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But women called the house. sometimes they would call and hang up on her. >> in fact, linum learned jody had served her husband divorce papers on september 8, 1992. less than two weeks later, she was dead. at the base of the palisades. the timing made him even more eager to talk to the widower scharf. >> there was a sit-down with mr. scharf. he has consented to talk, right? >> yes. >> two days after his wife's death, stephen scharf was freely answering detectives' questions. yes, he told them, he and his wife were talking divorce. as they had sometimes done during their tempestuous marriage. a...

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 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...

Police station waiting for someone to tell him what happened to his wife. >> do you remember what's going through your mind at that point? >> how badly is she hurt. where is she? why isn't she calling back to me. >> that's when an officer walked into the room and broke the news to stephen. jodie was gone. >> i don't even remember who came in and told me. >> what was your reaction? >> denial. it was how could this -- how could this happen. >> that question would haunt him and many others. and it would take years for the answers to finally come. >> coming up. >> he was rubbing his eyes to make i...

Were you eating? >> drinking. >> you were drinking. >> i had lost my wife. my son lost his mom. >> there was plenty of sympathy among family and friends, to be sure. 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 chofi. why was jody's purse on a ledge just feet below where her husband said she...

Scharf's body. >> why would stephen have killed his wife? the biggest reason, the prosecutors argued, was that stephen did not want a divorce. he didn't want a custody fight and he didn't want to split assets with jody. and there was yet another motive for stephen said the prosecutor. a potential payout. >> usaa life insurance company. >> an insurance representative testified about a $500,000 policy taken out against jody scharf months before her death. payable to a primary beneficiary. >> can you tell us the policy owner. >> stephen f. scharf. >> jody scharf was simply worth more dead than al...