as ashton and brianna remember their mother telling them. we happened to be laying on the bed with her. she just started talking. she was like, i am just i m so happy that i have you girls and dad. it was one of those conversations that you don t have every day. still, there was work to be done. it was not a new house. it could use some remodeling. particularly the bathroom. courtney was still living with her parents as the work began. they re going to be doing the tile work and stuff. so we wouldn t have a shower for that day. so, shower out of commission, they decided to wake up early, put on their bathing suits and rinse off in the outdoor spa before the contractor arrived at 6:45 a.m. it was june 7th, 2007. chris got up first, turned on the spa to warm it up, then called brianna at her college dorm in san diego. here s your wake-up call, babe. get out and go on that run.
happy to help, he said. whatever would get him back home to comfort his daughters as quickly as possible. we re all so close. chris told investigators what happened. how, as courtney slept, he and cristi were in the spa bathing. she got out, went in, went to the bathroom, got some more coffee, tried to wake up courtney. courtney didn t wake up, apparently. she came back out. as cristi returned to the spa, said chris, they passed each other on the patio. he went in the house, stopped by courtney s room to make sure she was awake, then went right back outside and saw his wife floating face down in the spa. he called courtney then, he said, and they began a frantic effort to revive her. a fall, must have been. in your gut, tell me what happened. she slipped or something. i don t know.
then the phone rang. and they had their answer. you know, broken-up words, and he s crying, and we re crying. that was when he said they think i hurt mom. i mean, he was very upset. but he didn t sound surprised when he said no, he was crying. he was crying. he was upset. very upset. but by the time police investigators were questioning chris, remember, they had heard from lindsay patterson. and at the station, chris version of events in the spa differed in one crucial detail from what lindsay described seeing that first time she peered over the wall and into the hall s backyard. that specifically, me holding her down in there, there s nothing that took place in that jacuzzi that would explain that. there was no sex. there was no i don t even think we had any contact while we were in the jacuzzi other than when i was getting her out. but investigators were
what did you think then? that was tragic. that was devastating to us. you expected a not guilty verdict? oh, yes. not a doubt. deputy d.a. burke strunsky was disappointed too. he was also determined to retry the case. but first he sent his investigator on a mission to explore the life and marriage of chris hall. and what do you know. in idaho, where hall had been a disgraced police chief, the investigator uncovered a startling accusation. chris was a great, great con man. former los angeles police officer jerry winkel is a county commissioner up in idaho now. but once upon a time he was chris hall s friend, that is, before a night of poker and booze when he said paul made a disturbing revelation, that he had shot himself in the leg when he was a cop in order to get retirement benefits. chris had been drinking beer.
came outside and found his wife s body floating in the spa and called out for courtney. investigator tom dove. i heard it best described during the trial as a cosmic coincidence that someone could see something that they perceived to be more than just some kind of kinky action in a jacuzzi in the morning, and then that actually turn out to be true, that a woman was actually drowned in that spa. that is not a coincidence. that is what she saw. the prosecution s theory? somehow, sitting in that spa that morning, chris was overcome by some private fury, who knows what. the hidden violence, is what strunsky called it. and then killed his spouse when he thought nobody was looking. chris hall ambushed his wife, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head twice into the concrete edge. he s holding his wife of almost three decades under the water, showing absolutely no mercy, no remorse.