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Her friend, mary anne hilferdi testified that jody feared stephen might do something violent if she pushed for that divorce. even so, she was going to get away from her husband. >> she was going to have divorce papers served on stephen, and she was very afraid of him. >> yet, was stephen violent enough to kill his wife? an unlikely but powerful witness was about to testify against stephen scharf. >> i hear from my mother. >> his own son took the stand against him. now a businessman, jonathan scharf painted his father as an angry, violent man who terrorized his mother. >> did you see that abuse...

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. >> it nagged as rescuer michael chiofi. why was jody's purse on a ledge just feet below where her husband said she had fallen? >> where is she? she should be here. part of her should be here. >> that's the first thing that came to you. >> either she should be here or the pocketb...

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. >> jody's long-time friend told detectives that jody had been determined to take her 10-year-old son jonathan and leave her husband. she was convinced stephen had been cheating on her. >> she couldn't prove anything, but women called the house. sometimes they would call and hang up on her. >> in fact, linum learned jody had served her husb...

Is an invisible but crucial player for both sides. >> 16 years. >> 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. >> 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. >> the state marshalled some f...

But detectives have a kind of sixth sense about cases. it was telling james linum something sinister had just happened. >> you didn't think this was a horrible accident. >> no. >> there wasn't any smoking gun really. just something dark linum thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jody's death. >> he did not react like somebody who had just lost his wife should have reacted. >> and so the detective moved his investigation from the