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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 told detectives that jody had been determined to take her 10-year-old son jonathan and leave her husband. she was convinced stephen had been cheating on her. >> she couldn't prove anything, but women called the house. sometimes they would call and hang up on her. >> in fact, linum learned jody had served her husb...

Is an invisible but crucial player for both sides. >> 16 years. >> 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. >> 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. >> the state marshalled some f...

Been drunk the night she fell off the cliffs. jody had a blood alcohol level of .12. that was over the legal limit. >> would be equivalent to approximately four average-sized drinks, wine or beer, something like that. a drunken slip-and-fall, argued the defense. to back that up, the lawyer had his own heavy hitter. famed forensic pathologist dr. cyril wecht. wecht posted a resume of star-studded investigations too, as high profile as the prosecution's dr. baden. only wecht had a totally different take on how jody scharf died. >> i would call this an accidental death. >> in wecht's version whic...

Usually they're going to go south or they're going to go right down. they should have been right down where i got off the ropes. that's where she should have been. >> someone else was scratching his head about that night for different reasons. it had to do with stephen's behavior while the search was under way. officer walter seary was surprised stephen was willing to leave the lookout as rescuers were still looking for jody. >> did he give any indication, "i don't want to leave. my wife could still be alive down there?" >> not at all. >> seary says he couldn't believe how willingly stephen sc...

The top of the cliff. and 30 feet to the north. >> she had to have been 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. >> dr. mary anne 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 differe...