vince has been shot. and i was devastated. i was like, what? what what do you mean, he s been shot? reporter: vince s cousin, tim, immediately left his home in virginia and traveled to kentucky still in disbelief. how can he survive two times in afghanistan, come home to be shot by some worthless thug that didn t even know him? you must ve felt so horrible for jessie and for the kids. absolutely. i i must ve called her at least 50 times, you know, trying to figure out what s going on and be there for her and the kids. reporter: by now, jessie had left the christian county sheriff s department and headed home. she s picked up by a friend, taken back to her house on fort
vincent s cousin, was torn about the punishment. jessie, she should have gotten more time than she did. she manipulated him. reporter: is that the jessie you knew? she was manipulating us. i would never have pegged her. i believe she should do life. reporter: as for janet, the woman who stepped in as vince s mother, it s hard for her to describe the pain she feels. she watched her surrogate son go from a tough kid to a tough soldier. he became a good and honorable man, only to have it all needlessly taken away. he wasn t my biological child. but my heart, you can t tell that to my heart. i love that boy. and it s not fair that he was taken from his children or from his family. he had so much potential. he had gone so far.
it s not easy. it s not. she was a good mom. she loves the kids. reunited at last. they celebrated. then on the drive home there was a car there stranded. vince tells his wife that he is going to check on them. i heard two, three he was landing there with what appeared to know several gun shot wounds to the head. her husband, father of five, dead. no one could understand it. the time of person that he was. i don t think he ever had an enemy. or did he? he said we are now in debt to bad people. we knew that there was another personal that needed to be looked at. a winding investigation leading deep into the dark. this sounds like a love triangle. it s horrific. brutal. why? are you kidding me?
almost sometimes where you couldn t even understand what she was saying. reporter: there s jessie on her knees, collapsed on the side of the road. this was a wife who had clearly been through a traumatic situation? she had just watched her husband get shot multiple times, yes. reporter: detectives took jessie back to the station to get her statement. her stomach, it seemed, couldn t take the horror she d just witnessed. i m gonna be sick. let me get a garbage can for you or something. reporter: by now, christian county commonwealth s attorney, lynn pryor, had been notified. i remember them telling me a man had been killed on the road, that his wife was there. she had been a caller. and there was another witness that had heard shots but didn t actually see who had fired the shots. what did you think when you heard that a soldier from fort campbell has been gunned down? he s barely been home from his tour of duty.
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