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Violent intent to kill his wife. or was there another way of looking at that couple perched high on those cliffs on a summer night? stephen's new wife says the prosecution has it all wrong. >> my husband is not capable. that is not the man he is. my husband is sweet, kind, loving, considerate. >> the defense was ready to show how stephen scharf, far from villain, was the real victim in this story. >> coming up. >> they destroyed the crime scene area. >> new questions about the evidence, and was there another reason why a son might implicate his dad? >> who does the money go to? >> it goes to m...

>> reporter: jody's death on these cliffs had been a horrible accident. her husband said so. and the medical examiner wasn't arguing with him. but detectives have a kind of sixth sense about cases. it was telling james linum something sinister had just happened. so you didn't think this was a horrible accident? >> no. >> reporter: there wasn't any smoking gun really. just something dark he thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jody's death. >> e he didn't react like somebody who had just lost his wife should have reacted. >> reporter: so the dete...

Talking to stephen about what happened to jody when stephen interrupted him. >> he finally looked at me and he goes, you don't believe me. >> reporter: then the officer says he said something that almost knocked him off his feet. >> i said, i believe an accident occurred. i said, was it an accident? he put his head down and he said, no. >> reporter: aaronburg believes that was a stunning confession. he ran to tell the other detectives, including linum but they had spent hours grilling the man. >> we weren't getting the feeling that a reinterview would have done anything. >> reporter: the detec...

>> reporter: the state marshalled familiar facts to tell its story, starting with the crime scene where the prosecutor said the cliffs showed no sign of an accidental tumble. >> no debris, no clothing, no blood, no hair, no tissue. >> reporter: then there was the husband himself. cool and collected in the back of a police car. >> i didn't see any emotion from him at all, sir. >> reporter: who later confessed, the prosecutor said, to killing his wife. >> then i said, it was an accident? he said, no. >> reporter: but those facts were not where the case ended. the prosecutor argued that they set ...

What stuck in his mind -- >> reporter: in every murder trial, time is an invisible but crucial player for both sides. >> 16 years! >> reporter: sometimes it hurts a case. memories fade, evidence is lost, witnesses die. but time can also put evidence in a new light. such was the case in the trial of stephen scharf, accused of killing his wife nearly two decades ago. >> there is no statute of limitations on murder. >> reporter: the prosecutor promised the evidence would tell a story as simple as it was brutal. a husband determined to avoid a costly divorce lured his wife to the edge of a cliff a...