Sharon Maxwell

Weight loss medications are everywhere right now.

Everyone's talking about them, everyone's on them.

But let's be real.

Have you seen the price tag?

It's hard to believe they're actually accessible.

That's where HERS comes in.

HERS is transforming women's healthcare by providing access to affordable weight loss treatment plans.

They connect you with a medical provider who will work with you to determine the best treatment option for you.

So, if you've been struggling to find a solution to your weight loss journey, it's time to find the best option that works for you through HERS.

Start your free online visit today at forhers.com/slash snapped.

That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/slash snapped for your personalized weight loss treatment options.

For HERS.com/slash snapped.

Weight loss by HERS is not available everywhere.

Compounded products are not approved or reviewed for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA.

Prescription required.

See website for full details, important safety information, and restrictions.

Actual price depends on product and plan purchase.

Candice Rivera has it all.

In just three years, she went from stay-at-home mum to traveling the world, saving lives and making millions.

Anyone would think Candice's charm life is about as real as Unicorn's.

But sometimes the truth is even harder to believe than the lies.

It's not true.

There's so many things not true.

You gotta breathe.

I'm Charlie Webster and this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by 7 Hills.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

Sharon and Gordon Maxwell were living proof that when it comes to love, people can get second chances.

They were teenage lovers.

Then they reconnect after all these years.

This fairy tale come true.

Until a mysterious fire burns the life they built together down to the ground.

My husband's truck is on fire in the backyard.

She's frantic.

She can't find her husband.

They could see under some charred debris inside the vehicle a body.

As detectives search for answers, they will soon ask themselves, was this truly an accident?

Or was this fiery romance doomed from the start?

There was something funny about this whole thing.

The here's why I'm here is that y'all were having a relationship.

I've never had a good relationship.

Were you involved in what happened in any way?

No,

August 30th, 2011.

It's a typical Tuesday morning in the East Texas community of Orr City.

Or City is a small town in Ux County.

The population is probably somewhere around 1,000 people.

It would be your classic everybody knows everybody kind of town.

But the residents of this sleepy little town are about to get a jolt of adrenaline.

It starts around 11 a.m.

when a 911 call reaches area dispatchers.

Go ahead, ma'am.

System truck is on fire in the backyard.

Sharon Maxwell calls 911.

She's frantic, reporting a vehicle fire that she can't find her husband, Gordon Maxwell.

I don't know where my husband went to it.

I'm hollered for him, and I can't find it nowhere.

In addition to the fire and her missing husband, Sharon Maxwell is also concerned that the burning truck may contain live ammunition.

She could hear loud bangs.

She described them as sounding like a gun or gunfire.

Bullets, did you apparently?

Okay, don't go out there.

Moments later, the Orr City Volunteer Fire Department arrives on the scene, along with officers from the Upshur County Sheriff's Office.

They find Sharon, her 19-year-old son, James, and her brother-in-law, Christopher.

The brother was a volunteer fireman who was passing by the residence and saw the smoke.

When the Orr City Fire Department arrives, Chris was out back with a water hose trying to put this fire out, and then the volunteer fire department took over.

The truck was consumed at that point.

They were able to get the fire put out.

Once the fire is contained, officers move in to assess the damage.

They could see

under some charred debris inside the vehicle a body.

The body was charred beyond recognition.

There was no clothing remained on the body.

Could the first responders be staring at the remains of Sharon's husband, 46-year-old Gordon Maxwell?

That's the fear of everyone at the scene.

Chris Maxwell was attempting to console or calm Sharon Maxwell down.

Everything was evolving rapidly.

We had something bad happening.

Born in Gladewater, Texas, Gordon Maxwell was the strong, silent type.

His personality lent an air of mystery about him that proved captivating to more than one young woman at Orr City High School.

He was very quiet and reserved, but he was such a sweet, kind, caring person,

and he had lots of friends.

But Gordon only had eyes for one girl at Orr City High, the beautiful, blue-eyed Sharon Stanley.

They started dating.

Sharon was probably in 10ths.

I don't know, was 10th, 11th grade.

They were high school sweethearts.

This wasn't your average high school fling, though.

Gordon and Sharon were itching to get married.

They was both way too young, and both parents was like, no.

In the end, this love-struck couple assented to their parental demands and ultimately broke up.

Heartbroken, Gordon left town the first chance he got.

Once you graduate from high school, you can't wait to get out of there, especially if you are not allowed to marry your sweetheart.

Gordon moved to Cushada, Louisiana, where he spent his 20s drinking, carousing, and working as a mill worker.

Eventually, Gordon sobered up, settled down with a woman named Rhonda Holman, and found Jesus.

After Gordon and I married,

we started going to church.

We went to church for several years

and he felt like God was was calling them to the ministry.

He took some seminary classes in Beaucier City.

Then he was licensed to preach after that.

For more than five years, Gordon preached at a local church.

He and Rhonda lived a quiet but satisfying life.

I had a daughter and we kept the grandkids a lot, which he was crazy about.

They were his grandkids, you know.

He was very family-oriented.

In November of 2010, Gordon started dabbling in social media.

He had a laptop computer.

And of course, that was when the Facebook craze started.

So he got reacquainted with some friends from his hometown.

Gordon and Sharon found each other after all this time.

While Pastor Gordon had a congregation he loved and a wife he'd been happily married to for 15 years, Sharon's life had taken a much different turn.

She was a big clerk with a bunch of people.

I would say that Sharon Maxwell enjoyed being with and relationships and she had been married nine times.

At first, each of Sharon's husbands felt they'd won the lottery.

I was very happy.

It was exactly what I pictured out of life.

I mean, it was a fairy tale come true.

That is, until Sharon moved on.

She couldn't stick with one person.

If somebody didn't have enough to offer, she'd go to somebody else.

It was no problem for her walking out the door.

She didn't cry a tear or have any remorse over it.

She'd walk out and never look back.

By the fall of 2010, Sharon was a 42-year-old single mother with nine divorces under her belt.

She had five children.

I don't know about how many different men.

Two, I believe, were grown, two were still in school, and one was sort of in between.

Despite her love-em-and-leave-em approach to men, deep down, Sharon longed to reconnect with the one who captured her heart all those years ago.

So, when Sharon found 45-year-old Gordon on Facebook, she wasted no time sending him a private message.

They started talking.

Maybe it was nothing at first.

Maybe it was just a friendship at first.

But it didn't take long for Sharon and Gordon to rekindle their romance.

He up and reconnects with this old flame that he hadn't seen or heard from in years and years.

Been some feelings there a long time.

Soon, Gordon was sneaking off to Texas for intimate encounters with Sharon.

And after just two weeks of being with Sharon, Gordon told his wife Rhonda that their marriage of 15 years was over.

I tried to talk to him about God and how he was,

you know, not doing the right thing.

But he didn't do any good.

He still left.

He left the next day.

Leaving behind his church and his wife, in November of 2010, Gordon moved back to Orr City and moved in with Sharon and her three youngest children, high schoolers Kara and Lucas and 19-year-old James.

Gordon worked at a local mill company, U.S.

Steel, and he was a maintenance individual that worked on all the mechanical problems, whatever that may be, and he was very skilled.

Sharon, she did not work.

And so having someone in her life that filled that void and provided financially for her was very important.

In a place the size of Orr City, it didn't take long for Gordon and Sharon's rekindled romance to become the talk of the town.

His aunt, when she found out who he was seeing, she asked him, Gordon, do you know that woman has been married nine times?

And she said he looked at her and said, and I'm going to be number 10 if she'll let me.

On March 20th, 2011, less than six months after moving in together and just two days after Gordon's divorce from Rhonda was official, Gordon and Sharon tied the knot.

She said that she loved him, that she was in a great, loving relationship with Gordon.

It's just like something out of a Hollywood script.

Little did these newlyweds know their romance would be snuffed out almost as abruptly as it had begun.

It was determined there was a body inside.

And once that happened, this became a crime scene investigation.

Coming up, investigators spot an unusual detail at the Maxwell's home.

There were a lot of cleaning products placed around the kitchen area.

And a shocking discovery tips the scales of this investigation in a dangerous new direction.

The aha moment was definitely when they saw the blood spatter.

As the summer of 2011 was coming to a close, Orr City newlyweds Sharon and Gordon Maxwell were celebrating an unlikely love story that was nearly 30 years in the making.

But just as Gordon and Sharon were beginning to build their new life together, chaos erupted at their East Texas home.

When firefighters brought the blaze under control, they made a horrific discovery inside the truck, a charred human body.

The discovery sends Sharon into a deeper frenzy.

Her brother-in-law, Chris Maxwell, a volunteer fireman who helped extinguish the blaze, tries to comfort her.

She was acting very frantic, crying a lot,

upset.

Sharon's 19-year-old son, James, is also on the scene.

He appears to be in a great amount of pain, but he also appears to be very groggy.

He's described by officers when they see him as someone who had just woken up.

Sharon explains that James is recovering from kidney surgery.

He appears so weak, officers become concerned for his health.

They call for paramedics to check him out.

James had exerted himself actually looking for Warden.

He was taken from the scene by ambulance she was then asked to voluntarily come to the sheriff's office and provide a statement

while patrol officers escort sharon to the sheriff's office fire investigators take a look at the charred body inside the truck it was clearly a human being but he was not able to be identified by side

With Gordon Maxwell nowhere to be found and with the truck registered in his name, investigators operate on the belief that the body is his well they want to determine how and explain how this fire started and why he was inside the truck and unable to get out they come up here there's tools around there the hood is popped

that indicated that he was working on the vehicle had gordon accidentally started a fire while working on the truck And did he suffer a medical emergency that kept him from escaping the flames?

Did he have a heart attack, perhaps?

You know, was this a natural death?

Something went haywire and the thing caught on fire.

Some type of a spark between electrical components that allow the truck to combust.

As the scene is being processed, detectives back at the sheriff's office are speaking with Sharon.

She tells them that Gordon came home that morning after working the night shift at the steel plant.

She says Gordon gets home.

They both took the kids to school.

School starts around 8.

So they make the trip to the school, drop the kids off, come back,

and he's going to go work on the truck.

He needed to go out and work on the truck, and she described it as an electrical problem.

Oh, I heard him say something about

something about uses.

When he said something this morning, he said it wasn't running.

His fitness button.

But my friend talked about it, but I know he was tired.

She tries to get him to go to sleep

because he must be tired from working and she's going to go take a shower.

He says he's going to go work on the truck.

She gets out of the shower.

Hears an explosion.

Goes out and sees the truck's on fire.

out of the bedroom, out of the bathroom, and to that front door that's on fire.

Oh crap.

She runs out there, you know, screaming for him, wondering where he is.

Wakes up James.

Sharon says they looked for Gordon until their search was interrupted by loud bangs coming from the truck.

If you could describe the noise, what did it sound like?

I thought it was gone.

According to Sharon, Gordon always kept bullets in his truck.

Ever since,

I say ever since they came back upstairs, he's always had some kind of anger in there.

With bullets flying and the fire growing bigger by the second, Sharon says she and James retreated inside where she called 911.

Within seconds of making the call, Christopher showed up.

Christopher is Gordon's brother.

He showed up first.

He was there like right after our call.

Sharon says Christopher attempted to put out the blaze with a garden hose until firetrucks arrived.

Investigators tell Sharon that while they have yet to make a formal identification, they suspect the body in the truck belongs to her husband.

As investigators wrap up their interview with Sharon, they learn that her son James has been released from the hospital.

Within the hour, he joins Sharon at the sheriff's office to provide a statement.

Tell us a little bit about what you know of what happened tonight.

I was asleep and my mom woke me up.

And whenever I ran in there, the truck was on fire.

He had had a surgery, an operation.

The medication he had been prescribed would cause him to be groggy.

I ran outside and I said, Gordon, Gordon.

And I couldn't go out there.

I mean, I can't get close to it anyway because it started, everything was blowing up.

James's interview seems to support Sharon's account that Gordon may have accidentally started the fire while working on his truck.

But investigators are unsure why Gordon was unable to escape before the blaze turned deadly.

The issue that Gordon had described to the co-worker was very minor.

Nothing that would have electrically caused a truck to randomly combust.

There was no logical explanations as to why he was not able to get out.

Hoping to resolve this mystery, investigators return to the crime scene.

When they arrive, the medical examiner is removing the body from the truck, a process that unearths a critical piece of evidence.

You could smell gasoline.

As physical evidence is removed, you could smell the gasoline on him.

That's what we call a clue.

A clue that someone has intentionally placed an accelerant on a body that should not be there.

With no one but Gordon's family at the scene, investigators secure a warrant to search the residence.

What they find immediately raises more red flags.

When we entered into the residence, you could clearly see that there were a lot of cleaning products placed around the kitchen area.

But in the bedroom, they find the most troubling clue yet.

The aha moment was definitely when they saw the blood spatter in the bedroom.

Then, investigators spray luminol on the wall behind the bed and uncover even more blood.

It was very clear that there was a great amount of high-velocity blood that could not be seen with the eye, but the chemical agent illuminates it.

That's when you knew that the crime had been committed in the house.

Did Sharon and James lie in their statements to police?

Between the blood spatter and the gas residue, investigators know more went down on the Maxwell's property than their stories indicate.

However, they also know there's one person on the scene who they haven't interviewed yet.

Gordon's firefighter brother, 28-year-old Christopher Maxwell.

How odd of a coincidence that his brother just happened to be the first responder

to his brother's house.

The very fact that he's present when the fire is put out and then his brother's body is found.

Clearly, he has to be questioned.

Coming up.

Small town gossip begins to swirl and threatens to alter the entire direction of the case.

Never strayed a line and maybe had an affair.

But just as one allegation surfaces, the Orr City rumor mill generates a potential suspect.

He starts bragging that he's the one who killed Gordon.

This season, let your shoes do the talking.

Designer Shoe Warehouse is packed with fresh styles that speak to your whole vibe without saying a word.

From cool sneakers that look good with everything to easy sandals you'll want to wear on repeat, DSW has you covered.

Find a shoe for every you from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas New Balance and more.

Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.

Let's go!

Bravos, the real housewives of Salt Lake City are back.

Here we are, ladies.

I don't like it.

And they're taking things to the next level.

You know, some people just get on your nerves.

You questioned every single thing I have.

You're supposed to be my sister.

I am your sister.

No, you're not.

We have to be honest about this.

I'm afraid.

You should pay those lawsuits off.

No one sues the bottom.

They all go for the top.

Can I have the crazy pill that y'all took?

Apparently, you're already taking it.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, September 16th, on Bravo.

And streaming on Peacock.

When officers from the Upshire County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call at the home of Gordon and Sharon Maxwell, they had reason to suspect Gordon may have died in an accidental truck fire.

But a jaw-dropping discovery made inside Gordon and Sharon's master bedroom has them rethinking that theory.

They could see that there was blood spatter on the wall in the bedroom.

That's a pretty good indication of whoever's in the truck was probably killed in this room.

While investigators fully intend to confront Sharon Maxwell and her son James with this new evidence, they need to interview one other person first.

Gordon's brother, 28-year-old volunteer firefighter Christopher Maxwell.

As an investigator, you know, you want to talk to everyone, especially the ones that could have been involved that were in close proximity where the body was found.

He happens to have been the first on the scene.

This seems like an interesting coincidence.

Detective suspicions are raised further by the fact that as news of the fire spreads through Orr City, so do some stunning rumors.

Gordon's brother, I heard that

him and Sharon was actually having an affair.

In any investigation, you have to keep an open mind to all possibilities.

Detectives bring Christopher in for questioning on August 31st.

They begin by asking him about his unusually quick response the day before.

My understanding is

you were the first one on the train.

I was the first one on the scene.

How did that happen?

According to Christopher, he was driving by his brother's home when he happened to see smoke.

I've been a firefighter since I was 16 years old,

known the Burn Vans.

My

normal thing to look, pay attention to it.

I seen the column of black smoke, so I got to move back to residence.

Chris says he raced to his brother's house and pounded on Gordon's front door.

He's met at the door by Sharon.

Sharon is freshly showered.

In fact, that corroborates what she said in her 911 call.

With Christopher corroborating part of Sharon's statement, detectives turn their attention to the rumors that Chris and Sharon may have been having an affair.

So what if somebody said that they were under the impression that you were dating or

seeing

Sharon before she even met up with George.

That's wrong.

It's totally wrong.

The hearsay I'm hearing is that before your brother moved down,

y'all were having a relationship.

I've never had a good relationship.

I've never had a relationship with her.

Ever.

So let's put that.

I don't know why.

Never sprayed a line that maybe had an affair.

No, I'm going to tell you why.

Never.

Chris asserts not only has he never gone out with Sharon, but until yesterday, he'd never even set foot inside her house.

We're not going to buy one hair

of your body in that house.

No.

Christopher then offers up an alibi to account for his time in the hours before the fire broke out.

So what did you do?

I went to Walmart, decided to pick up a few things at Walmart.

Left Walmart.

I'm not sure what time it was.

When investigators follow up on Christopher's claims, they discover his alibi is airtight.

We were able to confirm that he was at Walmart through receipts and video.

They give him a polygraph, and it indicates that he is telling the truth, that he had nothing to do with this.

With Christopher Maxwell ruled out as a suspect in his brother's apparent murder, investigators question Sharon for a second time.

They begin by grilling her about the blood evidence found in her bedroom.

There's blood in the bedroom.

There's blood on the ceiling.

There's some crime scene now inside of her house.

She is confronted with that.

We will like you to tell us the truth of what took place.

That's when Sharon suddenly changes her story.

She was evolving.

Well, we did have problems.

He did threaten me.

He was abusive and aggressive towards me.

Sharon tells police that her short-lived marriage to Gordon was marred by abuse.

Abuse that came to a head after they dropped Sharon's two youngest kids off at school earlier that morning.

As soon as they dropped the kids off, Gordon starts in on her.

He's physically attacking her, even puts a pistol in her mouth.

Then he grabbed me by the hair of the head, slung me down the bed, and told me I wasn't going anywhere.

What happened then, Sharon?

The gun went off.

I don't know what happened.

Sharon claims when the gun went off, the bullet struck Gordon in the head, killing him.

And she did the only thing that she could think of.

Her story is that she wrapped the body in a blanket, took it outside, and inserted it into the truck.

She tells police she doused Gordon with gasoline and lit him on fire.

James, she claims, slept soundly through it all.

It's been taking a lot of men since Boyce let right through everything.

All I know is the truck caught on fire.

Sharon Max will try to portray herself as someone that had been physically abused and threatened by Gordon.

Sharon, in the long run, it's going to depend a lot on how cooperative you are and how truthful you are.

Because the truth, one way or the other, is going to come out.

the entire truth

unable to confirm or refute sharon's claim of self-defense at this point investigators decide not to press formal charges against her she was trying to explain things away she was free to go she was not under arrest sharon collects a few of her belongings and heads to her son's home shortly after that detectives receive the findings from the autopsy conducted on the body retrieved from gordon's truck.

We were able to match up the teeth with dental records from his dentist to prove that the identity of that body was one and the same of Gordon Maxwell.

The autopsy report also provides a window into Gordon's official cause of death, one that seems at odds with Sharon's most recent statement.

The forensic evidence indicated that he had been shot in the house.

In fact, he'd been shot four times.

She's saying the gun went off once.

She's lying.

Investigators know that one gunshot could be self-defense, but four?

Multiple times at close range.

An up-close, angry,

violent act of I want you dead.

Based on the autopsy results, investigators have no choice but to arrest Sharon for Gordon's murder.

But by now, Sharon has hired an attorney and refuses to answer any additional questions.

She was arrested.

She was put in jail and investigation continued.

With Sharon unable to post bail, investigators continue to work the case for the next three months.

To err on the side of caution, we redid a new search warrant to now look for evidence of blood, DNA, blood spatter, hair fibers.

There were multiple warrants that had to be executed.

But then, in December of 2011, the case takes an unexpected turn with information that comes from a relative.

Information that revolves around Sharon's 19-year-old son, James.

William Eric Potter, the half-brother, was saying that James Potter had shot and killed Gordon Maxwell.

On December 28, 2011, investigators track down William Potter, who'd been arrested for an unrelated incident, and bring him in for an interview.

William tells the law that he has been out drinking with James, they've been at a party together, and that James starts bragging that he's the one who killed Gordon.

That particular morning, he went in there and woke Gordon up himself.

And

when he looked up, he shot him in the head.

And then they drag him out to the truck and put him in the truck.

poured gas on him and set it on fire.

But it's what William says next that really gets their attention.

Turns out William knows exactly how many times, four, that Gordon has been shot.

This is not common knowledge at that point.

Coming up, as the case against James gains momentum, Sharon comes forward with another admission.

But another bombshell revelation suggests there's still more to the story than Sharon's letting on.

Inside the bedroom where Gordon Maxwell was shot, his wedding ring was found on top of a dresser.

Someone was leaving her and she snapped.

December of 2011, four months have passed since Texas authorities recovered Gordon Maxwell's burned remains from inside his pickup truck.

According to Gordon's wife, Sharon, she shot her husband and former high school sweetheart out of self-defense.

She had painted Gordon as abusive and controlling.

They'd had a struggle and that the gun had accidentally gone off and killed him.

However, as Texas authorities worked to confirm the validity of Sharon's story, a new witness named William Potter claimed it was his half-brother, Sharon's 19-year-old son, James, who actually killed Gordon.

William is interviewed by law enforcement.

His statement was at a party that

James says that he shot Gordon

four times.

Is Sharon attempting to take the fall for her son?

Or is there another layer to this mystery yet to be uncovered?

In March of 2012, about six months after her husband's murder, Sharon Maxwell breaks her silence.

She came forward through her attorneys saying, I want to give another statement.

Her attorney was present with her.

She says that shortly after Gordon moved in with her, it became clear that he and her son James didn't get along.

She said they had a bad relationship.

James did not like Gordon.

And that ultimately Gordon told him he had to live by a set of rules.

Sharon says that when James refused to live by Gordon's rules, Gordon told James he had to move out.

That's when James, still in pain from his recent surgery and groggy from his meds, did the unthinkable.

She was in the kitchen cooking.

Bam.

My gun goes off in the bedroom.

She runs in there.

Oh my gosh, what are you doing?

What can you call a 9-1-1 at that time?

I guess I was trying to stop my charges.

I was mentioning it.

Sharon claims that she and James eventually came up with a plan.

They dragged Gordon's body to the truck and set it on fire.

At best, what she's saying she's guilty for is not telling the truth, but the reason she didn't do that was because she was trying to be a protective mom.

Detectives talked to James again about his mother's latest allegations.

We told him what his mother had said.

He was shocked by it.

He was upset by it.

Were you involved in what happened in any way?

No, sir.

Did you help her remove the body from the house?

No, sir.

I didn't do it there.

His story does not change, unlike Sharon's.

James tells them that when he bragged about killing Gordon, he was simply drunk and trying to impress his older brother.

James was trying to puff himself up, make himself sound like he was tougher than he really was by saying he committed this murder.

Now, when statements are made around a bonfire and alcohol is being consumed, sometimes there's credibility to statements that are made.

In this particular case, however, there was no credibility to any of the individuals that came forward.

And that's why I said it was very important from the initial observation of James Potter at the scene.

He had not freshly showered.

He had just woken up.

He appeared to be under the influence of the prescribed narcotics.

Although in pain from the surgery, he had not ruptured or busted any stitching.

James Potter had no signs that he had participated in that whatsoever.

With James' alleged involvement proved false, investigators are still in need of evidence that can solidify their case against Sharon.

When investigators dig into the couple's relationship, They find that those who knew Gordon say there was no way he was abusive.

She tried to say that he was mean to her and abusive,

and there's no way that Gordon Maxwell was a mean, abusive person.

There wasn't any evidence to corroborate her claim that he was an abusive and controlling person.

In fact, when police start talking to some of Sharon's exes, they find that if anyone was abusive in the marriage, it was likely to be her.

We found other ex-husbands that were able to talk to us.

She had been very aggressive, had attacked them before, threatened them before.

So there was a pattern with Sharon Maxwell.

It started getting physical and just getting up in my face and pushing.

And yeah, it got pretty bad.

Besides her propensity for violence, Sharon's exes say she also had another pretty serious character flaw, infidelity.

She was,

yeah.

Messing around on me apparently midway through our whole marriage.

Sharon was

a man-hungry,

oversexed human being.

And as it turns out, even though Gordon was Sharon's self-professed one true love, that hadn't stopped her from cheating on him as well.

While she was married to Gordon,

she was having an affair with a guy since 2009.

When investigators speak to Sharon's paramour, they learn he tried to end things with Sharon months before Gordon's murder with violent results.

The man said, I no longer want to see you or talk to you.

And she jumped into his truck and attacked him, physically biting him.

Deputies arrived.

We were able to produce pictures, but he did not want to file a report for personal reasons in his own marriage.

Gordon's co-workers tell investigators that it didn't take long for Gordon to uncover the truth.

And it broke his heart when he learned that she had cheated on him.

And it was devastating to him.

He had told co-workers that this marriage would not last.

Had a crestfallen Gordon finally told Sharon he was leaving her, only to be met with deadly violence?

That's what investigators suspect, but questions remain.

We want to see what would make a person, one, get married 10 times and then kill this husband, but not some of the ones before?

What was the motivation?

Investigators discover that at least part of her motivation may have been financial.

There was a big life insurance policy on Gordon.

And of course, guess who the beneficiary was going to be?

It was going to be sheriff.

Reviewing photos taken of the crime scene the day of the murder, investigators uncover what they believe is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Inside the bedroom where Gordon Maxwell was shot, his wedding ring was found on top of a dresser.

We believe when he took the ring off his hand and placed it on the dresser, he told Sharon Maxwell he was done.

And just like when her lover tried to break things off several months earlier, investigators believe that in that moment, Sharon went berserk.

Someone was leaving her.

She snapped.

She went violent and said, you're not going to leave me.

She She then walks over opposite the room,

pulls out a gun,

and shoots him first time in the head and then multiple times in the head.

Investigators believe that after dragging Gordon to the truck, she threw several handfuls of live ammo into the cab along with his body.

She had put the bullets in there to make it look like the fire had caused him to be shot.

She thought that the fire would cause these bullets to expel and that somehow would explain why there were bullets found in Gordon Maxwell.

Prosecutors finally agree to move forward with charges against Sharon Maxwell.

Still, they know that when the trial gets underway, Sharon's Sharon's attorneys will point the finger at her son James.

And if the jury believes them, Sharon will walk free.

We really needed to show the jury through our experts and through our actual testimony of what she was capable of.

Coming up, Sharon and her son face off in open court.

She said that her son James Potter had killed Gordon Maxwell.

Sharon said, if I did anything, I helped him clean up the house afterwards, afterwards, but I did not kill my husband.

He's being called to defend himself from his mother.

I very directly asked him, did you have any part in the murder of Gordon Maxwell?

In August of 2012, Sharon Maxwell's murder trial gets underway.

In opening statements, her defense team again claims that her now 20-year-old son, James, shot and killed his mother's 10th husband, Gordon Maxwell, in a fit of rage.

And they use James's own statements to support that theory.

At some point at a party, he was bragging about how he had shot Gordon Maxwell and gotten away with it.

They were married to the James theory.

Everything was built around that.

Sharon's defense also brings into question whether or not Sharon was capable of dragging Gordon to the truck by herself.

Sharon's courtroom appearance bolsters these doubts.

She looked like a string bean,

little old lady.

She looked like this frail little librarian.

How could this woman put a 260-pound man?

in this vehicle when she's not nearly that big.

Prosecutors remind jurors that the woman they're looking at today isn't the same person she was in 2011.

She was not this frail-looking woman at the time that the murder happened, and that she had grown up in the country on farms, hauling hay, those types of things.

She had strength, and combined with the adrenaline that she would have been going through in that moment, she would have been more than capable.

To refute Sharon's claims of innocence, prosecutors call her son James to the witness stand.

Now he's being called.

He has to defend himself from his mother.

I very directly asked him, did you have any part in the murder of Gordon Maxwell?

And the answer was no.

He was then allowed to be cross-examined by the defense counsel for Sharon Maxwell, and he withstood cross-examination.

It's easy to do when you're telling the truth.

In fact, prosecutors argue that a hefty life insurance policy, along with Sharon's desire to keep Gordon and her other lover under her thumb, provided strong motive behind Gordon's murder.

She fits the pattern of borderline personality disorders in that they will not tolerate rejection.

They will not tolerate you leaving them.

They can leave.

They can cheat, but they will not allow you to do that.

On August 24th, after less than an hour of deliberations, the jury finds Sharon Maxwell guilty.

She received the maximum sentence of life.

I hope she spends the rest of her life in prison.

She didn't realize what she had because he was such a sweet, kind, caring person.

When Sharon and Gordon married, Sharon announced that the marriage would be her last.

And although this is not the fairy tale ending she and Gordon seemed headed for, it appeared Sharon was right.

No human being deserves what he got that day.

And to be shot in the head and having your body burned, I mean, what kind of person does that?

Sharon Maxwell will be eligible for parole in 2041.

She will be 73 years old.

James Potter was never charged in connection to the murder of Gordon Maxwell.

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