Snapped: Women Who Murder - Rebecca Sears

Episode Date: October 4, 2020

Rebecca Sears and her son, are accused of robbing and beating their neighbour to death in March 2009.Season 10, Episode 17Originally aired: June 2, 2013See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondries Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Becky and Kay started out move next door and you have a family that's very much like yours. But soon, their families were getting a little too close. At lunchtime, they would go off in the car somewhere together. There was a spark between the two and a flirtation started.

Then a brutal crime would end it all. They would go off in the car somewhere together. There was a spark between the two, and a flirtation started. Then a brutal crime would end at all. They find K Parsons on the garage floor covered in blood. She was beaten with a baseball bat and a claw hammer. The investigation into the horrifying attack would stun the quiet neighborhood, as police uncovered a whole host of suspects and a secret motive.

He had had some drug problems. She said she knew you'd tell me. I swear to God, I never wanted anybody to get hurt. It just seemed like every piece of new information that we got became more and more bizarre. March 25th 2009. It was around 845 that Wednesday morning when Columbia County 911 received a report of a possible burglary in this quiet middle class community just outside Augusta. The houses are big and nice and right up on each other, but a very neighborhood feel. The caller was a workman who had been doing some minor repairs on the home of Kay and

David Parsons. They were in the process of selling their home. But when he knocked on the Parsons door that morning, there had been no answer. And when the workman had gone around back, he've made a disturbing discovery. There was no sign of 41-year-old K Parsons who was supposed to be there to let him in. She's not here. I mean, I hollered it in the door. I'm not there.

She's getting no response. The dispatcher asked the caller to remain outside and then routed deputies to the scene. They go around back. They announce their presence. They go into the house. Standard response, you know, for the deputies when they get there is, you know, to clear the house, to make sure there's not a burglar still in the house.

But as soon as they stepped inside, the deputies realized they were dealing with much more than just a burglar. And when you walked into the living room, there was blood. Blood on the floors and the walls. And following the trail of blood, the deputies quickly found its source. They find Cape Parsons on the garage for the work covered in blood.

She was alive, but barely. She had a pulse when she was breathing. She was not the best of my recollection responsive. She had been brutally beaten and left for dead. Her skull just been shattered. Multiple, multiple blunt horse trauma. She needed quick and rapid transport to the hospital. And by the time police solved the brutal attack,

they would expose the sorted secrets of this quiet suburban street. When they moved into the neighborhood in 2005, Kay and David Parsons appeared to be a perfect fit for the quiet family-friendly community of Grove Town. Kay and David, I believe, were high school sweethearts. They'd been married for a long time, quite a long time. They'd been together a long time,

but they had never really put down roots. Kay Parsons and her husband, David Parsons, were a military family, so they were moving around the country every few years. However, David had recently left the service and taken the defense contracting job that brought them to the Augusta area. They were finally starting to settle down here in Augusta.

And after more than a decade of following her husband's military career, that suited Kay just fine. She had kind of sacrificed her job and career to travel with him. Instead, Kay had spent her time focused on raising the couple's son, who was nine years old when they moved to Grove Town. She was just such a loving mother and would have done anything for her son. And now, after years on the move, she and David were finally settling in to what appeared to be the perfect community to raise their little boy. It's a nice middle-class neighborhood, family oriented, you know, children ride their bikes in the street,

people, you know, were outside on their porches. And it wasn't long before the Parsons made new friends right next door. Becky and Tony Sears had only been in their grove town home a month when the Parsons moved in. And while the two families had much in common, there were differences. While Kay and David were high school sweethearts,

Tony was Becky's second husband. Born in 1968, the Georgia native had married a man named Eddie Bowers while she was still a teenager. She had a few different men in her life. While married, Becky gave birth to two sons, Michael born in 1986, and Christopher born in 1989. But her marriage ended not long after the birth

of their third son in 1996, making her a single mom. Rebecca Sears was a working mother. But at 31, Becky found love again. And in 1999, she married Tony Sears. He became stepfather to her sons now age 3, 10, and 12. And after five years of marriage, they had more children together. There were also younger boys with her, you know, current husband, Tony, very young boys that looked up to their mother and loved her very much. A long-haul trucker, Tony was on the road alone,

but he made good money. And so did Becky, who worked as the office manager for a physical therapy center in Augusta. She was in charge of the bookkeeping and the payroll. She had a lot of responsibility there. On the outside, the sears looked like any other hardworking middle-class family in their subdivision. But behind closed doors, life wasn't quite so tidy. For starters, Tony's job meant Becky was often left to raise the five children alone. I'm traveling, put a strain on their relationship. And the fact that her two oldest boys were in their teens, only added to the stress.

Michael had some trouble with the law, he had had some drug problems. Becky's second son, Christopher, had similar issues. He had been in and out of a detention center for kids that have troubled backgrounds. But while the men in her life gave her trouble, Becky had at least found a friend in her new next door neighbor, Kay Parsons. It's kind of the dream situation of you move next door and you have a family that's very much like yours. They've got boys the same age, the couples are about the same age, they have similar interest. And soon, K's son and Becky's younger boys were all but inseparable. The boys are playing baseball together, so these two families were quick friends and spent a lot of time together. These houses are, you know, side by side,

privacy fence that separates their backyards. And it wasn't just the boys who bonded. Becky and Kay were definitely fast friends. They were really best friends the two families. Kay and Rebecca joined Weight Watchers together. You know, they were, they were pretty close. Kay and Becky's husbands got along well too. Tony and David were also pretty good friends and had a lot of similar interests.

They both had a military background and they had a lot in common. And as the families grew closer over the next three years, they would have more and more common memories to share. The Parsons family and the Sears family hung out during the summer. They went out as couples, went and did things, went on trips. In fact, Becky and Kay did more than just play together. They ended up working together as well.

Becky was the office manager at a physical therapy business in town. She got Kay a job there, working in the office, doing office work. She was working as a secretary at one of the branches there and doing a really good job I think she applied the lot of really quickly. But while Becky was getting along great with the next-door neighbors, there was still drama at home. By the end of 2008, Becky was struggling with her oldest sons,

22-year-old Michael and 19-year-old Christopher. Becky had a unique relationship with both of her older boys. They were her oldest boys, so she had a strong connection with them. Though technically an adult, Michael was still living at home. You know, trying to find a job. And while Christopher had moved out and gotten a job, he was still largely dependent on his mother. He worked in a local RV repair shop.

He wasn't making a lot of money now. Not that Becky seemed to mind. They were very close and spent a lot of time together and she really would have done anything for him and I think he would have done anything for her. And one of the reasons Becky may have needed her son's support was that after nearly a decade, her marriage was in trouble. Becky and Tony had a little bit of a rocky marriage.

And you would have known that, had you not known them a lot better. Her neighbor Kay understood, though, considering the sacrifices she'd made for David's job, she could sympathize with the problems in Becky's marriage. There was definitely something in that relationship going on inside the house that was driving the two of them apart. But that spring, there would be far worse to come,

an unspeakably brutal crime that would tear both families apart. Coming up, the police investigate a brutal attack and two burglaries. Becky's home was ransacked, similar to the way that Kays was next door. And as K fights for her life in the ICU, her attacker strikes again. Rebecca Sears have been shot. The New York Times

The New York Times Rovhtown, Georgia, March 25, 2009. It was a quarter to nine that Wednesday morning when a handyman called Columbia County 9-1-1 and reported a possible burglary at the home of Kay and David Parsons. He goes around back of the house, the back door has been shattered. Sheriff's deputies were on the scene within minutes,

and inside the house, they found 41-year-old Kay Parsons collapsed on the garage floor. Her head was partially against her car, tire. She was in a pool of blood. It was a lot of blood. Unconscious, but still clinging to life. against her car tire. She was in a pool of blood. It was a lot of blood. Unconscious, but still clinging to life.

Kay was rushed to the hospital. Her condition justified not spending more time than we needed on scene. So we got her off scene as quick as we could. How she had been attacked was no mystery. Based on the bloody weapons, the investigators found it the scene. She was beaten with a baseball bat and a claw hammer.

And based on the condition of the Holmes master bedroom, the investigators believed that K had been beaten and left for dead by a burglar. The master bedroom had been ransacked. Joey Boxing on through, Mattress just flipped over. The ransacked bedroom and the shattered back door weren't the only indications of a burglary either. While the investigators were cordoning off the crime scene, a young man named Michael Bowers approached from the house next door.

The eldest son of Kay's next door neighbor Becky Sears, he told the police that his mother's home had also been broken in too. He had come home about the same time the handyman showed up at Parsons House. He'd come home and noticed their front door was open and there was some golf clubs laying on the ground in the four year. Michael had also called his mother about the break-ins and the attack. And soon after he approached the police, Becky and her son Christopher, Michael's younger brother, arrived at the scene.

Rebecca Sears came home and immediately ran over to Cape Harson's house, asking, is she alive? Is she alive? Eventually, the investigators calmed Becky down and explained what had happened. Then they asked her if she had seen anything that morning. Rebecca told him, well, we both left at the same time. You know, Kay was taking the kids to school.

Becky said she had driven her son Christopher to the physical therapy office where she worked. She said she had taken Christopher with her to work, because he was going to earn some extra money doing work there. But Becky said she and Christopher had barely arrived at the office before her son Michael called her with the horrible news about Kay. Her son had called her and said, well,

our home was burglarized as well. Meanwhile, Kay had dropped her son off at school, stopped off at McDonald's, and based on the evidence of the scene, returned home and walked in on the intruder. She just went to McDonald's. Her coffee cup and McDonald's bag was strung about the floor. From where the coffee cup was found in the living room,

it appeared that Kay had fled from her attacker towards the garage, and that she had almost managed to escape. It was actually bloody handprints sliding down the wall on the garage door open and trying to get away. Next door at the Sears house, the investigators found more evidence of a burglary. Becky's home was ransacked similar to the way that Kays was next door.

Jewelry was missing, electronics were missing. But in addition to what was missing, electronics were missing. But in addition to what was missing, they also found something puzzling, something that shouldn't have been there. We found spots of blood on the back door of the Sears home. Whoever broke into the Sears house did it after attacking K. It doesn't fit right. Somebody's not going to beat somebody that bad and then go do another burglary next door.

They're going to get out of there quick as possible. And then there was the fact that Becky Sears' son Michael just happened to arrive on the scene. Moments after Kay's body had been found. He came home that morning and discovered the house burglarized his mother's house. So we wanted to know where he was at, where he had been that morning, you know,

account for his whereabouts. So that morning, while Becky went to the hospital to offer her support to Kay's family, the investigators brought Michael in for questioning. In the interrogation room, Michael told them he had spent the morning at a friend's house. We were able to go out and verify that day, that's where he was. They were able to go out and verify that day. That's where he was.

They were able to rule him out fairly quickly. The same was true of Becky's husband, Tony. We spoke to him. He really didn't have a lot to say. He left to go to work. And I believe it was around 4 o'clock in the morning, 4'30 in the morning. So he was gone through the whole thing.

And we were able to verify that. But what about the victim's husband, David Parsons? David wasn't home at the time. He was on a business trip. It was an airtight alibi, so airtight that the investigators began to wonder about the timing of his trip. It is convenient that he's in California

at the time this happens. And so they want to know, could he have been a part of it could he have helped helped make it happen. But when the investigators questioned David over the phone that morning he sounded blindsided by the attack on his wife. He seemed generally distraught about it. He was really wanting to know what happened to his wife, how she was, was she still alive, and he was trying to get back here as quickly as it could. He arrived home that evening to find Kay in the ICU

on life support, and the waiting room packed with anxious family and friends, including her next-door neighbor. When Kay is, you know, in the hospital on life support, Becky is in the waiting room, you know, demanding to see her, wanting to know what happened and what her condition is. So she was very present and very concerned.

Unfortunately, the vigil would be a short one. The next morning on the advice of K's doctors, David and the rest of K's family made a difficult one. The next morning on the advice of case doctors, David and the rest of case family made a difficult decision. They realized there was no brain activity that she had been beaten so badly that she would never recover and the family took her off life support. K Parsons was dead. It turned into a murder investigation. And the case was about to take a bizarre turn. On the evening of March 26, just hours after Kay was taken

off life support, the Columbia County Sheriff's investigators received shocking news from authorities in the neighboring county. Becky Sears had just been shunned. According to what Becky told the authorities, after spending all day at the hospital, she had gone into the physical therapy center to catch up on the work she had missed.

She was at work late, doing payroll. But Becky told Richmond County 9-1-1 that as she left the office at around 8-9, a man had approached her in the parking lot and demanded money. When we got there, we found that Rebecca Sears had been shot and was in the back of the ambulance when we arrived. She had been shot with a 25-calibre pistol. The shell casing was at the scene.

Her wounds were hardly life-threatening, though. She was shot in both legs, but they were grazing wounds. Serious or not, Becky was transported to the hospital. And while the doctors cleaned and bandaged her wounds, she described the incident for the investigators. I was in the hospital office. Someone came out of the bushes, and I went back to my office. I heard what I thought was a dead shot.

And I fell. And then I just, my ankle hurt really bad. And I looked in and it was a whole wound on my boot. Becky had to be frightened. I mean, as much as she'd been through in the last 48 hours. And when Becky explained what else she had been through in the last 48 hours, the Richmond County authorities quickly contacted their counterparts, investigating Kay Parsons murder.

She made the connection for them. Her neighbor had been murdered, which obviously raised a lot of red flags for us as investigators. Something's going on here. Kay's dead. Hello. You get shot. We automatically think that there's a good chance that these might be connected somehow.

Unfortunately, if the investigators believe that Becky's shooter was somehow the same person who had killed Kay, Becky offered them little to go on. Where'd he say to you? Who? The guy that shot you. That he wanted to money or next time it would be not that. What money do say to you? Who? The guy that shot you. Did he want it to be money or next time it would be not that easy? What money did you tell him?

I don't know, I do. Not only did Becky claim that she didn't have the faintest idea what the shooter was talking about, she said she hadn't even gotten a good look at his face. You know who it is? For some, it was a white baseball cap. Coming up, an informant reveals a taudry secret that turns the investigation in a surprising new direction. Do you have any idea how long we've been in here?

And the investigators put K's husband on the spot. That's right. This is what I would never have. Hey listener, it is Jason Bateman. We have been fortunate to attract so many A-list guests to our smartless podcast, but we've never put together a lineup quite like this. I'm talking about Will Ferrell, Conan O'Brien, Kevin Hart, Mark Cuban, Jimmy Kimmel, Matt Damon, and more available four weeks early and ad free on Wondery Plus.

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It's always going to stick in my mind. The gruesomeness of it, I mean, the twist in turns that it took, it just seemed like every piece of new information that we got became more and more bizarre. The first bizarre twist had come the night before. Just hours after Kay died in the hospital. Her next door neighbor, 41-year-old Becky Sears, was leaving work when Kay's attacker had apparently struck

again. Mrs. Sears, who is the neighbor of Mrs. Parsons, was involved in an incident, a shooting incident in Richmond County last night. A man stepped out from behind the building, threatened her and shot her. Becky wasn't seriously injured in the incident. She was treated for the injuries, but not hospitalized.

But the shooting definitely raised the stakes for the investigators, who suspected that Kay's beating and Becky's shooting were somehow connected. These two instances, in a matter of two different days, was just spelled trouble to them. Unfortunately for the investigators, Becky had been unable to identify her attacker.

And the reason may have had something to do with the next bizarre twist in the case. The morning after Becky was shot, a man called the Columbia County Sheriff's Department and claimed to have pressing information about the person's investigation. He saw that Kay had been murdered and he believed he knew who did it. And the informant wasn't just any random call. Turns out it was Rebecca Sears' brother.

Like her oldest sons, Becky's brother Jerry had a history of minor run-ins with the law. He was actually in our jail at the time. That's where I talked to him, man. And his criminal connections may have had something to do with what he told the investigators about Kay's death. According to Jerry, several weeks before the murder, Becky had approached him

asking for advice. And she had asked me if I knew of him one or if I knew a way that we could do this to kill Kay. He had a conscience. I mean, for some reason, he felt like these investigators needed to know this. This poor innocent woman who had been attacked in her home and I think he immediately felt drawn to help even though this was his sister that he was throwing under the bus. But why would Becky want her next door neighbor dead? According to Jerry, his sister had a dirty little secret.

Rebecca Sears and David Parsons were having an affair. So first we learned this affair between Becky and David Parsons. Did you ever hear me? How long? I don't know anything. She told me about four months. And according to Jerry, the affair was serious. She'd just call and say, well, something like, you know,

Tony, he don't do this for me. He doesn't do that for me, and David does. He doesn't love me like I need to be loved, and David loves me that way. But it was her own shooting in the office parking lot that convinced Jerry that Becky was involved in case death. Oh my God. I just can't help but believe that,

especially after what you told me about who and her. I saw that on the news earlier. You heard she was going forward to it? Yes, she is very vindictive. Oh, yeah. In fact, Jerry claimed that Becky's second son, Christopher, owned a gun that matched the casing recovered at the scene.

It was a 25. Maybe in a 20-k. Look at it. In your soul? Oh, yeah. Becky's own brother was accusing her of orchestrating K's murder, the bizarre parking lot shooting, and even recruiting her sons to help carry out the plot.

But could investigators prove any of it? They decided to start by questioning Becky's oldest son, Michael, Christopher's older brother, and despite the fact that he had a solid alibi for the morning of the break-in, they leaned on him hard. I'm not playing games anymore. That woman was murdered, okay? Her fucking skull crushed in.

You understand that? Yes, sir. Pressured by the investigators, Michael confessed that he knew his mother was having an affair. But he claimed not to know it was with their next-door neighbor. I had no clue know it was with their next-door neighbor. I had no clue that it was David nor Kate.

You know, they were good friends. But while Michael claimed that his mother never named the man she was seeing or mentioned the name of his wife, he also said she made no secret of her feelings for the other woman. She made comments like, I wish, you know, this just, just person would die or drive off a cliff, you know, something would just happen. But according to Michael, that's all she had done. She has never come to me and said, would you kill Kate for me? She has never said, would you kill Kay for me? She's never said, would you kill someone for me? Not that it mattered to the police.

By then, they were convinced that Becky had asked someone, Michael's younger brother Christopher, who had shown up at the crime scene with his mother. That night, we conducted search warrants at Christopher's house at Becky's place of business. When they served the search warrant, the police also placed Christopher under arrest. Later that night, the police arrested Becky Sears, too,

taking her into custody at the hotel she had moved the family to after the break-in. We were shocked in the media to know that a mother and son had been charged with such a vicious crime. And while Becky and Christopher were in custody, the investigators also brought in Chase Husband, David Parsons. He wasn't under arrest, but they definitely had some questions for him. As soon as I confronted him with it,

he confessed to the affair, laid all that out on line. You know, how long he'd been going on, what had been going on? He was having an affair with Rebecca Sears, and it was off and on for quite some time. David's timeline matched what Jerry had already told them that the affair had begun in August, 2008. Somewhere last year, we all started hanging out playing tennis

and stuff like that. And, um, these in the August, they can start talking and then start to see each other. As close as the families were, there was a spark between the two, and a flirtation started. But it had quickly become more than a flirtation. And for nearly six months,

Becky and David had been seeing each other in secret. Becky and David were seeing each other during the day when their families were gone at work or at home. They would meet for lunch breaks and they would sit in the car and talk and do some things they shouldn't have been doing. But David insisted that he never meant for his relationship with Becky to be anything more than a physical flame. He didn't want a divorce.

He didn't want a friction in his family. He didn't want his son to be taken away from him. Becky, on the other hand, felt differently. She said she would leave Tony. She said she would go wherever I was going. Whenever I was going. But I never ever reciprocated that. In fact, I was going to leave Kate and leave my son.

Then, according to David, his wife had received a series of anonymous text messages warning her about his affair. The first one said, if you want to see who your husband's been with, come to his apartment audit work right now. And it was soon after the mysterious text started to arrive that David decided to end the affair. I think he finally realized that things were getting too serious

and he was being too brazen and they were going to get caught. According to David, he'd gone to Becky two weeks before the murder and told her it was over. February 18th, they had ordered you know, we're stopping and we're having more, you know, a physical contact. He told the investigators he had also come clean to Kay. She knew about it. She talked about it, we were gonna work through it.

We were staying together and getting them with Becky. Kay and David had kind of recommitted to each other. But Kay's friendship with Becky would never recover. I don't imagine that they ever had a big blowout confrontation, but I know that these two women try to do everything they could to avoid each other after the affair had come out. In fact, Kay soon had made it crystal clear just how far she was willing to go to get away from Becky. Three days before her murder, she and David had put their house on the market.

Kay went out in the front yard and put a facel sign out in the yard. She went to stay there with her driver living right there next door. We're gonna work out together and move on. And Kay may have been right to insist on putting some physical distance between the lovers. Despite recommitting to his wife, David hadn't quite ended it with Becky.

Talked on the cell phones, you know, a little bit afterwards. In fact, David admitted that on the night before Kays murder, he and Becky had done quite a bit more than tall. He and Becky had done quite a bit more than Tom. He and Becky had, uh, had phone sex. Had David's backsliding encouraged Becky, made her think that if something happened to Kay, she could have David to herself. David appeared to be in denial.

Well, I told him that she was under arrest for murder. He didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it. She wouldn't take her away from my son. I said she really loved you. No, God, you're cute. He might have had this small thought in the back of his mind that she would have done something like this, but he didn't want to believe that.

And David was even more adamant that he had nothing to do with Kay's death. Over to you, Hazel, you tell me, I swear to you. I would never ever, I never ever want anything to happen again. But would the investigators believe him? He seemed to be very heartbroken about his wife, and they genuinely believed him. However, David wasn't the only one in an interrogation room that night.

Coming up, Becky's son refuses to talk. We're getting this right now. But Becky makes a shocking confession. And I asked him, my God, what did you do? It was a little after nine o'clock on the evening of March 27, 2009, when Columbia County Sheriff's investigators sat down with 41-year-old Becky Sears and her son, 19-year-old Christopher Bowers. Mother and son had been arrested earlier that evening for the murder of Becky's next-door neighbor and former best friend, 41-year-old Kay Parsons. Mother and Son had been arrested earlier that evening for the murder of Becky's next-door neighbor

and former best friend, 41-year-old Kay Parsons. She had been dead less than 48 hours, beaten to death in the home she shared with her husband, David. Becky and David Parsons were having an affair. The investigators had learned of the affair earlier that same day. When Becky's brother had come forward and identified Becky and Christopher as K's likely killers. After I spoke to him, I went and sat out and started typing up the rest warrants for Becky and Christopher. K's husband, David, brought in for questioning

at around the same time that Becky and Christopher were arrested, had just confirmed that he had been having an affair with his wife's best friend. He chronicled out the relationship and told about how they had tried to stop seeing each other. And that Becky just really wasn't having it. She didn't want the relationship to end. That early morning before K was beaten, they were still having an affair.

I believe they're having phone sex. However, when the investigators questioned Christopher that evening, he denied breaking into K's house and beating her with a hammer. And other than that, he refused to talk at all. When you're in this right now, I'm gonna give all the word. Becky, on the other hand, appeared more than willing to talk to the investigators.

We explained to her that, you know, we knew she was involved, we knew what was going on, and we kind of laid everything out for her. However, even when confronted with the evidence against her, Becky maintained her innocence. In the beginning, she denies any kind of connection to this. In fact, Becky claimed that her affair with David was over, and that she had been trying to patch things up with her husband, Tony.

Tony and I were making things. We were trying to make things work out. But then, over an hour into the interrogation, the tape suddenly stopped. The batteries died. And then, I think, approximately two and a half or two hours, 20 minutes into the interview, they discovered the batteries died.

The investigators quickly replaced the batteries and restarted the recording. But once the tape started rolling again, it captured what had become a vastly different interview. When they come back on that tape, she is telling everything. On the tape, Becky admitted that she had talked candidly to her son Christopher about her affair with David and her desire to be with him. I had said to him that I loved David and that I wish that we could be together. And he had said to me that he could make that happen if I wanted him to. It was obvious that Rebecca Sears and her son Christopher were close, maybe closer than the average mother-son relationship.

She would pick up the phone and call him. He would drop what he was doing to come to her. She would lavish him with money. It was just a strange dynamic between the two of them. According to Becky, she hadn't explicitly taken Christopher up on his offer. Christopher and I didn't plan on him going. It's not, we didn't sit down and make a plan for him

to go up there and kill Kay. But she admitted that she didn't directly tell him no either. In fact, Becky confessed that on the morning of the murder, she had secretly picked up Christopher at his home and driven him back to the house. He goes upstairs, hides in a bedroom. Doesn't want the other kids to see him there. But according to Becky, that didn't mean

she had expected Kay to die. I thought that he would get scared and wouldn't even go over there. But he did go over there. But I still thought that he would change his mind. You just assumed he would change his mind, but he didn't. She claims that, you know, that she's completely innocent, that Christopher just did this on his own. On the tape, Becky claimed she didn't even

know that Christopher had gone over to Cain's until he called her later that morning, asking for a ride. She rushed over to pick him up in the neighborhood. He hadn't gotten far. When you got into vehicle, could you see blood on his clothes and stuff? I didn't see any blood on his clothes, but he had blood on his thick hair, blood on his face,

and I asked him what he did. I said, oh my god, what did you do? According to Becky, it was only then that she had learned the horrific truth. He said, I'll be the f*** out of her. Did he, did he think she was dead? He didn't know. But if Kay could still be alive,

why hadn't Becky called 911? According to her, she had panicked, worried more about her son than her former friend. She didn't know how to protect him, so she did not call police. How you supposed to call somebody and say that your child did this because you may have seen that this was what you wanted him to do is not what I wanted him to do.

I never, ever wanted anybody to get hurt, ever. Instead, Becky said she had helped Christopher cover up his crime. He changes clothes, puts his bloody clothes into a book bag. She takes him to her work, he cleans up, and they sit at work until they get the phone call from Michael to come back to the house. But according to Becky, the fact that she had covered for Christopher didn't mean she condoned what he had done. I swear to God, I never wanted anybody. I never wanted K to get hurt. Becky's in tears, almost hard to understand her at some point

during the tape. Becky could cry all she wanted, but the investigators didn't believe a word of her denials. Instead, they suspected she had used her unusually close relationship with Christopher to manipulate him into committing murder. She blamed everything on her son, misreading her signals. Becky's statement, him the entire murder on her own son, but it wouldn't be enough

to save her. Following their interrogations, Becky and Christopher were both booked on murder charges and helped without bond. The District Attorney's Office was very convinced that these two did not need to be out on the streets. And they were prepared to keep them off the streets forever. After their indictment, the district attorney filed her intention to seek the death penalty. Coming up, Becky has her day in court. She looked like a whole different person. But the proceedings take an unexpected turn.

It was a big surprise to us. When 44-year-old Becky Sears walked into a Columbia County, Georgia courtroom on the morning of May 11, 2012, many in the audience didn't recognize the woman accused of murdering her next-door neighbor and one-time best friend, 41-year-old Kate Parsons. Becky had lost all this weight prior to the murder, three years in prison, and she looked like a whole different person. Becky and her son, 23-year-old Christopher Bowers, had both been held without bond since their arrest in March of 2009. At the time, Christopher Bowers was charged with murder

and Rebecca Sears was charged with conspiracy to murder. And soon after the arrest, the prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against both mother and son. In Becky's case, they felt like the way that she masterminded this attack deserved the death penalty, too. In fact, the prosecutors had Becky on tape, admitting that she and her son had discussed killing Kay. I told him before that I wished Kay would just fall down stairs.

And he said she couldn't have fallen down stairs, and she could be pushed. However, Becky maintained that Christopher had acted on his own. And despite the fact that his mother had fingered him for the murder, Christopher had acted on his own. And despite the fact that his mother had figured him for the murder, Christopher had refused to testify against her. We did explain to him that she's put it all on you. We just want you to know that. And yeah, like you just didn't care.

There was a weird relationship between mother and son. Not only had Christopher refused to cooperate, the defense had spent most of the last three years trying to get Becky's confession thrown out, too. Investigators were questioning Rebecca Sears and the tape stopped. We're certain amount of time. The defense jumped on that.

But in the end, the judge denied the defense's request. The confession was allowed in, and that changed everything. It was a big surprise to us that we went to court. And all of a sudden, we find out that they've reached a plea deal. Becky and Christopher both decided to change their pleas. Becky had come to court that morning to admit that she had put her son up to murdering her best friend. Becky walked in and she was in tears as she was admitting that she had done that.

And later that same day, the mother of five was sentenced to life without parole. Some of the family members said, yes, it's a good thing, because the children, others said, she deserved to die. you