Melissa Napier

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She was living the picture-perfect life with the picture-perfect family in a gorgeous mountain paradise.

They found some properties up in Virginia, and it's just beautiful.

They were living a dream life in the country.

Their deep devotion to each other took the burden off their age difference.

It kind of worked together, like him acting younger than his age, she acted older in some ways.

He was definitely in love with her.

But when this loving, older man suddenly disappears, investigators discover this May-December romance was riddled with secrets.

There was no money in the bank.

Everything was dry.

There's allegations of mental illness and also extramarital affairs.

She thought that he was blossoming.

She starts crying, acting just hysterical.

They were clearly very damaged people.

He was at very short temper.

Something was wrong.

I can't think of a worse way to die.

April 11th, 2012.

It's a crystal clear night in the quiet mountain town of Gate City, Virginia.

But the tranquility is soon pierced by the sound of screeching tires.

Billy Jack Napier and his wife Crystal are racing to his father's isolated farmhouse just off Highway 634.

Me and Dad kept in contact.

Not every night, and maybe not every week, but if weeks went by without one of us calling each other, something was strange.

And I didn't hear from him for weeks.

There's a little bit of worry starting to develop.

And then I get a call from my aunt Reb, and she said, I'm worried about your dad.

I dropped the phone.

Me and my wife got my truck, and we're doing 90 miles an hour all the way there.

We've already got about this bad feeling by the time we reach the house.

it's dark by the time we get there.

There's no lights on.

We tried to open the door to the house.

It was locked.

Everywhere we'd ever lived, Dad had always left me a key.

I knew where the extra key to the house was.

The first thing I'd done was look for them.

There was no key to the house.

I knew something was up.

Dad would not have taken them keys away.

The keys aren't all that are missing.

So are Melissa and Savannah Napier, Bill's wife and daughter.

All of vehicles are gone.

So there's another red flag.

Just something was not right.

Billy Jack and Crystal walk the perimeter of the house looking for an open window.

That's when they make a disturbing discovery.

My husband, he hollers for me.

He's like, hey, come here.

What is this?

And there was a big hole right there next to the garage.

There was fresh dirt, probably eight feet long, probably four feet wide.

The holes looked like they were about the size of a grave, and to see something like that is really worrisome.

I tell Billy, I'm like,

something's wrong.

That's when I just panic set in.

I started shaking.

I was really worried.

Born and raised in Harlan County, Kentucky, Bill Napier was a mountain man through and through.

Dad was an outdoorsman and just he loved nature.

He was very knowledgeable about anything.

You go walking in the woods.

He knew what all the trees were, the plants you could eat for a stomachache.

Bill was a father figure to us last kids that was at home, which were five of us.

And

he helped feed us, he helped raise us.

He helped mommy do everything.

He was so busy working to help mom feed us that he worked most of the time for people in cornfields,

whatever they had to do.

He went to work in a coal mines really young, like at 12.

He quit school, like in fifth grade, just to help take care of the family, like farming.

When Bill turned 18, he jumped at the chance to join the Air Force.

He was in there three years.

When he came out, he bought a home in North Carolina, Lincoln, North Carolina, and it was a real nice home.

And he got a job.

They had a furniture factory over there, kind of molded plastic factory, you know, where they made furniture and stuff.

Although Bill was able to find steady work and buy himself a house, he unfortunately didn't fare as well in the romance department.

By the mid-90s, he was a single dad with a failed marriage behind him.

But he never gave up hope of finding true love.

However, not even Bill imagined he'd find it in the Want Ad section of the local paper.

There was an ad in the newspaper someone was selling a car engine.

Bill responded to that ad and that's how he met Melissa.

It wasn't the most likely match, but there was an obvious connection.

Like Bill, Melissa Bailey grew up hand to mouth in the foothills of Appalachia.

Melissa had had a very difficult life herself.

She had been put up for adoption when she was about five years old.

Melissa bounced around from foster family to foster family until she was 12.

Then she was adopted by a family in North Carolina.

Melissa got married very young.

We're talking right out of high school.

It was kind of an out-of-the-frying pan, into the fire type of situation, and the relationship didn't last.

I understood that there were some serious issues, probably substance abuse and other types of abuse in that situation as well.

Missy, from what I'd heard from her stories and from what he would say, that she had told him that she had come from a broken home and been abused and was not treated well by her previous husband.

Because Bill was so charming and the chemistry between them was so strong, the two had no problem looking past their age difference, which spanned more than three decades.

He looked 15, 20 years younger than his actual age.

People hardly ever believed his actual age.

Kind of worked together, like him acting younger than his age, she acted older in some ways.

Although they'd both come from hard-scrabble upbringings, 74-year-old Bill Napier and his 40-year-old wife, Melissa, managed to carve out a fairy tale life for themselves in the mountains of southern Virginia.

In a matter of a month or two, I think she...

She'd moved in with us.

It was hard.

She was the same age as my oldest sister, so I viewed her as a sister, not as somebody my dad was dating.

In 1995, Bill and Melissa officially tied the knot.

And by 1998, they welcomed the birth of their first child, a daughter named Savannah.

He was ecstatic.

I mean, Savannah was his wife.

He worshiped Savannah.

That was his last kid he would tell me and his baby.

It seemed like Bill and Melissa couldn't be happier or more in love.

With Bill's older children now out on their own, he and Melissa focused completely on young Savannah.

They hoped to provide more for her than the two of them had growing up.

So when it came time for her to start school, Bill and Melissa moved to a small town near the state line.

They moved to Lansing, North Carolina.

However, soon after the move, Savannah started having problems at school.

They had some trouble with my half-sister getting bullied in school.

It was that big age difference between her parents.

That's what the kids would pick on her for.

They would either call Bill her grandfather or her great-granddad and even ask if he was her real father.

It was very upsetting for Savannah, and Bill and Melissa felt the principal wasn't doing enough to put a stop to it.

The bullying got so bad that the Napier family moved to a small town an hour outside of Charlotte.

They bought a really nice house in Lincoln, North Carolina.

But for two country mice like Bill and Melissa, the move to the burbs proved to be a difficult transition.

And Lincoln is literally like a development and you had a house 20 feet away.

I don't think he was happy there.

Dad was not a city guy.

He liked the mountains, didn't like a lot of neighbors.

In 2011, Bill and Melissa made a bold move.

and purchased a cozy farmhouse in the foothills of southern Virginia.

It's very rural farms, farming area.

The Napiers live about 100 yards off the road.

It had a barn, so my little sister wanted horses.

And dad, he loved the hills, the mountains.

The farmhouse was definitely what you call a fixer-hupper.

So to start, they moved into a trailer on the property while Bill was renovating the main house.

The house needs a lot of work.

He just had this talent for going in and making a place so beautiful.

We've strung barbed wire for a fence, landscaping, planting gardens.

Melissa was homeschooling Savannah and also trying to find a caretaking job in the area.

And at the time, Bill was in his 70s, but he really had the energy of someone 20 years younger.

After a blissful year in a new home, it's hard to imagine Billy Jack arriving at this once peaceful location to discover such a frightening scene.

The house was completely abandoned and there were holes dug around the property.

Billy Jack and his wife were really worried that something was wrong.

We knew we need to get to the police station.

Billy and Crystal rush to the police station and explain what they've discovered.

Based on what they were telling us,

what Billy Jack was telling us, it was obvious from the start that something was wrong.

The mystery takes a sudden turn at the Virginia State Police Station.

The Napier family was meeting with police and then all of a sudden a call comes in to one of the family members.

Coming up, this phone call adds an even more peculiar twist to the case.

She said there'd been a car wreck in Michigan.

I was like, is everything okay?

And she's like, no, it's not.

And leads detectives to a gruesome discovery.

We found a deceased body.

There was so much decay that we were unsure whether it were a homicide.

They also couldn't immediately tell who their victim was.

Melissa Napier and her husband Bill had been living an ideal, peaceful life in the hills of southern Virginia.

They had it great.

They loved the quiet, rural way of life, and for them, it really didn't get better than this.

On April 12th, 2012, state troopers receive word from Bill's son, Billy Jack, that something is amiss at the Napier residence.

No one had seen or heard from Bill Napier.

His wife and teenage daughter also appeared to be missing, and there was what appeared to be freshly dug graves on the land around their farmhouse.

While Billy Jack and his wife Crystal are meeting with police at the station, a call comes in that adds an even more bizarre twist to the case.

The call coming into Crystal's phone is from none other than Bill's wife, Melissa Napier.

Missy was just wailing.

She was doing this,

I don't know how to describe it, like this moaning

in the background.

The troopers asked Crystal to put the call on speakerphone so they could hear everything she had to say.

And the story she unraveled was just completely bizarre.

She said there had been a car wreck in Michigan and that my dad was dead.

She was saying that he had wrecked.

He was racing some guy

and was in his car and on a bridge in Michigan.

that it had exploded and that they couldn't identify the body and they needed dental records.

Melissa also told them that that Savannah isn't with her, that she is with friends in North Carolina.

At that point, the call abruptly cuts out.

Calls like this can be confusing.

Is there any truth to what Melissa is saying?

Really, at this juncture, the only thing police can do is collect statements from Billy Jack and Crystal and then search the Napier's property.

While waiting for a judge to sign off on a search warrant for the Napier residence, the investigator continues questioning Billy Billy Jack and Crystal in hopes that the couple can shed light on the strange sequence of events.

According to Billy Jack, it started a few weeks back when he realized he hadn't spoken with his father in quite some time.

March 2012, I had went to see him, I think, the 18th.

I just remember driving up there.

It was on a weekend, but...

And then I didn't hear from him.

He originally just tried to call his dad.

He talked to his dad two or three times a week.

He tried calling the house a few times, but Melissa kept telling him his father was either out or busy.

He and Crystal decided to drive up from North Carolina to see what was really going on in person.

Billy Jack says as they pulled onto the property on April 4th, Melissa met them in the driveway.

She comes out, meets me outside the truck, and I was like, is everything okay?

And she's like, no, it's not.

No.

So she just grabs her head and starts rocking back and forth and starts screaming that he's left her and he's been cheating on her i remember missy crying acting just hysterical she said that he had been uh having an affair she said that he had told her he was gonna leave and go marry her that he was gonna sell the farm over there and he'd go on his way and he'd take Savannah.

Melissa said that Bill stormed off in a rage and that he hadn't been home since.

She said that he had gotten his car.

He had an 87 Transamp that he really liked.

It was his toy, so,

and that he needed to get away for three days.

He was going ginseng hunting in Kentucky, which I believe, because that's something dad would have done.

According to Billy Jack, at that point, a tearful Melissa told him that Bill never returned home.

Melissa believed he'd moved in with his mistress.

She sounded very just upset, like she was crying and she said that she didn't know what she was going to do.

According to Melissa, there were more reasons to worry about Bill.

She thought that my uncle Bill was, in her words, losing his mind, that he didn't know things and he was forgetting a lot.

She would tell me that she thinks he's got dementia.

that he was losing his memory.

She was taking him to the doctor and that the doctor had gave him medication and that she would give it to him without his consent if necessary.

She was saying like how he was losing his memory and how she felt like he would get violent.

Billy Jack tells the detective that Melissa's description of Bill didn't really make sense to him.

We'd go work together.

He would tell me things that happened 50 years ago, things that happened the two weeks before when I'd come up.

So I didn't see none of that in him.

But according to Billy, Melissa seemed genuinely upset and appeared to be telling the truth.

We ended up leaving, still didn't feel

real sure what was going on.

And that, Billy claims, is the last time he saw Melissa.

Based on what they told me, the suspicious things that his stepmother had told him had happened to his father, a Billy Ray Napier, I felt that the search warrant would be prudent in this case.

Thankfully, just moments after concluding their interview with Crystal and Billy Jack, investigators are notified their search warrant has been approved.

They begin a formal search of the property, with Billy Jack and Crystal accompanying them.

We're able to go to the property.

They wouldn't let us go up to the house, so we parked in my truck at the bottom of the property.

As we walked into the kitchen, there was gasoline and hay bales sitting in the kitchen.

That was the first door that we came into.

Even on a farm, these aren't the type of things you see lying around in the kitchen.

It really looked like someone was trying to start a fire.

There was a tarp in the living room.

There was a hatchet.

But it's in the bedroom at the back of the house that police make their most shocking discovery.

We found the deceased body.

There was so much decay that we were unsure whether it were a homicide or whether it was a suicide or death of natural causes.

They also couldn't immediately tell who their victim was because of the level of decomposition.

It was a terrible, gruesome scene.

From that point, I called for our crime scene investigators who works out of our office.

And they come down and conducted the crime scene investigation.

In order to determine the identity of their victim and cause of death, police release the body to the county medical examiner.

So, an autopsy can confirm the identity of a victim and the cause of death, but it's a process that could take some time.

As the coroner's team carts off the remains, the CSI team combs the house for evidence.

Their job is to examine everything and determine what materials were involved in this crime.

There were tarps, hatchets, and things of that nature, which could be used to cut up the body.

In my 10 years' experience as a news reporter, there are so many possibilities in this situation.

An intruder could have entered the home, killed all three family members, and then planned to torch the entire house, but abandoned those plans.

At this point, you can't rule out that the holes around the house could contain another body or maybe multiple bodies.

There's even the possibility that the victim is an unidentified third party and that the Napiers are responsible for that death and are now on the run.

With so many possibilities to explore, investigators reach out to the medical examiner's office, hoping to narrow the focus of their investigation.

The autopsy results provide the first real break in the case.

They weren't the remains of Billy Ray Napier.

Dental records are a match for Bill Napier, as is the clothing that the deceased was wearing.

Not only has the medical examiner identified the body as that of Bill Napier, he's also determined the cause of his death.

They did a post-mortem and discovered he died by a bullet to the brain.

I believe it was a 22.

We knew that he would be shot, but what we didn't have is who shot him.

And so we needed answers.

Coming up.

If Bill was shot to death in his own home, why would Melissa say he died in a car crash?

Did she have something to do with Bill's death?

Or could she and Savannah be in danger themselves?

Every indicator, there's something more to this case.

I have to get into this case more.

Something's going on.

It comes down to one simple thing.

Police need to find Melissa and Savannah.

As investigators take a closer look at Bill and Melissa's marriage, dark secrets begin to unfold.

She started being gone a lot, and then money problems started happening.

There was some concern on his part like what was going on

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, I'm Bravo.

And streaming, I'm Peacock.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us.

and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

The idyllic existence of Bill and Melissa Napier has been wiped out by a gruesome gruesome murder mystery.

Bill's dead body has been found inside the family's farmhouse, while Melissa and Savannah are still unaccounted for.

When the police entered the home, the master bedroom was where Billy Ray Napier's body was laying.

And they did a post-mortem and discovered he'd died by a bullet to the brain.

After receiving word of the coroner's findings, investigators must now deliver Billy Jack the heartbreaking news.

The detective said we found a body, and it wasn't a burglar, it was my dad.

Planned shirt and blue jeans, and that's what my dad wore around the house, you know.

Billy Jack called me when he went over there, you know, with the police, and he said that

Bill was dead.

My mom didn't want to accept that or believe it, but I just felt like he's dead because

the Uncle Bill that I knew wouldn't have been disappeared like that and not have contact with anybody.

He wouldn't have taken off and not told his son, his daughter, my mother.

You know, the reason I hold doors open for people and say please and thank you was because of my dad.

He had his problems.

Everybody's got their own issues, but I really respected the man.

So that's what he was to me.

He was my

hero.

Just a really loving father.

He had a big heart for the ones he loved, fiercely protective.

It was devastating.

I saw it break my husband's heart.

So now, state police have gone from having three missing persons to two missing persons and a homicide, which really ups the stakes of the investigation significantly.

With what looks like a trio of freshly dug graves behind the Napier residence, everyone fears the worst.

We did see the holes that were dug in the yard that Billy Jack Napier said that he saw when he went to the house.

There is the possibility that other bodies could have been buried on the property.

As investigators remove the dirt and rubble from what they fear might might be makeshift graves, they are relieved to confirm there are no additional bodies found.

The holes were all empty.

There was nothing in them.

The fact that there were no other bodies in those holes, coupled with the phone call that Melissa made the day before, could be a hopeful sign that Melissa and Savannah are still alive.

But at this point, the bigger question might be, Are they in danger?

Are they being held captive by whoever killed Bill?

That evening, evening, investigators asked Crystal to call Melissa.

Crystal is the one Melissa called with the bizarre claim that Bill died in a car crash in Michigan.

So police thought that if Crystal called her back, Melissa might answer.

She did answer the phone.

We had it on speaker phone.

And when we called Melissa,

She continued to say that Billy Ray Napier had died in the car crash in Michigan.

We knew that that was not true.

Crystal Napier told Melissa that the police were at the house and they found a dead body in the residence.

Immediately, Melissa hung up the phone.

Investigators immediately asked Crystal to call Melissa back.

But this time, there's no answer.

And the same thing happens when police try Savannah's phone, too.

Melissa wouldn't answer any of the phone calls.

Savannah wouldn't answer any texts.

There is still a chance that Melissa and possibly Savannah are being held against their will, and their captor has cut off all contact with police now that they know how Bill died.

But who would want to basically murder Bill and kidnap these two women?

Perhaps the answer lies in Bill's alleged affair.

Allegedly, the affair had been going on for quite some time.

So possibly the mistress had a husband or ex-boyfriend who found out about the affair and was wanting to seek revenge.

According to Billy Jack, the rumors of his dad's infidelity are just that.

Rumors.

In fact, in the weeks before his death, Bill told friends that he believed Melissa was the one having an affair.

The last six months, as I traveled up there, there was a lot of times her and my little sister was gone.

She was gone a lot, and I just thought that was strange.

One time dad kind of joked.

He's like, you know, she's probably off seeing her boyfriend.

I know Billy one time walked in the house when he got there to visit his dad, and she was in the bathroom fixing her hair and getting all fixed up, and that she was leaving, you know, for the weekend.

I did notice that she was gone more frequently when I would go visit.

I wasn't going to do an investigation.

I figured if he thought something and he wanted to tell me, that he would let me know.

Billy Jack also tells investigators that the biggest problem in Bill and Melissa's marriage wasn't infidelity, it was money.

Money problems started happening.

That was very private.

He didn't want me to worry, so I didn't know details, details, but I did see there was some concern on his part, like what was going on.

They owned the home in North Carolina and when they moved to Virginia, he decided to rent that home out and then the rent off of that home would pay for the house that they're in in Virginia.

An agent there working for the Napiers would look over the property and collect the rent from the renters there.

They then would send that rent to Melissa

and then Melissa was supposed to send that money to BB ⁇ T to pay for the mortgage.

Bill had pretty much let her take control of the finances.

According to Bill's family, Melissa wasn't using the cash from the rental in North Carolina to pay for the mortgage on the Virginia farmhouse.

She'd spent all the money that he was getting for a lease on the house in Lincoln, North Carolina.

He thought that Melissa Napier was making the payments on that residence, as she should.

However, that was not the case.

She was taking the money and forging checks.

to make it look like that she was paying for that.

He should have had both properties paid for by this time, and instead he was getting foreclosed on.

As investigators are listening to Billy Jack, they become increasingly suspicious that Melissa had a hand in Bill's death and may be responsible for her daughter's disappearance too.

The evidence that we gathered, the person that was in control was Melissa.

She had control of the monetary funds and what they did.

She was kind of in charge.

There's been allegations of dementia, infidelity, financial issues, all sorts of things.

Then the question was, where's Melissa and Savannah?

What did they know about Bill's death?

That afternoon, investigators issue a bolo for Melissa Napier and her daughter Savannah.

But before the bolo goes into full effect, the case takes another turn.

Later that evening, we get a call from an attorney out of Kingsport, Tennessee that says that he has been into contact with Melissa and she wants to come talk to police.

Coming up, Melissa turns herself in and includes a jaw-dropping statement which turns the entire investigation upside down.

She starts talking about him being abusive and how Tavana has been abused for years.

After discovering the body of Bill Napier in the bedroom of his Virginia farmhouse, state police now believe that his wife Melissa and perhaps daughter Savannah played a role in his gruesome murder.

Investigators put out a be on the lookout or Bolo, and just a few hours later we received word that Melissa was in Tennessee and ready to talk to police.

Melissa did ultimately turn herself in is my understanding.

She presented herself at the office being Kingsport, Tennessee, and she turned herself in from there.

When we confronted Melissa Napier regarding the stories or the lies that she told in relation to Billy Ray dying in a car crash in Michigan, that's when she immediately said that it was self-defense.

She said that he was abusive towards her.

He had hit her in the past.

She starts talking about him being abusive and how Savannah has been abused for years.

According to Melissa, the abuse her husband inflicted on their daughter, Savannah, wasn't just physical.

It was sexual as well.

She did make an allegation that she had seen Billy Ray

grab Savannah inappropriately.

Savannah was not entirely comfortable being left home alone with her father.

She would call her mother and beg her to come home and things like that, never overtly saying what was going on, but telling her, I need you home now.

Melissa claims that on March 20th, 2012, she confronted her husband about his alleged sexual abuse of Savannah, and their argument quickly escalated.

She said there was shouting, there was hitting, and then things took a more serious turn.

She told us he had picked up a.45 caliber weapon.

She said there was another gun in the room.

So she picks up that gun and shoots it.

She said she did it for Savannah.

She was worried that she was going to be hurt, that she suffered from sexual abuse.

Melissa claims that after shooting Bill, she took 14-year-old Savannah to stay with family friends in North Carolina, then returned to the farm to dispose of the body.

She had rented a back hoe and tried to dig like holes in the yard.

I guess she was gonna try to bury him in it or something.

Melissa talked about visiting him, sitting there with him over his dead body.

She wouldn't say about it, but she would say I would talk to Billy and tell him about the yard, the house, and just everyday things.

It was so morbid.

It's unimaginable.

Without concrete evidence to support Melissa's claims of abuse, police have no choice but to arrest her.

We charged her with murder at that point because number one, we know that she shot him.

Number two is she gave a bunch of different statements.

There were a bunch of different lies on how he died.

With Melissa in custody, investigators are desperate to speak with the one person who can help sort fact from fiction: Bill and Melissa's daughter, Savannah.

Savannah Napier was the only other person that lived in that residence besides Billy Ray Napier and Melissa Napier.

So she would know what went on that day, what went on in that house.

Melissa stated that Savannah was staying with friends in North Carolina, and when police did reach out to those individuals, Savannah was located.

The investigator Jason Jason Jenkins and another female investigator came to bring me to Virginia, and it was about an eight-hour trip, so they were very nice to me.

Once at the station, Savannah claims she endured years of abuse at the hands of her father.

My dad was very mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive,

so that put a strain on our household.

He would strike me,

And he would strike her as well.

Other people that we talked to,

he was that very short temper and an angry man.

According to Savannah, her father wasn't the only one in the house who abused her.

Mom really didn't abuse me that bad as much as dad would have, but she was very

rough in some cases.

I've been hit a couple times in the face.

She would kind of snap on me if she felt that I was doing stuff wrong.

As for her mother's claim that her father sexually abused her, Savannah tells police that's an outright lie.

Savannah denied that her father ever sexually assaulted her.

So what was the real reason Melissa shot her husband?

Well, according to Savannah, she said the night her father died was the night that he found out Melissa wasn't making their mortgage payments.

I feel like dad had started to find out that there was, obviously that there was money that was going missing and there was issues with bills that day b and b and t calls uh informs mr.

napier that they there were a foreclose on his house

mom was you know scared about dad being upset mom and dad were arguing and my mom started crying and it was really bad he wanted to know where that $900 a month was going.

There was no money in the bank.

Everything was dry.

Savannah said that her dad stormed out of the house to go work on his car.

That's what he did to go cool off after a fight.

Dad was upset, and my mom started crying.

She said, I can't do this anymore.

And then she just told me it's me or him.

According to Savannah, an hour later, her father came back in the house to get ready for bed.

That's when her mother asked for an unusual favor.

My mom had told me that she needed me to go in there and hug him to distract him.

Savannah goes up and hugs her dad.

Savannah is facing towards the door as she's hugging her dad and Billy Ray's back is to the door so he couldn't see what was going on but Savannah had a perfect viewpoint of what was going on.

Melissa enters the room.

has a weapon, a rifle.

It's a 22 rifle in her hand.

She did make a statement during her interview that she put her her head on her dad's shoulder.

She said, Daddy, I love you.

I love you.

And hugged him a little tighter and didn't let him turn around.

Normally in any fight, I try to calm my dad down.

I'm always the one that goes in there and talks to him, calms him down to keep anything bad from happening.

But

I have no idea what was going to happen.

And then Next thing I know, the gun went off and he was gone.

Mom had left me in the room.

Dad had fallen between the, in front of the bed and the door, and I was stuck there.

And I looked up and she was gone and there was nobody there and I was just screaming.

She said that her father, just before Melissa pulled the trigger, turned around to see what she was doing behind him.

And I think to myself, if you're a father, And you realize your last moments in life is your wife shooting you, that's just a gruesome and a terrible way to end your life.

After Savannah's statement, I went and interviewed Melissa.

She was at the regional jail.

I told Melissa what Savannah said,

and Melissa acknowledged that that was the truth.

Savannah has implicated that she was complicit in her father's death.

Now prosecutors must decide if she should be charged with murder.

After careful thought, and this is probably one of the toughest decisions I made, we charged her, and we ended up charging her as an adult.

Coming up, as prosecutors begin preparing for trial, Melissa makes a desperate attempt to plead her case and plead for her daughter's freedom.

But I want your honor to understand what life with Bill is like.

Melissa indicated early on that her concern was Savannah, that she didn't want Savannah's life to be destroyed by this.

From the outside looking in, Melissa Napier appeared to be living the dream life.

A wonderful daughter, a loving husband, and a dream house in the mountains of rural Virginia.

Now, Melissa stands accused of Bill's murder, alongside her daughter, Savannah.

When Melissa learns that her daughter has been charged, she offers to sign away her own life if prosecutors will be lenient on Savannah.

Melissa indicated early on that her concern was Savannah, that she didn't want Savannah's life to be destroyed by this.

They agreed that Melissa would plead straight up and she'd take whatever the judge gave her, and in exchange, they would give this plea agreement to Savannah.

We had someone that we believed was a victim and someone that we believed was culpable for a heinous crime.

Prosecutors might be convinced Savannah's involvement in the crime doesn't merit a harsher punishment, but the rest of the victim's family isn't so sure.

Missy really manipulated her, but at the same time, I feel that she knew right from wrong.

She knew her dad loved her,

and she,

in my opinion, she helped murder him.

On August 6th, 2014, Melissa Napier goes before a Scott County judge and pleads guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.

First, I want to say how sorry I am for what has happened.

I want you and Bill's family to know that despite what happened, I did love Bill.

Though she admits guilt, Melissa explains that she only murdered her husband because she was afraid for her safety and that of her daughter.

I have pled guilty and I am taking responsibility for Bill's death.

But I want your honor to understand what life with Bill is like.

I can't explain my actions, except I had to protect her, and I could not bear to part with him.

Despite Melissa's emotional plea, the judge sentences her to 45 years in prison.

There's not an opportunity for her to be paroled out.

So in all actuality, she'll probably spend the rest of her life in prison.

I can't think of a worse way to be killed than to have my child

hold me in place while my wife shot me in the back of the head.

As for Savannah, per her mother's plea agreement, she's treated as a juvenile by the courts and receives a far lighter sentence than Melissa's life in prison.

She was sentenced to the maximum penalty for a juvenile when she was in detention till her 18th birthday.

She's now on intensive supervised probation.

I'd have 10 years suspended on indefinite supervised probation and basically until I pay off all my fines and then I could be possibly released from probation.

There's always a different way out of a situation.

It never had to be like that.

I try to remember the good part of him.

And yes, I was very close to my dad.

I remember the mountain man part him.

How he loved to be.

Melissa Napier is scheduled for release in 2051.

She will be 79 years old.

Abuse is never okay.

If you or someone you love is in an abusive relationship, there is help available.

Call the domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.

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

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