chris had been drinking beer. he came out and told me that he had shot himself. but there was more. d.a. investigator tom dove discovered a secret. not in chris s past but in cristi s. there had been infidelity in the past. the affair was relatively brief, years earlier. but she had been in phone contact with the man just days before she died. had chris found out? impossible to know. but when investigator dove talked to cristi s co-workers at the clinic where she was an x-ray technician, several said they noticed a change in her usually vibrant personality. one co-worker told them more. that she was contemplating a divorce. if true, it might persuade a jury. prosecutor strunsky also needed
return from the police station. and they wondered, why was it taking so long? 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. 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 s version of events in the spa differed in one crucial detail from what lindsay described seeing that first time she period 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
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? 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 as we began. did lindsay patterson really know what she saw? two in one? i did mom.
just, you know, it s a death investigation, and we have to do this. 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, he said, and they began a frantic effort to revive her. in your gut, tell me what
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 but 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