The Case Against Sandra Garner

>> Now, no one will issue emergency.

>> I need to, please. >> I was in the job. [MUSIC] >> You are in the police. I can just go out and let you know is this.

[MUSIC] >> We've got a telephone call from the Ellis County Sheriff's Office saying, "Hey, we've had a shooting in your city." >> Our husband's been shot on a known mail.

“I believe that it's broken into the house.”

[MUSIC] >> When I got there, I met a deputy from Ellis County. [MUSIC] >> And we see the body on the floor. >> He's still warm.

>> He lost. >> No, man. >> Come on. >> Come on. >> No, get him.

>> No, get him. >> No, get him.

>> Did you see who did this man?

>> Yes. >> I don't know who he came in here. >> He came in the house. >> Yes. [MUSIC]

>> Are we sure he's not here anymore? >> Chief, yes. >> It may still be here. >> Yeah. >> Don't know yet.

[MUSIC] >> Did you find him? >> No, man, nobody's here. >> They have me sitting on the couch and delivering her. >> No, man.

How are you doing? I'm Sergeant Carr. I'm with me for a police department.

And I've never dealt with police at all.

So I didn't know they even had video cameras on the board. >> Let me get your name. >> The same. >> Were you able to see him? >> I can't go on over and over and over.

“Everything I saw about him trying to remember everything.”

>> He was white. >> There was a white male. >> Everything he had on. >> He had blue jeans on the blue hoodie. And asked.

>> Just still trying to keep that memory going. >> And I looked at his face once, but I was afraid if I looked again. He was going to kill him. >> Can I get you staying right there? >> I'll put my phone out.

>> Get a real close up here if you don't mind. [MUSIC] And I started snapping pictures. I'm going to get some pictures back here. [MUSIC]

>> Both crunchy and stuck around these trees. We started going ahead and securing the scene. >> Most small cities like May Pearl, if they have a major crime. >> I'll get a call, Shane let him know. >> They will call in.

>> Are to wake you up. >> A resource like Alice County Sheriff's Office. [MUSIC]

“>> It was a little after 2 a.m. when I arrived.”

>> It was morning. >> How you doing, sir? >> After I was briefed immediately, I knew the Sandra needed to be talked to. She was the last one to see him alive.

>> He did that right there. >> We decided to take Sandra to the Sheriff's Office. She was very key, our only witness. >> It made me think that I was going to help him find the person that did this.

[MUSIC] >> You can bet this could be the last place Sandra Garner expected to find herself. >> Yeah, here she was. Early in the morning of January 2nd, 2018,

at the Ellis County Sheriff's Office in walks a hatchy Texas, not far from her home in May Pearl. [MUSIC] >> Just hours earlier,

she and her husband John had celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary. [MUSIC] >> And now, after a night of unimaginable violence, she was answering questions about his murder.

>> I didn't mind doing it at all, because I wanted to help him as much as I could. >> May Pearl's Chief of Police at the time, Boyd Norton was in charge, assisted by Lieutenant Shane Thompson of the Sheriff's Office.

[MUSIC] >> It was all routine. Sandra's hands were swabbed for gunshot residue. Her clothes were collected, and then the questioning began.

>> And I knew I had to stay kind of calm to be able to tell him everything that happened. [MUSIC] >> Because I felt like if I just let my emotions go that I would lose it all.

And I couldn't lose it. >> I woke up and I had heard them shot. >> You heard them shot? >> I heard two engines.

>> She says she saw a man holding a flashlight and a gun. >> I was starting screaming, you know, hoping somebody would hear me. He just said, "Please don't go near me." >> And he says, "What I came here to do is done.

I didn't come here to shoot you." >> You were having this conversation with a guy who just shot your husband? >> Well, I said that and he said it back to me, yes. >> She says he seemed to know both her and John, who he blamed for destroying his life years earlier.

>> So what am I to solve? And when you've heard him, he says, "I lost my house. I lost my life. I lost my children." >> He apparently didn't come just to kill John.

He also wanted money.

>> He said, "Your husband had always talked about how he

keeps money in the house. And I need that money. I think I earned that money." She went into the closet. She got the lock box.

>> That closet has a light that comes on when the door opens.

“And Sandra says, "That's how she got a glimpse of the killer."”

>> He had a mask on. I had to see his eyes. >> Was he tall, was he short? >> He was taller than me. >> You recognized the voice?

>> No. >> She handed him a pile of cash. Exactly how much remains a mystery. >> I think he was $18,000.

That's how much was in the last time I counted it.

>> $18,000. >> Yes. >> Sandra says when he left the killer gave her instructions that were frightening and a little peculiar. >> He told her to sit down and count to a hundred.

If he heard siren, he was going to come and kill her. >> One day, three for five, six, seven, eight, eight. >> That's how fast you counted it. >> Yes. >> No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

>> Then she made that call to 911. >> That was a man here. >> He told me.

“>> Investigators now had Sandra's story about John's death,”

but they needed to learn the story of the couple's life together. Sandra was a twice divorced mother of two when she met John. They worked as managers at the same packaging company in Paris, Texas. She was 13 years older than he was. >> He was just a very sweet man.

>> But he was known as a tough boss. >> He loved firing people because if they weren't doing their job right, they didn't need to be working for him. >> The fact that he had fired a lot of people, we knew that there were going to be people out there who didn't care for John.

John was kind of wild crazy guy. He was prescribed anti-depressants. He took those frequently drank heavily. It's very outgoing. Very blunt.

He's out there. >> None of that matter to Sandra. Two years after they met, they got married. On New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. >> We had awesome relationship.

We loved each other so much. >> We were partners. We just did everything together.

>> John became a second father to Sandra's son, Wes,

but her daughter Andrea was not very fond of him. Until 2014 when Sandra was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. >> I saw how much you loved her. That's all that mattered. He took care of her.

He was her rock. >> The medicine made me sick a lot. >> It also made her depressed. She says she thought about suicide and Google how to do it.

>> How do I kill myself and my sleep?

“How do I take pills to kill myself or something like that?”

>> Sandra says she didn't want to become a burden to John. >> I told John one day, you don't deserve this. I'm just going to kill myself. He said, well, if you do that, I'm going to kill myself too. That's when I knew I couldn't do it.

As Sandra got sicker, John became the soul breadwinner and caretaker. How reliant on him were you? >> I was very reliant on him. He was all ahead.

It was just me and him. >> In 2016, they moved to May Pearl. Population just about 1,000 to be closer to their families. John's father and stepmother bought the house across the street. >> And John and Sandra's backyard became the gathering place.

>> We're over there all the time. Our family is just, you don't knock on the door, you walk in. >> Jessica Garner married John's cousin and she became close to Sandra. >> I loved her. She was family.

That was John's wife. You love him.

>> So the news that John had been killed came out of the blue.

“>> And I just, sort of screaming, not like no.”

It was not. It was a nightmare. It was just a nightmare. >> Several hours after she arrived, Sandra left the sheriff's office to be with the extended Garner family, which had gathered to comfort her.

Police body cams captured the scene. >> I'm like what happened? What was going on? And she told us the story. >> Did you believe her?

>> I did. Did everybody in the room go either? >> No.

>> But what I wanted to tell you,

you didn't want to get a whole new studio. The Master by Tag Laptop. She's the intern. She's a master. >> I'm so sorry.

>> You can't say the story. >> You have a story. >> But you don't believe it? >> No. >> It's true.

>> It's true. >> It's true. >> And when you work, it's true. >> It's true.

>> That's true. >> What's true? to Dan Gates look. Yet's cost no doubt for being.

“He was the last person, John spoke to beside Sandra.”

He agreed to talk to Lieutenant Shane Thompson. That was just hours before the shooting. West says he went home and didn't know anything was wrong until John's family, including Jessica Garner, showed up at his apartment, to give him the news. John's been killed. Many was like, "What happened or like, we don't know."

And he was like, "How's my mom? Where's my mom?" West hadn't seen his mother, but what he had to say about her sure caught Lieutenant Thompson's attention. West, very early on, had suspicions about his mother being involved. He seemed to be wondering if his own mother could be a killer. "That she did something to help her, and what's your thoughts?"

Meanwhile, at the crime scene, investigators were busy collecting evidence and taking photos. "We searched the entire house, we searched all the cars, and all the outbuildings. Sandra's Mustang was parked inside of a detached garage. There was nothing there."

It took hours, but the police finally left.

And when they did, Sandra went home to live in the house.

“"Share's office? We're less than 24 hours earlier."”

Her husband had been shocked to death. It was a little weird, yes, but I knew I needed to be there. I just felt like that's where John would want me to be. And I was really hoping that the guy would come back. "You are."

"So I could kill him." "Investigators already had one killing on their hands, and they were going through all the evidence they took out of the Garner's home. They were particularly interested in the Garner's electronics." "You can learn a lot about a person from their electronics."

"And what they learned from Sandra's iPad and cell phone seemed especially interesting." A few days before the murder, she searched how to kill somebody in their sleep. She had clicked on a link, 16 ways to kill somebody, and not get caught. "What was your reaction?"

"Our reaction that Sandra just became more and more of a suspect." "You have a gift for understatement." "But it would be hard to understate how well the Garner house was protected." "John had guns, lots of guns, even for Texas." "49 pistols?"

"I'm sorry, how many?" "49, and there was probably 12 rifles." "He had them stashed everywhere." "Because he wanted there to be a gun if he needed it." "And they were able to account for all the weapons except for one."

"What kind of gun was that?" John was killed with a 38, and what's more, Norton says, "The missing pistol belonged to Sandra." "John had given it to Sandra." "But investigators couldn't find the gun."

On January 5th, three days after John was murdered, investigators returned to the Garner house to search again.

"And we searched all the vehicles again."

"And they wanted to look inside Sandra's Mustang, but this time they couldn't." "The Mustang was still inside of the detached garage, but it was locked." "We didn't make it that." "Well, we wanted to know why it was locked." "West went across the street where the family was gathered to get Sandra's keys."

"West walked in and said, "Hey, Mom, they want the keys to your Mustang." "She threw down the fork that was in her hand and said, "No, you can tell him to f*ck."

“"And I just remember looking at her like."”

"I was pissed." "Because?" "I knew they were looking at me for what." "She says she learned police were looking at her as a suspect just that morning from West." "I told him no, he said yes they are."

"Are you scared?"

"No, because I didn't do it."

"She was not going to let us in that Mustang." "When she knew that we were getting in that vehicle one way or another." "She stepped back out there from the police." "We're going to get this picture." "She and it are producing the key."

"When police opened the car, they found a plastic bag under the front seat. "And inside, wrapped in wet towels was a rusty gun. A 38 caliber pistol with no fingerprints or DNA." "No, it is awfully odd that it wasn't there one day and then three days later there it was." "Very odd, yes."

"How many ideas have that happened?" "Sandra put it there."

“"Justice, I'll remember his West coming back across the street."”

"He said, they found the gun in her car." "I just looked at him and I mean like I'm getting goosebumps now." "What?" "What did that mean to you at that point?" "Just everything changes at that point."

"She killed John." "How could she kill John?" "Why did she kill John?" "Sandra was brought back to the Ellis County Sheriff's Office and this time Thompson was assisted by Texas Ranger Adam Sweeney."

"I'm trying to swear I'm trying to be honest with you. I don't. You don't look at me honest." "And this was not a friendly conversation." "It was more confrontation." "It was something we had."

"Look at him." "That's when they started saying, "We know you did this, we know you did this." "No, I didn't." "Yeah, we know you did."

“"We don't want you to tell us that's what we're here for."”

"Justice, you don't get sighted at it." "What did I do?" "Then why don't you tell us that's what it is." "I told you that's what it is." "You're not telling us that's what it is."

"And they questioned her about her gun." "What did you put that link in your card?" "I'm getting the call. I'm serious." "I'm getting the call on you." "I swear."

"What did you get in the call?" "She stuck to her story." "She claims she had no idea how the gun got there." "You tried to get me to admit something I didn't do." "Yes."

"Yes." "I'm done talking to you." "I was upset because I didn't believe what I was telling them." "Why would they not believe it?" "That might be because five days later when the ballistics test came back, they showed

the gun in the Mustang was the one used to kill John." "And with that, just a few hours later when Sandra pulled into her driveway, police were waiting. "That just got out of the car and that's the worst in you. It was horrible." "The Garner family was watching from across the street as the woman who had been so close

to all of them." "Let's get her out of here." "It was hauled off in handcuffs." "I'll be completely honest." "We cheered."

"You cheered?" "We cheered." "But it was just a little piece of justice at that moment for John." "After police arrested Sandra Garner, her bond was set at $2 million. There was no way she could pay that."

"And they met her sitting jail for a year and a half."

"And that should have never happened."

Sandra's attorney, Tom Papas. She's not the kind of person that would do that to John. In September of 2019, Sandra Garner aged by prison got to tell her story to a new audience. "It would look every dollar." "In front of a jury when she went on trial in Waxahatchee, Texas."

"For murdering her husband, John."

“"Are you prepared for what that was going to be like?"”

"No, I didn't know what always going to be said."

"I was hopeful." "They didn't have anything to prove absolutely that I did it." "So I was confident." "But prosecutors Lindy Bady and Ricky Sipes believed they had a strong case against her." "The murder weapon was Sandra Garner's gun."

"Anybody you tell the story to says who comes to commit a murder and doesn't ring their own weapon." "Bady ridiculed Sandra's story about a killer coming in, but using Sandra's gun." "Damn it, I forgot the gun." "At times she acted out the role of the killer." "I wore my trusty mask, so no one would know who I was.

But I'm going to have a 10-minute conversation with Sandra about who I am and why I'm doing this."

“"And there were those goolish searches on Sandra's iPad, about killing someone and not getting caught."”

"Bid deal, and we did make a big deal about these." " Prosecutors could well have considered this case a slam dunk." "It sounds good for us, right? We sometimes we don't get that much." "But this was a hard case." "We knew we had a mountain of hurdles to overcome in this trial."

"Bake no mistake, she didn't switch on." " Prosecutions, biggest hurdles, may have been the result of poor police work." "Sphere of us." "Especially may Pearl Police Chief Boyd Norton's lack of experience leading an investigation."

"Obviously I had been many murder scenes, but as far as being the investigator on the scene."

"This was my first." "He had enough experience to know he had to look into all those people John had fired over the years." "We interviewed probably a couple of dozen people who had been terminated." "And we were not coming up with any suspects." "But Norton is more open and more honest than most people would be about the mistakes he made at various stages of the investigation."

"Was the crime scene secured in your view quickly enough to preserve all the evidence?" "No. I probably should have taken her out of the house and put her in a car. I probably should have bagged her hands." "And I should have done some other things." "Please might have made a huge mistake by not begging Sandra's hands." "Gunshot residue was discovered on her, but it was only a tiny amount that could have an innocent explanation."

"It says the defense." "It was lying right next to John when he was shot. She pulled the body off the bed and she did chest compression." "The fact that there are only three specs on her left arm wasn't consistent with her firing the weapon." "Investigators believe if Sandra's hands had been bagged, they might have found a lot more gunshot residue." "Enough to prove she did fire that gun."

"You're going to bedroom right there." Police might also have failed to preserve the crime scene well enough. "The responders came in and out." "A lot rained in the bedroom when I was still there, which I thought was strange because that's when it happened." "So why run and mess up everything that could be evidence?"

“"And important evidence was lost by the police themselves.”

Body cam footage shows Chief Norton taking photos of the scene right when he arrived. A lot of them, and they all inexplicably disappeared from his cell phone." "How did you feel when you realized that these photos were missing?" "Well, I feel bad. I had evidence that should have been with the case and it wasn't there." "So yeah, I wasn't embarrassed."

"Prom for the case." "Yes sir." "Instead, the prosecution had to use photos taken by the Ellis County Sheriff's crime scene investigator eight hours after the murder." "Investigations messed up." "App with the photos seemed like a gift to defense attorney Tom Papas."

"What did you think when you heard that these photos had been lost?" "I think we're gonna win." "Do you regret not handing this whole thing over to Ellis County right away?" "I did. I did." "When did you realize that that was a mistake?"

"Hmm, probably about a week into it." "Law enforcement poured their heart into their cell into this investigation. It may not have been perfect." "And prosecutors knew the chief's inexperience would not play well in front of the jury." "Did Chief Boyd, Norton, fill you with confidence?" "Well, no."

"Prosicutors found themselves having to explain, among other things, why the police didn't finger print the door handle of the Mustang where the gun was found." "Papas says police might well have found a fingerprint that belonged to another suspect."

"I believe that it should have been done."

“"You know, I told you up front that we'd make some mistakes in this case."”

"Should we have taken the car and impounded and processed it, maybe?" "But we didn't." "Papas attacked every phase of the investigation." "Please search that house." "And they screwed a lot of stuff up."

"You wanted to know why it took police so long to get to the crime scene in the first place."

"I got a nice job." "You get a normal one call from a lady who's hysterical." "That says there was an intruder in my husband's been shot." "And it takes some 30-40 minutes to get to the scene." "Well, Chief Norton says that he was there in 15 minutes."

"Even 15 minutes is crazy." "Prosicutors had one other huge problem." "Proving a motive. Why would Sandra want to kill her husband who was her caretaker?"

“"We did not have one set motive. Here is the motive. This is the reason why she killed him."”

"In Texas, prosecutors don't have to prove motive." "But as a human being, everybody wants to know why." "But Papas says there was one person who was close to John and may well have had a motive to kill him." "And what's more, at every turn in the case, he was there." Sandra's son, Wes.

"We knew Wes was going to be a problem from the get-go." "What I say to you, are you going to play back to the monitor?" "West does look bad." "It is not hard to destroy a college." "Last season, the podcast campus files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults and more."

"And now campus files is back for another season." "There's a guy that's screaming into his phone." "He's like, just trying to curb his assassinated right in front of me." "Every week is a new episode and a new story." "It's okay. It's almost a university on a siege."

"Listen to and follow campus files. Available now wherever you get your podcasts." "West should have been a suspect." "Defense attorney Tom Papas says the police made one of their biggest mistakes when they ruled out one suspect." "So let's talk about Wes." Sandra's own son, Wes.

"His conduct when you really look at it objectively and look at Sandra objectively is more suspicious than hers." "What everything West did was kind of suspicious." "Prosicutor, Lindy Bady." "I did have a lot of heartburn over it when we were going through." "Case preparation."

"And we knew Wes was going to be an absolute train wreck." "And he was." "West was involved in this case early on." "Just hours after John was killed, Wes was the one who pointed the finger at his mother." "What's your laws?"

"What's he?" "He's wrong there." "And he kept at it questioning details of her story." "Dog, big dog." "The dog is lying there."

"How am I supposed to get him?" "I'm sure somebody just hit him on the left hand." "One of the hardest things about the case was the magnitude of Wes's disloyalty to her." "And the things he was doing to try to get her blamed for this."

"She has never acted like this before."

"Just jumped out of it."

“Sandra now says she has come to believe the worst thing a mother could believe about her child.”

"Who do you think killed John?" "I think it was Wesley." "Pappas says those chilling Google searches on Sandra's iPad and iPhone could have been done by Wes." "He says Wes had access to the devices that did not require a password." "There's one thing everybody said about Sandra and John.

It's they went to bed at 930." "Those web searches were done between 11 and midnight just four days before the murder." "And Papas says on that same night, Wes was at their house." "He's the one that did the website, not her." "When searching for 16 ways, 16 ways to kill."

"You don't know that for sure." "Well, I don't know who else had been." "I don't think it was John."

Wes wouldn't answer our questions, but he always seemed willing to answer investigators questions,

especially about his mother and her gun. "I think it was John." "He's given her words that I would say." "He's been a little bit too helpful with the police saying, "Hey, you know, look here." "After the police searched and failed to find the gun,

"Somebody will say that you're involved in the third year of the war."

"She does have a war." "I'll thought it wasn't in my time."

“"I mean, she says she's never better than Steve."”

"If she did, I'll be able to see her." "I don't need to see her." "The next day, police searched for the gun one more time." "Where do they find it? They find it under the sea." "Those things really did cause some concern."

"West does look bad." "It began to look like someone was setting her up."

"I don't know the West did that, but it sure looks suspicious."

"And his conduct was just unexplainedable." "Papas believes Wes might have more of a motive to kill John than Sandra did." "He says West needed money and mistakenly believed he was in John's will." "Was he ever a suspect in this?" "No. He was a my suspect."

“"After all, West told chief Boyd Norton he had an alibi for the time John was murdered."”

"And Netflix and phone records seemed to help corroborate his story, at least for a while." "There was a record that he'd been on Netflix until about 12, 12, 30." "There was some phone calls that were made." "Oh my god, it's perfect." "He's got an alibi, this is fantastic."

"And until we look at the records, and we're like, no, no, that's not the right time." " Prosecutors discovered investigators had made a mistake. The times on those records weren't recorded in central standard time." "The local time." "Which means there was actually no evidence that West was watching Netflix or on the phone at the time John was killed." "Didn't look good that the cops didn't know which time is on they were dealing with."

"No, it didn't. I would imagine it did not help your case." "No." "It didn't look at West, it didn't understand that he didn't have an alibi." "And that's an example of where they just gloss over stuff." "They thought they had a rock solid alibi for West, and in fact, that was not the case."

"I was floored at that." "The prosecutors insist, even though they say West looks suspicious at times, and he has no alibi, they are confident he is not the killer." "Once you meet West, it's over." "If you just talk to him for any length of time, he is just not capable of committing this type of crime." "He's just not smart enough, honestly."

"And she says, his stomach isn't strong enough." "There's no way that guy can go put a bullet in some guys' hand that he loves." "See some blood, and they're not be a vomit trail, you know, all the way back home." "And if West did break into the house that night and have a conversation with Sandra, baby wonders, how could Sandra not recognize him?"

"My God, people. If it was West Miller, she would know her own son." "There's no way she doesn't know if it's him." "There's no way." "I wouldn't recognize West." "I would recognize his voice, but after hearing shot."

"Just all the drama." "I can see why I didn't recognize it." "You're home, son." "Yes." "Part me for saying this, but it's hard to believe."

"I don't know. I just didn't recognize it." "There are a lot of questions for Sandra, and unlike most defendants in murder cases, she decided to take the stand." "Cameras were not allowed in the courtroom for her testimony." "I felt like if it went wrong for me if I didn't testify, what if I could have signed it?"

"You comfortable putting her up?" "No, of course not."

"You never go for one, your client takes a witness to him."

Sandra had trouble on the stand. She struggled to answer some of the questions during a lengthy cross-examination.

“"I think there were some questions about the website searches and the searches surrounding that that were difficult,”

and she simply didn't remember stuff, and they were able to make some points." "I thought that we were able to show that she was a liar." "As the case goes to the jury, Sandra should know soon if taking the stand was the smart move." "Whatever happened, I had to deal with it." "It took one month, 27 witnesses, and more than 400 pieces of evidence for the case again Sandra Garner,

to finally go to the jury, and when it did, neither side was very confident."

"I was extremely confident one minute and just destroy the next."

“"The jurors, however, seemed very clear about their views, they came back with a verdict in just three hours."”

"God of his nervous, because it all comes down to this. You're thinking, "God, please have done the right thing. Please found justice for this family." Sandra's daughter Andrea was holding her breath. "The longest three hours. Ever my laugh." "What did the quick verdict mean?" "It was anyone's guess."

"I did not think it was good for us." "I didn't feel that they had gone through all of the evidence again." "Oh, my heart must have stopped. This is bad. It's not good at all. Try to say that, so Sandra wouldn't hear." "Please be seated."

"In front of a packed courtroom."

"The judge read the decision." "The last thing I remember is the juror handing the paper to the by-lift." "And I looked down. I could not look. That wasn't ready for a guilty verdict." "We, the jury, by the defendant, Sandra Louise Garner, not guilty." "Not guilty, and just like that, Sandra Garner was a free woman after 21 months in jail."

"I felt wonderful. I turned to Tom and was saying, "Yeah, yeah." "And we held each other. I could go on."

“"I think those are the sweetest words I've ever heard of all of."”

"It was like a white heaven lifted off my shoulders." "They had been carrying for nearly two years." "I gave her the biggest I got good. I was so happy for." "I tear up just thinking about it." "I mean, she's just got a chance to try to get some of her life back."

"Of course, like every verdict, this one was not universally popular." "I just remember thinking, they got that wrong. What? There's no way. There's no way." "Why don't we watch this? There's no happy ending to this. This isn't happy at all." "Unless, of course, you are Sandra Garner." "We caught up with her. The moment she was released from jail."

"She was wonderful. That was wonderful." "I was just praying to God and my husband and my daddy just to help him say, "Not guilty, please." Sandra was eager to get back home to the same house where her husband was murdered." "I'm going to love my house. I know it's hard and I know people think I'm crazy for one to be here." "But I just want to be as close to him as I can."

"Living here will mean living across the street from John's parents who still are convinced Sandra is a murderous who killed their son and whose family is still grieving." "John should still be alive. We should still be a family. That was taken from us." "There should be justice for his killer."

"There's not. They're never will be."

"None of us have talked to her." "None of us want to talk to her." "Andry Miller is worried about her mother."

“"One of the most important pieces of her life isn't here."”

"And she has to live with that on a daily basis." "Sissy, come here." "I'm scared this is going to happen to her." Sandra's attorney, Tom Papas, is also worried about her safety. "There's a murderer that hasn't been arrested that's still out there."

"Santa, part of Sandra is tearing up now." "Part of Sandra is..." "Well, let me ask him why are you tearing up." "Tell me about her." "Because I care about her. I care what happens to her. I care what happens to the people around her."

"Whatever happens to Sandra, it likely will happen without her son, Wes." "Prosicutors and police believe they tried the right person and don't consider Wes a suspect." "But Sandra and Andria are no longer speaking to him." "He does not deserve to be part of my mother's life anymore." "As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a brother anymore."

"This is a tough question. Do you still love your son?" "Not like I used to know. I have not spoke to him at all. He didn't be really wrong." "And what toll is that taken on you?" "It's very hard for."

"I didn't."

“Sandra Garner is now free to spend time with what remains of her family.”

She knows others still see her as a killer who got away with it.

In the eyes of the law, she is not guilty.

“In the case against her is forever closed.”

Under the law, you cannot be charged with this crime again.

Even if you say you did it.

“So let me ask you, did you kill your husband?”

"No." "Man was 11 of my life."

I could tell she was all I had. He was going to take care of me for the rest of my life.

Without him I have nobody. No, I didn't kill my husband.