Manner of Death

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Speaker 15 How could this happen?

Speaker 15 A very healthy 31-year-old just winds up dead?

Speaker 16 A young father's death.

Speaker 17 So sudden, so strange.

Speaker 18 We wanted answers.

Speaker 15 The word poison just kept coming up.

Speaker 18 It was anifrey's poisoning.

Speaker 19 You can't smell it. You can't see it.

Speaker 20 Someone wanted him dead.

Speaker 17 Someone who was hiding something.

Speaker 21 The details of the case are very salacious.

Speaker 23 There's sex, there's the allegation of poisoning.

Speaker 25 Cleaned out the bank account.

Speaker 26 Are you trying to accuse me of doing something to him?

Speaker 16 A brother determined to find a killer.

Speaker 18 How dare anybody do that to my little brother?

Speaker 27 It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Speaker 17 A toxic mystery. An emotional trial.

Speaker 18 Is the jury being out long a bad thing or a good thing?

Speaker 2 It was a mystery from day one.

Speaker 28 From that time right around the end of the hockey season, it didn't make sense what was happening to Matt Podillack.

Speaker 30 Matt the happy hockey amateur. Matt the outdoorsman, the hunter, the fisherman, athlete.

Speaker 30 Didn't make sense from the very first day Matt Podillack woke up in the morning with that pain in his back.

Speaker 34 And after what happened in the hospital a couple of months later,

Speaker 36 nothing made sense after that.

Speaker 38 Though God knows there were accusations.

Speaker 39 Oh yes, plenty of those.

Speaker 43 And a brother, Mark, for whom the story, the mystery, became a kind of obsession.

Speaker 18 It's had quite an effect on me.

Speaker 45 But the story of what happened to Matt Portilac is one of those that,

Speaker 47 well, you be the judge.

Speaker 30 Let's begin in the spring of 2006.

Speaker 46 Matt was 31 years old.

Speaker 33 Maybe more than ever, he was loving the intense male roughness of amateur hockey.

Speaker 51 He was number 10, 10, and he was good at it.

Speaker 30 Even managed to keep all his teeth.

Speaker 18 He started to take it up when he was in high school, and that was really one of his loves.

Speaker 46 Mark Podolak was just a little older, a little more academically accomplished than his kid brother, maybe, but Mark loved him, loved him for what he was.

Speaker 18 He was a good kid. I mean, he didn't get in any trouble.
I'll be honest with you. My dad is a cop, so he sort of put the fear of God into me and my brother when we were growing up.

Speaker 46 Matt told his mom, Patricia, he was going to join the police force when he came home to Brooklyn after a stint in the Navy.

Speaker 52 Brooklyn, Ohio, by the way, it's one of the towns around the edge of Cleveland.

Speaker 58 Matthew always wanted to

Speaker 58 be a police officer ever since he was little.

Speaker 52 His dad, Lan, was a 39-year veteran of the Brooklyn PD.

Speaker 60 There was a point in time where it looked like we may even work together.

Speaker 61 But life is full of disappointments.

Speaker 52 Matt didn't get the call.

Speaker 63 And so instead he went to work for his uncle, whose Phoenix Industrial powder-coated engine parts for Ford and other companies.

Speaker 60 What did he think of that job of his over at the factory?

Speaker 18 The thing that excited him about it was that he was going to take over. My uncle was kind of grooming him to become the boss.

Speaker 7 But what Matt wanted, perhaps most of all, was a family. And so when he met Holly, Holly McFeecher.

Speaker 58 When Matthew fell in love, he fell 110%.

Speaker 58 And he really loved Hallie.

Speaker 40 There are some people who plan out their lives very carefully.

Speaker 39 Those people may have taken issue with Matt and Holly whose daughter Samantha was born give or take nine months after they met.

Speaker 67 The marriage part would come later they decided.

Speaker 18 He loved being there.

Speaker 31 He loved that little girl.

Speaker 52 And loved Holly. Holly loved him.

Speaker 37 Holly told her sister Chrissy the story of how they eventually got engaged.

Speaker 68 It was during a romantic weekend in Niagara Falls just before Samantha was born.

Speaker 36 Holly was preparing a bubble bath.

Speaker 27 And she couldn't hear because the faucet's running. And here's Matt down on his knee, like, hello.
And then she realized, oh my gosh, they're proposing.

Speaker 11 That is a kind of a romantic little story.

Speaker 27 I thought so, the bubbles, and I thought that was pretty romantic.

Speaker 48 After Samantha came along, Matt and Holly, now engaged, went to Vegas to witness a friend's wedding, Lynn Kirilko.

Speaker 71 Did you almost make it a foursome wedding as well?

Speaker 22 Oh, yeah, actually, yes. Holly and Matt said we should do a

Speaker 27 double wedding.

Speaker 27 But Holly knew that her family would not be happy with that, so I think that's what made them not

Speaker 27 get married.

Speaker 8 Didn't get married, but something happened in Vegas.

Speaker 70 Nine months after that, Josh was born.

Speaker 27 From what Holly has told me, Josh was was planned in Vegas.

Speaker 76 Ready or not, Matt was now the father of Samantha and a baby boy he nicknamed Little Man and Holly's daughter from a previous relationship.

Speaker 77 Big changes in a very short time.

Speaker 44 And by the end of the hockey season, a lot of things started going wrong.

Speaker 77 Josh was still very new then and colicky.

Speaker 36 Matt was stressed.

Speaker 28 And with that young family to support, he'd gone and lost money gambling on the internet. He complained of feeling depressed.

Speaker 29 So depressed, his doctor prescribed antidepressants.

Speaker 39 And that's about when it started.

Speaker 48 The pain, that is. Spasms of back pain.

Speaker 51 He ignored it, figured it would go away on its own.

Speaker 38 But it just got worse.

Speaker 42 After weeks of this, Polly insisted he'd go see a doctor.

Speaker 27 He had been complaining of pain, and she finally said, you need... to go.
Obviously, something's not right.

Speaker 27 So she basically, you know, had to drag him there.

Speaker 48 Kidney stones was the diagnosis.

Speaker 54 The doctor gave Matt pills to help dissolve them.

Speaker 57 Four days later, he took a turn for the worse.

Speaker 31 Way worse.

Speaker 7 Holly called her father, Matt's father, and 911.

Speaker 60 I got a call from Holly says something's wrong with Matt. So I talked to Matt and he says, Dad, I don't feel good.
I fell off the couch. I'm really dizzy.
I said, well, get in the ambulance.

Speaker 80 Holly's father, Mike Jusek, arrived and followed the ambulance with Holly to the hospital where things went bad fast.

Speaker 81 It was nerve-wracking because all we kept hearing about was, okay, they're trying to dial in on his kidney issue. Well then that medication was making his heart go.

Speaker 81 So then they tried to address the heart and it kept seesawing back and forth.

Speaker 46 And nobody seemed to know really what it was causing it.

Speaker 59 No.

Speaker 84 Matt faded in and out of consciousness.

Speaker 85 Doctors told Holly and family members, go home, get some rest.

Speaker 67 And then a few hours later, they called everybody back to the hospital.

Speaker 64 Right away, they said.

Speaker 50 One look at the ICU, and Big Brother Mark felt his world come apart.

Speaker 18 When I saw him in the hospital, it's something I won't forget. It seemed like he was in a coma.
I knew if he made it through, he wouldn't be the same.

Speaker 71 And everyone felt a particular kind of helplessness, knowing something was killing him, but not knowing, how could they,

Speaker 31 what it was.

Speaker 52 A family simple question, which will take seven years to answer.

Speaker 18 How can you go into the hospital for kidney stones and then die eight hours later?

Speaker 70 The end came on Monday morning, July 31st, 2006.

Speaker 28 There in the ICU, the mysterious ailment that attacked Matt Podolak overwhelmed his defenses completely.

Speaker 60 I got a call and I said, you better get here because he's gone into full arrest and we've revived him already, once.

Speaker 60 So when I got there, it was just

Speaker 8 downhill. Matt's fiancé, Holly McFeecher, begged the doctors, keep trying.

Speaker 27 And Holly said, don't stop, don't stop. And saying, Matt, don't leave me.

Speaker 8 It was no use.

Speaker 27 And once the doctor or nurse stepped away, Holly just lunged on Matt and just wouldn't let go. They actually had to pull her off of his body.

Speaker 45 He was just 31 years old and now his children were fatherless and Holly a single mother of three.

Speaker 53 At the funeral, said her sister, she did not take it well.

Speaker 27 Holly was sitting in her car for about 20 minutes, bawling her eyes out before she even went in. I don't know how I would be able to do that myself, going and see him lying there in the casket.

Speaker 32 Mad and Holly's son, Josh, was just six months old, and he cried a lot.

Speaker 51 So, said Chrissy, Holly repeatedly had to leave the reception line to care for her colicky baby.

Speaker 27 She was in the basement with Josh because she was nursing. She had to still take care of her kids and show them that she had to be strong.

Speaker 51 Holly's friend Rebecca Vega did what she could to help, especially with that little boy, so young.

Speaker 15 This poor baby, he would have never known his father. How could this happen? All of a sudden, a very healthy 31-year-old young man

Speaker 15 just winds up dead. It's kind of strange.

Speaker 8 Kind of strange?

Speaker 35 It certainly was.

Speaker 46 Matt's brother Mark couldn't stop thinking about how strange it was.

Speaker 18 He had kidney stones. How can you go into the hospital for kidney stones and then die eight hours later?

Speaker 90 Exactly what the coroner was wondering when he had a look at some of the damage to Matt's organs, as if he had been exposed to some toxic chemicals in his environment.

Speaker 91 Matt had worked for four years for his uncle's Phoenix Industrial, supervised an assembly line, involved in painting and powder coating.

Speaker 77 Any toxic chemicals there?

Speaker 52 The coroner called Holly to ask, said her friend Lynn Kirilko.

Speaker 22 The coroner told her a lot of the chemical compounds were very similar to what the chemical compound was that they found in him.

Speaker 85 Right after that, Holly called Matt's uncle, the man who owned the factory.

Speaker 58 Saying that my brother needed to call the coroner so that he can explain what Matthew was exposed to.

Speaker 93 But soon after the coroner talked to Matt's uncle, after he got a proper list of the chemicals they used, he pretty much ruled out any industrial cause.

Speaker 58 All those chemicals were safe to work with, they were OSHA approved, and they had masks to wear.

Speaker 11 So if not that, what?

Speaker 7 Perhaps a cause unhappily all too common when death occurs in one so young, that a depressed young man, overwhelmed by his sudden responsibilities and the pain of his kidney stones, decided to end it all.

Speaker 48 It was a coroner's investigator who brought up the subject with Matt's mother.

Speaker 58 And she was questioning me, would Matthew have committed committed suicide?

Speaker 8 Never, said his mother. Never.

Speaker 46 But it was, his family had to admit, a not unreasonable question, given Matt's depression and all.

Speaker 85 Even though Mark believed his brother had that under control.

Speaker 18 He went to a doctor to get some help with that, and the doctor gave him some antidepressants.

Speaker 30 Did that help?

Speaker 18 I thought it did.

Speaker 18 He seemed to be better.

Speaker 70 But then, Matt had a new family now.

Speaker 28 You know how it is. Matt was spending most of his time with Holly and the kids and her parents, they said.

Speaker 10 So maybe Mark didn't know.

Speaker 97 Did he go to his own parents' house very often?

Speaker 81 I don't recall him talking about

Speaker 81 that much.

Speaker 92 His connection didn't seem to be that close then.

Speaker 81 It didn't seem to be.

Speaker 2 And Mark didn't know, not then anyway, that Matt actually asked a friend to remove his hunting guns from his house as if he was afraid perhaps he might harm himself.

Speaker 90 Was he really thinking about killing himself?

Speaker 27 From what I heard, yes. I heard that he was having thoughts.

Speaker 27 He had told Holly, I think he actually had told my dad.

Speaker 38 Just as she insisted he see the doctor for kidney stones, it was Holly, said her sister, who insisted he get help for his depression.

Speaker 27 She had sent him to the doctor and got him on medication for that as well.

Speaker 14 What happened to Matt Podolak?

Speaker 31 Who knew?

Speaker 54 Apparently, not the coroner, who had still not issued any official report.

Speaker 7 And then finally, three months after Matt's death, Mark got a call from his mother.

Speaker 84 Come to a family meeting, she told him.

Speaker 37 She refused to tell him what would be said there.

Speaker 58 Because I knew he would be very, very upset.

Speaker 29 The news was too bizarre, too shocking, to share over the phone.

Speaker 36 The coroner's report makes it clear Matt's death wasn't just strange. It was also highly suspicious.

Speaker 18 It was my mission to find an answer for this.

Speaker 3 There were just the two of them, big brother Mark and the kid he looked out for, his little brother, Matt.

Speaker 52 And now Matt was dead.

Speaker 8 And nothing made sense to Mark Podolak.

Speaker 18 There's no way that a guy is going to go into the hospital with kidney stones and you're going to die because of kidney stones.

Speaker 45 Three months after his death, Matt Potolak's family gathered for a meeting.

Speaker 50 Matt's mother arranged it.

Speaker 85 Beforehand, she told Mark they'd been discussing a possible wrongful death suit against the hospital where Matt died.

Speaker 18 My mom called me over and she said, we're going to talk with the lawyer tonight. We're going to find out our next steps, what's going to happen.

Speaker 100 But Mark's mother wasn't exactly straight with her son.

Speaker 3 That was not what was going to happen.

Speaker 18 So when I got to her house, the whole family was there. And I was like, where's the lawyer? And she's like, he's not here.

Speaker 7 No lawyer.

Speaker 56 Something far more disturbing.

Speaker 69 The autopsy report.

Speaker 50 Matt's mother did not want her surviving son hearing about this over the phone, afraid of how he'd react.

Speaker 18 The whole family was there as a support thing, and they said we got the coroner's report back, and it was antifreeze poisoning.

Speaker 18 And I kind of lost it.

Speaker 17 Antifreeze poisoning? That's just...

Speaker 81 Yeah.

Speaker 77 The correct phrase for this said the coroner's report was chronic intoxication by ethylene glycol.

Speaker 63 Ethylene glycol being the active and toxic ingredient in antifreeze.

Speaker 18 So I was like, what is what does that mean? Ethylene glycol is antifreeze, but chronic? And so, you know, it happened over a period of time. So once that kind of set in,

Speaker 18 I was shocked. I was speechless.

Speaker 52 And that's when something profound happened to Mark Podilak.

Speaker 76 Maybe right that moment.

Speaker 101 A decision snapped into place.

Speaker 18 From that moment on, when we found out,

Speaker 18 it was my mission to

Speaker 18 find an answer for this.

Speaker 28 A mission complicated by the fact there was one very big question the coroner couldn't answer.

Speaker 33 Was Matt's death the result of some terrible mistake?

Speaker 63 Or suicide?

Speaker 39 Or was it murder?

Speaker 10 Nobody knew.

Speaker 50 And so the coroner labeled the manner of death undetermined.

Speaker 70 Across town, Matt's fiancée Holly was getting the news to.

Speaker 85 Holly's sister, Chrissy.

Speaker 97 What did she say?

Speaker 27 What can you say? What do you mean there's antifreeze in his system?

Speaker 27 We were all thinking it was kidney failure. We were not expecting that.

Speaker 30 Was it really possible that Matt somehow ingested small amounts of antifreeze for a period of weeks, if not longer?

Speaker 43 That was the implication of the phrase chronic ethylene glycol poisoning.

Speaker 50 Mark had already made up his mind that his brother did not commit suicide and certainly not gradual suicide.

Speaker 103 What did he have to go on?

Speaker 46 So far, only a growing suspicion and rage, which he made perfectly clear to the police.

Speaker 18 I finally got a hold of the detective on the case and he he did some initial stuff, but

Speaker 18 It wasn't the follow-through that I had hoped. Maybe that was just because that I was just grieving and I was so upset.

Speaker 17 But when something like that happens, you want the whole world to stand up and pay attention and do something.

Speaker 18 When something like that happens, I want every member of Cleveland Police Department to be on it.

Speaker 1 And it seemed like nobody was on the street.

Speaker 18 And it didn't seem that way. No, it just...

Speaker 18 And just time started to go on, and

Speaker 18 I became extremely frustrated.

Speaker 54 Matt's father, Lynn, a former cop himself, could see the problem.

Speaker 42 The case file was stuck.

Speaker 60 It kind of became a catch-22 situation.

Speaker 50 The coroner said he couldn't label it a homicide without more evidence from the police.

Speaker 36 Well, at the very same time.

Speaker 60 Cleveland Homicide was saying that they can't investigate it as a homicide until the coroner rules it a homicide.

Speaker 46 And so it remained, month after month, year into years.

Speaker 61 And still, the manner of death was listed as undetermined.

Speaker 52 Just like Mark, Matt's father, Len, made something of a pest of himself.

Speaker 60 I would call the detective that was assigned to the case and say, what have you got? And his standard answer to me was, I don't have anything. What have you got?

Speaker 60 I was, well, this is your job, not my job, you know.

Speaker 70 Not unlike the way Matt's fiancé, Holly, was thinking.

Speaker 27 She was upset, you know, that there was no

Speaker 27 death, yes.

Speaker 27 None of our family was interviewed.

Speaker 100 It was like they were letting it go.

Speaker 27 Exactly.

Speaker 71 But Holly had three children to raise, alone.

Speaker 2 Police versus coroner politics was not exactly uppermost in her mind.

Speaker 46 To make ends meet, she took on two and sometimes three jobs at the same time and threw herself into coaching her children's little league baseball teams.

Speaker 28 Meanwhile, Mark kept hounding investigators, but getting nowhere.

Speaker 18 It made me feel like there was nothing mean done. It made me feel like there was a...
My brother's case was on a desk of somebody who could care less and was counting down the days to his retirement.

Speaker 40 But though Mark was getting nowhere, Holly was hearing things not from the police.

Speaker 102 Remember the plant where Matt supervised other workers?

Speaker 103 What was really going on around the powder coating machines?

Speaker 31 Holly and her sister had their own theory about how Matt died.

Speaker 27 There were some people at his job that may have not liked him. He was supposed to get a promotion.
And I I think there were some people that

Speaker 27 didn't think he deserved it.

Speaker 35 Were they right?

Speaker 43 Paulie McFeecher was up against it, big time.

Speaker 28 Three kids, two still in diapers.

Speaker 45 She lost the father of her children.

Speaker 46 The police couldn't seem to figure out what happened to him, didn't seem even to be trying.

Speaker 2 The little bit of cash left over in Matt's checking account was soon gone.

Speaker 32 Eventually, Matt's work-based life insurance paid out $10,000, but that was way off yet, and it wouldn't be very much.

Speaker 46 So, in the meantime, she did what she had to do. She took on several jobs at a time, even babysat for neighbors when she had a spare hour or two.

Speaker 27 The children needed food. They still needed a roof over their heads.
And that's exactly what she was doing. She was paying their bills and making sure that kids were taken care of.

Speaker 46 And the thing is, Holly McFeecher loved kids, not just her own.

Speaker 48 While Matt Passion was playing hockey, Holly's was coaching Little League Baseball.

Speaker 63 She threw herself into it after Matt's death.

Speaker 37 Baseball is how Rebecca Vega met Holly.

Speaker 15 Our kids were in Little League together at that time.

Speaker 71 That was the spring of 2006, before Matt died.

Speaker 72 Their oldest girls were school classmates and sports teammates.

Speaker 54 And Holly?

Speaker 15 She was

Speaker 15 friendly in a way that it was intoxicating, I guess. It was like an intoxicating friendliness.

Speaker 89 You just wanted to be around her?

Speaker 15 You did. You did.
You wanted to be around her.

Speaker 37 Being around Holly was how Rebecca met Matt, actually.

Speaker 34 And then one day, Matt tagged along with Holly to one of the kids' t-ball games.

Speaker 35 He was already sick by that time, though nobody knew yet how sick.

Speaker 53 He was sitting under this tree all alone, said Rebecca, watching the game.

Speaker 15 You could tell he didn't feel well. You could tell that he was in pain.
He shifted in the chair quite often.

Speaker 7 And four days later, Matt was dead.

Speaker 87 After the funeral, Rebecca tried to comfort Holly and help with the kids.

Speaker 15 If she needed help with the children, if the children needed something,

Speaker 15 yeah, it was just to kind of help her.

Speaker 52 When the coroner's report came out and shocked everybody, Hawley told Rebecca, of course, right away.

Speaker 41 What'd you think when you heard that he died of antifreeze poisoning?

Speaker 15 It kind of put the mystery of how does a healthy 31-year-old actually pass suddenly, you know, that he was poisoned.

Speaker 11 But who would want to poison Matt Podolak?

Speaker 64 Just a regular guy, no enemies.

Speaker 94 No known enemies anyway.

Speaker 6 Hawley told Rebecca the police didn't seem to be doing anything to find out, but that she had some leads of her own.

Speaker 92 And she suspected somebody at work.

Speaker 15 She had suspected somebody at work.

Speaker 57 And eventually, she told Rebecca, the police did too.

Speaker 15 They thought that somebody poisoned him at work. The word poison just kept coming up.

Speaker 107 Sister Chrissy heard the rumors too.

Speaker 17 Why would they do such a thing?

Speaker 27 There were some people at his job that may have not liked him. It was his uncle's company, and people I think were a little jealous.
He was supposed to get a promotion

Speaker 27 and I think there were some people that

Speaker 27 didn't think he deserved it.

Speaker 92 Increasingly, Holly and members of her family became all but convinced that somebody at work found a way to put antifreeze into

Speaker 17 Matt's drink or something.

Speaker 102 And if that phrase in the coroner's report was true, chronic ethylene glycol intoxication, that somebody would have done it several times.

Speaker 46 But one person who wasn't buying that theory was Matt's brother, Mark.

Speaker 18 He didn't have any enemies.

Speaker 102 Matt had worked his way up from the production line to supervisor at the plants at Mark, and he was well liked by the people at Phoenix Industrial.

Speaker 18 He wasn't this guy that was going around picking fights with people. He was loved by his co-workers.

Speaker 43 By then, solving the case of his brother's murder had become Mark's obsession.

Speaker 88 He collected stories from Matt's factory coworkers, from the streets, from friends.

Speaker 8 He fumed when the official investigation seemed to go nowhere.

Speaker 109 And then after three frustrating years, one small change that made a huge difference.

Speaker 28 A new supervisor in the Cleveland Homicide Division took over Matt's case.

Speaker 10 His name?

Speaker 46 Detective Sergeant Mike Quinn.

Speaker 50 So by the time you took it over, I took it over.

Speaker 110 Pushing three years.

Speaker 25 Pushing three years.

Speaker 110 And I reviewed the file.

Speaker 44 With fresh eyes, Quinn went over the case, re-interviewed people who knew both Matt and Holly, and suddenly.

Speaker 18 I felt a completely different sense of what was happening.

Speaker 77 Now, said Mark, when he called with questions or suggestions, he felt like somebody was listening, especially when he told them what he was hearing on the street.

Speaker 18 I was trying to, hey, maybe this is something that could help you. Maybe you should look into this.

Speaker 4 You heard about things.

Speaker 18 Absolutely. It was a really

Speaker 18 close-knit town, so people talk. There's chatter out there.

Speaker 78 Strange how that chatter seemed to focus on one particular person.

Speaker 85 A possible motive for murder.

Speaker 25 She wrote checks writing his name on the checks, cleaned out the bank account.

Speaker 101 What did that say to you?

Speaker 110 Obviously, a huge red flag.

Speaker 38 Three years after Matt Podolik died of antifreeze poisoning, two families had sharply differing theories about the cause.

Speaker 73 Matt's fiancée, Holly, her whole family, in fact, suspected somebody at work had it out for him.

Speaker 12 But Mark and his family were looking closer to home.

Speaker 35 How close?

Speaker 28 Let's put it this way: the two sides of the family weren't talking anymore.

Speaker 14 An already existing mistrust ramped up that night in the hospital years before when Matt was in the ICU.

Speaker 36 That's when Matt's brother Mark began to wonder if Holly was in some way responsible for Matt's mystery illness.

Speaker 18 My mom and I had a specific conversation. I remember it.
She said, you don't think she could have did this to him, do you?

Speaker 18 And we kind of were like, I don't know, maybe. But at the time, we didn't know why he passed.

Speaker 71 And then there was the funeral.

Speaker 43 Holly's family said she was very upset, cried in the car before going in.

Speaker 68 But when Sergeant Quinn read the old case file, he found a curious statement from Hawley's friend, Rebecca Vega.

Speaker 79 What sort of grief was this?

Speaker 15 She was back and forth talking to different individuals,

Speaker 15 almost like a flirtatious, that intoxicating friendliness that she had, as if her fiancé wasn't even laying there in front of everyone.

Speaker 90 Talking to just everybody, or was she concentrating on men or women or mostly men?

Speaker 41 Flirtatiously.

Speaker 15 Flirtatious.

Speaker 103 That's how she was, said Matt's family, how she always was.

Speaker 1 At first, friendly, magnetic, even.

Speaker 103 But it didn't stay that way for long.

Speaker 64 Later, Matt told them, Holly became controlling, demanding.

Speaker 92 Did he ever complain about his relationship?

Speaker 87 Oh, of course he did. Yeah,

Speaker 41 he did.

Speaker 87 What did he say?

Speaker 18 She's nagging me type thing.

Speaker 18 She's yelling at me. She's calling me all the time.
She's doing all this stuff. There were some incidents that happened, some times where they had to have police show up.

Speaker 100 Matt's protective big brother called it downright nasty the way she treated him.

Speaker 80 Said so, too.

Speaker 18 It's not worth a heartache to keep going through this. He was afraid that he wouldn't see his kids if they were apart.

Speaker 43 And now he was dead, and his family was raw with suspicion.

Speaker 46 When they went to collect some of Matt's personal effects, like his computer, they told Sergeant Quinn.

Speaker 6 Ollie told them she no longer had it, that the hard drive was being fixed, which sounded fishy to the detective.

Speaker 4 Was this any effort to destroy evidence?

Speaker 25 That's what most people do when they get rid of a computer and

Speaker 25 that may have been connected with the crime.

Speaker 86 They're going to get rid of it.

Speaker 103 Not evidence, really, but suggestive.

Speaker 44 Like when, according to them, Holly said right after Matt died, he wanted to be cremated.

Speaker 62 An idea Matt's family quickly shot down.

Speaker 38 Still, why would she have said that?

Speaker 50 And then, they said, when they asked her for his clothes and other effects, she told them she'd already gotten rid of them. It was as if she wanted to erase Matt from her life.

Speaker 9 Was there anything left of this guy at all in her house?

Speaker 25 Not that I'm aware of, not too much.

Speaker 46 Then there was the business about the money.

Speaker 28 A big deal, that, said Detective Quinn.

Speaker 25 She went to the ATM machine and used his card the day after his death. Two days later, she wrote checks writing his name on the checks.
Cleaned out the bank account, left one penny in it.

Speaker 41 Wow. Well, what did that say to you?

Speaker 110 Obviously, a huge red flag.

Speaker 70 It was a measure of the suspicion, the broken trust, that Matt's mother, in charge of his estate, reported Holly to the police.

Speaker 51 Holly was arrested and charged with theft and two counts of forgery.

Speaker 46 She agreed to make restitution and was put on probation for a year.

Speaker 29 In return, prosecutors dropped the charges.

Speaker 14 What happened to her? What was the sentence?

Speaker 25 She was given a first-time offenders program, so she didn't do any jail time.

Speaker 113 Then there was the life insurance.

Speaker 50 It wasn't much, including Matt's 401k.

Speaker 69 It amounted to just $15,000.

Speaker 94 But here's what made Matt's brother, Mark, suspicious.

Speaker 18 My brother was talking about a couple days before removing her from a life insurance policy, removing her from

Speaker 18 as a beneficiary of the policies in the 401k. And that's how serious it was getting.

Speaker 46 And so, when Holly actually got 10,000 of that insurance, it seemed to Mark to confirm what he had been thinking since the beginning.

Speaker 71 She must have killed him.

Speaker 18 In my mind, there was nobody else. There was no other way that it could have happened.
None.

Speaker 38 So the first reaction is this shock.

Speaker 73 What's the second reaction?

Speaker 18 Anger. And then sadness.
How dare anybody do that to my little brother? How dare they?

Speaker 11 But really?

Speaker 44 10,000 in life insurance, a motive for murdering the father of your children?

Speaker 17 What did you think when you heard that?

Speaker 101 I mean, this was a fairly serious allegation, right?

Speaker 27 I thought it was ridiculous that somebody would actually think that.

Speaker 7 Oh, yes.

Speaker 12 Holly and her family heard all the whispers.

Speaker 57 They knew all about the Podilak's suspicions, which were, they said, absolutely baseless.

Speaker 46 That business about stealing money from the bank account, for example?

Speaker 71 Did she understand that she was breaking the law when she did that? No.

Speaker 27 Absolutely not. She was thinking that she had to take care of her children and his.

Speaker 27 What else else was she supposed to do?

Speaker 45 And as for getting rid of his stuff, erasing him from her life.

Speaker 22 That's not true at all. As a matter of fact, she still has some,

Speaker 22 a lot of Matt's shirts that she actually wears.

Speaker 6 But quietly, four years after Matt's death, Sergeant Quinn collected the stories he heard.

Speaker 8 But there was one story he hadn't heard.

Speaker 37 Nobody had.

Speaker 42 Holly's story.

Speaker 107 Holly is invited downtown for a little chat with detectives.

Speaker 115 Did you give

Speaker 115 Matthew any type of

Speaker 116 poison?

Speaker 26 No.

Speaker 90 Four years after Matt Bodelite's death by Antifreeze poisoning, the machinery of justice was coughing and sputtering to life and pointing at her.

Speaker 91 Matt's fiancé and the mother of his children, Holly McFeature.

Speaker 105 Holly McFeecher was the suspect from day one.

Speaker 8 There's the sick. Prosecutors were appointed.

Speaker 12 Brian McDonough and Allison Foy,

Speaker 86 though they were soon frustrated.

Speaker 117 But we were missing, missing pieces, missing critical links on the case.

Speaker 46 Evidence already collected was maddeningly inconclusive.

Speaker 54 For example, detectives recovered two bottles of antifreeze in the garage where Holly and Matt lived.

Speaker 37 But it turned out somebody else had been living in the house for more than a year by the time they found it.

Speaker 48 Whose antifreeze was it?

Speaker 10 Nobody knew.

Speaker 118 But still, was there a way that we could go ahead and link it up?

Speaker 52 Nope.

Speaker 56 Tests confirmed the garage antifreeze didn't match the antifreeze that killed Matt.

Speaker 6 But remember Holly's friend Rebecca Vega? Detective Quinn found her name in the old file, called her up, and discovered that after Matt died, she spent practically every day with Hawley.

Speaker 47 And here's where Detective Quinn's eyes really opened wide.

Speaker 46 Rebecca told him that one day she was at Holly's house when she noticed some odd-looking jugs of chemicals in Holly's kitchen.

Speaker 15 She had said that it was Anna Freeze and that it was to winterize Matt's boat.

Speaker 41 Did you ask why they were there?

Speaker 77 I mean,

Speaker 75 fixing the boats, but...

Speaker 11 I thought, well, it's in the kitchen.

Speaker 15 The boat's outside. You know, why would Anna Freeze be in the kitchen?

Speaker 46 And then there was the time she, Rebecca, was complaining about her husband.

Speaker 33 And Hawley said,

Speaker 15 I can get rid of him.

Speaker 92 I can get rid of him?

Speaker 15 It can get rid of him. And I kind of thought, oh, that was kind of, I kind of joked about it, and I laughed.

Speaker 15 But she actually backed up that statement with, well, you could work, and we could just move into your house.

Speaker 8 Weird as she looked back on that.

Speaker 2 So once she heard about the coroner's report and the Podolak family's suspicions, she cut off all contact with Holly, ended the friendship without saying why.

Speaker 15 I had thought to myself, I'd expose my family to murder.

Speaker 25 She seemed to me like she believed that

Speaker 25 Holly poisoned Matthew.

Speaker 61 Was she a little freaked out by this?

Speaker 110 She stated that she was afraid of Holly.

Speaker 52 So Quinn kept an eagle eye on Holly McFeature. And one day, he heard about Holly and the karaoke bar.

Speaker 25 Holly and her sister were singing a song by the Dixie Chicks.

Speaker 110 It's called Earl's Gotta Die.

Speaker 25 It's a song about

Speaker 25 an abused woman in a relationship with a man who, to get back at the man, ends up poisoning his food. And they were up there singing the song and laughing about it.
This was after Matthew's death.

Speaker 61 I thought it was really cold-blooded when I heard about it.

Speaker 73 That was 2010, four years after Matt's death, the same year Sergeant Quinn received a big gift. Maybe it was the fact prosecutors were appointed.

Speaker 46 Maybe it was Sergeant Quinn's investigation.

Speaker 67 Maybe it was the karaoke.

Speaker 79 Whatever it was.

Speaker 68 That's when the coroner changed his ruling on Matt's manner of death from undetermined to homicide.

Speaker 10 And with that little bureaucratic stroke of the pen,

Speaker 33 everything changed.

Speaker 116 You take a seat in that goal.

Speaker 42 Thing one.

Speaker 77 For the very first time, Hawley was invited to the police station to give a formal statement.

Speaker 116 Holly, we're investigating the death of Matthew Pobleck.

Speaker 116 The coroner's office has ruled it a homicide.

Speaker 40 Chewing gum, looking casual, Hawley came in without a lawyer and was read her Miranda rights.

Speaker 116 Are you willing to talk with officers without consulting a lawyer or having a lawyer present with you?

Speaker 26 Yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 119 I don't have anything to hide. I didn't do anything, so.

Speaker 62 So, what would she say about her relationship with Matt?

Speaker 115 Did you and Matthew ever have any fights physically?

Speaker 119 Yeah, there were a couple.

Speaker 115 Did she call the police?

Speaker 119 Um, I know on one time I called the cops.

Speaker 3 Holly said it happened when she had a male friend over at their house.

Speaker 119 It was because he assumed something was going on when that wasn't the case. I had a friend over, we were talking and he came home and he didn't, he didn't like it.
He got jealous.

Speaker 46 She told them if they really wanted to solve the mystery, they should look for answers at Matt's factory.

Speaker 115 So did Matthew ever have any kind of enemies?

Speaker 119 At work

Speaker 119 from what he would come home and tell me

Speaker 119 There was a lot of people there that he didn't get along with. He was considered one of the supervisors

Speaker 119 and he would tell me different stories upon like how him and so-and-so would get in a fight, you know.

Speaker 2 And remember the $10,000 in life insurance bandied about as a possible motive for murder?

Speaker 9 Polly said she didn't know there was life insurance until after Mac was dead.

Speaker 119 As far as I knew, the only thing he had at work was his 401k plan. I didn't find out that he had life insurance until at the funeral home when his uncle told us.

Speaker 116 The fishery wasn't.

Speaker 119 It ended up being me. We found that out after the funeral.

Speaker 52 But how about that night in the karaoke bar?

Speaker 116 Earl's Gotta Die.

Speaker 116 You know that song?

Speaker 119 Yeah.

Speaker 116 And then laughing about it with the reference about an abusive relationship where the female poisons the man and he dies.

Speaker 58 It's a song.

Speaker 119 Yes. It's a karaoke song.

Speaker 26 Wow. I sang a song.

Speaker 2 Over and over, the detectives challenged Holly with the accusing question.

Speaker 115 Did you give Matthew any type of

Speaker 116 poison?

Speaker 35 No.

Speaker 26 No.

Speaker 115 Did you give Matthew any type of antifreeze?

Speaker 26 No.

Speaker 116 Is it a fact that you poisoned

Speaker 120 Matthew?

Speaker 119 No, it's not a fact, because I didn't do it. I didn't do that.

Speaker 116 Have you ever told anyone that you put something in Matthew's drinks?

Speaker 119 No, I never put anything in his drinks, so I would never say I did.

Speaker 79 Holly protested.

Speaker 46 None of this made sense, she said.

Speaker 119 This is the father of my children, my fiancé, the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I'm not going to hurt him in any way possible.

Speaker 119 I mean, dreams, our goals, everything, my whole life has completely been changed upside down. And I know nothing.

Speaker 119 And his family just despises me and does nothing but speak evil.

Speaker 2 And with that, detectives thanked her for coming in and sent her on her way with a warning that most likely she'd be indicted.

Speaker 116 You don't show up for the Raymond hearing there'll be a warrant for your arrest.

Speaker 71 That was late September 2010, but Holly wasn't indicted.

Speaker 70 Not that year.

Speaker 46 Not the next year either.

Speaker 84 But something strange happened in 2011.

Speaker 104 Holly answered her phone and found herself talking to a guy she dated briefly after Matt died.

Speaker 44 Do you remember what you told me about the drinks?

Speaker 50 Do you hear the trap snapping shut?

Speaker 61 Police and prosecutors think they've hit pay dirt with the new witness. But is he enough to take this case to court?

Speaker 21 The details of the case are very salacious.

Speaker 23 There's sex, there's the allegation of poisoning.

Speaker 24 It's very interesting, but that doesn't make it necessarily a deadbang winner for trial.

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Speaker 77 In the summer of 2011, five years gone, gone, Matt Podolak's death was still an unsolved mystery.

Speaker 2 All that time, Mark Bodilak had neglected his own life in his quest to prove Hawley was the killer.

Speaker 18 I know that my relationships with my friends suffered. Ultimately, it led to me getting divorced.
It was destructive on a lot of levels because you focus so much on a certain goal, a certain mission.

Speaker 26 And you're so damn angry.

Speaker 18 And I'm angry.

Speaker 31 Even angrier now, now, if that was possible.

Speaker 56 Because there had been a change.

Speaker 43 The case was reclassified as a homicide.

Speaker 37 But Holly was living her life free.

Speaker 10 No charges filed.

Speaker 18 I became extremely frustrated. I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 80 So frustrated, he sent a message to Dateline on Facebook, asking us to look into his brother's death.

Speaker 86 Holly and her family, meanwhile, were waiting to see if the hammer would fall.

Speaker 27 I can't tell you how many times she's cried,

Speaker 27 knowing that people are saying, you know, that she's a murderer and that this loving mom and softball coach can kill a man that she loved.

Speaker 38 But day by day, Sergeant Mike Quinn was closing in on Hawley.

Speaker 43 Just one more big thing, one solid piece of evidence, all he needed.

Speaker 14 And maybe,

Speaker 43 he and the prosecutors decided, maybe a jailbird could provide it.

Speaker 6 Hawley briefly dated a man named Jameson Kennedy a year or so after Matt died. And, according to Kennedy, during a wine and sex-driven evening, Hawley made some kind of confession.

Speaker 11 This, thought the prosecutors, was gold.

Speaker 71 What did he claim he heard?

Speaker 129 He claimed to have heard Holly McFeecher confess by saying

Speaker 117 She put something in his drinks.

Speaker 50 Prosecutor Brian McDonough.

Speaker 17 And that she wanted to stop, but that his kidneys had failed.

Speaker 85 And that was compelling evidence.

Speaker 37 But always something.

Speaker 51 Mr. Kennedy was not exactly the local church pastor.

Speaker 9 His rap sheet was longer than a Sunday sermon.

Speaker 51 In fact, when he came up with that little offering about Hawley, he was in county jail under arrest for beating up some cops.

Speaker 6 So, a snitch.

Speaker 130 As a prosecutor, we don't like informants.

Speaker 117 But what was so compelling about his testimony was that he was the only person to have that knowledge.

Speaker 1 How would he have that knowledge in the front?

Speaker 64 How would he hear that?

Speaker 129 He heard that from her lips to his ears.

Speaker 80 But how could they possibly prove it?

Speaker 7 One possible way.

Speaker 3 Sneaky, but it might work.

Speaker 54 They set up a phone call.

Speaker 10 Kennedy in prison called Holly.

Speaker 50 And they turned on a tape recorder.

Speaker 40 Hello. Holly.
Yeah.

Speaker 101 Do you know know who this is? Uh, yeah, hi, Jameson.

Speaker 54 Sometimes these things work.

Speaker 76 Sometimes they don't.

Speaker 85 So what's going on with you?

Speaker 28 Just how it is with investigations of this sort.

Speaker 76 Suffice to say, the call wasn't everything they hoped it would be.

Speaker 37 So here they were at a kind of crossroads.

Speaker 87 Should they go forward or finally drop it?

Speaker 39 The evidence?

Speaker 109 The story of a jailhouse snitch with multiple felony convictions, never an easy sell.

Speaker 6 An ex-friend whose talk of Auntie Freeze in the house and offers to get rid of her husband might have been real or imagined.

Speaker 44 A financial motive that at most might have amounted to a paltry 15 grand.

Speaker 6 And a bit of Dixie Chick's karaoke, the performance of which may have been monstrously cruel or perfectly innocent.

Speaker 48 Still, who else could have done it?

Speaker 21 The details of the case are very salacious.

Speaker 57 Prosecutor Allison Foy.

Speaker 21 There's

Speaker 23 sex, there's the allegation of poisoning.

Speaker 24 It's very interesting and it's certainly enough to keep anyone's attention, but that doesn't make it necessarily a strong case or a deadbang winner for trial.

Speaker 91 And so the prosecutors consulted Mark and his family.

Speaker 86 They were all committed now.

Speaker 62 All emotionally attached.

Speaker 4 But the family should decide.

Speaker 18 He said, this is where we are. He laid it all out.
And

Speaker 18 he said, we can take our shot and see where this goes. And...
And you might lose. We might lose.
And

Speaker 18 we all agreed that we wanted to go with it. We've suffered long enough.

Speaker 131 Case number 564-265-Holly McFeecher.

Speaker 62 So in 2012, six years after Matt Podolak's death, Holly McFeecher was indicted for aggravated murder and contaminating a substance for human consumption.

Speaker 61 From her mugshot, it didn't look like she was too worried about the outcome of the case, but this was serious.

Speaker 2 Maximum sentence, life without parole.

Speaker 44 Her attorney, Brett Jordan, applied for bail.

Speaker 132 She was

Speaker 38 scared.

Speaker 132 She missed her kids. I would say probably in some state of shock at that point.

Speaker 54 The judge took a look at the circumstantial case against her and granted the bail request, half a million bond with an ankle bracelet.

Speaker 63 But though the case was not the strongest, there was publicity. Anti-freeze poisoning?

Speaker 50 Hawley was suddenly famous and not in a good way.

Speaker 35 The old Brooklyn Little League told the once-beloved coach she wasn't welcome anymore.

Speaker 67 And Holly McFeecher prepared to defend her life in court.

Speaker 43 Iced tea, spiked with antifreeze, the prosecution's theory of how Holly poisoned Matt.

Speaker 19 You can't smell it, and you can't see it in the tea.

Speaker 118 He would have no way to know that it's coming.

Speaker 117 It's so secretively done.

Speaker 43 Seven years, seven years of pestering the investigators, seven years of brooding in the cemetery.

Speaker 67 Seven years after the sudden, agonizing death of his kid brother, Matt, Mark Bodilak watched with grim satisfaction as Holly McFeecher walked into the courtroom.

Speaker 18 I finally felt that we were going to make this happen.

Speaker 46 Mind you, the case against Holly was possibly a reach.

Speaker 65 No guarantees here.

Speaker 86 And Mark knew it.

Speaker 18 I was extremely nervous.

Speaker 98 Oh my gosh, being in that courtroom.

Speaker 50 And you don't know how it's going to turn out.

Speaker 18 I have no idea how it's going to turn out.

Speaker 62 Truth was, the prosecution didn't have much to work with.

Speaker 44 Without any hard evidence to pin on Hawley, their case boiled down to a process of elimination.

Speaker 52 Someone did this to Matt. Who else could it have been other than his fiancée?

Speaker 31 In this case, telling a story would be crucial because there wasn't a whole lot else to do, right?

Speaker 105 Absolutely.

Speaker 52 Prosecutor Brian McDonough began his story with the scene inside the hospital room the night Matt died.

Speaker 130 His body was shutting down.

Speaker 130 His organs were systematically shut down.

Speaker 36 And then Matt's father, Len Potolak, described the horror of watching his son's final agonies.

Speaker 61 So much pain he couldn't talk except to ask for his children.

Speaker 60 He would say,

Speaker 60 where little man,

Speaker 16 and where's

Speaker 31 Samantha?

Speaker 99 A picture was passed around the courtroom.

Speaker 12 Matt, dead, lying on the autopsy table.

Speaker 14 Mark began to cry across the courtroom.

Speaker 11 So did Hawley.

Speaker 62 And then Coroner Dan Goleta told the jury what he found during his autopsy.

Speaker 46 Discoveries that became the core of the case against Hawley.

Speaker 120 The cause of this was chronic intoxication by ethylene glyqual.

Speaker 83 Poisoned with antifreeze, very, very slowly.

Speaker 56 He explained he'd found crystals in Matt's heart and brain, having inched their deadly way through his body, kidneys to heart to brain.

Speaker 130 How much time would it take for the crystals to deposit themselves in the

Speaker 123 blood vessels vessels of the heart.

Speaker 75 It takes weeks, at least.

Speaker 105 The fact that the crystals were forming in his heart and actually had traveled to his brain indicated long-term exposure and not a one-dose deal.

Speaker 53 And Matt's friends and work colleagues testified they had seen his body disintegrate before their eyes starting weeks, if not months, before his death.

Speaker 123 He began sweating profusely

Speaker 123 and he complained of back pain.

Speaker 133 He was sitting beside me and

Speaker 123 practically was hunched over to whereas his chest was on his knees.

Speaker 76 Who could have made that happen and how?

Speaker 6 Investigators remember had found antifreeze in Hawley and Matt's garage, admittedly a year after Hawley moved out.

Speaker 77 The prosecutors knew they couldn't link these bottles to the crime.

Speaker 65 But even so, Detective Quinn took them out of the evidence bags for the jury to see, left them on the witness stand, a prop, little courtroom theater.

Speaker 114 A bottle of Saturn antifreeze at coolants.

Speaker 86 Take a look at those bottles, the prosecution seemed to be saying.

Speaker 43 And common sense would tell you it wasn't suicide.

Speaker 11 Nobody would down antifreeze on purpose, said the prosecutor, let alone bit by bit, as indicated in the coroner's report.

Speaker 117 There was no suicide note.

Speaker 105 He didn't go ahead and give away his possessions.

Speaker 117 Suicide did not make sense.

Speaker 54 No, there was one person, the prosecutor argued, and only one who had had the means and the motive to poison Matt.

Speaker 68 His fiancé, Holly McFeecher.

Speaker 55 A parade of witnesses testified about Matt and Holly's rocky relationship, the bitter words, fierce arguments they couldn't help but overhear.

Speaker 133 When we would be fishing, that phone would be ringing every five minutes. She'd be screaming so loud, he'd be holding the phone out to this way away from his ear.

Speaker 123 I told him that he needed to protect himself,

Speaker 123 and I told him

Speaker 11 that

Speaker 123 he should should remove his shotgun and from his house.

Speaker 43 And far from being shattered by Matt's death, as her family claimed, prosecution witnesses described how Holly seemed almost giddy after Matt died.

Speaker 123 What did you observe the defendant at the wedding?

Speaker 11 Almost

Speaker 123 a party atmosphere like nothing had happened.

Speaker 113 And then the prosecution called Holly's old friend, Rebecca Vega.

Speaker 44 If anybody had a ringside seat to Holly's life after Matt, it was Rebecca.

Speaker 128 How was it to actually be in that courtroom?

Speaker 71 See her there and answer those questions.

Speaker 15 Couldn't even look at her.

Speaker 54 Rebecca told the jury, Holly didn't wait long after Matt's death to remove any trace of him from their house.

Speaker 15 It seemed as if everything that

Speaker 22 being of Matt had been...

Speaker 27 taken out of the home.

Speaker 43 But it was what Holly hadn't cleaned up that make the biggest impression on Rebecca.

Speaker 41 Those bottles of chemicals on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 21 What was Holly's response when you asked her about those items?

Speaker 15 One of the items was brought up as Antifreeze for Matt's boat to winterize his boat.

Speaker 24 I'm sorry, to do what?

Speaker 15 To winterize his boat.

Speaker 109 But who winterizes their boat in the summer?

Speaker 45 Remember, Matt died in July, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 38 So Rebecca's story...

Speaker 48 was evidence that Holly had access to Antifreeze around the time of Matt's death.

Speaker 118 She was able to put antifreeze in the kitchen of Holly McFeecher after the death of Matthew Potola.

Speaker 40 Now they needed to convince the jury that Holly actually fed the antifreeze to Matt.

Speaker 61 That would take a little doing.

Speaker 54 First, several of Matt's co-workers testify that Holly sometimes dropped off Matt's lunch at the factory.

Speaker 135 Holly would bring it in every once in a while for him.

Speaker 24 How many occasions do you recall that happening?

Speaker 17 Half a dozen.

Speaker 88 And Hawley always made sure to include Matt's favorite drink.

Speaker 68 He said, half a gallon or more of raspberry iced tea.

Speaker 57 Antifreeze is sweet, but otherwise tasteless.

Speaker 80 Did Holly spike the tea?

Speaker 19 You can't smell it and you can't see it in the tea.

Speaker 118 He would have no way to know that it's coming.

Speaker 89 But why in heaven's name would she do such a thing?

Speaker 41 What was her motive?

Speaker 130 Well, as the prosecution saw it at least, all those arguments Matt and Hawley were having represented the death throes of their relationship, a relationship she wanted to leave and he did not, stubbornly.

Speaker 17 Because he didn't want to lose custody of those kids.

Speaker 92 So it's your claim that he was sticking like glue and to get rid of him she had to poison him.

Speaker 128 That is what she saw as the way out.

Speaker 10 A way out.

Speaker 28 Sweeten suggested the prosecution by the fact that Hawley was the beneficiary of Matt's life insurance policy at 401k.

Speaker 48 He was worth $15,000 to her if he died.

Speaker 86 That was clearly not a motive, really.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's chump change, basically, right?

Speaker 105 Well, $15,000 for some person might be worth $150,000 for another.

Speaker 107 Interesting theory.

Speaker 67 Trick was to persuade the jury that a hard-working, committed young mother, a woman who was always volunteering to help others, who coached t-ball teams, could, at the same time, be a devious, cold-blooded murderer.

Speaker 77 Yep, absolutely possible, said the prosecution's star witness, still to come.

Speaker 7 A man who knew all about violence and secrets and kissing and telling.

Speaker 69 Hawley melts down in court.

Speaker 40 What happened?

Speaker 63 Way up on the 22nd floor of the criminal courts building here in downtown Cleveland, Holly McFeecher sat through a hailstorm of allegations and attacks on her character and motivations.

Speaker 50 Practically a monster, if you believed some of the witnesses.

Speaker 44 And for the most part, she listened politely, turned occasionally to smile at her sister or share a word of encouragement.

Speaker 91 And then, then, the announcement was made.

Speaker 43 Your Honor, at this time we have a Jameson Kennedy.

Speaker 91 And with those words, Jameson Kennedy, Holly went into a kind of shock.

Speaker 61 And then, as quickly, even before Kennedy walked into the courtroom, came the tears, and something in her seemed to crumble.

Speaker 65 The tears became racking sobs, as if she, in full-blown terror or panic, simply could not go on.

Speaker 2 All this happened as the attorneys were at the bench conferring with Judge Brian Corrigan before Kennedy's testimony began.

Speaker 46 Holly left her seat, rushed to her sister Chrissy in the gallery, and broke down.

Speaker 43 And it all happened in front of the jury.

Speaker 14 Mark Podolijk was not moved.

Speaker 6 In fact, he was disgusted.

Speaker 18 Where was that emotion during the funeral? Where was that emotion when...

Speaker 18 Your lover was dying in the hospital.

Speaker 18 Yet a guy that you haven't seen in years steps into the courtroom, you have an emotional breakdown?

Speaker 18 That's courtroom drama in my opinion.

Speaker 6 Was she afraid of the man?

Speaker 43 Or was she afraid of what he had to say?

Speaker 85 The whole business was highly unusual.

Speaker 48 Holly, visibly shaking, was allowed to leave the courtroom while Kennedy testified.

Speaker 133 How do you know of Holly McFeature?

Speaker 16 I originally met her at a bar that she worked at, The Dirty Dog.

Speaker 50 Jameson Kennedy was that ex-con ex-con Hawley dated nearly two years after Matt's death.

Speaker 61 The snitch who had peddled his story from a jail cell.

Speaker 90 Was it wise to call him as a prosecution witness?

Speaker 91 The man had eight felony convictions under his belt.

Speaker 88 And at the time of the trial, he was serving 10 years for beating up cops.

Speaker 97 And yet there he was, central witness against Hawley.

Speaker 6 He's an alcoholic, he's a drug addict, and he wants something from you guys, so he'll say whatever he has to say, right?

Speaker 24 The thing about this witness, about Jameson Kennedy, is that he didn't want anything in exchange for what he was going to come into court and say.

Speaker 24 He knew that he was going to be in prison for quite a while and that nothing he could say in court would ever change that.

Speaker 47 And Kennedy's story, if the jury chose to believe it, was a potential game changer.

Speaker 46 It was September 26, 2008, two years after Matt died.

Speaker 7 Kennedy was on probation, he told the jury, when Hawley stopped by the law office where a kindly defense attorney had given him a job and a place to sleep.

Speaker 6 They shared a bottle of wine, ate some takeout.

Speaker 16 We both were kind of a little bit, you know, tipsy.

Speaker 16 After drinking, we ended up having sex.

Speaker 16 And after the sex is when things got really emotional. Like, she just started crying.

Speaker 136 What did she say?

Speaker 16 She made some remarks that she just wanted it to all go away. She wanted to move out of Cleveland.

Speaker 16 She was

Speaker 16 regretful for what had taken place.

Speaker 31 Regret?

Speaker 7 About what?

Speaker 38 Kennedy told the jury that he pushed Holly to tell him more.

Speaker 16 But she just told me at that time that she was sorry for what she had done. What had she done?

Speaker 16 On her words was that she had put something in his drink.

Speaker 128 What had she put inside of his drink?

Speaker 16 She didn't tell me.

Speaker 128 Did she say

Speaker 93 what happened

Speaker 130 after putting something inside the dream

Speaker 130 um

Speaker 16 that he had gotten sick and passed away it was quite simply stunning but

Speaker 68 big but was it true could the jury really take the word of this eight-times convicted felon yes said the prosecution because of this did you tell

Speaker 102 anyone about what Holly McFeecher told you about putting something in his dreams?

Speaker 97 Yes.

Speaker 93 Whom did you tell him?

Speaker 16 My attorney.

Speaker 56 Well, not exactly that, said the attorney in question, who testified that Kennedy asked him in a cryptic sort of way what he should do if he knew about a murder.

Speaker 54 Didn't name Holly or any particular murder.

Speaker 102 As an officer of the court, did you provide him with any advice?

Speaker 82 I told him that if he had any information of that nature, that he had to

Speaker 82 inform whomever

Speaker 105 about this

Speaker 75 supposed situation.

Speaker 48 But Kennedy didn't tell authorities anything then.

Speaker 62 Not until he was sitting in a jail cell under arrest for assaulting those cops.

Speaker 43 Did he hope police would go easy on him if he told them something they wanted to hear?

Speaker 44 Sergeant Quinn told the jury he believed Kennedy's story because Kennedy offered details only someone close to the crime would know.

Speaker 25 There was no mention in the media anywhere.

Speaker 114 Where did it come from?

Speaker 24 The fact that this is the one witness who we could bring forward for the jury to say that I heard Holly McFeecher confess to putting something in Matthew Podolak's drinks, it's so important that I think in our minds it couldn't not go to the jury.

Speaker 24 Thank you so much for your time and your consideration.

Speaker 10 And with that, the prosecution concluded its case of circumstantial evidence.

Speaker 64 But there was a giant void in the room, a big empty hole where the hard evidence usually goes.

Speaker 37 What would the defense make of that?

Speaker 7 The defense strikes back.

Speaker 137 You have no idea how that man died, do you?

Speaker 15 I didn't have to see physical proof.

Speaker 137 I asked the question. You have no idea whatsoever how that man died, do you?

Speaker 15 Not to my knowledge.

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Speaker 7 For almost a week, Holly McFeature's family sat in a courtroom listening to prosecutors accuse Holly of drip by drip, ounce by ounce, feeding her fiancé the poison and watching him die.

Speaker 91 Monstrous, evil,

Speaker 56 and, said her family, completely untrue.

Speaker 87 Just nasty gossip gussies up as evidence.

Speaker 27 It was just a bunch of people talking bad about my sister.

Speaker 81 Such a one-sided burner-at-the-stake type of scenario.

Speaker 46 Defense attorneys Brett Jordan and Billy Summers agreed.

Speaker 132 It was all speculation. It was all just finger-pointing without any basis.

Speaker 68 And now they knew they'd have to persuade the jury to buy something they personally believed in their gut, that Holly McFeature was wrongly accused.

Speaker 135 I don't think I have ever believed in the innocence of a client more than I believe in Holly McFeutscher.

Speaker 73 The defense began by putting some negative cards on the table.

Speaker 29 That is the fighting.

Speaker 44 Holly and Matt had been fighting a lot, but that was hardly a surprise, said the defense.

Speaker 46 Two babies, one of them colicky, and Matt was out fishing all the time.

Speaker 132 You can't say that just because somebody's arguing every day, that's a sign of hatred, and I'm going to kill that person.

Speaker 112 And that story that went around about Holly's behavior at Matt's funeral, uninformed judgments made from afar, said the defense, that somehow became this big myth that Holly didn't care.

Speaker 60 Oh, I can tell you right now she didn't care.

Speaker 7 You can.

Speaker 138 So you can crawl into her mind and you can tell everybody here what she was thinking.

Speaker 99 No, you can read it on her face.

Speaker 71 Read it on her face.

Speaker 132 You don't have to be crying your eyes out at a funeral to not be grieving.

Speaker 12 No, the defense argued all the testimony maligning Holly's behavior was really a product of the six plus years of rumor and innuendo, which had, courtesy of the authorities and Matt's family, hardened into what sounded like truth, even if it wasn't.

Speaker 132 If you listen to all the witnesses, anybody that was Holly's friend, they all turned away once they talked to the detective.

Speaker 28 That was certainly the case, said the defense, when Holly's friend Rebecca Vega cut off contact with Holly about a year after Matt died.

Speaker 91 Who's the accused murderer in this room?

Speaker 4 Holly is.

Speaker 60 Yeah, and you don't, you can't even look at her anymore.

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 46 Only then, after she heard from the police, said the defense, did she begin saying what she said at the trial.

Speaker 137 But you have no idea how that man died, do you?

Speaker 15 I didn't have to see physical proof.

Speaker 11 Wait, I asked you a question.

Speaker 137 You have no idea whatsoever how that man died, do you?

Speaker 15 Not to my knowledge, no.

Speaker 32 Did the memory of all those happy days Rebecca spent with Holly suddenly sprout with dark suspicion once the police whispered in Rebecca's ear?

Speaker 77 Like the bit about the Antifreeze in the kitchen.

Speaker 27 Holly has children, and she's very careful and I know she would not leave chemicals like that just lying around the house.

Speaker 43 No, the assault on Holly by her former friends, the defense ed was just a smokescreen for the hard evidence the prosecution did not have.

Speaker 20 Like anything connecting Holly to the murder weapon, by which, of course, we mean the antifreeze.

Speaker 46 Remember those two bottles of antifreeze investigators found in Holly and Matt's house after she moved out?

Speaker 114 This is a blue bottle of peak antifreeze and coolant, it says.

Speaker 7 The prosecution showed them off like the crown jewels, all the while knowing they had no known connection to anything or anyone.

Speaker 99 The defense was on that, like a terrier on a bone.

Speaker 44 No fingerprints on the bottles.

Speaker 62 No indication the antifreeze was even the same kind that killed Matt.

Speaker 104 No indication the bottles were in Holly's house when she actually lived there.

Speaker 136 Those two bottles of antifreeze are not linked to Matthew Podolak at all.

Speaker 25 No. And those two bottles of antifreeze are not linked to Holly at all, other than the fact that they came from that address.

Speaker 112 What was the point of that?

Speaker 132 That's why exactly there wasn't any.

Speaker 4 Were they implying a connection or

Speaker 78 grasping?

Speaker 28 Another glaring weakness, the defense said, was the prosecution's theory that Holly disguised the antifreeze in Matt's beloved raspberry iced tea.

Speaker 33 Zero forensic support for that, said the defense.

Speaker 71 Do you know how that iced tea got into that thermos?

Speaker 135 I have no clue.

Speaker 132 None of the cups at the homes were ever tested. The thermos that he allegedly brought to work every day was never tested.
There was nothing ever connecting that it was even iced tea.

Speaker 84 And the motive the prosecution suggested, the modest life insurance money, laughable, said the defense.

Speaker 50 Wouldn't even buy a decent car.

Speaker 2 Besides, Hawley said she had no idea the insurance existed.

Speaker 14 Matt's uncle, who owned the factory where Matt worked, couldn't say otherwise.

Speaker 106 Question is, do you have any personal knowledge of how he actually knew there was a life insurance rider on his health insurance?

Speaker 97 I can't say that I do.

Speaker 75 But Hawley's defenders did have a problem.

Speaker 7 No getting around it.

Speaker 8 Huge problem.

Speaker 113 That pillow talk with Jameson Kennedy.

Speaker 31 When, according to him, Hawley actually confessed.

Speaker 7 If they couldn't knock him down, they were done.

Speaker 77 Was the prosecution's bombshell witness a dud?

Speaker 139 Are you trying to accuse me of doing something to him?

Speaker 101 I'm not trying to accuse you of anything.

Speaker 139 Well, you're spilling words in my mouth right now,

Speaker 139 because I never said any such words to you.

Speaker 28 What in heaven's name would Holly McFeatures' defense attorneys do about this?

Speaker 16 Her words were that she had put something in his drink.

Speaker 48 There was no avoiding the impact of those few words from Jameson Kennedy.

Speaker 83 Remember, just the mention of his name sent Holly into an epic breakdown, weeping, sobbing, fleeing the courtroom.

Speaker 97 Next day, it was the defense attorney's turn to take him on.

Speaker 76 Holly had regained her composure.

Speaker 52 She came back into court. The strategy was to pick apart Kennedy's story, expose him for what the defense said he most certainly was, a liar.

Speaker 80 Liked a bit about being tipsy.

Speaker 2 Holly, Kennedy said, had a glass of wine or two that night.

Speaker 52 Well, he knocked off an entire bottle himself.

Speaker 138 You still are telling the jury here that Holly was tipsy or drunk that night, right?

Speaker 16 Yes, sir.

Speaker 138 When in fact, it was you that was drunk that night, not Holly.

Speaker 66 I think we were both, you know, feeling a buzz.

Speaker 46 Now, this is the sort of moment a defense attorney probably lives for.

Speaker 41 Listen.

Speaker 132 Were you aware that Holly's allergic to grapes and she can't drink wine?

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 67 Was this a man who could be believed when he said he had a real relationship with Holly?

Speaker 27 She had told me that he was stalking her. He had got her name tattooed on him.
He would not leave her alone. How'd she feel about this? Oh, she was afraid.

Speaker 14 And Kennedy admitted under defense questioning that he got very angry with Holly when he heard a rumor that she was with another guy.

Speaker 34 Yes.

Speaker 138 So angry that you grabbed her by the neck, you threw her against the wall, you punched her numerous times, that type of angry, right?

Speaker 16 No, sir.

Speaker 11 No, that didn't happen.

Speaker 16 I do believe I pushed her.

Speaker 16 Only when she approached me to try to hit me, I think, with the phone or to smack me or something, I just kind of stiffed armed her away. I think she fell down.
That was the extent of it.

Speaker 7 Really?

Speaker 44 Holly called the cops that night and said Kennedy punched her five times.

Speaker 43 He'd already fled, but she said she was going to get a restraining order against him.

Speaker 67 But before she could, he was at her door again.

Speaker 44 And when Holly called the police this time, Kennedy tried to escape and fought with two of them before he was finally arrested.

Speaker 76 And it was only then, after she turned him in and he was in jail facing years in prison, burning up with anger toward Holly, that he called his attorney, Charlie Feliciano, to try to make a deal.

Speaker 107 You say, Charlie, get me the police.

Speaker 138 I got to help myself get out of this jam.

Speaker 87 I'm going to tell on Holly, right?

Speaker 16 Also, he was concerned that she would try to put this on me.

Speaker 11 Oh.

Speaker 132 So now we got a conspiracy theory going that Howie's now going to blame you for the death of Matt.

Speaker 78 Is that what you're telling me?

Speaker 102 It's just an attorney's recommendation.

Speaker 43 This attorney, who'd bent over backwards to provide Jameson with a job and a place to stay while he was on probation from an earlier conviction.

Speaker 35 And what happened?

Speaker 37 Kennedy stole from him.

Speaker 96 What? And

Speaker 111 Jameson threatened your life?

Speaker 98 He threatened me, yes.

Speaker 132 He threatened your family also.

Speaker 75 Yes.

Speaker 132 He had mental problems and was not stable, right?

Speaker 120 Correct.

Speaker 68 According to the defense, not even the police believed Kennedy.

Speaker 80 For more than two years, they did nothing about his allegation.

Speaker 53 And after those years, when according to the defense, they couldn't find any other evidence, they put his story to the test by orchestrating that phone call from Kennedy in prison to Holly, trying to get her to incriminate herself.

Speaker 90 Curiously, the prosecution didn't mention that call in court.

Speaker 4 So the defense was was only too happy to push play for the jury.

Speaker 89 This was something they had to hear.

Speaker 40 Holly. Yeah.

Speaker 101 How do you know this is?

Speaker 101 Yeah, hi, Jamison.

Speaker 65 Holly was taken by surprise, hadn't heard from him for years.

Speaker 79 Police, of course, were listening.

Speaker 44 Do you remember what you told me about the drinks?

Speaker 26 What drinks?

Speaker 44 The drinks with Matthew.

Speaker 139 What did I tell you about that?

Speaker 87 Didn't work out so well for the police or for Mr. Kennedy.

Speaker 139 Are you trying to accuse me of doing something to him? Is that what you're trying to do to me?

Speaker 101 I'm not trying to accuse you of anything.

Speaker 139 Well, you're putting words in my mouth like that,

Speaker 139 because I never said any such words to you

Speaker 139 about ever putting anything in his drink. I would never have done that.
Never. I'm not that type of person.
He was the father of my children.

Speaker 26 We were supposed to get married. My whole world was destroyed when he passed away.
Are you serious? This is a very sick thing for you to say to me right now.

Speaker 46 No, said the defense, Holly didn't confess.

Speaker 68 Not then, not ever.

Speaker 28 And Kennedy was a sick puppy who saw an opportunity to combine revenge with a little self-help.

Speaker 138 You are now trying to tell everybody that Hawley confessed to you

Speaker 138 about this case because it would benefit you, correct?

Speaker 16 I don't think I know it's morally right, sir.

Speaker 137 You know it's morally right.

Speaker 138 If you knew it was morally right, sir, you would have gone to the police on September 26th. Isn't that correct, sir?

Speaker 80 I should have.

Speaker 74 Big morals, right?

Speaker 16 I should have, but I was very much.

Speaker 106 I have no further questions.

Speaker 91 Kennedy was eventually released early from serving his full 10-year prison sentence, but after his release,

Speaker 7 he died of a heart attack.

Speaker 33 One more question to answer.

Speaker 44 If it wasn't Holly, who was it?

Speaker 68 For that, the defense offered Dr.

Speaker 103 Robert Bucks, forensic pathologist.

Speaker 65 Matt wasn't poisoned slowly over time, said Dr.

Speaker 11 Bucks.

Speaker 6 The coroner simply made a mistake.

Speaker 68 All that pain Matt suffered in the weeks before his death?

Speaker 6 That was from simple kidney stones, said Dr.

Speaker 33 Bucks. Nothing at all to do with antifreeze.

Speaker 136 Is flank pain a symptom of ethylene glycol poisoning?

Speaker 134 Shouldn't be, no.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 46 this wasn't a case of chronic antifreeze poisoning.

Speaker 43 This was a textbook case of acute poisoning.

Speaker 62 One large dose, said Dr.

Speaker 67 Bucks.

Speaker 134 This is a massive and cute ingestion. These types of ingestions is going to have to drink almost a pint of it.

Speaker 46 And the most likely person to have poisoned him with a drink of that size was Matt himself.

Speaker 114 As to the manner of death,

Speaker 106 what would your ruling be?

Speaker 134 Probably be a suicide.

Speaker 37 Suicide by antifreeze.

Speaker 62 A method more common than most people realize, said the defense.

Speaker 89 Who kills himself with ethylene glycol?

Speaker 109 With antifreeze, stuff would be horrible.

Speaker 105 What a terrible death.

Speaker 113 Not true.

Speaker 132 It happens all the time.

Speaker 68 And there have been some famous cases.

Speaker 52 A retired pro football player, a writer for Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 31 But why mad?

Speaker 18 He had gambling debts.

Speaker 132 He was depressed. He wasn't happy at work.
Throw in

Speaker 132 experience of pain from kidney stones, throw in maybe they weren't having the best relationship at that time. That all adds up to suicide.

Speaker 43 And at that, the defense asked the judge to throw out the charges against Holly.

Speaker 132 Your Honor, there has to be evidence.

Speaker 136 There has to be proof. There has to be something that the state did to show that Holly

Speaker 97 was the one who did it.

Speaker 136 And it just doesn't exist.

Speaker 94 For For a moment, it seemed the judge might grant the motion.

Speaker 62 But no, he ruled.

Speaker 47 Hawley McFeecher's fate would be decided by the jury.

Speaker 31 As it turned out, very slowly.

Speaker 37 Ethylene glycol.

Speaker 87 Odorless, colorless, sweet-tasting.

Speaker 20 But did Hawley use it to kill Matt?

Speaker 11 You don't know.

Speaker 18 Is the jury being out long a bad thing or a good thing?

Speaker 100 It was seven years almost to the day since Matt Podolak took his last painful breaths.

Speaker 51 The prosecutor appealed to the jury.

Speaker 86 Convict Holly McFeecher.

Speaker 104 He fell in love with the wrong woman.

Speaker 63 She was toxic to him.

Speaker 6 This was the closing message, a stark visual. Look how easy, said the prosecutor, for Holly to mix antifreeze into Matt's beloved iced tea.

Speaker 79 Look how hard for Matt to detect the poison.

Speaker 37 Ethylene glycol.

Speaker 87 Odorless, colorless, sweet-tasting.

Speaker 87 The defense appealed to the heart.

Speaker 6 There were two tragedies in this story, they said.

Speaker 68 Matt's death and Holly's suffering.

Speaker 76 Nothing could be done about the first, said the defense.

Speaker 45 But the jury could rectify the second.

Speaker 78 You got to end the nightmare and you got to put put to rest this family's tragedy.

Speaker 85 This could be a close call.

Speaker 51 The jury went out.

Speaker 67 No verdict at the end of that first day or the next.

Speaker 14 Matt's brother Mark didn't know what to think.

Speaker 18 You don't know, is the jury being out long a bad thing or a good thing?

Speaker 46 Holly's sister Chrissy was nervous, tried to stay confident.

Speaker 27 I mean they had hearsay from a man that was in prison and some iced tea on a table.

Speaker 42 Finally, toward the end of day three, cell phones started buzzing.

Speaker 11 Verdict.

Speaker 6 Holly, looking like she'd seen a ghost, headed toward the courtroom, surrounded by her family.

Speaker 131 Please, guys!

Speaker 7 As the jury filed in, Holly began mouthing the Lord's Prayer.

Speaker 15 I understand you've reached a verdict in this case, is that correct?

Speaker 62 And then the judge began to read.

Speaker 106 We, the jury in this case, being duly impaneled and sworn, do find the defendant Holly McFeecher guilty of aggravated murder, violation of section 290301.

Speaker 11 I heard those words.

Speaker 45 Guilty.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 it was emotional.

Speaker 64 Please.

Speaker 11 Sir.

Speaker 65 Mark turned to hug his mother, her face awash in tears.

Speaker 107 Across the courtroom.

Speaker 27 Nobody could react because it was... total shock.

Speaker 27 Nobody was expecting that.

Speaker 50 Please.

Speaker 12 The guards came then, wrapped handcuffs around Holly's wrists.

Speaker 50 She shook her head.

Speaker 14 No, seemed to be reeling.

Speaker 78 Her words less than a whisper.

Speaker 27 She looked at me and

Speaker 27 she was gone.

Speaker 107 What did that do to you?

Speaker 108 It tore me apart.

Speaker 27 I really couldn't understand how this happened. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Speaker 6 The defense team felt felt gutted.

Speaker 43 The prosecution's case had been so flimsy, they felt.

Speaker 35 How had it all gone so wrong?

Speaker 73 Still wondering what happened.

Speaker 46 This was not an easy one for the prosecutors either.

Speaker 11 The sort of case you might reasonably have walked away from if you didn't let yourself get caught up.

Speaker 29 Didn't start to care a lot. What was it like to get your guilty verdict?

Speaker 18 It affirms the work that we do.

Speaker 86 It was a good one.

Speaker 105 A very good one.

Speaker 128 What made it so good?

Speaker 118 You meet with a family at the beginning,

Speaker 14 and you're on this journey all the way through

Speaker 118 and to be able to deliver something to them that they believed from the beginning made it very satisfying.

Speaker 113 A month later at the sentencing, Holly's sister wanted the judge to know what the children thought, that their mother was not a murderer, and that they were begging him.

Speaker 56 send her home to them.

Speaker 27 My mom is the greatest mom in the world world because she is sweet and kind.

Speaker 19 I really want to see her again.

Speaker 27 I really miss her.

Speaker 27 I wish I could have my mom back.

Speaker 44 Then, a surprise.

Speaker 113 Matt's father, the retired cop, had become an ordained minister since his son's death, and he told the judge he had made a decision.

Speaker 60 I have come to the point where I can forgive Holly, and I have forgiven her. And I'm asking you, Your Honor, to temper justice with mercy.

Speaker 11 But Mark, seven years of suspicion, frustration, anger finally came bursting out and filled the courtroom.

Speaker 18 I just have one simple question.

Speaker 11 Why?

Speaker 18 Why put someone in unimaginable pain when he could have just walked away from the relationship? Why continue to slowly poison him when he could have stopped?

Speaker 18 And why take him away from those children that he so dearly loved?

Speaker 46 The sentence was swift and stern.

Speaker 106 The nature of the crime and the case cannot be overlooked in this matter.

Speaker 64 And the court's going to impose a sentence of life with parole eligibility after 30 full years.

Speaker 72 Holly McFeecher will be eligible for parole after 30 years.

Speaker 43 In March of 2020, she went before the Ohio Court of Appeals, alleging evidence about the jailhouse snitch was withheld by prosecutors and should have been turned over for her trial.

Speaker 39 But she lost this latest appeal.

Speaker 50 Her children are living with one of Holly's sisters now, and Matt's parents get to visit them every few weeks.

Speaker 58 We want them in our lives. We want them to know

Speaker 58 who their dad was.

Speaker 67 The night before Holly was shipped out to state prison to start serving her life sentence, Chrissy took the children to visit with her.

Speaker 69 They couldn't touch.

Speaker 57 A glass barrier separated them.

Speaker 70 They spoke over a jailhouse phone.

Speaker 27 That just breaks my heart.

Speaker 17 It's hard to watch, huh?

Speaker 27 Very hard to watch. I had to turn away numerous times because, like I said, it was just heartbreaking knowing that they couldn't just touch.
She couldn't touch her babies that she loved so much.

Speaker 46 And Mark Podolak went where he always goes on the anniversary of Matt's death to talk to his brother at the cemetery.

Speaker 52 This year, there's a lot more to say.

Speaker 18 I hope that you're proud of your big brother a little bit because I kind of hopefully help you rest in peace a little bit more than you have been.

Speaker 48 And this year there will still be a Podo Lac playing amateur hockey here in Cleveland.

Speaker 76 Matt loved the game.

Speaker 48 Mark took it up in his memory.

Speaker 91 And since Matt can't be here to play, said Mark, he'll play for you.

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