local sheriff s department, eager to hear what he had to say. how much money did you put into that boat? i don t know. what would you estimate? what would you think? i have no idea. it s over a period of a long time. we wanted to key in on him, how much money did you have? how much money did you spend somewhere did the money come from and thing os s of that nat? he was very vague. it became pretty frustrating. did you set up steven s trust fund? you lost me. did you set up steven s trust fund? steven took care of his own stuff. did you ever help steven with his finances after his father s estate sold? ask steven. okay. did you ever get any money from steven and put it in your account? what do you mean, we passed money back and forth. how many times did you receive money from steven? was it more than once?
today our nightmare ends. today yours really begins. reporter: harvey was sentenced to life without parole after which his now ex-wife debbie invited us down to the pier where she took harvey s fake engagement ring and the other costume jewelry he d given her. i threw them into the water as a tribute to steven. reporter: and his friends. steven was part of my family. he s the part of the family you get to pick. i can open a great bottle of wine and sit there and think about steven. the pain phase, tfades, the meme sustained, and that s the part i ll keep with me forever. the only way i can kind of deal with it is i knew he was going to eventually get on a boat and sail around the world, so i just kind of think of him out there, you know, he s out there somewhere. reporter: out there like the happy go hulucky free spirit on
at this point the numbers i m getting from the court were over 33,000 pages of documentation. quite frankly, we missed it. reporter: they had missed evidence that seemed to show harvey wasn t stealing from steven at all, had no motive to kill him. suddenly the whole case against harvey fragile to begin with seemed in danger of falling apart. amid doubt about the new eviden eviden evidence, the judge declared a mistrial. i thought, oh, my god he s being set free. but harvey wasn t set free. instead the state appointed to the case its third prosecutor in five years. this was my first case of this particular type. prosecutor john mckinney. how do you get ready? quickly. reporter: his first task, to address that alleged loan between harvey and steven s father, the issue that caused the mistrial. he spoke to steven s best friend and heard this. i said i know it s complete fiction. i know it s fraud. reporter: and sure enough, when prosecutor mckinney took a
closer look at that loan document, steven s father s signature didn t match. classic sign of a con job said the prosecutor. even the idea that there had been any sort of relationship between morrow and steven williams father was nonsense, right? bogus, couldn t have possibly been? couldn t have possibly been and wasn t corroborated by any evidence whatsoever. reporter: now he was ready for the new trial. he showed the jury check by check how harvey drained steven s accounts, all 1.7 million in just three years to dress up a boat that was never going to sail. the boat wasn t properly outfitted for a trip around the world. it was outfitted in such a way that suggests it was just going to be a show piece. it was going to be part of his con, part of the image that he liked to sell to people. reporter: then the prosecutor took the jury through the gps and cell phone records and explained how that evidence put steven and harvey together on
it was completely sterilized. nothing in it, not one loose object. reporter: it was as if steven had never set foot in there, and then those boaters made their shocking discovery. steven facedown in the ocean, a bullet in his head. what was it like to get that news? oh, it was awful. i felt like i was in some made for tv movie. it was like this can t be happening. reporter: detectives ken clark and robert martindale wanted to have a look at harvey morrow s boat, steven s last known residence, and they wanted to talk to harvey. they got a search warrant, brought a whole team to the harbor, seized the yacht. when you first walked in, was it clean? absolutely clean. clean enough for you and these are my words, to eat off the floor. reporter: pristine, in fact, and for all the diligent efforts of the forensic people, there was no sign of steven b. s existence, no evidence he d ever set foot on that yacht. they did find some high-tech navigation equipment, which they