After the Party

Transcript

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Speaker 8 It was a small New Year's Eve party. We took off.
And then shortly thereafter we saw the police car. My gut was telling my feet to run back to that house.
This can't be happening.

Speaker 9 When the party ended, the mystery began.

Speaker 8 It was just crazy. I didn't understand what was happening and why.

Speaker 9 His wife, the hostess, had seemed fine all night.

Speaker 10 Then...

Speaker 9 Her death was ruled a suicide, but not everyone agreed.

Speaker 8 I always was afraid he was going to hurt her.

Speaker 11 Always.

Speaker 12 Did a fight that night lead to something much worse?

Speaker 14 I knew that Ashley wouldn't take her own life.

Speaker 9 A troubled woman or a troubled marriage?

Speaker 15 That wound on the back of her head isn't where she could do it herself, Tom.

Speaker 16 It is not.

Speaker 18 It is not true.

Speaker 9 Suicide or murder.

Speaker 13 I didn't do this.

Speaker 8 I just knew that my whole

Speaker 11 world

Speaker 8 is never going to be the same again, ever.

Speaker 9 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with After the Party.

Speaker 7 What is so optimistic as a party on New Year's Eve?

Speaker 21 What night is hopeful, as full of anticipation, as the clean slate midnight brings?

Speaker 8 It was a small New Year's Eve party. Just family and friends.

Speaker 23 Disappointment is inevitable, of course.

Speaker 25 Clean slates, no matter how ardently desired, are messy all too soon.

Speaker 14 We noticed that there was a lot of alcohol out.

Speaker 13 Still, we celebrate possibilities and drown past sorrows and watch the clock that ticks toward our new beginnings

Speaker 1 and our ends.

Speaker 23 On December 31st, 2011, an hour north of Denver in West Evans, Colorado, Ashley and Tom Fallus, surrounded by friends and family, danced to the music that brought them together, their wedding song.

Speaker 8 They decided to get up and dance in the middle of their living room.

Speaker 22 Everybody watching.

Speaker 8 With everyone watching.

Speaker 4 And romantic.

Speaker 8 I mean, I think I said, like, oh, this is sweet.

Speaker 31 It was their party, Ashley's and Tom's.

Speaker 25 She'd invited her co-workers, like Andrea.

Speaker 8 It was casual, but she verbally told everyone at work, like, you should come.

Speaker 31 They worked together at a rehabilitation hospital where ashley was a respiratory therapist she was crazy nice

Speaker 32 crazy

Speaker 3 yeah just full of energy she was a happy person just laughed a lot and joked their friendship was new andrea didn't know a lot about ashley but had listened to her chatter about jobs and marriages and her three kids the youngest of whom was born with a dangerous condition called hydrocephalus, which causes life-threatening fluid buildup in the brain.

Speaker 8 She talked about it a lot.

Speaker 18 Did she?

Speaker 8 Yeah, but I didn't get the impression that she felt burdened by it by any means. Like I felt like that was the cards that she was dealt.

Speaker 33 Well, in fact, she embraced the challenge, said Ashley's mom, Jenna, became a public advocate.

Speaker 8 She went to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2011 to speak before Congress for funding for hydrocephalus.
So she had a full plate.

Speaker 37 So did Tom, for that matter.

Speaker 38 I like Tom.

Speaker 12 He was a pretty good guy,

Speaker 38 very intelligent.

Speaker 23 Jeff Rodriguez was Tom's boss at the Weld County Jail.

Speaker 31 They were corrections officers.

Speaker 38 He was a good employee. He had a son that was sick, so he did miss more work than what most fellow officers liked.

Speaker 42 Stressful, draining thing, caring for a sick child.

Speaker 43 So maybe their New Year's Eve party was a way to hope for better times and take a break, too.

Speaker 27 Ashley's adoptive dad, Joel, was at the party.

Speaker 14 There was dancing going on. People were having a good time.

Speaker 23 And Ashley seemed to be having a fine time, said Andrea.

Speaker 45 She and Tom seemed to be getting on fine.

Speaker 8 They seemed to be getting along fine.

Speaker 12 That's when Ashley and Andrea went off into the kitchen, had a little party of their own.

Speaker 2 What were you drinking?

Speaker 8 Jungle juice and jello shots.

Speaker 47 I've heard of jello shots.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 36 But what's jungle juice?

Speaker 8 Just juice of whatever kind, and then vodka and Everclear, whatever kind of hard alcohol.

Speaker 18 Oh my. Yeah.

Speaker 8 I was having a good time. I intended to have a good time.

Speaker 2 There was one unusual thing, though, said Andrea.

Speaker 37 Ashley had just gone through something kind of awful.

Speaker 8 She found out that she had a miscarriage that day and I said, oh, I'm sorry. Like, are you okay? And, oh, yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 1 Didn't strike you as odd.

Speaker 8 No, I didn't think that it was odd.

Speaker 45 Was she unhappy about the miscarriage?

Speaker 8 My impression of it is she

Speaker 8 already has her beautiful family. It seemed like her life was already complete.
So I don't think that she was devastated that she had

Speaker 8 found out that she had a miscarriage.

Speaker 26 No tears, Andrea said, just a quick casual mention.

Speaker 30 And then the conversation moved on.

Speaker 40 Went on to talk about other things.

Speaker 8 Went on to talk about other things. Probably went and got another.

Speaker 37 Midnight arrived.

Speaker 3 There were, as there always are, kisses and smiles and toasts.

Speaker 19 By 12:30, the party was over.

Speaker 8 I gave her a hug, told her bye, we talked about future plans.

Speaker 43 How did she seem?

Speaker 18 Happy.

Speaker 1 But oh, how quickly the New Year's clean slate darkened.

Speaker 23 As an uncle prepared to leave, Ashley asked him for a bit of his marijuana to smoke later, she said.

Speaker 23 Tom, the sheriff's department employee, was furious and reminded Ashley's family that her employer required regular drug tests.

Speaker 6 Was it the alcohol that amped up the family's screaming match?

Speaker 4 Whatever.

Speaker 39 Ashley's parents have their own recollections.

Speaker 8 He walks by me and he says that he hated us all and wished we would all bleep and die. And he went into the bedroom and slammed the door.

Speaker 14 Ashley came out of the bathroom and was just kind of like, what's going on? And we're like, well, we're going to leave.

Speaker 8 And then she's like, hey, I'm having a Super Bowl party in a couple weeks. You know, don't forget about that.

Speaker 41 But Ashley's parents were rattled.

Speaker 34 They drove away, then pulled off to the side of the road to talk.

Speaker 23 Ashley's mom sent a text to Tom.

Speaker 8 And I'm like, you know, hey, there's kids in the house, calm down.

Speaker 2 Which arrived as their young granddaughter was involved in quite another discussion with 911.

Speaker 10 Can you go open the door and let the officers in?

Speaker 9 The new year was less than an hour old and off to a very bad start. When we return,

Speaker 35 chaos.

Speaker 11 It was shocking.

Speaker 9 A frantic race to save a life.

Speaker 50 What happened in that house?

Speaker 8 I just knew that my whole

Speaker 11 world

Speaker 23 2012 was not even an hour old.

Speaker 7 New Year's celebrants had only just poured themselves into their cars to head home.

Speaker 37 And in a little house in West Evans, Colorado, it was already the worst year ever.

Speaker 10 What's the address of your emergency?

Speaker 23 The man on the phone was Tom Fallus, begging for help and willing his wife to live.

Speaker 1 No!

Speaker 10 Sir!

Speaker 6 Tom told the dispatcher, she shot herself.

Speaker 43 Then he put the phone down.

Speaker 23 He was holding his hand to her head, trying in vain to stop the bleeding.

Speaker 50 So he had his nine-year-old daughter pick up the phone. Honey, are you there?

Speaker 10 Okay, can you go open the door and let the officers in? No. Okay.

Speaker 10 Okay, okay, we're going to hug her. I need to go open the door.

Speaker 6 Brian Spencer was a Weld County Sheriff's Deputy back then.

Speaker 31 He arrived within minutes to discover that the local police, the Evans police, had beaten him there.

Speaker 51 I believe there was three there ahead of me, and then there was more sirens light. You could hear them coming.

Speaker 12 It's a pretty fast response.

Speaker 51 Very fast.

Speaker 52 And this bit of news was going around fast, too.

Speaker 51 This was a sheriff's employee, a jail employee.

Speaker 29 Not that that should matter.

Speaker 53 The effort then was to save Ashley Fallas' life.

Speaker 33 This was recorded by a police body camera.

Speaker 12 It shows the paramedics arriving.

Speaker 2 Chaotic? The scene?

Speaker 51 Very frantic. The officers located Ashley Fallus somewhere in the home.

Speaker 33 The local police took charge.

Speaker 22 They asked Brian Spencer to watch the front of the property.

Speaker 33 And that's when, from his post on the front porch, he saw Tom.

Speaker 23 That's him in the background in the white t-shirt.

Speaker 51 He was pacing around in the front yard and front sidewalk area, frantic, screaming.

Speaker 41 Screaming what, do you remember?

Speaker 51 I heard him say she's dead. A lot of mumbled stuff.
He would put his hands up over his face and screaming and crying.

Speaker 34 By this time, Ashley's parents had pulled off the road home to talk and worry about the fight that ended the party.

Speaker 12 When they heard the sirens, saw the lights flash by, headed that way,

Speaker 14 something automatically felt bad. And

Speaker 14 I whipped a U-turn.

Speaker 8 He didn't have the car stopped and I was out running to the house.

Speaker 33 Were you able to go and see Ashley?

Speaker 47 Were you able to?

Speaker 8 No,

Speaker 8 I could hear what was going on. I had all three kids and they were just crying and crying and screaming and I'm crying.

Speaker 20 See, it was just crazy.

Speaker 14 It was like a nightmare. I can see blood splatter on the wall, the master bedroom wall.

Speaker 18 What was that like?

Speaker 18 Chaos.

Speaker 14 It was shocking.

Speaker 45 Do you understand it was your daughter?

Speaker 54 Yes.

Speaker 14 I do recall just

Speaker 14 being hysterically upset and crying and thinking that this can't be happening to my daughter. This can't be happening to us.

Speaker 14 But yet it was.

Speaker 36 Inside the master bedroom, Ashley was alive, but the wounds to her head were catastrophic.

Speaker 42 The police body camera shows officers kneeling on the floor trying to stabilize her condition.

Speaker 51 Paramedics went in and they made a decision to do what we call a load and go, which means they're not going to spend any time doing life support stuff.

Speaker 22 Ashley's mom, Jenna, huddled with her grandchildren in a neighboring bedroom, listened to it all through a closed door.

Speaker 47 Is there any way to describe what it's like for a mother to be in that situation?

Speaker 8 No. Your brain does funny things.
I just knew that my whole

Speaker 11 world

Speaker 36 Outside, Brian Spencer watched Tom pacing back and forth, crying, talking to himself.

Speaker 51 I notice he's wearing a white t-shirt and he's covered, I believe it was on his left side, in a large amount of blood.

Speaker 37 It was odd, Brian thought, that the Evans police officers didn't take Tom's clothes or bag his hands for gunshot residue.

Speaker 51 He still had evidence on him, and he needed to be preserved. He needed to be controlled.
He needed to be processed.

Speaker 2 And clothing removed, everything.

Speaker 40 But that's not not what happened. Not at all.

Speaker 21 And soon after Ashley was rushed off to the ER,

Speaker 49 Tom got in the back of a squad car and was driven away.

Speaker 4 But surprisingly, not to the hospital.

Speaker 9 Coming up, Tom tells his story.

Speaker 56 I heard her gun caught and I looked out.

Speaker 26 I was like, I was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 9 But police don't seem to believe it.

Speaker 9 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 41 In the first cold, dark hours of 2012, Ashley Fallus's parents followed an ambulance to the hospital and caught up to her in the ICU.

Speaker 8 We walked into her,

Speaker 38 um,

Speaker 8 bleeding out of everywhere.

Speaker 7 There wasn't really any hope.

Speaker 3 They could see that.

Speaker 30 She was going to die.

Speaker 8 I just sat down

Speaker 8 and held her hand.

Speaker 37 But Tom wasn't there to hold her hand.

Speaker 25 Tom Fallus was at the Evans police station answering questions.

Speaker 59 I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 59 I have no idea, and that's why I'm asking to speak with you.

Speaker 33 It was 2 a.m., and Tom was still wearing bloodstained clothes, the ones Sheriff's Deputy thought should have already been bagged as evidence.

Speaker 59 How is your relationship with your wife?

Speaker 10 Really good.

Speaker 33 But, said Tom, Ashley was devastated when she miscarried the very day of her New Year's Eve party.

Speaker 56 It was hard for Ashley. It was hard for me.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 45 I didn't think that

Speaker 56 it was just getting to this point.

Speaker 37 Still, at the party itself, said Tom, she seemed all right.

Speaker 50 They got on fine until the argument about the marijuana.

Speaker 23 Tom admitted he was furious at Ashley's family, said he was trying to protect her, and they weren't.

Speaker 56 I told Ashley, I was like, you don't need to get high.

Speaker 56 I was like,

Speaker 1 if

Speaker 56 whatever happened today with the miscarriage, I was like, it happened. I was like, you know what?

Speaker 29 F ⁇ your mom.

Speaker 56 F ⁇ everybody.

Speaker 41 So there was no love loss between Tom and Ashley's parents.

Speaker 36 That was clear.

Speaker 23 And Tom admitted that he and Ashley kept arguing as they got ready for bed.

Speaker 12 And then he turned around and went to the closet, he said, and it was all over.

Speaker 56 But while I was in the closet, I heard her gun caught and I looked out. I was like, I was like, what are you doing? And before I even had a chance to finish my sentence or close the door.

Speaker 1 There's smoke.

Speaker 1 I heard it. There's a smoke.

Speaker 56 I just ran over to her and I just grabbed her head.

Speaker 43 Tom told detectives that sadly he had been worried about just this sort of thing for more than a year because Ashley had threatened suicide before.

Speaker 59 What was she saying that she wanted to do to herself?

Speaker 56 Oh, just that she wants to end it. She's like, you and the kids would be better off without me.

Speaker 59 And so she had just said those words, but she never acted on anything. No.

Speaker 59 And so, how long has she?

Speaker 56 Never once, never once has she ever grabbed her gun. Has she ever loaded it?

Speaker 56 Has she ever

Speaker 56 made this type of gesture whatsoever?

Speaker 48 By this time, well, the doctors tried to save Ashley.

Speaker 41 Tom had been answering questions for hours.

Speaker 59 I have to ask these questions that that I have to understand.

Speaker 56 But the problem is, is that I've been here since freaking what, two o'clock, and now it's already five o'clock and I don't know what's going on with my wife.

Speaker 1 About then, the detective noticed something else about Tom.

Speaker 59 The scratch mark that's on your chest, what is that?

Speaker 59 You have like a long red scratch.

Speaker 56 Oh, probably because I've been doing this all freaking night.

Speaker 44 Okay.

Speaker 59 This one just goes straight across here.

Speaker 16 Oh, probably.

Speaker 56 I don't know. It's just me.
It's not.

Speaker 59 Okay, so it isn't. And I just had to ask.

Speaker 33 The detective left the room and spoke with Ashley's parents, who'd arrived with the purpose of telling officers just one thing.

Speaker 25 Their daughter did not shoot herself.

Speaker 8 We had just seen her seven minutes before this. She was completely fine.
You know, she wouldn't do anything like this.

Speaker 7 She was in good spirits when they left, they said.

Speaker 23 She was already planning her next party.

Speaker 46 But Tom, he'd always had an awful temper, they said.

Speaker 8 I always was afraid he was going to hurt her. Always.

Speaker 11 Always.

Speaker 18 Why? What about him?

Speaker 8 His temper.

Speaker 8 You can't go from zero to a hundred and think clearly.

Speaker 14 I think that he was just in a fit of rage and he shot her.

Speaker 43 Armed with that new information, the detective went back to talk to Tom and zeroed in on those scratches.

Speaker 48 Officers had given him something clean to wear so they could collect his bloody clothing.

Speaker 59 And you have scratches on your body.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 56 See this? This is a shaved chest. Do you know how bad this hurt and itches?

Speaker 56 So when I'm sitting there, I do this all freaking day. This is actually her blood.

Speaker 41 It comes off.

Speaker 44 See?

Speaker 56 Oh my gosh, it's coming off. It's her freaking blood.

Speaker 59 That's actually a scratch. Okay? That's a scratch.

Speaker 49 Still, the detective pressed him.

Speaker 33 He had motive and opportunity, she said.

Speaker 60 So when you went upstairs, upstairs, you were arguing with her. And you know you were arguing with her.

Speaker 13 She was also reluctant to believe the shooting happened so quickly.

Speaker 23 No threats or warnings or hesitation.

Speaker 60 She went from saying, I'm going to do what I want to just pulling.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 44 Yeah,

Speaker 44 she did.

Speaker 45 I'm not lying to you.

Speaker 41 And when the detective gave a description about the gunshot wound, a description that turned out to be inaccurate, that really set Tom off.

Speaker 1 Go!

Speaker 1 And then, quite suddenly, in the middle of it all, completely out of nowhere,

Speaker 23 the detective made an abrupt declaration.

Speaker 60 And I have to let you know: your wife did not make it.

Speaker 59 Your wife did not make it.

Speaker 59 She was was breathing when I was holding her.

Speaker 1 She was breathing.

Speaker 17 They told me she was breathing when she left the house.

Speaker 37 Ashley died while Tom was in police custody.

Speaker 56 I didn't shoot my wife. I didn't shoot the mother of my kids.

Speaker 17 I didn't shoot the person who I wanted to have another one with.

Speaker 54 What would the police believe?

Speaker 27 Tom's story that the shooting was a suicide?

Speaker 46 Or Ashley's parents' story that he'd shot their daughter in a fit of rage.

Speaker 9 Coming up, Ashley's family is outraged by the investigation's final report.

Speaker 8 It was incomplete. It was inconsistent.
No follow-up. It was unbelievable.

Speaker 9 Then, a new investigation turns up, a new witness.

Speaker 8 I'm going to start crying because it's the catalyst for opening everything up. I finally have someone who's taking it seriously.

Speaker 7 Ashley Fallus, 28 years old, wife and mother of three, was dead.

Speaker 22 The gunshot wound in her head, unsurvivable.

Speaker 42 It was suicide, said her husband, Tom.

Speaker 56 I didn't shoot my wife.

Speaker 18 I didn't...

Speaker 13 I didn't do this.

Speaker 25 It was murder, said her parents.

Speaker 8 I had three grandkids that I dearly, dearly loved that

Speaker 8 I knew in my heart that Tom had just killed their mother.

Speaker 21 The news of Ashley's death spread quickly the morning after the party.

Speaker 8 I didn't understand what was happening and why, because everything was fine

Speaker 1 that night.

Speaker 20 This was confusing as anything.

Speaker 8 Very confusing. She was happy.
She didn't seem suicidal.

Speaker 33 Andrea, new friend, co-worker, drinking buddy at the party, couldn't shake a feeling.

Speaker 8 I don't feel like she would have taken her life. Tom was the only other person that was there.

Speaker 18 So it wasn't her ad to be in. Right.

Speaker 5 But for all their middle-of-the-night questions, the police did not arrest Tom, nor charge him with anything.

Speaker 40 What were they telling you along the way?

Speaker 8 Oh, that they were investigating it.

Speaker 25 At Ashley's funeral, Tom was one of the speakers.

Speaker 56 Ashley didn't have much patience.

Speaker 54 And what he said wasn't the sort of thing people expected to hear.

Speaker 19 She always said, I don't care when you do it, where you do it.

Speaker 40 I want it now. I want it.

Speaker 25 It was an unusual and, frankly, not very emotional eulogy for reasons only Tom might understand.

Speaker 21 But her parents were furious.

Speaker 14 When he had that opportunity to speak and share about the woman he so-called loved

Speaker 14 and called his eternal wife,

Speaker 14 all he did

Speaker 14 was

Speaker 14 degrade her.

Speaker 54 What was it like to hear that?

Speaker 14 It was shocking. It was unbelievable.

Speaker 23 As the days turned into weeks and Tom remained free, Ashley's parents became convinced that something about the investigation was not right.

Speaker 8 Joel and I sat down and said, look,

Speaker 8 if for some crazy reason she walked in the house and shot herself and they can show that, we will accept it and support Tom. We didn't feel like that was, you know, the case.

Speaker 50 They weren't alone. Remember, on the night it happened, former deputy Brian Spencer saw Tom roaming around freely with blood and other potential evidence all over him.

Speaker 51 Police 101, very basic thing. Any scene that you respond to, you want to treat it as the highest level of what it could possibly be.

Speaker 3 So he would be a suspect.

Speaker 51 And he needed to be preserved. He needed to be controlled.

Speaker 41 But none of that was done at the scene.

Speaker 37 Pretty soon, Ashley's parents began to suspect there was a cover-up to protect Tom.

Speaker 23 Perhaps the so-called blue wall of silence, looking out for a fellow law enforcement officer.

Speaker 52 It's a hell of an accusation to make, though.

Speaker 35 It is.

Speaker 14 It is strong, but that is how we feel.

Speaker 31 Mind you, the Evans Police Department strongly disagreed. Both the coroner and the crime scene investigator issued reports concluding Ashley's death was indeed suicide.

Speaker 23 And remember, Tom told the police she'd expressed suicidal thoughts before.

Speaker 31 And she had two close relatives who'd taken their own lives.

Speaker 29 And investigators found prescription psychotropic drugs in Ashley's purse and nightstand, which Tom told them she quit cold turkey without medical supervision when she learned she was pregnant.

Speaker 23 And so, two months after Ashley's death, her parents got the news they feared.

Speaker 26 Police ruled her death a suicide.

Speaker 54 Case closed.

Speaker 14 It made me angry.

Speaker 14 It made me angry because I knew, I knew that

Speaker 14 he shot her.

Speaker 14 I knew that Ashley wouldn't take her own life.

Speaker 8 Once the case closed and we got the police report, we realized they didn't do anything.

Speaker 22 So tell me more about the police report and what you didn't like about it.

Speaker 8 It was incomplete. It was inconsistent.
Could have been written by a high school student. No follow-up.

Speaker 50 It was unbelievable.

Speaker 23 The Evans Police Department declined to speak with Dateline on camera, but said this about the allegations against them.

Speaker 36 The investigation we conducted was thorough and complete.

Speaker 29 A conclusion of suicide was determined after an exhaustive review and analysis of all evidence, physical, forensic, and testimonial, by all of the five agencies involved.

Speaker 43 As for Ashley's parents,

Speaker 23 There was nothing more either of them could do, apparently. And two years went by, during which Tom moved to Indiana with the kids and enrolled at a local university.

Speaker 8 And I said to him, Tom, murderers always move away.

Speaker 23 It was important to Ashley's parents to remain close to those three kids, so they fought for grandparents' rights and tried, they said, to be civil with Tom.

Speaker 25 But they also told anybody who'd listened that they believed their daughter had been murdered, like a local reporter.

Speaker 8 And he said, do you mind if I start looking into this? And I said, Joel, and I said, no, go ahead. Start looking into it.
And it didn't take him much.

Speaker 33 The reporter asked around, talked to neighbors, and asked the Evans Police Department to comment on what he'd heard.

Speaker 41 And before you knew it, the chief announced Ashley's case would be reopened.

Speaker 61 I extend my sincere sympathy to the family of Ashley Fallus for their loss and for the revisited grief. that can accompany the reopening of a difficult case such as this one.

Speaker 8 I start crying because it's the catalyst for opening everything up. I finally have someone who's taking it seriously.

Speaker 13 Denver's Fox 31 aired the startling discoveries that prompted the new investigation.

Speaker 4 In particular, a neighbor who was only 15 at the time said he heard Tom admit to shooting Ashley.

Speaker 62 It's pretty hard to forget hearing somebody confess their murder and then getting away with it.

Speaker 33 To prevent any suggestion of taint or cover-up, the case was turned over to the nearby Fort Collins Police Department.

Speaker 26 For the next seven months, officers talked to witnesses, both old and new, and hired experts to re-examine forensic evidence.

Speaker 5 And when their work was done, Well County DA Michael Rourke decided to assemble a grand jury.

Speaker 38 What I want to do is, I want to put all of that information, as much as we can gather, and almost use it as a test run.

Speaker 52 And they said.

Speaker 38 And they indicted him.

Speaker 8 And I got the phone call that

Speaker 8 they indicted him, but I just started crying.

Speaker 25 Tom Fallas was arrested in Indiana, charged with second-degree murder, and brought back to Colorado to stand trial.

Speaker 29 Ashley's parents were finally optimistic.

Speaker 14 I believe that they will find him guilty of murdering our daughter. I believe that's going to happen.

Speaker 42 Have you decided to believe it, or do you really believe it?

Speaker 18 I really believe it.

Speaker 9 Coming up, a powerful one-two punch from the prosecution.

Speaker 62 I heard him saying, oh my God, what have I done?

Speaker 63 She said, I could hear her screaming, get off me, get off me.

Speaker 9 Case closed?

Speaker 27 Far from it.

Speaker 9 When dateline continues.

Speaker 64 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 64 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 64 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 64 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 37 Four years after Ashley Fallace's death, her husband Tom was on trial for murder.

Speaker 24 Dan Grossman of NBC's NBC's Denver affiliate, KUSA, was in the courtroom for opening statements.

Speaker 57 The room was packed.

Speaker 66 You have Ashley's parents who were there, a lot of family members, aunts, uncles, and even just people from the public who were interested in this case.

Speaker 27 The prosecution's allegation was perfectly clear.

Speaker 33 Tom Fallas argued with his wife and, in a fit of rage, shot and killed her.

Speaker 67 At the conclusion of this case, after you've received all of the evidence, you will be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it is him

Speaker 15 who pulled the trigger.

Speaker 33 Prosecution witnesses said Ashley was in high spirits at her New Year's Eve party not at all suicidal.

Speaker 8 She was happy the whole night laughing smiling.

Speaker 67 She was dancing with her children interacting with all the guests.

Speaker 1 Tom though?

Speaker 43 Ashley's uncle John testified about Tom's sudden blow-up when he discovered Ashley asked him for a joint.

Speaker 43 And I was sort of taken back by it because everything was fun that night and then all all of a sudden, boom.

Speaker 18 So I was like, whoa.

Speaker 37 A neighbor said Ashley told her how Tom got physical with her.

Speaker 68 She told me how he had pushed her around before.

Speaker 68 He had never hit her, but he was physical and pushing her.

Speaker 41 D.A. Rourke wanted the jury to hear that Tom had a hot temper, that he was volatile.

Speaker 38 Anger would have been the most obvious motive.

Speaker 45 Simply lost his temper. Anger.

Speaker 41 Gun nearby.

Speaker 18 Bang. Right.

Speaker 1 To prove it, the witness,

Speaker 37 ear witness, you could say,

Speaker 25 Nick Glover, the neighbor whose story was reported on television and helped reopen the case.

Speaker 62 I heard him saying, oh my God, what have I done? Oh my God, what have I done?

Speaker 22 Nick was 15 at the time.

Speaker 37 He said he remembered crouching down inside his house under an open window, listening to Tom speak to people in his driveway.

Speaker 62 You can hear one of them, I do not know who it was,

Speaker 62 say what?

Speaker 62 What do you mean?

Speaker 35 and he proceeded to say I shot my wife Nick said he knew it was Tom he could see him out the window how certain are you that the voice you're hearing is Tom Ballis' voice I'm 100%

Speaker 1 there was more

Speaker 6 Nick's mom Kathy Glover testified that on the night of the shooting she got a strange phone call from a teenage neighbor around 1 a.m.

Speaker 63 She said, please tell me called the police. And I said, no, I didn't.
Why? And she said, because your neighbor just shot his wife.

Speaker 8 And I said, what?

Speaker 63 And she said, I could hear her screaming, get off me, get off me.

Speaker 1 Powerful evidence.

Speaker 42 And then that neighbor testified.

Speaker 2 But, uh-oh.

Speaker 70 Do you recall telling Kathy Glover in a phone conversation that same early morning, I heard

Speaker 70 her screaming. Get off me, get off me.

Speaker 64 I do not.

Speaker 70 She was 16 and drinking that night, she said so that might explain her faulty memory do you recall telling officer crocent that you heard a female yelling get off of me get off of me i do not did you expect that from her yeah

Speaker 38 it didn't surprise me it hurt you though it hurt but i thought that you know when you have a police officer who interviews her within an hour hour and a half of this shooting and she as clear as day is saying these are the things i heard from my back window whether she had been drinking that night or not to me that's the most believable version of events.

Speaker 53 So a hiccup, perhaps.

Speaker 12 But then there was the crime scene.

Speaker 23 Remember, the coroner and the CSI officer said at the time that the scene screamed suicide.

Speaker 26 But this prosecution witness? My name is Jonathan W.

Speaker 71 Priest.

Speaker 33 Priest is a former homicide detective and forensic consultant who used a miniature model of the Phallas bedroom to show Ashley's position.

Speaker 71 So she has to be here and then bent down so that she'll fit into this trajectory area.

Speaker 25 He was convinced that if Ashley shot herself, there would be more blood on the floor and surrounding surfaces, not just this one carpet stain.

Speaker 71 We have indications of

Speaker 71 bleeding,

Speaker 71 the type of injury that we're talking about is going to bleed a lot.

Speaker 71 And that's not the kind of stain I would expect to see if that's what was occurring. Something is keeping that blood from reaching that area.

Speaker 37 And he believed that something was Tom Fallus.

Speaker 23 Remember, his clothing was drenched with blood, and the priest concluded Tom and Ashley must have been in close contact when the gun went off.

Speaker 21 Using the prosecutor, he suggested there was a struggle when the shot was fired.

Speaker 71 I can keep bloodstaining from getting onto the wall or onto the cabinet, and I can lower her, continuing to bleed,

Speaker 71 onto my shirt to where I get her in this position.

Speaker 21 The prosecution rested its case.

Speaker 50 What possible defense could there be?

Speaker 50 Well, for a start,

Speaker 54 this.

Speaker 67 I have so much pain on the inside, I can no longer take it.

Speaker 18 A letter.

Speaker 1 And what a letter it was.

Speaker 9 Coming up.

Speaker 9 A troubled marriage or a troubled young woman.

Speaker 67 What kind of mental health issues did you observe Ashley Falls to be going through?

Speaker 8 Mood swings?

Speaker 68 Impulsive behaviors.

Speaker 9 And the verdict.

Speaker 41 It can't be an easy thing for a juror imagining a moment he or she didn't see.

Speaker 12 And deciding what must have happened.

Speaker 13 Did Tom Thallas kill his wife, wife, Ashley, in a fit of violent temper?

Speaker 24 Or what?

Speaker 67 Tom Fallis did not kill his wife and mother of their three children.

Speaker 67 Ashley Fallis committed suicide.

Speaker 34 Remember how the prosecution talked of Ashley's happy frame of mind?

Speaker 29 That, Ashley, was a kind of lie, said the defense.

Speaker 67 Ashley Fallis was a beautiful woman,

Speaker 67 but she had a terrible pain inside.

Speaker 67 She was mentally ill.

Speaker 12 The defense put one of Ashley's close friends on the stand.

Speaker 67 What did you know of Ashley having a mental illness?

Speaker 8 I knew that she was on medications.

Speaker 8 We spoke pretty in-depth about that.

Speaker 33 But even with medications, the friend testified, Ashley had trouble controlling her emotions.

Speaker 67 What kind of mental health issues did you observe Ashley Fallast to be going through?

Speaker 8 Decision, mood swings,

Speaker 68 impulsive behaviors.

Speaker 27 In fact, the defense argued Ashley was so depressed the summer before she died, she wrote this letter to Tom.

Speaker 67 I have so much pain on the inside, I can no longer take it.

Speaker 67 I'm sorry to do this to you and the kids, but I find myself not even liking my children.

Speaker 21 Every day is a chore with them and you.

Speaker 37 I have to pretend to be happy.

Speaker 33 I have to pretend to be someone I am not.

Speaker 7 Please make sure you raise the kids to continue to go to the school we have chosen.

Speaker 46 I do love them.

Speaker 30 I just can't take this life any longer.

Speaker 7 Please make sure you let them know every day that I do love them and this was not their fault.

Speaker 49 Suicide expert Dr.

Speaker 37 Michael Allen studied the letter as well as Ashley's medical records and testified about his review.

Speaker 67 Do you have an opinion in this case about whether or not Ashley Fallas was a high risk to commit suicide on January 1st, 2012?

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 11 My opinion is that she had many, many risk factors and warning signs.

Speaker 33 Remember, detectives had learned years before that Ashley had a family history of suicide.

Speaker 50 Both her maternal uncle and her grandmother took their own lives.

Speaker 46 And that, said Dr.

Speaker 6 Allen, put Ashley at a higher risk for doing the same same thing.

Speaker 11 Two close family members who had died by suicide would suggest a genetic propensity for suicide.

Speaker 33 The defense argued that on New Year's Eve 2011, it was the miscarriage that broke her will to go on.

Speaker 33 that she spent the night masking her pain with alcohol, that she planned to dull it further with marijuana after the party.

Speaker 41 And that's why Tom was upset.

Speaker 67 She was vulnerable.

Speaker 67 He was concerned about her.

Speaker 67 He didn't want her to add marijuana

Speaker 67 to this toxic system that was developing inside of Ashley Fallus.

Speaker 24 The defense conceded Ashley and Tom quarreled that night, but insisted it never got physical.

Speaker 21 Those scratches on Tom's chest, the ones the prosecutors believed were proof of a struggle, DNA tests never found any evidence to support that.

Speaker 67 You did did not find any of Ashley Fallus' DNA cellular material on the swabs from Tom's chest, correct? That is correct.

Speaker 42 The defense reminded jurors that Tom told the police why he had the scratches, that he'd done a little manscaping to spice up his marriage.

Speaker 48 He had texts and photos to prove it.

Speaker 67 There's Tom Fallus when he has hair on his chest, all the way to the left. And on December 17th, 2011, he texted Ashley.

Speaker 67 There you have it. You get your way, so here it is.
Thought you might like it.

Speaker 30 So the scratches, said the defense, were because it was itchy, and that's all.

Speaker 29 As for the so-called witnesses, said the defense, totally unreliable.

Speaker 6 The one changed her story on the stand, and the other?

Speaker 1 Just months after the shooting, young Nick Glover went camping.

Speaker 19 of all things with Tom,

Speaker 33 the very man he said he heard confess to shooting Ashley Fallus.

Speaker 39 Fallis.

Speaker 67 At no time during the camping trip with Tom Fallas did you ever tell anybody that you were uncomfortable being there with Tom Fallus?

Speaker 62 I do not recall.

Speaker 2 Who to believe?

Speaker 37 For example,

Speaker 1 it wasn't one, but two prosecution crime scene analysts.

Speaker 48 This one, you've already heard, believed it was murder.

Speaker 19 But this one?

Speaker 69 Most people that shoot somebody in an act of rage,

Speaker 69 they don't stop with one shot.

Speaker 31 Dan Gillum was the crime scene expert from the first investigation of Ashley's death.

Speaker 37 Using a defense attorney about the same height as Ashley, he demonstrated how difficult it would have been for someone as tall as Tom to have shot Ashley at an angle that matched the bullet's trajectory.

Speaker 67 First of all, is that an unnatural position? For another person to be holding the gun in that manner.

Speaker 52 It is for me.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 67 And Mr. Fallus is six feet tall.
How tall are you?

Speaker 55 I'm six feet as well. Okay.

Speaker 34 And the gun was Ashley's.

Speaker 33 The shooting happened in arm's reach of where it was usually stored, said the defense.

Speaker 37 After examining all the ballistic and blood-spatter evidence, Gillam just didn't believe the shooting was murder.

Speaker 57 I believe that the story that Mr. Fallis gave is consistent with the evidence found at the scene.

Speaker 42 In other words, he thought it was suicide.

Speaker 29 So, what happened in that moment after midnight?

Speaker 7 How would a juror decide?

Speaker 72 Upon reaching a verdict, you will inform the bailiff who will in turn notify me.

Speaker 4 Reporter Dan Grossman settled in for a bit of a wait.

Speaker 66 This is almost a three-week trial. There's a lot of evidence.
You thought that you were looking at coming back the next day to hear the verdict.

Speaker 32 But no.

Speaker 1 Less than four hours later,

Speaker 53 a verdict.

Speaker 69 We, the jury, find the defendant Thomas Fallus not guilty of murder in the second degree and all lesser included offenses signed by by the jury for person?

Speaker 37 Not guilty.

Speaker 4 Not murder.

Speaker 35 After four long years of living under a cloud of suspicion, Tom Fallas was acquitted of all charges.

Speaker 66 He stayed straight-faced.

Speaker 66 His defense attorney, Iris Itan, was very emotional, but Ashley's parents,

Speaker 47 they left the courtroom fairly quickly.

Speaker 45 What about Ashley's family? Can they just accept this and go on?

Speaker 51 I don't think they'll ever accept it.

Speaker 38 To say that they were distraught would be an understatement.

Speaker 38 They, I think, truly believe that Tom Fallus killed their daughter, and they are never going to let that go.

Speaker 36 An idea once so deeply ingrained, true or not, will not go away.

Speaker 22 And Tom Fallus and his children make a life as best they can.

Speaker 19 That's all for now.

Speaker 9 I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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