obvious sign of electrocution. an electrical box used to turn on a high voltage irrigation pump had apparently shorted out and exploded with such intensity metal fragments blew out the windows and covered the passenger side of roberto s new ford f-250. a miracle little fabian wasn t killed, too. translator: we received a phone call that something had happened. reporter: roberto s wife fabiola. translator: it was when we received the call from the police department and they said they had fabian and fabian was okay but they couldn t tell us what happened to roberto. we thought he was in the hospital. reporter: and you didn t know what happened? translator: we didn t know what had happened. we called the hospital and the hospital didn t know anything about what had happened. about an hour, hour and a half later, they arrived with fabian. it was my dad. my brother just started screaming that he was dead.
i would have probably been the one to get off to go check that. reporter: why would anybody want to hurt him? i can t find a reason why somebody would want to kill him. and this bomber whoever it might be came very close to also murdering fabian. if you want my button pushed bring a challenge to it. reporter: the da john pointer found fabian s plight to be particularly heart breaking. i couldn t imagine 7 years old and seeing my dad blown up. reporter: and running all that way. people don t understand, it was like maybe a couple miles as the crow flies. but to run through what we call colusa mud which is the rice fields and it s just, i mean, he had to take his shoes off. he was literally covered with it. you could hardly walk through it. for him to run all that way, it was amazing. i remember asking if he knew what 911 was. and he told me and he was right and i asked him if he knew how to use a cell phone. he said yeah. i asked if your dad had a cell phone.
robert was told paul that he was going to get my share of what my dad was going to leave me of the ranch. reporter: fair to say though that your nerves were a little bit raw about ed and robert. oh, no. i was mad. i m going to be honest with you. there was a lot of animosity. reporter: so much so that one day pete jumped into his truck and drove down to the farm and called roberto out. i told him, well let s go. reporter: your intention was to fight him. oh, yeah. it settles things. reporter: but roberto politely declined. he had a farm to run. the next time pete heard anything more about roberto ayala, it was that he was dead. what did you think when you heard that he was dead? well, i was told it was an accident. reporter: which is certainly what it was. at least according to the experts from pg&e. but just to be sure, the detective called explosives experts from a neighboring county. just to ask them, hey, have you ever heard of an electrical panel like this blow
they were very, very private. reporter: this is mary, part of the greater moore clan. her family, like many of the big farming families around here, keeps its wealth private, too. i knew that there was money there, but they didn t flaunt it in any way and you weren t told about it. you just knew that it was there. reporter: she learned early, she said, that the family fortune was also a tool to keep the descendents in line. my dad would say like when i was in high school, if you ever get into drugs or do anything i m kicking you out of my will. reporter: though she could never have inherited the land, that birth right was passed from father to son, not daughter. the custom started with the moore family patriarch, who handed the farm down to his two sons, roger and dusk now in their 70s. each of them had a son born just a year apart, paul and peter, who were in line to one day run the farms as partners.
come up with anyone who said, i heard paul moore say he wanted to hurt roberto. reporter: no. but they did find this document on paul s computer titled my life a rambling, self-pitying document. what did i do wrong to be treated this way? i think my dad really thinks i m stupid. he is always saying how smart robert is. but ultimately the trial came down to a single sheet of blank paper. almost like a rorschach test for the jury. what would they see, paul moore s guilt or a plot to frame him? coming up, a verdict that will divide this tight knit town and rip apart this family all over again. we started crying.