didn't seem to have an enemy in the world. right up until, the night he was murdered. >> there was evidence of a violent struggle between jack and his killer. >> someone was keeping secrets and police thought they knew who. >> her -- was just scary. >> they thought they knew the motive to. but -- >> a matter of proving it was a different story. >> until someone found the perfect bag. >> hey, dude it's me. you need to call me asap. >> could they set the perfect trap? >> these people might literally get away with murder. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> hello, and welcome to dateline. jack jessee, who was a doting granddad and the patriarch of a large blended and by all appearances, loving family. but when he was stabbed to death in the southern california home, police wondered if the jessee weren't quite as happy as the scene. the case went unsolved for years. but those who love jack never gave up hope. neither did the relentless detective who was determined to catch jack's killer. here's keith morrison with deadly conspiracy. [noise] the game's call, mel strap. a little ball on its track with the tiny mouse which, how every lever works in unison this would not be caught. and, how often things go wrong to allow the mice to get away. so, did what really have been could so accurately mimic a children's game? >> all, how nice! >> these are the people that have been to, the jessie family of orange county, california. they vacation together. >> yes, i'm tired, i'm ready to go home. >> share birthdays. >> this was for them. >> happy new year! >> even got together for a month of -- >> but what these grainy home videos show is what is yet to come, which is murder, conspiracy. one branch of the family against the other. a game so twisted, quite so clever, that crafting a trap to catch the plotters just might be impossible. slits to begin with,, it was 1998. shakespearean love won the oscar. monica lewinsky was freshly famous. it was a school to learn august night, hottest of the year. when cheryl's deanda got a call from her dad. jack jesse. >> i was getting ready for bed. and my phone rings. and it's my dad on the phone. >> what time of this? >> 20 after nine. >> he was worried about his wife, sandra. she was missing. >> what did you think that happened? >> i just thought she maybe got into an accident or something. >> she rented this nearby mall on the quick aaron said shells that. but she was gone for so long. would cheryl deanda at least find, or ask that? >> went through, there we went to the burger king which was near the walmart. and back above 50 minutes later. >> but, when she went back into her dad's house. she found -- >> most horrifying sight i ever saw my life. it was her, face down on the floor, in the pool of blood. it's horrible. >> what did you think happened? >> i thought he had fallen because he had a big gash in the back of his head. i just went to the kitchen phone and called 9-1-1. >> but when she rolled him over, she could see wounds all across his chess. he had been stabbed many times. >> every time i start doing cpr i could hear bubbling. and air escaping. and then i started feeling it all over his chest. >> it's not often little placentia has a murder. >> 10:00 at night, when i got the calling -- >> but at that time, he was the sole homicide detective. >> what did the crime scene itself look like? >> it was pretty bloody, there was evidence of a violent struggle between jack and his killer. >> the kind of thing that might happen if it was a home invasion robbery or something? >> or an assault between people who knew each other. >> protocol told him, look first at the person who reported the crime. which was his daughter, cheryl deanda. >> my daughter, we have to look at her as a potential suspect. she was the one of founded. >> back at the station, why it interviewed all relatives, including cheryl and jack's wife sandra who hadn't been missing at all. just out on the shopping trip. >> mrs. jessee came to the station to us voluntarily, she wanted to cooperate and solve the murder of her husband. >> and, she told him about life with jack, married 14 years blended family for kids. jack was a patriarch in the jessee klan she said. a teddy man of a man. >> jack was a very, very loving person who doted on his children, doted on his stepchildren, doted on his grandchildren. >> but, jack was ill. housebound after colon cancer surgery. sandra told the detective, she'd been running a bit of a mercy mission for. jack and, doubled too long at the mall. >> it's only like five minutes in and -- i was on the road for only 15 minutes. >> and she was very, very specific about where she had gone, at what time and what she had gone. >> as for cheryl, she told detectives she do anything to find out what happened to her dad in those 15 minutes she was away from the house. >> her actions were very very consistent with somebody who understands that police are looking at you right now. i know i didn't do anything. i'm gonna do everything i can to get full disclosure. >> and then, the day after the jack, just the murder, the guy walked into the bar, sat down on the bar stool and told the bartender a story about how the murder happened about who did it, about what's the motive was. the whole story. but of course that was just a story in a bar to take the -- didn't hear anything about. it and as he continue to dig for clues, he hit an unexpected wall. sandra, announced she had just helped as much as she could. she was done. >> i was referred to her attorney, she didn't want to meet with us again. >> same thing happened with sandra's kids, jacques step children. while the blood relations practically beg to help solve the case. so, what's happened to that big happy family in the video? a mirage perhaps? in fact, living with sandra suggest daughter chere and cheryl -- >> it's too late. now >> the kind of written by the brothers. grieve >> oh, she was just mean to me. she wanted me completely gone. she did everything she did to get rid of me. >> but, when it came to her own children, they said, sandra was indulgent. eerily so with her son, tom. he was a really big mama's boy. he took -- >> very weird, very weird. >> weird thing to watch. >> they were always walking into the other room and closing the door. >> though,, jack seemed quite happy with sandra, until the spring of 98, that. is just a few months before the murder when jack was diagnosed with colon cancer. the shock of course. but one of two shocks for sandra. and, to those around her, the second seemed somehow worse. her beloved son, tom up and moved. to arizona. >> and she was flipping out about it. >> yeah. >> she had to go. there >> she demanded jack moved to arizona to. >> that woman was off her rocker. her tone was just scary. it was like somebody else's voice coming out of her. >> but, surely that wasn't motive enough for murder. and, with plenty of suspicion, little else to go. on why it spent months pouring over sandra and jack's record statements, credit card bills, searching for, well he didn't know exactly what he was searching for. but, he was getting basically nowhere. >> we couldn't establish a pattern that was suspicious. >> then, why it's investigation sputtered sandra leff. so jacks house here in california moved to arizona to be near her son tom, and soon her daughter followed to. and they all lived within a couple of blocks to each other in the home sandra helped percentage with sandra's insurance money and savings. >> when everything was said and done, she got close to $700,000. and, as the month slip back, leads failed to connect the investigation hit one dead after another. and why it was promoted out of homicide. the case bounce from the placentia pd to the orange county sheriff's department. way before long and became a case to avoid. toxic, an unsolvable career killer. and, so, five years after his brother's murder, when david jessie met the detective name tom doug said he picked up the case. >> i said, oh really? well, that's great. let me ask your question. >> yeah. >> what are you going to do? you're gonna get my case for three, four, five months, a year and then move up and become a sergeant or something and move on? and tom says to me and says, listen buddy. nobody likes me in that apartment. he says, i'm not going nowhere. he said, i got five years to put in your brother's case. or else i retire and i'm out of here. he said but i'll give it my all. i will give everything to this case that i have. i looked over at him and i said you're the man. >> what david did not know, clearly sensed was that detective tom that was the real deal, a legendary lawman. he seemed to have stepped out of his own crime time drama. >> it wasn't a whole lot to go. on there wasn't any physical evidence, there wasn't any eyewitnesses. >> in other words, the perfect -- >> correct. >> coming up -- that bartender with the customer who liked to talk. now, he's talking. to >> this person has specific details, unknown to the general public. >> not only that he's naming names. when dateline continues. ♪birds flyin' high, you know how i feel.♪ ♪breeze driftin' on by...♪ ♪...you know how i feel.♪ you don't have to take... 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>> it least ten times. >> and then it jumped out at him right about here on the table sandra's going through slips of paper in her day planner. she looks at one and. says >> this is my son's friend. >> listen to it again. >> this is my son's friend. >> this is my son's friend. one phrase of hours of material but it got doves mine racing. if the bartender was right that the killers were friends with sandra son, was that slip of paper holding the key to the case? dove toward through bags of evidence and there was the day planner. seized five years earlier just after the murder. >> i went through that day planner for probably a day or more, i went through every scrap piece of paper every notation. there was a small piece of notepaper with the name which appeared to me at that time to say schreiber with no telephone number and no significant. just schreiber. >> i thought schreiber. >> but where would he find this schreiber? dove went back to sandra's interview and under one more clue when asked by detective wide about tom's friend. sandra said that the boys were once worked by these. >> -- >> so detective dug crisscrossed southern california searching through the employment records of every target store for a guy named schreiber. but nobody had ever heard of him. >> and we were starting to come to the end of our rope we were getting to a dead-end. >> that was about the time jack 's daughter reveal big game getting packages in the mail from sandra who said that they were keepsakes that jack wanted his girls to have. >> like what? >> little boxes like ash trees bowling ball bag. it was just weird stuff that just kept coming. >> which seem designed to provoke exactly the reaction the sister's fault. >> hatred. >> more than i had before. >> sandra seemed to be telling them she had beaten them got away with it won the game. >> he just said are we cursed? is there something with this case that's just not going to be solved? >> it's frustrating for him putting all this work in and to think that these people might get away with literally literally murder. >> patty is tom's wife and together since high school knows them better than anyone. she was used to his compulsive perfectionism. >> it is comforting to me i think to just know what things are and where they're going. >> is nothing out of place since of order? >> he's a very stubborn man so for him to take a case he is going to do it and solve it. >> and so detective dove decided to start over. take a different approach this time he immersed himself and sandra's old phone bills. seized by detective why years before. >> i did is i went through every telephone call on those phone records looking for somebody related to this case. there had to be some communication. >> get anywhere? >> -- >> what's the phone had been overlooked before was a cluster of calls who not long before the murder, all short within minutes of each other. >> one of those calls was to a target store one was to a pager and one was to a boarding house. so he called that last number asked if anybody there knew a guy named schreiber. and the landlady said no. but there was once a tenant name shrub, she said, could he be the man the detectives were looking for? >> it was brent shrub. >> shrub? >> doug tracked him down to a distance aboard in the mojave desert, and right there, parked in the driveway, was in 1999 pick up truck and the sea do just like the anomalous bartender said. >> this was a huge break for us. we now had a name of somebody that's involved in jack jessee murder. >> coming -- up >> often people throw away valuable evidence. detective dove finds treasure in trash. this is too good to be true. when dateline continues. this halloween, trick or treat yourself to the blendjet 2 portable blender... it's to die for. blendjet 2 gives you monstrous power for a delicious smoothie, shake, or frappé anytime, anywhere. cleaning blendjet 2 is scary easy. just blend water with a drop of soap. recharge quickly with any usb port. boo-gie on over to blendjet.com and order yours today. i'm kareem abdul jabbar. i was diagnosed with afib. the first inkling that something was wrong was i started to notice that i couldn't do things without losing my breath. i couldn't make it through the airport, and every like 20 or 30 yards i had to sit down and get my breath. every physical exertion seemed to exhaust me. and finally, i went to the hospital where i was diagnosed with afib. when i first noticed symptoms, which kept coming and going, i should have gone to the doctor and told them what was happening. instead, i tried to let it pass. if you experience irregular heartbeat, heart racing, chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, or light-headedness, you should talk to your doctor. afib increases the risk of stroke about 5 times i want my experience to help others understand the symptoms of atrial fibrillation. when it comes to your health, this is no time to wait. are you tired of clean clothes that just don't smell clean? 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