Mystery at Heath Bar Farm

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Speaker 3 The first time I saw her, I thought she was beautiful. We just loved being together.
We were always together.

Speaker 5 I wish I could have been there to protect her.

Speaker 4 My wife!

Speaker 6 Oh my God!

Speaker 7 He was the one who found her.

Speaker 6 My wife is in the cellar. She was later.

Speaker 5 Police didn't know how to handle that.

Speaker 8 His wife, the school teacher, murdered, and police were pointing straight at him.

Speaker 11 He was such a nice guy that you would have never have guessed that he would have done something like that.

Speaker 12 You think he faked that burglary and killed his wife?

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 14 He wanted the house, he wanted her money, and if he divorced her, he lost everything.

Speaker 7 Did he do it?

Speaker 16 Hang on.

Speaker 7 This case had a twist that no one saw coming.

Speaker 17 This woman essentially says, I saw the murderer, and it wasn't Tom Foley.

Speaker 3 There's the killer.

Speaker 19 Right there.

Speaker 3 I did not

Speaker 19 kill my wife.

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

Speaker 7 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Mystery at Heath Bar Farm.

Speaker 21 February 2009, Coldwater, Michigan.

Speaker 22 What's the problem?

Speaker 22 Wife! Your wife?

Speaker 23 Yes!

Speaker 23 In one day. One moment.
Is she breathing? No!

Speaker 23 He's gone!

Speaker 23 He's gone!

Speaker 15 The innocent, simple life Tom Foley and his family once lived was gone forever. Oh my God!

Speaker 15 Oh my god!

Speaker 25 Martinez dribbles it in 27 seconds, gets it off to Foley.

Speaker 15 It was a moment Tom Foley never would have imagined 23 years earlier.

Speaker 15 Back then, number 30, gonna be 15 seconds left exactly now, scored the winning basket, giving Coldwater High School the regional title.

Speaker 25 Broley baseline jumper, 18 minutes.

Speaker 25 He hits it with five seconds and played well called the timeout.

Speaker 28 And earning young Tom a place in Coldwater's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Speaker 30 I have goosebumps right now just talking about it.

Speaker 31 It was like victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat, and he came through with it.

Speaker 32 To what extent were you sort of known around here for being the kid that hit the game-winning shot?

Speaker 3 That went on for a long time. You know, maybe someone might come up,

Speaker 3 hey, Tom, remember when you hit that shot?

Speaker 7 I said, of course I remember.

Speaker 33 In 1991, the hometown heroes started dating another local standout named Darlene Weber.

Speaker 28 Dar, as she was known, had a personality as big as her smile.

Speaker 3 The first time I saw her,

Speaker 3 she was playing softball, of course, and she had on these

Speaker 3 lime green rec specs. So she looked a little funny, but when she took them off,

Speaker 3 I thought she was beautiful.

Speaker 24 It was a classic case of opposites attracting.

Speaker 3 I think we both went into the relationship knowing that we

Speaker 3 really loved spending time with one another.

Speaker 28 Tom was the laid-back, easy-going type.

Speaker 35 Dar, an elementary school teacher, was more type A.

Speaker 28 And she didn't hide what she was thinking.

Speaker 3 She had opinions and she let those be known. It's one of the reasons I loved her.

Speaker 3 I still love her today.

Speaker 42 Still, when Dar's sisters, LaDonna, LaDonna, Lynn, and Marla, learned that Dar and Tom intended to marry, they were left scratching their heads.

Speaker 14 My famous saying was, there's got to be something wrong with Tom for him to stay with Dar.

Speaker 32 Because you couldn't do it.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 32 You couldn't be around somebody who was, what, that much the center of attention.

Speaker 11 And telling you what to do.

Speaker 23 And that controlling.

Speaker 44 Dar was not a...

Speaker 11 domesticated person either.

Speaker 41 The Foleys were married in 1994, and and right from the start, Darr took the lead.

Speaker 46 Fair to say that she wore the pants in that house?

Speaker 3 I'd say probably 75-80% of the time she did.

Speaker 32 She was the breadwinner? Yes. You stayed home and took care of your son?

Speaker 3 I did.

Speaker 19 Heath was Tom and Darr's only child and the center of their lives.

Speaker 3 And we just loved being together. We were always together.

Speaker 15 And so the three Foleys lived on the outskirts of Coldwater in an old old farmhouse they called the Heath Bar Farm. A picture-perfect family until that winter day back in 2009.

Speaker 20 What was the last thing you said to her?

Speaker 3 I said, I love you.

Speaker 3 And I'll see you later.

Speaker 48 On that day, the Foleys were preparing to celebrate Heath's 10th birthday at a friend's house just down the road.

Speaker 15 Darr still needed to shower.

Speaker 49 So Tom, Heath, and a friend of Heath's left without her.

Speaker 15 The plan was for Dar to follow in her own car and meet them all at the party later that afternoon.

Speaker 23 But Dar never arrived.

Speaker 38 That gave you some sort of sick sense that something was wrong.

Speaker 3 Yes, she was always on time or early to events.

Speaker 28 So Tom left the party and headed back home in search of his wife.

Speaker 3 Our kitchen back door was open

Speaker 10 and

Speaker 3 I noticed that the glass was broken and there was glass all over our kitchen floor. So I looked through the rest of the house for her

Speaker 3 and ended up finding her in our bathroom.

Speaker 19 She'd been shot in the head with a shotgun at point-blank range. Tom immediately called for help.

Speaker 51 What's the problem?

Speaker 15 First responders rushed to the Foley farm. When Michigan State Police Detective James Carbon arrived on the scene, he knew he was in for a long night.

Speaker 52 We don't have a lot of homicides that happen in and around Branch County. And because of her position as a school teacher, just for the number of people that knew her, that put it in a much more

Speaker 52 serious type investigation.

Speaker 28 Detective Carbon and his team of state troopers scoured the crime scene, taking pictures and seizing evidence of what appeared to be a home burglary gone wrong.

Speaker 26 The first clue, the broken glass coming from the kitchen door window.

Speaker 53 And it appeared that a beer bottle was used to break that particular window.

Speaker 15 According According to Tom, jewelry and credit cards were missing.

Speaker 19 The family desk had also been disturbed, and financial documents inside were gone.

Speaker 29 And then there was the medicine cabinet.

Speaker 52 Looked like somebody had gone in and basically scooped a shelf off of the medicine cabinet and its contents.

Speaker 5 Like maybe they were looking for prescription drugs.

Speaker 53 Potentially.

Speaker 15 But to Detective Carbon, The items missing weren't nearly as telling as what was left behind.

Speaker 27 Expensive electronics were untouched, as was Dar's purse found sitting on a hallway chair.

Speaker 52 It just didn't make a lot of sense.

Speaker 39 Neither did the use of a shotgun.

Speaker 58 It's large, potentially bulky.

Speaker 52 If you're going in to break into something, you have to carry whatever you steal out with the shotgun that you brought also.

Speaker 40 It wasn't until the next day that police found their first significant piece of evidence. Evidence that led the investigation in a whole new direction.

Speaker 59 Down in the Foley's dusty basement was a suspiciously dust-free yellow plastic bag.

Speaker 55 What was in the bag?

Speaker 12 Three shotgun shells.

Speaker 8 When we come back,

Speaker 7 police have some questions for the grieving husband.

Speaker 60 We found a Dunham's bag that had some shotgun shells in it. Have you ever seen him before?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 7 And so does his wife's family.

Speaker 15 There were a number of people that were really offended by his demeanor.

Speaker 33 The funeral for Dar Foley was held on the 13th, Friday the 13th.

Speaker 28 Those unlucky enough to be sharing their grief over the woman they'd loved and lost poured into Union City High School Auditorium.

Speaker 28 No church, it turned out, was big enough to accommodate the more than 500 people who came to honor and remember Dar.

Speaker 62 She was so full of life, and she had a lot more to give.

Speaker 62 And we can't bring her back.

Speaker 5 Your wife's been killed and you've got a 10-year-old son.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 5 What did you tell him?

Speaker 3 I told him this someone had hurt mommy.

Speaker 3 And he goes, is she in in heaven? And I said, yes.

Speaker 15 It seemed that no one in Coldwater could comprehend what had happened, including Steve and Joni Pierce, close friends of both Tom and Darr, who learned of the murder from Tom himself.

Speaker 63 I said the three of you were always together and he was crying and he said, I know, I know, I should have been there for her.

Speaker 63 And then I said,

Speaker 63 if you would have been, the three of you would be dead now instead of just Dar.

Speaker 48 But just 24 hours into the investigation, Detective Jim Carbin had almost abandoned the theory that this was a random act of violence.

Speaker 52 It appeared to me that this was a stage break in an entering to try to hide a homicide that took place.

Speaker 48 But according to Detective Carbon, whoever staged the burglary didn't factor in the weather that day.

Speaker 53 It got really warm.

Speaker 52 We had a huge snow melt off.

Speaker 15 The ground around the farmhouse was unusually wet and muddy.

Speaker 32 So you'd expect that there would be muddy footprints from inside the residence from somebody who had come through that door.

Speaker 20 Absolutely.

Speaker 22 And was there anything or any footprints?

Speaker 5 There was nothing.

Speaker 49 But it was the yellow bag found in the basement, the bag containing shotgun shells, that interested Carbon the most.

Speaker 60 Downstairs in the basement, okay, we found a Dunham's bag, okay, that had some shotgun shells in it. Okay, have you ever seen it before?

Speaker 60 No.

Speaker 32 No, the Foleys didn't own a shotgun, as far as we know.

Speaker 5 That's correct.

Speaker 29 Carbon sent the bag to the lab for analysis.

Speaker 39 And what technicians found on the bag surprised even this veteran detective.

Speaker 24 Tom's fingerprint was on the bag.

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 15 Suddenly, Detective Carbon felt he needed to take a closer look at Tom Foley.

Speaker 24 and his seemingly picture-perfect marriage.

Speaker 52 I think they did a lot of things together. However, I don't consider them the picture-perfect couple.

Speaker 38 Neither did Darr's sister Lynn, in whom Darr once confided.

Speaker 11 She said, Tom doesn't love me anymore. He's leaving me.

Speaker 62 He's going through his change of life, you know.

Speaker 20 His midlife crisis. Yes.

Speaker 39 Dar's sisters were becoming increasingly suspicious, especially they said after watching Tom's behavior.

Speaker 43 at Darr's funeral.

Speaker 64 It was almost like he was relieved.

Speaker 14 There were a number of people that came up to me after this service that were really offended by his demeanor,

Speaker 14 his joyfulness.

Speaker 3 These are things that I've heard.

Speaker 7 And it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 I mean, taking care of Heath was on my mind.

Speaker 3 Wondering who killed my wife was on my mind. They don't know the things that I've been through.

Speaker 15 Maybe so, but Detective Carbon was keeping a very watchful eye on Tom Foley.

Speaker 19 He decided to interview the other Foley who was at the farm the day Darr was killed, Tom and Darr's son, Heath.

Speaker 66 Heath, like I told you, I'm Detective Sergeant Carbin.

Speaker 19 On that day, Heath and his friend Skylar Waddy were inside the house playing video games, waiting to be driven to Heath's birthday celebration.

Speaker 52 Did you see anything different or out of the ordinary or anybody walking around? Anybody come up to the door? Anything that you could think of?

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 51 The detective also interviewed Skylar Waddy, who said right before leaving for the party, Tom sent the two boys outside to go start up the truck.

Speaker 68 He said that he'll be out there in a little bit.

Speaker 25 Okay.

Speaker 68 So I don't know what he was doing in there, like taking a shower or what.

Speaker 8 Like Heath, Skylar couldn't recall anything unusual about that day either.

Speaker 15 And then, suddenly.

Speaker 68 Yeah, when we were outside running across the barns, like there was like a big crash like way in the back of the house.

Speaker 56 Like what did it sound like?

Speaker 68 Sound like breaking glass and a bunch of things falling.

Speaker 68 Like maybe a vase just...

Speaker 60 It was a loud sound.

Speaker 15 Detective Carbon showed Schuyler a drawing of the Foley farm and asked Schuyler to place an X where he believed the sound originated.

Speaker 56 Like somewhere around

Speaker 43 in here.

Speaker 47 Schuyler placed the axe just outside the first floor bathroom, the same room where Dar Foley had been shot.

Speaker 52 It appeared to us that Skylar Waddy may have heard the shotgun blast that killed Dar Foley.

Speaker 15 Detective Carbon was also thinking this.

Speaker 15 The one other person in that house at that time was Tom Foley.

Speaker 9 Coming up.

Speaker 14 He wanted the house, he wanted her money, and if he divorced her, he lost everything.

Speaker 50 Was that a motive?

Speaker 7 And was Tom Foley the killer?

Speaker 7 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 23 From the mouths of babes, or in this case, one articulate 10-year-old boy, came what seemed like a case-breaking revelation.

Speaker 38 Detective Carbin believed 10-year-old Skylar Waddy was an ear witness to the shotgun blast that killed Dar Foley.

Speaker 33 If true, it meant Darr was murdered earlier than originally thought.

Speaker 28 More significantly, it meant Tom Foley was still in the house when the murder occurred.

Speaker 53 That lead was huge.

Speaker 52 It was very, very important.

Speaker 35 But if Tom Foley was in that house and pulled the trigger, the question remained why.

Speaker 38 The answer, said Carbon, is quite simple.

Speaker 32 Murder for money.

Speaker 52 Potentially, yes.

Speaker 29 Money in the form of an insurance policy.

Speaker 52 I think that he wanted out of the marriage

Speaker 52 and did whatever he needed to do to make sure that that happened.

Speaker 32 And if he got $310,000 in insurance money and got out of the marriage,

Speaker 12 so much the better.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 47 The evidence against Tom Foley was circumstantial but compelling.

Speaker 12 You think he faked that burglary?

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 12 And killed his wife?

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 15 They never found the murder weapon.

Speaker 24 What do you think happened to the gun?

Speaker 52 I wish I knew.

Speaker 22 But even without it, in March of 2009, one month after Dar Foley was gunned down in her shower, state police arrested Tom Foley and charged him with his wife's murder.

Speaker 3 And I just...

Speaker 20 What?

Speaker 15 Why?

Speaker 3 And I was like, this cannot be happening. Why do you think that I did this? That I did not

Speaker 3 kill my wife.

Speaker 26 To Tom and Darr's close friends, the Pierces, news of Tom's arrest was almost as stunning as the news of Darr's death.

Speaker 46 Could you conceive of Tom either hating his wife so much that he wanted to kill her?

Speaker 6 Absolutely not.

Speaker 23 Or killing her for the insurance money?

Speaker 29 Absolutely not.

Speaker 17 That would be stupid. She made good money.
Why kill the golden goose?

Speaker 20 You think they had a good marriage? Yeah, I do.

Speaker 17 Everything seemed to be going real good for him.

Speaker 15 It seemed sadistic, shooting your wife at point-blank range, killing the mother of your son on the very day he was celebrating his 10th birthday.

Speaker 64 He never would have done that to his son.

Speaker 65 Police continued gathering evidence.

Speaker 51 Ten days after Tom's arrest, police brought Heath Foley in for a second interview.

Speaker 18 And this time, Heath did recall hearing a noise that day.

Speaker 31 When Skyler talks about hearing this unusual sound, do do you remember anything?

Speaker 69 Or neighbors just like shoot guns?

Speaker 68 Or it was like maybe a gunshot, maybe, or maybe

Speaker 69 like glass broke. I don't know.

Speaker 69 But it was one of those two things, maybe.

Speaker 55 According to Tom, the sound Heath heard was nothing more than glass breaking.

Speaker 3 They were old barn windows that I was trying to clean up and I went to grab them and one of them slipped out of my grip and it smashed on our back porch steps.

Speaker 20 It made a lot of noise. Yeah, it did.
Yep.

Speaker 28 But Detective Carbon wasn't buying Tom's explanation.

Speaker 5 The boys were playing over by this barn?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 19 And how far is that to the house?

Speaker 52 It's approximately 75 yards.

Speaker 15 Mr. Foley claims he was dropping a window.

Speaker 19 Would that sound have penetrated that far?

Speaker 53 In my opinion, that couldn't have happened.

Speaker 38 Police also say they carefully searched that area around the back porch.

Speaker 52 There was no glass glass that we could see when we looked at the scene on that particular night as well as the next day.

Speaker 45 For Darr's sisters, the writing was by now on the wall.

Speaker 15 They were certain of their brother-in-law's guilt.

Speaker 64 We went over every case we could come up with to not make it tom.

Speaker 62 I think Tom resented Darr and that he couldn't be a man. I think it kind of ate at him and he couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 16 People get divorced for that reason.

Speaker 14 He didn't divorce her because he's a selfish coward. He wanted Heath.
He wanted the house. He wanted her money.
And if he divorced her, he lost everything.

Speaker 22 In November 2009, Tom Foley's trial began. The prosecution argued that only Tom had a motive to kill Darr.

Speaker 15 But the defense claimed police had rushed to judgment.

Speaker 38 Defense attorney Tom Schaefer and defense investigator Ken Koberstein.

Speaker 37 In their mind, it's always the boyfriend or the husband.

Speaker 71 Or the person who finds the body.

Speaker 66 Which in this case was the husband and

Speaker 53 Tom.

Speaker 3 They wanted me bad because

Speaker 3 what's easier for them to go after someone that they can actually physically see or to go after someone that they cannot physically see?

Speaker 16 What's wrong with the idea that the money was a motive?

Speaker 3 Absolutely not. I mean, we had a mortgage.
To move on after all this, it was going to take a hell of a lot more than that.

Speaker 24 After two weeks of testimony, the jury had its verdict.

Speaker 16 I felt that the evidence was going to prove that there was absolutely no way I had anything to do with this.

Speaker 49 Twelve jurors didn't share that feeling.

Speaker 56 Wait, did the jury find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder?

Speaker 3 I was just...

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 I was just shocked.

Speaker 72 What was wrong with the jury?

Speaker 63 What do they know that I don't know? How could they convict a man on what they had?

Speaker 3 I knew what a conviction was meant for me.

Speaker 37 Meant for life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 13 My sister was still dead.

Speaker 56 Still didn't bring her back.

Speaker 64 But you had a little bit of faith in the justice system.

Speaker 15 In the hours following the verdict, it seemed everyone in Coldwater was relying on faith.

Speaker 3 I said to myself, God isn't going to let me go to prison for the rest of my life. Something had to turn around.

Speaker 29 Then, less than 24 hours after the verdict, Tom Foley's defense team got a phone call from a woman.

Speaker 17 This is a woman who essentially says, I saw the murderer, and it wasn't Tom Foley.

Speaker 9 Coming up.

Speaker 3 There's the killer right there. She saw him.

Speaker 8 A bombshell from out of the blue. Was there hope for a newly convicted husband?

Speaker 25 Foley baseline jumper 18.

Speaker 25 He hits it with five seconds.

Speaker 16 24 years after the one-time hometown hero named Tom Foley made Coldwater history, the now convicted murderer of the same name sat behind bars awaiting his sentence.

Speaker 18 You ready to spend the rest of your life in prison?

Speaker 3 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 15 To Tom Foley's attorney, Tom Schaefer, and to his private eye, Ken Coberstein, the guilty verdict landed like a crushing blow.

Speaker 37 This was a grassroot to whodunit, and we thought we had shown that it wasn't this person who had done it.

Speaker 66 I was devastated.

Speaker 71 When this ended,

Speaker 24 I could have walked into a wall.

Speaker 65 But just one day after Tom Foley's conviction, a woman stepped forward.

Speaker 24 She had new information that suddenly gave new life to Tom's defense.

Speaker 37 She came forward and said, I saw this white car storming out of the driveway, almost hit me. It looked like somebody was either high or running away from something.

Speaker 35 The woman was certain the driver was coming out of the Heathbar farm right around the time Darr was murdered.

Speaker 33 And she was equally certain the driver looked nothing like Tom Foley.

Speaker 19 There's the killer.

Speaker 19 Right there.

Speaker 3 She saw him.

Speaker 3 Person leaving our property.

Speaker 28 And then, like a dam dam-breaking, two other witnesses came forward, each having seen a mysterious car of their own, either parked on the Foley property or speeding away from it.

Speaker 73 All the sightings were within two hours of Darr's murder.

Speaker 3 I mean, it was just like one after another.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I was like, what is going on? Where were these people,

Speaker 3 you know, before?

Speaker 38 The judge, who was about to sentence Tom Foley to life, wanted to hear what these new witnesses had to say.

Speaker 22 And after a year of appeals that went all the way to the state Supreme Court, Tom Foley was granted something most people convicted of murder never receive.

Speaker 24 A second chance.

Speaker 3 I was walking through the chow hall in prison and somebody says, hey, Tom, I saw you in the news. I said, really?

Speaker 10 What for?

Speaker 3 Well, they gave you a new trial.

Speaker 7 I said, what?

Speaker 33 But news of a new trial didn't change the minds of Darr's family.

Speaker 59 They remained convinced, not only did Tom kill Darr, he did so on the the day of his son's 10th birthday celebration.

Speaker 55 You think Tom's cold-blooded enough to do something like that to his kid?

Speaker 64 Yes.

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 14 I think there's evil at hand.

Speaker 38 Prosecutor Terry Norris agreed.

Speaker 15 Who killed Darr Foley?

Speaker 56 Tom Foley.

Speaker 64 There is nobody else.

Speaker 15 A year and a half after Tom Foley's conviction, both sides filed back into the courthouse to once again determine Tom's fate.

Speaker 55 Circuit court is again in session.

Speaker 56 Thank you.

Speaker 44 Thank you.

Speaker 38 As before, the state opened its case with the crime scene analysts.

Speaker 64 What is it that you found in the basement?

Speaker 74 Found a yellow Donovan's bag.

Speaker 37 Located inside the Donovan's bag was three shotgun shells.

Speaker 31 These are phone records.

Speaker 19 Norris also showed the jury the Foley's home phone records from around the time Darr was killed.

Speaker 31 There were no phone calls that either came in or left.

Speaker 32 If your wife doesn't show up somewhere, why not call home and see, you you know, have you left yet?

Speaker 16 Where are you? We're waiting for you.

Speaker 5 That's what I would do.

Speaker 55 According to Detective Carbon, Tom didn't bother calling Dar at home because he knew Darr was already dead.

Speaker 46 Then, members of Dar's family stepped forward to testify that Tom and Darr's marriage was troubled and that Tom wanted out.

Speaker 74 He told me that his wife is very controlling and that that was wearing on him and

Speaker 74 he did not necessarily want to stay in the marriage anymore.

Speaker 33 And there was more evidence of an unhappy marriage.

Speaker 38 According to this woman, back in 2006, Tom had a wandering eye.

Speaker 75 Please state your full name for the record and spell your last name.

Speaker 76 Carolyn Zuck.

Speaker 38 Carrie Zuck taught at the same elementary school as Dar, who was known at school as Dee Dee.

Speaker 15 That's how Carrie met Tom.

Speaker 77 He told me that he was

Speaker 77 thinking about leaving Dee Dee.

Speaker 15 According to Carrie, Tom Tom also revealed he had feelings for her, and later he tried to kiss her.

Speaker 79 And what was your reaction to that?

Speaker 77 I didn't want anything to do with it.

Speaker 27 The prosecution wasn't done.

Speaker 29 This woman took the stand.

Speaker 75 Please state your full name for the record and spell your last name.

Speaker 14 Marion Victoria Crandall.

Speaker 39 Out of the presence of the jury, Marion Crandall told the court that, like Carrie Zuck, she met Tom through Darr.

Speaker 15 And a couple of weeks after Darr's murder, Marion stopped by the farm to offer Tom support.

Speaker 79 I don't mean to embarrass you, but you had sex with Tom in his living room?

Speaker 77 He tried to.

Speaker 77 And it was stopped.

Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 79 Who tried and who stopped?

Speaker 77 He tried and we both stopped.

Speaker 64 You don't have a sexual relationship with somebody within two weeks after your wife's been murdered in that house.

Speaker 15 But the jury never heard Marion Crandall's testimony.

Speaker 15 Because there was no indication of a romantic relationship prior to Darr's murder, the judge ruled, just as he did in the first trial, that her testimony was prejudicial and therefore inadmissible.

Speaker 15 It was a huge blow to the prosecution's case.

Speaker 64 It supports the position that they weren't this deeply in love couple that he kept trying to present. I mean, that would have proven that.

Speaker 22 But Nora still had her two key witnesses, Tom's own son, Heath and Heath's friend Skylar Waddy, both two years older and now more certain than ever about what they saw and heard the day Darr was killed.

Speaker 80 Last year at church camp it went for one of our activities we fired shotguns and it most resembled that sound.

Speaker 15 Then it was time for Heath to take the stand.

Speaker 33 The last time Tom had seen his boy was at a hearing, also in court, almost a year earlier.

Speaker 64 While you're in the barn,

Speaker 64 do you hear something?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 81 I thought it was maybe Skylar kind of ran into a wall.

Speaker 77 Either that or a gunshot.

Speaker 48 You think the boys actually were, if not eyewitnesses, then earwitnesses.

Speaker 13 Earwitnesses to what happened.

Speaker 19 You may step down. Tom Schaefer knew that if he had any hope of getting Tom Foley acquitted, he'd need to prove the sound those boys heard was anything other than a gunshot.

Speaker 41 Just two weeks before trial began, while inspecting crime scene photos, Schaefer found what may be the key to his client's freedom.

Speaker 37 And I says, Ken, is that what I think it is? It was one of these.

Speaker 20 Holy crap.

Speaker 70 It was, to us, just a Perry Mason moment.

Speaker 9 Coming up.

Speaker 55 We were together

Speaker 55 all the time.

Speaker 7 Tom Foley on the stand.

Speaker 15 with his own fate on the line.

Speaker 3 I wanted to convince the police. I wanted to convince my wife's family.

Speaker 61 Could he?

Speaker 7 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 78 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 78 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

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Speaker 82 The defense began presenting its case in hopes of convincing the jury that Foley is innocent.

Speaker 15 Midway through Tom Foley's trial,

Speaker 15 the talk around Coldwater focused on the damaging testimony of Skylar Waddy and Tom's own son, Heath.

Speaker 53 What did you think was the strongest part of of your case?

Speaker 64 The boys. The testimony of the boys.

Speaker 13 They heard the gunshot.

Speaker 15 But the defense was about to argue that over time,

Speaker 24 both boys' testimony had changed and in significant ways.

Speaker 3 Heath is now stating that it sounds like a gunshot. It's something that he didn't say in the first interview.

Speaker 37 The same thing with Skylar.

Speaker 15 Heath's courtroom testimony left Tom furious, not at his son, but at his accusers, the people who had cared for Heath while Tom was incarcerated.

Speaker 20 That's somebody coaching him or encouraging him?

Speaker 22 I believe so.

Speaker 46 Coached or not, Tom Foley's defense team knew from day one that they needed to prove the sound those boys heard was Tom dropping a window frame on the back porch and not the fatal gun blast.

Speaker 15 Four days after Tom Foley's arrest, Schaefer and Koberstein took a trip to the farm to try and do just that.

Speaker 37 A couple of Perry Mason moments. Don't come very often.
often.

Speaker 24 This is the frame that we found. Right where Tom said he dropped the frame, they found this tiny shard of glass.
Immediately, they tried to match the shard with the frame Tom said he dropped.

Speaker 71 If you take the shard and set it in one of the few remaining intact, putty areas of the frame, you can see it fits perfectly.

Speaker 24 It was compelling evidence that Tom may have been telling the truth.

Speaker 15 But Schaefer would need more than a shard of evidence.

Speaker 15 He next called this woman, Jeanette Moore, the woman who came forward immediately following Tom's guilty verdict and the reason he was ultimately granted a new trial.

Speaker 30 Hi, June. Okay.

Speaker 15 Moore said she was driving past the Foley house right around the time Darr had been murdered.

Speaker 24 As I approached, this white car

Speaker 76 come racing out forward.

Speaker 76 And if I hadn't braked, I would have hit him.

Speaker 49 Jeanette Moore said she got a good look at the driver.

Speaker 76 It was a young 18 to 20-year-old kid. He had real black hair, and his face was real white, and he was clunching the wheel just like this.
And I thought, he's crazy. He's going to kill somebody.

Speaker 55 Why didn't you call the police?

Speaker 76 I didn't because I was afraid.

Speaker 15 But when Jeanette Moore learned about Tom Foley's guilty verdict, she said she could no longer keep her silence.

Speaker 76 God forgive me, and I truly mean that in my heart, that I didn't come forward sooner if I hadn't been so darn scared.

Speaker 26 What followed was a succession of other witnesses, each claiming they too saw mysterious cars either on or leaving the Heathbar farm right around the time of the murder.

Speaker 53 Whoever killed Dar Foley

Speaker 66 was either in one of those cars or all three of them participated in this murder in some fashion.

Speaker 15 But Tom Foley knew if he had any hope of acquittal, the jury would need to hear from one more witness.

Speaker 67 I called Tom Foley to the Sandron.

Speaker 3 I just didn't want to convince the 12 jurors.

Speaker 3 I wanted to convince the prosecutor. I wanted to convince the police.
I wanted to convince my wife's family. I wanted them to know and look at me and hear me.

Speaker 38 Tom started by answering some still nagging questions like, how did a yellow plastic bag with shotgun shells in it get into Tom's basement?

Speaker 67 Did you have Denham's bags in your home?

Speaker 49 Yes.

Speaker 16 How do you explain the bag in the basement with the shotgun shells in it?

Speaker 3 They weren't ours. That bag is probably ours.
I mean, my fingerprint's on the bag. But for

Speaker 3 three clean shotgun shells to be in my basement, it just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 45 You have no idea where those came from?

Speaker 3 Absolutely not.

Speaker 38 Tom said he's never owned or used a shotgun.

Speaker 3 Never. Wouldn't know how to operate it.
Wouldn't know first thing about it.

Speaker 15 Tom Schaefer then asked why Tom failed to call his home when Dar didn't show up at the birthday celebration.

Speaker 22 Something just wasn't right, so that's why I went home.

Speaker 3 If we had cell phones, I would have called her on the cell phone. I had to find her, I had to go and see where she was at.

Speaker 15 Then it was time for Tom to describe his relationship with Dar.

Speaker 15 It didn't take Tom long to lose his composure.

Speaker 55 We were very close.

Speaker 55 And we were...

Speaker 56 Glenn.

Speaker 55 We were together

Speaker 15 all the time.

Speaker 34 Tom admitted to the jury he did once flirt with Carrie Zuck, but he says that happened three years prior to the murder, during a brief time when he and Dar were arguing more than they were communicating.

Speaker 3 That put quite a bit of distance between us and it also led to

Speaker 3 intimacy problems between her and I.

Speaker 59 Tom says he eventually told Darr about his feelings for Carrie.

Speaker 19 He also says he went to counseling to work on their communication problems.

Speaker 67 After those sessions, did things get better?

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 38 But then why was it so easy for Tom to become intimate with Marion Crandall?

Speaker 61 so soon after Dar's death.

Speaker 46 This like three weeks after Dar died.

Speaker 16 Yes. And you're in the house where Darr died.
Yeah.

Speaker 23 What am I to think of that?

Speaker 3 Think that

Speaker 8 I don't

Speaker 3 care about what had just happened to my wife. That's not true.
If I go back and change it, I would, but I can't.

Speaker 37 This was

Speaker 37 an event

Speaker 37 that involved grief and

Speaker 37 a reaching out, and it happened.

Speaker 67 Do you love your wife?

Speaker 3 I love her very much.

Speaker 67 Did you love her on February 7th, 2009?

Speaker 15 Very much so.

Speaker 67 Did you have anything to do with her death?

Speaker 15 Not at all.

Speaker 15 Before closing arguments, the prosecutor had one more card to play in the form of a surprise rebuttal witness

Speaker 15 who could unravel Tom's alibi.

Speaker 75 Please state your full name for the record, Amber Rapplejay.

Speaker 15 Out of the presence of the jury, Darr's niece told the court that one week before Darr was murdered, she went to the farm to babysit Heath.

Speaker 30 She told us not to go out on the back porch without shoes because Tom had dropped a frame and there might be still some glass out there.

Speaker 65 But the judge ruled that Amber's testimony was hearsay and therefore inadmissible.

Speaker 15 The jury never heard her challenge Tom's claim that what the boys heard the day Darr was murdered was him dropping a window frame.

Speaker 47 Now, with the evidence that was admitted, and for the second time in two years, a jury was about to decide Tom Foley's fate.

Speaker 3 My stomach was turning, I wasn't eating, I

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 physically sick.

Speaker 8 Coming up, another verdict brings another shattering moment.

Speaker 37 He collapsed to the floor and wept for 20 minutes.

Speaker 38 As he did in the first trial, Attorney Tom Schaefer prepared to address the jury for what he and his client Tom Foley hoped would be the last time.

Speaker 32 When your defense rested,

Speaker 20 were you comfortable?

Speaker 70 Yes.

Speaker 12 You thought you were going to win?

Speaker 3 Very much. Yeah.

Speaker 24 You thought that once before. Yes, I did.

Speaker 67 Apparently, the theory of the prosecution is that if a marriage ever has a bump in the road, then that is a motive for murder.

Speaker 5 Is it reasonable?

Speaker 67 I suggest not.

Speaker 38 Tom Foley, he says, had nothing to do with Darr's death.

Speaker 59 But those mysterious cars did.

Speaker 67 Those cars should not have been there. And the prosecution has not given you any explanation why they were there.
Because there is no other explanation other than that they had some connection

Speaker 67 with the death of Dar Foley. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, I submit to you, there is more that reasonable done.

Speaker 67 I respectfully ask you to find Tom Foley not guilty.

Speaker 28 Then came Prosecutor Terry Norris's turn, and she started by attacking the credibility of those witnesses who say they saw the cars.

Speaker 81 If you were to believe that all of these vehicles were there, there was a party at the Foley home that day with a... with a bunch of white cars and a black SUV.
That makes no sense whatsoever.

Speaker 64 None.

Speaker 34 Terry Norris wanted this jury thinking only one thing.

Speaker 55 Who had the motive?

Speaker 81 It's Tom Foley.

Speaker 81 Whose fingerprint was on the bag of shells in the basement?

Speaker 20 Tom Foley.

Speaker 64 Tom Foley is guilty. I'm asking you to bring back that verdict.

Speaker 15 The outcome of Tom's second trial was far from certain.

Speaker 13 What worried you the most?

Speaker 11 Just that he was such a nice guy that you would have never have guessed that he would have done something like that.

Speaker 5 He didn't seem like a murderer. Right.

Speaker 48 And then, at the fabled 11th hour, it was time.

Speaker 35 The jury filed in.

Speaker 32 Were they looking at you, the jurors?

Speaker 20 No, they weren't.

Speaker 3 I took a couple deep breaths and I just

Speaker 82 Your Honor, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.

Speaker 37 The waiting had

Speaker 75 paid off. As to count two,

Speaker 49 not guilty.

Speaker 37 The reaction of Tom at the time of the verdict.

Speaker 20 Absolutely incredible.

Speaker 37 He collapsed to the floor and wept for 20 minutes.

Speaker 6 Unbelievable.

Speaker 64 He got away with murder, but he almost did it.

Speaker 55 We had it.

Speaker 62 We had him convicted.

Speaker 64 And to actually have to go back and talk with that family and try and give them some consoling, how do you do that?

Speaker 11 You're just angry.

Speaker 62 You're angry at the jurors,

Speaker 62 the judge, when there's nothing you can do about it.

Speaker 14 I was more concerned about Heath at that point

Speaker 14 because I knew

Speaker 14 that he knew his father killed his mother.

Speaker 14 And I couldn't imagine having to go back and live with the man

Speaker 14 that killed your mother.

Speaker 53 Get it, get it!

Speaker 65 Tom has regained custody of Heath, and he treads very carefully when discussing that tragic day with his boy.

Speaker 3 From him I at least want to know why do you think I did this?

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 3 I deserve that answer and all he can say is

Speaker 3 I don't know who else it could have been.

Speaker 28 Tom says he will never forget Dar.

Speaker 3 I still think she's beside me.

Speaker 3 I'm going to continue to raise our son the way that we wanted him to be raised.

Speaker 53 You harbor any grudge because of this?

Speaker 3 All I can say is they made a mistake. That's all I'm asking.
Is that they search and search and search until they find Dee Dee's killer.

Speaker 22 According to Prosecutor Norris, there would be no point to that search.

Speaker 32 You're not investigating anymore.

Speaker 64 There's no one to investigate. And there's been no new evidence of anybody else ever having committed this crime.

Speaker 38 This boyhood hero wrote a whole new set of headlines as an adult.

Speaker 50 And Coldwater may never be the same.

Speaker 22 As for those who remain convinced of Tom's guilt, they cling to the memory of the one they lost and loved so much.

Speaker 19 They gathered to release balloons in Dar's honor.

Speaker 72 She loved to be the center of attention, so this is

Speaker 72 her center of her attention.

Speaker 72 They rise us closer to where she's at, and hopefully, she sees that we're thinking about her.

Speaker 24 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 7 Thanks for joining us.

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