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harvey was quite chatty with joe, but one thing harvey didn't know -- joe, his attentive audience, was a former police officer. and harvey's amazing story made joe's antenna buzz a little. >> the more he would talk about the loss of his wife and his boat, the more intrigued i became. >> so on his way home that night, joe took a little detour, drove by the hotel where harvey said he was staying. >> and when i drove by, i didn't find his suv at that location that he said. which i didn't think suspicious at the time. but i still, for whatever reason, drove around to see a few other hotels or motels, to see if i found his vehicle. and i located his vehicle at a place called the imperial inn. >> why would harvey lie about something as benign as where he was staying? when joe got home that night,
harvey sitting in jail. no luck for the investigation now. and then? a phone call. it was the commandant of harvey's yacht club. >> he says, "i found a handheld gps in the library of our club." >> the commandant told them someone in the club had found the gps, wrapped in a napkin and hidden in the back of a club library cabinet. >> and he says, "that cabinet is in a position where harvey morrow always sits and reads all the time." and he showed us a garmin c60 which exactly matched in the way it looked. all the manuals that we had recovered months earlier on that yacht. >> here it was, the device they searched for on the boat and couldn't find. >> and he said, "you need to look at the data that's in this gps." >> amazing thing. the gps preserved in its memory, in almost infinite detail, its very last trip. which was as follows -- may 4th, 2006 around 2 p.m., the gps headed out toward catalina island.
it was said that the money that harvey got from steven was money that was owed to harvey in a loan that happened many years ago. >> harvey loaned money to steven's father back in the'80s, the defense told the jury. they had a promissory note to prove it. >> hadn't you encountered that along the way? >> no. it was part of the trust packet and the trust -- at this point, the numbers i'm getting from the court were over 33,000 pages of documentation. >> quite -- quite frankly, we missed it. >> they'd 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. and amid doubt about the new 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?
on a yacht and yet harvey always showed up -- these are her words. "he showed up in costume." >> and harvey's employment history? turned out it was not quite as gold-plated as harvey had been letting on. as the detectives discovered. >> i think everything harvey's been involved with throughout his career in banking or stockbroking has gone belly up. everything he's involved in seems to have some type of fraud involved.
entitled action find the defendant, harvey morrow, guilty of the crime of willful, deliberate and premeditated first-degree murder of steven b. williams. >> oh my gosh. we were all holding hands. and when they read it, we all started crying and just were so grateful. >> and steven's many friends poured into the courtroom the day harvey was sentenced. doug johnson read a statement for all of them. things he had to say to harvey. >> for years you ate his food, lived and worked under what he thought was a common goal, the whole time stealing from him and ultimately taking what was most precious, his life. you worship a false god, the god of arrogance, ego and greed. today our nightmare ends. today yours really begins. >> 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 and -- >> i threw them into the water as a tribute to steven.
could kill. >> i never once thought it would, it would be harvey that would have hurt steven. >> and in fact, there was nothing definitive tying harvey to steven's murder. no sign of any violent struggle, not a drop of steven's blood anywhere on the ship. if only the detectives could talk to harvey. it turned out they had just missed him. an employee at the yacht club told investigators harvey was standing nearby in plain sight, observing as the cops scoured his boat. but by the time they heard that, harvey was long gone. >> from friends and knowing his past, we -- there was some speculation that he would go south and he had some dealings in belize before and we believed that's possibly where he was heading. >> so they put out feelers, belize, the virgin islands, harvey's old haunts down there. but the trail went cold. steven's murder apparently unsolvable. coming up -- a mysterious stranger surfaces hundreds of miles away. >> he was very sure of himself, to the point of being a little smug. >> the more he would talk, the more intrigued i became. >> could he hold the key to the case? >> did you ever get any money from steven and put it in your account? >> when "dateline" continues. >> when "dateline" continues >> when "dateline" continues
island, where both harvey and steven's cell phones pinged together just where the gps said they would be. after which steven's cell phone went to straight to voicemail and harvey sailed right back to his dock the next morning. where he was late for a pre-arranged fishing trip with his friends. >> they basically said he looked disheveled. he looked as if he had been up all night. he was not himself. >> one question left, exactly what happened on that fancy boat in the last moment of his life? doug remembered stephen was angry over harvey's handling of his money, -- >> he had said he was going to have a come to jesus, he was going to confront harvey about the money. >> did steven confront harvey over his lost fortune? is that what led to this? >> we believe they were both on deck, and he walked behind him, and just put it in the back reset and pulled the trigger. which explains a lack of blood evidence. or he fell over. >> it took five years and over 30,000 pages of evidence to build the case against harvey morrow. most of it hinged on a financial motive. all of it circumstantial.
they thought i was crazy. >> what made you think he would? >> well, he's a con man and he likes to talk. and con men think they can talk themselves out of any situation. >> he was right. sure enough, harvey was confident, self-assured. had answers for almost everything. he didn't steal steven's money, he said. >> he came up with a story that no one had heard before his testimony. >> which was that steven actually owed him his entire inheritance to pay back a whole different loan. this second loan was verbal, said harvey, done on a handshake. undocumented, naturally. >> but mr. morrow thought he could sell it. he is a con man and he told it with a straight face. >> would jurors believe him? steven's friend sylvia worried. >> you know, i was thinking, "oh my gosh. what if he cons these people, you know, the way that he conned steven. >> and perhaps there was reason to worry. the jury stayed out for almost two full days. >> it was a long couple days, i'll tell you that. >> and then, finally -- >> we the jury in the above
>> i was -- i was impressed. i was very impressed. >> police searched harvey's landrover, discovered guns and ammunition. they loaded him into the back of a squad car, took him to the local sheriff's dept, eager to hear what he had to say. >> yeah, our -- my primary focus is about your vessel, harvey. how much money did you put into that boat? >> i don't know. >> what would you estimate? what would you think? roughly. >> i have no idea. it was over a period of a long time. >> and so we wanted to key in on him. how much money did you have? how much money did you spend?