Return to the Early Shift

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Speaker 3 I stood there in that hallway where that pool of blood was, where her her office was.

Speaker 3 Whoever did this knew this facility and knew it well.

Speaker 1 A lot of blood, a lot of trauma.

Speaker 4 I think of what happened to Michelle, and I just, it's horrible.

Speaker 3 Somebody moved her body.

Speaker 6 There were pry marks on her office door. We were kind of baffled.

Speaker 7 He's on the property, and we don't know who he is.

Speaker 1 He could possibly be Michelle's killer. Right there on that video.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 Everybody on social media was like, that's the guy that did it.

Speaker 8 He literally had a rolling crime scene cart. His large janitorial cart that he used every day with cleaning supplies on the side.

Speaker 6 His truck is seen leaving the parking lot at 6.31 that morning.

Speaker 7 All of the personal conversations between the prosecutor and the lead detective, all of that comes out.

Speaker 9 Did you have a sexual relationship with her?

Speaker 11 Are you denying that?

Speaker 12 I don't think it's any of your business.

Speaker 13 Right away, your heart just starts pounding.

Speaker 14 Seven years.

Speaker 15 We're seeking justice for Michelle for almost seven years.

Speaker 15 She deserves all this to be over with.

Speaker 1 They call it the early shift for a reason.

Speaker 1 It was still an hour before dawn in this small town in northern Kentucky. And in a few hours, A local warehouse would become an anthill of activity as the first employees of the morning arrived.

Speaker 1 But who among them could predict that before the first coffee break that day, one of their co-workers would be dead?

Speaker 2 I just walked in our office and I think somebody had killed somebody upstairs in our office.

Speaker 1 Okay, what makes you think somebody killed somebody? He's laying there underground and there's blood all over.

Speaker 1 Impossible to believe in this tight-knit workplace where everyone knows everyone. But there was Michelle Mockby, Mockby, 42, wife and mother, face down in a pool of blood.

Speaker 1 The investigation that followed would peel the lid off an entire company and take a hard look at every employee who was there that morning.

Speaker 1 You know that your suspect is one of those people in the building.

Speaker 6 That's right.

Speaker 1 Probing for clues in the victim's private life.

Speaker 15 The detective asked me if there was any trouble in their marriage.

Speaker 1 Eliminating suspect after suspect until there was one.

Speaker 1 And just when it seemed to be over, it wasn't.

Speaker 9 Did you have a sexual relationship with her?

Speaker 11 Are you denying that?

Speaker 12 I think it's any of your business.

Speaker 1 A scandal would scramble everything.

Speaker 16 And you're not controlling this anymore.

Speaker 11 You're not the Commonwealth Attorney right here.

Speaker 1 They say the wheels of justice turn slowly.

Speaker 1 In this case, the wheels came completely off, leaving a family wondering who would do the right thing for a kind and loving woman who went to work one morning and never came home.

Speaker 1 If you give Michelle Mockby's siblings a chance to tell you about their sister, they can't say enough good things about her. She was our big sister, our role model.

Speaker 17 Michelle was

Speaker 15 just the most amazing sister that you can ever ask for.

Speaker 15 Very loving, caring, giving person. She would do anything for anyone.
She always had a big smile and her laughter was contagious.

Speaker 1 Michelle carried her positive spirit into the workplace. She was head of payroll at that warehouse owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a worldwide supplier of laboratory equipment.

Speaker 1 It was also where she met her husband, Dan Mockby.

Speaker 1 What was she like? What drew you to her?

Speaker 18 Michelle was funny, attractive, intelligent. There was a vibrantness to her.
I mean, she was beautiful.

Speaker 1 It was at a Thermo Fisher Christmas party back in 1999 that Dan first summoned the courage to share his feelings with her. You've been thinking about Michelle.
Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 He asked Michelle to stick with him that night, and she did. And then everything went sideways.

Speaker 18 And it was the worst date in the world.

Speaker 1 What wrong?

Speaker 18 I don't know. I was totally off my game.
I couldn't speak. But then I asked her out again and she said yes.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe you did something right.

Speaker 18 I must have. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Michelle and Dan married in 2001 and continued to work together at Thermo Fisher.

Speaker 1 Not long after came two daughters, Madeline and Carly.

Speaker 20 I remember she pretty much just said be nice to people.

Speaker 14 So I was like, you know what? I'm going to be nice to people.

Speaker 1 Because she was nice to everybody. Yeah.
Yeah, she was. She would always like

Speaker 4 play games with us in our backyard and like take us to all these fun places. Yeah.
She was just a fun person to be around.

Speaker 1 But even as busy parents, Dan and Michelle always planned a date night every other Monday. Memorial Day 2012 was no exception.
How was she that night?

Speaker 1 Happy? Absolutely. Normal? Mm-hmm.
Normal. The next morning, Michelle got up to go to Thermo Fisher for the early morning shift.
Dan had the day off and stayed home.

Speaker 18 She wakes me up, kisses me goodbye, says, I love you, and went to work.

Speaker 1 And that was the last you saw of her.

Speaker 18 It's the last I saw of her.

Speaker 1 At 5.53 a.m., a security camera captured Michelle's car as it arrived at the parking lot.

Speaker 1 She stopped by the warehouse's time clock and headed upstairs to her office. About an hour later, a supervisor supervisor named Ed Yuska noticed a big stain on the upstairs hallway carpet.

Speaker 1 He started looking around the area with help from a coworker, the janitor, David Dooley.

Speaker 21 Ed went out on the mezzanine just part of the ways, and I was holding the door and

Speaker 21 there was just a, he said there's a dead body laying there.

Speaker 1 What did it look like?

Speaker 21 I just saw from the knees down. I didn't see the whole thing, but honestly, I'm glad I didn't look because I'd never been around anything like that.

Speaker 8 It was kind of frightening for me.

Speaker 1 Someone inside Thermo Fisher had killed Michelle Mockby.

Speaker 1 But who?

Speaker 1 And just as puzzling, why?

Speaker 1 Fresh pry marks on Michelle's office door. What was in that office that anybody would want?

Speaker 6 That's the mystery.

Speaker 1 The hunt for a killer begins.

Speaker 12 With each person I talk to, there's no evidence that they've been involved in anything.

Speaker 1 So if it's one of these people you're interviewing, they've disguised it well. They have.

Speaker 1 It was a horrible, bloody scene. Michelle Mockby's battered body was on the floor of the mezzanine at the Thermo Fisher warehouse, a plastic bag over her head.

Speaker 1 When Boone County Sheriff's Detectives Bruce McVeigh and Everett Stahl arrived at the warehouse, they saw the bloodstains on the hallway carpet and concluded Michelle had been dragged around the corner from her office.

Speaker 1 The office itself was locked, but there were fresh pry marks on the door. It looked like an attempted break-in.
What was in that office that anybody would want?

Speaker 6 That's the mystery.

Speaker 1 While the detectives were trying to make sense of the crime scene, Michelle's husband Dan was still at home.

Speaker 1 Co-workers had started reaching out to him, but all they told him was there had been some kind of incident at the warehouse.

Speaker 18 And that's when I started getting

Speaker 13 nervous.

Speaker 1 Dan rushed to the warehouse. To detectives, he might have been the victim's loving husband or the perpetrator of an incredibly violent crime.
Right now, they didn't know much.

Speaker 1 After he was escorted inside, Dan took the initiative with Detective Stahl.

Speaker 18 And I looked at him and I said, excuse me, officer, my wife works here. I really need to know that she's all right.

Speaker 18 And that's when he told me that

Speaker 18 she was deceased.

Speaker 6 His reaction was pretty excruciating to watch. I still had to press on, and I still had to move forward with my looking at him as a possible suspect.

Speaker 1 When police ask you where you were at the time your wife was killed, I was doing what most sensible people are doing at six o'clock in the morning if they don't have to get up and go to work.

Speaker 18 And I was sleeping. It's not a very good alibi, but it's the only one I had.

Speaker 1 Detectives asked Dan to go to the sheriff's station to take a lie detector test. You agreed to take the polygraph.
Yes, sir.

Speaker 18 That's a scary thing.

Speaker 1 Because if it goes wrong, all of a sudden, there's a case against you. Right.
It was

Speaker 1 nerve-wracking. But Dan passed the polygraph.
And for detectives, that was enough. Apparently this time, the husband didn't do it.

Speaker 1 With Dan cleared, detectives decided to focus on everyone who was at the warehouse that morning. It turned out 13 employees were working their regular shifts when Michelle was killed.

Speaker 1 Detectives interviewed all 13.

Speaker 12 With each person I talked to, there's no blood. There's no evidence that they've been involved in anything.

Speaker 1 So if it's one of these people you're interviewing, they've disguised it well. They have.

Speaker 1 There was nothing suspicious about any of the 13 interviews, so detectives started methodically digging through other evidence, starting with Thermo Fisher's security camera footage.

Speaker 1 And right away, they spotted something unusual that happened the morning of the murder: a vehicle in the parking lot, not entering but leaving around the back of the building.

Speaker 1 Detectives matched the truck to its owner, David Dooley, the janitor, and one of the workers who'd found Michelle's body.

Speaker 6 Dave Dooley's truck is seen leaving parking lot at 6.31 that morning.

Speaker 1 Right after the murder. That's right.
That's right. The security tape showed Dooley returning to the warehouse around 7 a.m.

Speaker 1 Detective McVeigh thought it was odd that Dooley hadn't mentioned that when they first spoke. They needed to speak with Dooley again, so they went to the apartment he shared with his wife Janet.

Speaker 1 And Dooley wasn't surprised to see them.

Speaker 21 I kind of figured it would happen just to do a follow-up.

Speaker 1 Before Detective McVeigh even brought it up, Dooley told him he'd gone home the morning of the murder. McVeigh recorded their conversation.
I came back here,

Speaker 21 and then I went back to Fisher.

Speaker 1 You came back here?

Speaker 8 I came back here, yeah.

Speaker 22 I couldn't get a hold of my wife, and I came home to make sure she was okay.

Speaker 19 Yesterday, you didn't tell me you left.

Speaker 1 Why did you decide to think about that?

Speaker 1 Detective Stahl also questioned David's wife, Janet, separately to see if she would tell the same story. This conversation would prove critical to the entire case.

Speaker 1 What she said is in dispute, because a part of the recording is hard to hear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yesterday afternoon came home after he was released by last case we

Speaker 1 cultivated.

Speaker 6 I asked her specifically if Dave ever came home that morning, and she says no.

Speaker 1 To Stahl and McVeigh, Janet Dooley had just contradicted her husband's story. So police questioned her again about that apparent discrepancy.

Speaker 23 She told the other detective that he didn't come home that day.

Speaker 24 So they did?

Speaker 1 Janet seems surprised. She told police that David did in fact come home.
And the reason she offered raised more more questions for investigators.

Speaker 25 He said he ripped another pair of pants. So he had to come home and just

Speaker 25 increase a pair of pants.

Speaker 1 Janet's statements were not helping her husband's cause. David Dooley never said anything about ripped pants to police.

Speaker 1 Adding to the confusion, detectives spoke with Thermo Fisher employee Joe Seagert, who told them he talked with Dooley that morning.

Speaker 6 According to Joe, he made a point to come over to him and say, hey man, I had to go home because I ripped my pants.

Speaker 1 Dooley was adamant he never said that to Segert and did not rip his pants that day. But the differing stories about why he came home placed a bullseye squarely on David Dooley's back.

Speaker 6 We started working on a search warrant for the residence and for the truck.

Speaker 1 You execute those search warrants and you find bloody clothing? No bloody clothing. Stuff taken from the crime scene that shouldn't be at his house? No.
Some kind of murder weapon? No.

Speaker 1 No bloody clothes, no weapon.

Speaker 1 But David Dooley was the only employee who left the warehouse on the morning Michelle Mockby was killed, and there were witnesses contradicting Dooley's account of why he left that morning.

Speaker 1 On September 27, 2012, the Boone County Sheriff's Department made its move. David Dooley was arrested.
and charged with the murder of his co-worker, Michelle Mockby.

Speaker 1 Case closed? Not by a long shot. The David Dooley trial would expose secrets, tarnish the reputation of law enforcement, and have Michelle's family question

Speaker 1 if justice would ever be served.

Speaker 8 David Dooley was in the middle of breaking into her office when she came up the steps and surprised him.

Speaker 1 A break-in?

Speaker 1 What was he after? That feels like a thin motive.

Speaker 8 Sometimes, desperate people do desperate things.

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Speaker 1 Michelle Mockby's favorite color had always been red. Since her death, her family has worn red in her honor.

Speaker 1 And that's what they did in October 2014 when they flowed into this Kentucky courthouse for David Dooley's trial.

Speaker 20 On May the 29th of 2012, Dan Mockney lost the love of his life.

Speaker 20 And two little girls lost their mom

Speaker 20 at the hands of a man.

Speaker 20 who couldn't even keep his story straight from one day to the next.

Speaker 1 Prosecutor Linda Talley knew she didn't have a perfect case. There were no fingerprints, no DNA.

Speaker 1 So she told jurors they wouldn't hear about any smoking gun, but they would hear David Dooley's own words, which had made him the last man standing in the detective's process of elimination.

Speaker 20 It was through this process that the path kept turning back to one person, the defendant, David Dooley.

Speaker 1 Jurors heard that almost all the employees working on the morning of the murder were were on the warehouse floor, far away from the upstairs office area where Michelle was killed.

Speaker 1 They were eliminated as suspects.

Speaker 8 We were able to create a time record of where everybody was and what they were doing at different points during the morning.

Speaker 1 And where was David Dooley?

Speaker 6 There's a red pickup truck.

Speaker 1 The jury got to see Dooley on security video from that morning.

Speaker 20 The defendant actually left that building that day at 6.31 a.m., which was about a half an hour after Michelle walked into the building.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor showed the jury a photo of those fresh pry marks on Michelle's office door and said they were a crucial clue that helped explain the murder.

Speaker 8 Our belief has always been that David Dooley was in the middle of breaking into her office when she came up the steps and surprised him. And ultimately she was assaulted and restrained.

Speaker 1 Because she was a witness to a crime in progress.

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 The medical examiner said Michelle was bludgeoned with something similar to an industrial packing tape gun. So then after such a violent attack, why was no blood evidence ever found on David Dooley?

Speaker 1 And why wasn't any of the DNA found at the scene a match to his?

Speaker 1 The prosecutor argued the janitor worked every day with cleaning supplies and plastic bags, together perfect. for removing evidence of a crime.

Speaker 20 At the time David Dooley attacked Michelle in that hallway, what did he he have with him?

Speaker 20 A rolling crime scene cleanup cart

Speaker 20 with a trash bag in the middle of it.

Speaker 8 It's my personal belief that when he left that building, he took with him a bag containing all of the evidence that was missing from the scene.

Speaker 1 A cover-up so spotless, only a janitor could manage it, said the prosecutor. It was only his story, she said.
that was a mess.

Speaker 8 It's very hard for a person to explain how they can't tell the same story twice. And in these circumstances, we had four separate statements from him.

Speaker 1 Detective McVeigh testified it was only in Dooley's second interview at his apartment that Dooley first mentioned leaving work and going home.

Speaker 22 And I came back here.

Speaker 19 Okay, what time did you come back here?

Speaker 22 6:30. I couldn't get a hold of my wife, and I came home to make sure she was okay.

Speaker 1 His wife, Janet, said David did come home to change a pair of ripped pants.

Speaker 17 He had to come home and just, you know, grab a pair of pants.

Speaker 1 It sounds like an alibi.

Speaker 1 Except David Dooley adamantly denied doing that.

Speaker 1 I never said that. Okay, you didn't rub your pants.
No. Okay.
That only though. When defense attorneys Chris Roach and Tom Pugh got their turn,

Speaker 1 they talked about all the hard evidence the state didn't have.

Speaker 26 DNA evidence, murder weapon, blood evidence, marks on David Dooley.

Speaker 1 Dooley never testified in front of the jury, but he did talk to Dateline about the case against him and his story that differed from his wife's. You say you went home to check on your wife.

Speaker 1 They talked to your wife and she says he came home because he tore his pants and he came home to change his pants. So what's the truth and why can't you and your wife agree on the same story?

Speaker 8 We do agree that I came home.

Speaker 1 Did you go home to change your pants?

Speaker 21 No, I did not.

Speaker 1 Why would your wife say that you did?

Speaker 2 I do not know.

Speaker 21 We've talked about that a couple of times. And the only thing we can come up with is she didn't hear me properly.

Speaker 1 Janet Dooley has serious hearing problems. And on the day of the murder, she says she only saw a pair of ripped pants in the house and thought David said that's why he came home.

Speaker 17 So a person that cannot hear, they put things together themselves through their eyes. And I did.

Speaker 26 Dave didn't change his clothes and Dave didn't change his story.

Speaker 1 The defense also stressed that DNA was found on Michelle's body and belongings in at least five different places. And none of that was a conclusive match to David Dooley or anyone else.

Speaker 26 We heard testimony that there were many unknown DNA profiles. Could one of these unknown profiles have been the killer?

Speaker 1 The defense noted that something had set off the warehouse alarm system just three days before the murder. And you think that's significant? Yeah.

Speaker 26 Yeah, it's significant. That means that someone could have gained access to thermofisher.

Speaker 1 After both sides had presented their cases, it was time for closing arguments.

Speaker 26 No one could think of any reason to kill Michelle Mockby. So what motive would David Dooley have to kill Michelle Mockby?

Speaker 1 But it was only after the defense had wrapped up its closing that the prosecutor gave her answer to that question, laying out her theory of motive for the first time.

Speaker 20 I would suggest to you that the evidence is right in that stack of stuff over there. You have time cards,

Speaker 17 you you have invoices,

Speaker 20 all kept in Michelle's office.

Speaker 1 You think the motive was the time cards? Yes.

Speaker 8 I believe that Michelle had actually discovered the fact that he had actually been triple-dipping by clocking himself in, clocking his wife in, and getting paid hourly to do a job that they were already being paid a monthly salary to do.

Speaker 1 That feels like a thin motive.

Speaker 8 Sometimes desperate people do desperate things.

Speaker 1 Was David Dooley desperate enough to commit murder over falsified time cards? It would be up to the jury to decide.

Speaker 1 Did you have anything to do with the death of Michelle Lockby?

Speaker 12 No, I did not.

Speaker 12 I did not kill her.

Speaker 1 Guilty or not guilty?

Speaker 27 We, the jury, find the defendant David Dooley.

Speaker 1 The real stunner would come after the verdict. A secret affair that would turn this case upside down.

Speaker 9 Did you have a sexual relationship with her?

Speaker 11 Are you denying that?

Speaker 12 Please any of your business.

Speaker 1 After waiting a full day without hearing a verdict, Michelle Mockby's siblings were on pins and needles. When the first day comes and goes and there's no verdict, you guys worried at all?

Speaker 1 That's going in.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it was pretty agonizing waiting.

Speaker 1 Then, after deliberating for some 16 hours over two days, word came from the jury. There was a verdict.

Speaker 27 We, the jury, find the defendant David Dooley guilty of murder under instructions.

Speaker 1 Guilty for the murder of Michelle Mockby.

Speaker 1 Did you have anything to do with the death of Michelle Mockby?

Speaker 21 No, I did not.

Speaker 21 I did not kill her.

Speaker 1 David Dooley was sentenced to life in prison. He filed an appeal.
You know, getting convictions reversed on appeal is a long shot.

Speaker 21 But when you're innocent, it does happen.

Speaker 1 And it will happen. Dooley was right.
It wasn't over.

Speaker 1 Two years after his conviction, a whistleblower came forward to reveal a secret romance between Detective Bruce McVeigh and prosecutor Linda Talley Smith.

Speaker 1 The scandal rocked the prosecutor's office. and would lead to serious questions about David Dooley's conviction.
Brian Hamrick covered the scandal for NBC's Cincinnati affiliate, WLWT.

Speaker 7 All of the information about the personal conversations between the prosecutor, Linda Talley-Smith, and the lead detective, Bruce McVay, all of their correspondence, all of that comes out.

Speaker 1 The jaw-dropping headlines said the affair between the prosecutor and the lead detective began weeks after the trial.

Speaker 1 At a hearing in March of 2017, the prosecutor and the detective, both instrumental in putting Dooley behind bars, found themselves on the hot seat being grilled by Dooley's new attorney, Deanna Dennison.

Speaker 11 Are you telling me you didn't have a sexual relationship with her?

Speaker 18 We were friends.

Speaker 28 You're under oath.

Speaker 18 We were friends.

Speaker 9 Did you have a sexual relationship with her?

Speaker 11 Are you denying that?

Speaker 12 It's any of your business.

Speaker 5 I'm asking you, answer. You're under oath.
She'll testify.

Speaker 9 She'll say. Tell me what it is your answer is.

Speaker 12 I just said yes.

Speaker 14 Okay, thanks.

Speaker 9 Simple.

Speaker 16 Let's talk about this letter.

Speaker 1 It was a sensational courtroom drama.

Speaker 1 But the issue for the Dooley trial wasn't the affair.

Speaker 1 It was an 18-page letter in which the prosecutor blasted the detective, who was by then her former lover, as an outright liar, both personally and professionally.

Speaker 1 She ended up reading her own scathing words into the court record.

Speaker 8 Now that I know what a complete liar you are, I am going to grapple with ethical issues with every case in which you are involved.

Speaker 1 She said she was upset because McVay didn't tell her what was on a Thermo Fisher security video that he'd come across.

Speaker 1 Dooley's attorney continued reading from her letter.

Speaker 16 Not to mention the fact that you allowed me to go through a complete affine murder trial without telling me the truth about that video. And now that I know it, what the F am I going to do now?

Speaker 8 What the F am I supposed to do now? Right.

Speaker 1 That one message from Linda Talleysmith to Bruce McVay really tells the story, doesn't it?

Speaker 7 Yeah, and that may be the most damning paragraph of the entire trove of information.

Speaker 8 He says 8, 11 p.m. Random Dude.

Speaker 1 The video in question shows a man outside the Thermo Fisher building. Police call him the random dude.

Speaker 7 It's a little hard to tell exactly what what he's doing, but he's on the property where a woman is murdered brutally 10 hours later, and we don't know who he is.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor said the defense was given this video, but defense attorneys say they never saw it and were never told about the random dude. That would have been in our closing.

Speaker 26 I mean, our whole defense was he didn't do it.

Speaker 26 So if we can point to unknown individuals that were trying to gain access to the building, that that would definitely have been used.

Speaker 1 Remember, Callie Smith said she didn't know about the man on the video during the trial, but finally learned about him from McVay afterwards. But then she did nothing.

Speaker 7 She didn't go to the judge. She didn't go to the Attorney General.

Speaker 1 And she didn't go to the defense either.

Speaker 7 She wrote a letter to Bruce McVeigh saying, how could you do this to me?

Speaker 11 And I get to live with the worry that someone on the defense side will find it at some point, and then we'll all wind up in trouble over it, and the entire case will be tainted because of it

Speaker 1 you wrote that i did write that in defense of her actions tally smith testified she subsequently calmed down and never sent that letter

Speaker 1 and besides she said the video with the random dude was much ado about nothing it doesn't constitute any evidence that someone got in that building

Speaker 17 Would it have changed anything about the case?

Speaker 1 No, absolutely not. For his part, McVay said he didn't tell the prosecutor about the video because he was confident the random dude wasn't the killer.

Speaker 1 But after hearing the testimony, the judge threw out David Dooley's conviction. It was a stunning development, setting the stage for a new trial.
David Dooley would remain behind bars in the interim.

Speaker 17 Dave found out and they called me, and of course he was crying. He was relieved that finally he's going to get his second chance to prove his innocence.

Speaker 17 We still have a murderer out there, but I'm not going to to shut up until Dave comes home.

Speaker 1 Janet Dooley was confident her husband would be found not guilty in a new trial because Detective McVay's credibility was compromised after the prosecutor branded him a liar.

Speaker 17 They lie, they cheat, they win,

Speaker 17 and that's what they do.

Speaker 1 Michelle's sisters said they were frustrated by the judge's decision, but it didn't change their minds about David Dooley's guilt. After everything that's come out, you think they got the right guy?

Speaker 15 We absolutely think they have the right guy.

Speaker 1 We have no doubt about that. Nothing that's happened since the trial, nothing in the appeal, has made you think maybe the jury was wrong.

Speaker 15 No, Michelle was just, she deserves justice. I mean, she deserves all this to be, we all deserve all this to be over with.

Speaker 1 Seven long years after Michelle Makby was killed, both sides had to brace themselves for a new trial.

Speaker 1 A new prosecutor with a powerful new case. Where are his boots? Missing boots, a suspicious screwdriver, and those time cards.

Speaker 3 They've never been found. So there are missing time cards.
Exactly two.

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Speaker 1 As the second trial approached, Michelle Mockby's daughter Madeline could see it weighing on her father.

Speaker 14 He had a little bit of closure and then The second trial comes and everything's just wiped back out.

Speaker 1 While Michelle's family was bracing for another trial, a lot had changed. Prosecutor Linda Talley Smith had lost her re-election bid and was now a potential witness.

Speaker 1 So the Kentucky Attorney General's Office and Assistant AG John Heck took over the case.

Speaker 3 Ladies and gentlemen, the jury. With every case that I take, I review it and I ask myself, is this person beyond all doubt guilty? Whoever did this was familiar with that facility.

Speaker 3 Then you say, well, who was there? And then whoever did it had to have left. Who left? Now we're down to one person.

Speaker 1 As for the video that showed the unidentified man approaching the warehouse's side door, Heck offered an explanation for why the so-called random dude didn't matter.

Speaker 3 Knowing that this is what got the new trial granted,

Speaker 3 we wanted to hit that head-on. That what that man did actually was throw something in the garbage can right beside the door.

Speaker 1 That guy was never identified. Never identified.
For Heck, the heart of the case was that David Dooley was the only one to leave the warehouse that morning.

Speaker 3 This was a bloody, violent murder. They would be covered in blood.
There were no bloody clothes found on the scene.

Speaker 3 Whoever did it left, and when you looked at the video camera, he's the only one who left.

Speaker 1 One of the things that could have been covered in blood, Dooley's steel-toed work boots, required footwear at the warehouse.

Speaker 1 Heck told the jury Dooley might well have gotten rid of his boots to cover up the crime. Where are his boots?

Speaker 28 They searched his house, his garage, his feet,

Speaker 1 his truck,

Speaker 13 and these were never found.

Speaker 1 So, did Dooley leave work to check on his wife or to get rid of bloody evidence? David Dooley's statement was that he went home to check on his wife. Right.
You don't believe that?

Speaker 3 No, he wasn't texting saying, how are you doing? And she wasn't texting back saying, I'm feeling bad. That communication never happened.

Speaker 1 David Dooley did place one unanswered phone call to his wife that morning before going home. To Heck, if Dooley was really concerned about his wife, he would have called more than once.

Speaker 1 Heck also found Janet and David Dooley's conflicting stories suspicious. But it's her version of the story that sort of you find more interesting?

Speaker 3 Yes, because she's essentially covering up for a criminal.

Speaker 1 Remember the disputed audio of Janet Dooley talking to investigators the day after the murder?

Speaker 1 When's the first time he saw Dave after that?

Speaker 1 When's the first time he saw David?

Speaker 1 Janet Dooley denies ever saying her husband didn't come home that morning, and she accuses detectives of manipulating her words and ignoring her hearing problems.

Speaker 1 But Heck points to another interview with Detective Stahl several weeks later,

Speaker 1 in which Janet seems to admit saying her husband never came home.

Speaker 24 I've been spending the last few days reviewing all of the interviews that we've done with you.

Speaker 24 And I said,

Speaker 24 when Dave left for work that morning,

Speaker 24 when is the very first time that you saw him after he left for work?

Speaker 24 And you said, when you guys let him go that afternoon.

Speaker 25 That's how I remembered it.

Speaker 3 So the second time, they went over her first statement with her and said, you told us this, this, and this. And she said, yep, that's how I remembered it.

Speaker 3 She said the exact same thing, and that is that David David Dooley did not come home.

Speaker 1 Prosecutor Heck acknowledges not knowing exactly why David Dooley would have wanted to break into Michelle's office and why he would have killed her.

Speaker 1 But to Heck, the fact that David Dooley was double-dipping on time cards and that Michelle handled payroll and that the Dooley's time cards from that week were never found.

Speaker 1 were together just all too suspicious to ignore.

Speaker 3 As we sit here today, we have never found David and Janet Janet Dooley's time cards from that week. Just, they've never been found.
So there are missing time cards. Exactly two.

Speaker 1 Would Michelle have had those with her that morning because she was coming in to do payroll?

Speaker 3 She may have gathered them up. She may have.

Speaker 1 And Heck emphasized, a screwdriver was found in David Dooley's locked janitor's closet. A screwdriver the same size and with similar markings as the prime marks on Michelle Mogby's office.

Speaker 33 What are the odds that in this situation, this screwdriver is a different screwdriver?

Speaker 1 The screwdriver, like much of the case, was circumstantial.

Speaker 1 Heck's response,

Speaker 1 there was simply too much circumstantial evidence to ignore.

Speaker 33 At some point, a coincidence is not a coincidence.

Speaker 33 At some point, it's just overwhelming evidence of guilt.

Speaker 1 Now, after years of waiting for their second chance at a trial, David Dooley's defense team was ready to make their case. And at the top of their list of alternate suspects was Michelle's husband.

Speaker 11 No alibi.

Speaker 9 The police didn't even bother to take his phone.

Speaker 1 That mystery man caught on camera a new focus. on the defense team's new evidence.

Speaker 32 We have an entire first trial on this case that's conducted on the fact that this is a fairly secure building. What the walking man shows is that that's not true.

Speaker 1 What would the verdict be this time?

Speaker 13 Right away, your heart just starts pounding.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I was terrified.

Speaker 1 David Dooley had waited five years for a second chance in court.

Speaker 11 Ladies and gentlemen, jury, David Dooley didn't murder Michelle Monkey.

Speaker 1 His new attorneys, Deanna Dennison and Jeff Lawson, were eager to present their new evidence to a jury.

Speaker 5 There was some new evidence, of course, with that random person that we wanted to introduce.

Speaker 1 Rules of evidence prevented defense attorneys from introducing Linda Talley Smith's letters in court, the ones where she accused Detective McVeigh of being a liar.

Speaker 1 But what they did have this time around was the random dude video that had led to the overturned conviction.

Speaker 32 We have an entire first trial on this case that's conducted on the fact that this was a fairly secure building.

Speaker 32 What the walking man shows is that that's not true.

Speaker 1 To the defense, that random dude was just one of the alternate suspects ignored by detectives.

Speaker 32 Every single thing that was done from the moment that they saw that... David left on that surveillance tape was in an effort to convict David as opposed to make sure that they had the right person.

Speaker 1 The defense brought up other warehouse employees who they said were not thoroughly investigated.

Speaker 1 They focused on Michelle's husband, Dan, and the money he received from Michelle's life insurance policy.

Speaker 5 We started seeing cash withdrawals, $10,000, $20,000, $12,000, $14,000.

Speaker 1 All of which suggests what?

Speaker 5 Well, suggests that something's wrong. $409,000 of cash withdrawals.
Could he be paying somebody? I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, that feels like you're throwing everything at the wall to see what's next.

Speaker 5 Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
Because it's all reasonable doubt.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors, detectives, and Michelle's family all agree that Dan Mockby had nothing to do with his wife's murder. And on the stand, he said as much.

Speaker 10 Did you have anything to do with

Speaker 10 somebody to kill your wife?

Speaker 1 Absolutely not. The defense also questioned the state's theory of motive.
You don't dispute that David Dooley was stealing. No.

Speaker 5 We don't, we don't, we think that he was, yes.

Speaker 1 You don't think he'd kill to cover that up?

Speaker 1 No, no,

Speaker 5 no, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 Even though it would have meant loss of his job and maybe loss of his wife's job.

Speaker 5 So we're going to kill somebody? No.

Speaker 32 It had nothing to do with

Speaker 1 covering up a theft.

Speaker 32 A theft which we don't even know she knew about.

Speaker 5 I mean, the way she was bludgeoned, that's not from somebody just, oh, shoot, she found out about it. You're going to spend the time to tape her legs up and drag her all over the place?

Speaker 5 I don't think so.

Speaker 1 And remember the steel-toed boots that the prosecution said were never found? The defense said Dooley's work boots were found, shown here in evidence photos.

Speaker 1 They weren't steel-toed, but the defense said Dooley wasn't the only one to violate the footwear rules at Thermo Fisher.

Speaker 1 In her closing argument, Deanna Dennison emphasized the circumstantial nature of the case against David Dooley.

Speaker 11 It's not a question of,

Speaker 9 did he maybe do it?

Speaker 10 Did he probably do it?

Speaker 9 Or could he have done it? Oh, maybe by process elimination, he's the only one that could have done it. That's not the standard.
The standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it.

Speaker 9 And they have not shown that to you.

Speaker 1 Now, once again, the case was in the hands of a jury. This time, it took seven hours.

Speaker 3 Somebody said they have a verdict.

Speaker 13 So right away, your heart just starts pounding.

Speaker 15 I was terrified going upstairs to sit in the courtroom.

Speaker 6 We, the jury, find the defendant David Dooley guilty of murder under instruction number four.

Speaker 1 For the second time, David Dooley was convicted of murdering Michelle Mockby. What did your client say afterward?

Speaker 32 Oh, no, not again.

Speaker 1 Michelle's siblings had a very different reaction.

Speaker 19 When they read that guilty, it was just, oh.

Speaker 3 Just felt everything just bam release. Lots of tears.

Speaker 1 Lots of tears.

Speaker 3 Lots of hugs.

Speaker 4 At the end of the day, this is a guilty man.

Speaker 15 And the jury rightfully found him guilty.

Speaker 1 David Dooley maintains his innocence and remains silent at his second sentencing.

Speaker 32 And he still says, I'm not going to confess to something I didn't do, even if it means that this judge could change my sentence, could give me a lower sentence.

Speaker 32 I'm never going to admit to something that never happened.

Speaker 1 It's been years since Michelle's death, but she's still part of her daughter's lives. Madeline and Carly say it's the little things that remind them of their mom.

Speaker 4 Bon Jovi will come on the radio and we'll think, like, oh, our mom liked all that kind of music and we'll go to all kinds of concerts and

Speaker 1 she was just a fun person.

Speaker 1 Everything I know about your mom makes me think that she wouldn't have wanted you in a courtroom. She wouldn't have wanted you to hear about a murder trial.

Speaker 1 She wouldn't have wanted any of this to touch you at all. No.

Speaker 14 No, she would just want us to be like happy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And maybe she'll finally get her wish?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes.

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