Linda Culbertson

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The Kansas City murder of a prominent attorney leaves even the most seasoned investigators shaken.

As we get up to the third floor, we keep hearing the sound and we're not sure what the heck it is.

There was blood all over the elevator floor.

I had never seen anything like that before.

Within 24 hours, the investigation heats up, exposing a labyrinth of possible suspects.

They had break-ins where they stole computer and equipment.

He opened his trunk, pulled back the carpet, and there was four $100 bills.

She was the instigator on all those threats.

She made them all up.

It was just unbelievable.

When the truth is revealed, it will expose a twisted and deadly obsession.

She ended up saying that we'd had sex and had an ongoing affair.

It's just something that you

would never think that another human being would do to somebody else.

It was crazy.

It's a very hateful crime.

June 7th, 1989, Kansas City, Missouri.

It's just after 10 p.m.

when a harrowing 911 call alerts police to a disturbance inside a downtown law office building.

The panic-stricken caller identifies herself as 33-year-old Linda Culbertson.

She said there'd been this break-in and she had been there hiding.

She was terrified.

Linda tells police that she's locked inside her third-floor office, and her boss, 39-year-old Donald Pierce, may also be somewhere in the building.

Ma'am, we have someone on the way.

Who out of the building?

Me, Mom, my boss, and a security guard.

Kansas City police officers Ramiro Treat and Eduardo Velasquez are among the first officers to arrive at the scene.

I could hear the woman screaming inside the building.

That's how loud she was.

And we're like, oh, this is for real.

We need to get in there and help this lady.

The front door's locked and I believe Sergeant Zimmerman kicks the door in and we take the stairwell up to the third floor of the building.

We didn't take the elevator because we don't want to be enclosed in it.

So we're going up the stairs.

My main concern was making sure that We don't come across this person with a gun.

We're all walking up to the third floor and at that point you could literally smell the gun smoke that was still in the air.

What crossed my mind was that something had just happened.

As we get up to the third floor we keep hearing this sound and we're not sure what the heck it is.

It was like oh wow this is really eerie.

And we look and there's a reef case that's keeping the elevator door from closing.

That's all we could see at that point.

As police move closer, they make a startling discovery.

I look into the elevator, and this man looked like a wax figure.

A hole in his head was so big, and guts were everywhere.

I mean, brain fragment.

It was crazy.

Though the discovery is shocking, officers still have work to do.

We don't know if the suspect is still on the scene.

We have a female that's screaming and not complying to come out to us.

I remember her screaming.

I can't.

I just couldn't see her, but she is hysterical.

She's just screaming.

I could hear this woman screaming with the dispatcher.

I asked the dispatcher, does she have a gun with her?

And the dispatcher said yes.

Officers work carefully to calmly lure the woman out of hiding.

It was a good three minutes before she came out of the door.

She put the shotgun down.

She was scared and she grabbed onto me really, really tight.

And it freaked me out, too, because I had to push her off me because we still didn't know where this killer was.

So they took her downstairs.

We were watching the emergency exits, make sure that these killers weren't going to come around and start shooting again.

As they make their escape, Linda reveals the identity of the man officers have just found in the elevator.

The victim was Donald Pierce.

It was his business, Pierce and Associates.

Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Donald Victor Pierce Jr.

was always center stage.

Don was athletic.

He worked towards doing those things and gave his best.

After college, Don pursued a career in the Army Reserves.

He had his head on straight.

By 1979, Donald was ready to settle down and married the love of his life, Kathy Evans.

She was an executive for Sprint.

She was just very sweet and very pretty and such a nice person.

While Kathy had her own successful career, Don went back to school and began making a name for himself as an attorney.

He did the usual attorney stuff, contracts, divorce work.

He did well enough.

I mean, his wife had a nice car.

He had a nice car.

He was a good boss.

He never treated me bad.

He was always nice to me, but he was a workaholic, put in a lot of hours.

By 1984, Donald was looking for someone to help him manage his bustling law practice.

And 28-year-old Linda Culbertson certainly fit the bill.

Small-town girl Linda Crawford dreamt of moving to the big city and forging a career in the business world.

She was involved in activities at school.

She wanted to do it all.

Linda was very friendly, kind of reminded me a little bit of a country girl because she just, she had a slight accent.

But in 1974, at the young age of 18, Linda's ambitious plans were put on hold when she learned that she was pregnant with her boyfriend's baby.

By 1984, at the age of 28, Linda found herself twice divorced and raising three young children.

She was a single mom trying to work and make a living.

It was then that she landed a job with Pearson Associates.

Linda and I began to work in the office.

We talked about our children from the very beginning, and working at night with her was more like

we were just hanging out.

Linda impressed Donald with her hard work ethic and quickly rose through the ranks of the law firm.

She had started out as a legal secretary and ended up being the office manager for Pearson Associates.

She was in charge of everything.

Anything that was to be done, she did it.

She was very pleasant to work with.

I had no qualms about working with her.

She was always the first one in the office in the morning and the last one to leave the office at night if she left the office.

She even had a pull-out bed there.

I'd come to work, I'd say, you haven't got your makeup on.

And this is what you wore to work yesterday.

And she says, well, I slept here at the office.

I never knew how much she got paid, but I guess she earned it.

For her boss, linda was worth every penny her ability to successfully manage the daily affairs of the office provided donald the luxury of spending more time with his loving wife kathy

they seemed to have a happy life him and her were happy in in their marriage they were always traveling and things like that i don't know really how but something went wrong

The successful careers of Don and his loyal secretary Linda come crashing down on June 7th, 1989, when Donald is gunned down inside his office building.

Just something that's kind of burned in your memory is that he was shot in the face.

His whole base was kind of flat up against the wall, like there was no bone structure.

It was surreal.

It's just something that you...

would never think that another human being would do something to somebody else.

else.

While Linda is escorted from the building, Officer Ramiro Treat works to secure the rest of the office.

We don't know if the suspect has left the scene or he's still in the building.

I'm thinking to myself that we're in a small confined area.

We really have no place for cover.

Making contact with Officer Treat and Officer Zimmerman.

I was told to run back downstairs and go back outside to the alley to keep watch on the alley to see if anybody was going to run out the back.

So I hurried up and I ran back down and I kept the alley guarded.

And all that time, that's when they found the security guard.

Coming up, a harrowing account is revealed.

He said somebody had hit him on the back of the head and knocked him out and tied him up.

And a string of crimes suggests a possible motive.

They were constantly getting threats all the time.

His office had been vandalized with spray paint.

There was a plan to kill him.

By June of 1989, 39-year-old prominent attorney Donald Pierce was in the prime of his life.

He was an attorney, a well-known attorney.

He had a good reputation.

But on June 7th, 1989, Kansas City police officers discovered Donald's prosperous career had come to a tragic end when they find his lifeless body shot to death in the elevator of his own office building.

I remember this call

like I went on it yesterday, looking at the victim in the elevator.

Though Donald's office manager, Linda Culbertson, has been found shaken but safe, first responders still need to secure the building.

The Calvary called out, I mean, it's not just one or two guys.

They had the SWAT team or TAC team, as well as patrol officers.

They had to search the whole building.

It's not long before they make a discovery.

I believe it may have been some canine officers found the security guard that was bound and tied up on the sixth floor.

The man identifies himself as 21-year-old Evison Jacobs.

He was just tied up.

He was conveying to the cops that he was knocked out.

He doesn't know what happened.

He had an abrasion and a bump on the back of his head.

They looked at him, checked him out.

He was treated and released.

With no sign of the shooter, detectives are called in to begin processing the scene.

They're focused on the victim in the elevator.

He had sustained three shotgun wounds, one to his left knee, one to his right shoulder, and right eye.

It was just unbelievable.

The crime scene, I had never seen anything like that before.

There was blood all over the

elevator floor, and there was some blood and bone matter that

was scattered a little bit in the lobby.

Inside the elevator, police find their first significant clue.

And there was a shotgun shell casing that was next to the briefcase

that was stopping the elevator door from closing.

And I remember Linda had a shotgun in her hand.

And it also crossed my mind that maybe that could have possibly been the murder weapon.

With the shell casing, police can now determine if Linda's shotgun played a role in the murder.

There were still live rounds in that shotgun, and officers could tell that that shotgun had not recently been fired.

It didn't smell like it had been fired.

It was determined that that was not the weapon that was used to kill Donald Pierce.

As for a motive, one theory is quickly dismissed.

It wasn't a robbery just for the mere fact that all his property was left on him.

He still had his wallet, his briefcase was still there, his car keys were still with him.

It looked more like a hit.

Police are anxious to search Donald Pierce's office for any evidence that may lead to their shooter.

However, Because the shooting occurred outside the office, they are temporarily forbidden to enter.

You can't get in there unless you get a warrant.

The only person that can give us that is the rightful owner, the rightful VC, the rightful renter, and he's dead.

We don't know what we're dealing with.

We don't know who the players are necessarily.

We're always better off if we get a search warrant.

Investigators work quickly to get in contact with Donald's wife, Kathy.

Usually when a spouse dies, the very first person that you suspect is the closest family member.

Something like 90 plus percent of victims that are killed are killed by a family member or a friend.

But when police inform Kathy of her husband's death, her reaction seems genuine.

It had an impact because she was heartbroken.

Kathy was.

She was heartbroken.

They had a good relationship.

She acknowledged that they just had a vacation not long before.

No financial issues.

He was faithful.

He was trustworthy.

He was conscientious.

He treated her well.

Judging by her shock and grief, detectives are confident Kathy isn't their suspect.

Mrs.

Pierce signed a consent to search to recover more items.

and process more of the crime scene.

And I don't have any reason to doubt her.

She was very cooperative, and she was helpful.

While CSI began processing Donald's office, detectives head to the station to question the 911 caller, Linda Culbertson.

She wasn't completely calm, but she was a little elevated,

nervous.

According to Linda, everything was fine as Donald left the office to go home, but within moments, she knew something was very wrong.

She says he leaves and I lock the door behind him and I hear some voices out there and then I hear gunshots.

She said that it scared me and

she ran and got this shotgun that she has and she hid behind a desk and she called the police department.

Detective Zinn asks Linda why she had a shotgun in her office in the first place.

She explains that, well, we had break-ins where they stole computer equipment and whatnot.

Linda claims she had the misfortune of being inside the office during one of those break-ins.

She had said, oh, someone came in and did this, and she was hiding in the closet and terrified, and she hid in the closet all night.

Linda says that wasn't the only distressing incident that had plagued the law office in recent months.

One time his office had been vandalized with spray paint.

And on a separate occasion Linda says someone even defaced personal property belonging to Donald's wife Kathy.

She had a snazzy little sports car that was vandalized and no one had an idea who it was.

They had hired security in the building just due to the fact that there were some incidents where there were some burglaries in that building.

I said, well, where'd you get the shotgun?

Well, Don took me over to this place over in Kansas where we could buy a shotgun.

I asked her how much training or whatnot she'd do with a shotgun.

She said, well, we'd go over there a couple, two or three times until I felt comfortable.

And I said, have you ever had to pull it on anybody or use it?

No, no, no, none of that.

When asked who may be behind the killing and these other incidents, Linda acknowledges that Donald had received some threats in the past.

Being a lawyer, there were people that were mad at him and that they were constantly getting threats all the time.

If the client doesn't get what he anticipates he's going to get from the judge, that may be an occasion where the client may come after the lawyer.

According to Linda, one of the last clients Donald saw was a woman named Brenda, and her soon-to-be ex-husband seemed particularly upset.

Linda Colbertson had said that his client's estranged husband was threatening them.

That really sparked me.

It could actually lead to something I'm thinking now.

Let's follow this path.

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After speaking to office manager Linda Colbertson, detectives in Kansas City now believe her boss, attorney Donald Pierce, may have been gunned down by a client's disgruntled spouse.

Colbertson told us about this estranged husband threatened

the employees and Donald Pierce.

She claimed, he said, you will never take me to court again.

Police work quickly to track down Donald's client, Brenda.

The woman client was taken aback.

because she said her husband wouldn't do that.

According to Brenda, her husband doesn't even live in Kansas City anymore.

She knew where her husband was at, and his behavior and demeanor were contrary to what was implicated.

The guy hadn't done anything, hadn't made any threats.

Could a shaken Linda have named the wrong client, or was there something more than a mistaken identity?

Before detectives can answer that question, they receive news of a curious discovery in Linda's office.

She had a cot stretched out in her clothes and stuff like that in the office.

We also found a rather large dildo in her closet and some other sexually related paraphernalia.

That isn't the only stunning piece of evidence recovered by detectives.

Wrapped up in some type of cloth and stashed back up in the top shelf of her office, we found another shotgun.

The new discovery immediately prompts some important questions.

Why did Linda have so many guns in the office?

If you're a detective, you know, you're scratching your head and say, wait a minute, this is supposed to be a victim.

Something ain't right here.

As police examine this second shotgun, they make a startling connection.

They took the shells out and made that unique discovery.

Hey, these are the same color and gauge shotgun shells that's in the hallway next to the victim's body.

With Linda now looking more and more like a suspect, police at the crime scene send the gun to be tested for fingerprints and make a call back to the station.

We let the detectives that were talking to Linda Let them know that, hey, you know, hold the phone.

We got something else.

It It fell into place real quick.

That puts her in the suspect category.

So I go back in and I keep going through her story and whatnot.

And then I continue playing the sympathetic guy.

Detective Zinn zeroes in on one particular detail of Linda's initial story.

I said, well, were you worried that that guy could come in through any other doors and get you and whatnot, that you'd be a potential witness?

And she says, no, no, it was all locked up.

Victor got her to acknowledge that, yes, she was the only one there.

No one came in and pointed a gun at her and said, here, hide this shotgun in the back of your closet.

When Detective Zinn confronts Linda about the weapon found in her office, her demeanor suddenly changes.

Now she's being more guarded in her answers.

She also says, well, I don't know how it could have got in there.

I said, well, they found it in there, and it had to get in there some way.

Then Linda drops a bombshell accusation.

As Victor talked to Linda, she gave multiple stories.

She said that Donald Pierce repeatedly sexually assaulted her in the office.

She ended up saying he was rather demanding.

We'd had sex and had an ongoing affair.

Linda's salacious allegations certainly add a new wrinkle to the investigation, but it still doesn't explain how the shotgun ended up in her office.

That's when Linda offers up a new lead.

She brought up the fact that the victim in this case was very disparaging of the security guards and interjected

relative to he made racial disparaging comments about them.

Linda seems to imply that the relationship between Donald and the guards may even have something to do with Donald's death.

Her main focus seemed to be on the security guard we found at the scene that was tied up.

She said there was some conflict between the two of them.

I wasn't totally discounting that because, you know, that could be a possibility too, but that little voice inside my head gave you the idea that she was trying to spread the blame.

For police, the only way to confirm linda's story is to bring 21 year old security guard evison jacobs in for questioning he'd been fingerprinted and two detectives have him recite the sequence of events and then they have him repeat them he couldn't keep his facts accurate when novices are involved in criminal activity It's pretty hard for them to put on a good act that convinces the detectives, the the police, that

something happened that they know didn't.

It was pretty obvious that he wasn't giving a full story.

Once detectives feel like they're on to something, they keep pressing.

He's giving this song a dance and we're having a hard time buying this.

And they confronted him with that.

He didn't last very long.

He couldn't handle the pressure.

And Jacobs confessed pretty quickly.

Evison Jacobs tells detectives that he and a friend named Quincy Brown staged the attack.

He got his buddy, Quincy Brown, to be the bad guy, be the shooter, and making it look like it was a robbery.

He was tied up and then hit on the back of the head.

And Quincy then assaulted Mr.

Pierce down on the third floor.

They were gonna say that somebody came in the building and knocked him out and he didn't know what was going on.

Then Everson would just, you know, get get medical treatment and be back to work in a couple days.

When detectives ask Everson how long he had been planning the attack, he drops a bombshell.

He'd been hired by Linda to commit the crime.

She came to him with this offer, you know, that she wanted Dierce done away with.

And, you know, she could give him money and a job and everything would be great.

I think that by them having so many conversations together that they got closer and closer and she was able to manipulate him into doing what she wanted him to do.

She was also going to get him sports cars.

So Evanson was to coordinate with his buddy Quincy Brown.

He used to always tell me, he says, I'm going to get a Corvette.

I'm going to get a Corvette.

I guess that was an easier way to get it,

he thought.

Evison tells police that he was paid $600 for the job.

He said, I actually have some of the money that I'm supposed to give the other guy.

It's in my car.

And they said, well, where's your car at?

He said, it's parked right in front of police headquarters.

So they went down to his vehicle.

I went down there with the guy.

He opened his trunk.

and pulled back the carpet and there was, I think it was four $100 bills.

I was like, wow, they're figuring, you know, putting these pieces together and I was shocked.

Coming up, twisted details emerge.

He thought she was going to save him, and instead she killed him.

And a picture of a cold and calculated mastermind comes into focus.

She wanted him to do it.

She was rubbing her hands together like Lady Macbeth.

She had no remorse what she did.

It was all fun and games to her.

She did show me the silhouette of her target from her gun range and hindsight thinking back, all that fits.

It's been less than 24 hours since attorney Donald Pierce was gunned down outside his office.

Now, 21-year-old security guard Evison Jacobs tells investigators that Linda Culbertson paid him to carry out the shooting.

Originally, it was a security guard that was propositioned with the murder for hire, and that security guard ended up hiring somebody else to do the shooting.

Jacobs just knew that he could manipulate this kid to do this, and so he did it.

With both Culbertson and Jacobs currently in custody, police begin a desperate search to locate the alleged shooter, Quincy Brown.

We spotted him out close to his house,

did a pedestrian check, and brought him down.

At the station, Quincy quickly confirms much of Evison Jacobs' story, with one game-changing exception.

When they got Quincy, they got him to give it up pretty quickly.

That's when he said, I didn't shoot him three times.

I just shot him twice.

According to Quincy, after tying up Evison Jacobs to make it look like a robbery, he proceeded to the third floor where he waited for Donald Pierce to leave his office.

Probably the last seconds of Mr.

Pierce's life was when he exited his office.

The killer was standing opposite the hallway from where he came out of his office and shot him in the shoulder first

and then in the knee.

He was crawling to the elevator after that and then tears is yelling to linda help me linda help me linda i think he thought linda was gonna save him instead quincy says linda emerged from the office and yelled for him to finish the job linda's saying shoot him again he's still moving

Quincy says as Donald pled for his life, he wavered in delivering the final blow.

She tries to get him to give him a coupe de grace,

and he won't do it.

And that's when the suspect gave the shotgun to Linda.

Linda goes in there, and she really didn't have any choice.

She had to finish what she had started.

He shot, but he's not dead.

So she took the shotgun.

and finished the job.

Quincy said she shot the last shot into his head.

After the shooting, Quincy bailed out the back.

Linda went back into the office, wrapped the shotgun up, and hid it in the law library.

I don't think Quincy wanted to have anything to do with it, but he was such a loyal friend to Everson that he went and did, you know, what he asked.

When detectives confront Linda with Quincy's version of events, she immediately shuts down.

She actually never admitted to committing the crime or being involved in it in any way, shape, or form.

Even without a confession, detectives feel they have enough proof to hold Linda, Evison Jacobs, and Quincy Brown for their involvement in the crime.

One of the things that makes a good homicide detective is we're skeptical of everything that everybody tells us.

We knew that.

There's something rotten here.

There's something funny going on.

With Quincy and Evison stories in hand, police continue to search Linda's desk for evidence that backs up their case.

That's when they find a receipt for shotgun shells and shooting lessons from a shooting range called the Bullet Hole.

I just know that she did go to the shooting range and practice with the guns that she owned.

She did show me the silhouette her target from her gun range and hindsight thinking back.

All that fits, I just didn't have those other pieces to the puzzle.

As the investigation continues, Linda's coworkers and friends begin to paint a disturbing picture of a suspect filled with rage and vindictiveness.

We were told Linda had gone down to Mr.

Pierce's vehicle, and I believe Linda had poured brake fluid on the vehicle.

Brake fluid destroys your paint job.

You know, the paint was all messed up on the car.

For a long time, no one had an idea who it was.

Now, after Linda Colbertson was in custody, suspicion fell on her.

Police also take a second look at the previous office break-ins that Linda had reported.

Some of the things stolen in these burglaries were later found hidden after the murder

in the office, you know.

I think that Linda was saving them.

Pierce was going off to the Virgin Islands on vacation.

And Linda had said, oh, someone came in and did this.

You know, some things were stolen, a bunch of office equipment and TV, and supposedly her pearls and her fancy watch and so forth.

That supposedly brought Pierce back from his vacation to check on Linda to make sure she was all right.

So she had accomplished what she wanted, was to break up their vacation.

As for the theory Linda floated of an unhappy client killing Donald, that appears to be another lie.

Linda Colbertson was the instigator on all those threats.

She made them all up.

As detectives speak to more and more employees, they begin to paint a picture of a woman unhinged.

It seems Linda had recently dated a maintenance man in the building, and it hadn't gone well.

She was constantly clinging to him and, you know, calling him up in the middle of the night, wanting to come over.

He was trying to get away from her.

His exact words were:

she was half crazy and

was having trouble.

He didn't want to have anything to do with her.

He didn't want any involvement and asked to be transferred.

But none of this seems to explain why Linda had become fixated on her boss, Donald Pierce.

Why would you do that to somebody?

What on earth would make you be so possessed with that man?

Coming up, a fatal attraction emerges.

Everything in her mind was totally different than what reality was.

She seemed like she was a scorn woman and she wasn't going to let him go.

And a new discovery seals the case as prosecutors head into trial.

Prints were recovered from the shotgun.

Detectives investigating the murder of attorney Donald Pierce believe his office manager, Linda Culbertson, is responsible for orchestrating his murder.

I said, she's in this up to her ears.

And there's no doubt in my mind she's somehow involved in shooting this guy.

Investigators are now relying on the evidence found in Linda's workspace and the word of those who knew Donald best in order to solve his murder and combat the accusations Linda has lobbied against him.

Almost everything that was implied by the relationship between Donald and Linda Colbertson was all one-sided.

She implied that Edson heard racial slurs made by Donald Pierce.

Any of the other employees, any of the other people that we talked to said, well, that's not true.

And Donald Pierce was not that kind of a guy.

He didn't make those kind of statements to anybody, ever.

Wasn't true.

The police investigation also brings into question Linda's claims of Donald's abuse.

Talking to her, he was mentally, physically, and sexually abusive towards her.

There wasn't anybody else, any of the other employees,

any of the other people that we talked to that had any reason to suspect any of that was going on.

But police are able to confirm one important piece of information.

The relationship between Linda and Donald was not always harmonious.

She's saying, I hate that man.

She tell me she just hates him.

She didn't say why.

Evans and Jacobs did recall that he heard shouting from the office a couple of times, but he had no idea what it involved.

While Donald's family insists he would never cheat on his wife or sexually assault Linda, police have to consider that the motive for the murder may have been a broken relationship between a boss and his employee.

When I saw him interact with her, I did not think that it was happening.

I just totally got a different vibe when I was there and I saw them communicate with each other.

While it's unclear whether a soured relationship is the motivation for the crime, co-workers suggest yet another reason why Linda may have been upset with her boss.

Linda supposedly was trying to start her own secretarial office company, and he had made statements to her that you're never going to leave this place.

She was trying to quit Don,

she said.

She was trying to quit him, and he wouldn't let her quit.

Is it possible that Linda took drastic measures to break free from Donald?

Maybe she reached the point of no return.

She felt trapped.

Unfortunately, you can't really say what the motive is.

You don't know if

it's the fact that she was just tired of being abused by him, if she was being abused.

It could be that he told her that he was not going to leave his wife if there was some question about doing that, but there was a plan to kill him.

Absolute motive and purpose is unknown.

Linda's fate is sealed when lab results from the shotgun used in Donald's murder finally come back.

Linda Colbertson's trends were recovered from the shotgun.

While police remain unsure of Linda's motivation, they're now confident of her involvement in the crime.

And in September of 1990, prosecutors begin their attempt to prove her guilt inside a Missouri courtroom.

She didn't go in front of a jury.

She opted for a bench trial.

That's when the lawyers agree to try just before a judge instead of a jury.

The defense will agree to that if they think it's in their best interest.

And in this case, they thought the best shot was with a judge.

Prosecutors begin laying out their case by depicting Linda as a manipulative woman obsessed with Donald Pierce.

It was a fatal attraction type scenario.

Her demeanor and her dealings with him fluctuated from one extreme to the other.

She respected him, idolized him, worshipped him, hated him, and in reality, for him, she was just his office manager and employee.

Period.

That's it, but not to her.

Linda's defense asserts their client was abused by Donald Pierce and that security guard Evison Jacobs and Quincy Brown were solely responsible for his death.

She was trying to either spread the blame apart or put it on more focused on them so she could walk away from this.

After resting their case, Linda and her defense team wait patiently for the verdict.

They don't have to wait long.

He didn't have to think about it.

He didn't have to consider it for several days.

He just found her guilty and sentenced her.

It was no surprise.

The evidence was all over her.

Linda Culbertson is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I thought she deserved it.

I think anytime you take a person's life,

you should pay.

Don should be remembered as a hard worker that he took the practice of law serious.

He took that risk and that leap of faith to have something for himself and to still give his clients a good quality of service.

And

he did those things.

It was crazy.

It was a very hateful crime.

If they would have given her the death penalty, that would have been way too easy.

She needs to think about it for the rest of her life.

For their role in the murder of Donald Pierce, both Evison Jacobs and Quincy Brown received life sentences in prison.

Linda Culbertson continues to serve her life sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correction Center.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our top.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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