The Perfect Family

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I eddy, Buddhist for all of them. In that truth, one of the most beautiful women to ever live. She wasn't just beautiful on the outside. She was beautiful on the inside too. She was very down to earth, very real, fun.

She loved being a mom. And it was the perfect family. My wife Ruth, my son Jeffrey and my daughter Julia. Jeffrey was a great student. He was the valdictorian. I'm lucky to have a son like him and I'm lucky to have a daughter like Little Miss America.

And then one day something went horribly wrong. On May 27, 11, my sister Ruth was found murdered in her garage. She was struck with a board somewhere between 12 and 14 times and then she was stabbed in the neck 16 times.

I never looked at the pictures.

I couldn't. I don't want that memory of my sister. The injuries were so excessive. We knew that there was some type of a rage that we felt that it was something that was personal. We hit her in the back of the head. This was an angry killing.

It was the result of the years and things that had built up living with a difficult person. Jeff told me that his mother was storing knives in her headboard. Ruth had been violent with both of the children.

“I believe my sister was very victimized by her family.”

Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors and in someone's home. The family was not the family that they appeared to be. The police asked me who killed my sister and I said Bernie Pine. To have people think that you could do it is the most disgusting and debilitating thought that you can have. And then when they started pointing at your son.

That's even more ludicrous.

Jeffrey could never hurt his mother. There's just no way.

It's a tragic story. You feel like this could be made up. But it's not. It's real life. A savagely murdered suburban wife and mother. Her husband and son, the prime suspects.

Even for a couple of hard-bitten detectives like Dave Hendrick and Greg Glover, this was a tough one. We'd take no joy in this case. I mean, this is a brutal case that literally is destroying a family. It started as a love story. Bernie Pine says he was smitten.

The minute he saw a fresh-faced farm girl named Ruth walk across the room during his senior year in high school. I said, "You are beautiful. We need to go out." And she said, "Just get out of here." But you were relentless. I called her up about every couple months.

And on the one occasion, she goes, "Yes, I will." And we were actually married less than 10 months later. They settled in suburban Detroit and eventually had two kids, Jeffrey and 10 years later, Julia. These pictures don't lie. I mean, there were many, many years that were not just normal, but they were wonderful.

This was a wonderful woman, wonderful mom and wonderful wife. Lots of happy times. But Bernie says nearly 20 years into the marriage, their lives took a very dark turn. I looked at her and I could just tell that there was something wrong. Then I noticed that she didn't sleep.

And I asked her, "If you had trouble sleeping, she goes, "Yeah, I haven't slept in eight days." And that's when we knew that there was something drastically wrong. Ruth was eventually diagnosed as bipolar with psychotic features.

“As the illness progressed, what was her mental state like?”

She would actually think of things like there were listening devices in the house. In fact, one time, she actually thought there was a tracking device in her bloodstream. She grew increasingly paranoid, says Bernie, even stashing knives in the headboard of their bed. She was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, but she refused to take them.

She explained it to me that she believed that all medication was a form of sorcery

Despite Ruth's illness, Bernie says the children managed to excel.

“Julia in ballet, Jeffrey on the basketball court and in the classroom.”

And he was top of his class. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He was the valedictorian. He was actually one of the top three recruits in the honors program at UVM Flint. All that while holding down two jobs and caring for Julia when his mom was too ill. You can see the toll it took on Julia from this heartbreaking drawing she made when she was just eight.

Ruth's sister, Linda Jarvey. Somebody had to, you know, be there and take care of the family. Jeff had to be the guy there to pick up the pieces. After a vicious cycle on and off meds in and out of hospitals, things turned violent in 2010. She'd been off her medication. She hadn't been sleeping. She was just miserable.

And I said, Ruth, just please take your medication. After she got through telling me basically, no, Jeffrey came in the room and she launched out of the bed and grabbed his throat and tried to hit him.

And Jeffrey never fought back?

Never. Why not? He's a tender soul. He's not a fighter. He's a loving son. The police were called to the scene, says detective Hendrick. She was, in fact, arrested for domestic violence.

And cobernard Pined at the scene. Ruth spent over two weeks in jail. Time, Bernie and Jeffrey used to petition the court to force her to take her medicine. "I don't want to have to take medicine either, but it just seems like when she doesn't all kinds of bad things happen."

Ruth, sitting there on the right, was sent to the hospital for 23 days. But when she returned home, she once again refused to take her meds. "We love Ruth, but it was getting old. I actually went to the attorney. And I had done everything but serve Ruth the papers." "Divores papers."

"Divores papers." "As much as I loved her, I just couldn't take it anymore." There was something else. Bernie had met a woman, Renee Janell, the manager of a local GNC store. "Somehow, in a relationship escalated, and when it was all said and done, we were very close."

Ruth caught Bernie and his lover having dinner at a local restaurant for Bernie the final straw. That night he asked Ruth for a divorce. "And she said, "Bernie, I'll do whatever it takes to save my marriage and my family."

“"When she said that to me, I said, "Okay, that means you must take your medication.”

And you must let me go to the doctor with you so that we can work with it and get the levels right." "And did she?" She did. So the Pine household was a happy household in the spring of 2011. "We were at the best place that we had been in a long time."

But before the spring was over, 51-year-old Ruth Pine would be found lying in a pool of her own blood here on her garage floor. So badly beaten that her skull was cracked open. I don't want to think about what my sister had to go through in the final moment of her life. I really don't. You hope that she was unconscious and knocked out early.

You don't want to go there. It's too painful." But she did think about who did it and wasted no time telling the police. The police asked me who killed my sister and I said "Bernie Pine." He's a violent person. I mean, I'm afraid of him. And Linda says so was her sister, at least till Jeffrey was born.

There was always a sense that Ruth was afraid of her situation with Bernie.

And she left him a few times to come live with me. Bernie denies ever harming Ruth and says she never stayed with Linda during their marriage. But he does admit he had a wild streak in his youth. "I was a little bit of trouble back then. A little rough around the edges." He was once arrested for putting a guy in a coma during a bar fight,

but was acquitted of felony assault. Bernie insists those days are long gone. Still, he knew it didn't look good.

“So there was a point where you felt like you were suspect?”

Well, I'm a husband of a mentally ill woman who had had an affair within the last six months. Yes. What was it like living under that cloud as a suspicion? I'm very uncomfortable. How so did you feel like everyone was watching you?

Oh, well, in the first place, as a husband to have your wife.

But what I was like this is the most painful and humiliating thing that can happen to any person.

But it turned out that Bernie had an iron-clad alibi backed by his boss and four witnesses.

“He was at a retirement lunch for one of his buddies at work.”

It took a couple days, but we were able to actually confirm Bernie's alibi and pretty much rule him out as a suspect at that point. Bernie started calling Detective Glover, sharing information and helping out however he could. I wanted to be part of finding out who did this to my wife. The two men developed a close rapport, but it was not destined to last. It came to a point where Bernie flat out asked us. He said, "I want to know in your mind who the monster is committed this crime."

Five months after his mother was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death.

Twenty-one-year-old Jeffrey Pine was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

He just said, "I just want to be a victim of your own crime. This is the social media and it's over.

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It's possible to help to get a real help. Start your tests today for one of your promontal. On Shopify.de/record. I was the one that was trapped in a marriage when you look at this, you know, with a mentally ill woman. I mean, looking at it from the outside, I'm a logical suspect. There's no doubt about it.

Jeffrey could never hurt his mother. There's just no way.

You know, so you may all be seated. Nobody wants to believe that somebody like Jeff is capable of this type of a crime. The person that everybody thought was the perfect kid on the inside wasn't as perfect as what they were seen on the outside. When detectives Greg Glover and Dave Hendrick received a call for assistance on May 27, 2011, they could not have imagined what was awaiting them.

Multiple multiple puncture wounds to our neck. I'd appear to be multiple wounds to her head, but there's rage. There's violence there. I mean, that's indicative of some sort of personal relationship between the victim and the killer. I've been doing this for almost 25 years, and this was probably one of the worst crime scenes that I had seen. It was an unsuspecting Bernie who discovered the gruesome scene when he arrived home after picking up his daughter from school.

So what happened when you came home? Julie and I got out of the car. We parked right here, walked around the back of the house, and I saw a roost arm. Luckily, Julie didn't go inside. She was right in the doorway. She was actually up against the door.

Bernie ran from the house before Julia could fully see what happened, calling out to neighbors, and calling 911. In my wife's seat, she's going to the garage. There's more than we would have quite kids. I don't know what's going on. Police arrived within a few minutes, but Ruth was already dead. Viciously beaten with an object and repeatedly stabbed.

I remember there was blood everywhere. As police investigated the scene, Bernie called Jeffrey, who had started his shift at three o'clock that afternoon. Working at Spicer Orchards.

“First time I called him no answer second time, I said Jeffrey, you need to come home.”

Did you tell him why? I did not tell him why. And when Jeffrey got to the house, what happened? That's when I told him.

I don't remember the conversation. I was pretty, I was in a bit of shock.

“When Jeffrey arrived home, he found his father and sister being consoled in the back seat of an ambulance.”

It was there that EMS workers noticed and bandaged blisters on Jeffrey's hands. Which he said developed after lifting a large pallet at work. When I had heard the story that he gave about how he'd injured those hands on a pallet, I was suspicious of it. There was a teenager in high school I worked in a feed store.

And I'd moved hundreds of wooden pallets and had never came up with an injury

to even remotely close to that, nothing more than a sliver. I've seen those blisters on him and usually it's from shoveling and raking in that type of thing. I don't know if those were new blisters or old blisters. They didn't look like new blisters to me. They looked to me the way I look at it.

It looked like old blisters that he'd actually ripped the skin off through on the pallet. Which would make perfect sense to me. Blisters don't make a murderer. Jeffrey told police he had been home with his mother before and after she went shopping that morning. We know that she'd left the Meyer store at approximately 10.54am.

We know the body was found at 2.30.

“It's what happened between those hours that will prove Jeffrey's innocence or guilt.”

And he told me he'd left the house at 1.30. And that's when I knew whatever had happened happened between then and 2.30. And that one hour window. And that one hour window, yes. And did you ask him how was mom?

He told me she was laying in bed. One of the things he told me that said, "What's the last thing you did before you left?" And he said, "Well, I got the mail and I threw it on the fireplace." And said, "By the mom." I mean, everybody has focused on the fact that he left at 1.30.

He says he left at 1.30. We don't know that he didn't have a confrontation in kill as mother shortly after she came home. If that's the case, he had two hours to clean up approximately, get things together and leave. Jeffrey says after leaving his home, he drove a few miles to his neighbors, Diane Needham, to do some gardening. It was very specific about planning five lilac bushes.

We discovered that the lilac plants or bushes had been planted on the Monday prior. We'd found out through Mrs. Needham. She was very, very specific about that. So at that point, we knew that he had not been there in plan of those lilac bushes as he had told us. And when Jeffrey was brought in for questioning the night of his mother's murder,

detectives were struck by his demeanor. The lack of emotion, the lack of any questions.

He never asked us questions about anything.

So if there's anything else that she knows of, that you've been holding back. He never asked us how she died, how she was killed. He never asked us about anything. So if there's anything else that she knows of,

if you've been holding back. He never asked us how she died, how she was killed. He never asked us how she died, how she was killed. Who did this? Anything.

He never asked us one question about anything. I don't know what to tell you. Is it strange that he never asked what happened when they said

“your mom has been murdered, that he didn't say how?”

What happened? You know, I don't, as far as I'm concerned, okay? That's Jeffrey. He's very even. And, you know, they're asking the questions. He's not.

Did you have any arguments with your mom? I didn't say anything hurtful to her. I didn't think. We felt the police were accusing you of killing your mother. And you hadn't done that, that you would be very adamant,

and very strong, by stating that you have the wrong guy. I didn't do this.

Jeff Pine has never, to this day, told us that he did not kill his mother.

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I don't know if there are transplants in her. Something perfectly clear. This is the first murder trial for Defense Attorney James Champion. We're not exercising a defense of insanity or self-defense or some other excusable homicide.

Most of Jeffrey's family is pulling for him. Even Ruth's sister Linda is trying to keep an open mind. I wanted to be a good ant for Jeff. I didn't really listen to the testimony. Maybe Jeff didn't do this.

Prosecutors Scrinzky begins with the only physical evidence implicating Jeffrey. The blisters on his hands. That Jeffrey claims he got handling wooden pallets at work.

“Do you handle pallets and boxes off of wooden pallets and boxes?”

Yes. On the stand, Jeffrey's friend and co-worker Nick Breddy. I smashed my finger between a box before he asked.

He says he's hurt his hands at work, but never the way Jeffrey says he did.

Even when he tried to duplicate Jeffrey's injuries. I tried multiple times picking up pallets in multiple different ways and I could not. I couldn't do it. You were trying to simulate the injuries that you couldn't do it?

No. Was that Jeff's voice? Yes. He says he then launches an attack on Jeffrey's alibi. Remember, Jeffrey says he left his house around one-thirty on the day of the murder

and went over to a neighbor's house to plant lilac bushes and paint the basement. Hey, another band of Jeffrey. Scrinzky plays the jury of voicemail message. Jeffrey left on Diane Needham's phone that day. I've been over to your house a few times at that time here.

Uh, come home. It's a very detailed message. Oh, I was just over there for about an hour or so. It's kind of sweet cloud checking things out.

But he never mentions the lilac bushes.

I was actually hoping you'd be there. I think he was looking for an alibi. Detective Hendrick believes Jeffrey left the voicemail to back up his alibi. He was hoping that she was either there so he could run over to the house or at least talk to her on the phone to give him something to tell us later.

Hey, it couldn't have been me. I was here. The state then calls medical examiner Rubin Ortiz Reyes. He testifies that the manner in which Ruth Pine was brutally slain does reveal something about her killer.

“Based on the wounds themselves, can you tell anything about the person who committed this crime?”

In the forensic pathology is called all they're killing. The injured is at the beginning where enough to kill this person. But whoever did it was upset. Can you say that that person is enraged? Yes, could be enraged.

Does that indicate some kind of relationship between the people? Is possible? And there's something more. After she was savagely beaten, Ruth Pine was still alive. Before she was then stabbed, 16 times.

I don't know how long did he take. The Emmy says a couple of minutes may have passed as the attacker looked for a knife. He intended on killing her. Detective Greg Glover. He could have stopped what he was doing and walked away from it.

And he didn't do that. He continued the assault a second time.

And does that make it premeditated? Under the law, yes it does. It's a strong circumstantial case. But what about motive? What would make this perfect son turn into a brutal killer?

How do you know, Mr. Pine? He was my boyfriend. Jeffrey's ex-girlfriend, Holly Freeman. Can you describe the relationship?

We had talked about marriage and kids.

“She would open a window on life inside the Pine home”

and deliver perhaps the most dramatic and damaging testimony of the trial. He became emotional, often, and almost every time it was about his mother. Holly learned of Ruth's mental illness and that often it became too much for Jeffrey.

There were many things that bothered him that he tried to brush off but they would accumulate and result in him having an emotional breakdown. Jeffrey considered moving out.

But Holly says he worried about what would happen to his little sister. He felt bad leaving Julia there and he was worried for her. But just two months before Ruth's murder, something happened that made Holly look at Jeffrey in a completely different way.

Can you tell the jury what happened at that time? Jeff had told me... Sorry.

“Holly found out Jeffrey had cheated on her.”

I was completely thrown off. And what way? Because Jeff, to me, Jeff was the perfect guy. The perfect son, the perfect boyfriend.

And that was the first time ever that I had

ever had a reason to doubt him. And that was as a result of his cheating? Yes. Because he liked so effortlessly to me, to my family, to my friends.

What really tied it together was probably Holly's testimony that Jeff can lie so effortlessly and why, why does Jeff do this? What is so wrong with him? Well, I can see how that doesn't look good,

but that's nowhere near proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a champion that people have arrested at this point. The defense is about to reveal a surprise of its own.

“This is a jury-indention to call any witnesses.”

What if everything he learned in history class was only half the story? I'm Dr. Hoony, bought host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets mysterious. Vantage civilizations,

doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. On Hidden History, I treat these moments like open case files. Not miss, not superstition, just incomplete explanations, waiting for closer look.

Listen to and follow Hidden History available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a tough day, it's a tough time to go through. OK, thanks. You may all be seated.

Court turns to the defense. Is it your intention to call any witnesses? Yeah, at this point, it detents rest. James Champion shocks the courtroom, declining to call any witnesses.

Why didn't you call any witnesses? We really felt that they hadn't proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt. They hadn't satisfied their burden of proof. They had a case that laid an egg. They had a case that ran out of there.

That ran out of energy, that ran out of gas. Champion is sure the esteemed Mr. Screensky isn't going to win this one. Bernie is praying, he's right. He's guilty, but he's in general. I have to believe that the system's going to work

and that Jeffrey Behome. This is what's going to happen. Bernie hasn't been able to touch or hug his son. In more than a year. What do you miss most?

Miss my family. He's allowed only one visit a week to Jeffrey. I feel like the government literally came in and stole my son.

Bernie says he's never felt so powerless,

but believes he has the truth on his side. Did you ever flat out ask him if he killed Ruth? He and I had the conversation, if you will. The conversation? The conversation?

Meaning what? I remember it very well. I said, Jeffrey, I don't know what's going on here, but they're really looking hard at you. And I need to know.

Did something happen here? Did mom lose it? I said it would actually be easier to defend you for self-defense than it would be for anything else. I need to know, did something happen here.

And he looked at me and said, Dad, I could never.

He says, I could never hurt anyone. But a little mom, I loved her.

I knew right then. They can jump in the jury tomorrow. And now it's up to champion to convince the jury in his closing argument. Look, if Jeffrey was responsible for this,

there would be proof. At least some blood on his clothes, under his fingernails, or in the house, says champion. There was no evidence that anybody cleaned up in that house. They checked Jeffrey's car.

There's no blood in the car, whoever did this was covered with blood. There's no way Jeffrey could have cleaned up. Not transferred anything. That to me, alone, should clear him.

There's no facts there. That's a hunch, that's a theory, that's an argument. That's a guess. If Jeffrey had done this, he wouldn't have come back with his hands. I'll bandage it up.

Look at who Jeffrey is. Compassionate, sensitive, trustworthy. Not according to his ex-girlfriend, Holly. Remember, she testified that Jeffrey cheated on her. He just liked so effortlessly

to me, to my family, to my friends.

Bernie says he's never known his son to be a liar.

Basically, it's character assassination, if you will, to portray him as a liar, and somebody that he's not. You think that Holly was just an angry ex? Yeah. No doubt in my mind.

Everybody lies. That's a fact, and especially when it comes to kids and dating.

“But I think what she was saying was going to his demeanor.”

That whole idea that he, with a very straight face, he could lie. I think anybody can. That doesn't make him guilty of murdering his mother. In fact, on cross, champion got Holly to admit, Jeffrey was anything but violent.

Did you ever see him hit anybody? No. In fact, you hit him a couple times, didn't you? A couple times.

He never hit you, did he?

No. Jeff. But what about Jeffrey's demeanor on that interrogation tape? She, you have no idea how you're mowed either. A red flag for the detectives.

You're mowed with murder. Don't you think it just plain looked bad in the police interview that he showed no emotion? I would have preferred that he showed more emotion, but, you know, we can impose our standard of how somebody ought to react to grief or tragedy or, you know, some traumatic event.

This was a rush to judgment. And a young man's painful, right? Here's a boy who's never had any type. Never had been in any fights. Never had any type of violence.

At all.

In fact, even video games, and so this is going to be his first exposure to violence.

Do you really think so? Could he have just lost it? I don't believe so. That explanation would make it real easy for the police, but I don't believe so. No.

“And that brings us to the big question, if Jeffrey didn't kill Ruth, who did?”

I don't know who killed Ruth. Anybody could have done it. But I know the person that did not do it, and that's Jeffrey. As the trial winds down, tensions rise on both sides, and it gets personal. Detective Glover and Bernie Pine get into an angry confrontation in the hallway.

At one point, he'd come right up to me, shaking his head and not stop. And actually said to me, "I can't believe what you're doing to my family. You realize what you've done to this family." The look I gave him, I'm sure, was not friendly. Because I was not happy with the way my son was treated.

I said, Bernie, I said, "Don't blame the police for this. We didn't cause this." At that time, he told me, "Don't look at me that way." And I thought about that for a moment, and then I looked at him and I said, "I'll look at you anyway I like." I feel horrible for Bernie.

But at the same point, it's hard to swallow what he's the personal attacks on me in the public. Good afternoon, coms. Ready to proceed? We're ready. At the 11th hour, shortly before the case goes to jury, Prosecutor Scrinzky makes a potentially game-changing motion.

He asks for another option. Second degree murder.

“You have to, I am requesting a lesser included offense of second degree murder.”

Champion argues vehemently against it. I'm concerned that the jury will compromise their verdict. Why argue against including a second degree murder charge? Because I'm scared that these jurors might actually split the baby, might compromise the verdict, and if there's an alternative they'll take it.

Judge Bowman grants the motion. The jury will now have the option of murder in the second degree. That was my greatest fear, and that was the prosecutor's greatest hope. The only thing that repeats and goes through my mind is,

Oh, look at here. Look at these.

“Oh, yeah. I want to do white watch like that.”

Do you? Yeah. Bernie Pine has been spending the holiday season trying to keep some sense of normalcy for his daughter, Julia. There's at least three different kind of candy canes in there. No, there's two.

Okay. There's two. Yep. You're right. As they both wait for a jury to decide, whether Julia's brother is coming home. I had to tell her that we're pretty sure that Jeffrey's coming home,

but that the system isn't perfect, and that there is a chance that maybe Jeffrey isn't coming home. It's sugar visibly. What'd she do when she say?

“I just can't think about that dad. It can't happen.”

Do you allow yourself to think about that? I really don't know. I can't imagine Julia not having her brother back, and I can't imagine not having my son back in home.

It's the third day of jury deliberations.

We're going to be right. I'm focusing on the positive right now. The jury has been ordered to return back to the court at 4 o'clock. I will then take the verdict in this case from the jury. Bernie, who's been waiting more than a year for Jeffrey to be cleared

in the murder of his mother. Now, due to the judge's crowded court docket, must wait four more hours before he can learn his son's fate. The agony of having to wait four hours to hear a verdict is just it's torture.

But he's hopeful it will end with an early Christmas present for Julia. She has a play tonight at Christmas play at 7 p.m. that she's playing the prelude for on the piano, and my hope and my prayers that I can take him to that play and he can see her play that prelude.

Mr. Pine Sir, I'm going to ask that you please stand. In the people of the state of Michigan versus Jeffrey Pine,

we the jury find the defendant guilty of second degree murder.

Second degree murder. The jury determined that Jeffrey killed his mother, but it was not premeditated. The verdict is you have just published. Jeffrey seemed stunned and Bernie distraught and disillusioned.

It wasn't there to protect my wife when I needed to be, and I wasn't able to get my son home for his sister for Christmas home. It's not been a good year, this is surprising. But for Jeffrey's aunt, the verdict was a relief and a vindication. This was a heinous crime.

Ruth Pine was a victim. Thank you. Still, she has sympathy for her nephew. I hold no grudge against Jeffrey. I just hope Jeff gets help.

The help that he needs to understand himself why he did this. Bernie had to break the news to his daughter. She was more upset than I actually ever seen her before. She said, "No. No. No. No it can't be."

Do you think if there was no option for second degree murder

that the jury would have acquitted Jeffrey? There's no doubt in my mind. James Champion has no doubts because he spoke with jurors immediately after the trial. The last question I asked them was, "If you hadn't had the second degree instruction, would you have acquitted him?" They said yes.

“I believe the jury got it wrong in this case, absolutely.”

Wrong or right, Jeffrey could be facing as much as life in prison with parole. At his sentencing in January 2013, Bernie returns to court to read a letter from his daughter. Good afternoon, here I am. A letter about Jeffrey.

My brother Jeffrey and I are very close and I miss him very much. He is a great, great, big brother and I ask you to send him home very soon

I am a victim of this crime. I miss my wife Ruth very much

“and I'm doing the best I can to raise my daughter as a single parent.”

Nobody knows who killed my wife. I am sure that my son had nothing to do with this, but must try to live with the verdict. I would ask for leniency in his sentencing so that what is left of our family to be put back together.

After all this, the judge is ready with the sentence.

This court sentences the defendant to 20 years to 60 years with the Michigan Department of Corrections. You may take the defendant. The court stands in general. All right. I'm disheartened. I'm disgusted and I'm going to tell you something else.

It was a coward and a monster that did this to my wife and that's not my son. He could never harm him.

“Could it be that it's just too painful for you to think that your son did this to his mother?”

I don't think so. In fact, if I thought my son had anything to do with this, we would need courts and we wouldn't need attorneys and everything else. I'd have marched him into the police department and we'd have taken care of this. What if somewhere down the line, somehow it's proven to you that he did do this? Would you forgive him?

I would forgive him. But that would be tough.

“Me and my partner are both fathers and could never imagine what he's going through.”

There are mixed emotions for everyone in a case that leaves no victors just heartbreak. When the guilty verdict came back, I was happy of the verdict, but at the same point, couldn't help but feel bad for Bernie and that family.

Ultimately, nobody was really going to win in this case and it's a tragedy.

Julie and I are very close and we're going to move on. We're going to take this one day at a time. And I've promised her that I will do everything I can to bring her brother back to her. From the trusted team behind 48 hours, welcome to Case by Case. You're weekly update on the biggest true crime stories unfolding right now.

Nick Ryder remains in custody without bail. Luigi Mangione accused of stalking and gunning down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. From high profile trials and stunning evidence to major breaks in cold cases, we'll follow it all, Case by Case. Follow and listen to 48 hours Case by Case wherever you get your podcasts.