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. and then killed his spouse when he thought nobody was looking.
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 had discovered a secret, not in chris past, but in cristi s. there had been infidelity in the marriage in the past, six years prior. while chris hall was in idaho. 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 sudden change in her usually vibrant personality. one co-worker told them more. that she was contemplating a divorce. if true, and it was only an if, it might well persuade a jury.
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 examiner from riverside. he found this to be an
effort to revive her. a fall, must have been. in your gut, tell me what happened. she slipped or something. i don t know. that s the only thing i can think of. but chris apparently hadn t noticed the nasty three-inch laceration on cristi s head. and here suddenly, the point of the police interview is revealed. she s got a huge gash on her head, okay? something like that is not consistent with just falling down. not consistent with just falling down? why would the police think that? i mean, you ve been around for a while. i know where you re going. and no. there s nothing why in fact was this ex-police-chief being questioned at all about the apparently disastrous accident that killed the love of his life?
here again is keith morrison. chris and cristi hall s three daughters clung together in grief and shock, all through the dismal evening hours of that worst of all days, june 7, 2007. waiting for their father to 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. 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