A lot of people called us, Ken and Barbie, I just fell head over heels for sweethearts in high school. Cheaters in marriage one have cheated, the other one had cheated. My yes, show me a teacher I want to want to own, which was show that early one morning about of stab wounds. That was a bad crime scene. I just fell on the floor crying. She wasn't shedding a tear.

Was she a devastated widow or was she in on it? She's been referred to as a puppet master. Her lover said one thing. I see no guilt on her part. I really don't.

The fact that she had a brand new dress ready for a funeral said something else. Every woman needs a black dress.

He was number 15, a boy named Thatd Fate, maybe because number 15 was her lucky number, the girl from the crosstown rival watching the game up in the stands, the pretty blonde named Michelle, who would become 1986 homecoming queen at Petrohawk.

It was an honor because the whole school votes for the queen, and so it was an honor. So you were the really cool girl at school, I guess. Number 15 that Reynolds and Michelle Sullens were prom dates married right out of high school.

They were both popular, both nice looking, both friendly, had a lot of friends. Social, sure. I mean, like they had it all.

But years on, people had strong opinions about the one time homecoming queen.

She is one of the most evil people that I've ever dealt with. And that's because of what happened early one morning, lots of stab wounds. That certainly was a bad crime scene with their church at the center of their lives, supportive families living right next door. How had it come to? What it did was kind of gruesome. Murder was very I mean, for our community and very big news. So much lost in the blink of an eye, so much blood.

I'm looking at myself in every mirror for a minute before I go in. It's hard to believe things got to where it was. A sense of place is important to the story, and here it is, Rome, Georgia, a county seat northwest of Atlanta, population about 35000, not too big, not too small, proud to be in the Bible Belt.

And all that implies about how you live your life and treat your neighbors, a great many of whom you'll know by name. Growing up here in this conservative community in the 70s was a sparkly little girl named Michelle. She always seemed to end up front and center in the family snapshots kept by her aunt, Trish Trish Benefield.

She was always wanting to pose for my camera, and she was sit at my moms and dads and the swing I would take her picture. So I grabbed a little poodle, you know, the dog and take another picture.

What the old photos of a happy kid don't reveal where the fault lines in Michelle's childhood, her parents split up when she was a little girl and her father died when she was only 13. Her single mom raised Michelle and her two older brothers with the teachings of the Baptist Church as a moral foundation. Michelle grew older and stayed cute, a kind of little Miss Sunshine who always thrived in the attention. Her golden looks brought on. Just a beauty. Absolutely.

Walk into a room and everybody looks.

Yes, she had that presence.

There were teenage boyfriends, but no one special until she went to that football game, the one with number 15 on the field.

And I asked who number 15 was. And it was it was Diane and I sang in a dance.

And then I just fell head over heels for Thad Runnels, football player, wrestler later on in the school year and an athlete not afraid to be in the school play in skits. He started seeing Michelle.

Someone is full of life as he was that sister Beverly remembers it as a match made in high school. He was the football player. She was the cheerleader. And I guess that's how it started.

The pair reminded their friends of another couple.

A lot of people called us, Ken and Barbie, and he was just fun to be around.

Fun for Thad was down home.

And yeah, our first date was a tractor pull in Atlanta with his family, a tractor pull with his family. Sir, this is a good start.

Right. And and actually, when we got back to their house, I got sick and threw up because I was so nervous.

Still, Michelle remembers having a good time. And two months later that asked her to wear his class ring.

The challenger with a school teacher and six regular astronauts on board was consumed by a giant fireball explosion.

No sooner had she slipped it on than ten minutes later. They both remember the space shuttle exploding the date January 28, 1986.

But they didn't see the disaster as a personal omen. They finished high school as a couple.

We went to the prom together by John Glenn Reynolds.

And right after Michelle and Thad graduated, the football player in the homecoming queen got married. They picked August the fifteenth fifteen. They're now mutually lucky number. They had a big church wedding at Hollywood Baptist, the church that would be so important in their lives in the years ahead. Ken and Barbie were now Mr. and Mrs..

This was it. This is her family. She was finally going to have what she wanted. So how was it to be a young, married woman?

It was awesome. I enjoyed it and had having our own place was nice, reliable.

Thad was unlike the father that had left the family.

Her aunt Trish wasn't surprised that Michelle married young security, because when I saw them together, I saw that I saw that security. I know she loved him. I also know that she could lean on him and depend on him.

Dad, like Michelle, had been raised religious. The Baptist Church was a cornerstone for the young couple. That was a common even when he was sick, kind of hard worker at a grocery.

We had goals. We wanted to buy a house. We wanted to go on a cruise and buy a camcorder. And we did all three. And after that, we decided to try and start having children.

They had a little girl and named her Olivia. But the young marriage was foundering five years in Michelle and that divorced one had cheated. The other one had cheated. So you have both stories. We had problems. Michelle got an office job and started dating a woman that kept on plugging along, sort of. But he especially took the divorce hard. His mom remembered getting a bad phone call from that.

He was in an apartment that he had rented and I can remember him. Saying that he curled up in the fetal position. In the closet. And as for God and asked for reconciliation, Michelle, too, wasn't finding much satisfying as a single mom in the dating scene.

I dated a few times that I knew back in my mind that I still love that. And I kept our wedding rings in our safe, but we still did things together. We had Christmas together and some holidays, and I even went to Florida with his family.

So it's almost like we really wasn't divorced after four years apart. That and Michelle went into counseling and at the end of that, they decided to try it again. They would get remarried. So one Sunday at Hollywood Baptist with some of the same friends from the first wedding looking on that and Michelle exchange marriage vows for a second time.

It was a beautiful ceremony because it involved Olivia. It was the three.

It wasn't just the two of them. It was a family.

The local paper splashed a heartwarming story about the young couple who'd overcome adversity and been reunited with all their church members. Looking on the article concluded, theirs isn't a fairy tale. It's a love story. And Trisko thought Michelle looked at it through less rose colored glasses. I thought it was more. I'll have a home. For my child and for future children, and he'll provide it, which he did a great provider later on with everything that happened, some church members would rue the day they ever encouraged Dad and Michelle to get back together.

Among the flock, wandering eyes and suspicious white sky torment, she was jealous of me and asking him if he thought she was prettier than me. Oh. That in Michelle, after four years apart, began marriage, take two, they built a little house for themselves on the block right next door to his parents, dad and fellow church members pitched in on the construction. By then, his mom, Kitty Walker, knew that Michelle would always be her boys, one and only, you just fell head over heels.

And it was total commitment, commitment to a growing family.

He and Michelle would have three more girls commitment to his job, working his way up the ranks at Frito-Lay and commitment most of all to the God he worshipped every Sunday at Hollywood Baptist Church.

You know how they always say God family. I think God was first with him, then his family, God working in my life, watching God work in their lives.

That was perfectly comfortable. Rising in front of the congregation at Hollywood and speaking with the conviction of a polished preacher, John 836.

God has done a miracle in my life, God says. Pursue righteousness, pursue faith, pursue love with others who call on the Lord, I really, truly deep, deep down think he will need to be a missionary. Fadin Michelle decided to homeschool their four little girls to shield them from the secular, worldly influences of public classrooms. When we get back together and asked, you know, if I pray about it, about homeschooling our children, so I think I hear you saying you're really living quite an active religious Christian life.

Yes, sir. The church became their family's focal point that was elevated to Deacon at Hollywood Baptist, a volunteer position as one of the pastors right hand man. Michelle became active with the teens putting on dance performances.

A lot of Baptist church have been to there just, you know, quiet, don't clap or anything is to wear, you know, there's more freedom to worship.

Hollywood got the teen group Michelle helped organize was foot stomping professional.

I mean, we should be united and to further cement their commitment to God, Michelle, and that both start in an elaborate church play now that you've asked Jesus into your heart.

We're a complete Christian faith.

That and Michelle are featured in a scene about a Christian couple, the wife traditional, the husband understanding of her lapses.

Oh, honey, I was so busy this morning, I forgot that the first in the oven and now it gets around the house on Sunday. That's OK, sweetheart. I understand.

We'll go out for lunch when Thad's sister, Beverly Owens, looks back. Those days of church and family were good times for her brother.

If I had to pick a time that he was his happiest, it was when he had all four kids and Michelle at home and the church provided like minded God-Fearing friends.

One of those couples was Scotty and Paige Harper. Almost a mirror image of that.

And Michelle in so many ways, Scotty, on that, you know, he was just a guy like that.

And Michelle, they lived next door to his parents like that. Scotty was deeply religious and also a church volunteer leader. He was the volunteer family pastor, giving his time to tend to the young people of Hollywood Baptist. And Scotty and Paige had their own three small children, also all girls.

Our children were like best friends.

And we would go out to eat with them, go to a movie, barbecues, volleyball, camping trips, prayer groups that and Michelle, Scotty and Paige and all the kids together.

The husbands who had first met when Thad was divorced became especially fast friends, the Bible and scriptures, their glue that thought so highly of Scotty. He praised him in front of the congregation, our family pastor official title.

Now, Scotty Harper has always told the people that are under him and the kids that we need to to teach them the things that are relevant to them these days. That's his key word, right? Relevant how to minister to them right now, their life is a good role model.

Bad and Scotty became the tightest of friends, helping each other hold firm to their faith Sunday mornings before church that him and Scotty and several other guys in Hollywood made it my and have a little worship there before they actually went on to church. The two moms, though, Michelle and Paige, never grew as close as tell me later on that she was jealous of me and asking him if he thought she was prettier than me and she was just jealous of me.

And so she just started getting away from me.

But Michelle was getting closer to Scotty. Her church performances for the middle schoolers came under his direction as the family pastor. They taught church business on the phone and exchanged e-mails. Scotty had actually gone to the same high school as Michelle two years behind her when she'd been elected homecoming queen.

I knew who she was. I if I saw her, I might say, hey, we really didn't cross many paths in high school.

After a tour in the Air Force, including duty in Desert Storm with a combat communications unit, Scotty parlayed his electronic savvy into a good job at the county's major medical complex, Floyd Medical Center. He helped keep the computer systems going.

Everything was good, you know, as far as vocationally, you know, a good job.

But there was some turbulence on the home front with Paige. He prayed for his marriage with that, who was part of his duties as Deacon, regularly counseled church couples at his home.

He and I over the years have better things off each other.

I mean, he's had some downs, I've had some downs, and we've known each other. For her part, Michelle was happy to see Scotty at her house. He was always so complimentary about her church work with the teenagers and her effervescent good spirits.

He was fun to be around and made you laugh and a great sense of humor.

By 2004, there were signs that Michelle was getting restless about Rome, Georgia, and maybe even all the churches in their marriage. Like a lot of families in the area and Michelle and Dad like to visit the campgrounds in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the Smoky Mountains, Michelle felt so rich she seriously wanted to buy a cabin, resort property from her family, uproot from Rome and cater to the tourists in Tennessee.

That was unreal. A million dollars or something they had already qualified for. And some guys stepped in supposably before they did and bought it. And that was their excuse as to why she was so. Down in the dumps and everything that spring, Michelle started popping in on her in-laws next door less frequently. When Dad got home from work, she'd say she'd had a long day with the kids and she was going off to shop. That, meanwhile, was becoming even more involved in the church after a missionary trip to Cuba.

He came back home afire with the idea of becoming a minister full time, leaving his job to see where Jesus would leave. Michelle was said to be frosty to the idea.

When did it begin? We'll never know. But Michelle feeling she was playing second fiddle to God and her marriage began telling someone she was having naughty thoughts about it, someone very taboo, and he was only too happy to say funny. Me, too. Two of the faithful play with fire, the same boy, you are a beautiful girl. You're also very welcome words for your ears at that point. Yes. Michelle Reynolds had become almost a theatrical producer at Hollywood Baptist Church for Christian Rock and Gospel presentation with a church's young people were slick and polished and.

But in their marriage by May 2004, Michelle and Thad had again hit a rocky patch.

He was thinking about pursuing the ministry full time. That would mean major changes in their lives with four little girls, certainly less money, but money didn't mean all that much to him. His mother tells a story about dad driving along one day listening to Christian talk radio.

God spoke to him and he said, Son, give. And he said, what do you want me to give, and he said, ever, what do you have? And that opened up his wallet and he had thirty five dollars in there. And he drove to this radio station and he gave the thirty five dollars to the receptionist and he said he wanted it to bring marriages back together.

Did that, who'd been through an excruciating divorce from Michelle, even realized that his wife was feeling ignored.

My husband was married to his job and church and and I did everything from A to Z in our household and home schooled and had toddlers taking care of babies. And I would tell him I needed a date. I always tell him I need a date. I need a date.

Now, they did have an act of social life, but it was mostly with other young couples from the church, mainly Scutt, dad's friend, the youth pastor, and his wife, Paige. They went on weekend camping trips together, real burgers, played family volleyball.

But something had made its way back to Michelle when that had been counseling Scotty over some marital problems. He'd been having that told Michelle to be careful around Scotty, because when Scotty had confided in him during those sessions, it dawned on Thatd that Michelle would make his best friend, Scotty, the perfect wife. My husband.

He told me to stay away from Scotty because everything that he wants in life.

But even if she wanted to do what she did, there was a problem with avoiding Scott. He was her boss in a way, all those church youth extravaganzas were planned with him.

I wouldn't have to ask if I needed, like, costumes or something for one of the dramas and he would tell me how to go about getting it.

So you're seeing him and talking on the phone, I imagine emailing and guess, are you got issues to talk about with the church?

Yes, sir. Now, on Scotty's end, he says his wife, Paige, was sensing that her husband and Michelle were getting way too cozy after a rafting trip they'd all taken together. That may when there seemed to be electricity dancing between the two of them. Scotty says Paige told him to back off Michelle.

I want me to be around her without Paige around. I want to talk to.

But they did talk. And a favorite topic, their spouses suspicions that something flirtatious was going on between. By the end of May 2004, Scotty, who seemed to put the one time homecoming queen up on a pedestal and Michelle, the ignored spouse, were crossing the line from friendship to intimacy. I started getting the attention from Scotty as I walk to my is showing me attention, tension and saying that you're awesome.

So here comes Scotty. And he's saying, boy, you are a beautiful girl. You're also very welcome words for your ears at that point. Yes, sir.

Michelle began by sending Scotty an explicit erotic e-mail, the Kama Sutra, of things she'd like to do with it.

I would have never suspected that we'd go there.

Scotty was tingly and hit returned with equally naughty thoughts. You don't get tempted by something that you don't want.

The weekend following the exchange of sexy e-mails, the two church leaders and their families shared a camper vehicle together. In the afternoon, Scotty and Paige went off to the lake with the children and that an hour left in our camper sleeper. And I tried to make love for my husband and he said, no, hey, hey, hey, brush me off.

And that was very frustrating that night in the camper with that sleeping next to Michelle Page by Scotty, Scotty says there was erotic midnight tension crackling between the two not yet lovers, only a few feet apart. Was she flirting with you?

Yeah, we were with her husband there and your wife there and the kids around. And, yeah, she was coming on to you.

We were just enjoying the weekend on that camping trip. Scotty says that teased him about losing that hunting knife Scotty promised to replace. The following Tuesday, Michelle met Scotty in the parking deck of the medical center where he worked. She waited for him in her SUV and they clambered into the back seat like teenagers. The two had crossed the line. And for Scotty, anyway, there was no looking back.

I wanted what I wanted, which was Michelle.

So this was the big thing. You thought you'd met your soulmate here?

Yeah, it was June 2004. And Scotty, the family pastor, and Michelle, the youth pageant director, were suddenly hot and heavy mornings when they used to go to the gym. We're now past in illicit hours at motels just down the road from Hollywood Baptist. They started whispering about Portland, the city of their fantasized exit strategy. They called and e-mailed all day long. There was even a stolen dinner together in a movie in a neighboring town.

I'm guessing neither one of you wants to be found out at this point. No, you want each other, but you still want to keep what you have. Is that the dilemma?

We want to tell them we don't want to destroy what we have. So how do you get out of that box? The easy thing, we just keep going day to day. But that obviously wasn't it wasn't reasonable, that wasn't working. Michelle also felt trapped between the two men.

Did you start to feel bad, Michelle, about what was going on? Yes, sir, I did. You were cheating on that? Yes, I did. At times I was like, I can't believe that it came to this. I really wanted to go along with my husband. We always talked about walking on the beat.

I'll prove now mid-June and another family's together weekend, a big one, a road trip to Alabama where Michelle's kids from the church dance troupe would attend a Christian gathering at a place called the Ramp that had stayed behind at home. The group overnighted at a nearby motel, while most of the parents, including Scotties wife, Paige, stayed in rooms piled high with sleeping bags, chaperoning the teens. Scotty, the family pastor, arranged for Michelle to have her own room.

I get the picture of you kind of easing your way out of the room after lights out tiptoeing down the hall. Is that the way it happened? Correct, yes. Into Michelle's room. This spend the night with her? Yes. Make love and then sneak back into your own bed pretty much that night.

And Michelle Single, the two in pillow talk, used an expression for the first time that would become their lovers code, the word ugly, a word that would come to hint at where they were headed at the end of the weekend.

They headed back home to Rome, Georgia, but they'd all be getting together again soon for the big Fourth of July weekend.

Racing up on everything about Michelle was great. You loved her. Michelle tries one more time to put her marriage back together, a date night that goes horribly wrong.

So pick a word for how you feel. Listening to this. I was discussed in. The deacon's wife and the family pastor were having a torrid affair in only a month's time, they crossed the line from friends to lovers. Scotty didn't think his wife knew.

I think Paige knew that Michelle and I was closer than she wanted us to be. She didn't know your physical know.

Michelle was sure her husband Thad was in the dark. Not surprising. She says he was oblivious to everything but his job and church be not therefor ashamed of the testimony of our Lord and what he's done in your life. All of which, she says pushed her into the affair with his best friend. Was this love or lust we're talking about here? I would say a name, a name that needed to be met, that I wasn't getting at home.

But there was a major lover's problem here. Scotty was reasonably sure that Paige would give him a divorce. Michelle was just as certain that for her divorce wasn't in the cards by then. That had started chatting with friends and family about becoming a full time minister. Being a two time loser at marriage wasn't going to do him any good.

Scotty says.

Michelle started joking with him that if you want me as your bride, then you're just going to have to outlive that.

In the midst of their hot sheets, mornings at local motels, the two began to email each other about other ways to get around their problem with their gnat's. That's what they called their partners Gnat's. Scutti says he joked with Michelle that, for instance, she could slather extra butter in Thad's food to induce a heart attack. Or maybe they could have a spaghetti dinner for their spouses with two pots bubble in one dinner for Thad and Paige. They would poison the sauce.

Maybe it did for some things in my head. You think it did. And maybe I was already thinking that I can't I can't really say.

Wheels started turning Scott. He began toying around with Internet searches and the lovers increasingly talk to each other about Portland and saying something about Portland, Oregon. And I said, I would like to visit there. And we understand had we got married, that we could move out there. Portland became their code word. They drop into a conversation when the Nats were all together together. Portland's nice this time of year, they'd say, with a private smile, was that a fantasy or did you actually think it would happen?

A fantasy? I believe it was a fantasy, but they both realized they were now in deep and the spouses had to be told it was agreed that Scotty would be the one to tell. Dad, are you insisting that he be the one to tell him? Yes, sir.

I was afraid that my husband might hate me, and I was just afraid that he would blow up.

It's late June now, and Michelle starts telling her lover, Scotty, places where her husband ThatT is going to be saying the following day, suggesting to Scotty that those are locations where he can deliver the very unpleasant news that he and Michelle are on and that his best friend, Thad, is odd man out in a lover's triangle. At least that's what Michelle claims those messages were all about.

Another code word by then was ugly, meaning how things might get when Scotty finally confronted that it first crept into their pillow talk during that Alabama weekend, how the two men had to talk and how the talk might get ugly. I took ugly to mean something and went ugly, meant something to all of a sudden I took a different meaning as well.

Scotty followed Michelle's instructions on her husband's whereabouts and haunted spots where Thad was expected to show up. He couldn't work up the nerve to confront him, though, and since Michelle was growing frustrated. How have you been on Scotty? Have you talked to him yet? Have you done the thing you promised you were going to do?

I just asked him when he was going to talk to him on July 1st, a Thursday, Scotty had walked into Kmart and bought a knife like the one he says that had blamed him for losing. Was it a replacement or what? The next morning, Friday, he sat waiting for that to come out of a restaurant. And would you do nothing chicken out? That afternoon was a low point in the Scotty and Michelle affair.

Michelle wanted him to meet her by the town's levee at lunchtime. But this time she wanted to talk, not make out Scott. He could feel her pulling back, dousing cold water on their flint.

I don't remember exact words, but I felt like she was to the point of, you know, the conversation not going to happen. You're not man enough to do this thing you said you were going to do, basically, and forget about me.

But because I'm going to be gone, I don't know that I really saw what she was doing that. But I guess I saw that she was willing to do that. Michelle was aloof by the river that day. She said she was starting to have serious second thoughts about the relationship. That's actually when I was trying to cut it off at that point. And I said no, but it kept going. Yes, sir. But to make an even bad rendezvous worse, Michelle told Scottie that she and that were going out that night, the date she'd been going on and on about with that, that she really needed to.

So they went out. But before dinner, Michelle says today's date night began with an unexpected stop at a prayer group as well, frustrated with that type of situation. And he said, yeah, I'll pray for me. I'm not a good husband.

To Michelle at the church meeting. Yes, sir. In public, out loud. Stand up and talk. Yes, sir. He says I'm not being the husband that I should be to Michelle. That's exactly what he's saying.

And so pick a word for how you feel listening to this. I was discussed and I was thinking, don't go to these people. Come to me, let's talk about it. And I was disgusted, really, because I just felt like he was woe is me, you know, he's the victim. I'm messed up.

So that probably wasn't a great date. No, sir. The Saturday of 4th of July weekend, the two families and a few other couples were getting together for the usual festivities. Scott Page that Michelle and the seven girls. Michelle says she was starting to get edgy about her affair with Scott, was it starting to eat at you just feeling convicted? Yes, sir. But that night, whatever concerns there may have been were pushed aside to watch the fireworks.

Their little girls, old and odd at the fireworks spectacular. The next day, Sunday, a cookout and volleyball. Michelle says Scotty's wife commented on her wearing attire too skimpy for an afternoon family picnic.

And we got together with some couples at the park and play some volleyball and can come in on my clothes there and kind of snide way. Yeah, I can't believe you were in that tank top, so that was uncomfortable.

Scotty had his own reasons for feeling uncomfortable at the afternoon cookout. How strange is the guy you're cooking steaks with? Is the husband of your lover strange like.

And if I go later that afternoon, Scotty received an email from Michelle with information about where Thad was going to be the next morning, Monday, after the chilly talk at the levy, Scotty knew full well that he might lose Michelle unless he confronted that suit, even if it turned out to be that lover's shorthand they had ugly and ugly, it would be after a bloody predawn discovery.

Tell me about it. And I just fell on the floor crying. The Fourth of July weekend was over that mom had babysat her granddaughters when dad and Michelle had gone out on their date night that Friday, I went come and picked up the girls and he said, Thanks, mom, we needed that.

And that's really the last conversation I can remember having. That shift at the Frito-Lay warehouse often began before dawn, that's where a co-worker found 36 year old Thad Reynolds had been stabbed to death in a friend's 19 woman's. Sheriff Tim Burkholder could barely believe what he was hearing, a well-liked local man brutally stabbed at his office. We typically have maybe two murders a year. And this kind of gruesome murder was, of course, very out for our community and very big news.

It was a scene right out of the movie cycle, not one you would normally ever see in the quiet city of Rome, Georgia. No one could make sense of it.

It just seemed out of character for what is a nice, quiet place to live.

Assistant District Attorney Natalie Stat's and her boss, Lee Patterson, got news of the murder that morning when the first officer arrived.

They called in for detectives to come in. They didn't know at that point who to even focus on.

The warehouse wasn't a place to have cash lying around. The drivers picked up their snack orders there.

They wondered if it was a stranger murder or somebody had just walked by and saw the lights on, saw the cars outside and then came in.

Well, detectives gathered evidence at the scene to try to make sense of the crime. The pastor from Hollywood Baptist went to break the news to Michelle that there was death.

They came and knocked on the door and had tell me about it. And I just fell on the floor crying that Mom Kitty found out while at work.

I got the call from the pastor in Hollywood and he said, you need to come home. You need to come home now. Michelle needs you. And I guess it was just like automatically I knew it was that kid.

He raced to Michelle's where she was officially told her son that was dead. That's a mother's nightmare. Basically, from there, it's it's like all of blah fat. Sister Beverley had arrived to her mom, told her I just kind of lost everything in there in the front yard.

I remember her going to her knees. Yeah. They helped me get back up and I walked in and went to Michelle. She was sitting on the couch.

I hugged her when she heard the news. And Trish came to the house to comfort her niece.

She seemed like she was in shock because obvious grief, crying, sobbing. No, she was like almost like she was in a trance because, like I say, almost in shock because she said, I keep waiting for him to walk in the door, you know, for that to walk in the front door. An emergency prayer request went out to the Hollywood Baptist community and members of the congregation started arriving to comfort Michel.

The new widow re taking medications is her antidepressant and sleeping pill. And actually one of the girls that I go to church with, a nurse, and she brought me some Xanax and some of the people helping you through your grief.

There's Paige.

It was only like a five minute that I remember her just hugging me and I was pretty much it.

Paige was joined at Michele's by her husband, Scotty.

The pastor had called him and told him the news at his office at the hospital that Scotty showed up at Michelle's house with a bandage right hand, a weightlifting accident at the gym. He explained he sat there and played games with Thad's kids and my daughter. I mean, they were all just sitting around cutting up, playing games.

Meanwhile, at the crime scene, the police were recovering what would turn out to be key evidence, great stuff. A homicide detectives dream. Whoever the killer was, he had been a bungler. He dropped his prescription glasses on the ground nearby. They found a sheath for a knife, the apparent murder weapon, and a witness recalled seeing a burgundy minivan as a murder. How clumsy is this crime?

Incredibly, the killing of a family man and church deacon in Rome was, of course, a big story. There was a man who had heard the news of the murder. He worked on the phone systems at the Floyd Medical Center. Later that night, he was sitting down with homicide detectives and they were very interested in what he had to say.

They would also be interested in certain e-mails, things like, I want to tell you that Satine part of it, certainly not Hallmark cards and kept quiet. Floyd Medical Center in Rome, Georgia, is the largest employer in the county, keeping its vast phone system up to speed is a big job. There was a tech person who was helping the hospital change over to a new phone system.

You might say he was a perfectly legal eavesdropper.

And one day as he was working to switch over the phone lines, he heard a fellow employee, somebody knew by name, having an intimate conversation with a woman who wasn't his wife. The technician was discreet. He didn't tell anyone that he'd caught Scottie Harper in an affair, cooing with the woman named Michelle, something he didn't tell until the day of that Runnels murder when he happened to drive by the crime scene that morning, a bus with police activity and later heard this crime stopper to be on the lookout for a burgundy van.

He's listened on these phone calls and he knows that Scott Harper is having an affair with somebody that's not obviously his wife.

And he knows that Scott Harper drives a burgundy van and he immediately calls the police. And so at that point, the police began to focus their investigation on Scott Harper.

With that tip, the detectives went to the hospital to get Scotty Harper's computer with all his e-mails. What the cops find reads like steamy porn, a month's worth of erotic messages between Scott and Michelle more than enough to persuade them that Michelle had lit the spark that started the affair.

She put the full court press on him to to try to seduce him. And she used everything in her power to do that. She's she's very good at it.

Obviously, they even referred to one of the messages as the Wheel of Fortune email. It was Michelle to Scotty after she'd confided to him that she was having bad thoughts about it. She sent him an email that details what she wanted to do to him sexually. And it would be a series of phrases like I want to. And then there'd be several words or several blanks that you'd have to fill in the letters to form a word, just like on the TV game show, just like on the game show.

And when you bought a vowel and filled it in, what were the kinds of things she was?

They were pretty graphic things like I want to taste you. That's a tame part of it. I want to make love with you.

But they were extremely more graphic and not not Hallmark cards and kittens and clouds.

You know, he filled in the blanks and that was when their relationship changed.

Michelle and Scotty tried to keep their cool with their spouses as though nothing at home had changed the custom of the two families getting together. Most weekends continued and was a kind of cover for their infatuation.

People who have affairs often when they think they're being secretive and they're hiding things and they think they're, you know, in this little bubble, we'll think that if you're with a big group of people and the two of you are together and you can talk with the big group of people there that no one will think there's anything about it. And they were finding their secret. Tingle's lovers code words are discreetly brushed hand all with her husband and his wife, only a few feet away.

She the initiator? Absolutely.

Absolutely. He would never have crossed the line. He would never have initiated this.

And he was willing to go along. He absolutely was.

But the homicidal math was starting to add up that the deacon stabbed to death the family pastor in a sexual relationship with the murdered man's wife.

A drop pair of prescription glasses spattered with blood, a burgundy van. On Tuesday night, the day after Thad's murder, the detectives told Scottie they wanted him and his wife to come to the police station for an interview. The next morning, he arrived there with his wife, Paige, they asking, you know, where are your glasses? Have you had an affair with Michelle Reynolds? He knows they're pinning him in at that point and he can't explain.

And he's lying to them flat out when he says he's not having an affair to them. And they already had the emails and they already had knowledge.

At this point. Does he give it up? Does he say you got me? No. They ask consent to search his van, the burgundy van. And he agrees.

The police go to the hospital to get Scotties van for processing pages with them now well aware from the police questioning where this is heading, he wants to go back into work to the hospital and Page says, no, we're going to your mom and dad right now.

Investigators believe Scotty was desperately trying to get back to his office to delete anything on his computer that would link Michelle to the building case.

He's trying to get rid of those emails because that's going to hook Michelle that he loves into this.

Surprising, of course, that a computer professional like himself would have kept the emails on his laptop in the first place. What was he thinking? Why does he let this stuff reside on the computers?

He would save them so he he could go back and reread and be excited all over again about this affair and its progression and all these things that they wrote to each other. He writes these long, flowery emails to her about how much he loves her and and how much he cares for her and how much he wants to be with her. And when she writes back to him, that's catnip to him. He's not going to destroy that.

Even an armchair detective would have started following the trail right to Scotty Harper's door. The killer had used a knife to stab that Reynolds 19 times that Monday morning. The detectives knew that on the morning of the murder, Scottie Harper had gone to the E.R. of the hospital where he worked to have a cut hand stitched up those explicit emails he failed to get rid of, told them he was a month into an affair with the murdered man's wife. Had Scottie Harper murdered his best friend, the husband of his lover ever, Mirah past.

I'm now the word you just killed that killed that Scott. He was confessing to the mirror, but not to anyone else. There's nothing I can say that could take it back. And there's. Nothing I can do to fix. And what about the widow's reaction to her husband's murder? She wouldn't shed a tear. Even prosecutors who seen a lot were sickened by the savagery committed on that Rennolds. With a gun, you can stand far away from somebody and shoot them and you don't have to touch them and you don't have to smell the blood and you don't have to put your hands on them.

But a knife is pretty cool.

And as unimaginable as it was, all signs were pointing to Thad's close friend, Scottie Harper, as the killer. And the night before, Scottie Harper had gone down to the police station for questioning by detectives. He called Michelle and confessed to her that he was indeed the killer.

I thought I did it in her words. As you recall, she got quiet. I remember saying nightmare never end seeing that same shot. She said, I've got to go. I got to go.

After hanging up the phone, Scotty says they talked again. And Michelle pleaded with him that if he was going to confess to the crime, that he not do it until after Thad's funeral. Still two days away. We talked later.

She said, I want my girls to ever know you did. This is crazy as they're going to. And she said, can you at least give them a funeral? Don't talk to the police until after the funeral. That's your message. I was wanting to talk to her oldest daughter, and that's mom and her. I won't be able to sit down with Alterio. That's when she said she didn't want her daughters to know.

And while he'd confessed to his lover, Scott, he still hadn't broken the news to his wife.

Had you told Page? No. But the morning of the detectives questioning Scott, he says his wife had started to figure out that he had killed the adrenalin's. We go to my mom and dad's house and they call my sister over there. They go faster over there. You say I did it? Yes, I was the one that murdered that. Yes.

In the next 24 hours. Scotty met with a lawyer and then checked himself overnight into a psychiatric hospital.

The lawyer suggested he said, I think you really need to go there, because I had and I probably did. And I'm not suggesting I was insane when it happened.

I remember after Scotty out of sight overnight in a psych ward, was also buying Michelle the time she wanted to prepare for Thad's funeral without the pall of Scotty's involvement hanging over it. But no one in their circle suspected yet that Scotty Harper could be the killer. Friends were nonetheless privately buzzing about the new widow's demeanor. Why did Michelle seem so calm and why did she tell the ladies who asked if they could help her shop for a funeral dress that that wouldn't be necessary?

She had a new black dress in her closet with a price tag still on what was going on with the newly widowed Michelle Thad's mother and sister. Don't remember Michelle shedding any tears at all.

There was no emotion, no knowing. You know, I thought maybe she was in shock. I remember Michelle coming outside and hugging me, but I saw no tears.

Michelle had also requested that police not give her any details about her husband's murder. Investigators saw it all as odd behavior. Everybody thought that she acted very strange.

There weren't really any tears. She wasn't crying. People at the church, again, were just devastated and she wasn't shedding a tear. In fact, she was making jokes to some of the people that came in and would say inappropriate things.

Friends at the House told investigators, though Michelle would later say she was just joking, that she initially talked about getting a nose ring.

Soon after Dad was killed, Michelle looked over and said, Do you like so and so's nose ring? And the lady said, No, I don't really I don't really like nose rings. And Michelle said, Well, now that that's dead, I think I'm going to get one.

And everybody in the room just kind of went something like Kiki because he won't be able to say anything about. They have been like them.

She's cold, ice cold. Michelle Thad's family says, is also talking about cremating Thad's remains. If that was his wish, he'd never mentioned it to them.

I was shocked, but I knew that there was nothing we could do because she was calling the shots and it all started crashing down on Thursday morning when Thad's mother went over to the house and was told that she couldn't go in.

One of the ladies from church kind of backing me up against the car and said, you can't go in there searching the house or seizing the computer. And that's when she told me that Scottie and Michelle had had an affair.

When the detectives read through all the e-mails that Scotty, the computer expert, had failed to delete when they saw a message from Michelle about when and where Scotty would be able to find thatd the morning he was killed and when they considered how coolly the new widow took the news of her husband's death, arrest warrants were drawn up not just for Scotty Harper, but surprisingly for Michelle as well. She would be charged as his kokila.

She is one of the most evil people that I've ever dealt with in all the years I've been a prosecutor.

The two lovers, the deacon's wife and the family pastor were issued jailhouse jumpsuits and charged with murder. They would face the highest count.

You announce your intention to go for the death penalty on the both of them. Yes. Her as well. Yes.

Even though she was clearly not at the scene, even though she was clearly not at the scene, she is a party to the crime. She aided and abetted, encouraged and helped plan this.

But could the state prove that Michelle knew all along what Scotty was going to do? The prosecutor was confident she could.

She's the brains and he's the most astonishing phone calls between the jailed lovers.

Would they give prosecutors the proof they need?

I don't believe I've ever met somebody. And I have by. The king said to his servants, Do you not know that a prince and a great man? Forgive me, has fallen this day in Israel. That Reynolds was eulogized as a man of God, sent to his rest by his many friends at Hollywood Baptist Church where he'd been a beloved deacon. So poignant, those four little girls stairstep incise, their father suddenly dead and their mother charged with killing him.

If you can hear them pray, Olivia Pray is just exactly like her daddy in the baby. She always says when she prays, she says, you know the usual stuff. Keep our family safe. Bless, Mama. Mama, I'm blessed. Daddy.

Mama. Michelle Reynolds was not at the funeral, but in the county jail, charged with planning dad's murder with her lover, Scotty Harper. Both were denied bond as flight risks. If convicted, both could face the death penalty. But the two were still apparently so desperately in love that they convinced a recently released fellow inmate to set up three way calling for them, an inmate at the Floyd County jail.

If you wish to accept this call, the inmate turned out to be a jailhouse snitch. Hey, hey. On the other line, OK.

And while Michelle and Scotty talked, their conversations were being recorded. It's not. Listen for yourself.

Scotty and Michelle from behind bars, still hinting at ending up in Portland, their fantasy city, where they'd start a new life together.

I wonder how many. Oh, I'm sorry. Here.

Even though they face the possibility of death row, Scotty and Michelle's conversations remained like flirtatious, even racy.

We were on and they kept speaking of their devotion to each other as investigators listen to them.

It always amazed me they were talking about how much they missed each other.

I don't believe I've ever met somebody over here by. And I mean, I don't know when they're stopping in the middle of the conversation and saying things like, oh, wait a minute, I love you. Did you know that I love you? And they'll say over and over and over.

And it's what they weren't hearing from a show.

A lack of outrage that reinforced the prosecutor's conviction that Michelle knew all along that murder was afoot and was actively planning it with Scottie.

If you were arrested for the murder of your spouse and you got to have communication with the person who actually committed the murder, don't you think you would say something like, what have you done?

What did you get me and why did you do this?

There were several of these conversations and none of them are their denials of any of it.

There were prison letters exchanged to in one from Michelle to Scottie. Two weeks after the murder, she uses some verses from the Bible to pass on an only slightly encoded message to him.

The letter page is headed Freedom for Me and My Children. She quotes a verse from Genesis and underlined the word, all the next bit of scripture is from Psalms who have a say in heaven, but you the eye is underwater in all. Michele writes out 17 verses with certain words underlined. And when you read all those underlines together, it forms the thought. All I knew was that you were going to speak to him about us. Help me.

If a man would give for love and that's her message to him, she still she knows that he loves her and she wants him to save her and and take her away from this. Take her out of it. So that's her campaign at this point. Yes. She's setting up her defense, which is I had no idea you were so much in love with me. I had no idea that you would go to that.

Yes. And in the days following the arrest, the detectives continued to build their case. They took note of an insurance policy on thatd that would have paid Michelle more than 250000 dollars. Was money part of the motive? But what the detectives initially didn't have was the murder weapon, the knife Scott Harper had used. But that changed when one of his co-workers at the hospital had an inkling of where a good hiding place would be.

He and another guy who worked at the IT department started looking and they went into the server room and they took the suction cup, the boss, and they started pulling up the tiles one at a time. And I think he told us he got to the third one and he pulled it up. And there was the J.C. Penney's bag.

Inside was Scotties bloody clothing, his shoes, the knife and even the receipt for the night from Kmart. It was virtually a murder conviction in a bag.

I've never had a case where somebody gave me not only the receipt from the buy in the murder weapon, but packaged it all up along with what they were wearing at the time.

They did it later. They'd recovered a security camera tape from Kmart. Scottie goes into the store to buy the four inch hunting knife. So was he among the world's stupidest guys? Yeah. You got everything but a movie of him doing it.

It hers is definitely the harder case.

Not in any of the recovered emails had Michelle written words to the effect we need to kill thing. So instead, the prosecutors focused on that Fourth of July weekend that began with that frosty rendezvous with the levy on Friday. By that day, Scotty had already failed on two occasions to confront that after he says, Michelle had given him instructions as to where he would be to Scott. She seemed upset that afternoon that he hadn't been manly enough to tell things he thought he'd lost.

Sunday, she emailed Scotty, letting him know where that will be early the next morning. And the best nugget the prosecution had was this an email exchange late Sunday evening. He writes, Stop me if you have any hesitations. She replies, I'm ready. Please be observant of your surroundings and be careful. I can't wait to be your bride. Was it enough? What a jury buy that as her knowing, deliberately giving her head over heels. Love her.

A green light for murder. Michelle had hired seasoned criminal defense lawyers Jimmy Berry and Vic Runnels. They were very worried about trying a case in a town they believe was ready to convict their client with biblical fury.

In this case, there was absolutely a moral backlash against Michelle. I think there was a perception by the community that she had initiated this affair, had taken this man of God with her womanly ways, sexual ways, had gotten him to do this heinous act. And and I think the community was convinced that that's what Michelle had done.

But despite the defense attorneys fear, a local jury would be willing to brand their client with a scarlet letter, they didn't believe those emails between the lovers gave the prosecutors the smoking gun they needed to send Michelle to death row. There's a lot of ways to interpret what some of these emails may have indicated. The defense attorney's version of events would be that Scotty acted entirely on his own, just crazy in love with their client. Talk to thatd, he suggests means that and only that no coded language.

She basically indicates to me that she never indicated to Scottie that she wanted him to kill her husband.

So which was two lovers who carried out a murder in order to get to their fantasy land of Portland together, or was she totally in the dark? Was it really about one crazed man killing the husband who stood in the way? And would the prosecutors be forced to cut Michelle loose from their case? All together was a time for prosecutors to play their least favorite game.

Let's make a deal. And how about let's piece together the evidence. Some wondered why Michelle seemed to have a brand new funeral outfit ready to go. Every woman needs a black dress. Michelle would write in an email later that she could relate to the words of that old song torn between two lovers feeling like I love my husband.

I didn't want him to be hurt.

But the prosecutors had come to look at Michelle Reynolds in the worst possible, like a seducer who used her sexual powers to dupe a swappable lover into killing her husband for her. She's been referred to as a puppet master. She was absolutely pulling his strings and pushing him and hinting and and saying we're never going to be together unless unless they argued Scottie killed her husband.

Did you ever have a conversation, Michelle, where you said, we've got to think about the worst possible thing, the only way we're going to be together is to get rid of that?

No, sir. Michelle denied that she sent her lover to kill her husband as she talked about her extramarital affair with Dateline.

At one point, we were both talking about it. You know, we need to stop. And. And then he came back and he says, I can't I can't stop. Guilty of adultery, she says, but not murder. And as you hear her tell her story, you'll realize that for Michelle, it was never endless love. She talks of Scottie indifferently as though he's an inconsequential old boyfriend. She has to squint to remember.

We met in the parking deck and his job and we just kissed. Anything else happened that day? No, sir.

And when did you go past kissing into actual having sex?

We actually didn't have sex. You never had sex? No, sir. He couldn't get it. I can get an erection, Scotty.

Michelle was saying was impotent. A startling revelation, if true, given all the horror that had spilled out of the affair. She says the tourists at the motels, all heavy petting and making out without consummation, and ditto for him sneaking into her room during that weekend in Alabama. Again, he can get an erection kissing and hugging her and then at dawn, he'd leave her when Scotty was in the county jail months after the murder.

Authorities confiscated in his cell a 58 page letter he'd written Michelle, but she'd never received over and over. He writes lines like these, I want to love you. Spend the rest of my life devoted to you and making you the happiest woman alive. But the letter is more than just another avowal of his endless love for her. It's also a bullet point outline for how they need to keep their stories together for their upcoming trials.

In this phone book of a letter, Scotty also outlines for her how he plans to defend himself. He's going to argue that he took a pill for erectile dysfunction, something which triggered a psychotic episode during which he killed thatd not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. So this idea of impotency is floating around the case. But the prosecutor isn't buying the argument. She says she has on the record, Michele, boasting about her sexual dexterity. She bragged about that.

She had shown in positions that he'd never seen before and he loved it. Those were exactly her words. And he loved. Whatever the truth, Michelle and Scotty were only a few weeks into the romantic relationship when they met at the levee, the date she didn't want to come, she wanted to talk about the dead end they were facing unless Scotty had a man to man confrontation with that, as he promised. Were you on him saying have you talked to him yet as this happened?

We had discussed it because there at that time he said, oh, my gosh, I'm losing you, because they had had to say I was going on a date and said that even increased his want to move forward even more.

So that was the Friday of 4th of July weekend when a dejected Scotty felt he was losing Michelle. That weekend there was barbecue volleyball fireworks. And on Sunday, Michelle remembers Scotty telling her he was finally going to talk to her husband. He said to me, your husband's schedule, so I'll know where he's at and, you know, hook up with him. And that's what I did. What did that mean to you, Michelle, that he was going to go and confront him about us?

Did you get the feeling he was talking about a violent resolution of this thing? No, sir, I really did. And Scotty was a nice, outgoing guy. I would never imagine him hurting anyone. But what about those troubling emails the lovers exchanged on Sunday, the day before the murder? Scotty sends you an email that says, I'm ready for tomorrow. Stop me if you have any hesitation. You remember that? Yes, sir. What did you think that meant?

If I wanted him to go and tell that about this or not and you reply, no hesitation.

I'm ready. Please be observant of your surroundings and be careful. I do want to spend time with you. I want to be your wife. Is there any way to read that, Michelle, other than to say be careful in what we both know was going to happen and look over your shoulder and do pull this thing off?

I know that there's people there because I come in and out and being careful is like, don't get in a fight.

Remember during that church trip in Alabama, Michelle and Scotty started using the words talk and ugly as a lover's code for Scotty's upcoming confrontation. With that, you used as shorthand the word ugly between you. Yes, sir. What did the word ugly mean to you then? Get in a fight. So when you say in this email, be careful, you're thinking about don't do something dumb, don't fight. Right. Michelle says she never told or even hinted to Scotty that he needed to kill, that there were no special looks, no nods, nothing.

Had you told Scotty explicitly or given him some sort of body language that we've got to kill, that this is how we're going to be together? No, sir. And when Scotty called her that morning, she said she still didn't suspect that he had killed that. He had said that he met with him and told him that he didn't bring up the fact that what happened?

What did you think could happen? I mean, you're a brave woman. Here was the morning of the confrontation. He says they did have the confrontation and then that is found stabbed to death.

I didn't want to believe that that it was him. Did you suspect it? No, because I just know his character is not part of him. He's just an all time sweet guy.

And, you know, so at the very moment, he's supposed to have this confrontation, which is going to be unpleasant and the best of all worlds, it happens. And then out of the blue, somebody else comes into the place of business and stabs your husband 19 times a dawn and a botched robbery. I mean, that doesn't add up, sir.

Michelle also says there was no dark humor between her and Scotty about killing that you don't remember joking with him about why would make a poisoned batch of spaghetti and that'll take care of it? No, sir. Will annihilate them, sir. As for the perception that she seemed unreasonably cool at the house in the days after the murder, Michelle says she was simply in shock. In all honesty, I was blacked out for the most part because those people that said they came to my house and that they saw me and I don't ever recall.

And the fact that she had what seemed to sum up preneed black funeral dress already hanging in the closet. Michelle says this has been taken entirely out of context. Every woman needs a black dress. And along with that black dress, I didn't mention the fact that I had like two other dresses, a top and skirt still with the tags on them.

To Michelle's lawyers, none of it may have looked good, but it was still all very thin evidence for the prosecutors to build a capital murder case against their client.

They were all just bad innuendos.

And even the prosecutor knew if they were going to get a conviction on Michelle, they'd need Scottie to testify against her.

And four years after the murder, as the two lovers sat in separate cells in the county jail. Prosecutors finally got just that.

You fully understand what's going on here today. A sworn taped confession from Scottie Harper.

Are you freely cooperating, fully giving us this statement? All right.

He cut a deal with the district attorney.

He taped this confession and would testify for the prosecution in Michelle's upcoming trial, provided the state dropped the death penalty on not just him, but also on her hand to my nose in a major way.

If you don't offer a get out of death row free card casually, no, he is going to have to give us her and her part in it and her complicity in it.

Not, you know, I love her. And she had nothing to do with this.

He's got it. He's got to come off that line. Yeah. He's got to tell the truth.

What would they ever get the complete truth from a man who will do anything for the woman he loved? Scutti recounts what happened when he called Michelle to tell her he'd finally confronted that, did she say words to the effect, Scott? Is he dead? Did you kill him?

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Scotty Harper had fallen hard for the former homecoming queen at his high school, the enormously tangled dilemma was that Michelle Reynolds was also his best friend's wife, the mother of four little girls. For him, what it started out as email flirtations turned into irresistible hot sex. Was it exciting?

Was it risky? Was it good? Exciting, risky? There's something I want to I think I hear you saying this is like a narcotic, that Michelle has become your drug and you cannot get enough of it. I guess that's fair to say that she was everything. Yeah, everything.

I know she's your brother's wife to live on and will be with him. As part of a plea deal with the state. Scotty Harper had agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table for both of them.

She said if we're going to them with regard to help in this sworn confession that was taped before Michelle's pending trial, Scotty described the path he says they traveled down that ultimately led to murder. It all started in earnest, he says, at the weekend church trip in Alabama when he sneaked away to the private room, he'd arranged for Jasmine to set up.

When you talk with them all the time and I have a feel for you, I'm asking for. She told me she said the other. All lined up just about everything you believe in, Michelle's mom talking a lot more than just saying words to somebody and taking from actually eliminating for her.

Scotty also said he heard relief in Michelle's voice when he spoke to her the morning of dad's death sentence.

And you're talking about relief on the part of Michelle's part. But when Dateline talked to Scotty Harper, he backed away from that position, he'd given the prosecution as part of his plea deal that Michelle was relieved the morning that his found dead. And that she even knew what and ugly were really all about, he seemed to once again want to protect her from any involvement in the murder. So what's the truth?

There's nothing to cover for. There's nothing to protect her from. The truth is, I did this. I see no guilt on her part. I really don't. Scotty is now saying that he acted alone and says when he went to sleep that Sunday night, even he didn't know how the confrontation with dad was going to play out. He said he got up before 5:00 that Monday morning. But instead of his usual trip to the gym, he made the decision to drive to the Frito-Lay warehouse.

It's hard to believe things got to where it was full in. I'm looking at myself in rearview mirror. For a minute before I go in, was that always going to be the outcome from that moment on, as you're looking at yourself in the rearview?

It's like I was sitting outside looking in and I'm not and I'm not remove myself from the responsibility because that was me. But it's hard to imagine myself with the thoughts that I was having. So yourself walking in. Yeah, I hear him saying, hey, Scotty Harper, what are you doing here? Yeah. What do you say to him? I don't want to go. Michelle. Scotty says he then pulled the knife out of the sheath that he says thought he'd simply come to return the hunting knife he'd lost on that family camping trip and samurai and.

He sees it, he looks down, he yells out his left hand as though you're going to what, hand the knife to him? I guess so. You know, he's saying, I want what you got. He had a little confused look on him, so they didn't know what I'm talking about.

But he didn't have much time to reflect because you're on him with a knife right away. The worst minute of your life and a lot of other people's lives that tried to fight back.

You remember anything about it?

Very much. They would say later in the autopsy report that you stabbed him 19 times. I don't remember not thinking styles, but I remember enough he went down and stayed down. Did you say, I want what you have again? I said it more than once, did you think now I've got her? No. I couldn't believe what I'd done, what I. Scotty left that his best friend bleeding to death on his office floor. He knew he needed to get away quickly.

I had real fingers. I'd cut myself. And there go your eyeglasses. You lost him. It's dark and they're gone. And you've lost the sheathed in the knife. No plan. This is no plan. It's got no plan. What's going on? No idea how it got there. Not a thing to take it about. What are you going to do next?

That's what six a.m. is about, what, 7:00 a.m.? What, 8:00 a.m. what's what are the next years of your life going to be about coming off of this moment?

The after effects wasn't planned or not thinking about running escape and doing anything, but also not going to the police and also not going to the police.

He drove to the hospital where he worked and entered through a side door.

I had little change clothes. There's other people going to be coming in and to just leave bloody clothes and a knife sitting out, I just put them under the floor and there's a raise for data center where we're at our servers that you could all the tiles up.

So did you think, wow, this is going pretty good now?

No, at no point during that, I felt like this is going pretty good now. He then headed to the E.R. to get stitches for the knife wound on his hand. Later, he drove to his gym to shower up every mirror past.

I mouthed the word, you just killed that. Killed that. It just seems surreal. It was like it didn't happen, but I knew it. Did your blood's on him, his blood on you, your good friend? Yeah. Scotty then calls Michelle, she has to do whether I said yes to Jessica Ugly. Yes. Did she say words to the effect, Scott? Is he dead? Did you kill him? Is it over now? So you're saying that her understanding was that you've had to talk with him and it was nasty and it was ugly and what I'll talk to you later.

Yeah. I mean, she says she's sure she'd hear all about it a little bit later.

Soon after speaking to Michelle Scott, Scotty got the official word from their pastor that that was dead. He headed over to Michelle's, where he was immediately surrounded by Thad's family, and pictures were snapped of him holding the dead man's youngest daughter, his daughters, the children who don't have a father.

Yeah, I see a sister. See his mom, the mom of the man you've just murdered. Yes. How are you holding it together? Why don't you just come undone at that point and say I throw myself at your mercy? This thing happened.

There was nothing I could say that could take it back and there's nothing I could do to fix it. So you're just going to muddle forward and see what happened? I don't know what to do.

Scotty says he and Michelle had barely any time alone that day. Too many friends were arriving to express their condolences. But when he called her late that night, he says it still hadn't occurred to her that he was the killer.

Before we hung up, she said, Do you think this was a sign of what? A sign as a sign from where? Of what? A sign from God. And I said, What are you talking about? And she said, of all days for you to go talk to us all day.

And she didn't know she didn't know that you were going to go kill him. No. I said it when I went to bed that night, I can't say I knew that I was going to kill him. I know she couldn't have.

I still had no idea. Scotty Harper's story from Friendship, The Homicide. All for a one time homecoming queen who now says their fling was just a big mistake. Was he still the 15 year old boy in high school fixated on the homecoming queen? Publicize her. And now, after everything, what would you say to Scotty? One woman, two men, seven children among them, being raised in good, solid middle class homes. I don't know how you explain it.

If you try to wrap your mind around it, you can't, because we always come back to the question, why not just get a divorce? But they didn't. And the prosecutor believes it was Scotty Harper's sexual obsession with Michelle that led him to murder.

She taught him how to walk on the wild side, and he didn't want to ever give that up, even apparently if it meant going to prison for the rest of his life, for there would be no trial. Scotty Harper pleaded guilty to stabbing, to death his good friend, that Reynolds.

It briefly entered a plea of guilty in the charges of murder.

And he was given life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Michelle Reynolds also ended up taking a deal from the prosecutor accused in the eurozone a proven guilty of his death by entering a guilty plea and giving up these rights. Knowing that Scotty was planning to testify for the prosecution, Michelle agreed to a sentence of 10 years for voluntary manslaughter and 10 years for party to the crime, a burglary, a charge related to Scotty entering the Frito-Lay warehouse district attorney's office.

It's always hard to roll the dice when you're talking about a death penalty.

Michelle's lawyers were prepared to go to trial and argued that she had no idea that Scotty was going to kill her husband. But when they hadn't managed to get a change of venue out of Rome, Georgia, and when the prosecution was offering to swap the death penalty for a much lesser charge, they advised Michelle to take the deal. It's the Bible Belt.

Nobody likes folks in the Bible Belt having affairs. Everybody pretty much had made up their mind that she was guilty, that she forced this boy and never been any trouble. Good boy. She forced him into killing her husband so that they can be together.

Michelle accepted the 20 year prison term without a trial because a part of her does feel responsible for Thad's death.

And morally, because I had the affair, I feel responsible because had I not had the affair, this wouldn't have happened. And I'm deeply sorry that so many people were hurt that I've hurt a lot of people.

So you agreed to do 20 years for an affair? Yes, sir. Is that what it comes down to? Yes, sir. But you didn't ask your lover to kill your husband. Sir.

Scotty, though, says he wished Michelle had fought the charges.

I understand why she pled because if she lost her bet, she might have ended up on death row. You're innocent. Why would you please? I mean, I just I don't understand, Scott.

He told us he took the plea deal because he didn't want his family to go through a death penalty trial and he didn't want Michelle to face that either.

Was that as important as your deal, that they take death off the table for her? Correct. So you're still trying to do her some good for what good it is?

I mean, I can't say that I've done good for anybody, but yeah, as part of her sentence, Michelle may have no contact with her four children until her term is served.

And what would you say to Scotty at this time? I don't have anything to say to him. He's just a memory and not good ones. Yes, sir.

I was definitely crazy about it. But now sometimes you have to suppress, suppress. It's there, but you don't want to touch it. You can so you don't. The other thing that Michelle said, which just really surprised me, when you think of everything that you guys gambled, she said that you never really completed a sexual relationship.

I've heard that from from people I don't know.

She said that basically you were impotent with her and never consummated the act.

I'm not sure why she said it, but I would leave it at that. You loved her? Yeah. Micheaux's four girls went to live with Dad's family, his life insurance went to their care, Scotty's wife, mother of his three, divorced. He was left with only regrets.

I'm sorry, doesn't cut it. That's all I have now. Nothing I can say undo, what about the prosecutor is not surprised by any of that, Scottie said he still loved Michelle from behind bars and that Michelle seemed not to care when last heard from he was still hanging the moon and the stars for and probably will for the rest of his life as giddy as a teenager.

He still loves her. She's still all he has. But what about her? She never loved him. She used it. She uses people as objects. If you're useful to her, she'll use you for a while and then she's going to cast you aside.

Sweetheart, wasn't service great today? It sure was, sweetheart, in the church play Michelle and Thad were featured in, they go to a cotton candy heaven as their reward heaven.

This is what? You won a Sunday school dream, nothing in that script about sexual obsession and a hunting knife, a man who wanted what the other had. You hear on the news, the Florida man, they're not very bright thing that the Florida man did in Florida in general is kind of unique, a perfect place for big mansions, exotic cars, for imperfect crimes. A bomb going off, two people were dead. Outrageous homicides, you've got to see it to believe it, the perps being idiots left the phone there does not happen in real life.

A Florida man murders a two night special event January night at 7:00, kicking off oxygens. Nine nights of twisted killers.