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>> women called the house. and sometimes they call and hang up on her. >> in fact, he learned jodi had served her husband divorce papers on september 8th, 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. >> there was a sitdown with mr. sharp, he's consented to talk, right? >> two days after his wife's death. steven sharp was freely answering detective's questions, yes, he told them. he and his wife were talking divorce, as they had sometimes done during their tempestuous marriage. >> he told us they had an o...

I didn't cause her to get hurt. >> reporter: we talked to scharf at the bergen county jail. he and his wife, tina, said they paid a high price for something he didn't do. >> our daughter is 2 1/2 and never been held by her father. because we don't have contact visits. >> it's not just a tragedy for jody. it's a tragedy for jon. it's a tragedy for my wife. it's a tragedy for my daughter and for myself. >> reporter: still, he decided not to take the stand in his own defense. but told "dateline," that what he first said years ago, about his wife's death, was the truth. >> i wish it didn't happen....

Center had just happened. he thought he could read between the lines in the police notes he reviewed the day after jodi's death. >> he did not react like somebody who just lost his wife should have. he quickly learned from jodi'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. jodi's long time friend said jodi had been determined to take her 10-year-old son jonathan and leave her husband. she was convinced steven had been cheating on her.

Said no. >> he believed that was a stunning confession. he ran to tell the other detectives, including lynam. but they had just spent hours grilling the man. >> we weren't getting that feeling, that reinterview at that point would have done anything. >> the detectives still believe they could find solid evidence to implicate steven sharp, but they didn't. >> we took it as far as we could go. the cause of death was listed as undetermined. so officially it wasn't a homicide about. >> in time, the detectives moved on to other cases. steven sharp moved on too. 14 years after his wife's death, he r...

Get away from her husband. >> she was going to have divorce papers served on steven. 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'm here for my mother. >> his own son took the stand against him. now a businessman, jonathan painted his father as an angry violent man who terrorized his mother. >> did you see that abuse? >> i did. >> jonathan said he realized his father had likely killed his mother only after that arrest in 2008. this videotaped interview shows him recalling t...