Teresa Kohnle

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Speaker 9 They were the family that seemed to have it all. And you're Robot!

Speaker 10 Every morning we'd wake up and, you know, we'd say, we're the Conleys.

Speaker 10 We had the four-part garage.

Speaker 11 We had the pool.

Speaker 5 His business went gangbusters. He had tons of clients.
And he was the kindest, most gentle man you'll ever meet in your life.

Speaker 9 Until a fire left their lives in ruins.

Speaker 14 It's what they refer to as a full alarm, dispatch three engines and a ladder truck and an EMS unit.

Speaker 10 One day we're living the dream, and the next day we don't know what we're going to do.

Speaker 9 As authorities try to make sense of this tragedy, secrets soon emerge from the ashes.

Speaker 15 Having this illness, he's not able to work as much, can't provide for the family.

Speaker 16 They were close to the house going into foreclosure. It was very bleak for them.

Speaker 9 Was this the last act of a devoted and desperate father

Speaker 13 Or a cold-blooded betrayal?

Speaker 18 My husband won't like itself.

Speaker 5 Her affairs have been going on for a while. He caught her several times, once actually in the act of cheating on him.

Speaker 15 She would benefit highly if you have a fire that takes out the home and the husband.

Speaker 19 He told me he wanted to die.

Speaker 9 June 29th, 2007, Ringle, Georgia.

Speaker 9 It's 9.34 a.m. in the quiet town along the Tennessee border when a proprietor of a local grocery store sees smoke rising from a nearby home.

Speaker 16 Gary Carlock owned his family store, Carlock's grocery. He was the one that first saw the flames and the smoke and called it in.

Speaker 9 Seven miles away, firefighters with engine 8 are starting their day when they get the call.

Speaker 14 It's what they refer to as a full alarm, dispatch three engines and a ladder truck. I'm in an EMS unit.

Speaker 14 No related, there's now flames visible, so you're trying to get your game plan, trying to think your way through it.

Speaker 9 Firefighters arrive at 9.42 a.m. to learn from command they can't contain this from the outside.
They are going in.

Speaker 16 The fire looked like it was on the rear side of the home. We'd come in from the home birth side.

Speaker 14 So when we talk about the importance of priorities, you think you may be putting fire out, you may also be having a victim in there.

Speaker 14 We go through this first hallway and we're immediately met with extreme heat and smoke conditions.

Speaker 16 The visibility was pretty low. We made it to the back bedroom.
We'd realized that was the fire room for sure.

Speaker 16 We'd suppressed that fire back and one of the guys with us, he was using a thermoimaging camera.

Speaker 9 The technology is capable of picking up a person's heat signature through smoke.

Speaker 9 As the fireman scans the room, an unsettling shape appears on the screen.

Speaker 16 He notified us that he did see what looked like to be a victim towards the backside of the bed.

Speaker 16 When we made it around to him, what I remember is he was kneeling by the bed in a sense,

Speaker 16 almost as if

Speaker 16 he was praying or something.

Speaker 16 He was unconscious, but he didn't appear to have thermal burns. He definitely had, you know, smoke on his clothes, on his skin.

Speaker 14 Usually victims are found very close to the door.

Speaker 14 They succumb where they just physically can't exert any more energy while they're trying to remove themselves from an environment.

Speaker 9 They preliminarily ID the victim as the homeowner, James Conley.

Speaker 22 Jim Conley was a local chiropractor who had a practice in Dalton, Georgia nearby.

Speaker 9 Although Jim Conley wasn't from North North Georgia, he found it the perfect place to build a career as a small-town chiropractor.

Speaker 20 My dad kind of grew up all over the place, and we come from a kind of a wealthy background.

Speaker 10 My great-grandfather was Frederick Conley, who founded Lawn Art Markings and invented one of the first price tag machines. They have over 300 patents.

Speaker 9 However, Jim bucked the family business and the money that came with it to make a name for himself in in a new profession.

Speaker 5 First time I met him, he had just started out and he was in the back of a beauty shop. He had his chiropractor business back there.
And I went in there for adjustments.

Speaker 5 I did his books and he did the chiropractic adjustments for all my kids and grandchildren.

Speaker 9 From those humble beginnings, Jim worked hard to build a successful and caring caring practice.

Speaker 5 Jim's business went gangbusters.

Speaker 5 He had tons of clients. When he worked on you, you felt good just being around him.
Jim was the kindest, most gentle man you'll ever meet in your life.

Speaker 9 With his business growing by the year, Jim knew he needed additional employees. The woman that answered his Help Wanted ad was 21-year-old Teresa Boggs.

Speaker 5 As his business started growing, Teresa was his receptionist.

Speaker 9 By 1994, Teresa and Jim's working relationship had evolved into a new kind of partnership.

Speaker 25 There's a more than 20-year age difference between Teresa and Jim. Teresa is in her 20s, he's in his 50s, but they were in love with each other,

Speaker 25 and the two of them embark on a life together.

Speaker 9 In 1996, Jim and Teresa welcomed a son, Caleb.

Speaker 5 I think it was love at first sight when he seen Caleb that became his entire world. He was a fantastic pet.

Speaker 10 They had me, got married a year later, and opened up their practice together, the Alpha Wellness Center.

Speaker 25 The two of them embarked on this life goal together of building a successful business. It was an all-inclusive health and well-being center.

Speaker 25 Teresa upgraded her own education and became a trained massage therapist.

Speaker 10 My mom, she's from Harlan, Kentucky. Harlan is more like a small-town mindset.
You know, women stay home, take care of their man. And that was just never for my mom.

Speaker 10 My mom always wanted to take care of herself, go off and do bigger, better, and things.

Speaker 5 She was a great massage therapist.

Speaker 26 She really was.

Speaker 20 They were both great.

Speaker 9 As their business continued to grow, so did their family. Their second child, Allison, was born in 2000.
The family settled into a pretty house on an expansive lot in Ringold.

Speaker 10 Growing up was probably like any little kid's dream. My parents' business was just booming at the time.
Every morning, we'd wake up, and you know, we'd say we're the Conleys.

Speaker 10 We had the four-car garage.

Speaker 11 We had the pool.

Speaker 11 And a robot!

Speaker 5 Jim and Teresa were very doting.

Speaker 20 The kids did just about everything they wanted.

Speaker 5 If they wanted it, they had it.

Speaker 10 It made me grow up believing that I could be anything, everything, you know. It was amazing.
It really was.

Speaker 18 They were great parents.

Speaker 9 But on the morning of June 29th, 2007, that charmed life comes to an abrupt end when a fire breaks out in the Conleys home.

Speaker 14 At this point, we immediately conduct a quick search of making sure that there is no other victims in there.

Speaker 9 Fortunately, there's no sign of any additional victims.

Speaker 9 But the fight to save Jim Conley's life isn't so lucky.

Speaker 16 After we made entry, he was unconscious when we had carried him out.

Speaker 27 They tried to resuscitate him, but they were unsuccessful.

Speaker 9 Jim Conley is pronounced dead at the scene.

Speaker 9 Jim's 34-year-old wife, Teresa, is traveling with their two kids to visit her parents out of state when she gets the call from Georgia authorities.

Speaker 10 My mom's friend Robin answered the phone. And I remember Robin screaming, my mom, you know, Teresa, pull over the car, or Teresa, pull over the car, you know, and she's just like, why, why?

Speaker 10 Just tell me, just tell me.

Speaker 10 And we pulled over it.

Speaker 10 My mom just fell to the ground screaming and crying.

Speaker 9 Coming up, investigators sift through the ashes of a life upended.

Speaker 4 At the time of the fire, he had got behind on their mortgage.

Speaker 29 Their finances were not in good shape at all.

Speaker 30 That's when the stress got worse for him and everything like that.

Speaker 30 He was surprised.

Speaker 15 Do you know what an accelerant is?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 9 June 29th, 2007.

Speaker 9 A house fire has claimed the life of beloved husband and father, 57-year-old Jim Conley.

Speaker 9 News of the tragedy has reached Jim's 34-year-old wife, Teresa, who is racing back home from a trip to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Speaker 10 My mom couldn't even talk. I remember telling that my dad had died and that our house was gone and just

Speaker 10 kind of went numb.

Speaker 9 At the scene of the fire, investigators from the Catoosa County Sheriff's Office arrive and examine the victim's body.

Speaker 13 He had burns on the soles of his feet.

Speaker 13 He could have burned his feet by trying to put out the fire, or his feet were exposed to the superheated air from lying there on the bed.

Speaker 4 It appeared that the cause of death was smoke inhalation, but they want to send the body for an autopsy.

Speaker 16 Anytime we have a

Speaker 16 house fire with a fatality, it's automatically investigated.

Speaker 10 So the fire marshal was called out at that time.

Speaker 13 Based on the amount of material that's been burned in the residence and the scope that the smoke has taken over the house, it was established that the fire started around 9 o'clock.

Speaker 27 They want to look for a point of origin of the fire to determine whether it was some sort of accidental cause or a non-accidental cause.

Speaker 17 You can determine that often by looking by the fire markings on the walls.

Speaker 9 As the fire marshal walks through the home, two things in the kitchen catch his attention.

Speaker 4 The oven was on and toast was in a little toaster oven on the countertop.

Speaker 24 But it would appear the oven hadn't really been used, although it was on.

Speaker 14 Could there have been a fire started here, you know, or is it just coincidental?

Speaker 9 The fire marshal moves on to the back of the house where the damage is more severe.

Speaker 14 The bulk of the fire was in the master bedroom and a side like office sitting area where you had a lot of fire damage.

Speaker 13 The arson investigators decided the origin of the fire was along a common wall between the office and the bedroom where the victim was found.

Speaker 9 Teresa arrives at the scene just after 4 p.m. with 11-year-old Caleb and Teresa's best friend, Robin Simmons.

Speaker 10 My mom was so distraught. I mean, she was just like, Mary, her whole life was dawn in a day.

Speaker 9 Detectives at the scenes start by asking Teresa to lay out her timeline of the morning.

Speaker 28 Teresa Connolly indicated she and her friend Robin Simmons and her two children left her home around 8.15,

Speaker 4 and she was on her way to meet her parents in Knoxville to pick up a car.

Speaker 31 Shortly after she left her residence, they went to Chick-fil-A in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.

Speaker 9 Teresa says says they then dropped her daughter Allie off with a babysitter and started the two-hour drive to her parents' house.

Speaker 9 Robin Simmons confirms Teresa's story with one difference.

Speaker 16 Teresa said they left 8.10 to 8.15 a.m.

Speaker 16 Her driver, Robin Simmons, said it was at least 8.45 a.m.

Speaker 24 Her time was a little bit different from Teresa Conley's, but she wouldn't expect people who had just gone through such trauma as that to have a precise timeline.

Speaker 9 Investigators intend to follow up with both women at a later date. For now, they give Teresa time to grieve with her family and friends.

Speaker 10 I'm in here, everything's falling apart. We don't know what we're going to do.

Speaker 10 We stayed with my mom's friend Robin that night that it happened.

Speaker 9 As the Conleys grapple with their loss, inside the family home, the fire investigation continues.

Speaker 13 The Georgia State Fire Marshal's Office.

Speaker 14 Those guys are trained to extremely high level in locating the cause of this fire.

Speaker 14 They can look for, you know, naturally caused fires, gases, fuels, lightning strikes, things that are in electrical wires. They're trained to look for accelerants.

Speaker 9 A specially trained dog named Smokey is brought to the scene.

Speaker 9 Within moments, he makes a startling discovery.

Speaker 29 He found presence of an accelerant placed in that location where he determined the fire had originated.

Speaker 31 It was pretty clear that it was an arson as opposed to an accidental origin for the fire.

Speaker 25 Authorities start to realize this is in fact an arson case. And carpet samples are taken and sent off to the lab.

Speaker 25 Authorities don't initially know who set the fire and why somebody would set a fire at the home and naturally authorities want to talk to Teresa.

Speaker 9 On July 5th, six days after the death of Jim Conley, investigators bring his wife Teresa into the sheriff's office for questioning.

Speaker 9 Investigators tell Teresa they need an exact chronology for the morning of the 29th.

Speaker 30 We always woke up 6.30, 7 o'clock, drinking coffee together, called.

Speaker 30 I was in the room in the car, taking a shower,

Speaker 30 talked to the kids a little bit,

Speaker 30 said he didn't feel well.

Speaker 30 They told me to send you later, and they said, I'll pick him some toast and be careful.

Speaker 30 That was it.

Speaker 33 Who's a lunch one lady to have?

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 29 The timeline is pretty critical.

Speaker 28 They can give a fairly accurate indication of when the fire started.

Speaker 13 And it was established that the fire started around 9 o'clock.

Speaker 13 If they had left around 8 o'clock to 8.30, as Teresa Connolly originally said, then she would have been on the road at the time the fire was likely to have been started.

Speaker 9 Investigators press Teresa about the state of her marriage.

Speaker 18 I love my husband more like myself.

Speaker 19 So you say you had a good marriage?

Speaker 34 We had a wonderful marriage.

Speaker 35 I mean, everybody has their

Speaker 15 days you don't like them. You love them, but you don't like them.

Speaker 9 Teresa reveals that recently the family has been under quite a bit of of strain.

Speaker 28 At the time of the fire, but Connolly had got behind on their mortgage.

Speaker 29 Their finances were not in good shape at all.

Speaker 10 Both of my parents' vehicles have just been repossessed, and my grandparents were giving my mom a car.

Speaker 10 So we were meeting them in Knoxville that morning halfway so that they could give us the car, and we were driving the rental car.

Speaker 9 Teresa explains that their financial problems began when Jim contracted Lyme disease a few years earlier.

Speaker 30 That's when things, the stress got worse for him and everything like that.

Speaker 30 He was depressed,

Speaker 30 but

Speaker 30 he loved life and he loved what he'd done and

Speaker 9 45 minutes into the interview, detectives put their cards on the table.

Speaker 15 You know what an accelerant is?

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 16 Something that helps a fire get going?

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 There's an accelerant on the floor.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 23 On your house.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 9 Teresa seems dumbfounded. She tells investigators she has no idea who started the fire inside their home.

Speaker 30 I don't know anything about the fire.

Speaker 30 All I know is that man was my life.

Speaker 30 And he will be the rest of my life.

Speaker 30 Dead or alive.

Speaker 30 Coming up.

Speaker 9 How a debilitating disease undermined a happy life.

Speaker 10 The fact that he felt that he could take care of his family was more than he could take.

Speaker 9 And could a grieving wife be hiding her own secrets?

Speaker 15 There were whispers that there was some infidelity going on, her seeing other men.

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Speaker 9 A week has passed since the sudden death of Jim Conley.

Speaker 9 After locating an accelerant inside the Conley residence, the case is officially labeled arson, leaving detectives questioning who would have motive to set the fire.

Speaker 22 When the fire marshal looked at this one, he said, yeah, this is an arson.

Speaker 12 Somebody poured the accelerant and set it up.

Speaker 9 During the days that follow, investigators find that Jim's finances had been in decline after a recent diagnosis.

Speaker 10 My dad was diagnosed with Lyme's disease. He received it from a tick, either running in the woods or camping.
We're not really exactly sure where he got it at.

Speaker 10 His workdays went from five days a week, sometimes six, to two or three, sometimes none.

Speaker 9 And when Jim didn't work, he didn't get paid.

Speaker 9 Friends say he fell into a deep depression.

Speaker 5 His business started dying down. People started going to other chiropractors that they could see.

Speaker 6 They were close to the house going into foreclosure.

Speaker 16 It was very bleak for them.

Speaker 10 The fact that things were happening the way they were before my dad killed him inside.

Speaker 10 The fact that he felt that he couldn't take care of his family was more than he could take.

Speaker 9 Was Jim so depressed that he took his own life?

Speaker 9 The theory gains momentum when a friend of Jim's contacts detectives.

Speaker 16 There was an issue of a crude will that Jim supposedly wrote and sent to a friend. Now, it had no value as a will because it wasn't properly executed under Georgia law.

Speaker 16 I think had he really wanted it to be effective, he would have done it properly with counsel. But it did have some value potentially as to show his intent.

Speaker 9 The handwritten will is dated May 2nd, less than two months before Jim's death.

Speaker 16 It threw some fuel toward the fact that perhaps he knew he was going to die.

Speaker 9 However, there's one stumbling block for investigators. Even if Jim was suicidal, self-immolation is a rare and extreme act.

Speaker 32 I've never seen anyone intentionally commit suicide by fire. That seems to be a

Speaker 32 real stretch.

Speaker 31 If you're going to commit suicide, there are a lot easier ways to do it.

Speaker 9 When Jim's autopsy report is completed, the findings raise even more suspicion.

Speaker 25 The mode of death is smoke inhalation, but toxicology results come back, and there were antidepressants and sedatives in Jim's system.

Speaker 25 When we factor that in with where the burn was on his body, most significantly at the soles of his feet, that could be because he tried to stamp out the fire.

Speaker 25 These things don't quite add up to somebody who is going to kill themselves and going to do so by fire.

Speaker 9 The coroner rules Jim's death a homicide.

Speaker 9 When detectives interview Jim and Teresa's coworkers at the wellness center, they uncover more secrets.

Speaker 15 There were whispers that there was some infidelity going on, her seeing other men.

Speaker 5 Everybody kind of knew it. Her affairs had been going on for a while, but it got worse as time went on.

Speaker 9 Coworkers also report inappropriate emails between Teresa and the business's former accountant.

Speaker 25 Witnesses talked about times when Teresa and this individual would go into a massage room for somewhere between two and three hours, far longer than any massage clients were ever seen.

Speaker 9 It's an important clue. Detectives wonder, did this love triangle turn violent?

Speaker 4 When they interview the accountant, he

Speaker 29 basically says that he did become close to Teresa Conley.

Speaker 13 But he denied a sexual relationship, but he did admit that they had had some sort of romantic connection.

Speaker 4 And that's the reason he stopped coming over there to Dr.

Speaker 18 Connolly's office.

Speaker 29 Teresa Conley denied having the affair as well.

Speaker 9 The accountant claims he hasn't been in contact with Teresa in years and has no reason to want Jim dead.

Speaker 9 With no evidence that the accountant had any involvement in the crime, And autopsy results indicating Jim could not have done this himself, investigators must determine who was the last person to leave the Connolly home that morning.

Speaker 13 During the course of an investigation, you consider all possibilities. I looked at Teresa Connolly and Robin Simmons since the timeline was pretty far off.

Speaker 13 I don't think they were free to ignore any discrepancies.

Speaker 9 Investigators circle back to Robin Simmons and press her further about their conflicting timelines.

Speaker 12 Robin said she and the kids, they were in the driveway for 15, 20 minutes waiting on Teresa.

Speaker 12 She had gone back in to do, they did not know what, but had gone back in.

Speaker 13 Again, she claimed they left at a much later time than what Teresa Connolly had been saying.

Speaker 24 And she said Teresa was trying to convince her that they left at 8.15, and she wants Robin to say that as well to investigators.

Speaker 9 Investigators ask Robin point blank, did you see the fire?

Speaker 29 Robin Simmons never indicated that she saw any fire or smoke at the residence.

Speaker 22 Shortly after they left her residence, they went to Chick-fil-A in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.

Speaker 9 Investigators head to the restaurant, hoping to obtain video surveillance from the day of the fire.

Speaker 16 The cameras at the Chick-fil-A in Fort Oglethorpe, which is less than 10 minutes away, showed them driving through at 9.17 a.m.

Speaker 9 Investigators time the drive from the Conley residence multiple times, and not once does it take more than eight minutes.

Speaker 15 She claims we're leaving around 8.15,

Speaker 34 and then video surveillance says that she's there there more than an hour later, around 9:20 or so.

Speaker 22 As the officers kept investigating the timeline, they discovered Teresa would have been at the house about the time the fire had started.

Speaker 9 Having punched a hole in Teresa's timeline, investigators obtain a warrant to search the home.

Speaker 16 Fire investigators are really smart.

Speaker 34 They look for what isn't there: personal photos, things that are irreplaceable.

Speaker 13 They found out in the garage, a lot of the clothes for the kids had been put out there so they weren't smoke damaged or fire damaged.

Speaker 12 She had taken stuff that arsonists take.

Speaker 32 Pictures of the children.

Speaker 2 Stuff that you can't replace.

Speaker 9 As investigators continue their search of the home, they find more incriminating evidence.

Speaker 13 They found an insurance policy for a lot of money on Dr.

Speaker 18 Connolly's life,

Speaker 13 and there was also some divorce papers that apparently had never been filed that were found there in the residence.

Speaker 5 He had papers drawn up several times for divorce, and he was going to leave her.

Speaker 15 If you have a fire that takes out the home and the husband, Teresa would benefit highly from Jim being gone and the house being in shambles.

Speaker 9 Coming up, suddenly Teresa's story starts to change.

Speaker 30 He told me to leave the house, and he said, Don't ask me no more questions.

Speaker 9 And devastating allegations come hurling Teresa's way.

Speaker 4 Several months prior to the arson, Teresa Connolly had a miscarriage.

Speaker 5 After she lost the baby, she got real depressed and started doing the drugs.

Speaker 9 10 days after the death of Jim Conley, Georgia authorities are homing in on one suspect, his wife Teresa.

Speaker 25 Teresa has presented them as a happy couple with no problems, no difficulties, but authorities have located documentation that they were, in fact, going to file for divorce.

Speaker 9 Detectives widen the scope of their investigation, interviewing several former employees, starting with Bonnie White.

Speaker 13 The detectives learned that several months prior to the arson, Teresa Connolly had a miscarriage.

Speaker 5 After Teresa had the miscarriage, she wasn't working for three or four months, and she got real depressed and started doing the drugs.

Speaker 22 According to people who worked at Dr.

Speaker 32 Connolly's office, she was using marijuana and methamphetamine.

Speaker 9 According to Bonnie, it was around that time she noticed that Teresa was embezzling money.

Speaker 5 I went to Jim and I said, I think Teresa's stealing from you.

Speaker 5 One month, she had wrote 16 checks to herself.

Speaker 5 He confronted her in front of me and she said, no, those checks were voided. And I said, well voided checks don't clear the bank here's the bank statement they're highlighted

Speaker 9 bonnie says she quit her job after that incident while detectives find that teresa was never charged with embezzlement other past employees come forward with even more alarming allegations

Speaker 28 Teresa has told several witnesses that she has been putting lithium in her husband's coffee.

Speaker 13 She says this basically keeps him quiet and sedates them. Dr.
Connolly himself has suspected that she's doing this and has told people that he thinks Teresa has been drugging him.

Speaker 13 So it

Speaker 32 seems pretty certain that this has been going on for several months.

Speaker 9 Lithium can be used as a medical treatment in small amounts, but if not carefully administered, it's highly toxic.

Speaker 25 For a person who is being given higher than normal doses over a cumulative period of time, lithium toxicity can be incredibly damaging to the internal organ functioning of a human being.

Speaker 25 Authorities now start to ask the question: did she intend to kill him? Maybe she thought if she slowly poisoned him and his system and his health slowly declined, maybe he would eventually just die.

Speaker 25 And people would assume it was Lyme disease.

Speaker 9 On June 9th, investigators bring Teresa in again and demand the truth.

Speaker 9 Much to their surprise, she agrees to a lie detector test.

Speaker 12 I explain that nobody can make her take a polygraph, and that if she tells me the truth, then she'll pass the polygraph.

Speaker 13 If she does not, she'll absolutely fail the polygraph.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to lie to you.

Speaker 16 In Georgia, polygraphs are inadmissible unless you sign a stipulation first that says it will be admissible.

Speaker 16 And they convinced her to do that.

Speaker 33 Regarding the fire at your residence, do you intend to answer truthfully each question about that?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 33 Did you start that fire? No.

Speaker 30 I know I did not start that fire outside.

Speaker 9 After administering the the exam, Detective Scroggins studies the results.

Speaker 33 Like I told you before, I'm just a real direct guy. I've been doing this for a long, long time.
I don't want you to meet me anyway.

Speaker 33 Big problems with this test.

Speaker 12 Holograph chart scoring is a mathematical kind of thing.

Speaker 12 The computer indicated her level of deception was in excess of 100%.

Speaker 12 People come in thinking, I can beat this test. I can go in here and convince them I didn't do anything wrong.
And I'll tell you, you can't.

Speaker 2 And then, Teresa drops a bombshell.

Speaker 30 He told me he wanted to die.

Speaker 30 And he told me to leave the house.

Speaker 30 And he said, don't ask me no more questions.

Speaker 30 And I said, baby,

Speaker 30 why?

Speaker 30 Just tell me why.

Speaker 30 He said, I just want you to know that I like you and I love those.

Speaker 33 And why have you not shared that little bit of information with the investigators up until now?

Speaker 30 Because I didn't want them to think that

Speaker 30 I would send John Take the line before I let them know he started this.

Speaker 12 Almost immediately, within the first 60, 90 seconds, she makes her first admission.

Speaker 9 Detective Scroggins brings in the two lead investigators who reveal another shocking piece of information.

Speaker 31 The detectives at the Catoos County Sheriff's Office had sent out subpoenas for the telephone records of Teresa Connolly's cell phone.

Speaker 33 I'm just curious.

Speaker 33 Somebody calls you and says,

Speaker 7 Hey,

Speaker 33 I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but your house burned down and your husband's dead.

Speaker 33 And your first call is to whom?

Speaker 30 I don't think I made a call. I don't know.
You didn't call mama.

Speaker 12 You didn't call his mama.

Speaker 33 You called your insurance agent.

Speaker 12 Does that not strike you as a bit strange?

Speaker 9 The accusation is clear.

Speaker 30 I know without a shadow of a doubt.

Speaker 30 I know we did it.

Speaker 30 I can't prove we've done it, but

Speaker 30 I can't prove I didn't do it, but I know I didn't start it. I didn't know it was going to happen.
He just told me, go and don't ask me any questions.

Speaker 30 I don't believe anything you told us.

Speaker 19 I've come to rips with that guy, and I've come to rips with I thought we needed to go get an attorney.

Speaker 9 The investigators arrest Teresa and charge her with malice murder and first-degree arson.

Speaker 11 I'll never forget forget this day.

Speaker 10 Jarice is up to me. She's got her handcuffs on, so she puts them around my neck, and she's just bawling.

Speaker 10 You know, she's just like, it's okay, baby. It's okay.
Everything's gonna be okay. You know, you've got to be strong for your little sister.
We're gonna get through this.

Speaker 10 You know, we're the Connie's, remember, we can handle anything.

Speaker 10 And then they walked her back and put me and my sister both in interrogation rooms.

Speaker 15 Did your mom take some clothes out of the house for you before the fire?

Speaker 34 No.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 34 No.

Speaker 36 How many facts?

Speaker 9 Caleb is decidedly closed-mouthed.

Speaker 25 Caleb's traumatized. He's grieving.
He's clinging to the parent that he knows and loves. And initially, he gives them nothing.

Speaker 9 Coming up, a stunning admission.

Speaker 25 What did you say?

Speaker 2 Momo, this is nothing to hear so far.

Speaker 6 She told me not to worry about it, and she said, okay, so we just kept driving.

Speaker 9 Six-year-old Allison and 11-year-old Caleb Conley are placed in the care of Georgia's Children and Family Services on July 9th, 2007, following the arrest of their mother, Teresa.

Speaker 9 On July 16th, Investigators obtain permission to speak to Caleb again, this time with the help of an expert.

Speaker 13 Forensic examiners at the Children's Advocacy Center are specially trained in how to interview children and know how to establish that rapport and to make the child comfortable.

Speaker 37 Take me back to the morning.

Speaker 37 That morning we woke up. My mom was getting ready.
My dad came up to get some water. We'll make us some toast and make us stuff on the computer.

Speaker 37 And then, whatever. My mom was supposed to get in the car.

Speaker 37 She went back inside. I don't know why.

Speaker 37 She came back outside.

Speaker 37 And we went, that was looking at the fence and the smokes behind it.

Speaker 37 Okay.

Speaker 38 So did you say something to her?

Speaker 37 Yeah. What did you say? She said,

Speaker 37 Mama, this is, I think the house on fire.

Speaker 36 She says, no, that's just a bunch of papers.

Speaker 10 We would burn stuff every day out in the yard.

Speaker 10 My mom was big on burning boxes.

Speaker 11 My mom would go around and pile them all up and burn them.

Speaker 10 She told me not to worry about it and she said, okay, so we just kept driving.

Speaker 38 Did you see the papers burning?

Speaker 37 No, but I seen the smoke.

Speaker 38 You saw the smoke and told your mom.

Speaker 38 Did Robin see that too?

Speaker 36 I don't know. She didn't say anything, though.

Speaker 13 It, of course, made absolutely no sense that she would have chosen that time time to burn some papers that early in the morning when you're getting ready to go on a trip out of town.

Speaker 25 By him being satisfied by his mother's explanation that they were burning trash, that allows Caleb to preserve his affection for his mom.

Speaker 9 For investigators, it's the final piece of the puzzle. They believe they know what happened on June 29th, 2007.

Speaker 28 I think Teresa had probably planned this out for some time.

Speaker 29 They were in financial straits.

Speaker 13 If she killed her husband, she would get insurance money for the loss of her husband.

Speaker 13 She wouldn't have to worry about the dangers of a divorce where she might possibly lose her kids because she was having affairs and using drugs herself.

Speaker 32 She gets Jim up that morning.

Speaker 13 She knows she's going to be leaving to establish her alibi.

Speaker 32 She drugs him through the coffee.

Speaker 32 He ends up going back to bed.

Speaker 13 She then sets the fire immediately before she goes out.

Speaker 22 Then they drive off with the house burning behind them.

Speaker 24 All indications were that he had enough in him, even under the sedation, to move about a little bit, so he ended up getting off the bed.

Speaker 23 But that was as far as he was able to make it when he died from the smoke inhalation.

Speaker 9 With the evidence stacked against her, Teresa's defense team does all they can to delay her day in court.

Speaker 16 The state put together what I felt was an almost insurmountable circumstantial evidence case.

Speaker 16 I advised her that it was very bleak, but that she had the right to a trial.

Speaker 16 And that's what every

Speaker 16 defendant has.

Speaker 15 They were supposed to go to trial on Monday.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 35 the Friday before, I get this call.

Speaker 35 Hey, we've got a plea deal.

Speaker 9 In lieu of malice murder, Teresa agrees to plead guilty to felony murder and first and second degree arson.

Speaker 13 Teresa Connolly ended up claiming in her plea of guilty that she was involved in setting the fire that ultimately killed her husband.

Speaker 32 Her husband decided that he would save the family by burning the residence down and then getting the insurance money.

Speaker 32 And he accidentally killed himself in doing this

Speaker 16 she admitted taking instructions from jim to help set the fire essentially

Speaker 16 she denied and still denies to this day killing jim with any intent

Speaker 25 when we start to ask the question about did she intend to kill him

Speaker 25 The fact that she made the decision to systematically and slowly poison him, it seems only reasonable that her primary focus in this situation and goal was to end Jim's life.

Speaker 9 In December of 2010, Teresa is sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

Speaker 7 I lost both of my parents.

Speaker 10 I was just 11 years old. My dad loved helping people.

Speaker 10 He just loved putting a smile on someone else's faces. And I think that's how most people remember my father.
And I think that's how anybody should want to be remembered.

Speaker 39 Teresa Lynn Conley is currently housed at the Pulaski State Prison in Hawkinsville, Georgia. Her first opportunity for parole will be in 2041.
She will be 67 years old.

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