Mystery in Big Sky Country

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Speaker 7 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 8 He was well liked.

Speaker 9 He was well loved.

Speaker 9 He was smart. He was fun.

Speaker 9 I had the most senseless, empty feeling.

Speaker 9 This is how it ends. Why would somebody do it? Now what?

Speaker 7 White hat, wide-open smile, a handsome young veterinarian in Big Sky Country.

Speaker 9 He loved helping animals.

Speaker 12 He asked me out that night. I was excited.

Speaker 7 Then they found him dead on on the floor.

Speaker 14 Two shots went off, and then the third shot into his chest.

Speaker 7 Three gunshots that launched a long-running mystery. Who killed the veterinarian?

Speaker 14 I think the perpetrator stood there and watched him die.

Speaker 9 There were so many different leads and rumors.

Speaker 12 I felt like if it wasn't for me, it never would have happened.

Speaker 7 Jealousy, rage, revenge.

Speaker 16 It was your classic who done it.

Speaker 17 Could anyone solve it?

Speaker 19 Look at what it's done to our our family.

Speaker 20 It was hard.

Speaker 9 I wanted justice for my brother.

Speaker 7 Here's Keith Morrison with Mystery in Big Sky Country.

Speaker 24 There was a broad swath of prairie where the cattle outnumbered the people and a sad summer breeze sang round a modest dwelling in the grass.

Speaker 24 This was Marlene, Croxman, and Geraldine.

Speaker 28 They called it the bunkhouse, though it was really just an old single-wide trailer.

Speaker 28 My husband has put down Richards.

Speaker 28 To see if you want to go to pasture.

Speaker 32 A nondescript little place out on the Montana prairie, a bit worn around the edges.

Speaker 21 Do you know where he shot himself? He doesn't know.

Speaker 33 Oh, if he's still alive, there's blood everywhere.

Speaker 34 Sort of place a young vet could live cheap while he built his business. Well,

Speaker 35 if you can tell somebody, go check and see if he's still alive.

Speaker 36 I have paid C ambulance.

Speaker 37 When the local sheriff's deputies arrived, they found a body in the middle of the kitchen floor, lying on its back.

Speaker 10 Blood had pooled under its head.

Speaker 30 On one foot was a shoe of the sort people wear in the water.

Speaker 15 The other was bare.

Speaker 41 A 357 magnum was on the floor, not far from the dead man's left hand.

Speaker 43 Marlene Protzman saw all this too, same time as the deputies.

Speaker 41 But she could tell right away, as apparently they could not, that she'd been wrong on the 911 call.

Speaker 47 The man did not shoot himself.

Speaker 36 Brian had a cut on his nose, and

Speaker 36 the way his shirt was ripped, and just the blood on the floor. It just...

Speaker 5 It looked like a struggle.

Speaker 36 Yeah, it wasn't a suicide.

Speaker 48 But the deputies went about their work as they saw fit.

Speaker 50 And thus, on Sunday, July 14th, 1996, they clouded a mystery that has come down all the way to us.

Speaker 16 There were so many different theories, different suspects, and so much conflicting evidence. It was your classic whodunit.

Speaker 52 Or perhaps your classic nightmare.

Speaker 14 I'd lay awake at night and ask God to give me some insight here. Where do I go now?

Speaker 54 The victim, the man on the floor, was Brian Rine, veterinarian, Charlene and Teresa's big brother.

Speaker 9 He was my brother. He was my best friend.
He was my business partner.

Speaker 53 They grew up together in Scott City, Kansas.

Speaker 19 We shared bedrooms. We shared clothing.

Speaker 8 Everybody shared.

Speaker 28 Brian was the eldest.

Speaker 21 So what kind of an older brother was he?

Speaker 9 Protective.

Speaker 21 Honery. Hornery.

Speaker 9 We were always playing pranks on each other, and especially Teresa, because she didn't take him so well.

Speaker 32 That Brian was very smart was a given.

Speaker 10 Maybe a little too smart.

Speaker 19 I remember turning to him once and saying, I just want to know what time it is. I don't need to know how the clock was made.

Speaker 23 Here's what they got to do growing up in a small town.

Speaker 58 They joined 4-H and Future Farmers of America.

Speaker 30 They raised their special animals, showed them off in fairs and exhibitions.

Speaker 48 And Brian knew from the very beginning there was one job he was meant to do.

Speaker 9 I never knew Brian not wanting to be a veterinarian. Brian always said that being a vet was way more difficult than being a doctor because an animal can't tell you where it hurts or how they feel.

Speaker 9 You have to figure out how they feel.

Speaker 28 After finishing vet school, Brian moved to Montana.

Speaker 38 Big, wide, open country, cattle ranches, galore.

Speaker 17 An outdoorsman's paradise, really, which absolutely suited Brian Ryan.

Speaker 57 He took full advantage of what Montana had to offer, and often.

Speaker 11 And so in 1995, the year before the events in our story, Dr.

Speaker 49 Ryan set up shop in a spec on the map called Geraldine,

Speaker 57 population, 300.

Speaker 9 It's always a struggle starting a new business, and starting a vet clinic is very expensive. But it was doing very well.

Speaker 62 Young Dr.

Speaker 32 Rine hired Marlene to help him run the office and moved into the unused bunkhouse Marlene and her husband owned on their property 11 miles outside of town.

Speaker 23 So she was both landlady and employee.

Speaker 21 Brian had a heart of gold.

Speaker 36 He was,

Speaker 36 you know, part of the family.

Speaker 28 Mind you, a good-looking young vet in such a tiny place, there was interest.

Speaker 38 Lots of it.

Speaker 8 I remember asking him, is there anybody there you're dating?

Speaker 19 And he's like, well, there's some girls, but they're just not the ones.

Speaker 50 It was possibly an overly modest answer.

Speaker 31 The handsome young vet's arrival was practically a news event.

Speaker 4 Heads turned.

Speaker 10 Hearts may have followed.

Speaker 57 Certainly gossip did.

Speaker 19 And then summer of 1996 i was like again the same question that i ask um so what is going on do you have another do you have a girlfriend well there is this one girl she comes over and she does things for me and i said things like and he said well she'll clean up my house and stuff so i was like shame on you you should be over there cleaning her house it was strange what began to happen after he took up with that young lady weird things not exactly frightening more like unsettling like the rock that crashed through a window of the clinic clinic.

Speaker 56 Didn't tell you what he thought it was?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 21 Or who? No.

Speaker 36 And he did find a footprint out in the back of the building, but nothing really ever came of it.

Speaker 54 Not long after, Dr.

Speaker 10 Ryan called both sisters with a request.

Speaker 9 At one point, he told me, quit calling and hanging up. I was like, Brian,

Speaker 9 I'm not hanging up.

Speaker 19 He just paw-hotted off, you know. And he's like, it's not a big deal, Teresa.
It's not a big deal.

Speaker 10 But was it?

Speaker 49 On July 10th, 1996, Dr.

Speaker 10 Brian Rine drove to Bozeman, three hours away, to attend a conference.

Speaker 23 He returned home Friday evening, the 12th.

Speaker 21 No one saw him on Saturday.

Speaker 31 And then on Sunday, the 14th, Marlene's husband drove over to Brian's bunkhouse.

Speaker 36 It was about, I don't know, five, ten minutes later. He came back and walked in the door and was very distraught, crying.

Speaker 49 Such a shock, which is maybe why her husband got the mistaken mistaken idea that Dr.

Speaker 28 Ryan committed suicide.

Speaker 49 But later that same day, when Marlene heard an undersheriff repeat the mistake to Brian's grandparents, here's what happened.

Speaker 36 Bernamae jumped up and she said,

Speaker 36 no way in hell would my grandson commit suicide.

Speaker 28 Then, next day, when state investigators led by Agent Ken Thompson of Montana's Department of Criminal Investigation arrived and looked at the ruined crime scene.

Speaker 14 My partner and I would look at each other and think, oh oh my lord, you know,

Speaker 14 it certainly makes things very difficult.

Speaker 52 Difficult? Oh yes.

Speaker 10 Difficult was not the half of it.

Speaker 7 So what did happen to Dr. Ryan when we come back?

Speaker 9 We had been told that he had committed suicide.

Speaker 5 Did you believe that could be true?

Speaker 27 Absolutely not.

Speaker 7 Blood on the doorstep. Bullets in the kitchen.

Speaker 9 How can this happen? Why would somebody do it?

Speaker 7 The search begins for a killer.

Speaker 14 I think the perpetrator stood there and watched Brian die.

Speaker 28 On a summer Sunday afternoon outside tiny Geraldine, Montana, local sheriff's deputies used towels to mop up the blood around what they took to be a suicide.

Speaker 67 The town's veterinarian, Dr.

Speaker 71 Brian Rine, aged 31, was dead.

Speaker 28 His own 357 magnum lay near his left hand.

Speaker 28 And the emissaries of sudden death delivered their message to Dr. Rine's sister, Teresa, back in Kansas.

Speaker 19 I remember saying, Mom, I need to talk to you.

Speaker 5 I can't imagine what it would be like to tell your mother that her firstborn son is dead.

Speaker 21 Yeah,

Speaker 21 it was hard.

Speaker 8 And he was...

Speaker 19 he was that child.

Speaker 21 That perfect child.

Speaker 10 It was evening before the news found younger sister, Charlene.

Speaker 9 I was actually in Las Vegas. We had been told that he had committed suicide.

Speaker 5 Did you believe that could be true?

Speaker 27 Absolutely not.

Speaker 9 It was a long plane ride home.

Speaker 5 Do you remember what your mind was doing to you during that plane ride?

Speaker 9 How can this happen? Why would somebody do it?

Speaker 31 Those questions because none of them believe Brian capable of suicide.

Speaker 44 And sure enough, the next morning, an autopsy revealed abrasions and contusions on the doctor's head, a swollen right eye.

Speaker 54 Clearly, there had been a struggle, and he'd been struck by three gunshots, two in the lower right forearm, and then a fatal shot to the chest.

Speaker 10 The conclusion? Obvious.

Speaker 54 It was not suicide.

Speaker 10 It was homicide.

Speaker 5 How is it possible at first they thought it was a suicide?

Speaker 14 I can't answer that. I think you have to understand that

Speaker 14 that county had not had homicide in, I think it was like 19 years.

Speaker 48 It was Monday when State Department of Criminal Investigation Agent Ken Thompson was called in.

Speaker 64 And by the time he got to the doctor's bunkhouse, the locals had been gone, the scene left unguarded for more than 24 hours.

Speaker 14 Montana is a remote state. Sometimes you'll drive eight hours to get to a crime scene.
So it's not like a big city where you can roll in and everything's pristine.

Speaker 58 No, not even close.

Speaker 48 In fact, the deputies and local coroner had spent just a few hours tromping around Brian's kitchen, had taken about a dozen photos, and in the process had done things that couldn't be undone.

Speaker 48 Like cleaning up blood on the floor under the victim's upper body and tossing into the garbage a telephone handset found under Dr. Ryan's head without swabbing for DNA or dusting for fingerprints.

Speaker 54 Those discarded materials were beyond recovery by the time Investigator Thompson arrived. The local deputies did tell him they found a water shoe on the bunkhouse doorstep.

Speaker 11 It appeared to have been knocked off in the struggle.

Speaker 29 The other one was found on Brian's left foot.

Speaker 38 And then Investigator Thompson saw the blood drops out on the doorstep.

Speaker 14 We knew that that's where the shooting had occurred. Blood had dropped straight down.
Yeah. And so it was just outside the trail.

Speaker 5 Did you find some bullets around there?

Speaker 14 They found two bullets lodged in the kitchen cupboard. So the two shots that went through the arm went through the arm and through that wall and came out into kitchen cabinets on the other side.

Speaker 40 Thompson and his partner used string to simulate the path of the bullets.

Speaker 38 They even tried to act out what might have happened.

Speaker 53 And before long, they came to some conclusions.

Speaker 21 How far away was the shooter?

Speaker 14 It's pretty close range.

Speaker 21 So if it was a struggle and the gun went off, it would be, right?

Speaker 14 Some kind of conversation went on and a struggle ensued. Two shots went off and then the third shot into his chest.
I think that Brian then struggled to get in to call for help, that he sat there.

Speaker 14 I think the perpetrator stood there and watched Brian die.

Speaker 54 And as for the location of the gun, so close to Dr.

Speaker 31 Ryan's own hand.

Speaker 5 So the killer must have put it there.

Speaker 78 Correct.

Speaker 32 But were there any fingerprints on the gun?

Speaker 14 No, and it looked like it had been wiped off with a solvent.

Speaker 55 So investigators now thought they knew how the murder occurred, but when it happened, that wasn't clear at all.

Speaker 10 Friday night, Saturday? It was an important question, of course.

Speaker 17 But just how important, they might not have fully imagined just then.

Speaker 40 But there was no clear answer.

Speaker 29 In fact, the pathologist who conducted conducted the autopsy left the space for time of death blank.

Speaker 49 Remember, Dr.

Speaker 42 Ryan returned home from a conference on Friday evening, but his body wasn't found until Sunday.

Speaker 40 Investigators canvassed nearby farms.

Speaker 14 And... There was a neighbor that lived probably about a mile away, maybe a little less, as the crow flies, that had seen an ATV go by that night and then

Speaker 14 said he heard two loud retorts about about that time that is friday night but could have been that night the next morning or something well he at first he wasn't sure and then he wasn't sure the date phone record showed the last time dr.

Speaker 27 ryan received a phone call was at 10 15 on friday night nobody heard from brian

Speaker 14 after that last phone call on friday night the thought that he would go all day saturday without having any contact with anybody was just really highly unlikely.

Speaker 65 On the other hand, Dr. Ryan could have hung around his bunkhouse alone that Saturday morning, or maybe he intended to go fishing.

Speaker 65 There were those water shoes, and they found a fishing pole near the door.

Speaker 59 Of course, all this when and how did nothing to shine a light on who killed Dr.

Speaker 39 Ryan.

Speaker 60 A question that was consuming everyone who knew him.

Speaker 36 My mind was just spinning, trying to think who,

Speaker 36 you know, any little lead at all.

Speaker 10 There was, she knew, this friend of Dr.

Speaker 37 Ryan's, Larry Hagenbush, whose behavior had recently been erratic.

Speaker 69 And she also knew that some people in town said they'd heard Larry bad-mouthing Brian in the local bar, though Larry denied it.

Speaker 49 But investigators almost immediately had a different lead that seemed worth pursuing.

Speaker 10 And it was related to that broken window at the vet clinic and those hang-up phone calls Dr.

Speaker 28 Ryan had asked his sisters if they were making.

Speaker 5 So he had no idea who was doing it.

Speaker 9 After he eliminated me, he had an idea.

Speaker 10 Oh, he knew, or thought he knew, who the hang-up caller was, but he didn't seem very worried about it.

Speaker 9 Everything was going to be okay. Brian was not afraid of anything.

Speaker 76 Maybe he should have been.

Speaker 7 Coming up, a new relationship.

Speaker 12 I thought he was handsome. I was excited.

Speaker 7 And a jealous ex.

Speaker 12 Should I file a restraining order? Should I do something?

Speaker 7 What would investigators make of him?

Speaker 14 I was beginning to form an opinion that it was somewhat a crime of passion.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 37 Veterinarian Brian Ryan's family went into a tailspin at the news of his death.

Speaker 59 And when they heard that somebody murdered him?

Speaker 80 He kind of fell apart after that, huh?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 9 It was difficult to figure out where to go, what to do.

Speaker 52 Brian's mom was practically paralyzed in her grief.

Speaker 48 And so much of the dreadful work that demands to be done after such a death fell on Teresa.

Speaker 19 Now I can remember sitting through the funeral and sitting there thinking to myself, I am so tired, I just want to go to bed.

Speaker 49 And maybe that played a role in Teresa's mood because on that July day in 1996, when Dr.

Speaker 28 Ryan was buried in his hometown in Kansas and a large contingent of Montanans made the trip to say goodbye, among them was that young woman from Geraldine, the one who'd gone over and cleaned his house, the one Brian had recently started seeing.

Speaker 19 I was almost annoyed she even came. And she was standing in our home and I really thought, why are you here? I was pretty irritated.

Speaker 24 Now those feelings were not lost on that young lady in the middle of her own grief and confusion.

Speaker 12 I just felt out of place because I felt like, you know, they didn't know who I was.

Speaker 44 Her name is Anne.

Speaker 49 She was 21 then.

Speaker 28 She had known Dr.

Speaker 49 Ryan just two months.

Speaker 70 Met him at Rusty's bar in Geraldine.

Speaker 12 I thought he was handsome and I was like, what is this guy doing in Geraldine? It was just kind of surprising to me.

Speaker 30 They talked all night, she said, and in the morning, how did you feel?

Speaker 12 I was excited. I felt giddy, just excited that somebody would be interested in me.

Speaker 59 Ah, but complications.

Speaker 56 Anne had a live-in boyfriend, a guy named Tom Jariseski, her high school sweetheart.

Speaker 57 They had been together four and a half years, and though the relationship had its issues, who knows, she might have married him.

Speaker 10 And then she had that heart-to-heart with Dr.

Speaker 38 Ryan.

Speaker 12 He's like, we're too young to be settling down and

Speaker 12 somebody telling you what to do.

Speaker 5 How did that strike you when he said that?

Speaker 21 I agreed with him.

Speaker 5 Like, why have I been with that guy all these years?

Speaker 12 Yeah, it made me see that I would be better without it, you know, because it hadn't been a good relationship for a while. I had a reason now to move on and let go of that.

Speaker 28 And she was going to tell Tom as soon as she got up the nerve.

Speaker 62 But then, oh boy, Dr.

Speaker 32 Ryan left a message on her answering machine at the apartment she shared with Tom, who, of course, heard the message.

Speaker 12 He called me up and asked me what the hell is going on.

Speaker 21 Well, a boyfriend would want to know what the hell is going on, right? Yeah.

Speaker 76 And when she told him...

Speaker 12 They started crying and saying he couldn't believe I was doing this and how I was throwing away everything.

Speaker 10 But Anne was done.

Speaker 54 She moved back to the family farm outside Geraldine, and Tom begged her to come back, promised to do better.

Speaker 12 He told me that Brian would, you know, when he got tired of me, he'd

Speaker 12 melt me and then I'd see.

Speaker 70 And then the phone calls started over and over again.

Speaker 12 I asked him to leave me alone. I said I needed time, I needed space.

Speaker 5 And he wasn't giving you any. No.

Speaker 31 One day, Anne agreed to go for a ride in Tom's new pickup truck so they could have the talk.

Speaker 30 Big mistake.

Speaker 38 Tom drove out of town and kept on driving. Wouldn't let her get out of the truck.

Speaker 12 So I was like, okay. I started looking at the ditch, thinking that's, you know, I can land in that grass.
I'll be okay.

Speaker 12 So I opened the door and I was going to jump out.

Speaker 12 And he grabbed my arm.

Speaker 21 I was like, what the hell are you doing?

Speaker 34 How did it eventually end?

Speaker 12 He finally took me back.

Speaker 5 Did you go home that night?

Speaker 12 No, my brother was out of town. So I asked Brian if I could stay with him because I didn't want to be home alone.

Speaker 5 It was a big step. Did you feel safer?

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 28 But then Tom, all of 23 years old, barged into Brian Ryan's place middle of the night when she was there, demanding to know the 31-year-old doctor's intentions.

Speaker 47 What did Brian think of this?

Speaker 12 He thought he was a stupid kid.

Speaker 21 Well, he was being a stupid kid.

Speaker 5 You would have to agree with that.

Speaker 12 Yeah, because I asked him, I said, should I file a restraining order? Should I do something? And he said, no, he's just a stupid kid. He'll get over it.
Just give him time to

Speaker 12 get it out of his system.

Speaker 52 But he didn't get over it.

Speaker 28 And one night when nobody was home, he went into Ann's house, into her bedroom.

Speaker 12 And he said he found my journal and read it.

Speaker 21 What did it feel like to have your personal journal read like that by him?

Speaker 12 It just felt like I'd been violated.

Speaker 77 How did Ann learn about it?

Speaker 54 Tom told her and quoted from her journal.

Speaker 12 At the end, I said, and it was in a sarcastic way, but it was like, here, I can't believe I... I'm thinking I met the man of my dreams.

Speaker 12 He'll probably get killed in a car wreck and Tom will probably kill himself. Just thinking of the

Speaker 21 negative possibility.

Speaker 12 Yeah, like here's something wonderful has happened. Something awful's going to happen.

Speaker 5 And that actually it turned out to be kind of a prophecy, didn't it?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 It plays back like a bad dream now.

Speaker 28 How she told Brian what Tom had been doing and then discovered it was even worse than she thought.

Speaker 12 He goes, well, I got one better than that. He came over here last night saying he had car trouble and asked to use the phone.
He said he let him use the phone and went back to bed.

Speaker 42 Had to have been a ruse, Brian figured, designed solely to see if Anne was sleeping there.

Speaker 5 Must have confirmed that you made the right decision breaking up with him.

Speaker 12 The more he did, the more it solidified that I'm not going back.

Speaker 31 All that was just before that conference Brian attended out of town, the one he returned from on Friday night.

Speaker 53 That last phone call he was on, 10.15 p.m.,

Speaker 11 he was talking to Anne.

Speaker 12 All of a sudden, he's like, Well, I gotta go. And before I could say goodbye, he'd hung up.

Speaker 21 Really?

Speaker 12 It was, I thought it was kind of weird, but you know, it was late. I didn't want to read too much into it at the time.
You know, I kind of wondered.

Speaker 52 And now that Brian was dead, Anne wondered a lot about something she remembered Tom said years earlier.

Speaker 12 If you ever cheat on me, I'll kill him and I'll kill you.

Speaker 28 So, it will not surprise you to know that when he heard all this, investigator Ken Thompson made arrangements to call on young Tom Jarisewski right away.

Speaker 14 You don't know the kind of person you're going to encounter.

Speaker 14 And just with my limited knowledge of what had happened here, you know, I was beginning to form an opinion that it was somewhat a crime of passion. So I thought, well, let's see where this goes.

Speaker 14 You know, that maybe if this is heavy on his heart and

Speaker 14 it was just a tragic situation, maybe we will get to the truth tonight.

Speaker 52 Oh, if only the life of an investigator were that simple.

Speaker 82 Coming up, the first things I thought, everybody's going to suspect me.

Speaker 10 Police have some questions for the envious X.

Speaker 23 It was dusk that Monday in Montana after the weekend murder of Dr.

Speaker 28 Brian Rine when investigators drove out to a farm 11 miles east of Geraldine.

Speaker 61 Here, Agent Ken Thompson and the local undersheriff intended to confront 23-year-old Tom Jarisewski, the young man who'd lost in love and didn't take it well.

Speaker 5 When you arrived, what was his demeanor?

Speaker 14 Oh, I think his demeanor was to be helpful. He was welcoming, very polite.

Speaker 82 My mom told me about Ryan when the first things I thought of was everybody's going to suspect me, the ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 83 But that is not the case at all.

Speaker 1 Tom Jarasewski admitted loving and

Speaker 83 being upset when he heard another man dr ryan leave a phone message for his live-in girlfriend so what i did is i called ann right away and i said oh you got a call here from brian she didn't say anything and i said so what the hell is going on she didn't say anything again i said you tramp because i knew right then she mustn't cheating on me tom did not deny that he behaved badly then he freely admitted that he phoned and family and her friends he even called some of Brian's former girlfriends.

Speaker 5 What did that say to you, that behavior?

Speaker 14 He was literally doing his own investigation on Brian. He was calling Ann's friends, trying to get all the dirt he could on Brian so that he could turn around and

Speaker 14 give it to Ann and say, you need to end this relationship. This is a bad guy.
He's just using you and

Speaker 14 you need to come back and be with me.

Speaker 39 In fact, Tom admitted nearly all the strange behaviors Ann described.

Speaker 49 The constant hang-up calls, showing up at Brian's place in the middle of the night, sneaking into Anne's empty house at 3 o'clock in the morning, snooping around in her bedroom, and reading her diary.

Speaker 82 So after reading that, I knew that, you know, Brian was a big reason why she dumped me.

Speaker 14 He was actively pursuing her, aggressively pursuing her for her to change her mind. to end that relationship with Brian and come back and start over.

Speaker 14 It was just a continual spiral, the things that he was doing,

Speaker 14 the more obsessed he got with her.

Speaker 4 It was, by his own admission, pathetic.

Speaker 61 Like when he drove an ATV over and hid outside Ann's family farmhouse, just hoping for a glimpse of her, and was then chased off by Anne's brothers.

Speaker 82 I used to apologize to him. I said, I'm so stupid, and I can't believe I did this.

Speaker 82 And I told them, you know, I'm lower than life. I don't deserve to live.
And they're like, oh, no, don't say that. I'll give you something to beat your head over.

Speaker 59 But Tom had an alibi, and a pretty solid one, for most of the weekend when Dr. Ryan was murdered.

Speaker 52 Except for Friday night.

Speaker 10 Oh, and yes, he did admit he phoned Dr.

Speaker 59 Ryan that night.

Speaker 82 So my intentions were to call him and just tell him that I didn't have any grudges against him and that wasn't going to interfere with him and Ann's relationship and that I hope that you take good care of Ann, you know, because she's a really special person.

Speaker 82 He answered the phone and he said hello twice.

Speaker 83 And I just couldn't do it. I checked him out.

Speaker 33 And so I went and when was that?

Speaker 82 This is this last Friday, about quarter to 10.

Speaker 49 Investigators have been thinking that though the medical examiner couldn't tell them, Friday night was possibly when Dr.

Speaker 41 Ryan was murdered.

Speaker 10 And after they heard Tom's story, how he didn't have an alibi for Friday night, that seemed to them to clinch it.

Speaker 35 You called him up at 10 o'clock on Friday night to say, I don't hold any grudges against you.

Speaker 33 That's right.

Speaker 35 With that hour, is the guy's dead?

Speaker 32 And then Tom dug a deeper hole for himself.

Speaker 42 Remember, it appeared Dr.

Speaker 56 Ryan scuffled with somebody before he was shot dead.

Speaker 31 Well, guess who told the agents that he'd hurt his back that very Friday night falling out of a pickup truck?

Speaker 82 Same I hurt my back. Did you get any bruises or anything? No, I didn't.

Speaker 33 I had no bruises on your chest.

Speaker 77 But the next day, Tom went to a hospital and was treated for back pain.

Speaker 24 The only things Tom denied in that interview?

Speaker 50 Faking a vehicle breakdown 10 days before the murder and knocking on Dr.

Speaker 31 Ryan's door to use the phone in the middle of the night.

Speaker 82 That didn't happen? No.

Speaker 10 But investigators weren't buying Tom's story.

Speaker 14 All the facts are pointing to you, Tom. Everything.
Everything we've got. Everyone at his place do you have against?

Speaker 14 That's all you got to worry about.

Speaker 33 It's right there. It's all being worked on.

Speaker 66 Trust me. Okay, good.

Speaker 35 Because there's not anything.

Speaker 16 There will be a carload of stuff going to the crime line.

Speaker 83 Well, good, because you won't find one thing against me.

Speaker 32 When you left at the end of that first interview, what did you think?

Speaker 21 Did you think this is our guy?

Speaker 14 I thought clearly he was a suspect. He clearly had done some things that were very troubling.
Sure.

Speaker 37 But did that mean he was the killer?

Speaker 66 What would Tom Jarasewski say if we asked him?

Speaker 78 Coming up, they started accusing me of killing Brian. I was scared to death.
I was worried that they were going to charge me that night.

Speaker 70 An arrest?

Speaker 7 Hang on. Could there be another person of interest in this case?

Speaker 14 We looked at him very seriously.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 28 The plains of Montana are no stranger to sudden, violent death.

Speaker 21 History is littered with it.

Speaker 61 But for the people living the history, in July 1996, after the murder of the town veterinarian Brian Ryan, it was all very, very hard.

Speaker 9 Mom, for probably the next five years, crawled in a hole and didn't come out.

Speaker 24 And Anne, that young woman in the middle?

Speaker 12 I was devastated. I just thought, here, you know, here I met somebody that's...
treats me nice and treats me like an equal.

Speaker 5 Somebody you felt special when you were with him.

Speaker 12 Yes, and to have that ripped away and not even know nothing may have ever came of it, but I, you know,

Speaker 12 didn't get the chance to find out.

Speaker 54 But what was worse, Anne felt an overpowering sense of guilt.

Speaker 5 You felt responsible?

Speaker 12 I felt like if it wasn't for me, it

Speaker 12 never would have happened.

Speaker 39 Because, of course, she broke up with him.

Speaker 41 It's just unbelievable.

Speaker 1 And here he is, Tom Jaraseski, Anne's ex,

Speaker 28 otherwise known as the prime suspect.

Speaker 78 It seems like a bad dream that I couldn't wake up from.

Speaker 5 How did you find out that he was killed?

Speaker 78 From my mom. She just said that she'd gotten a phone call that the veterinarian Geraldine had been killed.

Speaker 31 And of course, Tom knew perfectly well who his mother was talking about.

Speaker 52 His rival, the man who'd taken his girlfriend and made his life so miserable.

Speaker 70 And so...

Speaker 21 You had to be sort of a little bit okay with that.

Speaker 78 No, not at all.

Speaker 78 I had no ill feelings towards Brian.

Speaker 21 Oh, really? Come on.

Speaker 66 You had to have had ill feelings towards Brian.

Speaker 15 Not for some time. He took your girl away.

Speaker 78 Yeah, but not for someone to lose their life.

Speaker 64 Tom said he knew immediately that he would be high on the list of suspects, as of course he was.

Speaker 54 So he wasn't surprised when Agent Kent Thompson and the local undersheriff showed up at the family farmhouse.

Speaker 78 I was nervous. I mean, both guys had guns on their hips and

Speaker 78 came into my house. And, you know, I proceeded to tell them all these things that I was doing as far as the phone calls and the stalking.

Speaker 78 And

Speaker 78 when I told them all about that, then they totally changed their tune and started accusing me of killing Brian. I was scared to death.

Speaker 78 I was worried that they were going to charge me that night.

Speaker 45 But they didn't.

Speaker 37 While it was true, as we said, that the crime scene was compromised, there were hairs and fibers and fingerprints and blood samples yet untested.

Speaker 57 So the investigators said their goodbyes and told Tom they'd be back.

Speaker 76 All these years later, what's that?

Speaker 74 Sitting here now, two decades later, Tom told us, yes, he did love Anne.

Speaker 60 He thought they had a future together.

Speaker 78 You know, I felt like she was the one and we'd be together forever.

Speaker 49 But when he heard that phone message left by Dr.

Speaker 51 Ryan at the apartment he shared with Anne, what did that feel like?

Speaker 78 Like my heart was torn in half.

Speaker 5 You did some things then, which, in retrospect, probably you must think were not the brightest in the world.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 84 What bothers you as you think about it?

Speaker 78 Well, I didn't know anything about Brian, so I started calling up some of Anne's family and some of Anne's friends to see what they knew about Brian. I was concerned because he was a veterinarian and

Speaker 78 he had access to drugs. I thought maybe he was giving Anne something.

Speaker 5 Because why would she leave you for another guy? It must be drugs involved or something like that, something other than just wanting to make a switch.

Speaker 78 Yeah, that was my initial impression.

Speaker 10 And all that other stuff, the hang-up phone calls, the stalking, going into her bedroom to read her diary?

Speaker 21 Not great behavior.

Speaker 78 No, it was wrong of me to do that. I wanted to see her thoughts, what she had to say about me, what she had to say about Brian.

Speaker 66 You're having a lot of trouble letting it go.

Speaker 78 I did, yes. There's no manual on how long it takes to get over a relationship.

Speaker 78 And for me, it took a while.

Speaker 11 But he swore to us here, as he did when he talked to the investigators way back when, that he had nothing to do with the murder of Dr.

Speaker 52 Ryan, even though it looked pretty bad for him.

Speaker 78 They told me right away that this happened on a Friday night, and I was home alone on a Friday night. I had no alibi

Speaker 78 and

Speaker 78 so I was kind of stuck.

Speaker 43 Although remember, the medical examiner was unable to settle on a time of death.

Speaker 47 So despite what the detectives told Tom, the murder could have happened on Saturday when Tom did have an alibi.

Speaker 49 Which made another of the detectives' interviews particularly interesting because,

Speaker 15 yes, in fact, there were other persons of interest.

Speaker 59 And another man man they went to visit did have an alibi for Friday, but not Saturday.

Speaker 23 That man happened to be a close friend of the victim.

Speaker 25 His name was Larry Hagenbush.

Speaker 21 How seriously did you look at Larry?

Speaker 14 We looked at him very seriously.

Speaker 28 Hagenbush was the one who encouraged Brian to move from Kansas to Montana.

Speaker 45 But Larry wasn't a stable man just then.

Speaker 30 His wife was leaving him.

Speaker 1 He'd been drinking a lot.

Speaker 54 He'd tried to commit suicide a month before the murder using animal medication he'd gotten from Brian.

Speaker 42 In fact, it was Dr.

Speaker 10 Ryan who intervened to help save Larry.

Speaker 39 And here's the thing.

Speaker 59 Detectives had heard that Larry seemed to know intimate details of the crime scene, which had not been made public, as if he was right there when it happened.

Speaker 54 The problem?

Speaker 14 His story never stayed the same when he's even revealing it. I mean, at one point he said that there was bullet holes everywhere.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Later he would say there was only two holes. At one point he indicated that it was a rifle and that it was a pistol.

Speaker 35 Does Agent Kennedy Thompson Lontown Criminal Investigation bearish this?

Speaker 50 Still, from the sound of this 20-year-old recording, Agent Thompson wasn't accusing Larry of murdering his friend in cold blood.

Speaker 55 More like

Speaker 51 things got out of hand somehow.

Speaker 35 I could just see this happening. I can see Larry thinking, well, shit, he gets to drinking again, whether he's depressed, whether he's mad.

Speaker 35 I don't know whether it's just going out to talk to somebody and just ending up in a stupid damn shouting match.

Speaker 35 Oh, well, here's the gun that's always playing around, but I'll take care of this myself. I'll go out here and shoot my damn self then and then fight.
No, you ain't going to do that.

Speaker 35 Let's fight over the gun and bang, bang, bang, or whatever. I can see all that happening.

Speaker 35 And then we got an accident.

Speaker 35 You know, we got a goddamn tragic accident. Is that what happened? No.

Speaker 35 It makes sense, though, doesn't it? It makes sense, but it didn't happen with this.

Speaker 82 It could happen like that.

Speaker 72 It could happen, but not with this cowboy.

Speaker 61 Not much more the detectives could accomplish at that point.

Speaker 64 In those days, DNA took its sweet time getting tested.

Speaker 10 With the results, but either of those men at the crime scene firing the gun at Dr.

Speaker 31 Ryan.

Speaker 43 Seemed like maybe it was time for something hands-on.

Speaker 59 Or nose-on, if you will.

Speaker 31 Enter Calamity Jane.

Speaker 55 Well named, that dog.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 14 That was the closest thing we had to a link.

Speaker 7 Calamity Jane sniffs out a clue, and a sister's discovery is about to change the case.

Speaker 9 I said, well, where's the gun case? The gun case was missing.

Speaker 49 The week after they buried Brian Ryan near his childhood home in Kansas, Sister Charlene came to Montana curious about the progress of the investigation.

Speaker 32 And that's when local deputies told her about the mess up at the crime scene, how they threw away some potential evidence.

Speaker 10 Charlene was horrified.

Speaker 21 Have you ever heard of such a thing before? No.

Speaker 9 He goes, no, we cleaned it up. We didn't want the family to see it.

Speaker 86 I'm like, why?

Speaker 9 Where is everything? We got rid of it.

Speaker 39 But then, when she went to her brother's bunkhouse, Charlene discovered that someone else must have gotten rid of something, too.

Speaker 10 Something the cops didn't know existed.

Speaker 49 And in an instant, Charlene's discovery changed the whole theory of how the murder happened.

Speaker 9 They had found the gun beside him.

Speaker 9 And I said, well, where's the gun case?

Speaker 9 The gun case was missing. It was a gun case that Brian had made.

Speaker 5 And so the gun was always in the gun case.

Speaker 9 The gun was either in it or beside it.

Speaker 32 A perimeter search of the property was organized.

Speaker 30 And lo and behold, the gun holster, a leather case inscribed with Brian's initials, was found lying in tall grass 84 feet from Dr.

Speaker 52 Ryan's door.

Speaker 34 How did it get way out there?

Speaker 39 Well, as he thought about it, the whole scene seemed to gel in Ken Thompson's mind, the way it happened, that is.

Speaker 30 The killer must have stolen Brian's own gun in its case while Dr.

Speaker 11 Ryan was away at his conference, then brought it back that night expressly to kill Brian, discarding the holster on the way to the door.

Speaker 14 If it hadn't been for that holster out there, it could have been somebody came to the door and knocked to the door, Brian came to the door with a gun to maybe threaten him, and there was

Speaker 21 a stole, the gun changed hands, and boom, boom. It could have been.

Speaker 14 Absolutely. But that holster being out there,

Speaker 14 there's just no other reason why that holster would be out there.

Speaker 31 That was Agent Thompson's theory, anyway.

Speaker 43 Was Tom Jaraseski capable of such a thing?

Speaker 31 Well, he'd already admitted he sneaked into Ann's house when it was empty.

Speaker 57 And so, thought Agent Thompson, he must have been perfectly capable of walking into Dr.

Speaker 28 Ryan's place, too, and stealing that gun.

Speaker 14 He had plenty of opportunity to get the gun. The trailer was never locked.

Speaker 5 But why would he get Brian's gun?

Speaker 88 He could get a gun anywhere. It's Montana, for God's sake.

Speaker 21 Everybody's got a gun.

Speaker 14 He certainly had the ability to go over there undetected

Speaker 14 and walk into that trailer, ample time to look around,

Speaker 14 to grab the gun.

Speaker 64 So that became the leading theory.

Speaker 68 Larry Hagenbush, the doctor's troubled friend, if that's truly what he was, remained a person of interest.

Speaker 43 But the primary suspect, no question, was still Tom Jarisewski.

Speaker 39 But how to prove it?

Speaker 38 Well, as luck would have it, a bloodhound was at the crime scene that day, owned by a local guy, a dog named Calamity Jane.

Speaker 31 So they let the dog sniff Tom's baseball cap.

Speaker 55 And?

Speaker 14 The dog went into the trailer, went right to...

Speaker 14 right out the back door went right to where the holster had been found went right to the carragana bushes where

Speaker 14 there was an indication that somebody had been standing in there.

Speaker 74 What did you think?

Speaker 14 Well, we we believe that that was a connection. That was the closest thing we had to a link from Tom to the holster to a possible hiding spot.

Speaker 27 So you must have thought we got them.

Speaker 14 Well, it was the best that we had, given that we had no physical evidence.

Speaker 43 Of course, they kept trying to find some of that, too, at Tom's place.

Speaker 72 What did they want from you?

Speaker 78 They took everything imaginable. Shoes was the biggest thing.
They probably took at least 10 pairs of shoes. And they took other items like sleeping bag, binoculars,

Speaker 78 the inside lining of a winter coat.

Speaker 61 But not one thing from those searches could link Tom to the crime.

Speaker 24 Months passed, a year, and more.

Speaker 32 Back in Kansas, Brian Ryan's sisters watched their mother suffer.

Speaker 9 It got very difficult to talk to her on a daily basis

Speaker 9 because she was so down and she wanted answers.

Speaker 39 She also frequently called Agent Thompson and this was curious.

Speaker 47 So did Thompson's prime suspect Tom Jarisewski.

Speaker 14 He was always wanting to know where we were in the investigation.

Speaker 42 Finally, January of 98, a year and a half after the murder, detectives ran a bit of a bluff with Tom.

Speaker 14 We just pose it to him that, you know, why would we find anything in the house that would lead us to believe you were in that house?

Speaker 14 And he says, okay, I'm going to tell you something I didn't tell you before.

Speaker 47 Perhaps you remember, detectives heard that Tom once showed up at Dr.

Speaker 52 Ryan's place in the middle of the night, saying his truck broke down.

Speaker 74 He needed a phone.

Speaker 59 Back then, Tom swore up and down that didn't happen.

Speaker 64 But now, 18 months later?

Speaker 83 Well, this is something I didn't tell you guys the first time when I talked to you. Well, that did happen.
And it was at night, and I just wanted to see if Anne was there.

Speaker 83 And I asked if I could use his phone.

Speaker 33 What type of evidence would you have left in that place?

Speaker 33 Or could you have left? Could I have left

Speaker 26 prints?

Speaker 83 I could have left some prints on the table.

Speaker 52 They didn't have Tom's prints anywhere on the table, of course, but Tom had admitted lying the first time and now was explaining how they might have found his DNA or prints at Brian's place.

Speaker 14 He was only telling us things he knew we could confirm.

Speaker 32 And in your experience, that's what guilty people do?

Speaker 88 That they change their story when they realize that.

Speaker 5 That's where it evolves, yes.

Speaker 46 And it wasn't long before.

Speaker 78 I was leaving my apartment to go to work. Some guy that was standing behind the stairs said, Tom, and I turned around and with the guns drawn, they put the handcuffs on me.

Speaker 21 What was that like?

Speaker 89 Shocking.

Speaker 78 I couldn't grasp that it was actually happening.

Speaker 31 Tom Jarosewski rode in that police car to Fort Benton,

Speaker 28 where they booked him into the county jail and charged him with deliberate homicide.

Speaker 21 What was it like to hear that?

Speaker 9 Refreshing. Good to have it solved and put it behind us.

Speaker 9 And hopefully mom and dad could pick up and keep going again.

Speaker 10 All neat and tidy-like.

Speaker 59 Except, of course, that's not the way things happen, is it?

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 90 That was just devastating.

Speaker 7 Another family distraught.

Speaker 87 you feel angry you want to do anything you can to help them and help would arrive for tom jariski in a most unusual way

Speaker 7 when dateline continues

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Speaker 59 A half hour down the highway from Little Geraldine is a living remnant of America's old West, Fort Benton, Montana, still holding out against wind and weather and occasional outbursts of the worst humans can do to each other.

Speaker 37 This is where, in a cell in the county courthouse, they installed Tom Jarasowski.

Speaker 73 It was 1998.

Speaker 30 He was 25 years old, and he was charged with the deliberate homicide of Dr.

Speaker 54 Brian Rine.

Speaker 4 Tom's parents and five siblings tried to get their heads around what seemed to them an outrageous accusation, cruel and unjust.

Speaker 21 What's it like to have your little brother charged with murder, facing life imprisonment?

Speaker 87 You feel angry. You want to do anything you can to help him.

Speaker 90 It was just devastating.

Speaker 87 We've never been through anything like that in our family.

Speaker 32 There simply wasn't the money to hire some fancy, high-priced attorney, so Tom got a state-appointed lawyer, Bob Peterson.

Speaker 21 What were your impressions of this kid?

Speaker 80 When I met him,

Speaker 80 I knew that he couldn't have done it. And so then, as the evidence started rolling in, then

Speaker 80 I became very certain that he wasn't the one.

Speaker 54 Attorney Peterson could have said lack of evidence because, in fact, despite test after test, not a single physical thing, not DNA, her fingerprints, or anything else connected Tom to those few square feet where it all happened.

Speaker 94 Except

Speaker 67 there was plenty of circumstantial evidence.

Speaker 64 The phone calls, the stalking, the middle-of-the-night visits to Dr.

Speaker 31 Rine's bunkhouse in the days and weeks before the murder.

Speaker 31 But most of all, there was that dog, Calamity Jane, who, with one sniff of Tom's baseball cap, led the cops from the doorway of the bunkhouse to a grove of bushes where the cops found and marked some footprints.

Speaker 54 The theory being that Tom lay in wait for his opportunity to confront Dr.

Speaker 38 Rine at the door.

Speaker 34 Mind you, Calamity Jane did her sniffing a full 10 days after the body was found.

Speaker 31 So what did Attorney Peterson think of that?

Speaker 80 To me, it wasn't evidence. I made a motion before the judge to decide whether or not it should go before a jury.

Speaker 32 Besides, he said, Tom already admitted he'd been around there days earlier.

Speaker 4 Maybe that's what Calamity Jane hit on.

Speaker 24 So Bob Peterson got Calamity Jane's handler up on the witness stand at a hearing here at the courthouse.

Speaker 58 And And what do you know?

Speaker 59 Neither dog nor handler were properly certified.

Speaker 80 When I asked him for all the paperwork, he told me about how he had put the paperwork about the dog and himself up on the top of his suburban, and it unfortunately had all blown away, so he couldn't provide it.

Speaker 54 Not quite the dog ate my homework, but close.

Speaker 48 So, what did the judge do?

Speaker 39 He threw out the evidence.

Speaker 30 And just like that, the state dismissed the case against Tom.

Speaker 49 Because without Calamity Jane, the prosecution decided, there simply wasn't a provable case.

Speaker 32 Tom Jarosewski was a free man.

Speaker 78 Kind of like a weight that's been lifted off my shoulders. I can go on for my life.

Speaker 10 But Brian's family felt like they'd lost him all over again.

Speaker 19 That was very disappointing.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Did you think at that point, okay, it's all over.

Speaker 21 We're never going to find out?

Speaker 87 I,

Speaker 19 you you know, I think back in your mind you think, well, maybe one day.

Speaker 59 There was a reason she kept that in the back of her mind, why both sides did.

Speaker 17 Because the judge, that day in 1998, dismissed the charge without prejudice.

Speaker 21 Meaning.

Speaker 80 Meaning that the state can bring it back up if they choose to.

Speaker 22 How much of a worry was that to you?

Speaker 80 You always have this nagging...

Speaker 80 thing in the back of your mind as a defense attorney when something is dismissed without prejudice. You know that something could happen in the future.

Speaker 52 Agent Ken Thompson could simply have filed it away as one lost cause, tough case that didn't work out.

Speaker 14 I mean,

Speaker 14 you talk about a case where it seemed like everything was stacked against you.

Speaker 14 This was that case.

Speaker 70 But he didn't let it go, just couldn't.

Speaker 57 Mind you, there were new assignments and lots of other cases.

Speaker 47 Years went by.

Speaker 16 But.

Speaker 14 I kept, you know, those 10 forering binders. I moved them from one office to another office to our third office.
I mean, it was always on a bookcase in my office.

Speaker 21 And always on your mind.

Speaker 14 It was always on my mind, you know, and that's

Speaker 14 to solve it.

Speaker 9 There were times that Ken would call us and say, we're working on it, or, you know, we just don't have anything.

Speaker 8 It just laid there.

Speaker 17 Two years, five, ten, thirteen, the file stared down from its shelf like an accusation.

Speaker 17 But of course, we wouldn't be telling you this story if something didn't happen.

Speaker 21 No, would we?

Speaker 77 But what turned out to be quite a surprise.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 84 This is a homicide. We owe it to the family to go forward.

Speaker 7 Another chance to solve the case.

Speaker 78 I just wonder what the hell's going on here.

Speaker 61 Accusations like the one leveled at Tom Jaraseski can do corrosive things to a person.

Speaker 50 Sour the joy of a sunrise on the Montana prairie.

Speaker 28 Alter the look on a neighbor's face down at the local store.

Speaker 61 After prosecutors decided to dismiss murder charges against him, John felt like he just couldn't live here anymore.

Speaker 78 I couldn't stay in Montana. I needed to move away.

Speaker 78 And I decided to move to South Dakota.

Speaker 21 So you set up a new life there.

Speaker 66 I did.

Speaker 78 I got married.

Speaker 75 Had a couple kids.

Speaker 78 Life was good.

Speaker 21 And truly, you thought it was over?

Speaker 78 I really did. I never thought it would ever come back again.

Speaker 42 Neither did Tom's old girlfriend, Anne.

Speaker 31 Though she firmly believed Tom killed Brian, the man she'd left him for, Montana soured for her, too.

Speaker 28 She went to visit a sister in Arkansas and stayed.

Speaker 46 Never found out that Tom moved away.

Speaker 12 I didn't feel like I could go back home to Montana.

Speaker 21 Why?

Speaker 12 Because Tom was there. And I thought if he's willing to kill somebody to be with me, I didn't know what he would do.

Speaker 15 Corrosive.

Speaker 32 That's what it was.

Speaker 49 But then, 13 years after Dr.

Speaker 60 Ryan's murder, this man got a new job.

Speaker 49 This is Brant Light, who in 2009 became the top prosecutor in the Montana Attorney General's Office.

Speaker 48 And one of his duties was to help small counties prosecute particularly difficult cases, cold cases.

Speaker 84 We don't get the slam dunks turned over to us. We get the older cases, we get the difficult cases, and we're expected to go forward with those cases.

Speaker 28 Like the one Light's old friend Ken Thompson had never really given up on solving.

Speaker 14 So I felt comfortable to go to Brad and say, would you just review this, see what you think?

Speaker 5 What'd you think, as you reviewed the information, was this something that was worth trying again?

Speaker 84 Yeah, well, we had some work to do. I wanted them to go back out and to make sure everybody's still around.
We had to see what kind of shape the evidence was in.

Speaker 45 Evidence was resubmitted to the crime lab.

Speaker 76 Witnesses were re-interviewed.

Speaker 65 More years passed.

Speaker 5 Is there ever a case to be made to just let it go?

Speaker 21 How do you look at these things? Well,

Speaker 84 I will let it go if we don't have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm not going to roll the dice with somebody's life.
This is a homicide. We owe it to the family to go forward.

Speaker 84 And in my bureau, that's what we do.

Speaker 27 And then, in February 2014, nearly 18 years after the murder, Agent Thompson traveled to South Dakota with an arrest warrant for Tom Jarosewski, who heard his name called out one day at work and was ushered into the back of a police car.

Speaker 78 I was wondering what the hell's going on here.

Speaker 78 And maybe a minute went by, and then Ken Thompson popped his head through the

Speaker 81 door and

Speaker 78 said, Tom, remember me? Told you I'd be back for you.

Speaker 63 Tom called his family and asked them to track down that attorney who'd helped him so much all those years before, Bob Peterson.

Speaker 70 Who, for some reason, had been listening to a nagging little voice in his head all those years that told him, keep the file.

Speaker 80 Usually I'd destroy all my files after 10 years,

Speaker 80 but for whatever reason, I maintained his files.

Speaker 76 And so, when Tom was charged again with murder, Peterson got busy.

Speaker 10 First, he got Tom out on bond attached to a GPS monitor, and then he read through his old files and asked to see the prosecution's new evidence.

Speaker 80 My whole position was, let's see what they think they have.

Speaker 34 And when he did,

Speaker 62 Attorney Peterson could not have been more surprised.

Speaker 80 It was almost verbatim.

Speaker 80 the same affidavit that was used in 1998 to charge him.

Speaker 21 No new evidence?

Speaker 80 None. I couldn't believe that they would bring these charges back up again and not have

Speaker 80 one piece of new evidence to justify them doing that. You were mad.
It made me mad. Yes.
And I know I'm not being very outraged about that.

Speaker 80 We defense attorneys have to control our emotions.

Speaker 45 Who was the defense attorney angry with?

Speaker 80 We had a prosecutor with a big eagle,

Speaker 80 fashioned himself to be a cold case expert,

Speaker 80 and

Speaker 80 an investigator who has stewed about this case since the beginning of it in 1996 and had an obsession with Tom. Then all he wanted to do was get this case squared away before he retired.

Speaker 21 You're not really suggesting that a detective

Speaker 22 would persuade a prosecutor to go ahead with a case,

Speaker 22 a favorite case of his, just because he happened to be retiring.

Speaker 21 Yeah, I really am.

Speaker 28 To which both Investigator Thompson and Prosecutor Leitch replied, no, it was justice they had in mind, not retirement.

Speaker 45 Oh, and when Attorney Peterson asked a judge to throw out the murder charge, the answer was, oh no, it wasn't going to go away.

Speaker 38 Not this time.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 95 It was murder.

Speaker 37 After almost 20 years, the case heads to court.

Speaker 12 If you ever cheat on me, I'll kill him and I'll kill you.

Speaker 7 Tom Jariseski in a fight for his life when Dateline continues.

Speaker 31 The veterinarian's little bunkhouse is long gone now, burned, its embers ground into the prairie dust.

Speaker 28 The young woman who'd fallen hard for the dashing vet is a happily married Arkansas mother of three.

Speaker 28 And the young man, accused of killing Dr. Brian Ryan, has growing sons of his own.

Speaker 10 But two decades were a mere whisker of time to the law and the historic Choto County Courthouse, where in September 2015, six years after the case was reopened, 19 years after the murder, Tom's sister and the rest of the Jarisewski family assembled on one side of the courtroom.

Speaker 8 It was hard seeing people that you thought were your friends sitting on that other side of the courtroom.

Speaker 10 That would be a number of local people, along with Dr.

Speaker 11 Ryan's family, whose attitude, must be said, was unlike that of many victims' families.

Speaker 19 I remember having a huge sinking feeling in my heart, thinking, can we not just let this go and be done with it?

Speaker 55 Well, a tough case, to be sure, said Prosecutor Brent Light, but...

Speaker 84 To just throw up your hands and say, well, this is too tough, or I don't want to lose a case, that's just not right.

Speaker 50 Mind you, Prosecutor Light himself could not be in the courtroom.

Speaker 32 He had another fight on his hands against lung cancer.

Speaker 49 So he handed the trial to two trusted deputies, Dan Gacinski and Mary Kokenauer.

Speaker 95 It was murder.

Speaker 8 It was murder that was planned. It was a murder that was premeditated.

Speaker 8 And it was a murder where no evidence would be left.

Speaker 49 The big evidence was, of course, Tom Jarosewski's bizarre behavior in the weeks after Anne broke up with him and began dating Dr.

Speaker 32 Ryan.

Speaker 18 For them.

Speaker 28 This friend of Anne's testified.

Speaker 36 I thought that Brian should watch his back.

Speaker 45 Anne herself told told the jury about the hang-up calls, about the time Tom snuck into her house and read her diary,

Speaker 49 about his middle-of-the-night visits to Dr.

Speaker 32 Ryan's trailer.

Speaker 12 I'm scared. I'm like, I didn't know what was going to happen after

Speaker 12 Tom had been acting so weird.

Speaker 84 The stalking was just unbelievable. I mean, he was overwhelmed by the fact that he had lost

Speaker 84 lost Ann Wishman. He had done everything he could to try to break them up.
And I think at the very end, when he understood that that wasn't going to happen, the only thing left was to

Speaker 72 take Brian out of the picture.

Speaker 32 In fact, remember this?

Speaker 30 Ann testified about that time she said Tom once threatened to do just that should she ever cheat on him with any other guy.

Speaker 12 He said, if you ever cheat on me, I'll kill him and I'll kill you or I'll want to kill you.

Speaker 32 Tom, by the way, has long denied ever saying that.

Speaker 68 But even after the murder, Ann said, Tom kept pursuing her.

Speaker 70 Letters, cards, phone calls.

Speaker 12 He said he dreamed that we had gotten married and we had kids and

Speaker 12 was telling me, you know, like we went into detail about a life we were living together.

Speaker 64 So, how did he do it?

Speaker 31 He put his plan into action, said Prosecutor Light, when Dr. Ryan was away at that conference before returning

Speaker 84 I think Tom and Jaraski had finally made up his mind. I don't think he had any problem going in the trailer, and I think he located the gun.

Speaker 29 Yes, he argued.

Speaker 67 Tom stole Dr.

Speaker 59 Ryan's own gun.

Speaker 28 Then that Friday night, Tom placed a hang-up call to Dr.

Speaker 31 Ryan at 9.45 p.m.

Speaker 28 to ensure he was home.

Speaker 50 And soon after that, a second call to a second location in another town a half an hour down the road.

Speaker 84 He calls, Ann answers, he hangs up. So now he knows Ann's in Great Falls.
That's 36 miles away.

Speaker 14 So he knew that he could go over there and not find anybody there besides Brian.

Speaker 23 Then he got into his ATV, headed over to the bunkhouse.

Speaker 44 Was that what his neighbors saw?

Speaker 22 Well, later towards evening, I did see a four-wheeler go by. The ATV was dark green.

Speaker 84 Mr. Jarasewski owns a green and black ATV and within 19 years no one has ever stepped forward to determine who else in that small community had a green and black ATV.
Nobody did.

Speaker 29 When Tom arrived at the bunkhouse, said the prosecutor, he waited in the bushes where he could see Dr.

Speaker 39 Ryan's door.

Speaker 84 He's got the weapon there and I think at the appropriate time, he decides that he's going to

Speaker 84 walk up to the back door.

Speaker 11 And that must have been when Tom threw the holster in the grass, where it was found later, said Prosecutor Light.

Speaker 84 Now it just so happens that Ann makes a call to Brian. They even talk about getting a restraining order against Tom Jarisewski.

Speaker 84 And then Ann says that Brian almost abruptly gets off the phone as if as if somebody's there.

Speaker 40 According to Ann, that was about 10.40 p.m.

Speaker 84 I think Brian then heard him,

Speaker 84 went to the back door, and I think at that point, when there's Thomas Darasewski sitting on that back porch has a gun I think immediately Brian knew what was going on and the fight was on and I think it was a struggle.

Speaker 84 I think he shot him twice in the arm. I think he then Brian struggled back to try to get the phone and Thomas shot him in the chest left the weapon got on that ATV

Speaker 21 and took off.

Speaker 84 And then he had hurt his back, so the next day he had to go to the hospital. There you go.

Speaker 28 And that was the prosecution's case.

Speaker 40 All circumstantial, no physical evidence was ever found to link Tom to the murder scene.

Speaker 50 But the pieces, said the prosecution, fit together to tell quite a story.

Speaker 54 But only a story, Tom's defenders were about to say.

Speaker 21 A tall tale, if you will.

Speaker 76 Which, they added, a good Montana steak would undo in a hurry.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 18 The state had concluded that the time of death was Friday night.

Speaker 80 Why?

Speaker 7 A whole new theory of the crime.

Speaker 80 It doesn't seem like a plausible time of death.

Speaker 7 Dr. Ryan's last meal would tell a tale of its own.

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Speaker 67 A harrowing thing happened to Brian Rine's sisters at the murder trial of Tom Jarisewski.

Speaker 65 They re-felt all the searing anger, loss, and grief they tried to put behind them.

Speaker 19 I can distinctly remember sitting there almost feeling, feeling

Speaker 21 great.

Speaker 8 We're going to have to relive this all over again.

Speaker 32 Like attending a nightmare version of his funeral.

Speaker 19 But at this funeral, we're not saying anything nice about him.

Speaker 45 Why would that be?

Speaker 66 Because the sisters knew defense attorney Bob Peterson and his new co-counsel Jennifer Striano would not only attack the case against Tom Jarosewski, They'd bring up all the old long-forgotten gossip about Brian, about what a ladies man he was purported to be.

Speaker 19 When they went on about how he was a womanizer and he was having multiple affairs, so she knew it was coming.

Speaker 59 But in fact, the defense went beyond that and cast doubt on the very idea that this 19-year-old mystery could be solved at all.

Speaker 8 Throughout this trial,

Speaker 18 you will have the urge

Speaker 18 to want to solve this,

Speaker 18 and that's only natural. But this case cannot

Speaker 96 be solved.

Speaker 31 All that immature behavior, said the defense, couldn't change two facts.

Speaker 28 That Tom had never been a violent person and that not a shred of physical evidence linked Tom to the murder scene, said this forensic scientist.

Speaker 80 You never found any fingerprint belonging to Tom Jarizewski

Speaker 80 in any of the items that you tested, did you?

Speaker 19 I did not.

Speaker 80 I mean, they had all of his creepy behavior, sure.

Speaker 80 But beyond that, they had nothing. I mean, they had nothing inside the house that connected him to this offense.

Speaker 28 Those first responders all those years ago certainly gave the defense a juicy target, given how they treated Dr.

Speaker 29 Ryan's murder at first like a suicide.

Speaker 80 You did not take any blood swabs that day.

Speaker 68 Not that day.

Speaker 80 You did not take any fingerprints that day.

Speaker 68 Not that day.

Speaker 49 And what about throwing away potential evidence, like that telephone they found under Dr.

Speaker 10 Ryan's head?

Speaker 94 We all looked at it and I'm sure and decided there was nothing on it to save it or we wouldn't have thrown it out.

Speaker 13 The defense called them to the stand one by one to admit their mistakes.

Speaker 19 Looking back now, Deputy Dahlum,

Speaker 8 you probably shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 75 Yeah, we shouldn't have.

Speaker 61 And if the state could make such a mess of things at the crime scene, confusing the manner of death, said the defense, maybe its theory about the time of death was wrong, too.

Speaker 18 The state had concluded that the time of death was Friday night. And our question to them always has been, why?

Speaker 18 Why did they choose that time other than it's the only time really Tom doesn't have an alibi?

Speaker 45 But what if the state was wrong?

Speaker 86 In fact, said Tom's defenders, the state was wrong.

Speaker 64 How did they know?

Speaker 52 Well, for one thing, there was Cody, Dr.

Speaker 27 Ryan's dog.

Speaker 18 If the state's theory was correct, Cody then would have been left in that trailer with no exit

Speaker 18 for Friday to Saturday night, Saturday till Sunday morning, without going to the bathroom at all. There was no evidence that he had

Speaker 18 gone to the bathroom at all in the house.

Speaker 43 Dr.

Speaker 48 Ryan's sisters disputed the idea that Cody couldn't have found some way in and out of the trailer.

Speaker 31 But the defense said it had even more dramatic evidence that the murder did not happen until at the earliest Saturday morning when Tom had an alibi.

Speaker 39 Remember, Dr.

Speaker 31 Ryan returned home from a conference on Friday night. But at about 7 p.m.

Speaker 57 that evening, two local men testified Brian stopped for dinner at a place called the Square Butte Country Club.

Speaker 21 We ate and visited with him.

Speaker 31 And what Dr.

Speaker 29 Ryan had for dinner, according to these witnesses, destroyed the state's theory of time of death.

Speaker 62 It was this retired rancher, too ill to testify in person, who delivered the haymaker by remembering clearly, he said, what Brian had on his plate.

Speaker 97 Okay, and do you recall what he was doing when you sat down across from him?

Speaker 85 I

Speaker 21 other than

Speaker 85 sitting there eating a good-looking Montana steak, that's what you seem to be most interested in.

Speaker 10 A steak.

Speaker 39 Why was that important?

Speaker 30 Because the autopsy, the one in which time of death was left blank, did not reveal any steak in his digestive tract.

Speaker 10 How could that be if he died Friday night?

Speaker 49 The defense called a forensic pathologist.

Speaker 80 So if he had eaten a steak at 7 o'clock at night

Speaker 80 and was shot and killed at 11 o'clock at night, would there be steak still in his stomach contents?

Speaker 89 Yeah, my opinion is that it doesn't seem like a plausible time of death.

Speaker 10 So what was in Dr.

Speaker 44 Ryan's stomach?

Speaker 70 According to the doctor who did the autopsy.

Speaker 5 Appeared to be scrambled eggs and green pepper and tomatoes.

Speaker 28 And in the bunkhouse, eggshells in the garbage, dirty dishes in the sink, as if he'd made breakfast.

Speaker 32 Although Dr.

Speaker 73 Ryan's sister testified that it was Spryan's habit to stay up late and make eggs and work late into the night, the defense said the evidence pointed to Dr.

Speaker 59 Ryan being killed not Friday night, but sometime Saturday.

Speaker 73 And there was a certain someone who had no alibi for Saturday.

Speaker 59 Someone you've already met.

Speaker 81 Remember him?

Speaker 43 Larry Hagenbush was about to take the witness stand.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 it's your statement that you then just went home, is that right? Correct. And you were home alone that night.
That's right.

Speaker 29 No question, but the defense was about to imply, that the killer could have been him.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 18 He told this woman that Mr. Ryan was shot with his own gun.

Speaker 7 The 19-year-old mystery takes a sudden, dark twist.

Speaker 18 He started describing things that you wouldn't know unless you had been there.

Speaker 7 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 28 On day eight of his trial, Tom Jarisewski's defense team attempted to flip the playing field. Not only did they challenge the prosecution theory that Dr.

Speaker 34 Brian Ryan's murder occurred on a Friday night,

Speaker 42 they also pointed their suspicion at a man who had no alibi for Saturday.

Speaker 18 The defensive call Larry Hagenbush.

Speaker 68 Larry Hagenbush.

Speaker 31 That friend of Dr.

Speaker 60 Ryan's whose wife was leaving him, who had used medication he purloined from Dr.

Speaker 32 Ryan to try to commit suicide a month before the murder.

Speaker 18 But you took this combination of pills so that you could check out. You wanted to kill yourself.

Speaker 14 It was time. I mean, I was done with all the BS.

Speaker 18 It's, to me, very plausible. Larry goes to Mr.
Ryan's trailer. He's upset.
He's been drinking. He wants either more pills from Mr.
Ryan. Mr.
Ryan refuses. And Larry goes for the gun.

Speaker 28 Thing is, the day Brian's body was discovered, Larry admitted he had gone over to the bunkhouse.

Speaker 42 And the morning after, Larry broke down crying in the waiting room of a counselor's office.

Speaker 49 And while people around him listened, he described things only someone with intimate knowledge of the crime scene would know about.

Speaker 18 He started describing things you wouldn't know unless you had been there.

Speaker 18 That Mr. Ryan was laying on his back with his feet crossed, blood all over.

Speaker 18 But the one fact that I think that's the most important that stood out to me was that he told this woman on Monday morning that Mr. Ryan was shot with his own gun.

Speaker 27 In fact, this woman who worked in the office overheard Larry.

Speaker 80 Mr. Hagenbush make any statements about whose gun that was?

Speaker 18 He said it was Brian's.

Speaker 18 Sunday, during that investigation, these officers did not know that this was Mr. Ryan's own firearm that had been used

Speaker 18 in this shooting. So to me, that stood out as a major red flag.
How did you know Brian was shot with his own gun?

Speaker 14 I don't. I probably said a gun.

Speaker 14 By that time, I was in pretty good shock.

Speaker 18 Do you recall telling her that Brian was shot Saturday night?

Speaker 41 No.

Speaker 18 Do you recall telling her that you were going to go out and have a six pack of beer with him?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 18 So if she

Speaker 18 knows all of that information,

Speaker 18 Monday morning, do you know where she would have gotten that information from?

Speaker 14 I guess from me, but I don't remember any of that because I do remember telling our counselor that my best friend got shot.

Speaker 18 So nobody saw you from Saturday morning,

Speaker 18 7 in the morning, till

Speaker 18 then they didn't see you all Saturday night, is that right?

Speaker 21 Correct.

Speaker 18 And Sunday, you hear, you come out to Brian's trailer, right?

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 18 So that's the first time anybody sees you from Saturday morning to Sunday morning. Correct.

Speaker 28 Larry denied any role in the shooting and remember detectives didn't charge him with anything.

Speaker 65 But the defense had made its point.

Speaker 80 It comes back to they made a decision that Mr. Ryan died on Friday night and so Larry was around some people Friday night.

Speaker 80 But all day Saturday and Saturday night and Sunday morning, he wasn't around anyone.

Speaker 53 And then finally, as if to twist the knife, the defense brought up one more thing.

Speaker 28 The thing that so upset Dr.

Speaker 47 Ryan's sisters.

Speaker 11 The fact that in the underwear Dr.

Speaker 31 Ryan was wearing at the time of his death, there was DNA that was unidentified.

Speaker 18 So my question would be as to when that would have gotten there and how and more importantly, who.

Speaker 1 The implication, of course, that he was seeing and having sex with someone in addition to Anne, another Another potential suspect added to the plot.

Speaker 18 We're just saying Tom may not be the only ex-boyfriend out there who would have been upset with Mr. Ryan.

Speaker 32 That, in essence, was Tom Jarosewski's defense.

Speaker 68 Anyone but Tom.

Speaker 21 Did you kill him? No, I didn't.

Speaker 5 Do you think Larry Hagenbush did kill the doctor?

Speaker 78 You know, I have no idea. who killed Brian.

Speaker 78 I know what it's like to be an innocent person wrongly accused.

Speaker 78 And I'm not going to sit here and accuse somebody else.

Speaker 59 The end was coming very soon.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 95 He committed this crime masterfully.

Speaker 10 Did he or didn't he?

Speaker 16 This was an incredibly tough case.

Speaker 7 The jury's decision.

Speaker 62 What would it be?

Speaker 78 I put my head down on the table and I cried.

Speaker 76 Imagine the poor jury with such a decision to make.

Speaker 28 The dreadful loss of a young man with a bright future.

Speaker 37 But 19 years, a whole generation ago. Bad and suspicious behavior by the defendant, but no physical evidence.

Speaker 28 But they did have to answer the question, did Tom Jarisewski pull the trigger?

Speaker 70 For prosecutors, the question for the jury was, who else could have done it?

Speaker 8 Tom Jarosewski was the only person with the opportunity,

Speaker 95 the only person with the motive to take Brian Ryan out of this world.

Speaker 8 And he did it.

Speaker 95 And he committed this crime masterfully.

Speaker 43 The defense, in its closing, took a swipe at Ken Thompson, the agent who for two decades wouldn't let the case go.

Speaker 18 We don't convict people

Speaker 18 because

Speaker 18 the lead investigator is retiring

Speaker 18 and wants this case resolved

Speaker 18 just so we can close the book.

Speaker 28 The jury went out first thing in the morning the next day.

Speaker 57 They did not return as quickly as one side at least expected.

Speaker 18 It's just the worst time when you have a jury out. Every hour that went by was pretty painful.

Speaker 45 And then, minutes before the five o'clock whistle.

Speaker 16 All right, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Mr.
Foreman,

Speaker 16 has the jury reached a verdict?

Speaker 26 Yes, sir.

Speaker 21 I kept thinking, if they said guilty, I thought, I'm going to fall down.

Speaker 78 My heart beating so hard, so fast.

Speaker 78 Either I was going to have a life or I wasn't going to have a life.

Speaker 97 We the jury, duly empaneled and sworn to try the issues in the above entitled cause, enter the following unanimous verdict. To the charge of deliberate homicide, not guilty.

Speaker 45 Not guilty.

Speaker 78 I cried.

Speaker 78 I put my head down on the table and I cried.

Speaker 80 I just put my arm around him and said,

Speaker 80 It's finally over.

Speaker 16 The case is dismissed, defendant is free to go.

Speaker 94 Thank you.

Speaker 82 Go to the group like you.

Speaker 21 Yeah, you can get up there.

Speaker 44 His family, overjoyed, watched them cut off the GPS monitor.

Speaker 14 Did you realize it was finally over?

Speaker 78 Yeah, and it was a sense of relief

Speaker 80 and seeing

Speaker 78 tears of happiness for my family.

Speaker 78 It's the greatest thing ever.

Speaker 78 Calling my boys up in South Dakota.

Speaker 78 Telling them I'm coming home.

Speaker 21 That was a

Speaker 78 wonderful call to make.

Speaker 10 But while that was going on, across the court.

Speaker 21 Do you remember that moment?

Speaker 21 I do.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Almost like you lost them all over again.

Speaker 19 I remember walking out of there and thinking,

Speaker 19 and it turned out exactly the way I thought it would. Why did you waste our time?

Speaker 10 Did he?

Speaker 17 Ken Thompson didn't think so, of course.

Speaker 77 But

Speaker 14 of course, I was disappointed. My heart felt, but I truly was more a piece of people.
Got to hear it all. Because a jury said he was not guilty.
I don't think that changes things.

Speaker 14 For most people, they either believed he did or believed he didn't.

Speaker 21 What do you believe?

Speaker 31 That he got away with murder.

Speaker 54 Clearly, not what the jury believed.

Speaker 29 We asked Judge Greg Pinsky, who spoke to the jurors after the trial.

Speaker 16 This was an incredibly tough case to prove.

Speaker 16 It was a tough case to prove in 1998.

Speaker 16 It became an incredibly tough case to prove in 2015.

Speaker 5 What did the jury think were the weaknesses in the case?

Speaker 16 Timing.

Speaker 16 Timing. They wanted to know why this case was coming to trial after 19 years.
I think juries are motivated a lot by what they see on TV.

Speaker 16 And when they see an old case on TV,

Speaker 16 they expect that there was some new scientific,

Speaker 16 technological advance.

Speaker 32 Some DNA or something.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Some DNA that suddenly cracked open this cold case after 19 years and brought it forward. And that's not this case.

Speaker 10 A couple of months after the the verdict, we went to Arkansas to spend some time with the woman at the center of that long-ago love triangle and discovered she is still tormented by a guilt that will not go away.

Speaker 43 She wonders, if it hadn't been for her, would Dr.

Speaker 49 Rine be alive?

Speaker 31 It's odd, really, whether or not Tom killed Dr.

Speaker 50 Rine, and especially if he didn't.

Speaker 48 Anne could have had nothing to feel guilty about.

Speaker 5 And yet, she does.

Speaker 5 I know everybody says this to you, but stop it.

Speaker 21 It's not your fault.

Speaker 7 It really isn't.

Speaker 5 Not even for a moment.

Speaker 21 Well, I was hoping that

Speaker 12 if he was convicted, maybe that feeling would go away.

Speaker 85 That's what I wanted. I wanted

Speaker 12 to say he's guilty.

Speaker 21 And then I could quit feeling guilty.

Speaker 21 And they didn't.

Speaker 5 No, they didn't.

Speaker 21 So now I've got to figure out a different way.

Speaker 65 So do they all.

Speaker 13 The prosecutor, believing he had the right guy all along, has closed the case.

Speaker 76 But the judge?

Speaker 16 I mean it when I told the jurors when they wanted to find out who did this, when they wanted to solve this crime, that literally, if they believe there's another world that they go to someday, Look up Brian Ryan when you get there and ask him who killed him because that's the only way that we're ever going to know who killed Brian Ryan.

Speaker 37 That's all for now.

Speaker 7 I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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