The Pink Gun Mystery

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Speaker 3 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 4 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy. Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.
Or turn it down. It's time for something that's not too spicy.
Try Doritos Golden Sriracha.

Speaker 4 Spicy, but not too spicy.

Speaker 5 A husband and wife, each with a motive for murder.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 7 Robin's mom's calling me.

Speaker 8 Asked if I'd seen Robin.

Speaker 8 Six hours later, pick pick up the phone. All I say is, did you find her? She said, they found her body.

Speaker 9 And I saw three girls running towards me, hollering, she's dead, she's dead.

Speaker 10 Something horrible has happened here. It's a homicide.

Speaker 11 Did you have any plans to meet Robin Monday evening?

Speaker 4 No plans.

Speaker 11 How do you explain these text messages?

Speaker 10 We knew he was lying to us.

Speaker 12 Is my husband cheating on me with her?

Speaker 11 I will tell you this right now. They were on meat last night.
I guess they were.

Speaker 8 Once she suspected something, Katie's claws came out.

Speaker 13 She certainly had the means and she certainly had the motive.

Speaker 10 We find the Facebook photo of her shooting this pink pistol.

Speaker 13 If that gun killed Robin, only two people could have done it.

Speaker 11 I'm giving you a lot of things that I'm not murdered. You and I both know there's something going on.
You're protecting yourself, you're protecting somebody else.

Speaker 12 I want Robin back.

Speaker 12 I want to be happy.

Speaker 12 I want what will never be.

Speaker 5 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with the Pink Gun Mystery.

Speaker 4 It began with a letter mailed from a sun-scorched stack of cement blocks and steel wire on the dusty plains outside Amarillo, Texas. Randall County Jail.

Speaker 4 We often hear from inmates, but this letter seemed a little different. Within the neat lines, the author dangled a promise.
I will give you one hell of a story. Now that was the truth.

Speaker 4 The tempestuous tale that unfolded was about two family-oriented women, Robin and Katie. Friends from church who fell hard for the same guy, and then somehow turned on one another with a vengeance.

Speaker 8 Once she suspected something,

Speaker 8 Katie's claws came out.

Speaker 4 The dizzying spiral of betrayal and bad blood between the women exploded into violence, ending in a merciless nighttime murder and years of lies and suspicions.

Speaker 8 Don't be alone with her. She's the kind of crazy that'll kill you.

Speaker 4 Keep this in mind. The letter made one thing very clear.
Nothing was quite as it seemed.

Speaker 4 Even as a teenager growing up in suburban Amarillo, Robin Bledsoe had a clear sense of her destiny.

Speaker 14 She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

Speaker 4 Robin's mom Jackie and her dad Steve, who'd been married to the military and each other for 40 years, were about as apple pie as it gets. And Robin craved her own slice.

Speaker 14 It's like she wanted a relationship like we had, but she couldn't find it.

Speaker 4 The boys Robin chose weren't exactly the clean-cut type.

Speaker 10 She liked the bad boy image

Speaker 10 of being the girlfriend of a bad boy.

Speaker 14 And every time she'd find a guy that was like her dad, she'd freak out and go and run away and go find a bad one again.

Speaker 4 What Robin feared most, said her mom, was having no boy at all.

Speaker 14 She never wanted to be alone. She hated to be alone.
That was why she went from boy to boy to boy.

Speaker 4 With her warm personality, Robin became a hostess at a local restaurant.

Speaker 8 Bubbly, outgoing, friendly,

Speaker 4 just loved everybody. Erin House waitressed at the same restaurant and was a magnet for nice guys.

Speaker 4 Erin was hoping some of her luck might rub off on Robin.

Speaker 8 She always imagined having the perfect family. White picket fence, you know, 2.0 kids, dog, the whole nine yards.

Speaker 4 The path to that domestic tranquility was rocky and hard to follow. Robin and Aaron were fellow travelers on it.

Speaker 8 We loved to go dancing. We were both under 21, so we weren't drinking.
We were just enjoying being young.

Speaker 4 Best friends? Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then one evening in 2003, Robin met a cool guy. His name was Jeremy David Spielbauer, and he went by JD.

Speaker 8 They danced all night long, and she said they had a blast. He was genuine, he was caring, and he showed her a lot of attention.

Speaker 4 The perfect guy. Yeah.
Polite. Very polite.
Says yes, sir, no, sir. Yes.

Speaker 8 And would be the type, you know, to take his hat off when he met you.

Speaker 4 J.D.'s good conduct came as perhaps no surprise. Just 21, a big part of J.D.'s life story was his service in the Marine Corps and combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 8 He would tell people all the time that certain things would cause him like PTSD and he couldn't be in loud places and he didn't want to be in crowded bars.

Speaker 4 Because he had been a Marine and fought overseas.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 4 In civilian life, J.D. was a mechanic, a gearhead.
Erin wasn't sure about J.D., but it was Robin who was so taken with him. And Erin wanted her best friend to live her dreams.

Speaker 8 She wanted the happy ending that she, no matter what, would make it work.

Speaker 4 You think she settled?

Speaker 8 I do. I think she loved him, but failure was not an option for her.

Speaker 8 You know, she wanted to make it happen.

Speaker 4 Two months later, it happened. Sooner than planned.
Robin became pregnant. She broke the news to her mom and dad, who were only just then hearing about their daughter's new man.

Speaker 14 She was like, okay, so I'm moving out and moving in with him and his grandmother. And we were like, um, wait a minute.
Okay, you're a grown-up.

Speaker 4 Robin was just 22, and after she gave birth to a baby daughter, she and J.D. decided to get married.
It wasn't long before Robin and J.D. had a second daughter.

Speaker 4 Money was tight, and they struggled, financially and otherwise. The couple was on again, off again.

Speaker 4 They also began attending a local church, which came as a surprise to Aaron.

Speaker 8 They'd never been to church before.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden they start going.

Speaker 8 Yeah, like three times a week.

Speaker 4 At church, someone new came into their lives, a single mother of two. Her name was Katie.

Speaker 8 Katie's family was a part of that church, and they all started hanging out.

Speaker 4 Katie and Robin soon became friends, but Aaron grew suspicious of J.D.'s newfound religious zeal.

Speaker 4 You think this was less the desire to worship in that church than it was JD's desire to be around Katie?

Speaker 4 Aaron, never shy, warned her friend. Robin was having none of it, even as JD's interest in Katie was breaking up her marriage.

Speaker 8 She really waited till it was extremely obvious before she said,

Speaker 15 they're together.

Speaker 4 But she finally did admit it to herself.

Speaker 8 Yes, after they moved in with each other.

Speaker 4 So my husband is hooking up with this woman who was my close friend, and

Speaker 4 I've now rationalized that too. Yep.
And do you say to her, this is crazy?

Speaker 12 Yep.

Speaker 8 Pretty much those exact words.

Speaker 4 After nearly eight years of marriage, Robin divorced J.D. and eventually moved back in with her parents.
It wasn't long before Robin had more news to share about J.D. and Katie.

Speaker 8 She called me and said

Speaker 8 he married her.

Speaker 4 For a lot of couples, that kind of betrayal might be the last time they acknowledged either their ex or the other woman. But not Robin.

Speaker 4 It was pretty clear clear she was still stuck on JD, who was now helping Katie raise her two kids. Over time, Robin found a new man named Jarrett who worked several jobs.

Speaker 14 She was giggly. She was like a young person in love or in that infatuation stage.

Speaker 14 I really like this guy. You know, I've got a crush on him kind of deal.

Speaker 4 After all the growing pains, it seemed that a white picket fence was maybe at last in Robin's future.

Speaker 8 She was becoming the Robin I had met back in 2001

Speaker 15 that was friendly and happy and outgoing again.

Speaker 4 That must have felt great.

Speaker 8 It was like a light had come back on.

Speaker 4 And then just as quickly. It was turned off.

Speaker 4 One April night in 2014, Robin went out in her black Tahoe and she never came home again.

Speaker 5 What had happened to Robin when we returned?

Speaker 8 All I say is, did you find her? And I don't remember the rest of the conversation.

Speaker 14 When the second police officer pulled up, this winner was scary.

Speaker 4 What's your gut telling you at that point?

Speaker 10 Something horrible has happened here.

Speaker 4 The sun has been punishing Amarillo, Texas since long before this was part of the United States. But the sunrise on April 8th, 2014, was of particular interest to Robin Spielbauer's mom, Jackie.

Speaker 4 Robin had gone out the night before, and at sunup, there was still no sign of her.

Speaker 14 I'm like, okay, wait a minute, Robin's not here. I've got to be at work at 8.
How are we going to get girls to school?

Speaker 14 What's going on?

Speaker 4 As the hours passed, Jackie and her husband Steve nervously conjured up scenarios as to where their daughter Robin might be. Maybe with her new boyfriend Jared or her best friend Aaron.

Speaker 14 Okay, well she fell asleep at Aaron's house or she fell asleep at this house. She wasn't at any of those places.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile around high noon local businessman Denny Hargrove was driving through farmland outside Amarillo and swung his pickup onto a curved strip of dirt called Helium Road.

Speaker 9 As soon as I turned, I saw three girls running towards me saying, hollering, she's dead, she's dead.

Speaker 9 And my first response was, who's dead? I freaked.

Speaker 4 Ahead, he saw a black Chevy Tahoe and something,

Speaker 4 make that someone, was slumped near a rear wheel.

Speaker 9 The girl was not moving, not breathing, lots of dried blood on her forehead. He called 911 and immediately the officer showed up and took over.

Speaker 10 So we do a real brief examination of the body.

Speaker 4 Sergeant Alan Mongold, a 30-year veteran of the Randall County Sheriff's Department, took the lead in the investigation.

Speaker 10 We find this large crush injury, blunt force trauma, the upper left portion of the head.

Speaker 4 Could you tell how long the body had been there?

Speaker 10 It'd been several hours.

Speaker 4 And it appeared she'd been killed by the blood of the head.

Speaker 10 It really didn't appear to be a self-inflicted injury.

Speaker 4 They searched the body and the vehicle, but couldn't find an ID.

Speaker 10 Her cell phone and her wallet went missing.

Speaker 4 Suggesting robbery, maybe? Yeah.

Speaker 10 That's something we looked at. Was it an unexpected encounter with a robbery?

Speaker 4 What's your gut telling you at that point? That it's a homicide.

Speaker 10 Something horrible has happened here.

Speaker 4 It took only a few minutes to run the plate and turn up the victim's name. It was Robin Spielbauer.

Speaker 4 Robin's family still hadn't heard any news about their daughter, and by now their minds were going to dark places. At some point, it stops being irritating and frustrating and starts being scary.

Speaker 14 When the second police officer pulled up in front of the house is when it was scary.

Speaker 4 Right then, one of Jackie's friends called to say a black Chevy Tahoe had been found.

Speaker 14 And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not, this is not happening. It's not her car.
And then everybody was contacting me. It's Robin's car.
It's Robin's car.

Speaker 14 Just like, no, we're not going to go there. It's not.

Speaker 14 And then Detective Longold showed up and

Speaker 6 told us.

Speaker 10 We tell them it's a suspicious death, of course. They ask the question, yeah, we think at this point it's a homicide.

Speaker 4 Jackie broke the news to robin's young daughters their mom was not coming home so they broke and cried then she called robin's former husband jd and told him that they'd found robin's body and he was like

Speaker 14 what are you talking about

Speaker 14 i'm like the police are here they said they found robin's body you need to get here now jd dashed over and was there at the house within five minutes and uh burst into tears.

Speaker 4 Jackie then called Robin's best friend Erin.

Speaker 8 All I say is, did you find her?

Speaker 8 And she said,

Speaker 8 they found her body.

Speaker 8 And I don't remember the rest of the conversation.

Speaker 4 Back at Helium Road, investigator Mongold and his team continued to process what was now a crime scene. One of the first things they noticed was unusual damage to one of the Tahoe's windows.

Speaker 10 There's some nicks in the glass, and there's there's also a hot pink paint polymer transfer to the glass.

Speaker 4 Somebody hit the glass with something that was pink, something that was plastic and pink.

Speaker 10 That's what it looked like, yes, sir.

Speaker 4 At the time, the investigator had no way to know how significant that pink plastic on the window might be. And by now, he was trying to figure out who might have wanted to kill Robin Spielbauer.

Speaker 4 He went to see Robin's new boyfriend Jared, who worked at a bar.

Speaker 10 His story was basically that he goes to the bar, he's there till about 9, 9.30, goes home, plays Xbox till 11 o'clock midnight, and then goes to sleep.

Speaker 4 Not the perfect alibi. No.
The investigator also questioned J.D. at his home.
And what does J.D. say?

Speaker 10 He has a story where he came home, had a couple of beers, passed out.

Speaker 4 And he wasn't anywhere near Helium Road.

Speaker 10 That's what he says.

Speaker 4 That's when J.D. told Mongold about another man in Robin's life.
A name the investigator hadn't heard before. Chris.
Who's Chris?

Speaker 10 Well, he tells us a story. They used to date, and I think he's into drugs, and I think there was some violence.
I think he's kind of a bad guy.

Speaker 4 You're hearing this from JD. JD.
And JD's new wife, Katie, backed up her husband's story.

Speaker 10 Tells the same story, names the same guy. So off you go to Chris.
Yeah, if we go to Chris, same questions. When's the last time you saw Robin? What's your relationship? Who doesn't like her?

Speaker 10 The same questions. I was here.
Mom's in the house. I live with my mom.

Speaker 4 Talk to her. He had an alibi.
He had an alibi. So Chris is off the list.

Speaker 10 Nobody gets off the list that early. But yeah, he's at the bottom.

Speaker 4 Jared soon moved to the bottom, too. But JD was about to move up the investigators' list because his story was about to change.

Speaker 5 Coming up, an ex-husband caught in a lie.

Speaker 11 Did you have any plans to meet Robin Monday evening? Go, please. How do you explain these text messages? Let me read these to you in case your memory is failing you.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 4 When investigators first spoke with Robin's ex-husband J.D. Spielbauer, he said he didn't know anything about the night she was killed.
Not where Robin was going or who she was with.

Speaker 4 Then they got hold of J.D.'s phone records, including the texts he'd sent that night. And those told a different story.
So Sergeant Mongold hauled in J.D. for further questioning.

Speaker 11 This stressful trying to figure out everything,

Speaker 11 everything all at once.

Speaker 4 On the night of Robin's death, JD said he was at home drinking beer and watching TV with his uncle Ty.

Speaker 4 He said his new wife of just five months, Katie, Robin's one-time friend turned romantic rival, was at a friend's house with her son Diego.

Speaker 4 JD said that after his uncle left, he fell asleep on the couch, then woke up shortly before 10 p.m.

Speaker 4 Maybe 9:40-ish, 9:50 is at home.

Speaker 11 I started sending text messages and calling.

Speaker 11 I sent one to my wife. She said, well,

Speaker 11 we're good. Everything's okay.

Speaker 4 I was like, okay. JD said he then called his uncle Ty.

Speaker 11 He said, I don't know.

Speaker 11 I just

Speaker 11 have an uneasy feeling just seeing a good body at school.

Speaker 4 He's like, I'm fine. I'll come back over.
An uneasy feeling. That was interesting.
So was what JD did next.

Speaker 4 At 10.18 p.m., he sent this text to Robin. Is everyone okay?

Speaker 11 I didn't get a text or anything from her. I was like, okay.
Tried calling her, got her voicemail. I got it.
I guess she's busy sleeping. I don't know.

Speaker 4 Ain't no big deal. Just a few minutes after J.D.
tried to reach Robin, Katie showed up at the house.

Speaker 4 J.D.'s uncle, who'd come back to check on JD, pulled up right behind her and confirmed Katie arrived around 10.20 p.m.

Speaker 11 Me and my mom talked for a little bit this night LG Day.

Speaker 11 I don't know.

Speaker 4 That eerie feeling again.

Speaker 4 JD seemed to be dropping hints

Speaker 4 and Mongold had solid evidence he knew a lot more than he was telling.

Speaker 11 Did you have any plans to meet Robin Monday evening? No plans. How do you explain these text messages? Let me read these to you in case your memory's failing you.

Speaker 4 According to JD's own texts, on the night she was murdered, Robin had plans. With him.
Are we still on for tonight or do we need to reschedule again? Then this text exchange at 9.20 p.m.

Speaker 4 You about ready? Yep.

Speaker 4 Which, as it happened, was the last text ever sent from Robin's phone. So presumably that's setting up the meeting.

Speaker 10 Yeah. So we knew he was lying to us.

Speaker 4 Not good for for J.D.

Speaker 11 You're the last person on this earth to have contact with her, and that contact was arranging the meeting that she made. Yes, sir.
And that makes me number one suspect no matter what.

Speaker 11 It leaves me wondering. I don't know nothing.

Speaker 11 Leaves me wondering too, sir.

Speaker 4 JD now said he had planned to meet Robin at his house to talk about their kids. He said that's the reason he wanted his uncle there.
to be a witness just in case Katie showed up.

Speaker 11 Approximate time. Y'all were supposed to meet 9.30 Monday evening, yes?

Speaker 11 Approximate time? Yes, sir. How come you didn't?

Speaker 11 Because Monkwat was over. We were just drinking beer.
Decided to play pool. How did you communicate that to her? She's under the impression y'all are meeting at 9.30.

Speaker 11 Honestly, sir, it skipped my mind.

Speaker 4 It was clear to Sergeant Mongold, JD's story was not adding up.

Speaker 11 You and I both know there's something going on here and you're binging. Why? You're protecting yourself or you're protecting somebody else? Not protecting anybody.
Did you kill Robin? No, sir.

Speaker 4 And And in truth, J.D. didn't seem to have much of a motive to kill Robin, which got investigators thinking about who might.

Speaker 11 Let me run a scenario by you.

Speaker 11 Katie's not stupid. She's pretty sharp.
She finds out Heller had a meeting that night. That's why she's pissed.
That's why she's not at the house.

Speaker 11 You set the meeting up, and something really bad happened. So you're basically either saying

Speaker 11 I did something personally

Speaker 11 to my wife. You.
Or I know something. I know something.
With my very soul, I believe you know what's going on here.

Speaker 11 The best I can do, giving you the benefit of every doubt I can possibly give you, is that you have some real deep freaking suspicions that you don't want to discuss with me.

Speaker 11 Sir, I do have a lot of suspicions. I do a lot.

Speaker 4 Whatever those suspicions were, J.D. wasn't sane.
Investigators had suspicions of their own. And next in the box, JD's wife, Katie Spielbauer.

Speaker 5 Coming up, the warning Robin's friend gave her about Katie.

Speaker 8 Don't be alone with her. She's the kind of crazy that'll kill you.

Speaker 5 And why Katie may have been so angry at Robin?

Speaker 11 Is my husband cheating on me with her?

Speaker 11 I don't have proof of that. I will tell you this right now.

Speaker 11 They were going to meet last night.

Speaker 11 You take a minute. Like I said, some stuff you don't want to hear.

Speaker 4 When investigators questioned J.D. Spielbauer about the murder of his ex-wife Robin, it seemed pretty clear he was hiding something.

Speaker 4 As they poked around in J.D.'s private life, they soon found out what it might be. Bad blood between Katie and Robin?

Speaker 10 We had bad blood between Katie and Robin.

Speaker 4 There's a song titled, All My Exes Live in Texas. And that was definitely true for J.D.
Spielbauer. Married to Robin.
He had an affair with Katie, then married Katie. After which, J.D.

Speaker 4 appeared to be having another affair, this time with Robin. It was the Texas two-step of stepping out.
Robin lived just a few houses away from J.D. and Katie on Manhattan Street.
J.D.

Speaker 4 said they stayed friendly for the benefit of their kids. But according to Robin's friend Aaron, Katie had figured out there was something else going on.

Speaker 8 Katie and J.D. would get in a fight, and

Speaker 8 honestly, Robin found it a little bit funny.

Speaker 4 She found Katie's anger funny. Yeah.

Speaker 4 J.D. had cheated with Katie when he was married to Robin.
Now, Aaron said Robin seemed to relish the idea of making Katie jealous. So now the shoes on the other foot.

Speaker 4 Two women were locked in a battle over a man they both believed was a cheater.

Speaker 4 What made JD a prize worth fighting for remained a bit of a mystery? I don't think women like being lied to. I don't think anybody likes being lied to.

Speaker 4 And yet, so many people seem to sort of

Speaker 4 let that go.

Speaker 4 Robin certainly did. Katie seems to have.

Speaker 8 Katie didn't let it go like Robin did. Once she suspected something, Katie's claws came out.

Speaker 4 Erin said Robin told her about an incident in 2013. Robin had gone to Katie and JD's house to pick up her daughters.

Speaker 8 She goes walking up the stairs. Katie grabs her and pulls her off the stairs and gets on top of her and starts hitting her.

Speaker 8 And Robin... kicks her off and slams her into the

Speaker 8 fireplace.

Speaker 4 When Erin heard what happened, she warned her friend about Katie.

Speaker 8 Don't be alone with her. She's the kind of crazy that'll kill you.

Speaker 4 Five months after that fight, Robin was dead. Sergeant Mongold met with J.D.
and Katie outside their home on that first day and says, JD was so stunned he was having difficulty speaking.

Speaker 10 JD finally founds his voice and he starts trying to talk to us. And she looks over and says, JD, shut up and get in the house.
I'm talking to the police.

Speaker 10 And JD puts his head down, turns around, and walks into the house.

Speaker 4 So she's in charge.

Speaker 10 Very much so.

Speaker 4 Now, Mongold had Katie in the little room with the camera. And Katie had a question for him.

Speaker 11 I'm going to ask you a question.

Speaker 12 Can you be honest with me?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I will be.

Speaker 12 Is my husband cheating on me with her?

Speaker 11 I don't have proof of that. I will tell you this right now.

Speaker 11 They were going to meet last night. There were multiple text messages between them, and he deleted those text messages where they were supposed to meet at 9.30.

Speaker 11 Now here's the problem we get into. Some tissues right there.

Speaker 11 You take a minute. Like I said, some stuff you don't want to hear.

Speaker 4 Was there any question in your mind that Katie already knew the answer to that question when she asked you?

Speaker 10 No, so why ask me that question if she already knew the answer?

Speaker 11 You didn't have suspicions? I had suspicions. That's why I hated her so much because I thought she was trying to sabotage my marriage.
Maybe so. You sabotaged hers.
Turned about fair play.

Speaker 4 Talk about karma, huh? Karma is something homicide detectives know all about.

Speaker 11 Who wants Robin did and why? I don't know. You know, you've got a motive for her.
You don't like her. Not much of a motive, but it's a motive.
So that's why you get looked at.

Speaker 11 Y'all have had conflicts in the past. Have you ever threatened to kill her? No, I haven't.

Speaker 11 Because a couple of folks have said you had.

Speaker 11 No, I have not threatened to kill Robin.

Speaker 4 Investigators had evidence that Katie was lying. It was the same kind of evidence that tripped up J.D., her text messages.

Speaker 13 She is very, very upset with J.D. and very upset with Robin.

Speaker 4 James Farron was Randall County's district attorney for more than 20 years.

Speaker 13 She's just hammering J.D. with messages about, I know you're lying, I know you're having an affair with Robin.

Speaker 4 And not just one or two texts. Prosecutor Farron found that in just four days leading up to the murder, Katie sent J.D.

Speaker 4 336 texts, messages like this one. If Robin breaks any of my when you bring her home, I'll break her nasty face.
And this one, a day later, I'll hurt every single one of you on my way out.

Speaker 4 On the day Robin was killed, Katie unleashed a text storm directed at JD.

Speaker 4 I caught the last amount of disrespect from you and your bitch ex-wife. If I find out you are with Robin, so help me, God.

Speaker 4 It culminated with this one, less than an hour before the murder. My dreams of a happy family are gone.
I will not make you carry this burden any longer.

Speaker 4 You started this, whether you want to believe it or not. I will finish it.
It was the kind of statement that turns a jealous wife into a murder suspect.

Speaker 11 You kill Robin?

Speaker 12 No, I did not kill Robin.

Speaker 11 You conspire with anybody to kill Robin? No, I did not conspire with anybody to kill Robin. No, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I liked it because I didn't.
But

Speaker 15 my father died when I was two.

Speaker 12 I buried my mother when I was 18 years old.

Speaker 11 I know what it feels like to grow up without a parent. I would never do that to anybody.

Speaker 15 I'm not a murderer.

Speaker 11 I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a murderer.

Speaker 4 And maybe she wasn't. Although Katie seemed to be oozing with motive, she had an alibi.
She and her son were at her best friend Savannah's house house the night of the murder.

Speaker 11 I left there about 10 o'clock. Drove straight to the house? Straight to the house.
Stayed there the rest of the night. Stayed there the rest of the night.
Didn't leave till.

Speaker 4 If that was true, Katie would not have had enough time to drive to Helium Road, kill Robin, and then make it home by 10.20 when JD and his uncle saw her there.

Speaker 4 And besides, no evidence placed her at the murder scene. Not yet, anyway.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a pink smoking gun.

Speaker 10 We find the Facebook photo of her shooting this pink pistol.

Speaker 4 That makes you sit up and take notice.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 4 Katie Spielbauer had strong suspicions her husband J.D. was cheating on her with his ex-wife Robin.

Speaker 4 Suspicions that spilled out in hundreds of angry and threatening text messages in the days leading up to Robin's murder. Katie hit the motive.

Speaker 4 Angry at Robin for sleeping with her husband. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Killed that one.

Speaker 4 The same day investigators questioned Katie. The medical examiner performed Robin's autopsy.
Remember, at the crime scene, her only apparent injury was a blow to the head.

Speaker 4 But the autopsy found something else.

Speaker 10 At that point, we knew there was a.22-caliber wound at the back of Robin's skull that was fatal.

Speaker 4 A gunshot wound, something investigators at the scene had missed. Sheriff's investigators went looking for the gun.

Speaker 10 April 9th, we're at the Spielbyer residence on Manhattan wearing a search warrant.

Speaker 4 Robin's parents, living just three houses down, watched as police went into their ex-son-in-law's home. You saw that search happening.
Yes. So you know one of those two people is under suspicion? Yes.

Speaker 4 Investigators recovered several firearms from Katie and J.D.'s house. Not exactly an unusual find in the Lone Star state.

Speaker 4 But one small gun turned out to be a very big deal. A Sig Sauer pistol with a distinctive pink frame.
It was a.22.

Speaker 13 It was indeed.

Speaker 4 The same caliber as the bullet that killed Robin. What's more, the gun's broken.

Speaker 10 It's got broken pieces on it, which are pretty odd.

Speaker 4 So investigators went back to the crime scene. and sifted through the soil around where the Tahoe had been.
And they found a.22 caliber shell casing and two tiny fragments.

Speaker 4 No question those two little chips found on the ground fit that gun.

Speaker 10 Fracture machine, they match.

Speaker 4 Like a jigsaw puzzle.

Speaker 10 Just fits right in there.

Speaker 4 And just as the pieces of the pistol fit together, so too did a clearer picture of what happened that night. Like those inexplicable marks and pink residue on Robin's window.

Speaker 10 You envision a scenario where somebody's beating on the glass with a gun.

Speaker 4 Why would somebody bang on a window with a gun? Anger.

Speaker 4 It looked as if the pink gun could be the murder weapon, which was very interesting. Because right after the murder, before they even found the gun, investigators had examined Katie's Facebook page.

Speaker 4 And...

Speaker 10 We found the Facebook photo of her shooting this pink pistol.

Speaker 4 In that moment, they didn't realize the significance of the photo. And by the time they figured it out...

Speaker 10 She takes it off her Facebook account.

Speaker 4 That makes you sit up and take notice. Yeah.
It seemed Katie didn't want them to know about the gun. So investigators looked more closely at where Katie herself was the night of the murder.

Speaker 4 Remember, she had an alibi. She and her son spent the evening with Katie's best friend, Savannah.
Katie told investigators they didn't leave Savannah's house until 10 p.m.

Speaker 4 And JD's uncle said Katie arrived at her own house around 10.20.

Speaker 4 That was not enough time to commit the murder.

Speaker 4 And so Katie seemed to be in the clear.

Speaker 12 Katie sat there.

Speaker 4 When investigators questioned Savannah, they noticed a discrepancy. Then she left

Speaker 11 my house probably

Speaker 12 about

Speaker 4 9.50 or so.

Speaker 4 Those extra 10 minutes, D.A. James Farron believed, were significant.

Speaker 13 From Savannah's house to the spot where the murder occurred on Helium Road, it takes about three and a half to five minutes to drive to that location.

Speaker 13 Savannah believes she left her house about 10 minutes till 10.

Speaker 13 If she arrives at Helium Road in three and a half to five minutes,

Speaker 13 she has time to kill Robin and then drive back to Manhattan Street and arrive about 10.20.

Speaker 4 That 10-minute gap casts doubt on Katie's alibi. So it's really Katie's best friend that's sort of putting the news around her neck.

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Something else was hurting Katie too. If you watch Dateline regularly, you know cell phone data can either make or break a case.
And that was certainly true in this one.

Speaker 13 At 10.13,

Speaker 13 Katie pinged off an antenna at the Lockney Tower,

Speaker 4 which was close to Savannah's house and also to the crime scene.

Speaker 13 And when she checked her voicemail, it pinged off that tower.

Speaker 4 So that ping from Katie's phone, that's actually consistent with your theory

Speaker 4 that she had committed the murder and was heading home. Fit our theory.

Speaker 13 That's right.

Speaker 4 Motive, means, and opportunity. Randall County Sheriff's investigators believed they had everything they needed.

Speaker 4 On April 11th, 2014, only four days after their daughter's murder, an investigator gave Robin's parents the news.

Speaker 10 He says, well, we just arrested Katie.

Speaker 14 Wow, it was like done, done, done, and she was done. And we were like, okay, so this is, this is, this is awesome.

Speaker 11 Case closed?

Speaker 4 Not quite.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Katie offers up a new suspect.

Speaker 11 Who you said did it? I don't know. I'm starting to think maybe JD did.

Speaker 5 And JD has a new story. Please forgive me for

Speaker 11 ended up misdating anybody.

Speaker 4 There is a pain that only the families and friends of murder victims know. It's a feeling Robin Spielbauer's best friend Erin says she felt the day of Robin's viewing.

Speaker 4 That was my life laying on the table.

Speaker 8 That was

Speaker 4 13 years.

Speaker 16 Take it away from me.

Speaker 15 And it was not fair.

Speaker 4 And it hurts every day.

Speaker 4 Perhaps the only relief for Robin's family was knowing that the person responsible for her murder, Katie Spielbauer, was behind bars. Katie's family was feeling something else.
Disbelief.

Speaker 12 I never could get my heart or my mind around the idea of her actually doing that.

Speaker 4 Katie's sister-in-law, Rhonda Phipps.

Speaker 12 I hit the floor and I cried.

Speaker 12 And I asked, God, is it possible? Could she really have done that? Of all things, that?

Speaker 4 Katie?

Speaker 4 And then there were Katie's children. Her daughter, Harley, was 10 years old at the time, living in Florida with her father.
She remembers horsing around with her friends one day at school.

Speaker 18 Oh, my mom is so cool. I bet she's smarter than yours because I was being a little kid.
So I looked up on my science teacher's laptops my mom's name and it said arrested.

Speaker 18 And I was like, no, no, no, that's not true. It's false.

Speaker 4 Oh, but it was true. All of it.
This was Katie the day she was arrested. Back in that little room with Sergeant Mongold.

Speaker 11 I did not do this. So you had nothing to write.
That's not true. I don't know.

Speaker 11 But you sang did it. I don't know.
I'm starting to think maybe JD did.

Speaker 4 This was certainly not the first time investigators heard a suspect in a murder case point the finger at someone else.

Speaker 4 Their reaction wasn't new either.

Speaker 1 I know, you know, you're not here by accident.

Speaker 11 Stop yanking my chain. Stop wasting my time.

Speaker 4 Tell me the truth or let's go.

Speaker 12 I did not kill Ross. Who did?

Speaker 11 And don't give me this. Do not kill me.
No.

Speaker 11 Katie, listen to me. At this point.

Speaker 11 At this point right now,

Speaker 11 everything points at Eva.

Speaker 18 No, sir.

Speaker 11 I didn't do it. It can't point at me.

Speaker 4 Katie sat in jail, unable to make bail, while sheriff's investigators and district attorney James Farrett continued to build their case against her.

Speaker 4 And soon, they had some help from the man in the middle.

Speaker 4 What's that? My ex-wife and my wife.

Speaker 4 J.D. Spielbauer cheated on Robin with Katie, divorced Robin, married Katie, then cheated on Katie with Robin.
Robin.

Speaker 4 So when he said he had some information to share, investigators were eager to hear it. J.D.

Speaker 4 began by telling them what he had before, about hanging out with his uncle Ty and sending Robin that text about meeting up. Except, this time he provided some additional details.
J.D.

Speaker 4 now said Katie came home a little after 9 p.m. in a bad mood.
I can't remember her exact words. It was along the lines.
I hear you talking to the bitch again.

Speaker 11 I say,

Speaker 11 basically, to hell with it. I'm not getting into a fight with you.
I'll just go into my bedroom. I'll just lay down, pass out.

Speaker 4 JD said he woke up a while later to find Katie gone. She had apparently taken his truck.
That's when he said he started texting Katie and Ty and Robin, who never responded.

Speaker 4 Obviously, Mongold wanted to know. Why JD changed his story.
Because the thought of everything that my wife could have possibly did something was freaking me the hell out of me.

Speaker 4 Was that really why JD was coming clean? This time around, he not only admitted he had plans to meet Robin that night, but also told them where.

Speaker 4 And it was not at his house, as he had first said.

Speaker 11 So you and Robin are going to be at 34 in a helium. Yes, sir.

Speaker 4 But JD maintained he never left his house.

Speaker 11 Well, that doesn't work for me, JD, and it doesn't work for the phone records that we have.

Speaker 4 Mongold already knew a ping from JD's cell phone was telling a different story than JD was telling.

Speaker 11 So at 923, how the hell is your phone at I-40 in Bell Westbound headed towards the crime scene?

Speaker 4 JD said he could explain that.

Speaker 11 Somebody took it there. Who?

Speaker 11 The only other person that was at the house. Which was? That would be Katie.
Okay. Why would she take your phone? Apparently she probably saw a text message on it.

Speaker 11 Might she have taken the phone after that in your truck? That's a good possibility.

Speaker 4 Mongold thought JD was still holding back. He believed JD was at Helium Road with Robin and laid out a scenario of how it all might have happened.

Speaker 11 You tour in the backseat, Katie shows up, she starts beating on that back glass because we have chips out of the window and paint transfer from that gun.

Speaker 11 It happens in a flash right there in front of you, and you can't do anything about it. It's driving you crazy.
It's not your fault.

Speaker 11 It happened in five seconds' time. She wouldn't go anywhere.
No, sir.

Speaker 11 You're throwing all kinds of accusations and crap at me right now, and that that is not true, sir.

Speaker 4 But eight days later, JD said he was ready to come clean, and the story he then told matched investigators' suspicions. JD now admitted he had gone to Helium Road that night to meet Robin.

Speaker 11 I got in Zach's seat with her, and we was

Speaker 11 talking about the girls, the stars test coming up.

Speaker 4 That's when JD said he noticed headlights shining through the back window.

Speaker 11 A few moments later, Hera hear a

Speaker 11 tapping on the glass, something harder than a fist.

Speaker 4 Something like a pink gun? And I'm opening the door and I see Katie there.

Speaker 11 Which took me by surprise.

Speaker 11 They're bickering back at each other.

Speaker 11 I'm trying to stop the bickering. I just put my foot down and say this isn't what it looks like.
We're talking at the girls. That's it.

Speaker 11 She says something along the lines of, yeah, f ⁇ it. I don't give a f ⁇ .
I turn to Katie. I tell her, let's get in the car.
Let's go home. Put the foot down.
This is done.

Speaker 11 I shut her door.

Speaker 4 And I go walking back to my truck. JD said he thought Katie would follow him in her car, but when he got home, no Katie.
Which is why J.D.

Speaker 4 said he sent Katie and Robin those texts asking if everybody was okay.

Speaker 4 Remember, Katie said yes. Robin never responded.

Speaker 4 JD seemed aware of how his shifting stories must have looked.

Speaker 4 Please forgive me if I ended up misleading anybody.

Speaker 11 I was hoping this wasn't true. Seriously.

Speaker 11 I still love Katie with everything I got.

Speaker 4 But now J.D. was done.
He filed for divorce and never once went to see Katie in jail, which was a place it seemed she would be for a long time, unless there was something to prove she was innocent.

Speaker 4 Did you kill Robin?

Speaker 12 No, I didn't kill Robin.

Speaker 4 Katie wanted a lie detector test, so they gave her one and then another.

Speaker 13 She failed the polygraph miserably. It wasn't even close.
I hoped that Katie would say, all right, I'll give it up.

Speaker 13 Instead, Katie said, I have no idea why I failed to polygraph because I did not kill Robin.

Speaker 4 It was a position Katie firmly maintained from behind the cement walls of the Randall County Jail, awaiting trial, which is when we first learned about her case and received the first of those letters.

Speaker 10 Coming up, Katie's story, a long and winding road.

Speaker 12 Amarillo is a plague. Come on vacation, leave on probation.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 10 When Dateline continued.

Speaker 4 Here at Dateline, when we heard the tale of Katie Spielbauer in Amarillo, Texas, the case, at first glance, seemed open and shut.

Speaker 10 28-year-old Katie Spielbauer is accused of killing Robin Spielbauer.

Speaker 4 Katie was locked up on charges she'd murdered Robin Spielbauer with a bullet to the head. A bullet investigators thought came from Katie's very own pink 22.

Speaker 4 Katie's alibi looked shaky, and she'd failed two polygraphs. Add to that how Robin also happened to be the ex-wife of Katie's husband J.D..

Speaker 4 And that Robin's romantic relationship with J.D. somehow seemed to survive the end of their marriage.
There was a river of bad blood between the two women.

Speaker 4 A bunch of blinking signs that said Katie did it. We started digging a bit, and we wondered if there was more to the story.

Speaker 4 So in February 2015, one of our producers sent a letter to Katie at the Randall County Jail.

Speaker 16 Dear Ms. Spielbauer, I've been following your case for the past several months and felt it was time I reached out to you directly.

Speaker 4 A week later, we received a response from inmate number 80059, Housing Unit 2, Pod B,

Speaker 4 Cell 22.

Speaker 4 It was the kind of letter that makes an impression.

Speaker 12 I appreciate your interest in my story and your desire to want to know what is really going on in this pathetic excuse of an investigation.

Speaker 4 She clearly knew her audience.

Speaker 12 As long as you respect me and mine, I will give you one hell of a story.

Speaker 4 Because she said she had information we would want to hear about her ex-husband J.D.,

Speaker 4 the man she said was the real killer.

Speaker 12 There is a very dangerous man walking the streets of this town. I know the truth.
I won't stop screaming until someone listens.

Speaker 4 Listen, we did. Those letters kept on coming.
And soon, Katie and our producer, Karen Israel, were chatting by phone.

Speaker 11 Hi, Katie.

Speaker 4 Hi, Ms. Israel.

Speaker 11 Yes, I'm glad we were finally able to connect. I'm just coming at this trying to learn as much as I can and want to hear what you have to say about the whole situation.

Speaker 12 Well, it's a pretty rotten situation.

Speaker 12 I have found myself myself fighting for my life. My ex-husband did some pretty wicked things, and I'm caught in the middle of it.
Anyone who knows me would know that I'm not capable

Speaker 12 of doing what they're accusing me of.

Speaker 4 I would never do that to anybody. Keep in mind, we hear this a lot.
I didn't do it. Couldn't have done it.
The other guy did it.

Speaker 4 But the more we talked, the more we realized there was something about Katie we couldn't ignore. She was smart, strong, insistent.

Speaker 4 Could she possibly be telling the truth? Our correspondence continued for six months.

Speaker 8 Good day.

Speaker 12 I hope you had a wonderful vacation and are well and rested. So I thought I would have a letter waiting for you to catch you up on what's been going on here in Randall County, Texas.

Speaker 4 A relationship like none other. This careful dance, unique to journalist and inmate.

Speaker 12 I will not quit fighting for Robin and her family, even though they have been led to hate me. I cannot wait to meet you.

Speaker 4 When we met face to face, it was in Amarillo, where you'll find something called the Cadillac Ranch. It's a chunk of the recent past buried in plain sight.

Speaker 4 And that is a pretty good metaphor for Katie Spielbauer, who wore her own past. like a crown of thorns.
You had pretty far from the perfect childhood.

Speaker 12 It was a pretty rough childhood. My father passed away just a month before my second birthday, and my mother could not cope with that very well.
And she ended up addicted to heroin, crack.

Speaker 12 She was an alcoholic. We never had a stable home.
She was in and out of jail most of my childhood, in and out of rehab.

Speaker 4 No structure, no rules. Katie was a self-described, wild child.

Speaker 12 In eighth grade, I ended up dropping out of school. In eighth grade.
In eighth grade. I was homeless.
I was doing drugs. I don't know how I'm still alive.

Speaker 12 And I ended up pregnant at 15 with my son and that was the moment that everything changed.

Speaker 4 She credits that baby, her son Diego, with saving her life.

Speaker 12 The number one goal in my life is I am not going to be anything like my mother. And I knew that I had to stand up and be

Speaker 12 better

Speaker 12 than what everybody else thought I was capable of.

Speaker 4 She says she got off drugs and moved out of Amarillo with Diego's father.

Speaker 12 He showed me what it was to live well in a decent place with a decent car, with clothes and food, and not having to go hungry and not fight for everything that you have.

Speaker 4 When Diego was a year old, Katie broke up with his father and she moved back to Amarillo, where she met another guy, this one not so special.

Speaker 12 And I got pregnant with my daughter at 17. When I was six months pregnant, her father left me for a stripper.

Speaker 4 Okay. Well, sorry.

Speaker 12 I mean, life is what it is.

Speaker 4 While she was pregnant, a friend introduced her to his brother who lived in Florida. Katie moved there and gave birth to her second child, Harley.

Speaker 4 Katie's new boyfriend helped raise Harley, and Katie earned her GED.

Speaker 12 Then I realized that, oh, people like me, if they really do work hard enough, they can get to where they want to be.

Speaker 4 An American success story.

Speaker 12 Getting closer to it.

Speaker 4 Out of hell.

Speaker 12 Beauty from ashes. It was hell.

Speaker 4 After five years in Florida, another relationship went south for Katie. She broke up with her boyfriend, and her brother back in Amarillo said he could use her help caring for his child.

Speaker 4 Was there a voice in your head that said, don't move back to Amarillo?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 12 Amarillo is a plague. There's just something about this town that can destroy lives.

Speaker 4 I don't think the Chamber of Commerce has that on the city seat.

Speaker 12 They don't. Come on vacation, vacation, leave on probation.

Speaker 4 But you ignored that voice. I did.

Speaker 12 I did. I wish I hadn't of.

Speaker 4 Back to Amarillo she went and straight into the arms of J.D. Spielbauer.

Speaker 5 Coming up, the courtship was perfect.

Speaker 17 The marriage?

Speaker 12 It went from everything's going to be great to, oh crap, what have I done?

Speaker 5 Even Katie's daughter knew this marriage was in the red zone.

Speaker 18 I would always kind of stay awake in case something bad went wrong.

Speaker 4 Katie may not have been happy to come home to Amarillo, but she told us she did get a big Texas welcome.

Speaker 12 A family member had thrown a

Speaker 12 welcome home party for me and invited everybody and he was one of the people that showed up.

Speaker 4 He was J.D. Spielbauer.
Katie had known him as a kid. And through that you met Robin.

Speaker 12 I met Robin.

Speaker 4 Robin, J.D.'s wife. The women became friends.
Katie told us Robin even turned to her for counsel when J.D. treated her poorly.

Speaker 12 I would go have drinks with Robin and basically just listen to her cry.

Speaker 4 Katie said Robin described J.D. as angry and violent.
Eventually, she couldn't take it any longer. In August of 2012, Robin filed for divorce.
But by then, J.D. had started coming around to see Katie.

Speaker 4 You'd had a front-row seat to what kind of husband he was with Robin.

Speaker 4 You think at all, like, maybe I don't want to sign up for that?

Speaker 12 The thought crossed through my mind, but at the same time, I also had watched him purposely try to make changes in his life to better himself and his situation.

Speaker 4 According to Katie, it was a a big Texas-style courtship.

Speaker 12 We would go and watch all the rodeos. We're country.
We wear boots. We drive trucks.
You know, we listen to country music. We go out to step in.
You know, that's our life.

Speaker 4 And we marry people whose other marriages haven't always worked out. That's right.

Speaker 4 They married in 2013 on November 10th, the anniversary of J.D.'s beloved Marine Corps.

Speaker 12 It's changed so fast. It went from everything's going to be great, to, oh crap, what have I done?

Speaker 4 The Marine motto is Semper Phi, meaning always faithful. Apparently, that meant more to the Marines than to JD.

Speaker 4 Katie's daughter Harley remembers her mom and J.D. fighting all the time.

Speaker 18 When she put us to bed and they thought we were asleep, they'd start going at it again, yelling.

Speaker 4 A lot of those fights, Katie said, were about Robin. As you know by now, there was no love loss between the two women.
Katie suspected suspected J.D.

Speaker 4 was cheating on her with Robin, which probably shouldn't have been surprising. I gotta ask you, J.D.
ever cheat on Robin with you?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 12 After their separation.

Speaker 12 Before their divorce.

Speaker 12 Yep, I did that too.

Speaker 12 So, yeah, I'm not

Speaker 12 any better than either of them.

Speaker 4 Remember that fight when Robin pushed Katie into the fireplace? Katie told us that did happen. She also admitted to sending her husband hundreds of furious texts in the days before Robin's murder.

Speaker 4 Those text messages make you sound pretty angry.

Speaker 12 Well, would you be happy if he even thought that your wife was cheating on you and lying to you? I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say it was all rainbows and butterflies. No, I was hurt.

Speaker 12 I mean, it hurt me.

Speaker 12 I'm human. I have feelings, too.

Speaker 4 We asked her to explain one troubling text that she sent to J.D. about an hour before the murder.
My dreams of a happy family are gone. I will not make you carry this burden any longer.

Speaker 4 You started this, whether you want to believe it or not. I will finish it.

Speaker 12 The conversation that was going on at that point was a divorce. And he was denying everything.
And finally, I was like, you know what? I'll handle it. I'll go down.
I'll file the divorce.

Speaker 12 I already had the paperwork. I just needed the money.

Speaker 4 I'll take care of it myself. I'll get a divorce.

Speaker 12 I'll get a divorce.

Speaker 4 Not, I'll eliminate Robin, the woman that has come between us. not that at all just as she told investigators over and over again katie told us she was never on helium road that night

Speaker 4 so where was she katie told us she picked up her friend savannah's son at school at 3 p.m her own son diego at 3 30 and then they spent the rest of the evening at savannah's house she said the only time she left the house was a trip with the kids to mcdonald's and you were gone how long maybe 20 minutes kids were with you the end kids were with me after mcdonald's she said they returned to the house.

Speaker 4 And you were at Savannah's until...

Speaker 12 Until approximately 10 to 10.15 that night. I mean.
And then you went home. And I went home.
My clock said 10.18 when I pulled into the driveway.

Speaker 4 And during that time, you were always in someone else's company. Right.

Speaker 12 Yes, I was. There were three adults and two kids.

Speaker 4 You were never alone.

Speaker 12 I was never alone.

Speaker 4 Would you ever leave your son?

Speaker 12 No. My son stays me.

Speaker 4 Katie insisted she did not kill Robin, and she stuck to that story,

Speaker 4 even in the face of new evidence that investigators believed would prove Katie was lying.

Speaker 12 Coming up, he said these phone records was the last thing that I needed.

Speaker 4 Was it all over for Katie?

Speaker 5 When dateline continues

Speaker 4 When investigators first looked into Robin's murder, the case seemed open and shut. It took just four days to arrest Katie.
They quickly tied her to the murder weapon, her weapon, that pink gun.

Speaker 13 According to J.D.

Speaker 13 and the timeline, she had the opportunity, she certainly had the means, and she certainly had the motive.

Speaker 4 Though witnesses placed Katie and her son at her best friend's house that night, the friend said Katie left at 9.50 p.m.

Speaker 4 J.D.'s uncle said she didn't get home until around 10.20. That's 30 minutes Katie could not account for.
And J.D.

Speaker 4 had filled in the blank when he told investigators he was on Helium Road with Robin when Katie suddenly showed up, spoiling for a fight.

Speaker 11 They grinned back at each other.

Speaker 11 I'm trying to stop the big riff.

Speaker 4 District Attorney James Farron took J.D.'s statement to use as a lever to move Katie off her story.

Speaker 13 We believed that if we

Speaker 13 explained that to Katie, hey, he's throwing you under the bus.

Speaker 4 But she didn't change her story, and she certainly didn't confess. No matter how they came at her,

Speaker 4 Katie's answer was the same.

Speaker 4 I did not do this.

Speaker 12 I am telling you the truth.

Speaker 11 I was not at Helium Road. Okay, but I was not Helium Road.

Speaker 4 She stuck to her story, even if that story wasn't getting her anywhere.

Speaker 12 Why would I confess to something that I didn't do?

Speaker 4 A month goes by.

Speaker 12 Nothing happens. Two months.
Nothing. Six months.
Keeps going.

Speaker 4 James Farron had been putting criminals away for longer than Katie had been alive. He knew his evidence against Katie was not definitive.

Speaker 4 Cell phone pings the night Robin was killed showed Katie was in range of a cell tower that would have been on her route home from Helium Road.

Speaker 4 But from Katie's best friend's house, the location of her alibi, Katie would also have been in that cell tower's range. And then, serendipitously, came a break.

Speaker 13 Katie had been in jail more than a year when,

Speaker 13 strangely enough, one of my investigators overheard one of the secretaries up front talking about the fact that if you have an Android phone, that this tracking event occurs and she had seen some program on television about it.

Speaker 4 Funny, the things you learn on TV. Turns out some smartphones leave a digital footprint whenever they connect to a Wi-Fi network.

Speaker 4 Katie's phone had the Wi-Fi turned off, but her son Diego's phone had it on.

Speaker 4 That meant investigators could use Wi-Fi data to map Diego's every move that night. And based on witnesses, Prosecutors were convinced Katie and Diego were always together.

Speaker 4 So if you can track Diego's phone, you can track where Katie was.

Speaker 13 As I said to our investigator, get that data because wherever Diego was, Katie was. If Diego was on Helium Road that night, then Katie was on Helium Road that night.
I couldn't wait to get that data.

Speaker 4 Farron knew it in his gut. That data would finally put Katie at the crime scene.
It took months to get, and when it finally came in, the DA arranged a meeting with Katie.

Speaker 4 Katie's been in jail for how long?

Speaker 13 467 days.

Speaker 4 The facts, he told her, could no longer be denied. He was right about that.

Speaker 12 And he sits back and he says, over the weekend, I got your phone, yours and your son's phone records from

Speaker 12 an expert. And I have determined that you were never at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 4 It was a stunning admission, not from the suspect, but from the prosecutor.

Speaker 12 He said these phone records was the last thing that I needed. And I thought that it was going to be what was going to put you in prison for the rest of your life.

Speaker 12 But today, it is what's going to let you go home to your kids.

Speaker 13 When I told her her case was being dismissed and why,

Speaker 13 she broke down and cried.

Speaker 4 Several hours after that conversation, Katie was a free woman. We spoke with her days after her release.

Speaker 12 I never thought that I was ever going to see grass again or clouds

Speaker 12 or little things that so many people take for granted. Sunshine.
Just sunshine on your face.

Speaker 16 It's a gift.

Speaker 4 By then, she'd dropped the last name Spielbauer, went back to her maiden name, Katie Phipps.

Speaker 4 Her first trip out of jail was a surprise visit to see her daughter Harley, who'd been living in Florida with Harley's dad.

Speaker 18 I was sitting on the arm of the couch. They opened the door and the sun was right in my face.

Speaker 18 My mom and my brother walked in.

Speaker 16 The tears went

Speaker 16 and they were just there.

Speaker 18 And my mom was like, oh, my little baby, I'm home.

Speaker 4 Happy ending? Not yet.

Speaker 4 Because if Katie didn't do it, that meant someone was getting away with murder.

Speaker 5 Coming up, would Katie be the next victim?

Speaker 12 It was scary. I saw him drive by my house and I had told my lawyers, he said, well, honey, you're bulletproof.
And I remember telling him, as long as I'm not within rifle range.

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Speaker 4 After more than a year in jail, Katie Phipps was suddenly back in the arms of family and friends. She was free, no longer accused of murdering Robin Spielbauer.

Speaker 4 Not everyone in Amarillo was sharing in the love, including Robin's parents, Jackie and Steve Bledsoe.

Speaker 10 When we got the call, it was like, what? You're releasing her? Why?

Speaker 4 What was your reaction?

Speaker 14 Disbelief at first.

Speaker 4 And anger?

Speaker 14 Quite a bit.

Speaker 10 I wasn't happy by any means.

Speaker 4 Robin's friend Aaron had a very different reaction. Not so much rage as resolve.

Speaker 8 At that moment, I completely shifted, and I knew we had to get JD.

Speaker 8 I knew that

Speaker 8 if she was innocent, he was 100% guilty.

Speaker 4 D.A. James Farron admitted publicly he'd made an unthinkable mistake.
You had the wrong person in jail for 15 months.

Speaker 13 Yeah, 467 days.

Speaker 4 That's not how this is supposed to work.

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 4 Did you think maybe you'd arrested Katie too quickly?

Speaker 13 No. No.

Speaker 4 You didn't rush to judgment here.

Speaker 13 No. In fact, it was the very opposite of a rush to judgment because we continued to work on this case almost every day,

Speaker 13 all the time she was sitting in jail.

Speaker 4 Ultimately, Farron had come to a humiliating conclusion. He'd been played

Speaker 4 by J.D. Spielbauer.

Speaker 13 What went wrong was that

Speaker 13 we had an individual who had decided to frame

Speaker 13 his wife for the murder of his ex-wife. And he was pretty good at it.
And he was a lot better at at it than I thought at first. I didn't see J.D.

Speaker 13 as a particularly bright, clever person early in this investigation. I now believe he's much more clever than I thought he was.

Speaker 4 There were several guns found in J.D. and Katie's home.
The DA believed J.D. had set up his wife by intentionally choosing the pink gun to shoot Robin.

Speaker 13 He had multiple firearms at his disposal. He chose

Speaker 13 a 6-22 pistol that had a history of jamming after the first shot was fired.

Speaker 4 But he uses that gun anyway because it's hers.

Speaker 13 He picks that gun because it's hers.

Speaker 4 After J.D. shot Robin, Farron's theory now went, he took the pink gun back home where he left it for police to find.
If that's true, then J.D. was out to get rid of both Robin and Katie.

Speaker 4 And Katie was worried. Maybe he was still out to get her.

Speaker 12 It was scary. I saw him drive by my house and I told my lawyer, he said, well, honey, you're bulletproof.
And I remember telling him, as long as I'm not within rifle range.

Speaker 4 Katie well knew JD wasn't her only enemy in Amarillo.

Speaker 12 I still had people approaching me, calling me ugly names and saying, oh, you deserve to rot in prison for the rest of your life.

Speaker 4 For D.A. Farron, the investigation had to start all over again, now with J.D.
as the focus. Farron concentrated on J.D.'s lies.
Remember, J.D.

Speaker 4 first told investigators he was never at the crime scene on Helium Road. Later, he said, yeah, he'd been there, but so was Katie.

Speaker 4 Investigators found security video of a pickup truck that looked like J.D.'s near the crime scene close to the time of the murder.

Speaker 13 Can't read the plate, can't see inside the vehicle. We're confident that it's his vehicle, but we can't prove that.

Speaker 4 What about Katie?

Speaker 13 We never saw any vehicle come through that security view

Speaker 13 that looked anything like the car Katie was driving that night.

Speaker 4 Tantalizing, but not definitive, which seemed to be true of a lot of the evidence against JD.

Speaker 4 It had taken just four days to file murder charges against Katie, but Farron, burned once, was reluctant to charge JD without more proof.

Speaker 4 And so nine months went by. And then the DA got a call from Robin's mother, Jackie, that forced him to act.

Speaker 4 JD had apparently asked his mother-in-law for a big favor.

Speaker 14 Had me buy him a ticket to go to New York for the weekend.

Speaker 4 The trip to New York felt phony to you.

Speaker 14 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 And it did to Farron as well.

Speaker 13 It's not that far from there to the Canadian border. And after talking about it and thinking about it, I said, let's go ahead and make the arrest.

Speaker 4 Your daughter had been married to this guy.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 4 And now he's accused of her murder.

Speaker 10 It was like,

Speaker 10 I just can't

Speaker 10 believe it.

Speaker 4 And for Katie, there was relief, to be sure, but much more than that.

Speaker 12 When I got the call that he was, in fact, in custody, I laid there in bed and I was just crying. I want Robin back.
I want those kids happy. I want to be happy.

Speaker 12 I want what will never be.

Speaker 4 Now remember, J.D. was only arrested, not convicted.
And as we saw with Katie, any case can fall apart. And that's when the DA made another head-snapping move.

Speaker 4 He invited the suspect he'd once charged with Robin's murder, Katie, to help him develop the case against J.D.

Speaker 4 We were invited to one of their meetings in May 2017, three years after the murder.

Speaker 13 I'm confident that Robin, at some point shortly before the murder, confronted him with two issues. Number one, JD, I've met somebody else and I'm through with you.
We're not hooking up anymore.

Speaker 10 And number two, I want my child support and I want all of it.

Speaker 4 To Farron, J.D.'s thinking was clear.

Speaker 13 I killed Robin and get rid of her. I frame Katie and get rid of her.

Speaker 12 Get rid of them both and less than a month later, you got a new younger girlfriend in the the truck.

Speaker 13 This solves all my problems. If I'm JD this solves my problems.

Speaker 4 So with some help from Katie the DA prepared for trial and also prepared to gamble that the biggest mistake of his career would also become his best argument in court.

Speaker 4 Are you confident you're going to be able to convict J.D.? Yes.

Speaker 13 If that gun killed Robin, only two people could have done it, either Katie or JD. And I can prove it wasn't Katie.

Speaker 4 But not according to J.D. Spielbauer.
You don't think there's evidence against you?

Speaker 4 No, sir.

Speaker 5 Coming up, there are some things you just shouldn't lie about.

Speaker 4 What kind of person, in your view, does that?

Speaker 10 A liar, a fraud,

Speaker 4 charlatan.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 4 When auto mechanic and local Lothario J.D. Spielbauer went on trial for his ex-wife's murder, the jury heard a lot about cell tower pings and Wi-Fi connections.
But according to D.A.

Speaker 4 James Farron, the trial's most damning witness was J.D. himself and all of his changing stories.

Speaker 13 There is J.D.'s four versions of what happened, four different versions versions of what happened.

Speaker 4 The jury watched the video of him lying to investigators about whether he met with Robin on Helium Road the night of the murder.

Speaker 11 Did you have any plans to meet Robin Monday evening? No plans.

Speaker 4 Then jurors were shown another recording taken a few weeks later when J.D.'s story changed dramatically, and he admitted he did meet with Robin that night. And he said so did Katie.
who J.D.

Speaker 4 claimed followed him out to Helium Road.

Speaker 11 Which took me by surprise and everything.

Speaker 4 That was not the biggest lie J.D. was accused of telling.
Even bigger was this one, giant even by Texas standards. It wasn't about the night of the murder.
It was about J.D.'s past.

Speaker 4 A record search by investigators had yielded this.

Speaker 4 J.D., the gearhead, was no jarhead. He'd never served a day in the Marines or any other branch of the military.

Speaker 4 All of it seemed to be something he made up to impress women like Robin, whose parents both had military careers. Is that kind of thing offensive to you? Yes.

Speaker 4 What kind of person, in your view, does that?

Speaker 10 A liar, a fraud,

Speaker 4 charlatan?

Speaker 4 For the record, J.D. now denies telling anyone he was in the Marines.

Speaker 4 The most dramatic moment of his trial was yet to come, when his ex-wife Katie, also the ex-suspect, took the stand to testify against him.

Speaker 4 Katie knew the public perception of her guilt or innocence was riding on the credibility of her testimony.

Speaker 12 I knew I was going to be on trial as well.

Speaker 4 Because you're like sort of the alternate defendant. Right.

Speaker 4 To establish Katie's credibility as a witness, D.A. Farron had to admit to the jury he'd wrongly charged her with Robin's murder years earlier.

Speaker 13 Once we identified the Sigsauer pistol as the weapon that killed Robin, now the suspect pool becomes pretty small.

Speaker 4 By telling the jury that Katie could not be the killer, Farron hoped to reduce that suspect pool to just one, J.D.

Speaker 13 As author Cannon Doyle said through the lips of Sherlock Holmes, When you've eliminated every other possibility, whatever's left's the truth, the only person left is J.D.

Speaker 4 The defense's case though rested on two basic facts that were not in dispute first robin was struck in the head hard blunt force trauma the medical examiner called it second robin had also been shot once in the head with that pink trimmed 22 caliber pistol katie's pistol based on that jd's attorney joe marr wilson summed up his defense in just three words.

Speaker 4 Katie did it.

Speaker 23 The gunshot might have killed her, but the pathologist testified the blunt force trauma would have killed her.

Speaker 4 And that says anger, D. That says anger.

Speaker 23 That says everything Katie was doing.

Speaker 4 And as far as JD framing Katie?

Speaker 4 Couldn't have happened, said Wilson, for one simple reason. His client, J.D.,

Speaker 4 just isn't smart enough.

Speaker 23 JD's a mechanic, working guy, grew up in a broken home. If you were going out there, to set Katie up,

Speaker 23 you would do it a lot better.

Speaker 4 And Wilson felt there was one other flaw in the prosecution's setup theory.

Speaker 23 How do you set Katie up if you're not sure exactly where she's at?

Speaker 4 You would have done it when you knew where Katie was or knew that she couldn't alibi herself.

Speaker 4 In other words, J.D. didn't have control over Katie's movements that night.
So how could he be sure she wasn't with witnesses? who could provide an alibi?

Speaker 10 If he's trying to set her up,

Speaker 10 he's either the worst setup artist in the world or he is the most

Speaker 10 sophisticated criminal there ever was.

Speaker 4 JD did not testify at his trial. He did talk to me from jail.
Did you kill Robin? No, sir.

Speaker 4 JD said he and Robin were just hanging out at their rendezvous site on Helium Road when Katie emerged from the darkness. Were you and Robin just talking when this happened or something more than that?

Speaker 4 No, we was just just talking. But all of a sudden Katie shows up.
Yes, sir. And she's furious.
A little past furious. And then you leave?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir. How is it that you had two women literally fighting over you?

Speaker 4 That I'm still trying to figure out.

Speaker 4 I'm not even a decent-looking gentleman.

Speaker 4 I really don't know, to be honest. If you're not involved in this, why not tell police the truth from the beginning? Why tell police more than one story?

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 I just still did not want to believe that Katie would or could be able to do anything like this. So if you're avoiding telling police that story, you're doing that to protect Katie and not yourself?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir. I mean, look,

Speaker 4 there's another way to look at this, which is

Speaker 4 you planned this whole thing.

Speaker 4 You kill Robin. You put the gun back in the house to frame Katie.
Katie's arrested. Robin's gone.
You're a free man again.

Speaker 4 No, sir. That wouldn't have happened if Katie had been prosecuted? I mean, you would have been all alone.

Speaker 4 There would have been no type of benefits out of any of this. I would have lost a woman I love.

Speaker 4 My children lost their mother. I just lost

Speaker 4 my second wife. What makes you not guilty here? What points away from you?

Speaker 4 Well, plain and simple. Katie was the last one to see Robin Alotta.

Speaker 23 The best thing for us was that the state had indicted Katie Spielbauer and held her in jail for over a year because we can say, well, if they thought she did it, how can you not have reasonable doubt?

Speaker 4 What and who would the jury believe?

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 5 JD wasn't the only one whose future was at stake.

Speaker 4 Were you worried that if the verdict comes back not guilty, that that's like the jury saying Katie is guilty?

Speaker 12 That's exactly what I was going to think.

Speaker 4 Jury deliberations are a tense time for any defendant. But in this case, it wasn't just J.D.
Spielbauer sweating out the verdict.

Speaker 12 That was the scariest few minutes of my life.

Speaker 4 Were you worried that if the verdict comes back not guilty, that that's like the jury saying Katie is guilty?

Speaker 12 That's exactly what I was going to think.

Speaker 4 Although Katie also realized no matter what the verdict, some in Amarillo will always wonder about whether she played some role in Robin's murder. One of them is the man who arrested her.

Speaker 6 Two things a cop can do that are horrible.

Speaker 10 One is kill an innocent person. The second one is taking an innocent person's freedom away.

Speaker 4 So you don't think you did either one of those things? No. You didn't take an innocent person's freedom away.
No.

Speaker 4 Mongol told us he believed J.D. was guilty of Robin's murder.
But.

Speaker 10 The question is, was anybody else involved in how much?

Speaker 4 You have doubts as to whether or not Katie was involved.

Speaker 10 I do.

Speaker 10 I have some unanswered questions.

Speaker 4 But the DA who let her out says he has no doubt. The cell phone data proves she wasn't there when Robin was killed.

Speaker 13 Katie played no role in this whatsoever.

Speaker 4 Didn't know about it. Didn't do anything to facilitate it.

Speaker 13 No, had no idea.

Speaker 4 You know there are people involved in this who still think Katie got away with murder.

Speaker 13 I got up in front of the world and admitted I charged the wrong person. But some people can't bring themselves to admit that.

Speaker 4 When we first talked, which was a couple of years ago, I asked you if this was a rush to judgment, and you said it was not.

Speaker 13 Well, I didn't feel like it was a rush to judgment.

Speaker 13 Later, after we had put everything together, it clearly was a rush to judgment.

Speaker 13 If you're going to write a textbook about tunnel vision, confirmation bias, and a rush to judgment, this is the case you'd use to write the textbook.

Speaker 12 I love to hate him and hate to love him.

Speaker 12 I respect Mr. Farron.
I don't necessarily think that he would ever be somebody that I would call on a weekly basis to check in, but I respect him. He is good at what he does.
He is a very smart man.

Speaker 4 And he admitted his mistake, which a lot of prosecutors really don't like to do.

Speaker 12 They don't.

Speaker 4 Katie had waited 467 days to be freed from the lockup. The wait for a verdict wasn't nearly as long.

Speaker 4 It took the jury only about three hours to find J.D. Spielbauer guilty of Robin's murder.
His sentence, life in prison.

Speaker 4 Justice finally for Robin. But for her parents, nothing could take away the pain of knowing their daughter's greatest fear had been realized when J.D.
left her out there on Helium Road.

Speaker 14 She never wanted to be alone. She hated to be alone.

Speaker 14 And to be left out there was just not

Speaker 14 anything I could deal with.

Speaker 4 Erin still struggles with her own sense of loneliness.

Speaker 7 I lost my best friend.

Speaker 8 I can't call her anymore.

Speaker 4 Her number's still on your phone? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 15 if I delete it, I'd delete her.

Speaker 4 And as for Katie, you feel better now?

Speaker 12 Yes and no. I'm happy it's over, but it's still sad and heartbreaking.
It's a tragedy. It doesn't go away.
It doesn't fix anything. It doesn't bring Robin back.

Speaker 4 Robin's mom gave you a hug after a trial.

Speaker 16 She did.

Speaker 12 I love Robin's mom. And for her to

Speaker 12 reach out to me like that,

Speaker 12 actions speak louder than words. And there wasn't a single thing that she could have said to me that was more powerful than the hug that she gave me.

Speaker 4 You hugged Katie at the end of the trial?

Speaker 14 She hugged first.

Speaker 14 And it's, I'm a hugger, so yes, I hugged back.

Speaker 4 Would Katie be wrong to see that as a sign of forgiveness?

Speaker 14 I don't know how to answer that because I don't know if I

Speaker 14 have forgiven either one of them yet.

Speaker 14 I mean, one of the theories is that they were in it together.

Speaker 4 Either of you believe that? I mean, either of you believe that Katie's getting away with murder right now?

Speaker 14 I don't know what to believe. All I know is I believe the person that actually hurt our baby is where he needs to be.

Speaker 14 And that's what I have to believe. Because

Speaker 14 that's what they proved.

Speaker 14 That's what makes sense.

Speaker 4 One question is proving difficult to answer. What made J.D.
somebody women want to to fight over?

Speaker 12 It was easy for him to turn himself into somebody that he wasn't.

Speaker 12 We saw something different than what everybody else saw. But what we didn't know at the time was that we weren't his wives.
We were his property.

Speaker 12 And he was going to control and dominate that property any way that he saw fit.

Speaker 4 Katie promised us one hell of a story. She certainly delivered.
and she says she's not done yet. She graduated from college, the first in her family to do so, with a degree in legal studies.

Speaker 4 She now works as a paralegal in a law firm. On top of that, the founder of a nonprofit organization happened to see Katie on Dateline, inspiring a program called Ignite You First.

Speaker 4 It's dedicated to breaking intergenerational cycles. of trauma.

Speaker 12 I never had a male role model in my life, so I was never taught what kind of man I should be looking for. I was never taught what kind of humans and people and friends I needed in my life.

Speaker 4 Katie's hope is that by being part of that program, she can help teens and adults make better choices.

Speaker 12 Something like this happens, it gives you purpose. And life has no meaning without purpose.

Speaker 10 That's all for now.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 5 Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 22 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 6 It's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 4 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 22 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore.

Speaker 6 Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox.

Speaker 22 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 21 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.