Far from Spider Lake

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Speaker 11 Tonight, on dateline.

Speaker 12 911 emergency.

Speaker 12 Curly, good shot, my wife.

Speaker 13 Nothing had been missing from the house. This was clearly a premeditated murder.

Speaker 14 Why would anybody want to shoot Jan?

Speaker 15 Makes no sense to me.

Speaker 16 He was there in the room with Jan when this happened.

Speaker 18 God did not do this.

Speaker 13 The word divorce being thrown around.

Speaker 18 This evidence tells a story.

Speaker 11 It doesn't support what you're telling us.

Speaker 19 From the beginning, they had one suspect. It was Chris.
There's another person here that could have done this, and it's Jeremy.

Speaker 20 I got questions for you about a gal that you might be seeing.

Speaker 21 Bailey? Yeah.

Speaker 22 My mom and dad didn't want me to date him because he was that much older.

Speaker 23 That would be a motive for murder.

Speaker 16 He was a concern.

Speaker 24 You see it on TV happening to other people. Didn't ever think that this would be something that we would go through.

Speaker 11 Two shots in the dark, then a thousand and one questions in the light of day.

Speaker 24 I guess you just don't think bad things will happen in a small town to good people.

Speaker 27 And it did.

Speaker 11 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 28 Here's Keith Morrison with Far from Spider Lake.

Speaker 29 It was,

Speaker 8 this was, where happiness lived. Happiness and memories and desire.

Speaker 4 The wishes of dreams just out of reach.

Speaker 31 Its name is Spider Lake, one of those thousands of lakes that filled up the rocky gouges the glaciers left behind.

Speaker 5 Maybe that's why they sparkle the way they do.

Speaker 33 Why this one in Minnesota spread out every which way.

Speaker 34 And here, near the tip of its northern arm, is the Spider Lake Resort.

Speaker 35 Family cabins by the day or week.

Speaker 36 Calls itself one of northern Minnesota's best-kept secrets.

Speaker 17 Secrets.

Speaker 33 A word that will certainly apply to what you're about to hear, one way or the other.

Speaker 38 I went with them a couple times up there.

Speaker 39 Them being Chris and Jan Cruz.

Speaker 40 This is Jan's sister, Kay.

Speaker 24 They would like to go fishing, just stay at a cabin, just relax. It was just quality time together.
And they did. They both enjoyed being there.

Speaker 17 in fact they had a fantasy that chris and jan a dream to live here all the time to buy this resort and make it uniquely their own that was brought up a lot yeah

Speaker 43 jan's dad terry could see how they loved being here About every evening, Jan and Chris would take the boat and Jan liked to take pictures of the loon and the wildlife along the lake and the sunsets off of the lake.

Speaker 45 That was the kind of life they would have liked.

Speaker 29 And if they owned it, said Jan's mom, Mary Jean, frugal Jan could use her accounting skills to keep the place in business.

Speaker 31 And Chris?

Speaker 45 Chris is very much an outdoors person. Jan is the people person with the people coming in and out all through the week and keeping them all content, happy, busy, all of those things.

Speaker 41 Chris's brother, Josh.

Speaker 47 It would have worked out good for Chris and Jan because Chris is a really good handyman, construction guy. He could have taken care of the resort.
And Jan's pretty business smart.

Speaker 25 It would have fit him.

Speaker 17 Would have.

Speaker 17 Until

Speaker 36 the events of the summer of 2015.

Speaker 31 By the time all this happened, Chris and Jan Cruz had been married for two decades, had lived here in a tiny place called Brewster, Population 473, in the rural southwest corner of Minnesota.

Speaker 1 A good, apparently happy marriage, a happy life.

Speaker 49 What they had was what I hoped to have someday.

Speaker 13 I loved our family.

Speaker 39 Isaac, their eldest, was 20 then.

Speaker 4 His sister Bailey was 15 that summer.

Speaker 9 That was the year, spring of 2015, when Isaac's parents discovered that Spider Lake Resort was for sale.

Speaker 51 And a buzz of excitement filled the house. Did you ever fantasize about the family owning that place?

Speaker 49 Absolutely.

Speaker 49 When I found out that they were talking about buying it, I was starting to look for my line of the work up in that area, and I thought it'd be really fun to help own and help work out on the resort.

Speaker 55 That's the sort of place that becomes multi-generational, too.

Speaker 51 I mean, you can look forward to an association with it for your whole life.

Speaker 42 Yep.

Speaker 36 So, come August, Chris and Jan drove the six hours from Brewster to Spider Lake to engage in some serious negotiating.

Speaker 17 And there were obstacles, of course there were, as Jan told her sister Kay.

Speaker 24 It was just a timing with Bailey having a couple years left in school. So it wasn't that she, yes, she did want to buy it.
There was just a lot that went into that whole decision.

Speaker 50 Mostly, of course, the money.

Speaker 57 Jan, the bookkeeper, ran the numbers.

Speaker 9 They offered as much as their bank would allow.

Speaker 31 But it wasn't enough.

Speaker 29 Was it Jan who faced it first?

Speaker 58 that they'd have to move on.

Speaker 2 Chris would never own the resort he'd set his heart on.

Speaker 1 What they said to each other on the long drive home is not recorded, nor is what happened two nights later, middle of the night, in Jan and Chris Cruz's bedroom.

Speaker 26 My mom told me Jan had been shot.

Speaker 15 And I said, okay,

Speaker 26 I'll be there. Am I going to the hospital?

Speaker 56 My mom was quiet.

Speaker 24 I said, she's going to be okay, right?

Speaker 60 She's going to be okay.

Speaker 15 Mom said, no.

Speaker 15 She was dead.

Speaker 26 And I think I

Speaker 15 just kind of collapsed on the floor and screamed. And

Speaker 14 why would anybody want to shoot Jan?

Speaker 29 It mustn't make any sense to you.

Speaker 15 It doesn't.

Speaker 15 It makes no sense to me.

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 6 I know what you might be thinking, but maybe it wasn't that at all.

Speaker 61 Coming up.

Speaker 16 There was a hole through the wall of the bedroom, and so it appeared one round had been fired and missed.

Speaker 63 And was this a sign of a possible intruder?

Speaker 16 I've noticed a broken window in a bedroom downstairs.

Speaker 36 What happened to Jan Cruz in the early morning hours of August 19, 2015 was dreadfully obvious at first look.

Speaker 31 As Chris Cruz told the 911 operator.

Speaker 59 911 emergency.

Speaker 12 Come in and shot my wife.

Speaker 34 Jan had taken the fatal shotgun blast to the chest, while in bed beside her own husband, Chris.

Speaker 22 Someone shot your wife?

Speaker 12 Who shot her?

Speaker 12 I don't know. We were sleeping.
I heard a bang, got up, he was shot.

Speaker 12 The back door is wide open.

Speaker 9 As Chris called 911, he checked on 15-year-old Bailey in a downstairs bedroom.

Speaker 17 She had heard the gun, of course, but she was unhurt.

Speaker 3 Then the rush of first responders and police and terrible emotions.

Speaker 17 Chris and Bailey huddled in the garage while deputies secured the scene.

Speaker 39 And then as dawn was approaching, Chris himself spread the news to the family.

Speaker 29 He called his son, Isaac, off in South Dakota.

Speaker 49 He said that mom had been shot, and he didn't really know how to tell me that. And I just said, okay, I'm packing my stuff.

Speaker 17 I'm on my way.

Speaker 51 Did you know that

Speaker 51 she was dead?

Speaker 49 Assumed, I guess. I assumed it wasn't good from the sound of his voice.

Speaker 8 He called his in-laws, Terry and Mary Jean Pigman.

Speaker 45 Chris called us early morning and was extremely broken up. I couldn't understand what he was saying.
I could tell he was in tears, which wasn't a usual thing for Chris.

Speaker 45 Pretty stoic. And

Speaker 45 he's telling me she didn't make it. We lost her.

Speaker 45 I didn't protect her.

Speaker 52 But of all the people in the world, and especially this tiny world, Brewster, Minnesota, population 473,

Speaker 40 why would Jan need protecting?

Speaker 39 Why would someone shoot her,

Speaker 37 the least likely murder victim?

Speaker 24 She was just a very

Speaker 24 true and very genuine person. She just enjoyed spending time with her family and her kids and her husband.
And when she interacted with people, it was real. Like she cared.

Speaker 24 And you wanted to spend time with her.

Speaker 32 Isaac, a young man of few words, said a lot with a little.

Speaker 49 She was pretty amazing. I was probably a pain in the the ass growing up, but she was always really nice about it and understanding.

Speaker 45 Jan's always been outgoing, friendly. She was the one that brought soup to somebody that was sick.

Speaker 9 Jan had run a daycare in their home years earlier, but time of the murder had a front office job in a local plant.

Speaker 9 And here's the thing: said Jan's younger sister, Vonnie.

Speaker 50 She was just a regular person.

Speaker 5 Uncontroversial.

Speaker 34 Nobody didn't like her.

Speaker 60 She's great.

Speaker 38 Just a good person. Loved to quilt with her neighbors.

Speaker 38 Loved her family. That was definitely very important to her.

Speaker 32 She'd never see her children get married or welcome grandchildren into the world or be with Chris at Spider Lake.

Speaker 34 And so to say her family was in a state of shock would be to profoundly understate the feelings of that awful morning.

Speaker 5 Unaware of the activities of this man.

Speaker 16 I believe I received a call at about 3 a.m.

Speaker 1 Derek Woodford is a senior special agent with the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA, in southern Minnesota.

Speaker 16 I know most of the local investigators when they have a violent crime or homicide or death investigation and need assistance, they call me.

Speaker 5 So he got dressed and drove to Brewster.

Speaker 34 And before dawn, Agent Woodford was staring intently at the carnage in Kristen Jan's bedroom.

Speaker 16 What I found was the victim on a backboard. She was deceased.

Speaker 68 What was the nature of her injury?

Speaker 16 It was a shotgun slug

Speaker 16 that had entered kind of the lower right shoulder and exited out her back.

Speaker 9 Was it your sense that she would have died very quickly?

Speaker 16 We want to know, obviously,

Speaker 16 was it right away or could it have been minutes? And I spoke to the medical examiner and he had thought that she could have stayed alive for three to five minutes after the injury.

Speaker 34 It was as he approached that bedroom when Woodford found two spent shotgun shells.

Speaker 16 Right outside the door. Obviously, those I don't pick up at that point.
They'll stay for crime scene team to process. But I noticed they looked to be 12-gauge shot shells that were spent.

Speaker 64 Two of them.

Speaker 27 Two of them.

Speaker 36 So, two shots.

Speaker 29 Two loud shots. One obviously hit Jan, but the other one?

Speaker 16 There was a hole through the wall of the bedroom, and so it appeared one round had been fired and missed.

Speaker 16 It went through the headboard along the wall where their heads would have been laying, and then it went out the wall of the house outside.

Speaker 2 Well, that was strange, given where the bullet holes were.

Speaker 57 Looked like the person sleeping on the side of the bed closer to the door would probably have been hit.

Speaker 51 Would it be possible for him to have been lying in the bed beside Jan and not be hit by whatever this bullet was that went flying past?

Speaker 27 I

Speaker 16 thought that bullet could hit him prior to going through the headboard.

Speaker 31 Preliminary, of course, but you thought about it as you looked around the house.

Speaker 46 Nothing obviously missing.

Speaker 2 This did not appear to be a robbery.

Speaker 5 But had somebody broken in?

Speaker 16 I've noticed a broken window in a bedroom downstairs.

Speaker 64 Could somebody have gotten through the window that way?

Speaker 16 Someone could have got through the window. It was broken and opened, but it had rained pretty heavy off and on, and so the ground was wet.

Speaker 16 There was a little bit of dirt or a leaf that had blown in, but there were no muddy footprints below that window.

Speaker 34 So probably no entry through the window.

Speaker 2 But somebody was in here.

Speaker 8 Not to rob, not to rape, but to kill Jan Cruz in cold blood.

Speaker 7 Why would anyone want to do that?

Speaker 28 Derek Woodford got in his car, drove to the local sheriff's office.

Speaker 29 Someone he needed to talk to right away.

Speaker 34 No idea, then, how often they'd be talking or how confounding their conversations might be.

Speaker 61 Coming up.

Speaker 18 What the hell is the matter with people?

Speaker 18 What have you just done in the

Speaker 18 doorway in my bedroom and shot my wife?

Speaker 63 An enraged husband with his family apparently under attack.

Speaker 16 Their garage had burned down, and he had said that he was concerned could have been part of now Jan being shot.

Speaker 67 When dateline continues.

Speaker 18 This is Senior Special Agent Derek Woodford with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Speaker 2 The man sitting with Agent Derek Woodford in the County Sheriff's Office was Chris Cruz.

Speaker 23 And this is how they began, these perplexing interviews.

Speaker 29 The investigators' repeated efforts to match what they had seen to what they were hearing in here.

Speaker 40 Our task, too, in a way, as we watch and listen to Chris's many interviews and those of the others, to try to piece together what happened to Chris's wife, Jan.

Speaker 6 Who made it happen, and why?

Speaker 18 Chris, first off, you understand that you're here voluntarily.

Speaker 18 We just want to find out what happened.

Speaker 30 What happened, said Chris, was confusing.

Speaker 34 He was in bed, asleep, curled up in the way he always slept with Jan.

Speaker 18 If you're standing looking at the bed, I sleep on the left, she sleeps on the right.

Speaker 16 He described it as kind of like spooning, like where she's laying on her side and he's laying on his side, kind of next to her. I guess the front of his body would be alongside the back of her body.

Speaker 18 What do you remember happening

Speaker 18 in the evening then when you're in bed?

Speaker 18 Just the bang.

Speaker 18 What the hell was that? You know, and

Speaker 18 get up and Jan started sitting up and she said, oh my God. And

Speaker 18 by the time I got the light on and see what happened, it's picked out of a bitch. You know, laid her back down into bed.

Speaker 17 The bang?

Speaker 1 But as Woodford knew, there were two loud bangs, two shotgun blasts.

Speaker 18 You said you heard a bang. Did you hear just one bang? It was one bang, and it was like, what the hell? Yo, and you sit up and I could smell something.
I thought,

Speaker 18 are we on fire again?

Speaker 6 And again, on fire?

Speaker 17 What fire?

Speaker 40 That was two months earlier, said Chris, in June, just before he and Jan and the family were due to their part for their annual trip to Spider Lake.

Speaker 16 Their garage had burned down.

Speaker 16 And he had said that he was concerned, was it the same or could have been part of Jan being shot?

Speaker 9 At the time, said Chris, the insurance inspector said it looked like the fire may have been deliberately set.

Speaker 31 But by whom, nobody could say.

Speaker 18 His last comment to us was, lock your door, lock your garage doors.

Speaker 9 Interesting.

Speaker 30 But it was something else about the fire story that occurred right away to Agent Woodford.

Speaker 16 It was concerning to me because a fire in a garage smells a lot different than a spent shotgun shell in a house.

Speaker 35 He would know that, would he?

Speaker 16 He does a lot of trap shooting and hunting, and so he would know the difference between a shotgun and smoke from a house or a garage fire.

Speaker 34 Woodford made note of that and went on with his questions.

Speaker 1 What happened after Chris heard what he said was a single loud bang and saw that his wife had been shot?

Speaker 18 She's talking to him. She just said, well, Jeeves is not very much.
No.

Speaker 18 She's like, oh my God, why the thing holding s ⁇ .

Speaker 18 And I tried to lay her back down in the bed and just

Speaker 18 relax.

Speaker 18 I got my phone to call. And

Speaker 18 I came back. It was

Speaker 18 relief.

Speaker 18 Chris, it's

Speaker 18 and this is obviously going to be hard for you to discuss. And we're trying to get his...

Speaker 18 We're trying to get a 12-gauge shotgun

Speaker 18 laying in the bedroom of my door in my my bedroom like what the hell is the matter with people

Speaker 18 why he stood in the doorway of my bedroom and shot my wife

Speaker 18 what

Speaker 18 the matter i don't understand it

Speaker 17 Everyone reacts to disaster, grief, stress, in different ways.

Speaker 66 But though Chris was clearly distraught, Woodford was listening very carefully to the words he was using.

Speaker 3 Descriptions of the incident that Woodford already knew were not accurate.

Speaker 18 You heard one bang,

Speaker 18 and then do you see anything or anybody? Nothing. You don't see anybody? Oh, okay.

Speaker 18 And then

Speaker 18 you...

Speaker 18 Is she, you said, does she sit up for a minute?

Speaker 18 Yeah, actually, we both got up.

Speaker 18 What the hell was that? And what did she say? She just said, oh, my god.

Speaker 9 Chris seemed to be saying that Jen was shot as she was lying down in bed, and then she sat up.

Speaker 18 And then what? It was nothing. It was

Speaker 18 gurgling. And by the time I got the bedroom light on, it looked and was like,

Speaker 18 you know.

Speaker 18 Did you see

Speaker 18 what had happened to her?

Speaker 18 This whole chest was full of blood.

Speaker 18 I laid her back down on the bed and

Speaker 18 go and get my phone and

Speaker 18 I come back.

Speaker 18 Check down Bailey.

Speaker 34 But if he did lay her down, thought Wilford, surely his hands would have been covered in blood.

Speaker 40 And they weren't.

Speaker 18 Did you try to

Speaker 18 help her, revive her?

Speaker 18 Not really.

Speaker 18 I knew it wasn't good. Well, then I was worried for Bailey, but someone just shot my wife, man.

Speaker 18 But you didn't see anybody, hear anything,

Speaker 18 nothing.

Speaker 18 You know, I ran downstairs, our back door was wide open.

Speaker 51 Did he have any idea who that might have been?

Speaker 16 No, not at that time, because he didn't see anybody, didn't hear anything but that one shot,

Speaker 16 and then just noticed the back door being wide open.

Speaker 30 But the idea that a stranger had walked in, killed Jan, and just walked out again didn't make sense.

Speaker 34 In fact, that morning after, nothing about the murder of a loved local in a tiny hamlet in the middle of America made any sense at all.

Speaker 67 Coming up, teenage tensions and maybe troubles.

Speaker 18 How old is Jeremy? GG

Speaker 18 19. 19? Yep.
Does Jeremy get along with your mom and dad? They don't know that he comes over, actually. My mom and dad didn't want me to date him because he was that much older.

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Speaker 9 We cannot begin to imagine, nor possibly describe, the shock and grief that descended that first morning on Jan's parents, Mary Jean and Terry Pigman, to pick up the phone and hear from their son-in-law that their daughter was dead.

Speaker 29 And he, Chris, had been taken to the sheriff's office for questioning.

Speaker 45 We threw on some clothes and went out there.

Speaker 43 When we first walked in, the first thing they were concerned about was how we found out that he was there. The next thing out of their mouth was, well, you know, 85% of the time the spouse done it.

Speaker 43 And at that point, I felt, okay, I know where you guys are going with this. And

Speaker 43 I felt like telling them you're full of it.

Speaker 45 I mean, we've never felt he was the one that did it.

Speaker 51 No, they didn't.

Speaker 34 And so right after that first interview with Agent Woodford, Jan's parents invited Chris and Bailey to move in with them.

Speaker 41 That's where Chris's brother, Keith, found them later that first day.

Speaker 54 You know, we've never really been an emotional family, and we don't wear our emotions on our sleeves, I guess. But I remember looking at Chris, and I had never seen Chris as devastated as he was.

Speaker 54 I mean, he was in complete and utter shock.

Speaker 51 How did he look that was different?

Speaker 54 Well, his eyes were welled up. He was kind of...

Speaker 54 biting on his bottom lip a little bit and just kind of shaking his head back and forth. I'd never seen him so devastated, ever.

Speaker 4 Bailey was there too, of course.

Speaker 1 Also a mess.

Speaker 2 Earlier at the sheriff's office, she'd had her turn to tell the investigators what she saw and heard early that morning.

Speaker 9 It wasn't quite the same story as the one her father told.

Speaker 4 While both Chris and Bailey have hearing deficits, Bailey said she heard loud and clear, not one, but two shots.

Speaker 18 I heard like two big bangs, so I didn't really know if I should get out of bed or just stay in bed.

Speaker 18 So I kind of stayed in bed and I texted my mom like question marks because I didn't really know what I was supposed to do. And I could hear...

Speaker 18 Yeah. And then I texted my dad.
And then I saw him come downstairs. It was like 2.30 when I heard that.
And I could hear my dad like upstairs yelling. And I heard my mom like groan or something.

Speaker 18 I don't know. So I didn't really know what was going on.
So I just stayed in bed. What was your dad yelling? What's the hill? And then he slummed out of his room.
Because our

Speaker 18 house, we can pretty much hear a lot in the house. You can tell that he's walking out of his room and

Speaker 18 I don't know what he was yelling there. It was all kind of just mushed together.

Speaker 5 So, Bailey, who had a digital clock by her bed, had just put the murder at like 2.30.

Speaker 55 Chris called 911 at 2.39.

Speaker 21 Might be an issue.

Speaker 17 Why the delay?

Speaker 18 Bailey, what do you think happened? I honestly have no idea.

Speaker 18 Who do you think would want to hurt your mom? No one that I know of. Do you know what happened to your mom? Did someone tell you? Dad just said that she got shot, so.

Speaker 18 How did you find out that she died?

Speaker 18 Um, I actually realized that she died until he was sitting in the garage and he told me.

Speaker 41 Of course, those deputies were right when they told Bailey's grandparents that a significant other is quite often the prime suspect in cases like this.

Speaker 17 So they had to ask.

Speaker 34 What did Bailey know about her parents' marriage?

Speaker 18 They get along good. I mean, everyone has their disagreements, but it's it's nothing huge.
Disagreements about?

Speaker 18 Well because my mom really wants my dad to quit smoking and then about the cabin they both stressed out to get that resort so

Speaker 18 they don't ever yell at each other really. They get along really good if you ask me so.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 18 So been known problems. And when did this resort start?

Speaker 18 We've been going up there ever since I was little, ever since my brother was little. And then my dad's dream, my mom's dream have always been the only resort up there.

Speaker 4 So here in the sheriff's office, it was Bailey who told the investigators how she worried about the resort at Spider Lake.

Speaker 2 It was making her anxious, she said.

Speaker 18 I've been kind of worked up because my parents want to buy a resort up north and just kind of a weird time for me to move, so. Uh-huh.
So when you say worked up, what does that mean?

Speaker 18 Like, I get stressed out about, like, moving because I don't really know what I want to do. So the plan was that me and my mom would stay in Louis My Grandma and Grandpa.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 18 So I could finish school and graduate here. And then I'd go up in the summer and help dad at the resort.

Speaker 18 So I didn't, I just kind of worried about that.

Speaker 25 To help her cope, Bailey said she confided in her friend, an older boy named Jeremy Majerus.

Speaker 40 He'd been coming around to see Bailey quite a lot that summer.

Speaker 18 He gets me calmed down by a lot of things. So is it you didn't feel like you want to move or?

Speaker 18 Well, yes and no. I kind of have mixed feelings about it.
So I play hockey here and everything.

Speaker 18 Oh, okay.

Speaker 18 When's the last time Jeremy came over?

Speaker 18 Yesterday. How old is Jeremy? He'd be 19.
19? Yep. Are you guys dating? No.
What's your relationship with Jeremy? Just friends. Just friends? Yep.
Does Jeremy get along with your mom and dad?

Speaker 18 They don't know that he comes over, actually. He came over one night, so we were going to talk to my mom and dad because they were home.

Speaker 18 And we kind of told him that we liked each other and my mom and dad didn't want me to date him because he was that much older and

Speaker 18 dad's pretty protective of me.

Speaker 21 A resort they couldn't afford.

Speaker 55 An apparent arson fire in a garage.

Speaker 6 And an unapproved, maybe inappropriate older boy in their daughter's life.

Speaker 50 There were issues in this home. And a kid who needed talking to, Jeremy Majerris.

Speaker 61 Coming up.

Speaker 74 Have you guys kissed?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 74 We haven't yet. I don't want to go too far with it right now because she's younger than me.

Speaker 63 Nothing that sounds suspicious until Jeremy mentioned something else.

Speaker 75 She said they were in some pretty good arguments. Who was?

Speaker 74 Her parents, her mom and dad.

Speaker 67 When dateline continues.

Speaker 2 What happened in the Cruz house here in tiny Brewster, Minnesota was a truly terrible thing.

Speaker 9 The loss of that woman, Jan Cruz, a genuinely tragic event.

Speaker 29 Made even more so because it just seemed pointless.

Speaker 51 Why would somebody go into the house shoot some sleeping woman? That didn't make any sense. So did she have any enemies who would want her dead?

Speaker 16 No, that was a question that we asked often was who would have wanted Jan dead?

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 we could not find one person that didn't like Jan or that thought she wasn't a good person.

Speaker 34 There was, however, that young man, Jeremy Majerus, the not-quite boyfriend, unapproved by Bailey's parents.

Speaker 9 Passions can run high in a situation like that.

Speaker 7 Jeremy's place, his family's farm, that is, was a 20 or 25-minute drive away from the crew's house.

Speaker 2 Deputies drove out to talk to him, recorded the conversation.

Speaker 20 I got questions for you

Speaker 20 about a gal that you might be seeing.

Speaker 74 Yeah,

Speaker 21 Bailey,

Speaker 74 me and her hang out a lot.

Speaker 17 We can honestly talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.

Speaker 17 So, asked the deputy, when was the last time he talked to Bailey or communicated at all?

Speaker 74 We Snapchatt this morning and she said, I'll talk to you later. Something bad has happened, so I'm kind of scared for her.

Speaker 35 Jeremy said he met Bailey while helping out with the high school marching band.

Speaker 34 He had graduated, but continued to volunteer. And somehow, during those band practices, he and Bailey had grown close.

Speaker 2 It was all very innocent, he said, but they really, really liked each other.

Speaker 74 So we just kind of just friends right now. I told her when we're older, maybe we can pursue something different, but right now we, you know, I'm 19, she's 15, you gotta be careful with that.

Speaker 75 So

Speaker 75 are you guys boyfriend, girlfriend?

Speaker 74 I mean, not really, because we really don't do anything boyfriend, girlfriends do.

Speaker 17 I mean, we talk more or less.

Speaker 74 Well, you know, you don't, like, boyfriend, girlfriends go out on dates, and they go out and they do all the kissing and stuff like that. We don't do that, really.
I mean...

Speaker 17 Well, really?

Speaker 8 I mean, you don't do it really, or you do it?

Speaker 17 We don't.

Speaker 74 Have you guys kissed? No. There's...

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 74 We haven't yet. I don't want to go too far with it right now because she's younger than me.
So you gotta be careful with it, you know?

Speaker 17 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 74 Because, I mean, I've talked to my pastor about it, and he's like, you gotta be careful. If anybody even thinks you've done anything, I can get in a lot, a lot of trouble.

Speaker 9 So they just talked, said Jeremy.

Speaker 6 And the deputy asked, what about?

Speaker 17 Lately.

Speaker 74 She snapped me a couple nights where she said they were in some pretty good arguments about this.

Speaker 75 Because who was?

Speaker 74 Her parents, her mom and dad.

Speaker 9 Jeremy said the arguments, according to Bailey, were about trying to buy the Spider Lake Resort.

Speaker 74 And she hates them yelling at each other, but they had some pretty good, you know, it's like, hey, calm down. They're arguing about this.

Speaker 74 It's a lot of money, and her mom was, is very, very, very, very, very, very, very nervous about spending all this money on a resort.

Speaker 2 So Bailey was having trouble dealing with all that, said Jeremy.

Speaker 74 She avidly hates it. Like, she's made it very apparent to me that she will literally put her headphones on and turn music music loud.

Speaker 74 They've been having a tough time with it because her dad really, really, really wants us to go through. This is his dream.

Speaker 29 Was it true what Jeremy was saying?

Speaker 2 Bailey hadn't said anything like that when she talked to investigators a few hours after her mother was killed.

Speaker 31 So, the very next day, they brought Bailey in again to ask about her parents.

Speaker 7 At first, they didn't tell her they'd been talking to Jeremy.

Speaker 16 Were they having some disagreements about this?

Speaker 76 Not really that I know of, no.

Speaker 64 No disagreements?

Speaker 35 Then they told her about the Jeremy interview.

Speaker 45 And he said that

Speaker 77 you told him that your parents do argue about the resort or have been arguing.

Speaker 76 Well, I mean, every once in a while, but I think it's more like they were frustrated because they don't know what to do.

Speaker 76 But my mom and dad, I mean, they had like their disagreements on it, but it wasn't like arguing at all. No, like they never really yelled about it or anything.

Speaker 9 And then she painted a slightly different picture of what had been going on at home.

Speaker 41 Things had been difficult lately.

Speaker 29 There was that upsetting garage fire. But also, Jen had a hysterectomy.

Speaker 9 Chris had his appendix out.

Speaker 55 And then on top of it all, they were trying to figure out the whole resort deal.

Speaker 77 You're talking a couple months, they've had

Speaker 45 pretty tense. Yeah, I mean, at least

Speaker 45 more tense than normal.

Speaker 53 Yes, but

Speaker 40 so once again, they asked Bailey what happened the night her mother was shot.

Speaker 25 What she she heard from her bedroom one floor below her parents' room.

Speaker 16 We asked Bailey, did you hear anybody running out of the house or moving around? And she said she only heard one set of steps from upstairs and that was Chris.

Speaker 16 He was the only one that was moving around upstairs. She did not hear anybody else.

Speaker 25 Now what did that mean?

Speaker 32 And what would it mean when paired with CSI reports now coming in about curious little particulars at the crime scene?

Speaker 63 Coming up, a fortunate missed shot, or was it a suspicious one?

Speaker 18 We do like a trajectory with our crime lab, so there's a hole, right? If we look at

Speaker 18 the way that round travels, it looks like you're going to get hit with that round.

Speaker 29 The way people say goodbye can tell you a lot about a community and about the person they gather for, the funeral for Jan Cruz.

Speaker 24 The visitation was at the Lutheran Church and there were people lined up down the block waiting to get in because Jan was so liked and respected in the community.

Speaker 16 Whole town was probably pretty upset.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 24 She'd lived here all of her life, so she knew a lot of people.

Speaker 56 They had good things to say about her.

Speaker 2 And so there was a respectful pause.

Speaker 57 And then, a couple of days later, Chris Cruz was once again at the sheriff's office with senior special agent Woodford.

Speaker 18 I want to show you some photos.

Speaker 70 Some things had been bothering Woodford.

Speaker 21 Like why Chris said he'd only heard one gunshot, when obviously there had been two and what we got is we got two

Speaker 18 12 gauge slugs one of these you saw and one of these you didn't see is that correct correct you said you heard one shot okay definitely and then that did you

Speaker 18 say that because that's what you heard or did you just see the one shell i heard one

Speaker 18 for definite shot.

Speaker 2 But that first slug, the one he said he did not hear?

Speaker 6 Agent Woodford explained to Chris that one would have hit him had he been lying in bed beside Jan as he said he was.

Speaker 18 We do like a trajectory with our crime lab. So there's a hole, right?

Speaker 18 She's laying here, you're laying here on your side. If we look at the

Speaker 18 way that round travels, it looks like you're going to get hit with that round.

Speaker 18 Asking that question.

Speaker 18 This actually, this round actually doesn't hit anything. This is a mess.

Speaker 18 I've seen it go all the way through my house.

Speaker 18 So,

Speaker 18 I mean, the width to the mattress to that trajectory.

Speaker 18 I asked myself that.

Speaker 18 Was it supposed to be both of us?

Speaker 18 Do you think someone tried to shoot you and then missed and then shot her?

Speaker 30 I don't know.

Speaker 18 Why would anybody?

Speaker 46 Then Agent Woodford told Chris of the autopsy revealed that Jan was actually sitting up when she was hit with her right arm stretched out toward the shooter.

Speaker 31 In fact, her right hand was grazed by the shot.

Speaker 16 To me, almost like she saw it coming.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 16 And so that was a concern based on what Chris had told me the first time that she was shot when they were laying down.

Speaker 18 What this shows

Speaker 18 is that she's not laying down

Speaker 18 during this this shooting, okay?

Speaker 18 That she's not on her

Speaker 18 left side.

Speaker 18 After you think about it. Well,

Speaker 18 you were saying that you have your arm under her.

Speaker 18 Okay. You have your arm under her while she's shot.

Speaker 18 While we were sleeping.

Speaker 66 And here, Chris seems to alter the narrative.

Speaker 29 Says he awoke to find his wife sitting up beside him.

Speaker 18 She was up.

Speaker 18 She sat up before I did.

Speaker 18 How do you know that?

Speaker 18 Because she was...

Speaker 18 When I was laying there, she was up, and then I got up.

Speaker 18 I mean, it was the shot.

Speaker 18 The first round, you said you didn't get up on

Speaker 18 no so it woke me up

Speaker 18 laying there the first round woke you up I'm assuming

Speaker 18 so was this man changing his story I did not know she was shot until I turned the light on you told me you said you

Speaker 18 he stood in the doorway of my bedroom and shot my wife. Why do you tell me? Did I say he?

Speaker 18 You just said you didn't see anybody.

Speaker 18 So who's he?

Speaker 18 If I said he, I meant nothing.

Speaker 18 And then doorway.

Speaker 18 Why do you think it was the doorway?

Speaker 18 There was an empty shotgun shell right in the doorway of my bedroom.

Speaker 35 Then Agent Woodford asked Chris again about what he heard Jan say that night.

Speaker 18 I'm sure she said, oh my God.

Speaker 18 Before she gets shot, you hear, oh my God.

Speaker 18 Yes. Okay.
So you're awake.

Speaker 18 Yes. Then you hear a gunshot? Yes.
So if you're awake,

Speaker 18 you hear a gunshot. Who shot her?

Speaker 17 No idea.

Speaker 40 Chris was not under arrest, of course, though he had to know he was under a microscope.

Speaker 41 So the answers he was giving...

Speaker 68 Was he just confused?

Speaker 5 What was going on here?

Speaker 1 Coming up, his wife was bleeding to death.

Speaker 63 So, how did Chris come away so clean?

Speaker 18 By laying her back down, do you have blood on your hands?

Speaker 18 I don't.

Speaker 18 No, I didn't have any blood on my hands. The only blood I knew I had was on my forearm.

Speaker 67 When date line continues.

Speaker 50 Senior agent Derek Woodford was all too familiar with the worst of human behavior.

Speaker 41 Very aware, too, that he was talking to a grieving husband.

Speaker 46 But aware also that grieving spouses and relatives and friends are fully capable of the most determined mendacity when hiding culpability for the worst thing they've ever done.

Speaker 78 So he and his fellow investigators were certainly not finished with Chris Cruz and things that seemed to them

Speaker 27 odd.

Speaker 18 I noticed that, like, throughout the 911 call, you never spoke to Jan. No words of encouragement.
Hang on, baby.

Speaker 18 I said

Speaker 18 something

Speaker 18 when I went to get the phone. You remember what you said, Ben?

Speaker 18 Did you say, hang on?

Speaker 18 Have we played this part of this over

Speaker 53 and over?

Speaker 18 Well, the dispatch does ask you is she responding you said no she's dead. I wasn't there.
She

Speaker 18 no and I'm just asking you what how did you make that determination? What did you see? What were you hearing that was she making any noises at that point?

Speaker 18 Nothing.

Speaker 18 She's laying there. And how could you tell that?

Speaker 18 When I looked back in the doorway she was

Speaker 18 So you did go back up after you were on 911 then or

Speaker 18 I think one time. You guys have been married, what, 20 years?

Speaker 46 In October.

Speaker 18 You love your wife?

Speaker 18 Very much. Okay.

Speaker 18 And so

Speaker 18 you go look at her and

Speaker 18 why do you think that she's gone? Why do you think that she died?

Speaker 18 Just laying there.

Speaker 18 Moving, she was nothing. Is it possible that she could still have a heartbeat?

Speaker 18 What did I do?

Speaker 18 Because I didn't go back. I didn't.

Speaker 5 Chris said he was lying right beside his wife when she was shot.

Speaker 2 And as Woodford knew, Jan bled rapidly and profusely. Yet somehow there was surprisingly little blood on Chris.

Speaker 2 It didn't make any sense to Woodford.

Speaker 16 We believe with the amount of blood at the scene,

Speaker 16 we felt there should have been blood on crews.

Speaker 34 Especially because Chris said he wasn't just lying beside Jan, he actually laid her down flat on the bed after she was shot.

Speaker 18 How did you lay her down?

Speaker 18 I want to say my left hand was just kind of like up in her shoulder area on her back. By laying her back down, do you have blood on your hands?

Speaker 18 I don't.

Speaker 17 No, I didn't have any blood on my hands.

Speaker 18 The only blood I knew I had was on my forearm.

Speaker 6 No blood on his hands.

Speaker 17 But an odd mark on the front of his shirt.

Speaker 16 From how he describes being in bed with Jan, we were trying to figure out where that mark came from because it didn't make sense from

Speaker 16 just by laying next to her in bed.

Speaker 9 More like something was imprinted on the shirt, not like it was blood spatter or anything.

Speaker 27 Right like that. Right.

Speaker 18 This is a hard object, probably

Speaker 18 of some type.

Speaker 18 What we're getting at here is this is what we call a patterned stain.

Speaker 18 It's something that had blood on it, that had some substance to it, and it was placed up against you, whether it was placed up or you leaned up against it.

Speaker 18 There's really nothing in that scene that we're looking at. Be

Speaker 18 from Jan.

Speaker 18 What would have been on how you said you touched her very short very light and the only thing Jan had on was a t-shirt and shorts. So where would that have blood had come from?

Speaker 18 I don't know. I mean, I didn't realize I even had blood on my shirt until

Speaker 18 you

Speaker 18 pointed it out.

Speaker 9 Despite what some people like to claim, it can be quite hard to tell if the stranger sitting in front of you is lying or telling the truth.

Speaker 39 But in this case, said the investigators, what Chris was telling them wasn't adding up.

Speaker 18 This evidence tells a story. And what it looks like is it doesn't support what you're telling us.
And it actually, it's the contrary.

Speaker 18 I did not do this.

Speaker 8 They hooked up Chris to a polygraph.

Speaker 57 The test revealed the section.

Speaker 28 they told him

Speaker 18 and then chris offered up a possible suspect The name Lisa comes into my head

Speaker 18 and I don't want to tell you that because Kay and I talked about it.

Speaker 18 That's part of the reason I haven't said I don't want to steer anybody

Speaker 53 to

Speaker 18 believing anything, you know.

Speaker 17 Lisa?

Speaker 8 Who was Lisa?

Speaker 61 Coming up.

Speaker 28 A possible lead.

Speaker 16 We had gotten further information that she had maybe had some friction with Jan.

Speaker 28 And Jeremy says this was not a happy family.

Speaker 16 Bailey had told him they had mentioned the word divorce.

Speaker 17 People talk.

Speaker 31 And in a town like Brewster, everybody knew about the murder of Jan Cruz.

Speaker 2 Everybody had opinions.

Speaker 9 And one the investigators heard about was that one of Jan's neighbors, a woman who lived just down the block, might have been nursing a grudge.

Speaker 16 We had gotten further information that she had maybe had some friction with Jan.

Speaker 9 This woman, Lisa, had apparently been upset about Jan shutting down the daycare center she'd been running because her son went there.

Speaker 18 She found out Jan was quitting daycare and she said something about, I thought we were friends, you you did this, you can't have the words to tell me, and Baba, you know, went on and on.

Speaker 18 Kay thought it was said something about, you guys have everything.

Speaker 57 And it wasn't like she and her husband didn't have access.

Speaker 18 They have a key to our house. They feed our dogs.

Speaker 52 So of course the investigators talked to Lisa.

Speaker 17 They found her at work.

Speaker 73 We attended her 40th birthday party last year.

Speaker 16 Okay, and that was for Janet's birthday?

Speaker 15 Janet.

Speaker 8 Anyway, the daycare incident was practically practically ancient history.

Speaker 2 Didn't make sense.

Speaker 16 She was not involved.

Speaker 17 They looked at other people, too, other possible suspects.

Speaker 16 We had interviewed over 40 people, some people multiple times.

Speaker 66 They even took a hard look at two of Chris's own brothers.

Speaker 17 But they and all the others were cleared.

Speaker 17 All but one.

Speaker 9 Almost a year after the murder, investigators went back to Jeremy Majerus, the not-quite boyfriend.

Speaker 1 Possible motive?

Speaker 5 As old as first love.

Speaker 29 Chris, Jeremy had told them, was really the one stopping him from dating Bailey.

Speaker 2 So, the investigators had to consider, maybe Jeremy tried to take revenge on Chris and shot Jan by mistake.

Speaker 1 Jeremy had already admitted he sneaked in to see Bailey in her house many times that summer, unbeknownst to her parents and he knew if they bought the Spider Lake Resort they'd be taking Bailey hundreds of miles away from him

Speaker 16 so where was he night of the murder initially he had told investigators that he did not leave his house that night but that was a lie

Speaker 16 and then in further talking with Jeremy

Speaker 16 he had admitted to us that he did leave the house to go check on Bailey and was concerned about her.

Speaker 4 His story?

Speaker 6 Bailey had texted him after she heard those two shots, and there was indeed a text, one word, Jeremy.

Speaker 17 That alarmed him, he said.

Speaker 57 So he drove to Brewster, texting her along the way, asking her what was wrong.

Speaker 2 But when he arrived, Bailey's street was filled with emergency vehicles.

Speaker 57 So he returned home.

Speaker 64 Kind of something he should have told you right off the bat.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 16 And we had...

Speaker 40 How did he explain that?

Speaker 16 what he had indicated to us is that based on everything that had been going on at the Cruz residence, his dad had told him that he thought he should stay out of it and not get involved, thus not telling us that he left to go to Brewster that night after Bailey had texted him.

Speaker 34 Jeremy took a polygraph.

Speaker 8 He also showed deception.

Speaker 57 But not about where he was, Jeremy swore.

Speaker 2 No, the deception he told them was something else.

Speaker 41 He didn't tell them earlier, he said, because Bailey swore him to secrecy.

Speaker 57 It was about the state of her parents' marriage.

Speaker 51 Which was what?

Speaker 16 Which was that

Speaker 16 Bailey had told him they had mentioned the word divorce.

Speaker 71 Divorce?

Speaker 29 Chris never mentioned that.

Speaker 31 In fact, he said he and Jan got along well.

Speaker 18 When did the divorce word come up? Or does she say like a couple weeks before or months before? Okay, so just just as they were talking

Speaker 18 and their talk started from talking to arguing to arguing to fighting and

Speaker 18 the divorce didn't come out till they were literally shouting at each other and that's when they're January's crying Chris is mad all the time and he's told him something else about Bailey.

Speaker 18 If she gets crying about her mom, she said her dad didn't do it. Her dad didn't do it.
I think she's trying to convince herself. Yeah, that's the way it sounds.
Because

Speaker 18 it's not like, you know, when someone says, no, they didn't do it, but she's been, she says it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Speaker 18 She'll say it like ten times in a row, crying.

Speaker 31 That's because Bailey had told him.

Speaker 79 She was scared that he might have been involved. She said, Jeremy, I'm scared dad did something.

Speaker 79 That could have happened, could have got mom killed. That's exactly what she said.

Speaker 57 Was he making all this up to protect himself?

Speaker 14 Or was this devastating evidence against Chris?

Speaker 28 Coming up, Chris points his finger at Jeremy.

Speaker 18 Could you think of a reason why he would want to do that? Because Jan and I went in the way for a relationship.

Speaker 28 But then a discovery that points right at Chris.

Speaker 18 The gun that shot Jan was your 12-age.

Speaker 18 He was in the shop.

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 67 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 34 The letters turned up a year and a half after the murder.

Speaker 6 It was Chris Cruz who found them, offered them up to investigators.

Speaker 7 Disturbing letters, said Chris.

Speaker 52 Sent, purportedly, by Jeremy Majerus to Bailey.

Speaker 6 But Chris had an idea it might have been creepier than that, given this phrase in one of them.

Speaker 17 Love you, daughter.

Speaker 16 Chris had a concern that maybe Jeremy's dad had been writing some of these letters to Bailey.

Speaker 16 I followed up on that, and that was not the case.

Speaker 14 They were simply Jeremy's love letters, said Woodford.

Speaker 17 Nothing more.

Speaker 31 But Chris was not satisfied.

Speaker 42 Might Jeremy be Jen's killer?

Speaker 17 He wondered.

Speaker 18 Could you think of a reason why he would want to do that? Or what his reason would be?

Speaker 18 Jan and I was in the way for a relationship.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 that's because of that initial conversation was it was with Jeremy saying, you're not going to date Bailey at this point. Did Jeremy seem upset about that, or how was his reaction at that? I

Speaker 18 no, I mean I that's the last time I really seen him.

Speaker 6 But did he himself really think Jeremy killed Jan?

Speaker 18 Could I say

Speaker 18 I think he did this? No.

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 23 And after four interviews with Jeremy, Agent Woodford came to the same conclusion.

Speaker 1 Lies or no, Jeremy didn't do it.

Speaker 9 That conclusion was bolstered by Jeremy's father, who said he was up watching TV with his son when Jan was shot 25 miles away.

Speaker 21 He saw that Jeremy text just after it came in.

Speaker 30 But if Jeremy was out of the picture, Chris wasn't.

Speaker 57 In fact, the day Chris turned in those Jeremy letters, Agent Woodford steered the conversation back to a question he had not been able to resolve.

Speaker 18 I'm trying to put you, you're in bed with Jan.

Speaker 18 I'm trying to put you there because a lot of the evidence just looks like you weren't in bed, that you didn't have any blood on your legs or anything on your shorts.

Speaker 18 And I'm wondering why that was the case.

Speaker 1 The implication was impossible to miss, especially after they found the murder weapon in Chris's own construction company shop a minute's drive from the house.

Speaker 3 Bailey, remember, had said she heard gunshots, quote, at like 2:30.

Speaker 34 And Chris called 911 at 2:39.

Speaker 34 Was nine minutes enough time to stash the gun?

Speaker 16 I actually drove that at speed limit to the shop and back.

Speaker 16 And taking a count, it would take a minute to go into the shop. It was only three minutes.
And it was

Speaker 31 broke the gun news to Chris.

Speaker 18 So I'm trying to figure out, you know, why that is. I mean,

Speaker 18 it's... The gun that, the gun that shot Jan was, it was your 12 age.

Speaker 18 It was in the the shop. Yeah.

Speaker 18 I don't know that I can believe that.

Speaker 18 Well, the reason I say that is we had, we obviously do forensic testing

Speaker 18 on the gun and then remember the shells that were found. Any ideas on that?

Speaker 18 You got my mind racing.

Speaker 40 But his mind may not have race for long.

Speaker 2 Even though they were clearly suspicious of him, They still had more investigating to do.

Speaker 8 So Chris was free to go.

Speaker 17 And nothing happened for months, for years.

Speaker 5 The whole family tried to let it go as they settled into the hard business of learning to live without Jan and without knowing who killed her, except that they were sure it wasn't Chris.

Speaker 24 There's nothing to think that

Speaker 24 Chris had any involvement in this.

Speaker 45 Nobody could fake anything that much and not slip up.

Speaker 9 What's more, they all said they never saw Chris get violent or be mean to Jan ever.

Speaker 54 I mean, they truly loved each other, and he never had a harsh word about Jan, ever. And the same with Jan towards Chris.

Speaker 50 So maybe they just never know who killed Jan.

Speaker 59 Did you have an expectation that this was just going to go away and they'd never find out who did it?

Speaker 45 We were emotionally set that this, no one would be brought to justice in this world. It'd have to be by God, and they that they'd have to answer to.

Speaker 45 It wouldn't happen here.

Speaker 5 And then, in March 2019, three and a half years after the murder, something did happen.

Speaker 5 The county attorney's office decided to take the case to a grand jury, and that grand jury indicted Chris Cruz for first-degree murder.

Speaker 6 To his family's utter dismay and insult to injury.

Speaker 54 They could have simply asked him to come down to the police station

Speaker 54 and arrested him there, but they made a big scene. It was actually about a block from where I work.

Speaker 54 You know, guns drawn. It was just totally blown.
I mean, I didn't understand that at all.

Speaker 47 Once he got arrested, I mean, we all came together as a family and figured out what we had to do to help get an attorney lined up.

Speaker 29 That would be Tom Hagen and his associate, Stephen Groshen.

Speaker 46 This would be their first ever first-degree murder trial.

Speaker 19 I got a call, I believe, on a Friday night late. Chris just got arrested.
He didn't know what was going on. He didn't understand how this happened.

Speaker 2 And they couldn't understand it either.

Speaker 25 They went through the evidence, looking for an answer, but couldn't find one.

Speaker 19 Painstakingly going through the videos, painstakingly going through the interviews. When he spoke to law enforcement, he seemed to be, to me, very truthful and just trying to be extremely helpful.

Speaker 19 And his stories was fairly consistent all the way throughout.

Speaker 37 But Assistant County Attorney Brayden Hoford said Chris was not only not consistent, there were serious problems with the stories he told.

Speaker 13 The thing that I remember sticking out to me the most upon watching the version of events as described by Mr.

Speaker 13 Cruz was the difficulty that I was having making sense of exactly how this would have occurred

Speaker 44 without him

Speaker 13 seeing or being able to offer any description of the supposed perpetrator.

Speaker 9 So in other words, did his stories make sense?

Speaker 66 You know, as a prosecutor, you always think about

Speaker 13 how it's going to make sense to a jury. And it's not necessarily important what I think or even what the investigator thinks, but what is the average person in Nobles County going to think about this?

Speaker 13 The impression I walked away with it was that

Speaker 13 I didn't believe it would make a lot of sense to the average person in Nobles County.

Speaker 1 Would it?

Speaker 34 A jury of those average people was impaneled in late January, 2020.

Speaker 8 But what's an average person anyway?

Speaker 6 Can you ever really know what average people will do?

Speaker 63 Coming up, the prosecution's case.

Speaker 13 The word divorce being thrown around.

Speaker 13 Either he's killed by the first shotgun blast or he's covered in blood and Mr. Cruz was neither.
This was clearly a premeditated murder.

Speaker 34 They were a confident pair.

Speaker 46 The lawyers who came to defend Chris Cruz, despite never before defending anyone charged with first-degree murder, Tom Hagen and Stephen Groshen.

Speaker 52 Their biggest objection to the state's case?

Speaker 17 Two words, they said.

Speaker 34 Tunnel vision.

Speaker 19 From the beginning, they had one suspect. It was Chris.

Speaker 19 I don't think that they looked any further.

Speaker 57 Besides, they said, Chris was not so inconsistent

Speaker 46 during his many hours of police interviews.

Speaker 19 In my opinion, the foundation of what took place remained the same.

Speaker 19 It was approximately the same story. He was in bed.
He heard a shot. He popped up.

Speaker 19 And from there, then he went and grabbed his phone. That portion never changed.

Speaker 9 And of course, anyone's story would change a little,

Speaker 6 given

Speaker 19 from a dead sleep, you get woken up by gunshots and you look over and you see your wife is bleeding. I think it's reasonable to believe the fact that you're not going to remember everything clearly.

Speaker 19 I mean, the memory is

Speaker 19 an amazing thing, but I think one thing that everybody's found out is that it doesn't remember everything the same every time you talk about it.

Speaker 51 How do you explain how we didn't hear or see or find any evidence of an intruder in the house?

Speaker 19 It's a small home, and it wouldn't take somebody, you know, more than just a second to get out of that house and to hop in the car and to take off.

Speaker 8 Even the forensics were off, they said.

Speaker 17 Like the string that was put up to calculate the path of the first bullet.

Speaker 60 If you saw the photograph that actually has a dip in the string, they didn't pull the string taut when they were doing the measurements.

Speaker 52 Which...

Speaker 68 To the defense expert meant this.

Speaker 60 There's room in the bed for two people and and that first shot to miss.

Speaker 78 Is there a ton of room? No.

Speaker 60 We'll be upfront about that. But there was room for the shot to miss him.
And that's the testimony we brought out at trial.

Speaker 55 Why would he not have had more blood on him?

Speaker 19 My opinion is after he heard the shots, he got out of the bed fairly quickly.

Speaker 29 And as for Chris hearing only one shot when there were two.

Speaker 19 He thinks that first shot's the one that woke him up. He doesn't recall hearing it, you know, but he certainly recalls hearing that second shot.

Speaker 64 When he called 911, why didn't he go back and attend to his wife and see how she was and try to do CPR?

Speaker 51 She was probably alive for a few minutes.

Speaker 19 And I think that's one of his regrets, is that he didn't go back and do more.

Speaker 19 But I think his attention turned quickly to his daughter, who's downstairs, and trying to figure out if anybody's in the house to make sure that his daughter's fine.

Speaker 19 And I think he realized fairly quickly with all the blood that it was a fatal wound.

Speaker 3 Chris's lawyers fought the evidence that Chris's own shotgun was the murder weapon.

Speaker 44 They emphasized the state expert first thought it wasn't before concluding after more tests that it definitely was.

Speaker 41 But that seemed pretty subjective, they told the jury.

Speaker 60 Our expert, who was very credentialed, had reviewed the evidence. He concluded the answer was inconclusive, meaning you can't say this isn't the gun.
You can't say this is the gun.

Speaker 57 And the lawyers strongly challenged the prosecutor's claim that after shooting Jan, Chris quickly drove the gun to his shop before calling 911.

Speaker 57 They were critical of the investigators, saying they should have gone back to Bailey to confirm the time she said she heard the shotgun blasts.

Speaker 19 What Bailey stated was it happened around approximately 2.30. Law enforcement never cleaned up what time it took place.
They never came back and said, was it closer to 2.30? Was it closer to 2.40?

Speaker 27 During the trial, four and a half years after the shooting, under cross-examination by her father's lawyer, Bailey agreed she probably heard those shots closer to 2.38 a.m.

Speaker 57 Remember, Chris's 911 call was at 2.39.

Speaker 19 So there's really not this eight to nine minute block. It was the timeline, the timeline, the timeline.
I mean, it was tight.

Speaker 64 And really, was a resort at Spider Lake such a huge issue, such a motive?

Speaker 60 Why would you murder someone you were going to start a resort with? Now he's going to start the resort by himself?

Speaker 19 It never, to me, was a sound motive of what took place because the reality of it was is he needed Jan to run the resort with him.

Speaker 52 Of course, they didn't have to present a possible alternate suspect, but they did.

Speaker 19 There's another person here that could have done this, and it's Jeremy Majerus.

Speaker 50 Jeremy Majeris, who by the time of the trial was still with Bailey, was her boyfriend.

Speaker 6 And yet the defense went there.

Speaker 39 Said maybe Jeremy did it.

Speaker 64 Why would Jeremy want to kill Jan?

Speaker 60 Part of the motive would have been Bailey leaving town and moving up north for the cabin, and then she would have less interaction with Jeremy.

Speaker 60 And I'll be the first to tell you, do I think it's a strong motive? No, I don't. Does it make more sense than Chris's? In some ways, it actually does.

Speaker 78 What's more, Jeremy was on the record lying to investigators.

Speaker 19 His story changed. It was never consistent.
It never made sense. And that's the part that I think was the big red flag for us.

Speaker 66 Jeremy eventually admitted he did drive to Brewster after the shooting, he said, after Bailey texted him.

Speaker 2 But what if he actually got there earlier, suggested the defense attorneys, got in through that broken basement window, ran upstairs, aimed to kill Chris, but missed and hit Jan before running out the back door.

Speaker 1 The theory, however, was problematic.

Speaker 7 Police had looked hard at Jeremy and ruled him out.

Speaker 1 And.

Speaker 40 Bailey didn't think Jeremy did it either.

Speaker 66 That's correct.

Speaker 2 That must have been extremely awkward.

Speaker 19 She was in a bad predicament either way. On one hand, she has her father up for murder.
On the other hand, you have us lawyers saying,

Speaker 19 you know, there is as much evidence or more evidence that Jeremy committed this murder than your dad did. And she was in a no-win situation.

Speaker 9 What was an attentive jury to think about that?

Speaker 28 Coming up, the verdict.

Speaker 63 It wasn't easy.

Speaker 82 One guy was not going to give up, and the judge said, there is no hung jury. You will keep at this until you're done.

Speaker 7 And Chris Cruz speaks.

Speaker 17 I miss everything.

Speaker 44 I miss her smile and the sound of her voice.

Speaker 1 The courtroom was crowded.

Speaker 38 I sat through every day of that trial.

Speaker 32 Every available seat filled, mainly by family and friends of the victim, and all were here to support the man accused of killing her.

Speaker 32 Would it make a difference?

Speaker 69 At 3.10 p.m.

Speaker 58 on the ninth day of the trial, the jury left the courtroom.

Speaker 46 Alex McGraw was the four person.

Speaker 49 Throughout the whole trial, to see the support from Jan's side of the family for Chris was very telling.

Speaker 49 And we found out that he lived with Jan's parents for a full year after this happened. So if that doesn't speak volumes, I don't know what does.

Speaker 7 Right away, Alex took a poll.

Speaker 49 I think there was like five or six of us right away that were not guilty.

Speaker 49 And there was two or three undecided and the rest were firm that he did it, that he was guilty.

Speaker 34 So then, line by line, they debated the evidence.

Speaker 58 Even performed a sort of reenactment, said juror Amber Engelkis,

Speaker 32 minus the actual bullets, of course.

Speaker 82 We actually reenacted the scene on the tables. We pushed them all together and we took the pillows and we had two people on the bed.

Speaker 57 But after hours of talk and debate, it looked like it was going to be a hung jury.

Speaker 82 One guy was not going to give up and the judge said there is no hung jury. You will keep at this until you're done.

Speaker 17 It went quickly after that.

Speaker 58 And finally, end of the second day, they re-entered the courtroom.

Speaker 24 And that was nerve-wracking. We prayed for the best, and we knew the truth, that it wasn't Chris.

Speaker 34 And the jury found Chris Cruz not guilty.

Speaker 49 I was actually kind of surprised at how much they were lacking in foolproof evidence.

Speaker 51 And when they said not guilty?

Speaker 24 I remember Vonnie like squealing.

Speaker 45 It was absolutely wonderful because I just, just, I mean, we were all just cheering and hugging each other.

Speaker 54 Oh, the weight of the world was off my shoulders. I think I hugged everybody in that courtroom before I got out of there.

Speaker 69 Including the man from whom the clouds were suddenly lifted, Chris Cruz.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 66 you can't.

Speaker 17 I don't know how to put that into words.

Speaker 59 It's hard finding words for things sometimes.

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 52 What have the last five years been like for you?

Speaker 44 It's been a real rough five years.

Speaker 54 Unimaginable.

Speaker 17 And now, finally, he could face his family and the world as an innocent man vindicated.

Speaker 17 Except,

Speaker 55 after the verdict, the county attorney issued a statement saying,

Speaker 2 While they respected the jury's verdict, they firmly believed after a long and thorough investigation that Chris did indeed kill his wife.

Speaker 13 As of this point, there are no other suspects and there are no other leads in the investigation of Jan's murder.

Speaker 9 Not even Bailey's boyfriend, Jeremy Majerus?

Speaker 28 Just no, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 13 He is someone who was concerned about confessing to texting while driving. Trying to make Jeremy Majerus the perpetrator here is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Speaker 2 Even the defense attorney who pointed the finger at Jeremy didn't hear with us.

Speaker 19 I'm not going to insinuate or say that, you know, Jeremy did this. I mean, I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 17 So where does it all leave Chris Cruz?

Speaker 57 Not in a very good place.

Speaker 44 I'm frustrated.

Speaker 49 These days I'm mad now.

Speaker 44 The way this was handled. It's upsetting to hear the prosecutors can say the jury was wrong.

Speaker 54 They made the wrong decision.

Speaker 7 Chris is the guy.

Speaker 44 I don't know how they can say that.

Speaker 44 I don't feel they put any effort into this.

Speaker 34 So now in the family, a question hangs in the air like a bad smell.

Speaker 47 I would like to talk to Jeremy. Yeah.

Speaker 51 What would you ask him? What would you say to him?

Speaker 47 I'd like to know why he said the stuff about me that he did.

Speaker 44 Yeah, I got lots of questions.

Speaker 29 Chris recently told us that he and the family, quote, still believe Jan's murder deserves further investigation.

Speaker 42 And as of today, law enforcement still has the case closed.

Speaker 9 The family has been and will continue to seek justice for Jan.

Speaker 42 Jan, whom they all remember lovingly, even as they cannot help but be angry at the people who accused Chris of killing her.

Speaker 60 My sister loved her husband, and we should never have had to go through that trial, ever.

Speaker 17 There was no grounds for that.

Speaker 26 And had they done their job and looked at the facts in front of them, we would have never been in that courtroom for that reason.

Speaker 24 To make matters worse, to put us all through this.

Speaker 24 How this could be.

Speaker 17 Now, there are only memories. I miss everything.

Speaker 44 I miss watching her get ready for work in the morning.

Speaker 44 I miss my

Speaker 3 have a good day kiss and

Speaker 44 my hey honey when I come home from work.

Speaker 17 I miss her smile and

Speaker 44 the sound of her voice.

Speaker 44 Jan was the best.

Speaker 3 And Spider Lake Resort, that magical place they'd hope to own someday.

Speaker 64 Did you ever go back to Spider Lake?

Speaker 27 Yeah,

Speaker 47 we go back every year, yet.

Speaker 44 We take our vacation in June. I go back in September.
Jan's birthday is the 24th of September.

Speaker 44 She loved her birthday.

Speaker 31 And so, in a way, he still takes her with him out here on Spider Lake.

Speaker 11 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 11 Good night.

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