Page 22 - Stephen S News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Said no. >> he believed that was a stunning confession. he ran to tell the other detectives, including linum. but they had just spent hours grilling the man. >> we weren't getting that feeling, that a re-interview at that point would have done anything. >> the detectives still believed they could find solid evidence to implicate stephen scharf, but they didn't. >> we took it as far as we could go. there hadn't been -- the cause of death at that time was listed as undetermined. so officially it wasn't a homicide. >> in time, detectives moved on to other cases, stephen scharf moved on too. 14 ye...

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 pocketbook should be down with her. it wasn't fitting. >> another thought...

Strange stephen said to her on the beach over that labor day weekend. >> he was under a lot of stress, and the stress would be resolved by the end of september. >> 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. and then the light bulb went off immediately. >> it also went off for mary anne hilferdi. in perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecution's case, she told the jury that when she heard her friend was gone she immediately remembered something jody said weeks earlier. >> she said that,...

Ledge or any part of the cliffs. >> nothing. no blood, no hair, no clothing, no fibers, no skin. >> by that point, officer walter seary had arrived at the lookout. since there was nothing the husband could do to help in the rescue, they took him to police headquarters. on the way stephen recalled the awful moment when his wife disappeared. >> we were walking. she said for me to go back in the car and get the blanket and she slipped and i didn't see her anymore. >> as seary and the man arrived at the station chofi made it to the base of the cliff. he expected to find a wounded woman there, but ...

>> then, the husband himself. cool and collected in the back of a police car. >> i didn't see any emotion from him at all, sir. >> who later confessed, the prosecutor said, to killing his wife. >> and then i said. it was an accident? and he said, no. >> but those facts were not where the case ended. the prosecutor argued that they simply set the stage for the real case. a story told by the victim's friends, family, and most importantly, by a star witness. >> my opinion is that the manner of death is homicide. >> dr. michael baden, the famous forensic pathologist, told jurors the crime scene sp...