Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Pam Phillips and Gary Triano, their charmed

life makes others green with envy.

The public saw them as a power couple. They saw her as beautiful, they saw him

as charismatic.

He's a mega -millionaire developer.

She's a socialite. But don't envy them, because the money isn't his.

He owed a lot of people a lot of money and declared bankruptcy.

So Gary had a lot of enemies.

And when greed takes hold of their marriage, is there anything they won't

money? I am very serious about this. You're going to be very serious when you

send in a woman's prison for murder.

In Tucson, Arizona, it seems like every swing of the hammer or pull of the slot

machine lever has something to do with Gary Triano.

Triano is a developer and bingo hall pioneer back in Tucson's go -go days of

1980s.

Rusty Sands is Triano's good friend and former partner.

At that time, he was very, very, very successful. He was one of the

of bingo.

on Indian reservations.

Bingo!

They started making a lot, a lot of money every month.

Triano is well known around Tucson for his wealth and his larger -than -life

personality.

Very self -assured, very flamboyant, liked the center of attention, but could

typically back it up.

Yeah, he was a lot of fun to be around.

In 1985,

Triano catches the eye of a local real estate agent named Pamela Phillips, who

was newly divorced from her first husband.

Pam socializes with Gary at parties thrown by him and his wife, and they

friends.

Well, she was a sexy lady, and she made herself available.

I believe Gary was very smitten.

Soon, the married Triano becomes enamored with Phillips.

and the two begin an affair.

Within months, Triano files for divorce from his first wife, with whom he has

two children.

Less than a year after ending his first marriage, Gary and Pam marry on a yacht

in San Diego.

It was a fantastic wedding. It was a black -tie type of wedding, and

and anything you wanted to drink was flowing. It was a beautiful, beautiful

wedding.

The adoring couple seems to have it all.

Love, happiness, and lots of money.

No one could imagine, then, how it would all go so wrong within a few years.

As it turned out, I guess it was the biggest mistake he ever made in his

But during the good years, Gary and Pam live in high style.

They have two children together and purchase a home in Tucson's affluent

Country Club.

where they host their wealthy and famous friend.

Carrie Drobin is an author and criminal defense attorney who spent a year

researching the couple for her book, A Socialite Scorned.

They ran around with the likes of Donald Trump.

They would go to their estate in Mar -a -Lago. They had two Jaguars. They lived

in this beautiful house. They thought nothing of jet -setting off to, you

some exotic locale for the weekend.

That was the lifestyle that they created and wanted people to see them as.

Then, in the late 1980s, Tucson's economic tide begins to turn, and Gary

Triano's fortune starts washing away.

First, the real estate market crashes.

Triano is highly leveraged, so when real estate values drop, he owes more than

he's worth.

So Triano turns toward heavier investment in gaming.

As the management company for tribal bingo halls, Triano skims a percentage

all receipts.

But in the early 90s, Arizona's Indian gaming laws change so that Native

American tribes can retain all the income from gaming on their

Gary lost the contract with the Indians. They went into their own casino.

He got cut out of that.

So he therefore lost a lot of money at that time.

His income plummets 93 % in one year, and it only goes downhill from there.

He owed a lot of people a lot of money.

Some of those people were very bad people.

He owed money to a group of northern Mexican investors to tune to $2 .6

Their attorney had told him, if you file bankruptcy, these people will kill you.

Despite the warning, he goes ahead and files for bankruptcy in 1994 with an

estimated $26 million in debt.

Meanwhile, his wife Pam, who was a very successful real estate agent in her own

right, doesn't know the extent of Gary's troubles.

In fact, what is really striking about it is Pam comes into this marriage with

$2 million.

They visit a bankruptcy attorney together, and she has probably this cold

dawning when she's sitting in the office realizing, oh, my God, what have I

done? She discovers at that time that Gary is nothing that the public

him to be. He has 74 pending lawsuits.

He owes his attorney $97 ,000.

He owes his former wife $1 .8 million.

He is indebted to everyone with no means of paying anything back.

So all of a sudden, she's plummeted into this world that she never wanted.

Once she learns just how much debt her once high -rolling husband has gotten

himself into,

Pam Phillips files for divorce.

And in a little over a month, it's finalized.

Pam is awarded the house.

But things get even worse between the former golden couple when Pam decides to

leave town with their two children.

She sold the house.

and recouped the proceeds. It was about $300 ,000.

She did that while Gary was off on a weekend jaunt with someone else.

So it was sort of a stick it to you, I'm going to take what's mine, what she

felt she was entitled to, and she fled to Aspen.

Gary Triano is alone in Tucson with a mountain of debt.

On the afternoon of November 1st, 1996, Gary plays golf at his favorite course,

La Paloma Country Club.

Though he shoots well, it may be his last time playing here.

He owes the club months of past dues, and they want him out.

It's been quite a fall, but his problems will soon be over.

On the last day of his life, Gary Triano golfs his favorite course at La Paloma

Country Club in Tucson.

Gary Triano was a creature of habit, and that was sort of his trademark.

He golfed a certain day of the week at a certain time and with a certain

partner.

Triano plays 18 holes.

Then he makes the walk to his parking spot.

As he's done so many times before.

Only this time, there is someone watching.

And lying in wait.

Someone who has placed a blue bag on Gary's passenger seat.

Authorities believe Gary reaches over to pick up the bag.

It's the last move he ever made.

Gary Triano, just shy of his 53rd birthday, is killed instantly.

His watch permanently stopped at 5 .38 p .m.

There were light flashing.

emergency vehicles everywhere.

It was surreal that something of this magnitude could happen in Tucson

and in one of the most prestigious sides of town.

Pima County Sheriff's Detective James Gamber arrives on the scene and begins

collecting evidence from the debris.

A roof had been torn off of it. It was riddled with holes from shrapnel.

Door panels were blown out. The rear window and the windshield were blown

In fact, we recovered the windshield in a swimming pool about 70 feet away that

had to travel over trees that were like 20 feet tall.

The bomb squad determined that the explosive device was a simple, if

one. It was a pipe bomb that was initiated by a remote control.

We know that the remote control had to be within a quarter of a mile.

There is no shortage of rumors floating through town about who could be

responsible.

NBC affiliate KVOA's crime reporter Lupita Murillo covers the case.

During the initial investigation, everybody was saying it was a mob hit.

a mob hit.

Gary Triano didn't borrow from banks.

He owed money to individuals.

some with questionable reputations.

What's more, given his background in the gaming industry and the gangland style

of the murder, police naturally think of organized crime.

We, at this point, don't have any specific suspects.

We have a lot of circumstances surrounding his personal relationships

of his business dealings that I think would lead any reasonable...

police officer to conclude that people might have motives for murder. He was in

desperate, desperate financial circumstances personally.

Police also looked closer to home.

Detective Keith St. John interviewed Gary's ex -wife, Pam Phillips, now

with their two children in Aspen, Colorado, and struggling to get back on

feet. Pam was strikingly attractive.

She came across as self -assured.

Obviously, she was used to money, but she also was cooperative. She sat down

with me on three separate occasions and talked.

Pam Phillips is the beneficiary of a $2 million life insurance policy on Gary.

And two months after Gary's death, she receives the money.

In my mind, there wasn't enough evidence to say she's a suspect.

After about eight months, the Gary Triano murder case goes cold and stays

way for nearly ten years.

Next on American Greed, a new connection leads to a new suspect.

He's got all this paperwork between Gary and Pam.

He's got to have something to do with this.

In the Gary Triano murder case, the trail is cold.

But Tucson police will discover a fresh lead.

It's in 1994, two years before the murder.

The newly divorced Pam Phillips moves with her two children to Aspen,

Living on the $300 ,000 in proceeds from the sale of her Tucson home, she sets

about making a name for herself in a new town away from her ex -husband.

She moved to a very affluent neighborhood in Aspen and needed to find

make ends meet.

And she did that again by relying on friends.

and making her alliances with wealthy people, because she certainly didn't

down when she moved to Aspen.

But establishing herself as a realtor in Aspen is harder than she expects, and

her lifestyle exceeds her means.

Her passion lies with a startup business she creates called StarBabies .com, a

website that she claims will predict the futures of newborns.

Pam believes the fledgling company could grow to be worth millions, but she

can't do it on her own.

And that's when she enlists the help of her neighbor, a self -described business

consultant named Ron Young.

He was a very bright individual, and he had become close to Pam Phillips in

Aspen. And Ron Young began to become involved in Pam Phillips' financial life

a great extent.

The two also begin a romantic relationship, even though Ron Young is

sort of man Pam usually goes after.

He was unsophisticated, not attractive, not wealthy.

He couldn't take her to the locales that he was used to.

But Pam is clearly getting something out of the deal.

In addition to business help, she leans on Ron when it comes to her troubled

relationship with her ex.

She complained incessantly about Gary. She complained that he didn't pay her

enough in child support or in spousal maintenance.

And he considered himself a problem solver, a fixer. And so he would come up

with ways where she could solve the problem, the Gary problem.

He actually called it the 800 -pound gorilla problem.

Yet by April 1996, things turned sour.

After two of Ron Young's other business clients report him for fraud, Pam

Phillips follows suit, reporting to police that Ron Young is also ripping

off in her Star Baby's business.

James Crowley, a detective for the Aspen police, tries to locate Ron Young.

He was already gone.

He rented a van at the Aspen airport, and that was the last we heard of him.

In his absence, Young is charged with two counts of theft and two counts of

forgery, and a warrant is issued for his arrest.

Two months later, Crowley gets a call from Yorba Linda, California.

Ron Young's rented van has been found, parked near his parents' home.

Yorba Linda contacted me and said that Ron had been at the impound yard trying

to recover the van, and when he was told that the police were on the way, he

left. and left the van behind.

Crowley flies to Yorba Linda to inspect the van.

Inside, he finds some interesting documents.

Their work, business documents from Star Babies, divorce paperwork between Gary

Triano and Pamela Phelps. There are also maps of Tucson, hotel receipts from

Tucson, and still an Arizona license plate and a shotgun inside.

Crowley isn't sure what to make of the evidence.

Until two weeks later, when he hears about a car bombing murder in Tucson,

Arizona.

I come into work the morning after the car bombing, and it's on the front page

of the newspaper.

And it didn't hit me quite at first.

So I'm like, Gary Triano, Gary Triano. And it's like, oh my God.

It's got to have something to do with it. I mean, between the map of Tucson,

guy's got a taser in the car, he's got a shotgun in the car.

He's got all of this paperwork between Gary and Pam.

I mean, he's got to have something to do with this.

So Crowley then calls us, which makes the connection for us.

Then when we question Pam, she minimizes Ron Young and says, oh, no, he's just a

guy that did a little financial work for me.

And then later on, what we find based on the hotel receipt is that Ron Young was

in Tucson in June and July for about 18 days.

While police cannot place Young in Tucson in November when the murder

they want to know what he was doing there in the months prior, especially

he has no ties to Tucson and no apparent law -abiding reason to be there. But

detectives can't ask him these questions because he's nowhere to be found.

We were depending on the fugitive warrant from Aspen for that to lead to

arrest so we could confront him.

Meanwhile, Pam Phillips collects a payout from Gary's life insurance

million.

If Pam has been building a castle in the sky, $2 million allows her to put a

foundation under it.

She bought a house in Meadowood, which is a subdivision just outside of town,

remodeled the house, and started living the lifestyle that she was accustomed

to.

She went to lots of social engagements at night.

She was skiing a lot.

She was known as a real social jet -setter, moving in circles with very

people.

For ten years, Phillips lived a good life in Aspen, while Ron Young stays out

of sight.

Next, police finally track down Ron Young.

And his own words come back to bite him.

You're going to be really sad.

I'm going to be back at work.

No, you're going to be in prison for murder.

In 2005, Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff's Detective James Gamber is assigned to

work the department's unsolved murder cases.

One of the most infamous is the 1996 car bombing of Gary Triano.

Nine years later, Gamber digs the massive case file out of storage.

So this is the paper case file of the Triano case.

It contains about 300 ,000 pages of paperwork.

As you can tell, it's endless files.

This isn't Gamber's first shot at the Triano case.

He also worked the original investigation.

Well, we eliminated all the suspects that Gary's friends, families, and even

enemies gave us.

There was but one suspect that Gamber feels he wasn't able to eliminate.

Ron Young.

Colorado businessman and one -time boyfriend of Gary's ex -wife, Pam

who has been a fugitive for nine years.

What we were left with was the one anomaly, and that was Ron Young. All the

details that we found in Ron Young's van, and then Pam's denial or

of their relationship.

But Ron was on the run.

He had the fraud charges out of Aspen.

We couldn't find him.

So until we found him...

We were stuck.

Gamber and an ATF colleague reach out to America's Most Wanted and convince the

show to do a story on Ron Young.

It airs on November 19, 2005.

Ron Young's chiropractor recognized him, knew he had a standing appointment, so

he called in to America's Most Wanted.

When Young shows up for his adjustment at the Pompano Beach, Florida,

chiropractor's office, police are waiting to take him down.

And the goal was to put him into custody on the Colorado fraud charges and for

us to talk to him about the Gary Triano murder.

Young denies any involvement in Triano's murder, and he gives police consent to

search his home, car, and storage locker.

where they find an unexpected trove of evidence.

They found about four large boxes worth of evidence, a lot of paper records, a

computer, and some microcassettes.

We put one of those microcassettes into a recorder, and there's Ron Young

talking to Pam Phillips.

Hello. Hi.

Hi. I'm at Walmart, shopping like a madwoman.

to get back to the kids who are swimming on their own with a bunch of fat, gross

bodies down at the Glenwood Springs pool.

Nice place, huh?

Oh, geez.

And it's not just one conversation.

Police find recordings of 500 calls and 100 e -mails between Young and Phillips

spanning eight years.

The topics are wide -ranging, but mainly...

They talk about money.

I just, you know, with you, I want to help you out. I just want to be at our

original agreement, and I will honor that, and I will try to get you as much

as quick as I possibly can.

It seems that Pam Phillips is making regular cash payments to her former

boyfriend.

Pam sends Ron the money via FedEx.

She even gives him the tracking numbers.

Let's see. I have a number for you. I'm sending it to FedEx.

It's 8127. I mailed something.

Let's see. I put it in the box. It is 80713864.

And I did it, you know, priority overnight.

Ron Young records it all on audio tape and on spreadsheets.

I mailed you something, but it takes care of January, February, and all of

March.

For as smart as Ron Young was alleged to have been, he kept an enormous amount

of material that ultimately led to his downfall.

This surreptitious transfer of money directed at Ron's direction went on for

about 10 years, and we were able to prove 44 transactions.

When people get greedy, it's good for police and prosecutors because they

to turn on each other in these phone conversations.

Well, I don't want too long money for somebody for most of a decade.

Look, can I finish it? Can I finish a sentence?

Can I finish a sentence?

Can I finish a sentence?

Can I finish a sentence?

Will you allow me to finish a sentence?

At one point in their relationship, Pam begins to fall behind in payments.

which angers Ron Young.

In

some

exchanges, the amount of money they discuss equals the life insurance policy

Pam collected after Gary's death.

Two million dollars.

He goes, you got your 1 .6.

I want my four.

Well, that conveniently adds up to two million.

But this conversation postdates the murder. It's way after the murder, which

me says there was a prearrangement.

In other words, you kill Gary, I'll get two million dollars and I'll give you

400 ,000. Right now, I want to know.

And I'm going to go figure out what it is, and I'm going to try to figure out

how to get it to you.

But right now, I want to know that we are capping it at four. I don't want

nebulous thing out there that we're supposedly supposed to do. It's not

nebulous. I don't want you to pass your agreement. I am very serious about this.

Well, I tell you, you're going to be very serious when you sit in a women's

prison for murdering.

When you sit in a women's prison for murder, you know, you're going to be

sad.

No, you're going to be in prison for murder.

We listened to those tapes over and over again, and we tried to come up with

alternative theories to explain why these two people told each other you

be in prison for murder.

And, you know, there's just no other reasonable alternative explanation.

for those conversations.

I helped you on something that was, you know, beyond what anybody else in the

world would probably do.

And I think that deserves some consideration.

Since you're living off the benefits of it, you know.

The emails, the FedEx connection, the banking transactions, the phone calls,

becomes so obvious.

I can't put Ron Young at the murder scene. I can't put Pam Phillips at the

murder scene. I can't show either one of them making the device.

But when you look at all that circumstantial evidence, this all

On October 16, 2008, Young and Phillips are indicted for first -degree murder.

Next on American Greed.

Taking down Pam might be harder than they thought. She's gone, and we don't

if we can ever find her again.

What else did Ron Young and Pam Phillips talk about?

Hear more at cnbcprime .com slash American Greed. Feeling greedy?

Want more than your share of behind -the -scenes dirt?

Follow us at American Greed TV on Twitter.

We'll be right back.

Pam Phillips is under indictment for the 1996 murder of her ex -husband, Gary

Triano. But she's living openly here, on the shores of Lake Lugano in

Switzerland, where she has been trying to escape the past.

Pam had gone to visit her daughter, who was going to college in Lugano,

Switzerland. She started dating a rather wealthy man there, which, in my

opinion, gave her reason to stay.

Phillips might feel safe in the country famous for its neutrality.

That's because Switzerland, like many European countries, will not extradite

suspects who could face the death penalty.

Then they made the announcement that we were dropping the death penalty.

Unfortunately, that was made publicly, so Pam got the clue to run.

So when the police in Switzerland went to the hotel room where we knew she was

staying, she was gone.

U .S. authorities work with Swiss police to try to get Pam back to the States.

Meanwhile, nearly 6 ,000 miles away in Tucson, Arizona, Ron Young stands trial,

accused of conspiring with Pam to kill Triano.

The prosecution's case rests squarely on the audio recordings between Young and

Phillips that Ron Young himself recorded and saved.

In an exclusive interview with American Greed, Young claims that he can explain

everything.

I'm absolutely innocent. I did not participate, did not plan. I never heard

Pamela discuss anything like this.

Absolutely, completely, 100 % innocent.

Young says he left Aspen in 1996 on a long driving vacation with his son, not

because he was fleeing fraud charges.

And then once he found out he was charged, the only reason he didn't go

Aspen is because he thought it wasn't that big a deal.

As far as how smart any of this was, it was incredibly stupid.

I had never been in trouble with the law, so I had absolutely no experience

the police or criminal activity.

I figured it would go away, and I just ignored it.

As it turned out...

Eventually, it came back and kicked me in the hind end.

As for the $2 million Phillips and Young discussed in the audio tapes, Young

claims that figure has nothing to do with Triano's life insurance payoff.

He says it's $2 million of equity Pam has tied up in a San Diego real estate

development, a portion of which he believes is owed to him.

I played lawyer. I played accountant.

typically a financial advisor, business consultant.

What I had done is saved her a fortune in professional fees.

As much as the defense tried to suggest that there were innocent reasons for

these conversations taking place, I think that when you listen to their

I think it's very clear they're talking about the murder.

Though they have no direct evidence tying Ron Young to the crime scene,

detectives can place the Aspen -based businessman in Tucson.

We had no eyewitnesses who saw Ron Young in the parking lot that day.

However, we did have Ron Young here in Tucson in July before the murder on an

assumed name for over two weeks.

I felt that that was strong circumstantial evidence that he was here

and find out which would be the best way to kill Gary Triana.

Will the jury see it the same way?

In March 2010, Young awaits the verdict.

I was

in shock. Just totally in shock because I allowed myself to...

Six weeks later, the judge sentences Young to two consecutive life sentences.

Now,

Tucson authorities need to find Pam Phillips, who is somewhere in Europe, so

can have her day in court.

Between Interpol and the police in Geneva, the criminal brigade, they did a

of work and they tracked her to Liechtenstein and then into Vienna.

And then the police in Vienna arrested her on our arrest warrant.

In July 2010, Pam Phillips lands at the Tucson airport.

Now 53 years old, She appears worn and tired from her journey.

KVOA reporter Lupita Murillo is there to try to get answers.

Your reaction, Pam, to what investigators say, that you hired Ronald

kill your ex -husband, what's your reaction to that for the insurance

that true?

Never said a word. Just kept looking straight ahead.

The only thing she said to me as she got into the squad car was,

It's rather warm here.

Well, it got a lot hotter after that.

Phillips is booked on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Next on American Greed, Phillips' defense team says it has new evidence.

Will it set her free?

We found trace DNA, and it excluded Ronald Young, the person that the

prosecution said built the bomb and killed Gary Triano for Pam.

That's reasonable doubt right there.

Brought back to Arizona from Switzerland, Pamela Phillips pleads not

the charges of murdering her husband, Gary Triano, for insurance money.

And on February 18, 2014, Phillips' trial begins.

The prosecution builds its case upon money, greed, and audio tape. It's a

circumstantial case that the defense team attempts to pick apart.

proved at trial, and the only thing they proved, that there was a connection

between Ronald Young and Pam Phillips, and it was a financial connection.

That's all they proved.

That doesn't prove that they had anything to do with the murder.

Pam Phillips' defense attorneys, Alicia Katah and Paul Eckestrom, say that Pam

wasn't even paying the premiums on the life insurance policy, that another

friend had offered to take over the monthly payments because Pam was in

financial straits.

And the month before Gary's murder, she forgot to make the payment.

If you're going to kill somebody for the insurance money, aren't you going to

make sure that the premiums are paid and the insurance is all up to date and

that you will get the money if this happens? And that didn't happen with

Over the course of working with Pam Phillips, Eckstrom and Katah become true

believers in her innocence.

The evidence you're going to hear is going to convince you now that my client

is... but that Ron Young is innocent.

We felt that we had to do a thorough investigation to build a case that

else did it. And we basically, I think, solved the case.

The defense team orders new tests on the pipe bomb fragments that killed Gary

Triano and are able to acquire trace amounts of DNA.

And it excluded Ronald Young, the person that the prosecution said built the

bomb and killed Gary Triano for Pam.

He was excluded.

from the trace DNA that we found.

That's reasonable doubt right there.

The defense team then takes it even further, presenting an alternate

Well, there's an individual named Neil McNeese who Gary Triano had ripped off

for about $80 ,000 and was very angry at Gary for doing that. And he was a

heroin addict. He was a trust baby. He had a lot of money and had this

thing about...

Gary because of the fact that Gary filked him out of $80 ,000.

And I think ultimately it was him who had ordered this to happen, had a hit

put together, and had a friend of his build the bomb that killed Gary.

And we were able to identify all those people.

At trial, McNeese's private doctor, Lawrence D 'Antonio, testifies that he

McNeese threaten to kill Gary Triano on several occasions.

What did he say about Gary Triano during his period time?

He wanted to kill him.

But the problem is, Neil McNeese died of a drug overdose in 2002, and he was

never investigated by Tucson police.

As with any investigation, you go back and look at it over time, and there's

always things that could have been done either differently, or should have been

done differently, or leads that could have been pursued, and for whatever

reason, or not.

And the defense went to great lengths to investigate Mr. McNeese.

And the best they could come up with is that he didn't like Gary Triano.

He had a friend who knew about remote -controlled cars, and he told people

he would like to kill Gary Triano. But that was over a debt over a ring.

But when you look at that, the debt over the ring occurred in 1991.

He waited until 1996 to have him killed.

Prosecutor Rick Unclesby points to the money trail.

and says greed is on both ends of it.

The 44 cash payments from Pam Phillips to Ron Young made over the course of 10

years total more than $400 ,000.

But the prosecutor has one more bit of evidence, and it proves to be a

bombshell. He calls to the stand Pam's former close friend, Laura Chapman. She

testified that Gary had been over to Pam's house.

They'd had a fight.

Gary pulled a gun to Pam Phillips, threatened her. He left. She called her

friends. They came over. They were consoling her. And that's when she said

is a $2 million insurance policy.

She said that she should just hire a hitman, have him taken out.

A few years later, Chapman is driving home when she sees smoke in the Tucson

foothills. and learns about Gary Triano's death.

Pam's earlier talk about hiring a hitman now echoes in her mind.

I remember saying, oh my gosh, she really did it.

I think that was the nail in the coffin, so to speak.

At the end of the seven -week trial, the jury has heard from more than 100

witnesses, and they have two completely different theories on who killed Gary

Triano and why.

What will they decide?

On April 8, 2014, Pam Phillips waits to hear her verdict.

Do you find the defendant, Pamela Ann Phillips, guilty of first -degree murder

as alleged in count to the indictment?

On May 22, 2014, Phillips is brought into the courtroom shackled to await her

fate. She has traded her designer clothes for a state -issued orange

The judge sentences her.

to natural life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Upon hearing her sentence, Phillips stands and addresses the court.

I just want everybody to know that I am innocent.

I am innocent.

I am innocent.

Okay? And I'm really, really... This is hard. So hard for me. It's a nightmare.

This is a nightmare.

I've never had somebody where I went to trial thinking that they were innocent

lose a trial.

And this one she did.

And it wasn't just I thought she was innocent. This one I was absolutely

convinced she was innocent from the evidence that we had dug up.

Both Phillips and Ron Young are appealing their convictions.

But author Carrie Drobin says she believes justice has been served.

It's really a story about two sociopaths.

They didn't have empathy for people. They knew how to manipulate people. They

had one goal in mind, and that was to satiate their hunger, to have money, and

to have more of it.

And that is the quintessential element of being a sociopath, that you just

have no remorse, no empathy whatsoever, that you have just murdered the father

of your children in such a heinous way.

Gary Triano's good friend Rusty Sands also has no doubt that Pam Phillips is

right where she belongs.

She's going to live the rest of her life in a place that she's not used to.

She only likes to go to five -star hotels. She wouldn't go to a four -star

hotel. Well, she's not in a hotel anymore.

And I think she's going to live the rest of her life out a very, very sad life.

Next, a hometown hero builds a scam on fake deals and bogus contracts until his

accomplice turns snitch. American Greed, scams, scoundrels, and suckers. Next on

CNBC.

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