Dateline NBC - The Evil That Watches

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

A triple murder divides a small town in Kentucky. As secrets come tumbling out, residents begin to wonder: How well do we really know our neighbors? Keith Morrison reports.

Tonight on Dateline. He showed me his phone. It's got a picture of my house with crime scene tape around it. It's just like it's not real. When they went into the house, they found Calvin Phillips' body in the basement, shot repeatedly. Firefighters were called for the discovery

of a burned car off the roadway. We find two bodies inside. There's been three gruesome murders. It's not a good feeling. What are we dealing with? What are we facing here? The son tells you about this apparent conflict between the neighbors. That's right.

He was an RB major. She is drop-dead beautiful. They had somewhat of a volatile marriage. Would talk about that he was very angry. I thought the pattern was of a woman who was using men to get what she wanted. Everything started escalating. He said, I need you to leave your house

in the next 30 seconds. My brother-in-law said, you need a gun. There's a killer on the loose. A triple murder, a couple with dark secrets, and one terrifying case. All of a sudden, I hear a window break and a man yelling and I think whoever killed Calvin Phillips is coming to kill me. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with The Evil That Watches.

Peace is what he wanted. To bury the past, things best left behind. He wanted a real home after the army. They both did. A place to dig in, raise their boy. And when he saw this old place, oh yes, he knew. He knew right away. He loved the history.

He loved the history. The history of this thing was, I think, what drew him, right? The architecture, yeah. A house with history that needed him and his handy ways and was big enough to fill with a lifetime of memories. This house was 99 and 9 tenths full of love. And somebody evil entered into this home. Into their space.

Into their space. Yes, this was evil. Evil that watches, lies in wait, plans. into their space. Yes, this was evil. Evil that watches, lies in wait, plans, and after, slinks away, unreachable, unknowable. The master or mistress of confusion. It's like spy versus spy or something. Mm-hmm. It's a weird thing. It's still a weird thing to me. something. It's a weird thing.

It's still a weird thing to me. The whole thing is a weird thing. So go ahead. Pick your dream home in that perfect neighborhood. Keep in mind, you cannot pick who will wind up there with you. It's a curious little place, Pembroke, Kentucky. A town that started grand, but didn't grow. It's where Matt Phillips grew up.

What can you tell me about life in Pembroke? You know, it's 700 people. I got on my bicycle and went everywhere. No one thought twice about it. All around for miles and miles are corn and soybean fields. Though, at the Army, Fort Campbell is a short commute away from this small, safe place. Nobody locked doors. It was that safe place that you could always go back home.

Yes, he could. His parents, Cal and Pam, were still devoted to this grand old house. Mom was a VP at a local bank. Dad was long retired from the Army. So he studied that house, and he was redoing that house himself. This is Diana, Cal's sister, Matt's aunt. It looked like it was absolutely a work in progress. Yeah, it's a labor of love, you know.

The latest improvement arrived Wednesday, November 18, 2015. A new washing machine. Matt, by then living on his own about three hours north of Louisville, had bought it for his parents' upcoming anniversary. Dad had one job, and it was meet the delivery folks and get the new washing machine in for Mom. Instead, his mom Pam got a call at work that morning from the delivery company. She shared with the co-worker, you know, Cal missed the delivery.

How could he do it? He knew how important this was. She was pretty mad. She was upset. She kept dialing. She couldn't reach Cal. She wasn't the only one trying. I called and left a message on the answering machine, because Cal never answered the phone. He'd call you back. Marlene LaRock is a family friend and, like Cal, a true dog lover. German Shepherds, specifically.

Cal was devoted to his old dog. And just that morning, Marlene heard the dog was dying and Cal was distraught. She wanted to offer condolences. When he didn't call back, she drove over. So I come up here and this door is open. They never leave their doors open. Never.

It was just standing ajar? No, this was closed, but the other door was wide open. I said, well, maybe Cal just went out back. He was always out doing something in that big backyard of his. She'd talk to him later, she figured, and she went home. But Pam worried. It was not like Cal to ignore her phone calls, so she left work early. On her way home, Pam spoke to her next-door

neighbor, a man called Ed Doncero. Hey, I'm starting to worry about Cal. It's getting later in the day and I haven't heard from him. So now I'm not mad anymore about the washing machine. Now I'm worried. Yeah, I'm worried. Worried about Cal. Yeah. Within 20 minutes or so, she was home, but still no sign of Cal. At around 5.30, she heard the message Marlene left and called her back.

She said, have you seen Cal today? And I said, no. In fact, I went by there earlier and the house was wide open. She said, wide open? She says, hold on a minute, don't hang up. I hear something. And then I heard like a squeal and she never came back on the phone. That was it? That was it. Well, that was odd. What was going on over there? Marlene and her daughter got in the car and drove back over, saw Pam's car in the driveway facing the house. And I opened the door, and my daughter was standing right there. I stuck my foot in the door and yelled, and then all of a sudden I just backed out and closed the door.

Because why? Because I had a chill going up my backbone. Something in my gut told me I did not want to go in there. What made her stop? Something. She didn't know. Let's go, she said, and they left. Did she call the police?

No, she did not. She didn't think it was like that. Anyway, night had fallen. In the morning, everything would be fine. Wouldn't it? Coming up. An alarming sight. A car on fire.

And something suspicious. A strong odor of kerosene. It was very pungent. This car may have been set on fire. Absolutely. And then, back at Cal and Pam's, a disturbing discovery in the grass. Two things of particular interest. One was a cell phone, and the other was a handgun. It was morning, November 19th, the morning after the strange series of missed connections at Cal Phillips' old house in Pembroke, a call came in to county dispatch.

A man reporting an abandoned car. But stuck off a muddy country lane on the edge of town. The car was found to have been burning and smoldering, I think is how it was reported. Sheriff Brent White was a state police commander then. His people went out there to see what the trouble was. And it was a car, all right, or used to be. The car's make and model was somewhat unrecognizable. The entire vehicle had been consumed by fire.

The car was unrecognizable. The entire vehicle had been consumed by fire. The car was unrecognizable, maybe. But the reason it burned? That seemed pretty obvious. They detected a strong odor of kerosene. It was very pungent. This car may have been set afire. Sure, absolutely. And then the investigator looked inside

the charred metal hulk. Oh, no. Horrifying. Two human skulls. No way to know whose they were. Except an important bit survived the fire. The license plate actually burned off, so to speak, came detached from the rear of the vehicle and was laying on the ground.

So they ran the numbers. And the vehicle and was laying on the ground. So they ran the numbers. And the car belonged to one Pamela Phillips of South Main Street in Pembroke. Yes, that Pam. State police and the local sheriff working together divided up the chores. The sheriff's deputies drove over to Pam and Cal's place and right away, outside the house. Were those traces of blood in the grass? They stopped in their tracks, called and asked for a search warrant.

When deputies entered the home, they found it to be unoccupied and there was really nothing amiss at that point. This is video deputies shot that day. Eventually, they worked their way to the back porch. One of the deputies noticed a piece of fabric that was protruding from the door to this cellar. A bad sign is how the deputy would later describe it. When they opened this door, they found at the bottom

of the stairs, the cellar, the body of what they believed to be Calvin Phillips at that time. There he was. No wonder no one could find Cal the day before. He must have been dead the whole time, at the foot of his own basement stairs. No question this was murder. Cal had been shot multiple times. full-time, at the foot of his own basement stairs. No question this was murder.

Cal had been shot multiple times. A pile of half-burned firewood was tucked up against his body. It was pretty apparent to them that someone had attempted to cover up the evidence by setting a fire. Somebody set it on fire, but then closed the trap door? And that would have put the fire out? Yes. The body in the basement had to be that of Cal Phillips. The burned car certainly belonged to Pam Phillips.

So if one of those bodies in the car was hers, whose was the other? The deputies went outside, eyes on the ground, and they found things. Two things of particular interest, one which was a cell phone and the other was a handgun. Both lying in the grass. The cell phone over near the house next door. Ed Doncero's place.

The same Ed Pam called the day before. Now deputies noticed Ed's back door was wide open. The television was on, a light was on in the kitchen, there had been a meal that had been prepared, there was a beer that was freshly opened. So where was he? They weren't the only ones asking. I had been trying to get him all day Thursday and wondered why he had not returned the call. Sally Jackson, Ed's girlfriend, was puzzled at first. She lived an hour away in Bowling Green, and when she left messages for Ed, he'd always call her right back. But this time, he didn't.

A whole day had gone by without a word. And then a friend phoned her A friend from Pembroke He told her a man's body had been found in Cal and Pam's house And police were now inside Ed's place And he said, Ed is missing I'm like, what do you mean Ed's missing? He said, well, his back door is standing wide open

The TV is blaring And his car is gone What was that like? Scary. Yes. And scarier as the police kept searching. And there was a holster draped over a chair. It was empty.

It looked like someone had left in a hurry and not come back. As though something had caught Ed's attention, made him grab his gun and cell phone and run outside, and now they were lying in blood-stained grass, and Ed was gone. So the cops put two and two together, figured Ed's might be the second body in Pam's burned-out car. As if by some dark wind, the news blew down Main Street to Marlene's house.

I was a nervous wreck, and so my brother-in-law said, you need a gun. But someone would want to know, should be told what she knew. She raced over to tell police about the interrupted call with Pam at 5.30 p.m., about that sound she heard, that little squeal or gasp, how scary it felt, like some bad thing or person was in there when she stood at the door of the old house. She potentially could have been a fourth or fifth victim in this case. By not going into the house, she may have quite literally dodged a bullet. Saved her own life.

That evening, miles away in Louisville, Cal and Pam's son Matt was meeting a friend for dinner. The man had a worried look about him. And so he showed me his phone, and on that phone was, at the top, you know, body found Pembroke. It's got a picture of my mom's car. It's got a picture of my house with tape around it. Crime scene tape. What was that like, that moment? It's just like it's not real. So he did what anyone in his place would do. He called home. I remember calling my mom frantically, frantically. Just pick up, just pick up the phone. But she didn't pick up. She didn't text me back.

Willful disbelief is normal, expected even, from a son quite unprepared for the horror to come. Coming up, Matt breaks gut-wrenching news. I'll never forget the sound my grandmother made when I told him. It's like a gasp. That sound. As a feeling of dread spreads. I was just so worried.

Terrible. Just horrible. When Dateline continues. Murder in any small town would be news, of course. But a triple murder, by gun and by fire, by a force or forces unknown in a sleepy community of less than a thousand? This was, well... This was extremely alarming and unique. Jeremy Finley covered the story for NBC affiliate WSMV in Nashville,

about an hour southeast of Pembroke. He could tell the news coming out of that little town would become a story for the ages. To have this grisly of a crime happen there made it something that every news department was focusing in on to try and get some answers. But no one needed answers more in those early hours and days than Sally Jackson, Ed Doncero's girlfriend, and Matt Phillips, Cal and Pam's son. Answers that helped. The police wouldn't, or to be fair couldn't, tell them with any certainty exactly who had been murdered. So brutal and thorough had the killer been.

But police knew. So did Matt. In his heart, anyway. And so, alone and desperate in Louisville, he called his dad's sister, his Aunt Diana, way off in New Jersey, blurted out what he had just heard. I said, what? What are you talking about? And I'm like, we need to get to my mom and my dad, because they need to hear it from us. Nothing they could do in Pembroke, not yet. So Matt drove all night from Kentucky to Michigan to break the news to his dad's parents. Torture.

I'll never forget the sound my grandmother made when I told him. It's like a gasp. That sound. Like the sound of a mortal wound to her soul. Terrible. Just

horrible. You know, I was just so worried. Sally was distraught. Her Ed would not have just disappeared without telling her without a word. They were each other's world. He was Jim. He really was. They met at a party in 2002. She was widowed. He was long since divorced. He called me the next day. I said, well, I'm kind of going out with the girls. And he said, well, do you mind if I tag along? I said, no, that's fine. They had been a couple ever since. At the time she was a librarian, he was a professional

pianist. That's him on tour with his friend Bo Haddock's band. When he wasn't at the piano, he was in the kitchen. He loved to cook, so he would cook for my kids, and he really thought my kids, they were his kids, and the grandchildren the same way. What you describe, you know, you are what you do, it sounds like he's a pretty nifty guy. Oh, yeah, yeah. Ed was a commuter, really.

He'd spend part of the week with Sally in Bowling Green, part an hour away in Pembroke, where he looked after one of those old historic houses for a friend. He clicked with his next-door neighbors. Cal liked to play guitar.

You got a band, right? I mean, these guys would sit around a little fire in the backyard and drink a couple of sodas and play music. Two guys who just loved music and loved these old houses. Matt's dad, Cal, in particular. Restoring this old place was a kind of therapy for him. He'd made a career in the Army as a logistics officer, spent part of it in the Gulf War back in the 90s before retiring. After he had seen so much around the world and more chaotic times,

but you could go to Pembroke and just kind of relax. It's about as far away from a war zone as you could imagine being. And he was happy here, and loud and gregarious and opinionated. The absolute yin to his wife Pam's yang. She was just the opposite, total opposite of Cal. Yeah. Very quiet, calm. But she knew how to work my brother.

When she spoke, he listened. She was VP at a bank, after all. Good people living a private, decent life, and now suddenly gone. As Matt and his Aunt Diana made the long trip to Pembroke, they dreaded what lay ahead. Police had a photo waiting for him. It was a partial photo of a face. It was a picture of my father's nose from here up. And so I identified my father by his eyebrows because he had significant trauma to his face. The trauma, a product of a vicious beating,

wasn't quite enough to kill him, but five bullets into his body made sure of it. Sadly, that was the easiest identification. The bodies in Pam's car were another matter. Someone from the M.E.'s office asked Sally if Ed had ever had surgery. 25 years ago, he had a compound fracture of his left shin and they put in a rod and screws. When he asked me that, I pretty much knew it was Ed.

DNA testing confirmed that it was, as feared, Pam and Ed. They too had been shot before their bodies were driven to that field and set on fire. Sally could not understand. Why them? Why her Ed? It just didn't make sense. These victims were not the usual victims of violent crime, including murder that we normally see. And yes, someone wanted them dead. Someone who went to a great deal of trouble to make sure the deed was done. And who left behind, so it seemed, virtually nothing to go on. Coming up.

As locals try to come to grips with a triple murder, gossip goes into overdrive. What people were saying. Ed and Pam were having an affair and they had Calvin murdered. We were just like scratching our heads going, are you flipping kidding me? What is it about humans in little towns or big? An awful event is partially revealed. And sure as there is air, we will grow like weeds in springtime.

And the most remarkable theories, to fill in the blanks of course the more scandalous the better I was hurt but furious at the insensitivity in the days after the murders Cal's sister and son Diana and Matt were hearing all sorts of rumors the fact that Ed and Pam's bodies were found together in her car. My, my, how that stoked local gossip. Ed and Pam were having an affair, and they had Calvin murdered, and we were just like scratching our heads going, are you flipping kidding me?

The ordinary just-of-facts work of real detection, however, had determined there was no evidence of any affair between Pam and Ed. Detectives hadn't even been able to sort out who was killed where or in what order, let alone who did it. Did it seem as if there might be some sort of serial killer at work in Pembroke? We didn't know, but obviously when you have that many victims, it definitely crosses your mind. Police, of course, were hoping to find something in that big house, now a crime scene, that might lead them to the killer or killers.

But then, just a few days after finding the bodies, they had a surprise announcement. At least it was a surprise to Cal and Pam's son. They said, look, we're going to hold the house for a day, maybe two. But after that, it's not our responsibility anymore. It seems pretty quick somehow. In this day and age, they usually hang on to a place longer. It seemed very quick to us.

They took us back there to that house. Told us about walking inside so soon after the murders. Still in some sort of stupor of shock. It's like, here's the house, here's all of their things, but where are they? You're coming in and it looks perfectly fine. I mean, everything was normal. So, what do you do? You keep busy.

They started cleaning up the cluttered house. And then, a few days later, another surprise. The police came back. Said they needed to test for blood. Now? After they'd already released the house, the timing didn't make sense to Matt and Diana, but they let the police in.

Were you worried that that might be, this scene might have been contaminated by that time? It's possible, but when you look underneath the floor or the floor covering, you can get blood up that is not visible to the naked eye. And there it was. Pam's blood soaked in the floor near the phone Pam used to call Marlene, the woman who heard Pam gasp. And then the line go dead. So this is where then

they found her blood and found her hair. So a lot happened right here. Yes. And at the end of that hallway in the back porch, where they were sure Cal was murdered. And then his body dumped down the cellar steps. Blood marked that spot. I specifically said to the police, where is it that we shouldn't go? And they said, you know, don't put on the steps. So, of course, you went there.

Yeah, I did. I did. Went down there and sat down. I just put my hand down on the step, and I, you know, I made a promise then. I said, we'll fight to make sure that the people or persons responsible for this are brought to justice. And I sobbed. I did. I sobbed like a flippin' baby. Their emotions clearly running high. It didn't help that they kept finding things in the house that police no longer considered

an active crime scene. A family friend was sweeping out the kitchen. And she finds something. She finds a projectile. It was a.22 caliber bullet, the same caliber used to kill Pam and Ed. They gave it to the police. And then there was this. We were cleaning, and so I had reached up onto a bookshelf,

and I pulled down. It was obviously a dog tag. I just clenched it. And I started to cry. Diana thought she was holding a memento from her brother's time in the army. She handed it to Matt. He looked at me and he said, Aunt Diana, you need to get your glasses on. Coming up, the focus shifts across the street to the neighbors. Here he is, a handsome member of the military. She is drop-dead beautiful. They made a statuesque couple. But what about beneath the surface? I think it's safe to say they had somewhat of a volatile marriage. When Dateline continues. Matt and Diana were turning into their own detectives, and they'd found a clue and a surprise.

The clue was a dog tag, but it didn't belong to Diana's brother, Cal. No, there was someone else's name on it. Kit Martin. It wigged me out, and I was very upset. And we closed the doors, and we left for the night. I mean, it stopped us in our tracks. They knew Christian Kitt Martin. He was one of Cal and Pam's neighbors, lived across the

street in this big yellow house. So what was his old dog tag doing here? Matt and Diana alerted the police, who did their own digging. Christian Martin was a U.S. Army major. He'd served a couple of tours. That's right, that's right. He was a helicopter pilot that served in Iraq. At the time of the murders, Kit was based out of Fort Campbell. He lived his professional life with the military precision

you might expect of an officer. He was Major Kit Martin. But in Pembroke, Kit had finally found a place to relax, just be a regular guy. It was the small-town innocence that drew him in, he said, when he was shopping for a new home four years earlier. When we first pulled in there, there was like a wagon at a hitching post at the Dollar General, and I was like, this is awesome.

This small little town is like a time capsule, and I was like, yeah, I want to live here. He, his wife, and her three kids moved into the big yellow house right across from Ed's place, diagonal to Cal and Pam. What did you make of the neighborhood, of your neighbors? They were all very friendly. Just like Kit. I got along with everybody. I was just an easygoing guy. I just tried to get along with everyone like I always have. And he said it was easy to make friends with the people here in Pembroke. Most of them were retired. A lot of them had been military, or they were a couple military guys around me. Like Cal across the street, right? Yeah, yeah.

He was a veteran like me, and we hit it off pretty good. His wife, Joan, said Cal and Pam felt like family. They were beautiful people. Reporter Jeremy Finley interviewed both Joan and Kit months after the murders. They invited me over, and they came over to my house for dinner. When I interviewed her, she stated, I kind of considered Pam to be another mother. Kit and Joan, likewise, impressed those around them. He was an Army major, really decorated.

Here he is, a handsome member of the military. She is drop-dead beautiful. They made a statuesque couple. But as we all know, appearances can be deceiving. Living in Kentucky, that was the first time we'd really been together for like an extended period of time. Most of the time I was deployed first time we'd really been together for like an extended period of time. Most of the time I was deployed or in the field doing training or something like that. And she started acting really strangely, started trying to get into

fights all the time. I think it's safe to say they had somewhat of a volatile marriage. Joan would talk about that he was very angry. He would say that she was untrustworthy. Kit asked Joan for a divorce not long after they moved in, in September 2012. They fought. It turned ugly. She called 911. What's going on there? My domestic abuse. My husband. What's he doing to you? Poking me in the head, screaming in my face and threatening me. A family court judge said later,

there wasn't enough evidence to prove Joan's domestic violence claim, but he granted her and Kit restraining orders, each against the other. The marriage was certainly over. Joan and her young kids had nowhere to go. So, Pam and Cal offered them sanctuary. You know, Mom was driving those kids to elementary school. You're talking little kids. You know, and Mom and Dad together saw someone that needed help.

And this is a small town. If someone needs help, that's what you do. They sure did. They moved Joan into a rental property they owned, loaned her a car. Diana heard about all this and worried for her brother Cal. In the very beginning, it was just he was trying to help someone, a woman and her children. But anything beyond that, I was very, very, very concerned. And it did go beyond that.

Absolutely, it did. She's talking about that extra favor. One day, Joan asked Cal to help her retrieve her things from the big yellow house. They went over there when Kit was out. So I took the old quilts that my great-grandmother had made. Here's Joan telling reporter Jeremy Finley about that moment. And I took that box, and in those quilts was a laptop and some discs. Well, I went to put them back in the garage, and Cal said, no, no, that's property of the Army. You need to give that back to the Army.

And he said, these discs say classified. Cal, as an ex-logistics officer, would know you can't keep things like that in your house, even if you are a major. Don't get in too deep, his sister had warned. Too late now. Cal took the laptop and discs home. He contacted a colonel who said, I suggest you take it to the FBI, get yourself out of it, you know. So Cal did that. But that was three years before the murders. What could that possibly have to do with a very current triple homicide? Maybe nothing. Or maybe everything.

Coming up, someone else in town is about to experience her own moment of terror. All of a sudden I hear a window break downstairs and a man yelling and I think whoever killed Calvin Phillips is coming to kill me. Now, the investigation into the Pembroke murders traveled back in time to 2012, to the moment when issues came between Kit Martin and Cal Phillips. Domestic, professional, legal issues. First, Cal got involved in the domestic dog fight between Kit and soon-to-be ex-wife Joan. And then he took the laptop and discs from Kit's house and turned them over to the FBI, then gave them to the military. The United States Army began investigating the specifics of what had been provided to them.

And that investigation became the worst thing that could happen to Kit, a court-martial. And it wasn't just about a computer or classified disks. There was something else, too. Cal told Army investigators about a photograph. A photograph of bruises on what appeared to be a boy, what appeared to be Joan's son. Cal said Joan told him she'd taken the picture years earlier after Kit beat her son. The military did not like what it was seeing and hearing about Major Christian Kit Martin.

They were able to say, you know what? Not only did you mishandle this classified information, you're not telling the truth that you mishandled the classified information. And, oh, by the way, you assaulted a boy. This court-martial could quite possibly ruin his military career and even send him to prison. A conviction of this magnitude would not only require prison time, but that he could lose his career, he could lose his rank, he could be dismissed from the U.S. Army. But Kitt's day in court kept getting put off. It happened again and again. Until finally, a trial date was set in stone. First week of December, 2015.

Huh. Timing. It certainly made the police sit up and take notice. Calvin Phillips was going to be one of their primary witnesses, and that that court-martial was days in the future from the time he was found murdered. Dead. Days before he was set to testify against Kit Martin. Coincidence or motive for murder? And if it was the latter and Cal was the intended target, were Ed and Pam just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Collateral damage, to use a military term. So now Kit's life needed a thorough examination, starting inside his big yellow house. Investigators petitioned the court for a search warrant for

Christian Kit Martin's house right across the street. Inside that house was Laura Spencer, Kit's fiance. Laura and her two kids moved in with Kit about two years after his breakup with Joan. And Laura was at home alone when police arrived with that warrant. All of a sudden I hear a window break downstairs and a man yelling and I think whoever killed Calvin Phillips is coming to kill me. You must want to jump out of your skin. Yeah. And I ran down the stairs in my socks and out on the porch, and there's five rifles at my head and people yelling at me to drop my phone and get down.

Laura would be questioned, and investigators got to work. They seized numerous items of evidence, including guns, a surveillance system, and also a safe that was locked. Kidd was at Fort Campbell. I went out to go to the gym at lunchtime, and I just got swarmed. Swarmed by Army special agents. They grabbed me, and then they SWAT raided our house. That kind of lets you know you're a suspect.

Did you think you were going to be arrested right away when they connected that raid? No. No, because, said Kitt, there was not a shred of evidence that he killed anybody. He said, just look at the security camera footage from the back of his house. This was the only way in and out because the front door was broken and nailed shut. Here's Kid on video coming home from work on the day of the murders, right before Ed and Pam were killed.

And there he is that night, in sweats, taking his dogs out. Around the time the murderer had so much left to do, a crime scene to finish cleaning up, bodies to load into a car, and drive out to a country road to set them on fire. The only time I got up was to go out and close the gate for a minute when the dogs were barking. It was like a minute. Plus, Laura was with Kit all evening, too. He was home with me the whole night. He had an alibi. As for that court-martial, Kit said he was sure to be exonerated once the military figured out just how diabolical Joan and her plans against Kit were. Those photos purporting to prove child abuse?

He didn't know where she got them, he said, because he'd never hit the boy. And he didn't take that laptop and disc saw of base. He said that had to have been Joan, who must have sneaked it out of his military office and then kept it hidden until she could use it as a weapon to take him down. Are you saying that this was all part of her, you know, revenge against you? Yes, I believe so. So, those murders across the street? Maybe have a look at Joan and whatever new man, new enabler,

was in her life. Far-fetched? Not exactly. Detectives were hearing more about Joan from others, too. Such a peaceful little town. So many strange stories. Coming up.

Joan had her own secrets. Secrets that she hadn't even revealed to Kit at the time of their marriage. What might those be? I thought the pattern was of a woman who was using men to get what she wanted. When Dateline Continues. Homicide detectives were trying to understand what happened at Cal and Pam's house, and they were wondering about Joan. Matt told us he knew next to nothing about her.

I met Joan maybe two or three times total. Matt had first heard about Joan back in 2012, when his parents were helping her out of a bad situation. They seemed to like her a lot, but so much he didn't know. Maybe none of them did. Joan had her own secrets. She had some secrets that she hadn't even revealed to Kit at the time of their marriage.

This woman knew all about Joan's secrets because she, Mary Martins, is a private investigator. And back in 2014, she took on a new client, Kit Martin. He told Mary all about his contentious breakup with Joan. I'm always skeptical about taking those cases. It's not something I like to take. And when he came in, it was... You kind of put yourself in the middle of these things. You do, but I listened to him, and he was in the midst of a court-martial.

And he wanted information that, if it was out there, would prove she was not credible. Kidd told Mary he'd never abused Joan or her kids, and now he doubted everything she'd ever told him about her past. So Mary looked up Joan's previous partners, like the father of Joan's son. And she had told her son that his father was killed in a logging accident. So Mary looked. And what do you know? No, this guy wasn't killed in a logging accident. He was still alive and living out in the Oregon area. And Kit said Joan complained a lot about the father

of her other children, too. She had married him and claimed he was a violent man. Well, Mary tracked him down, and he denied ever being violent. And then... What I find out is even more interesting is that there was no domestic violence, but that they were still married. Well, wait a minute. How could he still be married to that guy and be married to Kit? Exactly, which makes her marriage to Kit, I mean, what are you going to do?

She's still married to this guy. They never divorced. In other words, Joan was a bigamist. Kit reported Joan to authorities, and in 2014, a local DA charged her. So before the court-martial, and only weeks before the murders, Joan pleaded guilty to bigamy and was ordered into a court diversion program for first-time offenders. When Mary considered everything she'd dug up from Joan's past, she wondered if the woman had an M.O. I thought the pattern was of a woman who was using men to get what she wanted

and trying to maybe move on and find a new one. And Kit heard Joan found a new man before they were even separated. People around town had told him so. They started telling him, I believe your wife and Mr. Phillips, your neighbor, were having an affair while y'all were married. Mr. Phillips, as in Cal Phillips. Was it just the talk around town, or did you hear anything, any sort of credible evidence?

I interviewed two different witnesses who said they observed and witnessed the affair in action. Joan denied having an affair, and others in town who knew Cal said the rumors were ludicrous. But what would Cal have to say about it? In 2015, in the lead-up to the court-martial, Kit asked Mary to talk to Cal. He wanted me to find out if Cal was still on Joan's side. My name's Mary Martin.

Mary dropped in on Cal twice, unannounced, and secretly recorded the interviews. Let me grab a couple of chairs here. Cal loved to talk, talked about all sorts of things. We've got three generations of puppies. I turned 59. Mary had brought a colleague with her, and now her colleague got right to the point. One of the things, the information that the Army has is the fact that apparently you were having an affair with Joe. Okay.

Okay, that's what they have. So what? If you're having an affair with a woman that's involved in this situation, the thing is, everybody's going to make that out to be what they will. And that's fine. Cal didn't answer the question one way or the other. But when Mary brought up Joan's past, her bigamy... Okay, I'm sorry.

That was a shock to Cal. And Mary planted seeds of doubt that maybe Joan had been using Cal this whole time. Nobody wants to feel that they've been used. Sure. It's insulting. And she has a history of using men like that, and I think you were her next person that she used.

And she'll pay a price. Cal admitted he'd never witnessed Kit abusing Joan's son. He'd seen the photos of a boy covered in welts. These were pictures of the boy you didn't take. I didn't take. He also said on one occasion the boy claimed Kit had been abusing him, and Cal took the boy's word for it. I didn't see it.

Okay, this kid, he could have made it up. I don't know. I wasn't there. But all I can tell you is that that was what was said by the young man. Cal sounded frustrated the case had snowballed into a court-martial. He'd expected it to settle before things went this far. Well, this is a mess. I mean, this has turned into a complete mess. Cal had talked quite freely to people he knew were working for Kit. But when the conversation turned to what his testimony would be at the court-martial,

he clammed up. And I'll explain that on a stand-by. What do you hear? So whose side was Cal on? When Kit listened to those tapes, he said he thought he knew Cal had turned against Joan. And maybe that meant Cal would testify in his favor. He got pulled into her manipulations and eventually I think he figured it out. Why would you say that? Because we had the audio recording.

He went through every accusation. He's like, no, I never saw that. So, said Kitt, maybe Joan had figured out that Cal had turned against her and perhaps she had done something to take care of him. Why would she kill Cal? I mean, what motive would she have to do that? He'd helped her. He was going to mess up the case, the court-martial.

Meanwhile, police had been investigating another suspicious incident involving Joan. Joan discovered a cellular phone that was in her yard, and her and her family had taken that item to a local AT&T store. This video, recorded over a month after the murders, reveals Joan showing the phone to a sales rep, apparently trying to find out who owned it.

It ended up being Pam's phone, so you have to wrap your head around that. When the manager contacted police, Joan seemed to bolt for the door. Why do you have possession of one of the murder victim's phones? So many questions about Joan, but about Kit, too. Two persons of interest, apparently intent on destroying

each other, and three victims who seemingly got in the way of one of them. But which one? Coming up, at the scene of Cal's murder, what could be a case-cracking clue? And I said, what is that? And he said, Aunt Diana, it's a.45 casing. Matt and Diana hoped that police would soon figure out who killed Pam and Cal and Ed and make a quick arrest. But days went by without news, and then weeks, and then months. Be patient, they were told. So they kept their minds on busy work.

They kept coming back here to pack things up. But that only made them more anxious. We know there's been two, three gruesome murders, and I'm standing right smack in the middle of the place where that happened. It's not a good feeling. They also couldn't shake another feeling, that whoever killed their loved ones was watching them. They installed a security camera on the back porch. You just get conditioned to be on alert all the time. Including a day in April 2016, about five months after the murders, they were back at the house, cleaning and cleaning.

Matt in the front yard, Diana on that cluttered cobwebbed porch. That's when she saw it. I was moving the wood around and I saw something silver and I thought, this has something to do with ammunition. The new camera caught her reflection of the storm door the moment she spotted it and bolted through the house. So I went to the front where Matt was, and I said, I need you to come here. And we made a beeline back here,

and I said, what is that? And he said, Aunt Diana, it looks like it's a.45 casing. We had heard from the coroner that a 45 had killed Dad. And by the way, we're three feet, four feet from where the cellar door is. Could be. Could be important. They called police, who collected the casing.

Matt and Diana hoped finally this would be the evidence that would lead to an arrest. But no, police seemed no closer to solving the case. Sure, Kit Martin seemed like a plausible suspect, but they couldn't make a case against him any more than they could against Joan. They checked out her alibi, questioned her at the station, and if she was behind these murders, maybe she had help. We had to look at it all, all different angles. All angles yielded few answers.

Even Jeremy Finley, who was reporting on the case and had interviewed Joan and Kit, was stumped. I never will forget when the first of our investigations aired, and I walked back into the newsroom, and my executive producer turned around and she said, so who did it? And I said, I have no idea. You really did have no idea. There were so many possibilities

that you could see why investigators were really probably dumbfounded as well. The military trial was finally held, and even without Cal's testimony, Kit was found guilty of mishandling classified information for holding onto those military discs and laptop. And, assault of a child under 16, he lost his career, his pension, his freedom. For a time, anyway.

He went off to serve a pretty brief amount of time in a military jail. Three months, I heard. Three months. He was in and out, time to move on with his life. You had, in the course of all of these events, after coming out of your court-martial, restarted your life, reinvented yourself? Yeah, I tried to. I mean, I did the best I could. Kit landed a job with a subsidiary of American Airlines. They had already moved to North Carolina,

Kit, his fiancée Laura, and her kids. But, of course, suspicion followed them. You know, you could have left him after that. Sure, any time. And nobody would have blamed you? I could have left him when the accusations Sure, anytime. And nobody would have blamed you. I could have left him when the accusations were made in the first place. Nobody would have blamed me, but I chose him, and I choose him every day. He's loving. He's deeply committed. I know who he is, and he's

the man that I need in my life. But moving on was not possible for the people who loved Cal and Pam and Ed. They just kept on checking in with police. Ed's girlfriend, Sally. I would just say, you know, how are things going? Are you making some progress? And they'd say, yes, we've sent DNA to the lab, or we're trying to analyze fingerprints from different places,

and they would just tell me, you know, well, we're still investigating. This is definitely not a cold case. But there wasn't nearly enough movement to satisfy Matt and Diana. I want to know that people wake up every day and think about it like I do. And if it's your job, I want you to be on the job. Were you seen as a pain in the rear sometimes? Of course. That's fine. That's fine. Oh, they did more than pester law enforcement. We put up a billboard for $100,000. Wrote letters, lots of them. Gave interviews.

Yes, they were persistent, but they were scared too. The depth of the fear of someone still at large and is capable of doing whatever they want because no one's held them accountable. Determination can accomplish amazing things, mind you. Even getting a meeting with Kentucky's top law enforcement officer two years after the murders. How did you manage to get a meeting with the attorney general? Well, we scratched and clawed to get meetings with the secretary of justice, the Attorney General, the Governor.

I would have gone to the President if I could. After the meeting, then Attorney General, now Governor Andy Beshear, agreed to take over the case, and it felt like a breakthrough. But two more years went by with no arrests, no suspects named, and no hint of progress. We went from one prosecutor at the local level to a special prosecutor. That prosecutor was named a judge, so he had to remove himself. I've never heard about a case with so many musical chairs from day one. It was very unfortunate for the case, but it was also very frustrating emotionally for the family. And then one day, Matt was at home in Louisville. Phone rang. Remember that fear he told us about?

Suddenly, in a flood of adrenaline, fear was all there was. I got a call from a representative of the Attorney General's office, and he said, where are you? And I said, I'm at home. And he said, I need you to leave your house in the next 30 seconds. Time to run. The triple murder in Pembroke looked headed for the cold case file. An investigation approaching four years with nothing happening. And then, it was May 10th, 2019.

Something happened, all right. Phone call. Matt recognized the number in the attorney general's office. And he said, I need you to get on the highway going a direction you don't normally go quickly. And when you're in that car, you need to call me back. So I got my computer, a charger and a handgun and got to the car and got on the highway. Heart in his throat, Matt just drove. Then he called back and was told

they were finally ready to arrest Kit Martin for the murders of Cal and Pam and Ed. But there was a problem, a big one. They couldn't find him. He said, we expected to arrest him in North Carolina, but he's not there. And I said, well, where is he? And they said he is actually in Louisville right now. Louisville, where Matt was. What did that feel like? It's terror. And

it also, you know, in the back of my mind, I'm going, is he coming for us. And so I drove to Cincinnati and went to a hotel. Drama, terror, and Kit Martin was utterly unaware of any of it. Oh, he was in Louisville, all right, because he'd flown a plane full of people there. He was an airline pilot, remember? I was on day two of a trip, so the first day we had flown out and we were spending the night in Louisville. Just work, he said. Nothing diabolical about it. He was scheduled to leave Louisville early the next day, and he got up and went to Muhammad Ali Airport at 6 o'clock in the morning. No clue that police were there, too, in great numbers, waiting for him.

I was talking with two of our flight attendants. I was looking down to see what gate we were going to. I remember it was 5B. I was like, hey, we need to go to 5B. And I hear, there he is. And I see these guys running, and I'm like, where are they going for? And all of a sudden, they grab me.

And so these four guys start tearing my bag apart while the other four guys are grabbing me and handcuffing me and stuff. And I think I told them, I was like, I think you got the wrong guy, man. The wrong guy? Police had no interest in debating that with Kip Martin. They arrested him and hauled him off to jail. Sally Jackson heard from a friend who saw the whole wild thing go down.

She said it was something else. I mean, there were Jefferson County police. There were sheriffs, you know, Christian County State Police. Pretty much closed down everything at the airport until I got out. Kit's fiancée, Laura, back home in North Carolina, was not prepared. I just kind of went into like a cold shock for a minute. My heart broke for him because I know he doesn't deserve this. Attorney General Beshear announced the arrest and said Martin had been charged with murder and arson and burglary and tampering with evidence.

He also had a message for Matt and Diana Phillips. And for Matt and the family that came in here a couple years ago, I hope this is a day that brings some justice, and we're just thankful we could be a small part of that. It was the culmination of a long investigation, frustrating years for the victims' families who'd been kept in the dark and who didn't even know that one suspect, Joan Harmon, had been officially cleared.

From the very beginning, we did look at Joan Harmon as a potential suspect in this case, but every time we turned the corner, all roads led back to Christian Martin. So surely the announcement of Kit Martin's arrest would finally reveal something about the case against him. It did not. What happened? What was the trigger that was pulled to finally make this arrest? At a press conference, reporters peppered the AG with that same question. What was the evidence? We can't talk about any specific piece of evidence. I can't comment on the evidence.

Again, that's evidence that I can't comment on. And then, into that void stepped Kit Martin's defense attorney, Tom Griffiths. He was scathing. You know, the case was open for nearly four years by the time that arrest was made. What, A, took them so long, and B, what was the one thing that made them decide, okay, let's go arrest him? What took them so long is that they didn't have a case. And I know the police pretty well in this state, and if they think they have even half a case, they'll usually go forward and make the arrest. And they didn't do that. So why arrest Kit Martin now? What had changed?

What changed was that there was a great deal of political pressure brought by the family. And they kept pressure up on the attorney general, and they kept pressure up on the Kentucky State Police. So who was Kit Martin, really? A cold, calculating killer? Or the unwitting dupe of an ex-wife's cunning plot to frame him? Hard questions for a jury to decide. Coming up,

trial begins and a new witness reveals what he saw just a few days before Pam's car was burned. I come up to the top of the hill and I saw Christian Martin come out the fence right there. The courtroom was packed. TV cameras were in place for live coverage. It wasn't going to be easy to sit through Kit Martin's murder trial. Certainly not for Matt and Diana.

There I sit. with a camera facing us and it was just it was very hard to have to sit there and listen. Mind you they were cheering silently for the prosecutors. Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley spearheaded the case. But Christian Martin had motive, had the means, and the opportunity. Most important, the motive. Which was, she said, to silence the man set to testify against him at his court-martial. So Kit shot Cal, then pushed his body down the basement steps. Pam was killed when Kit Martin returned to the crime scene and discovered her at home. Ed Doncero was simply acting as a good citizen, checking on his neighbors next door.

When he was shot, more tragic collateral damage. The wrong place at the wrong time. But with Cal, it was personal. His face battered, surely in a fit with Cal, it was personal. His face battered, surely in a fit of rage, said the prosecutor. Well, the cleanup was cold-blooded, the mark of a highly trained Army Ranger.

Here was the man who prosecuted the court-martial, Major James Garrett, who confirmed Cal Phillips would indeed have been the star witness against Kit Martin, because... He was prior military and knew that discs labeled secret and classified should not be in someone's home. So he insisted on it being turned into authorities. And then Cal told the Army, too, about Jones' allegations of abuse. And he showed me four photos depicting abuse of the stepson. Those charges, what would it have done to his military career? It would have ended it.

There would have been no court-martial without Calvin Phillips. Motive? That there certainly was. But when could he have done it? Most of Kitt's time was accounted for. Except maybe this. Did you perform digital forensics on a cell phone belonging to the defendant? I did. It was an Apple iPhone 5S. Detective Mike Luttrell said analysis of Kit's cell phone and computer showed they were not in use at the time the prosecutors believed the murders took place. And after the murders,

there was plenty of activity. Some of it could be considered suspicious. At 11.27 p.m., the alarm application was open, and that alarm was set to go off or to alert at 1.10 a.m. The prosecutor spelled it out for the jury. Kit Martin set his alarm to ensure he would get up at the right time to go out and burn Pam's car in the dark of night. And Whaley suggested the alarm ringtone he chose from a famous movie spoke volumes about what Kidd thought of himself. He set the alarm on the phone for 1 10 a.m. to the Top Gun ringtone. Thought so highly of himself.

But Kidd had long claimed his own home security camera proved he never left his house that night. Showed he didn't leave the house through their one working door, the one out back where the camera was. No cameras at the front door, but it wasn't operable, he'd said. It was nailed shot. An alibi that prosecutor took pains to attack. Ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing wrong with that front door. And there's no nails. In other words, no alibi at all.

Pam and Ed's charred remains were found here, a farm on the edge of town. James Matlock worked nearby and he testified about something he said he remembered seeing a few days before the car was discovered. When I was coming around the corner, I come up to the top of the hill right behind us,

and I saw Christian Martin come out the fence right there. If it was him, was he making a plan? Then there was the weird discovery of the dog tags. Remember then? They were found on a shelf up above eye level in Cal's house, right next to Cal's wallet. The dog tags with Kit Martin's name on them. What were Kit's dog tags doing at the crime scene?

Lots of theories. Most plausible explanation in your view? Don't know that we'll ever know, but they didn't walk in there on their own, I can tell you that. But it was one small piece of evidence that went to the heart of the prosecution's case. The.45 caliber shell casing Diana found on the back porch. This ballistics expert offered a firm opinion. I determined, in my opinion, that cartridge case was fired by this.45 caliber pistol. Kit Martin's pistol.

So that was a positive identification? It was. The state rested, having presented a compelling but largely circumstantial case. Now it was defense attorney Griffith's turn. We may not know who committed these murders, but it was not Chris Martin. And the defendant himself

would tell the jury why. Kit Martin was going to take the stand as his own star witness. I'm going to fight it because I'm innocent. Good idea? Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't.

Coming up, the defense focuses the jury's attention on Kit Martin's ex. Could she be responsible for critical evidence at the crime scene? Joan had access to all of the belongings in the house. She had kids' dog tags. And what about that.45 caliber casing? The police, when they first go there, don't find it. Why is there a shell casing there? My answer is because somebody planted it there.

When Dateline Continues. Kit Martin sat silently through the state's case against him. Now it was his turn. The defense called Christian Martin. He took the stand, eager to declare his innocence and tell his side of things. Did you murder these three people? No, sir, I did not. Did you have someone else kill them?

No. I think the evidence and the expert testimony has shown that. The defense didn't want to just challenge the state's evidence. They wanted the jury to think about the case in an entirely different way. That Joan could have been the one behind the whole thing. And that she framed Kit in an act of vengeance. So the long and the short of it is, you believe that because you told Joan you were done, you were leaving, she ruined your life. That's what she said she was going to do. It took steps to ruin your life, concrete steps.

Yep. Getting jurors thinking about Joan was a path toward reasonable doubt and an acquittal. Defense attorney Griffiths invoked her name no fewer than a dozen times, just in his opening statement. This is a name you heard from the prosecution, but I'm going to say it and you're going to hear it a bunch during this trial, and that name is Joan Harmon. According to the defense, the key evidence against Kit Martin was tainted because of Joan. Joan had access to all of the belongings in the house.

She had kids' dog tags. The state had made a big deal about the dog tags that were found in Cal and Pam's house? The defense made that an even bigger issue. They're suggesting that you left a copy of your dog tags after you committed a murder. Yeah, that's real logical. No, I heard that. Yeah, like I said. And I'm asking, let me be clear with my question.

Is that true? No, sir. The most ridiculous thing is the idea that my client went over and committed a murder, brought a set of his dog tags, and decided he was going to leave them there. Does that make any sense at all? Not to me, anyway. Kitt said any discussion of dog tags is ridiculous for another reason. The ones entered as evidence were not even his. It's so obviously fake. It's on a white string. Nobody put put a duct tape on a white string. The name on there is not my name. Martin, Kit. Mine would say Martin, Christian R. The state's most

devastating evidence was the.45 caliber shell casing found at the crime scene. That was a match for Kit's Glock pistol. How would the defense respond to that? I think it's suspicious that the police, when they first go there, don't find it. Why is there a shell casing there? My answer is because somebody planted it there. Perhaps planted by, no surprise, Joan Harmon. Kit testified that she had access to the Glock and the ammo, which he kept in his pickup truck. Did Joan use any of the guns, any of the family guns? Yeah.

Which ones? So the Glock was the only one we had for a while. I think that kept that in my truck mostly. Did Joan have keys to your truck? Yeah, we both had keys to both vehicles. The defense also had an answer for that 1.10 a.m. alarm Kit said on his phone. There's nothing nefarious about that. It was simply to check on a new kerosene heater Kit had installed.

With a kerosene heater, you need to keep the wick wet, so I was a little concerned about it. And so I set my alarm to refill it and check, you know, check, make sure everything was going right. And what'd you do after that? Went back to bed. No, Kit could not have been the killer, said the defense. But Joan? Why, asked the defense, would Joan have had possession of Pam's cell phone after the murder. His phone is brought in by Joan to the store. Not brought to the police, right? And when they say they're calling the police, Joan hightails it out of there.

And what would Joan say? The woman at the heart of the defense's case. What would she have to say on the stand? The defense was eager to question her, but never got the chance, because Joan invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself. You have to imagine what the jury was thinking. They've heard this woman be accused and scorned in court, and they'll never hear from her. Can we find this gentleman guilty when we haven't even heard from the woman

who the defense believes did it? Even without appearing in court, Joan remained the centerpiece of an aggressive defense. Griffiths argued the entire foundation of the state's case was bogus. There was no reason for Kitt to silence Cal Phillips to prevent his testimony of the court-martial, none, because Kitt wanted Cal to testify for him. Calvin Phillips and Joan had been close at the time that the court-martial was initiated, but by the time the court-martial was going around, they weren't as close anymore. And she, I believe, realized that Calvin Phillips wasn't going to go in

and necessarily give her version anymore of this court-martial material. In fact, Kitt had subpoenaed Cal to compel his testimony. People usually don't kill their main star witness, you know. Maybe their accuser. As far as everybody else was concerned, he wasn't your star witness. He was going to take you down. Listen to the audio tape of what he says in his own words. He was going to blow that trial apart when he testified.

That's how he really needed him to be there. That's what you believed anyway. Yes, absolutely. For Diana, sitting in the courtroom, trying her best not to show any emotion, the assertion that Cal was going to testify for Kit was especially galling. That's always been a big issue for me personally to suggest that Calvin was his star witness at the court-martial. It's absolutely laughable. But what would the jury think? Of course, that was the only thing that truly mattered. Coming up, what would the jury think? No one

had a clue. None of us had any idea how this was going to go. There was no smoking gun evidence, no testimony that was just game changing. This could have gone either way. Joan Harmon took the fifth and did not testify at the trial of her ex-husband, Kit Martin. But was her presence felt? Oh, yes, it was. I sure wish we had seen her.

She has a lot to answer for. In his closing argument, defense attorney Tom Griffiths said key evidence, like the shell casing and the dog tag, were likely planted by Joan to frame Kit, the ex-husband she so despised. At the end of the day, once you remove the planted evidence, this case is no evidence. Prosecutor Barbara Whaley quickly reframed things. Joan Harmon wasn't on trial, remember? She'd been cleared by police, never charged.

The case was about Kit Martin. Who has the motive and the capacity to commit these crimes? No one else. You all know the truth. And I'm asking you to find that with your votes. Guilty of the murder of Calvin Phillips. Guilty of the murder of Pamela Phillips. Guilty of the murder of Calvin Phillips. Guilty of the murder of Pamela Phillips.

Guilty of the murder of Ed Donzaro. So what was your sense when the jury went out? None of us, I think, that had been watching this trial had any idea how this was going to go. There was no smoking gun evidence. There was no testimony that was just game-changing. This could have gone either way. Matt tried to be patient, telling himself the jury would need time to deliberate. I thought that it was going to be within six to eight hours,

so it just felt like, just sit here and wait. We've been waiting for five years. As for the defendant, well, he was confident. Everybody was telling me, even the deputies in the back who had to shackle me and everything that go to see trials all the time, they're all like, hey, you know, you're out of here. This is in the back. That was the word I kept hearing. For me, it was this nightmare of being in jail for over two years is over. Kit Martin sat through the jury's deliberations in a holding cell. And then after seven long hours,

there was notice. They were ready. So they come, and you put your shoelaces back in, you put your belt back on, put your jacket back on, you come back out, and you just sit in the chair, you know, and I was just hoping, it was like, you know, please let this be over, Lord. I have reviewed the verdicts.

The judge read the verdicts. We the jury find the defendant Christian Martin guilty of murder, guilty of first degree burglary, guilty of first degree arson under instruction. Guilty on all counts. I just couldn't believe it. I was just like took my breath away. I don't know what else to say. And apparently everybody watching on TV was the same way. People have been writing to me and emailing me about how they cried all night and they feel so bad for me. And, you know, I've got thousands of new supporters and friends out there that I really want to tell them thank you for everything that they're doing.

Of course, there are those who cannot be counted among Kit Martin's supporters and friends, like the 12 men and women of the jury who convicted him. Jurors have a look at a person. They're looking at you and they're thinking, do I believe this guy who's saying things like, everybody else is making mistakes but me. I'm as pure as a driven snow. And when a person makes an argument like that,

the average observer will say, he's full of s***. I did everything I could to prove my innocence. I'm not saying everybody else's fault but mine. I'm just saying that I didn't have anything to do with this. The jury still had one more piece of business. They deliberated again and decided Kit Martin should be sentenced to life in prison. No parole.

The bailiffs led him away. And then, to everyone's surprise, they brought the man convicted of three murders back into the courtroom. They had granted a special request for us to at least hug him because we hadn't been able to touch for two years. So he got to hug his family. He got to hug me. In 2023, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed Kit Martin's murder convictions. His conviction for first-degree arson, though, was overturned. Proof that Pam and Ed were alive

when the fire was set was required. The court reasoned. Regardless, Kit will remain behind bars for life. Joan, such an integral part of the whole tragic story, made no public comment after the trial. And she turned down our request for an interview. For those who

loved, the three people killed. The long search for justice had the right conclusion. But there were no celebrations. Ed's girlfriend, Sally. You know, grief hits you at different times. It does, yeah. It can come and hit you at the weirdest times.

And you'll be a mess. We keep saying it's our new normal, you know, this awful depth of emotions. You know, there's the loss, and then there's the scratching and clawing for justice, and they're both equally traumatic. Somebody said, you must be so happy. I said, no, I'm not happy. How can I be happy? Look at all the humanity that's been lost. And I'm relieved at the verdict, but I recognize too that I'm in a bit of a fog.

Now what do I do? The old Victorian house is still in the family. It's Matt's now, the house that was once so full of love. And Pembroke goes on as ever. A sweet, small town, a throwback of love. And Pembroke goes on as ever. A sweet, small town, a throwback of sorts, where children not yet born will learn the story of Cal and Pam

and Ed and the Major across the street. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.