Dateline NBC - Someone Was Watching

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

A Dateline classic with a plot straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. A young woman peers into her neighbor's yard, and sees something for a few mysterious seconds. Was it some kind of accident, or a crime? Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on October 14, 2011.

This is a tragedy on top of a tragedy now. It happened so quickly. Their parents in the backyard spa. Their mom in trouble. My dad just panicked. A sudden slip? A fatal fall? You're losing your mother. You're watching her go right in front of you.

Someone else was watching her too. A curious neighbor just moments before witnessed something astonishing. It was scary. The look on his face was almost indescribable. What had she seen? Was this drowning really an accident? She's got a huge gash on her head. Something like that is not consistent with just falling down. A husband and father is suddenly under suspicion.

He's crying. We're crying. He said, they think I hurt Mom. Three daughters stand by their dad, and one prosecutor stands firm. He's holding his wife of almost three decades under the water. My job is to get justice for Christy Hall. Was it murder? Someone was watching. Good evening and welcome to Dateline.

I'm Lester Holt. Tonight, a story that calls to mind the master of suspense. A plot straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. A young woman peers into her neighbor's yard and sees something for a few mysterious seconds. A man, a woman, and a moment that's unsettling. Was it some kind of accident, a crime, maybe even a murder? What she saw and what she did would set in motion a chain of events that would divide a family and a jury. Here's Keith Morrison. We know the truth, and we know everything that happened.

How do we know what we know? It's emotionally unsatisfying not to have that answer. So it is, even if we've seen something, or if we think we have. And that's the question at the heart of the whole puzzle. Is this woman right? I know what I saw. And I know the conclusion of my story. Of course she does. Of course she does.

So why does this other woman think this? She didn't know for sure what she saw. A question, we say, on which all the rest will turn. Why don't we begin in Cala Mesa, California, Riverside County, historic missions, sprawling suburbs, creeping out to the rim of mountains around the eastern flank of L.A.? It's where Chris and Christy Hall had come to live out their golden years, though they were far from old when it happened, just experienced with life and each other.

As far back as I can remember, it's always been Chris and Christy. They were never thought of as separate. They were a unit. Her three daughters, Courtney, the eldest, Brianna, the middle, and Ashton, the youngest. And all of them, of course, have heard scores of times the story of how their parents met. It was 1978. Christy had gone to see a relative at the Air Force Base in nearby San Bernardino,

and quite by chance, while she was there, encountered a security guard who, to her at least, looked just like Elvis. It was Blair Christopher Hall, Chris to his friends. Apparently she was a little flirty at the gate. In short order, Chris and Christy got married. She was 17, he 20. And as the girls grew up, they said they never doubted for a single moment the powerful bond of love. Their parents with them and with each other. I venture to say we're probably closer with our parents than most children. They're the parents that I hope to one day be. For years, Chris Hall was a police officer in San Bernardino until he was shot in the line of duty, and then he went off to become police chief in two small towns in Idaho. And then in 2005,

anticipating an empty nest and eventual retirement, the Halls bought a place back in Calamesa, which they loved for its backyard pool and spa, and life in the spring of 2007 seemed to have hit a sweet spot, as Ashton and Brianna remember their mother telling them. We happened to be laying on the bed with her. She just started talking. She was like, I'm just, I'm so happy that I have you girls and dad. It was kind of one of those conversations that you don't have every day. Still, there was work to be done. It was not a new house, could use some remodeling, particularly the bathroom.

Courtney was still living with her parents as the work began. They were going to be doing the tile work and stuff, so we wouldn't have a shower for that day. So, shower out of commission, they decided to wake up early, put on their bathing suits, and rinse off in the outdoor spa before the contractor arrived at 6.45 a.m. It was June 7, 2007.

Chris got up first, turned on the spa to warm it up, and then called Brianna at her college dorm in San Diego. Here's your wake-up call, babe. Get out and go on that run. Back at the house, Courtney dozed through her first wake-up, while Chris and Christy made their way outside to the spa. Just after 6.30, Chris looked in on Courtney again, second call, then headed back to the spa.

Life's last normal moments. 6.37 a.m. I got up out of bed and I was putting on my robe and I just heard this panicked, just panicked scream from my dad yelling for me. And I ran down the hallway to the back porch and I saw him just trying to pull out my mom out of the spa. It was she who dialed 911 as she and her father struggled to lift her mother out of the spa. It was the first moments of the worst day of our lives. Is it possible for people to understand what it's like to be in that situation? I don't think so. It's to see just both your parents in the worst times that you've ever seen them. Obviously my mom, unconscious, and my dad just panicked.

And for the first time in my life, seeing him just that way, not knowing what to do. Because he was a cop. He was used to dealing with those kinds of things. He was a cop, used to dealing with those kinds of things with people that were not his wife. So, Courtney took charge. After calling 911, she started CPR on her mother with her father. EMT and firefighter Eric Norwood was the first to respond. He just started, help my wife, oh my God, help my wife, help my wife.

Chris Hall was kneeling at his wife's side, more in the way than anything, and so hysterical it was hard for the EMTs to help. It took us a little bit to get him out of the way. He didn't want to leave her. He was just holding her hand, yelling her name. The paramedics worked on Christy for more than 20 minutes.

No vital signs. None. And no words to describe just the fear and the anxiety. You're losing your mother. And you're watching her go right in front of you. We tried to say we're together, and we just couldn't. The ambulance rushed her off to the hospital, where she was declared dead. She had drowned in the family spa. A private family tragedy.

Except, maybe not so private after all. Someone was watching. Coming up... It was a horrible scream. A witness. But to what? What exactly did she see?

I don't know. You know, I can't explain what she's saying she saw. When Dateline continues. On the morning of June 7, 2007, Brianna Hall was on the road from San Diego, driving home from college to what she didn't know, except that her elder sister, Courtney, had called and it sounded bad. She said, there was an accident, you need to just, you know, come home right away. It was Courtney who eventually broke the news to Ashton and Brianna. Their mother, their father's wife of close to 30 years, was dead.

But neither Courtney nor Chris waited at the house to tell the sisters what happened or to comfort them, nor did they linger over the body at the hospital. They couldn't. Because father and daughter were escorted to separate squad cars and driven to the police station to talk about the accident. What was that ride like?

Quiet. You know, I just remember crying the whole time. I couldn't comfort my father, he couldn't comfort me. It was... We got to the station, and he said that my dad would just be a few more minutes. Chris, so frenzied at the scene, had calmed down by then. He was a cop among cops, after all. And he understood, he said, what was necessary to help them sort out what happened.

I can't even start to imagine what you're going through, okay? Just, you know, it's a death investigation and we have to do this, okay? Happy to help, he said. Whatever would get him back home to comfort his daughters as quickly as possible. This is going to kill him. They're all so close. Chris told investigators what happened. How, as Courtney slept, he and Christy were in the spa, bathing.

She got out, went in, went to the bathroom, got some more coffee, tried to wake up Courtney. Courtney didn't wake up, apparently. She came back out. As Christie returned to the spa, said Chris, they passed each other on the patio. He went in the house then, he said, stopped by Courtney's room to make sure she was awake, then went right back outside and saw his wife floating face down in the spa. He called Courtney then, he said, and they began a frantic effort to revive her. I could tell he'd lose her. From what? A fall? Must have been.

In your gut, tell me what you think happened. I'm thinking she slipped in. She slipped or something. I don't know. That's the only thing I can think of. But Chris apparently hadn't noticed the nasty three-inch laceration on Christy's head. And here, suddenly, the point of the police interview is revealed. The gash she has on her head, she's got a huge gash on her head. Okay. Something like that is not consistent with just falling down.

Not consistent with just falling down? Why would the police think that? Yeah, I mean, you've been around for a while. I know where you're going, and no, there's nothing... Why, in fact, was this ex-police chief being questioned at all about the apparently disastrous

accident that killed the love of his life. And the answer was right next door. When Chris and Christy Hall took their outdoor bath that morning in June, someone was watching. I got up at 6, got my coffee. Lindsey Patterson was on leave from her IT job in the Navy, visiting her mom's house just over the backyard wall from the hall house. Lindsay was

inside, in the bathroom that faced away from the hall house and out into the street, when she heard a noise. It was a horrible scream. It was just something was wrong kind of scream. A woman's? She thought. She went outside

to tell her mom. And I said, did you hear that scream? And she said, yeah, but I think it's just kids playing in the pool. Kids? At six-something in the morning? Lindsay walked over to the six-foot brick wall between their yard and the halls. She stepped on the planter, she said, and looked over the wall. At that point, I saw a man with his hand, one hand on top of a woman's head, and then one hand on her back, and she was face down in the water. Like something was going on?

Yeah, that's what I assumed. That is, she thought she was looking at a sex act in progress. I don't know why it didn't seem right, but something made me want to look again. Perhaps 90 seconds, she said, between her first and second looks. And this time, she said, she only saw the man in the spa. He's leaning back, just relaxed in the hot tub, but I don't see her.

He's got his elbows back, and he's just kind of looking around like nothing. Where did the woman go? Lindsay told her mom something seemed strange. She again tells me, Lindsay, stop being nosy. Don't worry about it. But it just didn't seem right. It wasn't enough time for her to have gotten out and gone inside the house.

So, said Lindsay, she went to the wall again, her third and final look. At that point, he was getting out of the jacuzzi, and he was in a very big rush. She's still nowhere to be seen. The look on his face was almost indescribable. It was almost as if he had just gone into another world. It was scary. It was instinct that told her something was wrong, said Lindsay.

So she called 911. 911, state emergency. So now, hours and hours later, the detectives confronted Chris with Lindsay's story. Why, they asked, didn't her story match his? So am I supposed to believe that Linus is lying? I don't want to say she's lying. She sounded like the truthful kid or whatever, but I mean, I don't know.

You know, I can't explain what she's saying she saw. So now that question we posed as we began, did Lindsay Patterson really know what she saw? Coming up. She didn't see what was really happening. What had really happened. There would soon be a turn in the case. This was not an accidental drowning. It was purely much more suspicious than that.

When Someone Was Watching continues. Chris and Christy Hall's three daughters clung together in grief and shock all through the dismal evening hours of that worst of all days, June 7, 2007, waiting for their father to return from the police station, and they wondered, why was it taking so long? Then the phone rang, and they had their answer. You know, broken up words, and he's crying, and we're crying, and that was when he said, they think I hurt mom.

I mean, he was very upset. But he didn't sound surprised when he said, they think I hurt mom. No, he was crying. He was crying. He was upset. Very upset. But by the time police investigators were questioning Chris, remember, they'd heard from Lindsay Patterson. And at the station, Chris's version of events in the spa differed in one crucial detail from what Lindsay described seeing

that first time she peered over the wall and into the hall's backyard. That specifically, me holding her down in there, there's nothing that took place in that jacuzzi that would explain that. There was no sex, there was none there. I don't even think we had any contact other than when I was getting her out of the vehicle. But investigators were getting a good look at Christy's body and saw wounds that, to them, suggested a struggle

and more than just one nasty blow to the head. So the police had to choose which version, Chris Hall's or Lindsay Patterson's, was more likely the true story of what happened. Tom Dove led the investigation for the Riverside DA. I think they felt there was enough to say this was not an accidental drowning. It was purely much more suspicious than that.

And so, before the night was over, Chris Hall was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. The girls could stop waiting. He wasn't coming home. It was obviously a tragedy losing our mother that day, but this is a tragedy

on top of a tragedy now. Because knowing our parents isn't just the farthest thing from the truth. And one that felt infected by some kind of madness, said the girls. Christy was the love of their father's life. After all, the center of everything for him. How, they wondered, could anyone so happy in his marriage and his life be accused of harming her? And she was happy too. They said as happy as she'd ever been. They knew what they said based on that mother-daughter talk they

had. Not long before she died. She just kept reiterating how happy she was. A lot. And me and Bray will always cherish that. Of course didn't think much of it at that time. But that being the last time we actually saw her.

Kind of burned into your memory. But right or wrong, the legal trigger had been pulled. Chris Hall spent almost two months in jail until his daughters received the payout from Christie's life insurance policy and used the money to meet his million-dollar bail. And then he went back to what was to be his retirement retreat to prepare with the help of his daughters for a murder trial. That's very surprising to have a client in a murder case out on bail,

but he was a special man, and this was a special situation. Steve Harmon and Paul Gretsch are attorneys who would eventually defend him, though at first they only heard about the case. You've said two things there, special man, special situation. I think both of us can say that this is a man that we like and that we know, and we don't feel he could have done anything like this. So Chris Hall and his daughters prepared for a trial which they hoped would make clear to everybody, the police, the neighbor, the world, that Chris would not, could not, did

not harm the love of his life there was never in 30 years of marriage never one moment of violence there was no motive for this man to kill his wife Harmon and Gretch had a look at neighbor Lindsay Patterson's eyewitness account and suggested it was really not conclusive at all it was trag tragically incomplete. She saw three snapshots. What is missed by everyone is the wife getting into the jacuzzi, slipping, falling into the jacuzzi, hitting her head, going unconscious, and drowning. There's a sharp corner sticking out into the spa. Hitting your head on that would certainly have opened a gash and knocked Christy out, said the attorney.

She didn't see what was really happening during the times when she was not looking. That scream that made Lindsay Patterson look over the wall? Lindsay, they pointed out, was in a bathroom that faced the street. She wasn't in the backyard when she says she heard it. Could have been anybody. And Courtney, who was inside her own house near the spa, didn't hear a thing. We don't think that she's lying. We just think she misinterpreted what she saw. And anyway, Lindsay, to a certain degree, concedes she didn't know what she was seeing

in her glimpses that morning. Something was wrong. And yet you hadn't really seen anything. I know, but I knew something was wrong. I don't know if in my brain I was putting things together, but from between the scream, the position that he was holding her, and then not, just not having enough time for her to have gone inside. So it's like you kind of got three different snapshots of something going on in there. Right. And had to kind of work out what this was. You know, I wasn't thinking at that point, oh, this man just murdered his wife.

But now, based largely on that account, Chris Hall would go on trial for murder. And it was a trial for his daughters, too. He loved her. They were each other's best friends, and this is just, this is not fair to him because he truly loved her more than anyone. Coming up, the case begins. Evidence is revealed in court. When you lose that amount of hair, it's not reasonably explained by any kind of fault. And secrets are revealed from the past. This man had an uncanny ability to fabricate stories.

When Someone Was Watching continues. Burke Strunsky is a hard-charging man, ex-member in good standing of the San Francisco DA's office, now senior deputy DA in Riverside. That takes skill, persuasive powers. Strunsky would need them in the murder case against the former police chief and family man, Chris Hall. Mr. Hall, on the surface, looks like a loving family man. He looks like a good father.

He was somebody that had the support of his family. So he did. But Strunsky wasn't buying the loving father and family man bit. No, when he heard about Chris Hall's very obvious grief, the wailing that went on after the so-called accident. The phrase that crossed his mind was, it's an act. I think it was a wonderful performance by the defendant of acting like a bereaved husband. But when you look at his actions, how little he did to help his wife.

Who tried harder to save Christie? Not Chris, said the prosecutor, but his daughter. She called 911. She helped him get the body out of the spa. She is the only one that did chest compression. He had no interest in truly helping his wife. A matter of opinion, of course. But Prosecutor Strunsky poked around in Chris Hall's past as a policeman. And what did he find? This man had an uncanny ability to fabricate stories. Seven years earlier, while Hall was chief of police in Cascade, Idaho, he was charged with and convicted of misuse of public money,

embezzled $19,000, spent 10 months in jail, a white-collar crime, hardly murder. But what struck the prosecutor is that he says Hall tried to cover it up. To plan a fraud, to lie about it, not just lie about it, but lie about it effectively. And I think that was very telling about who we were dealing with. Suddenly, the prosecutor's prospects were looking better.

At the trial, Strzomski made Lindsay Patterson his star witness, of course. It was her story Strumsky made Lindsay Patterson his star witness. Of course, it was her story, after all, that got the whole thing started. But almost as important, he called the Riverside County medical examiner, who testified that those lacerations on Christie's head could not, in his opinion, have been the result of a single accidental fall. And the ME argued the particular type of bruising on Christie's face and body was a hallmark of homicide. The totality of injuries were not consistent with somebody slipping and

falling and then a rescue attempt. And there was a clump of hair in the bottom of the spa, still entwined with a broken plastic hair clip. That, said the prosecutor, could only have come from a violent struggle. When you lose that amount of hair, it's not reasonably explained by any kind of fault. There were some minor hiccups in the case. Lindsay Patterson, for example, was a little inconsistent about how long she looked over the backyard wall that first time she saw something going on. Was it just a few seconds or as long as a minute? But either way, said the prosecutor, Lindsay was sure she saw physical contact. That was the important

thing. He was given the opportunity to explain any physical contact that could in any way reasonably explain what Lindsay Patterson missaw. In other words, were they washing each other? Were they involved in a sex act? Was there anything that she could have misinterpreted? And at the end of the day, you're not just stuck with the fact that Lindsay Patterson made a mistake. You have to actually believe that Lindsay Patterson really hallucinated about everything she saw. And what made Lindsay's story all the more convincing, said Prosecutor Stronsky, was she told it before finding out what happened to Christy. She dialed 911 a full minute and a half before anyone from the whole house did. Before Lindsay had any idea how it would end. Here's what the jury heard her say in that call.

I mean, I thought I should put her under water and hold her there. And she was still on the phone with 911 when Chris Hall came outside and found his wife's body floating in the spa, called out for Courtney. The prosecution's theory? Somehow, sitting in the spa that morning, Chris was overcome by some private fury. Who knows what?

A hidden violence is what Strunsky called it, and then killed his spouse when he thought nobody was looking. Chris Hall ambushed his wife, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head twice into the concrete edge. He's holding his wife of almost three decades under the water, showing absolutely no mercy and no remorse and an absolute desire to end her life at that point. And then the pièce de résistance.

He then gets out of the spa, walks into the house where his plan is to wake his 22-year-old daughter, who he can use as an alibi witness. One little quibble. Why? In fact, as convinced as he was of Hall's guilt, Strunsky conceded the why was a problem. Didn't legally have to know, he said, but he just didn't. There it was. It's emotionally unsatisfying not to have that answer, not to know the entire narrative of what happened.

But you'd want to know why this guy, married to this woman for almost 30 years, apparently happily, would suddenly turn on her and drown her in the pool. Right, and I'm not sure we got the answers to that specific question. Kind of an important question, isn't it? It's an important question and a question that we ask in all spousal homicides. So, proof enough or reasonable doubt? Almost three years after Christy Hall's death, a Riverside jury would have to decide. Coming up. You expected a not guilty verdict?

Oh, yes. Not a doubt. But there was a surprise in store for both sides in and out of the courtroom. She was having a little affair, right? When Dateline continues... Chris Hall's daughters sat through every miserable minute of their dad's trial for murder at the courthouse in Riverside, California. Their review of the prosecutor's portrait of their father. It was a lie, they said. It's hurtful to us to hear someone basically say that he knows our parents better than we do.

And he knows our father's a sociopath and that we're blind to it. And he knows that there was hidden violence in our parents' marriage and we just didn't see it. You're basically telling us that we didn't know that our whole lives were alive. And to top that off, there's no proof of that. Chrisol had never been violent, argued the defense. Had no motive, no reason to suddenly turn on his wife. It had to be a freak accident. So, said the defense, Lindsay Patterson didn't really know what she saw. In fact, if she'd really witnessed Chris Hall drowning his wife, why then didn't she claim to see Christy's body in the spa when she looked again? Didn't

make sense. But the highlight was the Hall daughter's testimony, emotional, quite powerful. So it put Prosecutor Strunsky in a strange position, at odds with the victim's own family. They were so clear. If we had any inkling he had done this, believe me, we would have said so. And we would have seen it. I think that's what they truly believe in their hearts. And, you know, it weighs on me greatly, but my job is to get justice for Christy Hall. Now it was up to a jury to decide. After six days of testimony, two days of deliberation, They couldn't. It was a deadlock. The judge declared a mistrial. Chris Hall walked out of court with his family, free, but not quite in the clear, and nothing at all like a victory for the Hall daughters. What was it like to get that hung jury?

What did you think then? That was tragic. That was devastating to us. You expected a not guilty verdict? Oh, yes. Not a doubt. Deputy DA Burke Strunsky was disappointed, too, and was also determined to retry the case. But first, he sent his investigator on a mission to explore the life

and marriage of Chris Hall. And what do you know? In Idaho, where Hall had been a disgraced police chief, the investigator uncovered a startling accusation. Chris was a great, great con man. Former Los Angeles police officer Jerry Winkle became a county commissioner up in Idaho. But once upon a time, he was Chris Hall's friend.

That is, before a night of poker and booze when he said Hall made a disturbing revelation that he'd shot himself in the leg when he was a cop in order to get medical retirement benefits. Chris had been drinking beer and he came right out and told me that he had shot himself. But there was more. DA investigator Tom Dove had discovered a secret, not in Chris's past, but in Christie's. There had been infidelity in the marriage six years prior, while Chris Hall was in custody in Idaho. Christie's affair was relatively brief, years earlier. But she'd been in phone contact with the man just days before she died.

Had Chris found out? Impossible to know. But when investigator Dove talked to Christy's co-workers at the clinic where she was an x-ray technician, several of them said they noticed a sudden change in her usually vibrant personality. One co-worker offered more. She told us that she was contemplating a divorce. If true, and it was only an if, it might well persuade a jury.

But also, Prosecutor Strunsky needed to explain what Lindsay Patterson saw or didn't see. Why didn't she see Christie's drowned body when she peeked over the wall a second time? We were not able to explain to the jury why she didn't see Christy at that point. And I think that allowed the defense to make the argument that Christy Hall was inside. The prosecution hired a water expert to do a recreation of the Hall spa.

They shot video, which said the prosecutor shows that if an injured Christy had sunk underwater, she would not have been visible from Lindsay's viewpoint. And now the prosecutor was ready. In May 2011, one year after the first jury deadlock, Burke Struncki went back to court, armed with his new evidence for a brand new panel of Hall's peers. Jurors heard medical experts testify about the injuries to Christie's head and once again heard Lindsay's 911 call. Christie's co-workers testified for the prosecution.

And Jerry Winkle traveled from Idaho to tell jurors what he thought of Chris Hall. I was ashamed to admit that he was once a police officer. But if the prosecution had upped its game in the year between the two trials, so had the defense. That's when well-known attorneys Steve Harmon and Paul Gretsch entered the scene. And they came out swinging. That story about Christie's affair, for example, there's a shadow hanging over all of this stuff, a very human sort of shadow,

which is that she was having a little affair, right? Had a boyfriend. Yes, if the husband knew about it, but the wife never, ever mentions it and tells the husband. No one tells the husband. Quite right, said the judge. And because there was no evidence that Chris knew about his wife's affair, he ruled it out of the trial. And the story about Hoss shooting himself for retirement benefits? That was just absolutely a lie. That's wrong. There was never, never any evidence or indication or not even a moment's breath that he shot himself. Anyway, the story was prejudicial, said the judge, so he threw that out too.

As for what Lindsay Patterson says she saw Chris Hall holding his wife's head underwater, the defense had prepared its own visual demonstration, had taken pictures from her angle at the wall to show that it could look like two people were touching in the spa, even if they weren't. This is what she described seeing in her testimony. But on the close-up, what do you notice? They're not touching, but they're in position where they could be. But that's different than actually touching.

Again, the Hall daughters were there every minute. Their fathers, enduring champions. And this time, more family members came to court. Two of Christy's own siblings testified for Chris. And said the same thing. We have not a doubt in our minds that this was not a moment of violence. This was not a murder.

The victim's own sister and own brother. That's an amazing thing to see. Perhaps it was. But listen to this. The defense had one more very significant witness. A witness who oozed credibility, the sitting medical examiner from neighboring San Bernardino County, who stuck his neck way out to disagree publicly in a court of law

with the medical examiner from Riverside. He found this to be an accidental death, not a homicide. This was not some ordinary hired gun. This was a public official who said straight out that Christie's head injuries could and perhaps should be explained by an accidental fall. He didn't rule out homicide. He didn't rule out homicide, but he said the preponderance

of the evidence was towards an accidental drowning. What I've always been astounded by with this case is that the whole family lived so close to the San Bernardino border, if Christie had slipped and fell four or five blocks over, the pathologist in that county would never have filed criminal charges. An accident of geography. So now, a second jury would have to sort through these two sets of allegations, these two opposing realities, and decide whether Chris Hall would turn and embrace home and his loving daughters, or a pair of handcuffs and a life in prison.

Coming up... Things can only go so wrong for so long before something has to actually go right. Guilty or not guilty? This time, the answer from the jurors would be unanimous. When Someone Was Watching continues. May 2011. For the second time, 12 men and women of Riverside County, California, filed out of the courtroom.

A second jury to make a life decision about Chris Hall. Did he murder his wife? Which of the medical examiners should they believe? Whose account of the defendant's character? And perhaps most important, what did Lindsay Patterson see when she peeked three times into the hall's backyard? Do you ever have those sort of little dark moments of the soul where you think, I may have misinterpreted, misremembered. Because that is something I've thought about every day. Whether I misinterpreted, whether I think I saw something that wasn't there.

I didn't see everything. Yeah. But I saw what I saw. And I know the conclusion of my story. I know it. I know it. Right here. I know it. Of course, Chris Hall's daughters say they know the truth, too. Real thing. In their hearts. I think that we were the three most critical jurors in that courtroom.

Believe me, if we had heard anything or had any inkling that our father could have done this, as much as it would hurt and as much as we love our father, we would want that justice for our mother. The jurors deliberated two days, then broke for the long weekend. It was Memorial Day. Ball's daughters felt good. Things can only go so wrong for so long before something has to actually go right for us.

We just did a lot of talking about the future and this, you know, being over, this being finished. And honestly, I was concerned about dad and how he was finally going to be able to grieve for the loss of his wife. And then it was Tuesday, 8.45 in the morning. The jury gathered. And minutes later, a signal. They were ready. Chris Hall and his daughters rushed to court. And in the end, it was very quick.

Guilty of first-degree murder. Their father would not be coming home. Probably ever. He's being cuffed and potentially put away for life. And yeah, it hurts. And we are angry about that. You can still hear those daughters accusing you of unfairly convicting their father. Absolutely. It weighs on me. But at the same time, I know who I'm dealing with when it comes to Chris Hall. In fact, he's the one that stolen their mother from them. It had been a peculiar fact of this case that the victims and defendants' families had stood solidly together against the prosecution. But what no one knew was the truth was more complicated.

After the verdict at Chris Hall's sentencing, a letter was introduced. It was from another of Christy Hall's brothers, Billy Carlton, who, until now, had said not one public word about the case. We would like to ask his honor for the maximum sentence, wrote Billy. The pain that my family has suffered through this tragedy is unforgivable. And I didn't want to hurt the girls, but I had to say what was on my mind. There was a deep divide in Christy's family, said Billy. Some of her relatives believed Chris was innocent,

but he and, he says, others, including Christy's uncle Steve Mundy, silently urged on the prosecutor. Half the family was convinced he was innocent, and half the family was convinced he wasn't. And that's hard to do when you have a big family, and you all have to be together every once in a while. And when it involves a member as loved as Christie was. Exactly. Does that explain why this kind of group of people in the family decided just to let justice take its course?

We had talked about it quite a bit. And you've got to know when to show up sometimes and when not to show up, just to keep what's left of the family as together as you can have it. Thank you so much for coming. When it was over, Paul convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life.

Some of Christie's relatives met with Prosecutor Strunsky and thanked him. They wanted me to thank you. Thank you for putting me that way, because he's a murderer. And the Hall daughters, having lost their beloved mother, fought to save a father they adored. It's a devastating reality. It really is.

Especially for a family that, you know, to say that we are close is an understatement, you know. To go from that to being not able to be there with each other. It's the greatest heartbreak that anyone can ever experience, I think. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.