Deadly Twist

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Speaker 6 My parents always told me that monsters don't exist.

Speaker 6 I can tell you with absolute certainty

Speaker 6 that is 110%

Speaker 7 false.

Speaker 6 He is a monster.

Speaker 9 A wife and mother killed in her own home.

Speaker 10 I get a phone call from a screaming, irrational voice on the other end. I said, Is it Rachel?

Speaker 11 And I said, What do you mean? Somebody came into her house and murdered her.

Speaker 12 Boo murdered her.

Speaker 15 Police discover Rachel had a complicated love life.

Speaker 17 She said, I've fallen hopelessly in love with you.

Speaker 18 You were married to somebody else.

Speaker 17 I wanted to get out of that marriage as soon as possible.

Speaker 21 Was there an even bigger secret buried in this box?

Speaker 22 We're realizing, wait, there was a former wife.

Speaker 23 We finally come around this turn.

Speaker 23 The whole side side of the mountain's on fire.

Speaker 25 You have no business!

Speaker 26 You have no business!

Speaker 27 Marriage, money, and murder.

Speaker 30 Some say more than one.

Speaker 6 When people say, I know how you feel, you have no idea how I feel. I don't want you to know how I feel because no one should ever feel this way.

Speaker 31 The night forest was profoundly dark.

Speaker 33 Below its thick canopy of trees, even the meager moonlight was shut out.

Speaker 40 As the driver rushed too fast down the twisting, stomach-churning track, inches from yawning inky-black depths, desperate to save the passenger's life.

Speaker 42 What were they doing up here, so far from civilization, from safety?

Speaker 46 And what answers did the fire consume?

Speaker 47 As one of them was launched on a path as dark and twisted as the mountain road itself, one evil begetting another and another

Speaker 48 until.

Speaker 10 This whole story is a mixture of murder and blood and failings and grace and heaven and God and

Speaker 10 some real craziness to it.

Speaker 50 But to begin,

Speaker 20 2,500 miles west of that remote mountain trail in Georgia is one of the more civilized places on Earth.

Speaker 38 Napa, California, world-famous wineries, Michelin-starred restaurants.

Speaker 20 Here lived a beautiful woman who loved four admiring men.

Speaker 56 Her father, the prominent artist.

Speaker 58 Her husband, the ex-fighter pilot and pharmaceutical executive. Her lover, the handyman, former Marine and firearms expert.

Speaker 2 And her first boyfriend, the would-be Impressionist painter his name is Tim Charrington and she the woman at the center of all that happened was Rachel Rachel Hatfield

Speaker 18 so

Speaker 36 Rachel

Speaker 65 tell me about her hell

Speaker 66 I'm sorry we're starting huh well just whatever okay

Speaker 48 start again oh yeah what'd that do to you when I said that

Speaker 33 my heart just went boom the subject of Rachel as you can plainly see is painful for Tim Charrington.

Speaker 38 A pain that might lessen if he'd only learned to forget.

Speaker 48 But all he can do is remember, like the night they first met.

Speaker 66 It was a July night, a party,

Speaker 66 and she was dancing. And I said, wow, I'm going to meet that girl.

Speaker 65 How old were you?

Speaker 66 I was 18, and I think she was 17.

Speaker 56 Oh, wow. Coming over here.

Speaker 67 Love-drunk teens.

Speaker 15 They set up house together.

Speaker 40 That's Tim during those giddy years, rarely serious, looking like a character from the movie, dazed and confused.

Speaker 45 And there's Rachel, unconsciously glamorous, like some movie star in her own romantic comedy, with a plot that was all too familiar.

Speaker 14 Aspiring artists waiting for their break.

Speaker 50 Could she see Making a Life as a Painter?

Speaker 48 Yeah, she could.

Speaker 2 Rachel could picture it because she had seen it happen.

Speaker 39 Her own father, Don Hatfield, made a big name for himself painting the romantic, bucolic beach scenes that for years have graced living rooms around the country.

Speaker 45 You may have seen his How to Paint courses on YouTube.

Speaker 10 This is called, for me, it's called Aiming Your Shot.

Speaker 59 Rare is the artist who, like Don, could comfortably raise four kids in the Napa Valley.

Speaker 31 But though many are called, few are chosen.

Speaker 47 Tim's artistic hopes were disappointed.

Speaker 66 It wasn't happening. It wasn't happening.

Speaker 31 So he and Rachel lowered their sights and hustled up any work like murals that might help cover the rent.

Speaker 66 We're, you know, doing murals and that's all

Speaker 66 the income we had.

Speaker 48 Murals doesn't pay all that well.

Speaker 66 No, it doesn't pay much at all.

Speaker 10 She was undergirding and supporting and loving and directing Tim.

Speaker 75 Don Hatfield thought his daughter would outgrow Tim.

Speaker 67 After all, Rachel, unlike Tim, buckled down and went to college.

Speaker 10 You know, graduates at top of her class at Sonoma State, recruited by Deloitte and Touch, and they start her out at 80K. We want you.

Speaker 10 No, I want to do a little business of my own, you know. And she and Tim would run around and do stuff, paint murals.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Were they any good? Not really.

Speaker 64 But she loved him nonetheless.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 44 14 years this went on.

Speaker 40 Rachel wanted to get married, have kids.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 66 And I haven't asked her to marry me yet.

Speaker 47 Did you want to have kids?

Speaker 66 I did. I did.
I did, but I just wasn't there yet. yet, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 56 Well, it's an old story, isn't it? Tim was blindsided by what happened next.

Speaker 78 Rachel met another man, someone who was everything Tim was not.

Speaker 79 Todd Winkler, focused, disciplined, a former F-16 fighter pilot who was on track to be a corporate leader.

Speaker 56 Tim scrambled.

Speaker 66 And I went and bought a ring real quick to propose to her, and uh I did.

Speaker 60 It was too late by then, of course.

Speaker 44 Rachel turned him down and announced her engagement to Todd.

Speaker 66 It was really hard, you know, because the love of my life was leaving me for some guy that had a good job and a house and a boat and a nice car.

Speaker 11 Tim to me was

Speaker 22 Rachel's soulmate.

Speaker 11 He was nothing but loving and kind to her. We were both 21.

Speaker 46 Hard to watch, said Rachel's closest friend, Shannon Thurman.

Speaker 11 She called me when she broke up with him and said, you know, we're done. I want to have a family.
He's not ready to have a family. And so, you know, we're done.

Speaker 11 And then literally like two months later, she called me and said, you know, you need to be here in two days. I'm getting married.
And I was like, oh, great. You guys made up.

Speaker 11 And she was like, no, we didn't make up. You know, it's this other guy.
His name is Todd. And you need to be here in two days.

Speaker 16 Tim didn't go to the wedding, couldn't handle it.

Speaker 30 Went to a bar to escape it.

Speaker 82 No idea the wedding party would swoop swoop into his bar for a round of toasts.

Speaker 66 It was hard, man.

Speaker 66 Watching your girl on this big guy with her hot pink dress on, and he was carrying her. He's a guy that's got it going on, and she's a pretty girl, and they look like a great couple.

Speaker 48 I just, I mean, I can't imagine

Speaker 48 what that would be like. I just can't.

Speaker 66 Yeah, it's hard

Speaker 18 to be the guy who gets dumped

Speaker 65 is bad.

Speaker 66 It's bad. I quit paying, you know, as soon as I found out she married Hip Todd.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 66 I just had no energy. I had no

Speaker 66 oomph. I had no inspiration.
I had given up.

Speaker 20 So, what does this broken-hearted love story have to do with a fiery mountain crash?

Speaker 36 More than you could possibly imagine.

Speaker 83 In my mind, this was not an accident.

Speaker 83 Our friend was murdered. I truly believe that.

Speaker 31 A married woman's complicated love life.

Speaker 2 One of Rachel's lovers is gone, but not forgotten.

Speaker 66 I thought maybe, you know, later on down the road, we can get together again and share life again.

Speaker 1 And there's a new lover on the horizon.

Speaker 17 I couldn't get out of my mind.

Speaker 2 History, for all we may try to slip its inconvenient grip, is a sticky business, rarely is done with us as we would choose to be with it.

Speaker 38 We make deaths.

Speaker 28 We must pay.

Speaker 38 Rachel Hatfield turned her life as if on a dime, left her past behind, and embraced an existence that was everything it wasn't with old boyfriend Tim.

Speaker 15 When she married Todd Winkler, the ex-fighter pilot turned corporate executive, she also married into a very different lifestyle.

Speaker 29 There were private airplanes and boats and motorcycles, a big house in a development east of Sacramento called an air park, Cessnas in garages, piper cubs on the curb.

Speaker 29 Tim Charrington versus Todd Winkler, no contest, said her dad, Don Hatfield.

Speaker 10 The guy's an Air Force Academy graduate. He's successful in business.
He's a family man. He's, you know, from the Midwest.
It's got to be great.

Speaker 48 Good, solid upper-middle class.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no.

Speaker 10 And he's got a plane and he's got planes and boats and all over the place.

Speaker 56 What Tim, the starving artist, could offer beyond love and loyalty was a lot of nothing.

Speaker 77 Todd, on the other hand,

Speaker 10 went to Orlando with him,

Speaker 34 to Disney World.

Speaker 48 And he was picking up the bill for this, though.

Speaker 10 Yeah, most of the time, yeah.

Speaker 20 Don had no way of knowing that Tim was, for a time, still in Rachel's life,

Speaker 36 sort of.

Speaker 18 You didn't lose touch completely.

Speaker 66 No, we really kept in touch.

Speaker 56 Why would they do that?

Speaker 3 Maybe because marriage, her marriage, Rachel led Tim to believe, wasn't all apple pie and ice cream.

Speaker 66 Because she wanted to share with me what was going on.

Speaker 18 What did she tell you?

Speaker 66 She shared with me that Todd had taken her credit cards and maxed them all out and

Speaker 66 bought a plane and just put her in debt for like $45,000.

Speaker 65 Whoa.

Speaker 7 I was like, whoa.

Speaker 66 I'm like, aren't you freaking out? And she said,

Speaker 17 yeah, but he'll take care of it.

Speaker 50 Which sounded less like complaining than maybe boasting.

Speaker 87 Tim, after all, could barely qualify for credit at all.

Speaker 62 Eventually, being on the outside looking in was just too hard.

Speaker 66 Because I couldn't take it anymore. You know,

Speaker 66 it was getting harder and harder.

Speaker 62 So he asked her to stop calling him.

Speaker 80 He had to move on, start painting again, forget her.

Speaker 73 Though, as he admitted to us, he wasn't very successful.

Speaker 66 I thought, you know, maybe, you know, later on down the road, we can,

Speaker 66 you know, get together again and share life again.

Speaker 39 Wishful thinking, of course, Tim simply failed to understand that Rachel's life with husband Todd was getting more exciting by the day.

Speaker 74 When Todd's company sent him to live briefly in Australia, He invited Rachel's dad to visit and paid his way.

Speaker 10 Every night after work, boom, we were going to Cirque de Soleil, to comedy clubs, to dinners. I mean, it was a big, it was a six-week party down there.

Speaker 48 But it was back home in the air park where the Winkler's social life blossomed.

Speaker 89 Gosh, I have all kinds of things from Oktoberfest in October where the neighbors get together, Christmas parties,

Speaker 89 Easter, Valentine's Day parties.

Speaker 10 Ice cream socials.

Speaker 6 Ice cream socials.

Speaker 49 Yes.

Speaker 28 These were the neighbors.

Speaker 50 Rich and Linda Johnson, Linda and Marion Cockrell.

Speaker 17 Todd had one airplane in the hangar and one in the driveway.

Speaker 60 They loved having an ex-fighter pilot for a neighbor.

Speaker 90 Todd was always, I mean, he was just a genuinely interested guy. He would make eye contact with you.
He always wanted to know about my job. What sort of cases are you working on?

Speaker 90 What kind of law do you practice?

Speaker 91 I had actually kind of looked at Todd as kind of a guy's guy.

Speaker 93 You enjoy their company.

Speaker 77 We did.

Speaker 39 Enjoy Todd a little more than Rachel, maybe.

Speaker 90 I knew her less well than I knew Todd, I feel. I feel like we were both in the same place in our lives, but sort of moving in different circles.

Speaker 94 She wasn't one of those people who kind of you immediately were attracted to her.

Speaker 77 Or what?

Speaker 90 No, and I don't.

Speaker 90 I really liked her, but she always seemed a little bit distant, very polite, very friendly, but a little bit distant.

Speaker 49 Can I go over there?

Speaker 95 Yeah, go over there.

Speaker 13 By 2009, Rachel and Todd had two little daughters, Eva and Ariel.

Speaker 90 He always seemed very involved and very engaged with the kids, and to me, he always seemed to be trying to help Rachel and give her a break.

Speaker 89 Rachel and Todd to us were like the perfect little family.

Speaker 89 They were both very proactive parents, loving parents, caring parents,

Speaker 89 as well as to each other, a couple. They seemed like the perfect couple.

Speaker 90 And in our experience, we saw Todd

Speaker 90 more on a social level with the kids than we saw Rachel.

Speaker 40 Not every day, mind you.

Speaker 96 Todd landed a lucrative job with an international pharmaceutical company, grew expense accounts soft on his desk-bound track toward what he called a C-suite, as in CEO.

Speaker 56 The only catch was his office was a long drive away in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Speaker 73 And not wanting to uproot his family, Todd got an apartment in town, returning home to the airpark for the weekends, which meant, of course, that Rachel was now anchored to home and two toddlers Monday through Friday, and was soon quite restless.

Speaker 40 So she put her kids into daycare and got a full-time job managing the air park.

Speaker 18 How was she as a mother, Bowen?

Speaker 10 Oh, she was okay, I guess.

Speaker 92 Was that harsh?

Speaker 20 Dawn, you should know, has firmly rooted religious beliefs.

Speaker 10 I tried to lead all of my children to the love of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 70 It was an article of Dawn's brand of faith.

Speaker 60 A mother should be at home with her kids.

Speaker 10 I was really pretty frustrated that she had them over in daycare and that she was working full-time.

Speaker 76 I didn't like it.

Speaker 28 But of course it wasn't the only thing he didn't like about Rachel's job.

Speaker 36 There was also

Speaker 56 him.

Speaker 17 The first thought I had was, you know, wow, what a beautiful woman.

Speaker 17 And I still remember what she was wearing. I remember the way her hair was.

Speaker 73 His name?

Speaker 50 James White, former Marine, gun enthusiast, air park handyman.

Speaker 17 She was just the most perfectly nice, most beautiful woman I've ever met.

Speaker 17 I couldn't get her out of my mind.

Speaker 31 Intoxicated by a married woman.

Speaker 36 Well,

Speaker 28 no good can come of that.

Speaker 74 The attraction was mutual, and the fact they were both married was just one problem.

Speaker 80 Another was soon to arrive.

Speaker 18 How did she feel about carrying Todd's baby?

Speaker 80 Service in the military, as so many Americans have come to know, can form a person

Speaker 72 as it did James White.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I was a Marine for life. It never leaves you.

Speaker 38 Once a Marine, always a Marine, they say.

Speaker 20 And James White loved everything about the Corps.

Speaker 17 I missed the Marine Corps very much.

Speaker 4 Though, not so much his next job as a Mississippi Deputy Sheriff.

Speaker 36 What was it you didn't like about it?

Speaker 17 I don't like seeing humans suffering on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 30 So, after a failed marriage and with his young daughter in tow, he moved back to the place he started out, Northern California.

Speaker 56 That little girl, Caitlin White, is all grown up now.

Speaker 6 We're more best friends than father and daughter.

Speaker 85 We fight like siblings and we're just,

Speaker 6 we're more focused on having fun and not really caring about what other people think.

Speaker 9 James and Caitlin set up house together here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, coincidentally, just a few miles from Rachel and Todd Winkler's air air park.

Speaker 70 James started a handyman business and, again, pure coincidence, got some jobs at the airpark.

Speaker 81 He also started a website called ammosmith.com.

Speaker 19 Not so much about guns as about the craft of creating custom ammunition.

Speaker 17 We have an automatic pistol, the shoes are rimmed revolver cartridge.

Speaker 57 Now, that was his life in the spring of 2010.

Speaker 97 A nicely very little business, a second marriage that was not going terribly

Speaker 80 Oh, and he had a secret mad crush on the beautiful young woman who managed the air park, Rachel Winkler.

Speaker 17 And one day she called me into her office. This is in June,

Speaker 17 beginning of June of 2010. She said, have a seat.
I said, okay, I thought I was in trouble.

Speaker 17 And she leaned over from her chair and she grabbed my hand and said, James, I got something I really need to tell you.

Speaker 7 I thought I was like, you're fired.

Speaker 17 No, she said, I've fallen hopelessly in love with you, and I don't know what to do about it.

Speaker 7 What was it like to hear that?

Speaker 17 It was a huge relief.

Speaker 36 Relief? Yeah. Because you were in love with her.

Speaker 98 I was already in love with her at the time.

Speaker 17 But I couldn't tell her. I didn't feel that I should tell her.
You know, I

Speaker 17 wouldn't know how she would react. I'd rather have her as my friend than have her as

Speaker 76 nothing at all.

Speaker 64 So, having left artist Tim to marry ex-fighter pilot Todd, Rachel now launched into an affair with ex-Marine James.

Speaker 97 This, by the way, wasn't one of those sneak off into a closet and steal a kiss kind of affairs.

Speaker 41 With Todd living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area during the week, James and Rachel were together almost constantly.

Speaker 17 We tried to spend as much time as possible we could together.

Speaker 7 What did it feel like when you did?

Speaker 17 I felt like we were a family. I felt like we were one.

Speaker 17 One heartbeat.

Speaker 17 You know, our hearts were intertwined together like

Speaker 17 I can't describe

Speaker 17 indescribable love. I never loved someone so intensely in my life.

Speaker 79 Their children were soon in on the secret.

Speaker 44 Caitlin was beguiled by Rachel.

Speaker 6 You could be talking to her like we're talking, and she would make you feel like the most important human being on this earth.

Speaker 99 How did that make you feel?

Speaker 7 Special, loved.

Speaker 6 I could open up to

Speaker 96 If Todd suspected anything, he didn't let on.

Speaker 20 But Rachel's dad, Don, began to get a queasy feeling during his visits to the airpark.

Speaker 3 Tell me what you thought about him at the time.

Speaker 10 He came across as this Christian guy. You know, he's helping Rachel.
He's helping her around the airport. And okay, fine.

Speaker 10 After about the second time, I said, you know, is this guy trying to bed you or what's going on? And she says, he'd like to, but it's not happening.

Speaker 61 There were whispers around the neighborhood, too.

Speaker 35 People do notice things.

Speaker 22 I think we suspected.

Speaker 47 Suspected what?

Speaker 32 That something was going on?

Speaker 89 That maybe something was going on.

Speaker 94 Because you saw the two of them together a lot, she and James?

Speaker 76 I didn't see them as a couple, you know, outwardly as a couple, even though you'd see them together.

Speaker 80 But Rachel and James had more than Todd and Dawn and the neighbors to worry about.

Speaker 18 You were married to somebody else?

Speaker 36 I was.

Speaker 18 What did you do about that? What did you think about about that?

Speaker 48 How troublesome was that for you?

Speaker 17 I wanted to get out of that marriage as soon as possible

Speaker 17 because I wanted to be with Rachel.

Speaker 18 So you told your wife?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 17 My wife discovered us and then we separated.

Speaker 81 You will perhaps not be surprised to hear that James's wife, angry and betrayed, made a phone call.

Speaker 15 to Todd Winkler, who begged Rachel end it with James.

Speaker 61 She, in a rush of guilt and shame, agreed.

Speaker 17 She tried to call it off, and I tried to call it off. We couldn't stay apart from each other more than two days before we went crazy for each other.

Speaker 48 How would you try to call it off?

Speaker 65 What would you do?

Speaker 17 She said, She would say, I need to work it out with my husband. And I'd say, I need to work it out with my wife.
We can't talk to each other. And two days later, she'd text me.

Speaker 17 She said, I love you, and I miss you.

Speaker 17 I said, I love you, I miss you too.

Speaker 17 We had a real strong spiritual bond.

Speaker 88 Then, all love love sick, they'd sneak off to see each other or leave longing messages on the phone, like this one from Rachel.

Speaker 100 One of the great things when you're in love with somebody is that

Speaker 85 those feelings come to the surface more.

Speaker 100 Your feelings about work, about your heart, about your spirit, about everything.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 100 we can share those with each other, okay?

Speaker 100 And

Speaker 26 I love you. Take care.

Speaker 54 Bye.

Speaker 31 During their heart to hearts, Rachel complained that her Todd was not so perfect as people seem to think.

Speaker 61 Did she lay it on a little thick for the sake of her other man?

Speaker 16 Wouldn't be surprising, of course.

Speaker 44 Anyway, James relayed to us what he said she told him.

Speaker 2 That Todd was stingy, emotionally distant.

Speaker 82 That he was so devious, he actually faked having cancer twice to avoid deadlines at work.

Speaker 44 That on a business trip to Amsterdam, he feigned some sort of catatonic state the day he had a presentation due.

Speaker 4 And worse, as James related Rachel's story, Todd talked about staging a serious car wreck as a pretext for suing his own company and collecting a big settlement.

Speaker 44 Now, all this may have just been trash talk about the husband whose mere existence was an impediment to their happiness.

Speaker 67 But wrapped up in the fog of their love, they began talking about running away from it all together.

Speaker 42 And then, it was just about a year into their affair.

Speaker 25 Uh-oh.

Speaker 15 She was pregnant with Todd's baby.

Speaker 93 So, did Rachel and James end it then?

Speaker 60 Why, no, they did not.

Speaker 18 What did it do to your relationship?

Speaker 17 Brought us closer. She said to me,

Speaker 17 Who in her right mind want to take on a woman with two toddlers and an infant?

Speaker 48 I said, I would.

Speaker 17 Without hesitation.

Speaker 17 She started crying, and so did I.

Speaker 18 How did she feel about carrying Todd's baby?

Speaker 17 She said that the life in her

Speaker 17 was a gift from God.

Speaker 17 No matter who the father was, she was going to love that baby no matter what. Because half that baby was her.

Speaker 65 Sure, of course.

Speaker 17 And I told her I would love that boy and her daughters just like they're my own.

Speaker 56 Wait a minute.

Speaker 64 It was, after all, a husband.

Speaker 62 Todd was not about to take this lying down.

Speaker 92 And sure enough, he recruited a powerful ally.

Speaker 38 One tense and anxious day, they braced themselves and set out to confront his wife's lover.

Speaker 36 And James White was ready for them.

Speaker 17 I had a nine millimeter on me, and I know how to use it extremely well.

Speaker 9 Witness to a showdown between an angry husband and his wife's pistol-packing lover.

Speaker 6 I see these two men walking up the driveway, and I was like, oh my God,

Speaker 6 what are they doing here?

Speaker 64 And what was about to happen?

Speaker 15 Todd Winkler, distressed by his wife's infidelity, found an unlikely ally as he prepared to confront her lover, James White.

Speaker 102 But in this case, Rachel's dad, Don Hatfield, was only too happy to help.

Speaker 56 He did not approve of his daughter's behavior, just too much like his own once was.

Speaker 37 And Don was a guy who had been carrying his guilt like a cross for years.

Speaker 10 I tried to lead all of my children to the love of Jesus Christ. There was only one major obstacle to that ever occurring in a way that I would be happy with, and that was my hypocrisy.

Speaker 77 What do you mean?

Speaker 76 Your hypocrisy?

Speaker 10 My hypocrisy. Chasing women.

Speaker 10 Blowing my marriage.

Speaker 38 As Don tells it, women found his role as an ascendant artist quite appealing.

Speaker 60 Never mind, he was a married father of four.

Speaker 10 And that kind of thing destroyed,

Speaker 10 literally destroyed my family.

Speaker 39 By the time Rachel was in middle school, Don's string of affairs led to a home-shattering divorce.

Speaker 10 I think that

Speaker 10 the obliteration of the nuclear family had a profound effect on Rachel.

Speaker 59 Now, he feared, the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree.

Speaker 38 His daughter, Rachel, was in the middle of an affair herself, and it was putting her marriage at risk.

Speaker 10 You know, Todd had been calling me. You know, what am I going to do? You know, how am I going to save my marriage?

Speaker 10 And I said, Todd, have you just told him straight up to stay away from your wife this thing is worked out? He said, no.

Speaker 10 I said, well, have you thought about that? He says, well, not till right now. Sounds like a good idea.
Will you come with me?

Speaker 56 Yeah, I'll go with you.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 so we drove over there.

Speaker 38 James's daughter, Caitlin, 16 then, sounded the alarm as Rachel's worried father and betrayed husband pulled up at the entrance to James's isolated mountain property.

Speaker 6 We just got done shooting and I just hear this car car roll up. I was like, wow, that sounds like Rachel.
And I see these two men walking up the driveway

Speaker 12 and I was like, oh my God,

Speaker 6 what are they doing here? And I ran out. I'm like, dad, Todd's here.
And so is John. He goes, all right, let's get this over with.
And I grabbed the nine, or I didn't grab the nine, I grabbed the M4.

Speaker 56 Caitlin.

Speaker 79 is talking about the guns she had at the ready, a 9mm pistol and an M4 rifle.

Speaker 50 And James,

Speaker 36 he had a pistol holstered in the small of his back as he walked out to greet Todd, Don.

Speaker 17 I had a nine millimeter romantic, and I know how to use it extremely well.

Speaker 44 Here is James's memory of a confrontation so tense it sounds almost surreal.

Speaker 82 As the two men approached the house, he said, They hid behind Todd and Rachel's children.

Speaker 17 He had Ariel in his arms, using her as a human shield. and Don

Speaker 17 had Alex in his arms hiding on the other side of the car.

Speaker 48 We were afraid that you were going to shoot them.

Speaker 10 Perhaps. I mean, I can't remember whether or not Todd actually went to the door with the kid or I went to the door or whatever, but he was a human shield.
He was going to stop the bullets, right?

Speaker 7 That's a little scary.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it is scary.

Speaker 6 Todd was holding Ariel, and Don was holding Alex, and Todd came up, and he looks just a wreck.

Speaker 17 Todd confronted me. He said, Rachel and I aren't divorced yet, and I would appreciate it if you would stay away from her.

Speaker 7 And?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 12 You said, no.

Speaker 17 I said, nope.

Speaker 72 There was a pause.

Speaker 29 If something was going to happen, this would be the moment.

Speaker 6 And then he turns to me and he goes, hi, Caitlin. I was like, get off this property.

Speaker 57 And suddenly it was over.

Speaker 29 Todd and Dawn and the kids got back into the land cruiser and drove off.

Speaker 46 What was they feeling like as this was going on?

Speaker 10 No, the feeling for me was, God, I hope this clears the air.

Speaker 17 I think, I said, you know,

Speaker 10 he's asking him to stay away. So maybe he'll stay away and maybe they can figure out what to do.

Speaker 47 Was it a civilized conversation?

Speaker 48 Yes, yes, very. Didn't yell at each other? No.

Speaker 20 Didn't stare daggers at each other?

Speaker 7 Nothing.

Speaker 12 Zippo.

Speaker 10 I didn't like the fact that

Speaker 10 here's that a marriage in trouble, and there's guys who'll prey on that. You know, if he's a gentleman, he says, I'll wait in the wings, and if this flies, fine.

Speaker 10 But, you know, he didn't.

Speaker 37 No, apparently nothing could keep the lovers apart.

Speaker 34 James emailed Rachel.

Speaker 102 Hey, my love, I miss you something awfully bad.

Speaker 97 I've been crying on and off since Sunday.

Speaker 50 I'm dying inside.

Speaker 72 My heart is shattered.

Speaker 60 I love you endlessly, my sweet love.

Speaker 25 No,

Speaker 48 this wasn't over.

Speaker 31 Not the affair.

Speaker 40 Not the marriage either.

Speaker 35 And not the confrontation.

Speaker 29 Something was coming.

Speaker 72 Watch out.

Speaker 86 911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 104 Calling to report a fatality.

Speaker 104 Where did this occur? It's in the Cameron Park Airpark.

Speaker 56 Who had been killed?

Speaker 10 I get a phone call from a screaming, irrational voice on the other end.

Speaker 38 And who was the killer?

Speaker 52 Oh, so peaceful in the air park that last Sunday of February 2012, Todd and Rachel Winkler's marital issues did not noticeably ruffle the surface of normal suburban life.

Speaker 30 A neighbor bumped into Todd that afternoon.

Speaker 90 He stopped and talked to us for, you know, a couple of minutes and, you know, wished us well and kept going. He was pushing the two strollers with all three kids.

Speaker 90 And he didn't look particularly cheerful.

Speaker 93 Todd had no way of knowing that Sunday afternoon that Rachel was back at James's Mountain House double-checking her divorce application.

Speaker 17 She finished the paperwork and she says, I'm fine. I'm going to fax him the next morning.

Speaker 18 You're continuing with a relationship.

Speaker 71 She is filling out divorce papers. He's trying to block her.
She's determined to do it.

Speaker 17 She turned to me that day and she said, you know what, James? Whether you're in the picture or not, I'm divorcing Todd.

Speaker 7 I want out.

Speaker 71 Whether you're in the picture or not, but was there some doubt about that?

Speaker 17 No. She said, the reason why she wants to be with me is because she wanted to be with me, not because she had to be with me.

Speaker 71 I'm trying to imagine what you were feeling like. I was elated.

Speaker 17 We were finally going to be able to start the life together we've talked about and dreamed about and wanted together for so long.

Speaker 103 Rachel headed home to tell Todd they were history, that she was leaving him for the man she loved.

Speaker 3 Evening fell.

Speaker 2 It was Sunday night.

Speaker 44 No one who drove past the Winkler home in the gathering dark would have noticed anything untoward, but come Monday morning.

Speaker 43 It was a day unlike any the air park community had ever seen.

Speaker 43 911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 104 Good morning, I'm calling to report a fatality.

Speaker 104 Where did this occur? It's in the Cameron Park Airpark. My understanding, it was a domestic.

Speaker 90 It was just so surreal. It almost seemed like a dream.

Speaker 56 What was going on?

Speaker 29 The neighbors, watching anxiously from their windows, didn't know, of course.

Speaker 91 I was in my yard and saw the sheriff's department pulling into the neighbor next door between our house and the Winkler's house and taking kind of tactical positions, donning flak jackets and pulling AR-15s.

Speaker 98 There were five sheriffs in the backyard with their guns drawn facing Todd's house.

Speaker 8 What happened next floor?

Speaker 60 Marion Cockroach.

Speaker 91 And I saw Todd walking walking backwards across the street

Speaker 106 stop right there turn around put your hands on top of your head drop down to your knees keep your hand on top of your head mission yes i do who else is inside the house there's no one else inside the house where your wife is my wife is inside the house you said nobody else is inside though my wife is dead

Speaker 99 how could it be rachel winkler was just 37 years old with those three little children to whom she meant the whole world where is your wife

Speaker 108 she's is in. When you enter the house, you turn to the right,

Speaker 108 the first bedroom on your right, and you're sure she's dead. I'm positive.
How can you be, how are you sure? No pulse, no breathing.

Speaker 30 Amid the chaos, frantic calls, one of the neighbors reached Rachel's father.

Speaker 10 And I get a phone call from a screaming, irrational voice on the other end. And I said, is it Rachel?

Speaker 12 Yes, it's Rachel.

Speaker 10 I said,

Speaker 10 I have a question for you. Is there a yellow ribbon around the property? Yes.
Is there a big white van in front of the house?

Speaker 55 Yes.

Speaker 56 Don was in the middle of moving. The movers tried to calm him down.

Speaker 10 And the guy says, We don't know that she's dead. I said, count on it.
He killed her. And I got there and, you know, she was calling.

Speaker 33 He was right to begin with.

Speaker 64 Rachel was dead.

Speaker 20 The horrific news spread.

Speaker 17 I got a call from a friend and

Speaker 17 I say, Campi. And the next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor.

Speaker 7 You faded me.

Speaker 17 I completely blacked out, hit the floor.

Speaker 17 So I called the Sheriff's Department and asked them if they knew what was going on.

Speaker 77 And

Speaker 17 they said, just stay right where you're at.

Speaker 44 James's daughter, Caitlin, got a message at school.

Speaker 6 I walk outside and I call a family friend and he goes, are you sitting down? I think you need to sit down, Caitlin. I was like, what's going on?

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 6 all I remember is just dropping to the ground.

Speaker 60 Rachel's friend Shannon couldn't believe what she read online.

Speaker 11 I found out

Speaker 22 through Facebook.

Speaker 11 I was scrolling and saw someone post something, rip Rachel. And I was like, what the hell is going on? So then I called her younger brother and he said, somebody came into her house and murdered her.

Speaker 11 And I said, what do you mean? Somebody came into her house and murdered her.

Speaker 58 What had happened in that house?

Speaker 80 An eyewitness account from Todd.

Speaker 109 Oh my god, I want to get the children, get the children out here.

Speaker 80 And what does this box have to do with a long ago fire and death on a dark mountain?

Speaker 105 Stop right there.

Speaker 105 Turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.
Drop down to your knees.

Speaker 106 Keep your hand on top of your head, Minister Sammy.

Speaker 28 The scene that played out in front of the Todd and Rachel Winkler home in the air park that Monday morning, February 27, 2012, grew more bizarre by the moment.

Speaker 59 As neighbor Marion Cockra watched the police surround Todd, he saw something quite incomprehensible.

Speaker 91 They handcuffed him and took him off, and he didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 69 Todd?

Speaker 9 Under arrest?

Speaker 59 Charged with murder for killing Rachel?

Speaker 110 What about her lover, the man with all the guns?

Speaker 15 No, it was Todd in handcuffs.

Speaker 79 The investigators disappeared into the house and found a bloody crime scene and Rachel Winkler dead in her baby's bedroom.

Speaker 39 They found the couple's three young children safe and sound across the street at a neighbor's house.

Speaker 52 Todd had dropped them off there before the police arrived.

Speaker 34 Soon, Todd himself was sitting in an interview room at the Sheriff's Department, where he admitted, yes, he killed Rachel, but he said he had no choice.

Speaker 38 And then he told the police a harrowing story of rage and violence and self-defense.

Speaker 39 The trouble began the night before, Sunday night, he said, as he was preparing to leave early the next morning for work.

Speaker 72 Rachel told him straight out she was leaving him for James.

Speaker 69 She

Speaker 109 came back into the arms of James White.

Speaker 44 And then a few hours later, 3.30 Monday morning when Todd went into the baby's room where Rachel had taken to sleeping, they argued bitterly about custody of the children.

Speaker 109 I said,

Speaker 109 I'm not going to agree to you having the kids up here and having primary custody. I'm not

Speaker 109 going to fight you on this.

Speaker 109 And she said,

Speaker 109 you know, I want to have my boyfriend get rid of you.

Speaker 109 Her boyfriend is a

Speaker 110 big gun collector.

Speaker 62 As Todd told it, when Rachel said that, when she threatened to send James White to get rid of him, whatever that meant, he overreacted and punched Rachel.

Speaker 62 Where did you hit her?

Speaker 109 Where did her right side of the face? After she told you basically she's going to have her boyfriend take care of her. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Todd said he tried to apologize.

Speaker 109 For me, and I'm probably back saying, I'm sorry.

Speaker 109 I'm so sorry.

Speaker 59 But then he said Rachel turned around and attacked him with a deadly weapon.

Speaker 109 She's coming at me with a V of scissors.

Speaker 109 And

Speaker 109 I got a hold of them and we had a struggle on the bed and rolled off of the bed and

Speaker 109 got into

Speaker 109 this. struggle over the scissors.
I took some cuts just on my hands trying to get them away from her.

Speaker 21 They wrestled on the bedroom floor, he said, just a couple of feet from the crib where seven-month-old Alex was sleeping.

Speaker 67 And overweight and out of shape, said Todd.

Speaker 102 He was fighting for his life with his much fitter wife.

Speaker 109 It was a long, long, long, protracted struggle.

Speaker 109 I don't know how long, but it was a long time. She's a very strong girl,

Speaker 109 an extremely strong girl.

Speaker 109 And then she had me on bottom, and she was on top. I mean, going back and forth between bottom and top in this struggle over the scissors.

Speaker 79 Then he said he finally overpowered her, got control of those scissors.

Speaker 109 I was able to get him turned around onto her and give her some jabs. She was...

Speaker 109 She was...

Speaker 26 She was injured at this point, but

Speaker 109 probably not seriously. Uh-huh.

Speaker 109 I poked her in the eye really hard and got her to break free.

Speaker 63 He retreated, he said, as quick as he could.

Speaker 109 I got up and got out of the room and ran to my car.

Speaker 69 Got to my car and thought,

Speaker 109 get out of here. I thought, oh my God, I'm going to get the children, get the children out of here.

Speaker 58 His two daughters were in their room.

Speaker 74 But baby Alex was with the wounded Rachel.

Speaker 93 Standing there in the garage, he said, he made a decision.

Speaker 99 He had to protect his children.

Speaker 39 He would go back in and rescue them from Rachel.

Speaker 109 I grabbed my motorcycle jacket at that point, put it on, flipped it up. It's got pads over here for breaking down the door.

Speaker 63 And I rushed into the room.

Speaker 48 She must have been waiting, said Todd, to pounce.

Speaker 39 He was, he told the police, soon in a fight to the death to save his own life.

Speaker 109 I tripped and fell forward when I rushed into the room. She kicked me in the face, and then we got into another subsequent struggle on the floor

Speaker 109 and

Speaker 109 once I you know started to get the upper hand

Speaker 17 I just

Speaker 17 I pushed the scissors in as far as I could

Speaker 17 and where was that do you recall in her throat uh-huh in her throat I don't know how long

Speaker 49 quite a long time.

Speaker 109 Okay, and why did you hold her there like that with the scissors in? I knew if I let go, I mean, she still had a hand on the scissors. I was also fearing for, you know, she was

Speaker 109 a fellow, killer-be-killed kind of situation.

Speaker 13 Eventually, Todd got to his feet.

Speaker 40 He prepared a bottle for crying Alex, he said.

Speaker 48 And he worried.

Speaker 109 And

Speaker 109 then I just

Speaker 109 started just pacing around around the house just saying, oh, God, who's killed?

Speaker 9 By and by, Ariel and Eva woke up.

Speaker 19 Todd kept them out of the room where their mom lay dead.

Speaker 75 Then he said he cleaned up the house as well as he could.

Speaker 38 And at 10.26 a.m., seven hours after Rachel died, he phoned a lawyer friend and asked him to inform the authorities.

Speaker 101 Tell me exactly what you heard from your neighbor.

Speaker 104 What I'm willing to tell you is that I'm an attorney. I received a call notifying me of the situation.

Speaker 44 About the same time, 10.30 a.m., Todd took his children to the neighbor's house.

Speaker 109 I said, there's been a,

Speaker 109 I didn't tell him Rachel was dead.

Speaker 49 I

Speaker 109 said, we have a very serious situation across the street. Can you please watch the kids?

Speaker 39 Murder investigations are, of course, based on more than just witness statements. The CSI team rushed over to Todd and Rachel's house.

Speaker 82 An assistant D.A.

Speaker 41 Lysette suitor joined them as they searched and documented the interior of a house house that was strangely chaotic.

Speaker 65 What did it look like?

Speaker 22 The house is well manicured, minus the fact that there's this yellow crime scene tape up.

Speaker 22 And then you walk through that and you walk into the doors, and the house is in complete disarray. Kitchen is completely undone, baseboards missing all over the place.

Speaker 22 The house is not put together at all.

Speaker 3 Such an odd place.

Speaker 74 In the garage that doubled as a hangar, investigators found Todd's Mustang, Rachel's SUV, a boat, a BMW motorcycle, and parts of a plane Todd was refurbishing.

Speaker 44 And back inside the house, in the master bedroom, in a nightstand, they found something else, too.

Speaker 15 Something quite unexpected.

Speaker 69 This blue box.

Speaker 73 Inside,

Speaker 14 ashes.

Speaker 110 What?

Speaker 93 At the bottom of the box was a label that simply said, Cremated remains of Catherine Lynn Winkler.

Speaker 2 And now suddenly there were two mysteries to solve.

Speaker 56 What really happened in the Winkler baby's bloodstained bedroom?

Speaker 92 And more than a decade and 2,000 miles away, what was the ugly truth that burned on the mountainside in Georgia?

Speaker 72 Someone was keeping secrets.

Speaker 56 Big secrets.

Speaker 22 We're realizing, wait, there was a former wife.

Speaker 60 And that was just the beginning.

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Speaker 38 When Todd Winkler was arrested for killing Rachel, he claimed it was self-defense.

Speaker 61 He told the cops she came after him with those scissors.

Speaker 39 He had to protect his children and save himself, even if it meant a duel to the death.

Speaker 21 Prosecutor Lisette's suitor listened carefully to Todd's version of events and was skeptical.

Speaker 36 That's her job, of course.

Speaker 43 Still, no one else in Todd's house saw what happened, so there was no one to contradict his story.

Speaker 15 But then the investigators found that box with ashes in it, and the label on the box said Catherine Lynn Winkler.

Speaker 22 We're realizing, wait, there was a former wife?

Speaker 72 Oh yes, there was.

Speaker 75 Todd Winkler had been married before, and clearly his ex-wife was dead.

Speaker 110 So what happened to her?

Speaker 93 No choice, decided prosecutor's suitor.

Speaker 81 She would have to find out.

Speaker 4 And that's when she set out to follow a trail that led to a man in Georgia named Gerald Johnson, a judge now.

Speaker 19 But back in 1999, a rookie detective.

Speaker 98 It really shocked me that I was getting a call from California about a case that I had worked in our little gentle town there in White County.

Speaker 65 Had you forgotten all about that case? No, sir.

Speaker 98 I actually, over the years, I've thought about that case many times.

Speaker 13 The case.

Speaker 80 An auto accident in the fall of 99.

Speaker 64 An accident that killed the first Mrs.

Speaker 72 Winkler, Kathy.

Speaker 98 My father called me that night. and told me that

Speaker 65 Kathy was no longer with us. What was that like for you?

Speaker 36 It hurts.

Speaker 98 Still hurts.

Speaker 30 So many years later, Charles Carlyle still smarts from the loss of his big sister Kathy.

Speaker 21 Just never got over it.

Speaker 4 But then, Kathy was also his mentor, his protector, perhaps his only true friend.

Speaker 31 They grew up on MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida.

Speaker 30 Charles, painfully shy.

Speaker 61 Kathy, outgoing, strikingly attractive, popular.

Speaker 13 Tanya Van Adder and Julie Lynn Cox were school chums.

Speaker 38 They remember what a knockout she was, but that there was more to her than just that.

Speaker 101 She could have her choice of young men. She was beautiful, inside and out.
It wasn't just her exterior beauty.

Speaker 101 She was a beautiful girl, but she just had such a sweet, kind, caring personality that was attractive to everybody.

Speaker 56 It was a small miracle, perhaps, that she turned out so well, given what was demanded of her, said her friends.

Speaker 101 Her mother left when they were young. Her grandmother lived with her for a while, but she was the caretaker of her siblings.

Speaker 101 She had a younger sister and younger brother, and Kathy pretty much mothered them and cared for them.

Speaker 83 She definitely was the mom.

Speaker 2 Except on weekends when the school chums remember sneaking around the base to get a glimpse of the true stars among the young men there.

Speaker 81 No surprise, it was the macho fighter pilots.

Speaker 101 The man in the uniform, yes, that man in the uniform.

Speaker 83 Definitely. The jumper suit.

Speaker 7 Yes. Very hot.

Speaker 83 Kathy and I would always joke and say, do you think you're going to marry a pilot? Wouldn't that be so cool? It's like Top Gun. Marry a pilot.
And of course, she ended up marrying one.

Speaker 38 Wasn't a direct route, mind you.

Speaker 16 First, in her early 20s, Kathy struck up a serious relationship with a pilot who, in the end, just couldn't seem to commit.

Speaker 29 And so, just like Rachel, years later in Napa, California, Kathy was a a young woman on the rebound when she met fighter pilot Todd.

Speaker 83 Where the first one didn't work out or perhaps maybe it didn't work to the way that you wanted it to. Maybe she felt like this was what she needed to do and Todd came into the picture.

Speaker 83 I think having that pilot probably maybe is what caused her to marry Todd.

Speaker 56 Patterns.

Speaker 32 That time too, Todd was ready to commit.

Speaker 30 Right away.

Speaker 18 How long did they date before they got married?

Speaker 76 I wouldn't say it was a very long time at all.

Speaker 101 They got married within weeks of dating. She appeared to be happy, so I didn't question that.
She had married her pilot, and so I thought, you know, her fairy tale is coming true.

Speaker 21 The Air Force sent Todd to Japan soon after the wedding.

Speaker 46 It was an exhilarating time for Kathy.

Speaker 40 Getting married, heading off to live in an exotic place.

Speaker 101 Kathy was excited to move to Japan, and she was going to be an English teacher.

Speaker 47 And later, after Todd left the Air Force, Kathy's friends remember how she was there for him as he tried to figure out what to do next.

Speaker 83 She was very nurturing in the fact that she was supporting him in whatever different career he was going to choose.

Speaker 44 It was a difficult time for Todd.

Speaker 101 We did spend Thanksgiving with them one year, and Todd had put on a lot of weight. And I know that he wasn't working and he was depressed.

Speaker 47 But Todd always had a knack for making money.

Speaker 33 and he figured it out, got into the booming Wi-Fi business.

Speaker 35 And pretty soon Kathy and Todd moved into a big lakeside house in Georgia with a boat and fancy cars, and of course, an airplane.

Speaker 33 Kathy, always so nurturing, told her friend she was ready to take the next step.

Speaker 83 I remember Kathy calling me and telling me that they were living in Georgia and that she was excited about it and that she wanted to have children.

Speaker 83 So I was excited for her because I can see her with little kids.

Speaker 62 But nine years into what looked like a happy marriage, children had yet to arrive.

Speaker 58 And now we know because of what was in that blue box, they never would.

Speaker 58 Time to find out what happened.

Speaker 47 Who knew that the discovery in that box would bring investigators all the way across the country to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia to a campsite high on a hill?

Speaker 20 Here was a lonely place that had kept its secret long enough.

Speaker 24 We finally come around this turn, the whole side of the mountain's on fire.

Speaker 47 A mysterious death and suspicion.

Speaker 83 It just didn't add up.

Speaker 31 White County, Georgia.

Speaker 23 It's beautiful, just nature at its best.

Speaker 28 This is where the Blue Ridge Mountains begin.

Speaker 48 And it's sweet here. It's quite lovely.

Speaker 85 It's beautiful.

Speaker 33 A person can find what really matters up here, said Mike Hodmuth and Woody DePue.

Speaker 35 Up here so far from the raucous urban world, our weekends steeped in the peace and beauty of a natural cathedral.

Speaker 23 We'd ride our mountain bikes, go sit in the river, hike. go rappelling.

Speaker 86 Most of the time you're just you're out there by yourself and you make your own rules.

Speaker 56 At night?

Speaker 23 You can go up to the top of the mountain and you can see a lot of

Speaker 23 stars you didn't know were there.

Speaker 35 But down the sides of the mountain, under a thick canopy of leaves.

Speaker 86 Many, many nights it's just pitch black.

Speaker 94 This is the place, these the conditions, that California prosecutor Lissette Souter needed to understand.

Speaker 94 It was September 26, 1999, one of those pitch black nights. The night Mike and Woody lived through one of the strangest experiences of their lives.

Speaker 47 Mike and Woody were asleep in separate tents around a common campfire and both, same moment, were suddenly startled awake.

Speaker 86 I was sleeping in my tent and I heard somebody shouting from the road about 100 yards away,

Speaker 65 help, help, help, my wife is dead.

Speaker 27 This is the middle of the night.

Speaker 86 It's the middle of the night.

Speaker 23 And then I kind of just laid there and I was like, nah, I didn't just hear that.

Speaker 23 And then I heard it again.

Speaker 48 They got up fast. And out of the black night.

Speaker 86 Some strange man come walking into their campsite going, oh, help, help me. My wife is dead.

Speaker 2 The stranger was emotional, distraught.

Speaker 31 Told them he and his wife had been camping a few miles further up the narrow mountain road.

Speaker 86 He said that he had been stung by a bee and that his wife was rushing him to the hospital. And

Speaker 86 he was laying in the back of the truck. He then told us that...
His wife lost control of the vehicle.

Speaker 37 And then the pickup truck went over the edge and tumbled down the ridge, he told them.

Speaker 86 And then he was thrown out of the back bed of the truck.

Speaker 23 It just threw him out, and then he was able to walk away.

Speaker 82 He said it crashed at the bottom, burst into flames, with his wife still inside.

Speaker 48 The man looked disheveled, but okay.

Speaker 94 He wanted to call 911, but told them he didn't have a cell phone with him.

Speaker 32 And he wanted to try to find his wife, he told them.

Speaker 16 Woody and Mike told the stranger he could ride in the bed of their pickup truck while they drove up the twisting track looking for the accident site.

Speaker 23 I kept asking, like, where is the wreck? Where's the wreck? And then after that went on, you know, 20 or 30, 40 seconds, you know, going around

Speaker 23 different turns and stuff, we finally come around this turn

Speaker 24 and the whole side of the mountain's on fire.

Speaker 23 And obviously we knew we were there.

Speaker 47 Looked like several acres of forest were on fire.

Speaker 18 Did it look like it was possible anybody could be alive down there?

Speaker 98 No, no.

Speaker 27 Just the same, Woody and Mike climbed down the steep incline as far as they could.

Speaker 23 I don't see how anybody could have survived that wreck, the cliff, the fire, but I'm still hopeful.

Speaker 65 Okay.

Speaker 23 I got to do something.

Speaker 47 But there was no getting near the truck and no sign of a survivor. And then the firefighters came, and the EMTs, and of course the cops, and they too heard the husband's bizarre tale.

Speaker 2 And they also learned his name was Todd Winkler.

Speaker 83 In their report, they wrote that when they encountered Todd, he was calling out for his wife Kathy over and over again, Kathy, Kathy, as if he was hoping she'd come walking out of that burning forest.

Speaker 16 The patrol deputies called in the investigators, which is how Gerald Johnson, a brand new detective at the time, found himself deep in the Georgia woods early that autumn morning.

Speaker 18 So what happened up there on the hill was, well, you can describe to me, as best you understood at the time what had happened.

Speaker 98 Sometime during the night, he had gotten up, according to his statement, to go outside to use the restroom.

Speaker 98 And as he came back to the tent, he realized that he had been bitten by something or was having some type of reaction, that his throat was closing up.

Speaker 76 Sort of anaphylactic shock type reaction.

Speaker 98 Well, that's what I described it as. And she takes him out to this Toyota pickup, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 98 He's crawling on his hands and knees at this point and and having all these symptoms of some type of allergic reaction.

Speaker 74 Johnson mostly just observed, he said, as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation looked into what happened, but took no action.

Speaker 45 And eventually the coroner ruled Kathy's death an accident.

Speaker 44 Then the life insurance company did the same.

Speaker 15 And as the more than half million dollar policy on Kathy's life was a double indemnity, it paid double in the case of an accident, Todd got close to $1.2 million.

Speaker 40 And the case was closed.

Speaker 38 But for the heartbreak, it was Julie Lynn who told Tanya what happened.

Speaker 83 And she said, Tanya, Kathy's dead. She's not alive anymore.
She died.

Speaker 7 I remember falling to the ground.

Speaker 83 And I said,

Speaker 83 What do you mean she's dead?

Speaker 38 Kathy's friend Julie Lynn felt not just for herself, but for Todd too.

Speaker 101 I wanted to console him and just let him know that we were there for him, supporting him, anything we could do for him. And he never returned any of my calls.

Speaker 30 Tanya?

Speaker 40 Tanya tried to call him too.

Speaker 8 Different reason.

Speaker 83 It just didn't add up. My phone call was strictly to figure out and to pick his brain and ask questions.

Speaker 37 Because by then, Tanya was a cop herself who knew a little something about suspicious behavior.

Speaker 83 Did I think he was going to answer that phone? No. And let me tell you, I tried that phone number numerous times, and after about a month of calling it repeatedly, the phone number was disconnected.

Speaker 72 She didn't get anywhere.

Speaker 53 No.

Speaker 29 But sometimes, maybe with a little help from a curious prosecutor, you get a do-over.

Speaker 18 So as the years went by, you thought about it.

Speaker 36 Oh, yes, sir.

Speaker 56 Bothered you.

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 7 So that must have made that call that you got from California all the more remarkable.

Speaker 98 When I realized what they were asking me about, yes, sir, I thought, oh, my goodness, what in the world is going on with this case?

Speaker 22 The more we read, the more we realized that this was not an accident.

Speaker 12 So many questions about that long-ago case, starting with, why was Kathy even camping?

Speaker 83 I was at camping?

Speaker 101 Kathy was not a camper.

Speaker 93 Once, when outsiders came to these North Georgia mountains and valleys, it was to make a movie called Deliverance.

Speaker 39 This time, the visitors were California detectives.

Speaker 56 Here to find out exactly what happened on this mountain path on a dark night more than a decade ago.

Speaker 89 We got all those police reports.

Speaker 70 Out in California, 15 years later, Prosecutor Lissette's suitor was convinced for the sake of her own case, she had to find out what really happened up here on this isolated mountain road in September 1999.

Speaker 22 What is very important about

Speaker 22 the Georgia case in our case is it goes to his intent in the Rachel case.

Speaker 20 And before long, she knew this was going to be be explosive.

Speaker 37 The Georgia case could be her best evidence in the here and now in California to show that Todd Winkler was perfectly capable of spousal murder because she soon believed he had done it before.

Speaker 22 The more we read, the more we realized that this was not an accident.

Speaker 19 Todd's behavior up here on the mountains, said Prosecutor Souter, was deeply suspect.

Speaker 38 For one thing, his stories just kept changing with each telling.

Speaker 59 Like the one about where he was sitting in the truck as it headed down the mountain trail, in the passenger seat holding Kathy's hand as he told the police, or back in the bed of the truck as the campers insisted he told them.

Speaker 43 And when the truck went off the road?

Speaker 71 Did he describe being thrown out of the vehicle?

Speaker 98 Not to us, but there was another interview that was done earlier where I think he described to someone as a twisting and turning motion.

Speaker 98 But in our interview, what I recall him saying is that when he came to himself, he was laying on the ground outside the vehicle there was a huge fire and he didn't know where his wife was so from so that he didn't remember the accident at all in your interview right

Speaker 18 but apparently he did in some other interview

Speaker 47 and that's correct there were differing stories too about what sort of bugs supposedly bit him supposedly causing an allergic reaction so bad he had to ask Kathy to rush him down the mountain to a hospital and yet when the cops asked to see the bug bite?

Speaker 98 He didn't know where the bug bite was. Didn't know what bit him.

Speaker 48 Didn't know where it was?

Speaker 7 No, sir.

Speaker 18 Something serious enough to give him an allergic reaction that doesn't present anywhere is a bit odd.

Speaker 98 And

Speaker 98 that was a big question in my mind.

Speaker 82 Todd told the cops back then he had a history of allergic reactions, always carried an EpiPen for emergencies.

Speaker 52 yet didn't take that to the wilderness that weekend.

Speaker 71 Did that seem strange to you that he'd go camping without an EpiPen if he was subject to this sort of thing?

Speaker 98 It seemed strange to me that we were spending so much time talking about bug bites. It was almost as if we were trying to steer away from the real issue, which was a fatality crash involving his wife.

Speaker 94 It also seemed strange, he said, that by the time the campers saw Todd, he displayed no evidence of an allergic reaction.

Speaker 28 Of course, Lysette Souter and her people interviewed Mike and Woody, too.

Speaker 48 And they told her, as they told us, that they never forgot how strangely phony Todd seemed when he arrived at their campsite that night.

Speaker 86 Well, he was kind of

Speaker 86 play sobbing, I would say. You know,

Speaker 86 it was some horrible acting going on.

Speaker 92 It wasn't believable.

Speaker 77 They also wondered why, on a warm southern night, was Todd dressed in several layers of heavy clothing.

Speaker 32 Was he protecting himself from a fall he knew he was going to cause?

Speaker 86 He had a lot of extra clothing on, but I remember he also had a toboggan hat on.

Speaker 2 The kind you pull down over your ears yeah and i'm standing there in a t-shirt shorts and flip-flops also why did the accident happen on the one spot in the whole drive that offered a long straight drop hundreds of feet into a deep ravine the steepest cliff possible on that road why did their toyota pickup erupt into flames that might happen in the movies but rarely in real life Why did it look like the fire had been burning for a long time?

Speaker 24 It was the whole side of the mountain. It was a big mountain.

Speaker 23 It had to have been burning an hour or two.

Speaker 86 I would think. Probably closer to two.

Speaker 48 Curiosities.

Speaker 47 Why would he bring her up here to the very top of the mountain to go camping?

Speaker 48 It's an hour's drive over a rutted track to the other campers farther down the hill.

Speaker 47 According to Kathy's family, she didn't like camping at all. So why would he bring her to the most remote possible place?

Speaker 23 No one camps up there unless you want to be

Speaker 47 really secluded.

Speaker 29 And that, said Kathy's brother, was not something she would have wanted.

Speaker 18 Did she like to go camping?

Speaker 98 She'd rather be in a hotel any day over a tent.

Speaker 98 I know my sister.

Speaker 75 Puzzled Kathy's friends, too.

Speaker 83 I was at camping?

Speaker 101 Kathy was not a camper.

Speaker 69 And there was this.

Speaker 98 I recall him

Speaker 98 at some point, Mr. Winkler, saying, do you think I killed my wife?

Speaker 79 Is that a question an innocent man would ask?

Speaker 65 Johnson wondered.

Speaker 72 And when the investigator responded, Johnson remembered thinking, Todd's behavior seemed off, inappropriate.

Speaker 98 If I remember correctly, Special Agent Roberts says, did you?

Speaker 98 And then at that point, he became very emotional, you know, oh, I can't believe.

Speaker 7 And just his...

Speaker 98 His body language and his demeanor was just so over the top.

Speaker 28 But though they may have had their suspicions back in 1999, suspicion alone didn't make the death of Kathy Winkler anything but what it was called at the time, an accident.

Speaker 47 Insurance companies investigated it and paid out because they felt that it was a real accident, and the authorities there couldn't show that it wasn't a real accident.

Speaker 107 So why was it worth you looking at it again?

Speaker 115 Well, we knew a lot more about Todd Winkler at this point. We knew a lot more

Speaker 12 about

Speaker 22 how he goes about

Speaker 22 getting what he wants.

Speaker 75 The more she learned about Kathy Winkler's death, the more it seemed to her that Todd must have planned it all.

Speaker 62 Just as the evidence here in California was telling her that the killing of Rachel Winkler more than a decade later was a case of history, Todd Winkler's history, repeating itself.

Speaker 74 But if she had some crusading idea of finding justice in that old case and using it to solidify her own here in California, she'd have to persuade a judge first.

Speaker 30 Disorder in the court.

Speaker 25 You have no pushilo!

Speaker 5 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

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Speaker 95 Want to sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases? I'm Kayla Moore. And I'm Morgan Abscher.

Speaker 95 And we'd love for you to check out our new show, Clues. From serial killers to shocking cold cases, we dive into the clues that cracked some of the world's most unforgettable investigations.

Speaker 95 Join us every Wednesday and listen to Clues wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 39 Once a long time ago, this part of California was the epicenter of the gold rush.

Speaker 73 Back then, as legend has it at least, there was no wait for justice.

Speaker 56 You committed a crime.

Speaker 58 The punishment was meted out then and there.

Speaker 45 But not now.

Speaker 46 For more than two years after the bloody confrontation in the Winkler's nursery, Todd waited in jail to be tried for his wife Rachel's murder.

Speaker 109 And

Speaker 109 then I just

Speaker 105 started just pacing around the house to say, oh, God, you just killed me.

Speaker 75 For those two years, Todd maintained, as he had from the very beginning, that he killed Rachel only to save his own life, to save himself and his children.

Speaker 39 From jail, he and his family fought a losing battle with Rachel's father, Don Hatfield, who won custody of those children.

Speaker 79 And here began atoning for the sins of his youth.

Speaker 88 by devoting his life to three little kids, Eva, Ariel, and Alex.

Speaker 72 Oh, Ma,

Speaker 6 that's them, baby brother.

Speaker 68 It was after all that that they held the trial.

Speaker 40 Prosecutor Lisette's suitor intended to portray Todd as a manipulative and devious man who murdered not one wife, but two.

Speaker 39 That is, if she could persuade a California judge to allow an old Georgia case to be dusted off and brought back to life.

Speaker 22 I felt confident that I had the law behind me on that, and I submitted my brief, and I submitted the legal arguments that supported that.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 28 she won.

Speaker 74 And so September of 2014, when Todd Winkler went on trial charged with the first-degree murder of his second wife Rachel, the set suitor could use the Georgia story about first wife Kathy's death 15 years earlier against him.

Speaker 56 And the defense

Speaker 63 dismissed the Georgia case out of hand.

Speaker 80 Irrelevant, said Todd's attorney.

Speaker 75 Kathy Winkler's death was thoroughly investigated, he said, and was not ruled a murder because it was not a murder.

Speaker 107 There's no evidence of anything other than an accident.

Speaker 33 Todd's attorney was able to explain away the things that had raised suspicion.

Speaker 80 Kathy's family was wrong, said the defense.

Speaker 15 She loved camping.

Speaker 47 A ranger who saw them making their dinner way up in this remote spot, so far from any other living soul, said they seemed happy.

Speaker 52 And the insurance money, remember that?

Speaker 42 That wasn't motive, just business as usual for a pair of upper-middle-class professionals.

Speaker 107 In addition to the insurance policy of about $1.1 million that Kathy had at the time of her death on her own life, he had $1.2 million on his own life.

Speaker 56 No.

Speaker 37 Kathy and Todd were a young, awkwardly mobile couple.

Speaker 4 Life insurance was cheap, easy to get.

Speaker 37 They both had it.

Speaker 20 Anyway, Todd loved Kathy.

Speaker 82 Why else would he keep her ashes all these years?

Speaker 31 Kathy's death, said the defense, had nothing whatever to do with the event for which Todd was on trial, the death of Rachel Winkler.

Speaker 19 And he wasn't guilty in this case either.

Speaker 107 This is not a murder case, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 107 This is a self-defense case, or at most,

Speaker 107 it's a voluntary manslaughter case.

Speaker 44 There were two good reasons to believe that, said the defense.

Speaker 50 Reason one,

Speaker 96 self-defense.

Speaker 82 As Todd told the police that very first day.

Speaker 39 He was a good guy in a bad situation, said his attorney.

Speaker 80 He worked hard and long hours to support Rachel.

Speaker 97 He wanted to make her happy.

Speaker 88 He was a good dad.

Speaker 35 And for that, she cheated on him, threatened him, and then attacked with those scissors.

Speaker 20 Of course, by that point, Todd told the police, she was a very unstable woman.

Speaker 109 Started drinking, started binge-drinking. I was afraid for the children.
She was just

Speaker 109 spinning into this mental cycle of self-destruction.

Speaker 46 And then Todd's defense revealed this little gem.

Speaker 107 She signed up for California Sweetheart, which is an adult connection, kind of a, you can judge for yourselves what it is.

Speaker 39 Married to a man she'd grown to hate in an affair with a man she was maybe thinking of cheating on, said the defense.

Speaker 34 She was conflicted, said Todd's attorney.

Speaker 15 She was telling people she was afraid of Todd, and yet she sure didn't act like it here.

Speaker 37 Todd and Rachel looked happy.

Speaker 107 Compare it with this photograph taken in Las Vegas just a few days before Rachel died.

Speaker 16 But there was something else, said Todd's attorney.

Speaker 2 And it was reason number two that Rachel's death was not murder.

Speaker 38 And that was that his client had a psychotic breakdown when Rachel attacked him.

Speaker 39 His ability to understand what he was doing was diminished.

Speaker 33 Why should a jury believe that?

Speaker 80 Well, as you'll remember, Rachel herself described Todd as unstable at times, and now the defense presented evidence of what they said was his history of psychotic episodes.

Speaker 16 The first one happened in Asia, something like 20 years earlier when Todd was married to Kathy and was flying with the Fighting Samurai Squadron.

Speaker 34 He was caught shoplifting from a base PX.

Speaker 40 He claimed amnesia.

Speaker 47 So the Air Force sent him off for psychiatric tests.

Speaker 37 But then it got even more bizarre, bizarre and Kathy called her friend Tanya.

Speaker 83 She telephoned me saying I'm in Hawaii.

Speaker 83 Todd had a mental breakdown and so he's in a psychiatric facility.

Speaker 83 She had said to me that he escaped and was in the wooded area in Hawaii for a week or two and when he finally came out of the woods he said that he was a samurai warrior.

Speaker 62 Back then, after months of psychiatric evaluation, Todd was diagnosed with dissociative disorder, a neurosis that warped his view of reality.

Speaker 29 Not exactly what the Air Force wanted in a fighter pilot.

Speaker 107 And because of

Speaker 107 events and determinations by the Air Force psychiatrists,

Speaker 107 he was retired medically with a 50% disability.

Speaker 43 And there was that incident in Amsterdam, remember?

Speaker 44 Rachel told James about it.

Speaker 39 It happened just before he was due to make an important presentation at a conference.

Speaker 32 That time he appeared to blackout, became catatonic, ended up in the hospital where they found nothing wrong with him, and released him.

Speaker 99 Rachel told James he faked the episode.

Speaker 75 But here at the trial, a defense psychiatrist testified that Todd suffered from real mental issues, dissociative disorder, conversion disorder, which meant he could be violent if he felt he was under attack.

Speaker 58 And that awful morning, first he told police, she threatened to sick her well-armed boyfriend on him.

Speaker 109 And she said to him,

Speaker 109 you know, I'm not going to have my boyfriend get rid of you.

Speaker 109 And then she's coming at me with a V of scissors.

Speaker 96 Rachel's dad, Dawn, and self-described soulmate James watched as the defense argued that Todd had no choice but to kill the woman they so loved.

Speaker 107 His state of mind is what

Speaker 107 you really need to pay careful attention to here. He knows that she'll kill him.
He knows that if he stops, if he doesn't end it right then,

Speaker 77 that it could end him.

Speaker 74 All very sad, said the defense, but not murder.

Speaker 63 And what would prosecutor's suitors say about that?

Speaker 56 Simple.

Speaker 13 All that psychiatric stuff, she said, was fakery.

Speaker 74 Todd Winkler may have had or feigned some disorder that got him out of the Air Force, she said, but he killed Rachel.

Speaker 75 And it was murder, deliberate and planned, she said.

Speaker 78 Committed by a man practiced at getting away with things.

Speaker 112 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is a case about a mastermind, a manipulator, a murderer.
This is a case about Todd Winkler and how he brutally murdered Rachel Marie Winkler, his wife.

Speaker 112 mother of his three small children.

Speaker 96 Todd Winkler did not have to fend off a scissor-wielding wife that prosecutor sued her, so it wasn't self-defense.

Speaker 40 And Rachel's death could not be blamed on any mental condition either, any more than the death of another Mrs.

Speaker 94 Winkler in those dark woods so long ago.

Speaker 49 But as she began to tell that part of the story, watch what happened.

Speaker 112 She's found burned to death down a steep embankment where the car went. The car and she burned, and the defendant

Speaker 85 is

Speaker 112 very fine with just a few minor scratches on him.

Speaker 7 You are not salaried!

Speaker 25 Stop!

Speaker 7 You do not speak truth! You only want to destroy!

Speaker 25 You're no pushboard! You're no pushboat!

Speaker 2 Bayless and his lawyer struggled to restrain Todd.

Speaker 12 It looked like the whole trial would be over.

Speaker 9 Whatever happens, somebody had already made up her mind.

Speaker 6 I was told that monsters don't exist. My parents always told me that.
I can tell you with absolute certainty, that is 110%

Speaker 7 false.

Speaker 6 He is a monster.

Speaker 112 She's found burned to death down a steep embankment.

Speaker 40 Just as the prosecutor was laying out her case against Todd Winkler and the killing of his wife Rachel a sudden inexplicable outburst from Todd

Speaker 40 you are not samurai stop you did not speak truth you only want to destroy you have no bushido you have no bushido bushido

Speaker 74 in japanese the way of the warrior the honor-based code of conduct of a samurai.

Speaker 19 Why was Todd Winkler raving about it now?

Speaker 16 Was this another psychotic episode?

Speaker 7 I'll finish.

Speaker 16 Of course, the trial came to a screeching halt.

Speaker 30 A mistrial loomed.

Speaker 7 In the courtroom, Claire.

Speaker 20 But once order was restored, the judge allowed the prosecutor to continue.

Speaker 112 As I was saying, the defendant's former wife, Kathy Winkler, went on a camping trip back on September 26th of 1999 with this defendant. She died in a fiery crash.

Speaker 112 The only witness to the crime was, in fact, this defendant.

Speaker 15 Were there parallels?

Speaker 103 You bet there were, said Prosecutor Souter.

Speaker 64 The deaths of Kathy and Rachel were both cold-blooded, calculated killings.

Speaker 22 He's had now two wives where he has been the one who has been the only witness to a crime.

Speaker 40 But, she said, based on what investigators found, the events at 3 o'clock in the morning in the California airpark airpark were not so hard to determine, and she prepared the jury.

Speaker 56 What happened that night was horrific.

Speaker 40 One, Todd opened Rachel's laptop and found the divorce documents she'd been working on with her boyfriend James.

Speaker 42 That laptop disappeared from its usual place in the Winkler home.

Speaker 46 Number two, he grabbed the scissors from a craft box which was kept on a shelf right above the computer.

Speaker 22 And three, I believe he took a pair of scissors and he went in that room with the intent to kill her. He attacked her while she was sleeping, stabbed her repeatedly in the face and the neck area.

Speaker 22 And I believe at that point, he thought he had killed her and he left her for dead.

Speaker 81 Then, said the prosecutor, as Todd prepared to leave the house, he saw a light had been turned on in the baby's room.

Speaker 22 So that's when he then goes, gets his motorcycle jacket on for padding, for protection, bangs in the door, finds her

Speaker 115 in that

Speaker 115 corner.

Speaker 54 Cowering.

Speaker 115 Cowering.

Speaker 32 Trying to save her own life.

Speaker 49 Correct.

Speaker 62 They knew that Rachel spent some time after the first attack holding her baby.

Speaker 22 Baby Alex's

Speaker 112 onesie was examined.

Speaker 115 And you know that there are drip blood, like being dropped blood up on top of that onesie.

Speaker 22 That's how we know that Rachel was holding that baby.

Speaker 68 Then Todd came back.

Speaker 112 She's in the corner there. She kicks at him.

Speaker 20 Didn't stop him.

Speaker 112 He bare crawls up her body. He takes those scissors and this ex-fighter pilot jams them into her neck and he sits there and lays there on top of her while she slowly dies.

Speaker 16 After that, for seven hours, Todd cleaned up, said the prosecutor, then took his kids to the neighbor's house.

Speaker 97 And then, after dropping the kids at the neighbor's, but before the cops arrived, he took the time to cut his hands to make it look as if he'd been attacked by Rachel.

Speaker 57 How did they know the cuts were self-inflicted? The neighbor said his hands weren't cut when he dropped off the kids.

Speaker 97 And then the prosecutor told the jury about the ashes, Kathy Winkler's ashes, which Rachel discovered months before she was killed.

Speaker 112 And learned how there had been a crash and he had no injuries, and she had died.

Speaker 112 Rachel was upset by this and said, Well, is this how I'm going to turn out? And this defendant's reply was, Well, you're not going to get in my way, are you?

Speaker 40 Rachel knew she was in danger, said Prosecutor Souter, as a doomed young woman had already told her closest friends and family.

Speaker 112 And Rachel explained that this defendant said to Rachel, If you divorce me, you will end up like my last wife.

Speaker 101 She did.

Speaker 74 After 13 days of testimony, the jury got the case.

Speaker 53 They were out one day.

Speaker 116 We, the jury impaneled in the above entitled action, find the defendant Todd Allen Winkler guilty of the crime of first-degree murder.

Speaker 44 No outbursts this time, no breakdown.

Speaker 20 The former fighter pilot sat quietly and listened.

Speaker 16 He got 26 years to life.

Speaker 2 It was over for Todd.

Speaker 52 But not for anyone else.

Speaker 8 Not really.

Speaker 96 As James White's daughter Caitlin told us.

Speaker 6 I was told that monsters don't exist. My parents always told me that.

Speaker 6 And after going through that trial and seeing what I had to see, I can tell you with absolute certainty that that is 110%

Speaker 7 false.

Speaker 6 He is a monster.

Speaker 63 And Rachel's men.

Speaker 93 We weren't surprised to hear that James has his own idea of what justice might be.

Speaker 71 Did you have any thoughts about what would happen if the justice system didn't

Speaker 18 look after Todd in a way that seemed reasonable to you?

Speaker 17 He would have been dealt with.

Speaker 85 By whom?

Speaker 65 Me.

Speaker 48 You know, they could have put you in prison for life.

Speaker 17 It would have been a one-way mission. He and I are both going to go down together.
I'm not going to shoot him. I'm going to kill him with my two bare hands.

Speaker 17 I'm going to do to him what he did to Rachel.

Speaker 73 Tim Charrington, the man who failed to commit and then watched the love of his life go on to her terrible end, has his own way of taking revenge.

Speaker 44 Mostly on himself.

Speaker 47 Kind of a tragic love story from your point of view.

Speaker 66 It is.

Speaker 56 It is.

Speaker 71 I mean, this is a woman you could have spent the rest of your life with.

Speaker 66 Very, very easily could.

Speaker 92 Yes.

Speaker 66 I should have pulled the trigger when I had that chance, you know.

Speaker 12 I blew it.

Speaker 66 I didn't, you know, give her the ring earlier.

Speaker 65 Well, you're still paying for it, aren't you?

Speaker 66 Yeah, yes, I am. Yeah.

Speaker 66 that's a tough one

Speaker 101 different kind of thinking across the country among the friends of that other mrs winkler the one whose death on a lonely mountain road is still officially labeled accident i mean this is a beautiful woman who has who gave so much was so nurturing and caring i don't feel like there's been justice for kathy i think about kathy's death all the time about whether she could somehow have done more to prevent a second death the murder of Rachel Winkler.

Speaker 83 My heart breaks for those children. I wish I could hug them all and tell them I'm so sorry that I didn't

Speaker 76 press harder

Speaker 83 to make them open this case or

Speaker 83 be that strong person that I was.

Speaker 83 I apologize.

Speaker 58 And someday, said Don Hatfield, he'll find the words to tell the story to Rachel's children.

Speaker 43 Ariel, Alex, and Eva.

Speaker 10 This whole story is a mixture of

Speaker 10 murder and blood and failings and grace and Jesus and heaven and God. And so there's some real craziness to it.
But that's the character of my life and some of Rachel's life. And

Speaker 10 it's just kind of life in general.

Speaker 72 In the meantime, he said, he's trying to be the kind of parent he wasn't with his own children,

Speaker 103 but is now for Rachel.

Speaker 10 I believe it's my destiny to raise them. I intend to do that.
You know,

Speaker 10 with God's help.

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