Dateline NBC - The Beauty and the Beast Mystery

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

In this Dateline classic, Lisa and Scott Pattison marry on a fairy tale day and build a life together in central Indiana. But one day in July 2009, their marriage comes to a horrifying end as Scott races his gravely injured wife to the hospital, calling 911. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on February 25, 2011.

They danced on their wedding day as Beauty and the Beast. To stay beautiful, she worked out a healthy habit that one day turned deadly. He found her at home. The barbell was across her throat. A simple, tragic accident. This will fall down like a guillotine. Or was it? Getting that information at that moment. Did the case change for you?

Absolutely. What would the weight of evidence show? I got goosebumps. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy. The images are fuzzy on that old home video of the wedding reception. But anyone who was there remembers the event vividly. The bride all in white and the groom?

He's the dance partner in the goofy beast costume. Kind of a strange way to begin a marriage, some guests murmured. Beauty and the Beast. But then, it was a union that would end strangely. Last dance still more than ten years away at that point. Lisa, the bride, of course, had no idea what was in store for the two of them. She glided about with her signature 50,000-watt smile. You can't fake a smile like that. I mean, that was just her.

Lisa had been a single mom raising her small son when she joined her sister for a rare girls' night out at a Fort Wayne, Indiana dance club. There in the den, a big guy, a bodybuilder, he said, small-talked her and slipped her his business card before Lisa's party called it a night. In the car going home, Lisa pulled out the business card and showed it to her sister Christine. It said, Jean-Claude Van Damme look-alike.

You're kidding. No. And I said, you're not going to call that guy, are you? But she'd remembered him, hadn't she? Yes. Not only remembered him, but was soon dating and being pursued by the guy from the club, who turned out to be Scott Patterson, who worked in construction. Within a year, they were married. Lisa's mom, Lucy Rich.

She came in on a year, they were married. Lisa's mom, Lucy Rich. She came in on a white carriage, a horse, very beautiful. And she was so happy that day. She was very happy. I'm Scott Pattinson. I'm the groom here. This is my wife. As you left the wedding that night, Lucy, how'd you feel about your daughter? I was happy for her. The newlyweds set up housekeeping in central Indiana. He eventually became a self-employed roofing contractor,

and she the go-getter marketing manager at a local mall. Her son Dylan, from a previous relationship, grew to call Scott dad. Growing up, I didn't really have a fatherly figure. I mean, I slowly and surely called Scott dad. Growing up, I didn't really have a fatherly figure. I mean, I slowly and surely called him dad. And 13 years on, all were living a comfortable life together in a nice big house with acreage out in the country. There were vacations in the Caribbean, soaking in hot tubs, snorkeling with the stingrays, island hopping. Scott liked that people thought of him as a good time guy, Mr. Big. If you knew Scott, then you would know that he wanted everything to be the biggest and the best. And he kept up on his fitness regimen. The former bodybuilder didn't want to slide into flat.

He kept after Lisa to stay in shape with him. And her best friend from the mall, a woman named Leah Frazier, became Lisa's workout buddy. Lisa was always conscious about what she was eating, how she was exercising. She would do aerobics. She would do the stair stepper. Scott installed a few pieces of gym equipment in the basement of the house. A treadmill, a tanning bed, and a weight machine. It was there that something catastrophic had happened on the morning of July 2, 2009. And now Scott was in his truck racing for help, calling 911. 911, what's your emergency? My wife is in an accident at home.

As Scott sped through summer cornfields, his wife Lisa was in the back of the cab in very bad shape, as he told the dispatcher. I need an escort or something to get to the hospital quicker. Okay, what kind of accident has she had? See, I found her in a workout room with bars on top of her. Scott would say later he'd gone downstairs just before noon and found his wife straddled face up on the exercise bench with the barbell weight crushing her throat. She's blue. She's not breathing. Nothing. Paramedics intercepted Scott's truck minutes from the hospital. A police car followed behind, dash cam rolling.

Doctors could not revive her. And at the age of 36, Lisa Pattison was gone. How could any of the friends and family adjust to vibrant Lisa with that beaming smile being just a memory now? She was always in good spirits. She was always smiling. She was just an amazing woman through and through. Dylan had been up early that morning off to the job site where he was helping his stepdad and his crew. It had been the quickest of goodbyes to his mom. My last words to her was that I loved you, and she said the same thing back.

And now suddenly, they were all gathering at the hospital. Dylan got the news from his dad. I just lost it. I mean, the one person I'd depended on my whole life was gone. Lisa's mom, Lucy Rich, was taken in to see her daughter's body. I just walked around her body and just kept, I couldn't believe she was gone. Lisa's best friend from the mall, Leah Frazier, was likewise enormously saddened. I've lost probably my best friend, someone who made me a better person, someone who was good. Because Lisa had been in her prime and sound health, her death was

categorized as unattended, which meant that the police would take a look before it could be ruled an accident. But what else could it be? A woman home alone working out. A husband who comes back to the house for lunch only to find such a ghastly scene in the basement. It couldn't be anything but an accident, could it? That's what you might have thought at first. But when we return, police do a little investigating. Something just doesn't make sense. It had a red flag to me. Yes, it did. Some things make your nose twitch. Yes.

When you're an on-call detective like Wabash County's Mike Davis, you know that days off, like the upcoming Fourth of July, sometimes have a way of going up in smoke. But the assignment he was catching didn't sound like one of those. Check out the death of a young woman called in by the Marion General Hospital ER. The other detective that worked with me said, Hey, come on in. I've got a case we need to work on. I have a lady that's passed away on a weight bench.

The victim was a woman who worked at a local mall, Lisa Patterson. Even as her friends and family were racing towards the hospital, a sheriff's detective had taken Lisa's husband, Scott, aside in the ambulance bay for a brief recorded statement. I'm talking with Scott Patterson, a reference to the Kess investigation. Scott explained what had happened, how he'd come home from work to shower and eat lunch before an afternoon doctor's appointment for his bad back. Lisa had taken the day off. I went downstairs, and that's when I saw her on the bench with the weight bar thing across her neck. He said he lifted the weights off and started CPR.

As an ex-first responder, he'd been trained in that, but said he couldn't revive her. So I acted out of impulse and just simply picked her up, carried her upstairs, and threw her in the truck. And that's when I called 911. Another officer, crime scene investigator Jason Page with the state police, was now assigned to document Patterson's truck and examine Lisa's body. He found a bruise on the woman's neck and an abrasion on the left shoulder. Seeing those injuries, Jason, did it explain to you what had happened? You take it at face value. Her husband stated that he had found

her at home. A barbell was across her throat. Those injuries seemed consistent with that story. Signs were pointing towards an awful accident. Some cleanup paperwork to do and on to the next case. Still, the detective whose case it was, Detective Davis, elected to bring Scott down to the station that afternoon for a formal videotaped interview. First of all, Scott, I just want you to know that I'm sorry for your loss, okay? The interview began with a more detailed accounting of Scott Pattison's day. He'd gotten up, he said, at quarter to five in the morning, kissed Lisa goodbye, and made a run to the landfill north of town. He got back home around 6 30,

in time to meet his stepson Dylan and an employee who then all headed out to the job site together. I left there, did a couple errands. I came home, ballpark 11 30, probably. He said he called out for Lisa, but she didn't answer. Music from downstairs told him she was working out. 10 to 15 minutes went by, he said, before he actually headed downstairs to discover her. Okay, what kind of bar was it? The bench press, quick lifting bar. So it was a bench press bar? Okay. She was purple.

Totally purple. And her arms were dropped down to her side. He said he lifted the bar off Lisa's neck, felt for a pulse, then tried giving her CPR on the bench. I probably should have called 911, but at that time I didn't. I just cradled her, picked her up, and carried her upstairs and put her in my truck. As he was backing out, he told the detective he called 911. I had my flashers on. I was driving like an idiot.

I was turning the corner, and my wife was in the back seat and she fell onto the floor and you know it's hard to drive and reach back there and hold a body he said when he saw the ambulance he rolled down his window and pulled over to the curb maybe that's what happened at that time yes we didn't know but there was something about the way scott had acted that wasn't passing the detective smell test. Why don't you let me start an ambulance towards you, sir, if she needs CPR? I've tried CPR. I'm an expert responder. I've tried this. He's turning down 911 help.

It had a red flag to me. Yes, it did. Some things make your nose twitch. Yes. Then Scott was asked about the state of his marriage. How was your relationship with Lisa? Is there ever a perfect marriage? Well, I don't know. They'd been married for 13 years, Scott said,

but just a few months ago, they'd filed for divorce. When you say we, you or her, why were you going to divorce her? I had an affair. An affair. But he insisted the relationship with the other woman was over. In fact, the divorce with Lisa was on hold. He said they'd had a change of heart and had been trying to work things out. Okay, so there's something else we're going to look into. After taking the statement, investigator Page made a physical check of the husband,

noting no fresh injuries on his face, arms, or hands. Routine stuff. Then the officers headed out to the Patterson home. The crime scene agent's camcorder documented a house in pristine condition. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing to suggest a struggle. They did note two security cameras mounted on the exterior stone facade, but they checked the recorder in the garage, and the DVD tray was empty. We didn't get lucky here. Didn't get lucky. Downstairs in the workout room, they found the weight bench. It wasn't a free weight system as they'd imagined, but rather something called a Smith machine, a professional gym type device where the weight bar rides up and down two fixed cylindrical

rails. The barbell weighed about 105 pounds with weights attached. Investigator Page took a close look at the apparatus to see if it supported Scott's story. He talked us through the analysis he performed that day. This is the weight bench from the Patterson home. Page noticed two things right away. When he lay down on the bench as it was set up, the bar lined up not with his chest, the correct alignment for lifting, but rather with his neck. So if you complete the lift, it would align with the body in this fashion. Bar on the throat. That matched Scott's story. Investigator Page also made note of a circular smudge on the center of the bar itself. Had that spot been left by Lisa's neck? It looked like body oil to me or perhaps sweat. Would that mean you suspected that this part of

the bar was making contact? It appeared that it appeared to be that with me. That fit with the husband's account too. When Investigator Page tried the machine, it appeared to be in working order. He couldn't make it fail accidentally. And once in use, the bar felt fairly easy to re-rack and secure using a hook and holes along the frame. And you complete your repetitions. And once you're complete, you rotate your wrists and these hooks engage. But maybe something important. Two safety stoppers, which would have afforded a lifter extra protection, were resting unused at the bottom of each rail.

When these are engaged, it gives you an added layer of safety. That's all cool if they're in place, but if they're not in place, you don't have that protection. No safety stops. If the bar had they're in place, but if they're not in place, you don't have that protection. No safety stops. If the bar had slipped while in use, it could have plummeted onto Lisa's neck with bone-breaking force. This will fall down like a guillotine. Cthunk. Yes. Theoretically, could it be a fatal accident? Oh, yes, I would certainly consider it fatal.

There it was. Perhaps Lisa's death happened just as Scott had said. Certainly nothing jumped out and screamed homicide. Still, an important voice hadn't been heard from yet, and that was the medical examiner. His autopsy could prove to be crucial. It was. Coming up, a clue so small it was almost invisible to the naked eye

might have a big impact on the case. Getting that information at that moment, had the case changed for you? Absolutely. When Dateline continues. 36-year-old Lisa Patterson was dead. But Detective Mike Davis and crime scene investigator Jason Page were not sure yet what kind of case, if any, they had. On the suspicious side of the ledger,

Lisa's husband Scott had raised red flags when he declined emergency services help as he raced with his wife to the hospital. Likewise, what he said about that drive in a recorded interview raised eyebrows. It's hard to drive and reach back there and hold a body. I wouldn't think someone would refer to their loved one as a body when you're not even sure you're claiming she's not even dead yet. Still, maybe it was just a freak accident. A first-pass look at the weight bench Lisa had been on when she died suggested an accident was plausible.

And at the autopsy, the medical examiner didn't find anything to explain a sudden death. Nothing like a stroke or heart attack. Lisa had been in good health. Very healthy, 36-year-old woman who worked out. But the autopsy did provide a quite unexpected finding, something that now made the investigators very troubled. Lisa had died not from a sudden crushing blow to the neck, the guillotine effect, but rather from a slow neck compression,

as if the barbell had rested on her throat and gradually cut off her air supply. When you were testing the machine at the house, when you let go that bar, it was a real convincing thunk on the bench. Oh, yeah. And you would have seen that in the autopsy here? I would expect to see. There would have been crushed fractures. Crushed bones.

Perhaps even her neck. Did not find that? No, did not. What had happened to Lisa Patterson that morning? We know that her neck wasn't crushed. Her spine hadn't been fractured. She didn't have an aneurysm, didn't have a stroke, didn't have a heart attack. What had happened to Lisa Pattison that morning? We know that her neck wasn't crushed. Her spine hadn't been fractured. She didn't have an aneurysm, didn't have a stroke, didn't have a heart attack.

We didn't know what we had. Meanwhile, the people who knew Lisa best were wondering what in the world she was doing on the weight bench in the first place. Christine Smith knew her sister liked to work out, but Lisa was a treadmill girl, not a weightlifter. She was doing treadmill, you know, doing more aerobic stuff. And the dead woman's best friend from the mall, Leah, knew very well that Lisa couldn't lift heavy things. Not with a neck injury she'd suffered a couple of years earlier in a minor car accident. Even the holiday ornaments in the mall storage room were too much for her. I did the lifting. I did the boxes. I did the carrying up. I'm like, the weight machine, she doesn't lift weights. Then there was the elephant in the room

since Lisa's death, a subject that her friends and family didn't feel comfortable even putting words to. And that was how they felt about Scott all the years that he'd been married to Lisa. Impressions of him that ran from self-centered jerk to nasty drill instructor. Now that circle of Lisa's friends were asking if Scott had something to do with that so-called accident in the basement. He was Lisa's husband, but the rest of the family didn't get it. He'd long been an awkward fit to them. At holiday gatherings, they couldn't help but notice how tough he was on Lisa's son Dylan.

His stepdad bossed him around like a raw recruit and meted out harsh punishments for the slightest misstep. Dylan recalled what Scott ordered him to do one winter when the boy neglected to take out the morning mail. It was 6 a.m. in the morning, and he actually said, take your clothes off, leave your underwear on, and you're going to go walk out to the mailbox. I had a great mom, but I always wanted, like, a better fatherly figure. Now, when it came to his mom, Scott could put on the charm. Give me a hug. Lisa, don't be

dangerous. But to Lisa's mother and sister, Scott never measured up. I wanted her to be with someone that totally respected her and loved her with all their heart. And I didn't see that with Scott. It wasn't a big, dark family secret that Lisa and Scott had been crashing into the rocks for a while. He was having an affair, and Lisa found out. They'd talked divorce. When Lisa visited her sister at her home in Virginia about a month before she died, without saying as much, she telegraphed that the marriage was over. Sister Christine acted as Lisa's financial advisor.

She said, well, I need to make some changes on my life insurance policy. And when she said that to me, I knew that she was getting ready to leave. And how much was the policy for? Uh, $450,000. Lisa wanted her policy, which named Scott and her son as co-beneficiaries, quietly switched to Dylan alone. Christine mailed the paperwork for Lisa to sign, but hadn't gotten it back by the day Lisa died.

The day after Lisa died, the family met near the mall where she used to work. Scott had gotten wind of the policy change. He pulled his sister-in-law aside and asked insurance questions. He's asking me, basically, did she sign it? He wants to know if he's off the policy change. He pulled his sister-in-law aside and asked insurance questions. He's asking me, basically, did she sign it? He wants to know if he's off the policy. Right. Back at the Wabash County Sheriff's Office, crime scene investigator Jason Page was still puzzling through the autopsy results. Death by slow pressure to the windpipe,

rather than a bone-breaking catastrophic plunge of the weight bar. And we're left with this neck compression. It's like a slow neck compression. Then the medical examiner came up with an additional finding, and it would be as significant for Investigator Page as it was minute. On her back, from her neck down to her waistline, he noticed what appeared to be petechiae. Petechiae, minuscule bruises hardly visible to the naked eye, not just on the back of Lisa's neck where pressure had been applied by the bar, but down her back and along her waist as well.

What could have caused that? That troubled him. Perhaps somebody straddled her and sat on her chest or her torso at the time of death. Straddling her? But she'd been home alone working out. The all-but-invisible bruising wasn't enough for the pathologist to officially rule Lisa's death a homicide. But it did set a fire under the investigators. Getting that information at that moment, had the case changed for you? Absolutely. You were now following a homicide? Yes. A theory of homicide, but the case

was mostly innuendo. They needed to come up with hard evidence they could show to a prosecutor. They needed a lucky break. And as it turned out, one was a phone call away. Coming up, there's been plenty of attention on that weight bench, but it's another piece of equipment that just might crack this case. I got goosebumps. I'm like, oh my goodness. It's funny in criminal investigations how sometimes things fall into your lap from the most unexpected places. And that's what happened in the middle of July 2009. Lisa had been dead for a couple of weeks. Detective Mike Davis had been at his desk preparing subpoenas for the Patterson case when he took a call from the manager of a local burglar alarm company. He told the detective that one of his salesmen had just gotten off the phone with a customer

who had had some questions about how his home video surveillance system worked. The customer was Scott Patterson. Did the cops want to know something more about all of this? Detective Davis said indeed they did, but then he explained how they'd been out to the Pattison house and had checked out that video setup and noticed when he popped the tray on the recorder that there was no DVD. No DVD, no pictures, right? Well, Detective Davis almost fell out of his chair when he heard what the burglar alarm man

said next. He said, well, you don't need one. It records to a hard drive. And my mouth just kind of opened up. A hard drive. The detective got a warrant and screamed over to the Patterson house, where the recorder perched still untouched in the garage. What a video festival the detective was about to have. This is July 2, 2009. This is looking from his garage to the side here. The unblinking camera documented Scott's run to the landfill at 5 a.m. Then its motion detectors came alive again an hour and a half later as he got back home to hook up with Dylan and his employee as they headed out to the job site. The camera was showing the same thing Scott had previously talked to the detective about.

So he's a good storyteller, good accounting of his day at this point. Sure. And then Scott's timeline went haywire. Remember, Scott had told the cops he didn't get back to the house that morning till 1130, just a few minutes before he came upon lisa in trouble i came home about 11 30 probably but what did scott's surveillance system have to say a completely different story who's the head that was uh mr pattison scott pattison no question no question at all and the time was what 8 32 a.m not.m. Not 11.30, 8.32 a.m., and Scott Patterson is walking in the door.

You and other officers are looking at this for the first time. What do you say to one another? Holy cow, he really did it. He really killed her. Fast forward around 10 a.m. There's Scott again, this time in a change of clothes, a T-shirt and shorts, talking into his cell phone outside the garage. Zap forward again, 1140. Scott has changed again, back in work pants. Then at 1210, he's on the move. His pickup truck backs into frame and off he goes to the hospital with Lisa in the back seat.

When Wabash County Prosecutor Bill Hartley laid eyes on the video, he knew he finally had a case. I got goosebumps. I'm like, oh my goodness. In September 2009, a grand jury convened. And a week later, Scott Pattison was indicted for murder. Detective Davis handcuffed Scott at his mom's house and escorted him to the Wabash County Jail. Anything to say, Scott? I'm not guilty. The state of Indiana v. Scott Patterson went to trial in late October 2010.

The key, prosecutor Hartley told the jury, was the timeline. And Scott's own security camera video was the star witness against him. No cameras were allowed in court, but the proceedings were audio taped. But he still entered this from his own system, so he had been home that whole time. Hartley had brought the weight bench into the courtroom and planted it right before the jury. Crime scene investigator Jason Page demonstrated for the panel

how Lisa should have been able to wriggle out from under the barbell, given that she was in good health and the weight hadn't thunk down on her throat with bone-breaking force. A demonstration he later repeated for Dateline, first securing the hooks. How much effort do you have to expend to get these hooks to catch again? You just have to rotate your wrists. And then you're out of trouble. You're out of trouble, yes.

Or failing that, the investigator says, Lisa could have used her shoulder to shimmy off the bench to the side. Could you wriggle out from under there? Yes, I could. You do it like this. But if someone had been straddling over, sitting on her chest and preventing her from re-racking that bar, you're in a very bad way.

You're in a bad situation. Dead within 30 seconds, would you guess? Or at least unconscious within 30 seconds? I don't want to speculate, but I don't think it'd take very long. If the government's theory that Scott had straddled his wife and killed her was correct. The question arose for the jury, why do it? The prosecutor said money wasn't a small thing for Scott, and divorce would have cost him. He owned some nice trucks and this business, and he's probably concerned that he's going to have to

split some of that up with Lisa. Then there was the business about being dropped from Lisa's insurance policy. His share, a quarter of a million dollar windfall. But investigators had excavated another rich mine of clues, and that had to do with the other woman that Scott had admitted to having an affair with. The jury heard Scott claim it was all over by the time of Lisa's death. Do you still have a relationship with that female?

But the prosecution responded that it wasn't, not by a long shot. And the real headline grabber was that the other woman was a prominent person in the community, the former chief of staff to the mayor of Marion, Indiana, a woman named Stacey Henderson, the wife of a local police officer. In exchange for immunity, Prosecutor Hartley put Henderson on the stand, and she testified that she was still involved with Scott on the day Lisa died. During 2009, were you in love with Scott? Yes. Did you tell him that?

Yes. Did he tell you that he was in love with you? Yes. To underscore the point in bold strokes, the prosecutor introduced Scott's phone records. The logs reveal that on July 2nd, the day of Lisa's death, Scott and Stacey, who was away on vacation, exchanged no fewer than 130 text messages. and texts on a timeline, and you see that not only is Stacy the person on the receiving end of Scott's 10 a.m. call seen on that security cam video, but she's also getting a text message from Scott that's three characters long while he's at the wheel driving his dead or dying wife to the hospital. To me, that was huge that, you know, here he is driving his wife to the hospital,

but he's got the state of mind to think about his girlfriend and send her a text message. So there it was, a divorce in which Scott would likely lose part of his business, a life insurance policy from which he'd gain a bundle, and a continuing relationship with a girlfriend with whom he seemed still very much involved. Add up the circumstantial pieces of this puzzle, Hartley said, and Lisa's death was no accident. It was now the defense's opportunity to chip away at the case. Scott, do you have anything to say? No, not this time. Did you kill Lisa? No, I did not. How can you prove you're innocent? Time will tell. Coming up, at trial, the defense comes out swinging. There was no physical evidence that proved to me that Scott Pattison murdered his wife.

When Dateline continues. In Wabash, Indiana, the Scott Patterson murder trial was riveting stuff. A bizarre alleged murder weapon, damning security cam pics thought not to have been recorded, and a prominent other woman on the receiving end of a blaze of calls and texts from the accused on the day of the wife's death. Now the defense, led by veteran attorney Stanley Campbell, had a small mountain to climb. The team started with the illicit girlfriend, Stacey Henderson. A fling, the defense contended, not a romance for the ages.

There was no evidence that Mr. Patterson was thinking about killing his wife or that he was going to kill his wife for this other woman. So what about that flurry of text messages? Just routine chit-chat, Henderson told the prosecutor. And the three-character text sent by Scott as he drove to the hospital, that was benign too. You wrote that message for us? 9-1-1? The number's 9-1-1? Yes. Simply, she suggested, Scott's way of signaling to someone he loved that he was under duress. The phone call at 10 a.m., him to her and seen on the surveillance video, was Henderson said more of the same, just checking in on each other's day so far.

Did Scott ever indicate to you that he was responsible for Lisa's death? No. As for the divorce, maybe it was on hold just as Scott had told the cops. A retainer fee for Lisa's attorney had been returned to her bank account. And about Scott being taken off her insurance policy, the defense claims Scott knew nothing of that until the son, Dylan, told him hours after Lisa had died. Not being the husband of the year with any of this kind of evidence, but nothing to say that he was a killer. Nothing to say he was a killer, no. So if you're the defense, what do you do about the weight bench? The defense team

maintained that the police had never understood the difficulty of getting out from beneath its grip. Sure, a fit state trooper could wriggle out from beneath 105 pounds. But what about Lisa, someone not used to working out with weights? Maybe she was overtired or disoriented. Plus, accidental asphyxiation is not unheard of on these kinds of machines. The defense had referenced a case in Iowa of a young boy there working out alone, very similar kind of equipment. He suffocated. An accidental death. Who dies on a bench park, huh? Boy, isn suffocated. An accidental death. Who dies on a benchmark, huh? Boy, isn't that suspicious. That's bizarre. That's strange.

People in Iowa die on benchmarks. And in that Iowa case, the safety stops had not been secured in place, just as they hadn't on the Patterson machine. The defense moved on. It would call its own expert witness, a medical examiner from Kentucky named Dr. Greg Davis, to give a counter-explanation for that minute bruising with a funny name, the petechiae. You thought maybe it wasn't petechiae at all. That's correct. After reviewing the autopsy photos, Dr. Davis concluded the bruises weren't petechiae caused by someone straddling Lisa when she died, but rather bruises that occur naturally when blood pools after death. Purple areas of discoloration that can be easily mistaken for petechiae,

but they're actually caused by a different mechanism. And the same witness offered a different picture of the murder scenario. Had Scott Pattison indeed been on top of Lisa, pressing that bar down onto her throat, Dr. Davis said he would have expected to see more significant damage to her neck. I would expect to see a fracture of that cartilage right here, the Adam's apple, more injury. And the defense introduced a new theme. They talked to the jurors about a toxicology report that showed that Lisa had, what the defense characterized, as a dangerous cocktail of drugs in her system, particularly

a diet drug that's known to sometimes produce side effects like fainting spells and irregular heartbeats. Lisa, the defense said, had three times the therapeutic amount of that drug in her system. She's already exerting herself, heart pounding. That could tip her over the edge and at that point the bar comes down on her neck. It could take anywhere from just a few seconds at that point for unconsciousness to occur. That quick? That quickly. The conclusion from the expert witness, Lisa Patterson's death is not a, but one of an undetermined cause. There was no physical evidence that proved to me that Scott Pattison murdered his wife. But what about the defense's biggest obstacle, that damning surveillance cam video?

They conceded that Scott had lied to the police about not coming home till 1130 in the morning. His rationale, said the defense, was that Scott knew right away that husbands with suddenly dead wives always looked suspicious in police eyes. So he simply panicked and made the bad choice of lying about his timeline. But a liar, argued the defense, isn't a killer. The fact that he was there doesn't necessarily mean that he was responsible for her death. You know, as a lot of people look at this case, they ask themselves the question they might have asked of Richard Nixon. Why didn't you destroy the tapes? Well, maybe the answer is that if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have any concern or fear about what's going to be on

the tapes. And by the way, wouldn't you think that Lisa, fighting for her life, would have been able to put some scratches or marks on Scott, and there were none? Add it all up, the defense concluded, and you've got reasonable doubt. The prosecution's case, little more than theory and speculation. So the case went to the jurors. They took a straw poll and were surprised to find themselves split seven to five. That's a big gap. It's huge. The jury conducted its own experiment with a weight bench. Could that help them reach a verdict? After three weeks and nearly 30 witnesses,

the case against Scott Pattison was finally in the hands of the jury. Either they believed the defense's version, that Lisa Pattison's death on a weight bench was a horrible accident, or they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed his wife by suffocating her with a barbell. Upstairs in the jury room, tense deliberations began. It was like, game on, it's time. It's your decision. We spoke with four from Patterson's 12-member jury. Their first order of business, a straw vote. Foreman Larry Vaughn was stunned by the results.

Seven to five. Wow, you're split. And that shocked me. That's a big gap. It's huge. Seven guilty, five not. For those in the guilty camp, the pivotal piece of evidence, they say, was the surveillance tape. Scott at home when Lisa died, then lying about his day to the police.

But those voting not guilty, like juror Dan Ford, weren't convinced. Okay, that makes him a liar, not necessarily a murderer. The jurors did agree on one thing, Mistress Stacey Henderson. To the jury's eyes, Scott Pattison was still very much smitten. One of the questions was, are you still in love with Scott? And when she said no,

and I watched Scott's reaction, he was devastated. But as for those petechiae bruises the prosecution thought so critical to its case, for the jury, not so much. The petechiae just didn't do it for me either way. Granted, it was there. Very hard for us to see. As the jurors debated, the absence of evidence placing Scott in the workout room with his wife

kept them locked in a near-even balance. There was no smoking gun, no witness that saw this happen. It depended on us making what we thought was the right decision. Eight hours of deliberations, however, swayed one side to agree with the other. Word came down that a verdict had been reached. Lisa's sister, Christine, held hands with family in the first row, praying. And I just kept envisioning the word guilty in my mind. It's got to be guilty. The verdict reads as follows. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of the crime of murder,

of felony. Guilty as charged. Lisa's family couldn't hold back the tears. We just couldn't stop. We were just weeping of relief. Scott hung his head when the verdict was read and remained silent, stone-faced as he was escorted back to jail. Scott, do you have anything at all to say? Jurors said the foremost factor that bridged the divide was an experiment they conducted in the courtroom. They asked the judge if they could re-examine the weight bench. One of the female jurors agreed to play Lisa. They wanted to know how easy it would be for her to wriggle out from beneath that bar. It wasn't two seconds and she was out.

And then we said, okay, one of you ladies straddle her and let's do the same thing. And she couldn't move. Lisa Patterson had died on a hot July morning. Now on a cold December day, Scott Pattison was sentenced. The judge cited unusual harm to Lisa's son Dylan in giving Scott an enhanced sentence of 60 years.

On July 2nd, 2009, you were a human disaster, making death and destruction in your wake. Scott left the courtroom defiant and pledged continued silence. Scott, do you have anything to say? Wise man needs to know to keep his mouth shut.

So that's what I'm going to do. Scott declined Dateline's request for an interview. His appeal has been denied. So the beauty from all those years ago is gone. And the friends and family who toasted them are left to reflect on whether her life's companion really was the beast in more than just costume. Was the last face she saw, that of her husband looming over her, easing that bar down onto her throat? I hope not. I hope not. I hope that's not the last thought she had of someone that she loved,

someone that she thought loved her, someone that she was loyal to. And now her son Dylan has had to come to terms as best he can with that terrible day and the man he once called dad. You believe Scott Pattinson murdered your mother? I do. Press that bar into her throat? Yes, sir. Why?

Greed. Money. Stuff that really means nothing in the end. Stuff that means nothing. Dylan graduated from Virginia Tech and by all accounts is doing well. With the steady support of friends and his mother's family, he's doing his best to navigate life without his guiding star. The worst part is not hearing I love you from her

and not hearing her words of encouragement. You know, hey, you're an awesome kid. I love you. Keep up the good work. What's he stolen from you? My precious Lisa. Just her smile. She would call me, you know, every morning, say, Hi, Mom.

Took that away from me. And just our whole family is not complete without her. There will always be an empty chair at the family table. Only images of the smile and memories remain. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.