Original subtitles

[tense music]

KAITLYN: I had just graduated in May.

And I was thinking, what job should I start looking for?

Where should I start looking for work?

Should I start thinking about graduate school?

And I was ready to make these plans.

But I also knew that the police wanted

to come after me for murder.

LAURIE: The grand jury indicted Kaitlyn Conley

on a charge of murder in the second degree.

It was--you know, it's a very serious charge.

You can't get much more serious than murder

in the second degree.

- My attorney, Chris, called me on June 13th

and said that you have 30 minutes

to get to the police station.

- The first time I think the two of us realized,

wow, uh, this is a murder indictment.

This is real.

- So it was a time for confession.

I said, Katie, what's going on?

Did you kill Mary Yoder?

Quiet.

Too quiet.

And she says, Mom, Dad, you know me.

All I want--

a little house, a husband.

CATHY: Get married and children.

- Get married and one or two kids.

So why would I jeopardize that when that's all I want?

KAITLYN: I was targeted.

And I was a scapegoat in all this.

And they took me down.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[grim music]

♪ ♪

- After I was indicted, I was out on bail.

And then they put me under house arrest.

So I couldn't leave my house.

They so strongly and firmly believed that I'm guilty.

And I'd like to know why they think that.

MARK: We were convinced that we had the right person.

But you still have to put the physical evidence

to that person.

So the colchicine bottle became the most vital piece

of information we had at the time.

It became clear that that colchicine

was ordered out of California.

- I randomly receive a phone call

from a detective from Utica.

I started thinking like, you know, what happened?

What's going on? What did I do wrong?

He wanted to ask me a few questions

about a product that I sold.

They told me that the colchicine

was being investigated in a murder case.

I'm like, WTF?

Like, what's going on here?

- There was leads out there that we believed

we could dig deeper into by traveling to California.

So myself and another investigator

made the trip out there to speak with Rosa Vargas.

- I told the detective about the email listed

on the order that was placed,

which is mradamyoder1990@gmail.com.

- When we sat with Rosa and started going over

the emails back and forth of this,

I couldn't believe, you know, what she was telling me.

ROSA: I tried reaching Adam Yoder,

but the person I spoke to, uh, that answered the call, uh,

she seemed to be a young female with a very soft voice.

- I knew 110% who the girl was that Rosa was referring to--

a soft-spoken female voice at the other end of the line.

It was Katie Conley.

ROSA: She was really polite, was really nice.

She knew exactly what I was referring to.

I can't explain it in details, but it's the sense

that you get that she was a bit nervous

and trying to end the call fast.

- I have never spoken to Rosa Vargas.

And I would bet the key to the front gate

that Rosa Vargas never called the office.

They never got phone records for the office

where allegedly she called.

So you could have verified this.

We could have known for sure.

But they didn't.

TONY: The important thing about

the Mr. Adam Yoder Gmail account is,

one of the times when information was sent

to a chemical company,

it was logged into from Kaitlyn Conley's residence

and from Kaitlyn Conley's iPhone.

- Digital forensics, they don't lie.

So here is someone in Katie's house--

Katie--ordering colchicine.

She did it.

♪ ♪

- Maybe yes, I was in the wrong place

at the wrong times.

But I didn't do anything wrong.

- Pretty sure I'm not lying about this stuff.

[chuckles]

[grim music]

LAURIE: During the months before the trial,

we just wanted to focus on the case

and focus on getting the evidence in there

and hope that it was enough to get a conviction.

- I mean, we talked to past boyfriends,

people who knew her from school.

I mean, there was just-- we started to learn

there's another side to Kaitlyn Conley.

MARK: Okay, thank you.

- No, I didn't really date other people.

I wasn't big on the dating scene.

No. No.

I--even my other relationships,

I didn't have dramatic or contentious breakups.

You know, I'm a pretty relaxed kind of person, I think.

TAMARYN: When Katie was indicted,

at first, me and my sister were just kind of in disbelief.

Like, how could Katie have done this?

Katie, really? Like, this is crazy.

And--and then Adam was just kind of like,

well, you guys don't really know the real Katie.

LIANA: We found out that Katie had

filed a police report a year prior to my mom passing.

Now, at the time, technically, they apparently were broken up,

but in that contained an allegation

that my brother had sexually assaulted her.

This was a surprise to all of us.

That's when we were also told that my brother

had received a phone call

that she made from the police station.

- When that phone call was over,

Katie had indicated that

she didn't want any criminal action taken.

TONY: The sheriff's office asked

if anything on any of the devices

supported this allegation.

Kaitlyn Conley provides to the sheriff's office

printed pictures of injuries

that she sustained during this attack.

I was able to find those pictures on her cell phone.

The problem is they were taken, in some cases,

years prior to the date of the alleged sexual assault.

And they appear to be taken in relationship to an accident

she had while horseback riding.

LAURIE: I do not believe--

and there is not one shred of evidence

other than her word, which, to me, is worth nothing--

that he sexually-- ever sexually assaulted her.

And it was just insane to us.

Like, you're trying to, like, make up this rape allegation,

get him arrested, but you went out in the parking lot

and immediately asked him to get together.

She was the one that continuously

reached out to him, texted him.

She clearly had him fooled and manipulated

and so many crazy red flags that he didn't know.

Of course.

Young--young and in love.

M. WILLIAM: Months before Mary's murder, they break up.

Adam's completely done with her.

And she understands it this time.

He makes it very clear to her.

LIANA: We've all had breakups.

You break up with your boyfriend,

you cry, you go out,

you talk to your friends.

How could their young relationship

have turned into something so incredibly ugly

where she then went after my mom?

Was my mom just collateral damage?

Was there not even a point to it

other than, let me try to get at Adam?

LOCAL: It was a big news story around here.

A lot of people-- a lot of people talk.

[laughs]

- A lot of people say innocent, but a lot of people say guilty.

It's kind of 50/50.

But I believe that police have done a fantastic job.

I think--I think she's guilty.

I'm still in disbelief.

I don't wanna believe it, you know.

Hopefully they prove her innocence.

- Guilty or not guilty, anything can happen

because you never know what a--

you never know what a jury is gonna see or not see.

[suspenseful music]

REPORTER: The trial of a receptionist

who is charged with poisoning her boss.

And lo and behold, she was in a relationship

with that boss's son, Adam.

Prosecutors also say that she was framing Adam

for the murder of his mom.

Are you with me?

Because there's a lot.

- I wanted a stand for our family.

I wanted Katie to see us all there.

And we were gonna hopefully get justice.

KAITLYN: I wasn't too worried.

I was like, okay, it's finally here.

It's happening. Now we can resolve it.

♪ ♪

- I found out there was gonna be a murder trial

right before I found out that I had gotten pulled for the jury.

And I think that's when I started to panic.

Like, oh, my God, how am I gonna get through this?

But I knew it was my duty,

and I just have to figure it out,

and I'll get through it.

There was one juror that, uh,

kind of stood out from the very beginning.

He made himself known when they were picking jurors.

- I had never been a juror, mostly because

I was in the military so long, and I wasn't around.

I told them I could convict my daughter if she was guilty.

And at that point, the prosecutor wanted me.

- The defense strategy was to point the finger

at Bill Yoder because Bill Yoder was now in a relationship

with his dead wife's sister.

- You will find motive through the testimony

on the part of William Yoder.

Do you remember the first time that you had sexual relations

with Kathy Richmond?

- I don't remember the date, no.

I wasn't keeping a journal.

- Everything that the investigation can show

supports that as being true.

And some of it could be proven through the communications

between the two.

ROBERT: There was a text message after Mary's death

where Bill was going to see Kathy.

He had to text her and find out how to get to her house.

So wait a minute, you're telling me he had an affair

and was going to her house and having an affair,

but the guy's gotta text her and find out

how to get to her residence.

This affair didn't start before Mary's death.

LIANA: They looked into everything surrounding him.

He was not involved.

He was not involved in any aspect of it.

- It was, oh, gosh, very, very hard

because I never get over the guilt of wondering

if he had done it.

Just--I can't even put it into words.

- My dad was going through the emotional hell

of having his character attacked and assassinated

the entire time.

LIANA: My mom had a happy marriage,

but the life she lived

got taken away from her by lie after lie.

It got taken away in the courtroom.

It got taken away on social media.

It got taken away in the years of people

ripping apart her life.

[tense music]

TAMMY: It was a lot that you had to think about.

You had to pay attention.

I did notice, uh, Katie's dad always looking over.

I felt like he was looking at me all the time.

And I couldn't understand, why wasn't he looking

at the rest of the jurors?

But then it dawned on me that this Pat guy was

sitting right in front of me.

So he was looking at Pat all the time.

I didn't quite understand why that was going on.

- We believed the colchicine bottle

contained the murder weapon, obviously.

So the colchicine bottle was tested for DNA.

- Her DNA is on the colchicine bottle.

Why?

- I felt bad, but it was like, she did it.

All the evidence pointed towards her.

There was nothing else brought in,

no one else that it really fit.

Um, I--I just knew she did it.

M. WILLIAM: The trial closes,

and now it's in the jury's hands.

Now we have deliberations.

LAURIE: She wrote that anonymous letter.

She purchased the colchicine.

Her DNA was on the bottle.

Her DNA was on the envelope.

And we had connected her phone to the Gmail account.

So I felt pretty good about the case.

LIANA: And then we get the call.

They have a decision.

It was a day that we had been waiting for and hopeful for.

REPORTER: Eager eyes watched as the jury of 12

spent several hours deliberating the fate

of the 24-year-old Sauquoit woman

accused of poisoning Whitesboro chiropractor

Mary Yoder to death back in 2015.

[suspenseful music]

But what happens?

M. WILLIAM: It comes back 10 to 2, not guilty.

A hung jury.

Katie gets to walk.

REPORTER: The murder trial of the 24-year-old Sauquoit woman

accused of poisoning her boss to death

has been declared a mistrial.

- It's not the verdict that we wanted

because we wanted a total exoneration for our daughter.

We know she's completely innocent.

And the whole family feels that way.

- We love you. - Yes.

[laughter]

And a mother knows.

And a mother knows her child.

- We were two people away from an outright acquittal,

which would have finished the process.

It did.

It felt like a weight off my shoulders.

I said, okay, people believe me.

[suspenseful music]

TAMARYN: I think we just went numb

because it was the only way to, um...

kind of stand up and walk out of there

was to just to be numb.

ROBERT: Well, absolutely, I was upset.

I mean, here you spend all this time,

and now they come back as a hung jury

after you spent, you know, how many hours of your life

on this case?

And what are they listening to here?

What--what happened here?

- There was no evidence to prove what the prosecution

said they thought happened.

This was just a theory.

And it started out when we went in, it was 50/50.

Within an hour of us talking, it was ten people innocent,

two people guilty.

TAMMY: Pat was doing a really good job.

He had all, like, the smokers on his team.

He seemed to know what he was thinking and doing.

So they're like, yeah, sure, let's--let's go along with Pat.

Yep.

- One of the jurors said, someone's gotta pay,

might as well be her.

And I literally lost it over that.

I ripped the shades right down in the room yelling

because I didn't wanna be violent.

But it was someone's life, someone's life on the line.

- I was really surprised that this Pat person

had gone up and shaken the hand of Kaitlyn Conley's father.

He shook his hand right outside the courtroom hall.

So that was very surprising.

- I rented at their trailer park.

Yeah, I did.

I rented from--

I rented from Vin Conley.

But I said, Vin, if I thought she was guilty,

I would have voted guilty.

But I don't--in my heart, I don't think she did it.

LAURIE: I thought maybe for some of the jurors,

that they might just see this pretty 21-year-old girl

sitting there demurely, looking like she was, you know,

just this sweet young girl.

And they might not wanna convict her.

There's nothing I can do to get over that.

The defendant is who the defendant is,

and it's not gonna change.

TAMARYN: To face that we were going

to have to do it again was-- it just seemed, um,

like, pretty impossible at that point.

But we all--we wanted justice, so it was, okay, well,

we're gonna do it again because

she needs to pay for what she did.

- The prosecution said that they were going

to try me again in six months.

I was still under house arrest.

I'm like, we have to do this all over again?

We just did it.

You couldn't convince your jury.

You couldn't convince ten people.

Why do we have to do it again?

- In a lot of murder cases I've handled,

the decision to kill is made like that.

Premeditation is all over this case.

Advanced planning-- cold, calculated planning.

We can't just let her walk out the door.

In the second trial, we realized that

we had to change things up in terms of our strategy

to digitally prove what had happened

and why all of those digital roads

led directly back to Kaitlyn Conley.

- Now, with the gift of time, we can go back.

And the game changer comes

when I'm re-examining Adam Yoder's laptop.

On that laptop were numerous backups of cell phones.

And about the third file we examined, we realized,

this is not Adam's phone.

This is Kaitlyn's phone.

MICHAEL: So this backup that Adam did

would be a snapshot of what existed on the phone

about two months after the killing,

but long before police entered the case.

TONY: I knew it instantly.

This is the holy grail.

So many notes had been deleted by her

in the intervening months.

And the one that jumps out first

is a note about the mradamyoder1990 Gmail account.

It says, "Aisgay."

That could also be shorthand--

"Adamisgay."

Immediately, I'm looking at it and saying,

that's the password.

And it was.

- If I'm a scorned woman and Adam broke up with me,

and I'm gonna kill his mom,

am I gonna play a little game with myself

and choose "Adamisgay" as a password?

You bet your ass I am.

- I have never, ever in my life used gay as a slur.

That doesn't fit in with me.

But do I believe that that's his password?

Yes, I do.

Adam lived with a bunch of boys

who would use that as a slur, um.

So yeah, that sounds about right.

I believe that.

- Kaitlyn Conley deleted 6,000 images off her phone.

No one does that.

In the group of images that were deleted

are dozens and dozens of screenshots from websites

talking about poisons.

MICHAEL: Throughout the fall of 2014,

she had looked at cyanide, poison mushrooms, thallium,

and arrived ultimately at colchicine

towards the end of December.

- First thing was like, smack right in the face.

She takes Mary Yoder's body weight

and then fills out the formula

for how much colchicine would be necessary

to kill Mary Yoder.

I don't know.

That doesn't mean anything to me.

I don't have a reason to search lethal poisons.

I'm really--like, I don't even put out, you know,

poison for the mice in the barn.

I just--I can't. I can't.

That's not who I am.

- The research, I think, brought things

to a different level because it showed

a level of callousness, of planning, of deviousness,

and, really, coldness.

But that is kind of typical

for the behavior of Kaitlyn Conley.

This woman is a sociopath.

She has actually disconnected the reality of her actions

and the possible consequences of those from the moment.

- I wasn't too worried about going to jail

for the rest of my life.

Because I was--

I was pretty present.

I was in the moment.

And I was just enjoying the time with my family.

It felt like, okay, well, let's--let's just keep going.

I've come this far. I can keep going.

[tense music]

- I honestly did not know how I mentally was,

or emotionally was, gonna make it through a second trial.

REPORTER: 24-year-old Kaitlyn Conley is now

starting with a fresh slate.

Conley's defense attorney, Frank Policelli,

argues it's not Conley who killed Yoder,

but rather her son, Conley's ex-boyfriend

and the person he says set Conley up

for the murder of his mother.

- The first trial, they point a finger at Bill.

The second trial, uh-oh, Adam did it now.

We're gonna use that tact.

- So they say, well, but all these electronic devices

come back to Katie.

Yeah, right.

Ladies and gentlemen, it was Adam.

It was Adam.

- With her interviews with the police and her,

everything she said was pointing towards Adam.

And the letter that she sent was saying that Adam did it.

So I think, you know, her new defense lawyer thought,

well, duh, you told the police this.

We have to, like, try and point the finger at Adam

to make that make sense, so.

Now another member of the family

was under direct attack.

His character, everything was being attacked and questioned

and dragged through the mud.

Good morning.

- The defense was able to cross-examine Adam

and accuse him in open court of raping Kaitlyn Conley.

M. WILLIAM: Let's talk about this controlled call

that police make to Adam for this alleged rape.

The only problem with the controlled call is,

Adam doesn't admit it.

I was in shock.

I didn't know how to react.

And I was panicking.

And ultimately, I had drank enough to black out that night,

so I couldn't defend myself.

I didn't have a version of the story.

TONY: The defense revolved, really,

around the relationship with Adam.

But the prosecution turned the arguments between them

from being a negative to the prosecution

to becoming a positive for the prosecution.

Showing this long-term discord

between Adam and Kaitlyn

really created motive.

- We presented the motive that Katie had become

increasingly vengeful towards Adam

over the weeks and months leading up to Mary's death.

- The toxic relationship between Katie and Adam,

Adam is done with it.

What does Katie do?

Well, I'm gonna take away from Adam the thing

that I know he loves more than anything.

And that's his mother.

MARK: This was very, very calculated,

very, very planned out.

There's no doubt about that.

Mary Yoder is definitely as innocent of a victim

as you can get.

ROBERT: The day Mary died,

Kaitlyn Conley is in the office.

Now she's got opportunity.

She's got the time, and she's got the opportunity.

- And the substance itself is so innocuous.

It looks like a little bit of white powder.

And what does it really take but a pinch of that powder

to quickly put it in somebody's drink?

Just walk by, drop it in, and the deed is done.

No.

No, she--I didn't see her have a shake

that day at the office, no.

I didn't see her eat anything at the office.

- On top of that, if that weren't enough,

she then tried to pin it on him,

frame Adam for the death of his own mother.

TAMARYN: She set everything up under Adam's name.

She sent the letter saying Adam did it.

It just was such pure evil.

That's all we could--

she just--Katie had to be pure evil.

MARK: When Mary dies, Katie is there at the hospital

with the family.

I mean, that's how close she was.

And you know, she got to see her handiwork firsthand.

- Katie was right there every step of the way.

[exhales]

Oh, God, it makes me so angry.

- The idea that you would get back

at your ex-boyfriend

by killing his mother

didn't make sense to me.

It was the most ludicrous theory

that they could have come up with.

TAMARYN: Yeah, the jury went out

for deliberation again at the end of the second trial.

And it was--

I mean, gosh, it was almost like flashing back

to the first trial, just that waiting and waiting.

And then, at one point, they also sent a message

and said that they did not know if they were

gonna be able to reach a unanimous verdict.

And it was like, this isn't looking good.

- I was very concerned that, oh, my God,

we're gonna have to do this a third time,

and we don't really have anything more

to put into this case.

- This was a scenario that frightened us,

that if reasonable jurors go back and they deliberate,

and they say, you know, she looked up

the lethal doses of colchicine.

She wanted to see how much she could administer

that was sublethal that would only make somebody sick.

LAURIE: Maybe some of the jurors thought,

we don't think that her intent was to kill,

and so that's not murder.

That's something else.

So as a result of that, we asked for the lesser

included offense of manslaughter.

And the judge sent them back with the murder charge

and the manslaughter charge so that if they didn't convict

of murder, then they could go on and consider manslaughter

in the first degree as well.

- So when Dwyer granted that lesser included request,

I said, well, now it's not yes or no.

It's murder, manslaughter, or no.

So you've just given them two opportunities,

and you gave me one.

LIANA: We get the call. They have a decision.

At that point, nothing short of just gripping terror.

We weren't quite sure we could handle what was coming next.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

TAMARYN: There was, of course,

a lot of commotion in the courtroom.

LIANA: We had no idea what to expect.

LAURIE: When the jury said not guilty on murder,

for that moment, you're like,

oh, my God, she's gonna walk.

- My sister and I were squeezing our hands

so tightly we were bruised after.

- After such a long wait to get to that point,

it was just so overwhelmingly emotional

that I couldn't even--

it was just, we needed it.

[crying]

LIANA: We finally got to the light

at the end of the tunnel.

We finally--somebody was able to see what happened.

And so there was a small sense of a relief.

Like, we made it.

We got here. We made it.

♪ ♪

- And it just--it felt like everything failed.

I put all my faith and all my trust

in the system and these people.

And it didn't work.

It felt like we'd been let down.

SARAH: I truly think that Katie is innocent.

And I know people expect us to say that

because we're a family.

Um, but truly, deep down in my soul,

I don't think that Katie would have the ability to do this.

- You can only do so much when you're down

at Bedford visiting.

And it's very hard when we walk away each time

and we have to leave Katie behind.

You leave a part of yourself.

- I, uh--I figured it out that I'm probably not lucky enough

to live until she's free.

That hurt.

CATHY: It's--it's part of your daily life every day.

And it just--it could consume your whole day.

LIANA: I know they wanna believe their daughter,

so I don't think that they'll question anything she says.

I don't think the Conleys would ever admit it

even if she did admit something to them.

I don't feel that they would ever

be forthright in telling us.

TAMARYN: Adam's not good.

I don't think he'll ever stop blaming himself.

I don't think that he will ever

not be traumatized by this.

I don't think he'll ever heal from it.

I hate Kaitlyn Ann Conley

because Kaitlyn Ann Conley murdered my mother.

TAMARYN: And I hope she never makes it out of prison.

I'd be okay if she made it to 22 years

and then got fucking killed in there.

I'd be happy. [scoffs]

[sighs deeply]

- The Yoders don't need closure.

And they don't need that from me.

They need--they need help.

And they need to figure a lot of things out.

But that has nothing to do with me.

That has nothing to do with me.

Kaitlyn Conley is the killer.

Kaitlyn Conley killed my mother,

and she is absolutely where she belongs.

♪ ♪