Page 2 - Those Cliffs News Today

>> there wasnt any smoking gun really. just something dark lineham thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jodys death. >> he did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have reacted. >> and so the detective moved his investigation from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues. he quickly learned from jodys friends that this was a couple not in love but in crisis. the subject wasnt wine and roses on those cliffs. it was divorce....

>> 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 the feeling there was something definitely wrong. >> it nagged at rescuer michael chiofi. why was jodys purse on a ledge just feet below where her husband said shed f...

Propelled from that point. >> jody had to have been thrown or pushed to her death, he said, and likely from another spot entirely on those cliffs. he wasnt the only expert who saw it that way. >> the head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbles down the cliff face. >> reporter: dr. marianne clayton was the bergen county medical examiner who first ruled the circumstances of jodys death could not be determined. now on second look she said the victims wounds, or lack of them...

>> two weeks later jody scharf was dead. terry now sees that cryptic statement in a dreadful light. >> i was like oh, no, the end of september, and then the light bulb went off immediately. >> it also went off for marian hilferty. in perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecutions case, hilferty told the jury that when she heard her friend was gone she immediately remembered something jody said just weeks earlier. >> she said that during this conversation i have with him if anything happ...

>> but it was what he didnt see that confused him. there was no sign that the womans body had also hit that ledge or any part of the cliffs. >> nothing. no blood, no hair, no clothing. no fibers. no skin. >> by that point officer walter sirry had arrived at the lookout. since there was nothing the husband could do to help in the rescue, sirry was told to get him out of the way and drove him back down to police headquarters. on the way stephen recounted the awful moment when his wife disappeared....

Off the cliffs. jody had a blood alcohol level of .12. that was over the legal limit. >> would be equivalent to approximately four average sized drinks, wine or beer, something like that. >> a drunken slip and fall, argued the defense. to back that up, the lawyer had his own heavy hitter. famed forensic pathologist dr. cyril wecht. wecht posted a resume of star-studded investigations too, as high-profile as the prosecutions dr. baden. only wecht had a totally different take on how jody scharf di...

Just something dark lineham thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jodys death. >> he did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have reacted. >> and so the detective moved his investigation from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues. he quickly learned from jodys friends that this was a couple not in love but in crisis. the subject wasnt wine and roses on those cliffs. it was divorce. >> she was going to go through with it...

>> sometimes it hurts a case. memories fade. evidence is lost. witnesses die. but time can also put evidence in a new light. such was the case in the trial of stephen scharf, accused of killing his wife nearly two decades ago. >> there is no statute of limitations on murder. >> the prosecutor promised the evidence would tell a story as simple as it was brutal. a husband determined to avoid a costly divorce lured his wife to the edge of a cliff and forced her off it. >> if he has lied, he is guil...

>> that possibly she was telling everyone if something happens to me its my husband. >> and it was another woman in stephens life who also swayed the jury. terry scofield recounting what stephen said to her weeks before jodys death. that his stress would soon be over. >> that was something that pushed me towards what we decided in the end. >> it was the light bulb. >> to them it wasnt jody who slipped but her husband, with that menacing statement. they believed it wasnt just a fall from the clif...

Happened. >> so you didnt think this was a horrible accident? >> no. >> there wasnt any smoking gun really. just something dark lineham thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jodys death. >> he did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have reacted. >> and so the detective moved his investigation from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues. he quickly learned from jodys friends that this was a couple not in love but in cris...