Dateline NBC - Buried Secrets

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

In this Dateline classic, a Florida man disappears into thin air, leaving behind a young son and a grieving ex-wife. When his bones are identified years later, a rookie detective is determined to uncover the truth. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on July 6, 2012.

He's just my first love. The guy who disappears. Except in her case, he really disappeared. He's going to call me in a couple days. He never called. His family in agony. I wrote letters to O.P. Winfrey, to America's Most Wanted. A rookie detective finally broke the case.

I said, oh my gosh, I think I've hit pay dirt. A strange phone call revealed a secret. David needed to be gotten rid of. A killer revealed. Case closed? Not quite. Then we got the real story.

A bombshell revelation. Was she really a bereaved ex? I always loved David. Or just maybe a black widow? Barbara Britton is in the middle. Buried Secrets. It's a strange thing that happens among the bogs of marshes, the soft soil here in coastal Florida.

Things have a way of coming up. Things buried in the ground in the past. Or both. It was July 2003, beaches quiet, snowbirds back up north. So no one noticed at first what was starting, inland a little, in a town called Pembroke Pines, where Donna Velasquez, just three months a detective, a rookie really, had just been assigned to a brand new cold case unit. The sergeant came into the office and dropped a box of papers right on my desk and said, here, see what you can do with this.

And I began to wonder, hmm, is this a test to see, can she really do this? That the case was a challenge was understatement. And now all but forgotten mystery, the disappearance 15 years earlier of a young man named David Jackson. And the file offered no hints, no pointers, nothing really beyond the basic bio. To unearth the truth, even the rookie cop knew she'd have to learn about the victim.

So she began with something easy. She found David Jackson's mother, Judy Carlson. Found Judy's son, actually, who called his mom. And he said, are you sitting? And I said, yes. He says, they reopened David's case. The detective and the mother talked about David for hours. Wasn't a problem for Judy. She loves talking about her boy, even now, to us.

David was my first child. He was just, loved everything and everyone. Happy birthday, Judy! He would walk in the room and everyone would just be a magnet to him. David Jackson was the eldest of Judy's three children, and Mark Jackson idolized his older brother. He looked out for me, and he was that way with his friends, with everybody. Bill Brown was one of those friends.

In 1982, after high school, Brown and David Jackson worked together at a Burger King, where David became a manager. Brown also had a front-row seat to the budding romance between Jackson and a pretty 16-year-old co-worker named Barbara Britton. They were together, and that's awesome. I mean, if you can find love, I mean, that's what we all want. And so, all these years later,

Detective Velasquez paid a visit to the woman who'd been the girl who'd fallen in love with David Jackson. Happy to help, she told the detective. Same thing when we called on her to help, she told the detective. Same thing when we called on her to talk about the David she knew. He was a very good-looking man. You know, we just had an attraction for each other and started talking. Sweet, nice, kind. Swept me off my feet. He was a good guy. And as she talked, it became clear. Deep emotions would not stay beneath the surface. I was young. I was still going to school.

This is my first love. Two youngsters in love. And then, well, things happen, don't they? Mom, I got something to tell you. I said, what? And they said, Barbara's pregnant. Judy was surprised, a little worried maybe. But nowhere near as worried as Barbara's parents, particularly her dad, an ex-Marine who was not very impressed with young Mr. Jackson, or so Judy heard.

Mr. Britton did not like him. I don't know why. Still, David said his mother was walking on air. He came home one day and said, well, Mom, I'm going to have to sell the truck. And I said, why? He said, I'm going to be a father and a husband, and that's not appropriate to have a truck, and I'm going to have them. So the pretty girl and the handsome boy got married.

Big wedding, too, even though they were just kids. And very soon, parents also, to a son, John Jackson. And they fought, made up, fought again. Babies having babies is no easy thing. We were just too young. And to have a baby all the time, you know, he was, it was difficult for him. And it was difficult for me. So who was the first person to say, you've got to get a divorce? My dad. How did David take it? He was just kind of like, okay, let's just find somebody, some lawyers, and, you know, see what we have to do. And that was it.

The two divorced in 1985. David arranged weekend visits with John. How were they together? Oh, wonderful. Johnny just clung to them. They loved each other. And they all moved on. A couple of years later, Barbara married again. Michael Wolfe, an ex-military man like her dad, about the same age as her dad, too.

Your dad and your new husband probably saw eye to eye a lot. They sure did. They had a lot in common. They would talk a lot. Wolf took Barbara and John to live with him in Arizona. But David wanted to be a part of his son's life, so he traveled out west to see the boy. He went out there with a friend of his,

and they saw Johnny for three days. I got pictures of Johnny in, like, the old western town and everything. And maybe it was something about the distance, said Barbara. David and I became very good friends when I was out in Arizona and we used to talk a lot. In fact, what she felt deep in her heart, she said,

never did go away. I'll always love David. And then, it was June 25th, 1988. David's brother, Mark, was flying into town to visit the family. David was to pick him up at the airport. But when Mark arrived, he waited and waited. No David.

And Mark Jackson had a terrible feeling. No matter what, he'd have been there for me. I knew something was wrong. I knew something bad happened. Oh yes, very bad. And as the rookie detective Donna Velasquez poked around deep in the past, that something was reaching up through the mud to tell her its long neglected story. When we come back, just maybe nature could do some of the work. With the crazy weather and the water table that we have,

if he were ever buried anywhere, somewhere along the line, you're going to pop up. When Buried Secrets Continues. It was June 25, 1988, Fort Lauderdale, the day the mystery began. When a young man named David Jackson failed to meet his brother Mark at the airport. It was a gut feeling something was wrong, and I knew it. But here it was July 2003, and Detective Donna Velasquez relived that puzzling time. David's ex-wife Barbara, by then remarried and living in Arizona, as she told the detective, got a call from David's worried mother. Barbara said she wasn't worried, not then.

I thought, well, okay. He was with one of his girlfriends. And she was like, no, we're doing a missing person report. And I said, no, he's going to call me in a couple days. I know, no, he's going to call me in a couple days. I know he is. He's going to call me a couple days. And he never called. He never called. One day turned into the next. Police, family, everybody tried to find him. Couldn't.

Started looking, searching. Through canals, swam through pipes, through little bridges on the little dirt roads, anywhere. You see a car that looked like his go by, you do a U-turn and you chase it. How long did that go on? That went on until they found his car.

Which, more than three months later, turned out to be at the airport. So, did he just take off? His close friend didn't think so. Maybe he got on a plane and maybe he wanted to do something different. And then was like, no, he wouldn't do that. For one thing, David had been preparing for the arrival in two weeks of his five-year-old son, John. This was a big one, a month-long summer visit.

He was preparing for this visit. Oh yeah, for Johnny, yeah. Wanted everything perfect. And right in the middle of preparations, he vanished? Didn't make sense. But the days turned into weeks, months, years. Not a sign of David. The police went on in newer cases, but his mother never let up.

Phoning, nagging, writing. She knew David was out there somewhere. I wrote letters to O.P. Winfrey. I wrote to America's Most Wanted. And then I thought, okay, maybe I can have the semis put a picture of him in the back of the semi. So I got a list of all the big trucking companies and did all the letters.

But it took me a long time to finish any letter about him because I didn't want the ending to be like I thought it was. It took me a long time to finish any letter about him. Because I didn't want the ending to be like I thought it was. It was, she said, a horrible limbo. A little piece of her still hoping for good news. Part of her morning loss. I found a therapist right away. She said, take like 20 minutes out of every day.

Either scream and cry in the morning or scream and cry at night. Can anybody who hasn't been in your shoes understand what it's like for a mother to leave? No. Now, years later, the investigation was back in high gear. Judy told Detective Velasquez that in some corner of her heart she still hoped David might just turn up safely someday. The detective, however, was not inclined to false hope. She did not for a minute think he was still alive.

Had he died accidentally, surely a sign of him would have appeared. No, she believed when bodies aren't found, it's because someone has intentionally hidden them. But David Jackson might show up, just not alive. And my wheels started turning and I started thinking, you know, we live in Florida. With the crazy weather that we have and the water table that we have, if he were ever buried anywhere, somewhere along the line, you're going to pop up. Maybe, the detective thought, remains had popped up. After all, it had been a decade and a half since he disappeared. And so she Googled unidentified remains.

It led her down an endless Internet trail. And it's probably going on 10, 11 o'clock. And I'm sure my husband's saying, well, where the heck is that old girl? One site after another, dead ends. Until she got to one created by a Florida medical examiner. Promising, but exhausting. I'm there typing away and typing and typing, and it pops up about 100 matches. And she was determined.

She finally winded it down to a possible three. One of them really stands out for me. It says white male, and it says over six foot. David's a tall guy. He's a white male. Possibly. Those particular bones, just a few, a partial skeleton, turned up during construction of a Walmart parking lot not far from the place where David lived.

Surfaced just a year after David died, had been gathering dust in storage for 15 years. The detective went to see a forensic anthropologist, but when the doctor measured the bones... She comes out and she says, no, she says it's looking like he's only about 5'9".

Still, Velazquez had a hunch that she had finally found David Jackson. And she wasn't the sort of person to give up on a hunch. And I said, can we please do this one more time? She comes back and she goes, honey, she says, I was wrong the first time. She says, this person is anywhere between 5'9 and 6'1. I said, oh my gosh, I think I've hit pay dirt.

She got DNA from David's mother, waited for a lab to compare the samples. And ten days later, Detective Velasquez called the testing facility. She comes to the phone and she says to me, well, I sure hope you're sitting down. I said, why? You got a 100% match. Oh my gosh. I said, what? Because I'm not believing that I'm hearing what I'm hearing. Fifteen years after he disappeared, David Jackson had finally been found. The question now was, what happened to him? How did he end up here? Coming up, a strange coincidence, or was it? It's an eerie feeling,

you know, that he was in that area that I didn't even know about. When Dateline continues. It was good detective work that identified David Jackson's earthly remains, what was left of them. But pure chance that the partial skeleton was found at all, as David's brother Mark found out. They were getting ready to build a Walmart. A construction worker came across some bones. He reported it. They went out and they dug up a bunch of bones.

And put the bones somewhere and forgot all about it. They were found about a year after he disappeared. And they sat in the morgue for 15 years. Sat there all those years, even as those who loved David held out a shred of hope that he was alive somewhere. As far as I know, he was disappeared. He was missing.

But now Detective Velasquez had a hard truth to tell. David Jackson was dead, not missing. And the way he had been hidden made it perfectly clear he had been murdered all those years ago, most likely before his friends or family even noticed he was gone, which put a final period on his mother's lingering hope for his return. And apparently an ex-wife's what-ifs. Were you seriously thinking, and apparently an ex-wife's what-ifs.

Were you seriously thinking, you know, maybe someday I'll get back together with him? When it's your first love, you always think, you know, wow, you know, go to work, what if? Strange how things turn out. Barbara had moved back to Florida, remarried again, had a daughter,

took a job at Walmart, but still held a candle for David, even as he lay under the ground practically next door to the very Walmart where she worked. What did that do to you? It's an eerie feeling. It's, you know, that he was in that area that I didn't even know about.

Such an odd coincidence. Too odd, maybe? Time for a chat. Detective Velasquez called Barbara, got herself invited over to Barbara's house. Barbara seemed to have no problem talking about David. She said she cared about him a lot. And I say, well, how was David as a father? Well, David became abusive towards Johnny physically and emotionally, verbally. Wait a minute. This was a whole new wrinkle.

Up to now, everything about David's history had been squeaky clean. As an investigator and as a mom, I begin to say, did you ever call the police? She said, oh, no, I never called the police. She says, I just thought he would change. She proceeds to tell me that I documented the injuries with photographs, never produced any photographs for me. For us, by the way, Barbara changed her story, said it was really her father, not her, who accused David of abusing his son. And today she questions the allegation. My dad was looking into counselors and having them, you know, evaluate it and stuff like that because I would just be like, this is David, you know, what are you talking about? But of course, the detective couldn't talk to Barbara's father about abuse or murder or anything else. Harry Britton had been dead for years, but Barbara had more information for the detective. She recalled a troubling conversation she'd had with David.

At the time, said Barbara, David was working for Coca-Cola, delivering the product. He told me that someone was placing drugs on his Coca-Cola, delivering the product. He told me that someone was placing drugs on his Coca-Cola truck. And through his route, they were being taken off of the truck. I said, wow. I said, that's pretty serious. And she says, yes.

Interesting. Very. To Detective Velasquez, that sounded like a made-up story, almost as if she was trying to divert suspicion away from someone. An ex-wife would qualify, of course, as a person of interest in this kind of case, but as Velasquez and we learned, Barbara had an alibi. She wasn't anywhere near Florida, she said, when David disappeared.

I was not in Florida. I was in Arizona, in the apartment. I was nowhere around here. And lacking any further evidence, Detective Velasquez was stalled, dead in the water. Unless, maybe the man Barbara was married to at the time knew something. Michael Wolfe. A little checking revealed Wolfe had been married seven times. Number six, a woman named Nancy Graham lived in Alabama. Velasquez called her.

I told her, I'm investigating the disappearance of David Jackson. And she said to me, how much evidence do you have against him? And I said, I can't discuss the evidence with you, but I can tell you that it's enough for me to put him away right now. I was just totally bluffing. I had really nothing. I'm just throwing it out there, you know, fishing that long line. And if something bites, I'm reeling it in. And she says, Honey, she says, Let me call you back. The minutes ticked by. Velasquez waited by the phone. And when Nancy called back, what she said blew the case wide open.

She started telling me about who was involved, how it happened, where it happened, what they did, how they did involved, how it happened, where it happened, what they did, how they did it, how they planned it. They? Why, yes, they. And by the way, beware the sting of an ex-wife's tail. She says, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know. When we come back, the ex-wife ready to spill. The first shot didn't kill him. We have to shoot him again. When Buried Secrets continues.

David Jackson was murdered in 1988 in Florida. That much Detective Donna Velasquez could say for certain. But the rest? After more than a year of phone calls and late nights, all Velasquez had come up with was an increasingly complicated web of stories and relationships. David Jackson was married to Barbara Britton. Her father, Harry, disliked David. Barbara went on to become the

fifth wife of a man named Michael Wolfe. They divorced, and he later married two more times. But now, finally, one of Wolfe's ex-wives, a woman named Nancy, was sitting with Detective Velasquez, telling police she knew everything about what happened to David. Can you tell me again?

Because I know how he was killed and what they did with him. How did she know? According to the ex, Michael drank a lot. Every night, he would almost down a whole bottle of scotch. And I guess he just needed to talk. And the story Wolf told, according to the ex, implicated more than just himself. Here's what happened as Nancy heard it.

Wolf and Harry Britton, Barbara's father, rented a motel room on that long-ago July night, invited David to a meeting there. And when he gets at the hotel, they have a very small conversation, and Michael shot David in the head. He told me he had to get so drunk to do it, and that the first shot didn't kill him.

He had to shoot him again. After which, as Nancy relayed the story. They did take his car to the airport and left it there. Then they took him over to, I mean, there was an empty lot there, and that's where he buried. He did not spare the detail, said Nancy. And he did tell me he poured some corrosive, and I think it was lies what he said on the bus. And sure enough, I mean, that was consistent with the investigation. Along with that story came what sounded like a motive. David disappeared, remember, as he was preparing for a visit from his five-year-old son, John.

They decided that David needed to be gotten rid of because they never wanted David to be in Johnny's life. David was murdered in cold blood just to keep him out of his son's life. And boom, it clicked for me all of a sudden. I said, wow. I said, that's over child custody. That's why he's not here today. That was the motive. That was the motive.

But was Wolf's confession to an ex-wife a true story or just alcohol-fueled bravado? There was no way to know for sure, but it was enough at least to bring about the arrest in October 2004 of Michael Wolfe, now living in Ohio. But an arrest is not a conviction, Meg. And as Michael Wolfe cooled his very sober heels in an Ohio jail, he protested his innocence to anybody who would listen, including the local police. To whom Wolfe sent a letter, in which he claimed all he knew of the crime centered on a conversation with his ex-wife Barbara's father, Harry, a few months before the murder. Reporter Stephen Camp writes for the Broward-Palm Beach New Times and read Michael's letter. All Michael would admit

to is meeting Harry in a park near the Walmart, overlooking the place where David's bones would later come out of the ground. Michael Wolfe said that he had basically pointed over to that plot of land and said, well, if you needed to bury a body,

that would be a good place to do it. And then he concluded this letter with, and I don't know if he had listened or not. Apparently, he did. If Michael Wolfe had really not known anything beyond that point, it would get him off the hook. And it would leave it all in the hands of Harry Britton.

So Michael was pinning the murder on no one but Harry, who was safely dead and could tell no tales. But now Detective Velasquez believed she had enough evidence to bring Michael Wolfe back to Florida to stand trial for the murder of David Jackson.

We did the arrest warrant, and within a couple of days, we were flying out to Kettering, Ohio to extradite Michael Wolfe back to Florida. How did he react? He said some pretty harsh words. It's not very like if I say it, though. You can say it.

He said, I'm f***ed. This was it. Velazquez had her moment. Finally, after 15 years, she had made sure someone was going to be held accountable for the death of David Jackson. It was the culmination of 16 months of such a long, grueling, up and down, tiresome investigation of nights of not sleeping, of days of going to work and living off of coffee. And I thought, you know what? This is what it's all about. It was November of 2007 when Michael Wolfe went on trial for murder.

After so many years, any physical evidence that might have tied him to the crime was long gone. But what prosecutors did have was the verbal confession, the drunken story his ex-wife said he had told her. There, checkmate. Another ex-wife told police virtually the same story. He told me he shot him in the head. And he told me that he had a silencer on the gun. Now she too was called to the stand. That was enough. The jury was out less than an hour.

The verdict was guilty. At the sentencing, life in prison, David Jackson's family confronted Michael Wolfe. Not just to condemn him, but to ask a question, because there was still a piece missing. Something that still didn't make sense. What was David doing in that motel room the night they killed him? Why did he walk into that

trap? Why would he go to a motel to meet Mr. Britton when Mr. Britton lives ten minutes down the road? I mean, David is not a stupid child at 24. Why would Mr. Britt want to see him in a motel? Tell what you know, they demanded. There'd be no justice, they told Wolf,

unless everyone involved was held accountable. Outside the courtroom, David's brother encountered the state's attorney and said... He's going to tell you. And he said, he's not going to tell me anything. I saw it in his eyes, he'll tell you. And then we got the real story. In fact, it was just two days later when Wolf finally confessed the true measure of his guilt

and gave police firsthand his unedited version of events the night he said they buried David Jackson in the shifting Florida clay. Was someone else involved? Oh, yes, said Michael Wolfe. She certainly was. Coming up, what made David go to that motel? It was a woman who was on the phone.

David takes the phone, comes out. A little while later, he's all spruced up, ready to go out. When Dateline Continues. In November of 2007, the man who shot David Jackson to death was found guilty of the crime and sent to prison for the rest of his life. But a couple of days after he was sentenced, Wolf sent out word he was ready to tell the rest of the story. Sure, he said he was the trigger man, and yes, his father-in-law was determined to get rid of David permanently. But to set their trap, to lure David to the kill site, the motel,

they needed bait. And that bait, said Wolf, was Barbara. Barbara who did not require persuasion. Quite the contrary, said Mr. Wolf. Barbara Britton is in the middle. From what I was able to learn about David, he would have never gone to that hotel room to meet Harry Britton. He would have never gone to that hotel room to meet Michael

Wolfe. He agreed to come meet Barbara. The woman who wept tears of love for her long-lost David, who professed to have held a torch all those years, was the very same woman, said Wolfe, who called David on the phone and enticed him to go to that motel room to be killed. They needed to use Barbara as the lure because David still had feelings for Barbara. David had a roommate, reported journalist Stefan Kamp, and that roommate heard David take a phone call just before he went out that night. He was pretty sure it was a woman who was on the phone. David takes the phone, goes into his room, comes out a

little while later. He's all spruced up, ready to go out. He's got a smile on his face. He's combing his hair. He's putting on his Drakkar Noir cologne. And David Jackson left the apartment at that point. That was the last that any of his friends saw him at that point. What really happened at the motel? Wolf said he hid in the bathroom when David arrived.

Barbara answered, and he was glad to see her. He said they walked in, they sat down on the edge of the bed, and Barbara had a stun gun. And Barbara hit David with the stun gun. But the stun gun malfunctioned. So Wolf stepped out of the bathroom with his gun. He said, so I had the gun wrapped in a towel. And he showed me like this.

He said, pick the gun up, and I fired one shot. And about that time, Harry Britton came into the room and said, he's not dead yet. He's still breathing. Shoot him again. So he says, I shot him again and said, that shot killed him. And they put David's body in the back of Harry's VW and transported it to the site where they had already pre-dug the grave, so all they had to do was just lay his body in there and cover him up. But that wasn't the end of Wolf's tale. A year after the murder, he said, he got a call from Harry Britton. He had learned that they were going to build a new Walmart right there at the corner where they were.

Where the bones were buried. Where the bones were. And Harry, Michael Wolf said, told him, you have to come back down here and move the bones were. And Harry, Michael Wolfe said, told him, you have to come back down here and move the bones, almost as an order. Wolfe flew back to Florida. Michael says that he went out there in the middle of night, collected what he could find and put them in a trash bag,

and then he went back to Barbara Britton's family's house and put the bones out for the trash in a plastic bag. Michael Wolfe's story seemed to tell it all and to cast Barbara Britton in a leading role. And once she heard that story, Detective Velasquez was convinced Barbara, determined to keep David away from their son, was a full partner in his murder. What are the chances that either Michael Wolfe or Harry Britton forced her to take part in this scheme? Forced?

Yeah. You don't have to force a willing participant. And you believe she was willing? Yes. The detective couldn't help remembering, she said, what Barbara told her when she heard that David's bones had been identified. Strangely enough, the first thing she said to me was, how many bones do you have?

Come on. She had participated in retrieving those bones, and they thought they had gotten them all, when they had left about 50% behind. All this time, said the detective, she just knew Barbara had been lying and now she had the goods. We asked Barbara about all this, of course, about her ex-husband's allegations that she was deeply involved in the murder and she denied it. And you had no part in killing David? No, I did not. I had no knowledge and I had no part. And, you know, little lies here and there that Mike keeps changing his story. I think it's just psychotic. I think it's just psychotic for the things that he has said. I was 21 back then. I was very like, I don't think I could plan much.

You know, I mean, I'm not stupid, but I'm not that smart, you know. Now, said Barbara. It was all ex-husband Michael Wolfe's doing. His guilt, she said, made sense of his strange behavior during their time in Arizona. Particularly the weekend David disappeared. A weekend when, Barbara says, her ex-husband was not with her at home. He would always go on business trips. every time I asked he would tell me don't worry about it you know don't I got business to take care of. But she knew nothing at all about

the murder she insisted until the penny dropped during a conversation years later with her father. I'm like wonder you know wonder what he's doing I wonder if he's coming back I wonder, you know, I wonder what he's doing. I wonder if he's coming back. I wonder, you know, where he's at or what happened. And he would just be like, you don't have to worry, you know, he's not around to bother you. What was that like to deal with? Very, very rough. You know, it's like, it's my dad, it's my dad. I couldn't accept it. And what satisfaction did it get, you know?

I mean, did it satisfy him? Because it sure didn't satisfy me. Still in December of 2007, it was Detective Velazquez who got what she wanted. She'd worked hard to prove what she believed to be true, that Barbara was an integral part of the plot to kill David Jackson. And finally now, Barbara Britton was arrested and charged with murder.

Now, perhaps, the jury could answer the question, do you believe this woman? A woman whose hands literally shook, whose tears flowed at the mere mention of her departed ex-husband? Do you believe the things

she said? All the time we thought he was, it's always been, he's missing. Coming up, could Barbara's ex have a reason to lie about her role in the murder? She says yes. He held a grudge against her. I'll make you pay the price. Yeah. And then her day in court. I do. When Buried Secrets Continues Barbara Britton, the woman who sobbed at the mere mention of David Jackson's name, was now in jail awaiting trial for killing him. Exactly where Barbara belonged, said Detective

Donna Velasquez. She made it happen. She was the instigator as well as just being the one in the middle. I had no doubt in my mind that she was the catalyst. Barbara, meanwhile, maintained her innocence, claimed there was a certain reason Michael Wolfe lied about her that way. It was payback, she said, for something that happened when they were married. And here came another one of those odd stories. Earlier, remember, there was the one suggesting drug running on David's delivery truck. Now, a story about Michael and gun running. I was putting away laundry one day, and I saw a bulge in a dress shirt pocket,

and there was quite a bit of money there. And when he got home from work that night, I confronted him on it, and he told me that he was doing gun runs to Haiti. Barbara said she told the police about Wolfe's alleged gun running. And he got mad, and he even told a cellmate of his that that's it. You know, they could pay the price. That I was, yeah. Interesting. True. Wolfe hasn't commented. But Keith Seltzer, Barbara's defense attorney, suspected Wolfe had a much more practical motive.

Michael Wolfe was initially offered a 15-year plea bargain to take 15 years and testify against whoever his accomplices might be. Sure. And lo and behold, a week after the jury convicts him of first-degree murder, there was an option at that point to maybe get that 15 years back.

That was his motivation. In other words, said Barbara's attorney, Wolfe would sell out Barbara any way he could to get a reduced sentence. Of course, it was the uncomfortable fact of the two unprompted confessions he'd made to his ex-wives, confessions in which he portrayed Barbara as a sort of black widow intent on having David killed. Well, there are two versions that he gave to each of those ex-wives. The stories were not entirely consistent, said attorney Seltzer. Besides, he said, Barbara was at home in Arizona the night of the murder.

How does he know that? A phone bill from her mother's home, placing calls to her home in Arizona that night where nobody else could have been there. And what's a phone bill of that age doing lying around somewhere where it can be grabbed for evidence by the defendant? The father was a meticulous record keeper.

What's to say that wasn't an answering service that picked it up? Michael Wolfe testified in his first deposition that they had no answer machine. Could have been somebody else in the house. We questioned Mr. Wolff about that, and he said that there was nobody there. But as the defense prepared for trial in December of 2010, something changed. There was new evidence discovered.

Lainey Bandell is the prosecutor who inherited the case. And that new evidence was what we consider a jailhouse snitch. And he came forward and stated that Michael Wolfe told him he had fabricated the entire story about Barbara participating in the murder of David Jackson. That particular jailhouse snitch was well known, the DA said, mostly for the false information he provided. Still, after three years in jail, it was enough to get Barbara released and placed on house arrest pending trial. And then,

Prosecutor Vandell met Michael Wolff to ask him about testifying against Barbara. Didn't go well. The blow came to me when he said, what am I getting in return? What will my sentence be reduced to? Now the state reassessed its options. I think with any case, you're taking a 50-50 chance. The lack of forensics, the lack of physical evidence that a jury wants to see, but most importantly, again, the fact that you have a co-defendant who is giving the testimony, which was the foundation of this prosecution, who wanted something in return. The people who conducted the testimony, which was the foundation of this prosecution, who wanted something in return.

The people who conducted the investigation, you know, deep down in their guts, are sure that she was at the center of it. Did you think so, too? What I think as a person and what I think as a prosecutor, I have to keep them separate. And while I may have believed that Barbara was a full participant in this, what I can prove is totally different. So you made an offer? We made an offer.

Barbara Britton was offered two more years of house arrest and eight years of probation. She would avoid trial, but she had to plead guilty to accessory after the fact in David's murder, meaning she acknowledged knowing about the crime, but only after it occurred, something she'd always denied. You've got to remember, I had that option to go to trial and take it. It's just taking a chance with 12 to 14 other jurors who would hear a story about a Mata Hari patrol freak who very cleverly manipulated men to get them to do this awful thing. Right. They already know what you're there for.

So they're going to have somewhat of an opinion. Even though she accepted the deal, Barbara was not happy. True, there was no prison time, but she was a felon now. You have a title over your head. True, there was no prison time, but she was a felon now. You have a title over your head. It's life-changing. It's very life-changing. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?

Yes, I do. Detective Velazquez joined David's family at Barbara's sentencing hearing. You're okay with the stipulation and the fact that it's a guilty plea? Yes, Judge. Okay. And Judge, for the record, David Jackson's mother would like to speak. Judy? Of course. David's mother read a victim's impact statement. Because of you, Barbara, I have cried endlessly for 24 years. I wanted to die myself to be with David. Her gaze fixed on the woman her son once loved. You are guilty. Michael Wolfe is where he should be in prison. Your father is where he should be. And you would join him one day because that is where you should be.

In hell. David's brother, Mark, was not at all sure that justice was served. If you lose in trial, that's God's will. You can't control that. But I think it should have gone to trial. We have a picture of David. But his mother? There is justice.

Yes, and she's a felon now for life. She's got to live with all that. I don't. Oh, my God. Every time I get out of bed in the morning, one leg says guilty and the other one says felon. And as for the detective who so doggedly pursued the case, who now thinks a murderer got away. At first I was disappointed. So I had to make peace with it. And when I put my head down on the pillow at night, at the end of the day,

she's a felon. Mentally, when you're in prison here, do you ever escape that? Farber's house arrest is now over, but when we talked to her, she was spending it in her father's house. That old VW, the one in which they allegedly carried off David's body the night he was killed, was still parked outside. She was surrounded by the curse of her father's alleged sin, and, many still feel, cursed by the part she played in murder. So the allegations that you took part would suggest that the two of you were living together

and equally aware of your mutual guilt. That's what it would suggest, but that's not how it is. Bit of a curse, huh? It seems like it. You're surrounded by it, even though... Yeah, I'm surrounded by it. My dad, he's passed on and moved on, and I'm living it every minute. That's all for now.

I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.