A Crack in Everything

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Speaker 11 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 12 I see her laying there. My dad is kneeling.
That was the first time I had ever seen him cry.

Speaker 13 They had a tumultuous marriage.

Speaker 12 There'd be yelling and slamming doors.

Speaker 14 It's initially ruled a suicide. Her sister went to the Missouri State Highway Patrol to express their belief that this, in fact, was a murder.

Speaker 15 She had been having an affair with her boss.

Speaker 17 It was obvious there was something that just wasn't right.

Speaker 19 The only thing I've ever wanted was for everyone to hear the truth.

Speaker 21 I thought they made one of the worst mistakes I'd ever heard of.

Speaker 23 But I told him I would fight with everything I had in me.

Speaker 24 That's the promise I made to him.

Speaker 11 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 26 Here's Keith Morrison with A Crack in Everything.

Speaker 4 It was his secret that started it.

Speaker 8 A secret gift.

Speaker 5 It was Christmas Eve in the year 2006,

Speaker 28 a little farm not far from a little town called Buffalo, Buffalo, Missouri.

Speaker 31 And on that farm, in the fine new house Brad and Lisa Jennings had built for their family, the stockings were hung.

Speaker 16 The children were snug at their beds. And Lisa was sitting up very late, drinking wine and crying.

Speaker 38 Meaning, well, who knew?

Speaker 2 But for one thing, with Lisa in the way, Brad couldn't sneak that secret of his into her stocking, which is what started at the flaring argument, the slamming doors, the sudden silence.

Speaker 43 Before Amanda woke up to the sound of her dad on 911.

Speaker 12 And he's very hysterical. You know,

Speaker 12 he's crying, can't really say anything over than get here quick, get here quick. I heard that two or three times.

Speaker 32 Such a complicated tale with its secrets and lies and shifting loyalties. And here of all places, this throwback to an idealized past.

Speaker 46 We hunted mushrooms, we picked up walnuts.

Speaker 47 They were inseparable children, Brad and his older sister Marcia.

Speaker 46 He was my playmate. We depended on each other.

Speaker 2 Marcia became a nurse. Brad ran the farm, the center of their family, since 1853.

Speaker 41 That Christmas 2006, Brad and Lisa had been married 18 mostly happy years.

Speaker 12 We had a fairly good life.

Speaker 41 There were three kids, Amanda, 16 that Christmas Eve.

Speaker 40 Dallas, who was 11 then.

Speaker 49 Lacey, Lisa's daughter from a first marriage, was 19 and had just moved into her own place in town.

Speaker 50 And as Amanda said, life was fairly good.

Speaker 12 We would do lots of things, go on vacation a lot, go out and eat. I mean, my dad made pretty good money, so we were good on that end.

Speaker 46 Seemed like a very good and stable

Speaker 12 environment.

Speaker 40 Brad loved cars,

Speaker 29 especially classic muscle cars.

Speaker 16 And extra specially, the 1970 Chevelle Super Sport he'd so carefully restored.

Speaker 46 By the time he was 12, he was redoing motors and helping put motors in and out of different vehicles.

Speaker 3 So Brad opened a used car dealership.

Speaker 52 He was a great people person.

Speaker 52 And I guess that's what you have to be when you deal cars and stuff.

Speaker 43 And their mom, Lisa?

Speaker 19 Very pretty.

Speaker 12 She could be really happy and like a sort of like the life of the party kind of person.

Speaker 22 Yeah, really fun to be in.

Speaker 30 Well, Brad ran the farm and his car business.

Speaker 1 Lisa worked at a local internet company.

Speaker 24 She was

Speaker 12 really good at it and she became like their top employee.

Speaker 30 At home, Lisa was the mom who actually liked video games with Dallas mostly.

Speaker 29 Video games and movies.

Speaker 52 We had a big projector screen that we would put on the wall and like watch movies really big.

Speaker 53 Did it seem like a happy household overall?

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 30 But of course there is, as Leonard Cohen used to sing, a crack in everything.

Speaker 33 And in the Jennings house, those were the sudden blow-ups when the mood went dark and the kids scattered.

Speaker 12 They would fight maybe once every couple weeks or something. Mostly later in the evening at night, after they'd been drinking, they'd be yelling and maybe slamming doors, things like that, but just

Speaker 37 arguing about anything, nothing.

Speaker 52 I never really thought too much about it.

Speaker 48 Anyway, now it was that calamitous Christmas Eve, 2006.

Speaker 3 As always, there'd been a happy dinner celebration with Brad's side of the family.

Speaker 12 Christmas Eve we would go to my grandma's

Speaker 12 there in town.

Speaker 43 And then back home, games and stocking stuffing, and of course.

Speaker 12 I'll wake up real early and open all the presents.

Speaker 33 Lisa had no idea that Brad had bought her a $3,500 diamond ring, got the kids to help him pick it out.

Speaker 2 Back from Grandma's, he waited for his chance to hide it in her stocking.

Speaker 49 But Lisa kept fiddling on the computer, and the kids were playing a board game.

Speaker 22 I think it was monopoly.

Speaker 12 We just played downstairs for a while, and then eventually went up to our rooms.

Speaker 29 It was well after midnight when they heard the raised voices downstairs.

Speaker 12 I heard the, you know, the yelling and everything.

Speaker 12 a normal fight like they would always have.

Speaker 3 And then a door slammed, which meant that Brad had gone out to his workshop to cool down.

Speaker 25 But Lacey, home for the holiday, was furious.

Speaker 31 Another fight, and this one on Christmas Eve, no less, and as usual over some stupid little thing.

Speaker 29 She was done.

Speaker 12 And so my sister decided to go downstairs and get into it with her. I think one of the last things I remember my mom even saying was something like,

Speaker 12 I would never disrespect my parents that way.

Speaker 47 Lacey was just fed up, was she?

Speaker 12 Yeah, she just couldn't believe they'd fight on Christmas.

Speaker 30 Then more door slamming and Lacey was out of there.

Speaker 12 She went back to her house in Buffalo.

Speaker 17 So by the time she left, your dad was outside in the workshop, although he didn't really know where he was, right?

Speaker 12 Well, he was outside. He does that a lot.
He'll go outside and go out to shop.

Speaker 11 So Amanda sighed and closed her eyes and drifted off.

Speaker 30 And then sometime after 1.30 a.m., that loud, frantic sound.

Speaker 43 Her father, on 911, she ran downstairs to her parents' bedroom.

Speaker 12 I opened the door and you know I see her laying there and my dad is kneeling next to her.

Speaker 12 And as soon as I had opened the door, he gets up and kind of pulls me out of the room and he's hugging me and crying.

Speaker 30 Their mother was dead.

Speaker 41 Of that there was no doubt.

Speaker 37 But how and why

Speaker 23 and who?

Speaker 26 When we come back,

Speaker 27 what had happened in that bedroom?

Speaker 46 I thought there'd been an accident.

Speaker 16 The truth would be much worse.

Speaker 56 Did you have any inkling, any suspicion, that Brad might have had something to do with this?

Speaker 36 Dallas Jennings was only 11 that awful Christmas morning in 2006, the morning he lost his mother.

Speaker 31 And it's probably a blessing that something in his brain has blocked the memory.

Speaker 52 A lot of it's a blur to me.

Speaker 16 Amanda, 16 at the time, remembers every dreadful detail.

Speaker 12 It's just shocking. Obviously very upset, but didn't know

Speaker 12 what to do, you know?

Speaker 44 Yeah.

Speaker 37 It was very hard.

Speaker 35 And the ambulance arrived and the policeman.

Speaker 12 They all arrived and we had to leave the house so they could do all their work. And so we went outside and waited in my truck because it was cold out.

Speaker 17 What, just huddled together in there?

Speaker 35 Did you talk much?

Speaker 12 Just shock and mostly silence.

Speaker 12 I remember Dallas kept saying she was going to be okay. He didn't really know

Speaker 12 what had happened because he didn't see her or nothing. And no one was really saying

Speaker 12 what happened. And my dad was just sitting over in the passenger seat, just a mess.
And that was the first time I'd ever seen him cry.

Speaker 7 News of this sort spreads very fast, but often in confused or incomplete or fuzzy bits.

Speaker 2 So when Brad's sister Marcia heard something happened at the farm.

Speaker 24 I didn't realize

Speaker 51 the gravity of it.

Speaker 46 I thought there'd been an accident and she was on the way to the hospital.

Speaker 29 It was anything but an accident.

Speaker 33 Lisa was gone, dead at 39, killed by a bullet at close range to the head.

Speaker 49 Brad told local sheriff's deputies how he argued with Lisa, then went out to his workshop to cool off, and when he came back in maybe 20 minutes later, he found her on the bedroom floor, his handgun nearby.

Speaker 34 So deputies tested Lisa's hands for gunshot residue.

Speaker 43 They did the same with Brad and Lacey.

Speaker 11 That to tell them who fired the gun.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 40 Lisa's right hand tested positive for gunshot residue.

Speaker 2 Brad and Lacey came out negative.

Speaker 31 Meaning, it seemed to the coroner, that Lisa, for reasons unknown, must have killed herself.

Speaker 56 Did it make sense to you that she would commit suicide?

Speaker 46 Nothing made sense to me that night.

Speaker 51 Yeah, bad.

Speaker 51 I had

Speaker 46 heard statements, you know,

Speaker 46 that she was troubled about reaching 40. She had had cosmetic surgery.
Could be a red flag.

Speaker 36 Brad and Lisa's brother-in-law, Paul Bryan, was stricken.

Speaker 49 What did they miss?

Speaker 22 All the kids loved Ann Lisa. She was just fun.

Speaker 47 Lisa had seemed so together.

Speaker 42 She loved family events, loved having kids around.

Speaker 22 There was never a time that Lisa did not want the kids to spend the night or to stay, and she might end up with five or six different children that

Speaker 22 spent the night.

Speaker 53 It was fine with her.

Speaker 22 Yeah, she loved it.

Speaker 43 But now, this accommodating, fun-loving woman was dead.

Speaker 36 It was all very shocking.

Speaker 22 And it's not like you've had a long illness or something to get prepared. This was just sudden and...

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 31 The idea that she would commit suicide so abruptly and violently like that.

Speaker 27 That

Speaker 22 wasn't something that would be expected, no.

Speaker 36 But of course, the alternative was really quite unthinkable.

Speaker 56 Did you have any inkling, any suspicion, that Brad might have had something to do with this?

Speaker 22 I had none. Brad called me on Christmas morning, and you could tell he was still terribly dysrawed.
So that morning I came over, and he told me the whole story, and

Speaker 22 no, it never crossed my mind.

Speaker 9 In fact, after all the lab test results were in, the Dallas County Sheriff and coroner and prosecutor all officially ruled Lisa's death suicide.

Speaker 32 The local newspaper, the Buffalo Reflex, quoted the prosecutor, who said, there is zero evidence to show otherwise.

Speaker 56 So you had no sense anyway,

Speaker 55 no reason to think it was anything other than what the coroner and the sheriff said it was.

Speaker 46 Absolutely not.

Speaker 36 But there were others in the family and they were not so sure.

Speaker 29 Coming up.

Speaker 14 She went to the Missouri State Highway Patrol to express their belief that this, in fact, was a murder.

Speaker 26 And an investigator's prime suspect, Brad Jennings.

Speaker 21 He started asking me questions about Brad. And he goes, what did Jennings say to you about his wife having an affair?

Speaker 26 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 31 It's a sweet little piece of America, Buffalo, Missouri, population 3,000 or so, where people tend to know each other's business, and where Brad could have a best friend he met when they were both in diapers.

Speaker 16 So, of course, Dale Potter rushed over to see Brad that very Christmas morning.

Speaker 21 He just kept saying, why, Dale? Why did she do this? He was a mess.

Speaker 47 All those guns you see in the background there?

Speaker 43 Dale owns Buffalo's only gun and pawn shop.

Speaker 16 So when Lisa's death was declared to be suicide and the sheriff returned Brad's gun, the one that killed her, Brad called Dale.

Speaker 21 And he said, I don't really want the gun back.

Speaker 55 I can't imagine why he would.

Speaker 21 He said, Do you want it? I said, Yeah, I do. I cleaned it up, just put it in the safe, and forgot about it.

Speaker 43 And the family tried to move on and didn't pay much attention when Lacey began saying odd things.

Speaker 12 You know, when mom was murdered, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 43 Murdered?

Speaker 8 Not that it was anything like an accusation or aggressive or unfriendly.

Speaker 12 She didn't act any different with that. She still came around.
He still helped her.

Speaker 29 But sometimes... The smaller your town, the less you know about what your neighbors are saying behind your back.

Speaker 1 Nothing in your face, nothing like that.

Speaker 46 It was way more subtle than that.

Speaker 56 How do you mean?

Speaker 46 Probably everyone else was talking about it, but they didn't talk to us about it.

Speaker 1 No, they didn't.

Speaker 49 But Lisa's younger sister, Sean, was talking.

Speaker 14 She saw a rocky marriage, and her sister would not be a person that would have committed suicide.

Speaker 9 This is Steve Polkin, writes a column in the Springfield Newsleader called Poking Around, which he did, and discovered that Lisa's sister, Sean got busy soon after that deadly Christmas morning.

Speaker 14 In early January, she went to the office of the Missouri State Highway Patrol to

Speaker 14 express their belief that this, in fact, was a murder.

Speaker 2 She looked into a highly experienced detective named Dan Nash.

Speaker 14 Longtime investigator, who's been involved in several high-profile murder cases in the Ozarks.

Speaker 2 And when Sergeant Nash took one look at that file, something forensic seemed off.

Speaker 3 He was inclined to agree with Sean. Didn't look like suicide at all.

Speaker 14 He was just struck by the fact that if Lisa Jennings had shot herself using her right hand, that there would be more blowback from that wound than one drop of blood.

Speaker 5 Three months after that Christmas Eve, Investigator Nash drove over to Brad's farm, told him he was looking at the case again.

Speaker 14 and wanted the bathrobe that Mr. Jennings was wearing that night.

Speaker 29 The robe he had on when he said he found Lisa dead and held her in his arms.

Speaker 30 Why three months later would a bathrobe be of any use at all?

Speaker 35 Surely it had been cleaned or something after this event.

Speaker 14 Apparently it had not. Oh.

Speaker 14 Mr. Jennings had spent little time going back into that bedroom from where from his perspective

Speaker 14 his wife had taken her life.

Speaker 36 So Brad gave Nash the black bathrobe and sure enough, still had blood on it.

Speaker 32 So they ran some tests and and kept in touch with Brad.

Speaker 14 He was questioned a couple of times.

Speaker 32 Then, a month later, this was April now, the sheriff came to call at Dale Potter's Gun and Pond.

Speaker 21 Then he says, I'm here to seize the Jennings gun.

Speaker 5 Then, a few weeks after that, a guy in a t-shirt and khakis walked in.

Speaker 21 Told me he was a sergeant with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and he said, I'm here to investigate the murder of Lisa Jennings. I said, what are you talking about?

Speaker 37 Murder.

Speaker 21 It was in the paper.

Speaker 22 You know, it was ruled a suicide.

Speaker 21 And he said, no,

Speaker 21 he killed her.

Speaker 37 But that was all.

Speaker 21 And he goes, what did Jennings say to you about his wife having an affair? I said, he never said a word to me about his wife having an affair. Why, was she? And he said, yes, and we can prove it.

Speaker 21 I said, well, that explains a lot. He said, you mean why he killed her?

Speaker 37 And I said, no.

Speaker 21 I said, why she did this? I said, maybe everything caught up with her, you know.

Speaker 49 Meaning, thought Dale, something about the affair pushed her over the edge.

Speaker 32 Then Dale offered the sergeant a little family history.

Speaker 21 I said, you do know, don't you, that her dad killed himself? And he goes, you're full of crap. He said, her dad's alive and he lives at Wendyville.

Speaker 22 I said, no, you're full of crap.

Speaker 21 Her stepdad lives at Wendyville. Her real dad killed himself out in Kansas years ago.

Speaker 2 Another family suicide?

Speaker 9 An affair?

Speaker 29 Just where was this investigation going?

Speaker 26 Coming up, a determined detective.

Speaker 22 He looked at me and told me straight up I've never been wrong.

Speaker 16 And a confused friend.

Speaker 9 What'd you think?

Speaker 21 I thought they made one of the worst mistakes I'd ever heard of.

Speaker 29 Probably everybody in Buffalo, Missouri knew that Brad Jennings, the apparently grieving husband, was now a murder suspect.

Speaker 37 Everybody waiting for something to happen.

Speaker 34 And in July 2007, seven months after Lisa's death, it did.

Speaker 21 Got about a mile from his house, and two or three highway patrol sergeants and the sheriff stopped him and arrested him, took him to the county jail.

Speaker 9 What did you think?

Speaker 21 I thought they made one of the worst mistakes I'd ever heard of.

Speaker 46 Later, we were told there were people around that knew it was going to happen.

Speaker 54 People like Lisa's sister, Sean, who went to the Highway Patrol in the first place, and Lisa's daughter from her first marriage, Lacey.

Speaker 42 We asked for interviews.

Speaker 28 They declined.

Speaker 12 When my dad got arrested, Lacey and Sean showed up at the house to pick me in Dallas up, and and then my grandma showed up as well to pick us up, and my aunt and my grandma kind of got into it.

Speaker 17 It sounds to me like that is sort of the moment when the family broke apart.

Speaker 12 That's when it really blew open. That's when, you know, Lacey quit coming around and everything just fell apart.

Speaker 32 That evening, Brad's brother-in-law, Paul, who's married to Lise's other sister, said he met with the highway patrol sergeant who led the investigation.

Speaker 22 And I asked the one patrol officer if he'd ever been wrong, that there was a small part of me that wished or hopes that he is correct, because if not, he's going to ruin a lot of people's lives.

Speaker 22 And he looked at me and told me straight up, I've never been wrong.

Speaker 1 Never been wrong?

Speaker 22 Never been wrong.

Speaker 47 Was this

Speaker 29 investigator Dan Nash?

Speaker 22 It was.

Speaker 31 Brad posted a million-dollar bond and was allowed to remain free until his trial. Brad's attorney said the state had no case.

Speaker 46 And every time that I spoke with him, he said it couldn't go to trial. He didn't say it wouldn't.
He said it couldn't.

Speaker 25 Was still saying that the Friday before the trial was to begin in August 2009.

Speaker 46 He said, we'll go in there Monday morning and

Speaker 46 we'll see what motions are flying around.

Speaker 40 But by midday Monday, the jury was picked and the trial began.

Speaker 2 How shocking was that?

Speaker 46 It was very shocking. And we hadn't been there an hour till I was getting sick to my stomach just listening.
Prosecution was just running rampant with it.

Speaker 4 That is, saying terrible things about Brad.

Speaker 51 And

Speaker 46 I was wanting to jump up and object.

Speaker 2 Because to Marcia, it seemed like Brad's attorney, Darrell Deputy, wasn't objecting at all.

Speaker 24 Mr.

Speaker 46 Deputy wouldn't say anything in Brad's defense.

Speaker 17 What was it like to be you sitting back there watching that?

Speaker 46 It was the most miserable time of my life.

Speaker 46 And I didn't know what I could do. I wanted to stop it and I didn't know how.
And Mr. Deputy would say, it's all going to come together here and don't worry about it.

Speaker 8 Maybe the attorney was thinking of the gunshot residue or GSR.

Speaker 1 Remember, they found GSR on Lisa's right hand, but not on Brad's hands, implying that Lisa shot herself.

Speaker 34 The prosecutor had an explanation.

Speaker 14 So the prosecutor says it's a logical inference from the facts of the case that Mr. Jennings, after he shot his wife, before he called 911, he washed his hands and washed his forearms.

Speaker 42 And blood evidence.

Speaker 32 Investigator Nash was the expert the state put up, and he said that in his expert opinion, the way the spatter hit the wall and Brad's black bathrobe and Lisa's hand, it left no doubt that Brad fired the fatal shot.

Speaker 8 But why would he do such a thing?

Speaker 32 An age-old reason, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 30 Lisa wanted out.

Speaker 14 The prosecution at trial wanted to show that she was intent on leaving him and she had an application at an apartment complex where Lacey had lived.

Speaker 4 Lisa wouldn't end her life, said the state.

Speaker 16 because she was busy improving it.

Speaker 33 She'd bought nice clothes, had recently had cosmetic surgery.

Speaker 14 The state presented

Speaker 14 witnesses that said she was in good spirits, and it's unlikely that someone who has cosmetic surgery and is feeling good about themselves would take their lives.

Speaker 29 The defense didn't mention that Lisa's father took his own life or that she herself attempted suicide back in high school.

Speaker 2 No secret in town back then.

Speaker 29 And nobody brought up the rumor that Lisa was having an affair.

Speaker 2 But one curious thing did come up.

Speaker 43 The defense attorney, in his closing argument, made a rather fascinating point about the bathrobe Brad was wearing when Lisa was shot.

Speaker 14 The defense attorney in his closing argument said, they had that thing for two years. I don't know why they didn't test it for gunshot residue, but they didn't.

Speaker 14 So we could wrap this up in a heartbeat whether he did it or not if they had tested that.

Speaker 50 Now that was interesting.

Speaker 28 and a very good point.

Speaker 2 After all, if they found residue on the bathrobe, it would certainly point right at Brad.

Speaker 50 But the moment passed, the case went to the jury.

Speaker 2 And two hours and 24 minutes later, they found Brad guilty of murder.

Speaker 9 And where else would this happen?

Speaker 42 They let him go home one last night before the sentencing began the following day.

Speaker 20 And the next morning, he asked me to drive him back.

Speaker 51 And I think that's one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do.

Speaker 56 Did you want to just say, let's go somewhere else, Brad?

Speaker 55 Let's just drive to Mexico or something.

Speaker 23 No,

Speaker 19 that's not who we are.

Speaker 20 And I told him

Speaker 23 that I would fight

Speaker 51 with everything I had in me to

Speaker 19 correct it.

Speaker 29 But what could one lone woman do?

Speaker 53 No legal training, no contacts, no pull?

Speaker 37 What indeed?

Speaker 26 Coming up, a search for the truth.

Speaker 17 It was obvious there was something that just wasn't right and missing evidence.

Speaker 13 I took the photo, I texted it to Dwight, and just said, jackpot.

Speaker 26 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 31 The day after Brad Jennings was convicted of murdering his wife Lisa, he dutifully returned to court for sentencing.

Speaker 1 He got 25 years and they led him away on a day that would have been otherwise auspicious.

Speaker 52 That was my first day of high school.

Speaker 56 Did either of you ever think

Speaker 56 Maybe he did kill her?

Speaker 38 Not even once.

Speaker 12 If you know him, even like at all, he's just not that kind of a person.

Speaker 29 True, said Brad's big sister, Marcia.

Speaker 32 So she decided she had to do everything she could to help him.

Speaker 8 Wasn't easy.

Speaker 56 Because he had two kids who needed to be cared for.

Speaker 28 He had payments that had to be made on the house, on the farm, on the cars.

Speaker 62 He had a business that had to be wrapped up.

Speaker 56 And he had this huge problem of having been convicted of a crime you didn't think he committed.

Speaker 56 So what does a person do in a situation like that?

Speaker 51 I had no idea.

Speaker 20 I didn't even know where to start.

Speaker 16 But she knew she needed a better income.

Speaker 1 So she found a job that paid more, but required constant travel.

Speaker 19 Come home on Thursday night and leave Sunday.

Speaker 62 And in the time you were home, you'd wash your clothes, say hi to the kids, go into the prison, see Brad,

Speaker 56 and get back on the plane again.

Speaker 2 The first appeal claimed Brad had inadequate representation to trial.

Speaker 24 I thought that was a no-brainer.

Speaker 45 But it failed.

Speaker 32 Appeals court didn't agree. And Brad's trial lawyer, Darrell Deputy, said he served Brad well.

Speaker 2 Anyway, Marcia hired more attorneys, but...

Speaker 19 I couldn't get them to talk to me.

Speaker 20 I couldn't get them to answer a question. I couldn't get them to call me back.

Speaker 49 Did they send you a bill?

Speaker 46 Absolutely.

Speaker 46 I've got lots of bills.

Speaker 30 This went on for months, years.

Speaker 33 She heard about a private investigator named Dwight McNeil, but her then attorney told her, don't call him.

Speaker 46 So I sat on it for a little bit,

Speaker 26 and I was having a really bad day.

Speaker 24 And I called,

Speaker 18 and Dwight picked up the phone.

Speaker 51 And

Speaker 19 I just started crying

Speaker 24 because it had been so long

Speaker 24 since anyone I called answered me.

Speaker 1 And he did listen, but...

Speaker 17 I told her I wouldn't look at the case.

Speaker 5 Dwight was a former sheriff.

Speaker 31 He told her his job was catching bad guys, not getting them out of prison.

Speaker 9 But Marsha persisted.

Speaker 31 And so he agreed to see her in person.

Speaker 17 I explained to her that if I concluded from my review of the file that there was any basis at all to believe that Mr.

Speaker 17 Jennings had murdered his wife, that I would use whatever influence and whatever pressure I could to make sure he stayed in prison the rest of his life.

Speaker 17 You could accept a deal like that?

Speaker 51 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 31 So Dwight scanned the file.

Speaker 1 Just a quick look.

Speaker 29 And this was strange.

Speaker 17 It was obvious there was something that just wasn't right.

Speaker 30 Remember what the trial attorney said about the black bathrobe?

Speaker 31 Too bad they didn't test it for GSR gunshot residue?

Speaker 49 Dwight, with his years in law enforcement, lit up when he saw that.

Speaker 35 They must have tested the robe.

Speaker 17 That should have been tested for GSR all the way up the right sleeve.

Speaker 38 Sure.

Speaker 49 If he'd fired the gun, there would have been GSR on that robe.

Speaker 17 No such report existed for the testing of that sleeve of that robe in the file.

Speaker 43 Didn't make sense.

Speaker 4 Dwight began working with lawyer Lindsay Phoenix, who requested copies of all the lab reports from the Highway Patrol's crime lab.

Speaker 13 I got a lovely letter from them saying, here you go, here's everything that we have. And it included every test except for the one that I was looking for.

Speaker 45 But it had to be there.

Speaker 3 So Lindsay went in person to the State Highway Patrol.

Speaker 13 And I said, I want to examine every piece of evidence that you have. And I...
I brought a video camera and a cell phone camera and I photographed everything, trying to be inconspicuous.

Speaker 13 I didn't want to take a chance of me finding something and it disappearing.

Speaker 35 And that is when she found them. Two small canisters and inside.

Speaker 13 The stubs from the gunshot residue test that were labeled robe. And I took the photo, I texted it to Dwight and just said jackpot.

Speaker 13 And then I had to go through the rest of those boxes like I was still looking for something else and act like it wasn't a big deal. And I was ecstatic.

Speaker 43 Those little little stubs confirmed a GSR test had been performed on Brad's robe.

Speaker 9 But where were the results? She asked the Highway Patrol for them.

Speaker 13 And they didn't send them to me.

Speaker 6 So she wrote to them again.

Speaker 13 And said, all right, I know they're there. I have photographs of it.
I know they're there. Send me the results.
And then they sent them.

Speaker 42 And the tests were conclusive.

Speaker 2 There was no gunshot residue on Brad's black bathrobe, just as there wasn't any on his hands on the night Lisa died.

Speaker 30 Meaning, Brad almost certainly did not fire the gun that killed Lisa.

Speaker 5 But why didn't lead investigator Dan Nash reveal that?

Speaker 34 Well, he said he never received those results.

Speaker 37 Plausible?

Speaker 38 Not in a heartbeat.

Speaker 13 No, I was a prosecutor before this. My spouse is a police officer.
Dwight's a police officer. We know the care that goes into building a case.
And that's not a step that you skip.

Speaker 13 Dan Nash had specifically asked for that test to be done.

Speaker 1 So by now Dwight was looking carefully at Dan Nash.

Speaker 32 He talked to a retired judge.

Speaker 17 And he made it very clear that he had a lot of problems with Mr. Nash's reputation for truth and honesty under oath.

Speaker 17 And from there, we started interviewing former prosecutors and a number of former court personnel

Speaker 23 who

Speaker 17 expressed concerns about his reputation for truth and veracity.

Speaker 54 Remember how at the trial, Nash was presented as a blood spatter expert?

Speaker 1 He wasn't.

Speaker 30 In fact, Nash had not even taken a basic bloodstain analysis class when he investigated Lisa's death.

Speaker 42 He took a 40-hour course the following year, but was still not an expert when he testified at trial.

Speaker 32 Dwight sought out the best in the field.

Speaker 17 I found two of the world's most renowned blood spatter experts.

Speaker 3 He sent the crime scene photos to both of them.

Speaker 17 And they both independently came to the same conclusion.

Speaker 31 That Dan Nash was quite simply dead wrong.

Speaker 2 One of them wrote, the bloodstain evidence and the presence of gunshot residue on the right hand of Lisa Jennings are consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Speaker 16 But as any lawyer will tell you, undoing a jury's guilty verdict is well-nigh impossible.

Speaker 39 So, what now?

Speaker 29 Coming up,

Speaker 26 a life interrupted.

Speaker 52 He missed out on me turning 16, me getting married. I have a kid now.
He missed that. Wow.
He missed out on a lot.

Speaker 45 Will Brad Jennings miss even more?

Speaker 3 Dallas Jennings felt like a cheated young man, his father in prison when neither he nor Amanda believed for a minute that he killed their mother.

Speaker 52 He missed out on me turning 16, me driving for the first time, my graduation, me getting married. I have a kid now.
He missed that. Wow.
The birth of his first grandchild.

Speaker 52 He missed out on a lot.

Speaker 29 But Brad's sister Marcia was still determined to bring him back to that world he was missing.

Speaker 2 And with Investigator Dwight's help, she finally found a father-daughter team of attorneys who seemed to understand the case and the family.

Speaker 15 These were just salt of the earth, small-town, country people, and they were stunned at the way the system had worked against Brad Jennings.

Speaker 43 First, Bob and Liz Ramsey read the trial transcript.

Speaker 15 The first thing that jumped out at me is

Speaker 15 I don't recall seeing a defense attorney do so little

Speaker 15 for his client in my 38 years of practicing law.

Speaker 38 Oh, come on.

Speaker 15 Not the worst, surely.

Speaker 22 It was certainly one of the worst.

Speaker 5 But what also jumped out was the work of that Highway Patrol investigator, Dan Nash.

Speaker 39 Confronted about the unrevealed gunshot residue test that might exonerate Brad, Nash said he never saw the report, said it never made it to his desk.

Speaker 13 If that test had been positive, would it have been lost in a fax machine?

Speaker 15 It's just incomprehensible that he wouldn't follow up and say, hey, what happened to my gunshot residue test that I ordered? Well, he was either grossly negligent or he suppressed it deliberately.

Speaker 45 No question about it.

Speaker 16 The issue of that unrevealed GSR test.

Speaker 45 was huge.

Speaker 15 I thought it's a classic Brady violation. It's the kind of evidence that makes a difference in a trial.

Speaker 41 So they elected to shoot for the moon, their one chance to overturn the jury verdict.

Speaker 42 A habeas petition that claimed withheld evidence could have changed the result of the trial.

Speaker 15 I don't promise anything to a client other than I'll give you my best shot.

Speaker 15 And all I told him was, this gives you a shot.

Speaker 3 Vanishingly, few such petitions ever go anywhere.

Speaker 9 Still, they filed and

Speaker 45 And against all odds, were granted a hearing.

Speaker 46 We were very excited. Yeah.

Speaker 18 But cautious. It was almost like

Speaker 20 this little dim light at the end of a tunnel.

Speaker 5 This was the hearing in November 2017, almost 11 years after that terrible Christmas Eve.

Speaker 25 Here, Brad's attorneys revealed the GSR result that suggested his innocence, and the experts' blood spatter findings that did the same, and witnesses who questioned the honesty of Detective Nash.

Speaker 13 I think that his credibility was put at issue for the entire hearing.

Speaker 16 Lawyers from the Missouri Attorney General's office were there too, and told the judge that what the defense came up with would not have changed the guilty verdict.

Speaker 61 Their case was so strong.

Speaker 35 We wanted to hear from the Attorney General's office, from Sergeant Dan Nash, and the Highway Patrol, and all declined our requests.

Speaker 6 And then, months went by and they all had to wait for the judge until February 8th, 2018.

Speaker 36 Finally, a ruling.

Speaker 15 My first reaction was to go right to the last paragraph and see what the result was.

Speaker 15 And the last sentence of his order is,

Speaker 15 at a minimum, the suppression of the gunshot residue test undermines confidence in that verdict.

Speaker 39 Conviction overturned.

Speaker 20 It's the first time that we had had a positive outcome.

Speaker 51 It was wonderful.

Speaker 32 The state is fighting that decision.

Speaker 43 But the very next day, on the judge's order, Brad Jennings walked out of prison after eight and a half years and into the arms of people who never for a minute gave up on him.

Speaker 22 Oh, guys.

Speaker 13 It's the kind of stuff that you dream about in law school. And I firmly believe that Brad is innocent.
So to walk him out was one of the greatest honors of my life. Like, I'll never forget that day.

Speaker 58 It was

Speaker 19 just unbelievable.

Speaker 24 We had all waited so long for it and wondered if it was ever going to happen.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 18 But it was one of the best days of my life.

Speaker 12 It was really

Speaker 12 awesome to see him walk out. You know, that was

Speaker 12 knowing that he was going to come home with us. That was amazing.

Speaker 31 That ride home had to be quite something, huh?

Speaker 23 It was.

Speaker 52 That was weird. It was the first time my dad's ever seen me drive.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 52 Yeah, I drove him home.

Speaker 29 Brad Jennings was a man of few words when he met us a few weeks later.

Speaker 32 as if he was still afraid to believe it and let go.

Speaker 31 And he knows the state has an option to retry him.

Speaker 22 But if we go to trial again, I think we can win.

Speaker 50 But we talked a bit about that Christmas Eve and the mystery of what so upset Lisa.

Speaker 22 She was crying. That's one thing.
I asked her why she was crying.

Speaker 49 And she couldn't tell you.

Speaker 30 Didn't want to tell you.

Speaker 22 Didn't want to talk. Didn't want to say anything.

Speaker 43 It wasn't till years later, he said, that he learned she'd been having an affair with her boss.

Speaker 40 And that man had just broken it off, meaning she was also out of a job.

Speaker 22 You know, she had told me she wasn't coming back to work the day before this.

Speaker 43 He didn't understand it then.

Speaker 44 But now,

Speaker 35 maybe that was an answer to his long-ago question, why did she end her own life?

Speaker 5 Once he might have confronted the other man.

Speaker 28 Now,

Speaker 41 nothing to be done.

Speaker 22 I don't even know where he's at now. That business

Speaker 22 closed down now.

Speaker 29 The once-closed family is badly split.

Speaker 2 Lisa's sister Sean and daughter Lacey still believe Brad is guilty.

Speaker 28 So, for now.

Speaker 22 It's just like starting over again, though, you know, I mean.

Speaker 5 And he clings to his kids and his sister, his mom, and those who believe in him, to his ancestral farm,

Speaker 1 and his other longtime love, the old Chevelle.

Speaker 46 I knew Brad was innocent.

Speaker 19 The only thing I've ever wanted was for finally everyone to hear the truth.

Speaker 42 That's all for now.

Speaker 9 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 7 Thanks for joining us.

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