The Mystery on Horseshoe Drive

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Speaker 6 He married the woman of his dreams, beautiful and sweet.

Speaker 7 She's just angelic.

Speaker 6 And was folded into her tight-knit family, headed by an elderly religious matriarch.

Speaker 8 You were either part of their family or you weren't.

Speaker 6 Together, they had a little girl, Sydney. When their marriage fell apart, his wife's family closed ranks.

Speaker 10 In their view, Sydney was their property.

Speaker 6 One day, he went to pick up his little girl for a visit and was never seen alive again.

Speaker 10 He died right there.

Speaker 5 But who would kill a devoted dad?

Speaker 6 The unbelievable choice, his golden girl wife, or the gracious family matriarch? They seem so loving.

Speaker 2 But was there another sign?

Speaker 11 It's a monster that comes out of a closet. It's very ugly.

Speaker 4 How dark is that sign?

Speaker 10 Murderous. But which one was the killer? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 10 Here's Rob Stafford with the mystery on Horseshoe Drive.

Speaker 4 In the home of a God-fearing family, in one of the smallest of American towns, the worst of crimes. Police coming up, please.
Okay, I'll get all the ambulance, all right?

Speaker 4 The crime became a mystery. A whodunit.

Speaker 12 It's a puzzler. It's almost a game of three-card Monty.

Speaker 4 And it made many people in town wonder about one particular family, about what had been going on behind the closed doors of their home.

Speaker 7 How well do you really know your neighbors? How well do you really know the people that surround you?

Speaker 13 Get one?

Speaker 13 Timmy, feed it to me.

Speaker 4 Our story begins with Stephen Watkins, who'd grown up in tiny Chandlerville in rural central Illinois, population 700. He'd had the kind of ideal childhood he wanted to recreate on his own.

Speaker 14 I think that was probably his biggest goal in life, was to have that family that he grew up with.

Speaker 4 Stephen's parents, Penny and Dale, say even as a kid, their boy was always holding his younger sister Ashley, or cousins, playing with them, showering them with attention.

Speaker 15 He loved kids,

Speaker 15 loved people, and he always wanted to have kids and be around them.

Speaker 4 He was patient and kind and had a smile for everyone.

Speaker 14 And you could always see the smile in his eyes. I could just look in him and see the joy of life.

Speaker 4 Brandy Tolley ran cross-country with Stephen in high school back in the 90s.

Speaker 7 Just a really good guy, genuine, loved his family. I don't think he had an enemy in the world.

Speaker 8 Just always looked out for people.

Speaker 4 In his 20s, Stephen joined the military.

Speaker 14 I think he wanted to get out and see a different part of the world. He was raised in a small town and he felt like the military could offer him a venture.

Speaker 4 Stephen signed with the Coast Guard and moved to Virginia. But not long before he left, a former girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl named Alexandria.

Speaker 4 Alex, it was his baby girl and he immediately jumped in as her father.

Speaker 14 Stephen was right there. When she was born, he doted over her.
He was just excited about every little thing. He would sleep right by Alex's bed, holding her little hand.

Speaker 14 I mean, that's just how he was.

Speaker 4 The former girlfriend regularly took Alex to visit Stephen in Virginia and the bond between father and daughter grew strong.

Speaker 4 Alex's mother then realized Stephen could offer more stability and a better home life for their daughter than she could and she gave him full custody of her. That says a lot about him as a dad.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 14 Stephen was responsible and that says that he was determined to be part of his children's life.

Speaker 4 When Alex was two, Stephen moved her to Virginia to live with him full-time.

Speaker 15 He made sure she was in a good daycare and there was always times when he had to, you know, had to make sure he ran out and got her at the right time.

Speaker 4 Did he complain that he didn't have freedom?

Speaker 14 Absolutely not. He was content with that.

Speaker 4 But Stephen also wanted a wife. When his Coast Guard service ended, he returned home, living in a house behind his parents, and got a job with the state.

Speaker 4 About a year later, Stephen noticed an attractive woman whose office shared a parking lot with his.

Speaker 14 He was really excited. You know, he felt like I found what I've been looking for in life.

Speaker 4 That woman was Jennifer Webster, who'd grown up around the corner from Stephen's friend Brandy.

Speaker 7 She's very tall and just angelic, I think, in so many ways. Her smile was contagious as well.
Very bright, very modelesque.

Speaker 7 When she walked into a room, I think people turned their heads because she was beautiful.

Speaker 11 She's a very cute girl, long hair. She can be as sweet as can be.
You can take her to any crowd you want to go and she'll fit in.

Speaker 4 Jennifer's uncle Ed Skinner remembers hearing about Stephen from Jennifer before the two started dating in the summer of 2006.

Speaker 4 From Jennifer's description, Stephen seemed to be infatuated with her from a distance.

Speaker 11 She said, This boy has been watching me in the parking lot at work, watches my every move every time I go to work. He's there, sitting in his car until I get out, and then he follows me.

Speaker 11 My two boys looked at each other and said, stalker Steve, once they found out his name.

Speaker 4 His mother says Stephen wasn't stalking her and in fact had spoken to Jennifer a few times before asking her out in that very same parking lot. They became a couple instantly.

Speaker 11 This happened so quick I was shocked.

Speaker 11 She brought him to church two weeks after they had met and introduced him to my father-in-law. Didn't even know his last name.

Speaker 4 Ed says this wasn't how things usually went in his and Jennifer's family, which he says was slow to accept outsiders.

Speaker 11 We're a kind of family that every single night for probably 15 years we met for supper someplace, either at their house, my house, or at a local restaurant. We was just a close-knit family.

Speaker 4 The Skinners are a religious family, Seventh-day Adventist. In the last several years, multiple generations lived together in a large home, one of the biggest in the neighborhood.

Speaker 4 They stuck together, kept to themselves, to the point where some people say they seemed almost clannish.

Speaker 4 Brandy says not only were they tight-knit, but financially successful as well, the result of a family business.

Speaker 7 They always had nicer things. I remember growing up.
One year they had a garage sale one summer, and it was like a gold mine.

Speaker 4 Jennifer was beautiful, well-off, came from a close family like Stephen had, and yearned for a family as Stephen did. What could be better? In the end, the real question,

Speaker 4 what could be worse?

Speaker 11 He didn't know what he was getting into.

Speaker 6 Coming up, Stephen's family starts to wonder exactly what kind of woman he's gotten involved with.

Speaker 20 It was a disgrace that she would even do something like that.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 4 That's this. There's your horse.

Speaker 14 Oh, there he is.

Speaker 4 In the heart of the Illinois farm belt, a new relationship was growing very fast. It seems Stephen and Jennifer began dating one day and became a committed couple the next.

Speaker 4 And making it a happy threesome, Stephen's daughter from a previous relationship, Alex. Stephen often captured family moments with photos and videos.

Speaker 4 His family says he thought Jennifer would make the perfect wife and mother.

Speaker 14 He felt like she wants to cook with us. She loves Alex.
She treats Alex like she's, you know, her mother.

Speaker 4 The woman to complete his life. Yes.

Speaker 4 The family he was looking for yes but if stephen was happy his mother had her doubts about the girl from that tight-knit family i didn't feel like she really wanted to be part of our family and that was from the very beginning i felt that way stephen's dad took a more positive view i just thought it was going to be a good fit for him and i thought Jennifer would be real good for both of them.

Speaker 10 They presented a pretty good picture.

Speaker 4 Was your son in love?

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 4 Stephen began spending much of his time with Alex, Jennifer, and her family. And he was thrilled that the family seemed to embrace him and his daughter, as his sister Ashley remembers.

Speaker 20 That was number one as he wanted to make sure that they enjoyed kids and would get along with Alex, too.

Speaker 20 Not only was she nice and interacting with him and Alex and basically the perfect mother, but their family was accepting Alex and welcoming both of them with open arms.

Speaker 4 And it was crucial to Stephen to have this family accept Alex.

Speaker 20 Exactly.

Speaker 4 Within weeks of meeting, Stephen and Jennifer got married in August 2006. Stephen's family remembers how happy everyone seemed the day of the wedding, especially Stephen.

Speaker 15 He was ecstatic. Just had a big old smile,

Speaker 15 eyes shining. It was an outdoors wedding.
It was really a nice wedding.

Speaker 20 They threw petals on the sidewalk and Jennifer was happy. She was smiling from ear to ear.
Her family was happy.

Speaker 20 They made several comments about how happy they were that they had such a wonderful son-in-law now and that they were getting married and he was going to be part of their family.

Speaker 15 The whole family just raved about Stephen and Alex.

Speaker 4 The whole family that is, except Jennifer's Uncle Ed.

Speaker 4 He says he didn't approve of the whirlwind romance. He didn't like that stalker Steve became the one so quickly.
He did not attend the wedding.

Speaker 11 I was told within a month after they had started dating, they was going to get married.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 11 that's just not the way that our our family ever did it. You get to know somebody, you date them a long time before you just commit to something in life.

Speaker 11 I feel she jumped out of the skillet into the frying pan.

Speaker 4 Did you feel Stephen was jumping out of the skillet and into the frying pan?

Speaker 11 Yeah, he didn't know what he was getting into.

Speaker 4 Still, Jennifer and Stephen's life together unfolded like a storybook marriage.

Speaker 4 Not long after the wedding, they bought a home on Horseshoe Drive, just down the block from the big house where her parents and grandparents lived in Ashland, about a half hour from Stephen's family.

Speaker 4 Then, not long after that, Stephen called his mom with more big news. Jennifer was pregnant.

Speaker 14 I was excited for him. I kept thinking, you know, maybe I was wrong.
And being thankful that I'd not said anything, you know, imposed my feelings on him.

Speaker 14 I'm thinking they're going to have a baby, they're doing good as a family.

Speaker 4 But soon after the announcement, things seemed to change for Stephen and Alex. His mother says Jennifer's family suddenly wanted nothing to do do with Stephen's daughter.

Speaker 14 And he said, Jennifer's family told Alex that she's not really part of their family.

Speaker 14 I don't understand how they can love her and make her a special part and treat her like blood, and then all of a sudden just turn and go the other way.

Speaker 4 She says Alex was very upset by the rejection. Stephen was as well.
And soon with the spring thaw, about six months after Stephen and Jennifer's wedding, their relationship grew ice cold.

Speaker 4 Now it was Stephen himself who was also feeling rejected, kicked out of that family circle.

Speaker 14 Stephen was hurt and discouraged.

Speaker 14 I don't know if he thought that was just a stage that she would go through while she was pregnant, a hormonal thing, or somehow he could make things better and get him back on track.

Speaker 4 But it didn't get any better. Instead, the relationship flew off the rails after the baby was born in June 2007, a girl named Sidney.

Speaker 14 It was like Jennifer wanted her family and her to be part of Sidney's life, but didn't want anybody else to be part of them. Stephen said, I barely even get to see Sidney.

Speaker 14 When we get home, Jennifer goes down to her mom's house with Grandma Shirley and all of them, and he said, She even bathes Sidney down there and everything, brings her home at 9.30, 10 o'clock in time to go to bed, and gets up the next morning and starts the routine over again.

Speaker 4 Stephen had told his parents, Jennifer thought the arrangement made for the perfect marriage. But Stephen thought just the opposite.

Speaker 4 To him it was no marriage at all and worse he wasn't able to see his new baby. His mom says he was running out of patience and options.

Speaker 14 He said, Mom, the only way I'm ever going to get to know Sidney or to get time with Sydney without Jennifer being attached to her is if I file for divorce and get visitation.

Speaker 4 He needs to divorce his wife and see his daughter.

Speaker 14 Yes, it was a very hard decision for him to make.

Speaker 4 He also filed for custody of Sidney, and that set off a move from Jennifer Stephen never expected. She fired back a bombshell.

Speaker 14 The day that she found out that he filed for divorce and custody of Sidney, the day she found out, she called DCFS and accused him of molesting Sidney and Alex.

Speaker 4 Molesting Sidney and Alex? Yes. Did your son molest his daughter?

Speaker 14 Absolutely not.

Speaker 20 I thought it was a disgrace that she would even do something like that. Not only did she hurt him and her Alex, you know, she hurt the whole family.

Speaker 4 As the state investigated, Stephen was allowed visits with Sidney. But his family says Jennifer continued to keep Sidney from him.

Speaker 7 Knowing the Skinner family, they were so tight-knit, they would let nothing come in between them and their grandchild.

Speaker 4 The allegations of sexual abuse didn't stick. The Department of Children and Family Services said they were unfounded.
But Jennifer still wouldn't allow Stephen to see Sidney.

Speaker 4 To force her to share the baby with Stephen, the judge in their divorce case ordered that Stephen get regular visits with Sidney.

Speaker 4 That court order helped, and Stephen was able to see Sidney for a few visits. He sometimes invited Jennifer to come along, as they did to pick pumpkins in October 2008.

Speaker 4 Because despite all that had happened, his family says Stephen was still hoping he could show Jennifer how good life could be with the four of them together as a family.

Speaker 4 His efforts were in vain, though. Far more often than not, Jennifer and her family denied Stephen visits with his baby, frequently saying Sidney was sick.

Speaker 4 Once, Stephen called a police officer to the Skinner home to help him, but the family still said no.

Speaker 4 Stephen was becoming more and more frustrated. And then, one evening in late November 2008, the whole situation exploded.

Speaker 15 911 was your murder.

Speaker 15 Mom,

Speaker 21 my grandmother needs help.

Speaker 6 Coming up, Jennifer was calling for her grandmother, but it was Stephen who needed help.

Speaker 2 Looks like

Speaker 13 somebody decided to shoot him in the back of the head.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 4 It's not just corn that grows quickly in rural Illinois. So did the family of Stephen and Jennifer.
They'd met, married, and had a baby in about a year's time.

Speaker 4 And just as quickly, their relationship fell apart. They were fighting over baby Sidney when Stephen went to Jennifer's one November evening to pick up the child.

Speaker 4 And within minutes, Jennifer was on the phone with 911, hysterical.

Speaker 15 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 15 Mom,

Speaker 21 my grandmother needs to help.

Speaker 24 My husband came to pick up my child because we're getting a divorce, and he came after her and tried to come after the baby. And I am telling he's on the floor,

Speaker 4 is he shot?

Speaker 4 No, he's shot.

Speaker 4 I need an ambulance for my grandmother. It was a confusing 911 call.
Jennifer wanted an ambulance for her grandmother, Shirley Skinner.

Speaker 4 As for her estranged husband, Stephen, Jennifer implied to the dispatcher he'd been shot to protect her family.

Speaker 24 He came after her and pushed her out of the way, and

Speaker 24 then he tried to come after Sidney and I.

Speaker 24 Oh, God.

Speaker 24 Okay, what happened to your grandmother?

Speaker 24 I think she might, she's having a hard job.

Speaker 21 I'm breathing coming up, but...

Speaker 4 Okay, what's your name?

Speaker 24 Jesus Watkins.

Speaker 4 Okay, I'll get a hold of the ambulance, all right?

Speaker 21 Yes!

Speaker 4 Ashland Police Chief Jim Birdzel was called to the scene.

Speaker 13 About 5.50 that evening, I got a phone call from 911 advising me that there had been a domestic in town at number 11 Horseshoe Drive.

Speaker 13 Said the husband came in to pick up his daughter for visitation, forced his way in house, knocked an elderly woman down, and she's having medical problems at that time.

Speaker 4 But when he arrived he found this was no routine domestic.

Speaker 13 I walk up and open the door and walk in the house and directly in front of me was an elderly lady sitting in a chair which turned out to be Shirley Skinner and one of the DMS personnel knitting beside her holding her hand.

Speaker 10 And she's crying a little bit.

Speaker 4 Then a first responder motioned over to the other side of the room.

Speaker 13 And I saw the body laying down there.

Speaker 4 Any sign of life? No. It was Stephen Watkins dead on the floor.
A nine millimeter Glock handgun on a box several yards away.

Speaker 13 Trying to get in my mind what had happened. The EMS personnel had told me that Shirley had made a statement to them that she had shot him.

Speaker 4 They reported to the chief that Shirley had said a couple times, is he dead? I shot him. He shouldn't have come back here.

Speaker 4 A stunning story, but this was secondhand information from first responders quoting an elderly woman in the midst of a medical and family crisis. Were her statements reliable?

Speaker 4 Had she really said that? Chief Birdzel asked Jennifer what happened.

Speaker 13 She said that Stephen forced his way in the house and knocked her grandmother down, and then

Speaker 13 he was coming after her and the baby, and the grandmother shot him.

Speaker 4 It all seemed hard to believe. Chief Birdzel wanted to ask Shirley himself what happened, but never got a chance.

Speaker 13 About the time I was getting ready to, her attorney was on the phone and told me he didn't want me to talk to her.

Speaker 4 So she is already lawyered up? Yes. Shortly after the chief's arrival, Jennifer also hired an attorney and stopped talking to him as well.

Speaker 4 Jennifer's grandfather, who was in the house at the time Stephen was killed, wasn't talking either. So what had happened in the Skinner home?

Speaker 4 Had Stephen Watkins finally gotten so frustrated over the child custody battle he'd been fighting that he completely lost it and barged into the house on a rampage with Shirley Jennifer and grandpa silent the evidence would have to tell the tale did you see signs of a break-in no sir the door didn't have any damage to it any signs of a struggle not at the door there was supposedly something on the wall that was broke it was hanging down a sconce on the wall on the wall of the house but there was no indication the sconce was broken that day and there was no skin tissue or blood found on the sconce had shirley skinner really been pushed down by Stephen?

Speaker 4 Did you see any injuries consistent with her being knocked to the ground?

Speaker 4 No, sir. Were there any black eyes, broken bones?

Speaker 13 Didn't see anything like that.

Speaker 4 Did she seem like her clothes were out of place?

Speaker 13 No, sir.

Speaker 4 Didn't even look disheveled? No. What's more, Stephen had been shot once in the back of the head, and he did not have a gun or any other weapon on him.
The chief didn't think it was self-defense.

Speaker 4 So what does it look like to you?

Speaker 13 Looks like that somebody decided to shoot him in the back of the head.

Speaker 4 But who was the somebody who shot him? Members of the Skinner family obviously knew who did it, but none of them were talking. Complicating matters, Chief Birdzel had never handled a murder before.

Speaker 4 Most of his law enforcement career had been spent on vehicle code violations. He thought he'd be able to handle the case on his own, but he couldn't.
And the case dragged on for months.

Speaker 4 People all over your community are saying, why hasn't there been an arrest?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 4 Are you hearing that?

Speaker 12 I'm hearing it a lot.

Speaker 4 As the case dragged on with no arrests made, the whodunit became the talk of the town.

Speaker 12 People were very, very, very aware of this killing in this community.

Speaker 4 Bruce Rushton covered the case for the Springfield Journal Register.

Speaker 12 Anytime we write something in the newspaper about this, like the tiniest little thing, it's the most clicked on thing, or close to the most clicked-on thing. It's a puzzler.

Speaker 12 It's almost a game of three-card Monty.

Speaker 4 Rushton says no one thought Stephen instigated the violence. Everyone the reporter spoke to had had only good things to say about Stephen, including two teachers who had taught his daughter Alex.

Speaker 12 Both of them agreed that they had never in their teaching careers encountered a father who was devoted to their children as Stephen Watkins was.

Speaker 12 When I spoke with his coworkers, he would talk about his kids at work. And they all knew that Alex in Sydney, they had a pretend bake session.

Speaker 12 And so he had animal crackers that he was putting in the toy oven and playing with his kids.

Speaker 2 I mean, how many fathers do that?

Speaker 4 Everyone thought Stephen was such a great guy, such a great dad.

Speaker 5 Who would kill him?

Speaker 4 Ultimately, Mike Vujevic, then with the state's attorney's appellate prosecutor's office, and Sergeant Kelly Walter, who is now a colonel with the Illinois State Police, took over the investigation.

Speaker 4 They focused on a key question.

Speaker 9 Who pulled the trigger?

Speaker 4 The forensic evidence was no help. Was the weapon tested for DNA? It was.
Was anything found? Nothing. And no fingerprints on it at all?

Speaker 10 No, no fingerprints on it.

Speaker 4 Were gun residue tests performed on the people people inside that house at the time of the shooting?

Speaker 10 They were not.

Speaker 4 And no blood spatter was found on any of the family's clothing.

Speaker 4 Investigators had no physical evidence proving any one person had murdered Stephen Watkins, even though he was clearly shot to death inside the Skinner home.

Speaker 4 All they had were statements from first responders claiming that Shirley Skinner, an elderly woman who was very upset and agitated at the time, said she'd shot Stephen.

Speaker 4 Did she really mean to say that? Did Did they really hear her right?

Speaker 4 Who was the shooter? To solve that mystery, they would look into the inner workings of the tight-knit Skinner family.

Speaker 4 And they say what they found there helped them finally get to the bottom of who pulled the trigger and what.

Speaker 6 Coming up, investigators have questions about the golden girl who held sway over the entire clan.

Speaker 11 It's a monster that comes out of a closet. It's very, very ugly.
Very ugly.

Speaker 10 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 14 We all lost our lives that night. You know, it's not something you ever get over.

Speaker 4 On the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving 2008, Penny Watkins' son Stephen had gone to pick up his baby daughter Sidney for a court-ordered visit when he was shot to death.

Speaker 4 Stephen's wife Jennifer told police he barged into her home, knocked over her grandmother, and was heading for her and the baby when her grandmother shot it. But had it really gone down that way?

Speaker 4 Why would an elderly religious woman shoot the father of her great-granddaughter? Even as investigators focused on Grandma Shirley, they began to look more closely at Jennifer.

Speaker 4 For one thing, they learned she'd been married before. Jennifer's uncle Ed Skinner says that relationship was a sign of things to come.

Speaker 11 That didn't last long. She just had to have her way all the time and there was never his way.

Speaker 11 So he didn't stick around.

Speaker 4 He divorced her? Yes, sir.

Speaker 11 Did you blame him? No, sir, not at all.

Speaker 4 State police say when they talked to Jennifer's first husband, he described an us-against them mentality in Jennifer's insular family.

Speaker 8 They did everything together, and you were either part of their family or you weren't.

Speaker 4 And Stephen Watkins was clearly no longer part of the family. What with the divorce filing, accusations of child child molesting, and the custody dispute.
And now Jennifer was losing that dispute.

Speaker 4 The abuse allegations had been found baseless and a court hearing about increased visitation for Stephen had been scheduled. How concerned is the Skinner family about this visitation ruling?

Speaker 2 Very concerned, very concerned.

Speaker 10 In their view, Sydney was their property, and they were not going to share their property with anyone outside that Skinner family, even Stephen Watkins.

Speaker 10 The Skinner family was circling the wagons for themselves, and he was the enemy.

Speaker 4 Jennifer and her family feared Stephen would be successful in getting overnight visitation at that hearing.

Speaker 4 He was also continuing his quest for sole custody of Sidney, but he never made it to the courthouse. He was killed the night before at his estranged wife's home.

Speaker 4 According to investigators, the Skinner family had been so concerned about the hearing, Jennifer's mother hired a private investigator to witness Stephen picking up the baby the evening he was killed, perhaps to observe something that could be used against him at the hearing the following day.

Speaker 10 Perhaps some dirt,

Speaker 10 you know, baby that was crying whenever dad picked her up, or maybe he wasn't putting her in the baby car seat.

Speaker 4 But state police learned Jennifer's mother told the private eye not to show up not long before Stephen was to arrive.

Speaker 10 Less than two hours later, Stephen Watkins is laying dead on her dining room floor.

Speaker 4 Suddenly, the child custody issue that posed such a problem for Jennifer was solved forever. According to Ed, his family catered to Jennifer.

Speaker 11 She's a spoiled rotten brat. I know that's pretty harsh statement.
The world revolved around Jennifer. We didn't do anything if Jennifer didn't want to do it.

Speaker 4 Ed says his mother surely doted on Jennifer, the family's firstborn grandchild.

Speaker 11 They was very, very close. There was nothing that Jennifer could ask for that she didn't get.
She lived as a princess, treated as a princess.

Speaker 11 When she went to church, she looked like a little doll that had just stepped out of a magazine, dressed fit to kill.

Speaker 4 As she grew up, he says Jennifer could be sweet, but her dark side was something else.

Speaker 11 It's a monster that comes out of a closet. It's very, very ugly.

Speaker 12 Very ugly.

Speaker 11 She just thinks that she can control anybody that she comes along with.

Speaker 4 When Jennifer doesn't get her way, what happens?

Speaker 11 She throws a fit and life is miserable for everybody around.

Speaker 4 Do you believe that Jennifer was just using Stephen to get a child? Now she had what she wanted. She wanted to get out?

Speaker 11 I think at the time, she was probably hoping that it would work, hoping that he would knuckle under and obey her. But I think later on, she saw that that wasn't going to work.

Speaker 11 She knew she had her child, and that's what she really wanted.

Speaker 4 And Ed believed Jennifer would do anything to keep Sidney from Stephen.

Speaker 11 She just said that he couldn't have her.

Speaker 4 Even going so far as pulling the trigger herself, Ed says. After all, the murder weapon was not Shirley's.
It was Jennifer's.

Speaker 11 Jennifer has every motive to do it.

Speaker 4 And he says that even if his his mother was the one who killed Stephen, she was probably driven to it by Jennifer.

Speaker 11 So my mom and dad was around Jennifer and her mouth 24 hours a day. And she is very annoying when it comes to something that she believes in.
And she believed in not giving Stephen

Speaker 25 the daughter.

Speaker 11 And she talked about it constantly.

Speaker 4 This goes beyond annoyance. We're talking about.

Speaker 9 Oh, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's not just Ed who thinks Jennifer might have killed Stephen and that Shirley was trying to take the fall to protect her granddaughter, a young mom.

Speaker 4 Reporter Bruce Rushton went to a vigil for Stephen nine months after he was killed, which included a walk to the Skinner family home.

Speaker 4 People there were split over whether it was Shirley or Jennifer who killed Stephen.

Speaker 2 It's a head scratcher.

Speaker 12 Because what's the grandmother's motive here? And compare that to Jennifer Watkins' motives.

Speaker 10 Did these folks truly believe Sidney was being abused?

Speaker 12 I don't know. Prosecution obviously doesn't have to prove motive in a criminal case, but you can't help but ask yourself.

Speaker 4 The jury will be asking.

Speaker 26 You would imagine so.

Speaker 4 A jury would soon get its chance. More than 10 months after Stephen Watkins was shot to death, an arrest in Florida, where Shirley and Jennifer had gone to live with baby Sidney.

Speaker 4 Chief Birdzel was there.

Speaker 13 When she saw me there, she appeared to be very surprised. I was heavy to be there.

Speaker 19 Coming up,

Speaker 6 it turns out that one of them had strange marks on her hand the night of the murder.

Speaker 4 Two lines.

Speaker 8 Two lines.

Speaker 4 Consistent with firing that type of weapon.

Speaker 8 Consistent with firing this type of weapon.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 4 In October 2009, more than 10 months after Stephen Watkins was shot to death, his parents finally received the call from police they'd been long waiting for. What do they say?

Speaker 14 We just wanted to let you know that we've picked Shirley Skinner up in Florida for the murder of Stephen.

Speaker 4 Shirley Skinner, the religious matriarch of a close-knit family.

Speaker 4 Despite what Shirley's son Ed says and the rumors around town that Jennifer might have pulled the trigger, it was the grandmother who was charged.

Speaker 4 Though Jennifer implied her grandmother had shot Stephen in defense of her and baby Sidney, investigators believe the older woman had executed him in cold blood. What do you think happened?

Speaker 2 Stephen was coming over to pick up Sidney for his court-ordered visitation, came to the door, once again was told. that the baby was sick.

Speaker 10 Perhaps he was frustrated once again by being told that. Maybe he said something to the effect of OBS

Speaker 10 and maybe all have been lured in by that. Come in and see for yourself.
And then he's inside the house, and it's a distance of approximately 30 feet from the main entry door to Sidney's bedroom.

Speaker 10 And we've got to believe that Jennifer was holding the baby. And as he's walking down the length of that dining room, he's passing Shirley.

Speaker 10 And as he walks past her, it's our belief that she then shot him.

Speaker 4 Had he been turned over as though somebody was trying to do CPR or anything?

Speaker 8 No, he lay where he fell.

Speaker 10 Shot in the back of the head. He just fell forward and a pool of blood right around his head and his baseball cap underneath him.
And he died right there where he was shot.

Speaker 4 Why had Shirley been the one charged? Though the forensic evidence collected at the scene was not useful, authorities did have important eyewitness evidence.

Speaker 4 Something the first responders in Chief Birdzel said they'd seen that fatal night. Two parallel scrapes on Shirley Skinner's hand.

Speaker 8 She had two marks across the webbing of her hand.

Speaker 4 And what's significant about that?

Speaker 8 The significance about that would be, and I'll show you with the weapon, the slide part of the weapon is coming back over the webbing of my hand.

Speaker 8 If she's holding it wrong, something that could catch it would be that the hand and the marks could be made from that slide coming back across her hand. Two lines.
Two lines.

Speaker 4 Consistent with firing that type of weapon.

Speaker 8 Consistent with firing this type of weapon.

Speaker 4 To investigators, those marks conclusively put the gun in Shirley's hand.

Speaker 4 What's more, they learned Shirley had allegedly been planning Stevens' murder for a while by trying to find someone to kill her.

Speaker 10 About a month or so before Stephen's execution, Shirley approached two of her employees and offered them $10,000 to cap this guy who they identified as being Steve Watkins.

Speaker 4 Cap this guy, this little old grandmother.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 10 The one employee said he thought she was joking. At which point she says, no, I'm serious.

Speaker 2 I'm serious.

Speaker 4 How did an elderly religious woman who once owned a daycare center become someone the state was accusing of premeditated murder?

Speaker 10 To her fellow parishioners, she's a fine, gracious, Christian woman who loves children. That's one side of Shirley.

Speaker 4 The grandmother who loves kids. Is there another side?

Speaker 10 She's proficient in the use of guns, which in and of itself doesn't mean anything, but that put together with the cultish form of that family.

Speaker 10 where everything is done for the family, within the family, to the exclusion of anybody on the outside, and we will take whatever measures necessary to protect that family unit.

Speaker 10 That is the other side of the contradiction.

Speaker 4 How dark is that side?

Speaker 2 Murderous.

Speaker 4 And that went to the heart of the state's theory, that Shirley had fired a fatal shot to rid the family of a son-in-law they no longer welcomed and didn't want in baby Sidney's life.

Speaker 4 Are you convinced Shirley Skinner acted alone?

Speaker 10 I believe Shirley Skinner pulled the trigger. Do I think she acted alone? No.
It's been a family conspiracy, a family plan.

Speaker 10 They were were not going to allow him any further contact with that little baby.

Speaker 4 And yet, no fingerprints, no DNA, no gunshot residue, no blood spatter, no recorded statements from either Shirley, Jennifer, or anyone else in the family.

Speaker 4 And those supposedly incriminating marks on Shirley's hand? Turns out they'd never been photographed. A jury would never see them for themselves.
Would any jury be able to sort out this case?

Speaker 4 An alleged family conspiracy? Two women at the crime scene, one who appeared to have clear motive, the other, 75 years old, neither with criminal records.

Speaker 4 It seemed such a confused, slim case, Ed says. He and the family believe Shirley would never be found guilty.
So when she was offered a plea deal, she turned it down and chose to go to trial.

Speaker 11 I was convinced that she didn't do it.

Speaker 19 Coming on.

Speaker 10 Jurors had their doubts, too.

Speaker 4 Does Shirley Skinner look like someone who could commit this kind of crime?

Speaker 18 Honestly, no. As a matter of fact, when I first walked in there, I really thought that she was one of the attorneys.
I had no idea that she was actually the one who was on trial.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 4 In America's heartland, Shirley Skinner went on trial for the first-degree murder of Stephen Watkins, her grandson-in-law, and two counts of solicitation of murder for allegedly asking two workers at the family business if they knew anyone who capped somebody for 10 grand.

Speaker 10 That kind of went in large measure to her intent. It demonstrated the deep contempt and hatred that she had for this, the father of her great-grandbaby, to offer money to kill him.

Speaker 4 The trial lasted less than four days. The state made its case that Shirley killed Stephen to eliminate a family problem.
Prosecution had no physical evidence to prove she was the shooter.

Speaker 4 No DNA, no fingerprints, no gunshot residue, no blood spatter, no photos of the scrapes on Shirley's hand.

Speaker 4 Basically, all they had were descriptions of the hand and statements from first responders that Shirley told them she'd shot Stephen.

Speaker 4 Now it was time for the defense to make its case to the jury, mostly young and female from small-town rural Illinois.

Speaker 4 Lawyers for Shirley emphasized the fact there was no physical evidence linking her to the weapon. And they argued Shirley's statements to the first responders, is he dead?

Speaker 4 I shot him, were made when she was having a medical emergency. How reliable could those statements be?

Speaker 4 The defense also focused on what it called a sloppy, inept investigation by the police chief and pointed at Jennifer through innuendo and implication with her ugly divorce and custody battle as the one with the motive to kill Stephen.

Speaker 4 They didn't directly argue Jennifer pulled the trigger, only that there was no hard evidence Shirley did. And what did Jennifer have to say to the jury? Nothing.
She didn't even attend the trial.

Speaker 4 And the defense called no witnesses of its own.

Speaker 4 So what did jurors think of the case? We spoke with three.

Speaker 4 Does Shirley Skinner look like someone who could commit this kind of crime?

Speaker 18 Honestly, no. As a matter of fact, when I first walked in there, I really thought that she was one of the attorneys.
I had no idea that she was actually the one who was on, you know, trial.

Speaker 4 What did you think of the police investigation?

Speaker 11 Left something to be desired.

Speaker 17 There's a lot of holes in it.

Speaker 17 There was a lot of mistakes made. I would have liked to have seen pictures of the scrapes on the back of her hand.

Speaker 4 When it came down to the final vote, how difficult a decision is?

Speaker 11 It's difficult in the sense that you're deciding somebody's fate, but as far as time-wise and what we had to contemplate and weigh out, it didn't take long.

Speaker 4 The jury was out a total of 90 minutes, including lunch, before finding Shirley Skinner guilty of murder. Stevens' family was jubilant.
Look at this first save!

Speaker 4 Shirley's son, Ed Skinner, was shocked.

Speaker 11 I was convinced my mom was going to get off.

Speaker 4 Shirley is serving a 55-year prison sentence. If she'd taken the plea deal, she'd be out in less than nine.
What's it like to see your mother behind bars?

Speaker 9 Horrible.

Speaker 4 Absolutely horrible. Is she equipped to handle what she's going through right now?

Speaker 10 Not at all.

Speaker 13 Not at all.

Speaker 4 Although Ed Skinner had split from his family by publicly blaming Jennifer, he still struck a note of us against them.

Speaker 11 I honestly feel

Speaker 11 Jennifer made this bed. She needs to sleep in it.

Speaker 11 She knew what she was getting into when she got into that family. And she had to think in the back of her mind that she's going to to be with these people the rest of her life.

Speaker 4 Well, when you say these people, what's wrong with the Watkins?

Speaker 11 Nothing bad. They just a little bit different than what we're used to.
I mean, we don't believe in drinking. We don't believe in smoking.

Speaker 4 But you have guns in the house. Stephen Watkins was shot in the back of the head.
Yes, sir. In your family's home.
Yep. And somebody in your family did it.
That's correct.

Speaker 4 So it's pretty hard for you to be sitting here judging somebody else.

Speaker 11 Oh, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 4 In the end, it was a murder that Ed Skinner thought might have been planned as a way to get what Jennifer wanted, but leave the Skinner family intact and unscathed.

Speaker 11 Very, very poorly planned out scheme on

Speaker 21 my niece and my sister's side that runt the Watkins family, ront the Skinner family.

Speaker 11 I don't think that they planned it out as good as what they should have if they was going to do something like that.

Speaker 4 Despite the accusations of a family conspiracy, neither Jennifer nor anyone else in the Skinner family was charged with any crime related to the shooting.

Speaker 4 No one in the family had agreed to speak with Dateline except Ed.

Speaker 4 As for Stephen's parents, they'd been raising Alex in Illinois. They battled Jennifer for visitation with Sidney, and in 2010, a judge awarded it to them.

Speaker 4 Then in 2016, a judge determined Sidney was a neglected child. She went to live with her paternal aunt and uncle who'd been granted permanent guardianship.
Jennifer has supervised visitation rights.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, Stephen's parents have spoken to Sidney about what happened to her dad.

Speaker 14 From my viewpoint, he gave his life for her.

Speaker 10 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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