heidy wagner and conrad truman had a powerful connection. a deep love envied by others. then one fateful night, the young couple was jolted by unforeseen tragedy when heidy was killed by a single john gunshot to the head. in the aftermath, fingers were pointed. but where the aimed at an innocent man? here s josh mankiewicz with as night fell . they seem so in congress. the soaring majesty of utah s wasatch mountains and the story of a beautiful woman, struck down in her youth. it was a lot of things. tragic. crushing. stunning. but was it an accident? or a suicide? or a murder? police felt they knew. but as most cops who will tell you, both the evidence and the jury have their own stories to tell. and the answers are not always so clear. certainly, that is true for this story. and quite possibly for the woman at its heart. her name? heidy wagner. as a baby, she was favored. everybody loved her. she could do no wrong. autumn was one of heidy s four sisters. she was ju
you just wonder how this could happen. it seems very surreal. a quiet night at home shattered by a gunshot. she came out of the shower and i heard a pop. and there s blood. a young life dying on the floor. she wasn t talking at all. i m asking, what happened here? i was utterly confuse. so many different stories about what might have happened. he said many things that night. maybe someone shot something at the house. at one point he said it was 80% suicide. police had their own theory. i thought, oh, man, there s something going on here. we don t see a lot of women commit suicide naked. his stories weren t adding up. but something else was it adding up either. a key piece of evidence. we went to the house and we walked in and we think, ha. would in the stake in measurement send an innocent man to prison? or free a guilty one? we thought it was over. we thought this was settled. one suspect, so many stories, only one of them could be true.
this is the moment where some convicted killers ask for mercy, because of their difficult lives. or tell the court they ve been misunderstood. and sometimes, of course, they don t speak at all. but not conrad truman. listen to me, please. i can t say sorry. for something i did not do. i understood speaking out would make it worse. but i was like, i don t know. i was like, (bleep) with this, i need to speak my mind. i didn t kill my wife. there is no way. there need to be some proof. that s why there is no proof. this is just a big injustice. the judge had heard that before. the sentence he imposed? 16 years to life. crushing for conrad and his family sitting behind him. including sister colette. you want to believe that the things turned out the way they re, supposed to.
to someone, i just started to make threats. well, if all that is true, then why and how did heidy wind up with a bullet in her head? i think police found it hard to believe that you could be right there, with her, in a very small area. and she s shot. and you don t know what happened. yeah, maybe in their heads in their in mine i was confused. can this be an accident? what i say to that is i do see. i don t know what happened. that s how he felt just hours after the shooting. but as the months passed, came conrad to the conclusion, may heidy have taken her own life. his wife, he said, listen as tough as she appeared. well she is that person? was she a depressed person? when she drank a little bit, you could see it come out. it was in every time. but it did. heidy s friend sandi sanchez also saw another side to heidy.
we don t see a lot of women that commit suicide naked. that s not normal. did you find anybody that heidy had spoken to about suicide, or about being depressed? no. neither heidy s mother janet nor her sister autumn, could imagine heidy even thinking about taking her own life. heidy would never do that, in fact she was against that. she had a friend who committed suicide and she thought it was selfish and in her words, dumb. heidy ever tell you she was depressed? no. ever act depressed? no. she was probably one of my happiest, most of the kids. that left wallace with homicide. and it put conrad back in the police crosshairs. wallace decided to speak to the officers first on the scene about their experience with conrad. everyone felt his behavior was odd. he s yelling but it s a violent yelling. he s like, if you don t save her, i m going to (bleep) kill you. crook found those threat so alarming, he took out his phone to require them. you are going to (bleep) d