Dateline NBC - The Hometown Hero & The Homecoming Queen

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

In this Dateline classic, an Olympic athlete and a homecoming queen share a life in the charming suburb of Oxnard, California until gunshots are fired in their backyard on a late summer night in 2009. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on April 1, 2016.

It's never good news when the phone rings at 5 o'clock in the morning. I knew something wasn't right. He just began sobbing and saying, no, no, something horrible must have happened. It was just before midnight when the shooting started. He had been shot multiple times. He was on the ground, face down. A man was dead, but not just any man. How do you kill Superman? How is Superman dead?

He was an Olympian and a father, killed, his wife says, by an intruder in his own backyard. I hear gunshots through the door. Describe to me how fast they were. But if her husband was dead outside, why was the gun found hidden inside? And what other secrets were hidden away? Sometimes she would say things like, I'd be better off if Dave wasn't around. Was her husband defending his family, or was she?

She rose that night. The mystery may not be who did it but why? The truth will come out and justice will be served. I have to believe that. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with the hometown hero and the homecoming queen. It was late when it happened. Very late. Too late. The sky had already fallen. No one saw it coming.

No one heard the warning. But now, in the night, it was done. They work hard here in their homemade garage gym. Because, in part, it isn't just a gym. It's a kind of shrine. I look at the wall and there's a bunch of pictures. And that's what makes it special, I think.

These were the moments before they were born. when a shot putter named Dave Lout became his family's Superman. Here we have that spin. That is a very new technique here. And his little brother watched him win a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics. I mean, after I just cried. How do you not?

How do you not cry when you see your brother up there getting the medal? It's cool. He was my big brother, but he was like my Superman. He was my Superman. Don Loud is Dave's younger brother by nine and a half years. Dave and Don inherited a passion for athletics and fitness from their father. I remember my first milk when I was a kid was a protein powder. This is all really just built into your DNA almost, and it's part of your life.

Yeah, it really is. Here is where that DNA was planted. Oxnard, California. A farm town on the beach, north of L.A.'s encroaching sprawl. They grow mostly strawberries here now. Lima beans back then, they were different those days. When we grew up, you know, you could ride your bike anywhere. Everybody knew everybody.

This is Helen Kalouris. Of course, she knew the Louds growing up. And that big old farming family of her childhood best friend, Jane Laubacher. Our dads were both farmers. Old farming families were both from... The Laubachers were big here in Oxnard. It was just lots of Laubachers. There was always lots of Laubachers around.

It was just, they multiplied. They were good Catholics. And Helen's friend, Jane, grew up to be especially beautiful, featured in her high school yearbook as homecoming queen. But she was not ever concerned with that. She's also very, very shy. How do you get to be a homecoming queen if you're shy? She's also just a very kind person, very gentle person.

And as that yearbook shows, a star volleyball player, too. She could spike. I mean, she's not that tall, but she could jump. Jane soon met that other gifted athlete, Dave Lout, already well on his way to becoming one of the best shot putters in California. They began dating after high school and sometimes let Dawn, little Lout, tag along. She was wonderful. She was fun. They just, they got along so well. They loved each other. It was just neat. When they got married in 1980, Jane's friend Helen was a bridesmaid. Going to that morning of the wedding to Jane's parents' house and all the girls getting dressed up,

that was really fun. It was just sweet. And Jane was quite excited. I mean, she looked gorgeous. Beautiful. Beautiful on her wedding day. He had her on a pedestal. He always said such wonderful things about her. This is Dawn's wife, Rebecca. We became very close. We'd talk maybe once, twice a week on the phone. And probably for hours, her and I, we just hit it off.

We were family. Jane was there by Dave's side as he became a national and then world competitor. At the World Championship meet in 1983, he talked to NBC Sports about the benefits and costs of weight training. It can tighten a thrower up. It can destroy the feelings that are necessary to throw and implement a far distance. Dave won the bronze medal of the 1984 Games, but after, his career faded quickly. He kept trying, but knee injuries. He didn't make the Olympic team in 1988.

He was disappointed, but he knew, I mean, it's like a point of your career when you know that something is done. It's okay, because you know you've done know that something is done. It's okay. Because you know you've gone as far as you can, and that door closes. And another door opened. Dave became a high school biology teacher, coach, and athletic director. And he was even better at being a teacher and a coach, and he was even throwing.

If Dave missed his former glory, his family said, he never showed it, and of course, remained a legend to his niece and nephews. I think one phrase that could best describe him is a gentle giant. Yeah. Yep. He had so much patience, so much kindness. At home, Dave and Jane struggled to have children. She wanted to have a family really bad.

I felt bad when I would get pregnant. And then in 1999, they adopted a baby boy from South Korea, named him Michael. They were happy. I mean, I have tons and tons of pictures of them, the three of them together. They were happy. Moments in time.

Inspiration on a garage wall, which these days is about all that's left. This doesn't make sense. No. It's not right. It doesn't make sense. Ever since that August night in 2009. I want an emergency. I need to look at it.

I've got it. It was shot. You heard John being fired? Yes. When a Superman fell to earth what happened in that backyard when we returned i got a truck like a shadow did a run-in with a prowler turned deadly. How many pops did you hear? Three. Describe them to me, how fast they were. Pop, pop, pop. You need a pick. Midnight, August 28, 2009.

Oxnard, California. I want emergency. Something was in my backyard. The woman in full panic. All right, what's the person look like that was in your backyard? I didn't see it. It was a truck. Your truck made fire? Yeah.

I don't know. The woman on the phone was Jane Lout, the wife of the hometown hero. Dave was still outside, she said, where she heard shots fired. They told me to get back here with Michael so I came back in and then I hit the shop. I told your son to eat the lunch money. Okay, don't make a bunch of shit, okay? Stay with me. I have officers there. I have two officers there. I want you to stay inside the house. The officers had to lock down and call in a homicide team to investigate further. It was a brutal scene. Ventura County DA's investigator Mike Palmieri said,

by the time first responders arrived, there was no sign of a prowler. But they did find Dave Lout. He had been shot multiple times. He was on the ground, face down, with very obvious gunshot wounds to his back and to the back of his head. Jane was a mess. She told investigators she had no idea who would do this. Is there anybody who's watered him hard or anything at all?

Son Michael, 10 at the time, slept through it all. And Jane's brother took charge of him while Jane went down to the Oxnard police station to offer a more complete statement. It had been a perfectly normal evening, she said. They were in bed by 10, Dave in the master bedroom, she in Michael's room, where she often slept because Dave had a bad back.

And then it was about an hour later, she said, about 11. Someone was crowding. Who was? The dog. My son was just a possum. Dave came down the hall, she said, worried about the dog. And he said, what's wrong with her? Yeah, I don't know.

She must have had a score of five. And then he went back to bed. with her. Yeah. I said, I don't know that she must perhaps glorify it. And then we went back to bed and then he got up and said he died. So, 11.15, she said.

She and Dave crept over to a sliding glass door to a side yard. I said, get a flashlight. And, uh, so I got the red flashlight. So you walk towards the side yard. I started to go off where the trash cans were, and then I heard something like an F or something like that. Did you see anybody else? I thought I saw a shadow or something with a trash can.

Do you think you did? I don't know. And was it in front of her or behind her? I don't know. I just heard there's a gate. So how far behind her were you? and was it in front of her behind it so how far behind you are you see shadows by the trash can where you And the gunshots. As Jane talked to investigators into the early morning hours, the awful news was getting around. We got a call about 5 o'clock in the morning.

What happens to a person? You go to bed at night and everything's fine. Then the phone rings at 5 o'clock in the morning, suddenly to a person you go to bed at night and everything's fine then the phone rings at five o'clock in the morning suddenly your life is a very different thing yeah it's like an earthquake it just shakes your whole foundation and beam and things are never the same after it was awful just fell to his knees you know know, he was on the phone, and he just began sobbing and saying, no, no. Yeah. And it was horrible. You don't believe it, but it's like, how do you kill Superman?

How is Superman dead? I once was lost. A few days later, Dave's friends and family held a candlelight vigil. He was so loved. And every step we take, we take because people like you reach out to us and are here to support my mother-in-law and my husband and our family. And we just really, truly appreciate that. Thank you.

Live up for Cand our candles for Dave. But they didn't know then, didn't know what the police had discovered. A key piece of evidence, almost overlooked at first. The lead investigator in this case walks in. He's just looking around. And, I mean, you've got a dining room table, you've got a hutch, you've got a dining room table you've got a hutch you've got a grandfather clock so he opened up that clock and it was a it was an oh wow moment now why would a prowler leave something so

important in there coming up if the intruder was outside how did a key piece of evidence get inside? And something else seemed odd. Jane's behavior. She actually tried to keep one of the police officers out of the laundry room. She tried to close the door with her in the laundry room and him out. When Dateline continues. Jane Lout told the police a harrowing story of a backyard prowler and gunshots right outside her door. And now her husband, Olympic bronze medalist Dave Lout, was dead. But some things seemed a little off. For example, said investigator Palmieri, when police were still questioning Jane at the house, she stepped into the laundry room. She actually tried to keep one of the police officers out of the laundry room. She tried to close the door with her in the laundry room and him out.

Why? Well, said Palmieri, Jane was wearing pajamas when police arrived, but in that laundry room they found her jeans rolled up in a towel tucked between the washer and dryer. Her top was lying there as well, inside out, looked like they'd been removed quickly, stashed away. And when an officer tried to administer a gunshot residue kit to Jane's hands, standard procedure in a shooting investigation. When the officer doing the test began getting the test ready, she did go into the bathroom and either wash her hands or wipe her hands on a towel, one of the two, before coming back to the table and before the test was done.

So, odd things. Anyway, police scoured the place, didn't see any murder weapon lying around, and they were about ready to take Dave's body off to the morgue when some instinct told the lead detective to look here. He cracked open the doors of the grandfather clock in the dining room, looked down inside,

and there it was. This is more than likely the murder weapon. A Ruger six-shot revolver. Surely no prowler would have dropped a weapon right here in the dining room clock. The prowler theory did not make any sense whatsoever with a hidden gun inside the house. And so it wasn't long before investigators shifted their focus from unknown prowler to the woman who'd reported one, Jane Loud.

Remember those clothes they found in the laundry room? When they tested them, they found gunshot residue. So did Jane shoot Dave, then change into her pajamas before she called 911? And you'll remember Jane specifically mentioned a red flashlight, so police bagged it, tested it, and found gunshot residue, as if she was holding the flashlight while shooting her husband. And if Jane was the killer, this was about as cold-blooded as it gets. Investigators said Dave had been shot six times. We came up with a fairly logical explanation of how it was done.

Shot one appeared to have been fired from a distance of several feet, grazed his head, deposited pieces of scalp on a garbage can, and then the bullet hit the wall. That shot brought him to his knees, where the killer fired shots two and three into his face at close range. We find the one that goes through his cheekbone. It goes down the side yard. It bounces off of the concrete. It nicks the fence, and that bullet we matched out on the sidewalk. Shots four, five, and six hit in the upper arm and back, the back of Dave's head. We believe shot six, the final shot, was the shot to the back of the head.

From the very beginning, Jane denied she had anything to do with it. I didn't do it. I don't know what happened. I really didn't do her, especially when they found out that the bullets that killed Dave matched the gun in the grandfather clock. And now Dawn and Rebecca Lout began to look at a lot of things differently, things Jane had told them through the years, which maybe didn't add up either. I honestly felt like she was family, so I'm going to dismiss the strange feeling I get sometimes. Like said Rebecca, the time Jane told her, two men put a knife to her throat and demanded money. And I said, well, did you call the police? Did you yell? She says, oh, no, I just came home. I just wanted to get home.

And I said, and this was in the middle of the day and nobody else saw? And she said, no. And then there was her claim that somebody was leaving threatening notes on her car. But then you'd ask her in pro-bird, like, what kind of notes? But she wouldn't really tell you. So so the implication is somebody's after her somebody's out there she's in some danger. And now when they look back at the things they'd noticed over the years it was like something fell into place for them. There was a separation it was like Jane was the parent and Michael was the child and Dave was in the way. You had the sense that she was pushing Dave away?

Yeah. I think that was a stress on the marriage. That there was stress was pretty clear, said Rebecca. For a while, every time she would call me, it seemed like it was to vent about something she didn't like about what Dave was doing. So, evidence was carefully sifted for months. And then in February 2010, Jane Loud was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. And the story, said investigators, was chillingly clear.

This was an execution. She lured him out, shot him from behind, and then aggressed on him, shot him a second, third time. Stepped back, shot him a fourth time, came up super close, and shot him two more times, one to the back of the head. There seemed to be plenty of evidence. Jane's odd behavior, her lie about a prowler, and on top of it all, the gun and the grandfather clock. So Jane hired a lawyer

and pleaded not guilty. And the story that came out there turned the whole case on its head. Mr. Lott was a monster. He was despicable. Coming up, what had been happening behind closed doors?

You got one of two choices at that point. Run or fight. She decided to fight. Reputation is all we have in the end. How quickly it can turn. Sweet Jane Lout, now accused murderer. And Dave, now that Dave was dead, stories emerged. It seemed like she was controlled, in my opinion.

And across the street neighbor. I mean, he's there, standing there while she's, you know, pulling weeds, cleaning out gutters, washing his truck, and he's not lifting a finger to help her? Come on, you know. Well, Jane seemed, what, nervous? Almost like a scared little rabbit. I was always a little leery about what was actually going on in the home. This close friend said Jane's fear reminded her of another vulnerable creature.

Jane looked like a scared cat, constantly doing like a twitch, looking over her shoulder, kind of looking to see if someone's behind her. And this from Jane's former co-worker. He was very aggressive. He was very aggressive. He was very demanding. And when he said jump, she would go, how high? How strange it was, she thought, that Jane always wore long sleeves, even when it was hot outside. But more disturbing.

There were times when she would come in and I noticed on her face it looks swollen and she would never comment how it happened there were several times that I saw bruising on her one time on her face, her arms, her legs, several places. He's a monster. He's just a monster. Ron Bamier was Jane's defense attorney. And according to him, Dave Loud is far from the hometown hero so many believed him to be. The real truth about Dave Loud, said Bamier? For nearly three decades, he subjected his wife

to horrific abuse. Like all abuse, it's power and control. We have verbal abuse, the names he called her over a repeated long period of time. We have emotional abuse, the way he treats her. We have physical abuse. That's everything from the punching, to the kicking, to the slapping, to the hitting, throwing her down, pulling her hair, spitting on her. And Jane wasn't the only victim, said Bamier. Dave was angry that his adopted son, Michael, was not athletic. We have neighbors who hear him call Michael names like ****, racial names to Michael that are just horrible.

We have him yelling at him in the street about how he can't ride a bike or catch a football or play baseball. All those years, Jane was afraid to report Dave, said Bamier, afraid of what he might do to her loved ones. And so she covered up his abuse and her injuries. We obtained this summary of a police report from the 1980s in which Jane reported that an intruder attacked her while she was alone at work. At the time, police found the injuries consistent with Jane's story. In fact, said Bamier, Dave inflicted those injuries, then ordered Jane to lie and blame a non-existent intruder.

A pattern of covering up Dave's abuse, abuse which by the summer of 2009 was getting worse at Bamye. From June of 2009 to August of 2009 it was escalating. But Jane continued to take it until that particular August night when something changed. That night

according to Bamye for the first time Dave threatened Michael's life. She really believed that he was going to kill Michael? Yeah. So she made the decision to fight. Jane had taken Michael to the beach that day, said Bamye. They were late getting home. Dave was upset.

Started screaming and yelling, nobody respects me, you know, I don't get any attention around here, nobody cares about me. Jane put Michael to bed, said Bamye, got into pajamas herself, and waited for Dave's anger to subside. But he wasn't calming down.

So, about 10.30 or 11 o'clock, he comes out of the room, and he's upset, and he's angry. And that's when she saw the gun, said Pamier. He's holding it, and he starts talking about Michael, how that they don't respect him,

and that he's going to blow his effing head off. He grabs her, he throws her against the wall. She falls down. She kind of crawls backwards with her hands and her feet like a crab walk towards the back door. Somehow she gets him out on the patio. She's like, calm down, Dave, calm down. And then out in the darkness, Dave stumbled on the patio. He loses his balance. and that's her opportunity.

And she just goes at him. She tries to grab the gun, and they go to the ground. And there's a struggle from the gun. The gun goes off, and then she eventually gets the gun, and she just empties it. And then, she said, she ran back into the house, put the gun inside the grandfather clock, and called 911. She has no idea he's dead.

He's down, but she thinks he's getting up. And women in these relationships have this Superman complex they give their abusers. So, yes, she lied about the prowler, said Bamier, but did it almost automatically, her conditioned response to his abuse. But once the police discovered Jane's lie, said Bamier, their minds were made up that she was a cold, calculating killer. And so when police found those clothes shoved in the laundry room, Bamier said, they believed it must have been Jane's attempt to hide evidence of her crime. But those clothes, when tested, actually only had a tiny fragment of gunshot residue.

And police never bothered to test the pajamas Jane was wearing when they showed up. But Bamier did. And the test revealed the pajamas were covered in gunshot residue. Proving, said Bamier, that Jane was wearing those pajamas when she fired the gun. So it all supports her story. It all does. And as for the claim that Jane jumped up to wash her hands before a gunshot residue or GSR test, that never happened, said Van Mier. That was just the police covering up a major mistake. The cop lost the GSR sample test. They searched for it. They couldn't find it. Anyway, said Van Mier, investigators looked at the crime scene evidence and just plain got it wrong.

Once they concluded she was a murderer, he said, they actually distorted the evidence to fit their story. A bullet that glanced off his head and went at about a 90 degree angle and hit the wall. And then deposited two pieces of scalp matter on the garbage can. And you're saying that's physically impossible? Yes. It's ludicrous. It violated the laws of physics. And what's more, he said, the DNA on the gun

was Dave's, once again supporting Jane's contention that he had the gun and then they struggled for it. His DNA is on the trigger. I mean, there's no getting around that fact.

And one more thing, said Bamier, one more bit of evidence that the police missed, even though it was right under their noses. Bruising on Jane's upper left arm, photographed the morning after Dave was killed. If you look at the bruise closely, you'll see that there's basically a little handprint. A hand-shaped bruise that helps prove, said Bamier, this wasn't murder. It was self-defense. If you're fighting for your life reasonably, I think you reasonably have to conclude that if we're fighting for a gun, you get to use lethal force.

And now, looking back, said Jane's childhood friend, Helen, things began to make sense. We saw her less and less. More than two decades passed. Helen had a long career as a social worker and gradually lost touch with Jane. I would always send her Christmas cards and say, call me, whatever. And I would never hear from her. And then Helen heard about Dave's death. Everybody was pointing to Jane. And like a light bulb went off. And I'm like, oh my God. She was a battered wife.

And you didn't get it. You didn't see it. But the very idea that Jane was an abused spouse, that she killed Dave in self-defense? Absolutely ludicrous, said the Louds. And an outrageous allegation about Dave. I know my brother. He's just a good man. He'd give you the shirt off his back.

That's just the way he was. Can you see him losing his temper at the woman he's married to and abusing her, hitting her? Never. No. No. Never. No. No, said the Louts. No, said the police. Besides, they said, maybe Jane had quite another motive for killing Dave Lout, a financial one. Coming up, borrowed money. Thousands and thousands of dollars. And even more money if Dave was dead. Sometimes she would say things like, I'd be better off if Dave wasn't around.

When Dateline continues. olympic glory does not always translate into material wealth in fact said detectives as they sifted through dave and jane's financial records they found evidence they were struggling. The Louts' finances were, they were just living beyond their means. It was poor bookkeeping, poor management of the bills. It didn't happen just before the shooting. This has been going on for years and years and years. After Dave was killed, said Don and Rebecca, they found out Jane had been borrowing money from her mother-in-law.

Jane asked her for a lot of money, gave her different excuses why she needed money. To pay mortgages or something like that? Mortgages, doctor bills, school, tuition, school supplies. How much money are you talking about here? It was a lot. It was thousands and thousands of dollars. It was a lot. And when they found out Dave had three life insurance policies? I believe we totaled it all up,

and I think it came to $300,000, $350,000, somewhere in that neighborhood, that she was likely to see if a prowler had done this. Was there ever any indication she was capable of violent acts, or that sort of person who could be violent? She said some things to me, and I dismissed them because I maybe didn't want to believe that she was capable, but sometimes she would say things like, I'd be better off if Dave wasn't around. Meanwhile, justice crawled.

A year passed, then two, three, four. Jane remained free on bond, and Dave's niece, Megan Lout, fumed. She caused my family so much pain, and it's horrible. It was, it's just, I hate it. Nephews Aaron and Cody took it out on the

garage weight room. I have a way of bottling it and condensing it, and I get it out when I lift. You get your emotion going, you get your anger, you get your adrenaline going. In September 2013, Don Lout pleaded with a judge to get the case before a jury. I just want the court to know that there is a family and there's friends behind my brother. And it's been four years, And it's been very difficult.

And then, in January 2015, more than five years after Dave's death, in a move that shocked Jane's veteran defense attorney, the prosecution indicated it would be open to making a deal. And I was blown away. A plea deal? Yes, and what a deal it was, said Bamye. If Jane pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, she'd be sentenced to just six years and would most likely serve only three. Seemed like an admission of weakness from the prosecution, said Bamye, and the opportunity of a lifetime for a woman facing first-degree murder and 50 to life.

And so... I gave her my strong recommendation, but she'd take it. And she said no. And I was just like, I was stunned. I said, Jane, I kept saying, do you understand it? And she goes, I understand fully.

It's not on you, Ron. This is my decision. And she was crying, and she says, I understand fully. It's not on you, Ron. This is my decision. And she was crying. And she says, I have to fight for this. Mind you, by then, Jane had some powerful moral support from her old friend, Helen Kalouris. She rose that night. I mean, she didn't fall.

She rose that night and, you know, became a very strong, powerful woman and defended the life of her son. And then at last, in January 2016, Jane Loud went on trial for murder. Her friend Helen, sitting right behind her. Do you think she'll go to jail? I don't. I don't.

I absolutely do not. You believe the jury will believe her story? I do. And see it as a case of self-defense? I do. I believe that. I believe that. I sincerely believe her. And I don't say that about many people. I sincerely believe her. Do you usually get this personally invested in a case? I am always invested in my cases, yes.

But do I care as much about clients like I do about Jane Lawton? No, I'd be lying if I said I did. But could he persuade a jury to believe in Jane, too? Coming up, Jane takes the stand. If you're going to get a not guilty, which is what we're shooting for, she has to testify. A gun takes the stand. If you're going to get a not guilty, which is what we're shooting for, she has to testify. A gun takes center stage. Pull back the hammer. Fire. Each and every time.

And the verdict. Will the jury find the defendant? Dave Loud was a son he was a father he was a colleague he was a friend more than six years after the death of Olympic bronze medalist Dave Loud

the murder trial of his wife Jane finally began in this Ventura, California courtroom. Prosecutor Ramin Minoui told the jury Jane was a calculating killer. If you look at each of the six shots, they were administered by this defendant. As she was executing her plan to murder her husband, there is only one reasonable conclusion. It is to find the defendant guilty of murder. I'm about to talk to you for quite some time. Defense attorney Ron Bamier countered the real victim was Jane Lout, who suffered the utmost cruelty at the hands of her husband.

He is not the hero of the Olympics. He is the monster who abused her for 27 years. The defense called family and friends and neighbors who all testified Jane was an abused spouse. But attorney Bamier said the most important witness was the defendant herself. If you're going to get a not guilty, which is what we're shooting for. She has to testify. The judge would not allow cameras to roll when for the first time publicly, through tears, Jane told her story. She said she took Dave's abuse for nearly three decades

until the night he threatened their son. I think she could live with the fact that he could kill her. She could not live with the fact that he could kill her. She could not live with the fact that he would kill Michael. On the stand, Jane admitted that she lied in her 911 call. 911 emergency. And later to the police about a prowler. But she denied she had any financial motive for killing her husband. After all, she did not ask for nor did she receive a penny of Dave's life insurance. Jane would never be about finances. Absolutely not. Why do you say that?

Because that's not her value. Jane is about relationships. She's about family. She's about children. She's, it's never been about money for her. Of course, the prosecutor got his turn to cross examine Jane. There were a lot of I don't remembers about the night of the murder. She simply couldn't recall what happened after she fired the first two or three shots,

she said. But she did admit she was quite familiar with the gun, in fact had used it several times before. This single action gun in the hands of this defendant required her to pull back that hammer, fire, pull back the hammer, fire, each and every time for the six times that she aimed that weapon at her husband and shot him. Like this, said the prosecutor, as he played a video of a woman firing that very gun. But, said the defense attorney, that's not the only way to fire the gun. If you hold the trigger down, you can pull the hammer back and it will fire. This is called fanning the gun, sort of thing you'd expect to see in an old western. But a prosecution expert countered that a movie is the only place you'd ever seen that.

Every expert that came up said that that is absurd. The accuracy of firing a gun six times and hitting your target six times in the dark is astronomical. After seven weeks of testimony, final arguments from both sides, defense attorney Bamier made an impassioned plea to the jury. Why would Jane Lout do this? Why would she do this? When you think about it, there's only one real reason.

Only one. It's what anybody would do to protect their child. Any one of us. You do not have the right to kill your husband. While Prosecutor Minoui urged the jury to look past the emotion and focus on the evidence. The defendant's testimony is false. It is untruthful. It is unbelievable. It is a story conjured up to

raise for battered woman self-defense claim in a murder case. It is plan B because plan A doesn't work and it's a lie. The jury deliberated for three and one half days. And then finally, this past Wednesday, announced they were ready.

Jane, supported by Helen and other friends who'd stood by her all along, walked to the courthouse, and what waited there? It all appears to be in order, so I will read the verdict. We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Jane Laubacher-Laut, guilty of the crime of first-degree murder.

Guilty of first-degree murder. A shock ran through the room. Ron Bambier, who so fervently believed in her innocence, looked distraught. And Jane comforted him. The woman who flat turned down a deal to do six years for voluntary manslaughter now faces the possibility of life in prison. It was a victory for Dave's family. Yes, but not one to celebrate. Our faith calls us to forgive, and we do. We forgive her.

But forget? No, not the Louts. Not their Superman. It's very difficult. I miss him every day. I miss him every day. I think I'll always grieve. I know I'm always going to miss him. He's always a part of me.

But it's hard. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.