Anatomy of Murder - 8-Week Marriage

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

A cord left wrapped in a dead man’s hands. He was killed with it, by his wife. Justified or homicide? Secrets uncovered will help decide where the truth really lies.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. For today's story, a friend of mine who you heard from on another episode, Mitch Benson, was in a different jurisdiction for a while. And while there's a lot of us prosecutors, we're actually a rather small community. And he said to me, you know, you really should speak to this other prosecutor about a case that he had because there's really some worthwhile things to talk about. So I spoke to Michael Canty and he brought us back to a case that occurred in 2007. Kelly Forbes was originally from Trinidad.

She lived with her family in Brooklyn. I know she had at least one brother, and she came from all accounts a very nice family. Her family and friends best described the 29-year-old as a great mother to her young daughter. She was fun-loving and finding her way after moving to the U.S. And she was working in a doctor's office as a medical assistant. And that's where she met Michael Forbes. His father was an industrious man and bought properties and began to buy properties with Michael. And Michael started his own business.

He started a barbershop business. He had fancy clothes, a fancy car. He got married. He started a barbershop business. He had fancy clothes, a fancy car. He got married. He had a child. He subsequently divorced, but maintained a very good relationship with his wife and had been quite successful. And she made such an impression on him during that visit that on his way out, he made a point to leave his phone number at the front desk, asking her co-workers to pass the message on. He wanted to take her out.

Michael took to her almost immediately. He was at the point in his life where he wanted to settle down and have a family. And Kelly had a child from a previous relationship. And by all accounts, he came in and swept her off her feet. So in 2006, he began to shower her with gifts. And it didn't take long for him to decide that this was the woman he wanted to marry. And, you know, he proposed and she said no. She said she wasn't sure, but the relationship continued. I think there was a little bit of a cooling off period. And again, it doesn't matter

woman to man or man to woman, but you do start to question, okay, is it just that she didn't accept because she wasn't sure? And hey, I'd rather have someone take their time than to rush into something that wasn't going to work out, or at least they knew that from the get-go. Or is there something else? There is one other important thing to point out. Kelly Forbes was 20 years younger than Michael. And let's discuss the elephant in the room.

When you hear the age difference, there may be absolutely nothing more than two people with a large gap between them who are very much in love. Or is there something else? You know, I hate to go down that path, but we have heard the stories many a time. A much older man is usually the story and a much younger woman and that control and I am older, I will be the person to be in charge comes out guns a blazing. In June of 2007, he proposed and then they got married. Just when I hear, well, that eventually she accepted his proposal, you have to start to, I don't know, talk about, is it that the thing that makes her accept is his money? Is he some sort of security? You know, Kelly Forbes grew up, as you heard, in Trinidad.

So she's this young mother now in a new country raising a child. And this guy comes and basically says, I'm not only going to care for you, I'm going to care for your daughter, too. She did want a big wedding. And Michael obliged. He paid for the wedding, took her on a nice Caribbean cruise for their honeymoon, constantly showered her with gifts. From proposal to actual ceremony was really quick. They knew each other for only about a year and got married only a couple of months after he proposed. You know, Michael did also come through with one of his promises. When they returned from their honeymoon, Michael has now purchased his house down on the south shore of Long Island in Merrick, and he has been doing

construction on it. He knows that Kelly and her daughter are going to be moving in. You know, clearly Michael was much more of a hurry to get married than Kelly was. And within months, he was set up with a wife, stepdaughter. And for Kelly, it seemed that Michael did bring her stability. I think in this day and age, so many of us realize that we shouldn't have preconceived notions on just about anything. And that can go for marriage too. You know, different setups work out for different people. And could this really be exactly what the two of them were looking for? She had a job. She had a secure situation for her daughter and herself. Things could go in the right direction or not.

The morning of November 21st, 2007, a call came in to 911. National Police Emergency Operator. Okay, you're going to have to stop crying, sweetheart, so I can understand you. What's the problem? That 911 caller was Kelly. My head is choking. I don't want to eat. That 911 caller was Kelly. The initial call to 911 was a hysterical Kelly Forbes saying something about choking,

to the point where I believe the 911 operator said something, are you choking, or he tried to choke me. Someone laid dead on the ground. It was Michael. Is your husband conscious? I don't think so. I was at work and I got a call. There's been a homicide in Merrick, New York, which is on the south shore of Long Island. I was familiar with the area. I grew up on the south shore of Long Island. So when I knew the neighborhood and I responded to the scene and that was

my introduction to the case. This was actually the first case he handled for a homicide. It had been a little bit slow in the county, and Thanksgiving was that Thursday. So Mitch Benson, who was the chief of our major offense bureau, called me into his office, and he said, it's yours. At the time, I really had no experience. I knew the types of cases that were coming in, but I was obviously genuinely excited, probably a little bit nervous. You know, I wanted to make sure that I put my best foot forward on my first homicide. Eight weeks after they said their vows,

it was Kelly Forbes who made that 911 call saying her husband was dead. I believe it's Officer Goldhammer. He arrives at the scene, he rushes up, and she says something to, he tried choking me. I had to defend myself. I was able to knee him in the groin and get the cord around him, and next thing I knew, he was dead. While there is an admission that she ended his life,

she's making it clear that so far her actions were taken to save her own. And this is where the investigation kicks off. And Anastasia, to you, clearly you understand this world. What does it take for you or a prosecutor to really work through a self-defense claim? I was in domestic violence for a while, even before I got to homicide. And unfortunately, we see this all the time. You know, when you have an assault or like here, an ultimate death, the person who committed it, at least at their hands, calls it in because whether it is actually justified that they are defending themselves or whether it's something more than actually a crime, they call it in. And just going for a second to Kelly Forbes' perspective, you know, certainly

what we see in domestic violence cases so often is the woman who, when she has actually committed an assault or like here, a death results. What that must be like, you know, something has happened to them to be attacked or to cause them to fear for their lives. I mean, just for a moment, again, we don't know what side of the line this one falls on, but put yourself in that person's shoes in the unfortunately many cases of justifiable self-defense. One thing as a prosecutor is you don't presume anything. Your objective is not to simply convict somebody because somebody is dead. You need to objectively investigate her claims to determine what happened. So let's go step by step with this crime scene, starting when first responders initially arrived. Kelly Forbes was at the top of the stairs crying, and he then immediately

pushed past Kelly to find Michael on the ground, not breathing. And he immediately started CPR, started chest compressions, kind of in a failed attempt to try to see if he could revive him. Through this rush of trying to perform CPR and do chest compressions and to see if he could save his life, he was taken aback by one particular fact, and that was that the cord had been laid across Michael's hands, that it almost looked like it had been placed that way. And after the first responder finished trying to give CPR, he got a really good look at Michael Forbes' clothing. There was no indication of any ripped clothing. In fact, Officer Goldhammer described Michael having a single button on his pajamas buttoned.

And if this was a life-or-death struggle, essentially it was only one button buttoned. And if this was a life or death struggle, essentially it was only one button buttoned and that button remained intact. He actually ripped it off. He described ripping it open to perform CPR. We always talk about in these homicide investigations, you have to go where the evidence leads you. And how does that particular crime scene begin to get you some answers? And here's a few clues that I see. First, she only had a small bruise on her wrist and another on her arm, nothing on her neck, not even a scratch. How does a 250-pound man that's 6'2", why is he now dead at the hands of a 5'7", 130-pound woman? That's the first thing that went through my mind.

So it's not easy to strangle somebody to death. He had broken cartilage in the front of his neck. He had petechial hemorrhaging under his eyelids and inside his lips. The amount of force that would need to be applied time-wise would be anywhere between 10 seconds and a minute. And if the struggle was so intense, how would her daughter, who was sleeping in the room right next to them, sleep through the entire event? Kelly had claimed that she kept quiet not to wake her daughter up. You know, I'm going to take the other side of that perspective. So often we do see survivors or victims in their own right that don't show physical signs of the abuse or the

attack. And even with a child in the next room, unfortunately, unfortunately, so often the victim, that survivor, again, will do anything to not let that child hear. One, because they don't want that child to get into harm's way, but they also don't even want them to hear what's going on. And so that is yet another victimization of the abused so often in these cases. To detectives, it doesn't seem like there had been a battle for her last breath with a man twice her size. This incident where Michael was found was in a room. It was essentially like a sunroom off of the bedroom with a couch. And certainly messy, but not indicative of a life or death struggle. In fact, there were cables that had glass tops that were right next to the couch where this purported struggle had occurred, this fight for her life.

They were essentially unmoved. These are all the different things that you take into consideration when evaluating a crime scene. So the cord being in his hands, suspicious, yes, possible, of course. But when you take all of the crime scene in totality so far, it's leaning towards a possible theory that it was placed. You very rarely try to rely on a single piece of evidence. What you want to do is you want to couple that with everything else you're seeing. So you say, okay, you got the button.

Well, I'm not really asking you to just rely on the button to paint this picture of what really happened. But look at the table. The table's unmoved. Look at Kelly Forbes' clothing. No rips, no tears, no stretches. But I think the one thing that's clear is that you can volley back and forth across this net. I mean, because we certainly can.

And so that's why investigators need to look so closely at these cases, because that ball does land on different sides depending on the case. So here they really went next to speak with Michael's family. Michael's family had concerns, for sure. They were not thrilled with Kelly. And even though the marriage was only eight weeks old, something happened weeks before this incident. But this time, the person who called 911 was not Kelly Forbes, but Michael. And that call paints his case in an entirely new light. Police went to interview Michael Forbes' parents

to understand more about their relationship with Kelly. I mean, was this a perfect marriage or a powder keg ready to explode? And his parents told investigators that three weeks into the marriage, Michael called 911 because he had a heart attack. He spends approximately four days in the hospital. It's a fairly significant heart attack. And then after that, his mother comes and stays with him for approximately a week, where she's staying with him overnight. So she's present in the home with Kelly and Michael.

And then the following two weeks, she is at the house every day. During this whole time, on the weekend, Kelly is leaving. So on Friday afternoon, she takes her daughter. She heads into Brooklyn. So she's never with Michael on the weekends. Michael's mother complains, you're the wife here. You should be taking care of your husband. And regardless what his mother's thinking, none of this seems to faze Michael because the thing we know that he does next is buy Kelly a car and an expensive one at that.

She is complaining incessantly to Michael, I'm field trapped, I need to have a better way to get to Brooklyn. So he goes and he buys her a $40,000 Mercedes-Benz sports car. And while Michael's having his heart attack, she's picking up the sports car from the dealership. I mean, here is this couple only eight weeks into their marriage, right? You're supposed to be in the newlywed stage, that la-la phase, if not then, then when? And then we know eight weeks in, she kills him. So in many ways, it seems like the clearest case maybe ever.

While developing a strong case against a defendant, you also need to do a deep dive into your victim's past. and that's for several reasons. But perhaps the most critical is if you get to court, how would the defense potentially portray the victim? And could that be relevant? Investigators in this case would learn about Michael's past and that could change the course of the investigation. After he got out of the army in the early 80s,

he had some trouble with the law, disturbing allegations or convictions, in fact, involving an assault. I believe one was a sexual assault and some violent felonies. Of course, hearing this, this now impacts what everybody that hears this is thinking. You hear a assault component. You hear violence. I hear the word sexual assault. I mean, head spin on my end,

and I can only imagine on investigators when they heard that. And again, just like you can't prove that someone has done something in court by their past, you certainly have to take it into account and look much more closely at everything Kelly says

in light of this new information. They ask her, because they're doing a thorough investigation, any incidents of physical violence. mostly at everything Kelly says in light of this new information. They ask her, because they're doing a thorough investigation, any incidents of physical violence. And she mentions these two incidents, one where I think he pushed her against the wall, and a second one where she was at the top of the stairs and he walked up behind her and grabbed her arms and shook her. In a case of self-defense,

the allegations would prompt the investigators to go back and see how many times police may have been called to the Forbes home on a domestic violence call. Certainly, it was something that we took seriously. I mean, anytime somebody makes an allegation of physical abuse, especially in domestic violence, you know, as prosecutors, one thing that you become acutely aware of, whether you're handling misdemeanors or you're trying homicides, is how significant domestic violence is and violence against women is in the criminal justice system. This really starts to build credibility into what she's saying, at least now that we have to really be much more critical at thinking that she isn't perhaps telling the truth.

It would be a logical step for investigators to look at reports, talk to neighbors, and go back and re-canvass to determine, did any of these alleged incidents occur? And that may begin to paint a totally different picture. In this case, it was simple. It wasn't a whodunit. It was, did Kelly Forbes kill her husband unjustifiably, or did she kill her husband in self-defense? Those are the two options that were on the table. Unlike other homicides where, you know, you have a murder victim and they're lying on the ground,

and you say, well, who shot him? Well, we don't know. Who are the suspects? This was not that type of case. This was not a whodunit. It was what happened. Now, listen, let's just stop for a second because the person that is dead in this case is Michael Forbes. So absolutely, he is the victim and something caused his death. But again, if we're analyzing from law enforcement and prosecutor's perspective, we have to really look at it from the outside to see if what Kelly Forbes did equals murder or justifiable self-defense.

And the devil in that is going to be in the details. Other than the bruises that showed up later on that night on the sides of her arms, there was no other indication of domestic violence or physical violence inflicted on her. So we're looking at two specific allegations where police were called to the home. But that doesn't really spell out murder. It doesn't necessarily always lead to murder. Often it does not, thankfully. So you still have to step back and look at the preponderance of all the circumstantial evidence you're gathering before you can make that final determination.

And then you continue the investigation and you say, OK, what else do we know about the marriage? Were there any prompt outcries? Sometimes this doesn't happen, but you look to see, is there any other evidence of Kelly reporting physical violence at the hands of Michael to others, a family member, a friend, a parent? Even though they were only married for eight weeks, what was going on between these two people? So Kelly had made statements that Michael became angry that Kelly was spending more and more time with her daughter, and at times even sleeping in the bed with her instead of being in the bed with her husband, Michael.

According to her, they were having an argument about her not wanting to sleep in the bed. Michael wanted her to stay in their bed, in their bedroom, and she left. She was also on the phone, either texting or speaking to somebody, and it was that Michael grew frustrated. She then went into her daughter's room. Her daughter's room was down the hall and fell asleep in her daughter's bed. Essentially, when she came back, he said, what are you doing here? And an argument ensued. And it was this dispute that led to Michael's death.

She describes an argument. He came at me with the cord. He managed to get the cord around my neck. I believed he was going to strangle me. I managed to knee him cord. He managed to get the cord around my neck. I believed he was going to strangle me. I managed to knee him in the groin and get the cord off my neck and around his neck. She did say at one point she was on top of him after she got the cord off of her neck. Now, I can easily go two ways on this, right? Because on the face, it's like, wait, because of that, you're going

to actually try to choke someone, which we all know can quickly lead to death. But on the other hand, we have all heard the stories and clearly we have seen the cases where literally nonsense can lead to murder, you know, looking at someone the wrong way. And here you have the fireworks, if you will, of people getting angry in romantic entanglements, in relationships, and that unfortunately does light the fire all too quickly in too many cases. And then the case takes a critical turn. Police find a clue which flips this case on its head.

You know, if this was a self-defense, you want to look into that. As a prosecutor, your job is not to prejudge. You know, we don't say, oh, well, she must have done it and there was no excuse. You have to go through the process. You have to look at the evidence and you go where the evidence takes you. You know, listening to what Michael Canty said, I can definitely relate to his words because we are programmed because what we most often see in the Bureau is, unfortunately, mostly women coming in, victims or certainly alleging abuse. So your head right away goes to her. But you can't put blinders on in any of those cases. And in domestic violence, of course, we've all heard where it's turned out to be the other way,

that people have started to catch on and now use that victimization to now flip it on its head and try to unfairly use that to gain advantage, to get out from under criminal conduct at their hands. So you have to step back to see what the facts in this particular case, where the evidence will lead. And when investigators dig into Kelly's life, they find something very unsettling. As one of the first steps of the investigation, police looked at phone records. And when they looked at Kelly Forbes' records, that led them to a man named Jeremy, who was a flight attendant.

This individual is the first person that Kelly reaches out to after she strangles Michael to death. Hello? She texted him right after this assault with her husband? You know, what does he have to say about that? We brought him in, and I remember interviewing him, and I said, can you describe the relationship? And he goes, well, we hung out. You know, we met, we hung out, we used to hang out together. And then I thought to myself, well, she's in her 20s,

this guy looks like he's in his 20s. I just asked the question, I said, did you guys have a sexual relationship? And his response is, well, did we? Yeah, of course. Whoa. I mean, I heard that and now I quickly, my head flipped and turned. Boom. Now we hear, and this goes towards what his family was saying, that Kelly was just not the wife that they expected to be so happily married only eight weeks in, and to now hear that during that time, in the first eight weeks, she's having an affair, and then Michael dies at her hands.

When I heard that, I quickly went from one side of the line to the other. She engages in a text messaging exchange with Jeremy Bryan. If we use that as the baseline, so let's assume for a second that she calls Jeremy almost immediately after she strangles Michael. We knew that approximately 70 some odd minutes had passed between when Michael was strangled and when she finally decides to pick up the phone and call 911.

I mean, obviously, we're all asking the question is why would someone delay calling police in a situation like this? And I have my own thoughts, but Anna Seeg, I'd love to hear yours first. I hate to keep doing the back and forth here, but I see it two ways, right? I mean- Of course you do. Because you have to. You have to think on both sides to hopefully make sure that we get it right. And the one thing is to me is that no matter what precipitated her putting the cord around his neck, he's laying there. And if indeed he attacked her first, no matter what, you call 911. You want to try to get him help because then you would

assume that she doesn't actually want him dead, right? Is there some sort of a cover-up about to play in? So I have to say, on its face, I can really go both ways. You know, I question whether that 911 call was staged. I mean, we have seen that in our stories, right? Where someone really took the time to decide when to call 911, potentially in this case, where to place the cord, or to potentially destroy any physical evidence that may be in the room. How about this? Delete phone messages on your phone. Delete any potential evidence on may be in the room. How about this? Delete phone messages on your phone.

Delete any potential evidence on the victim's cell phone. I mean, I can go on and on. And to me, that's crucial evidence because it demonstrates that there's plotting going on. There's planning going on. There's not a concern for Michael's well-being and whether or not Michael's going to survive or not. It's putting together a plan as to how I'm going to explain what happened when the police ultimately come. But the real big question in the room here is, did this play a part in this homicide? When I saw the text messages and I found out the timeline between when she strangled Michael and

then when she called 911, The light bulb went off and I said, well, if this woman was defending herself and she has a child in the house, wouldn't your initial reaction be to grab your child, run out of the house, knock on a neighbor's door? My husband just tried to kill me. Call the police. Call an ambulance. She does none of that. And you know, one thing we have to stop and say here is that, look, people have relationships outside of marriage, and that certainly doesn't lead or mean that they are capable of murder. I remember thinking to myself, well, this is somebody then that's going to have crucial information as to whether or not these claims of abuse are true. He's going to potentially have information as to whether or not she confided in him about the abuse. And it also now provides another key piece of evidence as to how Kelly felt about this eight-week marriage that she was in.

That certainly she wasn't taking it as seriously as Michael was because she was carrying on an affair with someone just days into her marriage. And so when they talked to Jeremy, it seemed that Kelly Forbes was certainly not the woman so in love with her brand new husband. He was an African-American male, handsome, clean cut, sharp, polished. He was a flight attendant on a private airline company. So he was dressed very nicely, was not shy about speaking to us,

was very candid. And we interviewed him. And what can you tell us about her relationship with Michael? And he said she complained about him incessantly. She felt trapped in the marriage. She was miserable. She couldn't stop saying all these terrible things about him. And then we said, well, did she ever

indicate to you that there was any physical violence? And he said, never. This is an individual that had seen Kelly in the most intimate of circumstances. He'd seen her naked, right? And we asked him, we said, is there anything on her body that indicated to you that she was the victim of violence, physical violence? He said he never saw any indication of that at all.

What he made clear and what was very clear to investigators, the prosecutor, when they spoke to him, was that through these texts, that Jeremy, both in what they saw and what they heard when they spoke to him, that through these texts that Jeremy, both in what they saw and what they heard when they spoke to him, that he was shocked. The defendant who just murdered her husband, you say, is this individual in any way implicated? Is he involved? And we quickly determined that he wasn't. And in fact, he was corroborated by his text messages where he's telling her to call the police, check his pulse. These are all consistent with, you know, what we were hearing from him when

we were interviewing him. And in another shocking detail, in those 70 some odd minutes before Kelly called police, she made another phone call before she dialed 911. One of the calls she placed was to her brother. He took control away from Kelly because on that call, he says to her, Kelly, I'm calling the police. And now she realizes I don't have more time. They're coming regardless. And then she decides at that point when she realizes she has no choice, that the police are eventually going to come because her brother's going to call the police. She then places the 911 call. And the major question that was troubling investigators from the very beginning was this strangulation. You have Michael, who is a half a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than Kelly.

How was she able to overpower him? And as investigators really looked into it, it all started to make sense. We found out through the autopsy was that he had a heart condition. Well, now we have a man that's 50 years old that is essentially convalescing and recovering from what has been described as a severe heart attack. What doesn't come right away is the toxicology report. We also knew that he had cough syrup in his system, which, what does that tell us? Well, obviously, healthy people don't take cough syrup. Hearing the toxicology report and the results of that toxicology report, I mean, it's giving us a clearer picture of how aggressive he could have been, according to the report.

We found out that he had Ambien in his system. Ambien, obviously, is a sleep drug. We then spoke to medical experts that told us that Michael would, based on the amount of Ambien that was in his system at the time he died, would either be sleeping or would be in a sleep-like state. So certainly in no condition to engage in a combat of sorts with his wife. So when you look at a combination of all three of those factors, it starts painting a clearer picture of the physical condition of Michael during this struggle. You know, it's becoming clearer and clearer that she had an advantage, a physical advantage over Michael in this struggle.

So at this point, investigators and prosecutors working hand in hand, they decide there was enough probable cause to arrest Kelly Forbes for the murder of her husband. You know, normally here in New York, when someone is arrested for a felony, prosecutors only have a certain amount of time, a certain amount of days before you have to present that case to the grand jury and return indictment if the person is to remain incarcerated on bail or in the case of most homicide cases remand which means there is too much incentive for you to flee so you stay in jail while the case is pending it's essentially a pre-trial hearing where you present your evidence before a judge and the judge makes a determination as to whether or not the defendant should be held the reason for that is simply just charging them with a piece of paper. Defendant certainly has a right to go before a judge and say, this is grossly unfair, this doesn't make sense, I need to have my day in court. But here, Kelly Forbes, that time went by and there was no grand jury action.

To make it even stranger, after her arrest, she was released. Now, Michael Canty can't talk to us about the details because grand jury proceedings are secret and with good reason. But from the outside, I can tell you that that doesn't very often happen when you have these homicide, murder, and manslaughter cases, unless some of the evidence isn't coming together or we need further investigation or digging. And so from an outsider, I have to think that that was going on here, that even from the inside, people really weren't sure yet which side of the line

this case fell. I can tell you that we use the term no action. That means that there's not been any action on behalf of the grand jury. So at that point, a defendant can make an application to the court to be released. And that's what Kelly did. And, you know, for local reporters, you know, seeing her walk out of the courthouse after being charged in a murder case, it was an unusual sight and it just made it that much more of a bigger, interesting story. There was significant press attention. It did, over the course of the next few days, it certainly picked up steam. You had affluent community, wife kills husband, strangles him to death.

There was a lot of press attention and interest in the story, especially in light of the fact that you had that age difference. But ultimately, while we don't know exactly what caused the delay for prosecutors, they did present their case and Kelly Forbes would find herself back in a courtroom, slowly proceeding to trial. As you put together a trial, obviously as the prosecutor, you go first. So you have the ability to control a narrative. And we certainly didn't want to put a narrative out there

and misrepresent who Michael was and then have the defense attorney get up and say, well, they didn't tell you that Michael went to prison for a violent felony. So we made the tactical decision. I worked with the chief of our major offense bureau, Mitch Benson. We sat down. We had a discussion about that. So we made the tactical decision. I worked with the chief of our major offense bureau, Mitch Benson. We sat down, we had discussion about that. Do we disclose it? Do we control that narrative and explaining that, look, this is just a small part of who Michael Forbes was.

You know, he paid his debt to society. And for the better part of the next 20, 25 years, he had no run-ins with the law. And we made that tactical decision to open on it. Kelly Forbes is facing a charge of murder against her husband, and her defense took a position not only was a self-defense, but they wanted to utilize that toxicology report in her favor, saying that the mixture of those drugs that were found in the system, which is basically cough medication and Ambien, could make somebody violent, could make them lash out.

One of the side effects of Ambien was aggressive and belligerent behavior. That could have made Michael become the aggressor, the violent one. She was just offending herself. When you talk about jury selection, I believe one of the jurors was a pharmacist. And I thought to myself, well, do we want the pharmacist or not? Ultimately, the pharmacist was sat. And I thought, well,

is it more likely than not that it worked as its intended effect, which is essentially to put you in a sleep-like state or the less than 1% where it causes belligerent behavior? And we were confident that based on all the facts and circumstances and the crime scene, like we said, that a jury would see for what it was. And so really, in certain ways, it came down to a battle of the expert.

And certainly from the prosecution's perspective, like, sure, they have a document case or two or more that someone has actually been violent when on this combination of medication. I mean, for all of you out there, if you look at just about any medication that's in your medicine cabinet, they all have the warning of what the side effects could be. But if you really go beyond those and look at the trials and the actual numbers, those side effects, certainly in this case, are so few and far between that when they put

it all together, this case ultimately seemed pretty clear to the jury because once they were given the case for their deliberations, it didn't take long before they came back with the verdict. Kelly Forbes was convicted of manslaughter, and her sentence was 21 years. And Anastasia, your thoughts about that sentence? Just to make it clear to everyone out there, if you don't know what manslaughter is, when we look at the sliding scale where death is caused by criminal means, after the various homicide counts, there's the next one down is manslaughter. And the real difference here is that the penalty, the sentence is going to have that definite, that determinate number, that actual number here, like the 21 years of Scott said.

So it's not going to have a range. I consider myself like a person of faith and I believe in the intrinsic value in everybody's life. So the fact that Michael had those run-ins with the law and they were serious and not certainly not minimizing them, but I think every life's redeemable. And you know, as prosecutors, you take your victims as you find them. And they have different pasts. And some are the innocent of innocent. And some have sometimes sordid pasts. But that doesn't give anyone else the right to take a life. And by all accounts, he had redeemed himself.

He had started a business. He had a loving relationship with his parents he had a marriage that ended divorce but he still maintained a cordial relationship with his ex-wife he had a daughter who he loved and supported he took in kelly and kelly's child and provided a home for them to have your life snuffed out like that at 50 when all indications were that you were looking to start a new life with your wife. It comes back to what I said. I think every life has value. And I think our criminal justice system, when we punish homicides so severely,

you know, we have trials and we take them seriously. It demonstrates that we do value life. And we have to make sure that those that take life are held accountable. Michael Forbes had turned his life around and put his past behind him and thought he had found the perfect match, someone to share his dreams. Instead, his new wife, Kelly Forbes, took it all away. And both Michael and Kelly had children from previous relationships. And today, my thoughts are with them.

They are the ones who are left behind. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media Production Sumit David is Executive Producer