Debra Dillard

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She was a doting grandmother who would do anything for her son and daughter-in-law.

My mother, who's very excited to have a little baby in the house.

She would watch, take care of him like any grandma would do.

She actually treated my sister like a daughter.

As a family, we were a team.

We had a perfect life and they went to hell in a handbasket.

The victim is laying in the center of the road crumpled up.

She was still warm to the touch so I was just minutes behind the shooter.

To find the killer, detectives will have to expose a motive.

I don't recall any real direction as far as anybody that wished her harm.

There was no enemies out there.

I couldn't think of anybody that would hurt any of us.

As the investigation unfolds, detectives follow a twisted trail of suspects.

It was obvious to us that they were keeping things from the investigators.

She was secretly saving money.

I just knew something was going on and I wanted to know where she was.

You did a shot in the back of the head.

Her gut feelings told us that they had the wrong person.

November 13th, 2009, Moody, Missouri.

It's a quiet Friday night as Corporal Clinton Howell of the Missouri Highway Patrol drives down a desolate stretch of highway.

I was on duty by myself that night.

I was taking my calls, doing what I normally do, when troop headquarters called me and said that there was an accident with injuries.

A man and his wife were driving down the road.

They saw this vehicle parked on the side of the road.

with the headlights on.

As they drove by, they saw the woman lying on the road.

And I started moving that way very, very quickly.

Lights and sirens as fast as I can possibly get there.

The quicker you can get there to somebody that is injured, the quicker you have a chance of saving their life.

Within minutes, Corporal Howell arrives on the scene.

I roll up on it, come flying out of my vehicle.

The victim is laying in the center of the road, crumpled up.

She was early 20s, about five foot tall, maybe 100 pounds.

She was just very small, petite.

She was still warm to the touch, had no pulse.

She was already deceased.

At first glance, how the young woman died is a mystery.

There was no trauma, no clothes tore up where maybe a vehicle had struck her.

There was just some blood oozing out beside her head, just a small amount.

Corporal Howell then attempts to ID the victim.

He went ahead and opened the door of the vehicle and went through the purse and he found a driver's license.

The young woman's name is Becky Dillard.

I had my hands full.

I'm out there by myself.

I've got a young lady dead in the middle of the road and then I have to shut down the highway.

It was quite chaotic.

Born in 1985, Becky always stood out.

Becky was Miss Chris.

She was like, I think eight or nine when she started getting clothes that match.

Her hair had to be perfect, everything.

I don't think she really set out to be the center of attention, but inevitably she just ended being a center of attention.

By high school, Becky was getting plenty of attention from boys too, especially classmate Justin Dillard.

Everybody loved her.

She was very popular.

She was beautiful.

And...

We hit it off right off the bat.

So I knew she was going to be my friend.

He was just like Becky.

His clothes had to match.

His hair had to be fixed.

Becky would always call him whenever something was going on and she needed someone to talk to.

Justin was very sweet to my sister.

They were the best of friends.

They shared everything together and hung around with each other all the time.

It wasn't until after graduation that Becky and Justin became more than best friends.

When we got together, I knew that I could never do any better.

And I was very lucky to even be with her because she didn't know how perfect she was.

But I did.

When Becky came to me and told me that she was in love with Justin, I really wasn't surprised.

I feel like we hit it off so well because we were a lot alike.

We're both very into fashion.

We both wanted to go to school to do hair.

I mean, it was perfect.

Becky decided to go to cosmetology school, and Justin decided to go as well.

The couple hadn't been dating long before they took their next big step together.

We were going to have a baby.

We were terrified because we were young.

We weren't married.

When Becky told me she was pregnant, I knew she was going to be an awesome mom already.

So I just gave her a hug and told her I'd be there for her.

Justin's mom, Deborah Dillard, was so thrilled by the news that she and her boyfriend, Billy Eastep, made room in Deborah's home for the couple and future grandchild.

My mother was very excited to have a little baby in the house, especially mine.

It's an extension of me.

I'm an extension of her.

Deborah had spent her entire life looking after people.

That was her calling, to take care of people.

She graduated from nursing school, top of her class, and was a charge nurse at nursing homes.

Deborah would tell Becky, don't worry about anything.

I'll take care of everything.

And I'll guide you through this because I've had children before, so I know what I'm doing.

True to her word, Deborah was right by Becky and Justin's side in May of 2005 when the couple welcomed their son Kobe into the world.

She was all like smiling, crying her first grandbaby and stuff like that.

She was so proud of Becky and what she did and telling Becky she did a good job.

She was ecstatic about Kobe and we were kind of ecstatic to have her because we didn't have to pay a babysitter and we were still in school.

So we'd get up, get him ready, give him to her, go to school and come home and have all the free time we wanted with him deborah was very very serious about the care for kobe she would take care of him like she would any grandma would do for their grandbabies

in august of 2005 with three-month old kobe in tow becky and justin married She was my best friend, and who better to marry besides your best friends?

I mean, it was perfect.

Becky and Justin got married at Deborah's home, got married in the backyard.

They had chairs set up and a wedding cake was outside

and it was kind of a party situation.

Becky was very happy at the wedding.

Kobe was in it as Justin walked down the aisle.

He carried Kobe with him up there as they said, you know, their vows.

With Deborah still looking after their little boy, Becky and Justin finished cosmetology school and both started working at a salon in the area.

As a family, we were a team and as a team, we were all very happy.

Everything we needed was taken care of.

If I couldn't provide it, Becky would provide it.

If Becky couldn't provide it, my mom would.

Deborah was really sweet, very, very, very, very sweet woman.

She was always caring.

She actually treated my sister like a daughter.

In 2008, Deborah had even more reason to bond with her daughter-in-law after Becky gave birth to a little girl named Cricket.

My mom and Becky got along a whole lot better than sometimes my mom and I did.

Though as close as Becky had become to Deborah, she and Justin still dreamed of one day having a place of their own.

Our goal was to have an apartment or something somewhere.

I know that Becky and Justin were trying to find a place, you know, alone away from the parents, had their own privacy, but it took longer than they expected.

Becky and Justin were happy.

They raised their children together.

They seemed to be in a good relationship.

Everybody's dream is to have a son and then a daughter.

And that's what we had.

We had a perfect life and they went to hell in a handbasket.

The once happy family is ripped apart when a Missouri highway patrolman finds Becky dead on an isolated highway on the evening of November 13th, 2009.

Vehicle was on the shoulder.

She was laying in the middle of the road.

So they just made the assumption that it was a crash, somebody ejected, and they called in.

But Corporal Clinton Howell quickly discovers this was no accident.

There was a couple of shell casings in the road, what appeared to be.22 caliber shell casings.

He was the first one to make that determination that she'd been shot.

It was a small caliber gunshot wound to her left temple between the ear and the eye.

There was also another gunshot wound to the back of her head.

It was so obvious that it was a murderer.

I contact her and tell them that I need an investigator to respond immediately.

Coming up, detectives piece together the grisly scene.

It was a hit, plain and simple.

And the death notification raises a red flag.

He was grieving before he knew what he should be grieving about.

On November 13th, 2009, Missouri Highway Patrol Officer Clinton Howell has just discovered 24-year-old Becky Dillard dead from what appears to be two gunshot wounds.

She was still very warm, so I was just minutes behind the shooter.

And I'm on by myself.

I have nobody else.

I have no backup.

I have nothing.

So, yeah, you've got to be on points.

You've got to keep your head on a swivel and then do everything you can to preserve the evidence.

When investigators arrive minutes later, they first take note of the crime's peculiar setting.

With where it was located out in the middle of nowhere, I mean it's it's not a case of there were stop signs or any reason that she would be stopped where she's at.

The vehicle was still running so it's obvious it wasn't car problems.

What could have motivated the murder is also a mystery.

You would think that if somebody was looking to steal something, whether you take the car, take the purse, her pockets did not appear to have been gone through.

It all indicated that it was a hit.

She was targeted, plain and simple.

It wasn't a random act.

As investigators continue to examine the crime scene, they take a closer look at the condition of Becky's body.

She was dressed up to go out for the night, very clean, not dirty, any way, shape, or form.

Her clothes weren't torn off of her.

where, you know, maybe a physical altercation had occurred.

The bullet hole that was on her left temple area, the blood from that flowed across her forehead and down the other side, which she would have had to been face down for the blood to go in that route.

So it appeared that whoever had done this had rolled her over, possibly to make sure she was dead.

So I believe this was definitely to kill her with that intention.

It is truly a rural area.

Very few people live out there.

Stranger violence around here is very, very rare.

We felt like it was going to be somebody that she had some type of relationship with.

And that's what it appeared that she had gotten out and walked around back to have a conversation with someone.

While crime scene investigators finish processing the scene, detectives go to the address listed on Becky's driver's license, a home just minutes away.

We went to the door and knocked on the door, which was answered by Deborah Dillard.

The officers did not tell her at that time what had happened to Becky because they weren't sure who had done this, but they spoke to her and asked her questions about where Becky may have been going.

Was Becky upset about anything?

Was somebody following her?

Did she have an argument with anybody?

According to Deborah, Becky and her husband, Deborah's son, Justin Dillard, had spent the last hour bickering about a party they'd been planning to attend that evening.

Becky was coming to the party and Justin was supposed to be coming with her.

It's our understanding that Justin was having a little trouble getting ready and Becky was getting frustrated.

There was conversation back and forth about whether he was going to go or not go and then when she decided it was time to go he wasn't ready and that she had left.

Deborah tells detectives that Justin left for the party a few minutes later.

He got Deborah Dillard to drive him to the party.

There was two routes from there that they could get to town and

if they had traveled the route where Becky Dillard was going across, they would have driven right by the scene.

But they took a different route.

Deborah says she dropped Justin off 30 minutes down the road at Becky's father's house.

Detectives immediately head to the party to question Becky's friends and family.

I think Deborah Dillard had called and let them know that we were coming.

And Justin Dillard and several others were all outside when we arrived.

I just knew something was going on and I wanted to know where she was.

Is she in trouble?

Justin's reaction strikes detectives as strange.

He seemed to be assuming the worst and it didn't feel normal.

He was grieving before he knew what he should be grieving about.

Detectives have a deputy drive Justin down to the station for a statement.

I'm like, am I being arrested?

And they say, no, you just need to go with us.

And so I'm like, okay, something's up.

While Justin is taken to the station, detectives turn to Becky's family members.

They say Justin had been acting strangely since the moment he arrived at the party.

He had showed up and was like asking where she was and Becky was nowhere to be found.

He had freaked out.

Justin got out.

Where's Becky?

Where's Becky?

Why isn't she here?

Where's she at?

Oh no, she's probably in a ditch somewhere hurt.

At the time, Becky's friends and family weren't too worried.

We all knew Becky was always fashionably late to any family get-togethers and stuff like that.

That is how Becky is.

Justin was asking, you know, that they looked in the ditches for her and things of that sort, like, like he knew something was wrong.

Which, of course, he would assume something is wrong when she's not there at the party and she's supposed to be there.

They thought, okay, dude, you're being too dramatic.

You're being, what do we used to call him, drama queen?

However, considering that they just found Becky dead on the side of the highway, detectives can't write Justin's comment off as mere drama.

We ask if everybody there would be willing to come to the Sheriff's Department for us to be able to sit down and interview them and talk to them as far as any information they had relevant to the investigation.

All the way in, we're talking, man.

Why don't they just have us go to the hospital?

You know, why are they having us go to the police department?

We'd rather go to the hospital and see Becky if she's that bad and that hurt.

It's only once everyone's at the station that detectives break the tragic news.

Becky is dead, and it appears to be a murder.

We were in a haze, disbelief.

We were numb.

I'm kind of in a zombie mode, as you say.

I cry a little bit, but I don't want to be strong.

As the realization sinks in, detectives start interviewing the grieving family members.

Everything was pointing that it was going to be someone who knows Becky Dillard as being our suspect.

One of the main things we try to look for is motive.

So it's very important for us to see what the last few hours of Becky's life were.

If she had angered anybody, if she had any enemies, if there was anybody that might be making threats towards her.

They ask us who

we think would do that.

And we say, Justin.

My suspicion was on Justin.

I didn't really suspect anybody else, but I suspected him, number one suspect.

Becky's family tells the investigators that Becky and Justin started having problems in their marriage soon after the birth of the couple's son.

The relationship started to break down.

I believe that he wasn't ready to be a father.

Becky had, I guess I dealt with it already.

Hey, I'm a mother and I'm going to do the best I can, put my best foot forward.

I think things snapped in him that he wasn't ready for.

And then that is when his drinking came.

Becky seemed to be on her way.

Justin, on the other hand, was calling into work, wasn't showing up to work.

The family says that Justin's lack of motivation soon led to problems with Becky.

From what I understood, Justin had not worked in over a year, and that was creating financial hardships, a variety of things like that, where she is the one taking care of the family.

Pretty much she was the glue holding everything together.

Deborah Dillard would take care of them while Becky was working.

Becky was upset.

You know, it shouldn't be Inanna's job to be a father figure to their grandbaby.

It was his job, his responsibility.

According to the family, as their household grew with the birth of their second child, so did Becky's resentment towards Justin.

As it progressed when Becky had cricket, things have gotten worse.

Finally, by the summer of 2009, the family says Becky'd had enough.

She told me once, before she was murdered that she was going to leave Justin.

She had the guts to walk away from things that weren't good for her.

Becky told me many times that she wanted to move out, but she did not tell Justin or Deborah about it because she didn't want them to know because she was secretly saving money, stashing it so that she could move out.

She was saving every tip up to a side, hiding it in a soft drawer.

She was only saving it so she can get away, get a place of her own.

Becky's family tells detectives that she had recently shared some upsetting news involving her secret stash of money.

Becky couldn't find it.

No one knew other than me and mom what Becky was saving this for.

She didn't know where it went.

That kind of scared her a little bit.

And made her sad because now she had to redo it all over again and hide it in a different spot.

With or without the money, Becky never got the chance to leave Justin.

But does that mean her husband is behind her murder?

Coming up, detectives interview Justin.

He was crying, but there was no tears coming out of his eyes.

And a key witness comes forward.

There's two cars that were parked on the side of the road.

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Late on the evening of November 13th, 2009, just hours after state troopers found Becky Dillard dead on the side of a Missouri highway, detectives sit down with her husband, Justin Dillard.

We were ready to talk to him.

We kind of talked to everybody else first, kind of worked our way through before.

We talked to him because you want to know as much as possible before you talk to the person that may be involved.

We did tell him directly that Becky was deceased and that her death did not appear to be an accident, but we could not give him any details due to the investigation.

He was just extremely emotional and upset and immediately agreed to cooperate in any way possible.

I couldn't deal with it.

You cannot explain that feeling ever.

I could throw up now thinking about it.

My first question was, was she raped?

Was she robbed?

The only thing I could think of as a random person,

he painted her as a very likable person, that there was no enemies out there.

There was nobody that he could point to that he thought would do this to her.

The population of my town is 300 people and I know every one of them.

I couldn't think of anybody that would ever hurt Becky ever.

No one.

I couldn't think of anybody that would hurt any of us.

When detectives ask about his relationship with Becky, Justin's version of their life together is very different from what Becky's family told them.

Becky wasn't leaving.

I was her best friend.

I would have known if she was going to leave.

I knew everything she did.

She knew everything I did.

We didn't keep things from each other, and she wasn't going anywhere.

She wasn't taking the kids.

However, no matter how much Justin denies having anything to do with the murder, detectives are less than convinced.

He was crying, but there was no tears coming out of his eyes, and we were strongly wondering if he was involved.

But we don't have enough to incarcerate Justin, and we had to let him go.

The following morning, detectives returned to Deborah's house, hoping to find clues that might shed more light on Becky's murder.

The next stage was to do more follow-up at the house, to go back to where she had come from, the last place that we could place her, you know, prior to her being found dead out there on the road.

Detectives don't have a warrant, but now knowing her daughter-in-law has been murdered, Deborah readily cooperates.

So with her permission, we did the consent search there.

In addition to the search, detectives conduct a brief interview with Deborah's boyfriend, Billy Eastep.

My mother had just gone through a divorce and we knew him through church and he was more or less our maintenance man.

He was kind of a jack of all trades and I think my mom gave him a job and so they became friends.

I remember my mother saying, I'm too old to have a boyfriend, but Billy and my mom did have some sort of relationship.

They'd been together for a while,

but I didn't know how long they've been together.

They were very close, from what we could tell.

There's a little he can tell investigators about the night of the murder.

She had told us that he had been drinking and that wasn't feeling well, had taken some NyQuil, and it kicked and he just went to sleep.

Billy says he doesn't remember Becky leaving or Debra driving Justin to the party.

But he does say that Deborah and Justin must have taken his truck.

Deborah and Becky shared a vehicle.

Billy had the only vehicle that was there that was running that we know of.

So if somebody left the residence, it would have had to have been his vehicle.

Once detectives learn about Billy's truck, they ask if they can conduct a search, and he leads them outside to where it's parked.

Billy Eastep drove a dark-colored pickup truck with a white door on it.

When detectives open that white door, they make an alarming discovery.

Inside his vehicle, there were some smudges that we thought were possibly dry blood.

Detectives collect samples of the suspected blood.

Basically hoping that we might get hit on some type of DNA or something.

Detectives also asked Billy to come down to the station for a formal statement.

But the interview doesn't add much to what he already told them.

His story was that he had taken some cough syrup and just immediately knocked him out.

They found that hard to believe to begin with, that over-the-counter cough syrup was going to react that quickly.

It's just a really strange story.

But then he later talks a little bit about the arguments that Justin and Becky are having.

He just wasn't completely consistent, and he was trying to really eliminate himself from things as, you know, just separating himself.

So that kind of makes you wonder.

Which we believe made him more of an interest that he knew what had happened.

If he wasn't there, at least he knew what was going on.

Even though detectives suspect Billy may know more than he's letting on, they have no reason to hold him.

There was no evidence that Becky and Billy had any bad feelings towards each other.

It seemed like they just existed in the house together.

It was a voluntary interview, and he was allowed to leave at the end of the evening.

A few days later, detectives are disappointed again when preliminary testing of the samples from Billy's truck reveal that the stains were blood, but not human.

It had us perplexed

on who it could have been, or actually on a motive on why anybody would have done this.

We're still hoping and looking and trying to find something that gives us some concrete evidence.

While the investigation appears to be at an impasse, news of Becky's death continues to spread through the community.

We don't have a lot of murders in Howell County.

And so when something like this happens, it would be on the radio, it would be on Springfield News, it would be in the newspaper.

I'm sure it was all over social media.

So everybody knew about it.

We had a flood of phone calls, condolences coming in.

After about two days, we just unplugged the phone.

We just want to be left alone.

It was hard to deal with.

There we were.

Then, on November 19th, six days after the murder of Becky Dillard, the Missouri Highway Patrol receives a call that could break the investigation wide open.

A man named Tyler Bean called in and basically said, hey, on that day I was on that road.

Tyler Bean and his girlfriend had been at Walmart shopping that evening, left Walmart, went and gassed up his truck, and then drove home.

So we have him and his girlfriend both seeing our victim parked out there on the road.

However, as Tyler explains to detectives, Becky's car isn't the only one they saw on the side of the road that night.

There's two cars,

SUV

and

I think a Chevy pickup.

It was parked on the side of the road and both of their headlights were on.

Everything was like that's normal, like somebody stopped somebody, talked to somebody, just pulled right up behind them.

He said there was somebody in the Ford Explorer, which was Becky Dohert's vehicle, sitting in the vehicle, and that this other pickup, they couldn't say for sure.

They couldn't identify the driver.

No way you failed hair, anything.

Any facial hair that was

just, I couldn't tell you anything about it.

I couldn't even tell you positive if it was a guy.

But there is one thing about the truck that Tyler can remember.

It was a dark-colored Chevy pickup.

It had a light-colored mismatched body part on the driver's side of it.

And that matched Billie Eastup's vehicle to a T.

Coming up, a polygraph test unearths a huge breakthrough in the case.

I walked around the desk.

I said, you knew how you were going to do on this test.

And accusations boil to the surface.

She said he was wearing clothes that looked like they had blood on them.

On November 19th, 2009, Missouri Highway Patrol detectives investigating the murder of 24-year-old Becky Dillard appear to be on the verge of a breakthrough.

An eyewitness has just placed Billy Eastep's pickup truck at the scene of the crime.

There was a multicolored dark vehicle with a white driver's door.

Just stood out like a sore thumb.

On November 20th, detectives contact the woman who'd supposedly driven that truck on the evening of the murder, Becky's mother-in-law, Deborah Dillard.

She agrees to come in for a polygraph.

That's basically an investigative tool to determine whether or not a person, when they're being questioned, are being truthful.

She was very relaxed, seemed like she felt like she was in charge of what was going on.

Deborah seems just as confident when the test is over.

She kind of clapped her hands and seemed like she was excited about it.

I walked around the desk.

I said, you knew how you were going to do on this test even before I did, and I'm sure it comes to no surprise to you that you didn't pass the test.

It was obvious to us that she was keeping things from the investigators.

She was totally deflated at that point.

She was a loss for words.

And I could tell it had really set her back.

And at that point, I explained to Deborah that it would be in her best interest to explain what took place.

Put on the spot by detectives, Deborah suddenly caves.

Feeling how Calden can kill her.

She cracked and gave up that Billy was the one.

And they actually even recorded a little bit of her saying that.

She basically said, the thing that I was keeping from you is that Billy actually left the house that night, that she was still there.

And then when he came back, he was wearing clothes that looked like they had blood on them, and that he immediately jumped into the shower, took a shower,

and that she said they really sent up red flags for her.

According to Deborah, when she confronted Billy about her suspicions, he didn't deny it.

He didn't shot him imagining he is.

Deborah kind of alluded to the fact that if Billy had done this, that he'd probably done it to help her maintain their way of life with the grandchildren.

She was afraid that Becky was going to take away the grandchildren and move away from their residence.

Before detectives wrap up their interview, they ask her one final question.

Have you ever said anything around him that he would construe that you wanted to hurt him?

No.

After Deborah IDs her boyfriend Billy as Becky's killer, detectives bring the 41-year-old handyman in for another round of questioning.

Basically, Billy was confronted with the fact that Deborah was not saying that he had killed Becky.

He did state that to law enforcement that he was there, but he did not pull the trigger.

He would not say who did it.

That's one thing that he just refused to answer.

He said, I want to talk to an attorney.

And they came in and asked me, I said, he asked for an attorney, we're done.

At which point, the questioning stopped immediately.

And Billy was arrested.

He was charged, but the investigation continued.

Deborah Dillard was still a person of interest at that point because we could not find a true motive on why Billy would have done it.

Becky never said anything ill-willed about Billy at all.

Our gut feelings told us that they had the wrong person.

Debbie and I had talked about it.

It was like, no,

it can't be him.

On November 21st, after only 15 hours in jail, Billy decides he's ready to talk to investigators.

Before you say anything, I'm asking you a simple question, Billy.

Are you rescinding your statement this morning when you said, I don't want to talk to you anymore, I think I need attorneys

are you withdrawing that statement I have to honor your request that's why I'm asking you now if you are withdrawing that request it is your own free will

I'm telling you on free will that I did not pull that trigger

with Billy's ongoing cooperation detectives question him about Deborah's involvement in the murder Billy's okay you're not gonna hurt her feelings man no matter how bad it stayed that's what you say it's happened man we're trying to get the truth.

So, let me get this straight.

Did she go with you because she wanted to make sure it's done?

Yeah,

she went with you to make sure that she went with me because she pulled the trigger.

I told her not to do it.

You told her not to do what?

I told her, don't, don't do it.

What was she going to do?

To obey.

While Billy says that the murder was Deborah's idea, the alleged motive stays the same.

Becky was going to leave the household, was going to take her grandchildren with her.

And she wouldn't take in her babies.

Deborah was very attached to the children.

She did not want them leaving the house.

She wanted to keep the children there.

If Becky was no longer in the picture, she would not only be able to see them all the time, she may have even gotten custody of the two kids.

According to Billy, after Becky stormed out of the house on the evening of November 13th and drove drove to the party alone, Deborah decided to act.

Deborah and Justin's relationship seemed to be very close.

And if Justin was upset, Deborah would be upset.

We don't know exactly what Becky and Deborah talked about prior to Becky leaving, but we believe that there was some kind of heated argument.

We believe that was

the instigator, the final straw.

that Deborah finally decided, okay, I'm going to take care of her at this point.

So when Becky left, Deborah immediately got into the vehicle with Billy, followed her out on the highway, and chased her down and had Becky pull over.

She got out and she said, Becky, come here.

When Becky started walking over there, she stopped in front of the truck and she said, Justin wants you to go back and go get him.

And she sighed.

Becky turned around to go back to the vehicle and Billy Eastep said, Deborah pulled out the gun.

And when she turned around, Deb went, pal.

And what did Becky's body do then?

She just collapsed.

He said he wasn't aware that she had planned to do that.

Because then when I Deb bent down, I heard a second shot.

She wanted to make sure she was dead, so shot her a second time.

And then she got back in the truck.

And I looked at her and I said, I can't believe you did it.

I can't believe you really did it.

Billy says that once Becky was dead, Deborah had driven off to dispose of the murder weapon.

That's our understanding that that was thrown off the Howie 101 bridge into the North Fork Lake, which is a very deep, long bridge.

The chances of recovering it there are just non-existent.

Then, according to Billy, Deborah had returned home and driven Justin to the party.

When did Justin find out about this?

Find out about it.

About the plot to kill his wife.

I didn't know he found out about it.

The farther we go, the less Justin Drew Dillard's being mentioned as far as having done anything.

We have nothing that shows that he was involved.

However, if Billy wasn't involved either, why hadn't he come forward sooner?

You could have said, hey, I'm with a crazy woman that just killed one of my friends.

Call the Howell County Sheriff's Office and tell them.

I mean, you had a chance to do it, Billy.

I know it.

I mean, you know, like I said, I'm a shadow dog don't hunt man i was shot she threw him under the bus to save herself and he took the fall

with no eyewitnesses and only billy's statement against deborah police and prosecutors don't feel they have enough to make an arrest but that all changes on february 14th 2010 when authorities receive a six-page letter from Deborah Dillard.

She had written that that the guilt was weighing on her and that she felt bad that Billy was sitting in jail for a crime he didn't commit and that she wanted everybody to know that she actually did it.

This was the very first time somebody had confessed in a letter to a crime in my career.

Coming up, will Deborah's letter lead to her arrest?

That was it.

That was the nail in a coffin.

Or will detectives be too late?

When they walked in, she was in bed and she had the pistol laid beside her.

On February 14th, 2010, sheriff's deputies and state troopers raced to Deborah Dillard's home outside Moody, Missouri.

Earlier that morning, authorities received a six-page confession from Deborah, claiming that she was the one who murdered her daughter-in-law, Becky Dillard.

That was it.

That was the nail-in-the-coffin, basically.

Once we received those letters, we had a case.

However, an arrest isn't the only reason officers rush to reach Deborah.

It came across to me when I first read it as a suicide letter.

When they walked in to arrest her, she was in bed and she had the pistol laid beside her.

And when they walked in, they told her that they needed her to come to the station.

And her hand automatically went to the pistol.

Detectives had to draw their weapons on her and they were afraid that she was either going to harm herself or them.

If she was meaning to end her life at that point, they basically talked her out of it and arrested her.

When detectives question Deborah, it's clear that suicide isn't the only thing she's having second thoughts about.

Are you afraid to sit in jail for what she's done?

I'm like, oh, no, I'm serious.

I haven't done anything.

She said that she loved Billy so much that she could not live without him and that it was her plan to make this false confession, saying that she did it and that Billy didn't do it and then she was going to kill herself.

But then she chickened out.

Deborah's sudden reversal is a frustrating moment for detectives.

I gotta have you tell me the absolute truth truth today.

I'm so sick of all the drama and the bullcrap, man.

I can flush it all away.

You know, but there's nothing to this damn town.

In yet another twist, Deborah also reverses her original statement fingering Billy for Becky's murder.

I really believe that.

Detectives don't believe any of it.

At that point, we pretty much feel like we had the two people involved.

She had means motive and definitely had opportunity.

They had enough probable cause to arrest Deborah Dillard for first-degree murder.

When I found out that they had finally arrested Deborah for murdering my daughter, Becky, I was ecstatic.

I was like, it's about effing time.

But they still had to prove it in front of a jury.

When Deborah goes to trial in January of 2011, the prosecution argues that Billy's story and Deborah's written confession are the truth, that she was the shooter.

The autopsy in this case revealed the trajectory of the bullets and was basically almost straight head-on.

Billy Eastep was roughly about 6'3, 6'4, and Becky was almost roughly five foot tall.

So if Billy would have shot Becky, it would have been at a downward angle.

When it's the defense's turn, Deborah takes the stand and once again claims that her confession was false.

Deborah Dillard did testify that she missed Billy and she really loved him and she wanted to take the heat off of him.

She was trying to manipulate the jury to believe that she didn't have anything to do with

how do you find her?

Guilty.

Murder in the first degree in Missouri means life without parole.

There is no other sentence, and that's what she received.

The only time that woman ever cried was when she was sentenced a guilty.

No remorse whatsoever for the murder, except she got caught.

Deborah's son, Justin Dillard, still believes his mother is innocent.

She wrote a letter trying to see what she could do to get Billy out.

I feel like my mother was trying to save us all by throwing herself under the bus.

I lost my best friend.

My children lost their mother.

I lost my mother.

I lost everything.

For Becky's family, the police, and prosecutors, the most fitting punishment is that while she was willing to do the unthinkable to get custody of her grandchildren, Deborah will never see them again.

Deborah was what I would refer to as a narcissist.

It was all about her.

Everything revolved around her needs and what she wanted.

What What she wanted was to have Kobe only to herself at Cricket.

And she's not the mall.

My sister is.

And she hated it.

So she made it to where it was only her.

Becky would never have taken the kids away from Deborah.

She knew that the kids needed to know their grandma.

But grandma, Deborah was too greedy and she wanted all their love.

Billy E.

Stip pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

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