Letti Strait

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When a devoted father is found murdered in his home, dark secrets creep out of the shadows. He was lying face down with the blanket on top of him.
He had no defensive wounds.

He had no idea somebody was behind him. The trail of clues leads detectives through a maze of possibilities.

Because of his last name, some people speculated that this might have something to do with organized crime. What investigators ultimately uncover is a cold-blooded plot that no one saw coming.

It was dead quiet in the house, and he heard we have to kill him.

The crisis negotiators and the SWAT teams around at the house, she seemed to be a person who thought that if she talked enough, she could talk herself out of any situation.

This thing's going to explode like a bomb. She's going to come down on this.

Okay, well, here, I can tell you, I don't have any care.

September 1st, 2007, Riverside, Missouri.

Around 8 p.m. in this quiet suburb just outside of Kansas City, Charlie Joe Camisano and his friend Josh stopped by the home of 52-year-old Charlie Camisano.

The relatives went looking for Charlie because he hadn't been answering his phone calls and he was supposed to attend a kids sporting event that day, which he did not.

They knew their uncle had been out the night previous at a bar he liked to frequent called the Caddyshack. So they thought their uncle might have had a little too much to drink.

Charlie Joe bangs on the door but gets no response. The house was all locked up, they said.
His Jeep wasn't there.

And Charles climbed in through the window to go in and check on his uncle. He went into the living room area, and that's where he was met with what he didn't really want to see.

He saw a blanket with what appeared to be a body underneath it.

He quickly left the house, motioned for his friend, Josh, to come in and said, hey, could you see who this is? Josh came in and then looked under the blanket and his worst suspicions were revealed.

It was his uncle dead under a blanket.

At the time, of course, we didn't know what had happened to Charlie.

In July 1955, Charlie Camisano was born in Kansas City, Missouri. The Camasano family was well known in Kansas City, but not always for the right reasons.

During the 1970s and in the 1980s, there was a large mob presence in Kansas City. The leader was a man named Nick Zavella, but a man named Willie Camisano was his right-hand man.

Charlie's uncle was Willie Camisano. His nickname was Willie the Rat, and Willie, I had dealt with when I was with Kansas City as a detective.

Despite his brother's mob ties, Charlie's father, Joseph, never embraced the family's criminal connections and instead managed a number of restaurants across the Kansas City area.

Like his father, Charlie had no interest in the mob. Charlie came from a big family, had a typical boyhood.
He teased his sisters a lot. He played sports, family members and friends.

Everybody said Charlie was a great guy, easy to get along with, and a likable guy.

Charlie dreamed of following in his father's footsteps in the restaurant business. But his dreams were put on hold in 1971 when his girlfriend Sally Brand found out she was pregnant.

They're high school sweethearts and he

tried to do the right thing. He married her.
Charlie and Sally's son was born in August 1972 and a daughter soon followed.

To support his growing family, Charlie worked in his father's restaurants and took odd jobs.

He really cared about his kids and he really worked hard at taking care of them and providing for them. He was a good parent to all of his kids.

As the years went on, Charlie and Sally grew apart.

They were married for a few years, didn't work out, but they remained friends.

Not long after his divorce was finalized, Charlie was working in one of his father's restaurants when he met a young waitress named Letty K. Rivera.

She was tough and she was good looking and she was funny and she just, you know, didn't take any flat from anybody.

Born in 1960 in Nebraska, Letty grew up in a religious family, but it was soon clear that Letty wasn't the church-going type. Letty was a very wild child.

Her parents sent her to this Christian reform school in Texas. I think that probably made the situation worse.
Letty ran away.

At 17 years old, Letty started moving around the Midwest. She then married and gave birth to a daughter.

When the young marriage suddenly fell apart, she ended up settling in Kansas City, where she got a job in the Kamisano restaurant.

Charlie's operating this restaurant in Parkville, and Charlie met Letty.

The two hit it off right away and quickly started a relationship. Charlie and Letty were not married, but they lived together for a long time.

After more than six years together, Letty gave birth to their first son in October of 1986. Over the next decade, four more children followed.
Letty was a good mother.

She was always, you know, she tried to tend to their needs, make sure they were dressed nice and they had good meals and had a lot of time with their friends.

Charlie was a pretty loving family man. I mean, he loved his kids, he would do everything, you know, for his kids.

But by the time their fifth child was born in 1996, their relationship was beginning to deteriorate. For the sake of the children, Charlie and Letty did their best to make things work.

Charlie Camasano came from a very, you know, tight-knit Italian family. You know, he valued marriage.
He thought, you know, he needed to do the right thing

since they had kids together. After 19 years together, Letty and Charlie finally tied the knot in October 1999 in hopes that marriage would strengthen their bond.

But unfortunately, things got even worse. And in August of 2001, they ended the relationship.
There was a lot of dislike. that was going on back and forth between

Letty and Charlie, and they were divorced. This was a long, drawn-out divorce process.
There were motions to modify filed by both Letty and Charlie during this.

Eventually, Charlie left the restaurant world and started work at a local car dealership while Letty followed her passion and started painting houses.

We both had our own businesses and we were in like home remodeling. I did wallpaper and painting and she did some of the same things and did woodworking, but I think painting was her fourth day.

Not long after her divorce, Letty met Terry Straight. At first glance, Terry couldn't have been more different from devoted family man Charlie.
Terry grew up in rural Kansas.

When he was growing up, he liked to fight and drink a lot.

Terry and former wild child Letty immediately clicked.

We like to do the same kind of work she did, and they, you know, he was tough and he was good looking and built. Terry loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

On July 20th, 2003, only two months after her divorce with Charlie was finalized, Letty and Terry married. Terry soon joined Letty at her painting business.

Everyone knew Terry and Letty never left each other's side. They were always together.
With their business booming, the future looked bright for the newlywed painting team.

But by August of 2007, she had moved to a newer home in Parkville. This house was much larger and much bigger than their Riverside house.
Terry was fairly involved with Letty's kids.

I know that he coached you know, little league teams and soccer teams and stuff like that for the kids. By late summer 2007, Charlie and Letty were moving on with their separate lives.

But for Charlie, his life as a single dad would soon end with his unexpected death.

September 1st, 2007. After a relative discovered Charlie Kamisano dead in his home, first responders arrived within minutes.

When the patrol officers arrived on scene, they made entry.

One of the patrol officers had lifted a corner of the blanket and they could see he was shot in the back of the head. He had multiple gunshot wounds to his torso in addition to his head.

Coming up, investigators quickly make a crucial connection. I dealt with multiple organized crime homicides and the name Kamasano was prominent in those cases.

That would make me think that Charlie was ambushed. Charlie had compact wounds, the back of his head, like an organized crime hit.

On September 1st, 2007, officers with the Riverside, Missouri Police Department are surveying the scene of a brutal murder. The victim is 52-year-old father of seven, Charlie Camisano.

Charlie was found in the living room. He was lying face down with the blanket on top of him.
When they removed the blanket, it appeared that there were six gunshot wounds to his back and head.

Some of the bullet wounds were at close range and he had no defensive wounds. The bullets that entered his back would make me think that Charlie was ambushed.

He had no idea somebody was behind him, let alone someone shooting him in in the back. There was a lot of blood.

One of the bullets that went through his chest area was found laying on his chest when they rolled him over.

As they take a closer look at Charlie's body, detectives find a potential clue to the killer's identity. When they processed his hands, they found a couple hairs.

And one of them appeared to be a 14 centimeter chemically dyed hair. It had some root tissue, so we were hopeful to get who this hair might belong to.

As the CSI team continues examining Charlie's body, detectives turn their attention to the rest of the house. The entire residence was secured.
The doors were locked. There was no forced entry.

There were no broken windows. You would think a door would be kicked in, but there was nothing of that sort at the house.

His wallet was there, he had money, he had bills as well as change in his pocket. Everything else was intact.

There weren't any obvious signs that anybody committed a burglary or a robbery. It didn't look like it was ransacked.

Charlie's house, it wasn't immaculate because several kids lived there with him, but that night, the kids were with his ex-wife, Letty Strait.

Nothing appeared to be missing except his car keys and his car. We knew it was a Jeep Cherokee.
We established quickly that it's gone when we get there.

The Jeep was quickly put in. The computers are stolen.
And there were flyers put out for local law enforcement to help us find this Jeep that belonged to Charlie.

After putting out a bolo for Charlie's car, detectives at the scene received their first lead.

While officers were at the crime scene, one sergeant for Riverside did receive a phone call from Letty Strait.

This, you know, it filled her down to heard that, you know, Charlie, you know, had been killed and, you know, she was upset.

Letty Strait identifies herself as Charlie's ex-wife and the mother of his five youngest children. She tells police that she has just told them the devastating news.

The fact that all the kids don't have their dad, that's tragic because he was a good father for them. And they knew that their father cared about all of them.

It's one of the saddest things you can hear about.

Letty tells police that she has some information that she hopes will help them track down Charlie's killer.

During that phone call, Letty Strait told the sergeant that she had driven by Charlie's house that morning, morning of September 1st, 2007, and saw the Jeep parked in his driveway around 9.15.

The information from Letty suggests Charlie was killed that day, sometime after 9:15 a.m.

The significance of Letty saying that Charlie's Jeep was at his house was that the murderer must have stolen his Jeep.

Taking into account all the evidence at the crime scene, detectives consider the possibility that the crime could be tied to the legacy of Charlie's family.

Charlie had contact wounds, the back of his head, like an organized crime hit. I dealt with multiple organized crime homicides, and the name Kamasano was prominent in those cases.

Merely because of his last name. Some people speculated that perhaps this might have something to do with organized crime.

Charlie was related to them, but only related. He was a nephew.

We checked with the FBI and with Kansas City to verify that Charlie had never had any relationship or even association with organized crime in Kansas City.

With the mob ruled out, detectives take another look at the crime scene, and one clue in particular stands out.

One of the things that was most striking was that Charlie Camasano's body was covered with a blanket.

Why would a killer cover the body with a blanket? You don't want to look at the body because there's a connection there.

Whoever killed him didn't want somebody to see him the way he was.

When you look at the crime scene, mafia hits, if you will, kind of do two things. They resolve a problem, but they send a message.
A locked door, a blanket over the body.

These are not acts of someone who wants to send a message.

This did not have any hallmark of any type of mafia hit. There was no evidence at all that indicated that was the case.
This was probably somebody who was close to Charlie Kamasano.

Detectives hope talking to Charlie's kids will shed light on a possible suspect. All the children were interviewed by detectives.
Charlie really didn't have an enemy. Nobody disliked him.

He wasn't in debt to anybody. So there wasn't really any other place to look.

The kids say that the main conflict in Charlie's life was with their mother, Letty Strait. Tensions eventually drove the couple to divorce.

And after watching Letty's behavior in court, a family court judge ruled in favor of Charlie.

As reflected by the court judgment during the custody proceedings, she was an unstable person who had tremendous vitriol for her husband. The court awarded primary physical custody to Charlie.

They lived with their dad in this house here in Riverside. And then

Letty

had visitation rights, and they went to her house every other weekend.

Charlie was awarded child support.

The kids all said a couple months before dad died, mom and dad really, really started to argue a lot more about this.

I remember the kids

were all basically saying that their mother had killed their father.

We still had a lot more to look into and investigate at that point.

Coming up, up, detectives sift through personal connections in search of a killer. There were multiple telephone conversations, many of which became heated.
Things were about to get out of hand.

Her animosity was growing and growing. What have the kids said if my mom is the madness?

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September 2nd, 2007.

The morning after Charlie Camasano was found shot to death in his home, police in Riverside, Missouri have just learned from Charlie's children who they think was responsible for Charlie's murder.

They had told people from the beginning that they thought their mom killed their dad. The kids tell detectives they are afraid of their mother, Letty Strait, and her new husband, Terry.

One of the kids said, Terry's the muscle, and my mom is the madness.

Everybody knew she controlled Terry.

Terry did what Letty said. The kids tell police that Letty refused to pay child support and owed Charlie thousands of dollars in back payments.
Charlie had forgiven her $19,000 worth of child support.

He just wanted the kids to be safe and with him.

However, the children say that forgiving Letty put their father in a financial bind.

Charlie was not a rich man. He lived hand to mouth

and trying to take care of his kids. By 2007, Charlie was in such financial need that he went and applied for food stamps.

When he arrived, he discovered that he could not apply for food stamps because someone was already collecting them and someone had been collecting them for

around two years. And that person was Letty Strait.

Even though she didn't have custody of the children, Letty Strait had been claiming those children that she had had custody of them to obtain food stamps.

For Charlie, the food stamps were the last straw.

There were multiple telephone conversations between Charlie Camasano and Letty Strait about the food stamp situations, many of which became heated.

The kids kind of overheard these fights.

One of the kids talked about their mom like begging dad to, you know, claim that, you know, we have joint custody and stuff and I'm able to get food stamps as well as you are.

The kids tell police that this time, Charlie wasn't backing down.

I'm not going to do that. I need these food stamps, so I'm not going to write off any more, you know, credit for things that I'm owed by you.

According to the kids, the tension escalated even further on August 31st, 2007, when they left their father's house to spend Labor Day weekend with their mother and Terry.

The one thing that all the kids had to say is,

when it was their mom's weekend for staying at her house, mom liked us to be there. It was mom's time.

What was unusual about August 31st of 2007, three of the four youngest Kamisano children were not going to be spending the night at their mother's house.

They were going to be spending the the night at friends' houses. Letty was putting a lot of effort into making sure that all the kids had some place to go, which was unusual.

According to the kids, by early evening, Letty and Terry had found somewhere else for all of them to stay, except for her youngest son.

On the night of August 31st, he was upstairs in the living room watching TV. When being a young kid of nine or 10 years old, he decided he was going to go play a joke on his mom.

He quietly snuck downstairs to his mother's bedroom and it was dead quiet in the house and he heard his mother whisper, we have to kill him.

He was terrified by this statement, went back to his room thinking perhaps As a nine-year-old boy, they were talking about killing him.

So he went upstairs, packed his bags, and then they took the youngest boy, who was the last one in the house, to his friend's house that night.

All the young Kamisano children were scattered across the Kansas City metropolitan area.

The two places they were guaranteed not to be that night, Bloody Straits House and Charles Vito Camasano's house.

The Camasano kids tell police that when they found out their father had been murdered, they immediately made the connection.

The kids really kind of believed that her mom killed her dad because they didn't want to be with her mom.

The Missouri Children's Division intervened in this case.

They had been placed initially in the custody of their mother and ultimately Children's Division determined that that was not an appropriate placement for those children and they began to live with other family members.

We got to do more than just go on what the kids say, so we have to prove it.

In search of more evidence, detectives go downtown to the Caddy Shack, the bar where family members say Charlie spent his last night.

We interviewed a bunch of the people that had been there at the Caddyshack with him the night before.

Everyone that we interviewed knew that very often,

Letty would threaten Charlie's life.

Bar patrons tell police that on August 31st, Charlie seemed more worried than usual.

Letty's straight, her animosity toward her ex-husband was growing and growing. And Charlie Kamisano saw that things were about to get out of hand, was thinking about a way to protect himself.

He was concerned to the point that he was contemplating buying a cap and ball gun.

Friends say that when Charlie left the bar around 12.30 a.m., he'd issued a chilling warning to everyone around.

Charlie had told people that if anything ever happened to him, that Letty probably did it.

Though they've collected circumstantial evidence pointing to Letty, investigators hope to find something more concrete.

A break comes on September 5th, four days after Charlie's murder, when detectives locate his missing Jeep just a few blocks away from the Caddyshack bar.

They conduct an area canvas, so they're out talking to individuals to try to see if anyone saw the Jeep.

Investigators were able to find several residents of that neighborhood who indicated that that Jeep had showed back up in the middle of the night.

That was important because it's a different timeline than Letty's Strait led authorities to believe. Letty told officers that she saw Charlie's Jeep at 9:15 on September 1st.

So many of the things that Letty Strait said simply didn't match the facts of this case. The car seemed clean, there was no damage to it, that was noteworthy.

It looked like somebody just parked it there.

They processed the Jeep both from fingerprints and DNA: steering wheel, driver's steering column, door handles, windows, things like that.

While detectives wait for the DNA and fingerprint results, they secure a search warrant for Terry and Letty's house.

They knocked on the door, tried to get Letty and Terry to come out so that they could execute the search warrant. But Letty and Terry make it clear they don't have any interest in cooperating.

They told him they're not coming out. They were possible suspects of a homicide, so they ended up calling a tactical team.

The crisis negotiators and the SWAT team surrounded the house. When she found out the whole house was surrounded, she and Terry thought discretion was the better part of battle, and they surrendered.

Detectives transport Letty and Terry to the station and place them in separate interrogation rooms.

Starting with Letty, police get right to the point.

Did you have anything to do with Charlie's death? No. Did you take us cheap? No.

Do you know who did it? No, I do not.

Letty told investigators that her and Charlie had got beyond their differences and they were getting along now. We knew this wasn't accurate because everybody else was telling us different.

We were divorced, you know, but,

you know, he was still the father of my kids and, you know,

he was a good man.

Investigators also tried to nail down Letty and Terry's whereabouts on the night Charlie was murdered. We were just asking what she had been doing the last couple of days.

And she acknowledged she didn't have any of the children with her and Terry that night.

It's a Friday especially. You guys watch a movie crash.

Yeah, yeah. When we come home, we sit in the living room and just kind of bed.

On Saturday morning, you were going to a job. Yeah, we went to work Saturday.
Charlie was going to pick the kids up Saturday. I took that off work.

In the other interrogation room, detectives aren't having any luck getting much more out of Terry.

He didn't know what was going on, and he wasn't involved in anything. He didn't want to talk anymore.

Though Terry invokes his right to remain silent, Letty is just getting started. She seemed to be a person who thought that if she talked enough, she could talk herself out of any situation.

Coming up, as the interrogation continues, detectives turn up the pressure.

I can tell you this much: I know for a fact there's some things that you have told us that are not true.

I didn't have anything to do with this.

Well, then you know what my response is?

You're lying

During her interrogation at the Riverside Police Department, murder suspect Letty Strait seems interested in talking about anything besides the death of her ex-husband, Charlie Camisano.

I got 10 inches of my hair cut off the day and I'm blonde instead of red.

What do you do? Well, I was wanting to get my hair cut and I got my hair cut today and donated my hair to the Loxa Left. You know what I said when I first saw you? I said that didn't look like that.

Usually I have a ball cap on.

I love ball caps.

I love baseball caps.

We're going to talk about this. I don't know anything that's going to solve this problem.

Okay.

But as Letty begins to run out of steam in the early morning hours of September 6th, investigators pounce.

I can tell you this much, okay?

I know for a fact there's some things that you have told us that are not true. I'm here to give you a fair shake, okay?

Because this thing's going to explode like a bomb. Shit's going to come down on this.

Okay, well, here I can tell you, I don't have any fear. I was not in my ex-husband's home, okay? I did not kill my ex-husband.
You weren't there when whatever happened to him happened. No.

That's what you're telling me. That's what I'm telling you.
Well, then, you know what my response is? You're lying.

I've said as much

as I should say, okay?

I didn't have anything to do with this, okay? Nor did my husband, okay?

In addition to Letty and Terry's tight-lipped interviews, a simultaneous search of their residence yields nothing of value. We had nothing yet

to hold her on, so we let her and Terry go.

But as Letty and Terry walk out of the station, they don't realize they are leaving crucial evidence behind.

The whole time that we were talking to her, she was smoking cigarettes and putting the cigarettes in a coffee cup. We recovered that and got DNA off of it.

The cigarette butts are immediately sent to the crime lab for DNA extraction. Especially in 2007, DNA evidence takes a long time to come back.
So we did wait on that.

After a couple of months, detectives finally receive the results of the DNA tests, starting with the mysterious dyed hair found clutched in Charlie's hand.

We had a chemically treated dyed blonde hair. Turns out that the root hair didn't have enough DNA in it to do some comparisons.

Still, detectives have a good idea who the hair might belong to.

We noted in the defendant's interview with the police, she had dyed her hair blonde. And what do we find in the hands of her ex-husband? A chemically dyed hair.

The results from the DNA swabs of Charlie's steering wheel have also come back. They determined that the DNA that was on the steering wheel not only

belonged to Charlie, but there was a female DNA hit as well.

The DNA on the steering wheel was a somewhat match to Letty. It was a match to somebody in her maternal side.

But will it be enough to get an arrest warrant for Letty and Terry? I knew in my heart of hearts that Letty Strait had committed this crime.

I knew that we had some evidence to be used against her, but I wanted as much as we could get.

The Riverside Police Department continued to investigate and continued to do everything they could to try to collect more evidence. However, less than a a year after Charlie's murder, the case stalls.

It went cold in 2008-ish. We thought we knew who did it.
We just didn't have enough evidence for the prosecutor to file charges on.

After no new leads surface for more than a year, investigators decide to pursue another strategy in October 2009 when they discover Letty claimed her children as dependents on her 2008 tax return.

She claimed the kids on her food stamps when, in fact, she didn't have custody of them. And she did the same thing on her tax cases, too.
So that was fraud on her taxes.

While I didn't feel like we had enough evidence yet to go to trial on the murder, I ultimately became convinced that we did have a very solid case against Letty Strait for tax fraud.

In April 2011, more than three and a half years after the murder, the charges stick, and Letty is sentenced to three years in prison for attempted tax evasion.

Investigators hope her time in jail might lead to more charges.

We knew that she was a talkative person, and I thought at some point that she might give up to somebody what she had done that night when she murdered her ex-husband.

After a few years pass and Letty's release date grows closer, detectives revisit the DNA collected from Charlie's steering wheel.

They've improved DNA technology a lot, and we were hopeful to do some mitochondrial DNA testing.

Mitochondrial DNA testing is a form of DNA testing to test the maternal lineage of who that hair might belong to.

Our crime lab people tell us that if we can get

that

maternal strand of her relatives, they can exclude each of them, which will make the DNA a higher hit probability. We contacted everybody in her maternal side.

A few of them, we had to get search warrants for their DNA because they wouldn't comply, but all the kids helped.

Detectives gather DNA samples from Letty's maternal relatives, and after months and months of waiting, the results finally come in.

The frequency of that DNA was a 440 million-to-one

match of Letty Strait.

Detectives soon receive another lead from former friends of Terry Strait, Alice and Ron Goddard.

Miss Alice Goddard had called, and she expressed that her husband had loaned Terry a gun several years earlier, a 25-auto Titan handgun.

That would be the same caliber of the weapon used at our murder of Charlie Camasano.

At that point, it felt like a second wind had hit us. I felt we were getting somewhere.
It was now progressing.

The grand jury convened in 2014 and after the grand jury finished their investigation. They were both indicted in that December of 2014 for a first-degree murder of Charles.

On December 12th, 2014, just months after Letty was released from prison, detectives arrest Letty and Terry Strait for murder. Letty was not happy with us.

She had already had made it known that the Riverside Police were out to get her and she didn't do anything wrong. And we were lying and making things up.

Prosecutors know that Letty won't go down without a fight, but by 2016, they might have a new ally to bolster their case.

About a year and a half after Letty and Terry were arrested, they were still in the county jail and we were approached by Terry's attorney.

Terry Strait's lawyer said that his client might be willing to come forward and tell the truth about what happened during that murder. He said he wanted to make a deal.

Coming up, Terry tells all.

She said we're going to follow him home. He's waiting in the car, sees some flashes inside the house.

In the spring of 2016, a year and a half after Terry Strait and his wife Letty were arrested for first-degree murder, Terry's attorneys reach out to prosecutors and say that he is willing to tell them what really happened to Letty's ex-husband, Charlie Camisano, if the price is right.

Terry would agree to testify during Letty's trial for first-degree murder.

In exchange for that, the state agreed that they would amend the charges against Terry from premeditated first-degree murder to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

It was always my belief that Letty Strait was the driving force in this murder. So ultimately, I was willing to enter into this agreement with Terry Strait.

We met

with Terry up at the Platte County Jail. And that's where Terry proffered that he did have knowledge about what happened to Charlie.

According to Terry, Letty and Charlie's relationship was at its worst when Charlie discovered Letty's food stamp fraud.

I think her financial strain came to a head with the fear of Charlie wasn't going to do what she wanted. He wasn't going to do what she wanted on the child support.

And Charlie wasn't going to do what she wanted on the food stamps.

I think at that point, she just simply broke.

Terry says that on August 31st, 2007, Letty told him that she wanted to talk to Charlie about the food stamp situation while all of the kids were out.

Terry drove his wife down to the Caddyshack bar, where Charlie spent every Friday night. They found Charlie near his Jeep.

Letty got out, talked to Charlie, got back in with Terry, and said, we're going to talk about this. We're going to follow him home.

According to Terry, Charlie had told her, we're not arguing about this here in the street. If you want to come up to the house and talk to me, that's fine.

Terry tells police that when they arrived, Letty and Charlie went inside.

Letty goes inside to talk to Charlie. Terry's kind of got no dog in this fight, so he's waiting in the car, sees some flashes inside the house.
And then Letty ran out of Charlie's house.

Letty told him, hey, follow me. We're going to take Charlie's Jeep back down to the caddy shack.
So he did. They drove back down to to the caddy shack.
Letty parked the car. Letty got in with Terry.

He did say that they never talked about it after that.

Though the evidence lines up with Terry's story, prosecutors are skeptical.

Do I believe that Terry Strait told the full story? I'm not sure that he did.

But he certainly told enough to give the jury enough to know that Letty Strait was responsible for the first-degree murder of her ex-husband, Charlie Camasan.

In 2016, Terry pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. His sentencing is delayed until after Letty's trial.

In January 2020, more than 12 years after Charlie's murder, Letty's trial begins with Terry as the state's star witness.

When Terry Strait Strait testified at trial, he put Letty Strait in the home at the time of the murder.

He also testified that she later told him that she had thrown the murder weapon into the Missouri River after the killing.

Prosecutors present evidence that Letty's DNA was found on Charlie's steering wheel, supporting Terry's story. However, the defense claims that Charlie allowed Letty to drive his car months earlier.

She was was thinking about buying Charlie's Jeep, so she had test-droven it several months before the murder. The defense blames Terry for Charlie's murder.

They had someone else to point the finger at during this trial, and so the defense attempted to do that, to say that Terry Strait had acted alone.

On February 6th, 2020, the jury reaches a verdict.

The jury deliberated for around two hours and then returned a verdict of guilty in the first degree for the shooting death of her ex-husband, Charles Vito Camasano.

Letty's conviction means she will receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. Letty Strait will take her last living breath.
inside the walls of a Missouri State Penitentiary.

For Letty and Charlie's now grown children, Letty's conviction means the end of a 12-year search for justice.

That's the most memorable and most gratifying thing for me as a prosecutor is when

we got the guilty verdict, you know, for those kids, for me to be able to hug those kids and

knowing what they went through.

I think the adults that they are today is a true testament to how much Charlie loved and sacrificed for his children.

Terry Straight was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was denied parole in the fall of 2020.
Letting Strait is house at the Chillicothe Correctional Center. Her appeal was denied.