Page 3 - Jody Sharp News Today

>> she couldnt prove anything, but women called the house and sometimes theyd call and hang up on her. >> in fact, she learned jody had served her husband divorce papers in 1992. less than two weeks later she was dead at the base of the palisades. the timing made it even more eager to talk to the widower. >> theres a sit down with mr. sharp. hes consented to talk, right? >> yes. >> two days after his wifes death he was freely answering questions. yes, he told them, he and his wife were talking d...

Him, if jody had tumbled, why hadnt she hit the side of the cliffs? there was no blood or hair anywhere on the rocks, and the location of jodys body seemed off to chioffi. way off. >> she was like 30 to 40 feet away from us to the north. a person falls off the cliff, usually theyre going to go south or right down. should have been right down where i got off the ropes. thats where she should have been. >> someone else was scratching their head that night for different reasons. it had to do with s...

Duck boat accident on the missouri lake is now 17. the boat was carrying 31 people before severe winds and sunk thursday night. of the 17 confirmed dead, 9were members of the same family. and trumps personal former lawyer secretly recorded candidate trump for the story of karen mcdougal. welcome back to "dateline." a forensic pathologist was brought in to review the case of jody sharp.

Another. people handle terrible events in different ways. the police are paid to be suspicious. maybe their view of steven was too jaundiced. there really was nothing to indicate that jodys fall was anything but an accident. a few months later the ruling was in. the bergen county medical examiner concluded the manner of jody sharps death could not be determined. an accident was as likely as anything else. case closed. or was it? coming up -- >> so you didnt think this was a horrible accident? ...

Base pointing flashlights north. finally about 30 feet away the beams landed on something white. it was jody lying motionless next to a tree. >> there was a lot of blood on that tree and the blood was actually draining down the tree. thats where severe impact took. thats where she really, you know -- >> jody sharp had not survived the fall. to cioffi it was clear she had slammed into that tree. as they began to move the body, he noticed something else. >> she had an odor of an alcoholic beverage...

He ran to tell the other detectives including lynam but they had just spent hours grilling the man. >> we werent getting that feeling that a reinterview at that point would have done anything. >> reporter: the detectives still believed they could find solid evidence to implicate steven scharf but they didnt. >> we took it as far as we could do. the cause of death was listed as undetermined. so officially it wasnt a homicide. >> reporter: in time, the detectives moved on to other cases, steven sc...

>> but had the jury gotten that same message? when they walked into that deliberating room for the first time, some jurors, in fact, planned to vote not guilty. >> there wasnt enough evidence for me. thats what it was. >> others were thinking guilty. >> it was several things. it was no one thing that had made up my mind. >> the jurors went back and forth over the evidence. and heres what they came to believe, that jody was likely drunk and that her husband knew it, and if that was the case why w...

Speaking of which, he added, those other women did not bother jody at all. she was seeing other people herself. >> the person on the bottom half of both of those is who? >> jody scharf. >> the record keeper of the dating service testified that jodys name was on an application. she even checked off the interests shed like to share with a man. the attorney offered that as proof of steven and jodys open marriage. but what really rankled the defense, torn at the heart of steven scharf was the testim...

>> drinking. >> you were drinking. i lost my wife, my son lost his mom. >> there was plenty of sympathy among family and friends, to be sure. for the man newly widowed with a small child to raise on his own. his wife had died in a freak accident off a cliff of all places. how could that happen? and thats exactly what police who were there the night of jodys death wanted to know too. >> right away, i got a feeling that there was something definitely wrong. >> it nagged at the rescuer. why was she...

Killed his wife? the biggest reason, the prosecutor argued, was that steven did not want a divorce. he didnt want a custody fight and he didnt want to split assets with jody. and there was yet another motive for steven, said the prosecutor. a potential payout. >> usa life insurance company. >> an insurance representative testified about a $500,000 policy taken out against jody scharf months before her death. payable to a primary beneficiary. >> can you tell us the policy owner? >> steven f. scha...