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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 detective moved from the physical evidence to the less tangible clues. he quickly learned from jody's friends that this was a couple not in love, but in crisis. the subject wasn't wine and roses on those cliffs. it was divorce. >> she was going to go through with it, yes. absolutely. >> reporter: jody's long-time friend told detectives that jody had be...

>> he was under a lot of stress and the stress would be resolved by the end of september. >> reporter: two weeks later, jody scharf was dead. terry now sees that cryptic statement in a dreadful light. >> i was like, oh, no, the end of september. then the lightbulb went off immediately. >> reporter: it also went off for marion. in perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecution's case she told the jury when she heard her friend was gone she immediately remembered something jody said just weeks earlier. >> she said that during this conversation that i had with him, if anything happens to ...

Where i got off the ropes. that's where she should have been. >> reporter: someone else was scratching his head about that night for different reasons. it had to do with stephen's behavior while the search was under way. officer sery 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 wife could be alive down there? >> not at all. >> reporter: sery said he couldn't believe how willingly scharf got into the car. >> if it was my wife, girlfriend, whoever they would have had to pry me away from the s...

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 and forced her off it. >> if he has lied he is guilty. >> reporter: the state marshalled familiar facts to tell its story, starting with the crime scene where the prosecutor said the cliffs showed no sign ...

>> she had to have been propelled from that point. >> reporter: jody had to have been thrown or pushed to her death, he said. and likely from another spot entirely on the cliffs. he wasn't the only expert who saw it that way. >> of the head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbles down the cliff face. >> reporter: dr. clayton was the bergen county medical examiner who first ruled the circumstances of jody's death could not be determined. now on second look she says the victim's wounds or lack of them told her something different, something vital. if jody had tumbled inno...