The Officer's Wife

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Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.

Speaker 3 Please have somebody call me right away. Please.

Speaker 4 It was disturbing. A young, handsome police officer, a young, beautiful wife.

Speaker 6 Somebody that I talk to almost every day is gone. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 When you hear suicide.

Speaker 8 No, no way.

Speaker 4 Things about it started stinking.

Speaker 3 She'd met another man. Yep.

Speaker 9 It's a big, messy triangle.

Speaker 3 How many other women besides you was Levi Chavez having an affair with?

Speaker 10 Ten. Ten.
And you know what the problem is, we've got so many freaking girlfriends.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 4 She had told her boss that she had done something bad.

Speaker 11 I think the last statement within her diary said it all.

Speaker 7 We knew we would get here.

Speaker 9 We just had a lot of hurdles to get over.

Speaker 13 I'll never forgive myself. Ever.

Speaker 5 Here is Josh Mankiewicz with the officer's wife.

Speaker 3 The life of a police officer is full of danger

Speaker 3 and stress.

Speaker 6 They have rough days at work and they end up holding it in.

Speaker 3 They're our first responders.

Speaker 6 It's hard. It's hard work.

Speaker 8 From one call to the next, you don't know what you're going to meet up with.

Speaker 3 But our story is about what happened when a first responder had to face a crisis in his own home.

Speaker 3 A cop pleading for help from his fellow men and women in blue.

Speaker 3 Okay, okay. In one moment, a family is shattered.

Speaker 14 It was like disbelief. It's like a surreal moment.

Speaker 3 And over time, an entire community's secrets would be revealed.

Speaker 16 I laid there and cried.

Speaker 6 It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 It starts here in the village of Los Lunas, New Mexico, 25 miles south of Albuquerque. Tara Chavez grew up in a loving family with her twin brother Josh and younger brother Aaron.

Speaker 3 Joseph and Teresa Cordova are the parents.

Speaker 12 She was a girly girl, very motherly.

Speaker 11 She always was working with drawings and poetry, always writing.

Speaker 3 Melanie Gonzalez was Tara's best friend growing up.

Speaker 6 She was amazing. She was shy.
I know a lot of times in school people thought that she came off

Speaker 6 kind of stuck up.

Speaker 3 But that wasn't her?

Speaker 6 Not at all.

Speaker 3 Then one day at summer camp, that shy girl met the handsome boy who would change her life in so many ways, Levi Chavez. How did she talk about him?

Speaker 6 She loved him. It didn't take very long before

Speaker 6 she fell hard for him. He was charming towards her and she thought he was gorgeous.

Speaker 3 Tara was quiet and artistic. Levi was a guy's guy who loved basketball and boxing.
Their love bloomed bloomed in the New Mexico desert.

Speaker 3 Tara got pregnant while they were still in high school and they got married just before her graduation.

Speaker 6 He was happy about it. Scared as well, just like she was.
Something that they neither one of them expected. It just happened.

Speaker 8 Every time we would see him, they were happy.

Speaker 3 Michael Romero is Levi's uncle, and as a town magistrate, he performed the ceremony. On that wedding day, the whole family was there?

Speaker 8 Yes, our family was there. It was a joyous occasion.
They're a lovely couple.

Speaker 3 And together, they dreamt of the life they'd have. Tara worked as a hairstylist, but had bigger goals.

Speaker 11 She was really wanting to start her own business.

Speaker 3 Her own business, meaning her own salon. Yes.

Speaker 11 So she approached me.

Speaker 3 I'm all for it.

Speaker 11 I'll be a silent partner.

Speaker 11 Although she did laugh at me.

Speaker 11 Because, dad, you're not silent.

Speaker 3 Levi worked long hours as an officer with the Albuquerque Police Department. It was his dream job.
In Levi's world, police work was known as the family business.

Speaker 8 His grandfather from his father's side was a police officer, and he has four or five uncles that are police officers. And I'm an ex-police officer myself.

Speaker 3 He was a natural police officer?

Speaker 8 He was natural.

Speaker 3 By 2007, they were raising two children, Andrea and little Levi, and had settled into a new house in Los Lunas.

Speaker 3 But while Levi was out fighting crime in the big city, Tara was finding out that life in the suburbs wasn't entirely crime-free. Tara's brother, Aaron.

Speaker 18 She called me and told us, you know, I think somebody tried to break in my house.

Speaker 18 So we immediately, let's go to the house, we checked, and the door did look like somebody had messed with it a little bit.

Speaker 3 Whoever did that didn't steal anything, but it put Levi and Tara on alert. He says he suggested she keep one of his old duty guns at home to protect herself.

Speaker 3 Do Levi and Tara live in a tough neighborhood?

Speaker 8 In Balencia County in general, I think they have a high crime rate. They tend to have a lot of break-ins, a lot of crime there in that area.

Speaker 3 And Levi and Tara were about to experience it firsthand. Levi had recently bought an expensive new truck.
Late one night, Tara was home alone and heard their dog bark.

Speaker 3 She looked outside and the truck was gone.

Speaker 6 She said, hey, guess what? Levi's truck got stolen. And I was like, well, what happened? Are you okay? Is Levi home? She said, No, he was at work last night.

Speaker 3 That made Melanie worry, and it turned out there was plenty to worry about. Two weeks later, on a Sunday, the kids were away visiting Levi's dad.

Speaker 3 Levi himself had a pretty quiet weekend on patrol, but when he stopped to check on Tara and saw what was in front of him, this police officer found himself on the other end of an anguished call to 911.

Speaker 5 When we come back,

Speaker 5 a close-knit community reeling with grief and shock.

Speaker 4 It was disturbing.

Speaker 5 A young, handsome police officer, a young, beautiful wife, the distraught husband overcome by guilt.

Speaker 3 It was a blustery October night with high winds gusting over New Mexico's Sandia Mountains. Albuquerque Police Officer Levi Chavez called 911 from his own home.

Speaker 3 He told police he'd found his wife lying in a pool of blood in their bed. In a panic, Levi begged for help.

Speaker 3 I can't leave her.

Speaker 3 Okay, okay.

Speaker 3 Oh my god.

Speaker 3 Aaron Jones was a detective with the Sheriff's Department in suburban Los Lunas.

Speaker 4 When I received a call from my sergeant saying that there had been a police officer's wife that had been shot,

Speaker 3 It was just after 9 p.m. when Jones got to the Chavez home.

Speaker 4 It was disturbing. I mean, it was a young, handsome police officer, a young, beautiful wife.

Speaker 3 Jones saw Tara lying on the bed with a gunshot wound to her head, and he found this Glock 17 by her body. It was the same gun Levi said he'd given her for protection.
It was his service weapon.

Speaker 3 It was his service weapon. That he left at home?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 And beside the bed, on the nightstand, there was a three-word note. I'm sorry, Levi.
Jones quickly determined that Tara hadn't been a victim of crime, but had turned the gun on herself.

Speaker 3 She was only 26.

Speaker 4 We do have a lot of suicides out there. Unfortunately, Valencia County has a high rate of suicides.
It's not uncommon. The uncommon part of it was the fact that it was a police officer's wife.

Speaker 3 Within minutes, members of Levi's own police department in neighboring Albuquerque came over to the house to offer Levi's support.

Speaker 3 As the news of Tara's death spread, one officer's wife called Tara's best friend, Melanie.

Speaker 6 She just came out and said it, Mal, Tara's dead. And it took me a minute to process it.
And I was like, what do you mean?

Speaker 6 I don't understand.

Speaker 3 At the scene, police saw an inconsolable husband.

Speaker 4 He kept referring to himself as a piece of crap and other things that he just should have been a better husband and should have just been with her.

Speaker 13 I'll never forgive myself. Never.

Speaker 13 Pa, I better go ahead.

Speaker 3 Jones, the local detective, detective, took a statement from Levi, the big city cop, who bared his soul.

Speaker 13 She's the rest of my life. I'll be a blue bottle.

Speaker 3 He told Jones he blamed himself for Tara's suicide. His wife was prone to drama and depression, he said, but at times he didn't take it seriously.
Now it was too late.

Speaker 13 How would we kids?

Speaker 3 The detective did his best to bring a weeping Levi under control.

Speaker 13 Whatever is going on right now, take a deep breath.

Speaker 3 You're trying to make this guy feel better.

Speaker 4 I am. I was concerned that possibly my sympathy and empathy was gone to the point afraid that he might hurt himself too.

Speaker 3 Officers went through the scene in the bedroom and stumbled on something. Tara, the writer, had kept a journal tucked under her mattress.

Speaker 4 Parts of it were very dark, described a young woman that was having some dark times in her life.

Speaker 3 Tara had laid bare the depths of her despair, writing, Sometimes I want to just disappear, and I'm depressed. I want to fall off the face of the earth.

Speaker 3 Every day I feel my time and work, kids and endlessly trying to make my marriage work, I'm getting nowhere I never do. That sounds like depression to me.

Speaker 4 Classic depression.

Speaker 3 And police found another page of writing that sounded desperate, torn up and buried in the trash can.

Speaker 3 And Levi showed Detective Jones something else.

Speaker 13 I got a text.

Speaker 3 A text he'd received from Tara earlier that day.

Speaker 13 It says, I'm afraid I'm going to hurt myself.

Speaker 13 I'm so S-O-O-O.

Speaker 13 Upset, sad, and hurt.

Speaker 3 Open and shut. By 2 a.m., police were wrapping up their work at the Chavez house, and Detective Jones headed to Tara's parents' home to break the news.

Speaker 11 He introduced a deputy and a chaplain and said, it's about your daughter. So I'm already feeling weak.

Speaker 3 What'd you think?

Speaker 12 I thought there was a terrible traffic accident.

Speaker 3 I never,

Speaker 12 never thought

Speaker 12 to hear otherwise.

Speaker 11 I asked him what happened, and Aaron Jones said, It's an apparent suicide.

Speaker 3 Possibly the most painful news a family can ever hear. But the Cordovas weren't prepared to accept it, and they felt a deep conviction that no one outside this family saw coming.

Speaker 3 When you hear suicide,

Speaker 3 what do you think? No way.

Speaker 3 No, no way.

Speaker 11 That girl loved those children.

Speaker 11 And I knew right then and there that she would not take her life.

Speaker 11 and leave those children behind.

Speaker 3 Coming up, heartbreak and disbelief.

Speaker 6 It's not the Tara I knew. I never would have in a million years thought that she would ever take her life.

Speaker 5 Was Tara's death definitely a suicide?

Speaker 4 Just something about it, just things about it started stinking.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 3 Family and friends awoke to a piercing sadness in this tight New Mexico community. Tara Chavez, the wife of an Albuquerque police officer, had died by suicide.

Speaker 16 I laid there and cried.

Speaker 6 I couldn't believe it. I mean, somebody that I talk to almost every day

Speaker 6 is gone, and you don't know why you don't understand it.

Speaker 6 It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 When Levi's uncle Michael tried to help his nephew that next morning, he says he saw a broken man.

Speaker 8 I went and saw Levi and he was in bed and

Speaker 8 I just didn't know what to say. I just, this is the worst thing that could happen to anybody.

Speaker 3 What did Levi say to you that day?

Speaker 8 Do you remember? He didn't say,

Speaker 8 he was too emotional. He couldn't even speak.

Speaker 3 But along with the shock, Tara's best friend was overcome with a sense of disbelief.

Speaker 6 Part of me was like, no, this isn't right. This isn't what happened.
Like, they're lying.

Speaker 24 It's not, it's not true.

Speaker 3 And that's exactly what Tara's parents were telling the detective who'd come to their home with that terrible news. For one thing, they told him there was simply no way Tara would leave her children.

Speaker 3 You would not be the first family of a loved one who committed suicide who did not want to believe that that was possible.

Speaker 11 Well, Josh, I don't know about other families, but I knew Tara.

Speaker 3 I knew Tara. But what about the depressed person who emerges from that diary police found at the scene?

Speaker 3 Tara's family points out that many of the darker passages in that journal were several years old.

Speaker 6 Her journal, I think, was

Speaker 14 an outlet for her, just to vent sometimes.

Speaker 3 Gina Cordova is Tara's sister-in-law.

Speaker 14 I mean, I'm married. I have kids.
Sometimes I just want to disappear. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to harm myself in any way.

Speaker 3 And the very last entry, three months before her death, suggests Tara was in fact the opposite of depressed. Tara wrote, goodbye to the person I used to be.
Welcome, New Day. Happiness.

Speaker 11 I think the last statement within her diary said it all.

Speaker 3 Happiness.

Speaker 3 And her family says she had lots to be happy about. Tara was finally making plans to open that new hair salon she had long dreamed of.
She was even starting to look at real estate.

Speaker 14 She was so excited to do it.

Speaker 3 Gina says Tara had an appointment to look at this location with her dad scheduled for just two days after her death.

Speaker 14 She was thinking about how she was going to decorate and how it was going to be, you know, girly and she was just really excited about it.

Speaker 3 That's the Tara her brother Aaron saw all the time. And he says, just two days before she died, Tara had sent him this funny video of her kids.

Speaker 18 Sounds like you were dancing, Lee-Ray? They were dancing around the shop, just being goofy, joking around, you know, and it was pretty funny, actually.

Speaker 3 Nothing on that video to suggest that she was in a miserable place.

Speaker 18 There's a little second in there on that video that you see her, and she's laughing because her daughter and her little boy are just being goofballs, you know.

Speaker 3 And Tara's best friend, Melanie, reread the last text Tara had sent her around that same time and saw nothing frightening.

Speaker 6 It was real simple. She just said, hi, I haven't talked to you all day.

Speaker 3 How are you doing? Doesn't sound like someone in the middle of a terrible depression. Not at all.
Could you have conceived of her taking her own life?

Speaker 6 It's not the Tara I knew. I never would have in a million years ever seen or expected or thought that she would ever take her life.

Speaker 3 Melanie and the Cordova say their instincts were telling them something was wrong in that suicide scene at the house. And they let Detective Jones know it.
I talked to Aaron Jones.

Speaker 3 I don't think he believed you.

Speaker 11 No, I'm sure he didn't.

Speaker 3 It looked like a suicide to them.

Speaker 11 That's correct.

Speaker 3 But something you said to him, or some way you said it, made him think that he needed to dig a little deeper.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 4 I promised Tara's mom and dad that I would look at it. I knew that I couldn't just close this case out without looking at it and digging into it.

Speaker 3 To begin with, Jones knew from experience that bedroom scene was very unusual. Women make up just 10% of gun suicides.
And he wondered about that recent break-in attempt and Levi's stolen truck.

Speaker 3 Had someone been casing the neighborhood, maybe targeting the officer's house?

Speaker 4 I wanted to check and make sure that there wasn't any kind of indication of any kind of break-in or that maybe somebody else had... had done this.

Speaker 3 But nothing seemed to be missing from the house, and Jones could find no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 3 Still, he went back to the photos from the bedroom, started noticing things, like what appeared to be a swipe of blood on the bed. What could that smear of blood on the bed sheets indicate?

Speaker 4 Well, it could have indicated the fact that

Speaker 4 she didn't commit suicide and the fact that the person that fired that fatal round would have had blood on their hands.

Speaker 3 And the detective remembered something else from that night that now struck him as odd. A red substance in a toilet on the other side of the house.
Was it Tara's blood?

Speaker 3 And if so, how did it get there?

Speaker 4 You're in a situation where someone's died. They certainly didn't get out of bed and go bleed in the toilet.

Speaker 3 Jones also focused closely on that gun and noticed the patterns of blood on it. To the detective, it looked like whoever had fired it had to be left-handed.

Speaker 3 The areas of the gun that didn't have blood on them.

Speaker 4 Looked like a perfect handprint. Looked like a perfect handprint of a human hand.

Speaker 3 A left hand.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 Tara was right-handed. Yes.

Speaker 3 Was it suicide? Or could it be homicide? Jones turned all of it over in his mind. He even handled the gun himself.
You physically put a Glock in your own mouth? Well, yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Unloaded, I hope.
Of course.

Speaker 3 The medical examiner, however, had ruled Tara's death a suicide the day after she was found. And the the lid on this case might have been shut then and there.

Speaker 3 But Jones hesitated.

Speaker 4 It was written as a suicide. Unless I came up with something pretty contradictory to that, then my job was to write it up as a suicide and close the case.

Speaker 3 And why didn't you?

Speaker 3 Just couldn't do it.

Speaker 4 Just something about it, just things about it started stinking.

Speaker 3 After three weeks of investigation, instead of closing the case, Jones asked the medical examiner examiner to change the manner of death from suicide to undetermined.

Speaker 3 Now, the hard part: determining what really happened to Tara Chavez.

Speaker 5 Coming up, it didn't take police long to find out that Tara had a secret.

Speaker 3 She'd met another man. Yep.

Speaker 9 It's a big, messy triangle.

Speaker 5 But was it a motive for murder?

Speaker 3 The more Detective Aaron Jones looked at that scene where Tara Chavez died, the more questions he had. Then he says a light bulb went off, something that seemed like the key to the case.

Speaker 3 Jones says that when he found the gun next to Tara, the magazine with the bullets wasn't locked in place. It had been partially released.
Suggesting what?

Speaker 4 Suggesting that the scene was tampered with.

Speaker 3 So someone uses the gun to shoot Tara. The gun recycles and then what? In putting the gun down or dropping it, they accidentally release the magazine.
Well,

Speaker 4 that's what I believe, yes.

Speaker 3 But if Tara didn't shoot herself, then who shot her? Now Jones would have to delve into Tara's life and relationships. And soon, Jones learned that Tara had a secret.
She'd met another man. Yep.

Speaker 3 Jones heard from Melanie and others that Tara and her husband had been growing apart for years. And three months before she died, Tara stepped over a line.
His name was Nick Wheeler.

Speaker 3 Like Levi, he was another handsome police officer in the Albuquerque PD.

Speaker 3 Nick would get his hair cut by Tara every Thursday, and sparks flew. What drew Tara to this guy? To Nick?

Speaker 6 His personality. He treated her great.
Another guy that comes in and is nice to her and shows her attention and treats her good.

Speaker 3 And you've got the recipe for an affair.

Speaker 6 Exactly.

Speaker 3 But there was a problem. Tara was married to Levi and Nick.

Speaker 6 He was married to a friend of ours.

Speaker 3 Of yours and Tara's? Yes, sir.

Speaker 6 It's a big triangle.

Speaker 9 messy triangle.

Speaker 3 Now, that big, messy triangle was suddenly part of Detective Aaron Aaron Jones' investigation and a tricky one. Jones and Nick Wheeler had been friends.

Speaker 4 Back in like 2005, we had worked together in the field. He was a very likable guy.

Speaker 3 But Jones said he couldn't let that get in the way of his investigation. He was going to take a long, hard look at his friend.
And he remembered something that now seemed suspicious.

Speaker 3 The night Tara was found, Nick had called him, digging for information.

Speaker 4 Probably within an hour of me getting on the scene, I started getting texts and phone calls from him.

Speaker 3 Nick wants to know what?

Speaker 4 Well, I wasn't sure at first, but he was just asking questions about what was going on and if I knew anything.

Speaker 3 Was Nick concerned about keeping his affair with Tara under wraps or something else?

Speaker 3 Melanie told the detective that Tara had broken things off with Nick before she died and told Melanie that it had not ended well.

Speaker 6 She just told him, it's not right. You know, we're both married.
What we're doing is not a good thing.

Speaker 3 Her conscience.

Speaker 3 He didn't want to let her go.

Speaker 6 It didn't sound like it.

Speaker 3 Now, Jones thought Nick could be a potential suspect. So he and another detective visited Nick's home and didn't tell him the conversation was being recorded.
Nick quickly admitted the affair.

Speaker 3 His wife, Samantha, was right there to hear all of it.

Speaker 25 There's going to be some things you hear Sam at the channel right here.

Speaker 3 I just.

Speaker 25 This is your husband.

Speaker 25 It's your wife.

Speaker 3 Detective Jones found himself witnessing the kind of domestic argument that investigators usually hear about only after the fact.

Speaker 26 How many times did you sleep with her?

Speaker 25 We're saying sleeping, we're talking about obsession.

Speaker 25 How many times did you touch her?

Speaker 25 Well, she kissed me in the long track.

Speaker 26 And you kissed her back?

Speaker 26 Why Why did you just leave me?

Speaker 26 But you wanted to kiss her.

Speaker 3 Then Samantha said something that surprised Jones. She had known all about the affair because Tara had confessed and apologized.

Speaker 26 She was so nice.

Speaker 26 And I told her, I said, Tara, I'm not going to say anything until Nick tells me, because that's his responsibility. as a husband.

Speaker 26 Why did you kill her?

Speaker 26 She said she didn't want me to kill her. She wanted me to go after her her and beat her ass.
I told her I would never do it. Because I understand where she was coming from.

Speaker 3 So, if you believe that,

Speaker 3 the two women in this love triangle had made peace. If you believe that.
Did you think it was possible that either Nick Wheeler or his wife had killed Tara?

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 25 Well, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 11 Did you kill her?

Speaker 26 I really loved her. Really, I did.

Speaker 26 I did.

Speaker 3 That left one more question about the man in the middle, Nick. Where was he that weekend Tara died?

Speaker 25 Well, I'll pay to make that. I need to make sure I can find anything proof that he didn't kill her.

Speaker 3 He was a thief?

Speaker 3 He was her alibi and she was his. Pretty much, yeah.

Speaker 3 And that doesn't necessarily mean anybody's lying. Sometimes that's the way it works out.

Speaker 4 It is, because they were a couple, and I knew from experience with them that they spent a lot time, you know, either with friends or family or with themselves at home.

Speaker 3 The investigator says he didn't dismiss the Wheelers as potential suspects, but he had no evidence to link them to Tara's death.

Speaker 3 So Jones started focusing on the man any detective would need to look at, Tara's husband, Levi. And Jones says there was plenty to examine.

Speaker 6 Their whole relationship seemed like it was just a roller coaster.

Speaker 22 Coming up.

Speaker 5 Investigators find out that Levi had a lot more to hide than his wife did. In fact, when it came to cheating, they've never seen anything like it.

Speaker 3 How many other women besides you was Levi Chavez having an affair with? Ten.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 3 If Tara Chavez's death was homicide and not suicide, then her husband Levi would be a natural suspect.

Speaker 3 And it didn't take long for Detective Aaron Jones to find out that when it came to Levi Chavez, the Albuquerque cop, there apparently was something about a man in uniform. Levi's a very charming guy.

Speaker 4 He's a very charming guy.

Speaker 3 He clearly knows how to talk to women. He clearly does.

Speaker 3 There's no evidence that Levi knew about Tara's brief affair with Nick Wheeler, but it turns out that Levi was carrying far more secrets than his late wife had.

Speaker 3 Levi had been cheating on Tara, but that doesn't quite tell the story. Levi Chavez was racking up so many infidelities, he could barely remember some of his girlfriend's names.

Speaker 3 Tara's friend Melanie says that kind of thing had been going on ever since high school.

Speaker 6 And it wasn't just one girl, two girls, it was numerous girls.

Speaker 3 So he never really stopped?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 3 Detective Jones tracked down this woman, Rose Slama, a married mother of three. Rose says that at the time of Tara's death, she and Levi had been sleeping together for two years.

Speaker 27 By the time I came around, I was shocked to be number three.

Speaker 3 Number three, you were the third affair he'd had?

Speaker 27 No, I was on his phone when he opened it up. I was number three on his phone speed dial.

Speaker 3 So Levi was open with you, not just that he was married, but that he, in addition to being married, in addition to having an affair with you, had another girlfriend, someone who was, what, a little higher up in the hierarchy than you were.

Speaker 3 And you were okay with that? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Juggling multiple mistresses while married was apparently nothing new for Levi. And Rose said Levi's multitasking skills made it all possible.

Speaker 3 How many other women besides you was Levi Chavez having an affair with?

Speaker 15 Ten. Ten.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 You and nine other women? Yes. How did Levi find the time to be with ten different women and still presumably also, you know, fight crime?

Speaker 27 We were actually almost neighbors. We lived really close to each other.

Speaker 3 That would be essential in a situation like that. Yes.
You couldn't have like a one-hour commute to see somebody because when there's like nine others.

Speaker 27 And I think a couple others lived around us.

Speaker 3 Where did you and Levi usually meet up?

Speaker 27 On the running trails, the kids' school, my school, the duck ponds between our houses.

Speaker 3 So there was a lot of meeting up outdoors. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 27 Yeah, and even if I went to his house and the kids were there, he would just pop in a movie and have the kids watch a movie. And we would take off and

Speaker 27 do adult things.

Speaker 3 And Rose says those adult things didn't have anything to do with love.

Speaker 27 I didn't love him. I just...

Speaker 9 This was just sex. Just sex.

Speaker 3 But listen to this. One time when Rose and Levi were together at his house, she noticed a photo near the bed.

Speaker 27 I put two and two together and had asked Levi and he said, yeah, we're married.

Speaker 3 Rose recognized the woman in the photograph because she knew Tara and had just figured out she was sleeping with her hairstylist's husband. And you say, great, honey, lie down.

Speaker 3 Not, I gotta get out of here. This is weird.

Speaker 27 It was a little weird, I'm not gonna lie, but there seemed to be no love loss between them. There's like no love there, so

Speaker 3 I didn't care.

Speaker 3 Rose told Detective Jones a lot about her affair with Levi, but didn't seem to know anything useful about Tara's death.

Speaker 3 So Jones turned to others on Levi's speed dial, including Heather Hindy, a fellow cop in Levi's department. In fact, she'd been on cops, the TV show.

Speaker 28 Hey, PD, as well, Zier Nan returned fire.

Speaker 3 Jones interviewed Heather, but she didn't seem to have any leads. So he found Levi's more serious girlfriend at the time, another cop named Deborah Romero.

Speaker 4 I think she believed that Levi was going to be the real deal for her.

Speaker 3 Levi had admitted to Jones in their very first conversation that he'd been with another woman the night Tara died.

Speaker 3 Now, Deborah Romero would become a key part of Jones' investigation as he began to track Levi's whereabouts that weekend. He said he hadn't been home until he discovered the body.

Speaker 3 The detective believed Tara had been killed sometime on Saturday night, and Levi's story was that he'd been on duty until midnight and then went to Deborah's house. Jones went to talk to her.

Speaker 29 What is the first

Speaker 30 recollection that you have of seeing him physically at your house?

Speaker 30 When I woke up, he came into the bedroom.

Speaker 6 He was still in his uniform.

Speaker 3 Deborah confirmed she was with Levi from the time he got off work that night until the following evening. You wrestled together the whole time, David.
It was Alan Crapo that we together.

Speaker 3 So mistress as alibi. Maybe not a squeaky clean defense, but for now at least, their stories were in sync.

Speaker 3 But Jones still had questions for Levi. So the next time Levi came to his office, Jones set up a camera to record their conversation without Levi knowing.

Speaker 3 He wanted to see how Levi would react to the suggestion that Tara had not killed herself. Seems like you kind of caught him off guard.

Speaker 4 I did. I wanted to make him know that I had some concerns about some of the behavior that was going on.

Speaker 3 At first, it was all pretty routine.

Speaker 31 But whatever you need, I mean,

Speaker 32 I have nothing to hide you. Nothing.

Speaker 3 Then, Jones told Levi he suspected Tara had been murdered.

Speaker 10 Well, Levi, do you understand why this whole thing looks like a pile of s ⁇ ?

Speaker 4 No, I mean, I really don't.

Speaker 10 When I walked into your house that night, man, I really honestly believed this was suicide. But the problem is, man, as evidence don't lie.
Somebody killed your wife.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 32 That blows my mind. It'd be easier to tell my kids that than really what really happened, what I think happened, but I can't see how that's possible.
I mean, I didn't see...

Speaker 32 I think I would have saw something.

Speaker 3 Jones tells Levi he has some questions about all those women.

Speaker 10 you know what the problem is dude is i mean what what it looks like is is this i mean you've got so many freaking girlfriends dude i know i know what i mean you're like you don't even remember you don't you don't you got so many you don't even know their names i told you that i know and i might be

Speaker 10 you're you're like a major romeo dude

Speaker 3 a major romeo who said he still cared for his wife despite all those infidelities like she's like my partner man like who tara like

Speaker 32 you might not have been in love love business partner or parent-raising partner or just everything partner we've been through so much together well it almost looked like she was your nanny oh well you know i'm sorry man if you want me to apologize for being bad husband i was no but i don't know what you want me to tell you i'm divorced dude trust me bad husbands i i have to i'll probably take the cake i don't know what you want me to tell you dude i mean i'm i was husband dude but i didn't have nothing to do with this man well he admits to some of the affairs he admits to being a bad husband, but says he's no murderer.

Speaker 3 I don't see a guy who looks tremendously guilty there, but you did.

Speaker 4 Well, not necessarily over just that. I mean,

Speaker 4 it was the totality of her thing.

Speaker 3 That's because the totality of everything for Jones included some startling information he was getting. Something Tara's family and friends say she told them just before she died.

Speaker 22 Coming up.

Speaker 6 She made a couple statements to me that if anything ever happened to her, that Levi did it. It took me a while to even think, oh my god, maybe she was right.

Speaker 5 Did Tara have a premonition about her own death?

Speaker 3 The family of Tara Chavez never believed she took her own life. And they also didn't buy her husband Levi's story about how he found her.
There were a lot of just suspicious things.

Speaker 14 Nothing added up.

Speaker 3 To Tara's sister-in-law, Gina, the so-called suicide note found on the bedside table just didn't make sense, mostly for what it didn't say.

Speaker 14 I think my first thought was, like, I want to read it because I want to see it.

Speaker 3 And the note says, I'm sorry, Levi, but it doesn't mention her kids.

Speaker 35 Can you conceive of her?

Speaker 3 Writing a note like that and not mentioning her children? No.

Speaker 14 She wouldn't have left her kids. She would not have left her kids.

Speaker 3 Detective Jones had come to agree. The one sentence didn't seem like a suicide note.
At least, not one Tara would write.

Speaker 4 She was a very expressive person.

Speaker 3 You would have expected a more

Speaker 3 detailed and more expressive note.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Tara's best friend also told the detective that the behavior of the Levi she knew was much worse than the philandering he had admitted to.

Speaker 6 He would break her down so bad verbally. He would tell her all the time that she she was worthless, that she was nothing without him.

Speaker 3 Tara tried to keep it to herself, but especially from her dad.

Speaker 11 We didn't like seeing our daughter go through what she was going through with Levi.

Speaker 11 And being the father and wanting to fix everything,

Speaker 11 I think it created this curtain of don't let dad know.

Speaker 3 But in the months before she died, Tara did tell both of them she was getting fed up with Levi and was ready to end her marriage.

Speaker 12 She just told me she was going to be okay and the kids were going to be fine. They were going to be getting divorced and she was going to be moving forward.

Speaker 3 After Tara's death, the court of us say Levi never appeared to be the grieving husband, but instead seemed cold and distant.

Speaker 3 By the time of Tara's funeral, they say, Levi had already wiped away all traces of his dead wife.

Speaker 11 Everything my daughter did in that house was either in a box

Speaker 11 or somewhere. Somewhere else, it wasn't in the house any longer.
We were there to pick up clothing for a viewing that was going to happen Wednesday afternoon.

Speaker 3 And there was nothing left? There was nothing. Who does that?

Speaker 11 Who boxes up the person that made that house what it is?

Speaker 3 Within 48 hours.

Speaker 36 Within 48 hours, she was gone.

Speaker 3 It made the family wonder if evidence of Levi's guilt was also being boxed up and hidden, especially when they learned that potential evidence from the house had been destroyed the night Tara was found.

Speaker 3 Remember that red substance Detective Jones saw in the toilet that night? It turns out that never made it to the crime lab. Were you able to collect that evidence? No.
Because?

Speaker 4 Because it had been flushed by an Albuquerque police officer who was in the house.

Speaker 3 One of Levi's friends had come over to offer support. Well, friends, co-worker.
So, was it Tara's blood?

Speaker 3 Was it even blood? We're never going to know.

Speaker 4 No, we're sure not.

Speaker 3 And that bedding with the mysterious blood swipe was also removed by APD cops.

Speaker 3 Tara's family couldn't shake the feeling that Levi's fellow officers from Albuquerque might have been helping out their friend and that the local investigators in charge should have stopped them.

Speaker 11 I was extremely angry. Midfield-Balynch County Sheriff's Department.
I was

Speaker 11 beside myself with them. How could you allow another agency to come into your jurisdiction and enter that house?

Speaker 3 The jurisdiction of the man who found the body? Yes.

Speaker 3 Detective Jones says there's no evidence of a conspiracy or cover-up, and he blames himself for not immediately treating the house as a crime scene.

Speaker 3 Because of that, he was forced to work backwards to find both evidence and a possible motive. And soon he found something interesting, a life insurance policy that covered Tara.

Speaker 3 How much money would Levi get in the event of the death of his wife?

Speaker 4 $100,000.

Speaker 3 What about if it was a suicide?

Speaker 4 $100,000.

Speaker 3 And Tara's family told the detective that the couple, headed for divorce, had been having financial problems.

Speaker 3 But the main reason Tara's family and friends believed Levi had something to do with her death is this.

Speaker 6 She had made a couple statements to me that if anything ever happened to her, her, that Levi did it.

Speaker 3 Did you take that seriously?

Speaker 6 Obviously not serious enough. It took me a while to think, oh my God, maybe she was right.

Speaker 3 And her mom said that a few months before she died, Tara told her the same thing.

Speaker 12 She did tell me, if anything ever happens to me, Levi did it.

Speaker 12 And I immediately asked her if she was okay and if the kids were okay.

Speaker 12 And she told me everything was fine.

Speaker 3 But why say something like that?

Speaker 12 I couldn't tell you why she said that, but she did tell me that.

Speaker 3 Tara told her mom not to worry and not to say a word to her dad.

Speaker 12 And you didn't tell him. And I didn't tell him.

Speaker 11 I don't blame my wife for anything.

Speaker 11 Tara knew me well. She knew that I would

Speaker 3 intervene. Is there any part of either of you that thinks that Levi might not be responsible for this? No.
No.

Speaker 3 Now, the family and the detective were on the exact same page.

Speaker 3 You didn't believe Tara had killed her, so no. You thought Levi killed her? Faked it? Made it look like a suicide?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 3 But the feeling that Levi was responsible for Tara's death wasn't widely shared in law enforcement, largely because Levi had that alibi, Deborah Romero.

Speaker 3 a fellow police officer who said they were together that night.

Speaker 3 Jones wanted to interview Levi's police coworkers who had been on the scene that evening and his many other mistresses for more information, but some weren't talking.

Speaker 3 After a year, the investigation had reached a standstill.

Speaker 4 I was allowed to officially work the case for some time, but after that, I worked it when I could and

Speaker 4 however I could.

Speaker 3 Levi's uncle and family of cops felt Jones' investigation was pure witch hunt. When the police start to focus on Levi, what do you think?

Speaker 8 When you mention police, my thought is not police, it's Aaron Jones.

Speaker 3 You think this is all him? This is all Aaron Jones. He was driving the bus here.

Speaker 8 He was driving and he was the only one on that bus on the highway.

Speaker 3 While Jones's bus was stalling, the Albuquerque Press Corps rolled on with the story.

Speaker 3 Even though no arrest was made, Levi was put on administrative leave at his job. and remained the one and only person of interest in the case.

Speaker 8 To be honest with you, they didn't have a case. And I think they were trying to make Devi

Speaker 8 look like a bad guy.

Speaker 3 So maybe he's not a good husband, but he's not a murderer.

Speaker 8 No, he's definitely not a murderer. She took her life and Devi bound her.

Speaker 3 But Jones refused to give up and was determined to dig up new information any way he could. He began to think outside the box and suggested something highly unusual.

Speaker 4 I had told the coroners at the time, if you've got to sue me, sue me. You got to sue somebody, but in order order to get some answers on this case, you're going to have to file a civil suit.

Speaker 3 So they did. A wrongful death suit against Levi, the city of Albuquerque, and members of the Albuquerque Police Department, claiming they had all played a role in Tara's death.

Speaker 3 It was a huge fishing expedition, but would they catch anything?

Speaker 5 Levi's first testimony under oath. And one of his girlfriends tells a new story of what happened the night he found his his wife's body.

Speaker 27 He's like, my wife just died while I was in the shower and I heard the pop.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 3 Tara Chavez's parents were determined to help get their son-in-law arrested for their daughter's murder.

Speaker 3 So for their civil suit, the family's lawyers subpoenaed more than 50 people for depositions with the hope of learning something new.

Speaker 42 Please take your name for the record.

Speaker 17 Levi Chavez.

Speaker 3 Levi was called in to give a videotaped deposition.

Speaker 42 Were you aware that Officer Wheeler was seeing your wife? We're going to object to.

Speaker 3 He'd always been cooperative with police in the past,

Speaker 3 but this time Levi was under oath. And now, as his lawyers invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, Levi was far less chatty.

Speaker 42 When do you remember receiving an alleged text message from Tara saying she might hurt herself? We're going to assert the same privilege as to that.

Speaker 3 So little was learned from Levi that day. But attorneys also put his talkative mistress, Rose Slama, under oath.

Speaker 3 And in her deposition, she revealed something she had never told told police and later told us.

Speaker 27 And then when he got out, he had found her dead.

Speaker 3 Levi's story to investigators had always been that he'd been with one of his other girlfriends, Deborah Romero, that night and only found Tara dead when he returned home home to check on her.

Speaker 3 But this story Rose says he told her is quite different. You know you're the only person that tells that story.
Yes. You're sure that's what he said to you?

Speaker 27 I'm absolutely positively sure.

Speaker 3 This new story was puzzling to Jones, but it did match one thing the detective recalled seeing at the scene, a wet towel. And Rose had even more to reveal in her deposition.

Speaker 3 Remember, she'd been sleeping with Levi, but had also been a client of Tara's at her salon. Presumably you chatted with her the way women do with their hairstylists.

Speaker 3 And it was this double-edged role as paramour to Levi and as it turned out, confidant to Tara that would put Rose Slama at the center of this investigation and lead investigators to a possible motive.

Speaker 3 The last time she saw Tara, Rose says Tara told her something odd about that truck that had disappeared from the family driveway. You had a conversation with Tara about Levi's truck being missing.

Speaker 27 We were talking and I was like, well, what's, you know, what's going on with the truck? And have you guys heard anything about it? And she's like, it didn't come up stolen.

Speaker 27 I was like, what do you mean it didn't come up stolen?

Speaker 3 Rose says Tara told her the story of the truck being stolen had been a lie and that she believed her husband Levi, the cop, was mixed up in something very illegal.

Speaker 27 She said that Levi had some friends take it to claim the insurance, so he had the truck taken.

Speaker 3 So Tara was very upfront with you that she thought thought that the truck's disappearance was part of an insurance scam by Levi.

Speaker 27 Yeah, and she told me she was going to call the police and

Speaker 3 tell them. And when she later saw Levi, Rose says she told him his wife thought that he was involved in some kind of scam.
What was Levi's response when you told him about that?

Speaker 27 Says she didn't know what she was talking about.

Speaker 3 Levi maintained the truck was legitimately stolen. Yeah.
Still, if Tara was telling Rose she thought her husband was a criminal, what might happen next?

Speaker 27 I believe he was scared because she was going to turn him in and he had a lot to lose.

Speaker 3 To Detective Jones, that sounded like a reason for Levi to want to make his wife disappear. And he found more evidence to suggest Tara was planning to report her husband.

Speaker 3 Six days before she died, the New Mexico Insurance Fraud Bureau received a tip about a fake stolen vehicle.

Speaker 3 The investigator's notes say the caller's name was Sarah, but later said he thought it could have been Tara. And in fact, the woman's contact number was for the salon where Tara Chavez worked.

Speaker 3 What did you learn from people who worked at that salon?

Speaker 4 About three days prior to her death, she had told her boss that she had done something bad and that if she ended up dead, Levi killed her.

Speaker 27 I feel

Speaker 27 a sense of responsibility

Speaker 27 for Tara's death because if I've never said anything

Speaker 3 about the truck to Levi. Yeah.
Then what?

Speaker 27 Then maybe she's still alive.

Speaker 3 As As the Court of a Civil Lawsuit wound its way through court, Detective Jones retired from law enforcement.

Speaker 3 But the revelations that came from the suit jump-started the investigation into Tara's death and eventually caught the attention of prosecutors. Assistant DA Brian McKay.

Speaker 3 You thought the truck was a motive?

Speaker 21 We think the truck was a motive in a really simple sense.

Speaker 43 He's just moved to APD.

Speaker 21 He's wanting to move up the ranks. I'm sorry, you know the brass is going to do something if everyone's going around your wife's reporting that you're committing fraud.

Speaker 3 All of the defendants except Levi settled their parts of that civil suit, denying any liability. But the court of a family got what they really wanted.

Speaker 3 In April 2011, more than three years after Tara's death, Levi Chavez was charged with her murder.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Levi Chavez goes on trial with his alibi hold up in court.

Speaker 29 Is there any way for you to actually know what time he got there?

Speaker 6 I do not know.

Speaker 3 In June 2013, Levi Chavez was to stand trial in a New Mexico court for killing his wife Tara. He'd been out on bail, fired from his job as an Albuquerque cop after he was indicted.

Speaker 1 The trial for an APD officer accused of killing his wife is finally underway.

Speaker 3 Tara's family and friends thought justice was near. Was there a time when you thought Levi was never going to be prosecuted?

Speaker 7 No, we knew we would get here.

Speaker 12 We just had a lot of hurdles to get over.

Speaker 3 Levi's family saw the trial very differently as a chance to clear his name and theirs.

Speaker 3 You ever have any doubt as to whether or not Levi was capable of this?

Speaker 8 I didn't have no doubt. From day one I was one that was you know advocating that there's no way there's no way that he could have done this.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 Two families

Speaker 3 once joined by marriage could now hardly look at each other as they sat on opposite sides of a courtroom.

Speaker 3 The state set out to prove Levi, the cheating husband, killed Tara and staged her suicide to keep keep her from exposing a big secret.

Speaker 30 This

Speaker 29 was not a suicide.

Speaker 3 It was a purely circumstantial case.

Speaker 3 But lead prosecutor Brian McKay thought he had more than enough to brand Levi a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 29 So the perfect homicide

Speaker 30 equals suicide.

Speaker 3 You begin by talking about the perfect murder. Is that what you think this was? Yeah.

Speaker 21 A cop knows a suicide if they're convinced early on that this is a suicide.

Speaker 3 It's closed. It's over.

Speaker 29 It's done.

Speaker 21 There is no investigation.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors thought a big part of their case would be Levi's alleged involvement in a stolen truck scam. Rose Slama came to court to testify about what she'd heard.

Speaker 27 I had asked her about the truck situation and she had told me that Levi had had it stolen for insurance.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors told the jury they would prove this was Levi's motive for murder.

Speaker 30 He knows Tara's telling people

Speaker 29 that he is involved in some kind of a fraud.

Speaker 44 That's bad news.

Speaker 3 But the state couldn't really deliver on that supposed motive. Levi always maintained the truck really was stolen and fraud charges were never filed against him.

Speaker 3 So the judge wouldn't allow any testimony into trial that would back up Rose's story.

Speaker 3 The jury also never never heard family or friends testify that Tara thought Levi might hurt her, perhaps over the truck. All of that was hearsay.

Speaker 3 Still, McKay and his co-counsel and Keener believed they had much more evidence against Levi and made his infidelity the centerpiece of their case. They said Levi had simply grown tired of Tara.

Speaker 3 How would you describe him?

Speaker 43 Levi Chavez was a, is, a very

Speaker 21 me-centered person.

Speaker 43 Everything about Levi is about Levi.

Speaker 3 Among the mistresses who arrived in court was Katrina Garley, a Verizon store clerk Levi met shortly before Tara's death.

Speaker 3 They began an affair the day they met. And a few weeks later, they were in bed together again in the same home where Tara had died.

Speaker 29 When you went to the residence, did you have a sexual encounter?

Speaker 16 Yes, I did.

Speaker 10 Do you know if the children were there?

Speaker 16 He said they were, but I did not see them.

Speaker 3 Next up, a fellow APD officer, Regina Sanchez, Tara had called her when she learned Regina had been sleeping with Levi.

Speaker 16 The nature of the phone call was to pretty much just get mad at me, ask what was going on.

Speaker 44 Was she

Speaker 29 upset?

Speaker 19 Yes, very.

Speaker 3 And investigators showed that not long after that phone call, someone had typed in a web search on Levi's computer. How to kill somebody.

Speaker 45 After the how to kill somebody search,

Speaker 45 there was a web page that was visited, and that's on how to kill someone.

Speaker 3 The state's implication? That Levi thought murder might be easier than divorce. The prosecution said Levi had grown tired of Tara.

Speaker 29 That computer shows you that something's going on. He tells Tara she's holding him back, calls her a worthless piece of skin.

Speaker 3 And the prosecution suggested Levi had a plan to get rid of Tara for a new girlfriend, Heather Hindy.

Speaker 3 She was the other Albuquerque cop who got to know Levi in the weeks before Tara's death.

Speaker 7 You had indicated that you didn't start a sexual relationship until the end of November of 2007.

Speaker 19 Correct.

Speaker 3 63 days after Tara died, the man who once tearfully told Aaron Jones he would never get over his wife's suicide gave Heather a diamond ring.

Speaker 7 And when did you get married?

Speaker 16 July 5th, 2008.

Speaker 3 The official story is that Heather and Levi met just a couple of weeks before Tara's death, but things didn't evolve until long after Tara's death.

Speaker 3 Knowing what we know about Levi, do you believe that?

Speaker 4 No. I think she was the ultimate goal.

Speaker 3 And the state had something else. Deborah Romero, the mistress who had been Levi's alibi, now took the stand to testify for the prosecution.

Speaker 6 I actually think he called me that evening.

Speaker 3 Romero originally told investigators Levi was with her right after his shift ended during the period when it's believed Tara was killed.

Speaker 3 Now, years later, she testified that she couldn't be sure when he arrived at her house.

Speaker 29 Is there any way for you to actually know what time he got there?

Speaker 6 I do not know.

Speaker 3 According to the prosecution, Levi got off work at midnight and did something that his cell phone records show was highly unusual. He shut off his phone for 15 hours.

Speaker 29 On October 21st after midnight 2007, the defendant turned his phone on.

Speaker 3 His phone's off for a longer period of time than it had been off in a very long time. Yes.

Speaker 43 That was a huge piece of evidence because of the timing.

Speaker 21 I mean, really, that's the only time this big break and it happens to be when your wife's killed?

Speaker 3 Prosecutors then laid out for the jury exactly what they believed happened that night. They said Levi got to the house and walked inside to the bedroom where he found his wife asleep.

Speaker 17 Slams that gun in and pulls the trigger,

Speaker 29 instantly killing Tara Chavis.

Speaker 44 And then he pulls the gun out and he turns it over and he lays it down.

Speaker 3 And then?

Speaker 21 And then at that point in time is when he hops in the shower, in case the gunshot's heard, comes out, nothing, nobody's responded, Tal. That's when he sends that text.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors said it was Levi who sent that text from Tara's phone. I'm afraid I'm going to hurt myself.
I'm so upset, sad, and hurt. It was the text Levi would later show investigators.

Speaker 3 But Detective Jones took the stand to describe what he believed was Levi's one mistake.

Speaker 21 Did you push the magazine release in this case?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 3 Detective Aaron Jones testified how he had found the gun at the scene with the magazine already released.

Speaker 3 The state called experts to the stand to say that if Tara had shot herself, she wouldn't have been able to release it.

Speaker 30 I found that it took better than five pounds of direct pressure in order to release this magazine.

Speaker 3 And prosecutors believe the person who did release the magazine was Levi, the cop. They said Levi's perfect crime wasn't perfect perfect after all.

Speaker 3 This is not a suicide.

Speaker 3 Defendant killed Tara Chavez.

Speaker 3 But the defense was ready to tell a very different story, one of a lovesick woman in a spiral of despair.

Speaker 5 Coming up, the case for the defense, starting with a cross-examination of a lead detective. Turns out, he had a troubled past.

Speaker 17 Tucker Oll basically found you mentally unfit to be a police officer, right?

Speaker 4 That's what he ultimately said, yes.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 3 It seemed all of Albuquerque was transfixed by the sex-drenched narrative that was the Levi Chavez trial.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors argue the former police officer killed his wife and staged it to look like suicide.

Speaker 3 Now it was the defense's turn. Their first argument.
The reason investigators initially thought Tara took her own life was because she did.

Speaker 3 Defense attorney David Cerna.

Speaker 17 It was called a suicide because their own investigators, whose job it is to go and see what kind of death it is, called it a suicide.

Speaker 3 Stating what he knew the jury must have been thinking,

Speaker 3 Cerna admitted Levi was a failure as a husband, but said that didn't make him a murderer.

Speaker 35 He was completely unfaithful to her.

Speaker 3 In just about every way. Absolutely.
Just about every opportunity. Absolutely.

Speaker 35 But, you know, he talks about Tara being his partner. She was his partner because they had gone through so much.
They had had children together.

Speaker 3 All along, Levi's family felt the investigation into Tara's death was flawed and fueled by an obsessed detective.

Speaker 8 When one theory came up and it didn't pan out, then he had another theory. I think in police work, you got to have evidence.
You have to have something

Speaker 8 that we can hold on to.

Speaker 3 In a series of testy exchanges, the defense tried to discredit Aaron Jones on the stand.

Speaker 17 Thought as a world-class cop, maybe you could, or we're clairvoyant as well.

Speaker 4 I'm working on it.

Speaker 17 I know you are. I bet you are.

Speaker 3 I have no doubt of that. Cerna grilled Jones about his work history

Speaker 3 turns out he'd been fired twice and formally reprimanded for his handling of cases including one that caused Jones to be written up as unfit for duty

Speaker 17 roll basically found you in a

Speaker 17 five-page written report mentally unfit to be a police officer right

Speaker 3 that's what he ultimately said yes Jones was later found fit to serve and left law enforcement voluntarily. But the defense argued his troubled record cast a cloud over all his police work.

Speaker 3 How important was it to sort of chip away at Aaron Jones? Oh credibility. It was absolutely necessary.

Speaker 35 It was absolutely necessary that the jury see Aaron Jones for what he is.

Speaker 3 Remember Jones' theory that the blood pattern showed that the shooter was left-handed while Tara is right-handed? That theory never made it into court because it couldn't be backed up with forensics.

Speaker 3 And that insurance policy covering suicide that Jones found suspicious? The defense showed it was an old policy that had been in place for years through Levi's military service.

Speaker 17 My client never changed the

Speaker 17 amounts or coverage or clauses or anything of his insurance policy, right?

Speaker 3 I didn't know that then.

Speaker 3 And to cast more doubt on Jones' investigation, the defense suggested he never really really took a serious look at Tara's lover and his former buddy, Nick Wheeler.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 they never took your DNA. Did they take fingerprint

Speaker 46 exemplars from you?

Speaker 8 No, sir.

Speaker 3 In the end, the Sheriff's Department concluded there was no evidence that Nick Wheeler or his wife had anything to do with Tara's death.

Speaker 16 As for Rose Slama, had an itch and he scratched it, and that was it.

Speaker 17 You had an itch and he scratched it.

Speaker 3 That was it. Cerna argued Rose couldn't be trusted.
In fact, she was facing felony charges of her own.

Speaker 46 You were arrested for fraud over $2,500, right?

Speaker 27 Yes, sir.

Speaker 46 And forgery over $2,500, right?

Speaker 27 Yes, sir.

Speaker 3 The defense suggested Rose made up the Levi stories, hoping for leniency with her own legal problems, which she says all stemmed from a messy divorce.

Speaker 3 She would later plead out the lesser charges and get probation. But Rose swears all her testimony was the truth.

Speaker 27 I got no deal. I testified because it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 3 And the rest of that parade of mistresses? The defense argued those women only bolstered Levi's case, proving he was a lousy husband in a crumbling marriage.

Speaker 3 which gave Tara ample reason to be depressed, even suicidal.

Speaker 17 He wasn't a good husband, and he he wasn't there, and he didn't respond when she was making these cries for help.

Speaker 46 And he feels horrible.

Speaker 3 The defense's suicide expert, Dr. Alan Berman, testified all the evidence pointed to Tara taking her own life.

Speaker 33 She had a number of both chronic and acute risk factors for suicide.

Speaker 3 And the I'm sorry note left on Tara's bedside table? Dr. Berman said that note was too ambiguous for him to call it a suicide note.

Speaker 3 But that ripped-up page found buried in the garbage, the expert said that had the hallmarks of a real suicide note.

Speaker 33 The line, I hope you'll be happy now,

Speaker 33 is something we sometimes see in suicide notes.

Speaker 3 Originally, the state suspected both notes were forgeries, but their own handwriting expert confirmed Tara. wrote both of them.

Speaker 17 So you came back with an opinion that Tara wrote both of these so-called suicide notes

Speaker 3 I don't know what kind of notes they are sir but they're those notes yes one thing to keep in mind no expert on either side could say when those notes were written that day Tara died years earlier no way to tell but the weekend Tara died the defense said there was more evidence of her spiraling out of control

Speaker 3 she called Levi 315 times and that's the reason Levi shut off his phone. Not to escape detection, but to escape his wife.

Speaker 31 He doesn't want to be having his wife bugging him, bugging him, bugging him when he's, you know, hanging out at his mistress's house.

Speaker 3 Or he doesn't want any record of where he is.

Speaker 47 Well, now look at this.

Speaker 35 The prosecution's theory is that he knew about all of these cell phone tower pingings.

Speaker 47 Well, he didn't know anything about that at all.

Speaker 3 Well, there isn't a police officer in America who doesn't know about that.

Speaker 35 Well, he doesn't know that

Speaker 35 there's going to be

Speaker 35 a trail of where he is every minute. I got to tell you, Levi is not a criminal mastermind.

Speaker 3 That still left the question of how Tara could have shot herself and then partially released the gun magazine.

Speaker 3 The defense hired a crime scene expert to make this video, demonstrating how they believed it could be done.

Speaker 3 Magazine released.

Speaker 3 But when he came to court to do the same demonstration in person,

Speaker 3 he failed.

Speaker 3 Did you think when that's happening this is like the greatest thing?

Speaker 29 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 43 And the fact that he gets up there to show how his theory would work and is unable to do it, you know, once again, went absolutely to what we were saying.

Speaker 29 She could not have killed herself.

Speaker 3 Would that one mistake cost Levi his freedom? The defense attorney didn't think so because he had another strategy, a surprising and risky move.

Speaker 35 The defense calls Levi Chavez.

Speaker 22 Coming up.

Speaker 5 Levi Chavez takes the stand and tells his story.

Speaker 4 There was a little.

Speaker 3 A little light off from the TV.

Speaker 4 Couldn't believe it ever.

Speaker 15 See?

Speaker 3 Hey, weirdos!

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Speaker 3 Teresa Cordova says the woman Levi's defense attorney described at trial was not her daughter.

Speaker 17 Tara was a very needy person and she was a desperate wife.

Speaker 12 I

Speaker 12 walked out of there numb.

Speaker 4 It was horrible.

Speaker 3 Attorney David Cerna said Tara Chavez was a sad, needy woman desperate for male attention. And the breakup with Nick Wheeler sent her over the edge.

Speaker 35 That was really the double whammy because now she thought she found someone else to, you know,

Speaker 35 latch her star to, and he said nope to her also.

Speaker 3 Latch her star to. How about, you know, make her feel happy and

Speaker 3 not cheated on. Okay.
I mean, there's very little to suggest that Tara was interested in latching her star to anybody.

Speaker 47 I think you're right.

Speaker 35 She wanted somebody that was going to treat her right. The defense calls Levi Chavez.

Speaker 3 And now the man whom everyone agreed had treated her so wrong was going to take the stand himself.

Speaker 17 Please spell your last name.

Speaker 34 Levi Chavez, C-H-A-V-E-Z.

Speaker 3 Levi said he and Tara had been living on the verge of divorce for years, and she had become lonely and depressed.

Speaker 17 Did she express

Speaker 17 ever thoughts to you like she just wanted to disappear off the face of the earth all the time?

Speaker 3 And he said that on the weekend Tara died, he did ignore the 315 phone calls his wife placed to him.

Speaker 34 She would call and I would just hit the end button.

Speaker 34 I didn't want to be bothered by her.

Speaker 3 Levi says he worked till midnight on Saturday, then went directly to his girlfriend's house.

Speaker 34 Deborah was nice. She was like...

Speaker 34 A nice person. I didn't want, I liked her.

Speaker 34 I didn't want to take my phone in there and just ringing off the hook and have to explain,

Speaker 34 you know, it's my ex, I'm sorry. So I just turned it off so I didn't have to deal with it.

Speaker 3 His attorney took Levi through his account of the next day, Sunday. The kids were out of town at his dad's.

Speaker 3 Levi said he'd gone from Deborah's house to his mom's house, where she was watching desperate housewives. His mom said she couldn't reach Tara and was concerned.

Speaker 34 When I was talking to my mom,

Speaker 34 you know, everything was kind of coming together in my head, like her threats And

Speaker 46 no. And when you say 200 phone calls, what do you mean by threats?

Speaker 34 Like, I'm going to hurt myself if you don't come home.

Speaker 17 Okay, threats to herself. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 34 So, like, I had that information, and then she just stopped

Speaker 34 corresponding totally. And then my mom said she called in sick and didn't go to work on Sunday.

Speaker 3 I got

Speaker 34 afraid.

Speaker 3 He says fear made him race to the house to check on Tara. I walked in and the house is dark

Speaker 50 into the to the

Speaker 17 do you need a little time you need a little break to kind of to collect yourself?

Speaker 3 It's like a matter.

Speaker 34 So I walked in and and our bedroom's to the left

Speaker 4 and there was a little

Speaker 3 a little light on from the TV.

Speaker 36 I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Speaker 3 He says he instantly knew what had happened and that he was to blame.

Speaker 34 I felt like I was telling myself, like, this is your fault.

Speaker 3 Like, this is right here.

Speaker 34 It's your fault.

Speaker 3 Because I didn't answer the phone, and I was...

Speaker 34 I blamed myself.

Speaker 17 What emotions were you feeling?

Speaker 3 Guilt, but guilt doesn't even begin to even describe it.

Speaker 36 It's like there was something gone.

Speaker 36 And I was by myself for the first time.

Speaker 36 It felt like God was telling me, like, this is all your fault.

Speaker 3 Like, this is all your fault. After his emotional account of finding Tara, his attorney gave Levi a chance to explain away a series of other prosecution points.

Speaker 3 That computer search for how to kill.

Speaker 3 Levi told the jury that all came from his passion for martial arts.

Speaker 34 And I remember looking up

Speaker 34 how to rip somebody's throat out because I wanted to find that martial art.

Speaker 3 And Rose Slama? Yes, they had an affair. But Levi testified the rest of her story was a lie.

Speaker 17 Rose Slama told you, Tara seems to think that your

Speaker 17 truck wasn't really stolen.

Speaker 17 Did Rose Slama ever say such a thing to you?

Speaker 11 Never. She never told me.

Speaker 34 nothing like that. I didn't even, I don't even know for sure if Tara really cut her hair.

Speaker 3 And remember how Tara's things were so quickly packed up? Levi said his family did that all on their own.

Speaker 17 Did you know anything about family members of yours boxing stuff up?

Speaker 34 No, I didn't have anything.

Speaker 4 All I remember is the bed was gone.

Speaker 3 To close, the defense lawyer had two more questions for his final witness.

Speaker 17 Did you kill your wife, the mother of your children, Tara Chavez?

Speaker 34 Absolutely not.

Speaker 17 Did you tamper with any evidence to make her death look like a suicide when it was really a murder?

Speaker 34 No, I did not.

Speaker 3 On cross-examination, Prosecutor McKay tried to rattle Levi, grilling him about that text the state believed Levi had faked from Tara's phone and showed investigators.

Speaker 3 You thought that was an important text, didn't you?

Speaker 34 Of course I did.

Speaker 3 The prosecutor thought it suspicious that Levi had deleted all of Tara's other texts that weekend.

Speaker 29 Yet you deleted every text except that one.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 34 I don't, how am I supposed to know what text is I deleted?

Speaker 3 McKay went on to needle Levi as a lying philanderer. The answer?

Speaker 3 That was the old Levi.

Speaker 3 And he was now a changed man.

Speaker 34 It's impossible for any person to change in one day. It was a process.

Speaker 3 And Levi wasn't afraid to interrupt to make his points.

Speaker 34 I was explaining to the jury that's a process.

Speaker 3 Let me explain to my jury, please. Referring to the jury as my jury.

Speaker 34 Early October. Can I speak to my jury, please?

Speaker 3 Your Honor, no.

Speaker 29 You need to answer the question.

Speaker 3 In nearly six hours of testimony, Levi Chavez tried to show he had nothing to hide and that he did not kill his wife.

Speaker 17 Turns out Levi didn't do it. Nobody else did it.
Tara wrote those suicide notes, and they are suicide notes.

Speaker 3 But would his jury agree?

Speaker 5 As they begin deliberations, jurors are unanimous on at least one point.

Speaker 51 Someone made the comment, can we all agree that Levi Chavez is a dirtbag?

Speaker 5 But would that influence their verdict?

Speaker 5 When dateline continues

Speaker 3 The trial of Levi Chavez was drawing to a close as the judge charged the jury to deliberate. Just go into the jury room, select a fourth person.

Speaker 3 Was Tara Chavez's death a suicide or murder? If Levi is convicted, life in prison. Yeah.
Life in prison. Or he walks free.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Behind closed doors, after five weeks of testimony, the jury could finally discuss the evidence.

Speaker 52 It's mentally, emotionally draining. Yes.

Speaker 3 We spoke to six of the people Levi called my jury. What did you think of him continually referring to my jury?

Speaker 28 That was a little disturbing.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 They began deliberating and took a quick vote and realized they were far from unanimous. But they did agree on some things.

Speaker 3 All of you know someone who's had an affair? Yeah. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 12 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 3 Any of you know someone who's had as many affairs as Levi Chavez? No.

Speaker 51 Someone made the comment. Can we all agree that Levi Chavez is a dirtbag?

Speaker 3 And apparently they could agree on that while simultaneously setting it aside, concentrating on the evidence and not Levi's bad behavior.

Speaker 19 But we all felt that we couldn't judge him on his character. It was our job to judge him on the facts that were presented to us.

Speaker 3 But some of the comments the state said Levi made about his wife, they couldn't get over.

Speaker 50 He called her a useless piece of skin. To me, that meant I'm done with Tara.

Speaker 23 So that's kind of what made me think

Speaker 12 he killed her.

Speaker 3 They thought long and hard about how Tara was found and about the gun that killed her. They asked for the Glock to be brought into the jury room.

Speaker 19 We played a lot with the gun.

Speaker 23 We put the magazine in, we took the magazine out, we put the magazine in and we compared it to the photos.

Speaker 3 After a day of examining the evidence, they couldn't agree.

Speaker 19 My question was, what if we can't make a decision? I thought for sure there was no way. We were too far apart.

Speaker 3 The jurors went home for the night, and when they came back the next day, they took a vote. Now they were unanimous.
The court summoned the Cordova and Chavez families.

Speaker 7 I'm shaky.

Speaker 12 Wasn't quite prepared for that moment.

Speaker 3 How did Levi look?

Speaker 8 He looked very worried, too.

Speaker 44 Before I call out the jury and find out what the verdict is, I've been observing throughout this trial that there is a lot of animosity in this courtroom. You can cut the tension with a knife in here.

Speaker 3 The judge ordered quiet in the courtroom and instructed the families to leave separately after the verdict.

Speaker 44 Okay, jury number 51 has a jury reached a verdict?

Speaker 3 Yes, sir.

Speaker 44 Can you have the verdict for Suma Bailiff?

Speaker 44 Mr. Chavez, please arise.

Speaker 44 We find the defendant Levi Chavez, not guilty,

Speaker 3 of charge to greenhurt

Speaker 44 as charged with cottonwood.

Speaker 3 Not guilty. Levi Chavez was about to walk free.
Were you looking at Levi at the moment they read the words?

Speaker 8 Yes. And all of us were hugging and

Speaker 8 said a little prayer after. He was very, I mean, it's just like it's over.

Speaker 3 But the other family in court listened in agony and quickly left.

Speaker 33 Justice has not been served.

Speaker 24 Justice has not been served.

Speaker 11 I immediately put my arm around Teresa and got her out of there. And I wanted to get her home.

Speaker 6 I was shocked, disappointed, and disgusted with our system.

Speaker 3 So how did the jury reach that not guilty verdict?

Speaker 3 Prosecutors, they said, had simply failed to make their case. Several said they were baffled at how little evidence was presented.

Speaker 19 When the prosecution rested, I was like

Speaker 19 still weakly. Like, I was expecting much more from them.

Speaker 52 I really would have hoped them to take out two of the mistresses and put in something else that would give us more hard evidence, but they didn't.

Speaker 3 Many told us they specifically didn't believe one of those mistresses, Rose Slama. No.
No, no. Didn't trust her? No.

Speaker 3 Not at all. Not at all.
What did you say?

Speaker 52 Don't trust her with a 10-foot pole.

Speaker 3 Aaron Jones, good police officer? Definitely not.

Speaker 3 No. Jones testified that the guns magazine had been released.
But when the jury looked at the photos, they weren't so sure.

Speaker 23 Poor me, no one proved to me that that magazine was unseated.

Speaker 3 So the fact that the defense expert tried to show how it could be done and couldn't do it, that wasn't some huge fail for the defense. No, no, no, no, not enough.

Speaker 3 Remember, the jurors never heard the comments attributed to Tara from her family and friends, that if something happened to her, Levi did it.

Speaker 3 In the end, all of the jurors we spoke with said it came down to reasonable doubt. One was upset that they weren't able to convict.

Speaker 50 And it was not a decision that I wanted

Speaker 50 to give,

Speaker 50 but I had to

Speaker 50 because of the reasonable doubt.

Speaker 3 So you think Levi got away with murder?

Speaker 50 Unfortunately, I do.

Speaker 3 The jurors that I talked to said they were stunned when the prosecution rested. They thought to themselves, that's it? There's no more? Did you guys screw this up?

Speaker 21 No, we gave them the evidence, one we were allowed to give and two that was out there.

Speaker 21 We don't get to create the evidence.

Speaker 3 So my question is, was it worth it?

Speaker 3 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 3 Even though you didn't get the result you wanted?

Speaker 12 Yes. Yes, we know the truth.

Speaker 11 We know the truth. And Tara's words, even though they weren't heard in that courtroom, they're being heard today.

Speaker 38 I'm not guilty. I'm innocent.

Speaker 3 After the acquittal, Levi charged out of court and straight through the press corps he felt had been harassing him for years.

Speaker 4 I knew I'd be acquitted.

Speaker 52 I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not surprised at all.

Speaker 3 You are the only member of Levi's family who's willing to talk to us. How come Levi doesn't want to talk?

Speaker 8 Well, I feel that the media has really,

Speaker 8 I don't think they gave him a fair chance. None of my family has ever said anything bad about the court of us.

Speaker 8 We're all victims and I really do feel sorry for them. I really do.

Speaker 8 They can take this apology from my family, but you know what? Levi

Speaker 8 is a victim.

Speaker 3 His attorney says Levi has no plans to return to law enforcement.

Speaker 3 He still lives in the Albuquerque area with his wife Heather, their young son, and Levi's two kids with Tara. You think Levi's being a better husband to her than he was to Tara?

Speaker 8 Levi's Levi's being an excellent husband and father.

Speaker 3 The Cordovas later decided to drop their wrongful death civil lawsuit against their former son-in-law.

Speaker 19 We're all here to remember Tara.

Speaker 3 A few weeks after the trial, family and friends came together in Los Lumas to remember Tara Chavez on what would have been her 32nd birthday.

Speaker 3 For all of those who loved her, Tara is never really that far away.

Speaker 11 I'd be in good company if something ever happened to me now, wouldn't I, Josh?

Speaker 3 I have.

Speaker 17 I have my baby.

Speaker 17 She's looking over me.

Speaker 17 She's my angel.

Speaker 21 That's all for now.

Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 37 Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

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