The Hometown Hero & The Homecoming Queen

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Speaker 5 It's never good news.

Speaker 6 When the phone rings at five o'clock in the morning,

Speaker 6 I knew something wasn't right.

Speaker 6 He just began sobbing and saying, no, no.

Speaker 9 Something horrible must have happened.

Speaker 10 It was just before midnight when the shooting started.

Speaker 11 He had been shot multiple times. He was on the ground, face down.

Speaker 10 A man was dead, but not just any man.

Speaker 12 How do you kill Superman?

Speaker 12 How is Superman dead?

Speaker 10 He was an Olympian and a father. Killed, his wife says, by an intruder in his own backyard.

Speaker 15 It was gardenering how fast they were.

Speaker 10 But if her husband was dead outside, why was the gun found hidden inside? And what other secrets were hidden away?

Speaker 6 Sometimes she would say things like, I'd be better off if Dave wasn't around.

Speaker 10 Was her husband defending his family or was she?

Speaker 18 She rose that night.

Speaker 10 The mystery may not be who did it, but why.

Speaker 6 The truth will come out and justice will be served.

Speaker 7 I have to believe that.

Speaker 10 I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.

Speaker 10 Here's Kate Morrison with The Hometown Hero and the Homecoming Queen.

Speaker 20 It was late when it happened.

Speaker 21 Very late.

Speaker 2 Too late.

Speaker 22 The sky had already fallen.

Speaker 24 No one saw it coming.

Speaker 2 No one heard the warning.

Speaker 26 But now, in the night, it was done.

Speaker 5 They work hard here in their homemade garage gym.

Speaker 24 Because, in part, it isn't just a gym.

Speaker 28 It's a kind of shrine.

Speaker 30 I look at the wall and there's a bunch of pictures and

Speaker 23 it's...

Speaker 29 that's what makes it special I think.

Speaker 24 These were the moments before they were born when a shot putter named Dave Laut became his family's Superman.

Speaker 34 Here we have that spin that is a very new technique here.

Speaker 21 And his little brother watched him win a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics.

Speaker 12 I mean after I just cried

Speaker 35 How do you not

Speaker 12 How do you not cry when you see your brother up there getting the medal?

Speaker 5 It's cool.

Speaker 37 He was my big brother, but he was like my Superman.

Speaker 12 He was my Superman.

Speaker 26 Don Laud is Dave's younger brother by nine and a half years.

Speaker 39 Dave and Don inherited a passion for athletics and fitness from their father.

Speaker 12 I remember my first milk when I was a kid was a protein powder.

Speaker 41 This is all really just built into your DNA almost, and it's part of your life.

Speaker 43 Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 32 Here is where that DNA was planted: Oxnark, California, a farm town on the beach, north of LA's encroaching sprawl.

Speaker 44 They grow mostly strawberries here now.

Speaker 25 Lima beans back then.

Speaker 26 They were different those days.

Speaker 18 When we grew up, you know, you could ride your bike anywhere.

Speaker 46 Everybody knew everybody.

Speaker 40 This is Helen Kalouris.

Speaker 27 Of course, she knew the Louts growing up.

Speaker 22 And that big old farming family of her childhood best friend, Jane Lawbacher.

Speaker 18 Our dads were both farmers, old farming families were both from.

Speaker 22 The Lawbachers were big here in Oxnard.

Speaker 18 It was just lots of, lots of lawbachers. Always lots of Lawbachers around.
It was just,

Speaker 18 they multiplied. They were good Catholics.

Speaker 51 And Helen's friend, Jane, grew up to be especially beautiful.

Speaker 20 Featured in her high school yearbook as Homecoming Queen.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 she was not ever concerned with that. She's also very very shy.

Speaker 53 How do you get to be a homecoming queen if you're shy?

Speaker 18 She's also just a very kind

Speaker 18 person,

Speaker 18 very gentle person.

Speaker 21 And as that yearbook shows, a star volleyball player, too.

Speaker 18 She could spike. I mean, she's not that tall, but she could jump.

Speaker 48 Jane soon met that other gifted athlete, Dave Lout.

Speaker 26 already well on his way to becoming one of the best shop putters in California.

Speaker 32 They began dating after high school and sometimes let Dawn, little lout, tag along.

Speaker 12 She was wonderful. She was fun.

Speaker 12 They just, they, they got along so well, they loved each other.

Speaker 5 It was just neat.

Speaker 38 When they got married in 1980, Jane's friend Helen was a bridesmaid.

Speaker 18 Going to that morning of the wedding to Jane's parents' house and all the girls getting dressed up and that was really fun. It was just sweet.
And Jane was quite excited.

Speaker 18 I mean, she looked gorgeous, beautiful, beautiful on her wedding day.

Speaker 6 He had her on a pedestal.

Speaker 7 He always said such wonderful things about her.

Speaker 20 This is Don's wife, Rebecca.

Speaker 6 We became very close. We'd talk maybe once, twice a week on the phone.
And probably for hours, her and I. We just hit it off.

Speaker 9 We were family.

Speaker 55 Jane was there by Dave's side as he became a national and then world competitor.

Speaker 57 At the World Championship meet in 1983, he talked to NBC Sports about the benefits and costs of weight training.

Speaker 34 It can tighten a thrower up. It can destroy the feelings that are necessary to throw and implement a far distance.

Speaker 20 Dave won the bronze medal at the 1984 Games, but after

Speaker 20 his career faded quickly.

Speaker 58 He kept trying, but knee injuries.

Speaker 39 He didn't make the Olympic team in 1988.

Speaker 12 He was disappointed, but he knew. I mean, it's just, it's like a point of your career when you know that something is done.

Speaker 11 It's okay.

Speaker 12 Because you know you've done as far, you've gone as far as you can, and that door closes.

Speaker 5 And another door opened. Dave became a high school biology teacher, coach, and athletic director.

Speaker 12 And he was even better at being a teacher and a coach than he was even throwing.

Speaker 58 If Dave missed his former glory, his family said, he never showed it and, of course, remained a legend to his niece and nephews.

Speaker 30 I think one phrase I could best describe him is a gentle giant.

Speaker 30 He had so much patience, so much kindness.

Speaker 24 At home, Dave and Jane struggled to have children.

Speaker 6 She wanted to have a family really bad.

Speaker 7 I felt bad when I would get pregnant.

Speaker 38 And then in 1999, they adopted a baby boy from South Korea, named him Michael.

Speaker 5 They were happy. I mean,

Speaker 6 I have tons and tons of pictures of them, the three of them together.

Speaker 46 They were happy.

Speaker 26 Moments in time.

Speaker 21 Inspiration on a garage wall, which these days is about all that's left.

Speaker 60 This doesn't make sense. No.

Speaker 60 It's not right. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 39 Ever since that August night in 2009.

Speaker 2 When a Superman fell to Earth.

Speaker 10 what happened in that backyard?

Speaker 15 When we returned, I thought I traveled hunger shadow. There's something behind the trash can.

Speaker 2 Did a run-in with a prowler turn deadly?

Speaker 35 How many pups did you hear?

Speaker 61 Three.

Speaker 15 Describe them to me, how fast they were.

Speaker 39 Midnight, August 28th, 2009, Oxnard, California.

Speaker 43 The woman in full panic.

Speaker 62 All right, what's the person look like that was in your backyard?

Speaker 15 I didn't feel that I steal my truck.

Speaker 62 Your truck big fire? Yeah.

Speaker 41 The woman on the phone was Jane Lout, the wife of the hometown hero.

Speaker 14 Oh, my God.

Speaker 14 Dave was still outside, she said, where she heard shots fired.

Speaker 62 Where did you last see your husband?

Speaker 62 How old's your son? Two.

Speaker 61 He's still asleep.

Speaker 62 Okay, don't wake him up, sushit, okay?

Speaker 62 Stay with me. I have officers there.
There are two officers there. There are one stay inside the house.

Speaker 11 The officers had to lock down and call in a homicide team to investigate further.

Speaker 49 It was a brutal scene.

Speaker 32 Manchura County DA's investigator Mike Palmieri said, by the time first responders arrived, there was no sign of a prowler.

Speaker 64 But they did find Dave Lout.

Speaker 11 He had been shot multiple times. He was on the ground, face down, with very obvious gunshot wounds to to his back and to the back of his head.

Speaker 40 Jane was a mess.

Speaker 38 She told investigators she had no idea who would do this.

Speaker 65 Is there anybody that wanted to heart or anything at all?

Speaker 40 Son Michael, 10 at the time, slept through it all.

Speaker 32 And Jane's brother took charge of him while Jane went down to the Oxnard police station to offer a more complete statement.

Speaker 47 It had been a perfectly normal evening, she said.

Speaker 5 They were in bed by 10, Dave in the master bedroom, she in Michael's room, where she often slept because Dave had a bad back.

Speaker 5 And then it was about an hour later, she said, about 11.

Speaker 5 Ellen was crying.

Speaker 31 Dave came down the hall, she said, worried about the dog. And he said, What's wrong with her?

Speaker 31 Yeah, I said, I don't know that she might have to quarter time.

Speaker 31 And then

Speaker 31 he went back to bed.

Speaker 31 And then he got up and said he thought he'd hurt me.

Speaker 21 So, 11.15, she said.

Speaker 39 She and Dave crept over to a sliding glass door, to a side yard. I took him flashlight.

Speaker 39 And uh,

Speaker 50 so I got the red flashlight. So you walk towards the cytomester

Speaker 50 with the flashlight in your hand, right?

Speaker 50 And when you get to the cytomester, what happens?

Speaker 50 I remember where you heard about light, but he started to go off where the trash cans were.

Speaker 50 And then

Speaker 50 I heard something like

Speaker 50 a gas or something like that. Did you see anybody else? I thought I saw like a shadow or something by the trash can.

Speaker 50 Do you think you did?

Speaker 50 And was it in front of or behind you?

Speaker 50 Can't see there's the gate. So it's opening.
So how far behind him were you?

Speaker 50 I see shadows by the trash can.

Speaker 50 What do you? He sticks around the house and then going to the door. And then what happens?

Speaker 50 Then I hear

Speaker 50 gunshots and

Speaker 50 then I shut the door.

Speaker 57 And the gunshots?

Speaker 15 What are they sound like?

Speaker 15 They sound like a pop.

Speaker 15 Like

Speaker 15 quick.

Speaker 35 How many pops did you hear?

Speaker 35 Three.

Speaker 35 Describe them to to me, how fast they were.

Speaker 35 It wasn't pop, hesitation popped, and hesitation popped. It was 0.23.

Speaker 42 As Jane talked to investigators into the early morning hours, the awful news was getting around.

Speaker 7 We got a call about 5 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 35 What happens to a person? You go to bed at night and everything's fine. And the phone rings at 5 o'clock in the morning and suddenly life is a very different thing.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 12 It's like an earthquake that just shakes your whole foundation and being.

Speaker 12 And things are never the same. After

Speaker 59 it was awful,

Speaker 36 just

Speaker 6 fell to his knees. You know, he was on the phone, and he just began sobbing and saying, No, no,

Speaker 43 and

Speaker 64 it was horrible.

Speaker 12 You don't believe it, but it's like,

Speaker 12 How do you kill Superman?

Speaker 12 How is Superman dead?

Speaker 12 I was,

Speaker 12 once, was.

Speaker 66 A few days later, Dave's friends and family held a candlelight vigil.

Speaker 68 He was so loved.

Speaker 65 And every step we take, we take because people like you reach out to us and are here to support my mother-in-law and my husband and our family. And we just really truly appreciate that.
Thank you.

Speaker 35 Lift up for candles for Dave.

Speaker 31 But they didn't know then, didn't know what the police had discovered.

Speaker 5 A key piece of evidence almost overlooked at first.

Speaker 11 The lead investigator in this case walks in and he's just looking around.

Speaker 11 And I mean, you've got a dining room table, you've got a hutch, you've got a grandfather clock.

Speaker 11 So he opened up that clock, and it was an oh wow moment.

Speaker 43 Now, why would a prowler leave something so important in there?

Speaker 10 Coming up,

Speaker 10 if the intruder was outside, how did a key piece of evidence get inside?

Speaker 10 And something else seemed odd, Jane's behavior.

Speaker 11 She actually tried to keep one of the police officers out of the laundry room. She tried to close the door with her in the laundry room and him out.

Speaker 10 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 33 Jane Lout told the police a harrowing story of a backyard prowler and gunshots right outside her door.

Speaker 28 And now her husband, Olympic bronze medalist Dave Lout,

Speaker 42 was dead.

Speaker 57 But some things seemed a little off.

Speaker 58 For example, said Investigator Palmieri, when police were still questioning Jane at the house, she stepped into the laundry room.

Speaker 11 She actually tried to keep one of the police officers out of the laundry room. She tried to close the door with her in the laundry room and him out.

Speaker 9 Why?

Speaker 38 Well, said Pomieri, Jane was wearing pajamas when police arrived, but in that laundry room they found her jeans rolled up in a towel tucked between the washer and dryer.

Speaker 33 Her top was lying there as well, inside out.

Speaker 51 Looked like they'd been removed quickly, stashed away.

Speaker 24 And when an officer tried to administer a gunshot residue kit to Jane's hands, standard procedure in a shooting investigation.

Speaker 11 When the officer doing the test began getting the test ready, she did go into the bathroom and either wash her hands or wipe her hands on a towel, one of the two,

Speaker 11 before coming back to the table and before the test was done.

Speaker 47 So, odd things.

Speaker 54 Anyway, police scoured the place, didn't see any murder weapon lying around.

Speaker 16 And they were about ready to take Dave's body off to the morgue when some instinct told the lead detective to look here.

Speaker 52 He cracked open the doors of the grandfather clock in the dining room, looked down inside,

Speaker 5 and there it was.

Speaker 11 This is more than likely the murder weapon.

Speaker 19 A Ruger six-shot revolver.

Speaker 21 Surely no prowler would have dropped a weapon right here in the dining room clock.

Speaker 11 The Prowler theory did not make any sense whatsoever with a hidden gun inside the house.

Speaker 35 And so it wasn't long before investigators shifted their focus from unknown prowler to the woman who'd reported one, Jane Lout.

Speaker 5 Remember those clothes they found in the laundry room?

Speaker 33 When they tested them, they found gunshot residue.

Speaker 24 So did Jane shoot Dave, then change into her pajamas before she called 911?

Speaker 27 And you'll remember, Jane specifically mentioned a red flashlight, so police bagged it, tested it, and found gunshot residue, as if she was holding the flashlight while shooting her husband.

Speaker 21 And if Jane was the killer, this was about as cold-blooded as it gets.

Speaker 57 Investigators said Dave had been shot six times.

Speaker 11 We came up with a fairly logical explanation of how it was done.

Speaker 20 Shot one appeared to have been fired from a distance of several feet, grazed his head.

Speaker 28 deposited pieces of scalp on a garbage can, and then the bullet hit the wall.

Speaker 26 That shot brought him to his knees where the killer fired shots two and three into his face at close range.

Speaker 11 We find the one that goes through his cheekbone. It goes down the side yard.
It bounces off of the concrete.

Speaker 11 It nicks the fence and that bullet we matched out on the sidewalk.

Speaker 28 Shots four, five, and six hit in the upper arm and back.

Speaker 32 the back of Dave's head.

Speaker 11 We believe shot six, the final shot, was the shot to the back of the head.

Speaker 55 From the very beginning, Jane denied she had anything to do with it.

Speaker 61 I didn't get to.

Speaker 15 I don't know if it had anything to do with it.

Speaker 20 But they didn't believe her, especially when they found out that the bullets that killed Dave matched the gun in the grandfather clock.

Speaker 25 And now, Dawn and Rebecca Lout began to look at a lot of things differently. Things Jane had told them through the years, which maybe didn't add up either.

Speaker 6 I honestly felt like she was family, so I'm going to dismiss the strange feeling I get sometimes.

Speaker 67 Like, said Rebecca, the time Jane told her, two men put a knife to her throat and demanded money.

Speaker 6 And I said, well, did you call the police? Did you yell?

Speaker 8 And she says, oh, no,

Speaker 6 I just came home. I just wanted to get home.
And I said, and this was in the middle of the day and nobody else saw? saw and she said no

Speaker 14 and then there was her claim that somebody was leaving threatening notes on her car but then you'd ask her and probe her like what kind of notes and she but she wouldn't really tell you but so the implication is somebody's after her somebody's after she's in some danger but now when they looked back at the things they'd noticed over the years it was like something fell into place for them there was a separation.

Speaker 12 It was like Jane was the parent and Michael was the child and Dave was in the way.

Speaker 73 You had the sense that she was pushing Dave right?

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 12 I think that was a stress on the marriage.

Speaker 21 That there was stress was pretty clear, said Rebecca.

Speaker 6 For a while, every time she would call me, it seemed like it was

Speaker 6 to vent about something she didn't like

Speaker 6 about what Dave was doing.

Speaker 51 So, evidence was carefully sifted for months.

Speaker 26 And then in February 2010, Jane Laut was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Speaker 2 And the story, said investigators, was chillingly clear.

Speaker 11 This was an execution. She lured him out, shot him from behind, and then aggressed on him, shot him a second, third time,

Speaker 11 stepped back, shot him a fourth time, came up super close, and shot him two more times, one to the back of the head.

Speaker 5 There seemed to be plenty of evidence.

Speaker 56 Jane's odd behavior, her lie about a prowler, and on top of it all, the gun in the grandfather clock.

Speaker 5 So, Jane hired a lawyer and pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 50 And the story that came out there turned the whole case on its head.

Speaker 64 Mr. Lott was a monster, he was despicable.

Speaker 10 Coming up,

Speaker 10 what had been happening behind closed doors?

Speaker 64 You got one or two choices at that point. Run or fight, she decided to fight.

Speaker 40 Reputation is all we have in the end.

Speaker 28 How quickly it can turn.

Speaker 21 Sweet Jane Lout, now accused murderer.

Speaker 32 And Dave, now that Dave was dead, stories emerged.

Speaker 7 It seemed like she was controlled, in my opinion.

Speaker 52 And across the street neighbor.

Speaker 7 I mean, he's there standing there while she's you know pulling weeds, cleaning out gutters, washing his truck and he's not lifting a finger to help her.

Speaker 36 Come on, you know.

Speaker 48 Well Jane seemed what?

Speaker 5 Nervous?

Speaker 7 Almost like a scared little rabbit.

Speaker 74 I was always a little leery about what was actually going on in the home.

Speaker 24 This close friend said Jane's fear reminded her of another vulnerable creature.

Speaker 74 Jane looked like a scared cat,

Speaker 74 constantly doing like a twitch, looking over her shoulder, kind of looking to see if someone's behind her.

Speaker 67 And this from Jane's former co-worker.

Speaker 75 He was very aggressive. He was very demanding.
And when he said jump, she would go how high.

Speaker 21 How strange it was, she thought, that Jane always wore long sleeves, even when it was hot outside.

Speaker 42 But more disturbing.

Speaker 75 There were times when she would come in and

Speaker 75 I noticed on her face it looked swollen

Speaker 46 and

Speaker 75 she would never comment

Speaker 46 how it happened.

Speaker 74 There were several times that I saw bruising on her.

Speaker 74 One time on her face, her arms, her legs,

Speaker 7 several places.

Speaker 64 He's a monster. He's just a monster.

Speaker 24 Ron Bamier was Jane's defense attorney.

Speaker 28 And according to him, Dave Laud is far from the hometown hero so many believed him to be.

Speaker 40 The real truth about Dave Loud, said Bamier.

Speaker 21 For nearly three decades, he subjected his wife to horrific abuse.

Speaker 76 Like all abuse, it's power and control.

Speaker 64 We have verbal abuse, the names he called her over a repeated long period of time.

Speaker 76 We have emotional abuse, the way he treats her. We have physical abuse.

Speaker 64 That's everything from the punching to the kicking to the slapping to the hitting, throwing her down, pulling her hair, spitting on her.

Speaker 41 And Jane wasn't the only victim, said Bamier.

Speaker 38 Dave was angry that his adopted son, Michael, was not athletic.

Speaker 64 We have neighbors who hear him call Michael names like

Speaker 64 racial names to Michael that are just horrible.

Speaker 77 We have him yelling at him in the street about how he can't ride a bike or catch a football or play baseball.

Speaker 58 All those years, Jane was afraid to report Dave, said Bamier, afraid of what he might do to her loved ones.

Speaker 52 And so she covered up his abuse and her injuries.

Speaker 20 We obtained this summary of a police report from the 1980s in which Jane reported that an intruder attacked her while she was alone at work.

Speaker 24 At the time, police found the injuries consistent with Jane's story.

Speaker 17 In fact, said Bamier, Dave inflicted those injuries, then ordered Jane to lie and blame a non-existent intruder.

Speaker 20 A pattern of covering up Dave's abuse.

Speaker 32 Abuse which, by the summer of 2009, was getting worse, said Bamier.

Speaker 64 From June of 2009 to August of 2009, it was escalating.

Speaker 20 But Jane continued to take it until that particular August night when something changed.

Speaker 47 That night, according to Bamier, for the first time, Dave threatened Michael's life.

Speaker 41 She really believed that he was going to kill Michael?

Speaker 68 Yeah.

Speaker 64 So she made the decision to fight.

Speaker 40 Jane had taken Michael to the beach that day, said Bamier.

Speaker 9 They were late getting home.

Speaker 76 Dave was upset, started screaming and yelling, nobody respects me.

Speaker 64 You know, I don't get any attention around here. Nobody cares about me.

Speaker 31 Jane put Michael to bed, said Bamier.

Speaker 51 Got into pajamas herself and waited for Dave's anger to subside.

Speaker 64 But he wasn't calming down. So about 10.30 or 11 o'clock, he comes out of the room and he's upset and he's angry.

Speaker 26 And that's when she saw the gun, said Bamier.

Speaker 64 He's holding it. And he starts talking about Michael, how that they don't respect him and that he's going to blow his effing head head off.

Speaker 76 He grabs her, he throws her against the wall, she falls down.

Speaker 76 She kind of crawls backwards with her hands and her feet like a crab walk towards the back door.

Speaker 64 Somehow she gets him out in the patio.

Speaker 77 She's like, calm down, Dave, calm down.

Speaker 31 And then out in the darkness, Dave stumbled on the patio.

Speaker 64 He loses his balance when that's her opportunity. And she just goes at him.
And she tries to grab the gun, and they go to the ground. And there's a struggle from the gun.
The gun goes off.

Speaker 64 And then she eventually gets the gun and she's just, she empties it.

Speaker 47 And then she said she ran back into the house, put the gun inside the grandfather clock, and called 911.

Speaker 64 She has no idea. He's dead.
He's down, but she thinks he's getting up. And women in these relationships have this Superman complex they give their abusers.

Speaker 40 So yes, she lied about the prowler, said Bamier.

Speaker 24 but did it almost automatically, her conditioned response to his abuse.

Speaker 41 But once the police discovered Jane's lie, said Bamier, their minds were made up that she was a cold, calculating killer.

Speaker 67 And so when police found those clothes shoved in the laundry room, Bamier said, they believed it must have been Jane's attempt to hide evidence of her crime.

Speaker 32 But those clothes, when tested, actually only had a tiny fragment of gunshot residue.

Speaker 58 And police never bothered to test the pajamas Jane was wearing when they showed up, but Vamier did.

Speaker 42 And the test revealed the pajamas were covered in gunshot residue.

Speaker 58 Proving, said Famier, that Jane was wearing those pajamas when she fired the gun.

Speaker 14 So it all supports her story. It all does.

Speaker 66 And as for the claim that Jane jumped up to wash her hands before a gunshot residue or GSR test, that never happened, said Famier.

Speaker 45 That was just the police covering up a major mistake.

Speaker 14 The cop lost the GSR sample test.

Speaker 64 They searched for it, they couldn't find it.

Speaker 32 Anyway, said Famier, investigators looked at the crime scene evidence and just plain got it wrong.

Speaker 58 Once they concluded she was a murderer, he said, they actually distorted the evidence to fit their story.

Speaker 64 A bullet that glanced off his head and went at about a 90-degree angle and hit the wall and then deposited two pieces of scout matter on the garbage can.

Speaker 53 And you're saying that's physically impossible?

Speaker 21 Yes,

Speaker 76 it's ludicrous. It violated the laws of physics.

Speaker 51 And what's more, he said, the DNA on the gun was Dave's, once again supporting Jane's contention that he had the gun.

Speaker 40 And then they struggled for it.

Speaker 64 His DNA is on the trigger. I mean there's no getting around that fact.

Speaker 43 And one more thing, said Bamier.

Speaker 26 One more bit of evidence that the police missed, even though it was right under their noses.

Speaker 48 Bruising on Jane's upper left arm, photographed the morning after Dave was killed.

Speaker 76 If you look at the bruise closely, you'll see that there's basically a little handprint.

Speaker 40 A hand-shaped bruise.

Speaker 9 That helps prove, said Bamier, this wasn't murder.

Speaker 40 It was self-defense.

Speaker 76 If you're fighting for your life reasonably, I think you reasonably have to conclude that if we're fighting for a gun,

Speaker 76 you get to use lethal force.

Speaker 24 And now, looking back, said Jane's childhood friend, Helen, things began to make sense.

Speaker 18 We saw her less and less.

Speaker 26 More than two decades passed.

Speaker 54 Helen had a long career as a social worker and gradually lost touch with Jane.

Speaker 18 I would always send her Christmas cards and say, call me, whatever,

Speaker 18 and I would never hear from her.

Speaker 21 And then Helen heard about Dave's death.

Speaker 18 Everybody was pointing to Jane.

Speaker 18 And like a light bulb went off. And I'm like, oh my God,

Speaker 18 she was a battered wife.

Speaker 46 And you didn't get it. You didn't see it.

Speaker 58 But the very idea that Jane was an abused spouse, that she killed Dave in self-defense?

Speaker 27 Absolutely ludicrous, said the Louts.

Speaker 41 And an outrageous allegation about Dave.

Speaker 12 I know my brother. He's just a good man.

Speaker 12 He'd give you the shirt off his back. That's just the way he was.

Speaker 35 Can you see him losing his temper at the woman he's married to and

Speaker 40 abusing her, hitting her, being afraid?

Speaker 36 Never. No.

Speaker 36 No.

Speaker 6 Never.

Speaker 36 No.

Speaker 27 No, said the Louts.

Speaker 26 No, said the police.

Speaker 48 Besides, they said, maybe Jane had quite another motive for killing Dave Lout.

Speaker 23 A financial one.

Speaker 10 Coming up.

Speaker 2 Borrowed money.

Speaker 12 Thousands and thousands of dollars.

Speaker 10 And even more money if Dave was dead.

Speaker 6 Sometimes she would say things like, I'd be better off if Dave wasn't around.

Speaker 10 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 32 Olympic glory does not always translate into material wealth.

Speaker 33 In fact, said detectives, as they sifted through David Jane's financial records, they found evidence they were struggling.

Speaker 11 The Louts' finances were, they were just living beyond their means. It was poor bookkeeping,

Speaker 11 poor management of the bills. It didn't happen just before the shooting.
This has been going on for years and years and years.

Speaker 38 After Dave was killed, said Donna and Rebecca, they found out Jane had been borrowing money from her mother-in-law.

Speaker 6 Jane asked her for a lot of money, gave her different excuses why she needed money.

Speaker 73 To pay mortgages or something like that?

Speaker 6 Mortgages,

Speaker 6 doctor bills.

Speaker 61 school

Speaker 6 tuition, school supplies.

Speaker 67 How much money are you talking about here?

Speaker 59 It was a lot.

Speaker 12 It was thousands and thousands of dollars.

Speaker 36 It was a lot.

Speaker 24 And when they found out, Dave had three life insurance policies?

Speaker 11 I believe we totaled it all up. And I think it came to $300,000, $350,000 somewhere in that neighborhood that she was likely to see if

Speaker 11 a prowler had done this.

Speaker 73 Was there ever any indication she was capable of violent acts or that sort of person who could be violent?

Speaker 8 She said some things to me

Speaker 6 and I dismissed them because I maybe didn't want to believe that

Speaker 6 she was capable, but sometimes she would say things like, I'd be better off if Dave wasn't around.

Speaker 21 Meanwhile, justice crawled. A year passed, then two, three,

Speaker 19 four.

Speaker 32 Jane remained free on bomb.

Speaker 39 And Dave's niece, Megan Laut, fumed.

Speaker 60 She caused my family so much pain and it's it's horrible.

Speaker 6 It was, it's just, I hate it.

Speaker 32 Nephews Aaron and Cody took it out in the garage weight room.

Speaker 29 I have a way of bottling it and condensing it and I get it out when I lift.

Speaker 30 You get your emotion going, you get your anger, you get your adrenaline going.

Speaker 24 In September 2013.

Speaker 80 Don Lout.

Speaker 21 Don Laut pleaded with a judge to get the case before a jury.

Speaker 80 I just want the court to know that there is a family and there's friends behind my brother.

Speaker 80 And it's been four years

Speaker 80 and it's been very difficult.

Speaker 33 And then, in January 2015, more than five years after Dave's death, in a move that shocked Jane's veteran defense attorney, the prosecution indicated it would be open to making a deal.

Speaker 56 And I was blown away.

Speaker 9 A plea deal?

Speaker 40 Yes, and what a deal it was, said Bamier.

Speaker 24 If Jane pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, she'd be sentenced to just six years and would most likely serve only three.

Speaker 22 Seemed like an admission of weakness from the prosecution, said Bamier.

Speaker 26 And the opportunity of a lifetime for a woman facing first-degree murder and 50-to-life.

Speaker 19 And so...

Speaker 78 I gave her my strong recommendation that she take it, and she said no.

Speaker 17 And I was just like,

Speaker 78 I was stunned.

Speaker 78 I said, Jane, I kept saying, Did you understand it? And she goes, I understand fully. It's not on you, Ron.
This is my decision. And she was crying.
And she says, I have to fight for this.

Speaker 5 Mind you, by then, Jane had some powerful moral support from her old friend, Helen Kalouras.

Speaker 18 She rose that night. I mean, she didn't fall.
She rose that night and, you know, became

Speaker 18 a very strong, powerful woman and defended the life of her son.

Speaker 24 And then at last, in January 2016, Jane Loud went on trial for murder.

Speaker 38 Her friend Helen sitting right behind her.

Speaker 49 Do you think she'll go to jail?

Speaker 18 I don't.

Speaker 46 I don't.

Speaker 18 I absolutely do not.

Speaker 17 You believe the jury will believe her story?

Speaker 16 I do. And see it as a case of self-defense?

Speaker 18 I do. I believe that.
I believe that.

Speaker 64 I sincerely believe her. And I don't say that about many people.
I sincerely believe her.

Speaker 35 Do you usually get this personally invested in a case?

Speaker 64 I am always invested in my cases, yes. But do I care as much about clients like I do about Jane Lawton? No, I'd be lying if I said I did.

Speaker 24 But could he persuade a jury to believe in Jane too?

Speaker 10 Coming up. Jane takes the stand.

Speaker 77 If you're going to get not guilty, which is what we're shooting for, she has to testify.

Speaker 10 A gun takes center stage.

Speaker 81 Pull back the hammer, fire.

Speaker 82 Each and every time.

Speaker 22 And the verdict.

Speaker 83 We, the jury, find the defendant.

Speaker 15 Dave Laub was a son.

Speaker 64 He was a father.

Speaker 82 He was a colleague.

Speaker 84 He was a friend.

Speaker 24 More than six years after the death of Olympic bronze medalist Dave Laud,

Speaker 54 the murder trial of his wife, Jane, finally began in this Ventura, California courtroom.

Speaker 52 Prosecutor Rameen Menoui told the jury, Jane was a calculating killer.

Speaker 84 If you look at each of the six shots, they were administered by this defendant.

Speaker 84 As she was executing her plan to murder her husband, there is only one reasonable conclusion, just to find the defendant guilty of murder.

Speaker 78 I'm about to talk to you for quite some time.

Speaker 20 Defense Attorney Ron Bamier countered the real victim was Jane Laute, who suffered the utmost cruelty at the hands of her husband.

Speaker 81 He is not the hero of the Olympics.

Speaker 64 He is the monster who abused her for 27 years.

Speaker 5 The defense called family and friends and neighbors who all testified Jane was was an abused spouse.

Speaker 26 But Attorney Bamier said the most important witness was the defendant herself.

Speaker 77 You can't get not guilty, which is what we're shooting for.

Speaker 64 She has to testify.

Speaker 20 The judge would not allow cameras to roll when, for the first time publicly, through tears, Jane told her story.

Speaker 58 She said she took Dave's abuse for nearly three decades until the night he threatened their son.

Speaker 78 I think she could live with the fact that he could kill her.

Speaker 77 She could not live with the fact that he would kill Michael.

Speaker 25 On the stand, Jane admitted that she lied in her 911 call.

Speaker 55 And later to the police about a prowler.

Speaker 20 But she denied she had any financial motive for killing her husband.

Speaker 33 After all, she did not ask for nor did she receive a penny of Dave's life insurance.

Speaker 18 Jane would never be about finances.

Speaker 5 Absolutely not. Why do you say that?

Speaker 18 Because that's not her value. Jane is about relationship.
She's about family. She's about children.

Speaker 18 It's never been about money for her.

Speaker 32 Of course, the prosecutor got his turn to cross-examine Jane.

Speaker 20 There were a lot of I don't remembers about the night of the murder.

Speaker 51 She simply couldn't recall what happened after she fired the first two or three shots, she said.

Speaker 31 But she did admit she was quite familiar with the gun, in fact, had used it several times before.

Speaker 64 This single-action gun in the hands of this defendant

Speaker 81 required her to pull back that

Speaker 81 hammer,

Speaker 68 fire.

Speaker 81 Pull back the hammer, fire.

Speaker 82 Each and every time for the six times that she aimed that weapon at her husband and shot him.

Speaker 38 Like this, said the prosecutor, as he played a video of a woman firing that very gun.

Speaker 55 But, said the defense attorney, that's not the only way to fire the gun.

Speaker 81 If you hold the trigger down, you can pull the hammer back in order to fire.

Speaker 5 This is called fanning the gun, sort of thing you'd expect to see in an old Western.

Speaker 31 But a prosecution expert countered that a movie is the only place you'd ever seen that.

Speaker 11 Every expert that came up said that that is absurd.

Speaker 11 The accuracy of firing a gun six times and hitting your target six times in the dark

Speaker 11 is astronomical.

Speaker 42 After seven weeks of testimony, final arguments from both sides, Defense Attorney Bamier made an impassioned plea to the jury.

Speaker 14 Why would Jane Launt do this?

Speaker 35 Why would she do this?

Speaker 81 When you think about it, there's only one real reason.

Speaker 68 Only one.

Speaker 81 It's what anybody would do. to protect their child.

Speaker 35 Any one of us.

Speaker 81 You do not have the right to kill your husband.

Speaker 40 Well, Prosecutor Manui urged the jury to look past the emotion and focus on the evidence.

Speaker 84 The defendant's testimony is false. It is untruthful.
It is unbelievable. It is a story conjured up to raise her batter woman's self-defense claim in a murder case.

Speaker 82 It is Plan B because Plan A doesn't work and it's a lie.

Speaker 24 The jury deliberated for three and one half days.

Speaker 19 And then finally, this past Wednesday, announced they were ready.

Speaker 56 Jane, supported by Helen and other friends who'd stood by her all along, walked to the courthouse and what waited there.

Speaker 83 It all appears to be in order.

Speaker 52 So I will read the verdict.

Speaker 83 We, the jury, in the above entitled Action, find the defendant, Jane Laubacher Laut, guilty of the crime of first-degree murder.

Speaker 24 Guilty of first-degree murder. A shock ran through the room.

Speaker 5 Ron Bamier, who so fervently believed in her innocence, looked distraught.

Speaker 47 And Jane comforted him.

Speaker 66 The woman who flat turned down a deal to do six years for voluntary manslaughter now faces the possibility of life in prison.

Speaker 40 It was a victory for Dave's family, yes, but not one to celebrate.

Speaker 29 Our faith calls us to forgive, and we do.

Speaker 16 We forgive her.

Speaker 20 But forget?

Speaker 19 No, not the louts.

Speaker 23 Not their Superman.

Speaker 12 It's very difficult.

Speaker 12 I miss him every day. I miss him every day.

Speaker 59 I think I'll always grieve.

Speaker 12 I know I'm always going to miss him.

Speaker 37 He's always a part of me.

Speaker 42 But it's hard.

Speaker 10 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 9 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 70 I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 8 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 70 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 8 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

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