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>> there wasn't any smoking gun really. just something dark lineham 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 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. >> she was going to go through with it. yes. absolutely. >> jody's long-time friend marianne hi...

>> 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 the feeling there was something definitely wrong. >> it nagged at rescuer michael chiofi. why was jody's purse on a ledge just feet below where her husband said she'd fallen? >> where is she? she should be here. or part of her should be here. >> that's the first t...

Propelled from that point. >> jody had to have been thrown or pushed to her death, he said, and likely from another spot entirely on those cliffs. he wasn't the only expert who saw it that way. >> the head and chest injuries are not consistent with someone that tumbles down the cliff face. >> reporter: dr. marianne clayton was the bergen county medical examiner who first ruled the circumstances of jody's death could not be determined. now on second look she said the victim's wounds, or lack of them, told her something different, something vital. if jody had tumbled innocently down the palisade...

>> 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 marian hilferty. in perhaps the most chilling testimony of the prosecution's case, hilferty told the jury that when she heard her friend was gone she immediately remembered something jody said just weeks earlier. >> she said that during this conversation i have with him if anything happens to me you'll know who did it. she said, you'll know it was him. >> the prosecutor's position wa...

>> but it was what he didn't see that confused him. there was no sign that the woman's body had also hit that ledge or any part of the cliffs. >> nothing. no blood, no hair, no clothing. no fibers. no skin. >> by that point officer walter sirry had arrived at the lookout. since there was nothing the husband could do to help in the rescue, sirry was told to get him out of the way and drove him back down to police headquarters. on the way stephen recounted the awful moment when his wife disappeared. >> we were walking and she said for me to go back to the car and get the blanket. and she slipped...