The Cliff’s Edge

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Speaker 5 We were in love.

Speaker 6 They were so happy at first, sharing a lover's perch high atop a cliff. But romance turned to danger.
She fell from the edge.

Speaker 9 I would call this an accidental death.

Speaker 7 What was it?

Speaker 10 She said that if anything happens to me, you'll know who did it.

Speaker 6 A mystery of nearly 20 years heads to court, and the husband is on the precipice.

Speaker 11 Did you kill your wife, Jody?

Speaker 12 I did not. Jodi.

Speaker 8 What happened on the cliff's edge?

Speaker 13 I'm Lester Holt and this is Dayline.

Speaker 7 Here's Chris Jansen.

Speaker 14 Every couple has it.

Speaker 15 A shared song, a favorite movie.

Speaker 14 or maybe a special place.

Speaker 18 Stephen Sharf says for him and his wife Jodi, this was it.

Speaker 22 Two rocks forming a lover's chair on the edge of a cliff.

Speaker 12 That was our spot. We'd bring a hibachi, a couple of lawn chairs, a cooler, and she'd bring her work from graduate school.

Speaker 18 They'd been escaping to this magical place for years, ever since they were newlyweds in a starter apartment in New Jersey.

Speaker 17 Up here, the air was fresh and the views seemed limitless.

Speaker 12 It's sort of framed by trees, but you could look down to the right and see the view of the George Washington Bridge.

Speaker 28 What they couldn't see from here, of course, was the future.

Speaker 17 Had they caught even a glimpse of what was to come, surely they would have abandoned this place forever.

Speaker 26 Stephen and Jodi met in the late 70s in Georgia.

Speaker 31 He was in the Army, a bookworm who loved the Civil War.

Speaker 17 She taught history.

Speaker 20 Theirs was a meeting first of minds, then hearts.

Speaker 38 How would you sort of describe those early years?

Speaker 39 Were they loving?

Speaker 38 Were they exciting?

Speaker 12 Yes, they were,

Speaker 12 you know, we were in love.

Speaker 5 It was ecstatic.

Speaker 40 From there, marriage, a house, a son Jonathan, in 1983.

Speaker 38 And how would you describe Jodi as a mom?

Speaker 12 She was really devoted.

Speaker 43 Life was good.

Speaker 45 And even as the years went by, even with the demands of work and family, Stephen says he and Jodi still made time for each other.

Speaker 28 Like that last summer Sunday in September of 1992.

Speaker 26 Stephen says it was supposed to be a date night.

Speaker 3 It wasn't

Speaker 12 no idea that that would be the most critical day in our life, in our marriage.

Speaker 39 It was a day like any other day.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 49 Here was the plan.

Speaker 50 Husband and wife would drive into Manhattan and go to a comedy club, a light-hearted night on the town. But they made a detour to the Palisades, to their spot.

Speaker 18 Stephen remembers pulling up to this scenic lookout, sitting in the car with Jodi, sharing a wine cooler.

Speaker 12 There were other people there sitting in their cars, and we walked up, looked over the spot where the binoculars are, and then walked up, you know, to this sort of open view.

Speaker 52 He says they then turned and took a narrow, well-worn path to those rocks.

Speaker 53 They sat there as the night fell around them.

Speaker 36 He, with his back against the rock, holding her as she sat directly in front of him.

Speaker 38 At some point, something goes terribly wrong.

Speaker 57 Yes.

Speaker 47 He says he stood up intending to go back to the car to get wine and a blanket.

Speaker 18 For whatever reason, Jodi stood up too.

Speaker 16 The edge of the rock was at her feet.

Speaker 38 What was your last glimpse of your wife?

Speaker 12 Just standing up and,

Speaker 12 you know,

Speaker 12 and stumbling forward.

Speaker 35 Jodi had gone off the cliff.

Speaker 12 I didn't know how bad things were, but I was stunned.

Speaker 12 I got down on my stomach, I stuck my head over the, and I just yelled, Jody, Jody, talk to me.

Speaker 12 I just yelled down there.

Speaker 23 But no response.

Speaker 48 He grabbed a flashlight and and flagged down a motorist who came to the Palisades Interstate Parkway police station.

Speaker 18 Lieutenant Walter Siri was on duty.

Speaker 60 Until he came through that door, it was a quiet, very quiet night.

Speaker 57 And

Speaker 57 all hell broke loose.

Speaker 59 The frantic man was telling them a woman had fallen from the lookout above and that her husband was waiting for help.

Speaker 23 The police called in Michael Chiaffey, an experienced climber.

Speaker 5 I was there as a rescue mission. I thought she was alive.

Speaker 54 He began to to lower himself off the side of the cliff where the woman's husband said she had fallen.

Speaker 35 About 10 feet down, he caught sight of a ledge.

Speaker 5 The minute I got to that ledge, I observed the purse. I think it was two credit cards.

Speaker 49 On a ledge 10 feet down.

Speaker 57 Right.

Speaker 47 But it was what he didn't see that confused him.

Speaker 22 There was no sign that the woman's body had also hit that ledge or any part of the cliffs.

Speaker 5 Nothing. No blood, no hair, no clothing, no fibers, no skin.

Speaker 63 By that point, Officer Walter Siri had arrived up at the lookout.

Speaker 18 Since there was nothing the husband could do to help in the rescue, Siri was told to get him out of the way and drove him back down to police headquarters.

Speaker 51 On the way, Stephen recounted the awful moment when his wife disappeared.

Speaker 60 We were walking and she said for me to go back to the car and get the blanket and she slipped and I didn't see her anymore.

Speaker 31 As Siri and the man arrived at the station, rescuer Chaffee had made it to the base of the cliff, more than 100 feet below the top.

Speaker 35 He expected to find a wounded woman there, but he didn't.

Speaker 5 I'm saying she's not here.

Speaker 5 At the first point, I said, maybe this is a hoax. Maybe she never really went off the cliff.

Speaker 21 He and another rescuer began to walk along the base, pointing their flashlights north.

Speaker 54 Finally, about 30 feet away, the beams landed on something white.

Speaker 18 It was Jodi, lying motionless next to a tree.

Speaker 5 There was a lot of blood on that tree. And the blood was actually draining down the tree.

Speaker 5 That's where a severe impact hook. That's where she really, you know.

Speaker 35 Jodi Sharp had not survived the fall.

Speaker 63 To Chiafi, it was clear she had slammed into that tree.

Speaker 35 As they began to move the body, he noticed something else.

Speaker 5 She had an odor of an alcoholic beverage.

Speaker 5 That emanated from her body.

Speaker 49 So when you smelled that, did you think, well, maybe she had had too much to drink and fell?

Speaker 5 That entered my mind, yes.

Speaker 66 At that moment, Stephen Scharf was sitting in a room at the police station, waiting for someone to tell him what had happened to his wife.

Speaker 37 Do you remember what's going through your mind at that point?

Speaker 12 How badly is she hurt?

Speaker 12 Where is she? Why isn't she calling back to me?

Speaker 17 And that's when an officer walked into the room and broke the news to Stephen.

Speaker 18 Jodi was gone.

Speaker 12 I don't even remember who came in and told me.

Speaker 11 And what was your reaction?

Speaker 12 Denial that was...

Speaker 12 You know,

Speaker 60 how could this

Speaker 3 happen?

Speaker 18 That question would haunt him and many others, and it would take years for the answers to finally come.

Speaker 8 Coming up.

Speaker 60 He was rubbing his eyes to make it look like he was crying.

Speaker 49 You thought he was faking tears?

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 7 Curious behavior puts a husband under the microscope.

Speaker 8 When dateline continues

Speaker 66 it was the worst night of his life and now Stephen Scharf in the early morning hours of September 21st 1992 had to tell his 10-year-old son Jonathan his mother was dead.

Speaker 12 I said

Speaker 12 Come on, John, we need to take a walk. And I told him and he immediately burst into tears and

Speaker 12 I cried. I cried like a baby, and I wasn't ashamed.

Speaker 18 He remembers his distraught son's reaction, but little else from those dark hours.

Speaker 39 Were you sleeping? Were you eating?

Speaker 55 Were you

Speaker 39 drinking?

Speaker 12 I lost my wife. My son lost his mom.

Speaker 21 There was plenty of sympathy among family and friends, to be sure, for the man newly widowed with a small child to raise on his own.

Speaker 35 His wife had died in a freak accident off a cliff of all places.

Speaker 52 How could that happen?

Speaker 18 And that's exactly what police who were there the night of Jodi's death wanted to know too.

Speaker 5 Right away I got a feeling that there was something definitely wrong.

Speaker 56 It nagged at rescuer Michael Chiaffey.

Speaker 29 Why was Jodi's purse on a ledge just feet below where her husband said she'd fallen?

Speaker 5 Where is she? She should be here. Or part of her should be here.

Speaker 39 That's the first thing that came to you.

Speaker 5 Either she should be here or the pocketbook should be down with her. And it wasn't fitting.

Speaker 35 Another thought dawned on him.

Speaker 46 If Jodi had tumbled, why hadn't she hit the side of the cliffs?

Speaker 33 There was no blood or hair anywhere on the rocks.

Speaker 62 And the location of Jodi's body seemed off to Chaffee.

Speaker 61 Way off.

Speaker 5 She was like 30 to 40 feet away from us to the north. You know, a person falls off the cliff, usually they're going to go south or they're going to go right down.

Speaker 5 They should have been right down where I got off the ropes. That's where she should have been.

Speaker 35 Someone else was scratching his head about that night for different reasons.

Speaker 62 It had to do with Stephen's behavior while the search was underway.

Speaker 21 Officer Walter Siri was surprised Stephen was willing to leave the lookout as rescuers were still looking for Jodi.

Speaker 37 Did he give any indication, I don't want to leave, my wife could still be alive down there?

Speaker 4 No, none at all.

Speaker 18 Siri says he couldn't believe how willingly Stephen Sharp got into his patrol car.

Speaker 60 And I tell you, if it was my wife, girlfriend, whoever, they would have had to pry me away from that scene if I was still at the top of the cliffs.

Speaker 39 But he willingly got into your patrol car?

Speaker 60 Without a word said.

Speaker 71 Stranger still was how calm the husband seemed.

Speaker 44 When the officer heard Stephen describe how his wife had fallen, he made a mental note.

Speaker 60 There was no emotion in it. I mean, no emotion at all, like he was reading a script.

Speaker 39 Did it occur to you, well, maybe he's in shock?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 60 I've seen people who have lost loved ones,

Speaker 60 and I've never seen anybody act that way.

Speaker 22 But it was a particular moment later, inside the station house, that really caught the officer's attention.

Speaker 60 And he asked if he could get a drink from the water fountain.

Speaker 60 He was looking like over his shoulder at me and splashing water up into his face and then like rubbing his eyes to make it look like he was crying.

Speaker 49 You thought he was faking tears?

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 25 A death scene where the pieces didn't connect.

Speaker 18 A husband who appeared nonchalant.

Speaker 21 From a cop's point of view, things were adding up and not in Stephen's favor.

Speaker 5 Not just one thing, it was like the totality of the circumstances. Everything, every little thing was clicking in my mind.
I'm saying to myself, you know, this isn't right. Something's wrong here.

Speaker 66 Gut instinct is one thing, but evidence is quite another.

Speaker 64 People handle terrible events in different ways.

Speaker 51 The police are paid to be suspicious.

Speaker 67 Maybe their view of Stephen was too jaundiced.

Speaker 51 There really was nothing to indicate that Jody's fall was anything but an accident.

Speaker 25 A few months later, the ruling was in.

Speaker 47 The Bergen County Medical Examiner concluded the manner of Jody Sharp's death could not be determined. An accident was as likely as anything else.

Speaker 70 Case closed.

Speaker 48 Or was it?

Speaker 8 Coming up.

Speaker 72 So you didn't think this was a horrible accident? No.

Speaker 7 The suspicions grow. Was there a weapon at this romantic rendezvous?

Speaker 68 You have your wine, cheese, crackers, claw hammer. If red flares are going up, they reach the top of the pole at that point.

Speaker 8 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 56 Jodi's death had been a horrible accident.

Speaker 53 Her husband said so.

Speaker 18 And the medical examiner wasn't arguing with him.

Speaker 31 But detectives have a kind of sixth sense about cases.

Speaker 56 It was telling James Lynum something sinister had just happened.

Speaker 18 So you didn't think this was a horrible accident?

Speaker 57 No.

Speaker 48 There wasn't any smoking gun, really.

Speaker 46 Just something dark Lynum thought he could read between the lines.

Speaker 18 In the police notes he reviewed the day after Jodi's death.

Speaker 68 He did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have reacted.

Speaker 46 And so the detective moved his investigation from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues.

Speaker 62 He quickly learned from Jodi's friends that this was a couple not in love, but in crisis.

Speaker 18 The subject wasn't wine and roses on those cliffs.

Speaker 15 It was divorce.

Speaker 10 She was going to go through with it.

Speaker 26 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 18 Jodi's longtime friend, Marion Hilferty, told detectives that Jodi had been determined to take her 10-year-old son, Jonathan, and leave her husband.

Speaker 26 She was convinced Stephen had been cheating on her.

Speaker 10 She couldn't prove anything, but

Speaker 10 women called the house,

Speaker 10 and sometimes they call and hang up on her.

Speaker 18 In fact, Lynam learned Jodi had served her husband divorce papers on September 8th, 1992.

Speaker 25 Less than two weeks later, she was dead dead at the base of the Palisades.

Speaker 18 The timing made him even more eager to talk to the widower Scharf.

Speaker 39 There was a sit-down with Mr. Scharf.
He's consented to talk, right?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 56 Two days after his wife's death, Stephen Scharf was freely answering detectives' questions.

Speaker 53 Yes, he told them, he and his wife were talking divorce, as they had sometimes done during their tempestuous marriage.

Speaker 45 And it was true, there were other women.

Speaker 60 He told us he had they had an open marriage.

Speaker 68 They were seeing different people. He actually said he had been with like 50 to 60 women.

Speaker 75 She was okay with it, according to him.

Speaker 57 According to him, yes.

Speaker 21 But he told detectives he and Jodi had become unhappy with their free love lifestyle. So they came to this romantic, if treacherous spot to recommit to each other, Stevens said.

Speaker 31 To kiss and make up.

Speaker 68 And the spot where they went is not a spot where you would go to reconcile with anybody.

Speaker 15 Detectives weren't buying the story for another reason.

Speaker 56 They had found something suspicious inside Sharf's car. A bag filled with items you'd expect for a romantic picnic.

Speaker 41 And one you would not.

Speaker 76 A hammer.

Speaker 68 Oh, you have your wine, cheese, crackers, opener, claw hammer.

Speaker 68 I mean, if red flags are going up, they reached the top of the pole at that point.

Speaker 37 Did you think that might be a murder weapon?

Speaker 68 Yeah, I thought that might have been plan A, and

Speaker 68 he didn't use it, so he went to plan B.

Speaker 63 Which Lynam believed was to push or throw Jody off that cliff.

Speaker 35 So detectives asked Stephen Scharf the obvious.

Speaker 41 What was a hammer doing in that picnic bag?

Speaker 68 Well, he told us he fixed a drawer in his kitchen with a hammer, and he just forgot to put it back in the garage. He put it in a bag with the picnic items.
It was just convenient.

Speaker 68 It's a convenient excuse for having that hammer.

Speaker 35 Detectives asked if they could check out the drawer and the rest of Stephen's house that night.

Speaker 24 He agreed.

Speaker 21 But as it turned out, something potentially far more telling was happening away from the action.

Speaker 5 And I said, look, Mr. Sharf.

Speaker 77 I'm your local police department.

Speaker 26 Ted Ehrenberg was a local officer told to keep an eye on Stephen Sharf that night as detectives combed through his house.

Speaker 31 The officer says he began talking to Stephen about what had happened to Jody when Stephen interrupted him.

Speaker 77 He finally looks at me and he goes,

Speaker 79 you don't believe me.

Speaker 34 And then the officer says, Sharf said something that almost knocked him off his feet.

Speaker 77 I said, I believe an accident occurred. And I said, was it an accident? And he put his head down and he said, no.

Speaker 59 Ehrenberg believed that was a stunning confession.

Speaker 66 He ran to tell the other detectives, including Mynum.

Speaker 53 But they had just spent hours grilling the man.

Speaker 68 We weren't getting that feeling that a re-interview at that point would have done anything.

Speaker 18 The detectives still believed they could find solid evidence to implicate Stephen Scharf, but they didn't.

Speaker 68 We took it as far as we could go. There hadn't been the cause of death at that time was listed as undetermined.
So officially it wasn't a homicide.

Speaker 20 In time, the detectives moved on to other cases.

Speaker 66 Stephen Scharf moved on too.

Speaker 15 14 years after his wife's death, he remarried.

Speaker 18 Tina Scharf says he's been a loving, ideal husband.

Speaker 80 It was like we were two puzzle pieces that were made for each other, where we just, each of us complemented and completed the other person.

Speaker 18 But even in this happy new life, he says, he's never forgotten about Jodi.

Speaker 50 But he might have been surprised to learn that someone else was thinking of her too after all these years. Bergen County had a new prosecutor, and he was eager to revisit old case files.

Speaker 50 Among them, an unexplained death on the cliffs of the Palisades so many years ago.

Speaker 29 The death of Jody Sharp.

Speaker 81 There was this renewed push since 2002 to look into the cold cases.

Speaker 59 Gibrette Marcos covered the trial for the Record newspaper in New Jersey.

Speaker 31 On one hand, he says, it didn't seem the prosecutor had any reason to pursue the cold case.

Speaker 81 In terms of hard evidence, it had absolutely nothing new.

Speaker 20 But the prosecutor did have someone new, a famous name to join the investigation into Jodi Sharp's death.

Speaker 35 Dr.

Speaker 23 Michael Baden, a world-renowned forensic pathologist who investigated the deaths of John F.

Speaker 18 Kennedy and John Belushi and testified at the trial of O.J.

Speaker 48 Simpson,

Speaker 62 he was about to turn up the heat on a very cold case.

Speaker 81 Dr. Michael Baden has reviewed the evidence and has determined that this could not have been an accidental fall.

Speaker 18 In December of 2008, detectives paid one more visit to Stephen Sharf.

Speaker 12 They wouldn't tell me what it was for.

Speaker 12 I had no idea what this was about. I mean, it didn't make sense.

Speaker 63 16 years after that fatal night on the cliff, police were back.

Speaker 44 And Stephen Scharf was in for a shock.

Speaker 11 After all these years, he thought it was done.

Speaker 12 Not until they reached behind and hand me this thing, this arrest warrant.

Speaker 8 Coming up.

Speaker 6 The case heads into court with a surprise from the stand.

Speaker 13 Here from my mother.

Speaker 7 Stephen and Jody Scharf's only son has some dark secrets to share.

Speaker 2 Did you see that abuse?

Speaker 82 I did.

Speaker 8 When dateline continues.

Speaker 83 What's stuck in his mind?

Speaker 71 In every murder trial, time is an invisible but crucial player for both sides.

Speaker 1 16 years.

Speaker 26 Sometimes it hurts a case.

Speaker 53 Memories fade.

Speaker 31 Evidence is lost.

Speaker 21 Witnesses die.

Speaker 46 But time can also put evidence in a new light.

Speaker 18 Such was the case in the trial of Stephen Scharf, accused of killing his wife nearly two decades ago.

Speaker 68 There is no statute of limitations on murder.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor promised the evidence would tell a story as simple as it was brutal.

Speaker 23 A husband, determined to avoid a costly divorce, lured his wife to the edge of a cliff and forced her off it.

Speaker 52 If he has lied, he is guilty.

Speaker 18 The state marshaled some familiar facts to tell its story, starting with the crime scene, where the prosecutor said the cliffs showed no sign of an accidental tumble.

Speaker 12 No debris, no clothing, no blood, no hair, no tissue.

Speaker 46 And then there was the husband himself, cool and collected in the back of a police car.

Speaker 53 i didn't see any emotion from head walsh who later confessed the prosecutor said to killing his wife

Speaker 55 and then i said it was an accident and he said no but those facts were not where the case ended the prosecutor argued that they simply set the stage for the real case a story told by the victim's friends family and most importantly by a star witness my opinion opinion is that the manner of death is homicide.

Speaker 46 Dr.

Speaker 67 Michael Botten, the famous forensic pathologist, told jurors the crime scene spoke of a murder, not an accident.

Speaker 57 If

Speaker 79 a person falls accidentally, the individual will be, you know, within a couple of feet of the base of the building.

Speaker 46 And that didn't happen in the case of Jodi Sharf.

Speaker 35 Her body landed 50 feet out from the top of the cliff and 30 feet to the north.

Speaker 79 She had to have been propelled

Speaker 13 from that point.

Speaker 18 Jodi had to have been thrown or pushed to her death, he said, and likely from another spot entirely on those cliffs.

Speaker 35 He wasn't the only expert who saw it that way.

Speaker 69 The head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbles down the cliff face.

Speaker 33 Dr.

Speaker 64 Marianne Clayton was the Bergen County Medical Examiner who first first ruled the circumstances of Jodi's death could not be determined.

Speaker 20 Now, on second look, she said, the victim's wounds, or lack of them, told her something different,

Speaker 45 something vital.

Speaker 21 If Jodi had tumbled innocently down the palisades, she would have had broken bones everywhere.

Speaker 20 She did not.

Speaker 69 There were no visible injuries on the back of Mrs. Sah Sharp's body.

Speaker 35 But why would Stephen have killed his wife?

Speaker 67 The biggest reason, the prosecutor argued, was that Stephen did not want a divorce.

Speaker 26 He didn't want a custody fight.

Speaker 56 And he didn't want to split assets with Jodi.

Speaker 26 And there was yet another motive for Stephen, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 56 A potential payout.

Speaker 14 USAA Life Insurance Company.

Speaker 29 An insurance representative testified about a $500,000 policy taken out against Jodi Scharf months before her death, payable to a primary

Speaker 6 Can you tell us the policy owner, Stephen F.

Speaker 12 Scharf?

Speaker 35 Jodi Scharf was simply worth more dead than alive.

Speaker 29 Her friend, Marion Hilferty, testified that Jodi feared Stephen might do something violent if she pushed for that divorce.

Speaker 18 Even so, Marion said, Jodi was determined to get away from her husband.

Speaker 57 She was going to have the divorce paper served on Stephen,

Speaker 82 and she was very afraid of him.

Speaker 33 Yet, was Stephen violent enough to kill his wife?

Speaker 18 An unlikely but powerful witness was about to testify against Stephen Scharf.

Speaker 13 I'm here for my mother.

Speaker 41 His own son took the stand against him.

Speaker 20 Now a businessman, Jonathan Scharf painted his father as an angry, violent man who terrorized his mother.

Speaker 2 Did you see that abuse?

Speaker 13 I did.

Speaker 18 Jonathan Scharf said he realized his father had likely killed his mother only after that arrest in 2008.

Speaker 65 This interview shows him recalling the dark past for the first time to police.

Speaker 9 She got coffee thrown at her by him.

Speaker 26 Now, in court, he had even more to tell about his childhood.

Speaker 71 Like the afternoon he sat cowering in the back seat of a car, watching his mother suffer.

Speaker 13 My mom was driving and my dad just hitting her with the bottom of his fist

Speaker 68 and I was like begging him to stop doing it.

Speaker 54 He also remembered the last day of his mother's life.

Speaker 18 He was 10 and said his mother told his father that she didn't want to go out with him alone.

Speaker 13 She said, if I wanted to go out with you, I wouldn't be divorcing you.

Speaker 25 But where was the proof that Stephen had planned to kill Jodi that night?

Speaker 28 Well, there was the hammer in the picnic bag.

Speaker 21 but there was also testimony from one of Stephen's old girlfriends.

Speaker 84 I even mentioned to my girlfriend that it was a perfect relationship.

Speaker 18 Terry Schofield had been dating Stephen months before Jodi Scharf's death.

Speaker 77 Did Mr.

Speaker 66 Scharf tell you whether or not he was married?

Speaker 84 Actually, he said he was not married.

Speaker 21 And she remembered something strange Stephen said to her on the beach over that Labor Day weekend.

Speaker 84 He was under a lot of stress, and the stress would be resolved by the end of September.

Speaker 51 Two weeks later, Jodi Scharf was dead.

Speaker 63 Terry now sees that cryptic statement in a dreadful light.

Speaker 84 I was like, oh no, the end of September. And then the light bulb went off immediately.

Speaker 15 It also went off for Marion Hilferty.

Speaker 56 In perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecution's case, Hilferty told the jury that when she heard her friend was gone, she immediately remembered something Jodi said just weeks earlier.

Speaker 10 She said that during this conversation that I have with him, if anything happens to me, you'll know who did it. She said, you'll know it was him.

Speaker 17 The prosecutor's position was clear.

Speaker 16 A husband with a motive. The perfect setting.

Speaker 33 The violent intent to kill his wife.

Speaker 71 Or was there another way of looking at that couple perched high on those cliffs on a summer night?

Speaker 18 Stephen's new wife says the prosecution has it all wrong.

Speaker 32 My husband is not capable. That is not the man he is.
My husband is sweet, kind, loving, considerate.

Speaker 66 The prosecutor.

Speaker 35 The defense was ready to show how Stephen Sharf, far from villain, was the real victim in this story.

Speaker 8 Coming up.

Speaker 77 They destroyed the crime scene area.

Speaker 8 New questions about the evidence.

Speaker 7 And was there another reason why a son might implicate his dad?

Speaker 77 Who's the money go to?

Speaker 81 He goes to me.

Speaker 8 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 Stephen Scharf is not guilty.

Speaker 18 18 years after the death of his first wife, more than a decade after the investigation first stalled, Stephen Scharf was being called a killer.

Speaker 62 But his defense attorney, Ed Balinkis, argued there was no new evidence in this case, no new eyewitnesses, only new opinions.

Speaker 83 We're talking about the same old facts and circumstances.

Speaker 62 Balinkis said the state was hoping to win a murder conviction by painting his client as a terrible husband, that it couldn't prove he was a killer in 1992, and it couldn't prove it today.

Speaker 83 My client, Stephen Sharp, has been wrongfully charged with her death.

Speaker 31 And one reason the prosecutor couldn't prove murder had to do with sloppy police work, the defense attorney said, suggesting it had been like Keystone cops on the palisades that fatal night.

Speaker 77 You never photographed the body before you moved it, did you?

Speaker 13 No, sir.

Speaker 77 Why didn't they take photographs? They destroyed the crime scene area.

Speaker 56 They didn't even bother to question potential eyewitnesses, he said.

Speaker 18 Instead, they cleared visitors from the lookout.

Speaker 37 There might have been someone who saw something or heard something.

Speaker 60 There might have been. There's a possibility that might have happened.

Speaker 33 And if police were so suspicious of his client two nights later, the defense said, why didn't they videotape their interview with him?

Speaker 22 That way, jurors could have judged Stephen Sharf's supposedly odd demeanor for themselves.

Speaker 37 Why didn't you?

Speaker 68 Not an interrogation. He wasn't in custody.

Speaker 60 I don't know.

Speaker 18 The defense attorney also argued that police misinterpreted what his client said in his home just hours later.

Speaker 77 My client never said this wasn't an accident.

Speaker 18 And as for that hammer, police thought was a weapon?

Speaker 77 The hammer was examined by the forensic experts. There was nothing found on that hammer.

Speaker 47 And the defense attorney pressed the medical examiner on her flip-flop.

Speaker 20 Undetermined manner of death in 93.

Speaker 35 Now it was a homicide?

Speaker 53 Really?

Speaker 77 Are you trying to say that you're learning from your mistakes on this case?

Speaker 69 You may call them mistakes, sir. I did the best I could in 1992 documenting what I had observed with Mrs.
Scharf.

Speaker 47 The medical examiner was helpful to the defense in one critical way, though.

Speaker 21 She determined that Jodi had been drunk the night she fell off the cliffs.

Speaker 71 Jodi had a blood alcohol level of 0.12.

Speaker 62 That was over the legal limit.

Speaker 69 Would be equivalent to approximately four average-sized drinks, wine, or beer, something like that.

Speaker 46 A drunken slip and fall, argued the defense.

Speaker 45 To back that up, the lawyer had his own heavy hitter, famed forensic pathologist Dr.

Speaker 18 Cyril Wecht. Wecht boasted a resume of star-studded investigations too, as high-profile as the prosecution's Dr.

Speaker 15 Baden.

Speaker 35 Only Wecht had a totally different take on how Jodi Scharf died.

Speaker 4 I would call this an accidental death.

Speaker 29 In Wecht's version, which he demonstrated with, of all things, a teddy bear, Jodi fell off the cliff and onto jagged rocks just below, causing her mortal wounds.

Speaker 58 Her body then catapulted.

Speaker 27 And out goes the body and it hurtles into the air.

Speaker 21 Into the tree canopy, which then carried her through the abyss and into that distant tree.

Speaker 27 This is what I think happened to explain those injuries of the chest and of the head.

Speaker 46 But there was another bubble to burst in the prosecution's case, the motive for murder.

Speaker 56 Stephen Scharf wasn't a greedy killer, his attorney said.

Speaker 45 His client never made a claim on that insurance policy.

Speaker 21 It was only after the money was turned over to the state, years later, he said, that Stephen Scharf even bothered to collect.

Speaker 44 Would it throw fuel on the fire not to do it? Well, I know I look guilty because I am guilty. I better not make this claim.

Speaker 77 You're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't.

Speaker 18 The other alleged motive, divorce, was flimsy as well, he said.

Speaker 21 Jody and Stephen had been talking breakup for years.

Speaker 35 Those divorce papers, just the latest legal salvo in an ongoing marital spat.

Speaker 38 The prosecutor paints a picture of someone who frankly is furious about this divorce.

Speaker 77 No one person ever indicated that my client was furious over this divorce. They had talked about divorce for years.
Maybe she was, you know,

Speaker 77 saying one thing and not following through.

Speaker 70 Though it is true, Stephen Scharf did not want a divorce.

Speaker 29 He says he wanted to give the marriage another chance.

Speaker 23 And as for that former girlfriend, Terry Schofield, she recounted Stephen's mysterious statement just before Jodi's death.

Speaker 84 Just give me to the end of September and everything will be okay.

Speaker 84 The stress will be, a lot of the stress will be gone.

Speaker 18 The defense attorney says that was Stephen's clumsy way of trying to dump his girlfriends.

Speaker 33 And speaking of which, he added, those other women did not bother Jodi at all.

Speaker 18 She was seeing other people herself.

Speaker 77 The person on the bottom half in both of those is who?

Speaker 57 Jodi Sharf.

Speaker 78 The record keeper of a dating service testified that Jodi's name was on an application.

Speaker 35 She even checked off the interests she'd like to share with a mate.

Speaker 70 The attorney offered that as proof of of Stephen and Jody's open marriage.

Speaker 18 But what really rankled the defense, what had torn at the heart of Stephen Scharf, was the testimony of his son, Jonathan.

Speaker 13 Remember her showing me her bruises?

Speaker 18 He had painted his father as a brute and possibly a killer.

Speaker 12 I never hit Jodi. It made me sick to my stomach.

Speaker 33 The young man wasn't to be believed, said the lawyer.

Speaker 18 For one thing, when police interviewed jonathan back in 2008 the young man described his dad as a good guy i think he was a you know fairly decent you know fairly decent parent

Speaker 48 it was only after detectives told him his dad had just been arrested that the son turned on his father she got coffee thrown at her by him

Speaker 77 before you found out that your dad was arrested

Speaker 77 did you lie

Speaker 3 yes

Speaker 16 and did you lie lie more than once?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 35 Why would Jonathan turn on his father and lie?

Speaker 47 The defense lawyer said it was Jonathan, not his dad, who was motivated by greed.

Speaker 35 If Stephen Scharf was convicted, his son would get all that insurance money.

Speaker 77 Who's the money go to?

Speaker 81 It goes to me.

Speaker 18 In the end, the lawyer called Stephen Scharf's son a spoiled brat.

Speaker 77 That sounds like some spoiled kid.

Speaker 20 Who was not a credible witness.

Speaker 17 In closing, Balinkas insisted that this wasn't a murder case, just a sad story about a woman who tumbled drunkenly to her death.

Speaker 77 This case is an accident.

Speaker 83 Nothing more, nothing less.

Speaker 67 Soon, it would be in the hands of a jury.

Speaker 8 Coming up.

Speaker 87 It was the light bulb. You couldn't help but think, hmm, that's interesting.

Speaker 6 The jurors speak.

Speaker 8 What would they decide?

Speaker 37 Stephen,

Speaker 11 did you kill your wife, Jodi?

Speaker 7 The verdict.

Speaker 8 When dateline continues.

Speaker 35 18 years after a night that ended in his wife's death off a cliff, Stephen Scharf stood accused of murder by the state of New Jersey.

Speaker 41 And through it all, one thing he wants you to know is this.

Speaker 18 He would never have laid a hand on his beloved Jodi.

Speaker 1 Never.

Speaker 37 Stephen.

Speaker 11 Did you kill your wife, Jody?

Speaker 12 I did not hurt Jodi.

Speaker 5 I did not.

Speaker 11 Did you throw her off the bar?

Speaker 12 I did not. I did not.

Speaker 12 I didn't hurt Jodi. I didn't push her.
I didn't cause her to get hurt. I didn't kill my wife.

Speaker 14 We talked to Stephen Scharf at the Bergen County Jail, where he was held for more than two years after his arrest in 2008.

Speaker 35 He and his wife, Tina, say they've paid a high price for something he didn't do.

Speaker 80 When we visit, it's through a piece of plate glass. Our daughter's two and a half and has still never been held by her father

Speaker 80 because we don't have contact visits.

Speaker 12 It's not just a tragedy for Jodi. It's a tragedy for John.

Speaker 12 It's a tragedy for my wife, it's a tragedy for my daughter, and for myself.

Speaker 7 Still, he decided not to take the stand in his own defense, but told Nateline that what he first said years ago about his wife's death was the truth.

Speaker 12 I wish it didn't happen. I wish we had gone to the comedy club,

Speaker 12 but I didn't.

Speaker 12 I'm innocent.

Speaker 29 But had the jury gotten that same message?

Speaker 35 When they walked into that deliberating room for the first time, some jurors, in fact, planned to vote not guilty.

Speaker 80 There wasn't enough evidence for me.

Speaker 75 That's what it was.

Speaker 16 Others were thinking guilty.

Speaker 6 It was

Speaker 57 several things. It was no one thing that had made up my mind.

Speaker 21 The jurors went back and forth over the evidence, and here's what they came to believe.

Speaker 29 That Jodi was likely drunk.

Speaker 33 and that her husband knew it.

Speaker 29 And if that was the case, why would he he let her get so close to the edge of a cliff?

Speaker 87 As the husband, knowing that your wife was drinking,

Speaker 87 would you bring her there?

Speaker 35 The jurors deliberated three days before deciding whether Stephen Sharp should be found guilty or not guilty of a single count of murder.

Speaker 48 On the charge of murder of Jodi Ann Sharp, your verdict is guilty.

Speaker 24 Guilty.

Speaker 33 Later, jurors said what united them was the testimony of Jodi's friend, telling them that Jodi was terrified of her husband.

Speaker 87 That possibly she was telling everyone, if something happens to me, it's my husband.

Speaker 18 And it was another woman in Stephen's life who also swayed the jury.

Speaker 51 Terry Schofield, recounting what Stephen said to her weeks before Jodi's death, that his stress would soon be over.

Speaker 75 That was...

Speaker 75 Something that pushed me towards what we decided in the end.

Speaker 87 It was the light bulb.

Speaker 67 To them, it wasn't Jodi who slipped, but her husband with that menacing statement.

Speaker 28 They believed it wasn't just a fall from the cliffs, it was a cold-blooded execution.

Speaker 18 Stephen Scharf was sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 53 He says the jurors condemned him, not on the facts, but for his and Jodi's tumultuous open marriage.

Speaker 56 So you think this was a moral judgment on the part of jurors?

Speaker 12 And I suppose some people would say, well, he was punished for his moral weakness,

Speaker 12 but this is a murder trial.

Speaker 44 In 2014, an appeals court overturned Stephen Sharf's guilty verdict.

Speaker 18 Then, two years later, the state Supreme Court reversed that ruling and reinstated his conviction.

Speaker 15 Sharf remains in prison, serving his life sentence.

Speaker 78 For rescuer Michael Chaffee, it's a fitting end to a story that's haunted him since that night on the Palisades.

Speaker 5 This has never left me.

Speaker 57 It's been years.

Speaker 5 I went back there myself without people knowing it several times because it bothered me. Something was wrong.

Speaker 24 For close friends like Marion Hilfrady, the verdict does not remove the sting of the loss.

Speaker 10 I'm angry that he took the life of a beautiful person. That's what bothers me the most.
That he would do that and think that he was going to get away with it.

Speaker 10 He wanted the insurance money, he wanted his son, he'd have the house, he'd have whatever he wanted, and she'd be out of the way. Now I think that was sad.

Speaker 6 That's all for now.

Speaker 8 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 13 Thanks for joining us.

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