48 Hours - Eliminating the Threat?

Episode Date: August 21, 2016

An elite FBI agent shoots his estranged wife after he says she came after him with a knife.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The Bureau is the premier law enforcement and national security agency in the world. The FBI is a very select organization. For you to become a member, you're a cut above. Arthur Gonzalez is a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As FBI agents, you have to instinctively be able to know what to do when that sense of danger is upon you. 911, what city? Hey, can you get an ambulance and a cop, a deputy over? I'd received a call from my supervisor.

He advised me that there was a shooting. She just attacked me with a knife and I had to shoot her. Said there was an FBI agent involved. Where is the gun? It's on my holster. I'm an FBI agent. When she attacked you with a knife first? Yeah. I've already got help on the way. Fire, please, then rescue. I know you're getting sick, but can you start CPR for me again?

Yes. Arthur and Julie Gonzales were living in separate homes. I know you're getting sick, but can you start CPR for me again? Yes. Arthur and Julie Gonzalez were living in separate homes. They were in the process of going through a divorce. R. Gonzalez said he had come home. He had found his wife inside their marital home, which she was not living in at the time. I knew her for so many years, and I never knew her to be confrontational. He said she attacked him with a knife.

She never, ever, ever would have gone at anybody in anger like that. That just, it's not her. He thought Julie Gonzalez was a threat enough to him that he shot her four times. All right, sir, we'll take care of that in a second. So when they enter the house, the knife is still in her hand. It's in her hand. Julie would not harm anybody, anything, or anyone, period. Never.

Never. He's trying to be a victim. He's trying to get sympathy. Everything he does is calculated. What? What do you want me to say? Arthur Gonzales had a girlfriend at the time. We find out later she was an employee with the FBI. Art was completely head over heels in love with this woman. This was not an issue of a relationship situation. It's a case of self-defense.

We're federal agents. We don't shoot to kill. We shoot to eliminate a threat. This is the mother of his children. That's right. Eliminating a threat that the mother of his children is trying to kill him. I'm Susan Spencer. Tonight on 48 Hours, eliminating the threat. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of them.

I'm journalist Luke Jones Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific Island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free on Wondery Plus and the Wondery app. My wife just attacked me with her iPhone and had to shoot her. Soon after Art Gonzalez's frantic 911 call,

reporting that he'd shot his estranged wife, Julie, Stafford, Virginia police were sizing him up. By the time I got there, I had already heard that he was an FBI agent. I knew going into this that he would be well aware of what his rights would be. All right, Mr. Gonzalez. To Detective Todd Nozal's relief, Art was willing to talk, and without a lawyer. Why don't you tell me what happened today? He said he'd taken the day off, had lunch with a friend, and gone home.

To his shock, Julie was there. So I got there, I'm completely surprised that she was there. I'm like, what the f*** is she doing here? Julie said she'd come to pick up some clothes. She'd moved out six months earlier after Art filed for divorce. And she'd willingly given him custody of the kids for now. But the couple was still in contentious negotiations and things were moving very slowly. And I said, we need to talk about what's going on with the divorce since you're here. Essentially, it's over. We need to complete this process. He basically says,

I don't love you anymore. They're standing in the kitchen, and then she launches a knife attack. That is a mean-looking knife. It's intimidating. She attacked me, or she came at me. I put up my arm. She came back at me again. He said he just reacted. I just reacted and opened my open fire on that shot. That's really the extent of what happened.

And is there anything that makes you say, wait a minute? Uh, no, no. It's a perfectly plausible explanation. Right. A strange wife in the home, knife in the wife's hands. Yeah, on face value, it could possibly be that. He seemed upset when I told him that Julie Gonzalez was dead. I got some bad news. She's dead.

He sobbed. With four bullets pumped into her chest from Art's FBI-issued gun, Julie never had a chance. Her parents, Ray and Marietta Cerna, were both heartbroken and bewildered. I couldn't comprehend. Why would he do that? They weren't even living together. She picked up a knife and lunged for him, came at it. Why is that impossible? Because that wasn't her character. That's not who she was. Julie was a gentle lady that wouldn't even hurt a fly. The Cernas remember the little girl who grew up in Socorro, New Mexico,

who got along with everyone, always active and confident. She would tackle anything in the world, and she'd be successful at it. She could do anything. She was in her high school's homecoming court, attended college in northern New Mexico, and in 1995, married her college sweetheart, Art Gonzalez, who later joined the FBI as a field agent in California. He became one of the family. We saw him as almost a son. Art next became an FBI agent in Texas, before rising to supervisor in the Las Cruces, New Mexico field office in 2005. The couple had two boys, and then in 2010, they moved to Stafford, Virginia, after Art received a promotion to teach ethics at the FBI Academy. Obviously, people saw something

extra in him. Absolutely. His supervisor, Doug Merrill, became a close friend, as did Doug's wife, Jen. A person comes into the Bureau to serve the public. I saw he had the same motivation, dedication, compassion, and abilities that I had. And Art was one of the good ones. Meanwhile, Julie had taken a job as a teller at a local bank. The Merrills both had reservations about her. Julie was troubled. Was that apparent to you from the first time you met her? Yes.

In what way? She had some substance abuse, and you could tell. Doug says the shooting was tragic for everyone involved. My first thoughts were, my goodness, this is the worst thing that I've ever could encounter for a friend and their family. Yet he insists Art did exactly what the FBI trained him to do. Four bullets was not excessive. In fact, it was restrictive. Agents are trained to shoot more bullets and then assess the situation. So you think if you had been in the same situation, you would have done the same thing? Yeah, I believe if someone was trying to kill me.

Not someone. Jennifer. If my wife was trying to kill me and I could not do anything else and I had to use deadly force, I would have had to and I'd have to live with that the rest of my life. When R. Gonzalez explained why he shot Julie, he was succinct, both on the 911 call. She just attacked me with a knife and I had to the 911 call and with Detective Nozal. It was a very limited story without a lot of detail, the way he told it. He was far more expansive when it came to Julie's problems. Four years ago, it was nightmarish. You know, she started drinking. He really bashed Julie Gonzalez in that interview room.

It was all negative about Julie. Especially her drinking. I'd come home, I'd have to make dinner, she'd be passed out on the couch. Is it beer, wine, liquor? All of the above? Everything. Vodka. While Art Gonzalez was talking, the police were searching his house. We had an incident where there were two people in the home. One of them's dead, and I'm getting one side of the story. What they found convinced the detective there might be more to this story than what Gonzalez was was letting on. They found ladies panties in the master bedroom. It's a friend of mine who's been staying over every once in a while. And a much more complicated explanation of how Julie Gonzales died.

You think she didn't have the knife. You think she didn't attack him. You basically think this whole thing is made up. Yes. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with

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on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad free right now. Before FBI agent Art Gonzalez took his prestigious teaching job in Virginia, he and Julie lived a quiet life in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The couple's two young sons kept Julie busy at home, except for a few months each fall when she'd help out at a local Halloween store. She was beautiful and charismatic. I mean, people just loved her. Her boss, Kim Scott, and co-worker, Leah Lucero. Her loyalty was incredible. I knew when I wasn't there, she had my back. We talked about everything. We talked

about our kids. We talked about our marriages, our family. She loved her boys. She was a great mother. But they were leery of Julie's husband. He just wasn't friendly. And they say he kept Julie on a very tight rein, even monitoring the hours she worked. He would call my cell phone repeatedly if he couldn't get a hold of her. Redial, redial, redial. And he would yell in the phone at me saying, you know, where is Julie? Why isn't she home? Interrogating me. And he would show up at the store often as many as four times a day.

I wondered, what does he do as an FBI agent? What is his job that he has so much time to hang out here? But what got her, Kim says, was Art's belittling of his own wife in front of their kids. We would hear him say things about her to the boys. Don't listen to your mother. She's stupid. He would tell them, your mom has no money. She's never going to amount to anything. R. Gonzalez refused our repeated requests for an on-camera interview so he could tell his own story.

Instead, he referred us to others to talk about his character. And indeed, they all agreed he was a devoted father saddled with a wife who was drinking so much she wasn't even taking care of her children. Her behavior was becoming a little bit more bizarre and strange, and they were concerned because that was their mother. I just saw her every time drinking too much. I never ever saw her drunk. I never saw her have more than one or two drinks at a time. I think anybody in her position would drink a lot more than she did. She was not an alcoholic. But Arden insists Julie had a drinking problem, a point made repeatedly during the police interview just hours after the shooting. She's absolutely volatile. When she's drinking, she's impossible. And he had photos to prove it. Scores of pictures taken on his cell phone to document just how bad her drinking had become.

But by that point, as evidenced in this video, the marriage was over. I'm asking you to please get down. I'm asking you not to leave me. Julie, that's not an option. I'm asking you to stay. Art says Julie was so unstable that she almost attacked him with a knife once before. She's cutting tomato with a knife. I mean, like she was about to come at me with a knife,

and she threw a tomato across the floor, or across the room. You said you got a picture of that? I got a picture of the tomato. Police searching his house were less interested in tomatoes than in what they found in Art's bedroom. Women's underwear and some mail. The name on the mail was Carecast. And all about the morality police, you know, like are you guys, you guys hooking up? We're good friends. Very good friends. Art captured this shot on his cell phone just a few days before he shot Julie

dead. You guys having sex and stuff like that? Okay. Okay. Caracast turns out to be an employee with the FBI. What did you find out about this relationship? It was probably the worst kept secret at the FBI academy. Ironically, Art was teaching that ethics class when their on-again, off-again affair had started, around the time Art filed for divorce. Nossal points to a rambling nine-page love letter found in Gonzalez's office. There's poems, there's quotes.

I probably wasn't off the academy grounds before it had been referred to as the manifesto. Art had even picked a name for their future daughter. It has things in there such as him talking about dreams, when they're together, what baby names they'll have if they have kids. There's a drawing of a love molecule. Almost 36 hours before the shooting, while snooping through her phone, Art found pictures of Kara with another man. At three o'clock in the morning, he had found pictures of Kara, provocative shots, and some of those pictures was an FBI agent based in Indianapolis. Arthur Gonzalez, being a guy who likes to be in control, has now found out that his 24-year-old girlfriend is seeing another agent.

That part of his life is borrowing out of control. What is the FBI policy on having an affair with a co-worker? The policy is very simple. Keep it out of the office. But his friend Doug Merrill insists the shooting of Julie Gonzalez had nothing to do with Art's obsession with CaraCast and everything to do with the knife Art says Julie had. So when Art says there was nothing I could do, I couldn't even say stop, she was trying to kill me. That's pretty self-evident.

Not to Teresa Smith, a neighbor who was with Julie about an hour before she died. I invited her over to the house and she picked up some Chinese food for us and came over. Teresa says she served not a drop of alcohol at lunch, and in fact, the autopsy found no trace of alcohol in Julie's system. Teresa also remembers her friend as upbeat that day. Saying the marriage was over and she was ready to move on, Julie had decided to spare the kids and not even fight for custody. She said, well, I'm just going to say this and then that's the end of it. And she said, I've decided that I'm not going to go

after the boys. I'll just wait until they're ready to come see me. She was sad, but kind of looking forward to the future. Not a picture of a distraught woman about to attack her ex-husband. Teresa just didn't believe Art's story for a minute. None of it makes sense. It sounds like something out of a textbook. He says it is out of a textbook. He says this is textbook training that he, it just kicked in. That's not the textbook I'm talking about. What are you talking about? I'm talking about the textbook that says, you know, this is how you investigate a murder.

This is how you set up the scene. The authorities agreed. Just three weeks after police marched him from the house where he shot his wife to death, Special Agent Arthur Gonzalez was arrested and charged with murder. The only evidence that Julie Gonzalez came at Art Gonzalez with a knife comes from Art Gonzalez. And now, Stafford County's Commonwealth Attorney Eric Olson is determined to prove murder in the court of law. This case, says Olson, was never about self-defense. Two worlds came together that day, and the result of those two worlds coming together was the death of Julie Gonzalez.

March 2014, one year after Art Gonzalez shot and killed his estranged wife, Julie, the 18-year FBI veteran found himself on trial for her murder. No cameras allowed in the courtroom. He used a firearm to defend against a knife and he shot four times. His attorney, Mark Gardner, knew from the start that a self-defense argument would be a tough sell. Many people's first reaction to it is, oh my God, you shot her four times. That's excessive. What did you have in your arsenal to counteract this? Physical evidence. Evidence like the pattern of the shots aren't fired into Julie's chest. The tight grouping of the shots is consistent with his training,

which is basically to fire until the threat is ended. She came at him suddenly, and he put up his hand to push her away. Suffered a superficial wound on his left forearm. She came back at him and he shot her. But prosecutor Kristen Bird was sure none of that ever happened. She says Gonzalez staged the whole scene from putting the knife in Julie's hand down to pretending to be sick when he called 911. The scene really didn't add up. There was no vomit anywhere, and I would have sworn after listening to that call that he had been throwing up all over the kitchen.

You want me to count with you? I can. Or if you want to count out loud, if it helps you. Art says he was only dry heaving. Try to keep doing CPR for me, okay? I know you're trying. As to his claim of doing CPR, Bird says if he did it, he was amazingly neat about it, considering that Julie had been shot four times. I would have expected more blood on the body. I would have expected blood on his hands. I would have expected blood on his clothes. We watched the cruiser video, watching him come out of the house. He looked pristine. He did not look like a man who had been doing CPR for 10 minutes on his wife. And then there is the question of the gun itself and where it was when Art had lunch that day with, as he first put it to detectives, a friend.

He and Kara have lunch. His whole life was KaraCast. Security camera video shows him with his girlfriend, and he was not wearing his holster. If he didn't have the gun on his hip, he didn't draw it from the holster and shoot Julie Gonzalez in response to some deadly threat. At what point does he put on his gun? I think he put on his gun after he shot her. He says he put his gun on when he got back from lunch and before he got into his car. Why?

Because he was trained to wear his gun normally. Why didn't he wear it to lunch? to wear his gun normally. Why didn't he wear it to lunch? He had taken it off, not intending to go to lunch, and then changed his mind and went to lunch and didn't put it on. At trial, Art testified that just before Julie came at him, she asked him a strange question.

Does Kara know the boys? So Art says... Art says yes. And that's the catalyst. I can't crawl inside her mind and say that I know that's what provoked her to lose control and attack him. But the sequence of events is that they had that very brief conversation and then she attacked him with a knife and he shot her. After eight days of testimony, the jury struggled through almost 26 hours of deliberation. It was one of the longest jury deliberations that I've been a part of.

You just agonize over it. I've never seen a jury work harder, but at the end of the day, we had a hung jury. A hung jury. A very lopsided hung jury. Ten votes to acquit and only two to convict. I think the witnesses who testified about use of force were pretty compelling. But the state would not let go. Ten months later, the Commonwealth of Virginia tried Art Gonzalez a second time with a new jury, but the same judge. Both sides presented many of the same arguments. Gonzalez testified again about Julie's drinking and her irresponsible behavior. Julie, please get down.

No. Yes. No. irresponsible behavior. Julie, please get down. No. Yes. No. And said again, when she came at him with that knife, he had no choice. We're not saying that she's an evil person, but we're saying that she's human. She lost control of herself for whatever reason. We are saying that. At the second trial, juror Mary McDonald questions whether Art was really wounded defending himself. The scratches on his arms definitely weren't very deep. As for Art's torrid affair with Kara Kast. It's obnoxious to date somebody super hot because women throw

themselves all over him. It's obnoxious. Kara did not testify at Art's trial. I sat there and thought to myself that, wow, why would you do that? Why would you be so open, especially when you're going through a divorce? I felt that he wasn't thinking clearly with his brain. It was definitely the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. Mary was inclined to believe Julie had drinking problems, but she knew there was no alcohol in Julie's system the day she died. She was trying to get her life back. She was actually trying to do what was right for herself and get better. Her fellow juror, Paul Brastrom, wondered who better to cover up a crime than an FBI agent.

If there was anybody that could try and pull something like this off, he's a guy that would have all the answers. This is what he does for a living. So if anybody would know how to stage a crime scene, you thought a well-trained FBI agent would. Right, that was in our thought process. Right, that was in our thought process. But unlike the first jury, this one heard some startling new evidence from an expert who testified that one of the bullets that hit Julie was stopped by a hard, flat surface, meaning she was on the floor when it was fired. She wasn't up against a wall.

The only possible explanation is she was on the floor when that shot was delivered to her. What you're describing then is more like an execution. I'm saying that she was shot on the floor. To say that undermined Art's story is an understatement. That certainly created a completely different issue that we had to deal with. That was huge. Yes, it was huge. Yes, it was huge.

It is also a huge leap in logic, says Gardner, who produced his own expert to testify that the bullet could have been stopped by something as simple as Julie's bra. We know that there was an altercation there, and we have a knife in Julie's hand, but with four gunshots in there. The challenge for the second jury is the same as the first. Determine both the how of Julie Gonzalez's death and the why. We're starting to see this darker side of this otherwise stunning special agent. Faced with the mountain of confusing and contradictory evidence in the second Gonzalez murder trial, the jury again struggles to figure out what it all means.

I couldn't come to a conclusion as to whether she was on the floor or not. After just one day, worried prosecutors make a major concession. Withdrawing the murder charge. Giving the jury the option of voting for manslaughter. We were hoping that they were stuck between murder and manslaughter. And that if we took murder off the table, it would signal to those dug in for murder that we just wanted the conviction at this point.

It doesn't work. The jurors stay stuck. And that afternoon announced that they too are deadlocked again at 10 to 2, but this time 10 to convict. I felt he was guilty. Only two to acquit. I just didn't feel that they could prove that she didn't attack him.

A seemingly triumphant Art Gonzalez heads home carrying his youngest son on his shoulders, perhaps underestimating Prosecutor Eric Olson's determination. We felt that the truth was coming out and that in a third trial we could get a verdict. There will be a third trial. No chance of another hung jury because this time there is no jury. Both sides agree to a bench trial with some camera access and with Judge Sarah Deneke, who already has heard this case twice, deciding Art's fate. So now we have a situation where the judge is literally the judge and jury. Correct.

Meanwhile, Art Gonzalez is free on bond and living with his sons in the very house where he shot his estranged wife. Even with this reduced charge of manslaughter, he still could face 10 years behind bars. And that, says his friend Doug Merrill, is a scary prospect for a loving dad and his sons. How do you think he's holding up? How is he feeling? It's amazing to me that he's even holding up at all. At his third trial, defense attorney Mark Gardner uses Art's FBI training to defend what happened. His witnesses say the reflex to react ingrained in FBI agents is what keeps them alive. What about the fact that Art fired four shots? Four shots with a handgun against an advancing attacker is very often insufficient

to stop that attack. You want some coffee, Marietta? Julie's parents, who have traveled across the country from New Mexico three times for these trials, aren't buying it. He's not taking accountability for what he does. What he wants you to believe is Julie is responsible for her own death. It was very difficult to look at Art when I got on the stand. FBI agent Janet Johnson, who worked with Art in New Mexico, says Art confided something to her before he moved to Virginia. If I divorce her in New Mexico, she gets 50 percent of everything I have. He goes, that's not going to happen. I'm going to lure her to Virginia, and the laws are much more favorable

to the man in Virginia. Art's attorney, Mark Mark Gardner says the physical evidence of what happened that day is the only evidence that counts. Evidence like the gunshot residue. There was gunshot residue both on Art's hands and on Julie's hands. There was gunshot residue on the knife. All of that's consistent with his claim that she attacked him, was in close proximity to him when the weapon was fired. Prosecutors agree the physical evidence is the key and are hoping the judge will grasp it better than the two hung juries apparently did. They bring back their star witness. Marcella F. Fierro. Dr. Fierro is the renowned forensic pathologist who says Julie was flat on the floor when at least one of the shots was fired.

What makes her so sure? This bullet then exited the back partially. It exited and then popped back in because it has a short exit. This is the bullet Dr. Fierro is referring to. It means that the back was against something firm or hard. And that something, prosecutors say, was the kitchen floor. But as in the previous two trials, the defense maintains the bra Julie was wearing could have stopped that bullet. Nonsense, says Fierro. Could a bra cause shoring?

The answer to that is yes, but not the bra on this lady. She is unshakable under cross-examination. What would change your mind? A video. But defense forensic pathologist Donald Jason is just as sure. I believe it happens with bras like she was wearing. Even more surprising is this witness, who typically testifies for the prosecution. Dr. Jennifer Bowers is the state pathologist.

Do you believe the bra that you saw on Julie when she was brought to the medical examiner's office could have caused that shoring? It's possible, yes, sir. In his closing arguments, Attorney Gardner underscores the dilemma of dueling experts. how any forensic pathologist can say a.40 caliber bullet shot into Julie's body exited her back with enough force to hit the floor and cause shoring of that wound, and there's no evidence that the bullet struck the floor. Julie charged at him, according to him, surprised him. He looked up, he put his arm up, and he pushed her away. He tried to create distance. She got her balance and immediately came right back at him. He pulled his weapon and he fired, exactly like he's been trained to do. I maintain that there's no real evidence to contradict Art's claim about what happened in that kitchen.

But Prosecutor Olson says nothing Art Gonzalez says can be trusted. It is not a coincidence that the track of Mr. Gonzalez's relationship with Caracast is the track of the divorce. It was May, right at the beginning of May, is when he fell in love with Caracast, despite all his protestations to the divorce. It was May, right at the beginning of May, is when he fell in love with Caracast, despite all his protestations to the contrary. What happens mid-May, after he's fallen in love with Caracast? He goes to see a divorce lawyer. What happens in June of that year? He files for a divorce. Mr. Gonzalez has lied repeatedly in this courtroom. He's lied about when the romantic relationship started and when the sexual relationship started. He's manipulative. He is devious. Two years after this once respected FBI

agent shot his wife to death, he is about to learn his fate. The only thing that I'm 100% sure of is that Julie Gonzalez should not be dead The prosecution had flown in Julie's New Mexico friends to testify, and after two hung juries and three trials, they're confident that this time justice will be served. Leah and I just grasped each other and we thought, oh my God, it's finally done. There is no rational or reasonable explanation for what happened in that house on August 19th. But Judge Sarah Deneke seems in no hurry to deliver her decision. It was excruciating. I'd be lying if I didn't say that.

For openers, the judge clearly doesn't believe Art's story about trying to resuscitate Julie after he shot her. The defendant reported performing CPR on the victim, on Julie, and I find that very doubtful given the evidence that I've heard here. But then she pivots and begins dismantling the prosecution's case point by point. We have to address the issue of Karacast. The court finds that the evidence of the relationship with this girlfriend is irrelevant to this finding. There was not one single piece of evidence that is relevant to motive or motivation. His girlfriend, what he considered the love of his life, he found out that she was going with someone else that couldn't

have played a part in his mind when he killed Juliandra. You know, that to her, it didn't matter. Now, the evidence is that that bullet was somehow caught in the clothing. Frankly, I find that weird. It's not significant in terms of making a determination as to whether or not this crime occurred or this killing occurred in self-defense. This is not relevant. That's not relevant. She went through a whole list of what she found was irrelevant. All the things that happened to him made him unstable, distraught. She said that didn't matter.

Nor do the dueling expert witnesses sway the judge. They do not vary on the facts. They all agree that there were four shots. What apparently does matter to the judge is the gunshot residue on Julie Gonzalez's hands, which leads her to conclude that Julie indeed may have attacked Art Gonzalez. The gunpowder residue is consistent with the defendant's version of the victim holding a knife as he fired the weapon. There's no other explanation as to how she could have gunpowder residue on her hands. Accepting that Art's story could be true, she announces

her verdict, sounding almost reluctant. I have no choice but to find the defendant not guilty of the crime of manslaughter. When she says those final words are not guilty, my heart sinks. You know, you're just totally devastated. It was disbelief, shock. It was a miscarriage of justice. And it is more than Prosecut prosecutor Kristen Bird can take. You were sobbing. I had heard the family gasp behind me at the end of the reading of the verdict.

And it was hard to know that for a split second there at the end, they thought he was going to be found guilty. Despite the outcome, prosecutor Olson defends trying Gonzalez three times. We believed strongly that he was culpable and guilty of the death of Julie Gonzalez, and we wouldn't have prosecuted the case if we had any doubt. A free man at last, Gonzalez quickly exits the courthouse, his family shielding him from view. His sister Arlene stood by him throughout the entire ordeal. It's a relief. And our family is very happy.

I'm sorry. It's okay. You seem overwhelmed. I'm very overwhelmed right now. Thank you, God. Arch showed up uninvited when we talked with his lawyer. He didn't want to join the interview, but he kept his ear to the door for the entire time. In the end, Art Gonzalez would only talk about his reaction to the verdict.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mr. Spencer, what did... I'm kind of hearing through the door and stuff, but what did the prosecutors allege I did right after the verdict was read? Nothing. I didn't know. Nothing. No, I asked, I said I couldn't see. I said I was sitting behind you and I couldn't see. And I asked what your reaction was. I looked up and I thank God, without God and the people he's put in my life, there's no way I could have made it.

You can come say that to me. I will, sometime. Well, how about now? No, because I've got to go take my son to the doctor. Gonzalez never did sit down with us. Now a single parent, he says he's stretched thin. Plus, the FBI fired him for what it said was a lack of candor during the murder investigation. His life has been in limbo since this happened. He's been without work. He's been

unemployable. He's essentially lost all his assets. His house is up for sale. But you'll find little sympathy for Art Gonzalez in Julie's hometown of Socorro, New Mexico. Not my worst nightmare. Did I ever... Ever think that this would happen? Ever think that we would be going through something like this? Her parents can only take comfort in their faith and their memories. What will you miss most about her? Her gentleness.

Her wittiness. Her good nature. Her wittiness. Once very close to their grandsons, Julie's parents say they hardly get to see them now. We lived for our grandchildren. I was their teddy bear. What more can I say? We love them, and we'll always love them.

Through three trials, they believed in their hearts that the FBI agent who killed their daughter would go to prison for it. Now, they believe something else entirely. FBI agent who killed their daughter would go to prison for it. Now, they believe something else entirely. Art Gonzalez is guilty of murder, and he got away with it. I'll believe that to the day I die. Kara Kast married the other FBI agent she was involved with. The couple now have a child.