Original subtitles

[Joni] Clara Harris was a beautiful woman.

It certainly appeared as if she had the perfect marriage.

[Bobbi] But she knew her husband was cheating on her.

And that's when everything went crazy.

[Rod] It's all about rage, emotion, envy.

She's enraged and she wants to even the score.

[dramatic theme music]

[news anchor] We begin with Clara Harris

being granted parole.

In the last hournwe got this new mugshot of her,

taken one day afterú she was granted her release.

[narrator] A first taste of freedom

for a notorious prison inmateú after 15 years behind bars.

Clara Harris walked out ofúprison with a smile on her face.

She didn't speak to reporters,

but we could see her embrace and hug friends

as soon as she got in the car.

[narrator]60-year-old mother of two,

Clara Harris has waited a long time for this moment.

[reporter] She left wearing civilian clothes,

and carrying a bag of her belongings.

This infamous story of a woman scorned

is making headlines all over again.

[narrator] A few miles southeast of Houston

lies the quiet suburban enclave of Clear Lake.

At the nearby Hilton Hotel on a warm summer night,

respected local dentist David Harris

is spending the evening with his mistress.

David Harris is a veryú successful orthodontist

who is in the Houston area practising,

and receiving just fantasticú feedback from the community

and from his fellow practitioners.

He graduated at the top of his class

and has been extremely successful in his practice.

In August of 2001,

David hires a new receptionist named Gail Bridges.

And everything seems fine at the beginning.

In February of 2002,

he asked Gail to come to lunch.

And pretty quickly, over the next couple of months,

this relationship progresses to an affair.

[Bryanna] Gail is certainly aware of the fact

that David is married,

and is concerned about this in terms of their future

and what she's doing with him.

But David tells Gail that he's in an open marriage

with his wife, Clara,

that, in fact, she's already having

an affair with somebody else.

So not only is she cool with him having an affair with Gail,

but Clara's off doing her own thing,

and she doesn't really mind.

So I think he really was not truthful

in what he was telling Gail about the relationship,

but he was really downplaying any potential impact

their relationship would have on the two of them.

[narrator] David has been married to his wife Clara

for 10 years.

They are parents to two young children, twin boys,

and they both run successful dental practices

in the Houston area.

People who knew Clara and David for many years

said that they just seemed to be really happy together.

Clara in particular just seemed completely enamoured with

and devoted to David.

One friend of hers said, "It's just always

David, David, David, when it comes to Clara."

You know, she's made the comment that,

"I wish I could love my husband

the way Clara seems to love David."

[narrator] It makes her husband's choice of hotel

for his clandestine encounter with his lover

particularly hurtful.

David decides to take Gail to the Nassau Bay Hilton

and this is rather disturbing,

because this is the exact place

that he had his wedding reception

with his wife Clara

And of all of the hotels and Hiltons

that he could possibly have gone to,

that's where he decides to bring Gail.

[narrator] David and Gail are unaware

that their every move is being watched.

Despite David's claims thatnClara is fine with his affairs,

she isn't,

and she's hired a privateú investigator to follow them.

[Bobbi] My name is Bobbi Bacha.

I'm a private investigatorúwith Blue Moon Investigations.

[narrator] That night, a Blue Moon investigator

is following David as he leaves work.

[Bobbi] He left from work,

and he went straight to a teller machine,

and he got money out of the teller.

And then he went to the Hilton Hotel,

and that's where he met with the other woman.

They went inside, and they were talking at the bar

for a very, very, very long time.

We couldn't get close to listen to the conversation

because it was a really crowded bar.

And it was a full moon night.

The moon was coming up and it was a full moon night

and things go crazy on full moon nights.

[narrator] After chatting in the bar,

the pair decide to get a room.

And then David basically got a hotel room and they went up.

So, when we knew the floor that they were on,

and we knew that they were in the room.

It was just a matter of waiting,

because it was definite adultery.

It doesn't matter if they went up and played Scrabble

or Monopoly in the room.

You're not supposed to be alone with a married man in a room.

It's adultery.

[narrator] What the private investigators don't know

is that his wife Clara is doing her own detective work.

Clara knows David so well

that she immediately thinks she knows where he is.

She thinks, "He's at our special hotel,

the hotel we had our wedding reception."

And unknown to us, Clara had walked into the hotel

looking for David, 'cause she gave us the hotel address

as one of the possible addresses that they would go to.

So the hotel, because she knew what floor they were going to,

to have their affair, the other woman's house,

and a couple of places that they would go eat,

a couple of restaurants nearby.

So we had the whole list.

[narrator] Accompanying Clara is David's daughter

from his previous marriage, 16-year-old Lindsey Harris.

[Bryanna] Clara is very close to Lindsey.

She does internships with both of her father

and her stepmother.

They go out together.

She does shopping trips with Clara.

They tend to have a very good relationship at this point.

She just completely embraced Clara being a stepmom

and became very, very close to Lindsey

and would, again, make it a point

to make it home from work in time

to cook these great family meals.

Lindsey was upset, ú and she's 16 years old.

She understands how the world works.

And so she was angry at her father.

And so Clara is like, "Look, they're there.

We need to go there."

[Joni] So Lindsey and Clara walk in, and they asked

if Gail Bridges is registered there

or if David Harris is registered there.

And the person at the front desk goes,

"No, we don't have anybody by that name."

Obviously, David and Gail had used a different name

to check into the hotel room.

They walk out into the parking lot,

and they spot Gail's car.

And Clara is just enraged by this.

And she goes over, and she uses her key,

and she scrapes the car pretty viciously.

This is Gail's car.

And she bends the windshield wipers

and kind of breaks them.

And she vandalizes the car.

[narrator] Clara and Lindsey then devise a plan

to lure David and Gail down from their room to the hotel foyer,

using the couple's young children as bait.

[Bobbi] She had Lindsey call David with a lie

and say that the twins were sick.

So Lindsey called her daddy and said the twins were sick.

And here's little Lindsey helping Clara

track down her daddy

having an affair with another woman,

and she's only 16.

[Joni] So Lindsey reaches her dad, and he says,

"OK, OK, I'm coming home. This is serious."

And Clara and Lindsey are waiting in the lobby

to see if and when David and Gail

are going to emerge from the elevator.

And so after a few minutes, the elevator door opens,

and out walks Gail and David,

happily holding hands and smiling to each other.

As soon as the doors opened, there was Clara.

[Joni] At this point, Clara is hijacked,

almost, by her emotions.

I think they completely take over her.

Because Clara is somebody, I think,

who does care about other people.

She's very close to Lindsey.

She knows Lindsey is David's daughter.

I think if Clara had been thinking

logically and rationally,

she would not have brought Lindsey with her

to confront David.

And she certainly would not do what she did next,

which was to physically attack Gail Bridges in front of Lindsey

and in front of David.

[Bobbi] Apparently, Clara grabbed Gail,

started beating her head against the marble floors

of the hotel room,

grabbed her by the hair,

was beating her down into the hotel floor,

pulled her shirt open,

and the contents of Gail's purse fell.

And Gail's just trying to grab her purse,

semi-unconscious from being beaten down

on the floor by Clara.

[Joni] She's yelling, "You're effing my husband."

This person is... this is my husband.

This is a person he's having an affair with.

She's screaming.

This is in a public, very, very nice hotel.

Initially, Lindsey is so angry with her dad.

She is hitting her dad with a purse, saying,

"I hate you. I hate you."

Clara was so strong,

it took four men to pull Clara off of Gail.

And even with that, Clara still crawled over like a snake

and bit her on the leg.

And she had a big bite mark on her leg,

perfect teeth mark.

You know, romantic relationshipsúthat go bad can go really bad.

She's enraged, and sheú wants to even the score.

[narrator] And it's what she decides to do next

that will change the lives of the Harris family forever.

What would make someone to turn to the dark side

and become a killer?

Clara Suarez, ú which is her maiden name,

was born in 1958 in Bogota, Colombia.

Her father was an engineer.

Her mom was a seamstress.

And her dad, I think, was a huge influence on her early life

because he had a lot of ambitions and goals for her.

And he really wanted her, when she grew up,

to have a better life.

But, unfortunately, her father died.

And I think this had an absolutely huge impact

on her as a child,

and probably as an adult as well.

We know that children who lose a parent before the age of 10,

it can be very difficult for them.

And despite being so poorú while she was growing up,

she dreamed of success and decided

she wanted to be a dentist,

and grow up and move to the United States.

She did exactly that.

And in the late 1980s, she came to the United States

and received additional training in dentistry

at the University of Texas.

[Joni] Clara was a rock star.

And she absolutely stuck her nose to the grindstone.

And when she first came over, she did whatever it took.

I mean, she saved money.

And she eventually filled all of the childhood ambitions

that her dad had for her,

and I think dreams that she had for herself, as well.

[Bryanna] In the early 1990s,

Claire is working at a dentist in Houston,

and that's when she comes to meet David,

who she falls instantly in love with.

[Bobbi] She had won the Miss Columbia USA

beauty contest.

So she was a very beautiful woman.

And he had just recently divorced.

[Joni] He was somebody who was very charming.

He seemed laid back in some respects,

even though he was a very successful dentist.

He was kind of a folksy guy.

He was not pretentious.

He... His favourite word was golly.

But at the same time, he was very, very bright.

And so I think that combination was very appealing to Clara.

At this point, Clara is in her late 20s.

David has a five-year-old daughter named Lindsey,

who Clara immediately likes when she meets her.

They began dating in 1991.

And by Valentine's Day of 1992, they were married.

Their relationship was, I mean, úrock solid at the beginning.

They were so in love.

Clara loved him so much.

She told people that David was like her gift from God.

It was the one that God had sent into the world

to be with her.

They had a great relationship.

They had a beautiful ceremony

just less than a year after they met.

And they had their reception at the Nassau Bay Hilton.

[Joni] They seem like a match made in heaven.

[narrator] Their business careers are also flying.

The Nassau Bay Hilton is not that far

from where David would set up his first practice,

and very quickly decides he wants to expand

and buy seven other locations so he can have staff

and support across all of these different sites.

Clara is certainly career oriented.

She sets up her own practice in Lake Jackson

where she's serving as a dentist.

[Joni] This is somebody who sets her mind to something.

She goes after it, and she gets it.

I think that David Harris and Clara Harris

were seen as a power couple.

In 1998, Clara is in her early 40s.

And I think a miracle seemed to have happened to this couple.

She gave birth to twin boys.

And I think for Clara,

this really was not just the icing on the cake,

but like the final piece of the puzzle of a perfect life.

[Bryanna] Clara is just a super mom.

She is running her dental practice.

She has so many patients.

She still comes home every day on time for dinner,

makes dinner for David.

She takes care of the babies.

She's taking care of Lindsey, her stepdaughter.

She really is juggling everything

and excelling at all of it.

At least one friend had made the comment that,

"I wish I could love my husband

the way Clara loves David."

So on the outside looking in,

it certainly appeared as if they had the perfect marriage,

family, business, you name it.

Everything is perfect.

[narrator] David and Clara seem the embodiment of success,

but beneath the surface, cracks are appearing.

At the same time, David sadly is growing

more distant from his wife.

He is putting more and more time into his own practices.

He's feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibility.

From what I understand about Clara and David's relationship

is that she was the boss of the relationship.

She basically said what went on.

And David couldn't do anything without

basically asking Clara first.

So, it was kind of a bossy relationship.

He was trying to leave his wife.

She's a controlling woman.

He was trying to get out of that relationship.

In August of 2001,

David hires a new receptionist named Gail Bridges.

After a couple of months, I think some employees

noticed that David seemed to be kind of lingering

at their front desk a little bit more than usual.

Gail Bridges really enjoys this job as well.

She's a receptionist.

She's getting on so well with her boss.

And, in fact, she keeps getting raise after raise after raise

from him, as well.

[Joni] Gail Bridges was in her late 30s,

very attractive woman.

She was a mother of three children

and she had been a cheerleader in high school.

By April, May of 2002, their relationship was sexual.

[Bobbi] He was telling Gail he loved her.

Gail was needy. Gail wasn't strong.

Gail wasn't bossy.

She wasn't any of that.

She was very petite.

Total opposite. Total opposite.

I think that Gail made him feel like a man.

And I think that Clara made him feel like a mouse.

He was trying to get away.

And how do you get away from a boa constrictor?

You know, you just can't.

[narrator] And then, to her horror,

Clara discovers her husband is cheating on her.

Clara was absolutely blindsided

in July of 2002.

David's employees tell her that

her husband is having an affair.

Clara confronts David with this information,

and he admits it.

He admits that he was having an affair.

He acknowledges that he has been flirting around with Gail.

They've seen each other, but he's kissed her only once.

So it's not a big deal.

[narrator] She shares the news of her husband's infidelity

with her stepdaughter, Lindsey.

She says, "Lindsey, there's something I think

you should know about your dad."

And before she can elaborate

and tell her that he's had this flirtation at the office,

Lindsey says, basically, "I know."

All the girls at the office know.

They go to lunch every single day together.

And this, of course, just added fuel to the fire for Clara.

[Kristin] And it quickly, like most things,

became the talk of the office.

When there's an affair in the office,

everybody knows it's happening,

no matter how hard people try to keep it a secret.

It is clearly much more than David has told her.

[narrator] Clara's humiliation is now public,

but she's not giving up on the relationship just yet.

Clara decides that she has got to save the marriage.

[narrator] The couple sits down to discuss

what has gone wrong between them and how to put things right.

From David's point of view, he sees several problems

with the relationship with Clara.

He says that Clara is spending so much time on her job

and not enough time with him.

He also says that she cares more about the children

and less about him.

And he also feels like he's not attractive to her anymore.

One of the most, I think, unfortunate parts

of this whole story is that...

Clara seems to have somehow internalized

the responsibility for this affair to some extent.

She saw this as a personal failure on her part.

[narrator] David doesn't holdback on his criticism of Clara.

[Joni] David tells her, "Gail, you know, the sex is amazing.

You know, we have sex three times a day.

And she's got a great body, and you're fat."

Clara is literally taking notes during this thing.

She's literally thinking that this is a competition,

and I got to win.

She's, like, making a to-do list.

She completely focuses on this competition.

It's the kind of list that no man should ever answer, OK?

So, I mean, if your girlfriend

or your husband or your wife said,

"Hey, what makes that person better than me?"

and you get this list,

you're gonna be wishing you hadn't have asked it.

And, honestly, most men would not answer it.

But David, because she was so bossy,

he answered it, which, to me,

was the dumbest thing in the world.

You just don't make those comparisons

and you don't ask those comparisons,

'cause you're going to get things you don't wanna hear.

[Joni] She decides she's gonna get her nails done every day.

She goes shopping for sexy clothes.

She puts a down payment on breast augmentation

and liposuction,

and she is convincing herself

that if she does all of these things,

that things will kind of get back to the way they were.

[narrator] Clara also issues David with an ultimatum.

If he wants their marriage to survive,

he has to split up with Gail.

Clara demanded that he fire Gail,

stop seeing her.

[narrator] David agrees, but on one condition.

[Joni] David says he doesn't want to lose Clara.

He's going to... he agrees to break it off with Gail.

Clara says, "I want you to do it on the phone."

And David says, "No, I can't do that.

That would be too cruel. I need to see her in person."

[narrator] David tells Clara he plans to end the affair

over a meal with Gail at a local restaurant.

But is he telling the truth?

Clara can't be sure.

We know how persistent and dedicated Clara can be.

And at this point, she has some trust issues with David.

So while she is certainly hopeful

that he's telling her the truth,

she is,

I think, adopting the attitude of trust but verify.

Clara hired a private investigator

to follow David to the restaurant

and listen in to the conversation

he had with Gail

to make sure thatú he actually was ending it.

[Bobbi] When Clara Harris first came to my office,

she was dressed very sexy.

And she didn't really look like the type of woman

that would dress that way.

I think she had a little bit more of a classier look,

but she had cleavage and everything pushed up

and a very tight T-shirt.

She didn't seem like, you know, the sex bomb type,

but she was dressing sex bomb, but it wasn't fitting.

It wasn't clicking.

[narrator] Clara brings her stepdaughter, Lindsey,

to the meeting.

Lindsey was coordinating with Clara on times that David

would be able to be followed and things like that.

So they were actually talking a little bit about the case.

So Clara's basically hired us,

and she said that he's going to go meet the other woman.

And she said, "When they meet together,

I want to know if they break it off."

And she said that she would call us,

and let us know the times that he would be meeting

with this other woman to break it off.

If you can gather evidenceú showing or exploiting things

that he may or may not have done,

it helps your... ú it helps boost your case,

whether it be monetary for court,

or alimony, or settlements,

or it's just satisfactionúof saying, "He did it, not me."

Unknown to us, Clara had the help

following David that night.

[narrator] Clara gets a tip offfrom one of David's co-workers

that he is leaving the office to meet Gail.

It was a secretary that worked there

that Gail was kind of taking her job position over.

And I think there might have been a little jealousy

or something going on in the office.

But this woman called Clara, unknown to us, panicking,

and telling Clara to get in the car, go follow David.

[narrator] Clara is right to be suspicious.

David doesn't take Gail to a restaurant

to split up with her.

He takes his lover to the Nassau Bay Hilton

and books them a room.

At this point, after her husband told her

that he was going to a restaurant

to break up with Gail,

Clara is absolutely furious.

She's just so furious that this could even be occurring,

and she's just outraged.

[Bobbi] I think he went to go not break up with her,

but to go assure her that he was going to break up with Clara.

I think that that's what really happened,

and I think Clara figured that out,

and that's when everything went crazy.

[narrator] David's decision to take Gail to the Hilton

and book a room sends Clara into a rage.

When the couple come down to the foyer,

she launches a ferocious attack on her love rival.

Everybody's watching these women fight.

Gail's blouse is open. ú Everything's on the floor.

It's just a big cat fight.

[Joni] This is just an unbelievable scene

going on in this hotel lobby.

Security kind of comes out.

David kind of catches himself.

He pulls Clara off of Gail.

And security is escorting all of them out.

And so David leaves with Gail, goes out to her car.

And Lindsey and Clara areú escorted out to her car.

Clara and Lindsey get in the car.

David and Gail goes out the back door

and they escort her out.

And then when Lindsey and Clara was exiting out the front,

the hotel person said, "Now don't go around the back,

they're in the back and, you know,

we don't want you to get into another fight."

[narrator] It's then that Clara makes a fateful decision.

After Clara and David and Gailú are thrown out of the hotel,

Clara and Lindsey getú back into her Mercedes.

And at this point, Clara is still enraged with anger.

She sees Gail and David walking towards her vehicle,

and she decides to ram into Gail's car.

[Joni] Clara is still, you know, ranting and raving.

She comes peeling around the parking lot,

and she heads for Gail's car.

She hits the back, ú kind of right rear car.

Her car is damaged.

Her Mercedes is damaged.

I think she may have damaged Gail's car to some extent.

But David is standing pretty close to that car.

Lindsey later testifies that Clara said at that point,

"I'm gonna hit him."

And she does.

She hits him so hard, he flies.

[narrator] The force of the impact

throws David 25 feet into the middle of the car park.

But Clara isn't finished.

The next few momentsú are captured on shaky video

shot by the watching private investigator.

[Joni] And she circles around the parking lot

a couple of times running over him

on multiple occasions.

This is captured by video,

by people who are in the parking lot.

So this is not something that is hidden.

I mean, people are seeing this.

[narrator] Also witnessing itú all is David's daughter,

who is sitting besideú her stepmother in the car.

Lindsey, during the course ofúClara running over her father,

Lindsey started yelling at Clara, "Stop it."

Screaming at her, "Stop it. You're killing him.

What are you doing?"

Witnesses say that they heard Lindsey just screaming

at the top of her lungs and trying to open the door

to get out of the car.

She knows that Claraú had just hit her father.

But this is as it happened,

and Clara decides thatú she is going to hit David

and run him over again and again and again

for a total of three timesú that she ran over his body.

Lindsey, as soon as the event is over,

gets out and runs around to the front driver's side door

and punches Clara.

She then falls onto the ground, sobbing hysterically.

Clara also gets out of the vehicle

and runs over to her husband

and starts cradling him and crying hysterically,

begging him to breathe.

She got out of the car and shook him and said,

"David, look what you made me do."

At this point, the emergency medics arrive

and take David immediately to the hospital,

whereas Clara is brought to the police station.

And while Clara is being questioned about the events,

David receives care, but it's too late,

and he dies almost immediately upon arrival at the hospital.

Clara got arrested,

and she was taken into jail that night

saying it was an accident.

[narrator] Clara doesn't know that there is a video

of the incident.

This video shows Clara driving absolutely erratically,

so fast like she's on the highway,

but in this tiny parking lot.

And you see something happen, get hit,

and essentially that's her hitting

and then running over David's body.

I mean, you know, when you'reú filming through a camera,

it's surreal.

That's what I can tell you.

It's surreal.

So it's just like you're frozen.

We weren't even sure what we had captured.

But what you do see are tires squealing.

And you see this car

spinning around a coupleú of times in the parking lot.

It's just complete chaos.

[Rod] A weapon is anything that's available.

A car is used more often than not.

But the bigger, heavier, stronger car

is a great equalizer.

And she ran him over.

You know, it's as simple as that.

[narrator] Clara is held overnight by police.

The next morning, she is released on bail.

One of the first things she does is call Bobbi

at Blue Moon Investigations.

I got a phone call, and it was Clara.

And she's very, very prim and proper,

just calm as... calm as ever.

I said, "Why did you do it?"

And she said, "I just wanted to see what he was doing.

I just wanted to see what he was doing."

And so she admitted to killing him.

She says, "I just wanted to see what he was doing."

She basically wanted to see if he was going to break up

with the other woman.

[narrator] Clara Harris then asks

if there is a tape recording of what happened.

[narrator] Clara Harris remains composed

as Bobbi asks her how her children are coping.

[narrator] And once again, úHarris goes back to the tape.

[Bobbi] And then that's when she finally,

I heard her, like, take a deep breath.

[narrator] And Clara Harris then makes a last,

very practical request.

A refund for the time the PI

would no longer need to investigate,

because her husband is now dead.

And she says, "Well, I didn't use all the hours that night,

so I need a refund."

And I said, "Clara, we actually were there all night long

because you killed your husband."

[narrator]ú Clara Harris's trial begins

on the 23rd of January, 2003.

The jury has to decide whether she is a woman

in emotional free fall,

who can't be held responsible for her actions,

or a calculating killer.

[Joni] What is premeditation?

When does it begin?

I think most people would think that the attack in the hotel

was a crime of passion;

that she sees this and she reacts.

And that's kind of the definition

of a crime of passion.

You see something, you're overwhelmed with emotion,

and you act.

[Rod] I think that's a tough hill

for a prosecutor to climb, actually.

When someone is enraged like that,

or hurt, or whatever,

angry,

It's a difficult challenge to say that this person

was actually gonna do that.

I think probably what makes it even more of a challenge

is the fact that she's functional in society.

So I think a prosecutor would have a difficult time convincing

a jury or a judge, or anyone,

that this woman is a cold-blooded,

premeditating type of killer.

I think it was just purely out of passion

and anger.

I don't think there was any forethought to it.

[narrator] To help them make up their mind,

the jury hears from Clara's stepdaughter, Lindsey,

who saw what happened from the front seat of the car

that killed her father.

Lindsey testifies at trialú that Clara said to her,

as soon as Gail and David got to Gail's car,

that she saw them and still said,

"I am going to hit him."

And she intentionally rammed the vehicle.

It is hard to even fathom

what this whole experience

was like for Lindsey.

She is supporting Clara.

You know, she is calling her dad and asking him

to come down from the hotel room

to go take care of a child that really isn't even sick.

So in some respects at this point,

she's not only participating with her stepmom,

she's colluding with her and supporting her.

She told the jury that sheú begged for Clara to stop.

That, yeah, she was angry at her father.

She was really angry, Lindsey,

but she didn't want her father killed.

And so, she was screaming at Clara to stop

running over him.

And I find it so interesting that,

from what we understand,

when Lindsey first got out of the car,

I'm sure she spotted her father.

But the first thing she did was she punched Clara.

[narrator] The video taken in the car park

is also shown to the jury.

Her defence team argues thatú the footage is misleading,

and she hits her husband once,

not three times as claimed by the prosecution.

She actually paid for a reenactment

showing the body in a different place than when it really was,

and the car actually going over nothing.

But the video showed opposite.

[Rod] The truth is thatú you can watch the video

and only assume what's happened to him.

But when that autopsy report reveals

that there's severe damage

where there's almost no Mr. Harris left,

it puts more context or providesú more context to the video.

[narrator] After six hours of deliberation,

the jury finds Clara Harris guilty of killing her husband.

The jury finds Clara Harris guilty of murder.

[narrator] But they accept thatú the murder was carried out

in a moment of sudden passion.

20 years in prison, which is kind of interesting,

because you think of the jury on the one hand

as saying, OK, this is a crime of passion.

You're thinking, well, then why are you putting this person

in jail for 20 years?

[Bobbi] Clara lost her trial.

And the reason I think she lost it

is because her tears seemed likeúcrocodile tears on the stand.

And the jurors saw through that.

She needed to tell the truth instead of,

"It was an accident. I don't remember."

Everything was a fog.

It wasn't a fog. She knew what was going on.

I do think that this is somebody

who was overcome with emotion.

I don't think that she, úif she was in her right mind,

would have mowed downúthe father of her stepdaughter,

who's in the car with her,

if she had been thinking rationally.

So my question is, who has a stop sign

in their head to say, don't kill?

Most of us don't go past the stop sign.

But Clara had no stop sign.

So she just had no stop sign.

She didn't stop.

She backed up that car and went again.

[narrator] Whilst in prison,

Clara Harris makes good use of her time.

While in prison, Clara is just a model citizen.

She tries her best to fulfill everything

she's supposed to do, not break any rules.

And she's trying her best to get paroled,

so she can be reunited with her sons.

[Joni] She taught herself Braille,

and she did a tremendous amount

of translating things into Braille

that would be accessible to people

that wouldn't have been before.

Clara said that from the minute she stepped into prison,

her number one thought was on her sons,

who visited her every month.

And that she was determined

to be the best prisoner possible,

because her goal was to get out

and spend time with her children.

There are two sides to Clara Harris.

She in many ways is a loving mother.

[narrator] Clara Harris is firstú eligible for parole in 2013.

In 2017,

14 years into her sentence,

she applies for parole for the third time

before it's granted.

[news anchor] Well, tonight, after 15 years behind bars,

Clara Harris is walking free tonight

after murdering her cheating husband with her car.

[reporter] Clara, what's it like to be out?

[Joni] On her third try for parole,

she had a new parole attorney.

And what he did, which I think was...

it was very effective,

was he had her sons come to the parole hearing.

And they both talked about the fact

that they loved their mom,

that she'd been a part of their life,

and they really were looking forward to having her,

you know, released.

And they supported her.

And the third time she got parole was in 2018.

The David Harris and Claire Harris case,

it's shocked the world.

I think there are many women

who would hear that their husband

is having an affair,

and they would be angry.

They would understand that we may have issues or whatever,

but it's your responsibility.

It's your... you're accountable for your behaviour.

I think there's a certain level of emotion

that's unmatched in any other crime,

that people have maybe insecurities

or envy or rage or feeling vulnerable

or taken for granted or whatever the case may be.

It is really a cautionary tale

in the sense that it doesn't matter how successful you are,

how much money you have, how smart you are,

when it comes to, you know, relationships

and feelings and those kinds of things,

all bets are off in terms of what people will do.

[dramatic music]