Dawn Silvernail

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Dawn Silvernail seemed like an ordinary suburban wife.

She was just a regular person.

She has a job working with mentally challenged kids.

Though her longtime friend, Fred Andros, had a shadier reputation.

This guy was involved in all kinds of unsavory things.

Then, one of Fred's co-workers was gunned down leaving choir practice.

Other choir members heard the shots.

The ensuing investigation would expose a slew of scandalous secrets almost too shocking to believe.

This was no random act.

She was targeted.

There was talk about bribes, numerous affairs.

They had sex, the three of them, in the town water pumping station.

And by the end, everyone in town would know that Dawn Silvernail was anything but ordinary.

It's like a soap opera, it really is in small-town America.

Pleasant Valley, New York, October 28th, 1999.

It was a peaceful autumn evening in this quiet rural community just outside Poughkeepsie in New York's picturesque Hudson Valley.

It's 100 miles from New York City is a rural, very quiet kind of place.

And it's one of those places where when you pull into town, it has the Kiwanas

sign, the church meeting sign.

And at a quarter to nine that Thursday night, choir practice had just ended, and 48-year-old Susan Fassett walked out of the Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church.

She was involved in her church.

She sang in the choir.

She was liked around town.

Which made what happened once Susan crossed the street and got into her car doubly shocking.

At first, the other members of the choir paid little attention to the noise.

They thought it was fireworks.

But then someone noticed Susan, slumped over the steering wheel of her car, and covered in blood.

Ran over there, they realized what had happened.

Susan had just been shot.

Here it is, a woman coming out of choir practice at a rural church, and she's gunned down.

And even as they rushed to give aid and summon help, some of the choir members spotted the shooter's getaway.

Team suspect's vehicle was seen leaving the immediate area.

They get glimpses of it.

They see partial license plate.

That partial plate was just the first clue in the search for Susan's killer.

This was no random act.

She was targeted.

And the investigation would lead through a tangle of small-town corruption, double-crosses, and kinky sex to the woman who just might hold the key to the mystery, 50-year-old Dawn Silvernail.

Born in 1949, Dawn Mudge grew up across the Hudson from Pleasant Valley in New York's Catskill Mountains.

Dawn was kind of a country girl, you know, and she wasn't very sophisticated.

Nearly six feet tall by the time she was a teenager, she was also quite a tomboy.

Used to like to take target practice in her backyard with pistols and rifles and have campfires.

And, you know, she liked the simple life, really.

And her life after high school followed a pretty simple small-town trajectory, too.

A couple of years of community college, a marriage at 21, and after a few years at home raising the couple's son, a career of her own.

Dawn worked for a nonprofit agency that helps the developmentally disabled.

She liked to work with mentally challenged kids.

To unwind from her demanding job, Dawn moonlighted as a country music singer.

She used to do like singing in a bar.

She also turned to a craze that was sweeping the nation in the late 70s, the analog version of internet chat rooms, citizens band radio.

It's almost like meeting somebody online today.

You don't see them, you present this persona, you present who you want to be.

The would-be lounge singer took her CB handle from a chart-topping country western song.

Her name on the CB was Delta Dawn.

And in 1977, 28-year-old Delta Dawn started chatting over the radio with a man who called himself Neptune.

Only five foot six, Fred Androse was hardly godlike.

But Neptune was an apt nickname nonetheless.

Fred was the town of Poughkeepsie water supervisor.

He ran the water department.

And when it came to getting a building permit in Poughkeepsie, Fred really did wield godlike power.

If contractors wanted to get hookups to the town water system, they had to see Fred.

And Fred made it very clear that they would need his cooperation.

There was talk about bribes.

Hey, give me 500 bucks, or I'll shut your water off.

However, the rumor that he was on the take wasn't the only or even the juiciest bit of gossip swirling around Fred.

Despite being married, Neptune was known to be a ladies' man.

He had numerous affairs always, all the time.

Different women.

He was a powerful man.

He was in many ways a charismatic man.

And in a sense, his power, his charisma made him very attractive.

Although contrary to Fred's reputation, his relationship with Dawn started out innocently enough.

They would talk to each other on the CB and they became friends.

Fred even took his wife to watch Dawn sing at a honky tonk.

They went to see her and they became friends.

But despite the fact that they were both married, Dawn's relationship with Fred evolved from friends to friends with benefits.

When Fred wanted sex and he didn't have anybody else and he wanted to cheat on his wife, Dawn was always there.

She didn't love him, but they used each other.

For Dawn, it was a lucrative relationship.

Dawn would show up at Fred's office and say, Fred, can I borrow a couple hundred bucks?

She always went to Fred when she needed something.

And Fred was always more than happy to oblige.

Consequently, he held a lot of power over her and he got her to do a number of things

in the name of that debt that she owed.

However, not all the favors he asked in return were sexual in nature.

He'd say, sure.

Can you drop this off on your way out?

Can you drop this off to Joe Smith's house for me?

And she'd say, sure.

She'd dropped the envelope off.

The envelopes typically contained cash, the proceeds from Fred's shakedown racket.

It might not be organized crime, but it was organized bribery and extortion.

She liked the idea with being able to

vicariously live this life.

And when her marriage ended in divorce, Dawn continued to see Fred and run his illicit errands.

If you're connected to an important person.

And that's what Fred had sold himself as being.

And if she could do favors for him and make a little money from him or borrow money from him, that gave...

her some degree of importance.

And I really think that was their connection.

The relationship continued for more than a decade, even after 42-year-old Dawn remarried in 1992 to a man named Ed Silvernail.

I knew him to be a hardworking guy.

He was close to his parents.

The owner of a small-town appliance store, Ed was solid and stable.

But Dawn couldn't seem to give up the thrill of her affair with Fred.

She was looking for excitement in her marriage, in her life.

Her husband wasn't providing it.

Although Dawn and Fred's lives were about to get far more exciting than the occasional illicit hookup and envelopes stuffed with cash, it started in 1997 with a dead body in the water.

The town assessor was found floating in the Hudson River.

His death was officially ruled a suicide.

The suicide occurred a day or two after the FBI had confronted him to talk to him and see if they could get him him to cooperate and give information on other town officials.

Although considering the circumstances, there were plenty of rumors that the assessor's death wasn't a suicide.

And Fred started many of them.

Fred started the rumor that he arranged to have this guy killed to shut him up.

He wanted to be a godfather.

That was his dream, really.

Whether the rumor was true or not, the feds quickly took notice.

They started following him around and they had a file on him.

I remember seeing cars across the street in the parking lot watching.

However, despite all Fred's kingpin pretensions, his water permits for bribes racket wasn't what the feds were after.

The main focus of the inquiry was the town's Republican chairman.

He was the guy apparently who was ordering the shakedowns of contractors.

What the FBI wanted from Fred was cooperation.

There was supposedly another guy that was much bigger

and was running a corruption scandal on a much broader scale that Fred was connected to.

So they were trying to use Fred to get to this guy.

And by the spring of 1999, the feds had enough evidence against Fred to force his cooperation.

He actually called me and told me to come to his house.

He needed to talk to me.

And when I got there, he said, I need to tell you, I'm probably going to be arrested.

It really wasn't a big shock to any of us.

Everybody knew that Fred Andros was this bully who would shake people down.

Nailed by the feds.

Fred quickly cut a deal that would keep him out of jail, even if it did cost him his job.

Fred resigned in May of 1999.

from 33 years in the town order department.

The next day, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy.

And as part of that, he was to cooperate and be a witness.

But the end of Fred Andros' career was about to be eclipsed by an even bigger scandal in Poughkeepsie involving another town official.

Her name was Susan Fassett.

She worked in the town of Poughkeepsie Town Hall.

And her death would expose the sordid underbelly of life in this otherwise picturesque suburban community.

We don't know what goes on behind closed doors.

Lots of people hold secrets, even in small towns.

Coming up, the hunt for Susan's killer results in a standoff.

The town of Poughkeepsie, here's what team responds.

As police uncover another suspect, a shocking secret and an unlikely motive, they realize: wow, we got one hell of a convoluted investigation here.

Pleasant Valley, New York, October 28, 1999.

It was not quite 9 o'clock on a Thursday evening when 48-year-old Susan Fassett was gunned down in a parking lot as she left choir practice at the Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church.

As soon as Susan sits down in her car and straps her seatbelt on, shots ring out.

There were a number of other choir members that had heard the shots.

Police and EMTs were on the scene within minutes.

She's still breathing.

She's still alive when they put her in that ambulance.

And even as the EMTs fought to save Susan's life, the investigators were already tracking down a crucial clue that could lead to the shooter.

Several members of the choir had spotted the suspect fleeing the scene.

They see a car taking off up the hill.

Not only did the investigators know they were looking for a metallic-colored station wagon, at least one member of the choir had given them a partial license plate number.

We got a general description of which way it

left the scene coming out of the parking lot where the actual shooting took place but other than that we had very little to work with at the time but was it enough when the investigators ran the plate they came up with a possible match susan's husband the car was registered to jeff fassett and since jeff fassett was a lieutenant in the poughkeepsie police department law enforcement proceeded with caution The town of Poughkeepsie dur Swat team respond to Jeff's residence.

They have a cop inside of a house, and they think he might have shot his wife, and they know he's got one weapon.

Jeff Fassett soon spotted the SWAT team massing outside his house, resulting in a tense standoff.

He drew the shades in the house.

He talked on the phone about having a gun.

He was uncertain about what had happened.

He was asking questions that rose our suspicion.

Meanwhile, Susan Fassett is at the hospital, right?

Struggling to survive.

It was a struggle she would lose.

We're

advised that she was dead.

Soon after, the SWAT team stormed in and took her husband into custody.

Jeff was physically removed from the house at gunpoint.

Once he was cuffed in the back of a cruiser, the authorities transported Jeff to a nearby state police barracks for questioning.

They begin to ask, what's going on in the marriage?

Is there a motivation here?

And oh boy, did they get a story.

Jeff denied any involvement in his wife's death, but he told the police that just a month earlier, he had discovered that Susan had been having an affair.

He and Susan talked about it.

Jeff had confronted her about it.

She asked for forgiveness.

They seemed to be getting back together.

They had agreed to

have new wedding bands made to start fresh.

And since his wife had supposedly broken it off, Jeff suggested that the investigators talk to Susan's jilted lover, lover, Poughkeepsie's former water supervisor, Fred Andros.

You said this is a guy you definitely want to talk to.

This guy was involved in all kinds of unsavory things,

criminal and otherwise.

He had a reputation of floating out the fact that he was connected to the mob, the implication being he could have people hurt, have them killed.

Did Susan's affair with Fred Andros have something to do with her murder?

Everybody in and around the town of Poughkeepsie knew who Fred Andros was.

And they knew his reputation, both as a corrupt official on the tape and as a ladies' man.

Fred is running around with Susan.

He's running around with Dawn.

Or was it possible Susan's husband was counting on Fred's reputation to divert suspicion from him?

Based on Jeff's behavior in the interrogation room, The investigators didn't think so.

We felt that he was being honest.

He was cooperative.

He never requested an attorney.

He also agreed to take a polygraph.

The average polygraph test can take two to three hours.

This ran five or six, maybe a little bit more.

At the same time, the investigators went looking for Fred Androse.

It was roughly two, three in the morning.

We decided to go knock on Fred's door.

He appeared genuinely distraught over Susan's death.

He was emotional.

He cried.

he was very upset over it.

He said that he loved her.

Fred confirmed that he and Susan had been seeing each other for almost four years and that the affair had ended over a month ago, just as her husband claimed.

One of the questions asked early on was, when was the last time you had sexual relations with her?

And he claimed it had been quite some time.

Well, when the investigators asked Fred whether he had killed Susan, he said no and that he could prove it.

He had a perfect alibi.

He was having dinner in his home and he had some close friends over.

One of them was a city of Poughkeepsie police officer.

There's no way Fred Andros could have killed this woman.

And after a grueling six-hour polygraph examination, it appeared that there was no way Susan's husband had killed her either.

The polygraphist was comfortable that he was telling the truth.

And we basically ruled him out.

But what about the witnesses that had seen Jeff Fassett's car fleeing the scene?

It was a mistake.

There were some miscommunications running license plates.

In the confusion, the officer at the crime scene had accidentally given Dispatch the license plate number of the victim's car, which was registered in her husband's name.

That led some police to believe that it was the car belonging to Jeff Fassett that actually left the scene.

As a result, the investigators had two men with a possible motive to kill Susan Fassett, and neither of them could have pulled the trigger.

They realized, wow, we got one hell of a convoluted investigation here.

And when the medical examiner finished Susan's autopsy, the result was another unexpected twist.

There was no surprise about how Susan had died.

She had been shot six times with a.45 caliber pistol.

The first round severed

both carotid arteries.

Instead, the surprise was what Susan had been doing before the shooting.

Susan Fassett had sex within 24 hours of her death.

The question was, who had she been sleeping with?

Was it the husband she had supposedly reconciled with?

Or Fred Andros, the man who claimed to be her former lover?

It apparently wasn't her husband, Jeff, based on what he told the investigators when they dropped by his house later that day.

I asked Jeff the last time he'd had relations.

He indicated to me it had been at least four or five days.

And when the detective asked him for a DNA sample, the police lieutenant knew what that meant.

Less than a month after their reconciliation, Susan had already been unfaithful.

The look on his face,

it was...

It was terrible.

But when the investigators asked Fred for a DNA sample on November 4th, he was far less cooperative than Jeff.

He wouldn't offer a DNA sample, said he had to talk to his lawyer.

Rebuffed by Fred, the detectives decided to try an indirect approach.

We made a decision to take him out and get him lunch.

We were going to get his DNA sample from a straw.

And when one of the detectives asked Fred to meet him for lunch so they could discuss the case, he fell for the ruse.

They test that DNA and they find out that Fred was the one who had sex with Susan Fassett last.

As police suspected, the DNA was a match and Fred had lied.

That is not two people who were breaking apart.

That's two people who were back together again.

But if Fred and Susan were still seeing one another on the sly,

why would he kill her?

Was it possible her death had nothing to do with the affair?

After all, Fred had been busted as part of the FBI's ongoing investigation of Poughkeepsie city government.

The feds are working on this corruption case for many, many years.

Was it possible that Susan had some dirt on Fred?

Something that could violate the plea bargain he'd made with the feds?

The police begin to hear stories about, well, maybe Susan was involved with Fred in some of this corruption that he was involved in, passing envelopes around.

One thing was certain, however, no matter what Susan's involvement was, the fact that Fred had cut a deal with the feds gave them considerable leverage over the former water supervisor.

He had signed a

participation agreement with the feds that he would cooperate in any investigation, otherwise his plea agreement was going to get thrown out.

They can really put the squeeze on him.

So soon after the DNA test confirmed that Fred had slept with Susan shortly before her death, the investigators went to the FBI.

We sat down with the FBI, explained to them that

this guy's lying to us on this homicide investigation.

Intrigued by what they heard, the FBI agreed to cooperate with the local police.

On December 21st, they brought Fred in for questioning.

And as expected, the federal agents did put the squeeze on him.

He was there all day until about 10 o'clock at night.

And they start to ask him questions about their case.

the corruption case.

But through that, he's asked, was Susan running envelopes?

Because there's some stories around that Susan was transporting money for Fred.

And is that why she wound up dead?

At first, Fred tried to stall.

He was giving them just enough where he was hoping they'd believe him and think he was being honest and move on.

But eventually, as the hours ticked by, Fred's resistance began to crumble.

He was tired.

Very, very tired.

And sensing that Fred was about to break after the grueling all-day session, the agents turned up the heat.

Look, Fred, you're going to go to jail for a long time.

Probably the rest of your life.

They were going to remove the deal that he had.

It was about to be pulled off the table.

The pressure was really ratcheting up.

But they also offered him a way out.

Name Susan's killer.

And that's when he does it.

Bang.

Don Silvernau.

Coming up, the investigators uncover a sordid trail of secrets.

Sets up a couple lights, puts a video camera on them.

But will it lead them to the killer in time?

He was face down in the carpet with a pool of blood under his head.

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On December 21st, 1999, almost two months after Susan Fassett had been gunned down while leaving choir practice in Pleasant Valley, New York, the investigators had finally made a breakthrough.

During a day-long interrogation by the FBI, Susan's lover, a disgraced Poughkeepsie City official named Fred Andros, had given the authorities what he claimed was a solid lead.

He identified the shooter.

He was Don Silver now.

However, there was one small problem with Fred's claim.

Who the hell is Don?

They hadn't even heard the name.

Had Fred just thrown out a name in hopes of saving himself.

That's what at least one of the investigators thought after they pulled up Dawn's DMV photo.

My impression we looked at her picture, said, this doesn't look like a murderer.

What is Fred talking about?

But the part the police had the hardest time believing was the 50-year-old's supposed motive for murder.

According to Fred, Dawn...

was Susan's jilted lover.

They were carrying on a lesbian relationship?

this is pleasant valley this is suburbia however when the police dug a little deeper into their database they discovered two facts that lent at least some credence to fred's story

the first had to do with the murder weapon a.45 caliber pistol she does in fact have a.45 registered to her the second had to do with the getaway vehicle witnesses described Her husband had a vehicle registered to him that generally fit the description of the car leaving the scene.

So on December 23rd, 1999, the investigators made the hour drive up into the Catskills to question Dawn at the home she shared with her husband.

Dawn brought us in, sat us down, asked us if we wanted anything to drink, a cup of coffee, anything like that, being the perfect host.

And once Dawn and the detective sat down to coffee, she was extremely cooperative.

They said, our records indicate that you have a.45 caliber.

Well, she jumped out of her chair.

Absolutely.

I'll go get it.

She removed the gun, handed it to me.

Dawn also admitted to knowing Fred Androse.

Although, according to her, they were just friends.

They were friendly.

It was a casual acquaintance.

They would talk on the CBs when CBs were popular, that kind of thing.

But she denied knowing Susan Fassett at all.

And she seemed shocked when the investigators told her that Fred had implicated her in the woman's murder.

She appeared surprised by that.

I don't know why I'd say that.

I would never harm a fly.

I wouldn't hurt anybody.

Considering Fred's shady reputation, the fact that Dawn was a married woman who worked with disabled children, and that she had just voluntarily turned over her gun, the police were inclined to believe her.

She couldn't have been more cooperative than she was.

But was there a reason Dawn had no problem giving the police her gun?

When the investigators turned it over to the ballistics examiner, he immediately noticed something wrong.

Someone had tampered with the gun's barrel.

They worded out whether drill press or a Dremel tool.

There's only one reason to do that, and that's so that police won't be able to do a ballistic test on it.

But did that mean Dawn really was Susan's killer?

Or had someone set her up?

Maybe Dawn hadn't done this.

Maybe Dawn loaned her gun to either Androst or some third party that we didn't know.

On December 28th, the investigators asked Dawn to come in for another interview.

And Dawn, cooperative as ever, readily agreed.

Once we tell her that the barrel of that gun had been tampered with, her demeanor changed.

She was more anxious, more concerned.

She was more honest, too, admitting that she had been cheating on her husband with Fred Androse.

Dawn Silverna was one more female in Fred Andros' life.

But while the affair was sexual, Dawn said it wasn't exactly romantic.

She called Fred her little troll.

She told the police that she slept with Fred strictly to pay off the money he had loaned her over the years.

She said that she had owed him a great deal of money, something like $5,000.

However, according to Dawn, she didn't just work off her debt by having sex with Fred.

Andros had paid her money to have sex with his friends.

Dawn claimed that not all of Fred's friends were male either.

She told the investigators that in the summer of 1999, Fred had approached her with a new proposition.

I want you to have sex with this woman that I'm involved with, and I'm going to videotape it.

Andros offered her $350 cash

to participate in this.

This was Fred's idea to get the two women together for his own sexual appetite.

According to Dawn, the other woman was Susan Fassett.

They had sex, the three of them, in the town water pumping station.

It was just like something they did a couple of times to please Fred, but that they ended up liking it.

And it was exciting.

It was new.

It was fresh.

Dawn said she and Susan had performed for Fred on several occasions.

But she also claimed that by the end of the summer, Susan had started to have second thoughts and not just about the menage a trois.

Susan begins to talk about, ah, maybe I should get back with my husband.

This isn't working out, Fred.

We're just not meant to be together.

Susan had broken up with him and nobody breaks up with Fred Andres.

And when the investigators press Dawn further.

She finally just cracks and says, I shot that woman.

I shot that woman.

I shot that woman.

But I didn't do it on my own.

Dawn says Fred was the mastermind behind it.

He said, this will eliminate your debt.

Dawn said she had initially refused, causing Fred to resort to blackmail.

Fred said, I have these videotapes of you and this other woman, and I'll show them to everybody.

And Dawn claimed that when blackmail didn't work, Fred had started making veiled threats against her family.

For example, he took a photograph of her son.

on a break from his factory job, shows it to Dawn when he's trying to coerce her into committing murder on his behalf.

And he says this would be a good place for a drive-by.

When she saw those pictures of her son, that was it.

She was ready to kill someone else in order to save her son's life.

According to Dawn, that was why she had killed Susan outside her church.

Dawn sits there, just gives it all up.

Dawn's confession was more than enough for the police to arrest her on murder charges.

She's gotten down a woman, a mother, a wife.

In cold blood, shot her with a.45 caliber.

She's placed in jail.

And she knows her one hope is that she can go into court, tell this story, and that her sentencing will be light.

But would she tell that story as a defendant or a witness for the prosecution?

The next day, December 29th, police pounded on Fred Andros' door no one answered but that didn't stop the investigators we had our warrants we had what we needed and and we came in anyway once inside the investigators fanned out and searched the house I saw Fred's wallet I think his pager was there there was every indication that Fred was there in the house then One of the investigators climbed the stairs to the attic.

You could see dust moving.

Somebody had just moved from the top of that stairwell, and I basically announced that I was going to come up to talk to him.

And he's calling Fred's name out.

Fred!

Fred, we got you, man.

Give it up.

But the disgraced city official wasn't about to give up.

At least not to the police.

And when the investigators burst into the attic moments later.

That was Fred.

Face down in the carpet, gun next to him.

There was a pool of blood under his head.

Fred had just shot himself.

I'm thinking this thing is over.

Coming up, Dawn goes to court.

You could hear a pin drop as she told her story.

But it's not her story that shocks the courtroom.

There was an audible gasp in the room.

On January 29th, 2001, the accused murderer of Susan Fassett went on trial at the Dutchess County Courthouse in Poughkeepsie, New York.

We are comfortable that we had a pretty good case.

However, the person the prosecutors were presenting the case against wasn't the woman who had confessed to the shooting, Dawn Silvernail.

It was Fred Andros, a disgraced city official who had resigned from his position after pleading guilty to corruption.

Fred had attempted suicide a year earlier when police came to his house to arrest him.

Fred tried to take the coward's way out and kill himself.

However, he had miraculously survived the self-inflicted wound.

Underneath the chin, came out through the nose.

He had a lot of soft tissue damage to the face.

It was

how he did not have any brain damage.

He wasn't blind.

He could see.

Although, when he walked into court after a year's worth of reconstructive surgery, few people recognized the town's self-described ladies' man.

There was actually an audible gasp in the room when he walked in the first time.

He really looks like a disfigured man at this point.

I mean, he really looks bad.

They had to reconstruct his nose.

Dawn wasn't in the courtroom, however.

She was sequestered outside, waiting for her turn to testify against Fred.

She had made a plea deal with the district attorney's office.

Dawn had pled guilty to the murder.

But in exchange for her testimony, the prosecutors had agreed to a reduced sentence, 18 years to life, instead of the maximum 25 to life.

Would have liked to have given her the max.

But we needed her.

In its open, the prosecutors claimed that Fred had orchestrated Susan's death after she had dared to break off her affair with him.

He was the person behind the death of Susan Fassett, even if he did not pull the trigger on the gun.

The defense countered by presenting a very similar scenario, although they cast Dawn as the chilted lover.

The defense was trying to contend that Dawn did this of her own volition.

Perhaps because she and Susan Fassett had had had a lesbian affair.

And according to the defense, Fred's disgraced reputation made him the perfect scapegoat.

The defense theory is that Dawn realized that she could possibly frame Fred for it.

However, when Dawn took the stand to testify against Fred, she hardly seemed like the sort to mastermind such a crime.

She had short, rather unstylish hair.

She was overweight.

She was just a regular person who got caught up in something.

And her remorse at being caught up in Fred's fiendish plot appeared heartfelt.

I'm sorry that I killed that woman.

I ruined families' lives.

I took this woman away from her kids, away from her husband.

Dawn said she had only been trying to protect her family.

Dawn claimed they would be harmed if she didn't do exactly what Fred told her to do.

Dawn is married to a guy she really loves.

She has a job working with mentally challenged kids.

Will all that blow up on her if this secret is revealed of who she is?

Then, before the hushed courtroom, Dawn recounted just how she had waited in ambush while Susan finished choir practice.

She sat in the front seat of a car, pulled the seat back.

She has her pistol on her lap.

Dawn said that Susan didn't see her when she walked across the street from the church.

When Susan got in her car, Dawn sat up.

And according to Dawn, she immediately started firing at her former lover through the car's open window.

Dawn said she just kept pulling the trigger till the gun was empty.

You could hear a pin drop as she told her story.

She is a riveting witness.

I mean, there's tears.

You know, she gives the whole narrative of what happened.

Never misses a beat.

Then, once the gun was empty, Dawn had driven away as quickly as she could.

She stopped at a payphone and paged Fred a certain code and his pager,

and that would tell Fred that the job was done, that Susan was dead.

Dawn said that after the shooting, Fred had drilled out the gun to foil the ballistics and taken other steps to cover their tracks.

He actually paid for Dawn to get four new tires, thinking that we would be able to get fire tracks at the scene.

She gives him detail after detail.

But would Dawn's detailed account be enough to ensure Fred's conviction?

The jury has to believe that, yes, she killed her, but yes, she's telling the whole truth here.

On cross, the defense did its best to discredit Dawn.

But Fred's attorneys do.

They attack Dawn's deal.

Dawn was the killer here.

Dawn got the plea bargain.

Dawn got the reduced sentence.

The legal system couldn't hold Fred accountable for what Dawn Silvernail did to Susan Fasset.

Then, when it was the defense's turn to present their case, they called Fred to the stand.

It was clear when Dawn Silvernail was finished testifying that she had made a very powerful impact and that the defense would have to come back with something very strong in order to counter it.

And the defense strategy to counter it was to put Fred Andros on the stand in hopes that Fred could go head-to-head with Dawn.

However, contrary to Dawn's compelling performance, Fred came across as a broken man.

Fred stammered.

He

reversed course.

He wasn't clear.

He would say, well, I shot myself, so I don't have a lot of my memory.

Although, as Fred explained to the jury, it wasn't guilt that led him to attempt suicide rather than face arrest.

It was the hopelessness of his situation.

He'd lost everything.

He'd lost his job.

He'd lost his esteem in the community.

He was just so broken down and so tired.

According to Fred, the fact that he was about to be arrested for a crime he didn't commit was just too much to take.

He didn't have anything to do with it.

It was

Aunt Dawn Silverna and her alone.

And the idea that his jealousy had led to Susan's death.

Fred testified that it simply wasn't the case.

And the police had the DNA tests to prove it.

Fred says, I had sex with her the day before she died.

Why would I want to kill her?

Coming up, the jury reaches its verdict.

The jury came back within hours.

But whose story will they believe?

Dawn Silvernail did hold the fate of Fred Andros in her hands.

On February 23rd, 2001, the jury announced that it had reached a verdict in the trial of disgraced Poughkeepsie, New York City official Fred Androcks.

The jury came back within hours.

Fred was on trial for masterminding the October 1999 murder of Susan Fassett, the wife of a Poughkeepsie police officer.

Susan and Fred had been having a sordid three-way affair with Dawn Silvernail, Susan's confessed killer.

It's like a soap opera.

It really is in small-town America.

It's a story of political intrigue.

It's a story of very powerful people laid low.

It's a story of sex and violence.

At trial, Fred had testified that the killing was entirely Dawn's doing.

That the fact that he'd had sex with Susan less than 24 hours before her death proved that he had no motive for murder.

Or was that, as the prosecutors had argued in their closing, all part of Fred's plan?

He manipulated Susan to get back together with him again so he could have sex with her.

Just so he could prove that he was still with her.

Why would I want her dead?

Just so he could later say that.

That's who Fred Andros is.

In the end, it all came down to Fred's word versus Dawn's.

And when he finished telling the sad story of his attempted suicide, it was obvious Fred figured he had won the jury's sympathy.

He walks away with his chest sticking out like this cocky man, thinking they bought it.

Only they didn't.

When the verdict was read, the jury found Fred Andros guilty of Susan's murder.

Ultimately, Dawn Silverna

did hold the fate of Fred Andros in her hands.

She's the one who put him away.

Although she didn't put him away for long, despite the fact that he received a sentence of 25 years to life.

Within two years, he died of a heart attack.

He wasn't a healthy man when he went in.

In the years since his death, Fred's daughter has come to accept the jury's verdict.

I think he did what they said he did.

I think my biggest regret is being nice to him towards the end when he was in jail.

And Dawn Silvernail, the woman who killed Susan and whose testimony put Fred in prison, she not only has to serve her time, she has to live with what she's done.

Even though she got the last word, she paid dearly for what she did on behalf of Fred Andros.

She has nightmares every night about this woman and about what she did.

She relives this crime over and over in her head.

Dawn Silvernail was released on parole in December 2017 at the age of 68.

She currently lives in New Fay, New York.

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.

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