just happened to be Rob's 53rd birthday.

Speaker 67 And word came, there was a verdict.

Speaker 27 Rob and company hurried to the courthouse, hoping for a birthday present from the jury.

Speaker 116 Please be seated.

Speaker 68 What did you see when they walked in?

Speaker 33 They didn't look at me, which, as a lawyer, I know is not a good sign.

Speaker 116 Have you reached a verdict?

Speaker 88 Yes, we have, ma'am.

Speaker 116 We, the jury, find the defendant as to count one, second-degree murder, guilty.

Speaker 37 Guilty.

Speaker 68 Rob Fisher stared straight ahead, stunned.

Speaker 58 In the gallery, Lee's family and friends quietly sobbed.

Speaker 78 They had their justice.

Speaker 76 The prosecutor took his victory in stride.

Speaker 43 Were you surprised at all?

Speaker 34 No. A lot of people in the courtroom were.

Speaker 28 Depends on what side of the room, what side of the aisle you're sitting on.

Speaker 60 You were not surprised at all.

Speaker 28 I wasn't surprised for the fact that I thought we did an excellent job in educating the jury on the scientific evidence in this case, and that they could only come to one conclusion, and that was murder.

Speaker 45 The consequences in a situation such as this are immediate.

Speaker 65 Rob Fisher was handcuffed and led through a door that led to the county jail.

Speaker 33 I want to say it's a little surreal.

Speaker 85 And then he was installed in a temporary cell while he awaited a sentence of something like 25 years in prison.

Speaker 33 The thought of spending the next,

Speaker 33 in essence, the rest of my life in confinement, very difficult to try to process.

Speaker 24 Belinda wasn't in court to hear the verdict, but she certainly did hear about it and was shocked.

Speaker 13 I was at the gym and Joy called me,

Speaker 13 my attorney, and said, are you sitting down?

Speaker 13 Because, you know, everybody that knew

Speaker 13 information, they really thought that he was going to be found not guilty.

Speaker 32 But she herself, as she told us in a separate interview, didn't know what to think or who to believe.

Speaker 13 I didn't, I don't know, I'm 100% honest. I don't know what I wanted.
I really don't. I don't think that there was

Speaker 13 a verdict either way that...

Speaker 13 would have been what I wanted.

Speaker 29 Certainly wasn't what Dwayne Cates wanted.

Speaker 17 How had he so misread that jury?

Speaker 89 I was perplexed. I had no idea how they could have come to that conclusion, given what the evidence in the case was.

Speaker 81 But give up?

Speaker 19 No,

Speaker 42 that he could not do, said Robb's attorney.

Speaker 75 Still, any chance that a new chapter would be added to this story was very remote indeed.

Speaker 34 Unless,

Speaker 34 well,

Speaker 2 we shall see.

Speaker 12 Coming up, Dwayne Cates gets a bold idea.

Speaker 106 It's got to be such a long shot though.

Speaker 89 Absolute long shot.

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Speaker 117 I'm Julio Vaqueiro, anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch Daidline, the hit true crime series on Telemundo.
And now, you can listen to Daitline as a podcast.

Speaker 117 Stories of love and betrayal, of secrets revealed, of the men and women who stand between evil and justice.

Speaker 117 Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new new mysteries arriving every week. Just search Dateline en Español, wherever you get your podcasts, and start listening.

Speaker 118 On the night before Halloween in 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was murdered, but police failed to make an arrest. Until, in 2000, her one-time neighbor, Michael Scakel, was arrested.

Speaker 118 He was also a cousin of the Kennedys. The Kennedy connection is the reason that most people know about this case.
But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew.

Speaker 118 Find and follow Dead Certain, the Martha Moxley Murder on Pandora to listen to the latest episodes each week.

Speaker 77 It was Christmas again.

Speaker 35 In Lee Ratter's family, a difficult season.

Speaker 32 ever since what happened during that Christmas holiday in 2010.

Speaker 30 But now, Rob Fisher was a convicted man, and the New York branch felt the kind of consolation that comes with the belief that justice has been done.

Speaker 68 Do you think about him a lot?

Speaker 102 About Rob Fisher? No.

Speaker 102 I try not to put him in my mind at all because I don't want,

Speaker 102 I don't want hate in my system.

Speaker 31 Out west, Belinda was a mess of contradictions.

Speaker 46 And of course, she had to tell her daughters.

Speaker 73 The eldest, then 12, took it hard, couldn't grasp that her papa had killed her father.

Speaker 13 My daughter finally asked me

Speaker 13 about three days later

Speaker 13 if the verdict had come back

Speaker 13 and I said yes. And she just looks at me and I just started crying.
And right then she knew.

Speaker 69 That was her papa.

Speaker 13 She wants to have a connection with him, but yet she doesn't want to talk to him. So I think she struggles with that in maybe

Speaker 13 feeling like she's not being loyal to her dad in some way.

Speaker 35 Belinda had been leaning on her father and stepmom for support since Lee died.

Speaker 46 Her father, Jerry Dupree, is a psychologist.

Speaker 35 He loved his son-in-law Lee very much, he told us.

Speaker 72 But he was convinced the jury got it wrong.

Speaker 112 My wife and I are both 30-year clinicians, okay?

Speaker 112 We knew Lee committed suicide

Speaker 112 from the get-go.

Speaker 34 Really? Yes.

Speaker 50 What made you think so?

Speaker 112 Lee was a salesman, and there was a lot of false bravado to that process. A good man.
He cared about Belinda. He cared about his children, but a lot of false pride.

Speaker 112 When that collapses, there's nowhere for it to go.

Speaker 53 Which is exactly what Defense Attorney Dwayne Cates had argued all along.

Speaker 41 An argument that clearly failed to persuade the jury, but Dwayne Cates wasn't ready to say uncle, not him.

Speaker 17 So what can you do about it if you believe a jury has reached really the incorrect conclusion and it's an injustice?

Speaker 50 What can you do about it?

Speaker 89 Well, the first thing I do is file a motion for a new trial.

Speaker 46 So, as Rob Fisher endured claustrophobia and fought despair in his temporary cell over at the Maricopa County Jail, Cates went to work to try to get the guilty verdict tossed.

Speaker 41 He had to file his motion 10 days after the trial ended.

Speaker 55 He worked around the clock, straight through the holidays.

Speaker 89 You know, this was my Christmas vacation.

Speaker 89 Okay, was writing this motion.

Speaker 74 Cates based the motion for a new trial on two central complaints.

Speaker 66 Number one, an allegation of prosecutorial misconduct, accusing the other side of using unfair language during the trial and unfair tactics even before it started.

Speaker 89 They played hard with the discovery, getting us discovery, getting us notes. after I do the interview instead of before the interview.
They could have been more forthcoming.

Speaker 89 Is that what you're saying? You know, the practice of law doesn't have to be as hard as it was in this case.

Speaker 25 So there was that.

Speaker 47 A common complaint, though, which frankly doesn't often go anywhere.

Speaker 74 But something else, too.

Speaker 32 Cates argued that the jury's verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence, which is a pretty big deal and also a pretty big stretch.

Speaker 89 The judge can re-weigh the evidence because the judge was there. The judge got to see all the testimony, got to hear all the witnesses,

Speaker 89 got to see everything that happened in the courtroom.

Speaker 106 It's got to be such a long shot, though, because judges look at jury verdicts all the time and they say, well, the jury, you know, they looked at the same evidence, they made their decision, and that's the way the law works.

Speaker 89 Absolute long shot.

Speaker 27 Cates put it into his motion almost as an afterthought, really, hoping against hope the judge would see what the jury apparently did not, that the state's blood experts' testimony didn't add up.

Speaker 55 Dwayne Cates had been around for quite a while, so he knew he was tilting at windmills.

Speaker 53 Appeals of that sort almost never succeed.

Speaker 55 Almost never.

Speaker 93 Absolutely.

Speaker 89 It was a Hail Mary pass, but I felt confident in it.

Speaker 35 The prosecutor submitted his own brief, too, denying any misconduct and standing by the evidence and his case.

Speaker 38 Then.

Speaker 100 So then what? You sit back and wait?

Speaker 63 Absolutely.

Speaker 17 How was Rob doing in the meantime?

Speaker 89 Rob was in jail, so I don't think Rob was doing very well.

Speaker 32 In his cell, Rob Fisher, lawyer that he is, figured out the timing of the thing.

Speaker 27 First, the judge would hear the arguments, then spend some time working on her ruling. So that first week, he didn't even think about it.

Speaker 37 Same the second week.

Speaker 8 And then Rob started to worry.

Speaker 46 Cates would visit him periodically.

Speaker 106 Do you get a chance to talk to him much?

Speaker 11 I did.

Speaker 8 And it was hard.

Speaker 89 I hated to go see him in jail.

Speaker 31 What had happened to this man's life?

Speaker 30 Same business as you, successful attorney, in a different type of law, but just the same.

Speaker 92 What had happened to that life of his?

Speaker 29 It was gone.

Speaker 59 Imagine, Keith,

Speaker 89 police walk in the door right now. They put you in handcuffs and they lock you up and you lose everything.
You lose your house, you lose your business, you lose your career.

Speaker 81 It's all gone.

Speaker 39 Boom.

Speaker 89 In an instant, it's all gone.

Speaker 24 But of course, in just one instant, Lee Ratter's life was gone forever.

Speaker 77 What prison term would atone for that?

Speaker 46 That was also up to the judge.

Speaker 17 But from her, as the date for sentencing approached, there was not a word.

Speaker 12 Coming up, stunning news jolts everyone in the case.

Speaker 18 It was like a shot to the heart. How is that even possible?

Speaker 13 Does that happen? I'd never even heard of that.

Speaker 97 When dateline continues.

Speaker 101 As 2014 began, Rob Fisher was waiting, waiting, for the judge's ruling on the motion for a new trial, all the while sitting in an isolation cell in the Maricopa County Jail.

Speaker 75 You're an ex-cop, which adds to it.

Speaker 68 Right. How did that complicate your life?

Speaker 33 They put me in protective custody, locked down for 23 hours a day.

Speaker 82 One day at a time through all of January, then February, and then it was the 28th.

Speaker 52 Rob was due in court in a week for his sentencing hearing.

Speaker 82 And that's when Dwayne Cates came to call.

Speaker 33 Well I asked him, you know, so do we hear anything? He goes, well, before we talk about that, let's talk about next Friday's hearing.

Speaker 89 I told him that, you know, he's got to get ready.

Speaker 33 And then he looks at me with a big grin and says, it's not a sentencing hearing, it's a bond hearing.

Speaker 89 Because you're getting out of jail.

Speaker 81 It was stunning, overwhelming.

Speaker 33 I was ecstatic. I was elated.
I was thrilled.

Speaker 65 And Dwayne Cates felt like he'd just won the lottery.

Speaker 89 It very rarely happens that a judge will step in and on the way and re-weigh the evidence and say the jury just plain got it wrong.

Speaker 27 Remember, Cates made two arguments for a new trial.

Speaker 46 The first, an allegation of prosecutorial misconduct, was rejected by the judge. His second argument, the total long shot, was that Rob's conviction wasn't supported by the evidence.

Speaker 29 And what do you know?

Speaker 46 The long shot, the Hail Mary, succeeded and and caused the judge to throw out the verdict.

Speaker 85 I'm going to read a little bit of it here.

Speaker 41 The detective's opinion that the defendant staged the scene by manipulating Lee's body is not supported by the physical evidence, lacks credibility, and is sheer speculation.

Speaker 14 The DNA and fingerprint evidence are completely inconsistent with the verdict.

Speaker 25 Sheer speculation.

Speaker 58 Have you ever heard that from a judge before?

Speaker 37 Yes, but

Speaker 89 it's nice to hear it when it's on the other side. I mean, and it was sheer speculation.

Speaker 46 The judge was particularly scathing about the state's blood expert.

Speaker 24 She said he was guilty of a fatal flaw when he tried to decipher those bloody footprints because he wrongly interpreted the prints as facing the opposite direction.

Speaker 46 And the judge said, all but wagging her finger, that he backtracked and repeatedly provided inconsistent testimony in the stand.

Speaker 89 That was their key witness. I mean, that was the key to their case.
And he was not credible.

Speaker 17 And so one chilly night in March 2014, Rob Fisher walked out of the county jail and into the arms of his lawyer, the guy who took a chance on the long shot.

Speaker 17 It's been a long, long road.

Speaker 89 Rob's out and he's tired.

Speaker 49 But if Rob was relieved and happy, Lee's family was not.

Speaker 42 They'd been making plans to fly to Arizona for the sentencing when they got the call.

Speaker 18 And the prosecutor said, don't get on the plane, don't come.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 that was like a shot to the heart. Because how is that even possible that a judge can step in as a 13th juror and overturn a verdict?

Speaker 63 Belinda couldn't wrap her head around the judge's ruling either.

Speaker 13 I'm like, really? This? I mean,

Speaker 13 does that happen? I'd never even heard of that.

Speaker 87 So now Belinda had to accept the second of those two bad options: that her husband took his own life.

Speaker 13 I got a text from my dad after he read it.

Speaker 13 And he just said

Speaker 13 there's no doubt Rob didn't do this, that Lee committed suicide.

Speaker 13 I guess there's just

Speaker 13 no denying it now.

Speaker 39 Well,

Speaker 23 I get it now.

Speaker 69 It's like you've you've been through a roller coaster of different kinds of grief, right?

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 81 And with that kind of grief came guilt.

Speaker 13 Why didn't I do anything to stop it? What if I had only said this, or what if I had only

Speaker 13 done something to make that

Speaker 13 different?

Speaker 13 For him to still be here, for him to know how important,

Speaker 20 and that the money didn't matter.

Speaker 13 So, of course, the

Speaker 13 good old what-if game.

Speaker 13 And if only I

Speaker 13 took it more seriously, you know, really listened to what he was trying to say to me to

Speaker 13 maybe have been a better wife.

Speaker 81 Rob went back to California, trying from scratch to put his life back together.

Speaker 33 The state of Arizona's has taken two years out of my life and I refuse to let them take any more time. So we are going forward in our life as though this is behind us.

Speaker 49 But prosecutor Jay Rademacher, he had different plans for Rob Fisher.

Speaker 37 So

Speaker 40 end of the story?

Speaker 16 No no,

Speaker 16 not at all.

Speaker 12 Coming up for Rob, a devastating turn of events.

Speaker 18 Jay called me me directly and said that we got another grand jury and we're going to arrest him again.

Speaker 13 I just

Speaker 113 broke down

Speaker 13 and started crying and just in disbelief.

Speaker 58 After his murder conviction was thrown out, Rob Fisher tried to get his old life back, which meant starting from scratch the family law practice that imploded and died when he was charged.

Speaker 33 We've lost our home. We are living, you know,

Speaker 33 at the good graces of close friends. I joke with my wife that it's like we're 17 again and we're starting over.

Speaker 58 Lee's New York family was stuck in place.

Speaker 25 Felt like justice had been stripped away.

Speaker 10 It was horrible. It was horrible.

Speaker 49 The prosecutor told them, be patient, and he filed an appeal to get the conviction reinstated, claiming the judge had abused her discretion.

Speaker 18 It's like kicking the hopeful can down the road, you know, just praying that,

Speaker 18 you know, we get a resolution.

Speaker 41 And Belinda told us recently she just inched along.

Speaker 75 No choice, really, as a single mom.

Speaker 13 Pretty horrible most of the time

Speaker 13 trying

Speaker 13 to

Speaker 13 navigate things for the girls.

Speaker 14 Full of uncertainties.

Speaker 13 Full of uncertainties and full of questions.

Speaker 104 But she did not ask Rob those questions. Never talked about what happened.

Speaker 40 Were you afraid to do that?

Speaker 13 I think I was

Speaker 2 anxious.

Speaker 13 nervous,

Speaker 13 emotional.

Speaker 78 And here's the sad truth, really.

Speaker 83 Belinda and Rob had bonded over the shared grief of losing her mother, his late wife, to cancer.

Speaker 34 But Lee's death did the opposite.

Speaker 69 What happened to the relationship with Rob, your relationship?

Speaker 13 It was difficult. The losses on so many levels.

Speaker 13 It drastically changed our relationship in a lot of ways.

Speaker 41 2017 was when the prosecution's appeal finally made its way to the Arizona Supreme Court, which agreed with the trial court judge.

Speaker 2 The justices wrote, there was quite simply no physical evidence that the defendant fired the gun that killed Lee.

Speaker 40 A loss for the prosecutor Jay Rademacher and Lee's family.

Speaker 49 So, case finally closed?

Speaker 81 No.

Speaker 18 I think Jay called me directly and said that we got another grand jury and we're going to arrest him again.

Speaker 54 Wait, rearrest Rob?

Speaker 40 That's right. Despite a judge in the highest court saying they did not have the evidence, the state was free to try him again.

Speaker 78 And that's just what the prosecutor planned to do.

Speaker 18 So basically, we're back at square one.

Speaker 81 In February 2019, Rob Fisher was again charged with second-degree murder.

Speaker 49 He was released on bail, returned to California as he awaited trial.

Speaker 18 Well, we were excited. I think when we got the first trial date, they led us to believe that they had a strong case going forward, stronger than the first time.

Speaker 16 But did they?

Speaker 56 A year passed, and then it was 2020, and COVID closed down courthouses that year and the next year.

Speaker 41 Lee's mom had suffered a debilitating stroke, but, said her family, hope of seeing a conviction kept her alive.

Speaker 101 By the fall of 2021, it had been more than a decade since Lee was killed. And that's when Lee's sister got this update from the family's victim advocate.

Speaker 18 And she's like, I have some bad news. And, you know, the worst news that you could ever possibly imagine her to say would be, they're dropping the case.
And that's what she said.

Speaker 15 The state of Arizona had dismissed the case against Robert Fisher.

Speaker 49 The court papers simply said it was in the interest of justice.

Speaker 18 It's disbelief, then shock, shock, then anger.

Speaker 18 Like I'm shaking just thinking about, just thinking about it.

Speaker 18 What she told us was that

Speaker 18 it wasn't Jay's decision, that the decision came from above him, from his superiors, from a committee of higher-ups.

Speaker 41 Lisa had one phone call with the prosecutor's office in which she said they mentioned concern about the blood evidence.

Speaker 18 So they did say that there was a stain that was looked at and it was inconclusive for homicide or inconclusive for suicide. I don't know if that's what made them decide let's not go to trial then.

Speaker 54 We wanted to ask Prosecutor Jay Rademacher what happened to the evidence he so confidently said pointed to murder.

Speaker 40 He declined to be interviewed, referred us to a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, who told us it was determined there was insufficient evidence to proceed proceed with the criminal prosecution.

Speaker 13 Just in disbelief that 11 years was over, just like that.

Speaker 13 That was the closure.

Speaker 87 Belinda said that, well, she's finally got that elusive thing called closure.

Speaker 49 She's angry it took so long.

Speaker 13 When there wasn't enough evidence, they should have stopped.

Speaker 13 And yet they kept going,

Speaker 13 irregardless, because it wasn't about the truth. It was about them winning a case.
And

Speaker 13 we paid the price for it.

Speaker 71 Mind you, Rob's case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the state could theoretically come after Rob yet again.

Speaker 87 But this time, it seems, everyone wants to move on.

Speaker 18 Now has to be the time. Because it's like quicksand.
You're stuck and you can't move. And,

Speaker 18 you know, it's paralyzing and it takes your breath away and you can't sleep.

Speaker 18 But you can't live your entire life like that.

Speaker 34 And now finally, Belinda could find the courage to ask Rob the hard questions she'd been holding in her heart for 11 years.

Speaker 100 What were the central questions?

Speaker 13 How the gun got introduced that night.

Speaker 112 What did he tell you?

Speaker 13 Before I got home that evening, Lee had watched Rob

Speaker 13 take the gun apart and place it in his bag, which

Speaker 13 answered one of the questions. How did he even know the gun was there? That was a key for me.

Speaker 13 While some of the questions won't be answered until I hopefully see him again, Lee, in heaven,

Speaker 13 at least I've got a little bit of clarity.

Speaker 68 Which is that Lee knew where to find the gun he must have used to take his own life.

Speaker 81 It's been more than seven years since we last interviewed Rob Fisher, but recently he told us off-camera he is still trying to piece his life back together.

Speaker 70 Rob has decided not to talk to us for this report, but what has this done to him?

Speaker 13 He's ready to move on. with his life and he wants a relationship with the girls and I

Speaker 13 and

Speaker 13 I think he's ready to

Speaker 13 close this chapter.

Speaker 38 And now?

Speaker 13 And now we move forward.

Speaker 13 You know, my girls have a bright future ahead of them and he would be so proud. And

Speaker 13 we march on with memories of a great man.

Speaker 12 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8th Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 99 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 29 Good night.

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