Original subtitles

(Richard Shepherd) When a murder is committed,

it's always a race against time to find the truth,

to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer,

and to make sure that justice is served.

But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim?

I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd, and I've spent

my entire career as a forensic pathologist,

performing nearly 23,000 autopsies.

I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth,

and they never lie.

Through me, you'll be hearing directly from the victim.

With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory,

using ground-breaking technology, I'll be investigating a series

of intriguing crimes, where from the victims' bodies,

I'll reveal to you the truth behind these murders.

(camera shutter clicking)

Back in 1997, on the day after Christmas,

emergency services were called to a house fire

in Bremerton near Seattle.

But as they battled to contain the fire,

they had no idea what lay inside.

(beeping)

(phone ringing)

(Dispatcher) What's your emergency?

Shortly after 7:00 AM, 911 was called for a house fire.

Neighbours had noticed that there was

smoke billowing out of a window.

When the firefighters arrived, the house was fully engulfed,

and it was a major fire.

It took a while for the firefighters

to extinguish the fire.

And so, when the fire was finally out, they did a sweep of the home.

And they found what looked to be charred remains of a human being.

The body was located in the western corner of the home

in the primary bedroom.

The body was found laying on its back,

and it appeared that a blanket

had been over the victim

because you could see the wires from an electric blanket

that were over the victim's body.

The victim's body was horribly, horribly burned,

and it was unrecognisable.

And there were no distinguishing features that could be seen,

whether it was a male or a female.

(Richard) In this, a small community,

and just hours after Christmas Day, how had this fire started?

And whose life had it tragically taken?

As a forensic pathologist, some of the most difficult

cases I've dealt with are those where

a body is recovered from a fire.

Where the burns are extensive, identifying the remains

can be very difficult because fire destroys

many things, but not everything.

Vital evidence can be lost when the skin is burnt,

but some clues always remain.

In this case, jewellery found on the body

indicated it was 28-year-old Dawn Hacheney.

And that was confirmed by comparing her teeth that survived

the fire with her dental records.

Closer examination revealed that there

were extensive burns to the front of the body, but on the back

there were none.

And what that tells us is that, not only was she lying on her back

on the bed, but crucially, it tells us

that she didn't move from that position

as the fire engulfed the room.

So as flames ravaged through the home,

why was Dawn unable to save herself?

Was she simply asleep, unconscious, or already dead?

To find out, police had to build up a picture

of who Dawn Hacheney was.

Dawn and I were friends almost... it felt like forever,

but she was my best friend.

We first met when we were in seventh grade,

and it was just instant friendship from that point on.

She had a strong, strong faith core.

We went to a private Christian high school,

and so we all kind of had that.

She lived it though, and it just was part of her.

And she was just the sweetest thing.

I mean, she would give you the coat off her back if you needed help.

And that was her.

That was Dawn.

(Richard) Dawn Hacheney was the wife of Nicholas Hacheney,

a young pastor from the Evangelical Christ Community Church

of Bainbridge Island just across the Puget Sound

from Bremerton near Seattle.

(Eunice Wirtanen) Dawn met Nick at college.

She went to Northwest Bible College.

We called it Northwest Bridal College type of thing,

because that's where you went to get a husband.

My feelings for Nick were kind of ambivalent,

but I respected her choice of him.

And they seemed in love, and that's all that mattered at that point.

We all picked somebody different, and that's who she picked.

Dawn asked me to be her maid of honour for her wedding,

and I was so, so excited.

She was going to be mine.

That didn't happen.

But yeah, I was her maid of honour.

And it was a beautiful wedding.

Nick was the most happy-looking guy ever.

He really was very sweet.

It was just an awesome, wonderful wedding.

By outward appearances, it looked like they had just a wonderful,

picture-perfect marriage.

She was the sole breadwinner.

She was a loan officer for a local credit union.

Nick Hacheney was a youth pastor.

And so with that comes a lot of volunteer work.

I think he might have, at most, gotten

$600 every so often as a stipend.

But this was not a money-making venture.

This was a passion for him.

She enjoyed having him be a pastor.

She enjoyed being a pastor's wife.

And by all accounts, they had a wonderful marriage.

She loved him.

She did.

She did everything she could for him,

and he was the leader of the house.

And he is the man, and she will love and obey him to a point.

She didn't... she wasn't a doormat, but she did

feel very strongly in her vows.

And this was what she chose to do, and she loved him for that.

She was your typical pastor's wife.

She was very supportive of him.

He was an up-and-coming star at his church.

He was going places, they all thought.

And she was playing the supportive role.

(Claire Bradley) The Christ Community Church

was an Apostolic Church, the congregation

believing in the word and the will of God coming through them.

And so they believed they could hear the word of God

through prophecy, through speaking in tongues, and through dreams.

They would be seized with the word of God during services,

and there would be shouting.

And there were very lively services.

(Claire) And by all accounts,

he was a great youth pastor.

He was fun and silly and kind.

And he drew a huge following of kids in that programme.

He had a couple of favourite people that he

called The Little Disciples that he had paid

particular close attention to.

And because of his success and his charisma,

he was then put in charge of a marital counselling programme.

(Richard) Nick's counselling sessions proved

popular, but there were soon rumours that

they were becoming controversial.

Eventually, the marital counselling

sessions started to become more oriented

towards the female of the couple.

And he would say, OK, well, I think I really need

to speak privately with your wife.

And we have to deal with some issues that she has privately.

He was said to have befriended quite a few married women

in the church and would take these counselling

sessions where his main interest was

said to be about their sex lives.

And there were some complaints about that.

(Claire) Some of the husbands

started to complain about these private sessions

and how long they were taking and at what hours

they were being conducted.

And so questions were starting to be asked about his relationships

with some of these women.

It was very clear that that was his passion is to preach

and preach the word of God the way he saw it.

(Anna Laurie) Mr. Hacheney had gone out duck hunting

with several people that morning.

And when he came back, his house was basically destroyed,

and his wife was dead.

He was comforted by our coroner at the time.

Gone out doing something innocent, and comes back

and the love of your life is dead, a tragedy.

Faced with charred remains, it's easy to assume that

the cause of death was the fire.

But most people are killed by the smoke

and fumes rather than the flames.

When someone inhales smoke, the airways are usually black.

It's easy to see.

Its barn-door obvious.

But the examination of Dawn's airways

showed that they were clear.

There was none of the powdery soot in the trachea and bronchi.

With no soot in the airways, it tells us that she might have

been dead before the flames took hold.

But if the fire and smoke didn't kill Dawn, what did?

It was just incomprehensible that there would be foul play,

you know?

It just never entered anybody's mind.

In 1997, the body of 28-year-old Dawn Hacheney

was found in her burnt-out house in Bremerton near Seattle.

Her husband, Nick, had been away on a hunting trip

when the fire broke out.

Shortly after Dawn's body was discovered,

fire investigators searched the property looking for clues

to tell them how the fire might have started

and what had caused Dawn's death.

The fire investigators noted that there was a space heater

in the bedroom close to the bed, that there was

paper all over the room, some wrapping paper, some newspaper.

And they found a case of small propane tanks,

such that you would use when you're camping with a camp stove.

Nicholas Hacheney tells the investigators

that they were renovating their home,

and so they didn't have central heating.

And so he had turned that space heater on to warm Dawn

while she was sleeping so that the room

would be warm when she got up.

He indicated that the propane tanks were

a gift from Dawn for Christmas.

He was a big hunter, and he was a big camper.

And so she had gotten him a case of propane tanks

as a Christmas present.

He said that they had opened their Christmas presents late the night

before, and he had just left the presents and the wrapping paper

all around where they had opened them in the bedroom.

(Richard) So what did the experts make

of Nick Hacheney's story?

In determining the mode and manner of death,

a forensic pathologist has to look at everything, not just the body,

but the history, the context, and the parties.

And so this was a pastor who, by all accounts,

was extremely distraught by the death of his wife.

So there wasn't really a lot of suspicion with respect

to the cause of the fire.

And the fire investigator noted that, yes, there were

propane tanks in the bedroom and that there was paper

all over the bedroom, and that it was very possible,

and even likely, that the fire had been started by paper

too close to the space heater.

Perhaps there was a flash fire because of the propane.

The propane tanks might have had an impact

on the severity of the fire, and deemed that it was accidental.

(Richard) But was there more to learn

from Dawn's body about the events of that fateful day

and how she died?

When Dawn's body was found, there were no obvious injuries

indicating a cause of death, and the first pathologist

concluded the reason there was no soot in the airways

was that her throat had suddenly closed when the fire started.

We call this laryngeal spasm.

The theory is that inhalation of a flash of hot air from the fire

causes the vocal cords in the larynx to snap shut.

Now, this can happen, but it's far from common.

In fact, it's exceedingly rare.

With no evidence to prove otherwise,

the pathologist recorded the death as accidental.

And so the police investigation was shelved.

The findings may have been rare, but they were enough

to satisfy the authorities involved.

It was deemed to be an accident and a very tragic accident.

So there was no indication of any foul play.

It was just incomprehensible that there would be foul play.

You know, it just never entered anybody's mind.

Because of his role in the church, a pillar

of the local community, I think that an awful lot of things

went by the bye.

So a thorough investigation into it just didn't seem to happen.

(Eunice) At the time, when I heard

that it was an accidental fire and the cause of it,

I was just sad.

You know, I thought it was an accident.

At the funeral, Nick met me and gave me a Christmas card

that Dawn was going to give me.

And it was the last Christmas card that she even made.

She even put it together with all her crafty stuff.

And so I've got her words.

He said he found it in their car.

And I gave him a hug, and he gave me a hug.

And he was crying, and he showed true grief.

But during the funeral, he pulled off his behaviour like a preacher.

(Claire) He actually delivered the eulogy,

and there were a lot of people that thought,

how on Earth can this guy be so strong

as to give this powerful eulogy about the wife that he loved?

There was insurance money after Dawn's death.

And so he did get some money.

I think it was, in total, about $110,000

that he received in insurance money.

What he did with that money is some of it

went to trying to repair the house.

But he also bought a brand new truck.

He bought a boat.

He bought a motorcycle and was seemingly enjoying

having this extra money,

really just living it up with this new-found money.

(Eunice) After the funeral, I didn't see him.

The only thing I really remember is getting frustrated with Dawn's mum

that he wasn't doing anything to put a headstone on her grave.

And I didn't understand why he wasn't doing that.

That made no sense to me at all.

And that's where the first time I ever felt something

was just weird.

Why wouldn't you do that?

If you loved her, why?

There were also some other odd things after her death

that he seemed to have...

he seemed to be surrounded by a bevvy of women who were there

to comfort him and to give him whatever

it was that he needed because he was in such a state of grief.

So there were kind of some rumblings about how

maybe inappropriate that he was with women

immediately after her death.

There was a kind of a difference of opinion among people in the church

as to which side were you on?

Are you on the side that he's showing

that he's this grief-stricken loving husband?

Or is he just loving all of this attention?

He had a lot of weird behaviours.

But to... to figure out that that was criminal?

No, it was just sad and weird.

And maybe grief strikes people differently.

(Richard) It seemed like an open-and-shut case.

But four years later, all that changed when a woman

called Sandy Glass contacted the police.

(Claire) Sandy Glass had a lot to say.

Sandy Glass was the church secretary,

so she worked for the church.

She was also a very prominent figure in the church.

She was one that they deemed to be a prophetess.

And the church congregants put a lot of weight

into what Sandy Glass had to say with respect to her prophecies.

One year, she had prophesied that there was

going to be a huge earthquake.

So, based upon her prophecy, the entire church

started to stockpile food and provisions for the period of time

after this giant earthquake was to occur.

So she was a very central figure in the church.

She was well respected, and people believed what she had to say.

(Richard) And what she told the authorities was shocking.

She indicated that Dawn Hacheney,

who had previously been killed by a house fire,

well, there was more to the story,

and that this was, in fact, a homicide.

She had told the prosecutor's office that at the time,

she was engaged in an extramarital affair with Nick Hacheney

and that they had sexual relations before Dawn Hacheney's death.

She had indicated that Nick Hacheney had, in fact,

murdered Dawn Hacheney so that they could be together and had,

shortly after the murder,

had told Sandy just how he had done it,

that he took a clear plastic bag, put it over her face,

and suffocated her to death.

She had said that, once that happened, that he had stayed

with the body all night and then in the morning

set fire to the bedroom and left and went hunting.

The day of the fire, she had received

a phone call from Nick Hacheney.

And Nick had just said, it is done.

And at that moment, her call waiting clicked in,

and so she went over to the other line

and was told by one of the congregants

that Dawn had perished in a house fire.

So she knew what "it is done" meant.

(Richard) Sandy Glass's testimony threatened

to blast the case back open.

But was she telling the truth?

(Richard) In 2001, four years after Dawn Hacheney's

charred remains were found in her burnt out house, a woman contacted

police claiming the death had been no accident.

That woman was church secretary Sandy Glass.

Her claims were extraordinary, but were they backed up

by the medical evidence?

Nick Hacheney's former lover Sandra Glass claimed

he'd confessed to her that he'd suffocated his wife by putting

a plastic bag over her head.

If this explosive claim was true, it would explain why there

was no soot in Dawn's airways.

If she had been suffocated by a bag over her head,

I might have expected to see signs that she'd struggled

against him fighting for breath.

I'd be looking for defensive injuries to the wrists

and the forearms, grazes, abrasions, bruises, or signs

that her arms had been held down.

But there was nothing like that.

With no signs of a struggle, the evidence from Dawn's body

didn't appear to support Sandy's claims about the plastic bag.

But suspicions had been raised, so prosecutors

began a thorough investigation.

Could Sandy Glass be believed?

We did a lot of investigation about Sandy Glass's credibility.

As you can imagine, a late disclosure like this, of course,

needs to be investigated.

And we need to make sure that she was, in fact,

a credible witness and not some woman scorned

that's willing to make something up.

(Richard) But as prosecutors began

to examine Sandy Glass's claims, the story they uncovered

was even more extreme than anyone could have imagined.

(Claire) Sandy Glass and her husband Jimmy Glass

were having some marital difficulties.

And so they were one of the first people to avail themselves

of Nick Hacheney's marital counselling.

Nick started to have private sessions with her

without Jimmy Glass being there.

And one thing leads to another,

and they begin a romantic and sexual relationship.

And it became serious, very serious.

And they had been talking a lot about having a life together

and trying to figure out what that might look like.

Divorce simply was not an option in this church

because that could give rise to him being excommunicated

from the church and, at the very least,

have him be removed as a pastor.

I mean, he's a pastor who's conducting marital counselling,

and here he is cheating on his wife and getting a divorce.

(Richard) Meanwhile, cracks were beginning to show

in Nick and Dawn's marriage.

I started seeing some unhappiness in Dawn.

Then you start paying attention.

When you go over, you start paying attention

to the vibes in the house.

And every time I'd go over, he'd be laying around doing nothing.

And when he told her that she needed to lose weight,

well, you need to too.

And it was just some of the comments

that I started hearing her share about what

he would say to her in private.

And I'm not a subtle person.

I'd call him on it.

And I started telling Dawn, if you need

to get out of this relationship,

because you're not getting respected.

It doesn't even seem like he really cares for you.

And you can just feel that.

You can come to my house.

I had an apartment at the time.

And he heard me say that, and that didn't help.

But I really feel strongly that Dawn would never

have divorced Nick, that she made her vows,

and her vows are for life.

And she felt that very strongly.

But she didn't know what was going on,

and she started getting hints and kind of putting

pieces together on what was going on

but never had the complete puzzle.

(Richard) At the time of Dawn and Nick's marital problems,

he was having an affair with Sandy Glass.

And the pair were desperate to be together.

But with divorce out of the question,

both were looking for alternative ways

to get out of their marriages, however drastic.

(Claire) In the fall of 1997,

Sandy Glass had a prophecy that her husband

Jimmy Glass was going to die.

And so, on the one hand,

that was one answer to their prayers.

So the time came and went.

Jimmy didn't die and was very much alive.

And so she had another prophecy that Dawn was going to die,

and it was going to occur December 18 of 1997.

December 18 came and went, and Dawn did not die.

And over the course of the next couple of days,

they prayed about it.

And Sandy had another prophecy.

And she told Nick the prophecy, and it was,

your hands are no longer tied.

And she didn't know what that meant,

but I think they both thought that something

was going to happen to make their life together a possibility.

So fast forward a couple of days, and it's December 26, 1997,

and Dawn dies in a house fire.

So I think Sandy Glass thought

that this was their way out.

This was... they were going to be able to be together.

Unfortunately, Nick Hacheney had other plans

and had now started hooking up with three other women.

(Jane Carter Woodrow) It tells us that Nick is not a very good

Christian, that he's preaching one thing

and doing something completely different.

For somebody who is a pastor and loved Jesus,

he broke every commandment that he possibly could.

(Richard) Some months before Dawn's death,

and in a repeat of what he'd allegedly done with Sandy Glass,

Nick Hacheney had started to give marriage counselling

to Annette Anderson and her husband

before starting to see Annette on her own.

(Claire) Nick Hacheney told Annette that

he wanted to do a trust exercise.

So it's the trust fall where she's standing,

and she has to trust that Nick's going to catch her.

And so she does the exercise.

He catches her.

And Nick says, see?

That's what God is.

You have to trust God and trust God's will and trust God's word.

And things will be all right.

So it was clear that there was an emotional connection

between Annette Anderson and Nick Hacheney.

Things escalated very quickly and became

a sexual relationship within days of Dawn Hacheney's death.

(Anna) He believed that God had told him

that he was to be fruitful and multiply.

And he took that statement from God as he was supposed to be

sleeping with his parishioners.

He was very, very good at manipulating,

a complete charmer so that you would never suspect it of him.

(Richard) Already engaged in sexual relationships

with Sandy Glass and Annette Anderson, Nick's affairs

didn't stop there.

Nicole Matheson had also been one to come

to Nick for marital advice.

She was not happy in her relationship,

and it was very clear that that relationship was going to end.

So once again, it became an emotional connection

between Nicole and Nick.

But after Dawn's death, it also quickly

became a sexual relationship.

(Richard) Nick's involvement

with multiple women from the congregation was escalating.

But worse was to come, this time even closer to home.

(Claire) Bob Smith was a co-pastor

in the Christ Community Church.

And Nick Hacheney was kind of like a son to Bob Smith.

He supported Nick wholeheartedly and invited him into his home

to live with them after the fire because Nick didn't have anywhere

to live, and he needed help.

So this really was like a family relationship.

Within days of Dawn Hacheney's death,

Nick Hacheney started a relationship with Lindsay Smith,

who was 18 years old at the time.

Lindsay Smith is Bob Smith's daughter.

She was a child when they first met because he was

her youth pastor and one of the two that everybody referred to

as Nick's little disciples.

This relationship continued until Lindsay

left for Africa because she was going on a missionary trip.

And the relationship continued from afar

by way of emails of a sexual nature, of emotional nature,

of feelings of love and talking about their future.

And it was a really serious relationship.

Lindsay was in love, and she just couldn't think of a life

without Nick Hacheney.

(Richard) Now involved with four different women,

Nick Hacheney's relationships continued throughout 1998.

He kind of decided that Nicole Matheson was the one.

And so he, over time, had contacted Annette Anderson, Sandy Glass,

and Lindsay Smith to say,

hey, I really want to be with Nicole Matheson.

We want to be together.

And so we got to stop what we're doing.

And so from there on, the relationship

really was just Nicole Matheson.

(Richard) Now free to enter into a new marriage,

Nick got engaged to Nicole Matheson in 2001.

But his past was about to catch up with him

as gossip about his affairs began to circulate through the church.

By then in the new relationship and with her guilt

growing over the secret she had been harbouring for Nick Hacheney,

Sandy Glass finally disclosed what she knew to her fiance.

The fiance says, you have to go to the authorities on this.

You're morally obligated to go to the authorities on this.

You know this information, and he's gotten away with

this murder now for four years.

And so that is how she ended up getting an attorney

and then contacting the prosecutor's office.

(Richard) If Sandy Glass's claims were true,

her love affair with serial philanderer Nick Hacheney

had given him a motive for murder.

The police were convinced enough to reopen the case.

So would the truth finally be revealed?

In my opinion, he is a misogynist.

He really doesn't like women.

He treats him dreadfully.

You know, and the closer they are to him,

the worse he's going to treat them.

In 2001, Nick Hacheney's former lover told police that he'd

confessed to killing his wife.

Now, four years after her death,

was Dawn's body ready to reveal further secrets

about how she'd really died?

It was suggested that Nick Hacheney had

suffocated his wife Dawn with a plastic bag

before setting fire to their home.

In the light of Sandy Glass's claims, the case was reopened

and the previous autopsy report reviewed.

We hired a different forensic pathologist,

but we also asked the original forensic pathologist

to re-review what his findings were

based on the new information.

(Richard) Particular attention

was paid to the toxicology report, which identified chemicals

and toxins found in the body.

On review, the tests for carbon monoxide in Dawn's blood,

which had shown negative, looked odd

as it would have been present if she'd

taken a breath in the smoky room.

What's more, Dawn's blood have been shown

to be free of natural cyanide.

But this chemical would have been expected after a house fire

because it's released when plastics burn.

The absence of cyanide and carbon monoxide

strongly suggested that Dawn's airways

were shut before the fire started.

And although the rare instance of a laryngeal spasm described

in the first autopsy was still not out of the question,

the toxicology revealed something that could be more sinister.

They found Benadryl, a cold remedy that contains a sedative.

This raised no concerns at the time because everyone

assumed this was an accident.

And her husband, Nick, had told police that she'd had a cold.

A review of the toxicology results showed

that Dawn had as much as five times the normal dose of Benadryl

in her body.

It would have knocked her out, so she

would have been unable to fight off her attacker

as he suffocated her with a plastic bag.

When the investigators stopped assuming that this was an accident

and considered that she could have been murdered,

suddenly all of the pieces slotted together.

And the evidence fitted perfectly.

So why had these test results been overlooked

at the time of Dawn's death?

They did take into account that he was a pastor.

They did take into account that he was well respected

and kind of, I think, presumed that somebody like that

would never kill their wife.

And so there was perhaps a rush to judgement that

this couldn't possibly be homicide.

So let's make the facts fit into an accidental death.

(Richard) So in 2002, with this new information

at their disposal, and having taken a fresh look

at the events surrounding Dawn's death,

the state charged Nick Hacheney with Dawn's murder.

And the trial was set for later that year.

I was just confused.

What?

What is going on?

I never imagined Nick being a murderer.

I didn't like him.

I didn't think he was good for her.

I don't think that they had a healthy relationship.

But I... you don't assume that,

and that caught me off guard.

(Richard) The trial was held at Kitsap County Court.

It was Judge Anna Laurie's first murder case.

The first day, it was this giant courtroom,

and there was just... everybody in the courthouse wanted to see him.

I mean, at that point, the word had spread.

(Claire) It's not often that you have a pastor

accused of murdering his wife.

It's not often that you have some of the salacious details

that were going to come out during the course of the trial.

It was really interesting because it was my first look at him.

And I thought, really?

You killed your wife?

You're being accused of killing your wife?

Because he was a very innocuous-looking young man.

I mean, there was nothing especially significant about him.

He was kind of colourless, and just nothing there that you would think

would have that kind of evil about him.

(Richard) Over four years since the fire

and tragic death of Dawn Hacheney,

Nick Hacheney was finally facing trial.

(Anna) The prosecution's case was pretty straightforward.

It was, the story that Mr. Hacheney had told

is so improbable that it couldn't be true.

And thus, the only thing that makes sense

is that he gave his wife an overdose of Benadryl.

He caused her to die.

He set the house on fire to mask his bad actions.

And he wouldn't have gotten caught but for the fact

that he cheated on his wife with all of these women.

And he finally got caught.

The defence case was this was all a terrible tragic accident.

And this man over here is really a grieving widower.

So the defence case was, nope, they got it right the first time.

She died of basically the laryngeal spasm

and died in the fire as a result.

(Richard) But the prosecution

had uncovered evidence that proved a laryngeal spasm was impossible.

Laryngeal spasm is extremely rare,

and it really is usually when there is an explosion, like a bomb

or something of that nature.

It doesn't really fit the facts of the fire in this case.

(Richard) The only possibility that this had happened

would have been if there was a massive explosion of propane

from a leaky cylinder.

The tanks were examined.

They were completely full of propane.

There were no cracks.

There were no seals that were broken.

And so they didn't even vent during the fire.

So it's not as if the tanks just spontaneously blew up.

We also looked at the manufacturer and asked

questions, quality control questions, things of that nature.

And for that model of propane tank, the seals

had failed exactly zero times in the history

of that particular model.

(Richard) According to prosecutors,

no leaks meant no explosion, and so no laryngeal spasm.

Therefore, Dawn must have been dead before the fire took hold.

What's more, there was evidence that the fire

had been started deliberately.

(Claire) If you look at the pictures,

you can see there's, not just wrapping paper,

but there's newspapers stuffed all around her,

stuffed under her body.

And so the fire experts had indicated that

newspaper is a great accelerant.

And all he had to do was put newspaper

and other paper in the bedroom, light it,

and it would be a fantastic accelerant.

(Richard) The evidence against Nick Hacheney

was mounting up, but he gave nothing away.

(Anna) When Mr. Hacheney was at the defence table,

he would sit quietly, almost motionless

through the whole proceeding.

He believed that he was going to be acquitted.

I would note too, there was an interesting thing that

happened when I was preparing...

I was getting ready to do closing argument.

And we were on a break.

We were at recess, and I was standing

at the podium looking at my notes.

And he walked by and said, my life is in your hands,

and I really hope you understand that

when you do your closing argument.

And I thought to myself, even now, he's trying to manipulate women.

(Richard) The trial lasted for seven weeks.

The jury delivered their verdict on the 26th of December, 2002,

five years to the day of Dawn Hacheney's death.

So we brought him back in, and I was the first person

that got to see the verdict.

So I'm looking at this, and I'm just going, oh, my God,

they found him guilty.

There is only one sentence in Washington State law,

and that is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

(Richard) Justice had finally caught up

with Nick Hacheney, and he would end up

at the state prison in Monroe, Washington, to serve his sentence.

When I found out about the verdict, my first thought is why?

If you didn't want to be married to her, divorce.

That's simpler.

Why did you have to murder her?

That was my first thought.

And then there's a lot of other thoughts I had on him

that I'm not going to share.

But I hope you rot was my thinking.

(Anna) This man killed his wife.

He killed her in a way that caused her to suffer.

By all accounts, she was a sweet, innocent, loving wife,

who never would have guessed what her husband was about, ever.

Yeah, she deserved so much better than him.

(Claire) It's such a human story,

and it's so sad that, you know, this lovely lady,

who did nothing but absolutely adore her husband

had to die because of a pastor who wanted too much power.

(Eunice) It was the wrong...

wrong place, wrong time, wrong marriage, wrong man.

So he's where he belongs.

When Dawn Hacheney's body was found in her burnt out home,

everyone assumed the fire was an accident, and so was her death.

But her body revealed tiny clues that something more sinister

had happened.

There was no soot in her airways or carbon monoxide in her blood.

She had died before the fire broke out.

Four years after her death, Dawn Hacheney's body

finally revealed the truth her husband Nick had tried to conceal.

Dawn had as much as five times the normal dose of Benadryl

in her body.

He had asphyxiated her with a plastic bag.

So, with the mystery surrounding her death solved,

justice was duly served.

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