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Speaker 7 But everybody asked what happened, and everybody seemed to scratch their head when I said, I don't know.

Speaker 8 It was the question that wouldn't go away.

Speaker 10 The question that haunts many people even now: if you hear the story, can you know what happened?

Speaker 11 People would ask, Hey, whatever happened to the case with the lady on the cliff.

Speaker 8 Her name was Wanda, the lady on the cliff.

Speaker 13 I dream about Wanda every single night, and in several of those dreams always thought and felt like Wanda was trying to tell me something.

Speaker 14 Wanda, darling.

Speaker 16 She was 23, just married and on the honeymoon drive.

Speaker 18 Wanda and her new husband had turned off the highway near Homer, Alaska, to a remote cliff top overlooking a broad Alaskan bay, not a soul around.

Speaker 14 Almost.

Speaker 19 At the very end of that dirt road, etched into the bluff, there lived a mystery writer, an author named Ron Hess.

Speaker 22 This is kind of the frontier.

Speaker 23 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 24 For Wanda, a frontier indeed.

Speaker 25 She was 4,000 miles from hometown Haleyville, Alabama, much further than she'd ever been before.

Speaker 28 It was 1997, a summer day.

Speaker 3 Ron Hess was the first to hear.

Speaker 23 He was shouting. He was very distraught.

Speaker 9 Hess was having lunch with his wife when a stranger came running down the road to his house.

Speaker 23 He stopped about right in here and said, help.

Speaker 5 My wife has fallen over the cliff.

Speaker 25 Hess drove the stranger back down the dirt road and parked.

Speaker 33 On the way, the man was so distraught, he vomited.

Speaker 34 Together, the two men rushed to the edge of the cliff and looked over.

Speaker 23 And then he got down on his hands and knees and said, it should have been me. It should have been me.

Speaker 35 Larry Coons, then an Alaska State Trooper, responded to the 911 call.

Speaker 11 Came in at 12.32 p.m. Remember it well.
Remember the dispatcher saying, lady fell off a cliff. I said, what?

Speaker 37 Where?

Speaker 19 Trooper Coons rushed to the bluff where he learned the stranger's name was Jay Darling.

Speaker 11 He was very despondent. There was anguish on his face.

Speaker 32 Darling told Coons he and Wanda had been married just four months, were on a belated honeymoon, had stopped at the bluff on their way out of town.

Speaker 11 They were up there taking photographs. Wanda had fallen face forward down the cliff.

Speaker 28 Did he tell you how she felt?

Speaker 11 Yes, he did. She was taking photographs and she she had tripped on a clump of grass.

Speaker 22 Wanda fell a thousand feet down a cliff face studded with rubble and obstacles. Her body smashed into those obstacles all the way down.
Virtually every bone was broken.

Speaker 34 Her last conscious moments would have been terrifying.

Speaker 40 And when she hit the bottom, she was dead.

Speaker 25 Jay Darling seemed so distraught, Kuhn sent him to the hospital.

Speaker 18 Then, when he checked in on Darling later that day, he was struck that the man still seemed to think his wife might have survived the fall, at least briefly.

Speaker 11 He says, did you find Wanda? And I said, yes.

Speaker 11 What'd she say?

Speaker 11 What'd she say? What'd she say?

Speaker 43 Surely he knew that she had fallen to her death.

Speaker 11 Well, any logic and common sense,

Speaker 11 yes. He also asked the doctor if Wanda had said anything before she died.

Speaker 39 Maybe the man didn't know it was a thousand feet down that cliff, that nobody could have survived such a fall.

Speaker 3 For Coons and his partner, there was still work to be done.

Speaker 11 We got down on our bellies and crawled out to the very edge of the cliff. And we both kind of peered over the edge there, and I looked at him and he looked at me, and I remember saying, this is

Speaker 11 bleeping odd.

Speaker 1 Just getting close set off waves of vertigo.

Speaker 39 Why would newlywed sightseers have wandered way out there at all?

Speaker 11 This spot is so remote in relationship to the highway. It's down a dirt road that says road close.
There's two road close signs. It's not visible from the roadway.

Speaker 17 And the darlings had just driven right past a well-marked scenic overlook with a guardrail, where the view was every bit as spectacular.

Speaker 40 They retrieved Wanda's body from the bottom of the cliff.

Speaker 20 And Coons couldn't get the thought of the young newlywed out of his head.

Speaker 11 Wanda was somebody's daughter. She was part of somebody's family.

Speaker 19 Of course, dreadful accidents have implications far away.

Speaker 14 Jay Darling phoned the news of Wanda's death to a little town in northwestern Alabama called Haleyville, and reaction was instant that this was no accident at all.

Speaker 47 I knew.

Speaker 48 I called my supervisor and said, I've got to go home. Wanda's been killed.
He's killed her.

Speaker 38 Killed her?

Speaker 49 Not.

Speaker 6 There's a strange story to tell about a small town, an eager bride, and a man with a very surprising plan.

Speaker 48 When we found out about the plan to fake his death,

Speaker 48 I mean that just made it worse.

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Speaker 8 Wanda Wood Darling was on her honeymoon when her life came to a sudden and and terrible end. An accident, her husband claimed.

Speaker 51 Her own horrible stumble.

Speaker 18 But the people who knew Wanda best felt right away something in the story was all wrong.

Speaker 55 And I thought, oh my God, she would never fall from a cliff.

Speaker 3 He had pushed her.

Speaker 18 But why would her family have been so suspicious?

Speaker 32 Well, that was easy if you knew Wanda, they said.

Speaker 42 How would she have felt being anywhere near the edge of a thousand-foot precipice like that?

Speaker 48 Terrified. She held on to the rail when she walked down stairs.

Speaker 48 I mean, she could walk down four stairs and she would hold on to the railing.

Speaker 55 Yes, she would have never been close enough to fall.

Speaker 35 So suspicious.

Speaker 56 Yes, but Wanda's sisters Tammy Ward and Cindy Kalen seem to have many reasons for that.

Speaker 38 In the story of the not-so-little girl who grew up poor on the outskirts of Haleyville, Alabama.

Speaker 13 I remember her in kindergarten.

Speaker 39 Farah Tittle was Wanda's friend from as far back as she can remember.

Speaker 13 There was a pine tree on the playground that had a swing on it, and sometimes the swing would go around the limb and be too high for the short kids to reach the swing.

Speaker 13 Wanda could always reach up and knock the swing back over the limb and help everybody out.

Speaker 32 But something else happened back then, too.

Speaker 27 Wanda had a bad fall, broke an arm, and grew up with a terrible fear of falling.

Speaker 13 And after that, I never saw her climb up on any type of playground equipment or picnic tables or anything.

Speaker 28 She was sweet, smart, school valedictorian.

Speaker 39 She worked at the the local Piggly Wiggly for a time, then went on to become a registered nurse.

Speaker 30 Perfect for her, said her friends, because she was a natural caregiver, always thinking about how to make somebody else's life better.

Speaker 13 Wanda was friends with everybody. It didn't matter if someone was 60 or if they were two years old.

Speaker 25 But she wanted something too for herself that seemed more remote with every passing year.

Speaker 13 She'd always told us she wanted to get married and have a family. Always wanted to have a wedding in December, a big Christmas wedding.

Speaker 31 When Wanda went to the movies in Haleyville, it was not to hold hands with a boy in the dark.

Speaker 38 The dating scene everywhere was cruel.

Speaker 3 She had friends who were boys, but not boyfriends.

Speaker 31 She was taller than they were and bigger.

Speaker 30 Romance for her was apparently unattainable.

Speaker 22 And so when she called out of the blue one day to say there was this man and he had asked to marry her, her family was quite frankly stunned.

Speaker 48 I was home in December

Speaker 48 for Christmas, and she told me about him. But now she called him a friend.
And when I went back in March, Tammy told me they were getting married. And I said, I thought they were just friends.

Speaker 48 In December, they were just friends. Now they're getting married.

Speaker 14 Wanda had met Jay Darling while working at a hospital.

Speaker 9 He was a new physical therapist on staff.

Speaker 13 She thought he was handsome. She was talking about him being like a big old bear, you know, I mean, she really, really liked the guy immediately.

Speaker 38 She was a bit smitten with the guy.

Speaker 13 She She was smitten.

Speaker 18 But Ferris says the feeling back then was not mutual.

Speaker 24 And once when Wanda dropped in on Jay at home unannounced...

Speaker 13 He told her that he wanted her to leave, that she was getting on his nerves. And

Speaker 13 she was heartbroken. She came straight to my house.
She was crying, embarrassed, hurt.

Speaker 3 Wanda's dream apparently crushed.

Speaker 38 Or was there more to the relationship than Wanda's family and friends knew? Because just weeks later, they were stunned to discover Wanda and Jay eloped.

Speaker 13 Wanda told me that she was at home one day and Jay had called her from work and asked what she was doing and she said, oh, not much. I think she'd just gotten up and started her day.

Speaker 13 And he told her to get ready that they were just going to go get married. And that's what they did.

Speaker 58 No long-for December wedding, no family or friends. But Jay wanted it his way, Wanda told Farrah.

Speaker 35 So that's what they did.

Speaker 40 And when it came to choosing where they would live, Wanda did what Jay wanted then, too.

Speaker 36 She left her nursing job in Haleyville, Alabama, and moved 200 miles or so away from Wanda's family to Grenada, Mississippi.

Speaker 40 But when Wanda came back home to visit Farah not long after her marriage, Farah noticed bruises on her arms and legs, and her nose was broken.

Speaker 13 Her face looked terrible, and we asked Wanda what happened. My family was there, and we said, How'd you get these bruises?

Speaker 13 And Wanda said, oh, I was going to tickle Jay and it surprised him and he hit me, but he didn't mean to.

Speaker 2 The decision to move to Alaska was just as sudden.

Speaker 47 I didn't want her to go.

Speaker 6 On the phone the day before they left, Wanda promised her mother, Ollie Wood, that they'd be back in a year or so after they'd made some money.

Speaker 4 But Ollie had a bad feeling.

Speaker 47 I said, I want you to tell Jay that he's taking my baby.

Speaker 47 He did take my baby off, and he didn't bring it back either.

Speaker 36 All of these things Wanda's family told Trooper Coons, who now was all the more determined to find out what had happened.

Speaker 14 Was it a fall?

Speaker 45 Or something far more sinister?

Speaker 6 Was it a push?

Speaker 28 Coons turned first to Jay Darling for answers, interviewing him five times in the two days after Wanda's death.

Speaker 25 And each time, he says, Darling's story of Wanda's fall changed a little.

Speaker 28 She was taking a picture when she lost her balance, or she tripped on a stake stuck in the ground, or he didn't see anything because he turned away.

Speaker 11 This does not smell right.

Speaker 11 Doesn't smell right at all.

Speaker 9 So Trooper Coons began to poke around for any motive Jay might have had for getting rid of Wanda.

Speaker 21 He called Wanda's mother Ollie.

Speaker 47 And that's the first thing I told him there was a lot of insurance.

Speaker 9 Life insurance.

Speaker 58 Shortly after they were married, Trooper Coons discovered Jay had taken out two separate insurance policies on his life and two on Wanda's life, totaling a million dollars in coverage for each of them.

Speaker 38 But there was more.

Speaker 30 Before she married Jay, Wanda had bought a $60,000 policy of her own, naming her parents as beneficiaries.

Speaker 13 She felt good about that because she just felt like she was trying to prepare for the worst. And Jay immediately wanted her to change the beneficiary on that policy.

Speaker 13 To him. To himself.

Speaker 35 So she did.

Speaker 13 She did, but she wasn't happy about it.

Speaker 22 Now Koons thought he might be on to something, and he knew he was when friend Farah Tittle passed on a story Wanda had told her, that Jay was planning something highly illegal.

Speaker 13 Jay indicated to Wanda that he was going to buy a kayak and fake his own death in the Gulf of Mexico.

Speaker 46 This was shocking information.

Speaker 16 If Farah was right, Jay had come up with the ultimate scam.

Speaker 25 a plan to fake his own death, then hide in another country until the insurance was paid to his compliant wife.

Speaker 61 Did you advise her about what to do?

Speaker 13 Yeah, she was really worried, and I told her I just thought that was crazy.

Speaker 35 Why didn't she walk the other way?

Speaker 9 Why didn't she leave him at that point?

Speaker 13 I think that

Speaker 13 she probably thought she could talk him out of it.

Speaker 9 Now, this was very strange.

Speaker 39 A man tells others about his plan to fake his own death in order to collect insurance, and then his brand new wife falls off a cliff.

Speaker 48 Who has a plan to fake their death, and then, oh, somebody just falls off a cliff. People don't just fall off cliffs.

Speaker 4 By now, how suspicious were you?

Speaker 11 Pretty darn suspicious.

Speaker 16 The more Trooper Coons learned, the more he became convinced that Jay Darling had killed his new wife.

Speaker 14 But though Coons had found what he believed was a motive for murder, there was no physical evidence on the bluff that would prove it.

Speaker 9 The wall of evidence he was building against Darling was circumstantial, and hard as he tried, he couldn't quite make a case strong enough to satisfy the the DA.

Speaker 46 Coons, who was advised to stop working on the case, took it home with him.

Speaker 11 I made a lot of personal phone calls from my house, and I guess one can construe that as being obsessed. But it wasn't obsession.
It was

Speaker 11 tenacity.

Speaker 58 Back in Haleyville, Alabama, members of Wanda's Circle fumed, just as they had when her broken body was brought home.

Speaker 45 You wanted to punish Jay.

Speaker 13 I wanted to punish Jay. I can't even explain my reaction because I've only felt that way one time, but it was almost just like a storm in my head.

Speaker 13 I took a gun to the funeral home and I thought, I'm going to kill him. I'm just going to kill him.

Speaker 21 A lot of anger in that comment.

Speaker 13 Yeah, there's a lot of anger in me, all saved up for one person.

Speaker 62 Then finally, in 1998, Trooper Coons brought Darling's insurance scam, the one that began with the plan to fake his own death, to the attention of the FBI.

Speaker 27 And in 2002, Darling was charged, not with murdering Wanda, but with mail fraud for trying to claim insurance money after her death.

Speaker 60 He pleaded guilty.

Speaker 58 The sentence, 40 months in prison.

Speaker 35 End of story?

Speaker 6 Well, not quite.

Speaker 39 Because finally, in 2005, just as Darling was completing the sentence imposed for insurance fraud, A grand jury decided there was enough evidence to charge Darling with murder.

Speaker 16 Darling was back in Homer, Alaska, Alaska, facing a jury, along with former friends, now testifying for the prosecution.

Speaker 64 Did he show any remorse?

Speaker 65 No, he didn't seem grief-stricken or anything.

Speaker 10 The story of Wanda Darling and her strange, sad demise had become a local legend of sorts in Homer, Alaska.

Speaker 21 And over the years, the way many people heard the story, Wanda had met her end courtesy of a push from her husband, Jay Darling.

Speaker 4 He did it for the insurance money, they'd say.

Speaker 21 But did he?

Speaker 16 Now, in Homer's little courthouse, a trial was about to begin, and trials play by different rules than backyard gossip.

Speaker 4 Time was an enemy for the the prosecutors of Jay Darling.

Speaker 10 By the time they gathered to try him, Wanda had been in her grave for almost nine years.

Speaker 4 Memories fade.

Speaker 40 Evidence can degrade. Still in the modest Homer courthouse, brick by brick, the prosecutors set about reassembling that wall of circumstantial evidence for first-degree murder.

Speaker 16 There, investigator Larry Coons, courtesy of the prosecutor Crandon Randell, finally had the chance to tell a jury what he'd discovered, beginning with the motive, money.

Speaker 70 In that third interview, was there any discussion about life insurance?

Speaker 37 Yes, there was.

Speaker 70 What did Mr. Darling say about that?

Speaker 11 He said they had about a million dollars of life insurance.

Speaker 9 In fact, in the months before Wanda's death, he'd bought two policies.

Speaker 24 Wanda and Jay were covered for a million each, plus another policy on Wanda for $60,000.

Speaker 64 Former insurance agent jan staton said jay tried to get even more but it was denied why didn't the company approve the three million dollars

Speaker 46 um financial statements and medical history staton said darling called her repeatedly in the months before wanda's death to see if the million dollar policy she sold him had been approved how many calls do you think he made to inquiring inquiring anywhere from 15 to 20.

Speaker 28 an old friend of darling's a man named mike rabb testified that he overheard some of Jay's calls to the insurance companies in the days before Wanda's death.

Speaker 33 Jay certainly seemed to be planning something, he said.

Speaker 65 The tone was, was a policy in effect,

Speaker 65 was the paperwork on the way, things along that line?

Speaker 73 What kind of policy?

Speaker 17 Life insurance?

Speaker 9 Rabb told the prosecutor there were three or four such calls in his presence, but none when Wanda was in the room.

Speaker 74 Would he wait until his wife left the room?

Speaker 65 Yes, she'd be in the restroom or stepped out.

Speaker 9 The prosecutor said the accumulation of insurance policies became far more suspect when put together with Darling's scheme to fake his own death.

Speaker 24 Ex-girlfriend Lisa Edden said she knew Jay married Wanda to pull off his scheme.

Speaker 74 What did he say?

Speaker 13 He said he would have to be married and

Speaker 75 that he was going to have a kayaking accident.

Speaker 37 Go ahead.

Speaker 13 and that he would disappear and this wife would

Speaker 75 be the grieving wife for however life if the insurance company did deliver the money.

Speaker 4 But, said Mike Rabb, a little problem developed for Jay.

Speaker 32 After he married Wanda, she seemed to have changed her mind about playing along.

Speaker 65 I take it Wanda wasn't a willing participant.

Speaker 12 And so, suggested the prosecutor, Jay's plan to get that insurance money may have changed.

Speaker 21 From faking his own death in a kayaking accident to, using the same method, killing wanda do people commonly kayak in water with two or three foot chop not if they can help it

Speaker 58 a boat captain testified that the day before wanda died jay ignored his pointed warning about kayaking in the choppy water the two went out even though wanda was a complete novice and unlike jay was not wearing a wetsuit and when sure enough they capsized jay got back into the kayak but wanda could not she spent more than an hour unprotected in that cold Alaskan water.

Speaker 60 Jay threw her a rope and towed her to shore, but hypothermia threatened when she, not Jay, flagged down a passing boat for help.

Speaker 27 It was just a day later that Wanda did die, not in the water, but over that cliff.

Speaker 40 And the day after that, after Wanda was already dead, Jay called the insurance agents, but left out one important detail.

Speaker 64 Did he happen to mention his wife?

Speaker 71 I asked how their trip was going, and response, as far as I can recall, was everything. They were having a great time.

Speaker 16 Then, a couple of days later, Darling called the agent again.

Speaker 72 What did Mr.

Speaker 64 Darling say in this second phone call?

Speaker 71 He was advised, letting me know that Wanda was deceased. And he wanted to know what procedures he needed to do as far as the policy was concerned.

Speaker 64 What did he say? How did his wife become deceased?

Speaker 71 He told me she fell off a cliff. He wanted to know how to get the process started for the life insurance for the death benefit amount.

Speaker 25 But remember, Darling was holding more than just one insurance policy on Wanda's life.

Speaker 21 An agent for the second company, a man named Thomas White, testified that Darling called him too the day after Wanda went off the cliff, but didn't reveal that anything was awry until a second call three days later.

Speaker 77 On Thursday when he called, he said, Mr. White, oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that Wanda passed away.
She slipped and fell off the mountain last Sunday. I said, what?

Speaker 77 And he said, yep, I was just too distraught and forgot about it.

Speaker 38 And when the prosecutor asked Darling's friend, Mike Rabb about Darling's attitude toward his dead wife, Wanda, did he show any remorse?

Speaker 65 No, he didn't seem grief-stricken or anything.

Speaker 40 And Rabb said soon after Wanda's death, Jay was talking about spending that insurance money.

Speaker 17 He spoke about like trips that we could take these trips Tibet, Nepal, these trekking, you know, sort of outdoorsy.

Speaker 72 When did this discussion occur?

Speaker 65 In the weeks

Speaker 17 after her death.

Speaker 46 The prosecution turned to Darling's ex-girlfriend to show how Darling told conflicting stories about what happened to Wanda on that cliff.

Speaker 75 They were taking pictures and he was going back to take a a picture of her and when he turned back again she was just not there.

Speaker 18 And then a few days later she said he called again with a completely different story.

Speaker 14 Now he was claiming Wanda had killed herself.

Speaker 75 He then went on to tell me that he saw her jump off the cliff.

Speaker 18 But why would she do that?

Speaker 67 He said that Wanda was very depressed and upset.

Speaker 4 So many stories.

Speaker 32 Only one could be true.

Speaker 16 Jay Darling had already admitted that he tried to defraud life insurance companies out of a small fortune.

Speaker 22 Did he also murder his trusting young bride just to get his hands on the money?

Speaker 45 Now, the defense was going to tell its own very different story of the death of Wanda Darling.

Speaker 38 Surely the simplest explanation is she got a little push from behind.

Speaker 78 If you think that's simple, Keith, then you may have a talent for crime.

Speaker 44 The problem was your client did have a talent for crime.

Speaker 78 Not for killing people, not for injuring people, not for hurting people. The difference between a con man and a killer is night and day.

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Speaker 16 It was almost nine years after Wanda Darling took that terrible fall from a cliff in Homer, Alaska.

Speaker 35 Larry Kuhn's dogged investigation that finally made it to a trial.

Speaker 11 In my opinion, it was probably one of the most egregious acts of domestic violence.

Speaker 4 But remember, there are two sides to every story.

Speaker 40 James McComas was Jay Darling's defense attorney, a man who agreed he was representing an admitted crook, but not a killer.

Speaker 4 Looks pretty bad for this guy.

Speaker 80 That's the basis of suspicion that might lead investigators to want to find evidence in the case. The suggestion that you're making and really that they've made all along is that that's enough.

Speaker 80 And it's not enough when you understand the surrounding circumstances.

Speaker 35 McComas set out to show the jury, piece by piece, that Jay's behavior was not as suspicious as it may have seemed.

Speaker 27 Why take a private road to a lonely bluff?

Speaker 29 Because, says McComas, they were simply exploring, like tourists do.

Speaker 56 What about all those conflicting stories he told about exactly what happened?

Speaker 41 That he saw her fall, that he didn't see her fall, that she was taking a picture and lost her balance, that she was picking a flower and tripped.

Speaker 4 Why did he tell tell conflicting stories about what happened on that cliff?

Speaker 10 Because he didn't know the why.

Speaker 18 That's the reason.

Speaker 80 And Jay Darling pled guilty to what it was he did. He made false representations to try and get a large insurance scheme so he could fake his own death.

Speaker 35 And he pled not guilty to what he didn't do.

Speaker 31 He never murdered that woman.

Speaker 40 Obviously, Jay Darling had hired a persuasive attorney.

Speaker 56 But as McComas laid out his defense, would would a jury agree?

Speaker 62 Is it reasonably possible that Wanda Darling fell because she passed out or fainted at the bluff? That would be possible.

Speaker 1 Now, this was very unusual.

Speaker 36 Defense Attorney McComas called Norm Thompson, the medical examiner, who performed Wanda's autopsy.

Speaker 60 Generally, the medical examiner testifies for the prosecution in murder cases.

Speaker 62 Was there sufficient evidence for you to conclude whether or not this was, in manner of death, a homicide?

Speaker 74 No, there was insufficient evidence to consider this a homicide.

Speaker 62 Another option that you could have picked would have been an accident.

Speaker 62 Was there sufficient evidence on that?

Speaker 74 There was insufficient evidence to conclude that this was an accident.

Speaker 38 The most important testimony in this entire trial was Norman Thompson, who ruled the manner of death not a homicide, but undetermined.

Speaker 36 In fact, McComas offered a completely different possibility, that it wasn't Jay Darling who killed Wanda, but perhaps heartburn medication.

Speaker 35 It was very, very, very effective, but because it killed people, it had to be taken off the market.

Speaker 28 Pharmacologist James O'Donnell testified that Wanda's medication, Propulsid, was taken off the market in 2000, three years after she died.

Speaker 3 O'Donnell told the jury the propulsid could have caused a type of heart attack that's untraceable after death, or chest pain,

Speaker 74 rapid heartbeat, chest palpitations, dizziness, anxiety, weakness, feigning.

Speaker 39 Defense Attorney McComas raised the possibility that Wanda could have become dizzy while standing at the cliff's edge.

Speaker 40 He introduced records to show she'd been hospitalized several times in the year before her death for some of the very symptoms Dr.

Speaker 59 O'Donnell described.

Speaker 20 Of course, there was no way to prove that Propulsion had anything to do with her death.

Speaker 38 But was it possible?

Speaker 16 Did Wanda have an increased risk of falling?

Speaker 41 Yes, in my opinion, she did.

Speaker 28 The prosecution countered with Wanda's own doctor, who rejected out of hand the idea that propulsed had anything to do with her illness or her death.

Speaker 63 All her symptoms were from her anemia. Once we treated her for anemia, she was not having any more symptoms.

Speaker 28 But the question had been raised.

Speaker 43 Was it something other than a push that sent Wanda tumbling down that cliff?

Speaker 67 Yes, I only swear or affirm that the testimony.

Speaker 28 And remember how Darling's good friend Mike Rabb had told the jury about Darling's insurance scam, about the calls to agents when Wanda was out of the room, about plans to spend the insurance money on a good time?

Speaker 46 The defense set out to convince the jury that Rabb should not be believed, that he'd been threatened by investigators, eventually telling them just what they wanted to hear.

Speaker 64 You said, I don't think he murdered her.

Speaker 62 I really don't.

Speaker 70 And then they accused you of possibly being complicit.

Speaker 65 Yeah, it was literally a guy pointing his finger and he said he didn't will get you to.

Speaker 19 Mitigating evidence?

Speaker 39 Maybe.

Speaker 3 But Darling still had a lot to answer for.

Speaker 22 If the defense had any chance of breaking down that long-standing suspicion that Jay Darling had murdered his wife, if it had any chance of destroying the brick-by-brick assembly of circumstantial evidence, then Darling himself would have to sit up there in the witness box and look the jury in the eye and sell his version of what happened that day up on the bluff.

Speaker 4 A risky thing to do.

Speaker 79 Mr. Darling, did you push Wanda Darling off the bluff in Homer here on Sunday, the 24th of August, 1997?

Speaker 43 Nine long years after Wanda Darling fell or was pushed from the cliff on Bluff Road, the jury finally had its chance to look into the eyes of the man accused of killing her.

Speaker 45 Could they believe him?

Speaker 79 Would you briefly tell us what feelings you had for Wanda Darling?

Speaker 7 I loved Wanda. We were

Speaker 7 best friends. She loved me.

Speaker 26 Did he really love her?

Speaker 9 And what did he actually see when his wife went off the cliff?

Speaker 29 I turned around.

Speaker 7 to walk back up and go take Wanda's picture and

Speaker 7 I got part of the way back up to her and

Speaker 7 she just fell off the bluff.

Speaker 37 Did you push her or hit her or whack her with a bat or do any physical act to cause her to go over the bluff?

Speaker 7 No, I did not.

Speaker 5 How did you feel when you saw Wanda Darling fall off the edge of that cliff?

Speaker 7 Astounded.

Speaker 7 Astounded. What did you feel about the loss of her? Well, I didn't know that she was lost yet.

Speaker 6 I thought, wow,

Speaker 6 this is horrible.

Speaker 19 In an effort to prove their relationship was genuine, Jay read a card Wanda gave him on Valentine's Day, 1997.

Speaker 7 It says, I know I can always count on you to be there for me.

Speaker 7 You know me better than people I have known for years.

Speaker 7 I think that's pretty neat.

Speaker 38 P.S.

Speaker 7 For the record, I do consider you my best friend.

Speaker 8 Two months later, they were married.

Speaker 64 What were the the reasons that you got married?

Speaker 7 One of the reasons was that she was willing to go along with this fake my own death insurance scheme. The bigger reason was that I wanted her around me.

Speaker 46 But what about those bruises and broken nose friends saw soon after the marriage?

Speaker 66 A play fight accident, said Jay.

Speaker 7 She touched me kind of in the pork chops,

Speaker 7 and I was real relaxed when she did that. I went like that and jerked my elbows back.
And my elbow hit her in the nose and

Speaker 7 kind of cracked her on the bridge of the nose.

Speaker 60 Was he believable?

Speaker 57 Remember how Wanda's family and friends told of her almost lifelong dread of heights?

Speaker 56 Jay had known her only a year or so, took her up to a remote cliff edge a thousand feet up with uncertain footing and no guardrail, and told the jury.

Speaker 7 Wanda was not afraid of heights. She was normally cautious.
Okay.

Speaker 8 What was she afraid of?

Speaker 7 She was afraid of falling down. She was afraid of the ground moving under her feet.

Speaker 46 And what about that near miss the day before Wanda's death when she and Jay were tossed into the bay while kayaking?

Speaker 17 I thought, what the hell?

Speaker 7 Sorry. And that was the first thought that went through my mind.
Like, what's going on here? And then once we're in the water, it's like, well,

Speaker 7 damn, this is cold water.

Speaker 7 Other than that, it was, you know, kind of,

Speaker 7 let's get back in the boat and get out of here.

Speaker 30 Darling's attorney says this was not attempted murder.

Speaker 33 In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Speaker 56 It was Jay Darling saving Wanda's life.

Speaker 20 Had Jay not towed her to shore, he said, she certainly would have died.

Speaker 61 Were you scared?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 62 Was Wanda scared?

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 39 Back at the hotel that evening, Jay said, Wanda was furious.

Speaker 7 I told her, well, listen, you know, if we can't get past this,

Speaker 7 if this is just going to destroy our friendship, if this is going to tear us apart, then

Speaker 21 we haven't been married that long, and

Speaker 7 we can just get an annulment, you know.

Speaker 79 Okay, and what did she say in response to that?

Speaker 7 Nothing.

Speaker 46 Okay.

Speaker 79 Did you want to annul the marriage that you had with Wanda?

Speaker 29 No, I didn't.

Speaker 12 Maybe.

Speaker 33 Wanda was so distraught at the thought of losing him, said darling, that she threw herself off the cliff.

Speaker 6 And yet, the day after Wanda's fall, or jump, he neglected to tell those insurance agents that she was dead.

Speaker 76 Was that some deliberate effort at concealment or something?

Speaker 7 No, I'd gotten about two or three hours of sleep at most the night before.

Speaker 39 And why did he call again and again to check on the insurance?

Speaker 27 Simple, said darling.

Speaker 18 He has attention deficit disorder causing compulsive behavior and had barely slept the night after Wanda died.

Speaker 27 In response, the prosecutor seemed barely able to contain his disbelief.

Speaker 76 So

Speaker 76 you attribute the reason that you forgot to tell him or you didn't tell him was because of your lack of sleep?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 76 But the lack of sleep didn't prevent you from calling him to ask him where the policy was.

Speaker 61 That's true.

Speaker 76 So you remembered that with two or three hours' sleep.

Speaker 7 I'd been thinking about that for three days.

Speaker 82 But you forgot about the fact your wife was dead.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it. I don't don't think I forgot.
I just had this one thing in my mind, this hyper-focus. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't want to call this guy.

Speaker 70 The hyper-focus, Mr.

Speaker 76 Darling, and the hyper-focus was the insurance.

Speaker 6 The call, yeah. Money.

Speaker 7 What was about the policy?

Speaker 35 And the prosecutor confronted Darling about his question to Trooper Coons and a doctor the day Wanda went off the cliff.

Speaker 76 Were you worried about whether or not she might have said something if she wasn't quite dead when she hit bottom?

Speaker 7 There would be no reason for me to be be worried.

Speaker 7 There was no reason for me to be worried.

Speaker 28 The jury listened very carefully.

Speaker 35 Were these skillful excuses?

Speaker 21 Or could they believe Jay Darling's story of what happened to Wanda all those years ago?

Speaker 9 Now it was their turn.

Speaker 17 The trial, the string of accusations, the litany of denial, had drawn a crowd of spectators to Homer's little courthouse for three weeks running.

Speaker 21 Now each side had one last chance to persuade the jury.

Speaker 12 If he's found guilty, Jay Darling could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Speaker 17 If not guilty, he'd walk out of the courthouse a free man.

Speaker 72 Well, this is our guy, and I would submit to you

Speaker 72 that the evidence in this case has shown beyond a reasonable doubt

Speaker 72 that Mr. Darling killed his wife.

Speaker 72 He killed her for the money.

Speaker 62 The cause of death, fall from a coastal cliff, the manner of death, undetermined.

Speaker 78 There's not enough evidence to say homicide or accident.

Speaker 18 Reasonable doubt.

Speaker 9 And now it was time.

Speaker 33 The jurors left the courtroom.

Speaker 32 Wanda's family waited.

Speaker 48 Yeah, it was bad.

Speaker 10 It was very nerve-wracking.

Speaker 35 Nerve-wracking, too, for the jurors who would choose.

Speaker 38 Well, the whole town watched them.

Speaker 3 Three of them, Paula Snell, Rick Bates, and Sandra Stark, agreed to tell us what happened.

Speaker 83 Well, we kept going back to what was the scenario at the top of the bluff, trying to crystallize, well,

Speaker 83 what happened? And then as part of it, what proof do we have?

Speaker 39 Back and forth they went.

Speaker 18 Did he push her? Did he want her dead?

Speaker 22 Everybody in the room thought what happened.

Speaker 69 In some fashion thought he probably pushed her or had something to do with her going over.

Speaker 41 Or a few of them wondered, was it something else?

Speaker 85 I went more of thinking that

Speaker 85 possibly she did get lightheaded and maybe she did faint.

Speaker 56 And what did they make of the kayaking incident the day before Wanda's death?

Speaker 24 Did Jay try to kill Wanda that day?

Speaker 85 If that was his plan, that would have been the perfect time to do it. Mr.

Speaker 79 Darling, did you push Wanda Darling off the bluff in Homer here on Sunday, the 24th of August, 1997?

Speaker 44 No, I did not.

Speaker 12 And what about Jay Darling's testimony?

Speaker 18 Did it help him or hurt him?

Speaker 83 I felt he was an individual that could say certain things and believe them himself,

Speaker 83 but they were not what I would call the truth.

Speaker 40 For three days, they reviewed the evidence, counted the votes again and again, and finally, agreement.

Speaker 82 Under the case name and caption, State of Alaska versus J.R.

Speaker 40 Darling, J.

Speaker 29 Darling and Wanda's family steeled themselves for the verdict.

Speaker 82 We, the jury duly impaneled and sworn to try the above-entitled cause, do find the defendant J.R. Darling not guilty of of the crime of murder in the first degree as charged in the...

Speaker 33 Not guilty.

Speaker 84 It was like all the air got let out of the room. There was an audible.

Speaker 69 How could you type of an attitude?

Speaker 42 What's that feeling?

Speaker 47 Anger. I can't describe it.

Speaker 27 Hurtful.

Speaker 55 Devastating.

Speaker 55 Waited for nine years

Speaker 55 for him to pay for what he did to my sister.

Speaker 55 And then he's walked away.

Speaker 19 And Trooper Coons, who had spent nine years doing what he could to keep the case alive?

Speaker 5 When they said,

Speaker 21 not guilty.

Speaker 11 Pissed off. Shame.

Speaker 11 Not on me, on them.

Speaker 11 Shame on them. If the issue was proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that doesn't mean proof beyond all doubt.

Speaker 16 Jay Darling's attorney was ecstatic.

Speaker 50 Every effort was made to turn what is almost certainly an accident into an act of murder.

Speaker 50 And fortunately, the backstop of our system, and it's never the judge, and it's never the lawyers, it's the jury.

Speaker 38 The jury prevented that from happening.

Speaker 6 But were members of the jury happy about what they had done?

Speaker 32 No, they were not.

Speaker 57 As you became aware, all of you, in the jury room, that it was going to be a not guilty verdict, what was the feeling in there?

Speaker 5 Deep sorrow.

Speaker 85 Yeah,

Speaker 85 because you didn't feel like there was any justice for Wanda and her family, but you couldn't sentence someone that you didn't feel there was enough evidence to show that he actually did something.

Speaker 8 Do you think that Jay Darling was innocent?

Speaker 83 Do I think he's innocent? No.

Speaker 83 Absolutely not.

Speaker 35 But is he guilty?

Speaker 83 Not by evidence that I'll hold up to the standards that we needed to meet.

Speaker 19 After the verdict was read, Jay Darling walked away a free man

Speaker 38 and encountered in the parking lot the man who'd been chasing him all these years, Officer Larry Coons.

Speaker 6 So what did you do?

Speaker 11 I had to do it.

Speaker 51 I had to ask him.

Speaker 11 And I says,

Speaker 11 hey, Jay. And he looked at me.
And Jay's a big guy. And he looked at me as though I was there to take his life.
He seemed frightened. I said, relax, Jay.
Relax, man.

Speaker 11 I can't get you. I said, but I got to know.
You got to tell me how'd you do it?

Speaker 11 And his eyes got big. He says, no, no, no, you don't understand.
You don't understand.

Speaker 18 I didn't kill her.

Speaker 11 It was an accident.

Speaker 11 I said, sure, it was.

Speaker 38 Sure.

Speaker 16 Larry Coons had been waiting nine years.

Speaker 11 You know, we're trained to come out of the academy. You don't get emotionally evolved.

Speaker 6 But we're humans. We're not robots.

Speaker 37 And,

Speaker 37 you know, with

Speaker 11 it mattered. Wanda's family.

Speaker 79 Die.

Speaker 14 Jay Darling never collected a dime on any of those insurance policies, and he died in 2018.

Speaker 16 As for Larry Coons, after the troopers, he became an investigator with the Homer Police Department and has since retired.

Speaker 3 And up near Bluff Road in Homer, up through the scrub and the wind at the top of that terrible precipice, a small wooden cross marked the place, remembering Wanda Darling.

Speaker 13 I still dream about her from time to time, but every single day I think about her, and I think about all the people's lives that are affected because she's not here wanda just tried to be good and it was sincere and truthful and you don't replace people like that

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