Page 7 - Son Tom News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

And in the summer of 2009, 11 years after the murder, the mother and son team went on trial for the murder of jack jessee. >> going to court was like going to my dad's funeral every day. it really was. you're around people that you know killed your dad. it was a ridiculous feeling. you can't even put it into words. just soul-wrenching. >> schrauben testified against them. in court it was argued sandra had a variety of motives for killing jack. she wanted his money before medical bills ate up their savings. and she couldn't bear being away from her son tom. >> do you think the case had gone wel...

Moved to arizona. >> and she was flipping out about it. >> yeah. >> just -- she had to go there. >> reporter: she demanded jack move to arizona too. >> that woman was off her rocker. her tone was just scary. it was like somebody else's voice coming out of her. >> reporter: but surely that wasn't motive enough for murder? and with plenty of suspicion but little else to go on, wyatt spent months poring over sandra and jack's phone records, bank statements, credit card bills, searching to -- well, he didn't know exactly what he was searching for. but he was getting basically nowhere. >> we couldn...

Schrauben's garbage. >> so what did they tell you when you came up with that idea? you're crazy. >> i think their first idea was i'm really starting to lose it now, i want to dig through somebody's trash. >> reporter: so faithfully, once a week on gar back pickup day, dove got up at daybreak and made the hour-long adjourn tee to brett's neighborhood, where a trash truck used just for schrauben's garbage brought it to a nearby parking lot. >> we'd have the truck dump the trash in somewhat of a pile here, regardless of the size. >> right on the tarmac? >> right on the tarmac. scatter everything ...

It had been 11 years since jack jessee's death. his wife sandra and her son tom were on trial for his murder. but confessed conspirator brett schrauben had struck a deal with prosecutors. in exchange for his release, he took the stand to detail how sandra and tom orchestrated the plot to kill jack. now the case was in the jury's hands, but the jessee family's fight for justice was far from over. with the conclusion of our story, here's keith morrison. when the jury went into seclusion to deliberate, the jessee family thought justice was just hours away. but as the sun set on the courthouse, ...

Son tom and soon her daughter followed, too. they all lived within a couple of blocks of each other in homes sandra helped purchase with jack's insurance money and savings. >> when everything was said and done, she got close to $700,000. >> and as the months slipped past, leads failed to connect the investigation, hit one dead-end after the other and wyatt was promoted out of homicide. the case bounced from the pd to the orange county sheriff's department, where before long it became a case to avoid, toxic, an unsolvable career-killer. so five years after his brother's murder when david jesse ...