Martha Ann McClancy

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Martha Ann McClancy was an elegant grandmother, devoted churchgoer, and respected member of her small community.

She was the quintessential southern lady, a very quiet, lovely,

helpful person.

We all cared a great deal for her.

And it was clear that her husband of more than 10 years was devoted to her.

Bob made my mom happy.

He did everything he could to show his love for her.

But their marriage would end suddenly with a shocking discovery.

He has a loaded firearm in his hand and a bottle of gold in the other.

Did Bob take his own life after losing a struggle with his personal demons?

Bob served in the Vietnam War, and due to that, he did have PTSD.

Was there reason to suspect the man who found Bob?

He was Bob's best friend, friend and they had become so close.

He stole hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.

Or would years of suspicion and investigation reveal that Bob's devoted wife had secrets of her own?

I couldn't believe that my mom would be capable of doing such a thing.

Something went on in that house and it's not right.

Teleco Plains, Tennessee, May 15th, 2006.

It was a peaceful spring afternoon in this town of 800, nestled in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Teleco Plains is a very small town, adjacent to the National Forest, very private,

very intimate little town.

But at five o'clock that afternoon, Monroe County 911 received a distressing call from one local residence.

Hey, what's the problem, sir?

I just walked into the residence.

It's the McClancy residence.

The Mr.

McClancy appears to be expired.

The caller was 52-year-old Charles Chuck Kazmarzik, and he had just discovered the body of his friend, Bob McClancy.

He stated that he had found him dead on the scene, what appeared to be a suicide.

He has a loaded firearm in his hand and a bottle of gold in the other.

As Chuck explained, it wasn't exactly a surprise that the 56-year-old Vietnam veteran had killed himself.

Within the last two weeks, he has had two confirmed overdoses,

and he was just released from the psych unit at Johnson City V8 Medical Center on Saturday.

Mr.

McClancy suffered severely from post-traumatic stress issues.

And according to Chuck, he'd stopped by to check on his friend because he knew all too well how fragile Bob was.

He was Bob's best friend, and they had become so close and that they were suffering from the same PTSD.

And when deputies from the Monroe County Sheriff's Department arrived on the scene a few minutes later, they found the 56-year-old Vietnam veteran exactly as his friend had described.

Officers found Bob paced away in his recliner.

Bills hadn't killed him.

Maybe he was going to shoot himself.

But something about Bob McClancy's alleged suicide didn't seem right to his friends and family.

It just was not his personality to take his life.

It never crossed my mind that he would do that.

But did that mean someone else was responsible for Bob's untimely death?

Something went on in that house and it's not right.

Whatever happened, for nearly a decade, his family suspected it had something to do with Bob's best friend, Chuck, and Bob's widow, Martha Ann.

Born in 1949, Martha Ann Fry started life not far from the Smoky Mountains in Alcoa, Tennessee.

She said that she had grown up in Alcoa, a southern town with loving parents, very, very normal, just everyday American.

Smart and ambitious, Martha Ann excelled in school.

She was an honor student.

She won lots of awards for future homemakers of America.

She always wanted everyone to think that she was the best.

And after graduation, Martha Ann attended college in nearby Knoxville.

She met my father at the University of Tennessee.

They both wanted to excel in life.

The couple married while still in college, but after her husband graduated, Martha Ann dropped out.

She always wanted to be a

homemaker.

She kept an immaculate house and she prepared meals.

Soon after the wedding, her husband's new job led the couple to move to Sarasota, Florida, where they started a family.

They decided to adopt a child, which was myself.

I was three and a half to four years old when they had my brother.

But when her husband was between jobs, Martha Ann had to give up being a homemaker.

She found a job with the Manatee County Sheriff's Department, where she would meet a man who would change her life.

Born the same year as Martha Ann, Bob McClancy was another Florida transplant.

We grew up in Maspeth, Queens, up in New York.

After high school, Bob skipped college and volunteered for the Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War.

He served more than one tour in Vietnam.

He was in combat a lot.

Honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, Bob returned to Queens and tried to put the experience behind him.

When he came back, he didn't really talk about it all that much.

Bob married briefly, but moved to Florida after the marriage ended in divorce and took a job with the Manatee County Sheriff's Department, where the former Marine proved popular with his coworkers.

Bob is a very outgoing,

life of the party type person.

Bob was very juvial.

You never

seen him when he, you know,

wasn't smiling or cutting up or, you know, having fun.

And he soon struck up an unlikely friendship with his much more reserved co-worker, Martha Ann.

She was the quintessential southern lady.

Hair was always done, makeup was always on,

beautifully dressed.

She was a very meticulous person.

She was kind of like a very strict type person.

I didn't expect my brother to be with somebody like that.

But opposites attracted, and the couple fell in love, despite the fact that Martha Ann was married with two children.

I had just turned 13.

She had been gone for several weekends and wanted

me to go meet her friend that she had been staying with.

She said not to tell my father that we were going.

And Bob made a great first impression.

We liked him the first day I met him.

He took us out on his boat fishing.

Once Bob had won over her sons, Martha Ann officially ended her marriage.

My mom almost immediately filed for divorce.

Bob McClancy moved into our home and he became a stepfather.

And in 1995, Bob and Martha Ann married.

Bob made my mom happy.

He did everything he could

to

help

her

and

to show his love for her.

The couple spent the next four years in Sarasota.

She was very doting.

She seemed to be very,

you know, affectionate, Bob, take care of whatever Bob needed.

They seemed happy.

They had good times and they got along good.

But almost from the beginning of their marriage, Bob was dreaming of leaving Florida.

Bob wanted to move to the

mountains and have a small farm.

He wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city laugh.

And in 1999, after eight years together, with Martha Ann's sons grown, the couple moved to Telecoat Plains, Tennessee, tucked in the Smoky Mountain foothills an hour south of her hometown.

They purchased a retirement home slash cabin with some acreage.

He had pigs and goats and chickens and

just had a great love for animals.

But since he left the Manatee County Sheriff's Department at only 49, Bob was more than able and willing to keep working.

He originally wanted to work for the local sheriff's department, but they just didn't have any place at the time.

So he started doing odds and ends and farming type work.

Martha Ann, also 49, took a job in a neighboring town to help support the couple.

She worked for a company in Sweetwater and traveled back and forth every day.

They needed some extra money to make ends meet.

The couple also joined a local church where Martha Ann became very active.

She just

was a very quiet, lovely,

helpful person, and we all cared a great deal for her.

And by 2006, after seven years in Teleco Plains, the couple had more than settled into their new home.

It was a very simple life up here in Tennessee, but they seemed to like that lifestyle.

However, Martha Ann and Bob's quiet country life was about to come to an abrupt end.

Coming up, did Bob's PTSD push him to the breaking point?

He was having some reoccurring nightmares.

Or did someone else have a hand in his death?

Well, it very much suggested that the scene had been staged.

On May 15th, 2006, Monroe County Sheriff's officers were investigating the possible suicide of 56-year-old Bob McClancy at his Teleco Plains, Tennessee home.

He was deceased.

He'd been down for some time.

And the gun and pills found on his body weren't the only indication of Bob's apparent determination to end it all.

Police found a do-not-resuscitate order on the kitchen counter.

Signed by his doctors at the VA, it appeared that the Vietnam veteran may have purposely left the papers lying on the counter just in case someone found him before it was too late.

It looked to be a suicide.

Bob's body was still in the house when Martha Ann rushed home from work shortly after receiving the news that her husband was dead.

She got out of the car and went straight toward the house wanting to see her deceased husband's body.

They treated it as a crime scene at that point.

Martha Ann was alerted when she came home and they would not let her in the house.

Following standard procedure, the deputies requested that she wait outside until they finished processing the scene.

The deputy actually put her in the front seat of the patrol car.

And Martha Ann was still waiting in the patrol car when her friend Debbie Hartman arrived a few minutes later.

I got out and ran to her and so, you know, here's the two of us sitting in this car just sobbing our eyes out thinking that he's gone and we don't know what's happened.

Here's a woman that I thought of as a sister, and she has just lost her husband.

Hoping for some answers, the investigators were inside the house, taking a statement from the man who'd found Bob's body, Chuck Kazmarzik.

A family friend and fellow veteran, Chuck told the investigators that Bob had long struggled with his years of combat in Vietnam.

Bob served in the Vietnam War, and due to that, he did have PTSD.

He had symptoms in dealing with that, nightmares, things of that nature.

Nightmares that centered around one split-second decision that had occurred almost 40 years before in the heat of battle.

He had a bad feeling about the fact he may have killed one of his own friends in a firefight.

And over the last few years, his symptoms had apparently been getting worse.

He said that he was having some reoccurring nightmares and that he would get up and sit in the chair in the hallway with a gun.

And that left Bob terrified that he could repeat his nightmare scenario all over again.

He said, I'm worried that if I'm asleep and Martha Ann would get up and use the restroom,

that I might come out of a dream and accidentally shoot her.

In fact, Bob had been so worried about his nightmares that in 2006 he'd checked into the VA hospital in Nashville, which is where he'd met Chuck.

They were roommates, I believe,

at that treatment center.

When they got out,

Bob invited Chuck to come visit at their home in Telico Plains.

Chuck had soon taken Bob up on his offer.

Bob was introducing Casmarzik to Martha McClancy as his brother and his new best friend and

that's how the relationship started between all three of them, that they'd become friends.

They saw one another regularly too, since Chuck only lived an hour and a half away.

Chuck was from Knoxville.

They just became very close.

It may have been a good thing Chuck was so close by.

According to what Chuck told the investigators, Bob's PTSD symptoms were getting worse despite his time at the VA.

His demeanor changed.

He became very antagonistic,

argumentative, and people knew that something was wrong with Bob, but they had no way of knowing what it was.

It got so bad, according to Chuck, that Bob had rarely left the house.

So he'd stepped in to lend a hand.

He would come down and help do things on the property, help take care of the property, mowing, doing various things.

He'd also helped Martha Ann keep an eye eye on Bob.

And according to Chuck, he'd dropped by the house that afternoon to check on his troubled friend.

He said that he came in, found him.

That's what Chuck claimed.

But the investigators would soon be wondering if it was the truth.

It started when, soon after talking to Chuck, one of the investigators found a digital camera inside the house.

We went through the photos on the camera.

And the photos on the memory card were of Bob's body slumped in the chair.

There was photos of him without the pistol and the medication bottle and then there was pictures of him just the pistol and then there was pictures of him with the pistol and medication bottle and then the final picture was pretty much what we walked into and saw for ourselves.

And since Bob couldn't have photographed his own suicide, the photos could only mean one thing.

Well, it very much suggested that the scene had been staged.

But who would try to make Bob's death look like a suicide and why?

The investigators were determined to find out.

And since the camera belonged to Chuck, their next step was obvious.

Sheriff Watson walks out with Chuck Kesmarzik in handcuffs.

literally right past where we were sitting in the car.

And then Martha N goes ballistic about, well, why are they arresting him?

She says Chuck was his best friend.

Chuck would never do anything to harm Bob.

Never.

But to investigators, the photos of Bob's body made it look like his best friend knew much more about Bob's death.

We did confront him about it.

He finally, in his first statement or second statement, he had said that he staged a scene to make it look like a suicide.

However, Chuck was adamant that Bob was already dead when he dropped by the house.

He had said Bob had died because of the medication.

And when he found his friend dead of an apparent overdose, Chuck said he'd wanted to make sure Martha Ann would get insurance money from the VA.

So he had staged the scene and taken pictures so there would be no doubt that Bob's death was a suicide.

I think he took them because somebody had said, well, wish you had documented this better, what he was like.

So he did document it.

Could Chuck be telling the truth?

Could Bob have died of an overdose?

Investigators brought Martha Ann in to ask her a few questions about her husband.

And she told them that Bob had been on antidepressants for his PTSD and that he'd been abusing the medication.

She said that if he took one pill and it made him feel better, that if he would take two or three, his thought process was that he would really feel good.

And Martha Ann said that thought process had led to some dangerous results.

She said he had had two previous overdoses.

They had to get in the car and take him to the hospital.

Martha Ann's account of her husband's drug problems appeared to check out.

There were medical records that showed that Bob McClancy had been overdosed several times and taken to a hospital.

And based on the medical examiner's findings, Bob's death seemed to fit the overall pattern.

The autopsy report said my brother had died of an overdose of drugs.

Whether it was actually a suicide or merely an accidental overdose was tough to say.

But the apparent lack of any foul play in Bob's death didn't mean that Chuck was off the hook just yet.

He was charged with tampering with evidence.

Martha Ann was incensed by the charges and tried to rally support for Bob's friend.

She's angry that Chuck had been arrested and she was trying to find Chuck an attorney.

But in the end, the charges were dropped.

Those charges were dismissed because the Monroe County Sheriff's Department did not have a search warrant when they initially looked at those photos on the camera.

And with that, Ann investigation into Bob's death and its aftermath quietly died.

Coming up, Martha Ann tries to rebuild her life.

You hear people in the communities talking.

And her son makes a troubling discovery.

My mom had a lot more to do with this.

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By the fall of 2006, it had been a little more than five months since Martha Ann McClancy's husband, Bob, died in their farmhouse in Teleco Plains, Tennessee, the victim of what appeared to be either an accidental overdose or a suicide.

The police found Bob sprawled out in the chair with the pills in one hand and.38 caliber in the the other.

After Bob's death, his close friend Chuck Kazmarzik remained a frequent visitor to the farm.

She was having to take care of this large property and all of these animals.

He would come to the house and help her.

And while it seemed natural for Chuck to help his friend's widow, his constant presence began to raise some eyebrows.

At first, I thought just friends, and then

you hear people in the communities talking.

I could see there was something going on there.

The two of them were together together, not just consoling one another, not just helping each other through the grief process, but they were actually together as a couple.

Before long, they didn't even try to hide it.

They got married at fall.

Coming just five months after her brother's death, the marriage made Bob's sister suspicious of Martha Ann.

Had her relationship with Chuck started while Bob was still alive?

And if so, did it have anything to do with Bob's death?

This was not the Martha Ann that I knew.

This does not make sense.

The different things that she's telling you, you have to face fact that she was involved in it.

The Monroe County authorities were suspicious, too.

But with the photos of Bob's body ruled inadmissible and without any other evidence of foul play, there was little they could do.

Law enforcement was not able to go forward with any type of prosecution.

Free to make a fresh start, Martha Ann and Chuck bought a motorhome and spent the next several years traveling.

They would tour the country in this expensive motorhome and take cruises and live a very lavish lifestyle just going from one reunion to another.

Speaking at events and giving seminars and advice to veterans based on all of his experiences and credentials.

Chuck's credentials certainly sounded impressive.

Two Purple Hearts, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and two Silver Stars earned during his years in the Air Force.

The Silver Star is probably the second highest award for valor in the military.

He was this decorated war hero.

And wherever her war hero went, Martha Ann was always along for the ride.

I didn't see very much of my mom.

She would always be traveling.

But their cross-country travels were about to come to an abrupt end.

The trouble began with something Chuck said while regaling one veteran's group with tales of his exploits in Vietnam.

He was telling his stories about how he had earned combat awards from the Vietnam operation that were classified awards.

There is no such thing as a classified

decoration or award.

Suspicious of Chuck's claims, one one of the veterans in the audience contacted the va which quietly began looking into the matter the investigation was launched by the air force special operations command and the investigation revealed that all of chuck's medals were fake

chuck was never wounded he was never shot at he manufactured his own false orders, special orders, to award him all these decorations.

But why fake documents to give himself awards?

Was it simply bragging rights Chuck was after or something more?

He was claiming post-traumatic stress for the purpose of getting money, added VA benefits.

And he was soon receiving about $3,200 a month from the government, free money.

And the investigators suspected Martha Ann had helped him fake the documents and take the money.

They lived lavishly, traveled, did not need to work.

They stole hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.

How in this universe it ever came to be that two absolutely evil people that were just so

crooked

would come together is just,

it's just kind of hard to fathom.

And in July of 2012, the government came looking for a little payback.

They were arrested for fraud, both of them.

Neither of them fought the charges.

They both pled guilty and received sentences to serve in federal court.

Martha Ann was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Once convicted in federal court,

Martha Ann signs a power of attorney to her son to take care of all of her affairs and all of her property while she's serving her federal sentence.

I think she was trying to evade forfeiture.

But would her attempt to hang on to her home end up costing her far more?

While going through his mother's house, Martha Ann's son found her laptop computer, which he figured he would give to his children.

I started to go through the files to make sure it would be okay to use.

But Sean found something unexpected lurking on his mother's hard drive.

I found photos

of my stepdad,

Bob,

deceased.

They were copies of the photos that had been thrown out of court when Chuck was arrested for evidence tampering in 2006.

They were disturbing.

His body seemed to be moved around.

There were things that did not look normal.

But why would the the photos, which had been confiscated by police, be on Martha Ann's computer?

Did the fact that Martha Ann had the pictures mean Chuck hadn't acted alone?

I didn't know that my mom had anything to do with these pictures.

Could the pictures mean his mother had been involved in Bob McClancy's death?

Concerned, Sean contacted the authorities.

I realize this is this is not something that I or my family should be looking at.

The Monroe County authorities reopened the case because the implication that Martha Ann might have helped Chuck pointed to the possibility that together they had done more than just stage the scene after Bob's death.

We were taking a very close look at Martha Ann being a part of the conspiracy to kill Bob.

In fact, Bob's sister suspected Martha Ann might have been more than just a co-conspirator.

She was a very smart woman, so I could picture her planning something out like this and Chuck going along with it.

Mastermind or not, the investigators needed some proof that Martha Ann was involved.

So they asked her son to make a phone call to Martha Ann while they listened in.

And he agreed.

hoping that she might clear her name in the process.

I felt that it would be a good chance for her, if she didn't do anything, to come out with what's exactly happened.

But then he made the call and told his mother about the pictures he'd found.

I asked her, what should I do with them?

She said, delete them.

Delete as much as you can off of the computer.

I felt that my mom had a lot more to do with this than what she said.

That realization was devastating.

I couldn't believe that my mom would be capable of doing such a thing.

But would it be enough to convince a jury?

Hoping for more leverage, the investigators reached out to Chuck, who was serving 30 months in federal prison on fraud charges.

And Chuck gave them more than they expected.

Chuck Kasmarzik said that Martha Ann wanted to get rid of Bob.

And according to Chuck, Martha Ann was determined to get what she wanted, even if it meant cold-blooded murder.

Chuck Kazmarzik, in his statement, said that Martha Ann was crushing up Bob's medication and putting it in his food.

According to Chuck, she had called it magic dust.

Chuck said they'd done it three times.

starting with the two overdoses where they had rushed Bob to the hospital.

He was not taken to the closest hospital, which would have been the hospital in Sweetwater.

They drove him to Knoxville, which was a good two hours away.

They just hoped he would die.

But when that plan failed twice, Chuck said that Martha Ann had slipped a larger dose of her magic dust into Bob's dinner on the evening of May 14th.

Chuck said he presumed that was the night that Bob would die.

The next morning, Martha Ann went to work.

Their plan was that Martha Ann would be away from the home so she would have an alibi.

And Chuck dropped by to find Bob's body and stage the scene.

Everything he said jived with what had occurred.

Once Chuck confessed, both he and Martha Ann, already in federal prison for fraud, suddenly faced new charges.

They are charged with first-degree murder for killing Bob McClancy.

We were very confident that we had a very good case.

But it all depended on the word of a convicted con man.

Coming up, can Chuck close the deal?

We knew the jury wasn't going to like him.

Or will Martha Ann's testimony make the difference?

When she finally took the stand, I think everybody was kind of relieved.

They wanted to hear her side.

On November 16, 2015, Martha Ann McClancy went on trial for murder in Monroe County, Tennessee.

The 66-year-old was accused of killing her husband, Bob McClancy, in May of 2006.

We knew it was going to be a difficult case because it was a cold case.

And that wasn't the only obstacle they faced.

There was also the fact that Martha Ann didn't look like a killer.

She comes walking in with a walker.

She She was just grandmotherly.

She was very well-spoken and calm and nice.

She was trying to come off as this little innocent person.

But according to the prosecution's opening statement, Martha Ann's grandmotherly exterior was precisely what made her so deadly.

They told the jury that she had calmly, quietly killed her husband, and no one had ever suspected what was happening.

Paul McClancy died

by being over-medicated with his PTSD drugs.

She would take those drugs and grind them up and put them in his food.

And why did she do it?

The answer was simple, according to the prosecution.

Prior to the death of Bob McClansky,

Martha Ann and Chuck Kasmarzik started having an affair.

And according to the prosecutors, having an affair wasn't enough for Martha Ann.

She decided she'd rather be with Chuck than with her husband.

She wasn't as much of a home buddy as Bob was,

and so

I believe that she felt Chuck had had all these experiences.

I think he was just very charming to her, and I think she saw an opportunity in Kezmeric that she didn't see in Bob at that point.

It was typical of triangle, and Bob had to go.

So why not just get a divorce?

According to the prosecution, Martha Ann didn't consider that an option.

She wanted everything now.

And she had the means to get it, too.

When Bob McClansky was having health issues, he had given power of attorney to Martha Ann.

She borrowed it, so cut and paste, to create this will.

And the prosecution claimed that the forged will Martha Ann created had given her almost everything.

In that will,

Bob's daughter had received only $1.

His sister had received only $1.

She sent the $1

to each one of them, telling them that that's what Bob had wanted.

In addition to the revelations about Bob's will, the prosecutors called Martha Ann's son to testify about how he'd found the pictures of Bob's body on his mother's computer.

Testifying against my mom was

one of the worst and hardest things

that I've had to do.

The prosecutors also called Martha Ann's former friend, Debbie Hartman, to the stand.

She testified about Martha Ann's relationship with Chuck.

I don't know if the attraction was very instantly.

I do believe that the affair started while Bob was still alive.

But the prosecution's star witness was Martha Ann's alleged co-conspirator, the man she'd allegedly killed Bob to be with,

Chuck Kasmarzek.

It was Chuck's confession that had led to Martha Ann's arrest in the first place.

He totally ratted out Martha Ann.

He was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, just like Martha Ann.

But since they needed his testimony against Martha Ann, the prosecutors had offered Chuck a deal.

That he would testify truthfully and plead to 25 years on conspiracy.

We would not charge him with murder.

The reason was because

she is the one that actually gave the dose.

Chuck had taken the deal, and by the time Martha Ann's trial began, he was already serving a 25-year sentence for the conspiracy charge.

We knew the jury wasn't going to like him, but he was an essential part of this case.

And as he took the stand to testify against his wife, his honesty wouldn't win him any points with the jury either.

We made no bones about it that Chuck Kazmarzik is an awful person.

He's a con man.

But sometimes con men have to come forward and tell the truth.

And that's what Chuck proceeded to do.

When Chuck arrived at the residence that afternoon, in fact, Bob was still alive.

In fact, Chuck claimed that his friend wasn't just alive, he was still conscious.

Chuck found Bob in the bathroom floor and Bob asked Chuck to help him up.

On the stand, Chuck described how he'd wrestled his dying friend into a recliner before sitting back and coldly doing nothing.

Bob was still alive when he found him, and

he let him pass away, then called 911.

However, as awful as Chuck's story sounded, was it the truth?

In the defense's open, Martha Ann's attorney argued that she was innocent.

She is a victim of Charles Kazmarzik's fraud, just as the government was.

And the defense claimed that Chuck had turned on her and accused her of Bob's murder in order to take revenge on Martha Ann.

When Kazmarzik had pled guilty to the federal crimes, Social Security fraud, no veterans fraud, my client had obtained a lawyer and served him with divorce papers.

In other words, Chuck's so-called confession was simply his way of punishing Martha Ann for divorcing him.

Shortly after Mr.

Kazmarzik was served with divorce papers from Ms.

McClancy, that's when he gave a statement to law enforcement incriminating her.

But now the defense said Martha Ann saw Chuck for what he was, a con man.

And she took the stand to defend herself from what she claimed were nothing but lies.

When she finally took the stand on the fourth day, I think everybody wanted to hear her side.

In her testimony, Martha Ann professed her innocence.

She's always maintained that she doesn't really know what happened to her husband.

Although, if anything, she believed that Bob's death was just a tragic accidental overdose.

She honestly believes that he had these issues and problems with his medications.

And according to Martha Ann's testimony, she would never have done anything to hurt Bob.

Martha maintained that even though Mr.

McClancy had some issues and problems, that

he was the love of her life and

she wanted to continue to be married to him and help care for him.

She tried to get up there and claim she was the poor widow.

But in the end, it would be up to the jury to decide: was Martha Ann telling the truth, or was she pulling yet another con job?

There's nothing that she has ever told me that I have not questioned in my mind.

There's nothing that she ever told me that I now believe.

Coming up, the jury reaches a decision.

It was a total surprise.

And Bob's family reacts to the outcome.

I can't say I was happy.

On November 20th, 2015, the jury announced a verdict in Martha Ann McClancy's murder trial.

The 66-year-old grandmother was accused of killing her husband, Bob, with an intentional drug overdose.

She slowly murdered this man for the purpose of money and for the purpose of an affair with

another man.

The other man was Chuck Kazmarzik, her lover turned husband and the prosecution's star witness.

He testified that he and Martha did in fact commit and plan this conspiracy.

Was it the truth?

At trial, Martha Ann's defense attorney hammered on the fact that Chuck had a history of lying to the authorities, that he was in prison on fraud charges when he named Martha Ann as her husband's killer.

He's the kind of guy that likes to be in the limelight and tell big stories.

But now it all came down to whose story the jury believed.

The jury stayed out a long time overnight.

And that was a bad night.

We felt like we could lose it easily.

And when the verdict was read, those worries appeared to to be well-founded.

The jury dismissed the murder charge.

But did that mean the jury thought she was innocent?

The jury found her guilty of a lesser included offense of attempted murder.

The jury also found Martha Ann guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

It's a confusing verdict.

When you have someone that's charged with murder and you have a dead person,

then normally what you get is a guilty of murder or a not guilty of of murder.

Martha Ann appeared just as confused as her attorney.

She did just shake her head and said, no, no, no, and like it was a total surprise.

The verdict also left Bob's family confused and worried.

I can't say I was happy because I'm not happy over the whole situation, but hopefully justice will be served for my brother.

It all depended on the outcome of Martha Ann's sentencing hearing on June 24th, 2016.

And when the time came, the judge gave her the maximum that the law allowed.

Two consecutive 25-year sentences.

And in his remarks, the judge left no doubt that it was what Martha Ann deserved.

This was a sustained effort to kill a man, to poison him until he was dead.

In an exceptionally cruel manner, a bullet would have been much more merciful.

She is a scary woman.

She's smart and scary.

So smart that for almost a decade, Martha Ann got away with murder.

Her plan worked for many years, but it finally caught up with her.

Martha Ann McClancy is scheduled for her parole hearing in June 2024.

She will be 74 years old.

She appealed her conviction in 2019 and her sentence was cut in half.

Did you see that?

That was incredible.

I love this.

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

I've heard y'all been needing some advice in the love department.

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