Pamela Lanier

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When a salt-of-the-earth farmer and a fun single mom fall for each other, their faith in love is restored.

They lived a real good life and they were happy living it.

But a mysterious illness destroys their plans to grow old together.

People recall seeing him in severe ill states where he couldn't move for days.

He said, Your daddy's at hospital.

You probably want to go ahead and come home now.

Is there a darker side to this tragic tale?

The circumstances under which this man had died were suspicious.

He was not able to conclude what the cause of death was.

A family demands answers.

We've got to figure out what happened because it might be a murder.

That's when we decided we need to go back and exhume his body.

As the pieces fall into place, a dark pattern emerges.

There was another death under somewhat unusual circumstances some years earlier.

You hope you're dreaming.

It's a bad dream and you wake up, but

it's shocking.

Dublin County, North Carolina, is a place where life moves slowly and folks understand the value of a hard day's work.

Dublin County is approximately 70,000 people.

It's a very rural farm county in eastern North Carolina.

The people in Duplin County, as you would imagine, are rural, down-to-earth, very friendly people.

But everything is about to change for one local family.

On the evening of November 19th, 1997,

Mitchell Sanders is hunting on his aunt's farm with his cousin Dustin when he gets a familiar signal.

We were in the back of the farm hunting deer when

I heard horns blowing before dark.

I knew that horn meant for me to come down.

When the teens arrive at the house, it's clear something's wrong.

Mitchell's aunt, Pamela Lanier, is huddled over her husband, Dorian, who's in dire condition.

Doran had a strange color look to him to me at that time, more of a yellowish color, and I weren't for sure what it was, but I knew it weren't right.

He was unconscious in the residence.

The rescue came and they transported him to Duplin General Hospital.

Will they be able to save Dorian?

She doesn't know what's going on.

Nobody knew at that time.

And I reckon there was nothing that they could do to stop what happened.

For Ivy Dorian Lanier Sr., nothing was more important than farm and family.

Daddy and his family grew up on a small farm in rural Duplin County, Singapore Penn area, couple hundred acres at most.

Dora was a get up before the sun and let's get started.

And let's get whatever we got to get done done today.

He was like a piece of leather.

You could take a knife and you couldn't cut him.

That's how tough he was.

After high school, Dorian spent some time in the military.

But he always found his way back to the farm.

He went into the Air Force at a young age.

He was very proud to serve our country.

It got him off the farm, you know, to enjoy something different in life.

Although Doran's blood was definitely country blood, no doubt.

After the Air Force, Doran met his first wife, Beth, and then Doran and Beth had two children.

Over the years, Dorian had made a good life on land the Lanier family had worked for generations.

The property was property of my great-granddaddy's, and daddy got a chance to buy it from the family.

Mom and daddy built a home, which is about 1,200 square feet.

Nice little house, perfect for a family with two kids.

It was all very, very precious and dear to him because it was family, it was heritage, blood, sweat, and tears.

Doran was a turkey farmer, had lots of friends in the community.

They described him as

a very good neighbor, which is in those parts.

When you say somebody's a good neighbor, that actually means a lot.

He had turkey houses and small farm, nothing big.

Did bulldozer work for anybody that needed it.

So he was into farming and running heavy equipment, and he was a hard-working man.

But farm life wasn't for his wife, Beth, and it took a toll on their marriage.

I think they truly loved each other, but they just grew apart and had different opinions, you know.

Dorian was very stubborn, no doubt.

And Beth was a good woman.

She gave up a lot of herself to live on the farm with him.

After 25 years, Beth called it quits.

Mama moved out.

For all my high school years, it was me and my daddy.

Eventually, Dorian decided to get back in the dating game.

Dad had dated different ladies from the time that he and my mama separated, meaning that they were all nice ladies.

But none of Dorian's flings lasted long.

And after the kids grew up and moved out, he was beginning to picture a future alone.

Until Dorian ran into an old friend, Pamela Sanders-Williams.

Though she was raised to be a southern belle, Pam Sanders was a firecracker who kept everyone on their toes.

Pam's very energetic, so you're going to have fun when you're around her.

She's laughing, carrying on, but she's looking out for you.

You don't meet them like that every day.

Pam had been unlucky in love, divorced twice, and in 1987, she found herself raising a young son named Dustin on her own.

until Johnny Ray Williams walked into her life.

He was from the Duplin County area, a good country boy out there.

They were a happy couple.

Pam loved Johnny, and I would never question that.

And Johnny loved Pam.

When Johnny and Pam married in 1989, Johnny adopted Dustin and raised him as his own.

Later that year, the couple welcomed a daughter named Kayla.

Things were going well for the family.

Until September 4th, 1991, when Johnny had a terrible accident.

He was checking his crab pot stowed out there in their backyard off the dock.

And I don't know what happened to him when he fell in, if he got disoriented, or I don't know, but ended up drowning.

When the emergency people and the law enforcement arrived, they recovered his body in three feet of water.

When Johnny died, Pam didn't take it real good.

She was a different person and it just like her world fell apart.

She loved him

and it took her a while to move on after that.

She had a big loss,

but she had children too.

And she carried on for them, I know.

Pam spent the next two years healing.

But when she crossed paths with Dorian, she knew she could be happy again.

Pam lived nearby in the neighborhood.

The two of them had, you know, just knew each other.

We called Pam wanting to go out.

He was very persistent.

He saw something

and he weren't just going to walk away from it.

Pamela and Dorian married in 1993 and she and her children moved to Dorian's farm.

For Dorian, it was an unexpected new beginning.

I think he really missed the closeness that he had had previously with his own children.

And maybe he thought he had another chance with these two small children.

He did have an affection for the kids, and I think the kids like my dad.

To me, it seemed like they lived a real good life and they were happy living it.

But after four happy years of marriage, Dorian's health takes a tragic turn.

At 6.25 p.m.

on November 19th, 1997, Dorian arrives by ambulance at Dublin County Medical Center.

Doctors attempt to stabilize him, but the 57-year-old is in a fragile state.

I got a phone call probably about 10 or 11 o'clock from one of my aunts.

She said, your daddy's at the hospital.

He's sick.

You probably want to come.

So I said, do I need to come tonight or do I need to come tomorrow?

She said, you probably want to go ahead and come on now.

They took Doran back and run some tests.

Doran was still active fine.

I thought it wouldn't be long, and we'd be packing up and going back home.

He didn't look good, but he, you know, he talked okay.

The reference he made multiple times was, I'm gonna be okay, and Pam was taking good care of him.

But then, Dorian's condition suddenly plummets.

When it all happened in the hospital, the staff is all rushing.

Pam is going hysterical.

She don't know what's going on.

At that moment is when everybody started stirring there because he was directing flatline and Pam was losing it.

Coming up.

A family copes with a stunning turn.

There's a lot of confusion.

Nobody really knew what happened.

And unsettling information starts to emerge.

Dr.

Garrett did indicate that, in his opinion, this was not a one-time incident.

November 19th, 1997.

After 57-year-old Dorian Lanier fell ill at home, doctors at the hospital thought they'd begun to stabilize him until his vital functions started to fail.

The family was really worried about him.

Nobody had any idea how sick he was.

After multiple resuscitation attempts, doctors pronounced Dorian dead at 10.57 p.m.

They said Doran had passed away.

And it shocked me.

Because I was just talking to him.

You hope you're dreaming.

It's a bad dream and you wake up, but

it's shocking.

The last thing he told me was that he loved me.

But I always have that.

Dorian's wife, Pam, is beside herself.

She lost it.

As you would expect.

And it was tough.

It was tough.

All you could do was be there for her

and hope somebody's there for you.

The question on everyone's mind is, why did Dorian die?

There was a lot of confusion.

Nobody really knew what happened.

Dorne's daughter.

She requested the autopsy.

Dr.

Charles Garrett was our forensic pathologist, and he did the initial autopsy.

Dr.

Garrett noted that Mr.

Lanier had a yellow cast or color, and there was evidence that he had some liver issues, which could certainly explain why he might have had a yellowish cast.

In addition to problems with his liver function, Dr.

Garrett finds an enlarged heart and excessive fluid in Dorian's lungs, but the autopsy does not provide him with enough information on its own.

He was not able to conclude what the cause of death was until he sent off blood to do a toxicology report.

The report's findings stunned Dr.

Garrett.

The toxicology report came back and indicated to us that he died from arsenic poisoning.

That testing revealed elevated concentrations of arsenic in the blood, the liver, and a hair sample.

They were high enough to explain the death.

The other thing, again, of course, was that the symptoms that the man had exhibited prior to his death were consistent with arsenic poisoning.

In an instance when someone dies of poisoning then of course there are the three possibles that it's an accident, it's a suicide or it's a homicide.

However the poison got into Dorian's body, one thing is for sure.

His end was not a peaceful one.

In arsenic poisoning the victim dies a long drawn out death, very painful, uncomfortable death.

Dr.

Garrett did indicate that

in his opinion, this was not a one-time incident.

This is arsenic that had been the body of Dorian Lanier for a long period of time.

To Dr.

Garrett, the fact that Dorian had been poisoned over a long period of time points to a chilling conclusion.

It was his opinion.

Dorian did not commit suicide and it was not an accidental poisoning.

Dr.

Garrett notified law enforcement, well, look, we've got a case of arsenic poisoning here and we've got to to figure out what happened because it might be murder.

When it was brought to our attention that Dorian Lanier died of arsenic poisoning, my office immediately contacted the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

And also, we contacted the Dupin County Sheriff's Department, notified them of

the results of the autopsy, and formally requested them to conduct a criminal investigation surrounding the death of Dorian Lanier.

The homicide investigation begins close to home.

In any case where a husband or wife is killed, the number one suspect that you've got to eliminate is the surviving spouse.

So we obviously are trying to eliminate Pamela as the key suspect.

Pam Lanier immediately agrees to an interview.

Investigators start by asking about her marriage to Dorian.

She was saying that she loved her husband, they had a wonderful relationship, and she gave her explanation of the events leading out to her husband's death.

According to Pam, Dorian was in good health until September 1st, 1997, two months before his death, when he had a mishap while operating his bulldozer.

Best I can remember is a tree limb had come in the cab and pinned his knee one way or the other against some controls for the bulldozer.

And messed up his knee pretty bad, from what I understand.

And then

somehow from there,

things went downhill quickly.

Pam explains how over the course of several weeks, Dorian's health deteriorated.

Some days he's fine, and some days...

You couldn't hardly understand him.

He might be laying there sleeping all day or acting silly, like a kid and not listening.

Very defiant.

He had general weakness of his limbs, at least on several occasions that people recall.

And he lost a lot of weight.

So

there was a lot going on with him.

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Though according to Pam, Dorian refused to go to the doctor.

He wouldn't take medicine.

He didn't like to go to the doctor.

He'd always try and be self-sufficient about things like that.

Dorn was old school type of person.

He thought he knew as much as a doctor knows.

If he could cure one of his animals, he could cure himself, and that was his mindset.

Pam says that though she was worried, she respected Dorian's wishes.

Still, investigators find it hard to believe that Pam just stood by and watched as Dorian's health continued to deteriorate.

That certainly we thought was incriminating and certainly doesn't support her as being a loving, caring wife.

While authorities suspect Pam may have had something to do with Dorian's death, loved ones see her as a grieving widow needing emotional encouragement.

Pam took it hard.

Doran's family knew there was arsenic in the system from the autopsy and everybody still was there to support Pam.

Her family, Doran's family.

And after even knowing what was in his system, everybody still came to Pam's house and had Thanksgiving.

Nobody was pointing a finger at her.

Coming up, detectives are forced to reframe their approach.

There was some debate about whether or not a medication that he was using might have been the cause of his death.

And ghosts from the past bring new suspicions to light.

This was not the first husband that had died under suspicious circumstances.

Duplin County, North Carolina authorities are investigating the death of 57-year-old turkey farmer, Dorian Lanier.

Our forensic pathologist said, this is not an accidental death, this is a murder case.

So then you have to find out who did it, if it's a murder.

And obviously, Pamela lived with him during this whole two-month time that he'd been sick.

So she's interviewed.

Dorian's wife, Pam Lanier, cannot tell them how a deadly level of arsenic could have entered Dorian's system.

When you find something in someone that maybe maybe is not supposed to be there, you have to look at all the possible ways that it could have gotten there.

Did the person take it?

Did someone give it to them?

Or is there something in their environment that could explain it?

During this period of time, the Sheriff's Department and the State Bureau of Investigation went to the home of Dorian and Pamela Near, and there they, in fact, found a number of empty packets of Nitro 3.

Nitro 3 is a product that is used to help grow turkeys.

The feed additive is something Dorian worked with for years as a turkey farmer.

He'd get packs of the chemical,

Nitro 3,

and you'd dump it into,

I believe it was a barrel of water.

and it would slowly be pumped from that barrel of water, from the pump house, into the

watering system that goes to the turkeys.

On the packaging, detectives notice something that changes the course of the investigation.

The additive contains arsenic.

There was some debate about whether or not a medication that he was using with the turkeys might have been the cause of his death rather than murder.

But how would Dorian have ingested the Nitro 3?

Detectives speak with Pamela and other loved ones for more insight.

Their turkey house medicators runs through a pump house.

Doris they don't drink out of that right there, but yet throughout the year, I'd always see him pick up the hose and drink it.

He would be seen drinking out of a hose,

which clearly could expose him to arsenic if he was drinking the water that contained the medication.

But there was also a way to turn the spigot so that it would go into a different hose that you could drink out of a freshwater hose that was attached to sort of the same water supply.

Pamela Lanier and some of her family members' explanation was that Dorian accidentally poisoned himself.

Doran didn't really think about the dangers in things for himself as he would for others.

He would rather do it than have somebody else do it if there was a danger involved in anything.

But if Dorian happened to ingest arsenic from the hose, would it have been enough to kill him?

Well, our general sense was that the arsenic that was in use in his farm for his animals, there wasn't enough arsenic to explain what was found in him.

There was a much more concentrated form of

arsenic in his system.

The arsenic that he was feeding his livestock would not have done it, could not have done it.

If the Nitro 3 wasn't wasn't strong enough to kill Dorian, what or who did?

Before detectives conclude their interview, Pam tells them that she knows one person who may have had access to Dorian in the days leading up to his illness.

Allie Bradshaw was a friend who stayed there from beginning in September and left the early part of November of 1997.

When Allie moved in, Dorian was getting sick.

When detectives sit down with Allie, she is adamant she had nothing to do with Dorian's death, but admits she was concerned for his well-being.

She reported seeing him in

severe ill states where he couldn't move for days.

According to Allie, the only person who tended to Dorian before his death was Pam.

We find out that

Pamela

was very reluctant to allow friends and family members come over to visit Dorian during this two-month period where he was ill subsequent then to his death.

After Doran's health deteriorated even more, it was about impossible to see him or even talk to him because Pam isolated him from everybody.

Because

my suspicion is Pam didn't want everybody to know how really sick Doran was.

And he didn't want anybody to worry about him or make a big deal out of anything that

he was going through, which is, you know, hindsight's always 20-20.

After the interview, detectives work to corroborate Allie's story.

Obviously, we looked into Allie.

Allie had no motive to do any of this.

There was no financial incentive or no reason we should find why Allie would poison Norian.

And also, Allie left, I believe, November the 2nd,

and he died 17 days after Allie left the residence.

With no apparent opportunity or motive, Allie Bradshaw is cleared.

Investigators decide they need to take a closer look at Pam.

As they dig deeper into her past, they make an alarming discovery.

It was brought to our attention that this was not the first husband that had died under suspicious circumstances.

Pam's third husband, Johnny Ray Williams, had died in 1991, six years before Dorian.

Pamela Near said he had consumed some whiskey and was seen staggering down a pier going into the canal.

He fell in the canal and was trying to get get out.

According to Pamela Near,

she said she threw a crab pot towards him for a flotation device.

When she left to get help, she came back and found him floating and she called for assistance.

The official cause of death was drowning.

The problem with it was that he drowned in two or three feet of water.

There were people who thought that was very strange because they knew him to be a really good swimmer and that just didn't make sense that he would allow himself to drown in that depth depth of water, even if he'd been drinking.

For some reason, an autopsy was not performed on Johnny Ray Williams at that time.

Investigators reach out to Johnny's family for insight.

And his mother, Marie Williams, has some interesting things to say.

Mr.

Williams had been sick prior to his death.

He had been admitted at a hospital with symptoms similar to a stroke.

When Ms.

Williams went and spoke to her son, he was incoherent and unresponsive, and she had concerns that something may be wrong.

That's when we decided we need to go back and exhume his body and perform an autopsy to determine whether or not he died from arsenic poisoning too.

Coming up, investigators dig deep to uncover the truth.

His body was not in good condition.

It had undergone quite a bit of deterioration.

And when suspicions mount, retaliation begins.

She alleged that someone was stalking her and vandalizing her residence.

Detectives in Dublin County, North Carolina are investigating a possible connection between the deaths of Dorian Lanier and his wife, Pam's former husband, Johnny Williams.

Given the circumstances of her most recent husband's death, they, I think, wanted to see if there was any potential pattern or connection.

Arrangements were made to remove his body from the grave, and I was the one who ended up examining him.

Exhumations are always a bit of a dice roll.

In Mr.

Williams' case, his body was not in good condition.

It had undergone quite a bit of deterioration in the six six years or so that

he'd been in the ground.

They were looking to see if he also might have been poisoned.

Maybe if he did drown, he had drowned because he had something in his system that he shouldn't have.

But our main reason for performing it was to rule out the possibility that we had another case of arsenic poisoning.

We felt comfortable testing for arsenic because of the nature of arsenic.

It just doesn't go away and it doesn't deteriorate.

We were able, of course, to run tests on the tissues for the presence of arsenic.

There were small levels of arsenic in his system, but that's normal of all human beings.

The tissues really weren't in a state that we felt that testing for other medicines or drugs would be meaningful.

So we passed that on, and that was the end of that.

With no red flags in Johnny's autopsy report, investigators are unable to confirm definitively that his death was anything more than an accident.

Still, investigators know that after Johnny's death, Pam had inherited his life insurance policy for $25,000, and she's about to collect once again.

Pamela Nier stood to inherit an estate from Dorian Leonier, which was estimated at approximately $90,000.

Though the inheritance hints at a possible motive, authorities note that Pam hasn't made any claims on it yet.

It's been more than four months since Dorian's death, and without any new leads, the investigation stalls until April 1998, when Pam starts cashing in.

She did

sell assets for substantial amounts of money.

There was the land.

She either sold part of it and she sold some equipment after his death.

Once largely supportive of Pam and her innocence, Dorian's family now has a change of heart.

They became suspicious once she started selling all the farmland.

The family land was not given to the family, to his

brother, or son, sisters, and father.

That's when it all sort of went south.

I was shocked.

You find out she is just going about selling everything and

taking the money and it was just bizarre.

Still, some loved ones are more understanding.

Pam had to continue to live.

What do you do?

I mean,

if you got to sell something you can't use to make it another month, sometimes you got to do it.

When investigators dig deeper into Pam's finances, they find that she often struggled to make ends meet.

They also uncover one incident where she might have come up with an unsettling solution to her financial woes.

A year before Doran's death, his house caught on fire.

His wife, Pamela, was the only one at the residence at that time.

It was a firing laundry room.

There was a lot of smoke damage.

There was a lot of back and forth with the insurance company because they really couldn't figure out what happened.

At the time of the fire in 1996, Dorian and Pamela were having financial difficulties.

The insurance company paid them $142,000, which they used to buy a mobile residence they put behind the home that had burned, and also were able to pay off their outstanding debts.

It was never proven that Pam started the fire to cash in on the insurance.

But the fact that Pamela had been a suspect in this previous fire and financially benefited certainly was a piece of circumstantial evidence that supported the theory that she murdered her husband for financial gain.

And the fact that a woman has now had two husbands to die who had been healthy prior to a brief period prior to their death.

Both of them got the same type of very sudden health health issues.

Both of them died, and both of them she benefited financially.

That certainly is some evidence to support that she killed Dorian.

The totality of the circumstances involving the Dorian Lanier murder case, everything combined, was what Detroit Jones and Special Agent Wallace were able to provide to the district attorney's office.

In January of 1999, just over a year after Dorian's death, a Duplin County grand jury indicts Pamela Lanier for the murder of her husband.

Pam took it like anybody would take it.

In shock, disbelief that they would even think that she would have done it.

Pam is held in the Duplin County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

Pam didn't stay in jail for long.

Her bond was posted and she was released and she goes through the legal process of getting attorneys and stuff.

While Pam is out on bond, she tries to go about her life as usual.

She would have her moments, but Pam carried it real good for what was going on.

She kept

living her life day to day like she had to.

In the months before her trial, Pam doesn't shy away from law enforcement.

She contacts the Dublin County Sheriff's Office to report harassment, possibly by someone seeking retaliation against her for Dorian's death, despite the fact she's not yet been found guilty.

She alleged that someone was stalking her and vandalizing her residence.

Pamela Near's allegation was someone was cutting the screens in her windows, throwing eggs at the house, and she didn't know who it was.

Somebody poisoned her dog in the pen out by the back door.

They came home and noticed something something was wrong and took him to the vet and someone had poisoned him and killed him.

It was just nonstop.

When investigators look into the charges, they begin to think Pam has ulterior motives for keeping in contact with police.

We listened to her.

She had no photograph.

She had no evidence to present to us to prove that her allegation was true.

We just couldn't prove anyone was stalking Pamela and Nier or vandalizing her residence.

It was our opinion that she may have been trying to pick us for information to find out about her case.

And we also felt like she was, for lack of a better term, throw us a red herring for us to follow and run out regarding this alleged stalker and vandal.

That

eventually she could say, well, this could be the person that killed her husband.

Despite Pam's efforts to throw them off the trail, prosecutors work to solidify their case against her.

In October 2001, they offer her a plea deal.

At one time, prosecutors offered her a plea deal of a lesser charge than three years in prison, which surprises everyone she rejected.

So for somebody not to take a plea of something like that

makes you wonder, don't

they're crazy if they don't take that and they did it.

Why chance it?

But Pam stayed pretty confident that if I'm not guilty, I'm okay.

Coming up, Pamela Lanier goes to trial.

This case was not a slam dunk for the state at all.

It's a lot of circumstantial evidence.

And hard lines are drawn in court.

She's a loving person, and she wouldn't have done this to him.

It was very demeaning what she did to him.

You don't treat somebody you love like that.

In November 2001, nearly four years after Dorian Lanier's death, his wife Pamela Lanier's trial begins.

After turning down a plea deal, Pamela's fate rests on the outcome of this courtroom battle.

Those Those in attendance are divided by family ties.

I was there when they opened the doors.

I was there when we closed the doors.

For those few days, that was my order.

Saw the judge come in, saw the judge go out.

That was my duty.

That was my duty to my daddy.

She said,

I didn't do nothing.

They can't convict me of something I didn't do.

If I thought for any reason whatsoever that Pam had done this, I wouldn't be on her side.

I don't care how thick the blood is, I wouldn't.

But she's a loving person and she wouldn't have done this to him.

Without any solid physical evidence tying Pam to the crime, prosecutors have a tough road ahead.

You know, this case was not a slam dunk for the state at all.

It's a lot of circumstantial evidence involved, like most murders.

There was testimony about whether or not Pamela refused to take him to the doctor, and she probably should have.

I think it hurt Pamela Lanier a lot that there was evidence that she tried to keep people away and was not pushing to have him go to a doctor or even at some point go to the ER, even though they'd been instructed to go and they didn't get treatment.

Those kinds of things didn't sit well with the jury.

You know, before he died, she went to the extent of, from what I hear, covering the mattress and everything because his body functions were just way out of control.

It was very

demeaning what she did to him.

In more ways than one, you don't treat somebody you love

like that.

Prosecutors argue that while facing another financial struggle, Pam poisoned Dorian so she could take over their their property and bank accounts.

Prosecutors also assert that the suspicious patterns from Pam's past are not to be ignored.

The jury was allowed to hear evidence that her prior husband died under what the state would characterize as very suspicious circumstances at best.

And now her second husband has died under again very suspicious circumstances.

And even though the mechanism of death was different, the jury was allowed to consider both.

But Pamela Lanier is ready to fight.

Pamela Lanier had two of the best criminal offense lawyers in North Carolina,

Doug Parsons and Jack O'Hale.

So Pamela Lanier had what would be called the dream team in North Carolina representing her.

For everything that the state presented, her attorneys presented something else.

Pam's defense team tries to destroy the prosecution's assertions of a financial motive.

Pam had the farm already.

She lived on it.

She didn't have to work.

Doran paid the bills.

What was she gaining?

Nothing.

Why gain something you already have?

The defense also argues Dorian's death could have been the result of an accidental poisoning.

The argument was that this is a farm that uses chemicals and medicines for the turkeys and some of those contain arsenic and if he wasn't as careful as he should have been, that may have been what caused his death.

After closing arguments on November 29th, the jury deliberates.

When you add all the pieces of evidence together, it convinced a jury 12 people that she was guilty of murdering her husband.

Pamela Near was found guilty of first-degree murder and received life in prison without parole.

Those in Pam's corner are dismayed by the trial's outcome.

My mama called me and told me that they had found her guilty.

It was a shocking moment.

From day one to today,

she would tell you, I did not do this.

And I believe her.

Not just

in my mind, but with my heart, I believe her.

Most people don't see her like as a murderer, but a lot of people describe that they had a

good relationship, Dorian and Pamela.

But obviously, that was not true.

I'm very confident in the decision of our courts and how it handled this matter.

For Dorian's family, the verdict is a relief.

And its timing is yet another coincidence in a bizarre string of events.

It was amazing.

It was four years to the day he died that we got a guilty privilege.

Exactly.

Four years.

The family still mourns the man who was taken from them too soon.

My daddy died in 97.

I put him in the ground.

I have an 18-year-old, a 16-year-old, and a 14-year-old.

And they never met him.

Never got a chance to see him.

And if we're lucky enough to see this on TV, this will be the most I've spoken about it in 20 years.

And probably we'll speak a whole lot more about it.

Pamela Lanier is serving a life sentence at Anson Correctional Institute in Polk Town, North Carolina.

She remains hopeful for an exoneration.

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

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