Dateline NBC - In the Bedroom

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

In this Dateline classic, Josh Mankiewicz reports on a case that seems like a straightforward crime of passion. A husband straying, a wife betrayed, and a body found in their bedroom. What happened to Adam Kostewicz? Originally aired on NBC on August 24, 2009.

They call it the world's largest cul-de-sac, a place with nice homes, good schools, friendly neighbors. Ahwatukee is an affluent oasis south of Phoenix, but geographically isolated from the rest of the city. Local newspaper reporter Doug Murphy. Ahwatukee is really kind of a close-knit little neighborhood. It's like a small town in a bigger city. But do the neighbors behind their desert landscaping

ever really know what's going on behind the doors of those perfect little homes? It's a story of suburban passion, of desperate housewives, and of secrets that come with a terrible price. Oh my God. Oh my God. For Polish immigrants Grace Pianca and Adam Kostewicz, settling here represented their grasp, at last, of the American dream. With two suitcases and $250 to his name, Adam came to Detroit at the age of 20. There he met Grace, who'd also left Poland behind, yearning for a better life for herself and her three-year-old son, Victor.

Adam was seven years younger than Grace, but their quick friendship soon developed into a romance. They spent nine years together before marrying in 1996. The following year, this new family settled into a successful all-American life in the Arizona foothills, with Adam helping to raise Grace's son as his own. Grace sold real estate. Adam worked as a computer engineer. They spent their free time traveling and hiking. I met Adam at the gym that we both attended. We developed a friendship. Randy Thompson, Adam's workout partner and close friend for nearly a decade.

One of the best friends I've ever had. A wonderful guy. Very intelligent, quick-witted, always willing to help. As a new resident of the American West, Adam did not take his right to keep and bear arms for granted. He had a large gun collection. I know Adam from his background in Poland, communist background, really enjoyed the freedom and the Second Amendment rights here in the United States. And fittingly, one of Grace's closest friends, Cynthia Lavario, met the couple on the most patriotic of days at a Fourth of July celebration. She's a private person, but a great sense of humor also. A wonderful mother. Loving wife.

A very nice person. Was she happily married? Very. What was Adam to Grace? Everything. He was her world. So all the more disturbing when in early 2006, Grace said Adam had started acting a little different, distant.

He left their home and began spending nights in a nearby hotel. She was wondering, is he depressed? Is he having a midlife crisis? We really couldn't understand what was going on. You knew he was not living at home for a week, even though he was in town. Right. I thought it just had something to do with the fact that they were having problems with their son. Grace's son, Victor, had drug issues and had also been in trouble with the law. Were Adam and Grace on the same page in terms of how to deal with Victor? No. My mother forgives everything. Adam didn't want to forgive. No, he was tired of it. Was Adam's behavior a disagreement over how to deal with their son?

Or some kind of midlife crisis? No one quite knew, but no one expected the events that would unfold on Easter weekend 2006. It all began with an early morning phone call to the couple's home. She called me hysterical. A frantic Grace relayed that morning's events to her friend Cynthia. Her home phone rang, and she picked it up, and it was a woman. And she wanted to speak to Adam, so she gave him the phone. And she asked, you know, who it was, and he said, it's just a friend.

And he said, I'll be right back. And with that, without brushing his teeth or washing his face, Adam raced out of the house. He sped off in his car and Grace followed in hers. She saw Adam pull into a McDonald's parking lot and jump into a red sports car driven by a woman. And all she saw was blonde hair and they sped off. She was wondering what's going on. Grace was beside herself with worry and agony. Cynthia had a suggestion. Protect yourself. You want to make sure he doesn't leave you with no money. Right. We didn't know who this other person was or what she was capable of you know so i told her get your money out of the bank what happens next is not really disputed grace drives to the bank where she withdraws the couple's entire savings which is more than

twenty thousand dollars in cash and a cashier's check she tries to deposit that money into another bank under her own name but it's's Saturday and the banks have closed early. So Grace returns home and calls Adam a number of times on her cell phone. Adam doesn't pick up. She leaves some voicemail messages. She's sad and crushed, according to her friend Cynthia Lavario. And at some point during that afternoon, Grace Bianca begins drinking. I'm basically trying to calm her down. You can't really speak.

I have a conversation with someone who's that intoxicated. So she's like what, falling down drunk? She was barely walking, right? Had you ever seen Grace in that state of mind before? No. No, I hadn't. Which is very, very painful. Grace continued to drink wine and tequila throughout the afternoon.

Finally, around 7 p.m., Adam returned home. Cynthia decided to leave and let the couple talk. But later that evening, she called to check in on her friend. And there was no answer. And so I just assumed they went to sleep. Everything was fine. Everything was not fine? No, unfortunately not.

And shortly, a day that began with a startling phone call would end with another one. 911, what is your emergency? There's a body in the... I can see his body laying on the floor. I went around the back. Okay, ma'am, calm down. A frantic 911 call broke the silence of a quiet April evening, summoning police to a house in Ahwatukee, a prosperous pocket of Greater Phoenix.

We got the call that there was a homicide in Ahwatukee. This was Brian Hansen's first case as a lead homicide detective. Patrol officers gave him the news. They find Adam Kostewicz deceased in his bedroom from gunshot wounds. Adam Kostewicz, a healthy and active Polish immigrant who chased the American dream to settle in this successful community, was dead at age 41. Friend Cynthia Lavario heard the news from a reporter outside the couple's house. She said there was a gentleman killed last night here. Of course I was hysterical. Who was responsible and why? Police say that a crime of passion had started and ended in the master bedroom. The one thing that stands out in my mind

is the nightstand drawer that was thrown open and dangling. Suggesting that somebody had gone in there and gotten something out in a hurry. Correct. Police found multiple bullet holes in the bedroom wall, holes that told a story. They start high in the wall and they travel towards the door and then lower. What it looks like to me is that Adam was attempting to run out of the bedroom and towards the open door and was struck. Had someone else run from the scene too? Adam's wife Grace was nowhere to be found. But there was another woman on the scene who seemed to know an awful lot about what was going on. I know how salacious and fun and sexy this story is. that she and Adam met on a website designed specifically for married people looking to have affairs. Jen was married as well, but she'd managed to get away from her husband enough times

to spend a few nights with Adam in a succession of hotel rooms. And that Saturday when Adam died, she said, they had decided they were both leaving their spouses for good. This was a, you know, pull-the-trigger event, a life event. An odd choice of words? Maybe. According to Jen, Adam had tried to pull the trigger before on a new life, but Grace had threatened suicide when he tried to leave her. Now, finally, he'd had enough. He was leaving and he wasn't going back. At least some of Jen's story of what happened the morning of the murder did seem to match

the one Grace had told her friend Cynthia. Grace had called Adam's home early in the morning, and he'd met up with her at that McDonald's parking lot. They'd spent the day together. She said Adam called it the first day of the rest of their lives. He said, all my friends will know tomorrow. I want you to meet everybody. The plan, said Jen, was that Adam would go home to retrieve his clothes at about 6 30 p.m. and then meet her at a hotel. Jen then met her husband Bob for dinner at 7 15 at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant. I just kept flipping open my phone inside my purse because I expected to hear from Adam. And, you know, I was a little antsy, you know, about it. But, Jen told the detective, she couldn't find the heart to tell Bob she was leaving him.

And I feel so guilty that I didn't. I promised Adam I would. Jen said when she returned to the hotel around 9 p.m., she was more than a little antsy about not hearing from Adam. She kept calling his cell phone, but he didn't pick up. Jen said she was nervous. She said she knew Adam had given Grace a gun for self-protection and that Adam was about to tell his wife he was leaving for good. Did Adam ever tell you where he kept this gun?

In the nightstand. Okay. The nightstand in the bedroom, the one hanging open the night of the murder. Worried, she says, that Adam was not back to the hotel yet. At 9.30, she decided to call the police. She refers to Grace as Adam's ex-wife. The man that I'm seeing went back to his ex-wife to pick up some things at his house,

and he's not picking up his phone, and I'm just scared to death. But the police didn't take this phone call very seriously. I have a woman on the line who said her boyfriend went to his ex-wife's house at about 6.30 tonight, and she hasn't heard from him since. The operator told Jen there was nothing they could do. Jen says she was now really worried and drove to Adam's house.

A little after 10 p.m., she went around back and looked in the window. And his face was black. It wasn't red. It was black. I took off running while I was looking at the phone, pressing 911. Jen made it clear to the detective she believed Grace had shot Adam. In fact, Jen seemed to know the crime scene as well as if she'd actually been there herself. And as soon as he walked out of

that bathroom, she shot him. That's what I think happened. Detective Hansen says he bought Jen's story, that she and Adam were having an affair and were going to run away together. This wasn't somebody that wandered up off the street selling me, you know, a made-up story. She knew a lot about Adam Kostevich. So you believed her? Correct. And later, police even uncovered some webcam video on Adam's computer in which he told Jen how much he loved her and was looking forward to a life with her. It seemed to back up Jen's story. Police wanted Grace's side of the story, but first they would have to find her. That happened the morning after the murder, in a baseball field in Baghdad, Arizona, about 120 miles from Phoenix. A sheriff's deputy found Grace lying across the

front seats of her car, apparently following an attempt at suicide by taking a lot of aspirin. Next to her was an envelope filled with the money she'd taken out of the bank. Police did not find a murder weapon in Grace's car or at the crime scene, but they did learn that Adam had been killed with a.38 caliber slug and that he owned a.38 caliber revolver that was missing from his collection. You think that.38 was in the nightstand drawer, and you think that's the gun that was used to kill Adam? Yeah, certainly, certainly fits.

Grace was taken to the hospital, where she spoke with a social worker. She said that when Adam came home, that there was yelling and that there was hitting and shoving. Police believe she then left the house, drove off in her car, and later took all that aspirin because according to the social worker, Grace said there was no other way out. She made the suicide attempt because her situation was hopeless. Police had their theory. Grace had learned of the affair, spent the day drinking, and then killed her husband when he came home to pack up and leave her. Then, alone, depressed, and guilty, she tried to take her own life. Grace Bianca was arrested and charged with second-degree murder

for killing her husband Adam. Friend Randy Thompson said there had been some signs of problems in Adam and Grace's marriage, but he never imagined a situation like this. He never mentioned to you that he was having an affair? No. And from what I gather, he doesn't seem like the kind of person that you would think would be doing that.

Yeah, your observation's correct. It was a total surprise. It's a very, very tragic case. Grace Pianca was tried in a Phoenix courtroom in August of 2008, but it was a tough case for the jury. There was no gun, no DNA evidence, no witness to the murder. In the end, the jury couldn't reach a verdict. Six months later, Grace would be retried in front of brand new jurors,

and they would hear a stunning theory of the murder, of who pulled the trigger, and why. It was a very difficult case. It always looked like it was going to be a difficult case. Prosecutor Cleve Lynch had a circumstantial case on his hands. No gun, no DNA evidence, no witnesses who could say they saw Grace Bianca shoot her husband, Adam Kostevich. Adam was killed in his own bed. But Lynch believed the facts were clear. Angry and hopeless after learning her husband was having an affair, Grace drained the couple's bank accounts, spent the afternoon drinking,

then shot and killed Adam when he came home. And then she turns up having tried to commit suicide the next day in a really remote location. So that does point to her. A sheriff's deputy testified he found Grace after that suicide attempt, lying across the seats in her car, an empty bottle of aspirin next to her, and in her purse, what seemed to be a key piece of evidence. One thing that caught my eye was a empty brass.38 cartridge. A.38, the same caliber as the bullets that killed Adam,

although without the murder weapon there was no way to match that casing to the slugs at the crime scene, or to the.38 caliber revolver missing from Adam's collection. And the prosecutor argued there was more hard evidence that showed Adam was indeed leaving grace for Jen McIntyre, his mistress. There were garbage bags in the entryway filled with Adam's clothes and what Lynch called a packing list found on Adam's body. That's when the argument starts because he's packing up to leave. Was there evidence of an argument? Remember, a hospital social worker told investigators, Grace said there had been hitting and shoving. That story was ruled inadmissible in court,

but a nurse testified she found bruises on Grace's arms. Were those evidence of a fight between Grace and Adam? And, argued the prosecutor, take a close look at Grace's behavior, starting with the testimony of a neighbor, who told the court he went to Grace and Adam's house to investigate when he heard a smoke alarm sometime after 7 p.m. the night of the murder. He says he saw Grace in her car, quickly backing down the driveway. Her face was wet with tears, and I thought I heard a dog bark, but then she said,

shut up, shut up, to what I'm guessing was the dog, and then looked back at me and said, it's okay, it's okay. And she yells at the dog again and just takes off. And Prosecutor Lynch pointed out to the jury, Grace took off with no shoes on her feet, no cell phone. And there was more suspicious behavior on Grace's part. After her suicide attempt, she was interviewed and recorded in the hospital by Detective Hansen and another officer. That tape was played for the jury. On it, Grace repeatedly, because she knew what she'd done. She knows something happened to her husband.

And when the detective says Adam's dead, she acts upset, but never asks the questions you'd expect a new widow to ask. Well, we found Adam in the house. Okay. Okay? And he's passed away. Okay. Okay?

Is he alive? He's not alive. He's not alive? No. You've got to be kidding me. She says, you've got to be kidding me. And then she sounds like she's upset for about 15 to 30 seconds and then they just are asking questions and this woman does not sound

upset home is straight edges you drink what do you drink I usually don't drink I know okay what did you drink that night or that day oh hi why yeah there was one witness the jury would never hear from Jen McIntyre Adams mistress Ohio. White. White. And found the killer. There was one witness the jury would never hear from, Jen McIntyre, Adam's mistress, the woman who found the body, the woman who called 911. Jen had agreed to testify, but when that day came, she and her husband Bob were nowhere to be found. Investigators from both sides searched but were unable to find them. And no one was happier about that than the defense,

because Jen McIntyre's disappearance handed them a different theory of the crime. She's the mistress. And so you've got to think that the mistress can be just as much a likely suspect as the wife. Grace's defenders called the charges against her a rush to judgment and would point the finger at the other woman in this fatal love triangle. A rush to judgment. That's why we're here today. Now it was the defense's turn, and attorneys would argue that police had tunnel vision by focusing on Grace Bianca and ignoring the person truly responsible.

Alicia Dominguez and Ulysses Farragut represented Grace. Why was Grace Bianca the suspect? I mean, what got police to her so quickly? Jen McIntyre. She's the one who pointed the finger from the beginning. She gave her entire story of who she believed committed this offense, and the police never looked back from there. In a third-party defense, Grace's lawyers would take on the role of prosecutor, essentially charging Adam's mistress with murder. If you're a police investigator, you just use your common sense and logic, and it'll lead you down a path. And that's all we

did. And every time we went down this path, we would find these little nuggets leading us back to Virginia McIntyre. So who is Virginia or Jen McIntyre? The defense started digging into her background and that of her husband, Bob. They claimed to make a good living working in sales. But defense investigators found the McIntyres have a history of owing people money, including a $400,000 debt to the IRS. These are people that all of their contacts sort of lead back to strip mall P.O. boxes. It all kind of indicates a bit of shadiness, if you will. And the defense team learned something else. Even after she met Adam,

Jen continued to talk to other men on that website where they met. She did go off of it for a while, but then signed back in just one day before Adam died. And on that day, she made changes to her profile. Why would Jen go back on that website at all, especially the night before she and Adam were supposedly going to start a life together? The trial judge would not allow the defense to bring up the McIntyre's debts to the IRS or the information about the extramarital dating website. Even so, defense attorneys believed they had plenty to use against Jen McIntyre, and they would argue that she had both the means and the motive to kill Adam Kostevich. Remember, even though the police had found a.38 cartridge in Grace's purse, they never found the murder weapon and couldn't link the cartridge to anything.

This gave the defense an opening to link Jen McIntyre to the murder weapon. The defense put a computer forensics expert on the stand who'd uncovered an instant message on Adam's computer between Adam, screen name Simon, and Jen. Adam asks Jen, What caliber is your gun? And she says,.357. She complains about the kick of the gun, and Adam, who loves guns, tells her to try putting.38 special ammo in there to reduce the recoil.

.38 caliber ammunition, the very type of bullets Adam was killed with. He was suggesting Jan use in her gun. So could that have been the murder weapon? Defense attorneys said Jan had used a gun. They showed the jury a blown-up police photo of Jan taken the night of the murder. Her right thumb appeared to have an abrasion on it, and it looked as if her thumbnail was broken. The gun shop owner who sold Adam his.38 told the jury that kind of injury can happen when firing a revolver. Under recoil, this thumbnail can easily be broken by the cylinder, especially if you have long fingernails. It'll catch the edge of the fingernail and break the fingernail. And then there was this, something the defense claimed police had missed, a little white curved speck on the rug next to Adam's body. Could that white speck be Jen's fingernail at the crime scene? Could the

night she described to Detective Hansen as a pull-the-trigger event have been literally that? Jen's alibi at the time of the murder was that she was at a fast food restaurant with Bob. The defense focused the jury on cell phone records from that day. Outgoing calls were made from both Jen and Bob's phones all day long. But when you get to the critical time between roughly 6 30 p.m and 9 pm. when Adam was killed, there's no activity on either of their phones. Their whereabouts are completely unknown other than her suggestion she's with her husband at a fast food joint. And if there was opportunity, the defense also offered a motive, money. Jen McIntyre had somehow managed to insert herself right into her dead married lover's financial affairs.

Five months after Adam was killed, Jen McIntyre went to court and persuaded a judge to appoint her the special administrator of Adam's estate, coordinating communication between the courts and Adam's parents in Poland, an estate that included an $806,000 life insurance policy. Explain to me how the married girlfriend of a murder victim ends up in charge of his estate. Yeah, I mean, that's just one of the great mysteries, because I got to tell you, common sense dictates to me that if I were having an affair with someone and they end up dead, I probably would like to have as little involvement from there on out. And a woman from Adam and Grace's mortgage lender testified that, as special administrator,

Jen never once paid the mortgage on the house. The defense's argument, Jen wasn't doing anything to protect Adam's assets. She just wanted to get her hands on Adam's money. You think Ken McIntyre is that smart, that clever, that she not only planned this murder, but executed it, framed Grace, and then somehow got herself appointed administrator of Adams estate, all what, for the money? Yes, I believe she is that smart. And the defense asked the jury to listen very closely to that 911 call. The operator thought she heard someone besides Jen. The defense argued that voice was saying, think money. They played a slowed down version. Was it possible Jen's husband Bob or another man was with her outside the house when she made that call, reminding Jen to keep her eye on the prize and think money?

The defense attacked the work of rookie lead investigator Brian Hansen, starting with how, from the beginning, Hansen completely bought Jen McIntyre's story. You never investigated her background? No, I did not. And in that first interview after Adam died, Detective Hansen's courtesy to Jen McIntyre may have changed the course of the investigation. You did not tell Ms. McIntyre,

do not wash your hands, we're going to need to test those. No, I did not. And in allowing Jen to use the bathroom and wash her hands, he guaranteed that any test of Jen's hands for gunshot residue the night Adam was killed would come back negative. You think Jen McIntyre played Detective Hanson like a violin, don't you? Oh yeah. Absolutely.

But Detective Hanson doesn't see it that way. You never take her fingerprints to compare with the fingerprints inside the house she's having an affair with him and says that she'd been in there does that fingerprint show that she killed adam never checked her car for blood for guns no i did not other evidence no i did not and her alibi is pretty much her word. Correct. You didn't think she was a suspect? No, I had nothing other than what if pointed that Jen did this murder. Did police focus immediately on Grace as a suspect?

Detective Hanson says yes, because all the evidence pointed to Grace. Did you ever look at the whole issue of whether or not Jen had any financial motive in wanting Adam dead? No, I did not. Do you wish you had? I guess at face value, just in court to answer that question. But I don't think I messed up by not doing that. You know, where's the jump that, hey, we'll murder Adam, we'll frame his wife, police won't think I did it, and I'll become the special administrator to his estate and we'll ride off into the sunset with the life insurance. You've got to line up a lot of things to make that happen. The defense believed it had shown that Jen McIntyre had the

opportunity, the motive, and maybe even the weapon that killed Adam Kostevich. Now the accused, his wife, Grace Bianca, would take the stand to try to convince the jury that whether or not Jen committed murder, Grace did not. On trial, accused of murdering her husband, it was Grace Bianca's turn to tell her side of the story. She told the court that in January of 2006, something had changed in her husband Adam. He became moody. He changed his mood a few times a day. She said she bought counseling tapes and tried to reach out to Adam through an email. I wrote to him to let him know how much I love him and how much he means to me. Grace, with all his mood swings and these changes you saw on him, did you have any suspicion that he was having an affair?

Never. Grace told the jury all about the day Adam died. The early morning phone call, the car chase, the drinking. When Adam came home, she said, she finally confronted him face to face. He said that he was not having an affair. I told him that I don't believe him. Grace told the court that when Adam refused to discuss what was going on, they separated. Adam went to the balcony of the house. Grace ran to her car. I felt sad. I felt betrayed. She says she drove off and later in the night started gulping down aspirin, trying to take away her

pain. Did you have any intention of killing yourself with these aspirin? No, I didn't think about killing myself. No. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital, where she spoke with police. You repeatedly asked them to tell you if Adam's okay, where's Adam. Why did you keep asking that question? Because they did not answer my question. I just, I kept asking them, and they kept asking me questions. And what did you think when they weren't answering your question about Adam? That something is wrong. I don't know what is wrong, but something is wrong.

Finally, defense attorney Alicia Dominguez got to the heart of the matter. At any time on April 15th of 2006, did you shoot Adam with a gun? No, I didn't. Now it was prosecutor Cleve Lynch's turn to cross-examine Grace. And he presented a very different version of events for what happened that evening. So he's having an affair. He won't explain it to you. And that's not the angriest you've ever gotten. No, I'm not an angry person. I've never been. I feel betrayed. I cry, but I was not angry.

Did you get to the point where the two of you were arguing so much that he grabbed onto your arms? Exhibit 259. No, Adam was gentleman. He would never grab my arms. Well, were you attacking him at that point? I did not attack anybody, Mr. Lynch, no. You reach into the drawer. You pull out the.38, bang, you missed him. Bang, bang, bang. Five times. Ms. Bianca, isn't that what happened? No. You shot your husband. No, I did not shot my husband. Both sides now made final arguments to the jury.

The prosecutor ridiculed the defense's theory that the mistress, Jen McIntyre, had killed Adam. Jen says to her husband, Bob, Bob, I'm having an affair. He decided not to leave his wife. He's got money. We can kill him. And then I'll go call 911 and you wait in the car, Bob. And he says, think money. And then at the last second, just before the officer arrives, he jumps out. But, said the defense, this case all boils down to reasonable versus unreasonable behavior. Grace's drinking, draining the bank accounts, swallowing aspirin,

all reasonable behavior by a wife devastated to learn her husband is having an affair. But Dominguez argued Jen McIntyre's actions were not reasonable. Is it reasonable for her to call 911 and then point the finger and say, I have nothing to do with it, and then not show up here to tell her story. No, it's not reasonable. And it sure isn't reasonable for her to become a special administrator of the estate of a man she's having an affair with.

Now it would be up to eight jurors to decide whether Grace Bianca killed her husband, or whether it could have been the other woman, Jen McIntyre. She wasn't around to tell her story, but her son was. What do you want people to know about your mother? That she's, for one, first and foremost, she's not a murderer. Like both sides in this case, we also wanted to find Virginia McIntyre. This was as close as we got. Her son, Louis Hanson Moore.

He goes by Hanson. It's my parents. They're a different kind of cat. You know what I mean? They're not the type of people to go knocking on the neighbor's doors, bringing cookies. They like to, you know, be with themselves. They're homebodies. Hanson said he didn't know his mother was having an affair until after Adam's death, which he says left her heartbroken. She sat in front of that laptop and she just kept showing me his video. It was blatantly obvious that she was very much falling in love with this man.

But it wasn't long after the murder that people started to point the finger at his mother. I knew she couldn't have done it. I know my mother very well. You didn't know she was having an affair. I didn't know she was having an affair. But having an affair, sir, with all due respect, is nowhere in the same ballpark as shooting someone multiple times at a fit of rage like that. She has no reason to. Why would she shoot Adam? Why would she shoot Adam? To become the administrator of his estate, to get the money, to get out of

debt. My mom is a very intelligent woman, and she knows that she couldn't get away with something like that. They're self-made millionaires. They don't need to take over Adams' estate. They're self-made millionaires? They have been, absolutely. Then why not pay your taxes? Sir, you're talking to the wrong person here. It's not lawful by any stretch of imagination, but not paying your taxes and murdering someone or two different ballparks once again. When we spoke with Hanson in 2009, he told us his mother and stepfather left town because they received threats. And he said his mother wanted to save Bob, the embarrassment of what might come out in court. Where are they now? I don't know. Why don't you know? And why doesn't

anybody know? I mean? Because that's the way they want it. And she didn't tell you where she was going? Absolutely not. Come on. That's very hard. Not only would she not tell me where she was going, when she would try and make contact and call me, it was always an unavailable or private number so I couldn't get an area code. You think she was trying to protect you? Absolutely. So no one could ever make you? Absolutely. She just didn't want me to have anything to do with this. You know what I mean? She's a good person.

And my stepfather's done an incredible job of raising me and treating me like his own. And taking her back, he's a pretty forgiving guy. Incredibly forgiving guy. And from the last I heard of them, they sound like they're doing well. So I'm happy for them. Wherever they are. Wherever they are. I'm So I'm happy for them. Wherever they are. Wherever they are. I'm sure I'll see them again.

Her son said Jen didn't do it. But what would the jury decide? We sat down with four of the eight. The whole aspect of Jen McIntyre being gone was, I guess, the main biggest doubt of the whole case because she wasn't there to explain herself. But in the end, when we were talking about the case, we're like, Grace is on trial here, not Virginia McIntyre. You know, what we've got to focus on is the evidence that we have.

After four days of going over that evidence, the jury announced it had a verdict. Grace Pianka was about to learn her fate. We, the jury duly impaneled and sworn in the above entitled action upon our oaths, do find the defendant as to the charge of second degree murder guilty. She was sentenced to 13 years in prison and was released in 2019. A bloody love triangle with no winners. Adam's friends are still mourning him. Well, cherished memories of Adam. His picture is prominently displayed in our house with the great smile he had and his eyes twinkling.

Now, so we, you know, we miss him a lot, my whole family.