Kimberly Ross

Speaker 1 Do I have time for men?

Speaker 2 Yes, I do. Let's pray.

Speaker 1 I'm a baddie. The real housewives of Potomac are back.

Speaker 4 I know she ain't bring TJ round to get back with her men. Oh my god.

Speaker 4 Lied for a year, Stacy.

Speaker 1 Are we still talking about your situation? Don't let this accent fool you.

Speaker 4 I've never touched you around my house, Stacy.

Speaker 5 You don't have one.

Speaker 1 I'm so confused. All new the Real Housewives of Potomac.
Mondays, watch Bravo on Peacock.

Speaker 8 Wednesday on NBC. One Chicago is back with three can't-miss hours.
Let's roll. Chicago Mid, Fire, and PD.
Healing toward the danger, not away from it.

Speaker 8 With everyday heroes risking it all and unforgettable emotional moments on and off the job, you don't want to miss Chicago Wednesday. We made a vow to protect this city.

Speaker 8 One night, one family, one Chicago. Gear up, we're going in hard.
Wednesday on NBC.

Speaker 1 Kimberly Ross had a devout religious upbringing.

Speaker 2 She was a good girl, just always singing and, you know, in church.

Speaker 1 And her husband, Bill, was just as good-natured.

Speaker 13 Kimberly and Bill were people who would take in others who needed help.

Speaker 1 People like Ashley Cook and Justin Young.

Speaker 2 She was calling Kim mom and calling my brother dad.

Speaker 1 Bill took him into his home. He took him on as another child.
One night, Kimberly and Bill's welcoming refuge turned into a crime scene. They shot my husband!

Speaker 5 They shot your husband.

Speaker 14 Who has shot your husband?

Speaker 3 I don't know who they were.

Speaker 16 The two intruders just opened the door to the bedroom and began shooting.

Speaker 1 Was it a home invasion?

Speaker 14 I know a lot of people was alarmed by that and scared by that.

Speaker 1 Was it vengeance? Kim really made him believe that she was being hurt and that he had to save her. Or had the good girl gone bad?

Speaker 9 Kimberly Ross was a pathological liar.

Speaker 1 Shelbyville, Tennessee, February 14th, 2007. It was a little after 2 a.m.
in this quiet country town an hour south of Nashville.

Speaker 17 Shelbyville is small. It's a rural southern town.
Everybody kind of knows everybody and everybody knows kind of everybody's business.

Speaker 1 And everybody in Shelbyville was about to be shot.

Speaker 6 That's County 911 in the morning.

Speaker 18 She was hysterical.

Speaker 16 The 911 operator had extreme difficulty understanding her.

Speaker 1 The caller was 37-year-old Kimberly Ross.

Speaker 5 Ma'am, you need to calm down so I can understand you.

Speaker 1 But when she finally managed to make herself understood, it instantly became clear why Kimberly was so hysterical. They're my husband.

Speaker 10 They what? Not my husband!

Speaker 5 Who has shot your husband?

Speaker 6 I don't know who they were.

Speaker 5 Did they come in your house and do this?

Speaker 3 Yes, sir.

Speaker 21 She's been a victim of a home invasion and her husband's been shot and is clinging to life is your husband breathing

Speaker 21 you can tell that mr ross is still alive because she's actually yelling at him to lay still to be still

Speaker 1 lay down

Speaker 4 lay down lay down please we're moving

Speaker 4 lay down

Speaker 1 But his condition was dire.

Speaker 4 Oh my god, a lot of blood.

Speaker 1 Deputies from the Bedford County Sheriff's Office rushed to the scene.

Speaker 25 So I was pretty close by, about 2.15 when the call came out.

Speaker 1 And when they arrived, they found 19-year-old Justin Young lying near the front door, his hands and feet bound with bailing twine.

Speaker 23 He was living with the Rosses.

Speaker 24 He was friends with them through Kimberly's son.

Speaker 25 He was yelling for help.

Speaker 1 Kimberly was further inside the house, her hands and feet bound with an electrical cord.

Speaker 25 She was tied around her hands with her hands in front, and the same cable ran down to her feet and it was wrapped around her feet.

Speaker 17 She had managed to get to a phone, cell phone to make the call.

Speaker 1 And Kimberly's husband, 40-year-old Bill Ross, was in the bedroom.

Speaker 16 Despite the horrific nature of his wound, he was still alive.

Speaker 25 He was breathing and I could hear him making noise.

Speaker 1 With Bill clinging to life, the EMTs loaded him into the back of the ambulance while Sheriff's Deputy started going over the crime scene, looking for anything that might help identify the two home invaders.

Speaker 17 We were looking for any evidence, a weapon that may have been used, a firearm, anything, anything that would connect the dots that way.

Speaker 1 But for the moment, all they knew was that they had a very unusual crime on their hands.

Speaker 17 We had a victim with multiple gunshot wounds. We had two subjects that lived there that were tied up.

Speaker 1 And the investigation would soon focus on what was happening inside the home of Bill and Kimberly Ross.

Speaker 22 It's a situation where you want to know what's the rest of the story.

Speaker 1 Born in 1969, Kimberly Ballman grew up in a small Indiana town, raised by a family of devout Pentecostal Christians.

Speaker 2 Kim was a little church girl, long skirts, long dark hair, just always singing and, you know, in church. She was a good girl.

Speaker 1 But when Kim was a teenager, the family moved to Oklahoma. And soon after, the good girl rebelled against her religious upbringing.

Speaker 27 Stories from the family is she was sleeping around. She got kicked out because she got knocked up.

Speaker 1 Only 19, Kimberly married before giving birth to a son in 1989. But the marriage didn't last.

Speaker 27 She had one child. He was somewhere around the age of two.

Speaker 1 Barely in her 20s and desperate to support her child, Kimberly found work as an exotic dancer.

Speaker 1 Which was how she first met William Galloway. Although at first, he didn't realize she was a stripper.

Speaker 27 Me and some buddies, we were just kind of watching the girls and talking and drinking. This girl was sitting at the bar

Speaker 27 in a nice, expensive evening dress. We didn't know who she was.
I said, hey, let's put some money up and see if we can get her to get on stage, take that dress off.

Speaker 27 Well, I guess the trick was on us because she acted like she'd never done this before,

Speaker 27 but thought the money was nice, so she got up there and she actually stripped for us.

Speaker 27 And I didn't find out later that she actually worked there.

Speaker 1 Discovering that he'd been played didn't do anything to deter William, though.

Speaker 27 I asked her out and we started dating.

Speaker 27 And then she got pregnant. So I asked her to marry me.

Speaker 1 Kimberly said yes, but their happiness would be put to the test by complications shortly after the birth of their daughter, Billy.

Speaker 28 I had a fever. My heart was like a big owner.

Speaker 3 I don't know how to know.

Speaker 27 Something attacked her brainstem.

Speaker 27 On one side of her tongue, she don't have control of the muscles. We had to take her to all kinds of hospitals and doctors.

Speaker 1 And when it was clear that their daughter would survive, the relieved parents got married. And two years later, the couple also had a son, Kimberly's third child.

Speaker 27 We did pretty good. We lived out on some acreage and did stuff together.
I would say for the first five or six years, we were really happy.

Speaker 1 But things changed after Kimberly convinced William to give her the money to buy a friend's bar.

Speaker 27 We grew apart after she bought the bar.

Speaker 27 I was just losing money hand over fist in it.

Speaker 1 The business eventually failed, and soon after, Kimberly's husband filed for divorce, kicking off a bitter custody dispute over their two children.

Speaker 27 My divorce got so ugly that I hired a lawyer, but the judge awarded her custody.

Speaker 1 And things were still being finalized in 2004 when Kimberly's uncle died, and the 35-year-old went home to Indiana with her children for his funeral.

Speaker 28 Me and my brothers and my mom drove up there. And then I remember after the funeral, we went to eat with someone.

Speaker 9 And it was Bill.

Speaker 1 38-year-old Bill Ross, who'd known Kimberly since they were kids.

Speaker 1 Three years older than Kimberly, when Bill was 15, his mother died, and the teenager moved in with Kimberly's uncle, Andy.

Speaker 2 He was a good person.

Speaker 2 He pretty much shaped Bill, I think.

Speaker 1 Bill wasn't all that close to Kimberly, though, since she moved to Oklahoma soon after. And her uncle's funeral was the first time she'd seen Bill in years.

Speaker 28 One day it was Bill and they were talking like they've been fun.

Speaker 2 She was happy to see Bill.

Speaker 1 Bill was pretty happy to see her too.

Speaker 2 They were both all over each other at the bar after her uncle's funeral.

Speaker 1 They apparently made a deeper connection because after the funeral, when Bill went back to Tennessee where he'd been living for nearly 10 years, Kimberly soon followed.

Speaker 2 She moved to Tennessee like within days.

Speaker 1 And within months. Once Kimberly's divorce was final, she and Bill were married.

Speaker 2 It's like, this is it, you know, I really like her. I think we're going to do this.

Speaker 1 After the wedding, Bill and Kimberly settled into a house he bought on the outskirts of Shelbyville, not far from the car dealership where he worked.

Speaker 2 He was the top salesman, I want to say, for three consecutive years.

Speaker 9 He was the breadwinner. Kimberly didn't earn an income.

Speaker 1 But she wasn't a stay-at-home mom either.

Speaker 1 After Kim and her ex-husband agreed to a custody arrangement to avoid uprooting the kids, Kimberly's two youngest children stayed behind in Oklahoma with their father.

Speaker 1 And while her oldest son, who was almost 16, did come to Tennessee with his mother, he soon moved out on his own.

Speaker 16 He was not living in the home at the time, but he was a frequent visitor on weekends, things like that.

Speaker 1 However, Kimberly and Bill weren't exactly empty nesters. By 2007, they'd taken in a friend of her son's, 19-year-old, Justin Young.

Speaker 1 Justin had a difficult time dealing with the divorce between his parents and had a difficult time dealing with his stepdad.

Speaker 1 And Bill, perhaps remembering the kindness Kimberly's uncle had shown him, was more than willing to let Justin stay with them. Bill took him into his home.
He took him on as another child.

Speaker 1 So did Kimberly.

Speaker 1 Kim doted on Justin like that was her son. Before long, Justin acted like one, too.

Speaker 1 Justin called Kim mom. And that suited Kimberly just fine, since having Justin around the house also filled the void left when her youngest children opted to stay in Oklahoma.

Speaker 13 She had this need to be some kind of a mother figure.

Speaker 17 She had a need to be accepted by someone. She needed something to call family.

Speaker 1 Justin wasn't the only member of her surrogate family either. There was also 23-year-old Ashley Cook.

Speaker 21 She was somewhat of a transient.

Speaker 11 She lived several different places, was not working.

Speaker 1 She'd also been arrested a few times for possession of marijuana.

Speaker 17 She had misdemeanor stuff.

Speaker 17 Stuff that, you know,

Speaker 17 you don't want to see on a young person's record, but you're not really shocked when you do.

Speaker 1 Nevertheless, when a friend introduced Kimberly and Bill to Ashley, the older couple decided to help out the troubled young woman.

Speaker 17 Kimberly was paying her bills and giving her her money to keep her up.

Speaker 2 My brother helped pay for a place for her to live.

Speaker 1 And while Ashley didn't live with Kimberly and Bill, it was evident that she considered them family.

Speaker 2 She was calling Kim mom and calling my brother dad.

Speaker 1 But on Valentine's Day 2007, after a brutal attack that left her husband fighting for his life, the authorities would be asking, did Kimberly's need to take care of others lead to a tragic betrayal?

Speaker 1 Coming up, the investigators questioned Justin and Kimberly about the home invasion.

Speaker 16 Justin reported that he woke up to discover a black male holding a gun to his head.

Speaker 1 But will the evidence say otherwise?

Speaker 17 There were minute details that didn't match up.

Speaker 1 At a little after two o'clock on the morning of Valentine's Day, 2007, the Bedford County, Tennessee 911 Center received a frantic call from 37-year-old Kimberly Ross.

Speaker 21 She's been a victim of a home invasion.

Speaker 22 Her husband's been shot and is clinging to life.

Speaker 5 Is your husband breathing?

Speaker 4 A lot of blood. I'm making a lot of blood.

Speaker 1 A lot of blood. Within minutes, deputies arrived at the Ross home just outside Shelbyville, Tennessee.

Speaker 25 When you enter the house, it's... weapons drawn.
I mean, we were told on dispatch that the two assailants had left the scene. So obviously we have to clear the residence.

Speaker 1 Inside the house, the deputies found Kimberly and 19-year-old Justin Young, who lived with the Rosses. Both had been tied up.

Speaker 22 Justin was tied with string like you might bail hay with.

Speaker 17 Kimberly had been tied with some type of a cord, electrical cord.

Speaker 13 It was loose enough for her to get a cell phone and make a phone call to 911.

Speaker 1 Kimberly's husband, 40-year-old Bill Ross, was in the bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 22 It appeared there was gray material oozing from the wound, which would obviously be brain matter.

Speaker 1 So without a minute to lose, the EMTs loaded Bill onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance.

Speaker 25 You're changing the scene and possibly destroying evidence, but that's just something that has to be done. I mean, the human life is way more important than the investigation.

Speaker 1 And a life flight helicopter from Nashville was already in route, even as the EMTs rushed Bill to the local hospital.

Speaker 25 They have a helipad there, so they would go to the helipad and then meet the helicopter there.

Speaker 1 But by the time Bill reached the helipad, it was too late.

Speaker 22 He passed away in the back of the ambulance.

Speaker 1 Bill Ross was dead. And in an instant, the focus shifted from saving his life to solving his murder.

Speaker 25 Had deputies taped the scene off

Speaker 25 because

Speaker 25 just because the crime actually was committed in the house, I mean, there's evidence possibly outside the house and also to keep people away from the scene as well.

Speaker 1 And while the crime scene tape went up outside the house, Kimberly and Justin were inside giving sheriff's deputies a detailed account of the attack.

Speaker 20 The assailants were described as two unknown black males who had apparently crawled in through a window.

Speaker 1 The window was in Justin's room.

Speaker 16 Justin reported that he was asleep in bed.

Speaker 22 He woke up to discover a black male holding a gun to his head head and another one tying him up.

Speaker 25 He said that one of the males came to his room and was armed, held him at gunpoint and told him that if he would be still, be quiet, that he would be okay. He would not be harmed.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, according to Kimberly, she had been in the living room watching television.

Speaker 22 The first moment she's aware there's a problem is when Justin Young is being escorted down the hallway with the two intruders armed with guns.

Speaker 11 They tie her up and basically shove her to the floor.

Speaker 1 Kimberly said that based on what she'd overheard, the two men were looking for someone.

Speaker 17 She stated that she had heard the name. They were looking for William and Jimmy.

Speaker 25 She didn't know who William and Jimmy were, except her husband's name is Bill.

Speaker 25 She said that she had no idea why they were there, who they were,

Speaker 25 what they were upset about.

Speaker 1 And she had no explanation for what the two men did next.

Speaker 16 They then inexplicably just opened the door to the bedroom where Mr.

Speaker 22 Ross was asleep and began shooting.

Speaker 1 Kimberly said that the killers had fled after the shooting.

Speaker 25 We did not know what their mode of transportation was, whether it was on foot, whether they had left in a vehicle or what.

Speaker 1 But that all changed once the investigators escorted Kimberly out of the house. to take her down to the station for a formal statement.

Speaker 25 Once I got her her outside the house, she immediately started screaming, my car, my car. They took my car.

Speaker 1 Was it the brake that could lead investigators to the killers?

Speaker 25 They get a description of the car, got on the radio, boloed that to other officers to be on the lookout for that vehicle.

Speaker 1 And that wasn't the only clue the investigators had to work with either. Outside the house, they found something that seemed to confirm Justin's story about the intruders coming in the window.

Speaker 21 They noticed here's a stepladder outside Justin Young's window.

Speaker 1 And processing the bedroom, crime scene technicians made an important discovery about the murder weapon.

Speaker 25 There were a couple of shell casings on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Speaker 15 They were 380 casings.

Speaker 1 But elsewhere in the house, they made another puzzling discovery.

Speaker 22 There's a gun cabinet in the living room with a door open, and they discovered there was a box of 380 ammunition in there, but they did not see a.380 caliber weapon.

Speaker 21 Is it a coincidence that Mr.

Speaker 23 Ross was shot with a.380 pistol?

Speaker 1 After all, according to what Justin told the investigators, the killers didn't need to shoot Bill with his own gun.

Speaker 20 The facts that they were told was that both assailants were already armed when Justin Young was awakened.

Speaker 1 If Justin was right, why would the killers take one of Bill's guns?

Speaker 17 We had no idea what we were looking at. Was this a drug deal gone bad?

Speaker 17 Was this an old vendetta over something else? We had no clue.

Speaker 1 What they did know was that something wasn't adding up. So investigators turned to their two witnesses.

Speaker 1 It was six o'clock that morning before the investigators were finally able to sit down with Kimberly and Justin to take their formal statements.

Speaker 17 They were transported to the hospital, checked out, and then brought to the Sheriff's Department.

Speaker 1 And ushered into separate interrogation rooms. They each gave essentially the same account of the shooting that they'd given at the scene.

Speaker 21 Kimberly and Justin repeated the story of this home invasion.

Speaker 1 However, the investigators soon noticed something about their individual stories.

Speaker 17 They told basically the same story, substance, but there were minute details that didn't match up.

Speaker 7 They had some discrepancies in the description of the perpetrators, what they were wearing, some of the sequence of events.

Speaker 1 Of course, a certain amount of discrepancy was expected.

Speaker 22 You get that when you have people that have been subjected to a traumatic event.

Speaker 1 Especially someone like Kimberly, who just lost her husband.

Speaker 17 She seemed a little shaken by it all.

Speaker 17 There was a little bit of like a bewilderment type look.

Speaker 1 Justin, on the other hand, didn't look bewildered.

Speaker 17 He just seemed like a... a very nervous young man.

Speaker 1 So already suspicious of his claim that both intruders had been armed when they came in his window, one of the investigators brought Justin back into the interrogation room for a second interview.

Speaker 21 We went in and told Justin Young, you know, that

Speaker 21 essentially that he just didn't believe him, that, you know, there were a lot of inconsistencies between what he and Kimberly were saying.

Speaker 21 There were a lot of inconsistencies between what he was saying and the physical evidence.

Speaker 17 He got caught in a web of his own words.

Speaker 1 And once tangled in it, he tried to talk his way out.

Speaker 21 At that point, Justin did change his story.

Speaker 1 In fact, Justin didn't just change his story. He started naming names, including a name the investigators had yet to hear.

Speaker 17 Justin broke and said that Ashley's the one that done the shooting. She's the one that killed him.

Speaker 1 Coming up, the investigators bring Ashley in for questioning.

Speaker 17 It was not a plausible story. It didn't add up.

Speaker 1 And that leads to a shocking accusation.

Speaker 17 Kimberly led Ashley to believe that Bill had been abusing Kimberly.

Speaker 8 He took a patient out of the hospital on a motorcycle. Monday on NBC.

Speaker 30 I try to think outside the box.

Speaker 8 Zachary Quinto in brilliant mind.

Speaker 30 It's alien hand syndrome with mystifying new cases. Just a symptom of something bigger.
Question is what?

Speaker 3 And not so welcome new faces.

Speaker 30 Pleasure to meet you, sir. I just started liking the four interns I already have.
I don't have time to get attached to a new one.

Speaker 1 You're gonna last five minutes.

Speaker 8 Brilliant Minds. Monday on NBC.

Speaker 1 The doctors will see you now. Bravo's Married to Medicine is back.
What's up, players?

Speaker 6 What's up, players and players?

Speaker 1 I'm here for all of it.

Speaker 3 All of it.

Speaker 1 Friendships are the best medicine.

Speaker 9 We're that ride and die group.

Speaker 1 That's my sister. We're going to have a good time.

Speaker 1 But they've got drama down to a science.

Speaker 5 We all should be able to

Speaker 5 ready for the drag right now if you're interested.

Speaker 4 You dogs, our whole family.

Speaker 3 Me, my kids lay out of your mouth.

Speaker 1 Watch the premiere of Married to Medicine November 30th on Bravo and streaming on Peacock. Doctor's orders.

Speaker 1 On Valentine's Day, 2007, Kimberly Ross's husband of two years, Bill Ross, had been shot to death in his home outside Shelbyville, Tennessee.

Speaker 12 Kimberly said that two black males had entered entered the home, shot her husband, and tied her and Justin up and left.

Speaker 1 And at first, 19-year-old Justin Young, who lived with the Rosses, had told a somewhat similar story.

Speaker 7 A lot of their facts were similar, but they had some details that were different.

Speaker 1 Suspicious, the investigators had brought Justin in for a second round of questioning, and the result was a breakthrough.

Speaker 31 He figured he's telling a lie, it's not going to to hold up any further.

Speaker 21 And so he needs to start telling the truth. So Justin's next version was that this home invasion by two unknown assailants was bogus.

Speaker 1 Instead, Justin said that it was Ashley Cook who'd killed Bill.

Speaker 17 That's the first time we had heard the name Ashley.

Speaker 1 Ashley's name may have been new to the homicide investigators, but she was no stranger to the victim.

Speaker 1 Another troubled young person like Justin, Ashley didn't live with Kimberly and Bill, but she did depend on their generosity.

Speaker 1 The Rosses provided financial support, including the trailer outside Shelbyville, where Ashley lived.

Speaker 21 They paid the rent, they paid the utilities, things like that.

Speaker 1 So why would she kill the golden goose?

Speaker 1 It was simple, according to Justin.

Speaker 17 Bill Ross was going to cut it all off.

Speaker 1 Justin said that Bill's decision must have made Ashley furious because she was the one who'd actually crawled in his window early that morning.

Speaker 21 Ashley came over, came through the window, came down the hall, grabbed the gun out of the cabinet, chambered around, and then shot Mr.

Speaker 11 Ross.

Speaker 17 According to Justin, Ashley's the one that came up with the story about the gentleman breaking in, and she tied him up and told him, this is the story you tell.

Speaker 1 But if that were true, why would Justin and Kimberly actually tell that story once the sheriff's deputies arrived?

Speaker 1 Hoping for an answer, the investigators brought Kimberly back in for another round of questioning.

Speaker 21 Kimberly says that she lied in the first statement because she was afraid of Ashley.

Speaker 1 And like Justin, Kimberly said Ashley had murdered Bill because he decided to stop supporting her financially.

Speaker 17 I do recall.

Speaker 17 Kimberly saying Ashley got mad at Bill,

Speaker 17 and that was her reasoning for shooting him.

Speaker 1 However, while Kimberly and Justin's new stories essentially matched, the investigators didn't necessarily believe them.

Speaker 16 Why wouldn't you have told that in the first place?

Speaker 21 To say that you're afraid, well, now you've got a bunch of police officers.

Speaker 20 You're going to be safe from that point.

Speaker 22 Why aren't you pointing law enforcement in the direction of the person who did it?

Speaker 17 It was not a plausible story. It didn't add up.

Speaker 1 And yet, at just after 7.30 that morning, while the investigators were finishing up with Kimberly and Justin, patrol officers made a discovery that appeared to confirm at least some of their story.

Speaker 1 Kimberly's stolen car.

Speaker 17 It was abandoned in a church parking lot about a half a mile or so from Ashley's house.

Speaker 1 Had Kimberly and Justin actually been telling the truth?

Speaker 17 The vehicle was basically clean. There was no weapons.
There was nothing that was tied back to the crime scene.

Speaker 1 However, even without the murder weapon, finding the car so close to Ashley's trailer was enough to send send the deputies looking for her.

Speaker 11 They've got her and brought her to the sheriff's department.

Speaker 1 And without telling her right away that Justin and Kimberly had accused her of murder, they asked Ashley what she knew about Kimberly's car.

Speaker 17 At which time she basically started telling a story that Kimberly had given her the car and told her to take it.

Speaker 1 And Bill's murder. According to Ashley, she'd had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 21 She was told at that point, look, you know, Justin and Kimberly have ratted you out.

Speaker 22 They have pointed the finger at you and said that you alone did this.

Speaker 1 The news appeared to take Ashley by surprise.

Speaker 17 She became quite emotional. She felt like she had been sold out by Justin and Kimberly.

Speaker 1 And in her anger about the betrayal, Ashley ended up making a damning admission.

Speaker 21 She's now saying that this was a conspiracy involving myself, Justin Young, Kimberly Ross.

Speaker 1 Although according to Ashley, Kimberly was the mastermind.

Speaker 17 Ashley said Kimberly had put her up to this to do this.

Speaker 22 She was given $30 and was told she could keep the car for murdering Bill Ross.

Speaker 1 Ashley claimed that the money and the car weren't the main reasons she'd done it, though.

Speaker 17 Kimberly led Ashley to believe that Bill had been abusing Kimberly.

Speaker 7 Kimberly said she couldn't get a divorce because she would be left with nothing.

Speaker 15 And so the plan was hatched that she would come over and commit the murder.

Speaker 1 However, according to Ashley, that wasn't the entire plan.

Speaker 13 They had conspired to basically blame a couple of young black men as the perpetrators.

Speaker 1 Not just in a generic sense either. Ashley said they'd planned to set up two men she knew.

Speaker 20 They'd hung out together, done drugs before, things like that.

Speaker 1 And on the night of February 13th, Ashley had invited the two men to come to her trailer.

Speaker 17 They drove over, was hanging out with her. She said, I've got to go take care of something.
Y'all just hang out. I'll be back shortly.

Speaker 1 Ashley told the investigators that she'd taken a cab to the convenience store not far from Kimberly's house.

Speaker 22 So then she walked to the Ross house.

Speaker 11 She told how. There was a stepladder outside.

Speaker 31 She climbed up the stepladder that was left in place through the window.

Speaker 12 Justin had previously loaded the gun, chambered around,

Speaker 7 and wiped it down so there would be no fingerprints on it.

Speaker 17 He loaded the gun because she didn't know how to use it. She had never fired a weapon, or I doubt maybe that she had even held a weapon prior to that night.

Speaker 22 Then she claims she just opened the door without even looking, sticks her arm in the doorway, and fires three or four shots.

Speaker 1 And after shooting Bill, according to Ashley, she'd tied up Kimberly and Justin, but not too tight.

Speaker 17 Kimberly was left in a situation to where she could make a phone call, a 911 call.

Speaker 1 Although by then, Ashley was supposed to have carried out the rest of their plan.

Speaker 17 It was her intention to give the vehicle with the gun in it

Speaker 17 to the two black males that she left at her house.

Speaker 10 They'd be driving through town about the time there was, they'd be on the lookout and they would get picked up, questioned, find a murder weapon, dead man's car, and deflect any further investigation on their end.

Speaker 1 At least that was what was supposed to happen. But according to Ashley, when she got back to the trailer, the plan to frame two innocent men for murder had quickly gone awry.

Speaker 17 When she returned, they were gone. She didn't know what to do.
She left the car at the church. She walked back to the house.

Speaker 1 But according to Ashley, before ditching the car, she had decided to hang on to the gun.

Speaker 22 She had told him that it was under the mattress.

Speaker 1 And the.380 caliber pistol was still there when the investigators searched her trailer a few hours later.

Speaker 17 It all came apart so fast that by the time we got to her, she hadn't had time, really, to get rid of the weapon.

Speaker 1 The gun was enough hard evidence to place Ashley under arrest for murder.

Speaker 21 It matched the shell casings found at the scene.

Speaker 1 But it didn't prove her account that Kimberly and Justin had been involved.

Speaker 22 The determination was made to go back and talk to each one of them again.

Speaker 1 And since Justin had been the first one to break last time around, the investigators started with him.

Speaker 11 He would be the most likely to cooperate and tell the truth.

Speaker 22 And sure enough, Justin does.

Speaker 15 He agrees that this is a conspiracy.

Speaker 1 And according to Justin, he'd gotten involved in the murder plot for pretty much the same reason as Ashley.

Speaker 2 She told Justin that my brother was abusing her.

Speaker 3 Kim

Speaker 1 really made him believe that she was being hurt and that he had to save her. Although, according to Justin, when Kimberly brought up killing Bill, he'd tried to talk her out of it, at least initially.

Speaker 21 He had urged Kimberly to get a divorce. She responded that she would be left with nothing if she went through a divorce.

Speaker 1 But if Bill died, there would be much more.

Speaker 2 She said that there was a million-dollar life insurance policy.

Speaker 21 He was promised that

Speaker 20 she would move to Oklahoma and he would move with her and they would live on a ranch.

Speaker 1 When the investigators brought Kimberly back in for another round of questions and confronted her with what they'd learned from Justin and Ashley, she didn't deny it.

Speaker 31 She was pretty open about being involved in a conspiracy to have Bill murdered.

Speaker 1 And she fully backed up everything that Justin and Ashley said about Bill's alleged abuse.

Speaker 17 Kimberly stated that he had raped her the morning of the murder.

Speaker 1 And it was hardly the first time, according to Kimberly.

Speaker 26 Her statement begins with literally, Bill Ross is a horrible individual who has raped me.

Speaker 18 He has beat me. He has bruised me.
He has burned me.

Speaker 1 Which in Kimberly's mind... meant that Bill had gotten what he deserved.

Speaker 12 She's admitting that she was involved in a plan to murder her husband, claiming I'm justified in what I did.

Speaker 1 But would a jury see it that way? At the end of her third round of questioning, the investigators placed Kimberly under arrest for murder.

Speaker 23 She was charged with a conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and first-degree murder.

Speaker 1 And so were Justin and Ashley.

Speaker 11 It clearly involved these three people.

Speaker 1 But was there another person involved in the story? Another name that the investigators hadn't heard yet.

Speaker 1 Coming up, Bill's sister makes an unexpected discovery.

Speaker 2 I called the number and he said, Who the hell is this?

Speaker 1 But will it reveal a new motive?

Speaker 17 They had been engaged to be married for approximately five years.

Speaker 1 By the afternoon of February 16th, 2007, it had been less than 48 hours since Kimberly Ross's husband, Bill, had been murdered in their home outside Shelbyville, Tennessee.

Speaker 13 The story was given that it was a home invasion. These two fellas came in, shot Bill, and escaped.

Speaker 1 But within hours, Bedford County Sheriff's investigators had arrested 37-year-old Kimberly, 19-year-old Justin Young, and 23-year-old Ashley Cook for Bill's murder.

Speaker 14 This is definitely not a home invasion.

Speaker 14 It was reported that way to start with and I know a lot of people was alarmed by that and scared by that and justifiably, but that's not the case.

Speaker 19 Kimberly was the main actor in this.

Speaker 20 It was Kimberly Ross that put them on a path to murdering Bill Ross.

Speaker 29 Who pulled the trigger? Ashley.

Speaker 6 The other woman?

Speaker 4 Yes, I was trying to.

Speaker 4 They saw him abusing me and they couldn't take it no more.

Speaker 1 According to what Justin had told the investigators, Bill's alleged abuse and his million-dollar insurance policy had motivated the murder.

Speaker 1 But after doing a little digging, the investigators had their doubts.

Speaker 17 Mr. Ross had a life insurance policy of $25,000.

Speaker 1 And they suspected Kimberly's claims of abuse were also a lie.

Speaker 17 And doing the background with coworkers, family, associates, I couldn't find anybody that had anything bad to say about Bill Ross.

Speaker 7 Not one single person ever reported that he had a temper or that he was an angry person or that

Speaker 16 anything like that.

Speaker 1 But if Bill wasn't abusive and there was no million-dollar payoff, what motivated the crime?

Speaker 1 The first clue would come that afternoon, but it wouldn't be the investigators who found it.

Speaker 1 By two days after the murder on the 16th, the investigators had finished gathering evidence at Bill and Kimberly's house.

Speaker 20 After they released the crime scene, Bill's family were allowed in there to collect his things.

Speaker 1 And while Bill's sister, Tammy, was packing his personal effects, she heard a cell phone.

Speaker 2 I looked around and it kept going off, and we found it underneath some clothes on a dressertop.

Speaker 1 It wasn't Bill's phone, though.

Speaker 2 I already had his phone that he had laid on the bedside table, and I knew it wasn't it.

Speaker 17 She had found Kimberly Ross' cell phone.

Speaker 1 And since the sound that led her to it indicated an incoming text, Tammy looked at the log and discovered a series of recent messages.

Speaker 2 They were saying, sweetheart, where are you? You know, I'm waiting at the airport. I called the number and I said, who is this? And he said, who the hell is this?

Speaker 1 And when Tammy explained that Kimberly was in jail, under arrest for murdering her husband, the man on the phone became even more confused.

Speaker 2 He said, her husband, I said the murder of her husband. And he said, wait a minute, she's my fiancé.

Speaker 2 He was calling from Oklahoma and he said that they were engaged to be married and that he was supposed to pick her up for the air at the airport that morning and she was moving there.

Speaker 22 Law enforcement talked to him and we got a really complete picture of the kind of person we're dealing with with Kimberly Ross.

Speaker 1 The man told the investigators that he'd known Kimberly for years, back when she'd lived in Oklahoma, and that they'd gotten engaged before she moved to Tennessee.

Speaker 17 They had been engaged to be married for approximately five years.

Speaker 1 Kimberly's fiancé said he'd been expecting Kimberly to move back to Oklahoma to join him, but that she'd kept putting things off because of her oldest son.

Speaker 2 Kim had told him she was trying to get custody back of him, and so she was traveling from Tennessee to Oklahoma all the time.

Speaker 1 And what about Bill Ross? Kimberly's fiancé told the investigators that he knew the name. He even knew that Kimberly had been living with him, but he'd never heard anything about them being married.

Speaker 17 He had no clue. He thought that Bill Ross was Kimberly's cousin.

Speaker 1 However, according to the fiancée, their long-awaited wedding was finally supposed to be happening, which explained all the frantic texts about waiting at the airport.

Speaker 17 On the 14th, she was planning on flying out of Nashville back to Oklahoma, and they were going to be married and live happily ever after.

Speaker 1 Was the future husband waiting in the wings Kimberly's true motive for murdering Bill?

Speaker 21 I believe Kimberly's motive was simply she

Speaker 9 wanted out of the marriage.

Speaker 1 And while there was no million-dollar insurance policy, there was money at stake. Cash Kimberly was getting from her Oklahoma fiancé.

Speaker 2 I found all kinds of Western Union receipts from the fiancé from Oklahoma.

Speaker 17 He was paying Kimberly's bills.

Speaker 9 He was sending her

Speaker 17 quite a bit of money, anywhere from $400 to $600 a week

Speaker 17 for her upkeep.

Speaker 1 Small sums that eventually added up to some serious cash.

Speaker 9 He had apparently sent her more than $100,000 over the years.

Speaker 1 But was he also involved in Bill's murder? After interviewing the fiancé, the investigators investigators concluded that the answer was no.

Speaker 17 There's no doubt in my mind that he would have been the next victim eventually.

Speaker 1 Nor would he be the first person Kimberly had tricked out of money.

Speaker 1 Digging into her background, the investigators uncovered a laundry list of various frauds and schemes that she'd perpetrated back in Oklahoma.

Speaker 17 She claimed that she was a pastor of a church. She claimed...
a lot of things that just weren't true.

Speaker 1 And she had even been arrested for once impersonating a police officer.

Speaker 27 She had a uniform. She had an ID.
It showed she was a police officer.

Speaker 9 Kimberly Ross was a pathological liar.

Speaker 1 And she'd had no trouble convincing Ashley and Justin to go along with her plot to kill Bill.

Speaker 2 Justin believed that Kim was being abused. Kim kept feeding him that line.

Speaker 1 But was that Justin's only motive? The way she doted on him? It wasn't a natural relationship that you would have with your best friend's mother.

Speaker 10 It was suggestion that she and Justin engaged in sexual activity.

Speaker 1 It wasn't true, according to Kimberly.

Speaker 10 She vehemently denied any of that.

Speaker 1 And as she and her attorney prepared for trial, Kimberly confidently stood by her claims of abuse.

Speaker 10 She had a sense that it was a winnable case, that she wouldn't be convicted of first-degree murder.

Speaker 1 But was she right? Could she pull off an acquittal? After all, she'd already been able to convince people that she was a pastor and even a cop.

Speaker 27 She could manipulate people easy.

Speaker 1 So was it unreasonable to think that she could convince a jury that she'd been abused?

Speaker 13 If so, then maybe she did decide to kill her husband, you know, out of some need to get away from that.

Speaker 1 Or would it turn out that Kimberly had one more surprise in store for everyone?

Speaker 1 Coming up, can the prosecution convince Justin to take the stand?

Speaker 21 We made no promises to him whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Or will Kimberly's power of manipulation prove decisive?

Speaker 17 They played right into her hand.

Speaker 1 On Wednesday, November 7th, 2007, Kimberly Ross walked into the Marshall County Courthouse in Lewisburg, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 It had been almost nine months since the 38-year-old had been arrested for masterminding the murder of her husband, Bill.

Speaker 2 She was laying the foundation for this story that my brother abused her, trying to get people to believe it, you know, months before she killed him.

Speaker 1 And according to the prosecution, she'd recruited 19-year-old Justin Young and 24-year-old Ashley Cook to help her carry out her deadly plan.

Speaker 17 She was very manipulative.

Speaker 17 They were young, impressionable, and they played right into her hand.

Speaker 1 But since Kimberly was the alleged key to the conspiracy, the prosecutors had decided to put her on trial first.

Speaker 10 They had a very good case.

Speaker 10 But not an exactly strong case.

Speaker 1 Kimberly vowed to fight the charges, but as the trial date approached, something happened that made her reconsider.

Speaker 13 Justin turned state's evidence.

Speaker 21 When we met with Justin, we made no promises to him whatsoever.

Speaker 22 If you want to cooperate, you can.

Speaker 21 If you don't want to, you don't have to.

Speaker 15 I believe Justin Young was sincerely remorseful that he had decided to become involved in this.

Speaker 1 And his testimony could be very damaging to Kimberly's claims of abuse.

Speaker 21 He never saw any of that.

Speaker 9 He lived there.

Speaker 22 He said he saw no signs of that.

Speaker 15 He certainly never overheard an angry word between them.

Speaker 1 But would he ever take the stand? When Kimberly found out that the prosecution had been talking to Justin, her reaction was immediate.

Speaker 10 She just basically threw her hands up and says, well, it's over then. So I called the DA and we worked out a deal fairly quickly.

Speaker 1 And when Kimberly went to court on November 7th, it was to plead guilty to first-degree murder.

Speaker 10 The judge accepted her guilty plea and sentenced her to life with the possibility of parole. Kimberly has to serve 51 calendar years before she's eligible for parole.

Speaker 1 The police and prosecutors were satisfied that justice had been served.

Speaker 17 She was a very cold, calculated killer.

Speaker 17 She was 100% a part of this. She may not have pulled the trigger, but she might as well have.

Speaker 1 Bill's sister is satisfied, too, but that doesn't make the murder's aftermath any easier.

Speaker 2 We're supposed to pray for our enemies.

Speaker 2 You know, and I can do that with the woman that shot my brother, but I have to this day

Speaker 2 no sense of forgiveness in my heart for Kim.

Speaker 1 And perhaps most telling of all, neither does Kimberly's own daughter.

Speaker 28 My mom was

Speaker 3 evil.

Speaker 28 She didn't care who

Speaker 28 she had and had no feelings to anyone but herself.

Speaker 1 Ashley Cook was convicted of first-degree murder and given a life sentence. After testifying against Ashley, Justin Young pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Speaker 1 He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.