Transcripts For WRC Dateline NBC 20111121

you cannot have a president who says things like i'm gng to be elected to lead, not read. as if you don't need to be able to read and to listen and to do all the things presidents can do. his 15 minut have now passed and newt gingrich has ascended. but his 15 minutes only lasted what, like four weeks, five weeks? that tells us it'senirely possible we could be on to the next republicany the time the iowa caucus is on january 3r and that could be newt gingrich. t i'm here to stay say that i think it will not be. >> iesent that you think we in the media have a short attention span. >> i know. >> i saw the video and i thoughthell, perry's found a running mate. cain is a force of personality. i don't think he's going to tb the nominee. i think the legacy of herman cain is going to be the discussion about a consumption tax about how we're going to pay for all this stuff in 2013 after the failure of the super committee. >> another break here. i want to talk about occupy wall street, its political impact in 2012. we'll come back with that. plus our trends and takeaways. a look at what was said here today and at to look for i ♪ ♪ [ multiple sounds making melodic tune ] ♪ [ male announcer ] at northrop grumman, every innovation, every solution, comes together for a single purpose -- to make the world a safer place. that's the value of performance. northrop grumman. o0 [husband:] getting cold out here. 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[ male announcer ] as you wish, business pro. as you wish. go national. go like a pro. now through january earn a free day with every two rentals. find out more at nationalcar.com. final moments with our roundtable. still a lot to do. ed gillespie y hed senator kerry sathe markets may look at the inability for the super committee to get a dealone and we may be downgraded again. the politics on both sides, for republicans and for the president, had to take ahit after another failure. no? >i think prbably. i think, you know, approval rating for congress will go down. the approval rating for the president will go down. this will reinforce an era of a lack of leadership on the president's part. he litally phoned in a call to the chairs of th committee, was not engaged at l, and i think they both take a hit on this. pushes the debate into the prsidential election where it probably belongs. >> let's look at our trend tracker here. gingrich brushes off baggage. he's got thatew website that we talked about already. the iowa religious forum. and it gets to the point abo whether mke murphy, mi romney, is going to make a play in iowa. governor brand says he better. >> governor brand needs him to. we' got to keep te franchise of the iowa caucus alive. i think there's one number in the race which is important, rick perry's negative in iowa. as romney beats perry, he can take a second or third place finish in iowa. any ki of secre campaign is now not so secret. bu the hand is still on the throttle and with perry diminishing, if the ads don't buy perry back, romney may not be able to invest all the way in iowa. >> new hampshire senator key endorsement there. dee dee myers, want to askou about occupy wall street. we talked about these pictures out of davis in northern california with protesters ing hit by pepper spray by the police. and of urse, just you've seen the movement from new york and around the country. is there andentifiable movement still? is there a message that's actually going to resonate for democrats in 2012? >> i think themovement is amorphous and unclear where it's going. i think there is a message coming out. all of a sudden we're talking about the huge growth in inequality in this country over the last 30 years. how all the benefits for 30 years have gone to the richest 6 the rich. the top 1% have seen income growth 300% while the bott has seen an income growth of 18 the tax rate, lowest percentage of the gdp that it's been in a couple of generations. how has this haened? how have we gotten to this point? i think all of a sudden the wall street movement and the republic imary, quite frankly, has thrust this questiointo the center of the debate and i think we're going to hr it through 2012nd i think it's a good thing. >> the week ahead here is interesting to look at as get towards the holiday of thanksgiving. still a lot going on. we mentioned senator ayotte endorsing senato romney. that's going to happen today. cnn national supreme court cnn policy dete will play out on tuesday and the president is going to be in new hampshire pitching jobs on tuesday, as well. a lot to follow we're going to leave it there. thank you all very much. have a great thanksgiving. we'll still be thinking about politics and talking about it next week. and to all of you, we wish you a very happy thanksgiving and holiday tdd# 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 there are atm fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and the most dreaded fees of all, hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 at charles schwab, you won't pay fees on top of fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no monthly account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and we rebate every atm fee. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 so talk to chuck tdd# 1-800-345-2550 because when it comes to talking, there is no fee. can make it from australia to a u.s. lab to a patient in time for surgery may seem like a trumped-up hollywood premise. ♪ but if you take away the dramatic score... take away the dizzying 360-degree camera move... 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>> good evening and welcome to"dateline." i'm ann curry. when police got word someone fell off a cliff they weren't surprised. the place was known to be dangerous but it would take almost 20 years to find out what really happened to a woman out on an evening hike with her husband. here's chris january sing. jansing. ♪ the summer wind came blowing in ♪ >> every couple has t a shared song, a favorite movie or maybe a special place. steven scharf says for him this was it, two rocks forming a lover's chair on the edge of a cliff. >> that was our spot, we'd bring a hibachi, couple of lawn chairs, a cooler and she'd bring her work from graduate school. >> they'd been escaping to this magical place for years, ever since they were newlyweds in a starter apartment in new jersey. up here, the air was fresh and the views seemed limitless. >> it sort of framed by trees but could you look down and to the right and see the view of george washington bridge. >> what they couldn't see from here of course was the future. had they caught even a glimpse of what was to come, surely they would have abandoned this place forever. steven and jody met in the late '70s in georgia. he was in the army, a bookworm who loved the civil war. she taught history. theirs was a meeting first of minds, then hearts. how would you sort of describe those early years? were they loving? were they exciting? >> yes, they were. we were in love, ecstatic. >> from there, marriage, a house, a son, jonathan, in 1983, and how would you describe jody as a mom? >> she was really devoted. >> life was good, and even as the years went by, even with the demands of work and family, steven says he and jody still made time for each other, like that last summer sunday in september of 1992. steven says it was supposed to be a date night. >> it wasn't -- no idea that that would be the most critical day in our life, in our marriage. >> what was the day like, any other day? >> yes. >> here was the plan, husband and wife would drive into omedy club, a light-hearted night on the town but they made a detour here to the palisades, to their spot. steven remembers pulling up to the scenic lookout, sitting in the car with jody, sharing a wine cooler. >> there were other people there sitting in their cars and we walked up, looked over the spot where the binoculars were, and then walked up, you know, to this sort of open view. >> he says they then turned and took a narrow well-worn path to those rocks. they sat there, as the night fell around them. he, with his back against the rock, holding her, as she sat directly in front of him. at some point, something goes terribly wrong. >> yes. >> he says he stood up, intending to go back to the car to get wine and a blanket. for whatever reason, jody stood up, too. the edge of the rock was at her feet. what was your last glimpse of your wife? >> just standing up and you know, and stumbling forward. >> jody had gone off the cliff. >> i didn't know how bad things were, but i was stunned. i -- >> what did you do? >> i got down on my stomach, i stuck my head over the, and i just yelled, "jody! jody! talk to me!" i just yelled down there. >> but no response. he grabbed a flashlight and flagged down a motorist, who came here to the palisades interstate parkway police station. lieutenant walter cyrie was on duty. >> until he came through that door it was a quiet, very quiet night and then all hell broke loose. >> the frantic man was tell them a woman had fallen from the lookout above and that her husband was waiting for help. the police called in michael chioffe, an experienced climber. >> i was there as a rescue mission. i thought she was alive. >> he began to lower himself off the side of the cliff where the woman's husband said she had fallen, about ten feet down. he caught site of a ledge. >> the minute i got to that ledge i observed the purse. i think it was two credit cards. >> on a ledge, ten feet down? >> right. >> but it was what he didn't see that confused him. there was no sign that the woman's body had also hit that ledge or any part of the cliffs. >> nothing, no blood, into hair, no clothing, no fibers, no skin. >> by that point, officer walter cyrie had arrived up at the lookout. since there was nothing the husband could do to help in the rescue, cyrie was told to get him out of the way and drove him back down to police headquarters. on the way, steven recounted the awful moment when his wife disappeared. >> we were walking and she said for me to go back to the car and get the blanket and she slipped and i didn't see her anymore. >> as cyrie and the man arrived at the station, rescuer chiofee had made it to the base of the cliff, more than 100 feet below the top. he expected to find a wounded woman there but he didn't. >> i'm saying, she's not here. at the first point i said maybe this is a hoax. maybe she never really went off the cliff. >> he and other rescuer began to walk along the base, pointing their flashlights north finally about 30 feet away the beams landed on something white. it was jody, lying motionless, next to a tree. >> it was a lot of blood on that tree, and the blood was actually draining down the tree. that's where severe impact took, that's where she really, you know. >> jody sharp had not survived the fall. to chiofee it was clear, she had slammed into that tree. as they began to move the body he noticed something else. >> she had an odor of an alcoholic beverage that emanated from her body. >> so when you smelled that, did you think well maybe she had had too much to drink and fell? >> that entered my mind, yes. >> at that moment, steven scharf was sitting in a room at the police station, waiting for someone to tell him what had happened to his wife. do you remember what's going through your mind at that point? >> how badly is she hurt? where is she? why isn't she calling back to me. >> that's when an officer walked into the room and broke the news to steven, jody was gone. >> i don't even remember who came in and told me. >> and what was your reaction? >> denial. it was how could this, could this happen? >> that question would haunt him and many others, taken would take years for the answers to finally come. coming up -- he was rubbing his eyes to make it look like he was crying. >> you thought he was faking tears? >> absolutely. >> curious behavior puts a husband under the microscope. ew. hey, mom? what? pay you? for what? for unloading the dishwasher?! kid, you need to pay me for making this delicious -- whoa. hold on there, mom. kitchen counselor. um, mom, i think what she means is "greasy dishes." yeah. in fact, check it out. cascade complete pacs are the ones with the real liquid top. they fight tough greasy messes better than the other tablet, which can leave more tough grease behind. oooh, clean. there's only one cascade. love it, or your money back. 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were you eating? were you -- >> drinking. >> you were drinking. >> i lost my wife, my son lost his mom. >> there was plenty of sympathy among family and friends, to be sure, for the man newly widowed with a small child to raise on his own. his wife had died in a freak accident, off a cliff, of all places. how could that happen? and that's exactly what police who were there the night of jody's death wanted to know, too. >> right away i got a feeling that there was something definitely wrong. >> it nagged at rescuer michael chiafi. why was jody's purse on a ledge just feet below where her husband said she had fallen? >> where is she? she should be here or part of her should be here. >> that's the first thing that came to you. >> either she should be here or the pocketbook should be with her. and it wasn't fitting. >> another thought dawned on him. if jody had tumbled, why hadn't she hit the side of the cliffs? there was no blood or hair anywhere on the rocks. and the location of jody's body seemed off to chiafi. way off. >> she was like 30 to 40 feet away from us to the north. if a person falls off a cliff, usually they're going to go south or they're going to go right down. should have been right down where i got off the ropes. that's where she should have been. >> someone else was scratching his head about that night for different reasons. it had to do with stephen's behavior while the search was under way. officer walter ciere was surprised stephen was willing to leave the lookout as rescuers were still looking for jody. did he give any indication, i don't want to leave, my wife could still be alive down there? >> no, none at all. >> ciery says he couldn't believe how willingly stephen scharf got into his patrol car. >> i tell you, if it was my wife, girlfriend, whoever, they would have to pry me away from that scene if i was still at the top of the cliffs. >> but he willingly got into your patrol car. >> without a word said. >> stranger still was how calm the husband seemed. when the officer heard stephen describe how his wife had fallen, he made a mental note. >> there was no emotion in it, i mean no emotion at all. like he was reading a script. >> did it occur to you, well, maybe he's in shock? >> no. i've seen people who have lost loved ones, and i've never seen anybody act that way. >> it was a particular moment later inside the station house that really caught the officer's attention. >> and he asked if he could get a drink from the water fountain. he was looking over his shoulder at me and splashing water up into his face and rubbing his eyes to make it look like he was crying. >> you thought he was faking tears? >> absolutely. absolutely. >> a death scene where the pieces didn't connect. a husband who appeared nonchalant. from a cop's point of view, things were adding up and not in stephen's favor. >> not just one thing. it was like the totality of the circumstances. everything -- every little thing was clicking in my mind, i'm saying to myself, you know, this isn't right. something's wrong here. >> gut instinct is one thing, but evidence is quite another. people handle terrible events in different ways. the police are paid to be suspicious. maybe their view of stephen was too jaundiced. there really was nothing to indicate that jody's fall was anything but an accident. a few months later, the ruling was in. the bergen county medical examiner concluded the manner of jody scharf's death could not be determined. an accident was as likely as anything else. case closed. or was it? coming up -- so you didn't think this was a horrible accident. >> no. >> the suspicions grow. was there a weapon at this romantic rendezvous? >> you have your wine, cheese, crackers and claw hammer. red flares are going up, jody scharf's death on these cliffs had been a horrible accident. her husband said so. and the medical examiner wasn't arguing with him. but detectives have a kind of sixth sense about cases. it was telling james linem something sinister had happened. so you didn't think this was a horrible accident. >> no. >> there wasn't any smoking gun, really. just something dark linem thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jody's death. >> he did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have reacted. >> so the detective moved his investigation from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues. he quickly learned from jody's friends that this was a couple not in love but in crisis. the subject wasn't wine and roses on those cliffs. it was divorce. >> she was going to go through with it, yes. absolutely. >> jody's longtime friend marion hilfredy told detectives that jody had been determined to take her 10-year-old son, jonathan, and leave her husband. she was convinced stephen had been cheating on her. >> she couldn't prove anything, but women called the house and sometimes they'd call and hang up on her. >> in fact, linem learned jody had served her husband divorce papers on september 8th, 1992. less than two weeks later, she was dead at the base of the palisades. the timing made him even more eager to talk to the widower scharf. there's a sitdown with mr. scharf. he's consented to talk, right? >> yes. >> two days after his wife's death, stephen scharf was freely answering detectives' questions. yes, he told them, he and his wife were talking divorce, as they had sometimes done during their tempestuous marriage. and it was true, there were other women. >> he told us they had an open marriage. they were seeing different people. he actually said he had been with like 50 to 60 women. >> she was okay with it, according to him. >> according to him, yeah. >> but he told detectives he and jody had become unhappy with their free love lifestyle, so they came to this romantic if treacherous spot to recommit to each other, stephen said, to kiss and make up. >> and the spot where they went is not a spot you'd go to reconcile with anybody. >> detectives weren't buying the story for another reason. they had found something suspicious inside scharf's car, a bag filled with items you'd expect for a romantic picnic and one you would not, a hammer. >> oh, yeah, your wine, cheese, crackers, opener, claw hammer. i mean, if red flags are going up, they reached the top of the pole at that point. >> did you think that might be a murder weapon? >> yeah. i thought that might have been plan q "a" and he didn't use it so he went to plan "b." >> which linem believed was to push or throw jody off that cliff. so detectives asked stephen scharf the obvious -- what was the hammer doing in that picnic bag? >> he told us he fixed a drawer in his kitchen with the hammer and he just forgot to put it back in the garage. he put it in the bag with the picnic items. it was just convenient. it was a convenient excuse for having that hammer. >> detectives asked if they could check out the drawer and the rest of stephen's house that night. he agreed. but as it turned out, something potentially far more telling was happening away from the action. >> and i said, look, mr. scharf, i'm your local police department. >> ted aaronburg was a local officer told to keep an eye on stephen scharf that night as detectives combed through his house. the officer says he began talking to stephen about what had happened to jody when stephen interrupted him. >> he finally looked at me and he goes, "you don't believe me." >> and then the officer says scharf said something that almost knocked him off his feet. >> i said, i believe an accident occurred. i said, "was it an accident?" and he put his head down and he said, "no." >> aaronburg believed that was a stunning confession. he ran to tell the other detectives, including linem, but they had just spent hours grilling the man. >> we weren't getting that feeling, that a re-interview at that point would have done anything. >> the detectives still believed they could find solid evidence to implicate stephen scharf, but they didn't. >> we took it as far as we could go. there hadn't been a cause of death, at that time was listed as undetermined. so officially it wasn't a homicide. >> in time, the detectives moved on to other cases. stephen scharf moved on, too. fourteen years after his wife's death, he remarried. tina scharf says he's been a loving, ideal husband. >> it was like we were two puzzle pieces that were made for each other where we just -- each of us complemented and completed the other person. >> but even in this happy new life he says he's never forgotten about jody. but he might have been surprised to learn that someone else was thinking of her, too, after all these years. bergen county had a new prosecutor, and he was eager to revisit old case files. among them? an unexplained death here on the cliffs of the palisades so many years ago -- the death of jody scharf. >> there was this renewed push since 2002 to look into the cold cases. >> gilbert marcos covered the trial for the record newspaper in new jersey. on one hand he says it didn't seem the prosecutor had any reason to pursue the cold case. >> in terms of hard evidence, it had absolutely nothing new. >> but the prosecutor did have someone new, a famous name to join the investigation into jody scharf's death, dr. michael badden, a world-renowned forensic pathologist who investigated the deaths of john f. kennedy and john belushi and testified at the trial of o.j. simpson. he was about to turn up the heat on a very cold case. >> dr. michael badden has reviewed the evidence and has determined that this could not have been an accidental fall. >> in december of 2008, detectives paid one more visit to stephen scharf. >> they wouldn't tell me what it was for. i had no idea what this was about. i mean, it didn't make sense. >> sixteen years after that fatal night on the cliff, police were back and stephen scharf was in for a shock. after all these years, you thought it was done. >> not until they reach behind and hand me this thing, this arrest warrant. coming up -- the case heads into court with a surprise from the stand. >> here for my mother. >> stephen and jody scharf's only son has some dark secrets to share. >> did you see that abuse? 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and he said, no. >> but those facts were not where the case ended. the prosecutor argued that they simply set the stage for the real case, a story told by the victim's friends, family, and, most importantly, by a star witness. >> my opinion is that the manner of death is homicide. >> dr. michael baden, the famous forensic pathologist, told jurors the crime scene spoke of a murder, not an accident. >> if a person falls accidentally, the individual will be, you know, within a couple of feet of the base of the building. >> and that didn't happen in the case of jody scharf. her body landed 50 feet out from the top of the cliff and 30 feet to the north. >> she had to have been propelled from that point. >> jody had to have been thrown or pushed to her death, he said, and likely from another spot entirely on those cliffs. he wasn't the only expert who saw it that way. >> the head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbled down the cliff face. >> dr. marianne clayton was the bergen county medical examiner who first ruled the circumstances of jody's death could not be determined. now, on second look, she said, the victim's wounds or lack of them told her something different, something vital. if jody had tumbled innocently down the palisades, she would have had broken bones everywhere. she did not. >> there were no visible injuries on the back of mrs. scharf's body. >> but why would stephen have killed his wife? the biggest reason, the prosecutor argued, was that stephen did not want a divorce. he didn't want a custody fight. and he didn't want to split assets with jody. and there was yet another motive for stephen, said the prosecutor -- a potential payout. >> usaa life insurance company. >> an insurance representative testified about a $500,000 policy taken out against jody scharf months before her death, payable to a primary beneficiary. >> can you tell us the policy owner. >> stephen f. scharf. >> jody scharf was simply worth more dead than alive. her friend marion said jody feared stephen might do something violent if she pushed for the divorce. even so, she said, jody was determined to get away from her husband. >> she was going to have divorce papers served on stephen, and she was very afraid of it. >> yet, was stephen violent enough to kill his wife? an unlikely but powerful witness was about to testify against stephen scharf. >> i'm here for my mother. >> his own son took the stand against him. now a businessman, jonathan scharf painted his father as an angry, violent man who terrorized his mother. >> did you see that abuse? >> i did. >> jonathan scharf said he realized his father had likely killed his mother only after that arrest in 2008. this videotaped interview shows him recalling the dark past for the first time to police. >> now, in court, he had even more to tell about his childhood, like the afternoon he sat cowering in the back seat of a car watching his mother suffer. >> my mom was driving and my dad just hitting her with the bottom of his fist. and i was, like, begging him to stop doing it. >> he also remembered the last day of his mother's life. he was 10 and said his mother told his father that she didn't want to go out with him alone. >> she said, if i wanted to go out with you, i wouldn't be divorcing you. >> but where was the proof that stephen had planned to kill jody that night? well, there was the hammer in the picnic bag, but there was also testimony from this woman, one of stephen's old girlfriends. >> i even mentioned to my girlfriend that it was a perfect relationship. >> terri schofield had been dating stephen months before jody scharf's death. >> did mr. scharf tell you whether or not he was married? >> actually he said he was not married. >> and she remembered something strange stephen said to her on the beach over that labor day weekend. >> he was under a lot of stress and the stress would be resolved by the end of september. >> two weeks later, jody scharf was dead. terri now sees that cryptic statement in a dreadful light. >> i was, like, oh, no, the end of september. then the light bulb went off immediately. >> it also went off for marion. in perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecution's case, she told the jury that when she heard her friend was gone, she immediately remembered something jody said just weeks earlier. >> she said that during this conversation i have with him, if anything happens to me, you'll know who did it. you'll know it was him. >> the prosecutor's position was clear. a husband with a motive, the perfect setting, the violent intent to kill his wife. or was there another way of looking at that couple perched high on those cliffs that night? stephen's wife says the prosecution has it all wrong. >> my husband is not capable. that is not the man he is. my husband is sweet, kind, loving, considerate. >> the prosecutor -- >> the defense was ready to show how stephen scharf, far from villain, was the real victim in this story. coming up -- >> they destroyed the crime scene area. >> new questions about the evidence. and was there another reason why a son might implicate his dad? >> who does the money go to? >> it goes to me. >> when "dateline" continues. 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[ male announcer ] go to rogainefoam.com and you can get a 4-month supply of rogaine® for just $59.95. order in the next 10 minutes and get free shipping! you want to save money on car insurance? no problem. you want to save money on rv insurance? no problem. you want to save money on motorcycle insurance? no problem. you want to find a place to park all these things? fuggedaboud it. this is new york. hey little guy, wake up! aw, come off it mate! geico. saving people money on more than just car insurance. stephen scharf is not guilty! >> 18 years after the death of his first wife, more than a decade after the investigation first stalled, stephen scharf was being called a killer. but his defense attorney ed balinkas argued there was no new evidence in this case, no new eyewitnesses. only new opinions. >> we're talking about the same old facts and circumstances. >> balinkas says the state was hoping to win a murder conviction by painting his client as a terrible husband, that it couldn't prove he was a killer in 1992 and it couldn't prove it today. >> my client, stephen scharf, has been wrongfully charged with her death. >> one reason the prosecutor couldn't prove murder has to do with sloppy police work. >> you never photographed the this morning on "early today," terror on the hudson. new york city police say they've arrested a

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