chris hall spent almost two months in jail, until his daughters received the payout from cristi s life insurance policy and used the money to bail him out of jail. then he went home to prepare, with the help of his daughters, for a murder trial. it s very surprising to have a client in a murder case out on bail. but he was a special man. and this was a special situation. these are attorneys who would eventually defend him, although at first they only heard about the case. steve harmon and paul gretch. you ve said two things. special man, special situation. i think both of us can say this is a man that we like and we know. we don t feel he could have done anything like this. chris hall and his daughters prepared for a trial which they hoped would make clear to everybody, the police, the neighbor, the world, that chris would not, could not, did not harm the love of his life. there was never, in 30 years of marriage, never one moment of
before lindsay had any idea how it would end. here is what the jury heard her say in that call. and i saw him put her underwater and hold her there. and she was still on the phone with 911 when chris hall 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.
what no one knew was the truth was more complicated. offer the verdict at chris hall s sentencing a letter was produced from one of chris hall s brother, billy carlton who until now had said not one public word about the case. we would like to ask his honor for the maximum sentence, wrote billy. the pain that my family has suffered through this tragedy is unforgivable. i didn t want to hurt the girls. i had to say what was on my mind. there was a deep divide in the family said billy. some of the relatives believed chris was innocent but he and he said others including cristi s uncle steve mundy urged on the prosecutor silently. half the family was convinced he was innocent and half was convinced he wasn t. that s hard to do when you have a big family and you all have to be together once in a while. when it involves as member as loved as cristi was. exactly. does that explain why this
the wall again. her third and final look. at that point he was getting out of the jacuzzi. and he was in a very big rush. she s still nowhere to be seen. the look on his face was almost undescribable. it was almost as if he had just gone into another world. it was scary. it was instinct that told her something was wrong, said lindsay. so she called 911. 911, state your emergency. a woman was killed. now, hours and hours later, the detectives confronted chris with lindsay s story. why, they asked, didn t her story match his? so am i supposed to believe the witness is lying? i m not going to say she s lying, she sounds like a truthful kid, whatever. but i don t know. i can t explain what she s saying she saw. so now that question we posed
wall to show that it could look like two people were touching in the spa even if they weren t. this is what she described seeing in her testimony. but on the close-up, what do you notice? they re not touching but they re in position where they could be. but that s different than actually touching. again, the hall daughters were there every minute. their father s enduring champions. and this time, more family members came to court. two of cristi s own siblings testified for chris. and said the same thing. we have not a doubt in our minds that this was not a moment of violence. this was not a murder. the victim s own sister and own brother. that s an amazing thing to see. perhaps it was. but listen to this. the defense had one more very significant witness. a witness who oozed credibility. the sitting medical examiner for neighboring san bernardino county, who stuck his neck way out to disagree publicly, in a court of law, with the medical