Dateline NBC - The Man Who Talked to Dogs

Episode Date: December 31, 2020

In this Dateline classic, life seemed perfect for Mark Stover. He had a successful career as a “dog trainer to the stars” on a beautiful island paradise. After a tough divorce, he’d recently found love again. Yet friends said he walked around in a constant state of fear. Could he sense the danger no one else could see? Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on January 21, 2011.

He was born with a gift. He spoke to the animals. A dog trainer to the stars. With a beautiful wife. He was totally crazy about her. But an ill wind would blow through paradise. The kennel dogs were very, very upset. It was a huge ruckus.

They told me, we haven't seen Mark, and I knew in my heart something terrible had happened. Where had the dog trainer gone? A trail of sinister clues. There was three wet blood spots in the hallway. There was all sorts of ammunition and guns, firearms on magnets behind tapestries, firearms in drawers all over this house.

He has his arms around a big roll of plastic, and my brain goes, there's a body. Could anyone put it all together and sniff out the truth? What did that say to you? Well, it says a lot to me. October 28, 2009. Routine call, middle of the day. Dispatch sent a squad car to talk to the two ladies who'd phoned with them. What was it they said?

Two cars where they shouldn't be? Someone moving something bulky from one to the other? Back when it started, the lovebird should have known probably that it was too good to be true, or too good to last, anyway. After all, he seemed something of a self-made mutt, and she the purebred heiress type, the golden-haired daughter of a wealthy alpha male. Whatever. By the time they promised their eternal love, the clock to its end was ticking. Inaudible to them, of course, like a whistle only a dog can hear. Which, come to think of it, begs the question, how did he, of all people, miss it?

His name was Mark Stover, and he discovered quite early that he had some special, eerily mystical connection with dogs. When he talked to them, they listened. He was born with a gift. Stover had become known as Seattle's dog whisperer. I mean, it's not as simple as just giving them treats or clicker training or something like that. He spoke to the animals. With talents that amazed his loyal clients,

Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Major League outfielder Ichiro Suzuki brought him their dogs. You know, one of his phrases was, we train everybody in Seattle from Nordstrom to Nirvana. But he was much more than a dog trainer to the stars. Are you ready? Okay. A longtime employee. Come on, Samson! He trained everyone, you know. It didn't matter to him who they were. It was about the person and

the dog and the relationship between the person and the dog, not who they were. Stormy come. This woman liked him so much as a client, she went to work for him. He would connect with you. He'd find something that he could talk to you about, and then he'd help you train your dog. And the setting for Mark's dog whispering business? Incomparable. Oh, it's beautiful. It's a wonderful place. Kickett Island is what it's called. An 84-acre teardrop of primeval forest and meadows and beaches plunked a few feet offshore a 90-minute commute north of Seattle.

The dogs could go swimming in the water there. There's plenty of trail walks, and it was just really, really outdoorsy and beautiful. Outdoorsy and beautiful are words which also happen to describe the human love of Mark's life. Linda Opdyke, the willowy blonde daughter of Wally Opdyke, the wealthy investor who once helped found Chateau Saint-Michel Winery, Linda seemed a perfect match for Mark, according to the clients and friends who knew him best. She was Mark, too.

You know, I mean, they were peas in a pod. They had similar hobbies, hunting fish, you know, go camp somewhere, you know, that kind of stuff. He just thought she was the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, basically. Very protective of his Linda was Mark, as clients could clearly tell. He just thought she was beautiful, wonderful, smart. Never, never, ever said anything bad about her. Never. Seemed to be in love.

He was. He was totally, totally crazy about her. It was Linda's father, Wally Opdyke, who owned Kickett Island. Mark and Linda lived there on Wally's Island and grew their very successful business together. And then, in 2002, they made their union permanent. An intimate wedding ceremony in the presidential suite of the Las Vegas Four Seasons. Here was Wally Opdyke toasting his new son-in-law.

Mark, welcome to the Opdyke family. But maybe nothing is forever. It was just three years later when Linda told the employees she was taking an extended vacation. Alone. And that vacation kept extending and extending, and she just never came back. So, separation. There was a brief affair. Linda was one of Mark's best friends. And then divorce. About as ugly as divorce can be.

I was shocked. I really was. So was Mark, apparently, quite thoroughly devastated by all accounts because now he had lost not just the love of his life, but he had to leave Kickett Island, too. Losing her? It was, we hardly need say, a black period just about here. Some quite disturbing episodes, actually. Get to those later. Suffice to say for now that eventually life went on. It was just divorce, after all. Not death. Not yet, anyway. Mark found a new property in nearby Anacortes, Washington.

And if it wasn't Kickett Island, it was not bad. He moved into a new house, new kennels, new start. He had found the place that was going to be perfect for him and it was going to be all his. And I think he was very much looking forward. He wasn't looking back. Eventually, there was also her. Her name is Teresa. On our third date, though, he let me know that he wanted to marry me.

Third date? I was pretty shocked, yeah. What was it about you that he liked? He liked that I listened and that I was careful with the information that he gave me. Not just information, but with his heart. Which had been really badly damaged, and he worried about that. Didn't want it to happen again. He saw a safe harbor in you.

I think so. Safe harbor? Well, maybe she was, as they made plans for a life together. But even then, in the fall of 2009, an ill wind was picking up. Mark's employees couldn't help but notice it. He was off somehow. He was very different, and he told me that he was very paranoid. He'd actually been locking his doors. Even though, as everyone knew, Mark's highly

trained guard dog, Ding, would have protected him from anything. I asked him why he was locking his doors because he had Ding and he said, I don't know, I'm just a little weirded out about something. He didn't say what? No, he didn't say what. And Mark, it would take a lot to spook someone like Mark. He was always very aware of his surroundings, almost dog-like. And if there was something there, someone there, he knew it. And then, October 28th, Mark stopped calling Teresa.

No explanation. So I hadn't heard from him all day, and I thought, towards the end of the day, it started seeming odd. But then the next day, when I hadn't heard from him by 9 o'clock, I got one of the employees on the phone, and I said, what is going on there? Where's Mark? And so they told me, you know, we haven't seen Mark. We didn't see him all day yesterday. And I knew in my heart something terrible had

happened. But what? Well, there's the puzzle. Does anybody know even now? Strange goings on at Mark Stover's place. The dogs are restless, and neighbors are about to find out why. It took my breath away. Mark Stover was a bit like one of his well-trained dogs. He was a creature of habit, always on time, never missed an appointment, in bed early, up with the sun. And every Wednesday, Mark hit the road for the hour-and-a-half drive south to Seattle for sessions with his loyal clients.

The schedule which employees amber. We always joke that he was up, he'd beat the rooster out of bed. And Beth, who's usually on the road by seven. And Stephanie, he had his breakfast and beat Seattle traffic. Knew very well. But on the morning of Wednesday, October 28th, 2009, nothing was routine. Nothing at all. First, Stephanie, whose own house is right next door to the kennels, woke up to a chorus of barking dogs.

It was, she thinks, about 6 a.m. And the kennel dogs were very, very upset. It was a huge ruckus next door. Occasionally that sort of thing would happen. Very seldom. Very seldom. To that extent. Then, 8 a.m., Amber arrived at the kennels, and still the dogs were upset.

They would not settle in that morning. Odd. Then someone told her Mark was still around. He mustn't have left yet for Seattle. I thought it was strange, because he had supposed to be gone over an hour prior. She walked to the house where Mark made a habit of leaving the carport door unlocked so the employees could use the bathroom.

And I noticed a little bit of blood in the driveway. I was afraid that his dog had opened her stitches because she'd had surgery. Mark's dog, Ding, wasn't just any pet. She was a highly skilled protection dog.

A lot of blood? A little blood? A little blood. But noticeable? Noticeable. And I proceeded towards the house and tried to go through the back door, and it was locked, which was very, very odd. Then, not long after, Stephanie arrived

and noticed, perhaps a hundred yards from where she stood down in the field, Mark's station wagon was backed up to the carport area of his house. I was kind of surprised that it was parked where it was parked, because it was never parked there. It was really hard to get it into that position to begin with. Anyway, why hadn't he left for Seattle? It was then she noticed, must be Mark up at the house. Someone who had Mark's hat on, you know, which I thought was Mark, was bringing something big into the back of the car. Big, big, big? It looked like to me. So I was thinking he was carrying Ding and putting her in the back of the car. Bing, who, remember, was recovering from surgery. And then he went to get into his car. He was wearing Mark's hat, Mark's coat,

and closed the car door and then proceeded to, like, scream down the driveway, which Mark would never have done. Did you call out to him or wave? I waved and I went, went, I hope that's Mark. I hope that's Mark? Well, of course it must have been, Stephanie thought, rushing a bleeding ding to the vet. About 20 minutes later, Stephanie walked up to the house to use the bathroom.

This time the door was unlocked. But this was weird. Before I even got to the door, there was this immense smell of bleach. Bleach? Yeah, like it took my breath away. And inside the house? There was three wet,

what looked like blood spots in the hallway that had obviously been just cleaned and they were still drying. Perhaps Ding had bled on the carpet and Mark had cleaned it up. But why would he take the time? He wouldn't stop and spend half an hour cleaning. His main thing would be getting Ding to the vet, then getting to his appointments. But other than those wet spots, everything else appeared to be the way Mark would have left it. I was looking for bloody towels. I was looking for bloody paper towels. The bathroom

was immaculate. There was absolutely nothing in the washing machine. There was nothing in the tub. Stephanie wasn't sure what was going on, but it all felt kind of creepy. My thoughts were, well, that was freaky, and I got out of there, and I didn't go back up to the house the rest of the day. You went on with the day. But a strange day it was, and as the hours ticked by, there was no word from Mark. No one could reach him by phone. It was very odd that we had not talked to him. It was very strange. The following morning, October 29th, still no sign of Mark.

No word from him at all. Again, Stephanie went up toward his house. And I looked up, and there stood Ding by the back door. And she was obviously hurt. She was growling. And so I started talking to her nicely, thinking, oh my God, what is she doing here? And what's going on? And I backed down the driveway. At about the same time, the phone rang in the kettle. It was Mark's fiancee, Teresa. When they told me Ding was out, there was blood, Ding is never out, ever. She's either in the house or she's with Mark. She's not just out barking at people. No Mark, injured dog. Teresa, frantic now, called the Skagit County Sheriff's

Department. All of those circumstances were very suspicious. This is Detective Dan Luvera. Oh, I immediately thought, foul play. This is huge. There's more to the story. And there definitely was. More to the story? Yes, there apparently was. Starting with a secret history, stories of a marriage's ugly aftermath.

She had been calling key clients and saying really horrible things about him Starting with a secret history, stories of a marriage's ugly aftermath. She had been calling key clients and saying really horrible things about him to damage the business. It was evening, October 29th, the day after Mark Stover disappeared. Skagit County Sheriff's Detective Dan Levera, now retired, told us how he stood in the dark and looked at Mark Stover's big new house and just knew something very bad happened here. But what? There was no signs of a struggle. There was just a little bit of blood

here and there. Of course, Mark's protection dog, Ding, was clearly injured. That could explain those bits of blood. But earlier that day, just inside the carport door, Levera's investigation team had been knocked back by the overwhelming odor of bleach. And in the bathroom off the hall, they found Clorox bottles. Looked like someone tried to wash away evidence. This had to be more than just an injured dog. Mark Stover's employees told about the strange events the previous morning. The barking dogs, the odd business of the locked carport door, the man wearing Mark's clothes, roaring down the driveway in Mark's white Chevy station wagon. Mark never drove that fast. It didn't look good. The policeman

poked around, sniffed, measured, and still no Mark Stover. The evidence, even without a body, seemed clear. This was homicide. So by now, a couple of days after Mark's disappearance, his employees were shifting from puzzled to shocked to grief-stricken. Mark took a role in my life like a surrogate father, and I truly love Mark as a parent and a friend and a family member. Sometimes the clues in a mystery such as this can be very personal. More about relationships than fingerprints or DNA, as Detective Levera knew full well.

And in the days after Mark Stover's disappearance, the detective repeatedly encountered a disturbing story. These former lovers were afraid of each other. What happened to that marriage, the one on the heavenly island? In fact, there was a record, the detective discovered, and it was more hell than heaven. Well, Mark had issues with Linda, and Linda had issues with Mark. To put it mildly. Here's the story Mark's fiancee Teresa told the detective, the story she said Mark told her. Linda seemed to be doing her level best to destroy Mark's dog training business. She had been calling key clients and saying really horrible

things about him to damage the business. She called and tried to shut the website down, tried to shut his phones down. Which is why, again, this is the story Teresa Sedmark told her, why he snooped in her garbage. One March morning in 2008, this was a three-hour drive from his own house. He went there, said Teresa, to look for a paper trail to prove

Linda wanted to destroy his business. You know, divorce is never pleasant, but theirs just became very visible. And the fighting involved the business. He was afraid of losing it. Very much so. After the garbage incident, Linda came up with a whole slew of accusations that Mark had been harassing her ever since she left him. A domestic violence protection order was issued against Mark in April 2008.

Mark was later charged with criminal stalking. He swore up and down that many of the allegations were not true. But he was caught going through her garbage, and he eventually took what's known as an Alford plea, which means he agreed to plead guilty, conceding a judge or jury would probably convict him, even though he claimed he didn't do it, much of it anyway. But here was the deal, and this was important.

As part of that arrangement, Mark was ordered to give up his guns. For most people, that might be easy. But for Mark, he had dozens of guns. He loved his guns. It was a dozens of guns. He loved his guns. It was a passion for him. He loved his hunting. No guns, no contact with Linda. And Mark agreed. Here's what Teresa says Mark told her. This will make it all stop. In other words, he was telling you, I'm going to let her win. He said that was important, that she needed to win. Was he afraid of her?

Oh, yes. Still, after that, things seemed to settle down. Mark's business thrived in its new location here in Ida Cortes. He continued to service his clients in Seattle. And, of course, by then, he had found Teresa. But then, in the summer of 2009, two strange 911 calls came into the Skagit County Sheriff's Office. An anonymous male caller claimed Mark Stover was transporting drugs in his car. There's a crime that's going to take place in the morning. Police pulled Mark over, found a small amount of marijuana and cocaine underneath the car.

But he was not arrested. Mark told police he believed he was being set up. Those were not his drugs. Mark wasn't charged with any crime, but he was terrified. He was terrified that someone was trying to set him up to be charged with transportation of these drugs and facing jail time or prison time or both. Not long after that drug incident, Mark opened up to a longtime client. Told her, she said, that he was convinced his days were numbered.

He totally shocked me by saying how every time he leaves his house in the morning, he checks under his car to make sure there's nothing like a bomb. He was a shaken man. And then about a month later, she said, he called her on the phone, frantic. It was just breaking him, just totally breaking him. Because he knew that he wasn't going to survive. He knew it. Wow. He knew his life was over. He just knew it, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

As Detective Levera talked to friends and doggone clients, he heard all about Mark's fears those last few months. He kept on pointing the finger at Linda, but again, there was no evidence to prove that or suggest that, I guess. But he was concerned, and he had this feeling that something terrible was going to happen. What did he tell you about Linda? He told me that she will not rest until I'm dead. And it wasn't just Linda Mark fretted about.

He told friends he was afraid of her father, too. Why was he afraid of them? What I can say is often he would comment that they always win. And they always get the last word. And so, according to his friends, Mark Stover spent the late summer and early fall of 2009 in a state of mortal fear, even escaped secretly to Montana, says Teresa.

He would only use cash. He would call me from payphones. He was very worried. And he even called me and said, you know, things happen. This is what I want you to do. And I said, Mark, how will I know if something happens to you? And he said, you'll know. And now, of course, she did. Now everyone knew something happened to the dog trainer to the stars. And they might never have known more than just that, a mystery unsolved. Except for the strange events in a remote parking lot

and two sharp-eyed women who now had a story to tell. He's bent over and he has his arms around a big roll of clear plastic. And my brain goes, there's a body. Murder investigations are the top of the craft in the police business, mostly because they can be tortuous. It can take years to pry loose a single useful lead. But on the day Mark Stover disappeared, two women saw something that didn't belong and called it in.

They were a huge part of starting this whole process. Just a few hours after the employees at Mark's house watched his car drive away. I pulled forward and there's two vehicles behind the chain. Tammy Gilden and her mother, Sharon Larson, called the sheriff's department to complain that someone was trespassing in the locked parking lot of a grain shawl just a half mile from Mark's house. In fact, they said they saw two cars. One, ID'd by the license number, was Mark's white Chevy station wagon. Parked back to back, said the ladies with a black Suzuki SUV. And they saw someone moving something between the cars.

And he's bent over and he has his arms around a big roll of, you know, clear plastic. And my brain goes, there's a body. Oh, Tammy, no, there's not a body. You've been reading too many good murder mysteries. The man transferring the plastic and whatever was in it drove off in his SUV, the ladies reported, leaving Mark Stovis' station wagon behind. The sheriff's dispatcher sent a deputy to have a look. And sure enough, the deputy found Mark's car

inside the apparently locked parking lot. Except the lot wasn't exactly locked anymore. When the deputy looked closer to the chain link, he discovered that one of the links had been cut. And that link was placed and attached to the other links, making it appear that it was intact. And then, this was pure chance, really. The deputy spotted the SUV just down the road and pulled it over, peered around the driver into the back of the SUV. There was a lot of stuff in the back of his car.

It appeared to be camping-type stuff or tarps and plastic-type stuff. The man identified himself as Michael Oakes, lived a good five hours drive away, worked in internet sales, consulting a bit of writing, denied ever being behind the Grange. His word against the ladies, the deputy let him go.

The deputy just gave him a warning, said, don't go back there. You know, go on your way. It was just a minor trespassing incident after all. But now, a day later, it didn't seem so minor. Time to find both cars. The dog trainer's car was no longer at the Grange Hall, but an alert detective noticed it in the parking lot of the Northern Lights Casino,

three miles from the place where the ladies had seen it. Looked like blood on the lot of the Northern Lights Casino, three miles from the place where the ladies had seen it. Looked like blood on the back of the car. And when investigators ordered up the casino's surveillance video, they saw this. 6.21 p.m., October 28th, perhaps seven hours after the ladies saw the car at the Grange. Here was someone driving Mark's car onto the casino parking lot. Whoever it was abandoned it. And now Dan Luvera's investigation was moving very quickly. Immediately started trying to find out who this Michael Oakes guy was that was seen behind the grange by the two witnesses. Once police had Michael Oakes' ID, they discovered he was spending time with Linda Opdyke, Mark's ex-wife. So now, two officers from the Okanagan County Sheriff's Department paid a visit at Linda's house, here in Winthrop, Washington.

And sure enough, there was Michael Oakes' SUV in her driveway. Once in the house, the officers asked to speak to Oakes. He agreed. But then, he said, he needed to find his pills. He became agitated or frustrated, kept on asking for his medication, and the chief, not knowing if Michael

was having some sort of a medical issue, allowed him to look around for his medication. And while supposedly hunting for pills... Michael then secretly snuck out the basement area of the house and went to his vehicle. It just so happened that the sergeant was standing on the deck above the driveway and observed Michael Oakes walking outside to the driveway. Oakes, apparently not aware he was being watched, took a white bag out of his car, said the officer, and tossed it over a 20-foot

embankment outside Linda's house. He immediately questions Michael about what he threw over the embankment. Michael said it was garbage. Garbage? Garbage. But they went to retrieve that bag of garbage, and what was actually in it? It was a gun. Inside Michael Oakes' garbage was a.22 caliber Browning pistol. Also in the bag, a bloody swatch of carpet and an overwhelming odor of bleach. And then, here's what they found inside Linda's house. Bizarre. Oh, there was all sorts of ammunition and guns. Firearms on magnets behind tapestries.

Firearms in drawers. Lo loaded guns all over this house. Including semi-automatic weapons and... Yes. Big-time stuff. Big-time stuff, yeah. Why? Was an explanation provided for this? No. Before police left into Opdike's house here in Winthrop,

they arrested Michael Oakes on suspicion of murder. And back in western Washington, a local buzz began to grow. If Michael Oakes did kill Mark Stover, was someone else involved somehow? Buzz is discouraged, however, in police work in favor of actual evidence, which in this case arrived in a phone call to police from her. Michael Oakes, it turned out, had an ex-wife who volunteered a remarkable story about disturbing visits and puzzling messages from Mr. Oakes. What did that say to you? Well, it says a lot to you. Wow. Says a lot to me.

As one person opens up, another goes suspiciously silent. Both get detective's attention. What did you think? Oh, I thought, wow, huge red flags. Sometimes the worst thing a person can do is try to influence his own fate. As Michael Oakes sat in the back of a police car, under arrest on suspicion of the murder of dog whisperer Mark Stover, he was given an unusual opportunity. He was allowed to make several calls from his cell phone. He decided, for reasons of his own, to place one of them to a woman named Jennifer Thompson,

his ex-wife. Why? Well, we can only speculate that the result of that call may have been the very opposite of what he intended. Here's what happened. Not long after Oakes phoned her from the police car, Jennifer placed a call of her own to the county jail. She asked to speak to an investigator. And not long after that call, this was the story she told in an audio-taped interview. On October 24, 2009, four days before Mark Stover disappeared,

Michael Oakes stopped in to see her at her place in western Washington, not too many miles from the Stover Kennels, and talked to her about a job he was supposed to do. He didn't give me a lot of specifics. He just said he was here on a job, a side job, that there was risk involved, possible injury to himself, that it was fairly dangerous. At which point he left for a few hours, then contacted her again.

He texted me and said, job failed. I'm okay. No pay, though. No pay? No pay. What did that say to you? Well, it says a lot to me. It says that somebody's paying him. Somebody's paying him. Somebody's hired him. Does that sound like Michael Oakes was a hired killer? Well, wait, there's more. Jennifer told the police that after Michael left on the 24th, he told her in an email he'd be back in the area later that week. And sure enough, on October 28th, not long after that deputy pulled him over to investigate the trespassing incident,

Oakes called again, said Jennifer, came to meet her. He asked her to drive to a spot near the water, she said, where they could talk. Yeah, because he just was sitting there in a frenzy, just stressed out, and he just seemed very agitated, and he mentioned that he may be in trouble. And then, another reference to a job. A job gone bad. He said, well, I made an error. I was doing a job and I made an error. And when I realized the error, I tried to get out of there. But when I was getting out of there, two old biddies saw me.

I said, well, why is this a problem? And he said, well, now when the s*** hits the fan in the next 24 to 48 hours, they have my name. There's a 50-50 shot of getting questioned. If he gets questioned, he's guaranteed a trial. And if he gets a trial, there's no one that's going to stick up for him and he's pretty much going to prison he said looking at felony 10 to 15 years so big trouble he told jennifer there was evasive action to take work to be done he was really concerned about getting pulled over with the things in his vehicle he wanted to get them home and get them sterilized. And he said, if anyone sees this now, I'm going in right away. Going in, meaning he would be arrested right away, he felt.

And if all that wasn't incriminating enough, here was the capper. Jennifer told police the story of how their marriage fell apart. It happened in the spring of 2008, said Jennifer. Then-husband Michael told her about a phone call from someone named John. He told me that there was a potential job coming up that he was interested in taking about a woman and an ex-spouse that was harassing her. The father of the woman was initiating the job.

A father with a daughter named Linda. And it seems there was a plan in store for Linda's ex-husband. They would basically use Linda as sort of bait to lure the ex-spouse toward her, and then they would, if you were to show signs of hurting her, killing her, then they would take him out. Okay, and by taking him out, you meant, or you understood that to be, they would kill him. Right. Linda and her father?

Could that be Wally and Linda Opdyke, the police wondered? Mark Stover's ex-father-in-law and ex-wife plotting to kill him? It was a wild story, Jennifer told, and of course horrifying, given what seemed to have happened. Jennifer said she told Michael back then, don't do it, walk away. But he wouldn't listen. And that's when things started going bad. Well, Jennifer and Michael's marriage started to unravel because Michael had considered taking this job, and Jennifer knew that this was a kill for hire, and she didn't want to have any part of it. And thus didn't want to be married

to a guy who was going to do such a thing. Exactly, you know. But remember, awful though it sounded, this was an ex-wife's story. And all due respect to Jennifer, maybe she just had a vendetta against him because, after all, he was the ex. Didn't she want him back desperately? He wouldn't come back. Yeah, she still had feelings for him. So maybe she would just want to get him. No, Jennifer was very, very well-spoken, very articulate, very believable. She was the type of woman that you'd want to take home to your mom and dad. She was just very sweet. Of course, for Dan Luvera and his team of investigators, this was all pure gold. Or so you'd assume, wouldn't you?

But assumptions are not the same thing as evidence. And... We didn't have any evidence to support that Linda or Wally were directly involved other than what Jennifer Thompson had told us. Why not just call them in and ask them? They wouldn't talk to us. We got a letter and a phone call what Jennifer Thompson had told us. Why not just call them in and ask them? They wouldn't talk to us.

We got a letter and a phone call from Wally's attorney immediately after Michael Oakes' arrest stating that Wally Opdyke would not talk to us. What, had you asked him by then? No, we hadn't even requested to interview Wally. We hadn't even called him. What did you think? Oh, I thought, wow, huge red flags. I thought, wow, this guy,

we haven't even asked to talk to him and he's already got an attorney and the attorney's already contacting us, telling us not to contact Wally Opdyke. It was crazy. Same with Linda. She hired an attorney right away. Linda invoked her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. A judge ultimately ordered her to sit for a deposition. Still didn't say anything. Pretty much every question we asked her, she took the fifth on. So, there was one defendant in the murder of Mark Stover, Michael Oakes. But he certainly didn't look the part of a hired killer.

All five foot six of him, soft-spoken, understated, articulate, father of four, grandfather of one. Yeah, he's not your Hollywood casting for a hit man. But cast as defense attorney? Seattle's colorful and irrepressible John Henry Brown.

He's a really kind, compassionate, loving guy. Could anyone believe what happened next? The accused murderer released on bond? The question, was there even a murder?

And the other question, who was the real villain anyway? Turns out there was a very different side to this story. He wanted to provide a little twist, a surprise. And boy would he. In the months after their famous tulips wilted and the summer sun finally favored Mount Vernon, Washington,

events at the town's lovely old courthouse became a kind of parlor guessing game. A quiet little man named Michael Oakes had been charged with killing the dog-training wizard Mark Stover, even though no one could find Mark's body. Still, the charge? Murder in the first degree.

But early legal skirmishing seemed sometimes to merely add confusion. Was it murder? Oakes a hired gun? Or was it something else altogether? And besides that, how intimate was Oaks' relationship with Mark Stover's ex-wife Linda?

And who was paying for his famous defense attorney? The optics are behind this. The optics are behind this. And they hired me. I'll tell you, if they hired me, I wouldn't be wearing my Timex. That's ridiculous. John Henry Brown settled into a local hotel and set to work deconstructing the prevailing public view of defendant Michael Oakes.

Here in court, Brown sucked up the attention. And I would suggest counsel come to trial and she'll find out. Naturally flamboyant. I don't think I have a dog in this fight. Well, the client seemed to disappear into the woodwork behind him. A client who, said John Henry Brown, was not at all the villain the prosecution seemed determined to portray. What we have is a man who has, on his own, raised very successfully four children. It became, shall we say, a theme.

Michael Oakes, single father of four, grandfather of one. Well spoken, mild mannered, but certainly not any ordinary salesman or consultant. Oakes, Brown admitted, is a recognized expert in close quarters combat, knows firearms so well he's written numerous articles for gun magazines, has even trained police SWAT teams, but has no criminal record, and, insisted Brown, he isn't a murderer. Still, he must have done something to Mark Stover, didn't he? Well, here's where it all began to get tricky.

If Stover was really dead, said John Henry Brown, and if the prosecution could prove Oakes killed him, then and only then Oakes might provide an explanation. Through the legal fog, a little hint came popping out. The prosecution had already indicated it would introduce into evidence a bulletproof vest found in Michael Oakes' SUV. Now, Attorney Brown seemed to be suggesting that vest would be important to any claim the defense might decide to make. I'm just making things clear, Your Honor. It's not just the vest. It's a bullet that was found in the vest.

Indeed it was. Right smack in the center of the vest, a.22 caliber slug. Was the defense implying that Michael Oakes had himself been shot? No one really knew where things were headed here in September 2010 as trial began. Even John Henry Brown quite deliberately broke one of his own cardinal rules. He decided not to make an opening statement to the jury. I have what I call my famous 10 rules of trial, and I think it's rule number three is never, never, never, never, ever waive an opening statement. That's a rule. Good morning, everybody. This time the defense would lie in wait while the prosecution made its case that Michael Oakes was a first-degree

murderer. Here's how their story began. With a video, a security camera, about 5.30 a.m., the Mount Vernon Walmart. On it, Michael Oakes. It's the morning Mark Stover disappeared. Receipts found in Oakes' car showed he'd purchased ankle weights, anchor line, shin guards, camouflage clothes. Also found in his car, that bulletproof vest. Prosecutors argued Oakes arrived at Stover's house a little later that morning. Mark's employees were called to testify about what they saw and heard. I was awoken by the dogs in the barn next door. They saw the spots of blood, smelled the bleach,

saw Mark's car racing down the driveway. Both back ends were open to each other. And then the trespassing incident at the Grange Hall near Mark Stover's house, as called in by those two concerned women, now witnesses. There was a guy standing between the vehicles, and he had a big, huge wad of plastic, a big roll of plastic. That someone, Michael Oakes, as identified by his license plate,

and that wad of plastic, the suggestion was, of course, that it shrouded Mark Stover's body. And remember, there was a chain behind the grains that appeared to have been cut that morning and receipts found in Oak's car showing he bought and later returned a bolt cutter from a Lowe's hardware store the day Mark Stover disappeared. A state DNA expert testified Mark Stover's blood was found in the back of his car and in the back of defendant Oakes' SUV. Are you aware that Mr. Oakes purchased a

.22 caliber pistol at your store? I am. This former hardware store manager testified he sold Michael Oakes that.22 caliber Browning. He'd been interested in it for a very specific reason. He told me, well, I have a barrel that I can interchange on that, that has a threaded end that I can put a suppressor on. Silencer, that is. Then an expert matched bullet casings found outside Stover's house to Michael Oakes' gun. I was able to identify all three fired cartridge cases as having been fired from the Browning pistol. Proof that Michael Oakes' gun was fired at Mark Stover's house,

where, DNA showed, more of Mark's blood was found. Blood, but no body. To try to answer the question of what Michael Oakes might have done with Mark's body, prosecutors presented a surveillance video. Shortly after 12 noon, October 28th, the day Stover disappeared, an SUV looked like Michael Oakes' Suzuki, slowly cruising by the Waterfront Casino, three miles from the Grange. Right here, it's a dark-colored SUV. Detective Dan Lovera testified that the vehicle

spent about 16 minutes backed by the casino, out of range of the camera, on a road that leads to a channel, open water, and a dilapidated dock. Later, detectives and divers searched, but... Didn't find a darn thing.

Didn't find a darn thing. Didn't find a darn thing. Then, of course, there was one other key witness for the prosecution, Jennifer Thompson, Michael Oakes' ex-wife. Remember, she'd claimed that Michael Oakes told her he'd been offered a job to take out an ex-husband, that he'd been asked by a father of someone named Linda, and that Jennifer was convinced that meant this was a killing for hire. But because that alleged conversation took place when Jennifer and Michael Oakes were married,

that made it privileged. Couldn't be used in court. The prosecution would have to make do with just part of Jennifer's story. The judge would not allow her face to be filmed in court, as she told the jury about her visit from Michael just days before Mark Stover disappeared, when he talked about a job he was supposed to do. And then there was her meeting with him on the 28th of October,

not long after that trespassing incident when a police officer pulled him over. Jennifer said he looked a little frumpy. And what was that on his jeans? There was a rusty, reddish stain on his right knee. To me, it looked like blood. I just said, it looks like you have a dirty knee there. And he took his finger and he touched it.

And he said, yeah. But most startling in Jennifer's testimony, all those things she claimed he said, that he was doing a job and something went wrong, that he wanted to sterilize his car, and his fears about what would happen if the cops questioned him. Something that was not planned. He said, if there's a trial, it's not going to be good. All very methodically, the prosecution appeared to have cornered Michael Oakes, seemed to have met a certain burden of proof, and no one had a clue what Oakes or his attorney would do or say to respond.

Oh, but John Henry Brown knew exactly how he'd respond, and it was a bombshell he had in store. We wanted to be the people who brought light into this case. He wanted to provide a little twist, a turn, a surprise. Yeah. A very different portrait of the victim emerges. Mark Stover was a domestic violence terrorist. And then the defendant tells his

story to Dateline, even before he does in court. Good morning. Be seated, ladies and gentlemen. The defense team is reserving their opening statement. Experienced observers here in the Mount Vernon courthouse were puzzled. What was lead defense attorney John Henry Brown up to? As the prosecution put on its case against Michael Oakes, rolled out chapter and verse of the evidence pointing to Oakes as the murderer of dog whisperer Mark Stover, Brown said practically nothing. Why?

Strategy, said John Henry Brown. We put them through the task of putting on a lot of evidence, and it was just kind of boring them, and so we wanted to be the people who brought light into this case. So what was the light in this case? The secret twist. The evidence shows and demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt for any reasonable person that Mark Stover was a domestic violence terrorist. Terrorist?

The villain was not his client, Michael Oakes, said Brown, but the victim, Mark Stover. Remember, Mark's friends and clients had nothing but good things to say about him. But now it was clear Oakes' attorneys would use whatever evidence they could to paint the dog trainer as a threatening, gun-loving predator, someone Michael Oakes would have feared. And here the real work of the defense began. They focused to a large degree on Stover's behavior with his ex-wife. Linda Opdyke, said Brown, was stalked and harassed for years after leaving Stover. It wasn't just the incident in which her ex-husband was caught rummaging through her garbage.

He made a habit of showing up at her house uninvited, said Brown, exposing himself, appearing in her bathroom as she got out of the shower, pointing a rifle at her through a window, leaving handwritten notes, threatening voicemails. The fact that he goes into Linda's house with a.45 and puts it on a pillow and threatens to kill himself or her, the fact that he breaks into her house,

the fact that he steals her journal, the fact that he steals her garbage, the fact, you know, all those things are facts. And so, when it came time for the defense to finally make its case, Brown's co-counsel Corbin Vollis did his best to drive the allegations home. When Linda said she wanted to be separated from Mark in 2005, he did not take it well. What followed, claimed the defense, were many examples of bad behavior. Mark following her into a beauty salon.

Mark Stover walks in unannounced. He gives a card to Linda saying he will never let her go. Mark showing up at her place uninvited. He grabs her by her shoulders and says he can't let her go. Apparently spying on her when Linda slept with

Mark's ex-best friend. The next morning, Linda gets a phone call from Mark Stover. And then to Linda's horror, Mark Stover begins to describe in graphic detail the intimacy that Linda

had been sharing the night before. And sitting in his car outside her home. She's calling him on the cell phone. He's following her. She's pleading with him to stop it and quit following her. That time, said the defense, Linda called the cops. And he responded, according to her, by sending her a form canceling her health insurance,

which was still in his name. Controlling, threatening, suggested Oak's lawyer. Mark Stover has scrawled across the front. Next time, do not call the cops on the guy that controls your health care. And then the defense attorney showed the jury a video from Linda's surveillance cameras in the middle of the night. A man the defense claimed was Mark Stover creeping around Linda's house. What you see is Mark Stover walking up the driveway and under her house out of view of the camera. But that wasn't all. There was a series of odd and threatening voicemail messages,

said the defense, many with a similar theme. Mark seemed strangely obsessed with getting his wedding photos back from Linda. Just one of many transcripts of these calls the attorney read from. Send those dang pictures of the wedding. I know you're into the wedding. You don't give a damn about me. I don't want anything showing that we were married or anything else. The defense told the jury that Linda's attorney told Mark to stop contacting her directly, only go through his office. But of course, he keeps contacting her and contacting her and contacting her because Mark Stover is dogged in the pursuit of his prey. Prey? An interesting word, very deliberately picked by the defense. Because now they would argue that Michael Oakes also became prey for Mark Stover,

would claim that a terrified Oakes believed something unspeakable would happen if he didn't try to appease Linda's ex. I mean, the fact of the matter is, you talk about domestic violence terrorists, Something unspeakable would happen if he didn't try to appease Linda's ex. I mean, the fact of the matter is, you talk about domestic violence, terrorists. The person who's dead here is Mark Stover. Yeah. He's the one against whom the violence was committed. Here's something that we've learned in this country, haven't we?

You don't negotiate with terrorists. Michael didn't know that. Michael felt he could negotiate with terrorists. Linda felt she could negotiate with terrorists. The reality is you can't negotiate with a terrorist. And Mark Stover was a domestic violence terrorist. Mark's friends and clients had by now gathered around the courthouse here in Mount Vernon, determined to tell the world, anybody who would listen, that those claims were both unfair and untrue. Most of all these reports that we hear are filed by her alone and by her eyewitness alone and absolutely no one else's. So you've got to weigh that in at some point, too, that it doesn't have that much meat to it. I just knew that wasn't true

about him. There was nothing in him that was malicious or vindictive. And perhaps to answer them, a surprising and extremely unusual strategy. In mid-trial, John Henry Brown brought his client to see us here on the outskirts of Little Mount Vernon. Michael Oakes, before even talking to the jury, would make his case here. Preparation for his own testimony? Yes, probably. But also a wild bombshell

of a story. An audacious claim. I went and I got shot. And I won. It was early evening, thermometer dropping in the gathering dark, when Michael Oakes came to talk to us. Partway through his trial for murder, he came with a message about himself, which he delivered, more or less in the following manner, over and over again.

I'm a single dad. I cook three meals a day for my kids. I bring them to dance. I bring them to school. This has been my life. And in case we didn't get it. The lens I look at the world through is really that of a single dad. I'm a nurturer. I'm a father. I'm a very peaceable person.

I just happen to be a single dad who's kind of in a very unfortunate limelight right now. Well, yes. Charged with first-degree murder. So how did he get to this place? The story began, he said, when someone asked him to contact a frightened woman he did not know. That's how he made that first call to Linda Opdyke.

And she said, I'm dealing with a really frightening stalking situation. Michael, remember, was a security expert. He'd trained SWAT teams in close quarters combat. He offered to help. She put in my hands this very thick file, including video recordings, audio recordings, police reports, page after page, threatening voicemails. Linda told him she'd been stalked for years by her ex-husband. You get out of the shower and there he is standing in the bathroom with a gun in his hand and you thought your house

was locked. How many of those occasions does it take before you go, any room I'm in, any moment, I have to be ready. And that's the scenario that Linda lived in for at least two years. And then, as he worked out a protection plan for Linda, he said, something unexpected happened. We really resonated, really worked well together and connected on a very heart and soul level. So it was a romance. It was, yeah, it definitely, it definitely became a romance. And so Michael, the diminutive single dad

and security expert, and Linda, the beautiful, tall, golden-haired daughter of privilege, embarked on a life together, along with his kids. And then one day

in late May 2009, said Oakes, he was getting into his car in a Costco parking lot in a town called Kennewick, Washington, when he was confronted by Linda's ex, Mark Stover. I was approached by Mark Stover out of the clear blue. I had never met the gentleman prior to that,

never spoken to him before. He did not introduce himself. And he... Take your time. I got up every morning, you know, and took my kids to school. Right. I had my son in grade school.

And my daughter in middle school. There was a long pause while Oaks composed himself. Sorry. He said he needed me to do something. And he told me what my daughters were wearing that morning to school. And they had to have been there when my girls got out of the car at their schools, two schools. And he said that there was in a very tight relationship with the cops and if I, if as soon as I called, he would know.

And he said I was going to do what he wanted. Which was what? He told me I had to get wedding photos, believe it or not. Wedding albums. Photos. And I had to get them to him or else. What did you say? You know, I was, my head was spinning.

I was so much in shock, I didn't say much. I listened to him. I think I nodded several times. I don't remember saying anything. But Michael Oakes, the security, weapons, and hand-to-hand combat expert, the trainer of police SWAT teams, did feel something, he said. For six months of 2009, I lived in a perpetual state of fear. Too afraid, even, to call the police. I didn't have video proof. I didn't have audio proof. I didn't even have a

witness. And so, according to Michael, he tried to appease Mark Stover and looked for the wedding photos. I've just found the romantic relationship that I had been seeking my whole life, just putting it together. And in the middle of this, I'm supposed to say, hey, I'd really love to look at your wedding pictures with your ex, who's stalking you and driving you crazy. Where would you happen to have those? I'd really like to look at those. So... Wait a minute.

You didn't tell her that he'd confronted you and asked for these wedding pictures? Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. Instead, he says, he armed his own daughter, trained her, if anyone comes into the house, keep firing until they stop. My very first responsibility,

over and above anything or anyone, anyone, is the safety of my children. And then he claimed he agreed to Mark Stover's demand to meet, supposedly to talk about wedding pictures at Mark's house October 28th.

Went there armed with deadly force and wearing a bulletproof vest and did it, he claimed, only to protect his children from an out-of-control madman. Really? Any rational person would know you don't protect your children by taking a gun to somebody's house to meet with them when you think that maybe there'll be gunplay. You don't do that if you're a dad. No. Dads don't do that. No, Keith, you know what would happen if it was you,

and you were in this situation, based upon that comment, you would be standing right now on the edge of two graves, and you'd be looking at it, and all your friends would tell you, it's okay Keith, there's nothing you could have done. Well that, because there was something I could do, and I had to play patty cake with this guy for six damn months to keep my kids alive. And then you went and shot him.

I went and I got shot. And I won. Oh. So because I won the gunfight, I know that I will not be standing on the side of my children's graves. And people aren't going to be patting me on the back and saying, there's nothing you could have done. I did. Oaks claimed Mark Stover shot first.

Thus the claim he now made. It was self-defense. Even though no evidence ever surfaced to suggest Stover was in possession of any firearm at all, or that Stover had ever arranged any meeting with Oakes. And as for the story that he was a hired gun for the Opdikes, just not true, said Michael Oakes. A great many people believe that one or both of the Opdikes are involved. Were they involved?

Not at all. But of course it was all Michael's story. About a crazed dog whisperer, threats to his children, all that fear. I mean, who else says that besides you? And what evidence is there that he ever said such a thing? Said such a thing as? That he was, you know, threatening your kids. Well, Keith, it's been the problem.

I survived that day in October. I was still alive. My life continued on. And we have yet to see if the state is going to finish the job for him or not. And I understand I'm in a bit of a fix. You solemnly swear a firm testimony about to give him this matter to be the truth,

the whole truth, and I do. So now he'd tell his story to the jury. Would they believe it? The story comes complete with dramatic reenactment. My name is Michael Oakes. The task, as Michael Oakes took the witness stand, was not going to be easy, and he seemed to know it. He had to admit he did in fact kill dog whisperer Mark Stover, but somehow persuade the jury it was only in self-defense. You've heard what he told us, his allegations that Stover confronted him,

threatened his children. He told the jury about what he claimed was Stover's weird determination to get those wedding photos. Oaks' version of the deadly events? After a series of meetings with Stover about those photos, he demanded Oaks come to his house October 28th,

and he obeyed. Drove in the middle of the night across the state to Stover's house. He admitted buying all those supplies at the local Walmart early that morning on his way. I was very, very concerned about possibly needing to make some sort of on-foot escape through the woods from him and his dogs. He bought the anchor line and weights, he claimed, to help him scale up a nearby water tower, in case he found himself running away from Mark's watchdog. And those shin guards? They weren't

armor to fend off a watchdog, he claimed, but just a gift for his ex-wife, Jennifer's young son. At 7 a.m., Michael testified, he knocked on Mark Stover's door. He said Mark ordered him, stand in his hallway bathroom. And Oaks simply obeyed. And then when he told Mark he couldn't find any wedding pictures. He got more and more animated and got very close to me and was very angry and very loud. And then... He came around the corner with a gun in his hand. We tangled and I got shot. John Henry Brown had his client put on the

bulletproof vest and show the jury what he claimed happened next. Courtrooms show and tell. He's Mr. Stover. He's holding the gun out. He's fired at you. What do you do? That was amazingly fast, Mr. Oaks. Is that the way you did that? That's how I was trained.

Mr. Stover was shot with his own gun. Yes, he was. So now Mark Stover was dead in the hallway of his home. And soon after, said Oaks, he went outside and was confronted by Mark's dog, Ding. I shot a couple times until it stopped coming at me. Why didn't he call the police? He had said he owned the cops, and it seemed like there was some evidence that that might be true. I just didn't think they would believe me at all.

Then Michael said he wanted to see his kids before, as he said he assumed, he'd be arrested. Then he said he tucked Mark's gun into his vest pocket, carried the body out to Mark's station wagon, got in the driver's seat, put Mark's hat on his head, and went down the driveway. I drove around for a while and just stopped a couple places and sat there thinking about how the heck can I get to my kids. He said he thought maybe he'd leave Mark's car and the body behind that Grange Hall, but there was that locked chain, so he went and bought the bolt cutter, returned to the Grange, and those ladies saw him transferring Mark's body to his own car and called the cops. And when that police officer pulled you over, was Mr. Stover in the back of your Suzuki?

He was. He went to visit ex-wife Jennifer, he said, because he wanted to see her two sons. Though he never did. Nor did he drive to see his own children, who he said were in Battleground, Washington, a four-hour drive away. I realized that I couldn't drive to Battleground with Mr. Sober in the back of my rig. So instead, he said he ditched Mark's car at that casino, looked around for a place to dump his body. There's kind of a dilapidated-looking dock thing, and I got my car as close to that as possible

and muscled him out and dropped him in the water. An area investigators had searched but never found anything. Then, he said, he drove across the state, not to his kids, but to Linda's house. Though he insisted he did not tell her any of what had just happened. Didn't tell her what he'd done. I just said I had a really bad day. And when the police showed up the next night, he admitted, he did try to throw out some evidence.

What was your intent? I needed one more day. I was trying not to get arrested just yet. But of course, he was arrested and charged. And now, it was Prosecutor Rich Weirich's turn to challenge his story. About, for example, that morning at Mark Stover's house. Did you hear the gun go off? You know, I don't recall anything really. Who pulled the trigger? I believe I did. Okay. Was his finger still on the trigger? Uh, you know, I do not know. Where were you when you pulled the trigger?

I don't know. Where was the bullet hole? I don't know. You weren't curious enough to look? I was very disturbed. And despite all those people who testified they were knocked back by the overwhelming smell of bleach... I don't recall smelling any bleach. Did you use any bleach? I did not. Did you attempt to clean up anything? No.

...didn't try to erase evidence he claimed. And as for those odd supplies he bought at the Walmart? So why did you need camouflage? If I was going to make my escape through the woods to the water tower, camouflage is quite useful for that. You would have the camouflage in your backpack that you would quickly change into as you ran through the woods? No, I would change into quickly and then run through the woods.

But would this is assuming that Mr. Stover is taking the time not to chase you? I'm very fast. And finally, the prosecutor asked, if you was so afraid of Mark Stover, why not tell someone? Why go over to his house? You never took one step to enlist anyone's aid. That is correct. And you walked into Mr. Stover's house on October 28th. I did.

And he tried to kill you. That is correct. And you did nothing beforehand to try to avoid that. I think I did a lot to try to avoid it. What the jury made of the story, no one knew. But wait, the defense wasn't quite done. There was one more person, very important to all of this, who until mid-trial had refused to say one word in public.

The woman at the center of it all, Linda Opdyke, Ms. Opdyke, you'd raise your right hand. whose long silence was about to end. And it would, with a bang, with stories of who she said was the real Mark Stover. And he had a pistol in his hand and laid it on the murder of Mark Stover, his ex-wife Linda Opdyke had maintained absolute public silence. In the face of questions from police and prosecutors,

she invoked her Fifth Amendment right. So this, at the end of Michael Oakes' murder trial, was quite a surprise. Linda Opdyke, defense witness. I felt this was an important part of the story that I could tell about a dangerous stalking situation, and if there's any information that I could offer up, I wanted to do so. And as she began, it was clear she was here to join the defense's campaign against victim Mark Stover's character. Would you agree that Mark Stover was dogged in pursuit of his prey?

Yes, I would. The defense claimed Michael Oakes knew Linda Opdike had been stalked by her ex-husband, and that went to his state of mind when he acted in self-defense. So now Linda told the jury some stories she'd earlier told Oakes. Her claim, for example, that Mark appeared in her bedroom one night. And he had a pistol in his hand and laid it on the pillow next to my head and was very disturbed. And another time, she said, when she looked out her bathroom window.

I see Mark on a hillside behind my house. He's looking through the scope, pointing the rifle at me. And once, said Linda, long after she left him, after Mark agreed to plead guilty to the stalking charge, she visited their abandoned paradise, Kickett Island, to retrieve some personal things. And she said she found in a cubbyhole in the master bedroom, a wedding candle that she'd thrown away during the divorce. I found the wedding candle in there with a 22-bullet casing and a picture of me along with that in the cubbyhole. Was it a message? A threat?

In her cross-examination, it was pretty clear that Prosecutor Rosemary Caholakula was deeply skeptical about Linda's fears and allegations. No proof at all for Michael's claims. And Linda hadn't seen or heard a word from Stover in the year and a half before he was killed. So what was she and Oaks so frightened about? The last time that you ever saw Mr. Stover or heard from Mr. Stover was at the protection order hearing in April of 08, correct? That is correct. But she certainly saw a lot of Michael Oaks.

You continue to have romantic feelings, intimate feelings toward Mr. Oakes and vice versa. Yes. And in fact, I think that you said that in our interview last week, is that you loved him, correct? I don't recall if I said that or not, but I do, yes. And hadn't her new lover done her a favor? Asked the prosecutor by getting rid of the ex-husband she accused of causing her so much trouble. The fact is that in this case, you don't have to worry about Mr. Stover now, do you? It appears to be that case. And in that sense, the defendant helped you out, correct? No. Prosecutor Kahulakula also asked Opdike about her refusal to answer certain questions in the case.

Now, it's correct, isn't it, that throughout the investigation of this case, you've been concerned about your own potential legal liability in this case? Yes. And you refused to speak with my office, correct? Under legal counsel, yes. And this testimony now in court suggested the prosecutor sounded like a woman with an obvious and selfish motive to support Michael Oaks' claim of self-defense.

Isn't it true that if this is a case of self-defense, it gets you off the hook, too? What do you mean by that? You indicated you were concerned about your own potential liability in this case. If a jury were to find that this was self-defense, you wouldn't have any more liability either, would you? I have no liability in this case. Nothing further. And the witness left the stand.

Dateline wanted to talk to Linda Opdyke, but she did not respond to our interview request. And as for her father, Wally Opdyke, his lawyer emailed this statement. Wallace Opdyke had absolutely no involvement or prior knowledge of Michael Oak's murder of Mark Stover. Rumors and innuendo to the contrary are baseless and unfair of Mark Stover. Rumors and innuendo to the contrary are baseless and

unfair. Mark Stover was a domestic violence terrorist. John Henry Brown closed with a powerful recitation of his theme, that Mark Stover was the bad guy.

But even so, he said, Oaks didn't want or plan to kill him. You don't premeditate up just to the point of shooting somebody. You premeditate the entire scenario. And what happened after this tragic event is absurd. He has absolutely no plan. None. And if there's no plan afterwards, I think it leads you to the conclusion that there was no plan beforehand.

Really? Here was the prosecutor's closing. I will say this. The more charitable view of motive would be that Ms. Opdyke and Mr. Oaks, perhaps they really did fear for their safety for some reason, but the evidence doesn't support it. Now, the less charitable view is that the defendant set out on a path of a cold, calculated execution. Was it because there were some feelings of revenge after this incredibly contentious divorce? Was it to prove himself to Ms. Opdyke for some reason? And the fact is, we'll never know. Because the defendant has taken all steps necessary

to obscure the truth. And the deceit needs to stop now. Thank you. Up to the jury then. And as the hours became a day, and then two, and then three, it seemed perhaps they were having trouble making up their minds. Mark Stover's loyal friends and clients kept vigil, hoping for conviction,

eager to tell whoever would listen that Mark was never the abusive villain the defense contended. Michael Oakes, his children and extended family, were joined by Linda Opdyke. They waited in a rented waterfront house. And of course, neither they nor anyone knew what drama was coming with the reading of the verdict. I understand the jury has reached a verdict. Yes, we have, Your Honor. Emotions boil over. Here it was.

Nearly one year after Mark Stover disappeared, the moment had come. The verdict. The courtroom was packed. On one side, Mark's supporters, on the other, Michael Oakes. His children, his grandchild, and his love, Linda Opdyke. All waiting to hear Oakes' fate. We, the jury, find the defendant, Michael Glenn Oakes, guilty. Guilty? Not self-defense. Murder.

The Oakes children, the ones Michael claimed he'd been trying to protect when he killed Mark Stover, cried, screamed, fell apart. As they watched their father taken away in handcuffs. Arise, please. And then the next month, in a more ordered courtroom, the convicted killer stood before the judge to be sentenced. Though first, Michael Oakes had a thing or two to say. I wish to express the sincere and heartfelt remorse that I carry due to my actions, and

I apologize to all that I've harmed through my poor judgment. First, I would like to apologize to the members of Mr. Stover's family and all those friends and clients who clearly cared so much for him. I also wish to apologize to the members of my own family who've cared for me all of my life and who have now sacrificed everything for my legal representation and to enable my bail pending trial. But Oaks did not withdraw his claim of self-defense. He stuck to his story. And the judge just didn't buy it. And I believe we're still a long ways from the truth as to what actually happened on October 28, 2009.

Truth, as the judge told the court, seems elusive still in the stories of Michael Oaks. Large parts of your story, I just flat do not believe and never will. If it was self-defense, why not provide the gun and the body that matches the story and matches the bullet in the vest? Because with those simple things, law enforcement would have done an investigation and that probably would have done an investigation, and that probably would have been the end of the story.

So why did Oaks shoot and kill his lover's ex-husband? The judge floated his own theory. How does the knight win the hand of the princess? He goes out, and he slays the dragon that's chasing the princess. And I think at a starting point here, Mr. Oaks believed he could free Miss Updike from whatever was in her past, whatever dragons were chasing her, and by so freeing her, perhaps win her hand.

The judge gave Michael Oaks the maximum, 26 1⁄2 years in prison. Now imagine how things might be different had those two women, the biddies, Oakes called them, not happened by the Grange that morning in October. I guess we were going to be in the main, you know, characters in the whole drama, I guess. Two ladies who thought Oakes was where he shouldn't be and looked suspicious. They did what anyone would have done, they said, when they called police.

Though now that they've been thinking about it some... To be honest, I look at it this way. God put us where he wanted us. We saw what he wanted us to see. He protected us from what could have happened. But of course, a lot did happen. Dreadful things. Paradise lost, life taken,

reputation besmirched by a murderer intent on blaming his victim. He was, said his friends, smart, funny, generous, unfailingly loyal, ever reliable. He could tame wild beasts with his whisper. Not so easy to bring a human heart to heel.