Julene Simko

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They were a loving couple, living an idyllic country life.

They enjoyed working on their property, working on their house, their barn, their animals.

They knew everything about each other.

They were always together.

That is, until an unthinkable act of violence ripped their romance apart at the seams.

The caller stated that the shooter might still be in the house.

We were worried that whoever did it was still out there.

As the investigation heats up, a series of unexplained events sends police scrambling for answers.

When I hear unaccounted for time, my spidey senses tingle.

Had someone from their past marked this couple for murder?

He could definitely make an enemy.

Or was there a darker secret behind closed doors?

There were photographs of her.

She was nude and chained up.

This has been referred to by investigators as a master-slave agreement.

In the early morning hours of November 18, 2009, dispatchers in the sleepy town of Vermelian, Ohio are jolted to life by a frantic call.

The caller is 31-year-old Julene Simcoe.

The alleged victim is her husband, local businessman Jeremy Simcoe.

She's hysterical, she's crying, so the communication was quite difficult.

The operator instructs Julene on how to administer CPR to Jeremy.

That's when Julene reveals another terrifying detail.

Damn, it's the person that shot your husband still in the...

Police and EMTs are immediately dispatched to the scene.

As armed officers approach the Simcoe residence, they find the front door locked.

Unable to breach it, officers move to the rear of the home.

They observed that the door itself was open, and that's when they entered the house.

They clear the first floor.

The officers make their way through the upper floors of the residence.

The only light that they saw was light coming from the bottom of a doorway that was closed.

They're announcing themselves as they're approaching.

Mrs.

Simcoe then opens the door to the bedroom.

She was basically unclothed.

She had a, like, wrapped in a towel or blanket of some type, and she had a lot of blood on her.

Mr.

Simcoe is lying on the floor.

He is not clothed.

He has an obvious injury, and he's laying on his back.

Julene pleads with officers to help her husband.

Unfortunately, there's nothing they can do.

He was shot in the back of the head.

He had expired.

He was deceased.

There's two people in the house.

One person is dead.

This lady's hysterical.

You have a lot of things running through your mind.

It was just very, a very disorienting, very shocking situation for her to be in.

Born and raised in northern Ohio, Julene Nick seemed to enjoy a typical Midwestern upbringing.

Julian was honored society, in school.

She was in the more advanced classes.

She was smart.

She was a pleasant person to be around.

She was always nice.

If you were to meet her, you'd say, wow, she's a great person.

Seemed to be always happy.

On the outside, Julene's life seemed picture-perfect.

But that was not always the case.

As a child, Julene was a victim of a sexual assault that was perpetrated on her by her father.

Mr.

Nick spent time in prison over this incident.

Eventually, Julene's mother divorced her father and the two of them settled in Lorain County, Ohio.

Julene's mother married again, giving Julene a stepfather, a stepbrother, and a semblance of a steady, normal life.

She really...

talked about her stepdad as if he were her father.

Though her home life was more stable, Julene's childhood scars made her wary of getting too close to people, even her high school sweetheart, Jack Hyder Jr.

I would say she keeps stuff bottled up.

She never really talked to me about her biological father.

Shortly after graduating high school in 1997, Julene met one of her boyfriend Jack's childhood friends, 23-year-old Jeremy Simcoe.

Five years older than Julene, Jeremy also had attended the same high school years earlier, though Jeremy hadn't been an honor society type like Julene.

He was an aggressive person, he was a dominant person, and if you crossed him, there'd be a fight.

Jeremy loved the outdoors, hunting, nature.

Thankfully, after high school, Jeremy found an outlet that married his passion for the outdoors with his macho, hard-charging personality.

He was a tree trimmer, arborous.

A man's man.

He was a hard-working guy.

He was very good in the tree.

The work paid well, and pretty soon this one-time bad boy had turned a corner and even gotten engaged.

He sort of crawled out of where he came from.

But when Jeremy ran into shy 18-year-old Julene in the summer of 1997, the chemistry between them was undeniable.

It was a total surprise.

I would say she was more of a goody-two-shoes.

He was rowdy and odd.

Within days of meeting Julene, Jeremy broke off his engagement.

A week later, Julene's boyfriend, Jeremy's buddy Jack Hyder, was served a sobering dose of reality.

I went to her friend's house and I ended up finding her and Jeremy together.

Once that happened, we just never talked again.

Despite their rocky start, from that moment on, Julene and Jeremy were inseparable.

Julian and Jeremy made each other better.

He helped bring her out of her shell.

She was a very shy teenager, and he had a very angry temperament.

Julian helped him dial that back a little bit.

She talked how much she loved Jeremy.

I mean, there wasn't a story that didn't have Jeremy.

They appeared to be best friends.

A few months later, Jeremy started his own business, Simcoe Tree Service.

Julene was his first employee.

She was on the ground.

She fed the chipper all the time and just kept everybody working.

I thought she was a hardworking woman, for sure.

They worked together and played together.

They were a normal happy couple, always together.

It worked for them.

On September 4th, 1999, the couple tied the knot.

Soon after, the Simcoes saved up enough money to buy a farmhouse and barn on two acres in the quaint lakeside community of Vermilion.

The house was completely restored to like its original form, all redone in the original woodwork, very meticulously done.

They took good care of their property.

You could tell they cared a lot.

They had a parcel of woods behind them that they often used even though it wasn't theirs.

But they spent a lot of time back there hunting.

The property behind the Simcoe house eventually went on the market.

Unfortunately, the asking price on the 42-acre lot was more than Jeremy and Julene could afford.

So the couple started saving their pennies in hopes of buying the land.

They also began to focus their attention on starting a family.

They love kids, wanted kids.

They wanted to be parents so bad.

They tried for many years.

They were, you know, having some sort of fertility issues.

They routinely went to the clinic to figure out what was wrong.

I do know that she was pregnant at one point.

It was three months in and she suffered a miscarriage.

Then in 2009, the Simco's received some good news of a different sort.

Their 42-acre dream property was suddenly attainable.

They originally were trying to buy it years ago, but the owner wanted too much money for it.

And over the years, he, I think, kind of came down to a price that was affordable for them.

This property

was a dream of theirs.

However, before Jeremy and Julene could formally purchase the property, the unthinkable happened.

The call came in, somebody shot my husband.

They have to look for somebody that shot her husband.

Having cleared all three floors of the farmhouse, police believe the intruder has fled the scene.

They dispatch patrolmen to canvass the area and then escort Julene into the hallway, away from her husband's body.

I'm trying to find out what happened.

Can you tell me what happened, honey?

She's covered with blood.

She's hysterical.

So it kind of felt the best thing to do at the time was to get her to hospital.

At 7:48 a.m., Julene is transported to nearby Mercy Hospital to be treated for any possible injuries.

Meanwhile, news of the shooting begins to make its way through the tiny town of Vermilion.

For something like this to have happened there, I think it kind of rocked the little community.

We don't normally deal with homicides.

I believe our last homicide prior to this was around 1995.

With tensions rising and an active shooter presumably on the loose, everyone in Vermillion is on edge.

We were worried that whoever did it was still out there.

Coming up, Julene recounts her harrowing brush with death.

And investigators hope to get their first real glimpse at Jeremy's killer.

The security cameras were on the night of the murder, and they did capture what was surrounding the house at the time.

November 18th, 2009.

36-year-old Jeremy Simcoe has been shot dead in his home.

And his 31-year-old wife, Julene, is at the hospital in a state of shock.

Police in Vermillion, Ohio are scrambling to find Jeremy's killer before they possibly strike strike again.

This isn't like when you're watching a movie or you're watching a television show where somebody else is handling it.

Now it's on us to do the right thing and to look into the matter.

So it's definitely a bit overwhelming.

With patrol officers searching the area for the alleged shooter, detectives cordon off the Simcoe's house and begin surveying the property.

Jeremy Simcoe was a very security-conscious person.

They had a number of signs indicating that trespassers were not welcome.

There were several alarms set up throughout the house.

There were door alarms.

There was alarms on the outside of the garage.

There were window alarms.

Dogs were strategically located in four different places on the outside of the house.

If I was just a stranger walking down the street and I looked at the front of their house, those signs would indicate to me that my presence would not be welcome there.

As I walked around the house towards the back, I noticed a pair of black cotton gloves that were lying on the ground.

They were entered into evidence.

Inside the home, police find a massive gun safe underneath the stairs.

It's locked, but in the kitchen, they find a 357 Magnum revolver.

There's five live cartridges and one spent cartridge in the chamber.

It appears he has one gunshot wound, so it doesn't take a genius to figure out that very well might be the weapon that was used to shoot him.

However, the CSI team also finds three more bullet holes on the second floor.

In the master bedroom, police find another handgun, a 9mm Smith ⁇ Wesson.

Could this be the firearm that fired the other three bullets?

Before investigators can answer that question, they make another, more salacious discovery.

We located several marital aids.

There was a vaginal pump that would appear to be used in a sexual act.

In the sink adjacent to the room, there was a large black dildo that was actually just lying in the sink.

Investigators tag the sex toys along with the firearms and shell casings and bag them as evidence.

With Jeremy's body en route to the morgue, investigators reach out to doctors at Mercy Hospital.

who inform them that Julene is still shaken, but is well enough to give a statement.

The doctors determined that she did not suffer any injury.

So basically, my encounter with her was in the emergency room.

She's calmed down quite a bit at this point.

Julie, I'm still trying to figure out what happened.

Can you shed any light on what was going on for me?

I asked Mrs.

Simcoe what they had done the day prior to the homicide.

She indicated that they had done some things outdoors.

They had been canning pumpkins.

They just had a peaceful day.

And Jeremy then locked the dogs into their doghouse for the night and then came in, locked the the door, and then they went to bed.

You went to bed with Jeremy?

Okay.

Do you know what time you went to bed?

I don't know.

Okay.

Well,

maybe.

Julene says that Jeremy immediately fell asleep.

He was snoring and it was keeping her awake.

She talked about how she had gone upstairs.

She eventually fell asleep in the third floor.

So you fall asleep, and what wakes you up?

I heard a noise.

I thought my husband was shooting or something.

Okay.

Now what noise did you hear?

Boom.

It sounded like a gunshot to you.

She said it was very common for Jeremy to shoot coyotes out their window just because they did have the dogs in the yard.

She chalked it up to that and was going to go back to sleep, but I think decided to go downstairs and just double check.

You come back downstairs, you go into the bedroom, you see jeremy laying on the bed and you go over to check on him correct

okay as she's checking on him she feels something wet

she then turns on a light discovers him injured he has blood on him and he is not responsive to her

did you see anybody else never hurt somebody i'm sorry what i hurt my body okay and what happened then honey i didn't want to have that

she went on to say that jeremy had always told her if you ever hear something just shoot at the noise and it will make the person go away so she retrieved a nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol that's a Smith Wesson from the nightstand aims it at the hall fires two shots

Investigators then broach a sensitive topic with Julene.

There were several marital aides throughout the house.

Oak.

Did you guys have sexual relations?

Not much.

Okay.

Well, there was apparently

a dilbo in the sink.

How long has that been there?

A couple days.

Had there been any arguing?

No.

Okay.

No discussions, no disputes, anything at all?

When I asked Mrs.

Simcoe why somebody might do this, she did mention that there was money in the house.

Have you guys ever had anybody break into your house before?

Not the house.

The Simcoes had a problem with a couple separate incidents where individuals had entered their property and stole pieces of equipment from the barn.

Jeremy was extremely upset.

He really wanted to amp up their security around to make sure no one came into their barn, no one came into their house.

Julene's story dovetails with the evidence collected and helps explain the abundance of security in and around the Simcoe residence.

But who would want to shoot and kill Jeremy Simcoe and why?

That evening, Julene is released from the hospital and heads to her mother's house to spend the night.

Meanwhile, investigators pull the surveillance footage from the Simcoe's home security system.

They had a DVR-style recording system.

There were two cameras on the home.

The security cameras were on the night of the murder and they did capture, you know, what was surrounding the house at the time.

The difficulty is it wasn't all-encompassing.

There are blind spots.

So if somebody actually knew where the video was, in theory they could have approached from a different angle.

With the cameras offering no tangible evidence of the shooter, investigators expand the perimeter of their search.

It's this broader canvassing effort that unearths the next possible clue.

Where the murder took place, there was an abandoned school within a,

you know two-minute walk between the school and the house, and there's this car park there.

So I just took a picture of it.

One of the nighttime officers said, you know, he goes, I think I ran a plate of a very similar vehicle.

After we did an audit of the MDT, we realized that the vehicle that had been seen at night several days prior and the vehicle that I saw that Saturday morning were indeed the same vehicle.

Is it a mere coincidence that this same suspicious vehicle has been seen multiple times within walking distance of the crime scene?

Had someone been staking out the Simcoe's residence?

Maybe that person either didn't see something or it was possibly involved.

That was kind of a flag that went up.

Coming up, a potential suspect emerges, one who's hiding some pretty sordid secrets.

She was apparently in an extramarital affair.

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On November 21st, 2009, three days after 31-year-old Julene Simcoe reported that an unknown intruder had shot her 36-year-old husband, Jeremy, investigators in Vermilion, Ohio are working to track down the owner of a mysterious white SUV, a vehicle seen within blocks of the Simcoe's home both before and after Jeremy Simcoe's murder.

Got the license plate, so we're thinking, okay, maybe this has something to do with it.

So they run the the license plate.

The registration comes back to a local man.

Could he be responsible for Jeremy's death?

I went to the home of the registered owner, knocked on the door.

I explained exactly why I was there.

And the gentleman basically stated something to the effect, well, that explains some things.

Initially, I'm like, what?

And he said, well, my wife has some unaccounted for time.

So certainly when I hear unaccounted for time, my spidey senses tingled.

Could the man's wife have been parked there during the timeframe Jeremy was killed?

Is she somehow connected to Jeremy's murder?

His wife didn't happen to be home.

So I said, well, when your wife comes home, will you please ever give me a call?

So later in the day, I was called by his wife.

The vehicle happened to be right across from a homicide.

Basically, she said that, yes, I was the one that parked the vehicle there.

You know, I explained why we were looking into the vehicle being there.

Do you know about how many times you parked your vehicle back there?

It was quite a few.

Probably 10 times.

She said that she was involved in a relationship that she was trying to keep secret.

She was apparently in an extramarital affair.

She was parking there and then she was meeting the gentleman that she was having the affair with.

I mean, we were kind of sneaking around because my divorce hadn't gone through yet, and so we didn't want to be out in public a a whole lot.

Given the woman's admission, detectives consider the idea that the man she's involved with may very well be Jeremy Simcoe.

However, she claims it's not Jeremy she's sleeping with, but another local man.

Do you know if he knew the Simcoes by any chance?

I don't think so.

She was very upright and forthright with me.

Investigators call the woman's lover and confirm her story.

With no connection to Jeremy, the two of them are cleared of any wrongdoing.

It was just pure coincidence that it happened to be there.

Neither of them actually knew the Simcoes.

It seems the case has reached a dead end.

But the following morning, Vermelian police receive a call from Julene Simcoe, who'd just returned to her house for the first time since the murder.

She contacted us to report that the house had been broken into.

I went directly to the scene and I interviewed Julene briefly about what was going on.

The purpose of the return, if I recall, was they wanted to get a suit for Jeremy.

When they arrive at the home, they discover the very front of the house is kicked in or forcibly entered.

You know, like somebody is breaking into this house, somebody does want to get in here.

The safe had been kind of mutilated, the locking mechanism had been damaged, and it appeared like somebody tried to break into the safe.

There's a fire poker lying on top of the safe and the tip is broken off.

And the speculation was that this fire poker damaged the safe.

Though the thieves were apparently unable to break into the safe, Julene says that $2,000 is missing from the upstairs office.

Was this a random robber taking advantage of an empty house?

Or had Jeremy's killer returned to destroy any evidence linking them to the crime?

The surveillance system was taken.

We have no surveillance of the burglaries.

I photographed the scene and then processed the safe for latent prints to see if we could get any prints off of it.

No fingerprints were obtained.

Basically, whoever went over and damaged that house after we released the house back to the family, we have no idea who they are.

Investigators reach out to Jeremy's friends and co-workers.

Turns out, there's plenty of people in Northern Ohio who might have reason to go after Jeremy and his money.

Jeremy wasn't shy on how he felt.

I mean, he'd tell you, and that was him.

Jeremy had a lot of fights with contractors.

I don't think anyone could actually do anything to his level of satisfaction.

So some of them didn't get paid all the way.

When we interviewed people regarding Jeremy and his behavior, overwhelmingly we learned that Jeremy was quick to temper, that he was a very demanding boss.

Had a former contractor, or perhaps a disgruntled former employee, killed Jeremy in an effort to recoup some of the money he owed them.

We kind of checked out to see if people that worked for him, they had filed wage and hour complaints.

There was never any evidence that anybody murdered him over a business deal.

Who else could it be?

I mean, that would be it for me.

With every dead end, the case grows colder and colder.

Then, on the afternoon of November 25th, Julene throws an informal gathering for Jeremy's friends and family to celebrate his life.

One of the guests in attendance is Vermilion Police Officer Corey Spores.

Patrolman Spores in the past had done tree service work for the Simcoe, so he actually knew them.

Corey went to the wake, and while he was there,

he stated that Julene Simcoe was talking to some people and she mentioned to them, I'd like to tell you what really happened, but I can't.

It could mean anything.

She could be saying, you know, I want to tell you everything that happened, but I can't remember.

I want to tell you everything that happened, but I was in shock.

So there are other variations that it could have been.

I immediately thought that she was saying, I did it.

When investigators reach out to Julene for an explanation, it's her attorney that returns their call.

She'd retained counsel by this time, and we were not allowed to interview her.

The fact that Julene has now lawyered up does raise suspicions for police.

I'm assuming her attorney said, don't talk to the police.

I get that.

So we weren't able to follow up.

I couldn't get any more information from her.

Thankfully, by that time, the warrant to search the Simcoe's business records and personal finances has come through.

And after sorting through a mere fraction of the documents, detectives know one thing for certain: the Simcoes were in some pretty deep financial trouble.

There were some things that were not quite proper in the way they were conducting their finances.

We believe that they were actually using two sets of books, one that was reported to the IRS and one that they kept, which was probably more accurate.

They were behind in bills, house payments, credit card payments.

Most shocking of all was a letter from a loan officer officer at one local bank.

They were attempting to purchase a 42-acre piece of land that was behind their property, but one of the difficulties they had was they had a terrible credit rating.

When they ran their credit, the loan was denied.

The rejection for the loan came down the day before he was killed.

Could the rejection from the bank be connected to Jeremy's murder?

Coming up, the coroner's report sheds new light on the relationship between Jeremy and his killer.

Most intruders are not going to get that close to you when they're going to shoot you in the back of the head.

And investigators discover another dark secret about Jeremy and Julene's sex life.

The contract was actually a master-slave agreement.

It was really disturbing.

I think we're all just speechless.

Stunned for the most part.

At one point, we didn't want to hear it.

Detectives in Vermillion, Ohio are one week into their investigation of the homicide of Jeremy Simcoe, who was shot in the back of the head in his own home.

And they've now discovered that just one day before his murder, Jeremy and his wife Julene were denied the loan they needed to purchase their dream property.

I spoke spoke with the loan officer.

Their loan request to purchase is 42 acres of land has been denied.

For investigators, the timing of this bad news seems suspicious, but it's not a lot to go on.

So they look to the coroner's report for additional insights about the murder.

The coroner determined that Jeremy Simcoe died from a gunshot wound.

The end of the barrel of the gun was approximately two to three inches from the back of his head.

Whoever shot him had to be within inches of him and basically almost either crawl in bed or lay in the bed most intruders are not going to get that close to you when they're going to shoot you in the back of the head but who else would be in bed with jeremy except julene we became suspicious of her everything that we learned just kept pointing back to her

When the fingerprint and DNA analysis comes back, it casts an even larger cloud of suspicion over Julene.

The 357 did have DNA on it, the Simcoe's DNA.

It did not have an unknown DNA, and it appeared to have been wiped.

There was really no evidence of an intruder being in there.

There was no strange DNA, no prints.

To make an arrest, you have to have something called probable cause.

But we didn't have it.

In the months that follow, detectives continue to analyze the evidence and search for other prospective leads.

It's a process that takes time and manpower, which, in the case of the Vermilion PD, are two things in relatively short supply.

The size of the agency was a problem when you have a small town, is you have this case and this case is going on, but every day there's more cases.

Even with suspicions rising around Julene Simcoe, years pass without any new breaks in the case.

Then, investigators receive a call from two of Jeremy's friends, Al Hopp and Jean-Marie Becker.

According to Jean-Marie and Al, after Jeremy died, Julene was quick to get rid of everything that reminded her of Jeremy, including the farmhouse.

She did not go back into the house.

They sold it.

She had gone back to school.

She was working in the medical field.

I think that Julene was able to just branch out after the murder.

I knew she was dating some boy.

The whole thing is, you know, it's your husband.

You love him so much.

Want to know who did that man?

But she never did.

Her opinion was Julene didn't seem to be upset about the homicide.

She wasn't worried about her husband's murder being found.

She never expressed any anger that somebody had murdered her husband.

Al and Jean Marie also tell police that before the murder, there was always something a little off about the way Jeremy and Julene interacted with each other.

She didn't really talk much and would look to Jeremy whenever she would answer.

Jeremy was a leader.

He was like an alpha male type, dominant personality.

Julene was submissive.

She was pretty much doing what she was told to do.

Is it possible Julene lived in fear of her domineering husband and believed killing him was her only way out?

Investigators decide to revisit the mountains of personal documents seized from the Simcoe residence at the time of the crime.

We began to uncover photo albums which would depict Mrs.

Simcoe in forms of bondage.

There were photographs of her nude and chained up somewhere in their basement with a golf ball in her mouth acting as a ball gag.

There was several pornographic videos.

Not all of the footage in the Simcoe's home videos looks consensual.

Mrs.

Simcoe appears to be crying in some photos.

She appears to be in pain.

It's hard to decide if she was genuinely enjoying the situation.

Investigators become even more concerned when they uncover a 14-page document that appears to be a handwritten marriage contract between Julene and Jeremy.

The marital contract was actually a master-slave agreement.

And in it, it depicted Mr.

Simcoe would be her father.

and Mrs.

Simcoe would be his daughter.

And they were very specific in their rituals and how each was to behave.

Knowing that she had been a victim when she was a child, we were concerned that maybe she was being forced to do things that she didn't want to do.

There's good suspicion that he was abusing her because of all of the pictures we discovered and this contract.

Was Julene again being victimized as she had been as a child?

The evidence becomes even more compelling when investigators conduct a forensic analysis of the Simcoe's home computer.

When we searched the computer, we discovered a site that had been visited the day before the homicide.

There was evidence on their computer search history that indicated that somebody had looked up her father's obituary the night before Jeremy was killed.

The police found that to be very strange.

We thought that maybe that might have stirred up a memory of a very unpleasant time in her life.

Their sexual activity might have caused her to snap and do something.

Coming up, Julene comes clean about the salacious material found in the Simcoe farmhouse.

I was willing to participate in everything that went on in the bedroom.

And a new witness gives detectives a crucial clue.

The nurse was kind of startled and said, What did you say?

Detectives in Vermillion, Ohio, have uncovered racy new evidence in Jeremy Simcoe's murder investigation.

A secret contract between Jeremy and his wife, Julene, that sheds new light on the case.

Could best describe it as a

dominating, submissive contract between two parties

on November 14th, 2013, nearly four years after Jeremy's death, Vermilion investigators contact Julene's lawyer and request another interview.

Surprisingly, Julene agrees.

At the Vermilion police station, investigators confront Julene with the photos and the master-slave marriage contract.

I was a willing participant in everything that went on in the bedroom.

All right.

There was none of that that you were ever forced to do?

No.

She never indicated she was being, you know, sexually abused or in an abusive relationship.

She stated it was normal.

Or your information.

Just so you know, it wasn't like in a daily

relationship that was like this.

This was just role-playing.

Julene also denies ever searching online for her father's obituary.

Investigators aren't convinced.

but they still don't have enough concrete evidence to justify charging Julene with murder.

The Vermilion Police Department felt comfortable that Mrs.

Simcoe is the individual who shot her husband, but they were concerned that there wasn't enough to convict her.

We have no admission from her.

Nobody ever said she told me he shot her.

We had the alleged burglaries to deal with.

There's no way to completely refute that because we weren't there.

So we couldn't say positively she is our person.

In 2014, as the investigation enters its eighth year, detectives finally get the break they've been waiting for.

Jeremy's friend, Al Hopp, tells them that he may have found someone with new information about Jolene.

I have a friend who has a wife that works at the hospital.

She was one of the initial first responders to Jolene when she went to the hospital.

Investigators pay the nurse a visit on November 18th, 2014.

She says she remembers her interaction with Julene like it was yesterday.

The nurse had no idea why Mrs.

Simpko was brought in.

All she could see was a little blood on her.

So she says, something to the effect of, so what's going on?

The nurse said, I thought I heard the female say, I just shot my husband.

The nurse was kind of startled and said, what did you say?

Because she wasn't expecting that.

And that Mrs.

Simcoe then said, oh, somebody shot my husband.

At the time, the nurse chalked it up to Julene's state of shock.

But as the details of the case became public, she came to believe Julene had, in fact, killed her husband.

It was kind of like the puzzle.

It would get little tiny pieces and we fell into the hole.

On December 19th, 2014, Julene Simcoe is indicted for aggravated murder, felonious assault, and tampering with evidence.

She turns herself in without a fight.

I was extremely relieved.

It was a lot of work.

The ability to have that resolution to this type of a case was just fantastic.

However, the case against Julene remains almost entirely circumstantial, and the battle for her conviction is far from over.

If you're the defense, you'd want to have some sort of counterattack to what the prosecution is providing.

As the trial date approaches, Julene and her defense team worry that finding an impartial jury in this rural pocket of northern Ohio will be impossible.

So they make a bold move and request what's called a bench trial.

In a jury trial, 12 jurors have to unanimously agree to either guilty or not guilty.

In the bench trial, I'm the only one who makes a decision.

You have a much better chance of being found innocent with 12 different minds, 12 different backgrounds.

I think it kind of took everybody by surprise that that was what she decided on.

On Tuesday, September 12th, 2017, Julene's bench trial begins.

Prosecutors tell Judge Anthony Bedleski what they believe prompted Julene to murder her husband.

The prosecution believed that because of the stress of not getting the property and the very stressful BDSM relationship that the couple were in and that she had been abused as a child.

She just snapped and lost it.

Although they have plenty of circumstantial evidence to support their theory, prosecutors argue that the real evidence is what investigators didn't find.

No evidence of an intruder being in there.

There was no strange DNA, no prints.

If there was a DNA profile obtained, it was always either Julene Simkos, Jeremy Simkos, or a combination of both.

Julene's defense attorneys counter that the prosecution's case is built entirely on speculation.

The defense argument was poor investigation by the police department.

Because of that, the court can't come to a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that she committed the murder.

With Julene choosing not to take the stand, On September 22nd, 2017, her defense team rests its case.

Now it's up to Judge Betleski to decide Julene's fate.

This is probably the most stressful case that I had to deal with personally from the standpoint of having to make the decision myself.

On October 20th, 2017, Judge Betleski hands down his verdict.

My decision is...

She was guilty.

I think that the issue came down to there wasn't evidence of somebody else.

And there was also, I think, sufficient evidence that if there had been somebody else, there would have been sufficient warning to Mr.

Simcoe.

Judge Betleski sentences Julene to 28 years behind bars.

Upon hearing the verdict, Julene's pent-up emotions finally come pouring out.

She obviously had a meltdown.

Understandably, you're going to jail for most of the rest of your life, so it's pretty traumatic.

Even with Julene behind bars, there are mixed feelings about the verdict.

I don't get any satisfaction out of her being in jail after Jeremy's murder.

It's sad because we were friends.

It's sad to think about one of your friends spending the rest of their life in jail.

I mean, if she did it, that's, I guess, the price you have to pay.

But for me personally, I miss both of them.

Jeremy wasn't the nicest, but you know what?

He was great to me.

He was great to Al.

and it's not your place to decide, hey, that person should go.

Julene appealed her case in 2021, but it was rejected.

She will be eligible for parole in 2045.

Julene was contacted by production to participate in this show, but she declined.

It's your man, Nick Cannon, I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night.

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