Page 4 - Dinner Ben News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Worried because they think we're watching them. >> surveillance photos show dawn with james matlian and her two daughters, brandy, her 13-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and alyssa, 7 by this time. that's right. a year into the investigation, little alyssa was back with her biological mom who had then the courts slowly weaned her back there permanently. so there you are still trying to grieve the loss of ben at the same time as alyssa is being pulled back toward dawn. >> yeah, i lost both of them truly. >> reporter: and while the police were watching dawn, dawn was telling her child...

>> but she had quite a story to tell about james. about how he offered to murder ben. >> the night ben died, he said now or never. and i said no. i said not today. don't do it. no. i said no. i said no. no, no, no, no. >> reporter: hours later, she said, james woke her up from a sound sleep and told her ben was dead. but that, she said, is all he told her. all she knew. >> so you're confident that james had something to do with it? >> i don't know. >> reporter: but was that really all she knew? dawn, remember, had a 16-year-old son named devin, who detectives learned was at home and listening ...

Yada, yada, and james said, "i'll go out and kill him right now. you just say the word i'll kill him." she was like a broken record. "i want him dead. i want him dead." >> sound like a woman who was shocked when the murder happened? but there was more. it was after that when james matlean told his attorney ken stover it was time to tell the whole story. >> i could tell he was telling the truth. over the course of 15 months he's always told the same story. >> reporter: so now comes another story. james's story. not a love story this time. >> nobody could believe that i would do what i did. i ha...

Matlean got his sentence. >> the murder charge, you're sentenced to life in prison. >> reporter: life without parole ever. afterwards the little girl in the middle of the family drama turned to melissa with a remarkable request. alyssa asked to meet with james and was ushered in to see him before he was whisked away. >> i told him that i decided to forgive him and that i wanted him to have hope. >> reporter: and she went then, tears of forgiveness, of lingering grief for her father. and as for melissa? after the trial she told us she was ready to move on. where will you keep ben? >> he'll alwa...

Being grilled by detectives. >> 2-21-08. >> reporter: detective elgis had questions. lots of them. so many things about this murder didn't make sense. >> you were right there? >> the other thing i don't understand is why somebody shoots him and you don't see anything. >> i don't know. i honestly don't know. >> reporter: maybe it was the man ben warned her about, she said, a rough customer who once dated ben's ex-wife dawn and apparently threatened to kill both dawn and any man she had been with. was the story true? just to be true, detective elgis sent officers to dawn's house where they woke ...