Dateline NBC - The Mystery at Lost Dog Road

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

When a well-liked young man loses his wife and son on a family outing, an entire town mourns. But there is someone who suspects the tragedy was no accident. Keith Morrison reports in this Dateline classic. Originally aired on NBC on October 30, 2009.

From every direction you can see them, jagged cliffs rising up out of the desert landscape. The wind has carved their names. Kissing Rock, Castle Rock, Giant's Thumb, Tall, Rugged, and sometimes in the light of a late afternoon sun, Ominous. They the majestic backdrop to the scrabbling little mining town laid out at their base, Green River, Wyoming. Green River is small.

Kind of a one-horse town? Yeah, people refer to it like that. Pretty simple life. Simple? Well, in some ways, perhaps. But the story Roger Brauberger is about to tell is not the least bit simple. Tears the man apart, wondering how even he can absorb what happened

on and under the cliffs of Green River, Wyoming. Before all that, it was just fine to grow up there. Roger Brauberger and his pal Bob Duke. Funny how kids can be so different and get so close just the same. They hung out at a mutual friend's house, a cop's kid named Mecham, whose dad watched Roger fall into bad behavior. Well, Bob stayed squeaky clean. He was always a pretty straight kid.

He knew where he wanted to go. Bob's parents were school teachers, and he was ambitious and focused and talked endlessly about going off to college after high school graduation. But Roger? Oh, yes, Roger. I quit school my junior year,

and everyone said, oh, you're not going to go back, you're not going to go back, and I don't like people telling me I'm not going to do something, so I went back. But he seemed to take trouble with him, drinking, public brawling, marijuana, LSD, eventually cocaine. It makes you feel 10 foot tall and bulletproof. Usually someone showed me I wasn't 10 foot tall and bulletproof. Got a few bruises along the way. Yeah. Weren't a few. The good kid and the troubled one spent weekends together off-roading in Bob's Jeep, chasing girls, watching murder-for-hire movies. We were watching a movie about hitmen. We were easy money involved in just a few seconds worth of work.

Hitmen? Yeah. But that's killing somebody. So what, was it a joke? You know, it's shooting the breeze. It's, oh, wow, you know, $50,000 for pulling the trigger. They imagined becoming hitmen themselves. Just a joke, of course.

But then, quite suddenly, life got serious for Bob. His girlfriend got pregnant. He didn't know what to do. She wanted to keep it. Her name was Leanna Davidson, a high school junior, only 17. Long brown hair, really pretty. She wasn't really showy.

She was shy. She was shy. Yes, but she was intelligent, a straight-A student. She was going somewhere just like Bob. But now, there were issues. Her parents were Mormon, LDS, and his parents were schoolteachers, and there was pressure from both sides, you know, to do the right thing.

Liana, according to her sister, was scared, didn't know how to tell her parents. Bob, however, talked to Roger. I think part of him wanted to do the responsible thing. The responsible thing for him was to marry her and support her. And so their high school graduation was an event with a double significance. We graduated at 10, May 25, 1991, and he was married at two that same day. Happy day? We just graduated. What could be happier than that?

Liana, now carrying their child, had apparently adjusted to the new circumstances rather well. Was she a radiant bride? Oh yeah, that was probably the happiest day of her life. She was a doting wife from the beginning, says Roger, filled up the house with crafty things, needlepoint, stenciling. She was all about Bob. He told me one time, he goes, man, I've got it perfect. My wife loves me, I come home, dinner's ready, house is clean. And it wasn't long before Leanna and Bob were joined by baby Eric. Eric was as cute as a bug.

The kid was a spitting image of Bob, just a gentle kid. Who seemed to love his daddy. Neighbor Karen Yolk remembers how young Eric looked up to his dad. Bob had a trick bike, and there was a lot of kids in the complex, and he would go out in the parking lot and do tricks for the kids, and his son Eric would love to watch his dad. Bob had given up on college. He had a family to support, but he was smart, people liked him, and he soon built a solid business as one of Green River's premier carpet installers. He always had money. He had a nice car, nice Jeep, nice home.

You know, he took pretty good care of his family financially. Roger, meanwhile, spiraled into drug addiction and all of its attendant failures and disappointments and remorse. I did envy the fact that he had, that he was successful. Looked like he had no worries, you know. But the friendship survived. Bob and Roger, and now little Eric. By the time Eric turned five, Liana was pushing for another baby. But Bob? I think that he'd given up on it long before that and fell trapped. Still, no one could have prepared Bob or Roger for what happened then, August 1996. It was a blustery summer day, as Bob recounted later.

He piled Liana and little Eric into his Jeep for a family outing and they meandered up to a high rock ridge overlooking Flaming Gorge Reservoir. The rock surface of shale. Little Eric was playing near the edge, throwing rocks off, chasing lizards. Liana hovering by his side. Bob said he went over to the Jeep to get a soda.

He heard Liana scream his name. He turned around. They were gone. Roger's mother called him with the news. She told me something terrible has happened, and I said, what's happened? She goes, Bob's wife and kid have fallen off a cliff and died. By then, a Sheriff's Department lieutenant named Kevin Alvestepher had arrived at the top of the cliff, had talked to Bob, and felt quite deeply puzzled.

I couldn't tell you that was an accident, and I certainly couldn't tell you it was a homicide. It's just that it would be a good way to commit a homicide and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it. Idle speculation, really. But as we say, this is Roger Brauberger's story, and he felt at that moment somehow guilty and terrified. I was advised by dispatch that a male subject had called up stating that his wife and child had fallen off of a cliff. They call it Lost Dog Road, a dusty trail that winds up through the open desert up to the head of the cliff.

The road Lieutenant Kevin Alvestoffer sped up in response to the 911 call. I didn't realize there was a cliff in that area of such magnitude. I thought that the wife and child had fallen off perhaps a 15 or 20 foot cliff or were injured. But no, it was a towering ridge, and Liana and Eric had plunged all the way down 200 feet to the rocks below. At the top, Alvestefer encountered the young husband and father of the victims, 23-year-old Bob Duke. He told me that they were out on the cliff, his wife and his child. He heard his wife call his name. He had went back to his Jeep to get a soda.

And when he turned around to look, they were both gone. What was his demeanor? He was quiet, very reserved, didn't say anything. Did he look like he was in shock? No. Albus Deffer worked his way gingerly across the ragged, loose shale, braced himself against the wind, and approached the precipice. When I got to the edge of the cliff face and looked down, you could see the two bodies.

You don't want anybody around you when you're standing that close to that edge. On three sides of it, it's a sheer cliff, and it's, I mean, certain death. Bob Duke told Alva Steffer he hadn't been able to get down there to see if his wife and child were alive or dead. The terrain was too steep, he said. Odd, thought the lieutenant. The first responders had made it down quite easily. Force of habit, the cop watched Bob as the lifeless bodies of his wife and child were hoisted up the cliff. Did he go over and try to hold them? No. Why, the lieutenant wondered, had Bob Duke parked his jeep on this particular cliff, such a dangerous place? Said they went out for a drive and had stopped at several locations before coming

to this one. I'd asked him if he'd been in that location before and he told me no. But even if he'd never been there before, couldn't he see the risk? To think that anybody would let their five-year-old son run around on this cliff, it was beyond comprehension.

Still, they were so young. And if they were foolish enough to let their child play on the clifftop, surely it was reasonable she would have reached out to save him and then slipped off herself. Nothing else in the autopsy would support anything else other than death by falling. And so, before long, the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Department ruled the fall a tragic accident.

A family outing gone wrong. Still, the lieutenant brooded. I thought he got away with it. And that remained your thought? Yes. And that's a look at some sports notes for you here on KUGR. Local broadcaster Steve Kaur included the story in his newscast. I reported it as an accident.

That's what I was told by authorities, that Leanna and Eric had gotten too close to the cliff. And I had talked to some of the authorities, and some of the authorities had indicated that they thought it was kind of suspicious, but, you know, at this juncture in the game, it was an accident. Which brings us back to Bob's friend, Roger Brauberger, who heard the same news everybody did. I was tore up, too, because I knew Leanne and Eric.

I really, truly hurt for the wife and kid. There was something else, too, that only he and Bob knew. So right away, he arranged to see his grieving friend. And I went through about a box and a half of tissues before he showed up. It was two and a half hours later. And, you know, he'd been planning the funeral already. And he says, I need to talk to you outside. They stepped outside.

So he says, I need to know that you believe I didn't do this. It was, I need to know whether or not I need to cover my ass on this. I told him, no, there's no way you could possibly have done that. Now, why would Bob have said a thing like that? Roger began to get a sickening feeling. He found himself brooding over memories of Bob and the lack of warmth he showed toward his son. And I remember one time we come back and the son ran up to him and he, you know, kind of, they had to take care of your son like he didn't have time for him. Pushed him away. Just kind of stiff-armed him. Did he behave toward his wife that way also? I never seen him really lovey-dovey. Liana and Eric Duke were buried side by side on a hill

overlooking the town. Bob took great care in choosing the headstones. Roger was a pallbearer and he carried Eric's small coffin with a heavy heart and a worried mind. It was brutal. It was emotionally brutal. Reporter Steve Kaur also attended the funeral in support of his old acquaintance, Bob Duke. I'd known him for a couple of years. I felt bad. I was saddened by this whole thing. And I just felt the need to support him in the loss of his wife and child. I just really deep down felt it was an accident. But even as grief swept through the small desert town, support for Bob was accompanied by whispered questions.

Why had he taken his little family up to that remote, forbidding place? Why did he let Eric play up there on the lip of a deadly cliff? She was an overprotective mother. Okay? He was afraid of bugs. The kid was timid. Anyone that knew Leanna knew she wouldn't let her kid play on a cliff. They knew it was just a little too weird, and they couldn't put their finger on it.

But Roger could. Roger had a reason to be very suspicious indeed. The same reason must have been for Bob's urgent request during that strange post-accident conversation. I need to know that you believe I didn't do this. But could Roger go to the police with the wild story of what happened a month before the accident? After all, who would believe such a tale from a known drug addict like him?

Well, see, I think I'm the last person that would have went to the police. Not only was I doing drugs, I was selling drugs. Besides, your reputation as a believable person is mud. Exactly. Well, how believable is that going to be coming for me. A lot of the town was mourning, you know, the death of two beautiful people that died on a tragic cliff. Everyone in Green River, Wyoming, seemed to take it hard, the death of Leanna Duke and her little boy, Eric. So young, and the way they were killed

falling from that cliff, awful. You know, small news is big news in a town like that. There was a brief investigation, and then the ruling. It was an accident. And all over town, people offered their sympathy to the young husband and father, Bob Duke, just 23 years old and already a widower.

Everybody, poor, poor Bob, you know, poor Bob. Lost his wife, lost his child. Montmecum was that cop who watched Bob and Roger grow up, a narcotics detective with the Green River Police Department. I was like, I'm just not buying this. This stinks. Too many red flags there. Way too many for me, okay?

The case was out of his jurisdiction, though. Not much he could do, except plead with the sheriff's department to take another look at the case. And they said, no, we've closed the case. I said, man, that's sad. Thing is, if we said it's a small town. Bob, with Roger and the cop's old son, once spent long, happy hours in Mecham's rec room. So, of course, Mecham

knew Bob's parents, too, Larry and Roberta Duke, respected school teachers with impeccable reputations, which, thought Mecham, might have been part of the problem. There, the fact that mom and dad, because of who they were, you know, a little bit of politics was in play also. Maybe this is a family you have to be a little careful about. You have to, you know, you just don't jump up and say your son's involved in a double homicide. In a small town, when you start taking off the schoolteacher's kids, you know, the bishop's kids and stuff,

the small town comes into play, you know, the bishop's kids and stuff, the small town comes into play, you know, and that politics shows up. It's just, you don't go over and mess up this kid's life. The one person Mecham did not talk to just then, though, was Roger Brauberger, the well-known local druggie. Too bad, because Roger was sitting on a dreadful secret, which put things in a very different light indeed. It was July, a month before the accident. Bob approached his friend Roger with a rather odd request. He goes, well, you know, we talked about, you know, the easy money for making the hit. And I'm like, yeah. He goes, well, I was wondering, you know, would you like to kill my wife and kid for money? Kill his wife and kid for money?

I thought, well, he's just blowing off steam. Until a few weeks later when Bob laid out a detailed plan. He says, have you given any thought to that? I said, yeah. He goes, well, how about $20,000? You know, I'll be barbecuing this Wednesday or whatever, and, you know, I'll leave a.22 out behind the shed, and you can shoot me in the arm, shoot my wife and kid in the head and chest,

and then take out as many neighbor kids as you need to to make it not look so obvious. And I was like, you know, this is crazy, dude. Did he have a straight face when he was standing in the street? Oh, yeah. Straight as the day is long. Why would he pick you, of all people? He knew that I was into drugs, and he knew that I was probably the last person

that would go to the police. Roger wondered, what had happened to that family? They seemed so happy. And I asked him one time, why didn't he just divorce her? And he told me his parents would hate him. Weeks later, Liana and Eric were dead. He'd figured out a way to do it himself and make it look like an accident.

You really thought he did it at that point? I knew he did it at that point. Roger knew he had a moral obligation to speak up to say something, but it was his word against Bob's. He was a good guy. He was a pillar of community, you know. I mean, the guy taught taekwondo to children, for Christ's sakes. My parents absolutely loved him. You know, when I told my dad about this at first, Bob offered me money to kill his wife and kid before he did it. My dad didn't believe me. I didn't listen to everything Roger told me because I didn't want to hear him.

Because I thought, there's no way that Bob would kill his wife and son, his own son. And if his own dad wasn't buying it, the police surely wouldn't, especially given Roger's reputation as a drug user and peddler. Yeah, I wasn't a very upstanding community citizen. You know, I wasn't the Boy Scout. Once more, Roger didn't have any real proof that Bob had killed his wife and child. I had nothing. And it would have looked like I was attacking someone who went through a personal tragedy. And I had to bow my head and keep my mouth shut. And I had to and it would look like I was attacking someone who went through a personal tragedy and I had to bow my head and keep my mouth shut and I had to live with that. I'd be a pallbearer for his son knowing that he killed him.

And that tore me up. That ate the hell out of me for a long time. What was it like standing there with a coffin on your shoulder? It was brutal. It was emotionally brutal. What if I had said something, you know? They wouldn't be being buried. So it was tough. God, and there you are carrying the casket.

And now it was too late. Liana and Eric were dead. Bob collected the insurance, $60,000, and Roger kept his mouth shut. I was afraid of him. I was appalled. I him-handed myself for not having said something. I wanted, I never wanted to hear from him again.

Weeks turned into months, months into a year, then two. Bob moved away. And Roger tried to forget. By then I really wanted to believe that maybe it had been an accident. Maybe I was trying to talk myself into it. Maybe it could have been an accident, maybe. But not after that night when he picked up his phone, and it was Bob.

And then, as Roger discovered, he had a very big problem indeed. Yeah, it all came back. It came back with a vengeance. Two years had passed since Liana Duke and her little boy, Eric, fell off the cliff at the end of Lost Oak Road. And by now, Roger Brouwberger had suppressed his suspicion that what happened that warm summer day was anything but an accident. I didn't want to associate the Bob Duke that I knew with the Bob Duke that wanted his wife and kid killed, so I tried to separate it, you know, in the back of my mind. Anyway, Roger the drug addict was busy hitting bottom. I was stuck, man. I was a slave to that.

I was using it inervaneously. I'd do anything for my next fix. And then one January night, Roger answered the phone. And it was Bob, calling from Houston, where he'd gone to live with his older brother. He called me and wanted to know if I could get him automatic weapons. He was working security high-rise, and there were people that wanted certain people dead,

and he could make money at this. What was it like to hear that voice again for the first time? It was like the nightmare all over again. Bob knew that Roger's drug-dealing friends had connections. He knew if anybody could help him, Roger could. Why didn't you just say, no, I'm not going to do that? I don't know why. Maybe because I'm a coward in that way.

So Roger played along for a while, until Bob called a few weeks later with an even more bizarre request. He said, look, I've done family before. I didn't enjoy it. You know, I would like you to kill my parents. I'm like, what? He goes, they're going to die whether you do it or not. He goes, but I know that you need the money, so I'm giving you your first shot at it.

And he offered me $20,000 to kill his mom and dad. Roger got off the phone, shaken, and once again, afraid. All of a sudden, I know too much again, way too much. What was he to do? He called his father. I was just flabbergasted. I said, what? Why would he do that? He goes, for the money. And I said, Roger, tomorrow morning, you go right to the police. You tell them everything you know. He said, well, Dad, it's going to cause a lot of problem for him. And I said, Roger, it don't make any difference.

It was right then that Roger decided that for once in his life, he was going to do the right thing. I went to school with a kid named Mark Mecham. His dad was Detective Montmecham. He was a narcotics detective, but he was someone I could trust. I received a call from Roger. He was in a total panic. Kill me, though, kill me.

I said, who's going to kill you? I'm not sure. Mecham tried to talk Roger down. He wanted to swim the river and meet by the cover of darkness, you know, no moon and all that stuff. They met the following morning. What was the first thing out of Roger's mouth? Basically, you know, that he knew that Bob had killed his wife and kids. And there was more. This new plot to kill Bob's parents.

That was a shocker. That was the shocker. Only one thing to do now, said Detective Mecham. Roger would have to do the one thing he thought he would never do, cooperate with the police. He would have to catch his old friend in the act of plotting to kill. The FBI was called in. They put a tap on Roger's phone.

Agent Todd Scott gave him directions. We needed them to discuss the plot because up until that point, we only had Roger, whose credibility was undetermined by the FBI. This is expected to be a call from Roger Brauberger to Bob Duke reference conspiracy to commit murder. A visibly nervous Roger Brauberger dialed his friend's number.

Hey, remember when we talked before about the $20,000 for killing your parents? Yeah. Hey, I'm thinking I might want that. I had to see if there was any validity behind what I was saying. Because that was a pretty wild thing you'd told them. Especially coming from me. It was like a conversation out of the Hitman movies Roger and Bob had so often watched together. This time, it was Bob and his brother who wanted to turn Roger into a real-life Hitman.

They discussed how they'd carry out the hits and set a timeline for the murder. Did you have any ideas about maybe how I could do it? At 22, it's quiet enough. Right. I think it's an evening more than a door slamming. Okay, so you would think it would be on like a Friday night. We thought they might be going to Salt Lake or something for a day. Our whole thing relies upon us being able to say we are where we are.

You know what I'm saying? Right. For an alibi. Yeah. A good time would be over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. If they could kill them on Friday, they would have three days to be totally out of their alibi themselves, and no one would even begin to look for their parents until Tuesday. I can get you in, too. You can get me in? So it's just walk in and do it and walk out just like I live there, basically? Yeah, the best thing to do would be be there when no one's there. Right.

And then when they come in. And then catch them off guard? Got to be together. Okay. Because my dad does have a gun in the house. I couldn't just bust in and give him a chance to get the gun and shoot him. I had to be there to surprise him. Hey, as far as like afterwards, like getting paid, like is there insurance on them or something?

There are many things going on there. Bob had collected $60,000 in life insurance money after Leanna and Eric's deaths. Like, is there insurance on them or something? There are many things going on there. Bob had collected $60,000 in life insurance money after Leanna and Eric's deaths. And now it seemed he was planning to collect money on his parents. Okay, well, let me kick around the $20,000 for a couple days and I'll get back to you. I've had it with this whole thing. I'm tired of hearing about it. Right. If you did it, we could probably up it another five.

Okay. But the key is ASAP. They were in a hurry. They just wanted to be done with this. So they solicited Roger to actually conduct the murders. You're not talking about this, are you? No. No, I haven't said a word to no one. Were you nervous that he would realize somebody was overhearing this thing? Oh, God, yes. I don't know how he ever didn't figure it out.

Because you sounded so nervous. I was damn near hyperventilating. The FBI was nervous, too. They assigned extra cops around Bob Duke's parents' home, around Roger's home, and they surrounded Bob's apartment in Houston, ready at a moment's notice. Today is January 8, 1999, at 11.59 a.m. This is in reference to a conspiracy to commit murder. Still, they needed more from Roger. Though he'd extracted evidence of the murder plot against Bob's parents, Roger hadn't asked Bob to admit he

killed his wife and son. He'd have to make one more call. You said you were going to send me the key? You know what I'm thinking about that? Uh-huh. I don't think that's a good idea. Why's that? Because it won't look like an accident. It's going to look planned. Okay. Is there any way we can make it look like an accident like you did with your wife and kid? Dude, I did not do that. You didn't? No, I didn't do that. Oh, I thought you said you did that. No.

Huh? No. No. We talked about it and I didn't want nothing to do with it. He vehemently denied it and we got upset. Bob Duke wasn't confessing to the murder of his wife and son, but the FBI felt they had enough on the plot to kill his parents, and there was danger involved.

They'd take what they could get. The decision was made that we would arrest him while he's on the phone. 25-year-old Robert Duke was arrested at his home in southwest Houston. His brother, 31-year-old Patrick Duke, was arrested at a business office near downtown. Bob Duke was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. His brother was failure to report the plot. Finally, it looked like Bob Duke was going to prison. Roger had done the right thing. It was finally over.

It felt like a weight off my shoulders. I went out and got drunk that night. Only, the law is not always so predictable. And Roger's nightmare was far from over. The only way I can guarantee the protection of my family is to meet Bob when he gets off that bus and kill him. I thought I made it up. So half the town hated me, and the other half of the town patted me on the back or bought me a beer. Roger Brauberger, drug addict, had accomplished something quite remarkable.

He'd foiled a murder plot. Imagine, his own childhood friend, Bob Bob Duke wanted to kill his own parents. Both of them well-known and respected Wyoming school teachers. He came to me, and he put me in this position, and he has turned my life upside down with this. And yet those very parents, who refused to listen to the telephone recordings, also refused to believe that their sons wanted them dead. And more than a few people made it clear to Roger they agreed with Bob's parents. Why did you do this? Why did you make this up?

And then it got worse. Bob Duke was charged with conspiracy to commit the murder of his parents, but not with the murder of his wife and son. He took a plea bargain, the sentence 10 years in federal prison. By 2009, Bob Duke would be a free man. Roger was now married with a baby and another on the way, and he was certain Bob would seek revenge just as soon as he could. For every day he's sitting in prison, he's going to be thinking of a hundred different ways to kill me. He asked the FBI for protection of his family. They told him he wasn't a candidate.

My life has turned upside down, and I've been through hell for this. You know, to gain what? To do the right thing? Around Green River, the sense of something unfinished festered. Bob Duke's parents still went to school every day, still professed their belief in the innocence of their son, still held their heads high. But people wondered, if Bob Duke was capable of plotting to kill his own parents, was he also capable of murdering his wife and child? I think the majority of people in town were thinking they need to reopen that case. And then finally, prosecutor Harold Money Hun andigator Mike Dayton

agreed to take a fresh look at that accident on the cliff. I thought about it often over the course of several years, and the idea of him getting away with it simply didn't sit very well. I'm pretty sure he did it, but we're going to have a hard time proving it. Investigator Mike Dayton went out to the cliff at the end of Lost Dog Road. He was taken aback by the harsh wind, the pygmy rattlesnakes, the severe drop. No place for adults, let alone a child. This is a scary place.

And it's gravel on top, but it's layers of thin rock laid on layers of thin rock. It's a shale kind of thing. Yeah, and you step on it, and every step shifts a little bit. It is far steeper than it appears in pictures. But they needed forensic evidence, physical evidence. They examined the autopsy photos. There was a linear mark, a bluish-reddish bruise on Leanna's throat, and there was a suspicion that there may be evidence of strangulation prior to her being pushed off the cliff.

If Bob had strangled her, they were sure the hyoid bone, a small U-shaped bone of the neck, would be fractured. They were granted a court order to exhume the bodies. If that bone's broken, we thought we had him. They waited, hoping this was the evidence they needed. And the injuries were horrific, but the hyoid was intact. She had not been strangled. Everything that they saw would be consistent with an accidental fall. So they brought in an expert in the way things and people fall. The expert built dummies the same size and weight as Liana and Eric and threw them off the cliff. We were trying to determine whether there was a difference as to the resting place or point of impact if someone were pushed with some lateral force or whether someone just slipped off.

But in the end, it didn't matter if the dummies were hurled off or gently dropped off the face of the cliff because they were funneled to the very same landing place each time. You guys were really rich. I think at that point we knew that we weren't going to get a lot of additional forensic or physical evidence. And so we knew our case hinged on the credibility of Roger Brauberger. Roger Brauberger, who was certain that Bob Duke had murdered his wife and child, but whose reputation as a drug addict and peddler was terrible. Would a jury believe him?

Roger wasn't a choir boy. You know, he had some past. Still, Money Hunt decided to take the chance. Five years after Liana and Eric plunged off a cliff to their deaths, Bob Duke, father and husband, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. I think the general feeling among people in Green River was it's about time.

At the trial in the Sweetwater County Courthouse, rescue workers testified that when they arrived on the clifftop that day, Bob Duke seemed oddly unemotional for a person who just witnessed the deaths of his wife and son. Liana's parents said that their daughter wasn't the sort of mother who would let her little boy play around on the clifftop like that. Still others testified that Bob was unhappy at his marriage, and they'd heard him be verbally abusive to Liana.

And then there was the most important witness, Roger Brauberger. He would testify in a case that could put his old friend away for life. And I thought, you know, he's probably going to glare me down. And I started thinking, you know, the reason I'm here is because of him. I started thinking, you know, the reason I'm here is because of him. I started getting angry. Roger told the jury specific details of how Bob had offered him $20,000 to kill his wife and child, and how three years later he offered him a similar amount to kill his own parents. Had it been enough to convict?

No witnesses, no physical evidence. Three people went out to the cliff. One survived. He claims it's an accident. There's no physical evidence to Three people went out to the cliff. One survived. He claims it's an accident. There's no physical evidence to disprove the accidental theory. A classically losable case. Let's say we weren't overly confident. And then one day, toward the end of the trial,

Money Hen went back to his office to have lunch and fret about the case. I was trying to eat my sandwich, and I got a message that there was someone that needed to lunch and fret about the case. I was trying to eat my sandwich, and I got a message that there was someone that needed to talk to me about this case. It was with some reluctance that he relented and had his secretary bring in a young, attractive woman. Just kind of danced in and sat down and told me she had some stuff,

some information that I really should hear. It's a small town, 12,000 people in Green River, Wyoming. When something like this happens, people talk, and it was talked about pretty much everywhere you went. The Bob Duke murder trial was on everybody's mind in Green River, Wyoming that summer. Bob Duke was 29 by then. Liana and Eric had been in their graves six years. And Prosecutor Moneyhunt believed a conviction was a moral necessity.

To me, if you're capable of killing your own son for insurance money, there's not much beyond that. But inside the Sweetwater County courthouse, the prosecutor was preparing to arrest an iffy case. No real forensic evidence, no real physical evidence. And his main witness was a known addict. And then over lunch, there she was. It was just spur of the moment. Her name was Crystal Robinson. And she had a story to tell.

I wrestled with it for a while because I did. I looked horrible. You know, I looked like a homewrecker. Crystal told the prosecutor she met Bob Duke at the Green River Mini Mart. Crystal was just 13 years old then, and Bob, she said, came on to her. It was just so flattering that an older man would have any kind of interest in, you know, a girl that was so young. They started hanging out together. Well, actually drinking and making out together, she says, even though Bob had already been married three years

and she was just entering her teens. He took her for rides on his four-wheeler. Lots of times they went out into the country. I've been out there since I was little, so I had a lot of experience on the roads and everything and knew where I was at. So she knew exactly where they were when Bob drove up Lost Dog Road to the very cliff he told police he'd never once been to before Liana and Eric fell to their deaths. He had taken me to that very cliff at least 20 times. Bob had always claimed that he had arrived at this point on the cliff by accident. He'd taken a wrong turn. But he lied. And while they were up there, said Crystal, he told her stories about his wife and son. He was very miserable, and that was the only part of his conversation that had ever went bad.

It was whenever he talked about his family, because he felt like he was trapped. I asked him a few times, you know, if you're that miserable, why stay? You know, get a divorce. He wanted to find a way out of getting divorced without having to pay child support. The prosecutor put Crystal on the stand, of course. And then he told the jury that Bob Duke's way out of his marital dissatisfaction was to shove his wife and child off that cliff and then claim it was an accident and collect the $60,000 in insurance.

And when that money ran out, said the prosecutor, then Bob and his brother concocted the scheme to have their parents killed for their insurance money. Bob Duke took the stand himself to deny the allegations against him. Denied, for example, Crystal's story, although he agreed they did hang out together. Reporter Steve Korr found his testimony flat, expressionless. He came across as arrogant. He came across as not remorseful. But the jury, apparently, had a lot to talk about. An hour went by, then five, then ten.

It was late when Roger Brauberger got a call. He had just put his children to bed. He rushed down to the courthouse to hear the verdict. You must have been enormously nervous about this. I was a wreck. My future really hung. On what they said. Exactly.

And whether or not I could sleep at night. But his nightmare finally came to an end. Thanks to Roger's courage, Bob Duke is serving life in prison for the murders of his wife and son I did the only thing I could do I still look myself in the mirror and say look you know I like this guy that's a big step for you that is a big step and it's took a long time to get there you