Original subtitles

A deadly fall in rural Pennsylvania.

A small town left shell-shocked by the death

of a loving wife and mother.

Carol's death rocked the community.

It was just so unexpected and so surprising.

I think both of us felt sick in our stomachs

and emotional, like, just a shock.

Was it simply a tragic accident--

Perhaps Carol somehow fallen in the bedroom and bled.

Gone outside for fresh air, and stumbled down the stairs

and died.

- or was it murder?

Were you at the house

on the day of Carol's death?

Yes-- no.

OK.

OK.

They knew at that point that they had

a bigger case on their hands.

Carol Hickok was born

Carol Miller on June 30, 1945.

She was the second oldest of 10 children.

Carol, to help her family, took a job

delivering newspapers, and that's

where she met Roger Hickok.

And Carol and Roger Hickok married on May 9, 1964.

The couple went on to have three children

and raised them in rural Pennsylvania.

My name is Betty Thoren,

and I first met Carol in 1968 at church.

We were new when we moved here to Canton, Pennsylvania,

and she was one of the first gals that I met.

Canton is a very small rural town.

I believe the population when we came was about 3,000.

And you had 30 miles plus to go either way north or south

to a larger city to shop.

And people often know what's going on in your business

before you know it.

It's a very tight knit community.

Everybody knows everybody.

And, you know, there's small mom and pop kind of

businesses there.

And then you go to the outer lands.

It's very rural and it's very bucolic.

You know, it's dotted with beautiful red barns.

And at one time, it was a large dairy community.

There were a lot of farms here.

Roger had a farm, and Roger became

a very successful veal farmer.

Carol also had her own little veal business,

and she did very well with that.

She was respected.

She was a businesswoman.

She ran the business for them.

She did a very good job, and was a good mom

to her three children.

Life seemed pretty good for Roger and Carol.

But in 1996, their relationship changed forever.

By all accounts, you know, Roger and

Carol were living a good life.

She was a good wife.

She was a devoted mother, well revered in the community.

And for one reason or another, Roger met Emily, and

they began a 15-year affair.

After Emily Bellows-Schaffer and

Roger started a relationship, he made

no secret of their affair.

Roger would spend time with Emily,

and he would go home with Carol.

And she would make these wonderful meals and pies

and welcome him home.

And then he would be with Emily the other times.

And there was a cabin above their home

that Emily did stay in from time to time.

Carol did know that Emily was there.

She told me.

Not everyone could do that, or would do that.

She did that, and she chose to do it

because she thought it was right, regardless

of what anyone said.

A mutual friend told my husband that he

knew that Roger had a little boy, a child with Emily.

It was never difficult to believe,

but my husband assured me that it was so,

and that they had a little boy.

The existence of Roger and Emily's son,

Charlie, would eventually be learned

by Bradford County District Attorney Daniel Barrett.

After the son was born, at one point,

Roger had started a divorce from Carol.

But Emily, I guess, abandoned Roger at that point,

and then Roger and Carol reconciled.

She said, people want to know why I'm still

here, basically, with Roger.

She said, I don't feel that the Lord wants me to divorce Roger.

I know I'm to stay here, and that's what I'm going to do.

And then when Emily wasn't taking

very good care of her child, Roger

got involved in seeking custody of the child

because the child needed care.

Carol was a religious woman.

She enjoyed children.

And she willingly accepted Charlie into her home.

And they built their life around the child.

Carol, Roger, and Charlie

were living together as a family,

when, in the early hours of September 15, 2010,

everything changed.

An occasional insomniac, Roger was having trouble sleeping.

On the morning of the 15th,

Roger Hickok woke up.

And as he commonly did, he headed to a nearby coffee shop

to get coffee and talk with his friends.

After arriving at the cafe in Canton,

Roger sat and drank coffee for several hours.

And after a while,

it was getting near school bus time,

so he called home to make sure that his son

was on the school bus.

His wife didn't answer.

His son answered the phone.

And his son said that he didn't know

where Mimi was, because Mimi is what he called his stepmother.

A few minutes later, Charlie calls his father and says,

mom is outside at the bottom of the steps.

She's unresponsive.

She's not moving.

I need you here.

Roger then was stunned and called for 911 help

because he knew something horrible had to have happened.

Roger raced home to find

Carol at the bottom of some steps,

unresponsive and covered in blood

from what looked like a severe head wound after a tragic fall.

Carol was showing no signs of life,

and Roger recognized that she was dead.

He and his son just said a prayer

and waited for the emergency personnel to arrive.

At 8:16 AM, the coroner

arrived to find Carol Hickok's body wrapped in a blanket.

And she was officially pronounced dead at the scene.

News of Carol's sudden, tragic death

spread quickly to family and friends.

We received a phone call about 20

after 8:00 from a friend who told

us that Carol had passed away.

I think both of us felt sick in our stomachs

and emotional, like, just a shock.

My husband and I--

Larry and I just, just sat down.

And how could this be?

Carol's family were devastated

by her sudden death.

They struggled to comprehend how they were going

to move on with their life.

They just said it was the most heartbreaking thing that they'd

ever had to comprehend.

Carol's death rocked the community.

It was just so unexpected and so surprising

because she was a vibrant, healthy woman.

And here, something so seemingly simple took her out.

Carol's death appeared

to be a tragic accident from a fatal fall

down the rear steps of her home.

But when first responders entered the house,

they found there might be more to the story

than they realized.

In the master bedroom, it became very clear

that something big happened.

There was a lot of blood.

There was blood on the corner of the dresser.

There was blood on the floor.

Investigators found blood on the bed,

but the comforter had been removed from the bed

and placed in a washing machine,

still covered in blood.

The washing machine had not been turned on.

That was a mystery.

And for the police, there was an effort

to determine what can we see, what might tell us something

that had happened here.

And the circumstances were quite strange.

Despite the discovery of a large amount of blood

in the bedroom and on the comforter found in the washer,

investigators still considered the possibility

that Carol's death had been accidental.

They began to theorize that perhaps Carol had

somehow fallen in the bedroom and bled,

tried to pick up the clothing and sheets that she bled on,

gone outside for fresh air, and stumbled down the stairs

and died.

It made no sense that this woman

would have been the victim of some sort of violence

because there was no sign that anybody had been there.

And there's also no reason why anybody

would drag the woman out on the porch or left her in the lawn.

But investigators also had

to follow protocol for an unexplained death

and treat it like a homicide investigation

until proven otherwise.

In cases where there's a possible injury,

there's always the questions that have to be asked--

who would want to kill this person?

The question here would be to look at the family, look

at the husband, and anybody that

might have a grudge or a reason to benefit from Carol's death.

With investigators open to the possibility

that Carol may have been murdered,

Roger became suspect number one.

After Carol Hickok was found dead at the bottom

of a flight of steps at her home on September 15, 2010,

investigators went to speak to her husband, Roger,

to see if he could help them work out

if her death was the result of an accidental fall

or something more sinister.

When police arrived

at the house they were carrying on their investigation,

Roger was sat smoking a cigar.

And this kind of jumped out to the authorities

as quite strange behavior.

He was smoking a cigar just yards away from where

his wife's dead body lay.

Police took Roger to the local station

for an interview.

Roger is being questioned

because he's the husband.

He's the last person to have seen Carol alive that morning.

So, naturally, they had questions for him.

Roger explained to the police

that he routinely would wake up early and want to do something,

and would go and get coffee.

They immediately deployed officers

to the coffee shop to check the CCTV and verify Roger's story.

Roger had arrived

at the coffee place sometime in the range of 4:00 AM.

It was before daylight, quite early.

And it was easy to check whether he'd been there.

The records of the coffee shop could confirm that.

When questioned about the bloodied blanket that

had been left in the washer, Roger said, I don't even do

the washing in our household.

I wouldn't even know how to use the machine.

Police probed further to ask Roger

what had happened that night and

had there been any disagreements

between the couple.

He said, no, and that they'd gone to bed as normal

between 9:00 to 9:30 PM.

And it was at that point of 4:00 AM that

he decided to leave the house.

And that was the last time that he saw his wife alive.

Early indications suggest that Carol Hickok died

sometime between 4:00 AM and 7:00 AM,

so Roger's timeline stacked up.

Officers then asked Roger to take a polygraph test to verify

what he had told them.

The major benefit of polygraph

is that it assists police in eliminating suspects.

Roger's willingness to take the polygraph

was, of course, a good sign.

The police know that the impact

of their suggestion of a polygraph test

can be significant on a potential suspect.

So they often use the polygraph as a tool to elicit a reaction,

to see what reaction they get.

Someone who readily agrees to take a polygraph test,

usually, this indicates that this is someone who wants

to prove their innocence.

Roger Hickok was on hard

and blood pressure medication.

He was 65 years old.

And the medications are well-known to mess

up polygraph results.

So his polygraph result was inconclusive.

Despite Roger's willingness

to take the polygraph test, the inconclusive result

meant police continued to treat him as a suspect.

The investigations

stayed with Roger because he was

the other person in the home.

He was married to her.

So he remained somebody that might have,

in one way or another, had some benefit or some motive.

Police needed to consider all possible suspects

at this stage, and that included Roger's son, Charlie.

Even though he was 11 years old,

he was the person who discovered Carol's body.

So the police had to ask him some questions

to rule him out as a suspect.

However, Charlie's story that he was asleep

during Carol's death checked out, so he was very quickly

ruled out as a suspect.

Diving deeper into Carol and Roger's family

background, police then found out about Roger's affair

with Emily--

a revelation that dramatically changed the course

of their investigation.

They found out that Charlie wasn't Carol's biological son,

and Charlie was Emily's son.

Carol Hickok's family, of course,

had a fair amount of resentment,

I guess, about Roger's whole involvement with Emily

and the pain it must have caused

Carol over the years and the disruption to the family life.

Once the investigators found out

about this complicated situation, possibly a love

triangle, it then gave them a bit

of a motive to question whether Emily had anything

to do with Carol's death.

Roger, however, said that he had no relationship with

Emily anymore.

They hadn't been in contact for a long time, and

that she didn't have anything to do with Charlie.

Meanwhile, police eagerly

awaited the results of Carol's autopsy,

hoping that it would reveal whether she

had died from an accidental fatal fall,

or if her injuries suggested foul play and the possibility

that she was pushed to her death.

When the autopsy comes back,

it showed the blunt force trauma to her head.

It showed bruising on her torso and her body.

But at the end of the day, the cause of death

was undetermined.

It is a huge disappointment for investigators

because now they have no idea how Carol really died.

Nine days after Carol's death,

Trooper James Kerrick went over to interview Emily

at her home, which is around an hour away in Pennsylvania

from where Carol lived.

After this two-hour long interview,

Kerrick said that Emily was intelligent,

she was cooperative.

But he did notice this resentment

that seemed to still be there towards Roger and Carol,

especially because of her lack of contact with Charlie.

When asked directly if she had any involvement

in Carol's death, Emily simply answered no.

Emily told Trooper Kerrick

that she could not have got to Canton to commit

murder because there was no gas in her tank,

and she had no money.

When he left that day,

Trooper Kerrick knew that although Emily

could have had something to do with Carol's death,

he had no evidence at this point.

So with no clear leads, all the authorities

could do was wait for the forensic and lab results

to come in.

Three months after Carol's death,

with investigators no closer to determining how she had died,

the coroner decided to revisit the case.

It's not common for a coroner

to revisit a case, but there was just

something about this case that didn't

sit right with investigators.

The coroner is going through the photos again,

and he notices that there are scratches to Carol's neck,

and it almost looks like defense wounds.

Suddenly, investigators had

a potential cause of death.

If their suspicions were right, then, at some point,

Carol had been fighting for her life

while somebody had their hands around her throat.

What had once seemed like a mystery

was now a murder investigation.

After discovering that they were now

dealing with a homicide, police received

a phone call that revealed yet another twist to the story.

Carol's brother contacted the police

to say that Roger and Charlie had now moved to Roger's home

in Crystal River in Florida, and that Emily was

living with them there too.

When it became known

that Roger had gone to Florida with Emily Bellows-Schaffer and

their son, it was something of interest to the police.

This was very conflicting to what the investigators

originally thought.

They had been told that Emily had nothing to do with Charlie,

yet now she had practically stepped

in to be another mom to him, all living together

as a family under one roof.

And also, it seemed possible that Emily and Roger all along

had been carrying on their relationship,

and that actually it had been Carol

who was getting in the way.

The news of Rogers move

to Florida with his ex-lover sent

shock waves through Carol's family and the local community.

People who had reasons

to resent either Roger's conduct or

Emily's conduct over the years found a good opportunity

to use the trip to Florida as a reason to justify suspicions

that Roger, or Roger and Emily, or Emily had been

involved in Carol's death.

Just three months after Carol Hickok

was found dead at the foot of the steps

outside her home in Canton, Pennsylvania,

her husband Roger had moved to Florida with his former lover,

Emily, and their son.

But without enough evidence, police

were unable to bring them back to Pennsylvania

to be interviewed.

Seven months later, on July 19, 2011,

police received a call that would

turn the case on its head.

Police get a phone call from Emily Schaffer.

And she says she has something interesting to tell

them about Carol Hickok.

Emily had explained to police that she

and Roger had a falling out.

She told officers that following their argument,

Roger had taken Charlie back to their home

in Canton, Pennsylvania.

That was kind

of the last straw for Emily.

She was very frustrated.

She was missing her child.

The reason that Emily Schaffer was even in town

was because she had a court hearing to go

over custody of young Charlie.

Eager to speak to Emily about Carol's death,

police collected her from the courthouse

for a voluntary interview at the station.

Emily arrives at the police station,

and they bring her into an office rather

than an interrogation room.

So Emily was not under arrest at this point.

This is just a conversation.

They have no idea what she's about to tell them.

Trooper Dave Pelachick

led the interview, with Trooper Nathan Lewis

also in attendance.

We received a phone call from you today.

Yes.

You wanted to share some information with us.

Yes.

She arrives with a backpack

full of paperwork, and troopers want

to hear what she has to say.

Roger Hickok and I have had--

we've known each other over 15 years.

And it was a rocky 15 years.

As time progressed, he became more

and more angry and violent.

Do you think he's capable of something,

of causing harm to someone?

At first, I thought, you know,

there's no way Roger could have done this.

But the more I see that he still has the hair trigger

temper and the split personality,

I think anything is possible.

She's afraid of Roger, all of a sudden.

After a 15-year relationship where

they're loving each other and they have a child,

suddenly she's afraid.

He's abusive, she's scared of him.

She doesn't know what's going to happen.

And it looks like she's trying to protect herself from Roger.

He is a narcissist, and he is a sociopath.

Emily then went on to talk about Carol's history

with Charlie and Roger.

Prior to Carol's death,

she was the primary caretaker of Charlie.

After Carol's death, I went to Florida

with him, primarily to take care of Charlie

because he does not.

It becomes very clear that Emily

is no longer Roger's ally.

When Roger and Emily and their child

went to Florida, the relationship with them

didn't develop.

It wasn't, at last, we were together, at least

as far as Roger was concerned.

Emily had nothing really to call a job.

She was living from hand to mouth.

And eventually, as the winter ended,

he headed back to Pennsylvania and made it clear

that he wasn't bringing Emily with him.

In the middle

of the interview, as she's carrying

on about how awful Roger is, her cell phone rings.

This is Roger calling right now.

Roger had called Emily to ask her out for lunch.

When the call comes in from Roger inviting her to lunch,

he was calm and reasonable and wasn't

yelling or complaining at her.

He just invited her.

So his calling her was consistent with being

very reasonable.

Why do you want to have lunch?

Because what he says to me and

what he says to other people are

opposite ends of the spectrum.

Suspicious of Emily's description

of Roger as a violent sociopath, troopers

continued to probe Emily on their relationship.

We were supposed to have shared custody,

but he refused every opportunity, every request

that I had to see Charlie.

He refused to let me see him.

Roger does not want Charlie talking to me.

Emily is spinning

this tale to investigators about how awful Roger is.

And she's not really getting to the point of why she's there.

And so investigators are just letting

her talk because eventually it's going to come out.

When's the last time,

before Carol's death, that you had been intimate with Roger?

The last weekend in July.

I was so desperate for any contact at all that I had--

with Charlie that if I had to sleep with a son of a bitch,

I'd sleep with just so I knew what was

going on in Charlie's life.

Investigators understand they

have something going on here.

And they realize if they let her keep talking,

she's going to bring them back to the date of Carol's death.

You talked to Roger between the end of July.

And the day of Carol's death, did you

have any contacts with him?

I probably talked to him, but I didn't see him.

He made it a point to let me know that he was not home.

The morning that Carol died, he sent me a text message at 4:00

o'clock in the morning.

What did the text say?

The text said--

September 15 at 4:07 AM, he sent a text message, you up?

I texted back him at 7:02 AM saying, I'm up.

I said, favor to ask, can I borrow

the Ford and the big trailer?

I was moving out of my apartment.

He texted back, troubles.

That was around 2:21 in the afternoon.

I said, work, question mark.

I said, get earlier messages, question mark.

He said, death.

And I said, never good.

Then he texted back at 3:02, at state police Towanda.

I said, what's up?

And he said, troubles.

And then I texted back, prayers.

Let me just back up a little bit.

When he kept saying death, you never asked who?

I never asked who.

He didn't say.

She's not asking about

anybody else in the house.

So to me, that's a giant red flag.

You're not asking about your son who lives in the house,

or the woman who's taking care of your child,

or any of the other people that are in that family.

You're not asking about any of them.

I found that to be very unusual.

Pelachick knew Emily had a motive, that she was mad

at Roger, that she didn't like Roger,

and she had things to say.

So his curiosity was quite up there.

This was the time to see where the case would take him and

keep the person talking.

Let her talk and ask her questions.

What was the only thing

standing in the way between you and Charlie

prior to Carol's death?

Prior to Carol's death?

Roger.

I would say Carol.

No.

She took care of--

No, not between--

OK.

The only thing between you and Charlie

was Carol.

OK, because the minute Carol was removed--

I moved right in.

You certainly had motive to get

Carol out of the picture.

In Emily's mind,

it's obvious at that point that she realized

that she was becoming a suspect,

that they weren't accepting everything she had to say.

Were you at the house

on the day of Carol's death?

Yeah-- no.

OK.

OK.

When Emily stammers, and, first, she says,

yes, then quickly correct herself and

says no, they knew at that point

that they had a bigger case on their hands.

This responding, and then

correcting herself shows somebody trying

to strategically manage the interview

situation to give interviewers the response she thinks

is most appropriate.

And indeed, there are times when these kind of verbal slips

are direct indicators of deception,

of what the real answer is to the question.

Investigators can use that kind of slip

very directly and strategically to pursue that line of inquiry.

And they can use it just as a broad indicator

of somebody who is not telling them the whole truth.

Are you a violent person?

Because if this was not an accidental death--

Yeah.

- this is the first time this person

has caused harm to someone.

Can I tell you a little bit?

He came into the house one time and he said,

I'm going to take Charlie and leave.

And I picked up the nearest cast iron frying pan,

and I hit him square in the back with it.

And he handed Charlie back to me and left.

The fact that Emily struck Roger with the frying pan

showed that she could let her anger take her to the point

of senseless violence.

And real violence, too.

Not the slap across the face or anything like that.

It was at this point that police

decided to ask Emily to take a lie detector test.

We would like you

to take a polygraph at some point just

to say, hey, it's not me.

I didn't do anything to it.

Well, I was never at the house.

The two tubes-- one goes in your chest,

one goes lower-- measures your breathing.

Some people breathe more through their chest.

Some people breathe more through their stomach.

The reason we measure these--

I've waited for my chance

because I sing in the shower.

When she's singing and starting

breathing exercises, I think she was probably

trying to be cute and try to endear herself

to the policemen, and make them think that she's very relaxed

and confident and so forth.

It's an act.

Emily has gone into this interview as a woman very

confident, very organized, very used to handling authority,

not intimidated in any way.

And I feel that the singing is part

of this attempt to continue to charm the officers.

She believes she can sweet talk her way out of the situation.

The test is about to begin.

Please remain still.

Regarding that woman's death, do you intend to answer

each question truthfully?

Yes.

They had been interviewing Emily for four hours,

yet nobody had asked her directly if she was

responsible for Carol's death.

Did you cause that woman's death?

No.

Did you cause that woman's death at her home?

No.

The test is about to end.

Please remain still.

Did I fail or did I pass or what?

You failed.

I failed?

Yes.

No.

The point at which

the suspect is told they failed the polygraph, that's

when it's raised the level.

It's made it a confrontational situation.

Were you in that house that night with her?

No. Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

If that was the truth,

you would have passed the polygraph.

Emily, what happened that night?

Tell us the truth, please.

I wasn't there.

I wasn't there.

Is this the point that you want to be truthful

and tell us what happened?

After failing a polygraph test

about her movements in the hours

before Carol Hickok was found dead at the bottom of a flight

of steps at her home, Emily Bellows-Schaffer

continued to deny any responsibility

for Carol's death.

I don't have it in me to hurt anybody.

Not intentionally.

You hit Roger in the back with a skillet.

Listen, we know you were there, OK?

I told you that.

Can you look at me, please?

Please?

We know you were there.

Did you go out and kill her, or anything?

At that point, she

knows they're trying to determine what happened

and that she had responsibility there.

Did you intend for her to die?

No.

What happened that night?

What was your purpose of being there?

You can do it.

Emily claimed that, uninvited,

she had gone to the Hickok home that morning to visit her son.

And when she encountered Carol, a fight between the

two unfolded.

What did she do to you?

Can you show me?

Was it like this? Like, two of them together?

No, it was like this.

And were you close to her?

I was close enough that I pushed her backwards.

She fell backwards into the bedroom, into the dresser.

We wrestled around a little bit.

I think we rolled over the bed once.

Was she saying anything to you during this?

Yeah.

My husband, my husband.

I'm not here to see your damned husband.

I'm here to see my son.

The last place I saw her, she was on the floor

next to the dresser.

Was she conscious?

She was breathing.

OK.

Do you know if she was bleeding at that time?

Well, there was blood on the bedspread.

Did you do something with the bedspread?

I put the bedspread

in the washing machine.

But I don't know how to run the washing machine,

so I just left the bedspread in the washing machine.

She knew that her blood was on those sheets.

And she knew that her blood might be detected sooner

or later on those sheets.

So that's why she headed to the washing machine.

She had some finger marks on her neck.

Does that trigger anything?

Are you trying to get--

I tried to get her off of me.

Did you have blood on you?

I don't remember

blood on my hands or my face.

I don't remember--

I don't remember any blood on my clothing.

Asked if she had blood on her,

it's as if Emily forgets herself and goes back in time

and she's there at the moment of the murder.

And she holds up her hands, and it's as if- she's--

she's looking at the murder weapons.

For a moment, we get this curious indication

of absolute guilt.

Did you ever tell Roger what happened?

No.

Did he ever ask you?

No.

Emily had the opportunity here

to implicate Roger, that he had somehow enabled or assisted

her in murdering Carol.

But she didn't take that opportunity,

and so he was cleared.

How did she get to the bottom of the stairs?

I don't know how she got

to the bottom of the stairs.

She was quite alive the last time I saw her.

After talking to Emily for eight hours,

the troopers decided to end the interview for the day.

Are you going to arrest me and fingerprint

me and send me to jail?

You are going to have

to face the music to this.

At this point, they read Emily her rights.

They let her know she is under arrest,

and they take her to the county jail.

The following day, investigators

visited Emily to confirm her videotaped confession

in writing.

During the videotaped interview,

Emily tried to claim that Carol had

confronted her in the hallway, and

it wound up that Carol died.

The next day, she did not change that version.

The only part she changed was instead

of saying Carol was alive when she left the house, she

admitted that Carol was dead, that she had

taken Carol out of the house.

And she acknowledged at that point

that she had moved Carol's body down to the foot of the stairs.

All police needed now was

DNA evidence proving that Emily was at the scene of the crime.

The sheets and bedding and blood on the scene

was analyzed by the state police laboratory.

And it was determined that some of the blood

there was Emily's blood, which, of course,

placed Emily at the scene.

Emily's confession and DNA evidence

meant that she faced a lengthy prison

sentence for Carol's death, if found guilty of homicide.

But because Emily denied the charge of murder,

the case went to court.

In August 2012, nearly two years

after Carol Hickok's death, Emily

stood trial for the murder of her son's stepmom.

I'm tapped to be there every day.

I show up at the courthouse at least a half-hour

beforehand every day, because it was more than just

a story at that point.

I had to let the community know what was going on.

It was very important

for me to be at this trial.

I felt that I needed to be there for justice for Carol.

She was an innocent victim that should be alive today.

I wanted to know the truth because there

had been so many stories going around,

this and that, and the other thing that I know the truth

should come out in the trial.

And I needed to be there for those reasons.

Something I found incredibly remarkable

was that there was no one for Emily.

She has no support in that courtroom, whatsoever.

Emily was incredibly stoic during the trial.

She showed very little emotion.

Any emotion she showed, she would tip her head down

and she would talk to her attorney.

And that was about it.

She was very silent through that trial.

Well, the one thing I remember clearly about Emily,

I did not see remorse.

I never saw a bit of remorse.

That, I could not fathom and I could not get past.

During the trial, the prosecution

played Emily's videotape confession to the jury

before unveiling another key piece of evidence.

The most interesting part of that trial

was the introduction of Emily's diary,

because you could really see where she began to unravel.

One excerpt read, she's referring to Roger here,

and you can get a sense of how angry she is toward Roger.

"I wish I had a 2" by 4", I'd hit you upside your head and

scream at your lifeless body.

Now, we're even.

Because I died a little.

Every single day you have kept us apart."

And then she goes on to say, "There

will be no I love yous until this situation is resolved.

How/why on earth would/could I love anyone who could

so carelessly, heartlessly do this to me, who would

be so blind and selfish."

The things that Emily put in her diary

showed that she very much resented

that she didn't have much.

Carol was the reason that Roger didn't need

her to help raise the boy.

Carol was the reason that Roger didn't want to live

with her, and so forth.

So she wanted to get rid of Carol.

Six days before the murder, Emily wrote,

"I must do what I must do."

The information in the diaries

pulled everything together and brought real context

to what it was Emily was doing when

she went to the home of Roger Hickok and Carol Hickok.

The prosecution also highlighted

the evidence found by the coroner

when he revisited the autopsy photographs.

A very small, but very significant

part of the evidence was little marks, cuts on Carol's neck,

where she was trying to pry away

Emily's fingers, trying to get those fingers off her neck.

And it actually cut into her own skin.

It showed, among other things, that strangulation

was the cause of death.

The prosecution argued

that the only reason Emily went to Carol's house

on the day of her death was to commit murder.

The evidence was clear.

She had no need to go to the house to see Charlie.

She could have done that at lunch.

She had no reason to go there to see Carol,

because Carol wouldn't have wanted to talk to her.

That she went to the house, went into the house

and killed Carol, shows that that was

her objective from the start.

Emily's confession took herself as far

as the offense of voluntary manslaughter, that is causing

a death during a fight.

The overall circumstances of the case

were such that it was undeniable

that this was murder.

This wasn't-- this wasn't a fight that went bad.

On August 10, 2012, the jury retired to deliberate.

And at 4:00 PM, they returned with their verdict.

The jury found Emily guilty

of second degree murder, the felony offense of burglary,

and other charges.

On September 27, 2012, Emily Bellows-Schaffer

was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility

of parole.

And she remains incarcerated.

This tragedy began when Roger began a dalliance

with Emily Bellows-Schaffer that wound up with Emily

involved in their lives.

But the murder itself is all the fault and crime

of Emily Bellows-Schaffer.

And that's where guilt was found.

And that's where the true and complete blame lies.

Carol's death was truly tragic.

A horrible thing happened to a very good person

because of someone else's anger,

greed, selfish intentions.

Carol will always be remembered

as a pillar in this community.

I never met Carol Hickok, but I regard

her as a wonderful woman.

And almost a saint, because I don't know how many women could

take in the child of their husband's mistress

and carry on and love that child as if the child

were her own.

I give her a lot of respect for that.

Carol was strong.

What she did, she did 100%--

her business, her hunting, her mothering, her cooking,

her marriage vows.

And the way she loved Charlie spoke volumes--

Just spoke volumes.

She was faithful in friendships.

She was kind.

Just 100% her girl.

That's all I can tell you.

She just was great.