what mr. tung was doing, less than three hours after the murder, was obliterating data. he was doing the digital equivalent of lighting it on fire. reporter: that seemed more than coincidental. so in may 2012, 14 months after the murder of rob cantor, the bergen county prosecutor decided it was time to arrest tony tung. i answer the door in my boxers, and my tee shirt. detective yank me out of there. gun to my temples. slam me against the wall. what the heck? you re mr. mom. and now you re accused of murder. yeah. and burning the house down. reporter: in the fall of 2015, tony tung finally went on trial for murder. rob cantor had been dead for nearly five years by then. given that prosecutors still no physical evidence connecting tony to the crime, getting a conviction looked to be an uphill battle.
murder. nothing really led us to believe that she had any involvement in this. reporter: over in manhattan, detective love met with the other woman in rob s life, sophie meneut. she was crying. she knew that he was deceased. did you tell her that he had been murdered? later on in the interview, yes. what was her reaction. she was shocked. like anyone would be if you found out that information. reporter: sophie told the detective that she d seen rob hours before he died. rob, with his two friends had gone to new york city to meet sophie and her daughter, her eight-year-old daughter at a museum. how open is sophie to you? she was a very open person. when i asked her why would rob cantor be found in the basement bedroom, she broke down and she
reporter: in october 2015, the rob cantor murder case went to trial. almost every day for the next two months, rob s friends and family would be there. tony s friend sandra milon, who now lives in france couldn t come to new jersey to support him. did you follow the trial? were you able to over the internet? i was able to. yes, a little bit. reporter: for sandra, the man she read about online accounts, bore no resemblance to the person she d known for 30 years. did you think for a second that, oh, my gosh. maybe i don t know tony as well as i think ? no, no. because um tony knew also that doing something stupid, as in going to kill this man, then what? then you end up in jail for the rest of your life and is it really worth it? i mean what mattered for him
unlikely this case would be solved in a matter of days, or even weeks. still, when months passed with no arrest, rob s friends became impatient. outrage today in new jersey over a perceived lack of progress solving a murder case. reporter: first they hired a private investigator. then they petitioned the governor. when that didn t work, they picketed outside the bergen county courthouse. one of rob s co-workers spoke for the group. they keep telling us, give them time or don t interfere. we hired our own world class private detective. they said he s not doing a good job. then, who is doing it? everything we do, they say don t do it. we are so frustrated. was it moving slowly, as they claimed? well, i m sure for them it was moving slowly. but you know, every investigation s different. reporter: in fact, this investigation was a lot further along than the protestors knew. coming up
that, kalish argued because they only had eyes for tony. they just let it slide. let it slide because they got their man. reporter: on the night of the murder, kalish said, tony was at home alone watching an indiana jones marathon on tv. as for the late night destruction of all those computer files. kalish says that was just an unfortunate coincidence. it s just just normal that he decided to to do to do it at that time. what time did he delete the material? it s i believe it started about two something in the morning and then ran for about 5 hours. so we re talking about two hours after the fire started. yeah. it looks bad. oh, sure. that s that s why mr. mello and the prosecutor s office have a case. reporter: equally bad for the defense was the evidence that months before the murder tony had tried to get a friend to buy him a magazine for a .380 handgun.