48 Hours - The Perfect Family

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

From the outside, the family of Ruth and Bernie Pyne and their two children may have seemed perfect. It’s an illusion that was shattered, when Ruth was found murdered at their Michigan home, and suspicion focused on the family. "48 Hours" correspondent Tracy Smith reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 6/21/2014. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And that's Ruth, one of the most beautiful women to ever live. She wasn't just beautiful on the outside. She was beautiful on the inside too. She was very down to earth, very real, fun. She loved being a mom. And it was the perfect family. My wife Ruth, my son Jeffrey, and my daughter, Julia. Jeffrey was a great student.

He was the valedictorian. I'm lucky to have a son like him, and I'm lucky to have a daughter like Little Miss America. And then one day, something went horribly wrong. On May 27, 2011, my sister Ruth was found murdered in her garage. She was struck with a board somewhere between 12 and 14 times, and then she was stabbed in the neck 16 times. I never looked at the pictures. I couldn't. I don't want that memory of my sister.

The injuries were so excessive. We knew that there was some type of a rage. We felt that it was something that was personal. And he hit her in the back of the head. This was an angry killing. It was the result of years of things that had built up living with a difficult person. Jeff told me that his mother was storing knives in her headboard. Ruth had been violent with both of the children. I believe my sister was very victimized by her family. Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors and in someone's home. The family was not the family that they appeared to be.

The police asked me who killed my sister, and I said Bernie Pine. To have people think that you could do it is the most disgusting and debilitating thought that you can have. And then when they started pointing at your son. That's even more ludicrous. Jeffrey could never hurt his mother. There's just no way. It's a tragic story.

You feel like this could be made up, but it's not. It's real life. A savagely murdered suburban wife and mother, her husband and son, the prime suspects. Even for a couple of hard-bitten detectives, like Dave Hendrick and Greg Glover, this was a tough one. no joy in this case. I mean, this was a brutal case that literally is destroying a family. It started as a love story. Bernie Pine says he was smitten the minute he saw a fresh-faced

farm girl named Ruth walk across the room during his senior year in high school. I said, you are beautiful. We need to go out. And she said, just get out of here. But you were relentless. I called her up about every couple months. And, on the one occasion, she goes, yes, I will. We were actually married less than 10 months later. They settled in suburban Detroit and eventually had two kids, Jeffrey, and 10 years later, Julia. These pictures don't lie. I mean, there were many, many years that were not just normal, but they were wonderful.

Ruth was a wonderful woman, wonderful mom and wonderful wife. Lots of happy times. But Bernie says nearly 20 years into the marriage, their lives took a very dark turn. I looked at her and I could just tell that there was something wrong. Then I noticed that she didn't sleep. And I asked her, I said, if you had trouble sleep? And she goes, yeah, I haven't slept in eight days.

And that's when we knew that there was something drastically wrong. Ruth was eventually diagnosed as bipolar with psychotic features. As the illness progressed, what was her mental state like? She would actually think of things like there were listening devices in the house. In fact, one time she actually thought there was a tracking device in her bloodstream. She grew increasingly paranoid, says Bernie, even stashing knives in the headboard of their bed. She was prescribed antipsychotic drugs, but she refused to take them. She explained it to me that she believed that all medication was a form of sorcery

and that she wasn't going to take it. Despite Ruth's illness, Bernie says, the children managed to excel, Julia in ballet, Jeffrey on the basketball court, and in the classroom. And he was top of his class. Oh, yeah, oh yeah. He was the valedictorian. He was actually one of the top three recruits in the honors program at U of M Flint. All that while holding down two jobs and caring for Julia when his mom was too ill. You can see the toll it took on Julia from this heartbreaking drawing she made when she was

just eight. Ruth's sister Linda Jarvey. Somebody had to, you know, be there and take care of the family. Jeff had to be the guy there to pick up the pieces. After a vicious cycle on and off meds, in and out of hospitals, things turned violent in 2010. She'd been off her medication. She hadn't been sleeping. She was just miserable. And I said, Ruth, just please take your medication. After she got through telling me basically, no, Jeffrey came in the room and she launched out of the bed and grabbed his throat and tried to hit him. And Jeffrey never fought back? Never. Why not?

He's a tender soul. He's not a fighter. He's a loving son. The police were called to the scene, says Detective Hendrick. She was, in fact, arrested for domestic violence. I called Bernard Pine to the stand. Ruth spent over two weeks in jail. time Bernie and Jeffrey used to petition the court to force her to take her medicine.

You know, I don't want her to have to take medicine either, but it just seems like when she doesn't, all kinds of bad things happen. Ruth, sitting there on the right, was sent to the hospital for 23 days. But when she returned home, she once again refused to take her meds. We loved Ruth, but it was getting old. I actually went to the attorney, and I had done everything but serve Ruth the papers. Divorce papers. Divorce papers. As much as I loved her, I just couldn't take it anymore.

There was something else. Bernie had met a woman, Renee Janelle, the manager of a local GNC store. Somehow, the relationship escalated, and when it was all said and done, you know, we were very close. Ruth caught Bernie and his lover having dinner at a local restaurant, for Bernie the final straw. That night, he asked Ruth for Ruth. a divorce. And she said, Bernie, I'll do whatever it takes to save my marriage and my family. When she said that to me, I said, okay, that means you must take your medication and you

must let me go to the doctor with you so that we can work with it and get the levels right. And did she? She did. So the Pine household was a happy household in the spring of 2011? We were at the best place that we had been in a long time. But before the spring was over, 51-year-old Ruth Pine would be found lying in a pool of her own blood here on her garage floor, so badly beaten that her skull was cracked open. I don't want to think about what my sister had to go through in the final moments of her life.

I really don't. You hope that she was unconscious and knocked out, you know, early. You don't want to go there. It's too painful. But she did think about who did it? and wasted no time telling the police. The police asked me who killed my sister, and I said Bernie Pine. He's a violent person.

I mean, I'm afraid of him. And Linda says, so was her sister, at least till Jeffrey was born. There was always a sense that Ruth was afraid of her situation with Bernie, and she left him a few times to come live with me. Bernie denies ever harming Ruth and says she never stayed with Linda

during their marriage. But he does admit he had a wild streak in his youth. I was a little bit of trouble back then, a little rough around the edges. He was once arrested for putting a guy in a coma during a bar fight, but was acquitted of felony assault. Bernie insists those days are long gone.

Still, he knew it didn't look good. So there was a point where you felt like you were a suspect? Well, I'm a husband of a mentally, ill woman who had had an affair within the last six months. Yes. What was it like living under that cloud of suspicion? Very uncomfortable. How so?

Did you feel like everyone was watching you? Oh, well, in the first place, as a husband, to have your wife brutalized like this is the most painful and humiliating thing that can happen to any person. And then to have people think that you could do it is the most disgusting and debilitating thought that you can have. But it turned out that Bernie had an ironclad alibi, backed by his boss and four witnesses. He was at a retirement lunch for one of his buddies at work. It took a couple days, but we were able to actually confirm Bernie's alibi and pretty much rule him out as a suspect. at that point.

Bernie started calling Detective Glover, sharing information and helping out however he could. I wanted to be part of finding out who did this to my wife. The two men developed a close rapport, but it was not destined to last. It came to a point to where Bernie flat out asked us. He said, I want to know, in your mind, who the monster is that committed this crime.

And I actually said to Bernie, I said, I'm not sure you want us to tell you that. And he said, I want to know who the monster is in this case. And I said, Bernie, I said, your son is the one that killed your wife. In October 2011, five months after his mother was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death, 21-year-old Jeffrey Pine was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. So I'm a better suspect than any day than Jeffrey could ever be. I was the one that was trapped in a marriage when you look at this, you know, that with a mentally ill woman.

I mean, looking at it from the outside, I'm a logical suspect. There's no doubt about it. Jeffrey could never hurt his mother. There's just no way. Counsel, you may all be seated. Nobody wants to believe that somebody like Jeff is capable of this type of a crime. The person that everybody thought was the perfect kid on the inside wasn't as perfect is what they were seeing on the outside. When detectives Greg Glover and Dave Hendrick

received a call for assistance on May 27, 2011, they could not have imagined what was awaiting them. Multiple, multiple puncture wounds to her neck. It appeared to be multiple wounds to her head. There's rage, there's violence there. I mean, that's indicative of some sort of personal relationship. between the victim and the killer. I've been doing this for almost 25 years,

and this was probably one of the worst crime scenes that I had seen. It was an unsuspecting Bernie who discovered the gruesome scene when he arrived home after picking up his daughter from school. So what happened when you came home? Julia and I got out of the car. We parked right here, walked around the back of the house, and I saw Roos Arm. Luckily, Julia didn't go inside.

And she was right in the doorway. Yeah, she was actually up against the door. Bernie ran from the house before Julia could fully see what happened, calling out to neighbors and calling 911. 911, where's your emergency? My wife, she's like in the garage. There's blood everywhere. I can't. I don't know what's going on.

Police arrived within a few minutes. But Ruth was already dead. viciously beaten with an object and repeatedly stabbed. I remember there was blood everywhere. As police investigated the scene, Bernie called Jeffrey, who had started his shift at 3 o'clock that afternoon, working at Spicer Orchards. First time I called him no answer.

Second time, I said, Jeffrey, you need to come home. Did you tell him why? I did not tell him why. And when Jeffrey got to the house, what happened? That's when I told him that mom was dead. Did he ask you what happened? I don't remember the conversation. I was pretty, I was in a bit of shock.

When Jeffrey arrived home, he found his father and sister being consoled in the backseat of an ambulance. It was there that EMS workers noticed, and bandaged blisters on Jeffrey's hands, which he said developed after lifting a large pallet at work. When I had heard the story that he gave about how he'd injured those hands on a pallet, I was suspicious of it. As a teenager in high school I worked in a feed store and I've moved hundreds of wooden pallets and had never came up with an injury even remotely close to that, nothing more than a sliver.

I've seen those blisters on him and usually it's from shoveling and raking and that type of thing. I don't know if those were new blisters or old blisters. They didn't look like new blisters to me. They looked to me the way I look at. It looked like old blisters that he'd actually rip the skin off, throw in the palate, which would make perfect sense to me. Blisters don't make a murderer. Jeffrey told police he had been home with his mother before and after she went shopping that morning.

We know that she left the Meyer store at approximately 10.54 a.m. We know the body was found at 2.30. It's what happened between those hours that will prove Jeffrey's innocence or guilt. And he told me he left the house at 1.30. And that's when I knew whatever it happened happened between then and 2.30. In that one hour window? In that one hour window, yes. And did you ask him, how was mom?

He told me she was laying in bed. One of the things he told me that, I said, what's the last thing you did before you left? And he said, well, I got the mail and I threw it on the fireplace and said, bye to mom. I mean, everybody is focused on the fact that he left at 1.30. He says he left at 1.30. We don't know that he didn't have a confrontation to kill his mother shortly after she came home. If that's the case, he had two hours to clean up. approximately, get things together, and leave.

Jeffrey says after leaving his home, he drove a few miles to his neighbors, Diane Needham, to do some gardening. It was very specific about planting five lilac bushes. We discovered that the lilac plants or bushes had been planted on the Monday prior. We found out through Mrs. Needham. She was very specific about that. So at that point, we knew that he had not been there and planted those lilacly as he had told us.

Jeff, my name is Sirton Hendrick. I'm with the Sheriff's Department Hendrick. And when Jeffrey was brought in for questioning the night of his mother's murder, detectives were struck by his demeanor. You have no idea how your mom died or anything. Your mom was murdered. Someone killed your mom.

The lack of emotion, the lack of any questions, he never asked us questions about anything. So if there's anything else that you know about, that you've been holding back. He never asked us how she died, how she was killed, who did this, anything. He never asked us one question about anything. I don't know what to tell you.

Is it strange that he never asked what happened when they said your mom has been murdered, that he didn't say how? What, what happened? You know, I don't, as far as I'm concerned, okay, that's Jeffrey, he's very even. And, you know, they're asking the questions. He's not.

Did you have any arguments with your mom? I didn't say anything hurtful to her. I did nothing. We felt the police were accusing you of killing your mother, and you hadn't done that, that you would be very adamant and very strong by stating that you have the wrong guy. I didn't do this. Jeff Pine has never, to this day, told us that he did not kill his mother.

The detached demeanor, the questionable alibi, I went over there transplanted her lilacs. Those mysterious blisters. Can you take the bandages off your hand, of course? Along with no sign of Ruth being sexually assaulted and no sign of a break-in made Jeffrey not just the prime suspect, but the only suspect. We took months working this investigation. Anytime we developed information on another suspect or things that the family would say, well, what about these people? And what about that? We looked into them. We ran them down. We checked them out. We went into as much detail as we could to

eliminate anybody else that was a possible suspect. There was no one else. The boy didn't do it. My son would never harm his mother. They have this one wrong. The police make mistakes and this is a mistake. Your Honor now calling in the matter of the state of Michigan versus Jeffrey Pine can all rise for the jury Nearly a year and a half after the brutal slaying of Ruth Pine, her son is going on trial. This is the kind of a case that is a mosaic. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. We're going to put all these pieces together. The stakes are high for Jeffrey Pine. If convicted, he would spend the rest of his life in prison. You're going to see that what it forms is the picture of a man, Jeffrey Pine, committing a first-degree pre-medic.

murder. Prosecutor John Skrinsky gained national attention when he won a conviction against suicide Dr. Jack Kovorkian in 1999. Jack Kovorkin does not have the right to kill. He's won dozens of other high-profile cases. I want to make something perfectly clear. This is the first murder trial for defense attorney James Champion. We're not exercising a defense of insanity or self-defense or some other usable homicide. Most of Jeffrey's family is pulling for him. Even Ruth's sister Linda is trying to keep an open mind. I wanted to be a good aunt for Jeff and really listened to the testimony.

Maybe Jeff didn't do this. Maybe Jeff didn't do this. Prosecutor Skrinsky begins with the only physical evidence implicating Jeffrey. Rip the skin right off. The blisters on his hands that Jeffrey claims he got handling wooden pallets at work. Do you handle pallets and boxes off in wooden pallets and boxes? Yes. On the stand, Jeffrey's friend and co-worker, Nick Breddy.

I smashed my finger between a box before, yes. He says he's hurt his hands at work, but never the way Jeffrey says he did, even when he tried to duplicate Jeffrey's injuries. I tried multiple times picking up pallets in multiple different ways, and I could not, I couldn't do it. You were trying to simulate the injuries and you couldn't do it? No? No. Was that Jeff's voice?

Yes. Skrinsky then launches an attack on Jeffrey's alibi. Remember, Jeffrey says he left his house around 1.30 on the day of the murder and went over to a neighbor's house to plant lilac bushes and paint the basement. Hey, Mrs. Liam, it's Jeffrey. Skrinsky plays the jury a voicemail message Jeffrey left on Diane Needham's phone that day. I've been over. It's a very detailed message.

But he never mentions the lilac bushes. I was actually hoping you'd be there. I think he was looking for an alibi. Detective Hendrick believes Jeffrey left the voicemail to back up his alibi. He was hoping that she was either there so he could run over to the house or at least talk to her on the phone to give him something to tell us later. Hey, it couldn't have been me. I was here.

You may have a seat. The state then calls medical examiner Ruben Ortiz Ray. He testifies that the manner in which Ruth Pine was brutally slain does reveal something about her killer. Based on the wounds themselves, can you tell anything about the person who committed this crime? In forensic pathology, it's called over-killing, because the injuries at the beginning were enough to kill this person, but whoever did it was upset. Can you say that that person is enraged? Yes, could be enraged. Does that indicate some kind of relationship between the people?

It's possible. And there's something more. After she was savagely beaten, Ruth Pine was still alive, before she was then stabbed 16 times. I don't know how long did he take. The ME says a couple of minutes may have passed as the attacker looked for a knife. He intended on killing her. Detective Greg Glover.

He could have stopped what he was doing and walked away from it, and he didn't do that. he continued the assault a second time. And does that make it premeditated? Under the law, yes, it does. Do you swear or... It's a strong, circumstantial case, but what about motive?

What would make this perfect son turn into a brutal killer? How do you know Mr. Pine? He was my boyfriend. Jeffrey's ex-girlfriend, Holly Freeman. Can you describe the relationship? It was a serious relationship. We had talked about marriage and kids.

She would open a window on life inside the Pine home and deliver perhaps the most dramatic and damaging testimony of the trial. He became emotional often, and almost every time it was about his mother. Holly learned of Ruth's mental illness and that often it became too much for Jeffrey. There were many things that bothered him that he tried to brush off. but they would accumulate and result in him having an emotional breakdown. Jeffrey considered moving out, but Holly says he worried about what would happen to his little sister. He felt bad leaving Julia there, and he was worried for her.

But just two months before Ruth's murder, something happened that made Holly look at Jeffrey in a completely different way. Can you tell the jury what happened at that time? Jeff had told me... Sorry. Holly found out Jeffrey had cheated on her. I was completely thrown off. In what way? Because Jeff, to me,

Jeff was the perfect guy, the perfect son, the perfect boyfriend. And that was the first time ever that I had ever had a reason to doubt him. And that was as a result of his cheating? Yes. Because he lied so effortlessly to me, to my family, to my friends. What really tied it together was probably Holly's testimony that Jeff can lie so effortlessly.

Why? Why does Jeff? Did Jeff do this? What is so wrong with him? Well, I can see how that doesn't look good, but that's nowhere near proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a champion, the people have rested at this point. The defense is about to reveal a surprise of its own. Is it your intention to call any witnesses? What if everything you learned in history class was only half the story? I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets mysterious.

Banished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that. that science still can't fully explain. On Hidden History, I treat these moments like open case files, not miss, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a tough day.

It's a tough thing to go through. You may all be seated. Court turns to the defense. Is it your intention to call any witnesses? Your Honor, at this point, the defense rests. James Champion shocks the courtroom, declining to call any witnesses. Why didn't you call any witnesses? We really felt that they hadn't proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

They hadn't satisfied their burden of proof. They had a case that laid an egg. They had a case that ran out of air, that ran out of energy, that ran out of gas. Champion is sure the esteemed Mr. Skrinsky isn't going to win this one. Bernie is praying he's right. He's guilty, ladies and gentlemen. I have to believe that the system's going to work and that Jeffrey would be home. This was one of Rue's favorites right here.

Bernie hasn't been able to touch or hug his son in more than a year. What do you miss most? I miss my family. He's allowed only one visit a week to Jeffrey. I feel like the government literally came in and stole my son. Bernie says he's never felt so powerless, but believes he has the truth on his side. Did you ever flat out ask him if he killed Ruth? He and I had the conversation, if you will.

The conversation? The conversation. Meaning what? I remember it very well. I said, Jeffrey, I don't know what's going on here, but they're really looking hard at you. And I need to know, did something happen here? Did mom lose it? I said it would actually be easier to defend you for self-defense than it would be for anything else.

I need to know, did something happen here? And he looked at me, he said, Dad, I could never. He says, I could never hurt anyone, let alone mom, I loved her. And that was it? I knew right then. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, good morning. Good morning. And now it's up to Champion to convince the jury in his closing argument.

Look, if Jeffrey was responsible for this, there would be proof. At least some blood on his clothes under his fingernails or in the house, says Champion. There was no evidence that anybody cleaned up in that house. They checked Jeffrey's car. There's no blood in the car. Whoever did this was covered with blood. There's no way Jeffrey could have cleaned up, not transferred anything.

That, to me, alone, should clear him. There's no facts there. That's a hunch. That's a theory. That's an argument. That's a guess. If Jeffrey had done this, he wouldn't have come back with his hands all bandaged up.

Look at who Jeffrey is. Compassionate, sensitive, trustworthy. Not according to his ex-girlfriend, Holly. Remember, she had done. testified that Jeffrey cheated on her. He just lied so effortlessly to me, to my family, to my friends. Bernie says he's never known his son to be a liar. Basically, it's character assassination, if you will, to portray him as a liar and somebody that

he's not. You think that Holly was just an angry ex? Yeah, no doubt in my mind. Everybody lies. That's a fact, and especially when it comes to kids and dating. But I think what she was saying was going to his demeanor, that whole idea with a very straight face, he could lie. I think anybody can't.

That doesn't make him guilty of murdering his mother. In fact, on cross, Champion got Holly to admit Jeffrey was anything but violent. Did you ever see him hit anybody? No. In fact, you hit him a couple times, didn't you? A couple times. He never hit you, did he?

No. Jeff. But what about Jeffrey's demeanor on that interrogation tape? See, you have no idea how your mom died or anything. A red flag for the detectives. Your mom was murdered. Don't you think it just plain looked bad in the police interview that he showed no emotion? I would have preferred that he showed more emotion,

but, you know, we can't impose our standard of how somebody ought to react to grief or tragedy or, you know, some traumatic event. This was a rush to judgment, and a young man's paying for it right now. Here's a boy who's never had any type, never had been in any fights, never had any type of violence at all. In fact, even video games, and so this is going to be his first exposure to violence. Do you really think so? Could he have just lost it? I don't believe so. That explanation would make it real easy for the police, but I don't believe so, no.

And that brings us to the big question. if Jeffrey didn't kill Ruth, who did? I don't know who killed Ruth. Anybody could have done it, but I know the person that did not do it, and that's Jeffrey. As the trial winds down, tensions rise on both sides, and it gets personal. Detective Glover and Bernie Pine get into an angry confrontation in the hallway. At one point, he'd come right up to me shaking his head, not stop,

and actually said to me, he said, I can't believe what you're doing to my family. realize what you've done to this family. The look I gave him, I'm sure, was not friendly because I was not happy with the way my son was treated. And I said, Bernie, I said, don't blame the police for this. We didn't cause this. At that time, he told me, don't look at me that way.

And I thought about that for a moment. And then I looked at him, and I said, I'll look at you any way I like. I feel horrible for Bernie. But at the same point, it's hard to swallow what he's, the personal attacks on me. in the public. Good afternoon, counsel. Ready to proceed? We're ready.

At the 11th hour, shortly before the case goes to jury, Prosecutor Skrinsky makes a potentially game-changing motion. He asks for another option, second-degree murder. Your Honor, I am requesting a lesser included offense of second-degree murder.

Champion argues vehemently against it. I'm concerned that the jury will compromise their verdict. Why argue against including a second-degree murder charge. Because I'm scared that these jurors might actually split the baby, might compromise the verdict,

and if there's an alternative, they'll take it. Judge Bowman grants the motion. The jury will now have the option of murder in the second degree. That was my greatest fear, and that was the prosecutor's greatest hope. The only thing that repeats and goes through my mind is, got to get my son home to his sister.

I've got to restore what's left of my family. Ooh, look at here. Look at these. Oh, yeah. I wanted to do a white watch like that. Do you? Yeah. Bernie Pine has been spending the holiday season trying to keep some sense of normalcy for his daughter, Julia.

There's at least three different kind of candy canes in there. No, there's two. Okay. There's two. Yep, you're right. as they both wait for a jury to decide whether Julia's brother is coming home. I had to tell her that we're pretty sure that Jeffrey's coming home, but that the system isn't perfect,

and that there is a chance that maybe Jeffrey isn't coming home. It shook her visibly. What'd she do? What'd she say? I just can't think about that, Dad. It can't happen. Do you allow yourself to think about that? I really don't know. I can't imagine Julia not having her brother back, and I can't imagine not having my son back at home. It's the third day of jury deliberations.

We're going to be all right. I'm focusing on the positive right now. The jury has been ordered to return back to the court at 4 o'clock. I will then take the verdict in this case from the jury. Bernie, who's been waiting more than a year for Jeffrey to be cleared in the murder of his mother, now due to the judge's crowded court docket, must wait four more hours before he can learn his son's fate. The agony of having to wait four hours to hear a verdict is just, it's torture. But he's hopeful it will end with an early Christmas present for Julia. She has a play tonight, a Christmas play, at 7 p.m. that she's playing the prelude for on the piano.

And my hope and my prayer is that I can take him to that play, and he can see her play that prelude. Mr. Pines, sir, I'm going to ask that you please stand. And the people of the state of Michigan versus Jeffrey Pine, we, the jury, find the defendant guilty of second-degree murder. Second-degree murder. The jury determined that Jeffrey killed his mother, but it was not premeditated. The verdict as you have just published... Jeffrey seemed stunned,

and Bernie distraught and disillusioned. I wasn't there to protect my wife when I needed to be, and I wasn't able to get my son home for his sister for Christmas, so it's not been a good year. But for Jeffrey's aunt, the verdict was a relief and a vindication. This was a heinous crime. Ruth Pine was a victim. Thank you. Still, she has sympathy for her nephew.

I hold no grudge against Jeffrey. I just hope Jeff gets help, the help that he needs, to understand himself why he did this. Bernie had to break the news to his daughter. She was more upset than actually I've ever seen her before. She said, no, no, no, it can't be. Do you think if there was no option for second-degree murder that the jury would have acquitted Jeffrey? There's no doubt in my mind.

James Champion has no doubts because he spoke with jurors immediately after the trial. The last question I asked them was, if you hadn't had the second degree instruction, would you have quitted him? They said yes. I believe the jury got it wrong in this case, absolutely. Wrong or right, Jeffrey could be facing as much as life in prison with parole. At his sentencing in January 2013, Bernie returns to court to read a letter from his daughter. Good afternoon, Your Honor.

A letter about Jeffrey. My brother Jeffrey and I are very close, and I miss him very much. He is a great big brother, and I ask you to send him home very soon to me and my dad because we love him very much. I am a victim of this crime. I miss my wife Ruth very much, and I'm doing the best I can to raise my daughter as a single parent. Nobody knows who killed my wife. I am sure that my son had nothing to do with this, but must try to live with the verdict. I would ask for leniency in his sentencing so that what is left of our family can be put back together.

After all this, the judge is ready with the sentence. This court sentences the defendant to 20 years to 60 years with the Michigan Department of Corrections. You may take the defendant. The court stands adjourned. All right. I'm disheartened. I'm disgusted. and I'm going to tell you something else. It was a coward and a monster that did this to my wife, and that's not my son.

He could never harm her. Could it be that it's just too painful for you to think that your son did this to his mother? I don't think so. In fact, if I thought my son had anything to do with this, we wouldn't need courts and we wouldn't need attorneys and everything else. I'd have marched him into the police department, and we'd have taken care of this.

What if somewhere down the line, somehow it's proven to you that he did do this? Would you forgive him? I would forgive him. But that would be tough. Me and my partner are both fathers and could never imagine what he's going through. There are mixed emotions for everyone.

in a case that leaves no victors, just heartbreak. When the guilty verdict came back, I was happy of the verdict, but at the same point, couldn't help but feel bad for Bernie and that family. Ultimately, nobody was really going to win in this case, and it's a tragedy. Julie and I are very close, and we're going to move on. We're going to take this one day at a time, and I've promised her that I will do everything I can to bring her brother back to her.