Page 2 - Jody Sharp News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Hours. were you sleeping? were you eating? >> drinking. >> you were drinking? >> i lost my wife, my son lost hi mom. >> reporter: 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 that's exactly what police who were there the night of jody's death wanted to know too. >> right away i got a feeling that there was something definitely wrong. >> reporter: it nagged at rescuer michael cioffi. why was her purse on a ledge? just ...

There was no blood or hair anywhere on the rocks. and the location of jody's body seemed off to cioffi. way off. >> she was like 30 to 40 feet away from us to the north. a person falls offer the cliff usually they're going to go south or they're going to go right down. >> reporter: someone else was scratching his head about that night for different reasons. it had to do with steven's behavior while the search was under way. officer walter serrie was surprised stephen was willing to leave the lookout as rescuers were still looking for jody. did he give any indication, i don't want to leave, my ...

Someone to tell him what had happened to his wife. >> do you remember what's going through your mind at that point? >> how badly is she hurt? >> that's when an officer broke the news to steven. jody was gone. >> i don't remember who told me. >> that was your reaction? >> denial. how could this -- how could this happen? >> that question would haunt him and many others. it would take years for the answers to finally come. coming up -- >> he was rubbing his eyes to make it look like he was crying. >> you thought he was faking tears. >> absolutely. behavior put the husband under the microscope...

>> i'm saying, she's not here, at the first point, i said maybe this is a hoax, maybe she never went off the cliff. >> he and another rescuer began to walk along the base pointing their flashlights north. finally about 30 feet away, they landed on something white. it was jody lying motionless next to a tree. >> there was a lot of blood on that tree. the blood was draining down the tree. that's where the severe impact took. >> jody sharp had not survived the fall. it was clear. she had slammed into that tree. as he began to move the body, he noticed something else. >> note an alcoholic beverage...

From a cop's point of view things were adding up and not in steven's favor. >> not just one thing. it was like the totality of the circumstances. every little thing is clicking in my mind, and i'm saying to myself, you know, this isn't right, something is wrong here. >> gut instinct is one thing, evidence is another. maybe their view of steven was too jaundiced. there really was nothing to indicate that jody's fall was anything but an accident. a few months later the ruling was in. the burgen county medical examiner concluded the manner of jody sharp's death could not be determined. an acciden...