Page 33 - Stephen S News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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's not the man he is. my husband is sweet, kind, loving, considerate. >> reporter: 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. >> reporter: 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 me. >> reporter: when "dateline" continues. in terms of treating sensitivity...

>> reporter: in fact, linum learned jody had served her husband divorce papers on september 1992. less than two weeks later, she was dead at the base of the palisades. the timing made him more eager to talk to the widower scharf. there was a sit-down with mr. scharf. he's consented to talk, right? >> yes. >> reporter: two days after his wife's death, stephen 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. it was true. there were other women. >> he said there was an open marriage. h...

>> 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 and forced her off it. >> if he has lied he is guilty. >> reporter: the state marshalled familiar facts to tell its story, starting ...

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 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,...

>> reporter: you were drinking. >> i'd lost my wife. my son lost his mom. >> reporter: 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? 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. >> reporter: it nagged at the rescuer. why was jody's purse on the ledge just feet below where her husband said she'd fallen. >>...