Dateline NBC - Deadly Trust

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

In this Dateline classic, wealthy residents felt safe in their gated community but it was not safe for one millionaire, murdered in his waterfront home. Police investigated but the case grew cold. Turned out the key to solving it, or two keys, were right at the front door. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on April 13, 2012.

She can lie to you, make love to you, kill you, all in the same week, and not even cry at the funeral. She was living that dream California lifestyle. You talk about Housewives of Orange County, she could have been on the show. She wrapped him around her finger just like she wrapped so many men around her finger. She had it all. Waterfront home, fancy cars, millionaire boyfriend, quite the life, until... The shots were in sets of two. He saw his attacker. Her lover gunned down. Who wanted him dead?

Nanette would have not done it because there was no financial gain for her in this. But what about her secret friend, the former NFL linebacker? You lied to them, for one thing. I did. The mystery was unsolved. Then came a prosecutor who took on big waves and cold cases. Could he find the key to this one? This isn't just a motive. It's a motive on steroids.

Keith Morrison with Deadly Trust. There's a place, call it a pot of gold at the end of ambition, of the American dream. A place the few and the lucky build their mansions by the sea. Newport Beach, Orange County, California. Where the most unexpected event would be murder. Things like this rarely happen in Newport Beach, let alone in an area that's as secure as this area. Let alone involving people like this, attractive, charismatic, living large, like Nanette Johnston Packard McNeil. She had a beautiful home. She drove an expensive car,

and she was sort of living that dream California lifestyle. You talk about Housewives of Orange County, she could have been on the show. Yes, in fact, she told friends she'd turned down an offer to be on that show about over-the-top excess in Orange County. Though she did end up on a TV show called American Thunder about motorcycles showing off her own excess, including a bike she bought for 50 grand. What's your favorite part of the bike? Oh, I love the way it looks. And then there was Eric Naposki.

We eat housewives for breakfast. Ex-football player, personal trainer, wannabe actor, who starred in a never-aired reality show called The Newport 40. But here's where the show ends and the reel begins. Because of what happened in that house behind the gates a long time ago. It was December 15th, 1994, 9 p.m. The shots were patterned in sets of two. Two shots, two shots, a pause, and then two shots. Detective Tom Voth arrived to find a millionaire entrepreneur dead on his own kitchen floor.

His name was Bill McLaughlin, 55 years old, nice guy, deeply religious, and a true believer in the American dream, a man who'd made his come true. Kind of a self-made guy, right? Absolutely, yes. Bill said his daughter Jenny was the first in his family to go to college, the first to found a company, the first to end up with millions.

Not someone you'd think would wind up murdered, but here he was. You could tell that there was not a physical struggle. There weren't things that were knocked off, counters or things like that. You could tell that there was not a physical struggle. There weren't things that were knocked off, counters or things like that. You could tell, said Voth. Bill McLaughlin saw it coming, saw his killer. One of his movements was to put his hand up and try to block a shot.

He got shot through the underside of a finger. So he saw his attacker. Now Voth needed to figure out who was that last person Bill McLaughlin saw. You're trying to take everything in and you're trying to remember as much as you can, write down what you feel is important, what's going to come up in the investigation. What was important, what wasn't? It was hard to know in those first few hours. As you can see in this never-before-seen video the police shot the night of the murder, the house was as neat as a pin.

Except for a glass on a table, some papers askew from a lawsuit brought by an ex-business partner. And there were six bullet casings on the kitchen floor. And one more thing, a post-it note from his girlfriend, Nanette, stuck to the side of a lamp. She'd be home late. Her son had a soccer game. Nanette Johnston, as she was known back then, before reality shows and a couple more marriages, had been Bill's girlfriend for more than three years. And they seemed happy, despite the almost 30-year age difference, said his daughter Kim.

They seemed to be good companions and... She was like your age, wasn't she? It was my age. Nanette helped Bill look after his disabled son, Kevin, who suffered a severe head injury after being hit by a drunk driver. And she helped with some business ventures.

He found that interesting about her, that he could have, you know, possibly a romantic relationship, but also sort of a mentoring relationship, possibly a business partner. He had hopes for this. I think he did. They lived together in Bill's house on the Newport Bay,

as did her two little ones part of the time. And she brought some children. Correct. Did he like that? Yes, he thought that was important. He thought that it showed she was compassionate. On the night Bill was killed, Nanette was with her children at her son's soccer game.

The kids went to their dad's house afterwards and Nanette headed to the mall to go Christmas shopping. She arrived home to a crime scene and to Detective Voth. Anybody involved has a possibility of being the murderer. So Voth questioned Annette and Bill's own grown kids couldn't eliminate anybody yet. We looked at the girlfriend and we also looked at the daughters because anyone that stands to gain money in this situation is a potential suspect. Bill's ex-wife was way off in Hawaii.

They'd been divorced for years. Still, the detectives talked to her. Then there was Kevin, Bill's disabled son, and the only other person in the house at the time of the murder. Newport Beach Emergency Police Fire Paramedics. It was shortly after 9 p.m. when Kevin heard the gunfire. He was upstairs, still debilitated by those car accident injuries, and he labored to make his way down to the kitchen,

where he found his father. Two disabled to explain that he needed help. Somebody's dying. I can't understand what you're saying. Too disabled to explain that he needed help. Somebody's dying. Someone was dead. Kevin was a suspect that we needed to find out the validity of his statements, whether he had gunshot residue on his hands, whether he was even able to shoot a gun given his physical disabilities.

But a suspect? They checked his hands for gunpowder residue. Negative. You have to look at everybody, unfortunately. Sometimes it hurts feelings, but you have to get down to the facts on it, too. But facts can be tricky things. And in this case, far more elusive than anyone might have imagined. When we come back, some clues were elusive, but some were right out in the front,

like the two that dramatically narrowed down the circle of suspects. Those are huge. It eliminates everybody down to only those people that have access to those two keys. When Deadly Trust continues. In the days that followed Bill McLaughlin's murder, his children wandered overwhelmed through the essential events that follow a sudden death. That funeral must have been, I don't know. The funeral was horrible because we were in shock

and we had to hold up. I don't remember much, but I do remember Nanette sitting in the front with each child on either end, and they were both bawling at the top of their lungs. And then I remember my brother speaking, too, at the funeral and telling everybody what an amazing man he was and what a great dad he was for him. Bill's girlfriend, Nanette, moved out of the

house where Bill was killed to another house he owned right on the beach. Kim and her sister moved back into the family home with their brother. They clung to each other for dear life. We cried on each other's shoulders and did a lot of counseling and therapy and grieving. What made it worse was they didn't know who did it or why, any more than did the Newport Beach police. When a thing like this happens, I mean, it's really an execution-style killing. This was obviously somebody who intended to kill your dad. You must immediately have, you know, wonder who. Right. Well, you wonder if it's a completely random act,

some stranger, and it was a mistake or an accident, or you develop a list of people that might have a reason to have shot him. To police, it didn't look random. Nothing was taken. The killer struck with precision accuracy and got clean away. But there was something that intrigued Detective Voth that night. It was a clue they found in Bill McLaughlin's closet. We do a search of the house with the permission of Kevin and Annette. We're told that there were weapons in a closet upstairs, and when you come across a lot of weapons like that, it's surprising.

In the few years before his death, Bill had become an avid gun collector. He kept dozens of them at his Newport Beach house. But not just antiques, there were pistols and revolvers and semi-automatic weapons, including seven modified M16 assault rifles. Dangerous stuff in the wrong hands. We didn't know if somebody maybe was upset with the sale of a gun or something.

Nanette was worried about that, too. Nanette told us that Bill was dealing with a lot of shady people, gun dealers. And that was one theory, but there was something else, too, or rather someone else. The only person that we knew was frustrated with him was his business partner who he was in the lawsuit with. All of them, Bill's kids and Nanette, told Detective Volth about that business partner. How official. Because he and Mr. McLaughlin were in a heated multi-year lawsuit over the invention of the device. The device?

Bill had made his millions from a revolutionary medical invention, a machine that separates plasma from blood. It's still in use today worldwide. Just the sort of thing Bill wanted, to do something useful, helpful, and make lots of money, too. He enjoyed learning new things, discovering new things, and especially if it helped people, benefited people, you know, if he could make money off of an idea.

How Fishel had worked with Bill on an early phase of the machine, it was after Fishel left the company that the money came rolling in. Fishel thought his contribution to the invention deserved more than what he got, so he sued his former friend and partner, Bill McLaughlin. And here's the thing. It was just two weeks before the murder that the courts decided for Bill. Any day, he was to get the nine million he and Fishel had been fighting over for years. So, was it a revenge killing? Sounded at least plausible, except for something the killer left behind,

something Fishel didn't have access to. No, it wasn't DNA, not fingerprints. Something more mundane than that. When we got here, the door on the right was open, and there was a key stuck in the lock right here. In addition to that, there was a key on a mat laying right next to the door here. Two keys, two clues. One was a brand new copy of the front door key.

The other was a key to the community pedestrian gate, not a copy. Those are huge because it eliminates everybody in the world from being a suspect down to only those people that have access to those two keys. The circle of suspects is getting smaller. Coming up, police focus on one particular suspect who did have access to those keys and to something else. He bought a 9mm in the summer, a Beretta 92F. You lied to them, for one thing.

I did. When Dateline continues. Two keys that demanded attention. One of them was stuck in the front door the night Bill McLaughlin was murdered. The other was dropped on a mat outside. The person who killed Bill had obtained those keys somehow, which meant whoever it was was in his inner circle or had access to it. So now police began looking very closely for relationships,

like maybe secret ones. What is your involvement or relationship? Nanette's a pretty good friend of mine. And that's how they found Eric Naposki, who, they learned, was living in a studio apartment in one of those Southern California Melrose Place sort of complexes, just not quite as nice. Naposki had played football, but his promising career as a linebacker had fizzled.

Too many injuries, too many hours on the bench. By the early 90s, he was trying to figure out what to do next. I was in Seattle with the Seahawks when I retired, when I left, and I drove down the coast, and it was a great place to land. Be kind of nirvana for a guy like you. It was. Big, good-looking ex-football player like him? It was easy to get work.

And women in Southern California, like Nanette. He met her while working one day at this gym. What did you think when you saw her? I thought she was a snob when I first met her. A snob, yeah. A little stuck up. She had the sunglasses on, you know, the expensive watch, and she was a little snobby. Well, at least she was at first, but... So what made you friends? Proximity. She was a fun girl. We worked out together. I'd say we probably worked out together more than we did anything else together.

He was impressed by her intelligence, by what she told him about herself, that she had a business degree, for example. She graduated early from high school and she graduated early from college. By February 1994, ten months before Bill McLaughlin was killed, Nanette's affair with Eric was in

full bloom. Which, given that Eric was not exactly flush, turned out to be just fine because... She had no loss for money as she talked about things and as she drove her new cars and as she footed the bill for everything we did together.

So what did Eric know about Bill and Bill's relationship with Nanette? The cops asked. I never met Bill. You know who he is? I just knew, I knew of him. I knew of him and his, you know, his partnership with Nanette

as far as business goes and stuff like that. Eric told us, Nanette said she invented things, medical equipment, blood separators. Sound familiar? And Bill, she told Eric, guided her through the process. That was her mentor, that was her business partner, and she can make her own schedule. She can work out all morning, grab lunch,

do whatever she has to do, go pick up the kids and take them to practice and be the team mom. Pretty nice job. Eric and Nanette spent time at what she said was her house right on the beach. What did you think? It was beautiful. Beautiful house. Right on the beach. Right in Newport.

It was upstairs, downstairs, fully furnished. She had a picture of herself in the upstairs bedroom, a blown-up, looked like... Kind of a glamour picture? Kind of a glamour shot, yeah. It never occurred to him, he said, that Nanette and Bill did more than just business together. It was a business relationship.

And if you looked at Nanette and took into account her age, and then you looked at Bill and took into account his age. You know, why would you think Orange County, California? Hello. I guess I'm a rookie to Orange County. But when it comes to murder and relationships, sometimes two's company, three's a motive. If Eric found out that Bill was much more than just Nanette's mentor. Was it a motive for murder? So in their interview, investigators got right to the point. What was he doing that night? I was with Nanette at the soccer game.

She dropped me off and took off. And I got dressed and went to work later on, probably about 9.30. Curious thing about Eric's job, he was a bouncer at a nightclub about a football field and a half away from the McLaughlin house. Not that far for a linebacker. So the cops asked a few more questions. Did he do any army? No, I don't do any arms.

No, but that didn't mean he didn't own any guns. Just took him a while to tell the detective that. Okay, so you don't own any firearms at all? No, I bought one. I haven't seen it in so long. I bought one in Dallas that I gave my dad. We first ask him if he owns any weapons. He says he doesn't own any.

And then he says, oh, that's right, I did buy one in Texas, a little.380, but I sent it to my dad in New York. And then we talk a little bit longer, and he says, oh, I bought another.380. Did you have to register or anything else? I guess when you sign registration. The light must have gone off in his head that we were going to find out by checking registration because a few minutes after that, he says that he bought a 9mm earlier in the year, in the summer, a Beretta 92F.

Now that was interesting. A 9mm was what killed Bill McLaughlin, and no one knew that at the time but the cops and the killer. And there are lots of 9mm guns around, but why did Eric Naposki seem so dodgy about his? Where is your 9mm? I have no idea. You have no idea?

That's my statement. If he thought he was helping himself, he wasn't. Why didn't you ask for a lawyer? I didn't think I needed one. Innocent people don't need lawyers, do we? But you said some things that didn't help you out, that's for sure. Absolutely. You lied to them, for one thing.

I did. Of course, lying doesn't make you a killer. But jealousy, maybe. Did Napolsky know he was in a love triangle? Did he want Bill out of the way? And if so, did Nanette quite literally hold the key? When we come back, the young girlfriend on the make with a shady past she was trying to hide. In the big bold print, it was basically looking for wealthy man.

I'll take care of you if you take care of me. When Deadly Trust continues. On the afternoon of the day he was murdered, Bill McLaughlin drove from a house he kept in Las Vegas to McCarran Airport. He climbed into the little airplane he owned and flew it up above all his troubles. This is where he was free and happy, pure joy up here. Just around sunset, he landed at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, called Nanette to tell her he was back, and drove home to Newport, to the place he was about to die. But for all their efforts, investigators could find not one bit of evidence in those final movements of his, nothing that would link him to the man who was fast becoming their

prime suspect, Eric Naposki. Back at the house, Bill's daughters took it upon themselves to sort through all their dad's financials. Maybe there'd be a clue there. You had to figure all that out yourself? Mm-hmm. Must have been very complicated. It was very complicated, and we did not trust many people at that point. Understandably.

So Bill's daughters poured through it all, the little stuff and the big stuff. There'd been a failed real estate deal in the desert, two houses to deal with in Nevada. Soon money would be coming in, but when he died, millionaire Bill McLaughlin was low on funds. And things were missing. Bills and bank statements, check registers, that kind of thing. The sisters turned to Nanette for help because she was the person who handled Bill's day-to-day money matters. In fact, she was a trustee of the trust that held most of Bill's money. But everybody grieves in his or her own way, and Nanette was very hard to reach. She just disappeared. Yes, we'd contact her over something missing, and sometimes she would return our calls, and sometimes she wouldn't. She wasn't far away, mind you, just at the house on the beach.

In his will, Bill left Nanette quite a consolation prize. A million dollars in life insurance, $150,000 in cash, and the use of the beach house for a year. But it was hardly enough, frankly, to fund the lifestyle to which she'd become accustomed. Didn't he pay for everything for her? A couple of cars, even plastic surgery? Well, he treated her very well. He provided a very posh lifestyle for she and her children. Which made Bill's daughters move Nanette down the list of suspects. I said in front of her, I believe, well, of course, Nanette would have not done it because there was no financial gain for her in this.

After all, had Bill survived, Nanette and her two children might have lived very well indeed. And then Bill's daughters noticed something odd about his books. I noticed in one of his business accounts a $250,000 check that was written. That's a lot of money. A heck of a lot of money. The check, dated December 14th, one day before Bill was murdered, was made out to Nanette Johnston Trust. You saw the signature?

Yes. Did it look like your father's signature? No. And I showed it to the police. Detective Vose didn't like the looks of it either. Hello? Oh, hi, Nanette. This is Jenny. Hi. The detective told the daughters to give Nanette a call and record it. Well, first of all, a lot of checks, there are a lot of times that I signed for him on many things.

Uh-huh. With his permission. He gave you permission to sign his name? Excuse me? He gave you permission to sign his name? Oh, yeah, I've signed his name on many things. Huh, he never let us do that. Although Nanette told Jenny, she was sure Bill had signed that particular check.

But then the detectives got involved, and they found more money missing from Bill's accounts. Nearly half a million dollars. And also discovered that Nanette wasn't exactly the person she had portrayed herself to be. Detective Vos learned she'd grown up in Phoenix. You can barely recognize her from her high school yearbook pictures. She'd so transformed herself. And despite what she told Eric, she never studied business, never even got a college degree.

She never invented anything but her own backstory. Married at 18, two kids by 22, divorced at 23, and determined to leave dusty Arizona behind for the coast of California, in particular, Newport Beach. So this was the place she wanted to move into and said, let's move in together, I love you. It wasn't even finished being built. It turns out, before Bill, before Eric Naposki, there was Tom.

He met Nanette at a nightclub, and six weeks later, he found himself moving them both into a brand-new townhouse in the heart of Newport Beach. She had actually found the place before she even met him. What was attractive to you about her? Smart, intelligence, definitely very determined, forging ahead on her own two feet and wanting to make things happen. Oh, and she did.

She just happened to like shortcuts, which Tom discovered when he found something Nanette had been hiding, an ad. In the big bold print, it was basically, looking for wealthy man, I'll take care of you if you take care of me. Did you confront her after you found this stuff? Absolutely. Nanette denied it was her, but soon enough she had moved out and up and in with Bill McLaughlin.

It was clear to Detective Voth that Nanette Johnston was greedy and would stop at nothing for money. It was clear to him that she'd been cheating on Bill. It was also clear to him she'd been cheating on Bill with Eric. He even knew that her key to the community pedestrian gate was missing. And remember, there was one found. Could have been it on the mat at the murder scene. But did all that make her a killer? She and her lover, Eric? Do you remember what you thought at the murder scene. But did all that make her a killer?

She and her lover, Eric? Do you remember what you thought at the time? I thought the police would be able to have a closed case. Wishful thinking, as it turned out. Probably naive. In fact, it looked like someone, or two someones, might just get away with murder. Coming up, if that's what they thought, they reckoned without this man...

You're always nervous when you try an old case. ...and without this story from a new witness. She said, I don't even want to know if you had anything to do with this. And he said, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. When Dateline continues. Detective Voth thought he had a case. There were the keys, the lies, the other lover, the stolen money. Circumstantial, yes, but he thought both Eric Naposki and Nanette Johnston committed murder together.

I thought we had it solved as far as who the responsible parties were. It was just a matter of the DA's office didn't feel comfortable with filing the case. Two times Newport Beach police brought the case to the DA's office, and two times the DA's office said the detective had not made his case. Nanette was arrested in the spring of 1995, but not for murder. They got her for fraud and forgery. She pleaded guilty, spent a year in jail, and though Eric waited for her, by the time she got out, she was ready to move on.

She married a real estate mogul, much richer than Bill McLaughlin ever was. They had a baby girl. And once again, Nanette was driving a fancy car and living where rich people live and spending lots and lots of money on clothes and lunches and hairdos. And then, well, then she met someone else, another Bill. So she divorced the real estate mogul and agreed to receive $17,000 a month in child support. Could that have been her idea all along? The new Bill did not have millions, and when he married Nanette, he signed a prenup,

agreeing to let her keep for herself all the money she got from husband number two. Or was that number three? Anyway, the real estate mogul. Eric Naposki went back east, got married, had kids, got divorced, made that reality show that never got going. He was to play a big, scary, bad guy. I just have a slightly different interpretation of the law. And what of Bill's kids? They tried to live how their father would have wanted them to. Sort of the opposite of Nanette.

He really wanted us to help make the world a better place. So he encouraged us to do things in the community. The three of us kids would go to nursing homes and put on a little talent show for the elderly. How unusual. You need to understand where my dad came from. A very low-income family, as we'd call it today. And so he always appreciated what he had, and he worked very hard for it. Bill's children worked hard, too, supported libraries in the Third World,

orphanages in Africa, gave wheelchairs to the poor in Latin America. Rewarding work. But as time passed, they began to think the fairy tale had it all wrong. Seemed to them like it was the evil stepmother who got to live happily ever after. Certainly not them. Five years after the murder in 1999, the sisters lost their brother, Kevin, in a drowning accident. He never did recover from the damage the drunk driver did or the trauma of finding his murdered father. So both men of the family were gone,

and hope for justice faded away. We thought, those two will be arrested next week for killing my dad. And when it didn't happen month after month after month, and then year after year, we had to actually just release the pain and the anger we felt from it. And conscious of the fact that you had to work on that. Very conscious of the fact. And that might have been the end of our story, but for him. This is Matt Murphy, surfer and prosecutor,

with just possibly an excess of confidence in his ability to prosecute the murder of Bill McLaughlin all those years ago. What you had was an old, old case. Pretty circumstantial stuff. A lot of evidence had been lost. It degrades over time. Were you a little nervous about that? You're always nervous when you try an old case. But not a forgotten one.

Cold case investigators kept digging. They found a real estate agent who showed Nanette and Eric expensive houses after the pair said they were about to come into some money. They found a businessman who heard from Nanette before the murder that she was about to have lots of money to invest.

And they found a neighbor of Eric's from that Melrose Place type building, a woman who had been too afraid to come forward at the time of the murder, named Suzanne Kogar was very, very important because Susanne Kogar gave the best comprehensive understanding of the way Nanette manipulated Naposki into committing the murder. Susanne told them how she and Eric would chat by the pool, how one day in the fall of 1994, Eric was angry, said his girlfriend's boss, meaning Bill McLaughlin, had tried to rape her. Totally untrue. They're engaged to be married. She'd been living at the house as boyfriend-girlfriend for over three years.

But Naposki apparently didn't know any of that. And he was in a rage about it. He was in a rage about it. After the murder, said Suzanne, Eric sought her out, said if the police came around, tell them I'm a nice guy. She said, oh my God, Eric, I don't even want to know if you had anything to do with this or not. And he smiled and he said, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. If you think about it, you're accused of a murder you didn't commit.

How those words are ever going to come out of your mouth? Incriminating, but hardly one of those tangible facts that gets someone set away for life. This is one where every little piece of evidence had to be considered in light of all the other pieces of evidence. In fact, just the type of challenge Matt Murphy was after. So on May 20th, 2009, more than 14 years after Bill McLaughlin was shot dead in his kitchen, Nanette was plucked from her well-shod life and charged with murder. Nanette proclaimed her innocence, and her Orange County friends stood by her.

I'm just going to tell you that she's my friend. She's a good person. She's been generous and kind and a wonderful mother and a wonderful neighbor. Across the country in Connecticut, police picked up Eric Naposki and accused him of murder, too. Eric was also defiant. It wasn't Eric Naposki who shot Bill McLaughlin. This is a fact. And Matt Murphy's wrong.

I'll tell you right now, on my children. He's just straight wrong. Did Eric kill Bill McLaughlin. This is a fact. And Matt Murphy's wrong. I'll tell you right now, on my children, he's just straight wrong. Did Eric kill Bill McLaughlin? Did he conspire with Nanette? Or was Matt Murphy in over his head? Up to a jury soon. Coming up. First, they had to face trial where Nanette's lawyer had an unusual defense. In court, you called your client a slut. I'm sure I did. Just because you've treated people poorly in your life does not make you a murderer. Would a jury agree when Deadly Trust continues? Good afternoon. 17 years after Bill McLaughlin's life was brought to such a violent early end, Eric Naposki went on trial here in the Orange County Courthouse.

What I want to do at this point, I want to take you folks through kind of an overview of the evidence. Prosecutor Matt Murphy told the jury Eric Naposki volunteered to be Nanette Johnston's deadly trigger man, that he'd been copying keys in November, doing target practice, and... On August 2nd, Mr. Naposki purchased a very expensive Beretta 9mm Model 92F. Then, a few months later, it was Nanette's turn. Murphy told the second jury that Nanette's greed was insatiable, that she wrongly thought, as trustee of Bill's trust, she'd control the money, and that her stealing escalated as the murder date got closer.

She steals $48,200 in the month of October alone. So in the month of October alone, she has beaten the previous nine months combined with her thefts. And so, the prosecutor argued, she asked Eric to kill Bill before he caught on. Eric's attorneys told the jury two things. One, Eric couldn't have done it. 18 minutes before the murder, he was on a pay phone at this Denny's, which isn't even in Newport Beach. True, the phone bill which might have proved it had been lost, but the point was, said his

lawyers, he couldn't have made it all the way to Newport Beach in time to commit the murder. And anyway, they said, Nanette did it. That the evidence in this case and at this trial shows that Nanette Johnson is the person most likely to have committed this murder. Eric Naposki was merely the patsy. But at Nanette's trial, her attorney said she was innocent, and it was Eric who committed the murder. Over the course of this trial, the evidence is going to show that he murdered Mr. McLaughlin

out of jealousy and out of greed on his own part. Mutual finger-pointing. Though Nanette's attorney, Michael Hill, had to agree, his client wasn't exactly a saint. Hate her as much as you want. For being a thief, Michael Hill, had to agree. His client wasn't exactly a saint. Hate her as much as you want for being a thief, a liar, a cheese, a slut, whatever you want to call her. It seems to me in court you called your client a slut. I'm sure I did.

I can't just ignore the worst parts of the case. Just because you've treated people poorly in your life does not make you a murderer. If she thought she was getting a million dollars out of that life insurance policy, a million dollars is a lot of money. A million dollars is a massive amount of money to people like me. But to a million dollars for her, that's pittance. He was worth $55 million when he died. So her long-term plan is not to be with a deadbeat loser, wannabe NFL player. So it's harsh.

It's truth. Which was, in a way, the question we put to the prosecutor. She was getting lots of money from him. She's probably stealing a little along the way. And she could cheat at the same time. I mean, come on, why would she kill him? The problem is if he lives, he either finds out she's cheating or he finds out that she's stealing and she winds up, best case scenario for her, on the street with nothing. Worst case scenario, she goes to jail for the embezzlement.

So this isn't just a motive. It's a motive on steroids. In the end, Murphy got his verdict. Guilty. Guilty of the crime of felony to wit. Then, after conviction, the honest thing happened. An epilogue, if you like. Eric called up Matt Murphy from jail and said he was finally ready to tell the truth. Of course, he told us, too. The first thing I wanted to do was clear up with Matt that I didn't do the crime. But I also wanted to share some other information with him that I hadn't shared with anybody in 17 years. Eric had a new story. If Nanette wanted Bill McLaughlin dead, then Bill McLaughlin was as good as dead, whether it was to get me to do it, whether to pay someone else to do it. Eric's story now, that Nanette asked him to kill Bill McLaughlin and he refused,

but put her in touch with someone who could do it, and they used the Beretta, which, said Eric, wasn't his after all. He'd given it to Nanette as a gift, he said, and she supplied it to the hitman. So what did Matt Murphy think of Eric's new story? It doesn't make any sense. Here's the problem with Eric Naposki. The first story was

I had nothing to do with it. And then we arrest him and he says, Nanette's totally innocent and I'm totally innocent. Then we get to trial and it changes to Nanette's not innocent, but I'm innocent. And then I had nothing to do with that. I didn't know anything. Then we interview him afterwards and it changes again to something radically different again. Michael Hill didn't buy it either. Have you ever heard of hiring a hitman? But then the hitman goes, yeah, I'll take the job. But you know what? I don't have a gun. Could you loan me yours? So Eric sits in jail and contemplates that long ago love affair with Nanette. Nanette Johnston is the worst type of person. She can lie to you, make love to you, kill you all in the same week, and not even cry at the

funeral. And she was my girlfriend. And that's what I have to, that's the price I'm paying. As for Bill's family, they say they're grateful, believing Nanette and Eric are finally where they belong. How do you make sense of all of this stuff? There is no sense of it. They are just very sick, demented, selfish people. When we actually started learning how Nanette's mind worked, it was really hard to comprehend and a very dark place to unravel. And so she does what her father taught her. She lives for others as well as herself.

She flies like he did and she looks for the light. It comes down to what our dad taught us. Pass our goodness forward. Make this world a better place and give unto others who are less fortunate. And so we do that. My sister and I both do that today. That's part of our mission in life. And we go about with my dad, our dad as an angel on one shoulder and our brother as an angel on another shoulder. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.