Original subtitles

[Lindsey Kimbrel Keener] I was Andy's little sister,

and, you know, I always wanted to be wherever he was.

Andy definitely wanted to start a family.

The first time he met Stephanie

I felt like, you know, they would be a good match for each other.

Stephanie didn't really talk about her family or about her past.

And it does make you wonder

if there was more to this story than we know.

She definitely had that Jekyll and Hyde kind of behavior.

Looking back on it now, there's some signs that we probably missed.

[voice shaking] It's hard to think that somebody that I let in my life

is capable of something so horrible.

[phone ringing]

[Stephanie] Oh, God!

[Stephanie sobbing]

Andy was my older brother. Everybody loved him.

We did have a great relationship

growing up.

I was 10 and Andy had just turned 16

when my dad passed away.

That was very hard.

Andy was there and was ready to take on

anything he needed to take on as the man of the house.

And he made sure me and my mom were very well taken care of.

Andy always wanted to be a police officer for as long as I can remember.

I worked many years with Andy Kimbrel

on night shift

and through different assignments,

and he was the nicest, positive attitude, happy, eager,

every definition that you could think of

as a good friend, a good police officer, that would fit him to a tee.

[Capt. Johnny Evans] When Andy came to work

for the Vestavia Hills Police Department in October 2002

he was assigned to my shift.

When you describe a police officer as to serve and protect

that's exactly what he did.

Always wanting to do things for other people.

A real happy, positive guy.

[Lindsey] Andy and Dawn were high school sweethearts.

Him and Dawn had a great relationship.

You could just feel the love between them when you were around them.

Dated for years before they got married.

They were, you know, beyond excited

to welcome a child in it, especially a little girl.

They were thrilled to be parents.

He was the happiest he could ever be

was when him and his wife had the baby.

[Lt. Joel Gaston] I'd say that it was a dream come true for him.

And then subsequently there were some medical conditions

and medical issues that took a turn,

and tragically his wife passed.

To say that his world stopped

would be an absolute understatement.

[Lindsey] Dawn passed away

shortly after their daughter was born.

He struggled.

And I'm sure, you know, having a new baby was a lot for him

and then, you know, shortly losing his wife

was, you know, a whirlwind for him at the time.

And, I mean, he was never the same.

[Capt. Evans] Watching one of your own officers

go through what he had to go through

was very traumatic for all of us.

[Lindsey] But, you know,

just like he did when my father passed away,

he really just stepped up, and did what he needed to do,

and was a great father to Emma.

We always hoped that Andy would find just happiness again,

just genuine happiness.

He met Stephanie at a school carnival.

Her son was the same age as Andy's daughter,

and so they were kind of at the same stage in life.

I felt like, you know, they would be a good match for each other.

When they were together you could tell they were enjoying each other's company.

And, you know, there was an attraction there.

You could definitely see that as well.

Andy would be kind of silly and just very affectionate.

It was nice to see Andy happy.

Stephanie, you know,

her and I, we would go out to lunch occasionally.

You know, I always wanted a sister-in-law,

you know, to be able to be close to,

and I wanted to get to know her.

I wanted to be a part of their lives.

She was very quiet.

She didn't really talk about, you know, her family or about her past,

what her background was,

or any, you know, personal details about herself.

I remember not being completely comfortable to ask her those things

because she wasn't sharing those things with me automatically.

Her background was definitely a mystery,

and it does make you wonder, you know,

if there was more to this story than we know.

One day, my mom came to me and said, "I think Andy got married."

And I, of course, was very caught off guard,

and I said, "What do you mean?"

And she said, "Well, he showed me this piece of paper

and it looked like a marriage certificate."

And I said, you know, "Surely not."

I said, "Surely he would have told us."

I was a little bit shocked and, you know, obviously hurt

by, you know, the fact that he had gone off and gotten married

and didn't, you know, tell us before or even after.

Those are things you tell your family,

and if you're not telling your family those things

there's a reason you're not telling them.

It felt wrong and, you know, it made me wonder whose idea was this.

I think there was some manipulation going on.

After they had gotten married you could notice some problems.

They would seem to be arguing quite a bit.

Stephanie definitely had a temper.

I just remember thinking something's not quite right.

Andy didn't really go into a lot of details,

but, I mean, he definitely struggled.

Kind of his whole world had been rocked at the point.

She was very manipulative.

I feel like she did things, you know, to deliberately get a rise out of Andy.

Stephanie absolutely knew how to press Andy's buttons.

Her behavior definitely felt kind of mind gameish, for lack of better words,

and then, you know, so I definitely think

that was kind of her lifestyle.

There were incidents where their arguments

got out of control and got physical.

You know, there was one incident

she threw Andy's belongings off the balcony of their apartment.

They lived in a very, you know, busy apartment at this point,

so she had to know that other people were going to see it.

And she may have very well done it to embarrass him.

That's humiliating.

When Andy and Stephanie would have arguments

Andy would go over to my mom's house.

That was his escape to get away

and kind of remove himself from the situation.

Stephanie would follow him.

I mean, essentially, track him down.

And Stephanie did show up at the house, banging on the front door.

She called him and asked him to come outside.

He went outside

and she went immediately up to him and kissed him.

He was very caught off guard by it and kind of stepped back

because this, of course, is in the midst of an argument

and, you know, asked her what that was about.

And she said, "I just wanted to see if there was anything there."

And she said, "And there's not."

And I just remember thinking, "Well that was, you know, that was very odd."

It just seemed like she was playing a game.

This is not normal, this is not okay.

She definitely had that Jekyll and Hyde kind of behavior.

She was most definitely trying to manipulate him and assert her dominance.

That was definitely the moment

that I stopped being friendly with her

and stopped reaching out to her.

At that point I didn't know what the future held for their relationship.

I never in a million years thought it was gonna turn out the way it did.

[Stephanie sobbing]

I can definitely see Andy trying to have his life

appear to be as normal as possible.

This is a photograph that Andy had posted on Facebook.

Looks like a picture that actually Stephanie took of the two of them,

and underneath it there is a comment that Stephanie posted

that says, "Oh, who's that hot chick in your car?"

Stephanie, it appears, has definitely doctored the photo.

She seems to have a filter on her face.

The post is all about her.

But I also think that was in Andy's nature,

you know, to be all about her.

Andy responds with, [Lindsey reading]

He thinks, obviously, very highly of her

and seems to be very much in love.

Thinking about it now, I mean, it makes me feel a little bit sick to my stomach.

Andy, you know,

even if he knew 100% that that relationship was not a good situation,

I don't think he ever would have said to us, "You're right."

He just tried to be the tough guy police officer.

Andy would not have been the aggressor, in my opinion.

Andy was not that type of person.

He wasn't the type that would run from anything,

but he was also not the person that was trying to provoke anything, either.

Looking back on it now, there's some signs that we probably missed.

[Lindsey] I definitely think it was getting worse.

There was a situation where Andy's daughter was on the phone,

through Snapchat, with a friend of hers.

And they could see them arguing.

The friend could see Stephanie and her behavior...

And had even brought up the situation to her mom.

The girl was that concerned about what was taking place.

If that was happening that night,

it was probably happening much more frequently

than we heard about or knew about.

In 2018, when I got reassigned, I would see him in passing

and there would be days that he wouldn't be as jovial as normal.

There was a change in his demeanor.

[Lt. Gaston] We had both moved on to different assignments.

I think each of us knew, deep inside,

that we wanted to talk

but we just never went to that level.

[phone ringing]

[Lindsey] Andy was secluding himself from us

and so that was very hard to wrap our minds around.

[phone ringing]

The changes in his personality alone

would show you that he was struggling.

We never, you know, openly saw him tearful,

but you could definitely tell that he was struggling.

But it really got to the point where he wasn't spending time with my mom that much.

And one day Andy had come over to the house.

He had asked me if I could print something out for him.

You could tell he was not in the best mood.

We were in the living room together,

and my son was kind of tugging on his jeans

and trying to get his attention.

All he had to do was kind of reach down and pick him up,

and, you know, something.

And it didn't happen.

I knew something was going on with him

because that was not like him to do that,

you know, to go from this doting uncle

to, you know, somebody that's pretty much ignoring him.

And that was really a moment, I guess,

that was really a turning point for me to see that.

And so I very blatantly said, "Hey, you know,

I don't know what is going on with Stephanie or anything else,

but, you know, my child deserves to have an uncle that he knows.

And I'm here to help but I'm not going to be the person you call

when you need something.

I want to be a part of your life."

I proceeded to say some pretty hurtful things.

Some I meant, some I didn't,

and our relationship at that point

became pretty much non-existent.

That was...

[voice shaking] That was the last conversation I had with him.

[Lindsey] I would reach out to him periodically just to, you know, to say hey.

I just didn't get a response back.

But I remember hearing their arguments became more frequent.

The people that lived in the apartment complex

reached out to us

and told us they saw them arguing in the parking lot.

These total strangers are reaching out to us,

you know, to tell us these stories.

It's one thing to have an argument inside your home,

but when you are completely, you know, oblivious

to that you're having an argument

in the middle of a parking lot with people around,

and, you know, I definitely think that shows some sort of escalation

that things are getting out of control.

There was one incidence where he went to my mom's house

and showed her scratches on his neck

where Stephanie had put her hands on his neck.

I don't know how they got there,

if she was choking him

or just had put her hands on him in some form or fashion.

But there were visible scratches on his neck

that appeared to be, you know, pretty significant.

You think most people, you know, including myself,

when they hear of a domestic violence situation

you automatically assume it's probably initiated by a male,

but things are not always what they seem.

My mother was upset. She was obviously very fearful for him.

Her words were, "Please come home.

You need to get away from her.

She's going to kill you."

It wasn't a good situation for Andy, or Stephanie, or the kids,

anybody involved in it.

On all sides it was not a good situation.

And it is heartbreaking to watch.

He never came out and said, you know,

"Yes, I know that our relationship is not right."

[Capt. Evans] I think that Andy just didn't know how to,

or didn't know where to go to for help.

[Lt. Gaston] He was just completely hiding it from everybody.

I think that he was good at turning it on

when he needed to turn it on,

that, "I'm fine, I'm good."

You know, "Just let me go to work."

But knowing Andy and the type of person he was, he wanted to fix it.

We were frustrated watching it all fold out,

and wanting to just [laughs nervously]

take him and, you know, and shake him,

and say, "Listen to us."

You know, "Please do something."

[phone ringing]

[Stephanie] God.

[sobbing]

[dispatch]

[Stephanie]

[dispatch]

[Stephanie]

[dispatch]

[Stephanie]

-[Stephanie] Oh, my God. -[dispatch]

[Stephanie]

[phone ringing]

[Capt. Evans] About 11:15 I received a phone call

from our Deputy Chief of Police,

and he said, "Andy Kimbrel's been shot."

And I was like, "Where's he at?"

And he said, "He's on his way to UAB."

Andy was still alive,

and I said, "I'm headed to the hospital."

[phone ringing]

[Lindsey] We were asleep in bed and I got the call,

one of the captains from Vestavia Police Department,

and his words, I will probably never forget them,

were...

"Andy's been shot and it doesn't look good."

I remember just panic,

just absolutely panic and just not knowing what to do.

I didn't know, I mean, I assumed it happened at work, you know?

But I didn't know...

How do I tell my mom this? What do I say?

What, you know, what's next?

I didn't know what to do.

[siren wailing]

[Capt. Evans] They brought him down to the hospital,

so I walked into the emergency room

and I met with the nurse and met with the doctor.

They let me in the room where they were working on him,

and, you know, I just remember walking in and seeing Andy laying there.

And his head was bandaged up and I could see one of his eyes,

but I just remember looking at him and going, "Wake up."

[machine beeps]

And that's when I found out that he had been shot in the head.

-[machine beeps] -They had him on a ventilator,

and they said, "We're trying to track his brain activity."

And everybody was frantically trying to do

anything they could for him.

[machine beeps]

And so I remember asking the doctor,

"If he's shot in the head, I mean, is he gonna make it?"

[Det. Kyle Pannell] When I first got the call,

my Sergeant called me

and told me that there had been a shooting

at an apartment in Gardendale.

When I arrived on the scene I entered the master bedroom.

The walk-in closet is to your left,

and about middle-ways down the wall

there's a door leading in to the bathroom.

There was a bloody handprint on the toilet.

Inside the closet I could definitely see blood splatter.

On one side of the wall

there was a large pool of blood in the corner.

At first glance at the blood splatter

I could tell that it was not a long-range shot,

that it was fairly close.

The gun was a nine millimeter Glock.

Fairly standard issue for law enforcement.

A shell casing was right outside the door of the closet

on the floor of the bedroom.

Whoever fired the shot was standing in the doorway of the closet

or very close to the doorway of the closet.

After leaving the scene,

we returned to the police department.

Stephanie had been placed in an interview room.

We just kind of introduced ourself

and she agreed to speak to us.

[Pannell] Mmm.

Stephanie told us that he'd accused her in the past of being unfaithful.

So, according to Stephanie, you know, this argument

wasn't, you know, wasn't out of the blue.

She was basically painting a picture of her

being just an extremely calm,

non-combative, non-argumentative person.

[detective]

[Stephanie]

I've been in law enforcement for over 24 years.

I've never seen a gun just go off.

On a Glock the safety is actually on the trigger.

So in order to disengage the safety you have to pull the trigger.

So, you know, it was obvious that the trigger was pulled.

[detective]

I know that if someone is trying

to shove something at me that I don't want

I'm not gonna reach for it, you know?

I'm gonna back away or I'm gonna put my hands up.

I'm not gonna grab it.

The longer she talked, the more question marks and red flags kept popping up.

[Will McComb] Under her story,

they were both standing up,

and Andy had the gun in his hands,

and he shoves it into her hands when the gun went off.

But the fatal wound, the only wound on Andy,

was a bullet strike to his forehead

just about the hairline.

It just wasn't possible for a gun to go off at waist level

and the entry wound be basically on the top of the head.

It just didn't make sense.

So...

[woman] Paging Dr. Line. Line.

[Lindsey] When we got to the hospital

one of the pastors that the police department uses was there.

I don't even remember what he said

but made mention of the coroner,

[voice shaking] and that's...

The moment that we learned he had died.

And that's the moment that I learned

that Stephanie had shot him.

I just remember being in shock.

This has to be an accident. This has to be, you know, what could have happened?

Did she realize what she was doing?

Did she, you know, was it an accident?

Was it [stutters] I never, and even to this day, it's hard to wrap my mind

that she possibly could have have a gun in her hand and fire it at him.

It's hard...

To make sense of that.

[Det. Pannell] I mainly kind of wanted to just gauge her reaction.

And so, you know, in the interview

you can see me just kind of laser-focused on her, really.

She sounded upset

but when she raised her head up

she wasn't crying.

[Stephanie sighs]

You know, I looked directly into her eyes

and they were dry as a bone.

There was no tears in her eyes whatsoever.

What really happened? What's really going on here?

What Stephanie didn't know

was down the hall we had several witnesses

that were present in the house that night.

When I was told that, it changed everything.

Down the hall

we had Stephanie's son and Andy's daughter.

[Det. Pannell] Andy's daughter begins to talk,

you know, and she kind of just starts describing what she's been through,

and, you know, again, the loss of her mom at a young age

and now the loss of her father.

It was very tough not to get emotional interviewing her.

[Det. Pannell] Mmm-hmm.

-[Emma] -[Det. Pannell]

[Det. Pannell] According to what we were told,

Stephanie was the physical abuser in the relationship.

She was the verbal abuser in the relationship.

That painted quite a different picture

than what Stephanie was telling us.

At one point in the evening, she had received a text from Andy saying,

"Lock your doors. She's crazy."

[Det. Pannell] Stephanie's son advised us

that he was asleep the entire time

and he didn't hear anything.

[Det. Pannell] Andy's daughter,

she was a very important witness

because not only was she directly across the hallway from the incident,

she was awake the entire time.

When Andy's daughter made the comment to us it changed everything.

I know in my mind this just changed

from an accident to a possible murder.

We went back down the hall

and spoke with Stephanie again,

and then we confronted her with that detail.

[Det. Pannell] So you...

Her credibility, in my eyes, was over. It was done.

[Will McComb] In the mugshot she's clearly injured.

Defense attorneys and certainly members of the public,

they get to see the mugshot,

had some suspicions as to how she got her injuries

and then blaming the victim, Andy.

Like this comment here,

[Det. Pannell reading]

[Lindsey] It's extremely hard to read these comments.

Just absolutely heartbreaking.

The first posts says,

[Lindsey reading]

Andy was never abusive to her.

You want to scream it from the rooftops,

but there are sone people that are gonna, you know, question the situation,

and especially after seeing her booking photo.

This is a video that was taken from the jail surveillance footage

that shows Stephanie Keller whilst she is in custody and handcuffed.

This was taken a few hours before her mugshot.

The video itself was interesting, to say the least.

And she, you know, essentially takes a step towards the vending machine...

She nails the vending machine with her face.

It would seem to be a very intentional act.

[Lindsey] It's very difficult to not be able to reach out to these people

that are saying these horrible things, you know,

and tell them "You're wrong. This is not how this is.

This is a very different situation."

When we went to the trial

any doubt that I had that this was a horrible accident

just went away very quickly.

[voice shaking] It's hard to think

that somebody that I let in my life and had a relationship with

is capable of something so horrible.

[sniffs] It's a hard pill to swallow to think about that.

[Will McComb] When Andy's daughter testified,

her story was very impactful for the members of the court.

It was impactful for the jury.

The judge did come down for the sentence of 20 years

in the penitentiary for Stephanie Keller,

and that was the maximum under provocation manslaughter.

[Lindsey] I think that the sentence that she received was appropriate.

I mean, you know, nothing is ever enough. It will never be enough.

But it also won't change it, no matter what it is.

[Capt. Evans] As a police officer, we're usually the ones

that say, "Hey, here's how you handle this situation."

And when we can't do that for ourselves

we question ourselves as to whether we're a failure.

And so we have to reach out for help

just like everybody's reaching out for us to help.

Losing Andy had very much an emotional impact on the department.

Every member of the police department was at the funeral.

[Lindsey] People came from everywhere, you know,

and they just heard about it and wanted to come and show their respect.

It makes you so proud to be driving down the road

and seeing flags [voice shaking] that are, you know, for him.

It was definitely a moment to be proud of him.

I mean, I will always be proud of him.

He was a really great person, and...

A great father.

You know, I wanted to remember all the good things

that he did as a police officer.

Honestly, if I could say anything to her I would ask her, "Why?"

I think she's a horrible person.

I think she...

I...

I don't even know if I should say this,

but I think she is,

this could happen again given the opportunity.