48 Hours - The Death of Todd Stermer - Encore

Episode Date: November 22, 2020

A woman accused of setting her house on fire and then intentionally running over her husband as he escaped the flames speaks out to "48 Hours." Correspondent Erin Moriarty reports. 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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ConstantContact.ca This was all horse pasture over here and this was all our yard. At one time we owned 120 acres here. It was our dream home. Todd designed every inch of that house himself. Did you love Todd? Oh, I don't even think I ever didn't love Todd. I think I fell in love with him so quickly and I know that he loved me. Firefighters found him unresponsive outside the home on County Road 215. He died of smoke inhalation and thermal injuries. Linda, had it occurred to you that you would be a suspect in your husband's death? It didn't even occur to me that it could even be ruled arson. All I'm thinking was, how did this happen?

We are right now in our driveway facing where our front door used to be. So what was it like on that January 7th? It was in the low 30s. It had rained and drizzled all day. He's watching hunting shows upstairs. He's not doing much of anything. I'm doing laundry.

I heard a scream like no other scream I'd ever heard from him. And I just rushed upstairs to see what in the world happened. And as soon as I got around the corner, I could see a fire across the living room. He looked like he was fighting the fire. I just rushed out of the house. But the house is on fire. You didn't think about calling 911? That wasn't my first thought. My first thought was to get out. Todd's going to get out. As long as he knows I'm out. Todd's going to get out.

As long as he knows I'm out, he's going to get out. I thought, I've got to get help. I got in the van, and I started to back up. And then all of a sudden, he's there, and he's jumping around, and he's patting himself. He's, his skin is burnt terribly. And I lost sight of him. I don't know where he went to.

Did you know you had run over your husband? No. What do you believe happened? Our mother murdered our father. She drugged him with horse tranquilizer and she set the house on fire, doused him in gasoline. Then after the fact, when he managed to get out of the house, she ran him over with her van. You must know, Linda, that it's very difficult for people to believe that your husband is burned in a fire, he escapes, he's still alive, badly burned, and then you hit him with a car?

You just happen to have that kind of bad luck? Bad luck doesn't even describe it. Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok On January 7, 2007, the day her house went up in flames, Linda Stermer says she was doing laundry in the basement around 3 p.m., when she heard her husband Todd let out a scream. She ran upstairs to find their living room engulfed in flames. I could not have gotten over to Todd because there was fire between the two of us. She panicked, she says, and escaped through the front door with no shoes or cell phone. When Todd didn't follow, she jumped into this van to get help, knowing the keys were inside. But just as she was about to leave, Linda says

she suddenly saw Todd through the driver's side window. I'm screaming at him, get in the van, get in the van, and he won't get in the van. She says she jumped out of the van to try and help him. And I'm yelling at him to lay down, to do anything. I can't touch him. And so I get back in the van and I lost sight of him. I don't know where he went to, but it was so muddy. The tires were just spinning, so I couldn't get any traction. So I just put it in gear and I'm trying to let it creep until it gets some purchase. The van's tires were worn, says Linda, and the driveway too muddy. So she drove around to this side of the house where there was a sandy area, thinking that would give her traction. I saw the neighbors. I saw them coming up the driveway at some point.

Neighbors Mike Matheny and Connie Calhoun had seen the fire and rushed over to help. Mike, he is yelling at me, where's the kids, where's Todd? And I'm screaming at him. He said I was incoherent, couldn't understand me because I'm hysterical. And I'm trying to tell him the kids aren't here, Todd's up there. Linda says they looked for Todd at the front of the house where she had last seen him, but he was gone. We found Todd laying right here by closer to the house. Somehow, Todd ended up on the side of the house, not far from where she stopped the van.

Somehow he went from over here to here. Yes, and he was laying on his back with his head closest to the house. Linda says she has no idea how he got there. But investigators later found Todd's blood on the van's front bumper and undercarriage. Todd was barely clothed when they found him, so Mike Matheny grabbed some of his own clothing from the backseat of his car and covered Todd with it. He was so badly burnt, and he was alive.

He was looking at me, but he couldn't talk, and I laid there just begging him not to leave me. him not to leave me. When emergency medical technicians arrived, they tried to save Todd. They said they couldn't hook up a defibrillator to him. He was too badly burned. When they stopped working on him, I was so, so angry at them. Why did they get him in the ambulance? Why did they waste so much time trying there? Can we take a break, please? Of course.

Anytime we would ask any details on the case or what happened that day, she would start crying and look for sympathy from you and play the victim. The couple's sons, Trevor and Trenton Stermer, began to suspect there was more to the story when their mother seemed reluctant to share certain details. I asked her about the van and if she had run him over, and she said she didn't want to talk about it and that I should just believe her, but her story just wasn't adding up. It didn't make sense that our father, who was in great shape,

it didn't make sense that he would die in a house fire and she wouldn't. They say their parents' marriage had been rocky for some time. And it all seemed to come to a head on the eve of the fire when Todd and Linda got into a shouting match. Was that the worst fight you'd ever seen your parents in? Yeah, this was absolutely the worst. All of us knew that this was going to be the one that ended their marriage. The fight, they say, was a familiar one, over finances and infidelity.

It seems like he found out that she was having an affair, essentially, and had a separate life. Were you ever unfaithful to Todd? No. Todd was an extremely jealous and possessive person. Linda says she and Todd fought about money because they were near financial ruin. She says thanks to Todd. Todd owned his own business. He sold gloves and occasionally he sold hunting suits.

But he didn't like to work often. And I learned about him borrowing money from his mother. And I said, why would you do that? Why aren't you just going to work? I was working in a dialysis facility. I had to be to work at 5 a.m. How much in debt was he? At the time of his death, $75,000. He hadn't paid our mortgage in several months, and he just blew money, just blew money. But Trenton and Trevor say the real drain on the family's finances was Linda's obsession with horses.

They claim their dad was upset to learn that Linda had a line of credit for $25,000 to support the 31 horses she had on their property. The horses were always a topic of discussion between them. It was running us dry. I don't know where they would have gotten that idea from. Linda claims she was actually making money boarding those horses. The horses were self-sufficient. Todd always told me that if I didn't make enough money with the horses, that I couldn't have the horses.

Whatever they were arguing about, 24 hours later, Todd was dead, and investigators were suspicious. They started taking a long, hard look at Linda's actions on the day of the fire. For instance, she had gone to this gas station early that morning, and a clerk would later say it looked like Linda was pumping fuel, not into her vehicle, but into a gas can. And in fact, this can was found by investigators in the Sturmer's front yard. Do you think Linda intentionally hit Todd with the van? See more photos from the investigation on Facebook at 48 Hours. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California.

Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. 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?

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to make sure there was plenty of gas for her sons because when she got home, she woke them and told them to leave in her car. I told them that they could go to the movies with her friend. I didn't want them hearing Todd and I argue. Linda and Todd had been fighting since the previous day. She says their marriage was coming to an end, that she was getting ready to leave Todd that day and wanted the boys out of the way. I just felt like being in the house with us, watching me move out was going to be too much for them. After 13 years of marriage, it was a decision that had been a long time in the making. When Linda first met Todd in 1989, she says there was an instant attraction. He was so beautiful, so charismatic. You could just see the light in his eyes. They were both 25 when they started dating.

Linda was separated at the time with two young daughters, three-year-old Ashley and two-year-old Brittany. It was clear Todd wanted the whole package. I said, I'm in the middle of a divorce and I said, I have two little girls. And he says, well, that's perfect. I'll only make boys. I'm like, what? Wait. By the time they got married in August of 1993, Linda had given birth to their two sons, Trevor and Trenton. He did not have to marry me. We just wanted to be a family. Todd was the epitome of family. He was a great man, great father, coached all of us through as many sports as he could, and definitely a family man.

sports as he could and definitely a family man. He was such a devoted family man, says Linda. He even offered to take in her nephew, Corey, to save him from a broken home. Todd sat me down one night and he said, do you want him to come and live here with us? Maybe that would be good for him. Corey Pierce was two years old when they took him in. You miss your dad? Yeah.

He loved to play sports with us and hang out with us. He would go out in the yard and play with us, and he was really athletic. Did he ever treat any of these kids differently? Oh, no. Anybody who he had ever, ever introduced his family to, these are my sons, these are my daughters. It sounds at that point, your relationship was pretty ideal. Amazing. It was amazing. But that happiness, says Linda, didn't last very long. Turns out Todd had a temper. Linda's daughters, Brittany and Ashley.

The first incident, I just remember my stepdad, like, throwing a clothes basket of laundry at my mom. I remember him going out with friends at night and my mom having to load all of us kids up in the car to go pick him up at a friend's house where he was drunk and just belligerent and screaming at her.

It got so bad, you know, it scared us. We were young then. Ashley says that when she was about 11 years old and started speaking up, she became a target of that anger. What would he say to you, Ashley? You're a two-legged dog just like your mom. You're going to be a whore just like she is. Would he hit you? Oh, yeah. With what?

His hands, belts, horse reins, a phone in the middle of the forehead. rings, a phone in the middle of the forehead. Linda says Todd also hit her. It wasn't a regular thing. He would get extremely fired up and extremely frustrated, and he hit me one time, and it left a bruise on my cheek. But he sent me flowers, he told me how sorry he was, and then left a bruise on my cheek. But he sent me flowers. He told me how sorry he was. And then you believe that it's never going to happen again until it does.

But Trenton, Trevor, and Corey say they never saw their father hit their sister Ashley or their mother. Did you see your dad ever be abusive to your mom? No, I'd never seen him physically harm her. We never saw a black eye or bruises. Our father definitely had a temper, and perhaps he grabbed her and squeezed her arm, maybe a little too hard, but never any hitting. Marty, Linda's mother, says she never really trusted Todd. He could be charming.

He could be the most charming man you've ever met. And he could turn and be the worst person in the world. And Linda, she says, took the brunt of it. He was very controlling. If anything went wrong, it was her fault. Linda says she later found out that Todd had an arrest record dating back to before they were married. There were two convictions for misdemeanor drug charges, a DUI, and a conviction for misdemeanor assault and battery when he was 18 years old.

was 18 years old. I went out there one time and I says, if anything ever happens to her, I know who to blame. Were you really worried he might hurt Linda? Yes, I was. Linda says not long before the fire, she was ready to call it quits and started talking to a divorce attorney. She told me that she had planned on leaving. It was getting, you know, to be too much. On January 6, 2007, the night before the fire,

then 20-year-old Ashley says she called the Sturmer home to speak to her mother. I've never gotten to talk to anybody about this, so it's really hard for me. Todd answered the phone. When he said, your mom's not here, and he's like, but I had a conversation with God. I'm not decided yet, but one of us is leaving in a body bag, and it's either me or your mom. After Todd Sturmer's death, Van Buren County Sheriff's detectives spent two years investigating,

focusing on the troubled Sturmer marriage and the fact that Todd's wife Linda ran him over when he escaped the fire. Then on June 5th, 2009, the prosecutor's office felt they had enough evidence to arrest Linda Stermer on charges of arson and murder. For so long, we had all held the notion in our head that it was possible that she killed our father. But when all the details and the evidence came out, it was just overwhelming. On January 5, 2010, Linda went on trial. The evidence was mainly circumstantial. On January 5th, 2010, Linda went on trial. The evidence was mainly circumstantial, focusing on Linda's actions before and after the fire. Her sons testified she pushed them to go to the movies that Sunday morning.

Saying, you need to get up, you need to go, you need to leave the house right now. I went to go say goodbye to her father. She physically stopped us. She said, no, he's sleeping. Don't go over there. They now believe their dad had been sedated. I believe that he was drugged. It's because he was clearly incapacitated in the living room. Bolstering that theory was Kate Fox, a former friend and co-worker of Linda's. Fox testified that Linda confided in her, saying she was afraid investigators would find a coffee cup she used to try to drug Todd. Linda's trial attorney, Jeffrey Getting, says there was no evidence that Todd was drugged. The evidence introduced at the trial was contained in the autopsy report, which didn't find any significant evidence of sedatives.

But Kate Fox also testified that Linda had discussed ways of getting rid of her husband, including running him over with a car. Did you know Kate really hated me at that point? Linda says that by trial, their friendship had ended and that Fox lied on the witness stand because, among other things, she was angry at Linda for changing her shift at work. My lawyer asked her why she was so angry at me.

She says, she lied to me. She lied to me. She changed shifts without me. But Kate Fox also provided a motive for murder, telling jurors that at the time of the fire, Linda was having an affair with a co-worker named Chris Williams. That testimony was backed up by Williams himself, who claimed that he and Linda had a romantic relationship while she was a married woman. Were you having an affair with Chris Williams?

I started seeing Chris Williams romantically, but it wasn't until after I lost my husband. Why would a man you went out with turn around and lie at trial? Unless he was manipulated by someone, I don't know. Linda says Kate Fox was so angry, she convinced Williams to lie about when the relationship began. The defense presented evidence that Fox had a history of mental illness, and her own brother took the stand and said her stories couldn't be trusted.

I do know my sister can manipulate the truth to whatever she wants it to be, and yeah, she will lie if it's to her benefit but it may have been Linda's early morning trip to the gas station that was most damaging to her case remember she says she went out to buy milk and top off the gas tank in her car. But a gas station clerk testified she thought she saw Linda at the back of her car, seemingly pumping gas not into her vehicle, but into a gas can like the one found on the scene.

It's something Linda denies. It was frigid, and I had winter gloves and a warmer coat back there so I got my gloves out to pump gas. As for the gas can found at the house, Linda says they lived on a farm and there were gas cans everywhere. A jailhouse informant testified that while in custody, Linda told her she started the fire while Todd was asleep. Another informant said Linda hit Todd over the head with a blunt object. Getting tried to poke holes in their testimony. They were inconsistent. They both had problems with mental illness. The prosecutor argued that Linda started the fire by dousing Todd with gasoline, and his sweatpants, underwear, and socks did test positive.

But defense attorney Getting never called his own fire expert to refute any of that. I begged him numerous times for an expert, and he says, we don't need an expert, Linda. We will use their expert for our benefit. don't need an expert, Linda. We will use their expert for our benefit. Getting says his plan was to agree the fire was arson, but to convince jurors that it was Todd who started it. Todd is in the middle of the fire. The best defense in this case is Todd set the fire and was accidentally killed in the fire that he set. In fact, Todd had twice been suspected by police of arson in the past when two other properties he owned mysteriously burned to the ground. Both times, Todd was reportedly in debt and needed money. But Todd was never charged.

And in his closing argument, the prosecutor called the claim nonsense and reminded the jury that when Todd escaped the burning house, Linda ran him over. He also said Linda owned two cell phones and should have been able to call 911. And he pointed his finger in my face, just inches away from my face, and he says, she's a liar, a manipulator, a diabolical murderer. That may have crossed the line, but Getting never objected.

Just hours after the case went to the jury, the judge read their verdict. Count one, guilty as charged. Count two, guilty as charged. All I could think was, I have to be strong because my mom's right behind me. Linda's sons say the jury got it right. We knew it in our hearts that she was guilty, and it felt like we could finally breathe again.

Linda's daughter Ashley has barely spoken to her brothers since that day. I lost my brothers, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles because I believed in my mom. Linda was sentenced to life without parole, but she was determined to fight her conviction and reunite her family. I am determined and hopeful that I will get back to my children someday. Determined to free her mother, Linda's daughter Brittany begged well-respected fire investigator Robert Trenkle to reexamine her mother's case. He said, if there's any doubt in your mind at all whatsoever that your mom did this, don't hire me. Because if she did it, I will find out.

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Over the next five years, Linda Stermer filed appeal after appeal in state court, all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. All of them denied. It was devastating. It was really devastating. Then she turned to the federal court and took advantage of a prison resource, the law library. I was in that law library almost every single day of the week. And I learned as much as I could. almost every single day of the week.

And I learned as much as I could. I had people on the outside who were mailing me information on wrongful arson convictions and giving me an idea on where to go. Linda wrote her own petition to the federal court. In part, she blamed her conviction on her own defense attorney, who had chosen not to hire a fire expert, an expert like veteran fire investigator Robert Trankel, who would have testified there wasn't enough evidence to prove the fire that killed Todd Stermer was deliberately set. How would you describe the investigation that was

made into this case? Adequate? No, absolutely not adequate. Inadequate. Just the opposite. For example, Trenkle says investigators failed to sift through the remains of the house and took very few samples of debris. If you think the fire started in the living room and started in the center of that living room, you're going to have to take that floor and move it out to the outside, look at what kind of burn patterns are on that floor to give you that reason to be able to believe that, and then take a sample and see if you have something. Trenkle says the evidence doesn't support the state's theory that Linda doused Todd with gasoline and then set him on fire.

I've asked probably 30 or 40 people who are firefighters, investigators, and they all laughed when I told them about somebody getting out of a building after they had gasoline poured all over them. And when asked about the gasoline found on Todd's clothing, well, Trenkle says it was likely

a case of cross-contamination. Remember that neighbor who came to the rescue that day? He recycled auto parts for a living. And a shirt he used to cover Todd also tested positive for gas. And then there's the fact that no gasoline was found on Linda's clothing. If you get one little speck on your finger, you try to wash it off and wash it off and wash it off, it's still there.

So it should have been smelled on Ms. Stermer, and it should certainly have been on something that she was wearing. Trankel says there simply isn't enough evidence to prove arson. But even if there was, the more likely suspect was Todd Stermer himself. And why do you believe that? Because of his burn injuries, it certainly shows that Mr. Stermer was in the area of the fire. In 2016, an attorney filed Linda's amended petition, which included Trenkle's findings. Two years later, a judge responded, granting her another day in court.

In October 2018, federal judge Arthur J. Tarnow held an evidentiary hearing in Linda's case. I knew that the science was the key. There's no evidence to support a theory of arson. What do you believe started that fire then? I believe that something came out of that fireplace, a coal or a log or something fell out, popped out, and started that floor on fire. The state's fire expert testified that he followed proper investigative procedures and didn't take samples of the remains because he saw no evidentiary value in them.

When Jeff Getting took the stand to defend his work, the judge was quite stern with him. He was critical of me. He was critical of the entirety of this trial. But Getting says he still believes he presented the only case he could have, that it was Todd Stermer who started the fire that ended his life. This defense to the case was the one that I felt, my client felt, we together felt, gave us the best likelihood of success. Two months later, just before Christmas 2018,

Judge Tarnow called a hearing and issued his ruling. He found the prosecutor was wrong telling jurors that Linda had two cell phones when there was no evidence of that. And he also found fault with the defense, saying Getting failed his client by not calling a fire expert. The judge also pointed out that although Kate Fox's trial testimony was incriminating, she did suffer from mental health problems and that her brother testified she was known to be untruthful. The judge also agreed that if there was an arson, significant evidence pointed the finger of suspicion at Mr. Stermer. the finger of suspicion at Mr. Stermer. In December 2018, nearly 12 years after the fire, and after spending almost nine years in prison, Linda Stermer's conviction was overturned, and Judge Tarnow set her free.

Oh my gosh! It was an amazing, and Judge Tarnow set her free. Oh, my gosh. It was an amazing, amazing day. It's incredibly surreal. Walking out to that parking lot and seeing a real vehicle that I could get into and knowing that I could sit in the back seat without being handcuffed and shackled was the most amazing feeling. But is it over? No, it's not over.

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And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad free right now. I notice that you call her Linda. You don't call her mom. She's not our mother now. She's not mom anymore. No. For nearly nine years, Trevor Stermer and his brothers went on with their lives, believing their father's killer was behind bars.

And then in December 2018, a federal judge set their mother free. The fact that a judge took a look at the evidence and didn't feel she had a fair trial, thought she might be innocent, that doesn't change the way you feel. No. I know that she did what she did. But their sisters, who believe in their mother's innocence, are afraid they could lose her again. I have no faith in the justice system right now, to be honest with you. What's the worst thing that could happen? They'll send her back to prison. That was a real possibility.

Linda had been free since December 20th, 2018. But Michigan's Attorney General appealed the federal decision and asked for Linda's conviction to be reinstated. Linda Sturmer's new attorney,

Wolfgang Mueller, said he would fight it. I think I have a pretty good BS meter, and I believe her completely in terms of her story and then how the science just doesn't add up to an arson. And I think she was truly, one, factually innocent of this crime, and two, the whole system betrayed her. And two, the whole system betrayed her. Linda's future now rested with the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mueller would have 15 minutes to convince a panel of judges that Linda didn't get a fair trial. The state would get the same amount of time to argue that she did.

Are you scared? I am. I'd be ignorant not to. I know what's at stake now. I know what the prison system is like. On December 3rd, 2019, Linda Stermer, her daughters, and her mother were in Cincinnati, Ohio. Is this our entrance, I guess.

To attend the hearing that will decide her fate. Maybe this will finally end, this nightmare. She's hoping her sons will also attend, even though they won't be in her corner. You're thinking about going to the hearing? Yeah, potentially. I'd like to see how she weasels her way out of this. But when the hearing began, no one from Todd Sturmer's side of the family appeared. Cameras weren't allowed in federal court, but an audio recording was later made public. Face 19-1075. When it was Wolfgang Mueller's turn,

he argued passionately on Linda's behalf, saying she never had a chance at a fair murder trial without a fire expert. I felt the need to tell the judge that in a case involving fire science, you have to have an expert to be able to defend yourself adequately. Mueller also argued that the evidence against Linda was weak and circumstantial. Two jailhouse witnesses and a co-employee, we didn't have any strong evidence in this case. But one of the judges pushed back, troubled by what Linda did after the fire.

Weak evidence. I find the case astonishing. I mean, the car going back and forth, randomly hitting the guy. You're calling that weak evidence? The judge's comments left Linda Sturmer worried and visibly shaken. When the judge concentrated on the fact that I had driven over my husband, that's something that I've never been able to figure out how it happened. Later, she was angry. He said that I ran over my husband husband over and over, back and forth.

That was absolutely not the case. Did your heart sink a bit when you heard him say that? Just made me think he doesn't have, at that instant, a complete grasp of all the facts, but I trust that his clerks have gone over and will pour over every single page of the transcript as will all the judges and their clerks and their staff. While she awaited the court's decision, Linda Stermer was just trying to enjoy every moment she has as a free woman. She now lives with her daughter, Ashley, is working and saving money, believing one day she will buy her own home and be able to heal and reunite her family.

There were times while I was in prison that I wanted to give up. The only thing that kept me from doing it was that that was such a selfish act and there would never be a possibility of putting my family back together or making anyone feel whole again. Do you think at any point you'd have a relationship with her? Absolutely not. No.

It kills me that he can't be a part of my children's life anymore, that they don't have that privilege of having a grandfather like him. It's devastating. What will you tell your daughter? I'll just tell her what happened and that I think it was best to keep her out of our life. Ashley and Brittany are heartbroken and believe that by defending their mother, they have forever lost their brothers.

Do you plan on talking to them again? After this, I don't think they'll ever talk to me again. That had to be a tough decision then to talk to us. Why did you decide to talk? Because I love my mom. And I don't think that she's guilty. In May 2020, the appellate court ruled Linda Sturmer's conviction would not be reinstated, but prosecutors decided to try her a second time.

Her new trial is scheduled to begin March 9th, 2021. She killed her partner. I don't believe Christopher abused her. She was a very good actress. Murder or self-defense? There were many people who saw her with black eyes, with bruises. She was afraid for her life. 48 Hours, next on CBS.

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