The Bathtub Mystery

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Speaker 4 What goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage is not always apparent to the outside.

Speaker 5 My wife, she fell asleep in advance. I just came up here and she was laid faint down in the bathroom.

Speaker 6 You something wasn't right.

Speaker 8 She was just unconscious, a beaming bride, a haunting death.

Speaker 9 He was telling me he could never ever love another woman as much as he loved her.

Speaker 10 What had happened?

Speaker 11 Did she have an aneurysm? Did she have a seizure?

Speaker 10 Police were baffled.

Speaker 12 I expected something to be wet. I expected there to be water on the floor.

Speaker 13 Things were not adding up.

Speaker 12 Something was screaming to me, something's bad wrong.

Speaker 10 Could this death have been deliberate?

Speaker 4 She was murdered.

Speaker 14 I love Sarah.

Speaker 15 I would never have hurt her.

Speaker 9 I started crying because I just felt so bad for him.

Speaker 17 There's just no chance that he had anything to do with it.

Speaker 10 Three trials, three juries.

Speaker 19 We're scared that the truth may not come out.

Speaker 22 Sometimes the shades are drawn early in a marriage, even for young couples so in love like newlywed Sarah and Ryan.

Speaker 24 Everything in life was still fresh.

Speaker 26 even at home on your average Monday night.

Speaker 23 After his workday as a sports planner, Ryan said he plopped down on the sofa on an August night to chill with the Bengals preseason opener against Green Bay.

Speaker 31 Sarah, he says, went upstairs to draw a bath in the master.

Speaker 33 She liked her calming baths. The young dental hygienist had been tormented with more of her headaches that afternoon.

Speaker 35 The young couple in the suburban Cincinnati home that evening had been married for just under four months.

Speaker 38 114 days to be exact.

Speaker 6 They'd vowed till death to us part, and that moment was only minutes away from arriving.

Speaker 43 They'd begun, the two of them, with a blind date at a pub that worked out.

Speaker 35 Sarah, Sarah's steward, had been fixed up by her friend Dana Kist.

Speaker 47 Dana had an inkling that Sarah would really hit it off with her husband Chris's former college roommate.

Speaker 37 Ryan Widmer.

Speaker 19 I came home and I said, Sarah is amazing. I said, I think this other personalities would really get along.
He said, well, let's let them go to dinner and see what happens.

Speaker 50 What happened over drinks and nibbles was chemistry.

Speaker 51 Laid-back Ryan, the college jock and baseball player, super organized Sarah who needed everything just so, talked about getting together again.

Speaker 52 She said, well, let me check my book.

Speaker 19 So she gets out her little black book and, you know, she's looking through and he's peeking over, looking, you know, and he said later he calls us and tells us, you know, there was nothing written in her black book.

Speaker 41 It was a fast-track courtship.

Speaker 54 And before very long, Ryan was bringing his new girlfriend home to meet his mom, Jill.

Speaker 11 I liked her a lot. Probably number one thing that struck me the most was how

Speaker 11 beyond her years and maturity she was.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and Sarah didn't have a problem telling anyone anything. So if you made Sarah mad, you knew you made Sarah mad.

Speaker 38 As for Ryan, he never seemed to lose it.

Speaker 56 I don't think I've ever seen him upset. He doesn't get mad, you know.

Speaker 19 He's so laid-back and kind of easygoing, go with the flow. And she's so on it organized.
This is where we have to be. And he just says, okay.

Speaker 57 Jill Widmer enjoyed her days with Ryan and his new girlfriend, Sarah.

Speaker 11 Our family tends to do a lot of barbecues and picnics and things like that. We would spend some time down on a lake in Kentucky.
They would come down there.

Speaker 34 Were you pleased she was becoming a serious part of the family?

Speaker 11 I was very pleased, yes.

Speaker 59 The inseparable couple bought a nice four-bedroom house together in a good neighborhood, and Ryan surprised Sarah with an engagement ring.

Speaker 12 There was a ring in a dog collar around the dog's collar.

Speaker 56 She was very excited. He was very excited.
Sarah made him happy.

Speaker 61 And soon the wedding invitations were in the mail.

Speaker 36 The bridesmaids knew they'd better snap too.

Speaker 19 She's a planner so she had everything ready to go.

Speaker 19 She wanted to make sure all the girls wore the same makeup, same eyeshadow, same and bought us our little makeup kits for the wedding so we all look the same.

Speaker 18 How's Ryan doing?

Speaker 56 He was just as happy as I, I mean, happier than I've ever seen him with her.

Speaker 43 It cost Sarah big screen TV to seal the deal, but she got Ryan to take ballroom dance lessons for the wedding.

Speaker 11 And I was amazed. I mean, never in a million years would I think

Speaker 11 she could get him to do more things than any woman he had ever dated.

Speaker 28 The wedding in April 2008 was a formal affair.

Speaker 64 The bride was beautiful.

Speaker 43 Ryan's dance came off without a hitch.

Speaker 21 And the happy bridesmaids all matched just as Sarah won.

Speaker 19 Very beautiful. I mean, every detail was planned, obviously, to achieve, because it was Sarah, but, and she was gorgeous.

Speaker 19 Oh, it was probably the most fun wedding we've ever been to, ever.

Speaker 15 The newlyweds went to Costa Rica for their honeymoon and had a great time.

Speaker 67 Then, it was back to Cincinnati to begin their journey together as Mr.

Speaker 68 and Mrs.

Speaker 21 Ryan Whitmer.

Speaker 11 They worked really hard. They built a beautiful deck on the back of their house.
They had a trip planned to Cancun. They had everything to live for.

Speaker 69 So August 11th should have been just another day on the calendar.

Speaker 65 It should have been. And a young marriage, huh? Yes.

Speaker 66 August 11th, Monday night.

Speaker 21 Ryan remembers being downstairs watching Monday night football.

Speaker 70 Sarah had gone upstairs to her bath.

Speaker 26 She was in trouble.

Speaker 71 I could my wife.

Speaker 5 She called asleep in the bathroom. I think I was downstairs.
I just came up here. She was lazy.

Speaker 5 Down in the bathroom.

Speaker 11 I got a call. It was Ryan.
Something's happened to Sarah.

Speaker 35 The EMTs were rushing Sarah to the hospital.

Speaker 44 By then, they'd worked on her for 45 minutes, but hadn't gotten a response.

Speaker 57 Minutes later, Jill Whitmer was with her son, waiting anxiously together in a room off emergency.

Speaker 11 Finally, a woman came in and then we said, is she gone? And she said, yes. He just dropped down to his knees and was just bawling and sobbing, you know, into the chair.

Speaker 65 Sarah Whitmer, 24 years old, the bride of less than four months, was dead.

Speaker 73 Her husband, Ryan, told the emergency services people he thought she'd fallen asleep in the bathtub and drowned.

Speaker 40 But those EMTs doing CPR, trying everything they could to save her, didn't understand one crucial observation they made at the home that night.

Speaker 64 There's something here that doesn't look right.

Speaker 74 A drowning in a dry bathroom?

Speaker 12 I expected something to be wet. There's a towel on the floor, there's a mat on the floor, but everything's perfectly dry.

Speaker 75 The questions deepen.

Speaker 50 That Monday night, the Cincinnati Bengals were looking more than decent against Green Bay.

Speaker 74 Fans across town like Jeff Braley wondered if this could finally be a miracle season for the back then hapless local franchise of the NFL.

Speaker 68 But Braley didn't get to see all of the game.

Speaker 30 He was a cop, a detective, and you don't get to pick your downtime.

Speaker 12 I'm home watching the Bengals game and I get a call from my sergeant. Lieutenant, we're out on a drowning.
The paramedics are still working on her, but something's not right here.

Speaker 6 As he rolled to the house that night, he knew some of what to expect.

Speaker 23 When you're a cop for more than a decade, you become familiar with the signs of a drowning, like the froth about the victim's nose and mouth.

Speaker 12 Your mind starts running immediately about possibilities. They initially tell me I've got a 24-year-old drowning victim that died in the tub.

Speaker 12 I'm thinking that we're going to find evidence of something. You know, we're going to find some drugs or evidence of an overdose or something.

Speaker 47 As he pulled up, the victim was already loaded in the back of the ambulance.

Speaker 70 The arriving police officer was still inside the house, and he gave the detective a fill on what he'd found when he was led to the master bedroom where the 24-year-old woman lay on the carpet off the bath.

Speaker 12 He felt for a pulse. He assisted with CPR on what he described as a completely dry body with her hair being only damp.

Speaker 65 Wet head, dry body.

Speaker 82 That's That's correct.

Speaker 69 For someone who drowned in a bathtub.

Speaker 83 Pour water.

Speaker 84 Braylee, get her out of the bathtub and get her on a flat surface. Okay, okay.

Speaker 46 The 911 dispatcher had been quite clear about it.

Speaker 43 He had instructed the husband to get his wife out of the bathtub and put her on the floor.

Speaker 5 I'm down with her.

Speaker 76 The husband went away and came back on the line to say that he just moved his wife from the tub to the bedroom.

Speaker 84 Okay, go ahead and get back to sleep here.

Speaker 85 You can go on and try to sleep. I'll be there in a little bit, okay?

Speaker 24 Detective Braley wondered along with the EMTs and the arriving officers why a woman who drowned in a bathtub would be mostly dry.

Speaker 40 He needed to see the scene.

Speaker 24 What story would it tell him?

Speaker 12 So I started mentally preparing myself based on what they've told me. You know, what do I want to see versus what do I see?

Speaker 47 He headed for the master bathroom.

Speaker 12 I expected something to be wet. I expected there to be water on the floors or towels or whatever it might be, and it's simply not there.
Dry, dry.

Speaker 12 There's a very small remnant of water, what you might call some droplets on the bottom of the tub right around the drain. Other than that, there's nothing.

Speaker 69 You got any bath mats, wet towels on the floor, that kind of thing?

Speaker 12 There's a towel on the floor, there's a mat on the floor, but everything's perfectly dry.

Speaker 88 Now he had not only a drowning victim who didn't appear to be wet, someone who supposedly fell asleep in the tub and pitched face down in the water, but a bathroom itself that was both dry and undisturbed, even though presumably the husband had to wrangle her limp body out of the tub as he moved her to the bedroom.

Speaker 12 You know, whether it's lotions or soap or whatever singing on the side,

Speaker 8 they weren't knocked off.

Speaker 12 That bothered me if you're pulling somebody very quickly out of a tub that that's still together.

Speaker 8 The detective making mental notes.

Speaker 12 Something was screaming to me, something's bad wrong. Something bad, really, really bad has happened here.
And more so than just a tragic accident where she drowned.

Speaker 22 The forensic techs arrived and were taking photos, cutting out sections of the bedroom carpet where the mixture of blood and fluid common in drownings had stained it.

Speaker 91 What they wondered is, was there another explanation for the stains?

Speaker 12 We wanted to get those things to our lab right away to start

Speaker 12 to start checking out some things.

Speaker 31 Even though it was early hours in an incident, and so much would depend on the findings of an autopsy, the detective knew that this was not a case that was going to be closed out that night.

Speaker 12 When I left the house at 2 a.m., I knew I had a suspicious death.

Speaker 82 Still, there were questions.

Speaker 36 How long had Sarah been out of the tub?

Speaker 45 And had she been out of the tub long enough for her body to air dry?

Speaker 92 It wasn't possible.

Speaker 12 You know, if you're pulling somebody directly out of a tub of water, the body has to be wet.

Speaker 12 There's no other way around it unless a substantial amount of time has passed or we're not being told an accurate story of what actually transpired.

Speaker 75 Question.

Speaker 20 Was it possible for Ryan to lift Sarah out of the tub without knocking over those bottles that the detective noted were undisturbed?

Speaker 42 Was it possible for water not to be splashed around as she was moved to the bedroom?

Speaker 61 And that overriding question, what had happened to the young wife in her master bedroom?

Speaker 12 We knew that she had drowned just from the scene itself. It was the manner in which she drowned that had raised all the questions.

Speaker 73 But Detective Brale would have the most questions for the seemingly happily married husband. Was it possible there was stress in the marriage that no one knew about?

Speaker 12 I had to rely on the fact in the back of my mind that nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Speaker 11 Did she have an aneurysm? Did she have a seizure?

Speaker 74 Was there something medical behind this mystery?

Speaker 19 She was complaining of headaches. I was telling her how long it has been since you've been at the doctor.

Speaker 95 Sarah Widmer had died of drowning in her home, and her body would be examined by the county coroner.

Speaker 64 There was nothing for Ryan, her husband of four months, to do but leave the hospital and head home.

Speaker 57 His mother, Jill Widmer, took him back to the house in the wee hours.

Speaker 11 Ryan asked me, he said, Mom, I can't go back in there. Can you go in and grab some clothes for me?

Speaker 11 And so I went upstairs, and when I got upstairs to their bedroom, there were a couple pieces of carpet cut out of their carpeting, which I thought was odd.

Speaker 64 It hadn't occurred to mother or son that the authorities were already looking at Sarah's death as anything but a tragic, explainable incident of some sort.

Speaker 11 There were a million questions in our mind. Did she have an aneurysm? Did, you know, did something medically happen to her? Did she have a seizure?

Speaker 97 Daylight, and word was spreading that Sarah was gone.

Speaker 25 Dana and Chris, the couple who'd fixed the newlyweds up, could not believe what they were hearing.

Speaker 19 We had just gotten back from a trip, and I told her that I'd call her as soon as I got back so we could get together for dinner, and I didn't even get a chance to do that.

Speaker 56 Shocking news, to say the least. Shocking news.

Speaker 43 Dana, a nurse, tried to make some sense out of what had happened to her dear friend.

Speaker 75 She thought back to her last conversations with Sarah.

Speaker 52 She was complaining of headaches.

Speaker 19 She would call and say, you know, what do you think from a medical background? And I said, maybe you should get your blood pressure checked.

Speaker 19 You know, and I was telling her, I said, you just basically need a checkup. You know, how long has it been since you've been at the doctor?

Speaker 50 And then there was that funny trait Sarah had that people used to kid her about, the way she'd fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

Speaker 51 Well, maybe that wasn't so funny. Maybe that was part of an underlying condition that helped explain her sudden death.
Her mother-in-law noticed it when she first got to know Sarah.

Speaker 88 Where's yours?

Speaker 35 It was Christmas 2007 and Jill was taking home videos.

Speaker 11 All of a sudden I panned over.

Speaker 5 There's Sarah having a good time at the family Christmas.

Speaker 11 And Sarah was sound asleep in a chair in my family room. We were 15 or 20 people in the room.
We're all laughing, talking, kids running around, and she could just go to sleep.

Speaker 63 Sarah asleep at the dinner table, snoozing in the car.

Speaker 90 Friends kidded her about it.

Speaker 19 She would always fall asleep in the beginning of movies. So he would always be nudging her the whole time.
Sarah, Sarah, wake up and watch this movie.

Speaker 69 Was it so noticeable that you guys joked about it?

Speaker 56 Every time I went somewhere, even at the dinner table, we'd be laughing like, Sarah, don't fall asleep.

Speaker 19 I'd always say, Sarah, you have narcolepsy. And she said, Dana, I do not.
I'm just tired all the time.

Speaker 57 Had Sarah fallen asleep and drowned in the tub?

Speaker 43 Was that even possible to do?

Speaker 26 Ryan seemed to think so.

Speaker 36 He said as much to the 911 dispatchers.

Speaker 85 My wife goes asleep in the bathtub and I think she gets it.

Speaker 24 But all the observations about sleepy Sarah, Sarah with her headaches, was just anecdotal information, not the stuff of real medical investigation.

Speaker 22 The medical examiner would have the first real results about Sarah's death.

Speaker 69 What was he finding?

Speaker 12 No evidence of a stroke, no evidence of a heart attack.

Speaker 101 But the medical examiner had discovered something else, bruising to Sarah's head and neck.

Speaker 24 What had caused those injuries?

Speaker 75 The investigators checked off what they had so far.

Speaker 87 A young woman supposedly drowned in a bathtub with a damp head of hair and a dry body.

Speaker 15 It didn't figure.

Speaker 12 If you're pulling somebody directly out of a tub of water, the body has to be wet. There's no other way around it.

Speaker 57 A victim with unexplained bruises.

Speaker 37 And a husband whose story they didn't believe about a ho-ha Monday night watching football, then finding his wife dead in the bath.

Speaker 12 With Ryan's story, it doesn't fit. It doesn't fit at all.
We determined at that point we had a homicide.

Speaker 77 Sarah Widmer murdered.

Speaker 47 And the authorities believed her husband Ryan did it.

Speaker 69 How shocking is that to you?

Speaker 11 I can't even tell you.

Speaker 11 I mean, you've got to be kidding me. Like, why would they think, why?

Speaker 11 And I can't even tell you what that was like. So, on top of losing this beautiful member of our family, he didn't even get a chance to grieve because

Speaker 11 now we're scared to death, and he's scared to death that he's going to be charged with murder.

Speaker 57 And that is exactly what would happen.

Speaker 37 Just two days after his new bride's death, a warrant was issued for Ryan Widmer's arrest.

Speaker 12 By Ryan's own admission, he was the only one in the house. So Ryan murdered Sarah, or he's covering for somebody that did.

Speaker 8 It didn't seem possible at first glance, a clean-cut young couple. Him without a criminal record of any kind, them with no clear-cut history of arguments, no problems in their marriage.

Speaker 59 Where was the motive for murder on a Monday night?

Speaker 69 Any boyfriend, girlfriend issues here?

Speaker 12 There was no evidence whatsoever to point that there was a girlfriend, boyfriend.

Speaker 65 Money trouble?

Speaker 12 Not that we could find.

Speaker 69 Do you find any anger issues in the guy?

Speaker 65 No.

Speaker 69 No. Are we really not getting a negative picture of this couple?

Speaker 102 No, we're not.

Speaker 68 As unlikely as it may have seemed, police said there was no other explanation for Sarah's death.

Speaker 31 Ryan Widmer was charged with his wife's murder.

Speaker 92 This is the state of Ohio versus Ryan K. Widmer.

Speaker 64 His family and friends were devastated.

Speaker 11 Ryan and I were both so brokenhearted.

Speaker 11 I could not have ever conceived, nor could Ryan, that they would have had any idea that he would have been the person to hurt her and that it wasn't just a tragic accident.

Speaker 19 It just broke my heart. I mean, just knowing that he was feeling that grief and fear for his own life, too.

Speaker 69 Is there any moment when you think

Speaker 69 about the guy? Maybe there was this.

Speaker 104 Never.

Speaker 69 This instant of something awful happened?

Speaker 56 Never. I've never even seen anything where he's remotely angry.

Speaker 64 Even Sarah's family was behind Ryan.

Speaker 8 So much so, the two families decided to delay Sarah's funeral until Ryan was out on bond.

Speaker 11 Sarah's family, they were

Speaker 11 very livid about the fact that, you know, he wasn't guilty and that they were not going to go forward with the service until Ryan could be there.

Speaker 69 The families are both on the same page here.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 69 That you're foursquare behind Ryan and you're not even going to grieve together formally until he is there with you.

Speaker 88 Right.

Speaker 41 The dead woman's brother, Mike Stewart, asked the judge to lower Ryan's bond amount so he could attend the funeral.

Speaker 102 In our heart of hearts, we don't believe Ryan did this.

Speaker 64 But eight days would pass before the judge lowered Ryan's bond from a million dollars to 400,000.

Speaker 28 But by then, it was too late.

Speaker 65 The funeral had already been held so out-of-town relatives could return home.

Speaker 13 It was a nice ceremony.

Speaker 19 Her brother got up and said a few nice words. And I know that Ryan wrote a letter that was read during the service.
The minister that did their wedding did her funeral as well.

Speaker 50 Chris and Dana grieved for Sarah, but also tried to comfort a shattered Ryan.

Speaker 19 And I remember him telling me, Dana, I love her so much.

Speaker 37 Ryan was so distraught, he felt he couldn't go back to the home he'd bought with Sarah.

Speaker 59 So while he waited for his trial date, he moved in with his mother.

Speaker 11 It was great to have him staying with me, but...

Speaker 69 There's only one topic in the household, huh?

Speaker 11 Well, there's two.

Speaker 11 One was continuing to talk about how much we miss Sarah, trying to grieve for her, but at the same time, this young man who lost the love of his life, he's trying to grieve for his wife, and he's got a murder charge hanging over his head that he might go to prison for the rest of his life.

Speaker 24 Ryan Widmer wondered why couldn't everyone just see that he loved his wife and that she died a death that perhaps even a medical examiner could never satisfactorily explain, but that it wasn't murder.

Speaker 76 The case goes to court and out comes the evidence.

Speaker 105 It would be virtually impossible for somebody to fall asleep and not wake up.

Speaker 31 And later, Ryan Widmer speaks out at last.

Speaker 69 So you think they wanted to make a case here?

Speaker 106 Why would they arrest me a day after if they didn't want to make a case?

Speaker 13 Sarah was wonderful.

Speaker 19 The most loving person. She was just a great person.

Speaker 22 Sarah Whitmer had been a daughter, a wife, a loyal friend in her brief life.

Speaker 8 But in death, to those who would never know her, she had become simply the victim.

Speaker 25 And the case could be summarized as breezily as the title of a true crime paperback, The Bathtub Murder.

Speaker 25 On talk radio in the greater Cincinnati area, host Bill Cunningham could feel the court of public opinion responding to the story. The bathtub murder case had the phones ringing.

Speaker 107 The idea that such a young man could be watching a Bengals game and within a few seconds turn from a Bengals fan, long-suffering, to a murderer, was a little bit shocking.

Speaker 25 For months, listeners debated whether the husband could have done it.

Speaker 107 I had a large number of callers who said to me, he didn't do it. He doesn't fit the profile.
There's no history. And I said to them, wait a minute.
Wait till the trial takes place.

Speaker 107 I'm led to believe that there's going to be clear and convincing evidence.

Speaker 40 Seven months after Sarah's death, the only jury that mattered was sworn in to hear the case against 28-year-old Ryan Widmer, a charge of aggravated murder.

Speaker 78 The couple's friends were sticking by him.

Speaker 56 Basically, his life hangs in the balance of 12 jurors.

Speaker 19 That's a scary thought. It's a scary thought.

Speaker 56 There is a chance he could go to jail.

Speaker 64 In the courtroom, Sarah's family sat across the room from Ryan's, much as they had the previous year during the couple's fairy tale wedding.

Speaker 29 But now, Sarah's family's support for him had eroded.

Speaker 68 For Ryan's mom, that was just another unexpected twist in a situation that seemed to get stranger by the minute.

Speaker 22 Her son on trial for murder.

Speaker 11 I see my scared baby is what I see. I mean, he was scared to death.

Speaker 30 But the prosecution's message for the jury was blunt.

Speaker 64 There had been a violent confrontation in the Widmer house that night.

Speaker 86 Ryan Widmer purposely killed Sarah Stewart Widmer and murdered her by drowning.

Speaker 25 The prosecutors began with the first moments of the case: Ryan's call to 911.

Speaker 85 My wife, she fell asleep in the bathtub. I think I was downstairs.
I just came up here and she was laid face down in the bathtub.

Speaker 64 On the stand, the emergency dispatcher testified that the voice on the phone that night was giving more details than normal.

Speaker 12 It seemed that the caller was rather calm.

Speaker 10 Usually,

Speaker 112 I can't get anything out of them. She's in the bathtub.

Speaker 85 Yes, she's in water strain right now.

Speaker 71 I was out there watching TV.

Speaker 71 She falls asleep in the tub all the time.

Speaker 68 To prosecutors John Arnold and Travis View, the husband was trying to place himself as far away as possible from the bathroom where Sarah had died.

Speaker 86 He really gives very little information about her condition. It's really more important for him to say, I wasn't there and I really don't have anything to do with this.

Speaker 73 And could Sarah even be dead face down in the bathtub?

Speaker 33 Could a body contort that way?

Speaker 4 That seems an odd position for somebody who's, quote, fallen asleep, to be face down with your face near the faucet, almost bent in two.

Speaker 86 In terms of the possibilities of how the enclosed space of the bathtub is shorter than she is long.

Speaker 69 We're not talking about a McMansion whirlpool tub here, are we?

Speaker 86 Right.

Speaker 31 And so much more of the prosecution case was built upon the observation of the first arriving officers and emergency responders.

Speaker 87 They noted not only was Ryan Ryan not wet, this man who had lifted his wife's body out of the tub just minutes before they arrived, Sarah was also mostly dry.

Speaker 107 I noticed that her body was dry, her hair was damp.

Speaker 6 And others on the scene corroborated this observation.

Speaker 24 Damp head, dry body.

Speaker 13 Things were not adding up. It would seem to me her body would have been wet, the floor would have been wet, the carpet would have been wet.

Speaker 86 You're talking about from the time he says, I'm taking her out of this bathtub, to the time that other people are there, her hair is described described as simply damp, not even wet. Carpet's not wet.

Speaker 86 There's not water dripping off of her hair onto the rest of her body.

Speaker 97 The floor is not wet.

Speaker 64 And the officer noticed something else.

Speaker 22 The victim's fingers and toes.

Speaker 87 We all know what happens to them when they've been soaking in a bathtub.

Speaker 13 It was my understanding that she'd been in the water for 20 to 30 minutes. And I would have thought that her fingers would have been pruned up.
Her toes would have been pruned up.

Speaker 4 And did you see any indication of that?

Speaker 98 No.

Speaker 51 From simple observations, the murder case had grown.

Speaker 51 The jury was being told that Ryan Widmer's story didn't jive with what officers in the scene had taken note of, like the bathtub and surrounding tiles that should have been soaking wet but weren't.

Speaker 50 And that implicitly raised a question for the jury. Is it possible that this young woman who drowned had never been in the tub in the first place?

Speaker 97 Bottom line is there would have been water everywhere.

Speaker 4 If there wasn't, it was cleaned up. And if there was a cleanup, then there was something to hide.

Speaker 97 And that was her murder.

Speaker 25 And an expert witness for the prosecution spoke to the issue of whether a person can actually fall asleep and drown in a bathtub. Her testimony was no, that can't happen.

Speaker 105 It would be virtually impossible for somebody without the influence of drugs or alcohol or something external to fall asleep and not wake up.

Speaker 105 So first, the sensation of water on your face would wake you up. Two, it would be the gag reflux, water entering your airway, just choking.

Speaker 105 And then three, if for some reason that didn't, the drop in oxygen would actually cause you to stimulate and wake up.

Speaker 22 But maybe Sarah hadn't fallen asleep. Perhaps she'd suffered a catastrophic but perfectly natural event, something to her heart, her brain.

Speaker 33 The coroner didn't find that.

Speaker 22 Any evidence of heart problems?

Speaker 111 No.

Speaker 4 Any evidence of brain injury or seizure?

Speaker 111 No.

Speaker 86 One of the amazing things about Sarah Widmer is that she had regular medical care for a person her age. She went twice in two years for just regular physical.

Speaker 115 This is not a person who didn't have the opportunity to interact with her medical professionals.

Speaker 22 And to the coroner, the bruising he saw on Sarah's neck and scalp while performing the autopsy looked ominous.

Speaker 42 The wounds too significant and not in the right spot to have been caused by EMT's life-saving efforts.

Speaker 111 But the things that were the most disconcerting were, you know, the three bruises which were able to be seen on the right side of the scalp. She's got another faint bruise on her forehead.

Speaker 111 She's got this significant degree of neck hemorrhage. She's undergone significant CPR.

Speaker 111 However, there is no hemorrhage anywhere in the area of the chest, so it's difficult to try to rationalize that the hemorrhage in her neck can be the result of CPR.

Speaker 63 As the coroner saw it, the significant bruising on Sarah's neck was caused by Ryan's forceful drowning of her.

Speaker 4 Do you have an opinion as to the manner of Sarah's death?

Speaker 111 Yes, the manner of death was homicide.

Speaker 42 And that took prosecutors into the realm of speculation.

Speaker 63 What had happened in the bedroom that night if Sarah hadn't drowned by herself in the bathtub? This forensic pathologist had one scenario explaining a damp head but dry body.

Speaker 79 Her head was pushed over the edge of either the bathtub or the sink or the toilet, either forwards or backwards, either in a pool of water or under running water that's how she died an expert also noted these strange prints invisible to the naked eye he couldn't say when they were left on the tub or even that they came from sarah but felt confident that the prints were most likely made by a small person if ryan had forced sarah over the side of the tub had she tried to brace herself as she was pushed into the water from my experience those look like prints that are going down a downward motion.

Speaker 77 How do you fight back?

Speaker 6 Do you try to keep your head out of the water?

Speaker 4 Do you put your hands against the back of the tub? Or do you put your hands on the bottom of the tub and try to lift out of the water? Or do you grasp at somebody and lose your only hold on life?

Speaker 108 A stark image.

Speaker 38 The husband pushing his wife's head underwater and holding her there until she drowned.

Speaker 6 This was a drowning.

Speaker 4 She had been subjected to forcibly holding her throat over some object to drown her.

Speaker 8 But the jury had to wonder what the motivation could be for such an awful crime.

Speaker 48 Sarah's mother, who had initially supported Ryan, was now testifying for the prosecution.

Speaker 23 She said that when she was out shopping with Sarah, her daughter seemed to feel she needed to check everything with Ryan, who could see her purchases on his computer.

Speaker 120 She would buy something. Ryan would call her as soon as she bought it sometimes, telling her, did you really need it? Why'd you buy it or something?

Speaker 11 He thought she was spending too much money.

Speaker 69 He was very concerned about her shopping habits, huh?

Speaker 92 Correct.

Speaker 86 There were still stresses, things that were going on in their family.

Speaker 33 But even the prosecutors had to acknowledge that this didn't necessarily add up to a clear motive for murder.

Speaker 8 But they believed there were things happening in the little house at Crested Owl Court that no one but Sarah or Ryan knew about.

Speaker 4 Anybody who's been married or in a relationship knows that what goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage is not always apparent to the outside.

Speaker 31 But was the prosecution's case too thin? Too much observation light with not enough persuasive hard evidence?

Speaker 23 The defense would argue passionately that it was, and that Ryan had nothing to do with his wife's sudden death.

Speaker 22 Ed Room.

Speaker 10 Didn't add up that this

Speaker 10 man of 27 years, who has

Speaker 10 never even shown anger in his entire life, would all sudden kill his wife.

Speaker 68 Ryan's side of the story.

Speaker 78 Sarah's friends take the stand.

Speaker 72 I know that she had fallen asleep in the bathtub before.

Speaker 69 What was the toughest thing you had to surmount?

Speaker 10 We had a lovely 24-year-old woman who was dead, and no one could explain why.

Speaker 22 The defense wasn't going to be able to tell the jury what caused Sarah Whitmer to drown that night, but they were going to show that Ryan Widmer had no reason to hurt his wife.

Speaker 109 And as far as damp hair, dry body, they'd explain that.

Speaker 25 The bottom line for the defense.

Speaker 10 I know one thing, Ryan Widmer had nothing to do with his wife's death.

Speaker 31 Charlie Ritgers, Ryan Widmer's defense attorney, argued that his client was plagued from the get-go by his unhappy choice of words on that 911 call.

Speaker 84 She's during the bathtub. Yes, she falls asleep in the tub all the time.

Speaker 69 Electing to say she fell asleep in the tub sets the alarms going. Exactly.

Speaker 43 In other words, had Ryan told the 911 dispatcher only that his wife was unconscious, it wouldn't have been so suspicious.

Speaker 76 The only thing Ryan knows is she fell asleep in the tub.

Speaker 10 But they jump on that and say he's a liar.

Speaker 22 The defense attorney argued the coroner had been all too quick to rule the death a homicide.

Speaker 10 He had no idea she had unusual sleep habits. He had no idea that she was suffering from a headache that day.

Speaker 24 Remember, an expert witness for the prosecution had said said it would have been impossible for Sarah to fall asleep and die in the tub.

Speaker 22 But those who knew her sleep habits said it may have been a sign of an undiagnosed underlying medical condition.

Speaker 29 Sarah's boss, the dentist, testified that her quirky sleep habits were well known around the office.

Speaker 121 She would normally grab a quick lunch and then go out to her car and take a nap for 30 or 45 minutes. That was odd because people don't generally do that.

Speaker 29 And the dentist recollected that Sarah hadn't been feeling well on that last day of her life.

Speaker 115 She had a sore throat.

Speaker 121 Her stomach had been bothering her earlier in the day.

Speaker 43 She was still feeling crummy later that evening when she spoke to a friend.

Speaker 55 She had a headache and the back of her neck was hurting.

Speaker 52 I mean, she sounded tired, and, you know, she didn't sound like she felt very good.

Speaker 67 Sarah turning off the day and retreating to her bathtub, that sounded just like the Sarah they knew.

Speaker 56 She would always leave our house and say she had to get home because she had to take her bath.

Speaker 38 And Sarah dozing off in the tub was a trait a friend from childhood days was very familiar with.

Speaker 72 She had fallen asleep in the bathtub before.

Speaker 72 We would have talked about that because I had fallen asleep in the bathtub before too.

Speaker 51 The sleeping habits, the headaches, the defense claimed they could very well have been the symptoms of an underlying and potentially fatal condition that went undetected.

Speaker 51 Something an otherwise healthy young woman wouldn't take all that seriously.

Speaker 43 And even with all their scientific art, argued the defense, sometimes pathologists simply cannot say say why a person died.

Speaker 43 A doctor who specializes in emergency medicine testified that unexplained deaths occur far more often than many of us would guess.

Speaker 122 Nationwide, there are approximately 300,000 episodes of sudden death per year. And of those episodes of sudden death, 1 to 2% occur in young people.

Speaker 122 But one-third of those young people that die have normal autopsies.

Speaker 64 In other words, people sometimes just die, and their autopsies may never reveal the cause.

Speaker 28 But the issue that might decide the case was the observation by the arriving officers and EMTs of damp hair and dry body.

Speaker 30 What looked suspicious was easily explainable, said the defense.

Speaker 64 Hair simply stays wet longer.

Speaker 10 If they get out of a swimming pool or a bathtub, their skin dries before their hair.

Speaker 8 Yes, the defense told the court you have to look at the clock, the elapsed time of the incident.

Speaker 60 The defense claimed that Sarah's body dried off in the time between Ryan first speaking to the 911 dispatcher and when the police officer arrived.

Speaker 31 And what about the fingers and toes that should have been pruned up but weren't?

Speaker 91 Well, no one knows what time Sarah got into the tub.

Speaker 10 We don't know if she was primping in front of the mirror.

Speaker 76 We don't know any of that stuff.

Speaker 22 And by the way, suggested the defense, you can't have it both ways with the dry bathroom theory.

Speaker 25 If Ryan had killed Sarah in the small bathroom, there also should have been water splashed everywhere.

Speaker 10 If there was a violent struggle, then there would be water on the floor, on the counter, on the walls, everywhere.

Speaker 10 And if they want to claim that it was a stage scene where he cleaned up the water, well, where's the wet towel?

Speaker 22 And investigators looked for wet towels.

Speaker 48 In the dryer, even in the garage, nothing.

Speaker 20 And say for argument's sake there had been a struggle. You'd think Ryan would have gotten scratched up as Sarah fought for her life.

Speaker 47 But Ryan didn't have a mark on him.

Speaker 69 How would Sarah have reacted if she were being attacked?

Speaker 11 Sarah was a very spunky person and she was small in stature, probably five foot one. I think she weighed around 140 pounds, but she wasn't frail by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 11 She was a strong girl.

Speaker 69 So she would have gone for her attacker.

Speaker 11 I fullheartedly believe, yes.

Speaker 64 And Sarah's French manicure was in pristine condition when the EMTs found her.

Speaker 90 No sign of a fight.

Speaker 25 There was absolutely no damage to the nails.

Speaker 11 She had beautiful French manicured nails. None of them were damaged at all.
She didn't have skin from Ryan underneath her.

Speaker 25 And the very notion of Ryan attacking Sarah is preposterous.

Speaker 22 Say they're friends.

Speaker 19 Ryan's a lot like my husband, Chris, in the aspect of, you know, when there's an argument, Chris just says, okay, what can we do to fix it and let's move on? And that's kind of how Ryan was.

Speaker 87 And as far as accounting for the bruising noted to her neck and scalp, to the defense, they were certainly caused by the EMTs working on Sarah.

Speaker 125 Talk about 45 minutes of resuscitation efforts.

Speaker 10 Not five, not ten, 45 minutes.

Speaker 94 It looked perfectly consistent to this emergency room doctor, an expert for the defense.

Speaker 122 I was not surprised at the injuries at all based on the prolonged CPR and the number of inhibation attempts.

Speaker 22 Add it all up.

Speaker 101 Injuries the result of life-saving efforts, skin that may well have dried before the authorities showed up, and you were left, the defense argued, with an unexplained death.

Speaker 67 Something that experts tell you happened.

Speaker 63 And jurors, the reason you didn't hear about love affairs or out-of-control finances is because none of those things existed.

Speaker 53 Motive.

Speaker 79 They don't have motive.

Speaker 10 It didn't add up that this man of 27 years, who had

Speaker 10 never even shown anger in his entire life, would all of a sudden kill his wife.

Speaker 10 It made no sense. I hope that you agree that Ryan Widmer is not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Speaker 108 But the prosecution would tell the jury in its closing argument that while they may never know why Ryan killed his wife of only four months, that he nonetheless did, and that the clock was ticking as he staged the scene before he called 911.

Speaker 41 That, they said, explains the damp hair dry body mystery.

Speaker 109 Sarah Widmer was either out of that bathtub for a longer period of time, had been dead for a longer period of time, or her body was never fully in that bathtub.

Speaker 25 And they claim that Ryan spent so much time cleaning up the scene before he called for EMTs that Sarah's dead body was showing signs of rigor-mortise when they arrived.

Speaker 15 She was already dead by the time they got there.

Speaker 86 They had difficulty intubating her because her chin kept wanting to fall.

Speaker 7 Rigor mortise is setting in.

Speaker 37 Now it was up to the jury to decide if Ryan Widmer had killed his wife.

Speaker 19 We're scared that the truth may not come out. We know without a doubt that Ryan did not do this.

Speaker 37 23 hours of deliberation, the verdict, and the controversy.

Speaker 43 About the only fact of the case that was indisputable was that Sarah Widmer had drowned.

Speaker 51 But was it a natural death in her bathtub?

Speaker 69 What about the suggestion of a neurological event, something with a heart, that the medical examiner could not find?

Speaker 77 Her medical history is completely devoid of anything that even would suggest these things.

Speaker 37 Or had Sarah died at the hands of her husband, Ryan?

Speaker 10 They had failed to prove the case. They'd failed.

Speaker 46 Inside the Warren County Courthouse, the jury was out all day.

Speaker 35 The couple's friends waited.

Speaker 19 We're scared that the truth may not come out. We know without a doubt that Ryan did not do this.
And we pray to God that everyone else sees that too.

Speaker 79 Billy Cunningham, I am a great American.

Speaker 36 Ryan Widmer might have wished that the listeners to Bill Cunningham's call-in radio show had been on his jury.

Speaker 107 The call split 90 to 10 in favor of Ryan Widmer because during the trial, there was no smoking gun.

Speaker 91 Ryan's mother agreed.

Speaker 26 She was cautiously optimistic.

Speaker 11 I never let myself get cocky. I just felt that in having sat there and listened that there were a lot of holes and not a lot of evidence.

Speaker 11 Never felt like it was a slam dunk, but I felt like there was a lot of reasonable doubt.

Speaker 8 The jurors were hard at work.

Speaker 109 They asked for the tub where Sarah had been found dead to be brought to them in the jury room.

Speaker 60 By the second day, Ryan's defense attorney was getting anxious.

Speaker 69 When they're at more than 20 hours, it's clear that somebody's saying that this isn't as straightforward as it seems to be. Correct.

Speaker 8 But the prosecutors weren't worried by the long jury deliberation.

Speaker 4 We knew it was going to be a hard case for them to weigh a lot of evidence.

Speaker 30 They had two counts to decide.

Speaker 8 Count one, aggravated murder.

Speaker 22 Did Ryan premeditate the murder of his wife, Sarah?

Speaker 64 And count two, non-premeditated murder.

Speaker 65 Did it happen suddenly, without prior thought?

Speaker 64 Finally, after 23 hours, the jurors had reached a verdict.

Speaker 96 The lawyers were summoned.

Speaker 10 It's a very traumatic moment. Your heart's racing, it's in your throat, and you're anxious to hear what the jury says.

Speaker 97 It's a

Speaker 69 profound moment.

Speaker 77 As Jill hurried back to the courtroom, outside, a storm hit with biblical fury.

Speaker 114 She saw that as an ominous sign.

Speaker 11 The skies just opened up. There were tornado warnings, and it all just culminated when the verdict was about ready to be read.

Speaker 79 Ryan Widmer took his place at the defense table.

Speaker 115 The defendant will please rise.

Speaker 127 A verdict on count one aggravated murder. We, the jury, find the defendant Ryan K.
Widmer is not guilty of aggravated murder.

Speaker 8 It was a moment of relief for Ryan Widmer.

Speaker 48 The jury did not believe that he killed his wife with premeditation, but he still faced the second count of murder.

Speaker 127 The verdict reads, we, the jury, in this case, find the defendant Ryan K.

Speaker 115 Widmer is guilty of the lesser-including offense of murder.

Speaker 45 Killed the

Speaker 45 The jury had decided that Ryan Widmer did indeed murder his wife, Sarah.

Speaker 121 Mr. Widmer, is there anything that you wish to say?

Speaker 103 The accused, now the convicted, would kiss his wedding ring and then address the court for the first time.

Speaker 65 He hadn't taken the stand, as was his right.

Speaker 97 I love my wife. I did not hurt her.

Speaker 14 I was never given a chance. The day after she passes away, they charged me with murder.
I didn't even.

Speaker 14 If I had an answer, I would give the answer to what happened to her, but I can't. I was not in the bathroom with her.

Speaker 10 He was very upset. He doubled over when addressing the court.
In fact, I was surprised that he was as outspoken as he was. But he indicated to the judge and everybody that he loved Sarah.

Speaker 10 He would never have hurt her.

Speaker 14 I love my wife, and I did not hurt her.

Speaker 59 Ryan Widmer was given the mandatory sentence, 15 years to life in prison.

Speaker 63 He was cuffed and moved to a holding cell.

Speaker 11 And he stopped next to me and he said, can I say goodbye to my mom? And they said, no, just keep moving.

Speaker 69 How difficult is that?

Speaker 11 It was beyond difficult.

Speaker 103 Dana Kist, who had set up her friend Sarah with Ryan, her husband's college roommate, was devastated.

Speaker 19 She wasn't murdered.

Speaker 52 One of my best friends.

Speaker 69 So there isn't a whisper of doubt that says my best friend may have been killed by this. Absolutely not.
Close as you were to her, you still defend him?

Speaker 19 I do.

Speaker 39 Ryan's attorney took the loss personally.

Speaker 83 It was awful.

Speaker 82 Yeah, this

Speaker 10 was on my shoulders. It was my duty to my client to

Speaker 10 get a proper verdict, and I failed.

Speaker 43 But as Ryan Widmer got processed into the Ohio prison system, it wasn't the end of the bathtub murder case.

Speaker 28 The fax machine in the defense lawyer's office began to spit out other shocking information.

Speaker 8 The case of Ryan Widmer was far, far from over.

Speaker 12 As we speak, it isn't the end of things.

Speaker 10 That's correct.

Speaker 74 Something amiss in the jury room.

Speaker 10 He said that two or three of the female jurors had done home experiments where they had showered and then air-dried.

Speaker 37 Home experiments? What was that all about? Ryan Widmer was about to get a break.

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Speaker 10 My impression was that the community was stunned by the verdict.

Speaker 39 The verdict was so unpopular in the court of public opinion that candlelight vigils were staged to protest the jury votes.

Speaker 107 There has never been a case where hundreds of Americans come out of their homes carrying candlelights to listen to prayers about a condemned, convicted killer.

Speaker 108 It's never happened before.

Speaker 25 Talk radio host Bill Cunningham, a lawyer by training, regards himself as a hang'em-high conservative.

Speaker 33 But even he felt this was a case of justice denied.

Speaker 107 Judging this case against 100 other murder trials, this is one of the flimsiest and one of the weakest I've ever seen.

Speaker 119 My name's Mike Malaban.

Speaker 5 I'm the creator of the website.

Speaker 24 Someone out there following the trial was Mike Malaban, a young newlywed himself and a webpage designer.

Speaker 68 Even though he'd never met Ryan, he so believed in his innocence that he launched a free Ryan Widmer website.

Speaker 131 The goal is for him to get a new trial. If he doesn't get a new trial, I believe it's going to outrage a lot of people.

Speaker 8 Angry citizens, taxpayers, voters. Even though the real trial was over, the prosecution hadn't entirely called it quits.

Speaker 123 In their post-verdict victory lab, they spoke of things that the judge had not allowed the jury to hear.

Speaker 29 The weekend before his wife died, when she'd been away visiting relatives, they say Ryan had frequented a website called Adult Friend Finder, an organization that bills itself as the world's largest site for swingers.

Speaker 12 We found evidence that he'd been on the site, but no evidence that he followed through. If they were such a happy couple, why somebody on the computer surfing looking for a hookup spot?

Speaker 12 That makes no sense to me. That would combat the idea of the happy couple.

Speaker 41 The judge had not allowed the web surfing or other pornography investigators say they found on his computer to be introduced as evidence, since there was no way to know if Sarah even knew about Ryan's internet trolling.

Speaker 23 Still, was it a sign, as the detective thought, that their marriage was not as happy as friends and family believed?

Speaker 11 My understanding of some of these sites, supposedly that he visited ended up being pop-ups on a computer and I'm not the most computer literate person, but I don't think the full story was told there either.

Speaker 11 And I don't understand if they got the verdict they want, why they have to continue to attack my son and my family.

Speaker 37 And Ryan's mother said if the couple had thought over anything, the family would have known.

Speaker 43 Sarah, always outspoken, wasn't the type to suffer in silence.

Speaker 11 Sarah told everybody everything. She's a chatty person.
She had just been with her family for an entire weekend without Ryan being there.

Speaker 11 If there were any problems, believe me, they all would have known it and I probably would have known it because Sarah probably would have called and yelled at me about something my son was doing that wasn't nice to her.

Speaker 53 But none of that mattered now.

Speaker 31 The jury had spoken and defense lawyer Ritgers still couldn't get over the guilty verdict.

Speaker 58 Ryan had become more than a client to him.

Speaker 10 I absolutely believe in him. I had him to my home.
I had him around my wife and my kids. There was no question in my mind.
He was innocent.

Speaker 73 Innocent.

Speaker 63 Ritgers did what lawyers often do after losing a case.

Speaker 59 He wrote a motion to have the judge let Ryan go free or order a new trial.

Speaker 124 A long shot.

Speaker 64 Ryan was in prison and would likely stay there.

Speaker 11 This has been a roller coaster ride, and I just can't let myself get my hopes up.

Speaker 69 He may be in prison for 15 years.

Speaker 11 He may be. And this appeal process, I mean, it

Speaker 11 can take forever.

Speaker 118 What can you tell us about?

Speaker 91 The day after Defense Attorney Ritgers filed his motion, his fax machine started humming.

Speaker 8 It was a letter from a juror.

Speaker 10 He was having problems living with himself. He said it was a moral dilemma for him to allow it just to go without bringing it up to somebody's attention.

Speaker 41 The juror claimed there had been forbidden monkey business during deliberations.

Speaker 22 Monkey business over nothing less than the biggest issue in the trial.

Speaker 77 Damp head, dry body.

Speaker 10 He said that two or three of the female jurors had done home experiments where they had showered and then air-dried.

Speaker 69 They were testing at this theory of how quickly

Speaker 69 the body dries coming out of the tubber shower?

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 65 At home.

Speaker 92 At home.

Speaker 51 If the faxing juror was correct, the panel had directly violated the judge's instructions to consider only what they'd heard in court. The allegation was jury misconduct, a serious matter.

Speaker 31 Attorney Mark Godsey runs the Ohio Innocence Project.

Speaker 64 He saw the juror letter as a way to persuade the judge to grant Ryan a new trial.

Speaker 115 It's unusual for a juror to come forward and reveal that the jurors had violated the rules and they had performed experiments and brought that into the deliberations.

Speaker 64 The judge began reviewing affidavits from the jurors about just what went on during deliberations.

Speaker 124 In one of those sworn statements, a juror said of those taboo home experiments, the times to air dry influence my decision.

Speaker 115 Jurors are not supposed to go home and do experiments.

Speaker 101 In the end, the judge agreed.

Speaker 64 Four months after Ryan Widmer's conviction, he ruled that the husband would get another trial.

Speaker 8 The not guilty verdict on the aggravated murder count, however, would remain.

Speaker 93 So the prosecution could only retry him on the second count of unpremeditated murder.

Speaker 75 His mother scraped together enough cash to post the $400,000 bond for him.

Speaker 31 Ryan was released from prison, but by then he'd already spent five months behind bars.

Speaker 69 The quest for justice can deplete both bank accounts and emotions.

Speaker 69 How far are you prepared to go in this?

Speaker 11 I'm prepared to go towards to the day I die. If I have to live on the street in a cardboard box at the end of this, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get my son out of this.

Speaker 25 And Ryan and his family would end up not only at the very brink of financial bankruptcy, but also at the edge of emotional collapse.

Speaker 19 He says he can't sleep. He says he sees her when he closes his eyes.

Speaker 56 He misses her. He still worshipped the wedding room.

Speaker 41 Everything in Ryan's life was spiraling downward.

Speaker 26 He'd lost his job as a sports planner after the guilty verdict and was left to do odd jobs for supporters.

Speaker 51 The house he and Sarah bought together went into foreclosure.

Speaker 128 And now another jury would be asked to peer inside the mystery of a marriage and decide what exactly happened behind those closed doors on Crested Owl Court.

Speaker 36 The prosecutors would have to convince another jury that Ryan Widmer had killed his wife.

Speaker 30 It's got to be hugely frustrating.

Speaker 65 You've got a guilty verdict and you've got to do it again.

Speaker 4 On the other hand, by that point, we knew how a jury would react to our evidence.

Speaker 69 On the other side of the coin, the defense is senior case. They certainly have.
And they can now counterpunch it.

Speaker 4 And we can't change it very much.

Speaker 54 Ryan Widmer trial, take two.

Speaker 81 Ryan Widmer.

Speaker 74 A new jury makes a dramatic return to the scene of the drowning.

Speaker 80 And later, Ryan Widmer tells his own story.

Speaker 7 Now, I'm going to fight in this until it's made right.

Speaker 91 A little more than a year after a jury had found Ryan Widmer guilty of murder, only to have the verdict thrown out, it would start all over again.

Speaker 64 This time, a new defense team would take over Ryan's case.

Speaker 43 Defense lawyers Jay Clark and Lindsey Gutierrez worried that even though they were starting the trial with a clean slate of jurors, the verdict from the first trial would still hang over the accused.

Speaker 62 While he's still innocent until proven guilty, everyone thinks and everyone knows, well, he was proven guilty.

Speaker 22 Across the courtroom, the prosecution team was the same, and it would hammer home the argument that a healthy 24-year-old woman just does not die alone in a bathtub.

Speaker 4 Did you see any evidence that Sarah suffered a seizure to cause her death by drowning?

Speaker 125 No.

Speaker 89 Sarah's body, dry to the touch, the officers and EMTs testified, and the bathroom where her husband lifted her soaking body out of the tub, it was also not wet.

Speaker 123 Towels, a rug, magazines, they all appeared to be dry.

Speaker 70 And the jury would again hear the 911 call that to prosecution ears sounded odd.

Speaker 12 The message was, my wife's dead, and I wasn't around when it happened.

Speaker 124 But unlike the first trial, the defense lawyers asked to take the jurors to the home where Ryan and Sarah had lived to inspect for themselves the very bathroom where she died.

Speaker 21 The lawyers had made a pretrial visit.

Speaker 8 The first thing we said was, Man, this is small.

Speaker 22 They wanted the jurors to see for themselves that this was a cramped space in a modest builder's home.

Speaker 62 Imagine Ryan at 6'2 and Sarah at 5'1-5'2, and imagine them actually interacting in here.

Speaker 53 It was such a small bathroom, a defense expert argued, that if there had been a violent struggle, both the husband and wife would have shown more obvious bruises and scratches.

Speaker 128 I would have expected to see more injury if a violent struggle had occurred.

Speaker 87 But the prosecutors argued that Widmer, in an explosion of anger, could have overtaken his wife so quickly that she would have had no time to fight back.

Speaker 94 And in their closing arguments, they told the jurors that Ryan Widmer not only killed his wife, but also delayed calling 911 to buy time to cover up his crime.

Speaker 104 Things look so nice because Ryan Widmer had the opportunity to reset the scene. He had time to put things back into place.

Speaker 41 But Ryan's defense lawyers were hopeful this jury would see the case the way they did.

Speaker 96 An innocent man on trial for a murder he did not commit.

Speaker 62 Absolutely believe him.

Speaker 133 No doubt in my mind.

Speaker 61 The case was given to jury number two, and it seemed as though everyone in Cincinnati was on the edge of their seats waiting for its decision.

Speaker 64 But three days into deliberations, nothing.

Speaker 60 The jurors asked to see the judge.

Speaker 127 There's maybe an impasse.

Speaker 91 He sent them back to deliberate some more.

Speaker 134 It is desirable that the case be decided.

Speaker 8 It was turning out to be the longest deliberation in Warren County history.

Speaker 58 And as the jurors left for a long holiday weekend, the specter of a mistrial hung in the air.

Speaker 91 Dana and Chris Kist once again waited with Ryan.

Speaker 52 We have to make sure that he knows we're here. That's what we do as friends, is support him and be hopeful and have the faith that this is going to turn out the way that it's meant to turn out.

Speaker 48 The jury returned to work on Tuesday morning, but at 5 p.m.

Speaker 64 on that fourth day of deliberations, they asked to see the judge again.

Speaker 127 The note reads, we have decided that we cannot agree and that further deliberations will not serve a useful purpose.

Speaker 53 A hung jury, no verdict.

Speaker 59 By best count, they were deadlocked, seven guilty, one undecided, four not guilty.

Speaker 41 Walking out of the courtroom, Ryan Widmer's frustration spilled out.

Speaker 97 Just want this to be over.

Speaker 97 Disappointed, obviously.

Speaker 7 We should be found not guilty.

Speaker 31 At a press conference, Ryan's parents vowed to stand by their son.

Speaker 79 They'd already spent more than a half a million dollars on his defense, tapping out bank accounts and retirement plans.

Speaker 11 We know he's innocent and we're going to do whatever it takes.

Speaker 118 We'll move forward.

Speaker 64 Ryan's dad, Gary, was firmly behind his son.

Speaker 58 But in another odd twist, it had taken Ryan's arrest to reunite the pair.

Speaker 90 He'd been out of his son's life for 13 years, the consequence of a bitter divorce.

Speaker 23 He hadn't even known there was a Sarah until he learned his son had been charged with her murder.

Speaker 64 Father was reintroduced to son while Ryan was in jail.

Speaker 114 This is the first meeting you've had really with your boy in a long, long time.

Speaker 97 Through a glass wall.

Speaker 69 He's on the other side of the glass and you're talking through one of those phone devices? Yes, sir.

Speaker 114 That's kind of a hard thing to take right there.

Speaker 118 It was. It was hard, but it was so sweet to see him.

Speaker 47 A poignant reunion, father and son.

Speaker 57 and a father who completely believes in his son's innocence and will do anything to help him.

Speaker 118 If there's any avenue to take, you have to take it. It's my son.

Speaker 114 You have to take it.

Speaker 69 Your son didn't do it.

Speaker 114 Sarah Widmer died for reasons unknown.

Speaker 46 Council.

Speaker 5 Give your guys a round of applause.

Speaker 28 And beyond Ryan's family and close friends standing behind him, it was a case that had galvanized a virtual army.

Speaker 91 There were three Ryan Widmer t-shirts and wristbands.

Speaker 56 He was getting a lot of support.

Speaker 69 Including an anonymous donor said to have contributed $60,000.

Speaker 65 Yeah. Stranger.

Speaker 94 Yes.

Speaker 103 Even the prosecutors were a bit worried.

Speaker 31 So much taxpayer money would be spent on a third trial.

Speaker 21 So many Ryan Widmer supporters beating very loud drums.

Speaker 8 A plea deal was floated.

Speaker 4 We felt that it was a subject worth bringing up.

Speaker 41 But the KISS said there was no way Ryan was taking a deal.

Speaker 52 They offered him a plea, which they hadn't done in two trials.

Speaker 69 And he turned it down.

Speaker 52 Of course he turned it down.

Speaker 52 He says, I'm innocent. There's no way that I would ever take a plea.
Why would I admit to something I would never have done that I did not do?

Speaker 37 Ryan Widner was gambling that the next jury would acquit him.

Speaker 74 But his roll of the dice was taking its toll, not just on him, but on his family as well.

Speaker 37 Ryan's mom made headlines when she was stopped for drunk driving. She had pleaded not guilty to the driving under the influence charge, but police say they found two open bottles of vodka in her car.

Speaker 118 She broke down,

Speaker 118 hospitalized.

Speaker 102 It's a terrible toll on her.

Speaker 118 I've lived with it. Many times, all the three of us are together, and you can just

Speaker 114 feel

Speaker 118 her going deeper and deeper into this.

Speaker 41 But it seemed for every person that came out to support Ryan Widmer, there were those who believed just as strongly on the other side that he had deliberately drowned his wife.

Speaker 8 And one of those people would soon change everything.

Speaker 64 Ten days after the jury deadlocked, a phone rang in the prosecutor's office.

Speaker 87 It was a woman with a hand grenade of a story.

Speaker 69 Someone has come forward who said this guy confessed to me.

Speaker 4 We want to find out more about what she has to say and how she knows this.

Speaker 64 The prosecutors investigated and came away convinced they had the long-missing pieces to the puzzle.

Speaker 77 Both a confession and a motive.

Speaker 8 And Jay Clark, the defense attorney, would now have to worry overtime about the state's new bombshell of a witness.

Speaker 69 Did you guys know what they had up their sleeve?

Speaker 98 Literally no.

Speaker 55 Because the new witness feared for her life, saying saying that Ryan Widmer had threatened her, her identity would not be disclosed to the defense team until the beginning of the trial.

Speaker 22 And trial three would begin with virtually everyone holding their breath. Who was this person and what did she know?

Speaker 74 The mystery witness takes the stand.

Speaker 30 And what a story she has to tell.

Speaker 135 Saw the sadness and the pain and the hurt in her mom's face.

Speaker 100 They needed to know the truth.

Speaker 121 Mr. Witmer, is there anything that you wish to say?

Speaker 6 The first trial ended in a mistrial, the second with a hung jury.

Speaker 30 Would this next jury reach a verdict?

Speaker 40 These three jurors from the last trial said the prosecutors had failed to convince them that Brian Witmer had killed his wife.

Speaker 118 There's just nothing to prove to me that he had anything to do with her death.

Speaker 23 And that the next next group of jurors would also not be able to reach a unanimous decision.

Speaker 120 We sat in jury deliberations for 30-plus hours, and the likelihood of 12 jurors coming to the same conclusion was very unlikely.

Speaker 62 We really didn't think that another jury would not be deadlocked.

Speaker 28 They'd soon find out.

Speaker 8 Ryan Widmer's extraordinary third trial for the murder of his wife was about to start all over again.

Speaker 40 The prosecutors felt it was their duty to argue their case for Sarah.

Speaker 4 We're committed to seeing that justice is done for the victim of this case, and that's what we've got to think about.

Speaker 40 It promised to be a judicial groundhog day.

Speaker 64 Repeat testimony from the EMTs and arriving officers at the Widmer home. The oddity of a bathtub drowning victim with a damp head and dry body.

Speaker 96 A 911 call that to some listeners volunteered too much.

Speaker 33 And injuries to the wife's neck and head that spoke to the prosecutors of homicide and not resuscitation.

Speaker 4 The The facts which came out in this case gave rise to that idea that there had been an assault that occurred, which progressed into an incident of domestic violence.

Speaker 25 And this time, Sarah's own mother described the couple's relationship as more tense than she had in the previous trials, telling the court that Ryan and Sarah's arguments made her very uncomfortable.

Speaker 120 They would just call each other names and get hateful with each other. I even told them, I said, you guys have to stop.
I can't take it.

Speaker 22 But what was really new and stunning was something that had been haunting the defense since they first learned of it the previous summer.

Speaker 33 The prosecution's mystery witness who would testify that Ryan had confessed to the crime.

Speaker 41 It was a woman named Jennifer Crewe from Iowa.

Speaker 40 It was the first time the defense would get a good look at this person who Ryan had allegedly confessed to.

Speaker 18 And they were worried.

Speaker 62 She strolls in wearing a suit with decently done hair, normal makeup.

Speaker 89 But how exactly did this woman living 500 miles away from Ryan Widmer come to be involved in the case in a starring prosecution role?

Speaker 29 It turned out she'd watched our coverage on Dateline of the first trial.

Speaker 46 That dateline segment aired on September 18, 2009.

Speaker 87 After watching the show, she sent Ryan an email through the Free Ryan Widmer website, telling him how bad she felt about his plight.

Speaker 135 I felt sorry for Ryan. I asked him what I could do to help him.

Speaker 8 Before long, the two were in frequent touch.

Speaker 77 Struck up an email, texts, and ultimately a phone relationship?

Speaker 102 Correct.

Speaker 39 As the relationship continued, Ryan sent her photos of his dogs and asked her to send him a picture of herself.

Speaker 75 Initially, she sent this one of a friend.

Speaker 136 She says things got a little racy on the phone.

Speaker 135 He told me that he was watching porn in his mom's basement.

Speaker 22 There was even talk of Jennifer visiting Ryan in Ohio for a three-way.

Speaker 135 Ryan asked me to ask my friend, and I said I would.

Speaker 79 But the reason Jennifer Crewe was on the stand was to testify about one phone conversation in particular, one very different than their usual banter.

Speaker 68 It was October 26, 2009.

Speaker 87 Jennifer said she'd been asleep when Ryan called.

Speaker 21 It sounded to her as though he'd been drinking.

Speaker 135 He was crying and he was saying, I did it. I did it.
I killed Sarah. I did it.
I thought what he meant was that he didn't do enough to save her life that night. He said, no, Jen, listen to me.

Speaker 135 I did it.

Speaker 30 She said Ryan told her it had started with a fight between the two of of them.

Speaker 135 Sarah had found out that he had cheated on her when she went away with her mom. He said that they were in the living room and they were arguing about his pornography.

Speaker 4 What happened when she came upstairs?

Speaker 135 She was getting ready for the bath. Ryan said that the argument continued, that she kept saying she can't do this anymore, being married.
He said that Sarah told him that the marriage was over.

Speaker 109 Ryan, she testified, then told Sarah, Nobody leaves me.

Speaker 135 Nobody ever leaves me, and I mean nobody.

Speaker 73 That's when Jennifer Crewe says Ryan hit his wife.

Speaker 135 And she fell backwards and hit her head. And he said, Jen, I blacked out.
I blacked out.

Speaker 23 But why this story now?

Speaker 8 Jennifer Crewe waited until almost two weeks after the second jury had deadlocked before coming forward, even though Ryan had allegedly confessed to her eight months earlier.

Speaker 31 She said she'd promised Ryan she would not reveal his secret.

Speaker 48 and says she was unnerved when he gave her a veiled threat.

Speaker 135 I promised him I would never tell anybody. He said, I hope not because I wouldn't want you to be where Sarah's at.

Speaker 29 But she also said she thought that the jury, like the first one, would have convicted Ryan.

Speaker 27 And when they didn't, she contacted the authorities after seeing pictures of Sarah's mother.

Speaker 135 I saw the sadness and the pain and the hurt in her mom's face.

Speaker 100 And I'm a mom and I couldn't do that to them anymore.

Speaker 100 They needed to know the truth.

Speaker 22 It was a lot to absorb.

Speaker 8 Ryan confessing, fighting with a wife who was leaving him, blacking out in the bathroom.

Speaker 23 Would the jurors believe any or all of it?

Speaker 53 The defense had to make certain they didn't, but they were worried that they might.

Speaker 62 I think she had invented this story and started to live it and really wanted to believe it.

Speaker 134 You were convicted of...

Speaker 22 So they aimed for the jugular.

Speaker 99 Could this woman be trusted?

Speaker 133 She had a jaded past.

Speaker 62 Theft convictions, stealing. That's not something that an honest, credible person does.

Speaker 70 A one-time bartender at a strip club who managed the dancers.

Speaker 64 Jennifer Crewe admitted to misdemeanor brushes with the law.

Speaker 134 You were convicted of theft.

Speaker 37 Yes, sir.

Speaker 134 You were also convicted of fraudulent practices, correct?

Speaker 135 I believe that's what my record states.

Speaker 61 She was also in a methadone treatment program for her addiction to painkillers.

Speaker 134 You were using OxyContin for approximately five years.

Speaker 135 About five years, yes.

Speaker 128 You've used false names to get drugs.

Speaker 119 Yes, I did.

Speaker 64 And the defense indicated because of her addiction to drugs, her memory was not to be trusted.

Speaker 134 When the detectives talked to you, you told them that your memory is not very good, didn't you?

Speaker 135 I don't recall saying that.

Speaker 134 Do you remember telling them, I don't remember exactly verbatim conversations between you and Ryan?

Speaker 135 I do not remember the conversation verbatim.

Speaker 53 The defense would hammer on her confusion about what hour the phone call came through, even on what day it was placed.

Speaker 134 When investigators met with you, you told them the call was in the middle of the night.

Speaker 135 I was asleep and I thought that the call came in later than it did.

Speaker 121 Everything critical in terms of time and duration and any memory about the call was all different once she got to testify, but only after she saw her phone records.

Speaker 91 After Jennifer Cruz stepped down, the prosecution called the woman's fiancé to try to undo any damage to her testimony caused by the defense.

Speaker 123 He confirmed that she related the alleged confessional phone call to him immediately after hanging up that night.

Speaker 10 She came downstairs crying and she's like, he did it. She was scared, actually.
She was upset.

Speaker 64 If the jury believed Jennifer Crewe's story, Ryan Widmer was sunk.

Speaker 45 So the defense called a witness to refute the Iowa woman's story about an emotional call that night from Ryan.

Speaker 88 And it was another woman who became interested in Ryan Widmer's case after seeing our first dateline report.

Speaker 88 Melissa Waller from Seattle, like Jennifer Crewe from Iowa, struck up a phone and email relationship with Ryan in the fall of 2009.

Speaker 46 She says she was drawn to his case after the death of her sister-in-law.

Speaker 134 How often do you think you guys talked?

Speaker 17 It was a few times a week, you know, sometimes more, sometimes less. It was on a frequent basis.

Speaker 52 We talked about Sarah a lot. He was having a really, really hard time accepting everything.

Speaker 63 She flew to Ohio to visit a friend and to go with another supporter to a bowling fundraiser organized for Widmer's defense.

Speaker 26 She even made this video tribute to Ryan and Sarah that she posted on YouTube.

Speaker 30 Melissa's husband supported her friendship with Ryan.

Speaker 97 Was it a little out there? Yeah, but I'm so comfortable with her and our relationship.

Speaker 97 Without a shadow of a doubt, I was 100% behind her.

Speaker 17 I did feel strongly about supporting him. There's just no chance that he had anything to do with it.

Speaker 23 But the importance of the Seattle woman's story for the defense was that she, too, had had a lengthy phone call with Ryan that finished just six minutes before he called Jennifer Crewe in Iowa.

Speaker 93 The call in which he allegedly confessed to killing his wife.

Speaker 22 Melissa Waller said Ryan was perfectly composed when she spoke to him for almost two hours that night.

Speaker 127 How do you know that he was not drunk?

Speaker 121 He was not upset.

Speaker 17 Every phone conversation I've had, he's never been intoxicated or emotionally distraught.

Speaker 16 I knew that all the times I had talked to him that he was never drunk or upset.

Speaker 8 Melissa Waller was convinced that Jennifer Crewe had made up the whole story about the confession.

Speaker 16 I was shocked that somebody would go under oath on stand and lie.

Speaker 22 But still, had the defense paid a price by putting yet another woman on the stand.

Speaker 8 Is there a larger issue here?

Speaker 77 Is there a risk for you about these women getting involved with Ryan Widmer?

Speaker 121 That's easy to get sucked into that, but I think you have to understand what Ryan was going through. He's never been able to really grieve for Sarah.

Speaker 121 He's never been able to mourn properly for her because you can't do that when you're under the gun charged with her murder. They contacted him, and it was companionship.

Speaker 8 It was time to wrap up trial number three.

Speaker 101 The prosecutor, saying it was a sudden, violent murder.

Speaker 4 Anybody who's been in a relationship knows that sometimes things go off, they snap for no good reason. I think something like that happened.

Speaker 4 At some point, Ryan saw that his perfect marriage was falling apart, and that's what led us here.

Speaker 8 The defense arguing a medically undetermined death by natural causes.

Speaker 133 It's probably going to bother me for the rest of my life.

Speaker 62 What happened to Sarah?

Speaker 133 We'll never know, though.

Speaker 55 Sarah had drowned, but how?

Speaker 24 A third jury retired for deliberations.

Speaker 30 Another stunner.

Speaker 37 A new Sarah enters Ryan's life.

Speaker 77 Do you love Ryan Widmer?

Speaker 55 I love him. Yeah.

Speaker 37 Just who is she? Later, Ryan tells all.

Speaker 69 You guys kept it secret, didn't you?

Speaker 106 Oh, yeah, because I knew they wouldn't try to make it into something negative.

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Speaker 44 The The jury had been out for a day.

Speaker 57 Again, it seemed everyone in Cincinnati was waiting for a verdict.

Speaker 43 While Widmer still had a number of ardent supporters, trial watchers say this time things were changing in the court of public opinion.

Speaker 21 You have a candlelight vigil for him now, and probably you could hold in a phone booth.

Speaker 25 One strong voice that had turned against Ryan Widmer was talk radio show host Bill Cunningham.

Speaker 25 He was disgusted for one thing with how he says Widmer had exploited the free Ryan Widmer website.

Speaker 107 He used that website, the internet, to pick up chicks. And that instead of using that to find his innocence, he was bringing in these hot babes from Washington and Iowa.

Speaker 69 For you, it sounds like it fell apart on a character issue.

Speaker 77 It did.

Speaker 107 To me, by the third trial, the evidence didn't change. The facts didn't change, but the wallpaper of the case changed.

Speaker 63 Day two, and the jury in the courthouse was going round and round.

Speaker 62 My stomach was cramped and my shoulders were hurt and I just felt awful.

Speaker 110 I was nauseous.

Speaker 98 I didn't, I haven't felt that way for 20 years.

Speaker 49 The jurors were working their way through the evidence.

Speaker 124 They parsed the 911 call.

Speaker 71 Could my wife go to sleep in the bathtub and I think she's dead?

Speaker 110 The more you listen to it, the more and more it starts to sound like it was staged.

Speaker 29 And there was Sarah's body.

Speaker 22 Officers had testified it was too dry.

Speaker 118 Two and a half minutes later, after being removed from a tub, you would expect the body to be wet.

Speaker 26 The alleged confession is recounted by Jennifer Crewe.

Speaker 110 I just don't believe anything she said.

Speaker 66 The prints in the tub.

Speaker 119 In normal circumstances, you cannot leave those kind of fingerprints on the side of the tub trailing down.

Speaker 35 The bruising to Sarah.

Speaker 110 I think both the defense and the prosecution put up good arguments about that.

Speaker 110 That's teetering on a razor's edge with me.

Speaker 43 At the end of the second day, they took their one and only vote.

Speaker 8 They had a verdict.

Speaker 8 A blast of calls went out.

Speaker 65 The kiss grabbed a stunned Ryan.

Speaker 52 We immediately jumped in the car. Ryan says, I can't believe they're back this soon.
This is too quick. I'm worried.

Speaker 25 When everyone was gathered in the courtroom, the judge asked for the jury ballot.

Speaker 67 Anxious?

Speaker 11 Very.

Speaker 98 Sick?

Speaker 86 Yeah.

Speaker 25 Ryan Widmer stood with his lawyers, his life hanging in the balance.

Speaker 62 I can actually hear Ryan shaking. I can hear it, and it's that silent in there, and he's that nervous.

Speaker 55 The verdict.

Speaker 127 We, the jury in this case, find the defendant Ryan K. Widmer is guilty of murder.

Speaker 54 Guilty.

Speaker 41 Ryan dropped his head to the table.

Speaker 52 He was hysterical. He was crying.
He was a mess.

Speaker 97 A bad, bad, bad dream.

Speaker 64 Ryan composed himself enough to proclaim to the court his innocence.

Speaker 14 Judge, I did not do this.

Speaker 37 I don't know why this has to keep going on. I mean, my life has been ruined.

Speaker 134 I love Sarah.

Speaker 15 I would never have hurt her.

Speaker 131 Never.

Speaker 25 Outside the court, Ryan's father, Gary, slumped to the ground.

Speaker 73 The son he was recently reunited with after years apart, taken from him again.

Speaker 118 It was horrifying. It was a horrifying moment, and I think it just totally caught up with me at that point.
The whole total shock, and I just went bleak.

Speaker 24 Ryan Widner, for the second time, was given the mandatory sentence, 15 years to life.

Speaker 21 As court officers handcuffed him and led him away, few people were aware of a young woman on his side of the benches crying.

Speaker 64 This is also a Sarah, Sarah Manhurst, and she's still another twist in a story that has had so many.

Speaker 77 Do you love Heinwidmer?

Speaker 102 I love him.

Speaker 55 Yeah.

Speaker 37 Sarah wore an engagement ring and is the mother of Ryan's son born in the summer after trial number two.

Speaker 77 What'd you name the baby?

Speaker 9 His name's Ryan.

Speaker 69 Do you see Ryan's face in the babies?

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Sarah, a Canadian via New York, like Jennifer from Iowa and Melissa from Seattle, also became aware of Ryan after our first dateline program on the case aired back in 2009.

Speaker 9 I thought that he was railroaded.

Speaker 13 I really did.

Speaker 68 She sent an email to Ryan saying how sorry she felt for him and he sent one back.

Speaker 8 Soon they were talking on the phone.

Speaker 34 A little more than a month later Sarah came to Cincinnati to visit Ryan.

Speaker 30 She stayed with him at his mother's house.

Speaker 9 I thought it was a little awkward, you know, because we had talked so much on the phone, but we hadn't met.

Speaker 9 And, you know, he just was telling me how much he loved Sarah and he could never ever love another woman as much as he loved her. I think I started crying because I just felt so bad for him.

Speaker 94 Sarah went back to New York and then three weeks later returned to Cincinnati as Ryan's guest at his mother's Thanksgiving dinner.

Speaker 8 That was the weekend they became intimate.

Speaker 9 Like the first time we were together, I got pregnant.

Speaker 69 How did Ryan take the news?

Speaker 11 He was shocked.

Speaker 9 Obviously very bad timing.

Speaker 64 They kept the pregnancy a secret as Ryan's second trial would take place the following May.

Speaker 9 I decided, yeah, I was going to have the baby and he was okay with that, but it was just difficult because I'm thinking, here I am pregnant and you're facing another trial and my child could potentially grow up without a father, which

Speaker 118 now he's in jail.

Speaker 38 With Ryan sentenced to 15 years, Sarah is raising their son.

Speaker 9 I'm still in shock. I can't believe this happened to him.

Speaker 69 If in your own mind you couldn't get to beyond a reasonable doubt, if there was a sliver of doubt that maybe he had done this thing, would you have stayed?

Speaker 97 Never.

Speaker 9 I would have never stayed with him. There's no way that he could have done this ever.

Speaker 37 But had he? In the course of three trials played out before three juries, Ryan Widmer's guilt or innocence has been passionately debated.

Speaker 74 He is now telling his story.

Speaker 68 Widmer speaks from prison when we return.

Speaker 77 Did you kill your wife, Sarah?

Speaker 77 You think they fabricated this?

Speaker 97 Oh, I know they did.

Speaker 30 This young husband is about to make a startling claim.

Speaker 91 This is Ryan Widmer's story as he tells it.

Speaker 24 He remembers a loving relationship with his wife, Sarah, that was right from the first date.

Speaker 6 We hit it off perfect.

Speaker 7 Was there any friction? None whatsoever.

Speaker 97 Everything was cool. Perfect.

Speaker 7 Perfect.

Speaker 8 He only had one worry about Sarah.

Speaker 7 My biggest problem with her was her sleep. She would just work a regular day and she'd need to go to bed early or she'd be taking a nap.
I mean, I just thought something wasn't healthy about it.

Speaker 7 You're 24 years old.

Speaker 49 But still, he says they fell into their everyday lives, their jobs, walking the dog, building a deck on their house.

Speaker 132 All routine, he says, until that August night.

Speaker 58 Sarah had come home from work, he says, with a headache.

Speaker 41 They had dinner, watched TV.

Speaker 69 She's what? On the couch?

Speaker 69 Because she doesn't feel so hot.

Speaker 106 She said her neck was killing her.

Speaker 7 She's going to go get in a bath and she's going to go to bed.

Speaker 68 Ryan says he stayed downstairs watching the game until he, too, was ready for bed.

Speaker 57 Upstairs to the master bedroom and bath.

Speaker 69 Tell me what you see, just like a videotape recording it.

Speaker 7 I walk into the room, I walk over to to the nightstand, and I put some things down, turned on the TV, and then I walked in the bathroom. And that's when I saw Sarah.
I knew something wasn't right.

Speaker 7 She was just unconscious.

Speaker 69 How did you see her?

Speaker 7 Her head was just underneath the water.

Speaker 79 I mean, I don't even remember.

Speaker 69 Was she face down in the tub as you tell 911?

Speaker 7 All I remember is, yeah, just finding her. I mean,

Speaker 7 I knew it wasn't good. I mean, she was laying in the water.
I don't know what else to say other than it wasn't right. The only thing I remember certain things because of what I heard on the 911 tape.

Speaker 69 But it's such a shocking image.

Speaker 83 You think you remember?

Speaker 7 I wasn't thinking I'm going to have to remember. What did I see? What did I do?

Speaker 69 Head, what? Nose, mouth, down below the water? Everything, yeah. What did you do next?

Speaker 7 I'm trying to get any sort of reaction out of her, and I got nothing.

Speaker 79 That's when he says he called 911.

Speaker 85 My wife got asleep in the bathtub, and I think she's dead.

Speaker 69 When you chose that word, I think she fell asleep.

Speaker 7 It's not about choosing a word.

Speaker 118 It's about what I said.

Speaker 7 I mean, I guess it was just the whole her sleeping issue or whatever.

Speaker 118 I don't know.

Speaker 69 They would say that that 911 call is suspicious because this guy is giving us too much information. He's telling us he's downstairs.
He's away from all this stuff that's going on. She's upstairs.

Speaker 69 Do you know why you told him you were downstairs?

Speaker 97 What else is he supposed to do? Because I was watching the football game.

Speaker 7 I don't know what they wanted me to tell them.

Speaker 69 Maybe I just need an ambulance as soon as possible. Get here quick.

Speaker 7 I don't know. I mean, I called and that's what I said.

Speaker 118 I don't know.

Speaker 59 Prosecutors say the first arriving officer was at the house no more than six minutes after the 911 call was answered and less than three minutes after Ryan lifted Sarah's body out of the tub.

Speaker 69 The observations of the arriving officer. What do we have here? Why is this woman's hair damp and is her body dry?

Speaker 114 Yeah, well.

Speaker 69 It doesn't make sense, Ryan.

Speaker 7 I understand that. So how do you explain it? How do I explain it? I left the house and there was cops there by themselves and they came up with a story they wanted to come up with.

Speaker 77 Oh, you think they fabricated this?

Speaker 97 Oh, I know they did.

Speaker 69 So you think they wanted to make a case here?

Speaker 55 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7 I know they did. Why would they arrest me a day after if they didn't want to make a case?

Speaker 69 Why would they have it in for you? Why would they lie? EMTs and police officers don't even work for the same agency.

Speaker 7 They clearly do when they get up there to testify, because they're clearly coached into what to say.

Speaker 64 And what about the story of the woman who says Ryan confessed to her that he'd killed Sarah?

Speaker 135 Listen to me.

Speaker 37 I did it.

Speaker 69 Here's Jennifer Crewe from Iowa on the stand saying,

Speaker 6 he called me one night, he was sloppy, and he he confessed to me.

Speaker 69 Right.

Speaker 69 Jennifer, I did it.

Speaker 69 I'm telling you, I did it.

Speaker 69 Did that conversation happen?

Speaker 7 Nope. It never happened.

Speaker 69 So Jennifer Crew's story is made up.

Speaker 7 100% made up.

Speaker 31 The same goes, Ryan told us for Sarah's mother's testimony about hearing hateful arguments between the couple.

Speaker 120 They would just call each other names.

Speaker 118 She's a liar.

Speaker 69 Sarah's mom's a liar. Yeah.
She's making the stuff up.

Speaker 7 We were never mean to each other. Never.

Speaker 8 A one-time mother-in-law from an earlier life who he says is embellishing the reality of his marriage. Now Ryan Widmer has a baby with a new Sarah.

Speaker 7 She's awesome. So loving, caring.
There's similarities I see in Sarah, my wife, as I see with Sarah now.

Speaker 69 You guys kept it secret, didn't you?

Speaker 65 Oh yeah, because I knew

Speaker 106 they would try to make it into something negative.

Speaker 23 And in that court of public opinion, the women from faraway places, Iowa, Seattle, New York, who became involved in his case, didn't go down well with everyone.

Speaker 8 A character issue.

Speaker 69 We talked to somebody who accused you of using the Free Ryan Widmer website as like a dating service. I don't think it was just your way of meeting women.

Speaker 7 That's not true. I don't know who would have said that, but that's not true.

Speaker 59 But investigators wondered how good the marriage really was based on what they say they found on Widmer's computer.

Speaker 69 Did you have an unhealthy addiction to porn?

Speaker 53 No.

Speaker 77 You looked at porn. Yeah.

Speaker 89 But Ryan says that doesn't mean anything and certainly doesn't make him a murderer.

Speaker 77 Did you kill your wife, Sarah?

Speaker 7 No, I did not.

Speaker 7 I couldn't hurt Sarah emotionally, let alone physically.

Speaker 69 She didn't get in your face until you she was leaving you. Nope.

Speaker 114 Nope.

Speaker 53 Didn't happen.

Speaker 7 Did not happen.

Speaker 69 You were watching the ball game, went upstairs, and you found her in a bad situation.

Speaker 102 Yeah.

Speaker 110 And that's it? That's it.

Speaker 69 And you don't know why she died. Nope.
But you didn't put her head underwater?

Speaker 7 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 69 So you're saying you're wrongly convicted?

Speaker 97 Oh, I'm 100% wrongfully convicted.

Speaker 69 And if 30 jurors or more found you guilty after they heard the story,

Speaker 69 they're not getting it.

Speaker 7 They're not getting it at all.

Speaker 8 But these jurors from his third trial are confident they got it right.

Speaker 70 They say, among other things, it came down to what they saw as Sarah's too dry body, oddities in the 911 call, prints on the tub, and the unlikeliness of an out-of-the-blue medical event striking Sarah in the bath.

Speaker 110 I went into it believing that he was innocent, but everything that was put together with the evidence came down with four or five facts that we could not deny.

Speaker 110 We believe that he intentionally drowned her.

Speaker 30 And the guilt of Ryan Widmer will also never be doubted by the prosecutors.

Speaker 24 Do you believe that he actually did this thing?

Speaker 55 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 She was murdered, and he killed her. And he was the only one who could have done it.

Speaker 99 Ryan Widmer is still appealing his conviction.

Speaker 7 I'm not letting this stand. I mean, I'm going to...
fighting this until it's made right.

Speaker 57 The passage of time hasn't made the events inside the little house on Crestonow Court any clearer.

Speaker 37 And time, of course, brings changes.

Speaker 78 It's been years since we first met Sarah Manhurst.

Speaker 39 She and Ryan are no longer a couple, but she says she still believes in his innocence.

Speaker 38 And more change.

Speaker 37 His mother, Jill, passed away.

Speaker 136 Nothing, it seems, stays quite the same, except the central mystery itself, and that will likely be argued for years still to come.

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