Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed... That woman had a gift. She had some sort

voodoo magic over these men.

What Nanette Johnston wants, Nanette Johnston gets.

And her sorcery has one aim.

Turning sex into money.

She was a gold digger. It was obvious.

And he went for that? How smart is that?

She steals multi -millionaire Bill McLaughlin's heart. Then she steals his

fortune.

But when he becomes suspicious of her spending, this femme fatale's options

deadly. He must die or the money dries up. Nanette needs to find somebody

enough, violent enough, and mean enough that she can manipulate him to commit a

murder. Enter former NFL linebacker Eric Naposki.

But after nearly 15 years, no one is arrested for Bill McLaughlin's murder.

And many wondered if anyone ever will be. You can stay on my head for my whole

entire life and we will grow old together. You will die and I will stay

But you will never, ever, ever find any reason to think that I had any motive to

kill someone.

She is a killer.

That woman is responsible for the murder of Bill McLaughlin.

That woman is 46 -year -old Nanette Johnston. And in January 2012, she

trial for the murder of her former fiancé.

The couple is together for nearly three years when Bill McLaughlin is gunned

down at his Newport beach home on December 15, 1994.

The minute his heart stops beating, there is one obvious suspect.

At 9, 10, and one second, Lynette Johnston became a millionaire.

By now, Johnston has already been convicted in the court of law for

half a million dollars from McLaughlin and convicted in the court of public

opinion for being a greedy girlfriend.

But her defense wants to ask the jury one last question.

Hate her as much as you want for being a thief, a liar.

She's lost, whatever you want to call her.

Can you call her a murderer?

I guess, if truth be told, she just had some very appealing attributes that she

used very well.

She distracts you over here with her beauty, her looks, her body.

And meanwhile, she's got a whole other agenda, and that's in full swing.

Before Nanette Johnston ever meets Bill McLaughlin, she sharpens her

manipulative skills on Tom Reynolds in 1990 while he works the door of a

nightclub in Orange County, California.

We basically met. Things hit off rather well.

She came back to my place, which was down in Newport. And before I knew it,

had moved in.

It was not pre -designed.

Looking back, I kind of wonder how it happened.

Johnston essentially moves in immediately, and Reynolds quickly

a taste for the finer things at his expense.

She was very focused on money and where it was coming from and how much was

around. We went out and got all new furniture. It was redecorated, you know,

to bottom. New couch, new bed, new TV. Everything was done in whitewash from

upstairs to downstairs.

She had a gift. She, that woman, had a gift.

Orange County Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy says that engulfing men in

sex, lies, and vagaries is standard operating procedure for Nanette

This is what she does. She meets men, she manipulates them, and she destroys

their lives.

Everybody's got a talent.

That's her talent.

And one day, Reynolds realizes he isn't the first to fall prey to Johnston's

talents. An ex -boyfriend came by at one point. I found him lurking, literally

stalking, walking back and forth in front of the house, and he was trying to

track her down.

She had deceived him in some way. You know, they had been involved, and she

gotten money from him, and when she had done that, the relationship he thought

existed did not.

It seems to be a pattern with Nanette Johnston.

You start thinking about how did this whole situation come about because there

really was no planning, wasn't any formality to it. It was just here I was

the middle of it, which is pretty much as he had described it.

He said all of a sudden he looked around and things were gone, money was gone,

and she was gone.

And I'm like, well.

Everything so far, but not the gun part, and that really started making me

wonder.

Perhaps this relationship isn't all sunshine and roses.

I found a lockbox, and that lockbox had a canceled check.

That canceled check was made out to a magazine that we don't have a

subscription. I looked up what magazine it was, and it was a hookup magazine.

So I just went by the dates, found that issue, and lo and behold, it's in bull

print.

Wealthy men only.

Single white female.

Classy, well -educated, adventurous.

Fun.

Looking for an older man who knows how to treat a woman.

You take care of me, and I'll take care of you.

You know, here I am looking at this and knowing she's living in my home. I'm

like, well, if you're going to be wanting those wealthy men, I don't think

there's enough room in here or time for you to leave.

In a short period of time, Johnston finds her next mark,

Bill McLaughlin.

My wife today, you know, she jokes, good thing you weren't making more money

than you were because that could have been you.

Whether Bill answered that ad or whether they met in one of these other ways,

nobody really knows.

All we know for sure is that McLaughlin had been married for about 30 years to a

very, very nice woman. He had three beautiful, super sweet kids. And when he

got divorced, he basically met the worst woman in Orange County.

Apparently, that's not how he sees it. He called me and he said, oh, he met

really beautiful young.

You know, she has a couple of kids, but she has a Ph .D.

And I think I messed up. She must be a genius.

Barbara LaSpisa grows up with her cousin Bill McLaughlin near Chicago, where she

says his family learns the value of a dollar.

His parents were known to be very frugal in our family.

It was rather funny because if you went to their house to eat, as my father

would say, you better eat first before you went there.

McLaughlin may not have money, but he has ambition.

He wanted to be a millionaire by 30. That's what he would tell me, and I'd

of laugh.

Yeah, so would I.

We all do.

But he was focused, and somehow he was going to get there.

After high school, McLaughlin enlists in the Marines and is stationed at Camp

Pendleton in Southern California.

When his duty ends, he enrolls in what is now Loyola Marymount University.

Bill was the first one to go to college, and he couldn't afford that. The

parents couldn't afford it.

Determined to succeed, McLaughlin enrolls in a student worker program to

his education on his own, graduating with a degree in biology in 1964.

In 1966, he marries and soon has three kids, two daughters and a son.

And in the 80s, his promise to his cousin finally comes true.

His business partner invents a groundbreaking medical device that makes

millionaires dozens of times over.

They invented a centrifuge that would separate plasma from blood.

It's still being used today, and it is incredibly lucrative.

After his divorce in 1990, family friend Sandy Baumgartner says there was a

vacuum in McLaughlin's life.

And she sees how the 52 -year -old fills the void at a Christmas party in 1991.

Bill and Nanette walked in, and she was a great deal younger, and I managed to

glean through conversation that she and I were, in fact, the same age, three

weeks apart, and I was 26 years old at the time.

For a 26 -year -old, Johnston seems to have an impressive resume.

She tells Baumgardner she earned a Ph .D. from Arizona State and once owned

own business.

But something about Johnston doesn't feel right.

She was talking about all this education and such, and as I was doing the math,

something wasn't ringing true with the list of accomplishments and the resume,

if you will, that she was rattling off to me.

Nevertheless, when Bob Gardner sees Johnston again two years later,

and Johnston are still together, and she sees a transformed Nanette Johnston.

It looked like she had a little facial surgery and she had some breast

augmentation done.

McLaughlin's family, particularly his daughters Kim and Jenny, are not

impressed. Kim sat Bill down one time and said, look, I think she's after you

for your money.

And, you know, he said, well, thank you very much for your input. But, you know,

I think he took the stance of duly noted.

Johnston moves into McLaughlin's house, converting guest bedrooms into bedrooms

for her two children from a previous marriage.

McLaughlin treats them as his own. And before long, it appears he's going to

make it official.

In 93, he came to me and asked me my thoughts about him getting married.

Brian Ringler has been McLaughlin's accountant since the mid -80s. And

McLaughlin tells him he wants Johnston to be a permanent part of his life.

And he said his concern was that he would be able to provide for her should

something happen to him. And so we had discussed some various options, and one

of the things that he ended up doing was getting a life insurance policy.

The insurance policy is for a million dollars, naming Johnston as the sole

beneficiary.

And it comes just in time.

Within a year of getting the policy, shots ring out in Newport Beach.

Bill McLaughlin is dead.

But who in Bill McLaughlin's world could be capable of such calculated deceit?

Any idea at all who would want to harm him?

I wish I had something to tell you. I wish I knew.

I don't know.

I can't think of anybody.

When American Greed returned, Nanette Johnston claims to have an alibi for the

night of the murder.

But could she have tricked yet another man to do her bidding? I think Naposki

was definitely duped by Nanette. She went after men who could give her

something.

Newport Beach, emergency, please fire.

Three years before Bill McLaughlin's murder, his son Kevin is involved in a

accident that leaves him with mental trauma that affects his speech and motor

skills.

He comes down the stairs and finds his father dying on the kitchen floor. And

calls 911, and it is this heart -wrenching 911 call.

I can't understand what you're saying.

He's trying to... tell the 911 operator what happened, and because of his brain

damage that he suffered as a result of the accident, she can't understand what

he's saying, and you can hear the frustration in his voice.

Are you hurt?

Okay,

we have an officer on the way to your house right now.

The investigators get there probably about 9 .15.

They walk in, and there's poor Kevin distraught.

And to the right on the kitchen floor is Bill McLaughlin on his back, having

been shot six times.

The only thing that they could see that happened in the house was the shooting.

There was really nothing except the murder that seemed to be the point of

incident.

As usual in a murder investigation, the spouse or significant other is an

immediate person of interest.

But when she's questioned...

Nanette Johnston seems to have an alibi.

So what she says is, I was at my son's soccer game.

I went in a triple overtime, and then I went to go buy Christmas presents.

The kids were going to come home with me, but it was so late.

It was like already 8 .30 when the game ended, and my ex was right around the

corner from the field.

So he took them home instead because they were going to have to go to bed in

minutes.

Then I went over to South Coast Plaza, Christmas shop for a few things.

She produces a receipt from Crate and Barrel with a time stamp that seems to

corroborate her story.

So if Johnston wasn't at the house, who was?

Larry Montgomery is an investigator with the Orange County District Attorney's

Office, and he says that investigators on the scene immediately find important

clues about who may have pulled the trigger.

Keys were used. One was for the gate to get into the actual complex.

And the other one was the one that was stuck in the door itself to open the

house. So obviously right there, there's a big clue.

Who has access to keys that could get into the complex and the front door of

this gentleman's house? You start out with the population of the earth, and

can immediately eliminate everybody based on, well, essentially three

Somebody that's in the area, somebody that has a motive to kill Bill

and somebody that has access to these keys.

When Sandy Baumgardner arrives at the scene the next day, a thought

occurs to her.

Besides access to the keys, this killer must have inside information.

I said, whoever did this had intimate knowledge of his schedule because he

wasn't even supposed to be in town.

Only family members and a housekeeper have access to keys and might know

McLaughlin's schedule.

But none are near the house at the time of the murder except for Kevin.

But a gunshot residue test shows that he didn't fire a gun that night.

And his condition makes it extremely unlikely he could have pulled off a

with such precision.

Once again, all eyes are on one person.

But no one has an explanation for how she could be in two places at once.

But maybe she doesn't have to be.

As she repeatedly described, I was at my son's game. I watched my son's game.

They lost in the championship.

I was sad, whatever.

It turns out it wasn't an I, it was a we.

She was with her boyfriend, Eric Naposki.

When American Greed returned, who is this 6 '2", 230 -pound specimen?

And what use could the ex -football player be to Nanette Johnston? Nanette

to find somebody stupid enough, violent enough, and mean enough that she can

manipulate him to commit a murder.

I met Eric at the pool at the apartment complex where I live.

Suzanne Coger meets Eric Naposki in 1994.

The 6 '2", 230 -pound athlete has played linebacker for the New England Patriots

and Dallas Cowboys, among other teams in other leagues.

But injuries cut his career short.

He's tried his hand at both acting and personal training.

But when Coker meets him, he's working security for various nightclubs in the

Orange County area.

She also sees a woman visiting him regularly.

At first, Naposki says she's just a friend, but eventually he comes clean.

He came over and finally admitted that she was his girlfriend and how he was in

love with her.

And he also explained her living arrangement and said that she had been

with a man who was her business partner.

I wasn't sure if he was just trying to make me believe that or if he really was

that dumb to not believe that she was truly living, living with this man.

And he said, oh, no, no, it's just a business arrangement.

They're business partners.

And I said, oh, my gosh, boy, wow, really?

Is that what you believe?

Oh, he certainly believed it.

Angelo McDonald is Naposki's attorney.

According to him, Nanette Johnston tells Naposki that she is a successful

businesswoman. She had all the trappings of it. The nice car, the fine clothes,

the jewelry, the lifestyle.

She had everything.

The couple takes multiple vacations and cruises. And Naposki believes it's all

paid for by Nanette's successful business dealings. And in a twisted way,

After McLaughlin's murder, his accountant, Brian Ringler, examines the

Johnston is keeping and discovers that she's been skimming cash for months.

Here's a check to Nanette on October 25th. The check amount was actually $5

,000. It shows $1 ,000 on what Bill would get as a printout.

In McLaughlin's ledger, Johnston records relatively minor payments made to her

and other entities.

But in reality, she's writing bigger and bigger checks to herself.

So you see this dramatic increase in thefts from McLaughlin right as she is

spending more and more time with Leposki.

They go to Jamaica, she steals $20 ,000.

They go to, you know, meet his family, and it's $30 ,000.

They go to her sister's wedding, and the thefts are off the charts.

The most brazen theft?

A $250 ,000 check dated the day before McLaughlin's murder. The signature on

check forged by Nanette Johnston.

Brian Ringler believes that Johnston eventually embezzles approximately $500

,000 from McLaughlin, and it's not something she can expect to hide for

You can steal $5 ,000 and get away with it from somebody that has as much money

as Bill McLaughlin. You might even be able to steal $20 ,000 and get away with

it. You can't steal $250 ,000 and not have an accountant ask where that money

going. And she is a genuinely bad person. So she's going to get caught.

soon as he finds out that she's stealing or that she's sleeping with some other

dude, she's out the door.

So he must die before the money dries up.

And according to Murphy, she has set up the patsy to make it happen. To an

extent, you can almost feel sorry for the guy. He's not that bright. He's a

failed athlete.

And Nanette needs to find somebody stupid enough and violent enough and

enough that she can manipulate him to commit a murder.

Johnston allegedly tells Naposki that McLaughlin has been making unwanted

advances, sneaking into her bedroom at night. When Naposki tells his neighbor

Suzanne Cogar about it, she says his testosterone is boiling over.

He seemed jealous and somewhat enraged.

And then he proceeded to tell me that Bill owned his own plane, and then he

blurted out, I'm going to have his plane blown up.

Weeks later, Bill McLaughlin is dead.

And Nanette Johnson doesn't seem like a woman in mourning.

She's more like someone with reasons to celebrate.

There was an insurance policy that was worth $1 million to her.

In the will, there was $150 ,000 given to her.

She gets to keep all the money that she's stolen, which is somewhere in the

neighborhood of maybe just shy of half a million dollars.

She gets to live in the beach house rent -free for one year. She gets titled to

convertible Lexus that he bought for her. So just on the surface, she stands

make about a million dollars.

But as the trustee, she's going to be able to steal another million, two

out of his estate.

This is not only a gold digger.

It's a gold digger with a black heart.

When American Greed returns, law enforcement zeroes in on Nanette

she won't go down willingly.

You can't catch up to me because I didn't do anything.

You can't catch up to somebody who didn't do anything without making

up. Okay?

Because I didn't do anything.

Eight days after Bill McLaughlin's murder, Newport Beach police bring

Johnston's lover, Eric Naposki, in for questioning.

Am I in trouble for something?

I hope not.

I hope not, too, because I don't understand.

He's very aggressive and very compelling in the way he defends himself. He's

very forceful in his denials, but the problem is that he talks too much.

Describe your relationship with Nanette.

Well, he'd actually proposed to her.

So, you know, fiancé versus friend, you know, when you're immediately lying

about the nature of the relationship, that's a huge red flag.

They also asked him if he owned any firearms.

But less than 20 minutes later... The

problem

with Eric Naposki is that every time he talks, it's a different story.

It makes investigators suspicious.

But Naposki leaves the interview without further incident.

And if the attention scares him in Johnston...

They aren't acting like it.

Larry Montgomery put it very well once. He said, these are not chess players.

People that do this sort of thing, they roll the dice.

They're not thinking three or four moves ahead.

They went through all this so that they could get the money, and they can't wait

to go and spend it.

He moves out of his crappy little apartment and into a beach house in

Beach. He's driving around in Bill McLaughlin's convertible Cadillac. He

a friggin' shopping trip with her. We're there at South Coast Plaza buying

everything in sight.

All on Bill Stein.

But if Naposki dreams of driving the Cadillac off into the sunset, Nanette

not be riding shotgun.

The problem is, is I don't think Nanette has any desire to be with Naposki for

any length of time, but needed him for what she needed him for.

And now that that's over, things were starting to deteriorate.

You love this guy? You love Eric?

I don't know that I would say love. I'd say I care about him a lot. I care about

him as a person.

I mean... Do you want to marry him?

No, I don't want to get married.

The investigators believe that Nanette masterfully manipulates Eric's emotions.

They bring him in for questioning one more time to see if they too can play

manipulation game.

Maybe a revelation about the true nature of her relationship with McLaughlin can

get Naposki to turn on her.

She's told us that she was engaged to Bill.

That's what she told you? She has told us that. In an interview when she knew

that we were tape recording.

She said that she was engaged to Bill. That's interesting.

But even with knowledge of the betrayal and perhaps a new perspective on the

future of their relationship, Naposki won't break.

I have to look out for Eric. I don't want Nanette to be dragged into anything

that she didn't do either.

But once again, Naposki can't stick to his own script.

But when they confront him later in a subsequent interview, they say, hey,

you don't have an alibi. He says, well, let me think about that night.

Actually, I said I went straight to work, but I didn't. What I did is I went

home and then I went to see some friends of mine and I got a page and I made a

phone call from a Denny's. And that Denny's phone call has to be my, you

couldn't possibly have gotten there.

Another startling revelation in the second interview.

A gun Naposki forgot to mention.

Where is your 9mm?

I have no idea. You have no idea. That's my statement.

It's the same caliber gun used to kill Bill McLaughlin.

But Naposki seems to believe he's always one step ahead. You can stay on my head

for my whole entire life.

And we will grow old together. You will die and I will stay alive.

But you will never ever.

ever find any reason to think that I had any motive to kill a student.

It's not only with law enforcement that Naposki can't keep his mouth shut.

Around the same time he's being questioned, he pays Suzanne Colbert

visit. He asked if I'd seen any cops around.

And I said, why, what's going on? And he, why would there be cops here? And he

said, well, you know that guy, Bill, he was killed, he was murdered.

It sends a chill down Cougar's spine.

I said to him, I don't even want to know if you did it or not.

And he said, oh, I didn't do it.

But I might have had someone do it.

I was just shell -shocked. I couldn't believe what was coming out of his

Who would say something like that?

I said again, I don't even want to know if you did it or not. And he said, maybe

I did and maybe I didn't.

And he just smirked.

It's a conversation Cougar is initially hesitant to pass along.

He was only like six foot something and, you know, as broad as a doorway looming

over me.

He was very daunting to have standing right in front of you and tell you about

murder that had just happened and me standing there knowing that he was

responsible for it.

So I gave it a little time to make sure he was kind of leaving me alone before I

made a phone call to the police.

On that call, she's disappointed when the detective says her story will have

little impact.

He said, well, thanks, but this isn't enough to make an arrest or anything.

And I thought, wow, that tells you what I know about the justice system because

I would have thought that it was pretty incriminating.

Despite police and prosecutors believing they have the murder conspirators in

their sights, the case has limitations.

There are no unexpected fingerprints at the scene, nor DNA.

There are no shoe prints outside the house, no eyewitnesses, and the murder

weapon is never found.

You have to be able to have enough for the prosecutor to believe that they can

prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt before they can file charges.

It's an opinion that each prosecutor has to decide upon.

And in this case, the district attorney's office decides not to bring

charges.

But Johnston doesn't get away with everything.

In 1996, she is convicted for the theft of approximately $500 ,000 from

McLaughlin and is sentenced to one year in jail.

But remarkably, she is still the beneficiary of McLaughlin's life

policy.

After taking out what is owed to them from Johnston's theft, the McLaughlin

children are left with the unpalatable duty of paying Johnston $220 ,000.

Not a bad nest egg to start a new life.

When American Greed Returns. Nanette Johnston may have stolen a new

but the Orange County District Attorney's Office is starting over, too.

First day, when I came into the home studio, she said, When you get your

bearings, you've got to take a look at the foam and gloffing case.

She thought it was solvable, and she was right.

Want inside information from the show?

Join the Greed social network.

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We'll be right back.

Nearly eight years after Bill McLaughlin's murder, there's still no

But in 2002, when Matt Murphy joins the District Attorney's Homicide Unit, he

directs his investigators to solve the case once and for all.

I was asked by the DA and the Newport Police Department to look at the case

whatever experience I have to see if I can find anything that maybe they didn't

find.

The district attorney's office looks into minute detail of everything Naposki

and Johnston say and do.

And they see a lot of suspicious behavior.

In the fall, a few months before the murder, Johnston and Naposki appear to

looking for a new love nest.

They're house hunting in a place called Turtle Rock.

Picture Beverly Hills with newer houses.

You know, these are multi -million dollar homes.

Eric is a bouncer.

And Nanette has no income outside of Bill McLaughlin. So how this is going to

happen without her knowing at the time that Bill McLaughlin is going to die,

it's impossible.

Johnston also tells a software entrepreneur she may be interested in

in his company, but not until 1995.

She was saying that she was thinking that after the first of the year, she

have $100 ,000, maybe $200 ,000 to invest in his company.

She knows Bill McLaughlin's going to be dead. That's the only way that she can

come in. And if you know somebody's going to die, before they die, it's

not going to be a bolt of lightning that's going to kill them.

More than a decade after the murder, investigator Larry Montgomery and Deputy

District Attorney Matt Murphy begin to piece together Naposki and Johnston's

actions the night of December 15, 1994, after her kid's soccer game.

They drive directly to Newport Beach.

She dropped Eric Naposki off somewhere in the vicinity of the murder scene.

Back in 1994, there was a staircase that came right down to about where my feet

are, and there was a place you could pull out. We think that Annette probably

dropped Naposki off at that location so he could walk straight down here to

where I'm standing.

And right in front of me, this was a chain -link fence, and there was a gate.

He enters the pedestrian gate.

He enters the front door with the key that gets stuck in the lock.

So as he's fumbling for that, he drops the pedestrian access key.

So Naposki walks in, pulls the gun out, shoots Bill McLaughlin in three two

-shot bursts. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

McLaughlin goes down.

Mr. McLaughlin lived directly over this direction.

We think Mr. Naposki came right through here and immediately went up to the road

and then head directly over the bridge.

to where he worked, which is a building over here with a black awning.

If this scenario is true, Naposki and Johnston have been operating on borrowed

time for nearly 15 years.

And Johnston gets back toward her old tricks.

She marries one multimillionaire in 1998 with whom she has two more kids.

When that relationship falls apart, she marries another and is as wealthy as

ever. That woman had a gift.

She didn't murder anybody else that we know about, but she would charm these

guys, and she had some sort of voodoo magic over these men.

Naposki has two kids from a short -lived marriage and eventually moves to

Greenwich, Connecticut, working as a personal trainer.

His sister, Angela, is convinced of Naposki's innocence and says that

the difficult times being suspected by the police, Naposki is able to put it

behind him and continue with the life he deserves.

It took a little while for that to fade out and for life to get back to normal.

It wasn't a fun thing to go through, but it didn't, we all thought it was over

and behind us. Let's put it that way.

But it's not behind them.

When American Greed returns, Naposki and Johnston move on without each other.

But their paths will cross again.

Former NFL linebacker Eric Naposki and his ex -lover Nanette Packard have been

charged with the murder of William Francis McLaughlin.

On May 20, 2009, Eric Naposki and Annette Johnston are arrested in

stings on opposite sides of the country.

The trials are split into two.

Naposki's is first.

The defense will prove that Eric Naposki did not commit and could not logically

and reasonably have committed this crime because he was somewhere else at the

time of the murder.

The defense centers around Naposki's story that after the soccer game on

December 15, 1994, he made a phone call from a Denny's at 8 .52 p .m., and it

would have been impossible for him to get to the murder scene by 9 .10. But 15

years after the murder, the defense is severely challenged to prove it. You

can't wait for years and years and then put a defendant in a position where he

can't establish his defense.

Back then, he had lots of people where he could say, I was with these people

that people. And literally, 15 years later, some of these people are dead.

They're missing. They don't remember anything.

You can't find them because of that time difference. It's so difficult to

actually make your alibi defense what it's supposed to be.

I think in this case, it was unfair.

Even if Naposki did make that call at 8 .52, The prosecution argues that he

still had time to get to McLaughlin's house to commit the murder.

If you hung up that phone, got in your car, and drove straight to that bridge,

it's virtually the exact time that you would arrive, and we drove it many

You can't prove someone guilty of murder based on suspicion, innuendo, surmises,

guesses, beliefs, feelings.

The defense points out that the case is almost entirely circumstantial. The only

physical evidence from the crime scene are the bullets and shell casings. But

the gun is never found.

There were two, three million 9mm Berettas out in circulation at the time.

that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot to me in terms of reasonable doubt.

There were no fingerprints.

There was no DNA.

There was no video. There was no admissions.

There were no eyewitnesses, footprints, bits of clothing, fiber evidence.

None of that existed in that case.

We don't have a picture of him there. We don't have any witnesses that saw a big

guy at that location. However, we have a whole ton of evidence that the person

or persons who were involved in doing this had access to keys, and it's a gun

that he had, and it's a gun that he lied about where it disappeared to.

and then you compound that with the bits and pieces that are inconsistent with

telling the truth, inconsistent with innocence, and totally consistent with

you would say if you were guilty, it becomes overwhelming.

According to Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy, the greatest condemnation

comes from the mouth of the accused.

I think the best witness that we had in this thing was Eric Naposki himself, and

the fact that he told a different story every time he opened his mouth.

And that goes back to the investigation, the first interview, the second

interview. And we start out with, yeah, she's a pretty good friend of mine, to,

okay, I asked her to marry me.

You know, yeah, I don't have any guns.

To, okay, I had two guns, and one of them was a 9mm.

Ultimately, the jury doesn't believe Naposki's shifting stories.

On July 14, 2011, Eric Naposki is convicted of murder and he is sentenced

life in prison.

But after the trial, he presents yet another version of events to the

prosecution.

I know I lied about Nanette and I's relationship, and I know I lied about

gun, but now I'm really going to tell you the truth.

The truth is I knew she wanted to murder him.

I knew she was trying to find a hitman. I introduced her to the hitman, but I

had nothing to do with it.

According to his sister, Naposki has a reason to keep the story to himself for

so long.

The guy told him he would kill him and his family.

I remember him screaming to me on the phone, you know, from prison. I said,

well, what the hell? Why didn't you say this? You know, why didn't you tell this

story? He said, did you want to see me floating down a river?

You know, he was screaming at me.

McDonald claims that the evidence at the scene, such as access to keys and

knowledge of McLaughlin's schedule, only incriminates Johnston, not Naposki. You

could argue that she could have gotten anybody to do that. Certainly, the whole

Nanette hires the hitman theory clearly could have been done with the

same evidence, the same scene, everything. And the hitman not being

Naposki.

Eventually, Naposki names the alleged hitman. But law enforcement says they

no evidence to support Naposki's story.

I went and reinvestigated everything he told us and blew major holes in almost

everything he told us and then went back to talk to Naposki, confronted him with

those lies, and he admitted to a number of those and danced around a few, and we

proved that most of what he told us in this big second interview were also

So his credibility is just shot.

The common denominator in either theory is Nanette Johnston, and the district

attorney's office has no doubt that she orchestrates the murder after stealing

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now, how is she going to get away with that if Bill McLaughlin lives?

The defense tries to argue that Naposki acts on his own in a jealous rage.

There was no reason why he had to be killed that night, except that it was

opportunity Eric needed.

That was the defense he needed to run because...

Clearly, the jury's going to hate her, and as they should.

But he didn't want them making a decision on that type of motion, and of

we didn't either.

We wanted them to make their decision based on the hard facts and the

which is exactly what they did.

We, the jury and the above entitled action, find the defendant, Nanette Ann

Packard, guilty of the crime of... She is sentenced to life in prison, and the

people who knew Bill McLaughlin are left to try to make sense.

of a senseless murder.

From day one, her intention with Bill was to get as much money and live a

lifestyle, but I don't know at what point it turned homicidal.

I don't know what ails her, what in her life happened to her that made her this

way.