Jennifer Faith

In the suburbs of Dallas, a husband and wife

become victims of an ambush. She hears gunshots.

“And then I'll be so dark eyes and coming toward me.”

Make shot her husband three times in a hit, three times in the chest area, in one time in the groin. Detectives, I'll like that might be somebody trying to send a message. The suspects include a company full of disgruntled employees.

It was during the pandemic. And a lot of people had to be laid off. I hope that nobody would have taken that personal. But after a murder for higher plot comes to light, investigators uncover a chilling story

of lies, manipulation, and greed. She was giving him money. She was allowing him to use her credit cards. He was more susceptible to be dudes. He truly believed that she was a victim of this abuse.

We were able to retrieve the cell phone, and what it reveals are tens of thousands of text messages and emails. But began to paint a picture of truly an evil person.

“How could you talk to somebody that killed the woman?”

I didn't know if you killed my husband. I still don't know that he killed my husband. The O-Clyph area of Dallas, Texas, is a close-knit community with a burgeoning art scene. It's a very old part of Dallas.

There's a lot of old historical homes built in the late 1800s. And the mornings in O-Clyph, you'll see big families walk into school together and kids on their bikes. But on the morning of October 9, 2020,

the neighborhood bears witness to a shocking act of violence. Around 7.30am, NAM1-1 calls started coming in to the Dallas Police Department regarding shooting. They heard several gunshots and a woman screaming at the top of her lungs.

When the first patrol officer arrived,

“he saw a hysterical crying woman, a body laying in the street,”

covered in blood. The female victim, if you feed from the male victim, who would die that tip around her hands. First responders try to administer aid, but the man's wounds are too severe.

He's pronounced dead at the scene. They began asking questions and learned that the female victim her name was Jennifer Faith. She identified the victim as her husband James Faith. Jennifer Faith tells the officers

that she had gone on a walk with her husband with the dog. They go a few steps and then she hears gunshots. She turns around and she sees the assailant. She let go of the dog, the dog round down the street. She said it looked like he was going to shoot her,

but maybe the gun jam. He pushed her to the ground, attempted to duct tape her arms together. He reached over and took a ring off James's finger. You got neighbors coming out, dogs are barking.

There's all this chaos going on. [MUSIC PLAYING] Jennifer Faith's neighborhood. They were all in a panic and terrified because it seemed like this, you know,

masked gunmen had come and commit this random murder in their neighborhood.

When I first arrived, I observed Mr. Faith.

He was lying in the street. Her men had covered him up to protect the scene from a public view. He had multiple gunshot wounds. It's his body.

They started collecting evidence and they found eight shells from a 45 caliber weapon.

Jennifer Faith does tell the detective

that the suspect to approach them had on a blue mask average height, but nothing particularly identifiable. Unable to learn more about the attacker from Jennifer, detectives turned to nearby neighbors. The neighbors were also on edge,

so they wanted to have a police presence in and around that neighborhood. They didn't know what was happening. Everyone was very confused, very scared, very concerned for the woman who had just been through this horribly traumatic event.

James Faith Jr. was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1971. If I had to describe Jamie to somebody, I would say he's a genuinely nice and caring individual. He's got a witty and kind of a dry sense of humor, very intelligent. In 1995, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin

and Whitewater with a bachelor's in computer science. After college, Jamie landed a job as a web engineer

“for an important export firm in Phoenix, Arizona.”

A few years later, he accepted a job with US airways as a senior manager. James was really good at what he did, that's a huge reason why he was promoted and moved up with a new organization. He was pretty much a bachelor who was committed to his career.

Jamie's always been the person I said, I'm never going to get married.

If you just didn't want to have the responsibility of being married or having a kid. But in 2005, Jamie's friends set him up with a young woman named Jennifer. Jennifer and Jamie met on a blind date. They were introduced to each other through the mutual friends. They were both very intelligent people.

“I think that they had a lot in common there.”

In 1997, Jennifer was married. She was going to school. She received her master's in speech pathology in 1997. And that same year, she gave birth to her daughter, Amber. Jennifer moved in 1998 to Tucson, Arizona.

Where she and her first husband part ways.

Amber's biological father wanted to be involved and I've seen him give effort to see Amber. Jennifer remarried in 1999, but when that relationship also ended in divorce, she decided to focus on her career and raising her two-year-old daughter. She spent the years between 2012 and 2018. Working as a director of rehabilitation services at a inpatient hospital.

During that time, James met Jennifer. The couple quickly moved in together and Jamie embraced his new role as a father to Amber. Jamie was really, really good as a stepfather. He treated Amber as a shoeer his own. He did everything for her.

He gave her emotional, financial, physical support. They were a very tight-knit close family. After seven years together, a trip to Las Vegas brought on a moment of romantic spontaneity. I remember somebody telling them, "Hey, we're in Vegas. You guys should get married." They kind of just looked at each other and then Jamie says, "Okay, yeah, let's do it."

They got married that night. There were a few more changes in store as well. When Jennifer's daughter turned 18, she asked Jamie to legally adopt her. The following year, in 2017, he was offered a promotion with the airline. His new job obviously gave more responsibilities, more employees that he had to manage and most of

them were in Dallas. He was spending five days a week there and two days a week here when he was living in Phoenix.

“So I think he was kind of getting tired of traveling as much.”

It just made sense for him to make that move. For the faiths, adjustment to life in Dallas seemed effortless.

Everyone that had been in that household said that it was just a house that was

“yum and inviting and people could feel the love.”

It was a safe household, all the things that a lot of parents do for their kids. He has done forever. Jennifer and Jamie, they both seem, you know, happy, excited. After three years in their new home, the neighborhood is in shock after a gunman killed Jamie in broad daylight.

It may have been the robbery gun wrong. He took Jamie face wedding ring.

It was 7.30 in the morning. They were in T-shirts and shorts and walking their dog.

“And to do it in such a vicious manner, none of that added up to just a robbery.”

Some of the neighbors caught a glimpse of the shooter. One even managed to record him fleeing the scene in a pickup truck. There was no license plate that we could view. And the one thing that stood out about this vehicle

was that it had the white decal on the rear windshield.

They had a T emblem on the back window. We believed it to be a Texas Ranger Stitterman from Texas. Detectives were on the lookout for a black Nissan Titan. They did have people driving around and

“looking. Ocliffe is right next to a major freeway. I-30. That was going to be difficult.”

Coming up, home security cameras provide a disturbing glimpse of the murder. And a lie unveils a possible suspect. He does come across a text describing an emotional affair. Our shot. Now I've learned that you've lied to me. Dallas Police are investigating the death of 49-year-old Jamie Faith, who was gunned down by an unknown assailant outside his home.

We were able to recover eight or four of our calmer cases. We had no information on the license plate of the truck. At the time, we were still trying to figure out who would do such a thing to go to shoot the victim seven times right in front of his wife. As detectives process the crime scene, they make a new discovery. The face, how they bring camera on their door, the cameras saw them leaving the home.

But then they're quickly off camera. Although the shooting wasn't caught on tape, a neighbor's camera partially captured the terrifying moment. We reviewed the video. It actually captured the audio of the shooting. With little to go on, investigators turn back to Jennifer, hoping she can provide more details. I want to interview Mrs. Faith at Dallas Police headquarters while I have a 101-in-Counter

with her. We were both wearing masks because it was COVID, but she was a crying, very emotional. I'll continue to ask her what happened. I'll be so embarrassed. I'll be so embarrassed. I'll be so embarrassed. I'll be so embarrassed. But Jennifer says Jamie might have had enemies among his former employees. She brought up the fact that he was a supervisor at his job in American Airlines and it was

during the pandemic and a lot of people had to be laid off at that time.

I would hope that nobody would have taken that personal. But given the time that we were living

“and right during COVID, almost anything was possible as far as people's mental health.”

She was able to give me consent to do a full extraction on her cell phone. She was very cooperative. While they weighed on the data, investigators began looking into the possibility of a disgruntled employee. I went up to his job, the American Airlines Corporation. They told me that Jamie had laid off approximately 18 to 20 individuals, so I did a subpoena for the employee records. As they sort through the potential suspects, the autopsy report comes in and reveals a

possible reason why Jamie was shot. He was shot three times in the head, three times in the chest area,

and also one time in the groin. So a total of seven shots that he sustained.

“Detectives felt like that might be somebody trying to send a message. They number of shots”

and especially that shot took the groin, indicated something more personal. Through the media, Jennifer makes an impassioned plea to the public for help. It's been horrible. Devastating it, I teeter between completely heartbreaking and completely devastated every day. It's been awful. Oh my god, if you know what happened, I need, I need that for closer. I need to make some sense out of this.

Investigators receive an analysis of Jennifer's phone, revealing her marriage to Jamie wasn't as perfect as she claimed. One of the other detectives was methodically going through the phone. And he does come across a text between Jennifer Faith and a friend of hers, named Tina Spring, where Jennifer Faith around April of 2020 is describing an emotional affair. The text goes back and forth between Xi and Tina, and she describes him as a guy she knew

back in high school that reconnected with her, it's retired from the military, now lives in Tennessee, and the first name is Darren. In her texts, Jennifer confessed she'd started talking to Darren in March of 2020, and they continued speaking for months.

Although they'd never met in person, she said their relationship had become romantic,

but the online affair was short-lived. She informed Tina that she was going to have to

“contact with Darren because of Jamie. I believe Jamie had found out, and it was on those situations”

where he was uncomfortable or sad about the situation. Jennifer deleted the messages with Darren from her phone, but detectives know that doesn't necessarily mean he went away. I was shocked. Jennifer had already explained to me that there were relationships good, that there was no one else, and nowhere that she ever mentioned Darren's name. Now I've learned that you've lied to me. My head at this time now, I wanted to continue to

read through those stories to find out everything that I could about Darren. We were able to check different databases on where we were able to find out who Darren was, and I learned a lot about him. I learned about his relationship. I learned about his home. Through when I did a batch check, we learned he did pay the blackness on time truck. After learning about Jennifer Faith's affair, investigators use her phone contacts to

find the man in question. He turns out to be 48-year-old Darren Ruben Lopez. Darren Lopez was Jennifer's high school boyfriend. There's pictures of them being at prom together. They were very serious about each other. They thought they were going to marry each other. After graduating in 1990, Jennifer and Darren went their separate ways. Jennifer attended college while Darren joined the U.S. Army going on to serve in the special forces.

Darren Lopez was a decorated U.S. Army soldier. Darren had six combat deployments to Iraq

While serving in Iraq in 2005, Darren was caught in a roadside bombing.

“19 members of his unit were killed, but Darren survived with a traumatic brain injury.”

He was diagnosed with PTSD. He was discharged with a hundred percent medical disability. We knew that Darren was divorced that his ex-wife lived out of state, but that Darren had two teenage daughters that resided with him. So when Darren comes back, he's depressed, disabled, hopeless, helpless somewhat. One day he got the energy and the urge to

reach out to find Jennifer and see what she was doing in life. Darren Lopez locates Jennifer

fate online via LinkedIn. And they very quickly then exchange email addresses and start communicating via email. Investigators find Darren's current address in Comberland furnace, Tennessee,

“650 miles away from Jennifer and Jamie's home. We then contacted one of the local agencies who did a”

drive by of his residents. Detectives need to know if Darren's truck has the same T decal as the vehicle witnessed at the crime scene. The property was about 20 to 30 acres and it was so far away

from the roadway that you really couldn't get a view of around the house. So at that point, I reached out

to the ATF and they were able to get aerial surveillance of Darren Lopez's property. In the aerial surveillance, we found a black Nissan Titan pickup truck and we could see the T sticker on the back rear glass. Initially, because the crime occurred in Dallas, Texas, we believed that that might have been a sticker depicting the Texas Rangers baseball team. It turns out that in fact it was a Tennessee volunteers sticker. So we now know that that in fact is Darren Lopez is

vehicle. And that is the same vehicle that is depicted leaving the scene of the homicide here in Dallas. It's enough for Dallas police to obtain a warrant for Darren's phone records. That kind of information doesn't give the actual content of their messages, but it does show the number of messages that they were sending back and forth. It was an overwhelming amount of communication between the two of them. They were going back and forth.

“I think on average 500 times a day. What was obtained from Darren Lopez's phone did not exist”

on Jennifer Faith's phone, so it clearly suggested that she had deleted certain things. It's confirmation of a relationship, but not proof of murder. So now the biggest thing is to place them in Dallas. We began writing search warrants with Google trying to find his jail location of his cell phone. Once we were able to get the information back, we were able to plot and put on a map. On October 8th, he does leave

Comberland Furnace Tennessee and drives straight through except for gas station stops to Dallas, Texas, which puts him in Dallas, Texas about 2.30 in the morning. He's back in Comberland Furnace Tennessee late in the day on October 9th. The timeline gives Darren plenty of opportunity to shoot Jamie that morning and return home. Investigators immediately placed Darren under surveillance.

We were able to covertly place cameras in and around Darren's residents on one particular day that Cameron did depict Darren leaving his property. Detectives realized Darren has removed the Tennessee volunteers decal from his pickup truck. We were a little concerned that Darren might be tipped off. And so at that point in time, we knew that we need to get Mr. Lopez in custody as quickly as possible. On January 11th, 2021, they make their move.

There was a high risk for a violent encounter. You know, he was very familiar with weapons based

The special response team had observed a vehicle leave Darren Lopez's property occupied by

two individuals. Mr. Lopez was the passenger in a silver sedan that was being driven by his daughter. They actually engaged his vehicle weapons drawn and they gave very clear verbal orders, you know, step away from the vehicle with your hands up and he comply with everything. We conducted a search of the silver sedan and we located a backpack. There was two credit cards found in the backpack in Jennifer Fave's name. Further search of the backpack, we found a blue mask.

We smashed the shooter at our crime scene. Investigators find even more incriminating evidence in Darren's home. One of the agents that was searching in upstairs room in Darren's house, located a tan rucksack inside that rucksack. She located a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, which was the same caliber of weapon that was used to murder Mr. Fave. On the upper slide, we noticed a very small smear of what appeared to be blood.

“So this was a crucial fight. At that point in time, the primary objective is to get that fire arm”

to the DNA lab so that we can conduct forensic testing.

Coming up, Darren denies everything. I never thought we crossed like, you know, a threat or

worry, you're probably it. But recovered messages from his phone reveal a potential motive. They established that she was buying gifts for him. Three months after the murder of Jamie Fave, investigators have a suspect in custody. Former Green Bore, Darren Lopez. He's been a lot of time talking to me about Jennifer and how important she was to him. Darren believed very strongly that Jennifer was his soulmate.

And dressed up again in the center of the night, she said, "Go now." And so, we started making that work again. Yeah, she confessed to me, and I had gotten a lot of fans.

We were out of the back, told me it was married, so I mean, we never breached.

You know, I never thought we crossed like, you know, a threat or a worry, I never been down there. So I was like, I had never had any physical contact. Although Darren is an open book about his love for Jennifer, he denies any involvement in her husband's death. He gave me an alibi that he was out hunting with some of his military buddies, so I began pressing him and calling him out of some inconsistencies in his story.

The people had a seal in the back of it. It doesn't have one on it today. When it did have one on it, yeah, at the time of the office, he started tearing off. He asked for an attorney. Hoping to determine whether Darren was acting alone, Dallas police conduct another interview with Jennifer the same day.

“I appreciate you going to come down here. Have you ever heard of the name Darren?”

Darren, but yes, he is one of my best friends. We did it in high school, but he doesn't know Jamie. Tell me a little about Darren. Okay, and let's see, I lost contact with him at 93, we broke up. I know that there's more to you with Darren's relationship. I don't know what more you're talking about. It's the same guy that killed your husband, Jennifer.

It's the same guy that you can communicate with every day. Yeah, I don't want to go in class, take some of your calls. Tell him what class it is. I don't work here's retired. We talked throughout the day. I know that they're killed, you're hurt.

“How could you talk to somebody that killed your husband?”

I didn't know he killed my husband. I still don't know that he killed my husband. I wouldn't do that.

And that's the question by how for you? If you were so in love with Darren,

“it's not the guy. I wasn't. Just tell him how this happened.”

I was in love with my husband. I'm telling you the truth. She asked for an attorney, and that interview was terminated. Since there's insufficient evidence to prove Jennifer was involved, they're forced to let her go. The case against Darren, however, continues to grow stronger. We conducted a test comparing the ballistics from the spiral arm to evidence found in the scene

and in match. We also took swabs of the blood that were found on the weapon.

Those swabs were sent to our forensic lab and compared to blood samples from Jamie, and it also was a match. If he came very clear that this was in fact the murder weapon.

“The question is whether Darren acted alone or if he was manipulated by Jennifer?”

During our evidence collection, we were able to retrieve Darren Lopez's cell phone. What it reveals are tens of thousands of text messages and emails between Darren Lopez and Jennifer Faith. The recovered messages reveal a much closer relationship than the one Jennifer described. They started talking and texting incessantly, but importantly,

first day he was saying, "I love you." She responded wanting to rekindle a relationship

his world had been special ops green berets. Now it was Jennifer. Within a few days, they're talking about a five-year plan to be together. There's no record of the two discussing a plan to murder Jamie,

“but there are several texts indicating Jennifer helped cover it up.”

She says she had a very bad feeling, so she asked him to take the bumper sticker off and she pressed him very hard to get him to take it off. We knew that the decal was removed, but now it was significant because it wasn't Darren that took it off. It was Jennifer that urged him to. Jennifer was given direction and Darren was following orders just like he did in a military. And Jennifer was the one taking charge taking control of the situation.

Another incriminating exchange took place just before Darren's arrest. She instructs him that if he's ever questioned by police to advise him that he's going through divorce, he is in financial straits, and that they are just old friends from high school, and that she's helping him out. It was clear that Jennifer faith wanted to make sure that they had the same story. Detectives believe it's also likely Jennifer's texts about the

breakup were merely a smoke screen. Jennifer faith started laying the foundation to cover for Darren when she texts Tina, you know that she had ended the emotional affair with Darren Lopez, which we know isn't true. In February of 2021, we were able to charge Jennifer with obstruction and tamper with evidence. Investigators execute a search warrant for Jennifer's computer and financial information. They find a life insurance policy for Jamie in the amount of

$600,000. She's trying to collect financially from the death of Jamie Faith. She has found out from the life insurance agency that they were not at this point going to release the money to her because there was a criminal investigation going on, and she had not been completely ruled out as a suspect. Even though she couldn't collect, bank record show Jennifer was spending an alarming amount of money. They had found two credit cards with Jennifer Faith's name on them and she had given

those cards to Darren. They also established that she was buying gifts for Darren. She sent him a television. She was sending money and looking into her bank account detectives were able to start determining where this money was coming from. Shortly after Jamie was murdered,

family. Jennifer used to go fund me money to pay off any balances that she had on the two credit

“cards that she sent to Darren Lopez. Based on this evidence, the charges against Jennifer are”

increased. She was already arrested for obstruction, so they up the charge to murder for higher. The fact that she was giving Darren money, the fact that she was allowing Darren to use her credit cards, that there was obviously a element of remoration here in what we believe was her attempts to convince him to kill her husband.

After a three-month investigation, Jennifer Faith and Darren Lopez have both been charged with

the murder of Jamie Faith. It appears Jennifer's motive was money, but Darren's went much deeper.

“During the forensic examination, we really began to see her attempt to manipulate Darren Lopez.”

Jennifer had created false email accounts, one being in the name of James Faith. The forensic examiners could tell us and show us exactly when and where those fictitious email accounts were created by Jennifer on her computer.

They were able to determine that they had been created at her IP address.

Jennifer used those email accounts to communicate with Darren, reporting to be Jamie Faith. It is generally Jamie Faith saying to leave his wife alone, to stay out of their relationship, and then it turns to become that he is abusing, Jennifer Faith, and it turns to that he is sexually abusing her, then it turns to he is gangraping her to get more and more violent as these emails go through. There were photos of injuries

that Jennifer is shared with Darren. There were burns to her arm, there were cuts on her neck, and we found out those photos were from a car accident earlier, about eight years prior to our sending those emails. Darren due to his psychological problems and his PTSD was more susceptible than the average person to be doomed and to believe these fabricated stories of abuse. So it began to paint a picture of truly an evil person who was playing on Mr. Lopez's

hard strings. When investigators share the truth of Jennifer's manipulation with Darren,

“he confesses of his own volition. I think it's fair to say that he was shocked,”

he truly believed that she was a victim of this physical and of this sexual abuse. He came said a realization that he killed an innocent man. He described the crime, you know, very matter of factly, much as if he were describing a military mission. Given his background, that's not unusual. So Darren spends the night in that backyard, just waiting the same thing that he learned to do when

he was in combat. At 7.30 a.m., when Jennifer and James and their dog exited their home, he came out from the yard ran up to Jennifer and James and he shot James in the head, the torso, chest and and the groin. Darren admitted that he had shot Jamie Faith in the groin sort of as retaliation, if you will, for the alleged sexual abuse.

Then he pushed Jennifer to the ground. He had the duct tape that he sort of half-heartedly

he took Jamie's wedding band to make it look like it was a robbery they went wrong.

“He jumped into his black car and fled the way that he had planned in advance.”

And somewhere in the middle of Arkansas, he took that ring and tossed it into the river.

Remarkably, they had not been physically, in each other's presence, this whole period of time,

not until the moment of the murder.

“She had to have known that she had gone to trial. Most assuredly, Miss Lopez would have been”

called as a witness to refute any testimony that she would have been given. Jennifer Faith was facing the death penalty and so the defense was presented with the option of a plea where she would confess in exchange for a lighter sentence. Jennifer accepts the state's plea deal and on June 21st, 2022, she is sentenced to life imprisonment. The following year, Darren is found guilty of murder and receives a 62-year sentence.

But for investigators, some mysteries still linger.

Why did Jennifer snap? That question was always remained with me until Jennifer tells why she snapped.

How does somebody wake up in the morning knowing that that's the morning that you have decided

“that somebody that you are supposed to have loved for their life to end?”

I want him to be depicted as a person that he was and not, not the narrative that Jennifer tried to create, but she'll have plenty of time to think about how she could handle things differently. She can have plenty of time to reflect. [Music]