Deadly Entanglement

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I hear on the news that Desiree Sunford had been found murdered. and I screamed.
We were searching through the house, and I could see Desiree on the floor. She was shot very violently.
Scott was very talkative. I actually stayed with a friend.
What's the friend's name? Oh, her name's Paige. You're wondering, who is Paige? That's right.
Is he having an affair? Desiree and Paige and Scott all knew each other well. Yes.
I was accepted as a part of their marriage. Paige called this tip in.
She says, I know who the killer is. That's right.
A name that had never come up before. She's trying to set me up saying, I killed someone.
It makes me sick. The psycho swigled her way into their life and created chaos.
Talk about twists. I was completely blown away.
I risked my life to do the right thing. And I'm being crucified.
A husband, a wife, a mistress. Did a three-way affair lead to murder? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
Here's Blaine Alexander with Deadly Entanglement. We've all had that fear.
That middle of the night, home alone in a dark, empty house kind of fear. I can't imagine what went through her mind.
We hear a noise, and the imagination runs wild. Of course, we usually just shrug it off, go back to sleep, and wake up the next morning perfectly fine.
This is not that story. The woman in this story woke up alone to that very nightmare.

It was around 3.30 a.m.

Someone was in her house.

They'll be there to help her.

They'll be there to defend her.

Someone who was there only to kill.

And it was pretty clear that this wasn't just a robbery gone wrong. That's correct.
A diabolical plot, born of sex and obsession, where the killer was as unexpected as the victim. Who would want to kill Tiz? She had no enemies, and there was just no reason, no reason at all to kill her.
Yakima County, Washington, where a marriage of mountains and countryside creates a stunning backdrop. Picturesque? Certainly.
But people here are no strangers to crime. Retired Yakima County Sheriff's Deputy Ed Levesque has patrolled nearly every square mile of this county and seen everything from petty theft to homicide.
It's been a ride.

I've seen a lot, learned a lot.

So a late night call to report a possible break-in wasn't rare.

Like that call on April 7th, 2013.

Sheriff's Office.

It came out as like a welfare check.

Sometimes they're absolutely nothing and sometimes they're bad. Hi, ma'am.
This is Scott Sunford. 31-year-old Scott Sunford was driving home to Yakima County when he saw a notification.
An alarm had gone off at his house where his wife, Desiree, was home alone. I had three census trips and I've been out of town with family for a funeral.
My wife was home. Okay, did somebody break into the residence? I don't know.
I've been out of town. I'm just on my way back and I haven't been able to get a hold of the wife.
Deputies were dispatched to the scene, but Scott got there first. He called 911 again.
I just got home and the board that I have over my back door has been broken. And I still haven't heard back from my wife.
I need an officer here now. She stayed home at this address? Yes.
Ed Levesque and two other sheriff's deputies raced to get to Scott. but the house was way out of town.

You have to drive down a series of Tulane County roads.

There's no street lights out here.

Further out you go, the less homes you'll see.

Scott was still on the line with 911.

I'm in the driveway. I haven't tried to enter it yet or anything.
He even gave the operator his wife's phone number to call. It went straight to voicemail.
You've reached our race. I'm certain.
I'll get back to you when I can. When Deputy Levesque and his partners finally arrived, they saw a man standing outside, pointing a gun and a spotlight at the house.
My first thought was that there was a police officer already here. And as I approached him, I could see that he was not a police officer.
However, it was a guy standing just outside the driver's side of that door with the door open. And I saw that he had a pistol pointed at the house.
It was Scott. I says, what are you doing with the gun? Did you go inside the house and check on your wife? He says, no, I don't know what I'm going to find in there.
Just steps into the dark house, the deputies found Desiree on the floor in her underwear, a bandage on her leg. I could see part of her body.
And as I got closer, I could see that she had obviously suffered multiple gunshots. And I could see casings on the floor.
I could see a lot of trauma, a lot of blood. And it was obvious that she was deceased.
You know, I've been to quite a few homicides that involved firearms, but not like this. Looking at how many times she had been shot, it was obvious to me that person wanted to make sure she was dead.
So it was that very moment, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, that a wild mystery began. Are there parts of this case that still kind of linger in your mind, that still kind of bother you? There were some red flags that just didn't seem to add up.
His attitude, his behavior, his demeanor, his actions were just gross. She just never seemed like she would be that person that would be willing to accept another

person in her home.

In her marriage.

What were you thinking when you heard that name?

My exact thought was, who the hell is that guy? All through the night, detectives and forensic techs arrived at Desiree Sunford's home,

now a crime scene.

Desiree's husband, Scott, remained outside the house, no longer holding his gun. We secured the gun and we put him in the back of the patrol car.
Meanwhile, local police broke the terrible news to Desiree's mother, who then called her son Desiree's brother Casey. Desiree's dead.
That's all she could say.

I think I blacked out a little bit or something.

Next thing I remember, I was on the floor just crying into the phone with Mom.

It was impossible for Desiree's loved ones to believe she was gone.

Kayla Lewis was one of her closest and oldest friends.

What stood out about Desiree?

Desiree was, are we allowed to cuss?

Sure.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Give me what you feel.

She was just a badass.

She rode her Harley and carried a sidearm and she loved art. She did a lot of art herself.
But she was just a good person all around. And Desiree loved cars, classic cars.
Her dad taught her how to restore anything from a truck to a convertible.

And even after he died from cancer when she was 12, she kept working under the hood. Oh, my God.
We surprised her with her first car, with the Chevelle, for her 16th birthday. It was a special day, a very special day.
Turn the key. Of course, at 16, she had another focus, boys.

One in particular, Scott Sunford.

Her friend Kim O'Dell says Desiree got a kick out of Scott's goofy side.

He was always the jokester, always the prankster, always having a good time.

As long as I've known her, it's always been Desiree, her Chevy, and Scott.

Those three.

Those three things.

When did they seriously start talking about marriage?

She wanted to be done with school and then get married and then start having a family.

That plan changed a little bit, though.

Thank you. When did they seriously start talking about marriage? She wanted to be done with school and then get married and then start having a family.
That plan changed a little bit, though. It did because he was enlisted and then had to go to Iraq.
Scott proposed in 2003. He was 22.
She was 21. The wedding was just days before he deployed.
Everybody seemed happy. Desiree and Scott seemed happy.
While Scott was deployed, Desiree finished college and even earned a graduate degree. Eventually, she got her dream job as an art teacher at Wapato Middle School outside of Yakima.
Michelle Howell and Desiree bonded as young teachers. It was nice to have somebody that was relatively my age that was right there.
You know, every school has a cool teacher where you just want to go and sit and eat your lunch or just go and sit and just talk. It sounds like Desiree.
She was one of them. Was a cool teacher.
Yep. She was definitely one of them.
By 2012, Scott was back in Washington working at a National Guard training center. The couple adopted a dog and named her Ada.
They scraped together enough money to buy a home way out in the country. She's married her high school sweetheart.
They have a home together. Yeah.
And she was so proud of that. Desiree and Scott seemed well on their way to building a happy, grown-up life.
But then, on April 2nd, just five days before she was murdered, Desiree came home to find someone had broken into their house and stolen an iPad and a laptop. The burglary shook her up.
Scott put up a plywood board over the broken back window. And to calm Desiree's fears, they installed an alarm system.
Did Desiree still feel comfortable inside her home? Once the board got up back on the back door, it wasn't the end of the world. She was like, she knew she had her alarm system.
She knew that she could take care of herself, handle herself. Desiree owned firearms, too, and always kept a gun at her bedside.
But neither the alarm nor her gun stopped her killer. And now the terrible news of Desiree's death was everywhere.
I was getting ready for work Monday morning, and I hear on the news that local art teacher Desiree Sunford had been found killed or murdered. And I stopped, and I screamed.
I'm like, tell me it's a lie, tell me it's a lie, tell me it's a lie. Now, down at the sheriff's office, investigators were digging into the case.
Starting with Scott Sunford. Scott explained he had been out of town the day before, at his aunt's funeral, when the weather got bad.
He called Desiree. It was probably 11 or so.
And I told her, you know, it's kind of rainy. It's windy.
Tired as hell. Long day.
And they want to do a breakfast get together in the morning. I'm going to stay here for the night.
He said he didn't start for home until 530 the next evening. All along the drive, I just kept calling her randomly, trying to get a hold of her.
And he just wasn't getting anything from her. And it was kind of freaking me out.
He checked his phone again. That's when he noticed the alarm had gone off hours earlier.
He made that first call to 911. Did somebody break into the residence? I don't know.
Investigators were curious about Scott's last minute decision to stay overnight. They would become even more curious when he told them where he stayed.
You stayed at your dad's in Kennewick?

No, I actually stayed with a friend.

What's the friend's name?

Oh, her name's Paige.

She's a mutual friend.

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When Desiree Sunford was shot to death during an apparent break-in at her home,

deputies at the scene noticed right away her husband, Scott, seemed strangely calm.

He had no emotion whatsoever. None whatsoever.
It wasn't like he was trying to absorb bad news. I don't believe he ever asked me questions about how his wife died.
Now Scott was sitting in an interview room. I just didn't know what the hell was going on.
And something about him didn't sit right with the detective either. He asked Scott why he stayed on with the 911 operator instead of rushing inside to see if his wife was okay.
My stomach was churning. I was shaking.
I had convinced myself by that point something had to be wrong. Well, I'm just thinking, you're a big guy, so if anyone's going to be willing to go charge them in the house and make sure their wife's okay, it would seem to me that it would be you.
Well, it's not that I was afraid of anybody being in there. I'll take on 100 people for it, that's fine.
What did you think you might see if you went inside? Roll around 1,000 of the worst things you could think of. It just was not the normal response for an individual thinking his wife was hurt or in danger.
Yakima County Sheriff's Detective Dave Johnson, now retired, worked Desiree's case. And this is somebody who presumably could have handled a situation.
He knows his way around a firearm. He's got a gun.
Yes, he's well-trained. He has served in combat, so he would be able to handle the situation in our opinion.
The detective interviewing Scott asked about his military service. I got blown up a few times, but nothing really.
Well, I got shot, too, but I was wearing body armor. How do you cope with that? Well, according to the military, I'm what they call mentally resilient.
They said I deal with things quite well. The detective switched topics and asked Scott about spending the night away after his aunt's funeral.
You mean you stayed at your dad's in Kennewick? No, I actually stayed with a friend. What's the friend's name? Oh, her name's Paige.
At this point, you're wondering, who is Paige? That's right. It's not a normal event unless he's having an affair with this lady.
She's a mutual friend? A mutual friend of his and Desiree's. Did Desiree know that you were going to Pages? I don't know, honestly.
It's not something you're discussed with her? No. The red flags are just piling up on this guy at this point.
It is. There's more to this relationship than what he's telling us.
Was it just a platonic friendship? Or did you have a sexual relationship with Paige? You know, I shouldn't go there because it's kind of rude. But, well, Des didn't want me to say anything to anybody.
At one point, her and Paige had a little thing going for a while there,

a little experiment.

Okay, so it was Desiree and Paige who had the sexual relationship?

Yeah.

But not you and Paige?

We all did.

Sometimes you're in Paige, too.

Honestly, we all did.

Okay.

I bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?

We did not know. That was something.
Sometimes you think you've heard everything and something new comes up.

Did it seem as though he was trying to almost downplay his affair with Paige by saying that Desiree was involved?

Desiree knew about it.

She was good with all of it.

Yeah, it was no big deal.

We needed to find out as much as possible about their relationship.

Was there a major jealousy going on?

The detective asked Scott if he knew of anyone who had a problem with Desiree.

Nothing. I mean, who hates an art teacher? It's an elective.

The detective took a break and stepped out.

Just sit tight for a second.

Keep it together.

And Scott kept the conversation going with himself.

Knock it off.

No tears.

Don't think about your life.

Don't think about her.

Stop shaking. Stop shaking.
Calm down. Put teary up, man.
Suck it up, suck it up. All the suspects I've interviewed over the years, that's one of the first times I've seen that.
He was just like, he's really psyching himself up that he wanted to have his emotions in control. Was that suspicious to you? Very suspicious, very suspicious.
Meanwhile, investigators had been gathering evidence. There was some DNA under Desiree's fingernails? That's correct.
That was sent to the lab. There was also a shoe print on the carpet, a few feet from Desiree's body.
The person who made that print had stepped in some blood. You were wearing those shoes? Yeah.
On the left of the house? How important was that piece of evidence? If we found the correct shoe that would match that, that would be very huge. They also collected security video from the area, looking for Scott's car.
And they took his phone. Then they let him go.
So we can about wrap it up here. There was nothing that we could even come remotely close to charging him with the murder of his wife.

Just because he was acting funny.

But by the time he walked out of the sheriff's office, detectives weren't the only ones wondering about Scott.

After Iraq, he was a different Scott.

Different. The students at Wapato Middle School were struggling.
Desiree Sunford, the cool art teacher in room 147, was gone. When kids started finding out, those were tough conversations.
How were they taking it? We had a couple of kiddos get really angry. Really angry.
Fellow teacher Michelle Howell was heartbroken too, but she put on a brave face. In education, you can't think about yourself.
You've got to think about your kids.

Still, she realized just how raw her emotions were when a student came up to her during lunch break.

And she goes, I'm sorry that your heart hurts.

And I just broke down.

And she goes, I'm going to let you cry.

Sure.

But the commentary that swirled about what happened

and how it happened and who did it, that's where the tininess of this valley starts to really play in. So there were all sorts of wild theories flying around.
Stupid theories. There were supposedly that one of our kids had done it, and then an angry parent had done it.
You just wanted to put cotton in your ears so you don't listen. Who would want to kill Des? Nobody.
People in Desiree's hometown of Moses Lake were both sad and stumped. She had no enemies.
She was an amazing person. And there was just no reason, no reason at all to kill her.
At first, Kayla thought it could have been related to the burglary that happened a week earlier.

Did you think a person came back?

Yeah, I mean, that would be, I mean, a logical explanation.

When Kayla checked in with Desiree's mother, Connie, she learned about Scott's strange behavior at the crime scene.

She told me that Scott called the police because he didn't want to go in.

And she was very upset about it because he, you know, he's military. He had a weapon,

but he wouldn't go in to see if his wife was okay. You've known him for much of his life.

You've known him for years. Were you upset? I think initially I just question it, like why? But I think if I were put in the same position, I cannot tell you how I would react.
And Kayla wasn't surprised that Scott seemed unemotional at the crime scene. For the Scott that you know, that's not outside of his character.
Correct. He was not an emotional person, so it wasn't out of character for him.
Michelle wasn't willing to give Scott that pass. You could not pay me enough to stand outside if I thought that someone I loved or someone that I cared about was hurt or dying or dead inside anywhere.
So when you heard that, what did that make you think? I was super confused. I was really confused.
Why would you wait? Like, what would stop you? Like, what if she was still alive? Desiree's brother, Casey, wondered if Scott knew more than he was letting on. I never told mom this.
I never told anybody. And I kept saying to myself, if Scott had anything to do with this, it's one of those gut feelings that there was something he wasn't saying, telling us.
Kim O'Dell had the same gut feeling. She had known Scott since middle school, and she saw how much his time in the Army had changed him.
After Iraq, he was a different Scott. Different.
How? Completely different. Just a darker sense of humor about things.
Did Desiree ever say anything about it? A little bit here and there. So she noticed a shift too? She did.
I think we all did, especially those of us that were that were close before and after. People in Desiree's life noticed Scott seemed more detached, less loving.
And there was another reason their marriage may not have been rock solid. Had you heard that Desiree was stepping out on Scott? I did.
Years earlier, Kim found out Desiree had cheated on Scott before they were married. Did she ever tell Scott about this? She did.
Did they have to try and patch things up? What did that look like? I think that there was a lot of trust lost in that and I think that it was slowly them trying to rebuild. Between Desiree's infidelity and the change she saw in Scott, Kim wondered if Scott had just snapped.
I thought Scott lost his mind. Scott found out about things that had happened in the past, and he lost his mind.
Desiree's loved ones were grasping for answers. But what they didn't know was detectives thought they might already have one.
In Paige Blades, who was about to tell investigators

her story. Was there ever any jealousy or anger over the relationship?

No, she became, I wouldn't say so much jealous, but a little bit more possessive of him. Detectives wasted no time in contacting the other woman in Scott's and maybe Desiree's life, Paige Blades.

How quickly did you go see her?

It was later that morning. It was around 8, 9 o'clock that morning.
Paige said she didn't have money for gas, so detectives drove almost two hours to her house. She was 23, shared a young son with an ex-boyfriend, and she worked at a food processing plant in Moses Lake.
I understand that you're a friend of Scott and Desiree. Yeah.
How long did you talk with her? We probably talked with her an hour, hour and a half. How did she come across to you in that conversation? Didn't seem to be too concerned.
Can you just kind of tell me in your own words

about your relationship with them?

How long you've known them?

I met Scott in February 2011,

and we became friends.

I met his wife, Desiree, in May of the same year. We were friends.
We all hung out. We did stuff together.
What was the nature of your relationship with Scott? He's my best friend. He helped me sober up.
He helped me with a lot of personal issues that I was going through. Paige said she and Scott soon became more than friends.
We became intimate probably later that first year, and his wife knew about it. I was accepted as a part of their marriage.
I had, I had a relationship right along with both of them.

Okay.

So what?

In their bed, I shared food costs.

I cooked, I cleaned.

So you were involved in a sexual relationship with Scott

and Desiree knew about it?

I was also sexual with her as well, yes.

Just as Scott had told them, Paige said it was all good, that Desiree was perfectly comfortable with the arrangement, until she wasn't. That was about seven months before her murder.
She became, I wouldn't say so much jealous, but a little bit more possessive of him. And it kind of went away.

When she started feeling uncomfortable, we kind of ended up.

It was completely amicable, agreed upon.

We stayed friends.

There's never been an issue.

So now you're getting a different picture, perhaps, of this relationship than the one that Scott was portraying.

That Desiree wasn't completely on board with their dealings. That's correct.
Page said her relationship with Desiree may have cooled, but the affair with Scott continued right up until the night of Desiree's murder. Scott was still involved with her, and I'm not sure if Desiree knew that he was still involved with her.
When was the last time that you saw Scott? Last Saturday, two nights ago. He came, he had a funeral in Tri-Cities, and he ended up coming back here to spend the night.
As she talked, detectives thought she sounded a little too practiced.

Your story seems very, it's almost too clean. It seems like rehearsed and perhaps coached from Scott because your stories match too well.
We asked her if Scott had told her to give him an alibi

or tell her what to tell the police or anything like that.

She said no.

He never talked to her other than he notified her

that Desiree had been killed.

If you know anything regarding this death

and you're trying to make up a story or protect Scott,

the truth is going to come out eventually.

And the longer you hide things, you're not being honest

I'm going to come out eventually.

And the longer you hide things, you're not being honest with us and truthful with us,

you could be charged.

I understand.

Did she come across as believable to you?

For the most part, yes.

But there was still a bit of doubt there somewhere.

There was. We weren't sure if she was really telling us the truth.
Do you kind of put a bookmark next to her name thinking she's somebody we're going to have to dig further into? Yeah, we need to find out how deep a relationship they have. Do they see each other more than what she was telling us or what Scott was telling us? Is there anything that you'd like to add to this statement?

I hope to catch it.

Later, when detectives spoke to those close to Desiree,

Paige's and Scott's stories of a lovely, amicable three-way didn't seem plausible.

Kim said she'd never heard of Paige.

Desiree never mentioned her as a friend.

Nope.

When you first hear about her,

and kind of her connection in their world,

What do you think? It just seemed an odd situation. Like, as far as them having a relationship, the three of them, I didn't ever see it from her.
I just didn't see that she would ever venture into that. Kayla hadn't heard of Paige either.
Never heard of her name before. She also didn't buy the idea of a three-way affair.
Oh my gosh. It's like one of those crazy movies.
The things you only see in movies.

So the idea of her allowing another woman to even enter the relationship,

that's not the Desiree you know.

No, that's not the Desiree I know.

But could Desiree have hidden such an affair?

To detectives, anything seemed possible in a case that would be loaded with secrets. We had just found out about three weeks before the shooting that I was pregnant.
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Two weeks after Desiree was killed, her family and friends gathered for a funeral as unique as the woman herself. They had her Harley in there.
Inside the church? Yeah. There was a beautiful poem that I don't know who read, but it was The Dash.
And it was basically talking about, you know, the day you're born and then the dash and then the day you die. And they want to focus on the dash that time.
When you think about that poem with Desiree, did you feel that she lived that dash to the fullest? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
What other Harley driving, gun-slimbing, art teacher. Car restoring.
Yeah. She did it all.
She did. Scott was there at the funeral, of course.
But for Michelle, that memory is not a pleasant one. If I lost my spouse, if I lost someone that I loved and someone that I cared about, sure as hell wouldn't be smiling at their funeral.
Scott was smiling? Multiple occasions. We watched him on his phone walk outside, because the back part of the church that we were in, this open venue, there was a wall of windows.
And he's on his phone, smoking a cigarette outside with a smile on his face.

Detective Johnson was hearing similar stories that Scott just didn't seem like the grieving

spouse.

Just a couple days after the funeral, he was talking to a young lady at a motorcycle dealership.

He asked for a hug, which is kind of normal and,

you know, need a little emotional support. But then he asked her out to dinner.

Like on a date?

Yeah. It just didn't seem to add up that he was really devastated by the death of Desiree.

Now, devil's advocate, you never know how somebody's going to react in a traumatic

situation. This is a military man.
Perhaps he just was stoic by nature. This was perhaps his defense mechanism when hearing this hard news.
That's correct. Each individual handles different stress in their lives, handle it different.
And we had no, did not know what would be normal for his reaction. But their suspicions were based on more than his demeanor.
About two months after the murder, investigators got what sounded like explosive news. You get a tip that Paige was pregnant with Scott's baby when the murder happened.
What did you think when you heard that? That definitely would be a motive to get Desiree out of the picture.

Does that change this picture for you at all?

It makes us work harder to find out if there's any connection that would, did Page commit this crime?

Or did Scott have Page do it for him?

It was just more unanswered questions for the investigation.

But then some questions were answered when the lab results came back.

The DNA found under Desiree's fingernails was male DNA, but...

It wasn't Scott's DNA.

It was not.

Results on the bloody shoe print also came in.

No connection to Scott.

We had nothing in the house that matched any type of shoes that he had in the house. And the evidence from his phone? When you were going through that cell phone data, did it tell you where Scott and Paige were at the time of the killing? It showed that he was in the Tri-Cities area during those times.
It was on the route that he would take, so nothing was suspicious. They confirmed that Scott's phone wasn't at the scene of the crime.
Neither was Paige's. And all those gas station security cameras they checked? There was no sign of Scott's car near his home at the time of the murder.
It's like you've got a lot of shiny pennies, but they're not adding up to much at this point. Does your investigation start to go cold? Oh, yes.
But as the investigation of Scott seemed to cool, interest in Paige was about to get white hot with revelations of some hostile texts. There was one where Paige texted Desiree and said, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.
Oh my gosh. A wannabe boyfriend with a bizarre motive.
He worshiped the girl and I walk on. He's obsessed with me.
And even an attempted sting. Will you talk about it if I come over next weekend?

Just how did Paige fit into this twisted case? We would try to find out for ourselves.

There are people who would look at this and say that you came into their marriage

and basically just tore it apart. No, I definitely wasn't there to destroy their marriage.
What had seemed to be mounting evidence against Scott Sunford was amounting to very little, And the investigation into Desiree's murder seemed like it had gone quiet. How hard was that time for you? It was awful.
It was awful. There was all the other headlines, all the other things going on.
And she was forgotten. But her students didn't forget, and they still wanted answers.

When they became eighth graders, they were like, whatever happened to that teacher?

Like, did they ever figure out who did it?

And I would just say, I don't know.

And I would move on.

It's not really a conversation you want to have with a 13 or 14-year-old.

Sure.

Michelle thought an art project dedicated to Desiree might

help. We spent a Saturday

creating this piece of artwork

that is up

in our library. We invaded her classroom

and used all of her pastels and just

built this thing. And then

I took it to my classroom and any of the kids who wanted to come in

and be part of that and put their artwork

on there for her and create

a tile of their own for her is what we called it. And they did.
That's beautiful. Meanwhile, investigators were taking a harder look at Paige Blades, the third wheel in the Sunford's marriage.
Turns out there was another man in Paige's orbit. She'd brought him up in her interview with the detectives.
But aside from that, I can't really think of anybody. And who is your ex? Dylan Williams.
Have you ever known him to be a violent person? Oh, he has violent tendencies, but he's not... He's not violent without provocation.
So what do you mean by violent tendencies? If he's attacked, he'll attack.

And you said that he hates Scott.

And yes.

Detectives learned Paige's ex-boyfriend, Dylan,

had actually been involved in a shooting death two years earlier.

He told officers two men came to his home in Moses Lake and assaulted him, so he shot one of them in self-defense. It was ruled a justifiable homicide.
You did bring Dylan in to talk to him, correct? Oh, certainly. We wanted to find out the relationship that he had with Page.
Did he know anything about the relationship between Scott and Page? Did he know anything about Desiree? Did you ask him where he was the night that Desiree was killed? Certainly. What did he tell you? He was home in Moses Lake area.
At the time of Desiree's murder, he had two firearms registered in his name, but neither was the same caliber as the gun that killed Desiree. And his alibi checked out.
What's more, when Paige gave birth toward the end of the year, Dylan asked for a paternity test. It showed the baby was his, not Scott's.
So in the end, Paige's baby didn't matter to the case. But that didn't mean there weren't serious problems between Paige, Scott, and Desiree in the months before the murder.
Investigators learned a whole lot about that when the digital evidence finally came back. There it was, a trove of eye-opening texts between Desiree and Paige that told a dramatically new story about the two women and Scott.
He was not being very honest with us. He was not being forthright about his relationship with his wife, or it really isn't a relationship with Paige.
The texts began more than a year before the murder, and early on, showed a close friendship between the two women. Desiree wrote, You're my only close girlfriend.
Paige answered, That's good to know. I am able to talk to you more openly than I am with most.
They alluded to one night that wasn't strictly platonic. Desiree wrote, And honestly, I did enjoy that night.
There are aspects there that are different with a woman than a man. Page responded, I very much miss having a woman to play with.
But there was no evidence that they were engaged in an ongoing affair. In fact, about three weeks later, the texts showed Desiree getting tired of Paige living in her home.
She wanted more privacy with Scott. Desiree wrote, it's starting to wear out.
So the idea of you here for a week and who knows what next scares me. Where the hell is our time? Paige responded, typically that means there's a problem in your marriage and you might want to decide about Page and Desiree and their relationship? It was deteriorating.
They weren't the friends that they started out to be and that there was becoming a wedge in Scott and Desiree's relationship, that Desiree was becoming more jealous of Page and just did not want her involved in their, in their, at their home. The texts revealed something else.
Not only was Desiree unhappy, she had no idea Scott and Paige were intimate. She texted Paige, I still have to say that you two doing anything sexual would bother me.
Paige answered, he and I doing anything sexual is out of the question. In her messages, it doesn't seem that Desiree has any knowledge or thought that Paige and Scott are intimate at all.
As far as we can tell, Desiree did not know that this affair was going on. From the text, it's clear Desiree was worried about her marriage, and Paige was making it worse.

In some exchanges, she was downright brutal.

There was one where Paige texted Desiree and said,

I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.

Oh my gosh.

Desiree says, huh?

And Paige goes on to say, if you ever die and he needs a wife, I'm half convinced that would be me. Even just watching you, I can see that still upsets you.
Yes, it does. Like, why would you even say that? After that, Desiree finally pushed back, telling Paige to stay away for good.
Texting, I'm going to ask nicely for you to distance yourself from me,

my home, and my family.

Paige's response, not a problem.

I've been wanting to do away with you for quite a while now.

And then she hurled a couple of obscenities at Desiree.

I would imagine this is an important detail in your investigation. It gave us an indication that maybe there was a motive, that they wanted Desiree out of their relationship, so Scott and Paige to move on with their life.
As provocative as the texts were, they didn't reveal a murder plot. But another call to the tip line was about to change everything.

Well, that gives us a new spark in our investigation. Now we have a name.
A name and a wild story about a stranger with a strange obsession. Explore the world's hidden wonders on the Atlas Obscura podcast.
Transcription by CastingWords Every day, the Atlas Obscura podcast will blow your mind in 15 minutes. You can find it on the SiriusXM app, Pandora, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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H-E-L-P.com. Almost 14 months had passed since Desiree Sunford's murder.
When, out of nowhere, a woman called the Yakima Sheriff's tip line and left a message. What did the caller say? It said that the person that killed Desiree Sunford was a Marty Grismer.
And that's it? No other details? No other details. It's just a name that had never come up in the investigation before.
And that just breathes new life into this investigation. Now we got somebody to go after.
Who was Marty Grismer? To figure that out, job number one was to find the tipster. So we had to do some tracking to find out who called that tip in.
They traced the phone call, and when they got their answer, they couldn't believe it. Who was it? It was Paige Blade.
You've not spoken to her in months, but now suddenly she's saying she knows who the killer is where did that come from it came out of the blue well i really appreciate you coming forward with this information we brought hg akma we sat down and okay you just can't drop this bomb on us how do you know this tell us everything that that you know about this Marty Grismer. What does he do for a living? He's a teammate at the plant that I work at.
You guys dated for a short time? Right, very, very briefly. Marty had recently gotten married.
Still, Paige said he kept asking her for sex and would hit on her at work. She let him know that wasn't happening, ever.
But he was a friend, a really good friend. He's the one that got me the house.
He bought my car outright in cash. I still haven't paid him back for it.
He pays my insurance. He's done my grocery shopping.
He's taken very well care of me. He was like her fixer, she said, would do anything for her.
Something she suggested he took too far. We had just found out about three weeks before the shooting that I was pregnant.
Marty was one of the first people that I told. and apparently, he decided that if the baby was Scott's, like it was supposed to be, then Desiree would cause issues.

And Paige claimed Marty recently told her he took care of those issues.

Let me just make sure I understand.

He believed that, well, you were pregnant.

At that time, you thought it was Scott's baby. He believed it was Scott's baby.
He thought that Desiree was going to make problems for the two of you. And so he decided the best way to fix that problem was to eliminate her so that you could be happy.
So that we could move forward, yes. The baby wasn't Scott's, of course.
Paige insisted Marty didn't make this confession until more than a year after Desiree's murder. She said she was shocked when Marty told her, especially since her relationship with Scott had cooled.
And Scott was with another woman. She said Marty offered to take care of that, too.
I was explaining to him what was going on. With you and Scott? Yeah.
He just, he asked me, you want me to take care of her like I did the last one. And that, she said, is when she decided to call the tip line.
When you look at the motive for Marty, that he killed Desiree so that this woman that he was obsessed with could be happy with another man who wasn't him. Have you ever heard a motive like that? No, I've never had a case like that before.

It just didn't make sense.

Paige said Marty described Desiree's murder in detail.

She said Marty had been to the house before

and knew there was a key hidden near the front door.

He got the key.

He went in the front door because he knew that that was the closest to the bedroom.

He alarmed it off and he opened the door.

And Ada came out barking.

Des came out right behind her and he shot her.

He shot her three times.

She went down.

These were very specific details about this crime.

That's correct.

Details that only the killer or somebody there would have known. Right.
And those details were gruesome. I don't remember how many bullets he said.
It was a full clip. He got closer to her as she was trying to crawl away.
He made it look like a burglary. He took the board off the door and made it look like that's how the entry was.
He went back inside again, grabbed a jewelry box off of her dresser, and he left. Locked the door, put the key back where it was hiding, and this all happened around 3, 3.30 that morning.
He even told her the type of gun he used. Marty said it was a 9mm.
Did he say what kind of, what brand? I don't think he mentioned the brand. It all lined up with what detectives found at the crime scene.
Page said Marty told her he headed home and got rid of the evidence. Started a fire in the burn barrel.
Burned all of the clothes, his shoes, his gloves. Got in the shower, got ready for it, and he went to work.
What was her demeanor when she sat down and told you what Marty had said? Did she seem scared? Very emotional. She broke down and cried.
She just couldn't believe that he would do such a thing. Did you believe her? We didn't have any reason not to believe her at this point.
She certainly brought Marty to the front of the investigation, and we needed to do as much research in investigating how he would be involved. And they had an idea of how to find those answers.
If you're initiated another conversation with him, do you think he would talk to you about it more? I'm sure he would. He worships the girl I walk on.

He's obsessed with me.

But Marty wouldn't make it easy.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I've never done anything. Paige Blades had just told Yakima detectives that Marty Grismer, her co-worker and sometimes fixer, had confessed to murdering Desiree Sunford.
What did you think as you're listening to this? We were wanting to believe her, that this was the suspect that was involved. We were also wanting her to maybe get him to tell this story again.
Ideally, they'd record that conversation. So they asked Paige to meet Marty again, this time wearing a wire.
Today's date is August 8, 2014. Eight days later, she and Marty got together at a Starbucks near work.
What is the word that we are using that something bad happens that you were going to say? Avalanche. We had a team of undercover officers.
We were hoping to actually hear what Marty had to say about it in his own words. Paige tried to coax the story out of Marty.
I know that you said that there was no evidence. So I'm just wondering for sure, for sure, if there's nothing left.
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have anything.
I've never done anything. you can't freak me out, put me in full-on panic mode, and then just be like, nope, I don't know what you're talking about.
But it did not go as we planned. Marty seemed to be looking around like he was being set up.
Kind of like he was onto you. Maybe, maybe he caught a glimpse of somebody or Paige was hinky about how she was trying to ask him.
As undercover officers snapped photos of Paige and Marty leaving the coffee shop, Paige persisted. The way you talk about it, if I come over next weekend, in your house where you know that nobody is listening? I might just strip you down first.

Strip me down first?

Uh-huh.

Gotta make sure you don't have nothing on you now.

Right, yeah.

The conversation ended there.

We didn't get anything.

It was just, he was acting suspiciously.

But you can't take that into court.

Disappointing for you?

It was. We thought he would tell her everything again, but that just didn't happen.
Marty had no criminal history. His DNA wasn't in the system.
So they scoured every other part of his life and took a closer look at his family. He wasn't going to get any type of relationship with Paige, so he married this other woman.
Beth. Yes.
He was just moving on with his life. This is Beth Maxwell.
She met Marty on a dating site in May 2013, a month after Desiree's murder. What was it about Marty that caught your eye? He didn't judge me, like, because I'm a bigger girl, so, you know, it's something that I get judged for a lot.
He just accepted me for who I was. The polite man she met online seemed like a true gentleman in person.
He just was a charmer, kind of. He was what I wanted, what I've always wanted.
He opened the car door for me. And Marty quickly fit into Beth's life, becoming a father figure to her young son.

He was amazing. He was the dad that I've always wanted my son to have.

Was that a big factor in you saying, hey, this guy's the one?

Yeah, it was. And my son picked up on it right away, too.
He's like, that's my Marty dad. That's

what he called him. It was a whirlwind romance.
After just four months together, they got married. Why so quickly? We were like, why wait? Like, if that's what we feel, why not just go for it? It all seemed too good to be true.
So much so that Beth felt blindsided by Marty's choice of a best man, his best friend, Paige. I want to make sure I'm getting this straight.
Marty's best man was Paige. A woman.
Yes. How did that sit with you? It didn't sit great with me.
Beth met Paige for the first time on their wedding day. She wanted to dress exactly like Marty.
It was a big fight. She seemed very controlling.
Like this is what she wanted done. So he had to do it her way.
The honeymoon phase was short. Beth noticed that Marty prioritized Paige above all else, including her.
I found out that he had bought her car, was paying her rent. Had he bought you a car? No, he never bought me a car.
He bought her food a lot of times. Bought her food? Like groceries and stuff, yeah.
That's a love language. Mm-hmm.
You were married to a man who was seemingly completely devoted to another woman. Yeah.
You believed that Paige had feelings for your husband. I think so.
And that he had feelings for her. Yeah, definitely.
I started really having issues with it because I'm like, why is the best friend getting treated better than the wife? In fact, one of Beth's friends told her Paige had bragged about her power over Marty. She actually told my best friend that she could steal Marty away.
Did you believe that she had some control over him in some way. He was just that obsessed over her.

And there was just no changing it at all. Beth was wondering just what she'd gotten herself into when there's a knock at the door.
And there's six to seven people at my door. Police officers.
Police officers, yeah. Detectives.
Explore the world's hidden wonders

on the Atlas Obscura podcast, a village in India where everyone's name is a song, a boiling river in the Amazon, a spacecraft cemetery in the middle of the ocean. Every day, the Atlas Obscura podcast will blow your mind in 15 minutes.
You can find it on the SiriusXM app, Pandora, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.
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BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's deputies were at Marty Grismer's door.

What did you say to him to convince him to come with you?

We just told him that we're investigating the death of Desiree Sunford.

He said, no problem. He got a shirt, got dressed, came down to the office.
He didn't lawyer up. I've never bought a police department before.
They started out easy. What's your relationship with Paige? It's been complicated over the years.
I mean, she was the best man at my wedding. So, I mean, she was my best friend for a while there.
Were you two involved in a sexual relationship at one time? Not exactly, no. We just fooled around a bit out there early on.
Marty said Paige told him all about her affair with Scott. Did you hear Paige and Scott talk about Scott's relationship with Desiree and Paige's relationship with Desiree.
Were you aware of that whole love triangle that was going on? Yes, Paige told me about that. So I understand that Paige and Desiree have fallen out.
I guess, I mean, to an extent, yeah. Did you ever hear Paige or Scott talk about wanting to hurt Desiree or wanting Desiree gone or wanting her out of the picture? Nothing specifically, no.
I think Paige had said she'd wanted him to divorce his wife. Did she talk about how she would get her out of the picture? No, I never had gotten an indication of violence from her before.

So what was your, was she talking strictly divorce?

Well, I don't know if it was that or if it was just, you know,

trying to expose things just to get Bezueh to pick fights and get her to leave him.

I don't know.

As you're listening to him, what are you thinking? This is your first time that you're face to face with Marty.

Okay, Marty, if you didn't do it and Paige or Scott did it, you're covering it for them. Whatever happened with Scott and Desiree and Paige, Marty said he was an impartial observer, and only that.
And all through that first part of that interview, his guard is pretty much down. Correct.
He didn't seem to be under too much stress at that point. Detectives listened to Marty for about half an hour.
And now, the softball portion of the interview was over. Have you ever told Paige that you would take care of anyone for her or anyone that makes her mad you'd take them out for you? No.
I've never said that to him, I never would. They told Marty they'd been doing some research about him, had gotten a call from his boss.
And they said that you were suspended from work for having gun parts at work. Can you tell me about that? What kind of gun parts are we talking about? I had a gun bill that I left, though.
A gun barrel? Yeah. Marty was kind of a gun nut.
He liked to buy guns and buy gun parts. Except he seemed to have forgotten how he got this particular gun barrel.
Okay, and who did you get it from? I don't recall. I've had it for quite a year or so.
The fact is, detectives knew all about the gun barrel. They'd gotten it from Marty's boss and had rushed it to the lab.
And what do you know? The lab came back that the barrel that we found, that barrel was used to kill Desiree. So now you've got hard evidence linking him to this crime.

That's correct.

That is the smoking gun, so to speak.

Almost exactly that.

Exactly.

Marty seemed to realize this interview was going in a very bad direction.

There's a vein in the side of his head that just was really protruding.

He was under a great deal of stress during this interview.

Thank you. pain in the side of his head that just was really protruding.
He was under a great deal of stress during this interview.

And you could tell by his eyes that he was just trying to think before he spoke.

He was in hyper stress.

And that was only going to get worse as detectives got to the point.

Did you ever offer to kill Desiree Sunford for Paige? No, I haven't. I've never offered to kill anyone for anything.
It's not my nature. My difficulty for you is that Paige is saying that you are the one who shot and killed Desiree Sunford.
She said that you confessed that to her. I can't believe that bitch is doing that.
I mean, I'm trying to win my life here. Help us figure out where you got that barrel, okay? Because Paige has put you smack in the middle of a murder investigation.
She's trying to engineer, set me up to do something I'm saying to you that killed someone. I don't know that.
It makes me sick. His emotions were all over the page to a point where he was almost physically sick.
Like getting ready to vomit? Yeah, he said he was about ready to get sick. And then he said he remembered something.
He said Paige did have his gun fitted with that barrel at the time of the murder. So you loaned the gun to Paige? I loaned the gun to her over last year.
This was around February, unless she had it for a while. Until May, he said, well after the murder.

And then Marty turned the tables on Paige

and said he had long suspected

she had something to do with Desiree's murder.

I have no reason to hide anything anymore.

I have to protect my wife.

I have to protect my son.

I can't protect others.

When did you come here to include them

that you were saying add two plus two

Thank you. My son, I can't protect others.
When did you come here to include them?

You say an add in two plus two,

that our gear or the gun must have done it.

When did that get you?

A couple months after I got everything back.

The detectives weren't buying it.

It was his gun barrel, and they found it right where he left it. You know exactly what happened.
How would I know exactly what happened? Because you're involved up to your eyeballs in this case. All the evidence is on your shoulders right now.
I didn't kill anyone. But you're going to jail.
What are you going to arrest me for? Chris Bing work. And that is what they did.
He just couldn't believe that he was being charged with murder. But two other people remained on the detective's radar, Scott and Paige.
It was just that thought in the back of our head that still she's got to be involved and Scott's got to be involved. We still have nothing to tie them other than this relationship that they were all involved in.
We also had a few

questions for Paige. Did you and Scott conspire with Marty to have her killed? November 13, 2014.

19 months after Desiree Sunford was found shot to death in her home,

Marty Grismer was charged with her murder.

Desiree's friend, Kayla, thought someone else should have been locked up along with him, Paige Blades. I am thinking this psycho biatch swiggled her way into their life and created chaos.
And now my friend is dead over it. A needless death.
I just, it's unreal. I honestly think that she asked Marty to do what he did.
Even after Marty's arrest, Paige's role in the Sunford's marriage remained something of a mystery to Desiree's family and friends, and to investigators, too. You were still looking at her.
You still didn't think her hands were completely clean here. It was just that thought in the back of her head that still she's got to be involved, but we still have nothing to tie them other than this relationship that they were all involved in.
Do you think that there are things that people get wrong about you? There are a lot of things that people get wrong about me. There are a lot of assumptions.
Paige Blades is 35 years old now, the mother of four kids. She works in customer relations.
And she says she still has strong feelings for and about Desiree Sundford.

I love Des.

And I don't say that past tense.

She's still special to me.

There's no part of me that ever wanted anything bad to happen to her.

It's been more than a decade since Paige's entanglement with Desiree, Scott and Marty. Do you feel like you're a different person now? Oh, absolutely.
I am a completely different person. Paige says she's worked hard to battle addiction, money problems and the ghosts of a turbulent, abusive childhood.
childhood. She admits to a pattern of troubled relationships, like what she had with Scott and Desiree.
We became very good friends and eventually friends with benefits. And eventually we didn't have a relationship anymore.
She met Scott in early 2011. They were partying, hanging out.
Paige says when she finally met Desiree, they became fast friends. And in fact, it was Desiree's idea for her to stay with them.
They were in a one-bedroom apartment and they had a California king bed. And she was like, there's plenty of room.
All three of us shared the bed. So she invited you into the bed.
And she's the one who put Scott in the middle. During that bed arrangement, were you all sexually active? Yeah.
Everybody with each other? Not all together, but I was sexually active with Scott and I was sexually active with Des. In those text messages, Paige and Desiree carried on flirty exchanges.
But in other messages, it seems Paige wasn't being honest about her relationship with Scott. At one point, Desiree texted you, I still have to say that you two doing anything sexual would bother me.
And you responded, yeah, he and I doing anything sexual is out of the question. Was that true? I honestly don't remember that conversation.
Did you ever mislead Desiree into thinking that you and Scott weren't sexually active? Not as far as I know or remember. Paige says she does remember when Desiree's patience reached the breaking point.
She writes this, I'm done with the drama and the BS. I'm going to ask nicely for you to distance yourself from me, my home, and my family.
And you respond in part, not a problem. I've been wanting to do away with you for quite a while now and then go on to call her some names that I can't repeat on TV.
It sounds like you didn't take too kindly to her telling you to stay away. That was the big fight.
I know that I was out of line with how I responded to her.

There were a lot of other things that were going on in my life at the time

that were compounding stress.

Paige moved out, but she kept seeing Scott.

There are people who would look at this and say

that you came into their marriage and basically just tore it apart.

No, I definitely wasn't there to destroy their marriage. Did you want to be with him? No.
Would you have wanted to be his wife, have a relationship with him solely? No, him solely, no. I want to get you to respond to one more text thread between you and Desiree.
You write, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one. Desiree says, huh? And you say, if you ever die and he needs a wife, I'm half convinced that would be me.
What was that about? I still don't remember. And that one's come up quite a few times too.
At the time, Paige shared details of her life with another friend, Marty Grismer. He was my rock for a little while.
He would go on a grocery run for me if I needed, or if I needed to borrow gas money, then I would get it from him. He was the only person that I had that I could turn to if I had a struggle.
Why was Marty doing all of these things for you? I assume that it had something to do with his undying love for me, as he would say. Paige says she told Marty all about her rift with Desiree, that she was still seeing Scott and pregnant with his child.
Paige insists she never thought his moral support would turn to murder and was shocked when Marty confessed to killing Desiree. He went into excruciating detail of what he did to Desiree.
This is somebody who was your friend. How hard was this for you to listen to? It was not just hard.
It was a devastating blow. Who was this person that I had let into my life? So some people would look at this and say, you had to have planted some sort of seed in his mind by talking about Scott, by talking about the fact that you believed you were pregnant with his baby.
That would make him think, if I get rid of Desiree, I'm making Paige happy. I honestly don't know.
I don't know or understand how Marty's mind works. I honestly never have.
There are many people who believe that you conspired with Marty, that you wanted Desiree out of the picture so that you could be with Scott, and that you essentially put Marty up to killing her. Never.
No truth to that? None whatsoever. I...
I've heard that quite a few times, but never in a million years. There was never any reason for that to happen.
Did you and Scott conspire with Marty to have her killed? No, absolutely not. Her friends would say, if you hadn't been in the picture, if it weren't for you, Desiree would have never gotten killed, that she would still be alive today.
How do you respond to that? I don't think that's fair. I believe that if Marty hadn't been in my life, Des would still be alive.

I understand that to a lot of people, it probably seems like and feels like I am central to everything.

But from my own side, I'm on the outside looking in.

I didn't feel like I was the one in the center. Maybe not, but her testimony would be key to the case against Marty.
Prosecutors had to worry whose case would she actually help, theirs or the defense's? This case investigation raised a lot of questions, and some of those questions will never be answered. Page Blades may have turned Marty in, But no one close to Desiree saw that as a selfless act.
Do you buy the trying to do the right thing? No. No.
I believe she was feeling the guilt, and I don't think there was, I'm going to be the one to solve it. I don't.
I think it was a guilty conscience. But there's no denying it was Paige's tip that got them to Marty.
Still, it wasn't an easy case. There was no crime scene DNA matching Marty, no shoe of his that matched the bloody shoe print, and no video of him in that area at the time of the murder.
Then, as Marty sat in jail awaiting trial,

a call came in from the plant manager at Marty's job.

They were cleaning out a dumpster, and they found the jewelry box.

They found the laptop and the iPad.

The stolen laptop and iPad,

taken from Desiree and Scott's house when it was burglarized five days before the murder. But that jewelry box was key.
It connected Marty directly to the murder. Page had told investigators that Marty said he took it the night he killed Desiree.
It was all found along with a big clue as to who left it there, a receipt with the name Marty Grismer. That's big.
That's huge. Marty must have done the first burglary too, and he didn't get rid of anything.
He was not very bright to keep all this stuff involved in a burglary and a homicide. A month later, detectives got a call from Marty's cellmate at the jail.
And he's had some interesting conversations with Marty. Yeah, Marty's talking about the evidence that's against him.
And he was also talking about Paige. The cellmate said Marty was furious with her.
He's telling me that Paige didn't stab him in the back. I thought he did everything for this girl.
She had turned him in. Paige would be the star witness against him at his trial.
So Marty suggested a way his cellmate could solve his problem, kill Paige and a friend of hers. He said, well, I don't mind giving you $20,000, $30,000 to make these two people disappear.
That's quite a swing, going from doing anything for Paige, obsessed with her, will kill for her, to, according to the cellmate, wanting to put out a hit to get rid of her. Yeah, he's trying to save his own skin at this point.
No hit ever happened, and the cellmate got cold feet and refused to testify, which didn't help prosecutors who were already dealing with a difficult circumstantial case full of imperfect evidence and, maybe worse, two possible alternate suspects. You had wondered about Scott and Page's involvement from the very beginning.
Were you concerned that the defense might try and use that as an alternate theory? Certainly. It could have easily been used.
That's why we offered the plea. This case investigation raised a lot of questions.
And some of those questions will never be answered. In December of 2017, Marty Grismer was offered a deal.

His first-degree murder charge would be reduced to second if he took what's called an Alfred plea,

admitting there's enough evidence to convict without actually admitting guilt.

Desiree's brother felt there was no choice.

The prosecutor told us he'll at least get something if he takes this plea. And we're like, well, we've got to at least give him something.
We can't run the risk of him walking free. Casey attended the sentencing hearing with his mother, Connie.
She spoke to the court. Your Honor, I can only speak to you about one thing at this point.
Sentence this evil being to the harshest prison in our system. He deserves to be among other evil.
In the end, Marty Grismer was sentenced to just 15 years in prison. He's scheduled to be released in 2029.
Desiree's friends and family were angry. They didn't think Desiree got justice.
Was that good enough? No, it's not good enough. Because he's still not admitting any guilt and he's only getting 15 years.
They also remain angry at Scott. While he was never charged in the case, they're certain his affair with Paige led to Desiree's murder.
The bottom line is that Desiree would still be alive today if Scott had been faithful.

Scott moved away after Desiree died.

He's now remarried.

As for Paige, she was never charged either.

But still, Desiree's loved ones

cannot shake the idea that she was involved.

There are many people who believe

that you got away with murder,

that you should be in prison too. I've heard that.
What would you say to them? I had nothing to do with it. It's incredibly unfair that I risked my life to do the right thing, and I'm being crucified for existing.
Still, the people who loved Desiree say they try not to dwell on Scott or Paige. They want to focus on the good on Desiree.
If you were lucky enough to get to know Des, you'd want everybody else to know it too. Desiree's mother, Connie, had to sell her daughter's beloved Chevelle to pay for her headstone.

Hey, Des. It's been a while.

Connie died before it was installed. She's buried next to her daughter.

It's a beautiful headstone.

Yeah. She loved the dolphins dolphins and she did love roses.
That's her Chevy, her little Tweety bird. She loved Tweety.
Yeah. It's all her, Desiree Sunford, the beloved Harley riding art teacher.
It just makes everything so real when you come here and see it. Sure, sure.
That she's not going to just show up in your driveway on a Harley. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
And check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Blaine Alexander and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central.
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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