Mystery on the Mississippi

Speaker 1 the creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 2 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust-from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 2 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800-GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 3 Very bubbly personality, huge smile.

Speaker 3 It's a child's worst nightmare to lose a mom.

Speaker 3 Every day I wanted answers. Every day I was told it was unknown.

Speaker 3 People don't just die.

Speaker 4 She was a loving mother. He was a crime-fighting prosecutor.

Speaker 5 You are a pillar of that community.

Speaker 6 I did what I thought was right.

Speaker 7 Then one day, the law was at his door.

Speaker 4 His wife was dead in bed.

Speaker 6 Her eyes were open. She was pale.

Speaker 3 I just remember crying and not believing it.

Speaker 4 Sudden, suspicious, but no evidence of a crime.

Speaker 5 Any signs of a struggle? No.

Speaker 9 It was case closed.

Speaker 8 Years pass. New lives.

Speaker 4 Two new wives.

Speaker 10 He's extremely charming.

Speaker 3 We just had the most amazing time.

Speaker 4 Then a new detective just saw the old case.

Speaker 5 What jumped out at you?

Speaker 12 Most definitely that her arms were in a naturally raised position.

Speaker 13 My first thought was we missed something here.

Speaker 14 The manner of death would be homicide.

Speaker 11 What really happened in that bandroom?

Speaker 6 I wanted to answer all their questions.

Speaker 12 He didn't remember a whole lot about that day.

Speaker 4 A young mother's death was a mystery, but was it a murder?

Speaker 3 Tell me what happened to her. To my face.

Speaker 3 Don't give me excuses.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with Mystery on the Mississippi.

Speaker 17 It runs through the heart of America, a long meandering lifeline, feeding industry, towns, and imaginations.

Speaker 16 The Mississippi River gave us Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Speaker 21 Samuel Clemens Mark Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri.

Speaker 21 And just across the river in Quincy, Illinois lived another larger-than-life character.

Speaker 24 Curtis Lovelace, a small-town kid who wanted to be a star.

Speaker 16 And for a time he was a football champion for the University of Illinois.

Speaker 5 He's an all-American?

Speaker 3 All-American?

Speaker 5 This is what kids dream about. Right.
He was living that life.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. You know, he was looking like he would go to the NFL.
You know, that was kind of a dream of his.

Speaker 21 Then he realized grander ambitions, fighting crime as a prosecutor, serving his country in the National Guard, and his community in politics.

Speaker 6 I'm someone who wants meaningful work, and it's going to make the difference in the lives of people.

Speaker 32 But it was what happened in this little house in Quincy, to one person in particular, that made Curtis really stand out for all the world to see.

Speaker 35 Well, now to continuing coverage in the Curtis Lovelace murder case.

Speaker 11 Well, it was a heated day at the stand.

Speaker 36 Right now, the defense is presenting its closing arguments in the case.

Speaker 23 Big dreams on a mighty river can carry you far, or they can drag you under.

Speaker 37 This is the very strange journey of Curtis Lovelace, all-American to criminal defendant.

Speaker 21 Let's roll back the years to high school and to the woman who had become the focus of so much speculation,

Speaker 41 Corey Diedrickson.

Speaker 6 Corey and I went to high school together. We really didn't run in the same crowd.
We had some mutual friends, and we didn't date in high school.

Speaker 38 Back then, Curtis was more focused on football than dating.

Speaker 43 It wasn't until he went off to the University of Illinois, roughly 200 miles away, and became a star athlete that he truly noticed the girl from back home for the first time.

Speaker 34 It was during a college break.

Speaker 7 The former classmates bumped into each other in Quincy and quickly became an item.

Speaker 25 Corey wasted no time spreading her good news.

Speaker 44 I'll never forget the day I was playing tennis with a friend of mine, and Corey came over and met us, and that was when she told us that

Speaker 44 Kurt was it.

Speaker 45 Beth Dobrzynski went to high school with the new couple.

Speaker 5 Surprised?

Speaker 44 Not really. No, they seemed a great fit together.
And she was... she was very very much smitten.

Speaker 16 It wasn't long before Corey was also telling her mother Marty she'd found the one.

Speaker 46 She comes home and we're sitting there and she said, I've met the man I'm going to marry.

Speaker 5 Whoa.

Speaker 5 Back up.

Speaker 45 And she kept her promise.

Speaker 16 In 1991, just after college, Corey and Curtis married.

Speaker 21 He studied law.

Speaker 27 She worked a small job to support them both. After graduation, they decided to buy a home in Quincy.

Speaker 46 They wanted to be in the neighborhood and they wanted to be close by, and that just made it all the better. So we found them a house, and they moved back.

Speaker 5 Virtually over the fence, huh? Over the back of the house.

Speaker 46 The houses up and won over, yeah.

Speaker 25 Curtis's ambitions drove the young couple.

Speaker 48 He became a prosecutor in the Adams County State Attorney's Office and dabbled in school board politics, winning a seat and serving as president.

Speaker 27 He even found time to teach a business law class at Quincy University.

Speaker 51 In between the professional milestones, the Lovelaces started a family.

Speaker 16 First, a girl, Lindsay, then three boys.

Speaker 53 Corey juggled that part of their lives.

Speaker 5 How was your Corey as a mother? She's a young mom.

Speaker 46 Fantastic. She was a great mom.
There wasn't anything she didn't do for those kids.

Speaker 42 Corey's days were filled with diapers, play dates, and tantrums.

Speaker 25 But even then, this great mom never forgot how to be a good daughter.

Speaker 28 In early 2006, her dad, John, was dying of cancer.

Speaker 5 That was a major event for all of you.

Speaker 46 That was a major event.

Speaker 5 John's decline, huh?

Speaker 46 Well, in four years he fought it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 46 the last six months of his life, she came every night at 5 o'clock and sat for like a half an hour and visit. That was her time with him.

Speaker 15 Worn down with the stress of caregiving, raising four kids, was it any wonder when Corey herself fell ill?

Speaker 42 It was the weekend before Valentine's Day, 2006.

Speaker 6 She was feeling poorly and spending...

Speaker 5 What was she ailing from?

Speaker 6 Just flu-like symptoms,

Speaker 6 throwing up.

Speaker 6 We thought she had the flu.

Speaker 5 But on Monday, the night before Valentine's Day, Corey still managed to get the kids' Valentine's cards ready for school the next day.

Speaker 5 Her daughter Lindsay, then 12, remembers cuddling up with her mom, watching the Winter Olympics and snowboarder Sean White.

Speaker 3 I remember watching him with her and being like, mom, he's so cute. Like as a 12-year-old, like that was awesome.

Speaker 5 But it wasn't that she was bedridden or anything at that point.

Speaker 6 No, she would.

Speaker 5 She was just feeling crummy, huh?

Speaker 3 She was feeling sick. And even for my mom, that was not common because

Speaker 3 even if she was sick, she did what was like what she thought was expected of her and took care of us and made us dinner and did laundry and everything because that was her role.

Speaker 37 But when Tuesday, Valentine's Day, dawned, Curtis says he urged her to take it easy.

Speaker 6 And we decided that I would cancel my morning class at Quincy University in order to get the kids to school. And so that's.

Speaker 5 So dad is going to be on deck. It's going to be dad's time to get everybody up and running here, huh?

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 I canceled my class,

Speaker 6 helped the kids get ready for school. She did come downstairs to

Speaker 6 help out with that.

Speaker 50 He says Corey was so ill, he had to help her back to bed before driving the three eldest kids off to school, their backpacks stuffed with Valentine's cards.

Speaker 5 Within minutes, he was back.

Speaker 57 Only the home, still cluttered with clothes and toys, was now filled with something else.

Speaker 7 Silence.

Speaker 5 Quiet enough to break a family's heart.

Speaker 4 What had happened in that house when we returned?

Speaker 6 As I got closer, I immediately knew that something was really, really wrong.

Speaker 5 So wrong, it would tear apart a family and puzzle police for years to come.

Speaker 9 Every detective needs to keep in mind that there could be a bigger picture.

Speaker 34 The routine of the house was in a tizzy. With Corey sick in bed, it had been up to Curtis to get the three oldest kids off to school.

Speaker 24 Now he was back.

Speaker 6 When I arrived home, everything was quiet. I assumed that Corey was sleeping, resting.
She hadn't slept most of the night. I was just going to leave her alone in order to sleep.

Speaker 5 Before looking in on her, he said, he went over his emails in the kitchen. Then he headed upstairs.

Speaker 6 I needed to take a shower, shower, and as I walked up the steps, I looked to the left. The door to our bedroom was, as I left it, opened.
I could see her lying in bed, and I could see

Speaker 6 something

Speaker 6 from the distance. Didn't seem right, so I approached her.

Speaker 5 What made you say that, looking back?

Speaker 6 I'm really not sure. As I got closer, I could see that she was pale, she was motionless, and I immediately knew that something was really, really wrong.

Speaker 5 Did you think she's dead?

Speaker 58 I shook her.

Speaker 6 I called out her name.

Speaker 6 And at that point,

Speaker 6 I knew that she was dead.

Speaker 40 In that moment, he said, his thoughts turned to his four-year-old boy, Larson, who was still in the house.

Speaker 6 And I needed to get Larson out of the house.

Speaker 5 And what did you do?

Speaker 6 I grabbed Larson. I believe he was in bed.
And I took him immediately over to his grandparents' house.

Speaker 5 Corey's mom, Marty, answered the door. She remembers her son-in-law standing there with a young boy and saying something nonsensical about her daughter being dead.

Speaker 46 It was just kind of mid-morning.

Speaker 5 And there he is, you're sorry.

Speaker 46 And there he is.

Speaker 46 I opened the door, and he hands me Larson. And then he said something about people are coming or something.
And I often regretted not just putting Larson down and running over there.

Speaker 5 Stunned, she called her son, Corey's brother Peter, at his dental practice.

Speaker 58 I got a phone call from my mom, and it was just kind of out of the blue. I didn't think anything.

Speaker 5 Corey's dead, that can't be. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 58 She's 38 years old. There's no way.
I just saw her a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 5 Jeff Baird, then a detective with the Quincy Police Department, was assigned to head the death investigation.

Speaker 7 When he arrived at the scene, he went straight upstairs.

Speaker 56 He was in the bedroom when the coroner examined Corey's body.

Speaker 9 He tested her body temperature by placing his hand against her abdomen. I followed suit.

Speaker 5 Was the body warm or cold at the temple?

Speaker 9 The abdomen was warm to the temperature. It was warm.

Speaker 5 What did that tell the coroner?

Speaker 9 He knew that the time of death

Speaker 9 was narrowed then for the body to still be warm.

Speaker 27 It seemed clear that Corey's death had been recent within the past hour or so.

Speaker 16 Not at all certain why or how the woman died. The detective couldn't rule out any possibility, including foul play.

Speaker 5 Around the room itself, any overturned glasses or any signs of a struggle?

Speaker 55 No.

Speaker 5 So as I hear you, you're telling me you're seeing a woman who has apparently died in her bed

Speaker 5 and not that long

Speaker 5 before authorities arrive.

Speaker 61 That's right.

Speaker 9 If I can stress, there wasn't a single mark on her other than what appeared to be a skin blemish under her nose.

Speaker 5 Not a mark.

Speaker 38 And yet there was something about the position of Corey's body that did strike him as odd.

Speaker 62 He thought death and gravity would have caused her arms to drop.

Speaker 16 Instead, they were both fixed in midair, hovering above her chest.

Speaker 9 I was looking for an explanation for that, and I even addressed it to Curtis Lovelace. I asked him if there was a possibility that blankets had been under her arms when he discovered her.

Speaker 5 And what did he say? No. Said no.
So he said the scene that you were seeing was the way he saw it when he came and found his wife. Yes.
By his account. Yes.

Speaker 45 But then the detective was careful not to get hung up on one strange detail, not this early in a case.

Speaker 9 Every detective needs to keep in mind that there could be a bigger picture.

Speaker 16 And oh, yes, there was. A portrait of a woman, a portrait of a marriage, filled with details painted in a most unflattering light.

Speaker 63 Coming up.

Speaker 5 A peek behind closed doors. You were drinking too much.

Speaker 6 I drank too much.

Speaker 5 Corey was drinking too much.

Speaker 6 Corey was drinking too much.

Speaker 8 And a daughter mourns her mom.

Speaker 3 I just remember crying and not believing it.

Speaker 11 When dateline continues.

Speaker 53 The Quincy, Illinois detective was trying to understand why a 38-year-old woman had died suddenly.

Speaker 16 As he looked for clues inside Corey Lovelace's home, filled with the clutter of young family life, Jeff Baird noticed one item in particular, a white cup by her bedside.

Speaker 9 I collected an unknown liquid that smelled faintly of alcohol from a styrofoam cup.

Speaker 54 The detective asked her husband Curtis what it was.

Speaker 5 Did he tell you that she liked to have a vodka tonic? Yes. And that's likely what was in the styrofoam? Yes.
It's a big 24-ounce glass? Yes.

Speaker 23 As Curtis told it, alcohol had been a constant in the home.

Speaker 6 There was alcoholism in our family, so there was the ugly side of that.

Speaker 5 You were drinking too much?

Speaker 6 Looking back, yes, I drank too much.

Speaker 5 Corey was drinking too much?

Speaker 6 Corey was drinking too much.

Speaker 6 It was impacting her ability to take care of things at home.

Speaker 26 He also told the detective that Corey had been taking falls, sometimes out of bed.

Speaker 52 What's more, the detective later found out Corey had been battling bulimia.

Speaker 31 The picture quickly emerging.

Speaker 16 Corey had not been a healthy woman.

Speaker 5 I know you guys are listening to the words that a subject is telling you, but you're also looking at them. Why is he telling me this? So how does he phrase it? What were you seeing on that score?

Speaker 8 It's very important.

Speaker 9 And I saw a man who was answering my questions.

Speaker 5 Not being evasive.

Speaker 9 He appeared to be cooperative, solemn, upset.

Speaker 39 Curtis also retraced the family's steps that morning.

Speaker 9 He last saw his wife around 8.15.

Speaker 9 He took the kids to school.

Speaker 5 He returned and found her deceased.

Speaker 50 With that, the detective finished the interview and left.

Speaker 56 But Curtis knew his awful day was about to get worse.

Speaker 18 Not least, he had four children ranging in ages from four to 12 to look after.

Speaker 29 How do you tell the children?

Speaker 6 That was

Speaker 6 I think to this day that is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do.

Speaker 6 I believe I called the schools and let them know that I would be on my way.

Speaker 42 Lindsay, the only girl, was the eldest of the Lovelace kids.

Speaker 3 I remember being at school. I remember getting a call from the office that

Speaker 3 I was getting picked up. And in my mind, I thought, oh, maybe my mom went to the hospital.
She didn't feel good the days prior. Maybe she just had to go to the hospital.
Like, it's fine.

Speaker 34 But once inside the principal's office, her father broke the news.

Speaker 3 And told me that my mom had died. And I just remember then on my world crashing down.

Speaker 5 Did you say what had happened? What's going on?

Speaker 3 I'm sure I asked what had happened. I just remember

Speaker 3 crying and not believing it. And so we went, we left and we went to my grandma's house.
And I was like, I want to go back to school. And I went back to school.

Speaker 5 And you did on the day you lost your mom?

Speaker 3 Because that was normal for me. It was a normalcy thing.

Speaker 27 And in hindsight, she says, maybe the best thing she could have done.

Speaker 32 Her favorite teacher had something for her.

Speaker 3 She actually had wolf pups. She had a friend who was caring for wolf pups.
So I remember holding these wolf pups. I'm pretty sure they had just lost their mom, like they were orphaned.

Speaker 5 What a jumble of things going on, Dread.

Speaker 3 And that was the most comforting thing I could have done, was hold those wolves.

Speaker 7 By then, news of Corey Lovelace's untimely death was rippling across town.

Speaker 32 Students from Curtis's business law class that morning were the first outside of the family and authorities to suspect that something had happened.

Speaker 10 His class was all outside of his classroom waiting for him to come.

Speaker 64 One of Curtis's students, Erica, was surprised to learn Professor Lovelace's class had been canceled.

Speaker 16 Later she learned why.

Speaker 10 Everyone was just in shock because she was a very young 38-year-old and she seemed healthy from what everybody understood.

Speaker 10 So it was a huge shock that...

Speaker 5 So that's very sad your professor's wife has died.

Speaker 10 You didn't know her? I didn't know her, and I really didn't know him at that time either.

Speaker 56 Soon everyone in town was wondering what had caused Corey's death.

Speaker 48 The pathologist who performed the autopsy a day later noted some trauma, a small abrasion on Corey's upper lip and another mark inside. It appeared to be a cut.

Speaker 54 Curtis mentioned that Corey had fallen in the days before her death.

Speaker 5 Those falls, as they described them, could account for that injury to the lip, right? Presumably?

Speaker 9 I wish I knew. But yes, a fall could account for an injury.

Speaker 16 The pathologist also noted Corey had what's called fatty liver, often caused by heavy drinking.

Speaker 56 Still, the doctor labeled the cause of death undetermined.

Speaker 5 She doesn't know what killed this woman.

Speaker 9 That was frustrating. She does find

Speaker 9 a disease of the liver, which can be associated with sudden death.

Speaker 64 Unusual for a young woman to die of unknown causes, but it does happen.

Speaker 16 Without more to go on, the detective closed the case.

Speaker 53 Corey's mother, Marty, still in shock, could barely bring herself to read the autopsy report.

Speaker 46 Corey was drinking. We don't deny that.
She was

Speaker 46 bulimic, and I did try to talk to Curtis about that at one time. Told me it was all okay and it was going to be fine.

Speaker 50 Now, as she mourned Corey, Marty knew her suffering would only deepen.

Speaker 15 Her husband, John, was dying.

Speaker 46 We had a visitation for Corey, and John sat next to me, and it was like he was saying goodbye to friends too.

Speaker 46 He didn't come home from the hospital after that.

Speaker 5 So both those losses one right on top of the other? Yes.

Speaker 5 Within the span of a month Marty lost a daughter and a husband.

Speaker 5 She purchased two burial plots at the local cemetery even though Corey's remains were cremated. That was a choice Curtis says the entire family made together.

Speaker 5 But the decision to cremate would be one that would haunt this river town for years to come.

Speaker 6 Coming up, she was different than anyone I had ever dated before.

Speaker 8 Curtis moves on much too fast for some.

Speaker 3 She arrived as the girlfriend. Did I think it was too quickly? Yes.

Speaker 42 For so many years, he'd been the guy in town people looked up to and admired.

Speaker 16 Curtis Lovelace, football star, school board president.

Speaker 26 Suddenly, a pitiable widower who needed help.

Speaker 55 It was overwhelming.

Speaker 6 People did come forward, friends and family, helping get the kids to school in the morning so I could also go to work and then picking them up from school. It's a lot.

Speaker 6 It's a lot, but we came together as a family and did what we needed to do.

Speaker 5 To longtime friend Beth Dobrzynski, Curtis was stoic in the weeks after Corey's death. But one time she noticed the mask slip just a little.
It was at a high school reunion later that summer.

Speaker 44 They were doing a video montage and Corey's picture came up and he turned around and he looked and he goes, hey, that's my wife.

Speaker 44 And it was just times like that that made, you know, made me really think that, you know, it just, you know, grieving husband.

Speaker 33 That's why a few months later, she and other friends were surprised to hear that Curtis had met someone new.

Speaker 15 That was fast.

Speaker 6 She was different

Speaker 6 than anyone I had ever dated before. Maybe in some ways that difference intrigued me.

Speaker 57 She was Erica, as in the former student who showed up to Professor Lovelace's canceled class that fateful Valentine's Day morning.

Speaker 10 He's extremely charming. Anything that I needed or wanted, he could take care of, and he did.

Speaker 5 At the time this interview took place, Erica asked us to alter her appearance some to protect her privacy.

Speaker 5 She began her story by recounting how she, as a 33-year-old single woman, had bumped into her 37-year-old professor at a nightclub not long after Corey's death. A fish out of water, she thought.

Speaker 10 And I felt really bad for him, so I gave him my number and I told him that there's

Speaker 10 places that he could go in town that there's people more his age. Because I thought he was a lot, lot older than what he was he just seemed just stood out at that club huh he did quite a bit

Speaker 52 but not long after pity blossomed into friendship and then love they started dating about six months after Corey's death Erica and her daughter from a previous relationship eventually moved in with Curtis and his four children it was nice that My child kind of just tucked in there with the rest of them.

Speaker 10 All of us just fell into place.

Speaker 27 That's not the way Curtis's daughter Lindsay saw it.

Speaker 5 What'd you think of her, Erica?

Speaker 3 We did not get along.

Speaker 5 From the get-go?

Speaker 3 From the get-go. She arrived as the girlfriend.
And that's just how it was. And did I think it was too quickly? Yes.
But adults make their own decisions.

Speaker 42 In fact, Lindsay was so unhappy with her dad's girlfriend, she picked up and moved in with her grandmother, Corey's mom, just a few doors down.

Speaker 33 After nearly two years of living together, Curtis and Erica married.

Speaker 17 She'd admired how he'd coached local kids in sports and devoted spare time to his community.

Speaker 15 Eventually, they both served together in the National Guard.

Speaker 5 And he had an outstanding resume. He did.

Speaker 5 This is the all-American boy.

Speaker 10 I loved the fact that he was on the school board. That was where my profession was leaning.
And I loved that he worked with children. He was great.
He seemed to be great with the children.

Speaker 23 They even bought a new place in town together and moved from the house where Corey had died.

Speaker 50 There was domestic tranquility at first, but eventually, Erica says she saw a change in her husband.

Speaker 10 He'd detach once in a while just from the whole family, and I was kind of left all to myself, and he would just hide in the basement and blame it on work.

Speaker 52 She says their mutual silence separated them.

Speaker 56 Then, resentment exploded in loud confrontations.

Speaker 48 It just wasn't working.

Speaker 6 I believe looking back, that was a rebound relationship

Speaker 6 and a relationship that I should have not done not only for me, but more importantly, for my children.

Speaker 5 In 2013, after five years of marriage, Curtis filed for divorce. Now, you might think that he would have been gunshy about jumping into love again, but not Curtis.

Speaker 3 It was just

Speaker 3 surreal and lovely.

Speaker 37 This is Christine.

Speaker 64 She'd known Curtis since high school.

Speaker 23 He even took her to their homecoming dance.

Speaker 33 Marriages and careers careers separated them for a time.

Speaker 3 It was odd because I wasn't prepared for any kind of a relationship and I wasn't looking for anything like that.

Speaker 5 Where were you in your life, Christine? Were you single at the time?

Speaker 3 I was. I was single.

Speaker 37 After reconnecting on Facebook, the former classmates decided to catch up face to face for the first time in nearly three decades.

Speaker 3 There he is at the door. There he is at the door.
What do you see? I see. Kurt Lovelace, my senior high school homecoming date, standing there.

Speaker 3 And then we spent that evening with friends, and before we knew it, everyone else had gone and we just had the most amazing time.

Speaker 6 I was meeting in many ways

Speaker 6 the same person who I took to homecoming, just more beautiful,

Speaker 6 more interesting, and more

Speaker 6 kind than I had ever remembered.

Speaker 3 It just worked.

Speaker 5 More than six months later, on the day after Christmas 2013, Curtis was once again standing at the altar. Only this time the new Mrs.

Speaker 5 Lovelace seemed to have approval from everyone, even 20-year-old daughter Lindsay, who had packed up at the arrival of her father's last flame.

Speaker 3 She seemed very genuine. I liked that she cared a lot about the boys.

Speaker 5 Did you think maybe this could be the restoration of the family? Yeah, I did. After the nightmare, as you see it, of Erica.
Now here's Christine, who seems okay to you.

Speaker 5 And she's certainly making an effort to reach out to you, right?

Speaker 3 I, yeah, and I felt like our family deserved happiness at that point after everything we had been through, so I was hoping that it would all pan out okay.

Speaker 42 And it did go okay.

Speaker 16 Christine kept all the lovelaces running like a Swiss train schedule.

Speaker 7 Kids off to school while Curtis worked at his own law practice in downtown Quincy.

Speaker 16 Christine, meanwhile, put on her baker's apron.

Speaker 3 I opened an actual pie shop. I was making 100 pies a week.
And I was selling out of pies before 9 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 5 By all of us. So this wasn't just a little hobby to keep you busy.
No. This was a going concern, huh?

Speaker 3 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 5 What's your go-to pie?

Speaker 3 I love blueberry.

Speaker 5 I'm with you.

Speaker 3 But I make a mean gooseberry, you name it, I can probably do it.

Speaker 5 After years of turmoil, it seemed the Lovelaces were reborn. Lindsay was back in the family fold.
Christine had even adopted Curtis's sons as her own. Everything was working.

Speaker 5 But darker souls wait for the train wreck just when things are looking all hunky-dory.

Speaker 5 Turned out, that train was hurtling down the track at them.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a new detective leads to to new suspicion.

Speaker 5 What jumped out at you?

Speaker 12 Most definitely that her arms were in an unnaturally raised position.

Speaker 4 And the start of a new investigation.

Speaker 13 My first thought was we missed something here.

Speaker 11 When dateline continues.

Speaker 16 The river rolled.

Speaker 40 The barges slid by.

Speaker 33 And Corey Lovelace's death slipped further into the past.

Speaker 23 Her mom, Marty.

Speaker 46 I'll go sit in the cemetery by myself for a little while.

Speaker 46 And Chris Valentine's Day now is nothing.

Speaker 46 I don't do Valentine's Day.

Speaker 5 Corey's husband, meanwhile, had remarried, divorced, and married again. And in all that time, no one really questioned the why or how of Corey's death.

Speaker 5 But all that changed one day when a man in a windowless room a few blocks off the Mississippi found himself with spare time on his hands.

Speaker 12 I was sitting in my office and all of our files are on computer.

Speaker 53 It was late 2013, almost eight years after Corey's death.

Speaker 54 Adam Gibson, a newly minted detective with the Quincy Police Department, began idly pulling up old files.

Speaker 12 Not looking for anything in particular, just reading old cases. Corey Lovelace popped into my head and I read the report.

Speaker 5 The name mean anything to you?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I knew Curtis Lovelace because he had been at one time one of our assistant state's attorneys.

Speaker 22 There wasn't much to read in the file, truth be told.

Speaker 16 A statement from Curtis, the husband, police interviews with the three older children, and the pathologist's summary of her autopsy findings with some photos.

Speaker 5 So you knew what had happened in 2006, sort of, or?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I knew that she had passed away on Valentine's Day of 2006.

Speaker 5 What was the medical examiner's finding about the death of that woman?

Speaker 12 That was an undetermined, was the original autopsy.

Speaker 5 What did that mean to you? I don't know whether you'd encountered that before.

Speaker 12 Undetermined could mean a lot of things, but in this particular autopsy, there were things listed as suspicious or traumatic findings.

Speaker 17 For instance, the report mentioned that abrasion on Corey's face just under her nose, something the arriving officer had observed that day.

Speaker 57 The pathologist also noted the cut, what she called a laceration on the inside of Corey's upper lip.

Speaker 19 The detective kept scrolling and then saw something that just stopped him cold.

Speaker 21 An electrifying image.

Speaker 15 The police photos of the dead wife and mother as she lay in her bed.

Speaker 5 What jumped out at you?

Speaker 12 Most definitely that her arms were in an unnaturally raised position.

Speaker 5 The hands in an unnatural kind of way.

Speaker 12 Her hands defy gravity.

Speaker 5 Not supported on anything?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 5 Just kind of out there like a statue? Yes.

Speaker 21 Using police photos from the scene, we created this graphic representation of Corey's bedroom.

Speaker 15 You can see Corey's arms frozen in death above her body. That final pose had caught Detective Jeff Baird's attention years before.

Speaker 21 A curiosity, but he didn't assign it any real significance.

Speaker 28 Now, Adam Gibson did.

Speaker 5 Rigor mortis?

Speaker 12 Yes, in my opinion.

Speaker 22 The mechanics of rigor mortise go like this.

Speaker 39 Upon death, a human's muscles start to stiffen.

Speaker 18 But to the detective, it looked as though Corey's arms and hands were in an advanced state of rigor, meaning she likely died many hours before this photo was taken.

Speaker 5 Remember, Curtis said he tucked his sickly wife into bed only an hour before finding her dead.

Speaker 47 It didn't make sense to the officer.

Speaker 39 Detective Gibson went straight to his bosses with the old Lovelace file.

Speaker 13 My first thought was we missed something here.

Speaker 16 Chief Robert Copley had been in charge in 2006 when everyone assumed Corey had died a natural death.

Speaker 15 But he says he never saw the photos the detective was now holding before him.

Speaker 13 And that's when I saw the pictures the first time.

Speaker 5 What'd you think?

Speaker 13 I thought

Speaker 13 this is odd, this is not natural.

Speaker 5 Posture of the arms.

Speaker 13 The posture of the arms definitely appeared to me that Rigamortis had set in. I look at those pictures and I can't believe that we accepted an undetermined cause of death and a natural death.

Speaker 50 Detective Gibson agreed, but they had a problem.

Speaker 5 Very thin what you're working with.

Speaker 5 Some notes from a medical examiner from eight years before and a few photos, very few. Yeah, and only two

Speaker 13 slides

Speaker 13 were taken by the pathologist and passed on in evidence. So, yeah, very thin file.

Speaker 33 So, police went back to the doctor who did that autopsy and asked her to review the case.

Speaker 16 She did, but she would not alter her original findings. The next step might have been to order a new autopsy, but that wasn't possible since Corey's family had her remains cremated.

Speaker 32 The only option was to work with what they had.

Speaker 28 Detective Gibson had a suggestion.

Speaker 13 He wanted to have the autopsy reviewed by someone else, have basically a review of the original autopsy done, couldn't do a new autopsy because the body had been cremated.

Speaker 54 The chief okayed the request to hire a new pathologist to review old autopsy notes.

Speaker 26 The detective also had something else in mind to beef up his case, talk to anyone and everyone who'd known Corey.

Speaker 64 His first call was to her mom, Marty.

Speaker 25 He told her he wanted to meet, but not why.

Speaker 46 He said, well, you know, can we set up a time maybe tomorrow or what, you know, whatever. I said, well, scratch what I'm doing this afternoon.

Speaker 46 You just come now because I was so nervous about what it was.

Speaker 26 Everything old was about to be new again.

Speaker 64 New and very unsettling.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a different medical examiner reaches a different conclusion.

Speaker 68 The manner of death would be homicide.

Speaker 8 And a detective has a question for Curtis's daughter.

Speaker 59 Tuesday morning,

Speaker 59 before you went to school, he remembered.

Speaker 5 What did you think was happening?

Speaker 3 I didn't know.

Speaker 16 Corey Lovelace's mom had tried hard to move on after her daughter's sudden death in 2006.

Speaker 27 But after a phone call and a visit from Detective Adam Gibson in early 2014, she started to wonder.

Speaker 46 A lot of things I shoved away, really shoved away. And one of them was

Speaker 46 really why Corey had died.

Speaker 5 Did you ever suspect that there might be foul play involved in her death?

Speaker 34 No.

Speaker 32 Friends of both Curtis and Corey also started getting calls from the detective.

Speaker 27 Beth Dobrzinski remembers his message asking her to call ASAP.

Speaker 44 So then when I called Detective Gibson and he said we're reopening the case of Corey Didrikson Loveless, I was shocked.

Speaker 10 I was shaking.

Speaker 5 So the detective seemed to be interested in what you could tell him about the marriage. Correct.

Speaker 42 Which, she admitted, wasn't much.

Speaker 16 Beth and other close friends said Corey didn't really talk about her marriage.

Speaker 21 So the detective did something no one else had done on this case.

Speaker 7 He started knocking on doors, talking to Corey's former neighbors.

Speaker 12 All the neighbors talked about.

Speaker 12 all the constant arguing and fighting.

Speaker 5 So you were getting a picture of what was going on in that marriage that wasn't in focus in 2006. Right.

Speaker 52 The detective went a step further.

Speaker 21 He got in his car and drove more than 100 miles to the University of Iowa to talk with someone who would have been an eyewitness to the Lovelace marriage. I'm Adam Gibson.
Nice to meet you.

Speaker 21 I'm a detective with Quincy.

Speaker 5 Okay, okay. Lindsay Lovelace, Curtis and Corey's oldest, was in college at her mom's alma mater when she was summoned to the campus police department to talk with Detective Gibson.

Speaker 3 I was very confused why someone from Quincy had driven there.

Speaker 15 The questions that followed didn't clear things up, at least not at first.

Speaker 56 The detective started talking about her late mom and asking about her parents' marriage.

Speaker 59 How was your parents' relationship to your room?

Speaker 59 They had fights.

Speaker 69 It was an interesting relationship. There were times that we were like the perfect family.

Speaker 69 We do like fun handling bed and then there are times I do remember you woken up at night by my parents fighting.

Speaker 42 For the first time, someone inside the Lovelace family was revealing the turmoil before Corey's death.

Speaker 37 But then the detective asked Lindsay to describe that Tuesday in 2006 when her mother's body was found. Tuesday morning

Speaker 37 before you went to school, do you remember?

Speaker 53 The answer seemed to take the air out of his theory of the case.

Speaker 69 She was up and walking around.

Speaker 69 She had made breakfast.

Speaker 69 I don't remember what we have for breakfast, but she had like made us breakfast and she was like helping us get ready for school because we all had our little Valentine's Day boxes and all our values.

Speaker 16 The young woman, candid about her parents' troubled marriage, was nonetheless supportive of her father's account.

Speaker 15 Corey had died minutes after seeing her children off to school, not hours earlier as the detective suspected.

Speaker 30 If he'd been disappointed in Lindsay's answer, he didn't show it.

Speaker 16 But he did make a request that caught her off guard.

Speaker 20 If you do talk to your dad,

Speaker 59 pointing that I would ask is that you not discuss the fact that I came to talk to you yet.

Speaker 5 What did you think was happening?

Speaker 3 I didn't know, especially when you said, don't tell your father I was here.

Speaker 5 So what's that mean?

Speaker 3 And I went back to where I was living and just sat there and thought, what is going on? And then it slowly hit me.

Speaker 41 She realized the detective, for whatever reason, suspected her father had something to do with her mother's sudden death.

Speaker 16 Even so, she kept her promise and did not tell her father about the visit.

Speaker 5 In the meantime, Detective Gibson was waiting to hear from Dr.

Speaker 27 Jane Turner, the assistant medical examiner for the city of St. Louis.

Speaker 22 He had hired her to review that old autopsy report.

Speaker 68 The thing that struck me first just looking at the scene photographs was the position of Mrs. Lovelace's arms.

Speaker 40 She says the photos show Corey's body in full rigor mortise.

Speaker 32 Like the detective, the ME believe the picture and Curtis's story were out of sync.

Speaker 68 I estimate that the time of death was somewhere 10 to 12 hours prior to her photograph being taken that morning.

Speaker 3 So somewhere around 9 or 10 or 11 p.m.

Speaker 68 the night before.

Speaker 19 In other words, the night of February 13th, not the morning of February 14th, as Curtis claimed.

Speaker 34 Something else bothered her. Turner thought the scene appeared altered as though something under Corey's arms was removed.

Speaker 68 Why were her hands not resting on a surface?

Speaker 68 And that surface whatever that object was that her hands had been resting on, why wasn't there anymore?

Speaker 15 Turner noted the abrasion on Corey's face and the cut inside her upper lip.

Speaker 39 To her, that suggested something had been pressed against the woman's mouth.

Speaker 68 And then seeing the marks around the mouth and inside the mouth all suggest that suffocation occurred.

Speaker 45 Suffocation.

Speaker 49 An abrasion.

Speaker 16 An accepted timeline that no longer fit.

Speaker 28 Turner was convinced Corey had not died a natural death.

Speaker 56 She concluded someone had used an object, likely a pillow, to suffocate the woman, left it under her arms, and removed it many hours later.

Speaker 14 The manner of death would be homicide.

Speaker 5 For the detective, Corey Lovelace's death came down to two competing narratives from two compelling women.

Speaker 21 One relied on science to explain a murder.

Speaker 23 The other relied on memory to describe an ailing mother just before she passed away.

Speaker 5 In the end, the detective believed the science.

Speaker 66 He believed that a crime had indeed been committed.

Speaker 48 But now Chief Copley had a little problem back at the Quincy Police Department.

Speaker 26 There were two officers who'd conducted very different investigations of the same case.

Speaker 5 Detective Gibson, you believe that this was a homicide? I do believe that. Officer Baird, do you believe that this was a death of natural causes? Are you divided on that fundamental issue?

Speaker 9 I'm now uncertain from what I've heard and been told.

Speaker 9 under the new investigation. Much more uncertain than I was in 2006.

Speaker 48 Their boss, Chief Copley, still backs both men.

Speaker 32 He says if there's blame to be had in this case, he'll take it.

Speaker 13 You hate to admit that mistakes were made. And I want to say that I take full responsibility.
I was chief in 2006. You know, yeah, I had detectives and their supervisors work on this case.

Speaker 5 Chief, did he get a pass because he was a pillar of the community?

Speaker 5 He was a big shot guy.

Speaker 13 I don't know that he got a pass. I think he may have got

Speaker 13 the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 37 Curtis Lovelace was no longer going to get the benefit of the doubt because Detective Gibson's next stop would be the grand jury.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a day Christine and Curtis Lovelace won't soon forget.

Speaker 6 Totally blindsided?

Speaker 5 Give me a word.

Speaker 7 That day in your life.

Speaker 3 Horrifying.

Speaker 11 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 1 Looking to crack the code on your career? Well, maybe it's time to get your degree. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 programs you can complete online.

Speaker 1 No set class times means you can do it all on your schedule. And with some of the lowest online tuition rates in the U.S., they make getting your degree affordable, too.

Speaker 1 Get started at snhu.edu/slash dateline. That's snhu.edu slash dateline.

Speaker 71 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 71 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 71 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 71 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 20 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 20 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 20 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.
Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12 months.

Speaker 20 Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.
Initial plan term only.

Speaker 20 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary. See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 4 Continuing our story. Seven years after the mysterious death of Corey Lovelace.

Speaker 3 I just remember crying and not believing it.

Speaker 4 Police have reopened the case.

Speaker 13 We missed something here.

Speaker 4 Her husband, Curtis, who had remarried twice, is the prime suspect.

Speaker 5 What jumped out at you?

Speaker 12 Most definitely that her arms were in an unnaturally raised position.

Speaker 5 Had the mystery finally been solved?

Speaker 14 The manner of death would be homicide.

Speaker 4 Now, the suspect and his wife are about to get some very bad news.

Speaker 3 I said, what?

Speaker 3 Corey wasn't murdered.

Speaker 7 You were totally blindsided.

Speaker 61 Totally blindsided.

Speaker 4 Here again is Dennis Murphy.

Speaker 25 Christine Lovelace had been aproned up in her new shop baking pies all morning.

Speaker 32 It was a Wednesday in late August 2014 and she was getting hungry.

Speaker 54 Curtis was meant to stop by with lunch.

Speaker 3 I just knew that he was going to be there and I really kind of had a notion that he was going to bring me fried chicken that day. And

Speaker 3 lunch came and went.

Speaker 5 And no curtain and no curt.

Speaker 16 A few blocks away, Curtis had just stepped out of his law office.

Speaker 18 He was, in fact, on his way to the pie shop.

Speaker 6 And as I was walking to my car,

Speaker 6 there was a gentleman in a suit waiting for me.

Speaker 5 It was Detective Gibson, and he was armed with an indictment from the grand jury. He was there to arrest Curtis for the murder of Corey Lovelace.
And he said what?

Speaker 12 The only thing he said was, my wife died in 2006.

Speaker 5 What'd you think of that? That

Speaker 12 was not the reaction that I was expecting at all.

Speaker 57 Then again, Curtis Lovelace never saw it coming.

Speaker 6 Told me to put my hands behind my back and put me in handcuffs.

Speaker 5 What was going on?

Speaker 6 I didn't know. I remember hearing murder.
I remember hearing him use the word wife. I was not aware that

Speaker 6 there was an investigation.

Speaker 5 You were totally blindsided.

Speaker 6 I was totally blindsided.

Speaker 38 Blindsided because no one had really questioned Corey's death before.

Speaker 19 Even the police concluded she died of of natural causes.

Speaker 32 Back at the pie shot, an increasingly anxious Christine got a phone call.

Speaker 19 It was someone from a local TV station.

Speaker 3 He said, I'm holding a piece of paper in my hand. It's an indictment for the first-degree murder of Corey Lovelace.
And

Speaker 3 I immediately said, what?

Speaker 3 Corey wasn't murdered.

Speaker 5 Give me a word. That day in your life.

Speaker 3 Horrifying.

Speaker 6 I was placed in an interrogation room immediately.

Speaker 5 Curtis Lovelace, the former prosecutor, had a crucial choice to make.

Speaker 26 Either talk to the detective and try to clear this up right then and there, or listen to his lawyerly training and keep quiet.

Speaker 12 Yeah, the right to remain silent. Do you understand that?

Speaker 55 Yes.

Speaker 5 Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. And you're a lawyer.
And you know the number one rule is you do not talk to the police without having a lawyer present.

Speaker 5 But you talk.

Speaker 6 But I talk. I wanted to answer all their questions.
I thought that they wanted to know the truth.

Speaker 5 She indicated she didn't feel well.

Speaker 5 On that Valentine's morning, Curtis said Corey was still nursing that bad cold or flu.

Speaker 72 I walked back upstairs with her.

Speaker 72 She climbed into bed.

Speaker 26 He described leaving the house, then coming home, only to find his wife dead in their bedroom.

Speaker 5 She was cold and

Speaker 8 stiff.

Speaker 72 I just recall her, like her hands being up or something like that.

Speaker 5 And yet many other details surrounding his wife's death seem to elude Curtis.

Speaker 72 No, I don't remember anything significant about the night before.

Speaker 4 You said that the two of you went to bed together?

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I believe we did.

Speaker 72 Again, it was... been a long time so i i i mean i guess it's possible that i would have left you know slept on a couch or something you said you took the kids to school?

Speaker 6 Again, I believe I did.

Speaker 5 It has been so long.

Speaker 12 Ironically, you didn't remember a whole lot about that day.

Speaker 5 Couldn't even remember whether he, in fact, took the kids to school that day. Right.

Speaker 12 I just would have thought that

Speaker 12 finding your wife dead in bed would have left more of an impression on you.

Speaker 5 To the detective, Curtis was trying to look helpful without really being so. Gibson cut to the chase.

Speaker 12 Did you smother Corey with a pillow?

Speaker 72 No, I did not.

Speaker 5 Did you and Corey have a bad argument, Kurt? Did it get out of hand? Did you snap and then put a pillow over her nose and mouth and suffocate her?

Speaker 6 No, no,

Speaker 6 there were no bad arguments the night before.

Speaker 6 It's exactly

Speaker 6 what I've told Detective Baird in 2006 and what I told Detective Gibson in 2014 and what I'm telling you now, that that is what happened.

Speaker 6 She was sick and I came home, and I found her that morning, and she was dead in bed.

Speaker 5 It was clear the detective's strategy hadn't yielded what he wanted, a confession.

Speaker 12 I have a problem with you not remembering all these things.

Speaker 5 The lawyer's goal of talking his way out of trouble hadn't exactly worked either. Even after he agreed, Curtis says, to take a lie detector test.

Speaker 5 In a short time, he was swapping out his buttoned-down shirt and leather loafers

Speaker 5 for a very different courthouse look, jailhouse black and white stripes.

Speaker 4 Coming up, are his kids the key to his freedom?

Speaker 3 They saw their mother alive that day.

Speaker 5 So therefore she couldn't have been dead upstairs. Right.

Speaker 40 Curtis Lovelace could not believe how his world had fallen apart.

Speaker 21 One minute he was Quincy's fair-haired boy.

Speaker 26 The next he was being interrogated by police for killing his first wife, Corey.

Speaker 72 On my side of the bed, when I found her dead.

Speaker 25 Meanwhile, Christine was in a panic for two reasons.

Speaker 21 Her husband had just been arrested, and now she was looking for her sons.

Speaker 3 I found out that all three boys were at the police station.

Speaker 5 The boys were down there.

Speaker 3 They had been taken out of school and held in isolation earlier in in the day.

Speaker 40 They were just 17, 15, and 12 years old at the time, all alone at the police headquarters.

Speaker 21 Once Christine found out they were there, she rushed to the station.

Speaker 5 What were the kids told? What did they think was going on?

Speaker 3 They actually thought that something had happened to me. I walked into the room and they got up and they all

Speaker 3 were very scared. and

Speaker 3 they hugged me and I told them everything would be okay. We'll figure this out.

Speaker 7 Detective Gibson had rounded up the boys because he was looking for more information.

Speaker 70 I'm looking into

Speaker 70 the death of your mom from 2006, okay?

Speaker 52 The detective started to question them about the last days of their mother's life.

Speaker 70 So you went into your mom's room

Speaker 70 and she was in bed. Yeah, we wake up every morning and then I'd go in her room and watch their show.
Do you know what time that was?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 56 Larson, the youngest son, wasn't interviewed by police police back in 2006 because he was only four years old.

Speaker 17 Now, he was telling Detective Gibson he wasn't sure if his mother was alive that morning. He said he only remembered getting out of bed and going to his mom's room, but she didn't answer him.

Speaker 70 I just remember like being in the room and then she wouldn't wake up. I think it was Valentine's Day.

Speaker 70 Yeah. That's just dad was gone, came back,

Speaker 70 and then I told him that, yeah,

Speaker 70 she was not waking waking up.

Speaker 16 But the two older boys said they did remember seeing their mom that morning.

Speaker 23 This is Lincoln, the middle boy.

Speaker 70 I just remember, like,

Speaker 70 like waking up. Like, I remember her not feeling good, and I was sitting on the stairs.
And then I went to school. I think I remember saying, I love you, before we left.

Speaker 70 But that's pretty much it.

Speaker 21 Logan, the eldest son, said he knew for certain that his mom was alive that February 14th.

Speaker 70 She was sitting on the steps, like ready for us to leave the house.

Speaker 37 Christine was still trying to find her husband.

Speaker 25 She didn't know he'd been transferred to a different jail.

Speaker 26 Eventually, he called.

Speaker 3 And he told me everything would be okay

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 that we were going to have to fight some things.

Speaker 5 Christine was a wreck. Her husband was in jail, and she was dumbfounded as to why the police had taken the boys out of school and then interviewed them without parental permission.

Speaker 5 She felt better about this, though. The two oldest boys backed their dad's story.
They had seen their mom, Corey, alive Valentine's Day morning, just as Curtis said.

Speaker 3 They saw their mother alive that day.

Speaker 5 And that's the gist of their story. Yes, I saw her alive that morning when dad took us to school.

Speaker 5 So therefore, she couldn't have been dead upstairs and dying in rigor mortis setting in because we saw her alive.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 23 The boy's sister Lindsay had also told police two separate times her mom was alive that morning, had seen her off to school on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 69 Staying in the front hall, like

Speaker 69 marching us out the door like she always did.

Speaker 24 On the day of her father's arrest, Lindsay was away at college when she had an emotional talk with her brothers.

Speaker 3 Talked to him on the phone the day he got arrested, and they passed the phone around, and they were sobbing because they were scared.

Speaker 5 Hold on.

Speaker 5 Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 And they asked me to come home.

Speaker 3 And that was the last thing I ever said to them, like ever talked to him.

Speaker 27 That's when another tragedy unfolded within the Lovelace family.

Speaker 37 Around the time of Curtis's arrest, his relationship with his daughter once again deteriorated.

Speaker 28 The family doesn't want to get into details, but soon Lindsay found herself cut off from her brothers, too.

Speaker 3 I had been shut out, completely shut out.

Speaker 5 Well, you knew the charge against your father and the theory of the crime.

Speaker 5 That he had put a pillow over your mother's nose and smothered her.

Speaker 5 That's a stark image to deal with.

Speaker 3 It's something I didn't ponder, and I chose not to ponder.

Speaker 62 Though a jury would soon be pondering Curtis's guilt or innocence, in August 2014, the 45-year-old former assistant state's attorney found himself standing in a courtroom, this time as a defendant at his own arraignment.

Speaker 6 Having to appear in a courtroom that I had served as a prosecutor and dressed in stripes and having my hands and my feet shackled.

Speaker 6 Those were some really low times.

Speaker 18 Marriage just eight months.

Speaker 27 Wife number three's commitment, for better or for worse, was immediately put to the test.

Speaker 3 My husband, who is kind and caring and compassionate, is charged with something so heinous

Speaker 3 that it makes no sense.

Speaker 5 If convicted, Curtis Lovelace could spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of his wife, Corey.

Speaker 26 As if that weren't enough stress, his daughter Lindsay was about to drop a bombshell.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a daughter's difficult decision.

Speaker 3 I don't know what's in Lindsay's head and in her heart. One day, she was happy, and then everything changed.

Speaker 4 And a mother recounts what she says was Curtis's bizarre behavior the day her daughter died.

Speaker 46 I opened the door and he hands me Larson. And says, Oh, and by the way, Corey Steven.

Speaker 11 When dateline continues.

Speaker 33 Curtis Lovelace was the hometown hero.

Speaker 15 Now his face was plastered on the front pages of Quincy's newspaper as an accused murderer.

Speaker 60 We're relying on scientific medical media, including our Quincy NBC affiliate, were all over the story covering nearly every moment of his fall from grace he's accused of killing his first wife the former prosecutor would himself be prosecuted by Ed Parkinson you can't get around rigor mortis in my opinion and make sense of this case and the timeline doesn't make sense with Curtis Lovelace

Speaker 33 in January 2016 Nearly a decade after Corey Lovelace's death, Curtis arrived for the first day of his trial.

Speaker 49 He faced 20 to 60 years in prison upon conviction for first-degree murder.

Speaker 5 He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 38 Cameras were not allowed in the courtroom.

Speaker 6 It's clear to me it didn't matter what I did as far as the prosecution was concerned. Their only concern was that they needed to create a crime and they needed for me to look bad in order to do that.

Speaker 33 Curtis didn't necessarily need prosecutors' help to look bad.

Speaker 53 Some of his own actions the day Corey died were at the very least unusual, including never calling 911.

Speaker 5 He called who? His boss. His wife is dead in the bed? Yes.
And he calls his boss?

Speaker 60 Yeah, he said, my wife is dead.

Speaker 60 So his boss said, well, would you like me to call the ambulance people? Yes.

Speaker 5 Would you do that?

Speaker 15 Corey's mom, Marty Diedrikson, who lived just a few houses away, testified that Curtis broke the news of her daughter's death in what she thought was the most callous way.

Speaker 57 There was a knock at her door, and Curtis was standing there with four-year-old Larson.

Speaker 46 I opened the door, and he hands me Larson.

Speaker 5 And says.

Speaker 46 Oh, and by the way, Corey's dead.

Speaker 46 And leaves.

Speaker 5 Marty, I've got to say, I think that's very strange. Take your grandson, and by the way, your daughter's dead.

Speaker 60 He was emotionless, let's put it that way. People who saw him that day claimed that he was without emotion.

Speaker 49 Curtis also knew CPR, and yet he never tried to revive his wife.

Speaker 5 On the day, why didn't you do CPR? I don't know.

Speaker 6 I don't know why I didn't do CPR. I don't know why I didn't call 911.

Speaker 6 In looking back,

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 saw my wife, Corey,

Speaker 6 dead, and I didn't know how to react.

Speaker 26 Prosecutor Parkinson next went after the first police investigation.

Speaker 7 pushing hard against Detective Baird, who handled the case.

Speaker 26 He questioned if Baird gave Curtis, who was then an assistant state's attorney, preferential treatment.

Speaker 60 He was a prosecutor. They were the police.
He gave them a story that he,

Speaker 60 how it happened. They bought into it.

Speaker 5 After all, he's one of us. So maybe tougher questions didn't get asked.

Speaker 60 I think so.

Speaker 5 Neighbors testify the Lovelace household was sometimes a stormy one.

Speaker 7 And that, Parkinson suggested to jurors, is the backdrop of Corey's death.

Speaker 5 They fought all the time.

Speaker 60 It was a rocky marriage with lots of arguments going both ways, and it got out of control. Maybe

Speaker 60 the evidence indicates that placing a pillow over one's face to make them stop yelling at me, maybe

Speaker 60 in her weakened state, if she was, had flu-like symptoms, maybe it went too far.

Speaker 5 The state's theory, remember, is the force of the pillow caused that cut and abrasion on the outside and inside of Corey's lip.

Speaker 5 The prosecutor then implied the pillow was placed under her arms after she died and later removed.

Speaker 60 If you leave it there through the night and while rigor mortis is setting in, and then if a person is thinking, oh my god, what did I do?

Speaker 60 And oh there's that pillow and I'm going to get rid of that pillow,

Speaker 60 then the arms are already up.

Speaker 5 And you think that's what happened? Yes.

Speaker 27 But then came perhaps the most anticipated testimony for the prosecution.

Speaker 16 Lindsay, Curtis's own daughter, took the stand.

Speaker 15 Two times over a span of eight years, she told police her mother was alive that morning. She said she had felt better.

Speaker 43 But on the stand, with her dad's life on the line, she changed her story, telling jurors she was no longer sure her mom was alive that day.

Speaker 5 Don't remember any of it. But it doesn't stick in your memory.
Nope. And yet, Detective Baird's notes, you do...

Speaker 5 tell him the story about seeing your mother and then with a videotaped interview with Detective Gibson you seem quite clear about that morning and yes you saw her and went off to school what had happened in the interim between your statement and going into trial on the stand and then kind of stepping back from all of that?

Speaker 3 It was the fact of no one had honestly asked me sincerely what had happened that day and I'd never taken time to actually think about it.

Speaker 5 Well Detective Gibson did a couple years before when he took your statement, right?

Speaker 3 But it, again, I didn't know why he was asking me. I didn't know what was going on and I gave the story I always gave.

Speaker 3 So when I had to sit there and think about it, I had to be honest with myself and it

Speaker 3 wasn't the answer I wanted. I wish I could say, I really do wish I could say, yes, I remember her, or no, I know I didn't see her.

Speaker 5 But you cannot say that.

Speaker 3 But I cannot say that.

Speaker 5 And this is not you getting back at your dad, who you're very sideways with at this point. No, because it hurts me.
He needs that story, and you're not going to give it to him.

Speaker 3 No, because it hurts my brothers, too, for me not to honestly say, yes, I saw her. But I'm going to say what I can remember, which is nothing.
It's a black hole. It's a traumatizing event.

Speaker 3 And when kids go through traumatizing events, they block things out.

Speaker 3 And losing my mother was the worst day of my life.

Speaker 5 How are we to understand what's going on with Lindsay, Christine? Because she has told the story that

Speaker 5 she, like her brothers, remembers seeing her mom alive, but then she backs away from it and says, I think I can't remember really.

Speaker 3 I don't know what's in Lindsay's head and in her heart. One day she was happy and then everything changed.

Speaker 16 The prosecution still had to explain why the two oldest boys were adamant their mom was alive that morning.

Speaker 22 Parkinson told jurors there was a two-day gap between Corey's death and the first police interviews with the kids.

Speaker 54 Ample time, he suggested, for the boys to be influenced by their dad.

Speaker 60 I think the children were confused as to which day.

Speaker 5 How about coached? Do you think that he told them a story?

Speaker 60 He had custody of the children from the moment of her discovery until Thursday afternoon. So from Tuesday till Thursday afternoon, I don't know what was said.

Speaker 49 Dr.

Speaker 54 Jane Turner, the pathologist Detective Gibson hired to review the case, took the stand and said science is where the truth lies.

Speaker 33 She concluded, the most reasonable explanation for Corey's arms appearing to levitate is that Corey was dead up to 12 hours before police arrived on the scene.

Speaker 68 I viewed this material and reviewed it with the eye of a scientist and what we know about the development of rigor mortis.

Speaker 22 What would a jury believe?

Speaker 47 Science or the words from two of Corey's own sons?

Speaker 21 Corey's brother, a dentist, found himself struggling over the conflicting facts.

Speaker 58 Science is my living.

Speaker 5 I've never seen a more difficult case more closely argued. There doesn't seem to be middle ground to...

Speaker 58 There's none.

Speaker 21 Parkinson urged the jury to focus on the science and one image.

Speaker 22 Corey in her bed, her body in rigor mortise. He said it proved she died hours before Curtis claimed.

Speaker 5 It proved he was lying.

Speaker 16 It proved, he argued, that Curtis killed her.

Speaker 4 Coming up, the defense gets its turn, and Christine is feeling optimistic.

Speaker 3 I knew in my heart he was coming home.

Speaker 6 Until Christine came in and they explained to her what was about to happen.

Speaker 71 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition, too.

Speaker 71 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 71 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 71 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 75 Hey everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 75 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 75 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 75 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 76 Just got a new puppy or kitten.

Speaker 12 Congrats.

Speaker 76 But also, yikes. Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 76 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign-up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 76 Pro tip: LemonAid offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you. Your pet won't.
They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 19 The defense had a simple message for jurors.

Speaker 18 Curtis should not be on trial.

Speaker 27 That's because there was no crime and this was not a murder.

Speaker 57 It said the state's case was built on faulty science.

Speaker 77 I've stated repeatedly in this matter that there is no physical evidence to prove that he murdered his wife.

Speaker 5 Veteran pathologist Dr. George Nichols created the Office of Medical Examiner for the state of Kentucky back in the 1970s.

Speaker 18 Now, as a defense expert, he told jurors rigor mortis is not an accurate indicator of time of death.

Speaker 50 And he added, where is the evidence that Corey fought for her life?

Speaker 43 There were no signs of struggle and only the cut and abrasion on her lip.

Speaker 77 You will fight until you no longer can. The thought that somehow you could suffocate someone with a pillow and there would be only one dental mark is ludicrous.

Speaker 39 Detective Baird testified that when he first arrived on the scene, Corey's stomach area was still warm.

Speaker 21 How is that possible, the defense asked, if she had died up to 12 hours earlier?

Speaker 5 So, if the body is warm to the touch, my common sense tells me, not science, that this is someone recently deceased. Absolutely.
Is there an error in that assumption? No.

Speaker 40 As far as the prosecution's contention that Curtis killed Corey after a heated argument, the couple's oldest son testified he didn't hear anything like that the night before.

Speaker 53 And he should know because his room was right next to his parents'.

Speaker 28 It was even connected by an extra door that was usually left slightly open.

Speaker 70 She was all sick. I was like, I'll stay home with you.
And she wouldn't let me stay home.

Speaker 64 The two older boys, unlike their sister, stuck to the story they told police.

Speaker 70 Did she ever get out of bed?

Speaker 70 Yes, I think she did.

Speaker 16 If jurors believed them, it blew apart the prosecution's timeline that Corey was murdered the night before.

Speaker 6 They said the same thing that they had told Baird in 2006 and Detective Gibson in 2014.

Speaker 7 And the defense had its sights on Detective Gibson.

Speaker 5 They claimed in 2013 he was an overeager, newly promoted detective, primarily assigned to work crimes against seniors.

Speaker 33 This was his first murder case.

Speaker 6 He transferred from canine officer to elder service officer, and around the same time, he went to a one-week course on being a lead detective in a homicide case.

Speaker 6 And he embarked on this investigation that led to my indictment.

Speaker 23 Finally, the defense's medical expert concluded there was only one plausible explanation for Corey's death.

Speaker 30 She had a history of drinking and falling, and that caused that abrasion and cut.

Speaker 16 The bottom line, she was an alcoholic and bulimic suffering from a liver disease, someone who unfortunately died of natural causes.

Speaker 77 She's not a normal 38-year-old woman. She has a significant disease of a major organ that is associated with sudden death and with liver failure.

Speaker 49 In the end, Curtis decided not to take the stand.

Speaker 23 Ten women and two men would decide Lovelace's fate.

Speaker 7 The deliberations went on for two full days.

Speaker 45 Then Christine got the call to come back to the courthouse.

Speaker 3 I knew in my heart he was coming home.

Speaker 5 That was it. You were going to prevail.
He's coming home.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 5 But once she arrived, bailiffs led her to a small law library.

Speaker 6 Christine came in and they explained to her for the first time what was about to happen, that the judge would declare a mistrial.

Speaker 3 Kurt was sitting across. He said,

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 3 I lost all my air. It was terrible.

Speaker 33 The jury was hopelessly deadlocked.

Speaker 50 The vote, six guilty, six not.

Speaker 5 Curtis would face another trial. Since he couldn't make bail, he'd remain in jail.

Speaker 16 Unless.

Speaker 5 A deal, a plea deal?

Speaker 6 They had offered a second-degree murder plea, but I knew it was a decision not only that I had to make, but we had to make as a family. And I didn't know whether whether

Speaker 6 I could put them through

Speaker 6 another year of what we had already gone through.

Speaker 32 That's when one of Curtis's lawyers turned to Christine.

Speaker 3 And he said that

Speaker 3 this can all end right now if Kurt agrees to take this deal. He said it would keep him from dying in prison.

Speaker 5 But he'd have to admit his culpability, responsibility, and Corey's death. That's the condition, right? Correct.

Speaker 3 And that he wouldn't have to spend probably any more than 13 years in prison.

Speaker 27 The two said no thanks to the state's offer and geared up for a second trial.

Speaker 56 But that forced them to face another dire reality.

Speaker 16 They were totally broke, unable to afford another lawyer.

Speaker 55 What are we going to do?

Speaker 6 I mean, at that point,

Speaker 6 there didn't appear to be any option.

Speaker 5 This could be a moment for Christine to say, I'm out of here. I didn't sign on to be some Tammy Wynette for this guy standing by her man.
I'm gone.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 who could blame her

Speaker 6 if she would have done that?

Speaker 6 But that's not who she is.

Speaker 26 It looked as though Curtis would have to use a public defender, but Christine wouldn't accept that option.

Speaker 18 She worked her connections and eventually ended up here in Chicago.

Speaker 6 She came to our office and told us her story, and

Speaker 72 I remember finding it compelling and certainly worth exploring further.

Speaker 40 John Lovey is not a criminal lawyer. He's a civil rights attorney by practice who also does pro bono work with the Exoneration Project.

Speaker 16 Its aim, overturn wrongful convictions. But Curtis hadn't been convicted, at least not yet.

Speaker 17 Still, Lovy and co-counsel Tara Thompson decided to take the case.

Speaker 57 Their services would be free.

Speaker 78 The main concern that I had in this case from the outset was really the lack of evidence. This didn't feel like a murder case from the beginning.

Speaker 5 With a new defense team in place, Christine got working on her next goal: making bail to get her husband out of jail. Friends eventually put up the cash.

Speaker 33 Almost two years after his arrest, Curtis was released to his wife and sons.

Speaker 6 They greeted me at the Hancock County Jail, and I came home

Speaker 6 to a dog that I had never met, and

Speaker 6 for the first time got to be back in my house and back in my home.

Speaker 5 But it wouldn't be home sweet home for long. While Curtis and Mrs.

Speaker 7 Lovelace No.

Speaker 18 3 waited for the next trial in the alleged murder of Mrs.

Speaker 41 Lovelace No.

Speaker 40 1, the judge ruled Mrs.

Speaker 49 Lovelace No.

Speaker 19 2 could testify against her former husband.

Speaker 41 And what a story she had to tell.

Speaker 63 Coming up.

Speaker 4 Erica, out of disguise and on the stand, recounting what she says was a marriage from hell.

Speaker 10 He ripped my shirt, and

Speaker 10 then he let me go and he tried to grab me again, and I kept on trying to fight him off.

Speaker 11 When Dadline continues.

Speaker 5 or at least so infamous according to his new defense team that he couldn't get a fair trial in his hometown. A judge agreed.

Speaker 5 So trial number two was moved from Quincy to Springfield, Illinois.

Speaker 5 About two hours away. The defense is going to come up here and try to portray the defendant as a pillar of the community.
That's a facade.

Speaker 7 David Robinson would join Ed Parkinson for the prosecution.

Speaker 5 This time, cameras were allowed in the courtroom when the trial started in March 2017.

Speaker 3 Our houses were 15 feet apart from each other, so...

Speaker 5 As in the first trial, neighbors testified they often heard arguing from the Lovelace home. This woman lived next door and says she heard shouting almost every day.

Speaker 3 I mean, essentially, for the entire time that we lived there.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 six years.

Speaker 80 As I walked by the house, I heard an argument, a loud argument.

Speaker 5 Another neighbor testified she heard Corey and Curtis really going at it and on a specific date, the night before Valentine's Day, 2006. She happened to be out for a stroll.

Speaker 80 It actually did cause me to pause. I guess I was listening to see if somebody was in distress.

Speaker 5 The prosecution's theory this go-round on how Corey died remained the same. After a heated argument the night before Valentine's Day, Curtis suffocated his wife with a pillow in a fit of rage.

Speaker 5 He then waited up to 12 hours before police were called.

Speaker 79 Come over here and have a seat, please.

Speaker 5 And once again, science would play a leading role in the prosecution's case. But prosecutors had a new witness, a star forensic expert.

Speaker 66 I have also testified before the House of Representatives.

Speaker 5 In a 64-year career, Dr. Werner Spitz has consulted on the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations, as well as in other high-profile cases, including those of Phil Spector and Casey Anthony.

Speaker 81 The appearance of the injury leaves no doubt that this is not a a healing wound.

Speaker 26 In a darkened courtroom, Spitz showed photos and talked about that cut inside Corey's mouth.

Speaker 37 Curtis had told police his wife had fallen in the days before she died, his explanation for that injury.

Speaker 7 But this expert said he saw no signs the cut was an old one.

Speaker 81 There is no evidence of healing.

Speaker 81 So this looks like at the time that it was incurred.

Speaker 5 The abrasion on the outside of the lip and the cut inside indicated to Spitz that an object, like a pillow, had been placed on Corey's face shortly before she died.

Speaker 66 This is not an accident. This is not a natural death.
This is not a

Speaker 66 suicide. This is a homicide.

Speaker 5 Then came testimony the first jury never got to hear, and it was explosive. For this trial, the judge allowed Erica Gomez, wife number two, to testify.

Speaker 5 Remember, when we interviewed her, she wanted to protect her identity. But now on the witness stand, she could no longer be shielded by a disguise.

Speaker 10 He violently attacked me.

Speaker 5 Prosecutors called the ex-wife to the stand to try to show that Curtis had a history of violence. She recounted one incident, she says, that happened at home during their marriage.

Speaker 10 He had started probably drinking around 9 a.m. and we had been arguing about

Speaker 10 kids, and he came rushing at me and tried to grab me and

Speaker 10 tried to hurt me and grabbed my shirt and he yanked it up really hard hard enough to injure my knee he ripped my shirt and then he let me go and he tried to grab me again and I kept on trying to fight him off

Speaker 10 then Erica told the jury another shocking story she said Curtis had been drinking at a party and later that night he blurted out something she found disturbing He's rarely honest except for when he's been drinking and he was talk he was upset about something.

Speaker 10 And I asked him what he was upset about.

Speaker 10 And he stated something about, she was writhing underneath me. And then he said, oh, the black cat.

Speaker 24 As strange as that story sounded, the prosecutor took it to mean this.

Speaker 31 Curtis wasn't talking about a cat, but about Corey's last minutes of life as she struggled while Curtis smothered her.

Speaker 5 Erica had a story that tells us one particular quote that came out, and he says, I could hear her writhing beneath me.

Speaker 60 Yes, that was evidence.

Speaker 5 It sounds as though he's talking about killing his wife at that moment.

Speaker 60 That's what we thought it sounded like, and she testified to that under oath on the stand. I could feel her writhing beneath me.

Speaker 60 And that's pretty much what would have happened if suffocation was occurring.

Speaker 21 The prosecution believed its evidence against Curtis was overwhelming.

Speaker 39 Not so fast, said the defense.

Speaker 25 That's because it had some things up its sleeve.

Speaker 37 A new piece of last-minute evidence.

Speaker 54 And what an interesting nugget they had found.

Speaker 8 Coming up, tough questions for Erica.

Speaker 10 Someone made that up. Someone put those words in there.
My signature should be there.

Speaker 73 Anybody can redo this.

Speaker 4 And bombshell testimony.

Speaker 79 Did you know when you decided to pursue this investigation that the arms had been moved?

Speaker 12 I did not.

Speaker 35 We told the judge we weren't going to talk.

Speaker 32 Curtis Lovelace was putting his life in the hands of John Lovey.

Speaker 5 His new attorney, who took on the defense for free, had more than 20 years of experience, just not in criminal law. Was this your first murder trial?

Speaker 61 It was. I did a battery criminal defense case right out of law school, but other than that, this is basically my first criminal defense case.

Speaker 5 Curtis was taking a huge gamble.

Speaker 7 On the other hand, since he was broke, he didn't have a lot of options.

Speaker 11 Corey died of massive deliver disease.

Speaker 39 In his opening remarks, Lovy said the state hadn't presented any evidence of murder for a reason.

Speaker 5 There was no murder.

Speaker 67 All of the medical evidence in this case is going to prove to you that she died as a result of an acute, sudden onset condition brought on by her alcohol.

Speaker 5 One of the defense's key goals was to debunk the damaging testimony of Curtis's ex, Erica, that he had violently attacked her and ripped her shirt.

Speaker 82 Once we'd finished talking, and I had taken my notes.

Speaker 5 And one of the first defense witnesses was Major Larry Fuller with the Illinois National Guard.

Speaker 82 I asked her if she wanted to make a sworn statement, a formal sworn statement, which is in writing. She said yes, she would.

Speaker 56 Erica had filed a domestic violence charge with the guard since Curtis at the time was still active.

Speaker 7 The major was appointed to look into the charges.

Speaker 5 He testified as to what Erica told him.

Speaker 82 She started backing up.

Speaker 13 Well, backing up, she fell.

Speaker 82 Then he went down to pick her up, and when he did, she said that he accidentally struck her in the chin as he was reaching for her shoulder.

Speaker 79 I'm going to slow you down here. You said accidentally.
Where do you get the word accidentally?

Speaker 82 That was her words.

Speaker 5 Erica, at first, reported Curtis accidentally hit her.

Speaker 5 The major added that she initially didn't mention anything about Curtis ripping her shirt after conducting an investigation. He concluded her charges were unfounded.

Speaker 82 There was nothing there to actually lead to a domestic violence finding.

Speaker 5 Armed with that information, the defense confronted Erica in cross-examination with her own statement. But Erica said the document used in court was a fake.

Speaker 10 Someone made that up. Someone put those words in there.
My signature should be there. My signature is not there.
This is typed. This isn't written.

Speaker 73 Anybody can redo this.

Speaker 5 Then the defense did something unusual. It asked Erica about other accusations she's made against Curtis, and she had a laundry list of complaints.

Speaker 10 He knows how to forge paperwork. He used my social security number to try and steal money out of my account.
He knows how to get rid of evidence. He stole my daughter's bicycle out of the garage.

Speaker 73 At one point, an overwhelmed Erica asked for a timeout.

Speaker 73 Can I get a break, please?

Speaker 5 But Erica wasn't folding. She blurted out another allegation in court against her ex.

Speaker 10 He was poisoning me.

Speaker 10 There was... My hair was falling out.
There were white lines on my fingers. I was extremely sick.

Speaker 5 Erica claimed Curtis had tried to poison her and her daughter.

Speaker 25 She told police he likely put something in their orange juice.

Speaker 73 But according to the defense, there was a problem with that charge.

Speaker 5 Erica had never sought medical care.

Speaker 79 Isn't it true, ma'am, that you never went to a doctor and said, I think I'm being poisoned?

Speaker 10 It wouldn't have mattered.

Speaker 5 When Erica left the stand, what do you think the jury made of her?

Speaker 61 I think they were shocked that the state called her. You know, the state thought that they could score a point, but when she was subjected to cross-examination, she wasn't a credible person.

Speaker 5 There was one other theme Lothi wanted to drill into this jury, and it concerned the lead detective.

Speaker 73 Adam Gibson, he argued, had gone pathologist shopping.

Speaker 5 That is, he consulted a series of pathologists before finding one to give him the answer he was looking for.

Speaker 53 That, yes, Corey's death was, in fact, a murder.

Speaker 65 If my opinion is not what he wants, he's going to be going looking for somebody else. Dr.

Speaker 27 Shaku T's was one of the pathologists Gibson approached.

Speaker 5 Her opinion, Detective Gibson, wanted her to call this a homicide when that was not her conclusion.

Speaker 65 He had a theory and he was looking somehow to substantiate that theory.

Speaker 61 The original pathologist, the original coroner, said that there was insufficient evidence to find a homicide.

Speaker 61 He got other opinions from other pathologists who also told him there's nothing unusual here. You're barking up the wrong tree.

Speaker 5 Then came even more damaging accusations against Detective Gibson.

Speaker 5 The defense said it obtained, at the last minute, important emails and other documents it was supposed to have received from the police, but never did.

Speaker 5 Potentially exculpatory evidence.

Speaker 79 You understood this email shouldn't have turned over, didn't you?

Speaker 12 It was not something that I thought of, no.

Speaker 5 One email was from a medical expert. He warned Detective Gibson that if the first pathologist left the cause of death as undetermined, that opinion would trump anyone else's.

Speaker 5 And he implied that would give plenty of reasonable doubt to a jury.

Speaker 79 This email should have been turned over, didn't you?

Speaker 61 I believe so. It should, yes.

Speaker 79 You didn't turn it over, didn't you?

Speaker 5 I did not.

Speaker 24 The prosecution's case appeared to be teetering.

Speaker 5 Then came another blow.

Speaker 5 William Ballard was one of the first EMTs on the scene.

Speaker 53 When he arrived, he wanted to place EKG stickers on Corey's body to check for a heartbeat.

Speaker 22 So he moved her arms.

Speaker 59 Her arms were down against her chest. I had to pull them up to check for a pulse, check for any

Speaker 59 rigor mortis, and to also move her arms up to where I could place my stickers where I'm supposed to place them.

Speaker 50 He moved Corey's arms before the police photos were taken.

Speaker 17 That means her arms were not in the same position as seen in the photographs.

Speaker 39 The ones that started this entire second investigation.

Speaker 5 The defense seized on that fact.

Speaker 79 Did you know when you decided to pursue this investigation that the arms had been moved?

Speaker 12 I did not.

Speaker 79 Is this the first time you're hearing that, as you sit here today?

Speaker 12 That the arms have been moved prior to the pictures?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 79 Because basically your investigation took off because you believed that the armies were in a position that was suspicious, right?

Speaker 8 Yes. Mr.

Speaker 5 Lovelace come up and be sworn. A final surprise.
For the first time, the defendant, Curtis Lovelace, took the stand. He insisted he wasn't a violent man.

Speaker 73 He never harmed his second wife, Erica, and certainly did not kill Corey.

Speaker 6 I did love Corey, and

Speaker 6 I know the kids loved her, and it's been difficult.

Speaker 5 The defense wrapped up its questioning with an emotional Curtis telling jurors of the enormous toll the two trials had taken on him and his family.

Speaker 5 How long have you and your family had to live with this process?

Speaker 5 It's been two and a half years.

Speaker 55 Whenever you're ready.

Speaker 26 On cross-examination, the prosecution pointed out that a whole bunch of witnesses and facts in this trial would have to be wrong for Curtis to be innocent.

Speaker 79 It sounds to me like they're saying

Speaker 79 Eric is lying, Detective Gibson is lying, Marty's lying, and the science is lying. Do you agree with that characterization?

Speaker 6 It's up to them to decide who is lying.

Speaker 37 After seven days of testimony, Curtis Lovelace's trial had come to an end.

Speaker 5 The jury began deliberations.

Speaker 15 Remember, the first panel was deadlocked 6-6.

Speaker 79 Let me ask you this.

Speaker 35 Have you reached a unanimous verdict?

Speaker 5 But this go-round, the jury was out about two hours before it came back with a decision.

Speaker 65 Lead the jury, finding defendant Curtis T. Lovelace, not guilty.

Speaker 5 Signed by the poor person in the living. 11 years after Corey's death, two and a half years after Curtis's arrest, and two jury trials later, not guilty.

Speaker 55 Two-hour verdict, murder trial.

Speaker 74 I mean, what does that tell you?

Speaker 61 That tells me that they were absolutely convinced Kurt was innocent.

Speaker 5 That's not how prosecutor Ed Parkinson sees it. So does the system work or has a guy gotten away with murdering?

Speaker 60 Sometimes it works. I think my partner in the prosecution said you're looking at a guy who you think might have got away with murder.
I feel bad because I think we were right.

Speaker 5 How do you feel right now?

Speaker 26 While the legal consequences for Curtis are over, the fallout from Corey's death continues to paralyze the extended family.

Speaker 3 I don't know what to believe anymore.

Speaker 5 Lindsay, now a teacher, remains estranged from her father. But she hopes to salvage something despite all that's happened, a relationship with her brothers.

Speaker 3 I just pray every day and hope that one day I'll get a call, a text, a message, an email, something

Speaker 3 from one of them.

Speaker 5 Corey's mom, Marty. Did you come to an opinion about what role, if any, he had in

Speaker 5 Corey's death? Curtis?

Speaker 46 Those are tucked here. I have kept my mouth shut for a long time, and I'm going to keep it that way.

Speaker 22 Curtis says the state offered increasingly attractive plea deals before the start of the second trial, but he turned them all down.

Speaker 47 He has since filed an 11-count lawsuit against the police and the city of Quincy.

Speaker 15 The suit alleges malicious prosecution and argues Curtis's kids were falsely imprisoned during those police interviews.

Speaker 33 Representatives for the police in Quincy said they had no comment.

Speaker 5 The family moved out of Quincy and Curtis opened a law office in Champaign, Illinois.

Speaker 29 A couple of requests that we go ahead and get.

Speaker 5 And he and Christine started an exoneration-type organization.

Speaker 73 They say they want to help others wrongfully accused or convicted.

Speaker 5 Christine, what happened to you guys in this whole thing, do you think?

Speaker 3 I don't know what happened to us, Dennis. We're still figuring that out.
These kinds of things happen across our country every day.

Speaker 3 And now I think we have an obligation to share this story and to help other people.

Speaker 5 Your goal was to leave that courthouse an innocent man.

Speaker 6 Yes, I believe looking in the eyes of that jury,

Speaker 55 seeing

Speaker 6 the tears from some of them, how quickly that they came back, that they were declaring to me and

Speaker 29 the world

Speaker 6 that I'm innocent.

Speaker 16 Curtis Lovelace, A Life Interrupted.

Speaker 5 That's all for now.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 11 Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 20 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them.
Protect your identity with LifeLock.

Speaker 20 LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 20 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.