Unspeakable

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Speaker 5 It's shocking.

Speaker 5 I don't think they they knew exactly what had happened other than that he was covered in blood. She was just broken and lost.

Speaker 5 There is a murderer out there, and it's terrifying.

Speaker 6 I just hear saying help. Someone's in trouble.
I was scared.

Speaker 5 I was scared. Yeah, all I knew is my dad was killed in a home invasion, and thankfully, my mom was still alive.

Speaker 7 They found her on the ground with her hands behind her back.

Speaker 8 She's been tied up. She's been left in a closet for 14, 16, 17 hours.

Speaker 10 There was a car following us when we came in our neighborhood. It was still behind us.

Speaker 5 There's unknown male DNA on various drawer pools from the master bedroom.

Speaker 12 Were you worried about your mother? That whoever this person was might come back for her?

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Everybody gasped.

Speaker 6 We just could not believe it.

Speaker 8 This case ought to scare the hell out of all of you.

Speaker 12 You believe someone has gotten away with killing your father.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 13 The scented candles were lit.

Speaker 14 The jacuzzi jets turned on high.

Speaker 18 It was a belated anniversary evening, but not some big blowout.

Speaker 19 Sandra and Jamie really weren't that kind of couple.

Speaker 6 They were just always so kind to each other and always very respectful.

Speaker 17 It was really the start of a life victory lap for the two.

Speaker 22 They'd raised a daughter, juggled all the usual things that families do, and now retirement for Jamie was right around the corner.

Speaker 5 They sat there and they talked about the future and what they were looking forward to.

Speaker 26 But the future for these two would last no longer than the flame on that candle.

Speaker 24 By the next afternoon, there would be blood.

Speaker 20 Lots of it.

Speaker 17 Somehow, someone had turned a cozy celebration into a monstrous crime scene.

Speaker 6 It was just, it was horrible.

Speaker 18 What in the world had happened in that house?

Speaker 6 I have no idea.

Speaker 19 The story of the two begins as high school meet cute.

Speaker 31 Sandra, the new girl from Laredo, assigned a seat in her Houston classroom just in front of Jamie Melgar.

Speaker 33 Their daughter Liz doesn't know how many times she heard that story.

Speaker 5 He used to pull on her hair.

Speaker 23 Oh, you're kidding.

Speaker 34 Who's this guy behind me pulling on my hair?

Speaker 5 Yeah, apparently one time he invited her ice skating and and he told her a bunch of friends were going so it wouldn't really be a date.

Speaker 5 When she shows up there, it's him and one of his friends and his friend left shortly after that.

Speaker 34 So a little bit of a scheme going on.

Speaker 5 Yeah, a little bit, but you know, it ended well.

Speaker 33 And that was that.

Speaker 27 Sandra and Jamie were a done deal, an inseparable couple.

Speaker 18 Sandra studied nursing, and Jamie set aside every time he could for his family.

Speaker 21 juggling a job as a computer programmer while investing in real estate.

Speaker 9 Happy family?

Speaker 5 Very happy family. I was definitely a daddy's girl growing up.

Speaker 35 And Jamie carried himself with a certain goofy joy as his niece Marissa Campos remembers it.

Speaker 12 Easygoing guy?

Speaker 6 Yes, very easygoing.

Speaker 6 Easy to talk to. Had the worst jokes.

Speaker 5 They were so bad that you would just stop and groan and they became known as Jim jokes.

Speaker 24 Marissa's aunt Sandra would roll her eyes, then laugh indulgently at Uncle Jim.

Speaker 6 I remember her being like, oh, you're uncle.

Speaker 24 The Melgars' life revolved around not just family, but church too.

Speaker 22 They'd joined the Jehovah's Witnesses early in their relationship.

Speaker 24 But by her early 20s, daughter Liz had left the church.

Speaker 22 Newly independent, she rushed into a marriage.

Speaker 9 A bad one.

Speaker 12 True that he was involved in heavy drugs?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 12 And that was the end of it?

Speaker 5 That was it. I didn't want to live that kind of life.

Speaker 18 But her parents' marriage just kept going through sickness and health.

Speaker 34 In fact, in recent years, Jamie was looking younger than ever on a vegetarian diet and exercise regimen.

Speaker 5 He realized he was getting older and he just wanted to make sure he was in his best physical shape.

Speaker 12 Your mom, your poor mom, meanwhile, had a constellation of health problems, didn't she?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 12 Lupus, chemotherapy involved in that?

Speaker 5 At times, yeah. She also had epilepsy.

Speaker 12 Did she have the seizures? Did you ever see her?

Speaker 5 Yes, yes, she did.

Speaker 43 Then December 2012 rolled around, their 32nd wedding anniversary.

Speaker 47 Sandra was ill on the actual day, so they went out together 10 days later, on December 22nd.

Speaker 5 She was finally feeling well enough to go and have dinner.

Speaker 18 The next day, the 23rd, Marissa's family would join them to celebrate again over a late lunch.

Speaker 6 On our way there, I remember texting him.

Speaker 23 Texting your uncle? Yes.

Speaker 6 I didn't get a response, but.

Speaker 12 Was that unusual that he didn't text you back?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 34 They got to the house around 4 p.m.

Speaker 27 and knocked on the front door.

Speaker 6 Nothing.

Speaker 6 No answer.

Speaker 16 Marissa's father, Jamie's brother Herman, checked around the back of the house.

Speaker 19 No sign of Jamie or Sandra.

Speaker 6 Then we thought, okay, well maybe they left. Maybe they went to go get something.
And then my dad's like, no, but his truck is out there.

Speaker 6 So finally, that's when my dad said, oh, I'm just going to go inside.

Speaker 49 Herman walked through an open garage door and entered the house itself through an unlocked interior door.

Speaker 6 And then he comes around and to open up the front door.

Speaker 35 The visitors huddled in the dark entrance hall, expecting a greeting from Sandra or Jamie, but none came.

Speaker 17 Just as they got ready to leave, they heard something.

Speaker 21 It sounded like Sandra.

Speaker 6 It was mumbling.

Speaker 12 Where was her voice coming from, Marissa?

Speaker 6 We did not know. My dad, I just remember, just ran straight into the master bedroom.

Speaker 36 Marissa raced after her father.

Speaker 6 I just hear saying, help. Someone's in trouble.

Speaker 21 Are you really scared at this point?

Speaker 12 Yes, I was scared.

Speaker 23 The voice was coming from inside a walk-in closet attached to the bathroom.

Speaker 13 Herman moved closer.

Speaker 29 Wedged against the doorknob was a dining chair.

Speaker 38 He tugged it aside, opened the door, and there was Sandra on the floor, tied by her arms and ankles, but alive.

Speaker 52 He said that she did not look well at all.

Speaker 50 As Marissa's mom cut Sandra loose, her dad spoke.

Speaker 6 Where's my brother? Where's your uncle?

Speaker 25 The answer to that is unspeakable.

Speaker 37 What had happened to Jamie Melgar and to his wife?

Speaker 6 She looked like she had aged

Speaker 6 10 years overnight.

Speaker 5 Just broken

Speaker 5 and lost.

Speaker 39 Sandra Melgar, the only possible witness to a night of terror.

Speaker 18 What would she remember?

Speaker 23 There was a car while we missed.

Speaker 15 Marissa, rattled to her core, stood in her Uncle Jamie and Aunt Sandra's bedroom doorway, waiting for first responders, trying to calculate her family's terrible new math.

Speaker 6 I still didn't know everything that was going on.

Speaker 38 In the bedroom, open drawers, a tossed wallet.

Speaker 48 Had this been a home invasion?

Speaker 32 And where was her Uncle Jamie?

Speaker 16 Then she glanced to her side, and there, about 20 feet away from the bathroom, next to Jamie and Sandra's bed.

Speaker 6 I just saw his ankles.

Speaker 12 And this was, what, in a closet area

Speaker 12 off their master, huh?

Speaker 35 So you just saw his feet?

Speaker 6 I didn't even know what had happened to him. I just know his ankles were tied up.

Speaker 11 It was horrible.

Speaker 40 There was Jamie, naked, covered in blood on the floor, not far from his safe.

Speaker 24 A red rope encircled his chest.

Speaker 34 A phone cord looped around his ankles.

Speaker 21 Sandra, now freed of her ties, sprang from her closet captivity.

Speaker 28 A former nurse, she checked for his pulse and found none.

Speaker 12 Your Joanna's distraught. She's crying? Yes.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 12 Marissa, what in the world had happened in that house?

Speaker 6 I have no idea. I'm not sure who could have done something like that to him.

Speaker 6 To them.

Speaker 35 First responders weren't exactly sure what they'd been dispatched to either.

Speaker 53 They told us that there's possibly two victims, and that's all we knew when we got there.

Speaker 47 EMT Stephanie Robertson was the first responder on the scene.

Speaker 50 She checked on Jamie.

Speaker 42 He was clearly dead.

Speaker 9 Yeah, clearly dead. Yeah.

Speaker 12 You know gunshot wounds from knife wounds.

Speaker 53 You couldn't really tell. There was so much dry blood.
I did notice the gash down his neck.

Speaker 19 Next, EMT Robertson found her way to Sandra, by then collapsed on a chair in the bathroom, a family member by her side.

Speaker 53 She was kind of balled up a little bit, and she was crying hysterically.

Speaker 38 The EMT started to assess Sandra, who said her head hurt, but she said she has no injuries.

Speaker 17 Still, Sandra seemed disoriented.

Speaker 13 What time was it?

Speaker 23 Morning or afternoon?

Speaker 28 Then, between gulping sobs, Sandra said she simply could not remember what happened the night before.

Speaker 55 She'd been unconscious, maybe had one of her seizures.

Speaker 53 She said after seizure that it's not uncommon that she falls asleep for several hours.

Speaker 45 By now, Harris County Sheriff's investigators had descended on a crime scene that was once just the Melgar's modest home.

Speaker 49 Jamie, they could see, had suffered multiple stab wounds to the torso, by the looks of it, well over a dozen.

Speaker 18 The crime scene unit got to work inside, collecting evidence, things like a bloody chair near Jamie's body, and a kitchen knife fished out of the bottom of the jacuzzi.

Speaker 18 Sandra, seemingly in shock from her ordeal, declined to go to the hospital.

Speaker 25 Instead, she went to talk with investigators.

Speaker 11 Let's start yesterday.

Speaker 35 Sandra told investigators the last thing she remembered was her anniversary night with Jamie.

Speaker 10 We went up to eat.

Speaker 7 And what time was that?

Speaker 10 About eight. I mean, I'm just guessing.

Speaker 10 I don't know.

Speaker 28 Sandra told them they stopped for mixers at a CVS on the way home.

Speaker 25 What time did you get home?

Speaker 10 Um, probably midnight.

Speaker 30 She said they intended to share some late-night romance, candles and strawberries.

Speaker 23 We made some drinks, and we got in the jacuzzi.

Speaker 57 In your master bathroom. Right.

Speaker 56 And then what?

Speaker 10 Stayed there for about maybe two hours, talking and drinking.

Speaker 14 But the intimate jacuzzi was disrupted by their dogs barking outside in the yard.

Speaker 10 He got out and said he was moving the dogs to the office because when they're too loud, you don't want the neighbors to complain. And he just, you know, it was taking a while, so I got out and

Speaker 10 was going to get dressed for a change in my closet.

Speaker 32 Maybe that's when she had the seizure.

Speaker 10 That's all I remember until I woke up.

Speaker 34 As they talked, Sandra broke down.

Speaker 27 Who could have done this, she wondered.

Speaker 29 She recalled for the detectives a scary moment on their way home.

Speaker 10 I think when we left CVS, there was a car following us because when we came in our neighborhood, it was still behind us and he was really close.

Speaker 20 Something for the detectives to check out.

Speaker 43 After Sandra was done talking, her cousin Diana, who'd rushed into town to help, met her at a friend's house.

Speaker 6 She looked like she had aged

Speaker 6 10 years overnight, and she couldn't stop shaking.

Speaker 6 And so I didn't want to ask her too many questions.

Speaker 21 Liz, remarried now, was an ocean away, living in Europe when she finally got her mother on the phone.

Speaker 12 What did you hear in her voice?

Speaker 5 She was just broken

Speaker 5 and lost. She was just devastated.

Speaker 12 And at that point you had very fragmentary information, huh?

Speaker 5 Yeah, all I knew is my dad was killed in a home invasion, and

Speaker 5 thankfully, my mom was still alive.

Speaker 12 That's not any kind of news you should ever hear.

Speaker 5 It's shocking.

Speaker 23 Nothing made sense.

Speaker 12 Were you worried about your mother? That whoever this person was might come back for her?

Speaker 5 Absolutely. She was traumatized.

Speaker 28 Tips began to trickle in.

Speaker 58 Who could have done this?

Speaker 12 You're getting information right away about a kind of a sketchy neighbor.

Speaker 59 That's right. Just getting out of jail who was suspicious.

Speaker 60 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 60 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 60 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 60 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 39 Two days after the bloody discovery in her childhood home, Liz Melgar landed in Houston, a daddy's girl, shaken even more by the face that was missing.

Speaker 5 I think at that time it really hit me that I wasn't gonna see him anymore. He wasn't going to be there to pick me up from the airport.

Speaker 17 A still very rocky Sandra came with family to pick up her daughter.

Speaker 5 We both just broke down at the sight of each other.

Speaker 12 She'd been through a terrible ordeal. You don't really know the whole story yet.

Speaker 34 But did you see injuries on her?

Speaker 5 Just had bruising on her arms and on her face.

Speaker 12 Did she have a bump on her head?

Speaker 5 She did. She told me her head was hurting and I could I could feel it back there.

Speaker 32 Liz insisted her mom get some rest.

Speaker 47 So the next day, when detectives came by the house where Liz and Sandra were staying, the daughter was the one to field their questions.

Speaker 57 And you flew in yesterday? Yes, that's right. Okay.

Speaker 38 And Liz thought it prudent to record the conversation.

Speaker 47 She updated the detectives on her mother's health.

Speaker 5 She's just in complete shock, and she has retrograde amnesia at the moment. She has a hard time remembering things as it is because of the seizures.

Speaker 18 Liz had witnessed her mom's seizures before, and now she theorized that's what might have kept her alive during the home invasion.

Speaker 5 I think she probably had a seizure and that probably freaked out whoever was there, and maybe they thought they killed her.

Speaker 39 The detectives asked Liz to keep them updated on her recovery.

Speaker 57 Because if she could ever remember a suspect, that's the best thing for me and him. Because then we have a description and everything else.
Right now at this point, we have nothing.

Speaker 1 I've been asking them.

Speaker 39 And then the detectives asked Liz if she could pay a visit to her parents' house.

Speaker 57 Anything you think's missing? Because we need to start searching for the items that are missing.

Speaker 12 I can't imagine you going back to this house where you've known your parents and happy times and then

Speaker 12 it's a crime scene.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. It's the one place you're supposed to be safe and it's just been, I don't know, it's been tainted.

Speaker 20 She went through the house room by room, cataloging what she thought was missing.

Speaker 38 A TV set, jewelry, cash, and medication.

Speaker 58 Last stop, the garage.

Speaker 12 The garage was full of things that could easily be stolen and pawned.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 54 There, Liz spied something to her eyes oddly out of place.

Speaker 23 Her middle school backpack, sticking out of it, an Xbox console.

Speaker 39 Could this have been the killer's loot, dropped in a panic as he ran from the scene?

Speaker 35 Liz called investigators.

Speaker 28 They returned to the house, snapped even more photos, and collected the backpack as potential evidence.

Speaker 16 They'd later find beneath that Xbox some of Sandra's jewelry.

Speaker 49 And Liz realized she had an idea for detectives, too, a possible suspect.

Speaker 12 Is it true, Liz, that you even suggested they take a look at your ex at that point?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 I tried to give them as much information as I could.

Speaker 24 Yes, the ex-husband the Melgars regarded as a no-account.

Speaker 18 Turns out during the rocky last days of his marriage to Liz, the Melgars suspected he and a buddy lifted some of Sandra's medication, the same sort now believed to be missing.

Speaker 14 The Melgars never reported their suspicions to authorities, but now Liz told detectives, talk to the ex.

Speaker 16 By now, the murder break-in story was all over the news.

Speaker 47 Deputies say Melgar told them she can't remember who tied her up or who may have hurt her husband.

Speaker 26 And neighbors started offering up Crime Stoppers' tips. One of them, check out a guy seen lurking around outside the police tape.

Speaker 23 Let's look at our slideshow.

Speaker 26 Amanda Orr covered the Melgar murder for Reuters. Brian Rogers for the Houston Chronicle.

Speaker 12 You're getting information right away about a kind of a sketchy neighbor known to break into houses, steal stuff, and pawn it. And he's up the block and maybe at the scene that night.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 59 A neighbor who had just gotten out of jail, who was suspicious.

Speaker 54 Liz thought, add him to the list of potential suspects.

Speaker 12 Did you have ideas for them?

Speaker 5 I did.

Speaker 35 She also suggested they talk to one of her parents' tenants, someone who'd had disputes with her dad.

Speaker 21 And there was a coworker of Jamie she got a bad vibe from.

Speaker 35 And again, Liz said she urged detectives to look at her ex.

Speaker 24 He had a record of drug arrests.

Speaker 44 If not him, what about people in his circle?

Speaker 25 Months dragged by without word on the investigation.

Speaker 12 You believe someone is out there has gotten away with killing your father?

Speaker 5 Yeah, absolutely. It was hard to sleep at night.
I was...

Speaker 5 every little noise was

Speaker 5 had me on edge.

Speaker 12 Were you worried about your mother? Oh, yeah. That whoever this person was might come back for her.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. I was constantly worried.

Speaker 9 And how was her health at that time?

Speaker 5 She had started having seizures and,

Speaker 5 you know, she was traumatized. She had post-traumatic stress.
She had anxiety. She had depression.
She was a mess.

Speaker 18 Liz clung to the hope that one of those leads she gave detectives would would eventually pan out.

Speaker 21 But for now, anyway, it looked as though law enforcement was playing its cards close to the vest.

Speaker 49 According to prosecutor Colleen Barnett of the Harris County District Attorney's Office, that was because they'd made some early observations about the crime scene.

Speaker 7 Officers have investigated burglaries and robberies for many years before they get in homicide, and they thought that the scene looked kind of suspicious.

Speaker 12 So what was off-kilter with this one?

Speaker 7 The fact that it didn't look burglarized.

Speaker 34 The drawers were open, I I think.

Speaker 7 They were open a little bit, but nothing was tossed.

Speaker 35 But what about those items Liz noticed were missing from the house?

Speaker 32 And that backpack of apparent burglar's loot she found in the garage.

Speaker 9 Well, detectives took careful note of many other items, pricey things that had been left untouched.

Speaker 7 Cameras, the bicycle, there was some painting equipment. There were things that were easy to take that weren't taken.
And then the stuff that was taken and put in a backpack was left in the garage.

Speaker 7 Doesn't make sense.

Speaker 35 The home, to investigators, showed no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 21 That opened garage door, the only possible way in for an intruder.

Speaker 25 But law enforcement thought that too seemed as though it could have been staged.

Speaker 21 No, to investigators, this didn't look like a burglary gone bad, but more like a targeted killing. And they theorized their suspect was somebody already inside the house.

Speaker 21 My memory is

Speaker 10 so bad.

Speaker 26 How murky was her memory, really?

Speaker 20 Investigators are about to listen very carefully to Sandra's story.

Speaker 32 December 23rd, 2013, the day before Christmas Eve, also the first anniversary of Jamie Mulgar's death, was impossibly hard for his family.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's all we really think about.

Speaker 12 It should be holiday season, but it's that awful memory coming back.

Speaker 23 Yes, yes.

Speaker 12 So imagine the family is waiting for an arrest to be made in this thing, huh?

Speaker 53 Yes.

Speaker 6 We are anxiously waiting for that day to come. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's tomorrow or if it's 10 years from now, but

Speaker 6 we would like some answers.

Speaker 39 But law enforcement wasn't exactly forthcoming with the Melgar family.

Speaker 48 Might have been a reason.

Speaker 29 They doubted Jamie's murderer was a burglar or even someone else in Sandra and Jamie's remote orbit.

Speaker 7 There's always a a first suspicion of family members if there's nothing that really makes sense.

Speaker 29 And that suspicion had narrowed down to the person inside the house with Jamie, Sandra.

Speaker 41 Her account of a blacked out 14 hours after their anniversary celebration, I wish I could have been caught.

Speaker 54 To investigators, it was just too weird to be believed.

Speaker 5 And Emery is

Speaker 10 so bad.

Speaker 18 It seemed implausible to them that Sandra really heard nothing the entire night.

Speaker 12 This is happening in a very small space. The husband is stabbed to death and found in one closet, and she's been tied up in another.

Speaker 7 That's right.

Speaker 17 The investigators closely studied that interview they'd conducted with Sandra.

Speaker 16 They found her more indifferent than distraught.

Speaker 25 Do you know what has happened today?

Speaker 10 My husband was murdered.

Speaker 23 How?

Speaker 10 I don't know.

Speaker 40 And when Sandra broke down crying, the detectives couldn't recall seeing any tears.

Speaker 18 Detectives believe Sandra's story morphed over time.

Speaker 46 For instance, the part about how long she'd waited to get out of the tub after Jamie left to fetch the dogs.

Speaker 21 At first, she was vague.

Speaker 10 And he just, you know, it was taking a while, so I got out.

Speaker 65 Then, more specific.

Speaker 10 About 15 minutes, 20 minutes.

Speaker 21 Later, another revision.

Speaker 10 Maybe about five minutes.

Speaker 20 And detectives were perplexed by what Sandra claimed she did and did not hear that that night.

Speaker 59 Hear anybody scream? No.

Speaker 56 Hear the dogs? Well, you can hear the dogs bark.

Speaker 10 Yeah, because they were right outside our window.

Speaker 54 But after almost two hours, as investigators pushed her, Sandra seemed to tweak this key element of her story.

Speaker 10 Actually, I don't even remember hearing the dogs. My husband's the one that says he's got better hearing than I do.

Speaker 35 Of course, the changes in Sandra's story could be attributed to shock.

Speaker 34 But as the detectives viewed it, Sandra was being deliberately evasive, enhancing her story to align with a conjured-up crime scene.

Speaker 12 It sounds like a bloody event, was it?

Speaker 7 It was bloody in the area that he was in. There was blood in the carpet.
There was blood on a chair. He himself was very bloody in the closet, but nowhere else in the house was there any blood.

Speaker 34 To investigators' way of thinking, home invaders would have dragged at least a trace of blood on their way out of the house.

Speaker 51 But crime scene texts did not find any.

Speaker 24 When the rest of the forensics came back, the findings had limitations.

Speaker 23 Reporter Amanda Orr.

Speaker 6 Although you have the murder weapon, it's been washed in water for several hours.

Speaker 12 Kitchen knife or something?

Speaker 6 A kitchen knife, a large kitchen knife. It was found in the bathtub.
And so any DNA that could have been on it from the murderer was gone. It was washed away.

Speaker 21 What's more, no blood was detected on Sandra.

Speaker 18 In fact, no DNA or fingerprints linked Sandra to Jamie's body or Jamie to Sandra's.

Speaker 34 And while detectives had a hunch about Sandra, the evidence didn't seem quite there yet for an indictment.

Speaker 34 As more time went by, it became clear to members of Sandra's family, like her cousin Diana, that law enforcement was eyeing her.

Speaker 6 Okay, it's okay for you to think that, investigate her, and then you'll see that there's nothing there and move on.

Speaker 35 But as the investigation dragged into July of 2014, their worst fears were realized.

Speaker 16 Liz and her mom found out in a most unusual way.

Speaker 5 I went to to the mailbox and it had been absolutely filled with flyers from lawyers trying to get our business for our pending case.

Speaker 12 Did she know what that was about?

Speaker 5 I had no idea what that was about. And so I got onto the Harris County website and I entered my mom's name and I saw that she had been charged with my father's murder.

Speaker 34 A few days earlier, a grand jury had quietly voted to indict her.

Speaker 49 She turned herself in and posted Bond, and then she hired veteran attorney Max Secress to defend her.

Speaker 8 Quite frankly, I can smell BS from across the room. And when I sat down and spoke with her, her story was plausible.
I didn't hear anything that rang a kind of a false note.

Speaker 35 Allison Secress, Max's niece, served as co-counsel.

Speaker 7 She's a sweet person.

Speaker 5 She doesn't have a temper, and it was really apparent to us that she had a good relationship with her husband.

Speaker 47 They couldn't fathom how Sandra was under suspicion for a crime that defied physical possibilities.

Speaker 23 After all, she was found tied up, barricaded in her closet.

Speaker 8 She believes she's had a seizure, or maybe she was actually hit in the head and was knocked unconscious.

Speaker 35 To these attorneys, the case seems suspiciously thin.

Speaker 8 Where's the beef? Where's the crime? I guess more importantly, where's the investigation?

Speaker 18 It had taken more than a year and a half to indict Sandra.

Speaker 36 So what were the detectives doing all that time?

Speaker 39 Well, that's an involved story, investigated by NBC affiliate KPRC-TV.

Speaker 27 The lead detective on the case, Ruben Sean Carazal, seen here interviewing Sandra, had become the center of a scandal.

Speaker 64 A controversy is growing tonight over a document falsified by a Harris County detective now working for the district attorney's office.

Speaker 21 Detective Carazal got himself into serious trouble for falsifying a search warrant in a case not connected to Sandra's, and that cast a shadow on his other investigations.

Speaker 59 That became probably a really big issue for the prosecution and something that the defense would be able to definitely use against him.

Speaker 20 After the story broke, the detective left the sheriff's department.

Speaker 27 Would it end the case against Sandra, too?

Speaker 12 Did your lawyers tell you this thing may never go to trial here? This thing has got so many holes in it.

Speaker 5 That's what we believed.

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 35 By the summer of 2017, It had been three years since Sandra's arrest.

Speaker 16 She had a right to a speedy trial.

Speaker 38 It was put-up or shut-up time for the DA's office.

Speaker 12 When you read all your stuff and you stepped back and you said, What do I have here?

Speaker 12 What was the biggest problem?

Speaker 7 The biggest problem was that I didn't have that many affirmative acts from her standpoint. I had- What do you mean that? I couldn't put the knife in her hand.

Speaker 7 I didn't have any eyewitnesses that she killed him. She didn't confess.

Speaker 63 What did you have going for you?

Speaker 12 What was the best thing you had, Colleen?

Speaker 7 Her story was ridiculous.

Speaker 29 So the prosecution made the call.

Speaker 13 The people versus Sandra Melgar would proceed to trial.

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Speaker 39 August 2017, more than four and a half years after Jamie Melgar was murdered in what seemed at the time a brutal home invasion.

Speaker 28 But now, Sandra, his wife of 32 years, was on trial for Jamie's murder.

Speaker 13 She'd pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 24 It put daughter Liz in a painful judicial paradox.

Speaker 12 The People Versus are bringing you, the family victim, justice in their mind, and yet justice is putting your mother away.

Speaker 5 Correct. I've lost my father, and here I am about to lose my mother.
This is supposed to be the justice system that

Speaker 5 it's just completely broken.

Speaker 38 Prosecutor Colleen Barnett's message for the jury was simple. Sandra, and only Sandra could have done this.

Speaker 69 There's zero evidence, no evidence that anybody else did this.

Speaker 32 The prosecutor set out to dismantle the idea that Jamie's death resulted from a botched robbery.

Speaker 18 First responder, EMT Stephanie Robertson, told the jury that to her, the crime scene just looked off.

Speaker 53 It was a little disarrayed. The drawers were pulled out.
I mean, nothing was appeared to be missing.

Speaker 54 And the prosecutor used Sandra's own words against her.

Speaker 39 The jury heard that interview with the defendant, the one where detectives found her so oddly indifferent.

Speaker 25 Do you know what has happened today?

Speaker 10 My husband was murdered.

Speaker 21 And sometimes her story to the detectives didn't jive with what they believed to be the facts.

Speaker 7 She's just trying to tell a tale

Speaker 7 so that she can go on with her life without being in prison.

Speaker 14 For instance, her account of Jamie getting out of the jacuzzi to quiet the barking dogs.

Speaker 7 There was a next-door neighbor to the Melgars who constantly complained about the barking dogs. She said that night, she didn't hear the dogs barking, like she slept wonderful.

Speaker 51 Of course, one of the main problems for Sandra was the big picture.

Speaker 35 So you want us to believe, the prosecutor argued, that home invaders were slashing your husband to death just feet away from you, and you remember nothing.

Speaker 52 Really?

Speaker 56 Nobody running, nobody saying anything, shouting?

Speaker 10 No, nothing.

Speaker 35 Sandra's explanation was that she'd suffered from seizures and memory loss for years.

Speaker 54 Reporter Amanda Orr was in the courtroom as the prosecution introduced some of Sandra's medical history, refuting that.

Speaker 6 She did go to her doctor's appointments but reported that she was not having seizures, that her medication was controlling them pretty well.

Speaker 35 So if Sandra was in fact lying about being unconscious for hours, then she had plenty of time to pull herself together and make the house appear ransacked.

Speaker 70 She had a lifetime to get rid of the clothes,

Speaker 70 to wash herself up,

Speaker 7 to get ready for the big finale.

Speaker 38 Though not required to prove a motive, the prosecutor offered one up for the jury anyway.

Speaker 39 There was no evidence of infidelity or typical marriage troubles.

Speaker 21 Still, she suggested that Sandra wanted out, but their religion made it impossible to split up the usual way.

Speaker 70 Jehovah's Witnesses don't allow you to divorce unless someone's cheating. It's very clear that Jamie was not that guy.
If I get divorced, I get ostracized and I can't talk with my friends.

Speaker 70 But if I kill him and nobody finds out, I'm not ostracized.

Speaker 17 But wasn't Sandra too frail to commit such a violent close-quarters crime?

Speaker 38 Maybe not.

Speaker 54 The medical examiner's report concluded Jamie suffered 31 sharp force wounds, but none very deep.

Speaker 12 So kind of stab-stab-taunting kind of injuries?

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 7 Or maybe not much force used, or maybe a weaker person.

Speaker 28 So how did the attack go down?

Speaker 39 The prosecutor had a vivid scenario of a lethal seduction.

Speaker 6 The prosecution thinks that Sandra Melgar lured Jamie to the bedroom under the guise of sex play.

Speaker 70 So she gets Jamie to sit down in the chair.

Speaker 70 Maybe she's massaging his neck. And then she pulls it out.

Speaker 70 And while he isn't looking, she makes a strike straight up all the way to his neck.

Speaker 39 It was a dramatic show and tell for sure.

Speaker 25 Then it was showtime for the defense.

Speaker 17 The prosecution's case was all invented nonsense, they said.

Speaker 23 Theory strong, evidence light.

Speaker 8 This case ought to scare the hell out of all of you.

Speaker 21 Attorney Max Secrez told the jury that Sandra was the victim of a bumbling myopic investigation.

Speaker 8 Now we've got Heiny Butcher. This lady falsely accused.

Speaker 65 And the defense said Sandra was so clearly attacked herself, barricaded and bound.

Speaker 8 She's been tied up. She's been left in a closet for 14, 16, 17 hours.

Speaker 46 They showed these photos in court and told the jury Sandra went to a doctor who confirmed her injuries.

Speaker 8 When Sandy went to the doctor a couple of days later, she had a full examination and, of course,

Speaker 8 hematoma was found on her head.

Speaker 25 As for that interview, the defense said the only thing it revealed was that the Blinker detectives thought Sandra was guilty from the get-go.

Speaker 61 She wants to find the killer.

Speaker 8 Horse.

Speaker 8 I don't think he did.

Speaker 24 And they said it showed in the most trying of circumstances, Sandra remaining consistent and composed.

Speaker 10 I had a seizure and so I usually can't move anyway.

Speaker 21 Another point, a forensic one, the defense told the jury about DNA evidence that had been collected but not presented by the prosecution.

Speaker 5 There's unknown male DNA on various drawer pools from the master bedroom and door handles and also on that backpack. So it's huge because it points to a possible other suspect.

Speaker 35 And the CSIs had photographed a bloody swipe on the handle of the closet safe just a short distance from Jamie's body.

Speaker 40 The defense told the jury how detectives never ran it for a possible print, nor had it swabbed for DNA.

Speaker 8 But isn't that the kind of evidence you'd want to have available to consider? Why wouldn't you at least test it?

Speaker 27 The defense ticked off more examples of what they regarded as inept detective work.

Speaker 39 They never brought Liz's ex-husband in for questioning or that neighbor with a history of petty burglaries, the one fresh out of jail.

Speaker 59 The police go to his house, knock, he doesn't answer, and they leave their card for

Speaker 59 and they never followed up on it.

Speaker 35 And the defense thought they knew just how the investigation got so bungled.

Speaker 38 Look at the man who led it.

Speaker 8 What kind of murder investigation would you have where you knowingly, intentionally, and willfully don't bring the lead investigator to court?

Speaker 13 The defense, not the prosecution, called the one-time lead detective.

Speaker 16 They weren't allowed to tell the jury about the scandal involving that other case, but they asked him to account for a litany of perceived fumbles in this investigation.

Speaker 31 Case in point, a pair of Sandra's socks found not in the evidence room, but instead in a filing cabinet long after he'd left the job.

Speaker 8 It's a really horrible investigation. It's just inept.
There's no physical evidence in this case that points to her at all.

Speaker 35 But there was another key element to this prosecutor's case.

Speaker 29 She knew the jury had one big question.

Speaker 24 Was Sandra a Houdini-level escape artist?

Speaker 12 So how do you tie yourself up with that?

Speaker 7 All you do is just put it on your tie.

Speaker 52 A wickedly clever bag of tricks. Could Sandra Melgar really pull something like this off? The jurors would have a stunner of an answer.

Speaker 39 Sandra Melgar's defense attorneys had tried to portray the murder investigation as seriously flawed.

Speaker 54 But perhaps their most persuasive argument was Sandra herself.

Speaker 40 She didn't testify, but Houston Chronicle reporter Brian Rogers said her muted appearance spoke volumes.

Speaker 59 You know, there's an old adage in defense law, if you can make your client look like a school mom, do it, and she sort of comes across that way as someone kind of frail,

Speaker 51 small, depending on a cane.

Speaker 59 Yeah, you know, and you have a hard time believing she could even yell, you know, much less stab anyone.

Speaker 30 And how could that same petite woman have managed, as the prosecution contended, to wedge a chair beneath the doorknob of the closet that she was already inside, and beyond that bind her own hands and feet.

Speaker 33 The prosecution had an answer for those Houdini-like skills.

Speaker 52 She

Speaker 7 definitely prepared for this. I'm sure she practiced the chair behind the door.

Speaker 13 The prosecutor said Sandra had come up with an ingenious way to wedge that chair under the doorknob from the inside by sliding a pillow sham along the floor.

Speaker 24 How's that, you ask?

Speaker 41 Well, she played the jury this video of investigators recreating the process.

Speaker 7 The detectives videotaped themselves putting the chair on the pillow sham and pulling the pillow sham underneath the door so you can pull it closed.

Speaker 52 Now you don't need pulling.

Speaker 12 You have to be inside the closet, of course.

Speaker 7 Right, that's right.

Speaker 32 Prosecutor Barnett said it wouldn't be all that hard for Sandra to tie her own hands behind her back.

Speaker 41 She showed us what she showed the jury.

Speaker 12 So how do you tie yourself up with that figure eight then?

Speaker 7 It's pretty simple. All you do is just put it on your tie, turn it in the back, and you just mess around with it any kind of way.

Speaker 69 The point is that it looks legitimate. Not that it is legitimate, but it looks legitimate.

Speaker 19 The prosecutor argued Sandra did this just minutes before the family discovered her, which explained what the EMT said she did not see on Sandra's wrists.

Speaker 53 She had no bruises, no literature marks, nothing.

Speaker 47 But the very thought that Sandra could have come up with these elaborate tricks and executed them, that's sheer speculation, said the defense.

Speaker 8 That's a theory, folks. There's no evidence of that.

Speaker 29 A theory that the defense said investigators didn't even try to corroborate with the eyewitnesses who had found Sandra.

Speaker 31 Daughter Liz said after that night, investigators never came back to ask the family what they saw.

Speaker 12 Never really spoke to your family again, is that right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, they never reached out to anybody. They could have asked them about,

Speaker 5 you know, the theory of the chair and the mat under the chair. You know, they could have asked them about the surroundings.

Speaker 35 And they would have heard how the family said they needed scissors to cut Sandra free, her wrists so tightly bound.

Speaker 8 I have a big problem with them not following through and talking to witnesses who had personal knowledge.

Speaker 28 The prosecution said investigators followed the evidence and did a thorough job.

Speaker 25 It was now up to a Harris County jury to decide Sandra's fate.

Speaker 41 The first day of deliberations ended with no decision.

Speaker 12 When the jury's out to you, go back to your office and pretend to work or what?

Speaker 7 You can't work.

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 7 You try and do other stuff, but you really can't.

Speaker 22 Finally, on day two, there was a verdict.

Speaker 51 Family and friends filed into the court.

Speaker 52 We were all,

Speaker 6 everything's gonna be fine. This is a joke, no worries.

Speaker 12 Surely the jury will see it the way we, the families, exactly.

Speaker 17 Sandra Melgar stood to learn her fate.

Speaker 67 We, the jury, find the defendant, Sandra Jean Milgar, guilty of murder as charged in the indictment.

Speaker 41 Sandra collapsed into her chair, sobbing.

Speaker 15 Does either side wish?

Speaker 38 Liz, beyond devastated, grasped for her mother as she was led away.

Speaker 5 It sucked the life out of me. I just felt the room spin

Speaker 5 and I just felt like my world was collapsing.

Speaker 6 We just could not believe it. Could not believe that this was happening to her.

Speaker 41 To prosecutor Barnett, this was justice, both for the state and for Jamie Melgar.

Speaker 7 She's committed a crime, and they found her guilty, and I'm glad I've done my job, and justice has been served.

Speaker 35 The jury sentenced Sandra to 27 years in prison.

Speaker 13 Her lawyers filed appeals and in late 2022, the Innocence Project of Texas took on the case and is now working to have the conviction overturned.

Speaker 54 From behind bars, Sandra wrote us this letter saying she's at peace because she knows she's innocent.

Speaker 41 Her family supports her, so she's not giving up.

Speaker 1 And Liz?

Speaker 33 Well, she and her kids do their best to carry on without Jamie or Sandra.

Speaker 5 My daughter just loves her Nana so much, and it was so heartbreaking to tell her that Nana wasn't coming home.

Speaker 12 When do you miss your dad the most?

Speaker 5 Every day when I look at my kids, because I know what a wonderful grandfather he would have been, the jokes and the games, and probably the toys he would have made for them.

Speaker 12 They never got a chance to roll their eyes at a gym joke.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

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