48 Hours - Widow's War - Encore

Episode Date: August 18, 2019

"48 Hours" Presents: A Marine colonel is found shot in his bunk. Authorities say it was a suicide, his wife says it was murder -- and she is determined to prove it. "48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant investigates.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. 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. 48 Hours presents... He was strikingly handsome. His eyes were absolutely gorgeous, piercing blue. And I'm thankful enough to have those as well.

My dad, Mike Stallman, was a colonel in the Marine Corps. He devoted his life to his country. He was a patriot. Everybody says he is the poster boy for the Marine Corps. He graduated first in his class. He was a backseater in a RF4. Then he went to law school. He was a star there. And then before getting out of the Marines,

because of his commitment to his country, knew he had to serve in Iraq. This was my soulmate. He'd done so much. He was worldly. he was kind. I should have told him not to go. In 2008, my father was found with a gunshot wound to the left temple in his room while he was on tour in Iraq. Authorities concluded that it was a suicide. The military says that my husband committed suicide, but I know it was murder.

I just do not believe that he pulled that trigger. All of the evidence that I have and all of the reconstruction I've done point to this being a homicide. I see no evidence of homicide in the materials provided to me whatsoever. The evidence shows there's no way he could have done what they said he did. I think she was viewed as a frenzied, unbalanced widow, unwilling to accept that her husband had taken his life. It was not a suicide. There's no evidence to support anything other than a suicide. If this was a suicide, I would have to accept it and move on.

But it's hard when you know that that's not what it was. The truth needs to come out. 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 us. I'm journalist Luke 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+. Join Wondery in the Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus

in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty, her specialty representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld and she's informing Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets. The most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney,

I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively 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. You have to be strong as a military wife. You have to be strong as a military wife. For more than 10 years, Kim Stallman has been at war.

With a small group of allies, she's targeting the toughest hill in Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill. All I've ever done is tell them that I want the truth. She says she's trying to honor the legacy of her husband, Colonel Michael Stallman, one of the highest-ranking American fatalities in the Iraq War. This is a guy that gave his all. Colonel Stallman was a decorated Marine, a flight officer, and a military lawyer. In July 2008, just weeks from going home for R&R, he was found with a gunshot wound to the head on a Ramadi military base.

The Armed Forces medical examiner ruled it a suicide. But Kim has never believed her husband shot himself. It was not self-inflicted. Absolutely not. Someone shot him. Someone shot him. Someone shot him. Are you certain of that? I have no doubt. Kim says her ultimate goal is to get that manner of death changed. It's important to have the truth on that document because of the man that Mike was.

He was just this all-American guy, very confident, very decent. Susanna Andrews and Mike Stallman lived on the same block in Chevy Chase, Maryland as teenagers. My mother still remembers him as the most polite child any of us ever brought home. Decades later, she wrote about his death as a contributing editor for Moore Magazine. I started out wanting to know what had really happened. Mike Stallman, son of a U.S. diplomat, had lived in India, Jordan, and Panama as a boy before returning home to become one of a few good men. Was there a pride there and a sense of, I really want to serve my country? Oh, yeah. I mean, he's the one that elected to go to a Marine Military Academy in the ninth grade.

Mostly cadets here have a lot of pride, not only towards the Academy, but towards the Marine Corps. As a cadet, Stallman was a Marine recruiter's dream. He appeared in this promotional video. Cadet Major Mike Stallman, senior class president and highest ranking cadet. By April of 1987, Michael Stallman was in flight school in Pensacola, Florida when he landed in a bar in Florence, South Carolina and boldly approached a striking woman across the room. And what did you think when you looked at this guy? To be honest with you, I didn't think anything, you know.

But she admits something about this swashbuckling young flight officer struck a chord, especially after they ran into each other again the next day at an air show. And he came up to me and he said, do you remember me? And I'm like, uh, yeah. Stolman offered to show her around, but she says he was quickly distracted by the triplet baby boys of someone she knew. And he stopped and he got down on his knee

and he was talking to these triplets. And I thought, oh my God, that's someone special right there. And that's when I knew. I I knew in less than three weeks Kim and Mike's relationship took off he wrote his motorcycle up that's when he proposed to me the guy has Hollywood good looks he's a pilot and he's riding a motorcycle it's like Top Gun he sold his motorcycle for my first ring, too. He was a gem.

They married six months later. Two daughters followed, McKenna in 1997 and Piper in 2004. McKenna is 22 now and still remembers her father's kind heart. During Christmas, it was his duty. He was the cameraman. Here comes McKenna. He'd wake up and be like, don't go in the room until Dad has the camera ready. Did Santa leave a note or anything? That was probably one of the earliest memories I have.

Dear McKenna, thank you for the wonderful cookies. Like many military families, the Stolmans moved around the world. memories I have. Dear McKenna, thank you for the wonderful cookies. Like many military families, the Stolmans moved around the world. South Carolina, California, Japan. It's like an hour. Where Kim says she co-founded a counseling program on the base. We worked specifically with rape victims and spousal abuse victims.

Mike's career was on the move, too. By the early 1990s, he'd traded in his wings for a law degree. Kim says all the work and travel took a toll. We moved every two, sometimes every year. Is it fair to say there was some trouble in the marriage? Oh yeah, we had ups and downs like everybody else. After about 20 years of high stress military life, Mike Stallman had risen through the ranks to become a full colonel. He was about to retire. But there still was one thing Colonel Stallman wanted to do. He'd never been deployed to a combat zone. He volunteered.

This is his last hurrah, you know, he wants to do this. About three months after he arrived in Iraq, something happened to Michael Stallman. Something that even a Marines family could never have expected. My mom sat me down and she was like, something's happened to your father. 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 and the bolder risk takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye?

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wherever you get your podcasts. We would receive incoming every now and then. There would be shots fired. In July 2008, Gary Morrell was a Marine Gunnery Sergeant in Iraq when he picked up Colonel Michael Stallman at the airport. Good guy? Good guy. Oh, awesome. Outstanding. Colonel Stallman would be stationed at Camp Ramadi.

The area had seen some of the fiercest fighting earlier in the war. The area had seen some of the fiercest fighting earlier in the war. The front gate is still getting shot at, vehicles getting hit. It's still a rough area. Day-to-day life was tough. But Murrell says Stallman, who was working to help rebuild Iraq's legal system, stood strong. Did you ever sense that he was depressed? Oh, never.

A triathlete, he was known to work out every morning. He was always such a happy man. I don't ever recall him being upset or sad. I don't remember him crying ever. Did Mike have any history of depression? No. By the summer of 2008, Kim says Mike was looking forward to coming home for R&R to spend time with her and the girls. We were so close. I mean, it was home stretch.

In June, he emailed, just two more months until I come home. Missing you terribly. And in late July, the day before the shooting, everything is great. Sergeant Morrell saw Stallman the night before the shooting. He was anxious to go home. He was ready. In the morning, he wakes up, he goes running. We believe. I was talking to some of the other medics when the call came in. Army medic Dave Fuentes says he was just coming off shift at about 8 a.m. when he responded to a shooting scene. What condition was Colonel Stallman in when you first laid eyes on him? He was in very rough shape.

Critical condition? Absolutely 100% critical. It was still the previous night back in Connecticut where Kim and the kids were visiting her parents. At about 11 p.m., she says she found a cryptic email in her inbox, apparently from her husband. The email became central to this case. Kim, sorry about what you were about to find out. I love you and always will. You and the girls are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Love, Mike. What did you think? Honestly, I immediately thought one of our close friends had been killed. The next morning, Kim got a devastating phone call. They said, we're calling to inform you that your husband, Colonel Michael Ross Stahlman, was found this morning with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his left temple. Her husband was still alive, but unconscious. It was like they took my past, my present, and my future from me in that one phone call.

Kim says she was in shock. To some, that last email to her read like a suicide note. Kim had the email examined by a linguist. Just that this is not a suicide note. Sergeant Murrell says he doesn't see it as a suicide note either. He says Marines are trained to avoid divulging too much information when writing home from war zones. You've got to talk in code. It's something that I could see me sending my wife, and I felt I've sent her that letter before. He says the email could have been a reference to any number of things,

including a dangerous or classified military operation or personal finances. All I could think of, his eyes, his beautiful eyes. A few days later, Kim and her daughters arrived at Mike's bedside at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where he'd been flown for treatment. And I walked in the room, and it didn't even look like him. His face was so swollen. Days turned into weeks with no improvement. Slowly, Michael Stallman was slipping away. After Mike had been in the hospital for about two months, Kim decided to sit 11-year-old

McKenna down to say her father would be taken off life support. She was like, we're not detecting any more brainwaves. And that's when I had to lay in bed with him and say goodbye for the last time. I just remember the lights being dimmed and I can still smell the hospital room. Colonel Michael Stallman died on October 5th, 2008, the day before his 21st wedding anniversary and the month before his 46th birthday. I've never seen anyone die before. I literally saw his spirit leave his body. His funeral was at Arlington National Cemetery.

It was a closed casket. I just was hysterical pretty much the whole day. Adding insult to injury, Kim says she was still troubled by the information authorities had given her, beginning with the detail that Mike, a righty, had been shot

on the left side of his head. Mike did nothing with his left hand. As time went on, her skepticism turned to anger and determination to find the truth. You became an investigator. Yeah. Kim said right away, I want to do my own investigation.

Writer Susanna Andrews says Colonel Stallman's job easily could have made him a murder target. Mike was in Iraq at a time when we were trying to put the country back on its feet after the war. Colonel Stallman's work notes suggest he was aware of local officials on the take. He wrote, we want to stop IPs, Iraqi police, from taking bribes. And Andrews says some U.S. contractors were corrupt. I think it would be really hard to have not stumbled across some kind of corruption there. Sergeant Morrell says Marines were vulnerable everywhere, even on base.

You know, our perimeter was very open. He says the security fences were a joke. So you could get on and get off, but... So somebody from the outside could just come onto base. Correct. Kim says it's also possible Colonel Stallman had enemies closer than he thought. If Mike did not take his own life, who did? Gut instinct is it was somebody Mike knew and close in rank.

If you believe it's a homicide, somebody had to pull that trigger. Right. Give me a sense of the banter that was going around. That it was somebody inside. You know, it was strictly all rumors. Menick De Fuentes says he remembers hearing rumors, too, about a crime at a nearby facility, a crime he heard Michael Stallman may have been investigating.

A couple other high-ranking personnel had been relieved of duty due to stealing fuel from post and selling it to the locals. By a year after the shooting, Kim Stallman had decided to go on the offensive. And before long, she had some very influential allies. All of the evidence that I have and all of the reconstruction I've done point to this being a homicide and absolutely not to being a suicide. After her husband's death, Kim Stallman was paralyzed by grief. It's like a punch in the stomach. He loved his girls. He wouldn't have left them. She was basically a recluse. She never left the house.

And it was really rough seeing her like that. Kim emerged from her fog of grief and began a quest for the facts about her husband's death. In October 2008, she filed a Freedom of Information request with NCIS, which had arrived at the scene some hours after Stallman was found. Kim says she received about 1,500 documents and a small batch of photos. They didn't really show you anything, you know, and they were copies of copies, like photocopies. Scouring the reports, Kim says she learned her husband had been found in bed, lying on his back next to a blood-stained nightstand. A bloodied sheet was hanging from the top bunk, obscuring his body. A Bible and family

photo lay next to him. Stallman's nine-millimeter Beretta was on the bed, too. One first responder noted the gun was wedged between him and the mattress. The gun is half under him, around his waist, but pointed down. According to NCIS documents, a bullet from his gun traveled through his head, then through this wall, and came to rest on the floor of a storage locker in the housing unit next door. An ear witness had reported hearing a loud noise around sunrise. The information did not satisfy Kim. There were little flags, things that jumped out at me. Believing the suicide determination had been

made in haste, Kim says she wanted a closer investigation of the case. In the coming years, she would contact the military, members of Congress, even the White House. I was looking for anything, any help I could get. Since the shooting, Kim had been fighting her war alone. But in 2009, she met an important ally. Author Cilla McCain. She was grieving, totally grief-stricken, but fighting. McCain has a special interest in mysterious military deaths.

She supports the families with a website and advocates for them with lawmakers. I know of 166 families who believe that their loved one was murdered and has been labeled a suicide. Together, Kim and Silla say they took on the U.S. military. Who is this duo, these Southern women up against this brass wall? You know, all these officers and soldiers and institutions who just didn't take them seriously at all. Before long, word of their war would win them another important ally. This one had a worldwide reputation investigating cases at, of all places, NCIS itself. If it bled, if it blew up, if it caught fire, generally we were involved in

handling the forensic issues of that. Over a long career at NCIS, Michael Maloney investigated some of their highest profile cases. He'd left NCIS and was teaching forensics when a student told him about the Stallman case. He offered to take an initial look pro bono, but gave Kim a warning. Almost 100% of the time, the death is exactly what it's reported to be. Maloney wanted better quality photos and thought authorities might have them.

So he helped Kim file another freedom of information request. There were almost 200 photos on that disc. If I hadn't asked for those, they would have never volunteered them. Maloney says those photos led to a breakthrough. It changed the whole game. Pouring over the new photos, Maloney reached a startling conclusion. This is a homicide. There was someone else in that room. He believes an assailant probably

fired two shots. One missed. The other went through Stallman's head. He also believes this scene could then have been made to look like Stallman had been alone and shot himself with his own gun. All I remember is him

saying, we've got a problem. This was staged. And when you heard those words? It was like, holy Jesus, I'm right. Michael, what do we have here? Well, what I've done is I've set up a simulation. He set up a simulation for us to help illustrate his theory

that the trajectory of the bullet authorities recovered in the locker does not account for Colonel Stallman's injury. Why is the trajectory of the bullet authorities recovered in the locker does not account for Colonel Stallman's injury. Why is the trajectory of the bullet way up here and his injury is here? They should overlap each other because the bullet has to cause the injury. Maloney says the bullet hole in the wall, as seen in this investigator's photo, likely came from the assailant's first shot. For the first shot, he's going to fire and he's going to miss. That explains the hole in the wall.

He says what he sees around that hole is a telltale sign that the bullet never went through Stallman's head. It has the appearance of gunshot residue. All these little dots. All those little dots. Burned and unburned particles of gunpowder coming out of the muzzle of the weapon. In his interpretation, those particles would be unlikely to have hit that area of the wall if Colonel Stallman's head had been in the way of the bullet. This is when I began to believe that perhaps this wasn't the shot. This wasn't the fatal shot. that perhaps this wasn't the shot. This wasn't the fatal shot. The fatal shot, says Maloney,

would have been the second one. And as he starts to move, the shooter is going to rock up as well. And right in here, the shooter can fire as well. He believes the bullet may have come to rest in the mattress, though that alleged second bullet has never been found. Maloney thinks he knows why. All of this was destroyed. All of this was burned as a biohazard, yes. Now let's look at

that nightstand. The bloody nightstand, says Maloney, supports his theory too, because he says the stains only cover certain areas. But we have none in this area or this area. Leaving unstained sections called voids. There was something blocking the blood from hitting this surface of the nightstand. That something, he says, could have been the assailant's body. Someone sitting on the nightstand facing his bed. And Maloney says there's more evidence Stallman may not have been alone. He says it looks to him like a woman could have been in the room.

Well, there was a tampon found on the floor. There was also this dirty strip of fabric nearby. It certainly would have the appearance of a sheer bathrobe tie or something like that. There has been speculation that Mike Stallman perhaps had a girlfriend there. What you proposed is well within the realm of possibility. No. A one-night stand was simple. No, no, no, no. I would have known.

I think. But either way, Maloney says the strongest evidence supporting his theory of homicide is that sheet hanging over Stallman's bed. It had blood on both sides, but he says what's most important is a particular type of stain called misting. Look at this misting. The problem is this is on the outside of the sheet. Look at this misting. The problem is, this is on the outside of the sheet. This tells me that this side of the sheet had to be facing or oriented towards his injuries at the time they occurred. He says if the sheet was hanging down during the shooting, as it was found by first responders, these misting stains would have been on the inside.

Maloney demonstrated for us. A lot of times when you're over there, you do drop a sheet like this. It blocks the light coming in from the windows. But if you want to talk to someone, you can just pull the sheet back and tuck it up. The bloodstains at the scene, he says, strongly suggest the sheet was tucked up out of the way when the fatal shot was fired. And it causes the bloodst stain up here, the blood stain pattern here, the misting stain, and the rest of the blood staining from the exit wound goes down into the pillow and into the mattress. Remember, the mattress was destroyed. How about the sheets and the blood? Everything. Kim Stallman filed a lawsuit in 2013, alleging authorities conducted little or no investigation into various aspects of the scene.

They did not follow their own protocols, and that's why this has happened. A federal judge dismissed the case, saying the court had no jurisdiction. So Kim filed again with a military review board. Her lawyer says the board offered no assistance either. This required a thorough investigation. It didn't get one. Michael Maloney says he sent his 2011 report to his old employer, NCIS, and says they refused to meet with him about his findings.

They declined to give us an on-camera interview, but there is another side to this story. Kim, it turns out that NCIS did do a forensic investigation. We have some clips that we would like you to listen to. Do you believe that NCIS ever did a proper forensic examination of the shooting scene? No, no. But 48 Hours submitted our own Freedom of Information request, and we discovered it's not quite that simple. My name is Dr Mark Reynolds. I'm a forensic consultant,

and I investigated the death of Colonel Storman. Dr Mark Reynolds was brought on by NCIS in 2012 to review the case... Assess the evidence and give us an outcome. NCIS in 2012 to review the case. Assess the evidence and give us an outcome. More than three years after the shooting, including Michael Maloney's report. NCIS gave the veteran homicide investigator and bloodstain pattern expert permission to speak with 48 hours. Did you have everything you needed? The short answer is no. I was

quite critical of the response by NCIS in my report about the scene. Reynolds told us he concurs with Michael Maloney that the shooting scene should have been handled differently. A better documentation of the scene and better exhibit collection would have been helpful, and it wasn't done. He says that's partly because Colonel Stallman was still alive when he was found, so first responders rightly were focused more on stabilizing him than preserving evidence. But Reynolds disagrees with Maloney on just about everything else. disagrees with Maloney on just about everything else. All the scene indicators that Mr. Maloney has raised are either equivocal or wrong.

Mike Maloney has a great reputation, so we're supposed to believe in this particular case the man doesn't know what he's talking about? In this particular case, believe the science, and the science is there. Reynolds says Maloney based many of his conclusions on speculation. He says his own analysis of photos of the bloodstains, the nightstand, the sheet, the bullet hole, and the trajectory yielded no evidence anyone else was involved in Stallman's death. This is the image that Mr. Maloney used. Reynolds says the unstained area on the nightstand is too narrow to be meaningful.

If Mr. Maloney is suggesting that that, for example, might have been the leg of the attacker, it's three inches. That's a fairly thin leg. And what about that sheet hanging from the bunk above Stallman's bed, the one that Michael Maloney claims has bloodstain misting on the wrong side? Transferred bloodstains look like spatter, even under the microscope. Reynolds says the bloodstains could have been transferred there by first responders. In your opinion, there's nothing conclusive about this blood issue on the sheet? No.

And he says the same is true of the gray spots near the bullet hole, which Maloney suspects are gunshot residue. Was never determined. There was no sampling ever done. To go from a grayish particulate matter on a wall, to extrapolate that as being gunshot residue, I think is a very dangerous leap.

It could have been anything on that wall. You don't even go to this potential two-shot scenario. There's no scientific evidence to say two shots were fired. Documents indicate authorities did check the mattress for a bullet and didn't find one. And Mark Reynolds says Michael Maloney made miscalculations in analyzing photos of the scene. He says when those errors are corrected,

the path of the bullet that went through the wall does line up with Colonel Stallman's head wound. You get that? That matches. That matches. But what about the curious items on the floor, like that piece of fabric that Maloney feels could have belonged to a woman? Pure speculation.

And that tampon? Many soldiers around the world carry tampons in case they get shot because they put the tampon in the bullet hole and it stems the flower blood. Reynolds' conclusion? There is no obvious scientific evidence to indicate that it was a homicide. We informed Michael Maloney about Mark Reynolds' findings. Maloney insists Reynolds is wrong. I stand by my assertion that the best explanation given the evidence that I've examined does not indicate suicide.

giving the evidence that I've examined does not indicate suicide. Two experts, two very different conclusions. Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Mark Reynolds? No. Never? No. We wanted to see what Kim Stallman thought of Mark Reynolds' findings. We have some clips from the interview that we did with Mark Reynolds that we would like you to listen to.

Mike Maloney says, at best, this is an ambiguous death scene. My interpretation of this is there's strong contextual and scientific support for it being self-inflicted. There is no contextual or scientific support, in my opinion, for it being a homicide. And the fact that it's on the outside of the sheet when the shooting occurred on the inside... ...is an indication that someone pulled the sheet down. I think he doesn't understand how difficult it is

to classify bloodstains on fabrics. Yeah, I mean, I guess he's got his opinion. I... I don't know what to say. Kim says she brought the case to other experts who supported Maloney's findings. And she still stands by Maloney. I know that Maloney broke down that room pixel by pixel. That's all I know. And Kim is furious.

She says authorities should have showed her the Reynolds report years ago. Why didn't they show me that? Or tell me so that I can at least know? I don't understand why NCIS did not bring that to my attention ever. Kim says she has never felt authorities have respected her. have respected her. In fact, in 2012, she says she discovered this email showing someone at NCIS appears to have blamed her

for her husband's death. It was a tragic suicide contributed by the pressures he was under to include stress piled on by his wife, who now believes slash pretends it was a storybook marriage. I pretends it was a storybook marriage.

I never said it was a storybook marriage. Never. I have said it was a marriage with ups and downs. As 48 Hours discovered in his emails, Colonel Michael Stallman may have been battling an enemy within. I think they thought they could get away with their mistakes. Kim Stallman has always accused NCIS of not conducting a thorough investigation. But NCIS documents suggest otherwise, that evidence was collected, people were questioned, and many of Kim's concerns were answered. They also provided her with all those photos and thousands of documents, many of which were passed on to us. and thousands of documents, many of which were passed on to us.

Among them, emails between Kim and Mike in the final months of his life. Some are loving and upbeat. But there are others that raise troubling questions about Mike and the marriage. Like this one from Kim, sent about two weeks before the shooting. I just can't keep putting myself on a guilt trip anymore and blame myself for our problems. What problems are you talking about in this? We had gotten to the point where we really didn't communicate, and so we were talking about seeing a counselor for that. and a counsel for that. You went on to say,

after that, I can't make any promises because at this point, I feel it is about life and death for me. I can't stay in an unhealthy relationship. Right. Here's the next quote. I know I've done some terrible, hurtful things to you and vice versa. What's the terrible thing?

Well, to me, I can't think of a specific thing, but... It sounds like your relationship is almost at the end of the line here. I'm a bit of a drama queen. But it didn't... That's not where it ended. And it doesn't show the conversations we had on the phone. It's that last email Mike Stallman apparently wrote to his wife not long before the shooting that strikes some as the strongest proof of suicide. Is this, in your opinion, a suicide note? No, clearly not.

This man may be Kim Stallman's best hope of getting authorities to listen. Stuart Bowen was the George W. Bush administration's special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Kim first contacted him in 2011. He says he reviewed her legal filings and Michael Maloney's report and discussed the report with Maloney extensively. What have you concluded? It was not a suicide. I believe that he was murdered. Bowen says authorities may have cut corners early on. It might be the case that the rush to judgment led to practices that departed from best practices.

Though in 2017, Bowen resigned from a government job in Texas amid unrelated ethics allegations, which he denies, he has become one of Kim's most important supporters. She's committed to the truth about what happened. she's committed to the truth about what happened. He and Kim have helped Cilla McCain and others push Congress for a bereaved family's Bill of Rights. McCain says many have nowhere else to turn. There's no court in which they can say, hey, let's hear this fairly with unbiased eyes and ears. It doesn't exist for military families. Recently, another significant step forward. Bowen says he convinced the military's new chief medical examiner to take another look

at the official findings in the case. He assured me that he was going to review it closely and discuss it widely. Is that a big deal? Oh, God, yeah. Because what can that medical examiner do? Change the death certificate. I have poured over thousands, thousands of documents. After spending about 10 years looking into this case... I have talked to anybody that I could find. Scylla McCain is writing a book about it with Kim. She says in her experience, authorities rarely change

their findings. And last summer, NCIS sent us a statement saying, NCIS has thoroughly investigated this case and we continue to stand by our investigative findings. investigative findings. NCIS's independent expert Mark Reynolds insists the science strongly suggests how Colonel Stallman sustained his fatal wound. But Reynolds also surprised us. Do you feel 100% certain that this is a suicide? No. I think that if it was a hidden homicide, it was sophisticated, and it won't be determined frantically. It'll be determined investigatively. Would you be professionally troubled if this case was changed to undetermined? Would I be professionally troubled? No. Can you live with undetermined? That's like saying, it could be this, it could be that. No, I may have to live with it.

However, I don't want to. I don't think it's fair to my children. You've been described as a woman in denial about all of this. You're not in denial? No, no. Far from it, she insists. It would have been easier for me

if it had been a suicide. At least I could move on with my freaking life. Kim recently visited her husband's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. She's now thinking of moving his remains closer to home. A man gave his entire life to his country. And for what? They didn't support him in the end. As for the man they loved, Colonel Stallman's family knows they may never prove how he died, but they will always be proud of how he lived.

It's my duty to carry on his legacy and do great things so he'll be proud of me and whatever I end up doing in my life. My father was probably the best man that I have ever met and might ever will meet. A man she still sometimes meets when she closes her eyes at night. All of a sudden there's like a knock on the door and the door opens and it's dad. And then I wake up and I'm like nope, that was just a dream. There's no other man I've ever loved.

I know I'll never meet another Mike Stallman. Solomon.