I went inside the house, I put on the gloves, I put down the hammer. If you do this. A twisted tale of murder triggered by a twisted love affair was telling myself, you're doing this because you love her. It was frightening just how far he'd go for love. He looked at her with such lust. The lust led to lies and the lies led right to a dead body. She says, I'm so sorry, I'm just so sorry.

And I'm thinking, why are you sorry? And while the cops tracked down the killer, this is the rugby was on at the time he was murdered. She tracked down her lover, but mom was the last thing on her mind. Why the hell didn't you just run? I kept feeling the love, the love. She'd just try to shoot you to death.

Did you just shoot me? Did you just really shoot me? He didn't feel them. The 44 Magnum slugs that ripped through his body blew holes in the wall behind him and on the ground in a crime. Why the killing? And she answered with a bullet to the chest.

So, of course, it's a love story in its own weird, perverted way, a story about a kid in a day about people who act like they're living in movies like Double Indemnity or Body or Sin City. But the star would be the simple, trusting guy who gets played for a chump, if you can imagine a chump. Worst nightmare. I had an uncle by marriage and he was sexually molesting me. But then life had never been a box of chocolates behind Miramontes.

I was about six, seven when it started, and it ended about somewhere between 15 and 17. I am telling you, yes, he barely knew his imprisoned father, not even a memory of mother. I lost my mother at two years old. She committed suicide.

Is that why young himI turned out the way he did?

I think in reality is what has always caused me to seek for a mother figure. In my life, how do you feel when you're with older women? I just feel like. Secure Neede was our home, and then he was a ninth grade hormones in overdrive, and a woman who offered herself as a substitute mother of sorts was one of his teachers.

We became friends and then it started to become an intimate relationship. And I was with her till I was about 17. Outrageous, of course, illegal, immoral, just plain wrong, and like all the forbidden loves in the movies, it was destined to end badly. The teacher finally sent a message, himI tells us, severing the relationship.

And when the heartsick boy ran to her house to plead with her, not to leave him, she locked him out. I ended up smashing the sliding door open with a chair outside. She had a patio chair. Police were called in for. And the last words I ever heard from her were, don't dare you say, you know me, you psycho. That's when he was overcome by the strangest feeling. It could happen a lot like he was living in a movie.

In this case, the film noir thriller Body Heat, in which a lover is wildly obsessed by his woman. himI wasn't thinking about the part where the lover is set up to take the fall for a husband's murder, but then why would he? That would be like remembering something that hadn't happened. Not yet, anyway.

For now, Hymies life out in California's Mojave Desert was quite a mess, a stretch in juvie, no job waiting on the outside, and it was ironically, in the spirit of kindness for some well-meaning soul directed himi up here, up here to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where himI joined the California Conservation Corps, a work camp where a kid can grow and learn and the great outdoors.

Naturally, such places require supervisors to watch over. The young people look out for them.

One of Hymies minders was a married, middle aged mother by the name of Patty PressBoF. I saw all the other young men and women there calling her mother mom. And so, of course, he did, too. How did she respond with pure kindness and understanding how he felt he had finally found someone he could confide in about his years of abuse?

I gave her my whole life story from beginning to end. I've given her things that my family doesn't even know about. She made me feel like a man again. Never felt like a man before. Never felt like a real man before until I talked to. I knew that he was every bit of 47 years that had a lump themselves unkindly around her face and framed, and Heidi was a baby face 21 years younger than any of Patty's four children. But who can understand the mysteries of love?

Within weeks, romance bloomed. Their flirtatious encounters were even occasionally caught on store surveillance tapes or playing out in a country place where everybody knows everybody pretty much. They call it the divide, this isolated mountain top with the faded gold rush town with a population smaller than most high schools. Hard to keep a secret up here. So they were careful.

Mostly, she'd sneak in late at night when the others were asleep. Didn't seem odd to you to be with an older woman.

It never felt odd that I always felt right for me. Just just to. Have that come for twisted? Well, perhaps yes to you or me, but Heidi was a lover one day, a son the next, and all along showered with gifts and attention. She even took him shooting with her brand new revolver, a 44 Magnum. I was shooting bullets for like half an hour straight. Just just having the time of my life. What does that feel like?

Powerful. And I felt like a kid, you know, like that's that's the thing about those experiences. I always ended up feeling like a kid again.

And how did that make you feel about her? It made me feel. And that is indebted, indeed, Hymie would learn soon enough that Patty expected repayment.

She had his heart maxed on Patty's list, Hymies Soul and her husband, and she's like, well, you want me to leave him, right? Yes. Well, then what if she accidentally dies? Life have been an awful struggle for himI Ramos out here on the sun blistered sandy streets of his boyhood. No mother, no father sexually abused by an uncle.

So if once a childhood teacher awakened his desire, well, perhaps it wasn't so hard to understand, but his love. Now for Patty, a woman twice his age, her youngest son was older than himI, and he was more impassioned than ever. He'd do anything for this woman. Oh, and would you like to please her? Yes. Did you ever try not pleasing her, disagreeing with her? Yes. And she would get angry with me and it hurt me.

I went back to feeling insignificant. I went back to feeling alone and not a man and not a man. It always brings me back to the void of losing my mother. It's unbearable.

Your bones want to come out of your skin from anxiety, start thinking these suicidal thoughts, and once when Patty was making up with me, after putting him through one of those awful black and needy days, she revealed a terrible secret. Her husband, Ron PressBoF, she said, had been beating her. I just kept telling her, we'll get a divorce, leave. Find an apartment, do something and live with your kids. But. It was never that simple.

There was always some complication for her. What, for example, even her children didn't believe her. I felt bad, but she's one of the most honest people I've ever met. And yet she's telling me how her kids don't even believe her. It made me feel even more in love with her. Like, wow. I guess it really is only you and me against them. Yeah. The two of you against the world. Yes. And then one secret weekend they managed to get away, Patty said she told her husband she was attending a conference in San Francisco, but really she was attentive to him and she had a special surprise in mind to be unveiled in their Fisherman's Wharf.

It was Valentine's Day. She bought two machine engagement rings and she gave her private ceremony of her wedding with me and I felt that I was her husband during this wedding. She said that she promised me that the only way we'd break up ever would be death. Death do us apart, literally. And a few weeks later, Fati arranged another trip, another weekend trip.

This time it was Las Vegas and she told him it was to be their honeymoon. She took me to the place that I always wanted to go to and I was the Star Trek experience. It was the greatest time in my life. And to this day, I honestly believe that I wasn't on the Enterprise. I got to talk to Commander Riker and Data and Geordi Reforge. I mean, it was great.

The himI Patty was a rainmaker, a magical person who could transform him from boy demand the husband and his love. His obsession was real. It was spiritual. Those secret wedding vows they exchanged, whereas binding to himi as if they'd been made in a holy cathedral before God, a promise he made terrifyingly real a few weeks later. It was during one of their weekend getaways, they were on the freeway behind me driving when his cell phone rang, it was an ex-girlfriend and Patty listening to him is slightly embarrassed.

Attempts to politely get the girl off the phone became suddenly, violently angry. She throws his water bottle in my head and that gets me flustered. Like, what did you do that for? Pull the car over. Turn it around. We're over. We're through. I start yelling at her, telling her story. You're telling me that we're through. She said, yes. I said, well, then that means we need to die, if that's what you're saying.

I pushed the car to like ninety five, and I purposely ran myself under a semi truck somehow. We spun out from the tires instead of getting sucked in and landed in the median rolling and not a scratch on us and I told her, I told you till death do us apart.

So what else would himI do for Patty's love? After the accident, she offered her forgiving embraces. She brought himI out of his misery.

And then she began sobbing and trembling and told him she had a terrible secret, more terrible than any secret she had told him before.

Her husband, she said, had become even more violent, and now he had crossed a dreadful threshold. Now he had raped her.

I felt like this man did it to me and I promised myself that this will never happen to me again. And since it happened to me again, I'm going to hurt this man, and that's the moment when a strange, dark and curious little idea wormed its way into Hymies, all consuming story of love. It was Patti's idea, of course.

She's like, well, you want me to leave him, right? Yes. And you don't want him to hurt me no more, right? Yes. Well, then what if she accidentally dies? If only himI had no Pattiz, real plans and the real Padi, I have not liked her since day one. She just rubbed me the wrong way. She was very fake.

Life in the mountains can be dangerous. Accidents do happen. So now when Patty came to Spirit himI away from his dormitory, she filled his head with ideas about all the dreadful things that could well happen to that abusive husband of hers.

She starts coming up with these ideas of, you know, him going off a cliff.

But to him, says himI, all that talk was just that talk. No more real than some plotline from one of the movies he liked to watch. What was Patty planning? Amy began to understand. When his lover brought some paperwork to their next secret tryst, it came one day to where she presented me an envelope with this life insurance policy. And that's when I realized that everything we were talking about was really for real. The life insurance policy would pay the beneficiary twice as much if the insured person died an accidental death.

That kind of policy is known in the business as Double Indemnity. Double Indemnity is also the name of a Forty's film classic about a woman who seduces a man and sets them up to kill her husband. But that was long before Hymies time, and for all the movies he watched, this was a plot line he knew nothing about, even if in this new real life version, the starring role would be guess in my mind, if it makes her happy, then that's what I'll do.

Because unhappy because unhappy is not an option. Not an option.

And whatever happened to me didn't matter as long as she was happy, I mean, had he told her only one condition, I told her, if you want me to kill a man, I need to see what he's like.

So Patty concocted one of her stories. She told Ron that he had just quit his job with the Conservation Corps and needed a place to stay for a few weeks before moving on to Texas. And now he finally had a chance to face Patty's monster right away. He wasn't the man I expected. He was very enjoyable. He taught me things about using hand tools. He was funny. He had a lot of jokes. He told me about his life and his kids.

He was not at all the man that she portrayed him to be.

No, not at all. In fact, we'll leave the lovebirds briefly and spend a couple of minutes with their intended victim. Ron Crespo was a bear of a man born and raised on the divide, never lived anywhere else. He'd had all kinds of jobs, ranch hand back, hoe operator, you name it. But mostly he was a father and a son. And people around here like. Ron loved his simple life, the divide, he was a real mountain man and original raised his two daughters on his modest acreage among the pine trees, tried marriage three times, but the one constant in his life year after year was the short stroll across the street to his mother's house, where the two of them would sit together every afternoon and have tea.

Ron's mother, Lois, says her son was devoted to his two adoring daughters, April and Misty.

And they say to him, Oh, no, I was. There was like a father and a mother. They didn't have a mother. So, I mean, you know, cooked and took care of their laundry and cleaned the house.

You do our hair and French braid great French braid our hair. And he gave Adams who? French braid hair. Yeah, he he just and he knew he he was like a mother father and he really knew how to take care of us. And he did a really good job and taught us a lot.

And even though by the time Ron took up with Patty, his two daughters were moving off and the lives of their own, they were confused about his infatuation and then quite deeply hurt when their father, not a word to them, eloped.

I have not liked her since day one. She just read me the wrong way. She was very fake, very fake. I just had those vibes of false from her. She just nothing that she said seemed to be true.

Ron's mother got the same impression as well. There was something that just wasn't real about her. I just really couldn't get my finger on it. But, uh, Ron seemed to be totally in love with her and can also you go along with his wishes.

Sound familiar? Ron would do anything to make Patty happy. He was trying to please her. He was always trying to please her. And when she lied to him, told him she'd been sexually assaulted by her own father, Ron believed it took it to heart, even if his daughters didn't believe her for a minute.

She had told my dad that she was molested by her dad and my dad, raising two daughters of his own. I think that he felt sorry for her and was like, I need to help her.

But was it pity Patty was asking or was it the kind of control Ron seemed unaware of? The daughters had caught Patty in an affair once before and now they had radar for these things. Seemed pretty obvious to them.

Patty was straying again and we knew because she started wearing makeup and she lost almost 60 pounds and she was dressed in all cutesy and short shorts and tighter pants laying out in the sun. You know, I think that my dad was an intelligent man. So I think that he did know. But I think that he, again, was just finding the good and, you know, he always wanted to please.

And so it was maybe if I do more than she'll recognize that desperately trying to win over a woman who had only murder on her mind. Now she had a man willing to do the dirty work. I was going to use a falling fallbacks. Would you go through with it? It was a modest little place up in the mountains. The house, a piece of rundown. Ticketek always needed something, but it was the home grown up in and love and Misty and April mothers themselves now popped round all the time to see their dad talk to them most every day so they couldn't understand why their father didn't tell them.

A young man had moved into the house. Misty found out quite by accident during one of her visits, and that was really odd.

I'm like, What's this kid doing here, Dad? Who is this? And he introduced me to him. And I asked him a ton of questions because here this person is on my dad's property and I don't know him. And he says, oh, I'm just here for a few weeks before I go to Texas. So then I start asking more questions and we go in the house and he goes straight into one of the bedrooms. I look at my dad and I'm like, this kid has been living here for two weeks.

You haven't said anything to me.

The sisters knew right away something wasn't right. How could their father be so naive about Patty? I thought she was having an affair with him. Imagine that when you thought about her having an affair with him.

I mean, it's disgusting. He was younger than her youngest child. Yeah, gross. And there's something seriously wrong with that.

But their father, when it came to Patty, he only saw goodness. I think that just the bottom line is he truly, wholeheartedly loved her and believed in her. He would cater to her every need. He would wake up in the morning and make breakfast, make her breakfast and coffee. And Dad always just went out of his way for her.

Always I mean, remember had come here to witness the behavior of an abusing brute, but he, too, saw devotion. He did anything to please her.

In fact, she doesn't sound a little bit as if he had a relationship with her, which was in some ways like yours. In other words, he was always trying to please her. Was he ever mean to her? Not once did I hear him raise his voice. Not at all. Not at all.

This is the ogre who has been raping and beating to make any sense. Didn't make any sense. So himI dropped the whole idea of murder, couldn't possibly kill this lovely man, right? Well, no, because Patty had made her decision about what was going to happen here at Ront Precipices Farm Farmyard. It's always been an air of tragedy about the place the first settlor put in the old Stone Foundation more than 100 years ago as part of a house that he intended to build for his bride to abandon the project when she died.

Ron had been using it rather ideally as a pigpen.

But now Patty told Hymie the old Stone Foundation was to be the location of her husband's murder. The plan himi was to lure Ron to the pigpen, hit him from behind, load his body into his old suburban and roll it off the side of the mountain road known by locals as Tuilaepa of all the miles of windy road around Ron's little farm. There was one perfect spot to stage an accident an s curve on a hill with no protective barrier. A car could go right down into the valley, hundreds of feet below and along the road behind a berm, the only place which was perfect for hiding a getaway car.

On June 24th, 2008, Patte went shopping with himI for shoes and coveralls in case the killing got messy.

That afternoon, Patti took me to a used auto lot and bought him a getaway car, a 2003 green Hyundai. Afterwards, he went to dinner with family while he returned to Ron's place.

Her alibi was being with her daughter and granddaughter all day. How did you communicate with each other over that day? By phone. We had prepaid phones for them not to be traceable. You thought about that in advance? Yes. Who went and bought them?

She did buy. Me and Ron were now alone at the house. The murder was supposed to take place just before nightfall by the pig pen. But as the hours ticked down, himi waivers if there is any definition of doubt. That's what I was feeling in the movie that was home his life. Ron Crespo was a monster, but this man in front of him now just wasn't that. Patty could never buy time. He was sure she never lied.

It was all so confusing.

What she tells me I'm supposed to believe. I'm supposed to see that it's real. But what I experience, I know is real and I see firsthand and they do not meet up in any way or form. And you're about to kill and I about to kill them. Based just on what you've been telling me here, it sounds as if this man was one of the very few good men had ever experienced living with in your life that be fair and accurate and fair and accurate.

If none of this came about and they've lived there, I can definitely embrace him as a father figure, teaching me trades, giving me advice. Just being kind, could he accept the truth, his own eyes saw or was it only Patti's version he could allow himself to believe? The rape I thought of my rape to get yourself angry, to get myself angry, to justify myself. To blind what I felt was the truth. So as the summer sun set and the two watched television, himI told Ron, who was hard of hearing that the pigs were making noise and maybe they should investigate.

It was out by the pig pen, you'll recall, where Ron was to be murdered, because that way it'll be easier to. I clean up, if you want to say. I was going to use a falling axe and I had it here by my waist ready to swing. But the Andrado in that I felt that should have surged through, went in and out in a split second and I went and I sat beside a tree on the way, couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it. A few minutes later, himI slipped away phone. Patty begged her to accept what he now knew in his heart that she was mistaken about her husband.

I said, Patty, I don't believe this. I don't believe this. I told her. This is wrong, this is wrong, and she said, what you're telling me, you don't love me right now if you're going to do it, do it. And if not, just leave. Oh, Patty was not finished with himI and not with her husband either. And once these two got involved, well, what they had to do was just plain weird, very.

It was the morning after the night at Ron Pigpen, the morning after himI lost his nerve and put aside the acts with which he was going to kill Patty's husband. It was about eight a.m. Ron's daughter, April, was heading to her sister, Misty's house. She was winding along, chilly by the road when she came across a brush fire. There was a roadblock, a line of cars. Patty and her friend was parked and sitting out of their cars, leaned up against the hood of the car.

So I pulled in there and turned around and Patty approached me, says, Honey, April didn't come home last night. And I'd say back to her a couple of times. So, yes, he did.

I talked to him on the phone that night as April was talking with Patty up on the road down at the base of the gorge. Firefighters were making their way to the cause of the blaze is still smoldering. Chevy Suburban registered to run press, but the vehicle was still hot. It couldn't get too close, but it appeared the charred remains of a body were inside.

Then, as they followed the vehicle's trail back up to the road, they found something quite odd fresh stains, a series of dots leading right off the edge of the cliff where it spread pretty fast.

That runs brother Ken and Ken's wife Chris got the news from friends of the fire department.

What we had heard was that he'd come around and corn hit a deer in that he'd gone over the bank.

Standing on the highway, Ron's daughter saw the commotion, the fire down below, but understanding came slow like a wound that takes a minute to start hurting that does not like to drive Tilly Bahrein dad does not drive at night and I didn't really believe it. And then you kind of step out of the role of being a daughter and into a role. We've got to find out what's wrong and what happened.

Pretty soon, April and Misty and Misty's husband, we're all up on Coolibah watching the policemen and firemen down in the gorge and then Misty God say to those splotches on the surface of the road itself.

And it actually even came to this area. But there was some very large amounts up on the road and then it would go smaller amounts up higher above it in around the corner. That's about the time the accident investigator thought maybe a couple of homicide detectives should check things out just to be on the safe side. We received the call that something wasn't right with this accident. Detectives Paul Hedges and Mike Lenzi of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office were on call that morning.

There was a pool of blood, pretty good size, and then droplets and the drops kind of follow the path of the vehicle over the edge of the the roadway.

But why would there be a pool of blood as the car was traveling along the highway? Would it leave a pool of blood like that?

Something sat there long enough and dripped long enough. To create that pool and in addition to that, right next to the pooling of the blood, the staining, there was also an impression it looked like a plastic bag type of impression on the roadway next to it.

Hang on. It's a plastic bag kind of impression. What does that mean?

So you take a small grocery bag, the plastic grocery bags, you dip it in blood and then touch that to the ground. You can see the crinkle marks of the plastic within the impressions of the dried blood.

We're very and as the detectives made their way into the gorge, they found hanging from a manzanita bush a singed plastic bag. Of course, we went down there and drank a little bit and got a closer look and a partner opened up the bag, a clue? Well, yes, it certainly was. But what was in that bag? What could it possibly be? That was the last thing I expected to find in there. There was only one of many surprises that day.

And I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry. I'm thinking, why are you sorry? The accident up on the narrow, winding highway they called Tuilaepa, didn't look right at all, not to the fire department and not to the two homicide detectives who followed the suspicious looking trail of blood down the highway to the place the suburban went off the edge. That's where they found a stomach turning clues inside a plastic bag. And I found a partial human brain or a partial partial brain.

That was the last thing I expected to find in there.

Down in the gorge, the suburban was a smoldering metal car.

There was a occupant in the vehicle, but it was burned so far beyond recognition.

You couldn't tell if it was a male or female, yet there was little doubt who the victim was.

We kind of had an idea of where to begin our investigation at that point.

By now, Ron's family, in shock and grieving, gathered at his mother's house and just across the road, keeping vigil outside Ron's house where Patty and her children, April and Misty, walked across the road to the house they grew up in.

And we went to the garden because that was our sacred place for dad. And she had no emotion. That was like false emotions, like she was trying to force it out. And she just I'm going to miss him so much. He's my whole life and she's shaking the fence and she's just got these is just right around here in the garden just down here. And she I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry. And she went over and shaking trees and going into this historic but not one tear is coming out of her eyes and no genuine emotion.

No, no.

Almost as strange, they said, was the behavior of Patty's children. They were out laughing and having fun and drinking and blaring music like nothing was going on because she had them believe that dad had had hit a deer.

And in the midst of this bizarre gathering, Detectives Lindsay Lohan had just pulled up to question Patty, the one who had reported gone missing. When we arrived there, she was surrounded by her family and she looked to be distraught. So they took her into the house where they could talk to her privately. And that's when they saw it.

While I was standing in the living room speaking to her, I look over to my left and in between the couch in the woodstove is a spray of blood. Something must have happened inside this house. The detectives invited Patty down to the station for an interview. They could get on tape who I loved very, very much.

And he loved me very, very much. And that's when they found out Patty had an alibi.

She'd been out with her daughter and granddaughter all evening, was still out, she said when Ron called her cell phone around 9:00 p.m. and he said, well, I'm going to run to Placerville and get propane for the barbecue tomorrow and Sue Gastly than the one man.

And that was the last thing she'd heard from it.

And when he didn't show up in the middle of the night, she called the police. Correct. All the while, as Patty told the sad story of her husband's disappearance, the two detectives noticed a very unsettling trait. Her emotions were just very vague. How could you tell her face no tears? I'm sorry. I'm speechless because it's like one want three. When the detectives returned to the house a few hours later, the CSI team was about to begin its search for clues.

We used a chemical called Bluestar and anything that shows up positive for blood glos. And the entire living room, kitchen and hallway glowed in this hall, you could see swipes where the blood had been wiped up. You can see footprints, you can see drag marks.

Ron's brother Ken had arrived by then to watch and wonder what in the world was going on. Something bad had happened. Something really bad had happened. You don't have a crime scene investigation of that magnitude if something hadn't happened. And as the investigation dragged on inside, Ken says the mood among Paddy's children waiting outside started to get ugly. They were convinced Ron's death was a simple accident and that the police seem to be implying otherwise to them was an insult.

I mean, it was nasty what they were saying, who the F what are they doing in our house? And they don't belong in our house. I mean, and now it's getting bizarre. Eventually, Patty's family drifted away. Then the police went to and having collected what they needed, they unsealed the house, blood spatters and all which not only allowed Patti to return, it gave Ron's family members their first horrifying look inside. You could see blood spatter on the stove, on the ceiling.

It looked just like somebody somebody took a spatter gun and spattered it all over the ceiling.

And I'm looking up.

And I looked down and there was brain matter and skull and tissue and I about just fell down. I like my whole body just went limp and I just wanted to scoop up what was left and take it.

I think that this is I know it sounds so gross, but. That's all I was going to have left. You know, I think we all were just like going, what the hell happened?

There was so much to take in that first day. It was all such a shock that no one thought to ask, where is that young man who was staying here?

Where is himI? And soon himI was not the only one missing.

Patty was going to add her prediction to police come true. I hope they call you and. The Sierra Nevada Mountains, a strange place, one would think, to find a pair of homicide detectives, but for microlensing and Paul Hedges, these quirky old gold mining towns are their beat. They've devoted their careers investigating the sudden and violent deaths of loopy characters who could have stepped out of the pages of a Mark Twain novel. Ron Prosper, for instance, spent his whole life up here, never left them out, was as constant as the wind.

With Ronald Presby, I can honestly say I didn't meet one person or talk to one person that didn't hold him in the highest regard, and everybody said that he would have given his shirt off of his back to anybody.

And that was the problem about the press because nothing added up.

This by far is one of the most interesting murder cases that I have worked, due in no small part to Patty, who they discovered was rather hard to pin down. Do either one of you have any boyfriends and girlfriends that you're currently seeing? No, not a word about him.

And now that relationship would be disclosed by Ron's daughters.

When I mentioned himI, they didn't even know who he was. They're like, who's himI?

And when the detectives confronted Patty about him because we were told that you did have a boyfriend. I can't do that. I have a boyfriend. Yes. And now we have a young man, twenty one year old man that was staying with us for three weeks till he could get his stuff together to move to Texas. OK, what's his name? I mean, what does that I mean I mean, I am e. r. a. as a cell phone.

I mean, you know, where hymies sudden disappearance certainly raised suspicions.

But as far as the press per family was concerned, the kid was a distraction. There was no doubt in their minds as to who had murdered Ron.

We all knew. I mean, in our hearts, what did you know? That she she killed she killed Ron's brother.

Ken says he became convinced of Patty's guilt when he began trying to sort out the estate and found a life insurance policy with a special clause that double indemnity insurance policy if he died by accident.

Exactly.

The plot line of that old film classic Double Indemnity, the husband's murder staged to look like an accident.

And that's what it looked like. We had a staged accident scene and, well, no one else was buying. And Patty continued to insist that it was an accident. And so the detectives went about checking her story, retracing her steps in the days before Ron's death. And that's when they struck gold surveillance video of Patty and himI at a sporting goods store and used car lot.

You could tell that they were in a relationship just by the video, that there was more going on than just her trying to help him out with impressions.

She lied to us. And we now have a hidden relationship.

I brought in for further questioning. Patty suddenly and dramatically changed her story.

She finally and stated that her and Jaime Ramos were having a sexual relationship.

Did she indicate at that point that maybe Ramos had something to do with it?

She had been leaning more towards she thinks maybe he did this out of jealousy to have her all to himself.

And it scares me that I brought someone into my home and may have killed him, that it scared the crap out of me with plenty of suspicions, but little hard evidence.

The detectives let Patsy go by. But before she left, she began to shake was something that looked like real fear.

What did she know about that young man? What sort of story was she spinning?

Oh, I don't think I'll be alive. I'm telling you, your company will tell you he's coming here. He'll kill me first. It was clear now that Jaime Ramos was the leading man, the key to solving the case, even if he wasn't involved?

Well, he surely would have known who was, but how could they get to him?

He could be anywhere by now as the detectives dug into his background. They found he was devoted to his grandmother, the woman who raised him. Maybe she would know where he was. And I explained to her the situation he was in and the reasoning for me needing to talk to him, because to be honest with you, we knew nothing at that point. She must have pretty shocked. She was she was she was devastated.

And within twenty four hours, I had a phone call from Miami, Ramos, who, after stalling for a few weeks, finally agreed to return and answer questions in person. But on the day I was to meet with them, he was a no show. Instead, Detectives Lansing and Hutches received an urgent phone call. Patricia had gone missing a month to the day after Ron's murder. The two detectives were back at the house investigating another strange and violent crime.

There was forced entry into the house. There was blood, a kidnap note found at the house. What did the note say?

It was a white piece of paper printer paper with cutout pieces or cut out letters from a magazine glued to it stating that I have taken her.

Did it occur to either one of you that maybe Ramos himself. Had kidnapped Patricia, that he was behind this from the get go, we really didn't know we didn't know if Mr. Ramos had anything to do with this because we had no indication that he'd been back in town during the second investigation of their family home, April and Misty.

Once again, waited outside. And here they said they were quietly approached by one of Patty's daughters who asked a very strange question. She said, is there a dead body in the house? And I said, well, no, not that the detectives have said. And she said, my mom called last night and asked us to help her get rid of a body.

And guess whose body that was supposed to be? As we open the door and walked into the room, he yelled out to us, Don't shoot me. I've been shot already.

A Motel six parking lot within screaming distance of the Salt Lake City airport. It was the morning after Patty's sudden disappearance. Officer Mike Paletta of the Utah Department of Motor Vehicles was on a routine search for stolen cars.

He noticed the California plate on the green 2003.

Hyundai called it in and got a hit.

I found that it came back with an NCIC head out of California, wanted in a homicide officer. Paoletta was calling for backup when the woman left room 109. She looked at me and she turned right around and went right back into the room. My sergeant and I approach the room and as we got closer to the room, she had walked back out of the room and started walking towards me. And I had grabbed her and I said, Are you Patricia?

And she says, yes.

And then she said something quite bizarre is in the room. He's been shot. And my sergeant and I made entry into the room. As we opened the door and walked into the room, he yelled out to us, Don't shoot me. I've been shot already.

It was Jaime Ramos and just barely alive.

I see these two guns coming in with arms. And then I see that it's the police and they're telling me to freeze. I put my arms up and I just I wow, what's going on. And they helped me out of bed. They handcuffed me.

Patty Police discovered I had been stabbed in the arm and I'm.

Shot three bleeding holes in him. I was told that I was 30 minutes or so away from bleeding out. A medic attended to him his wounds. A policeman searched the motel room, found gauze, medicine, hair dye, a handgun and movies Rambo and die hard. Then as they led him across the parking lot to a waiting ambulance, himI watched Paddy an animated conversation with a cop. I didn't see her handcuffed. I just saw there talking to a police officer.

Then I started to think she she gave me up saying that she was kidnapped by me for once guessed right. That's exactly the story that he told later that day to Detective Lensink.

It was dark and he shot himself in the eye because he he's going to kill me. And you fired that gun from in here. Paddy claimed that himI wounded, overpowered her, grabbed the gun and told her it was a kidnapping.

He said when he came home, she blamed it on Mr. Ramos. She blamed the whole thing on Mr. Ramos, stating that that she had shot Mr Ramos three times because he was attacking with caliber of weapon. Was this we later found out it was a forty four Magnum. Wouldn't that do a whole lot of damage? I would imagine so. But for some reason the bullets didn't expand and they went right through him.

He was lucky Hymie was taken away for medical treatment and as he recovered, he thought about the fake kidnapping, the shooting, the choice of Salt Lake, even though he'd been begging Patty to drive south to Mexico. And he decided that Patty probably was trying to set him up to take the fall for Ron's murder.

But he also decided that maybe for the love of Patty, he would do just that. He went over it his head. The story he would tell when detectives came to see him that I did it, that I'm a mad man. But then a faint thought of my family came through saying, oh, yeah, my family, where's my grandmother going to think? So that's when I started to just say the truth, the way it really happened and what really happened.

The truth. So much stranger than even one of Patty's convoluted lies. The truth was more like fantasy, like the plot from one of Hymies movies. There were times during the interview where we actually had to slow him down because he was he he was putting this information out there so quickly we couldn't even digested. That never happens. No, it doesn't. I mean, story like none.

You've ever heard all this? I kept telling to myself, this is for her. This is to make her happy. What he did for that, I put on the gloves, I waved down the hammer.

Jaime Ramos described Ron Pressman as the kindest man he'd ever met, the sort of father figure he'd always wanted. But Jaime, just 21 years old, was in love with Ron's 47 year old wife, Patty, and this is his story of what he did for her the last night of Ron's life. It was after he'd lost his nerve out by the pig pen. After Ron went back into the house, Jaime called Patty, told her he couldn't go through with it, and Patty was furious.

Hadn't he heard what she told him about the rape? Was he like all those others? Did he not believe her either?

She would say, You're telling me you don't love me right now? No, I'm not saying that. Well, that's what you mean by saying that this is wrong, that you don't believe me. But then she would say, if you're going to do it, do it.

And if not, just leave chastened and confused. I may walk back to the house and on the way spotted a small sledgehammer. And I told myself, well. If one here and they have even just makes them go unconscious, that's enough for me. So when I went inside the house. I went and sat behind him and I started to drink a lot of water from my nerves. I was really nervous. And once again, a couple more calls from Patty, is it done, is it done yet?

Hurry up, click. And I finally. Took my last drink of water, I put on the gloves. I wiped down the hammer.

Ron was in his easy chair watching TV himi a few feet behind, seated at the kitchen table. I.

Look myself in the reflection by by the window. I was telling myself once again, if you do this, there's no turning back. You're doing this. Because it's right, you're doing this because. You love her, so you were sitting behind them trying to get up your nerve. What did you think about?

I was thinking about all the things that she told me and they must be true and that they must be true, that this has to be true. This if she tells me it's true, she won't lie to me. She's never lied to me.

And that's how sitting there in the kitchen, he talked himself into believing Patty's tale of abuse and rape, the one that triggered his own childhood memories immediately.

I got the adrenaline rush because I started to feel anger. I jumped out of my seat and I hit him on the head three times quickly. He put his arms up. And I sound like a what and why at the same time? And as he threw his arms up, data magically fell down and I was yelling at them, telling them how you raped my wife, you beat my wife, you're getting what you deserve. That's right. Pattie's my wife.

I married her. How dare you touch my wife that way. And I hit them on the head at about three or four more times. And it just ended up where I knew for a fact he was dead, broke his skull. I broke his skull. I dropped the hammer. And I felt a relief. And I felt exhausted and relief, relief that I finally got this over with, that I finally did justice for this woman. Should be happy now, but to fully please Pabey himi still had much to do.

He needed to stage Ron's death to make it look like an accident.

It took me about an hour and a half to put him in the car. How did you do it? I drove them all the way to the vehicle outside. And the problem was to lift him and put him in the driver's seat, so himI made a ramp out of a ladder and a sheet of plywood.

I set that up the ladder and the plywood on top and I was dragging him up. And it was working, I had them I got them all the way into the seat, I belted him in as he was driving. How did you get the SUV to the place where you knocked it off the cliff? I sat in the middle seat and I was using my left leg the whole time for breaking gas and. My right hand to steer, that can't have been easy.

No, it was it was exhausting sitting sitting right beside this man you've just murdered. His head is open and bleeding and you've killed him and he's right beside you. How did you keep your sanity?

I thought of a movie the movie himI was thinking about. Is Sin City.

A killer assigned to dump a body is driving through the countryside with the corpse sitting beside him.

I started to tell myself, Wow, three years ago when I watched this movie, neither did I feel that I was going to be doing something similar to this reality.

Inside that Suburban was horrific, but himI transformed it to fantasy. Now it was nothing more than a scene from a favorite movie. And I just kept replaying that part in my head and enjoying. That enjoying the feeling of being in the theater with my cousin watching that movie. Was was what helped me along the way, himI dumped the hammer, a bloody rug and Ron's easy chair. Then at the curb over the gorge, he put all the props in place for the climax, the accident scene.

And I started to douse the car with gasoline and I opened the propane tank. I lit the lighter while I put his foot in the gas pedal. It was on park, so I was just grabbed. I let it and then I put it on drive, everything went in flames. I shut the door and I saw the car go down and ran to the getaway car.

He parked earlier behind the earth and burned out his plan, call for him to flee southeast Texas, but instead he went west.

I actually ended up driving back to her house. And we're supposed to do that. I was supposed to do that. Why did you do that? I had to see her. I felt that if I didn't see her, that. She was going to abandon me when himI returned to the house, you found Patty in the living room cleaning up the blood and gore he left behind.

And sitting right in the middle of it, on the very spot where Ron was murdered, sat her three year old granddaughter watching cartoons on television.

As I go there, as she looks at me and she's like, What are you doing here? Are you serious right now? You know, get out of here. As I reached for a hug and a kiss, she withdrew from me. So you need to leave now. I'm like, well, can I at least get a last goodbye hug and kiss? She gave me this hug and this kiss that. Was empty and now alone at night on the open road is when I started to feel dirty.

I started to feel ashamed. I wanted to throw up, I felt. Like, I just desecrated a man for what I started to see now as a selfish reason. And on top of everything, I just down to my soul, I fled California that night, leaving behind the woman at whose behest he committed murder. Perhaps it wasn't so surprising that he didn't realize he was next for a date with Patty. A very bad date. And like Patty, what are you doing right now?

Did you just shoot me?

How far must you go to escape the guilt of having committed the brutal murder of a gentleman for himI Ramos, it was never far enough. He went to Texas first state with a favorite uncle, and once there, he couldn't stop himself from talking about his greatest passion. Patty, I told him everybody that I'm married to this woman and that I'm happy. That I even went as far as describing her as an angel, but within a week I'm grandmother Call said police in California wanted to talk to him and himi unable to defy his grandmother, obedient they call Detective Lensink.

Tell me what that was like when you realized it was a policeman at the other end. You want to talk to you?

I felt that I got caught. That's over. The detective even went as far as asking me if I killed them and I lied to him and I said no. Feeling the pressure maybe went back out on the road and drove to New York State with an old girlfriend, but there was always that craving, I started to feel of loneliness again. I started to feel that I needed my nourishment again, so he called and begged Patty to let him return, but that was not part of Patty's plan.

She told me, no, go, don't come here. Just stay away for a while, because they're not after you. They're after me. If you stay away, it's going to be OK for a while. Just if you come here, they'll just probably arrest you. Unable to control himself, he disobeyed and began the long road trip back to California. I went straight to Patty because I missed her so much. What was it like to get back with Patty again?

It felt like like San Francisco again. Just everything was just happy and nothing mattered anymore. I was worries. Fellow travelers worries fell away until reality found. My family called me and said, Where are you? I couldn't lie to them. So I told them that I'm here with Patty. Are you going to talk to the police? Yes, tomorrow. Promise us tomorrow. Yes, OK.

It was a promise himi fully intended to keep, except Patty had another idea and himi wasn't in on that script.

He was the only one she knew who could connect her to Ron's murder. She had known that full well when she sat in that interrogation room and quaked in fear, as she predicted, for Detector's her own demise.

I don't think I'll be alive for. I'm telling you, will come for me. He'll tell you he's coming here. He'll kill me first, and so the day before him, he was to see the police, Paddy launched her new production. She told me he would be the hero, the leading man.

That's when Paddy told me about this plan. Of a false kidnapping, the idea, Patty said, was for me to call Detective Lensink, say he was in Nevada but will be in California the following day ready to talk.

What was supposed to happen?

What was supposed to happen was that detectives think I'm in Reno. She gets apprehended by a party that nobody knows about, which would supposedly be the killer of her killer, of her husband. That evening, Patti told him he put on overalls and gloves and a mask. She gave me a stocking to put over my head, but wait a minute, who's going to be seeing you with the stocking over your head except her?

She was telling me it was so that no sweat or hair can come off.

Next, Patti told me to craft a note using words and phrases cut from a newspaper.

I got that idea from where else? Just from movies of seeing ransom letters from people, how they always do it, that they always do it that way. That way. No penmanship can be traced. And she's like, oh yeah, yeah. But just make sure that this is what it says.

The note was nonsensical, except for a patchwork of phrases Patty insisted on like she is mine, too jealous and real pain.

It was giving me the chills because when I looked at it, I felt that it was real.

Who had been played a fool for so long, who had murdered a good man for a bad woman, was still so blinded by obsession. He had no idea that once again Patty was setting him up. But this time he was to play the role of both stooge and victim. Patty Next grabbed the kitchen knife and told me to cut her. I'm hesitating, so she slaps my arm down to me and then I just end up slicing her deep cut as pretty deep cut.

She started moving her arm around, making sure there was blood splatters. I go, I get the car, I back it up. I can't find her, but I see that her bathroom door for the master bedroom is closed. That's when I realized, OK, she just wants another door kicked down. When I kicked that door down, I see her silhouette with a gun. I said, Patty, as she goes boom one time. And I guess the first shot went through my arm, which I didn't know because of the shock she fires again and it hits me here in the collarbone area and then knocks me to the ground.

And I'm on the ground and I'm crying. Patty, Patty, what are you doing? It's me. Stop this. Why? You're killing me. Stop this. It's me. And she was still firing. She fired another one and that one hit my leg. And after that she drops the gun. She starts running outside the house screaming for help. I get up and I run outside, get her, and I'm like, Patti, what are you doing right now?

Did you just shoot me? Did you just really shoot me? And as we get back in the house, that's when I start to feel my aches and I start to feel woozy. I start to feel the blood trickling down my leg, my arm, my chest. And I start to tell Patti we need to leave. You really did shoot me. Why? Why did you shoot me? Why?

Patti's only response, said himI, was to reach into a drawer and pull out a handful of bullets and a whole bunch of bullets are falling from her hand as she's reloading the gun. I yelled to her, Patty, why are you reloading the gun? What are you doing? And why are you trying to kill me? It's me, Peshimam. She very calmly says, I'm not reloading the gun. I don't know what you're talking about.

So now he was confused. He ran into the bathroom, tried to hide. I don't know where else to go. I was just, you know, I was panicked. I'm shivering, crying, bleeding. And she comes in and she's pointing the gun at me again and she's telling me Ron was such a good man, he didn't deserve to die. What you did was evil. Sounded like a different woman. It was totally different. Woman I was looking her in the eyes and it just didn't look like the patty I knew any more.

She caught the gun and told me to get on my knees. I told her, why do you want why do you want to execute me right now? She said, Just get on your knees. Started yelling at me and I told her, no, what is going on right now? If you're going to kill me, just kill me now. I can't remember the other babble she was saying, but she started pointing a gun at herself and I said, no, stop that.

Don't do that either. What are you doing right now? If you want to be with me, you need to stop this. And let's go right now. Didn't it occur to you, Amy, at that point to leave yourself you managed to prevent her from shooting it. Why the hell didn't you just run?

I kept feeling the love that I had for her, the love she just tried to shoot me to death.

I'm asking myself that same question.

Good question. I was scared and there was fear in me. There was much fear in me. But I still felt so much love for her that this had to it was going to be OK. She's coming back to her, to her senses. She gave me water. She gave me some food. That's what made me continue going with her, was because she was taking care of me again. Did she tell you she loved you? Yes. She told me how sorry she was, how she doesn't remember shooting me at the time.

You really believed that? Yes.

And so they headed out on the road eastbound on Interstate 80, Patti behind the wheel himi riding shotgun. They stopped for some gauze to stuff into hymies bullet holes and went on an 18 hour drive as the kid's life slowly oozed away.

But after a night in a Utah motel, this murderous odd couple was in custody and himi so close to death was in a confessional mood.

I just. Lost. I just lost all sense and I bashed them on the head. Where was he? He was just watching TV.

He told them how he murdered that good man, Ron PressBoF, as if to free his conscience of its sinful burdens.

And remember the last things he was just said. It was like you. Yes, he was. He asked why. And I was so furious with him at the time. And I told them, you raped Patty, you bastard, you beat her.

And yes, still willing by the end of his two and a half hour confession to play the chump for Patty, because even after the murder, the shooting, the betrayal, he still loved her.

I don't know what else I can tell you. I just I loved her very much like you do, that I would have done everything for her. I know this is going to sound weird, but. As much as she's done to me, if she's here, would I be.

Any chance that I could just see her? Not at this point. Not at this point, but I feel for her. You know, she she really made me feel like I was her husband and she was my wife. The question now, would he be willing to take the fall before a judge and jury? But if Hymies mood in court was any guide, Patti didn't have a worry in the world. He looked at her with such lust. Hangtown, the gold rostand from Placerville, the seat of El Dorado County behind me and Paddy were held well, awaiting trial.

A rural community with a single jail for both men and women, and in our story, that matters why? Because of a certain feature in the building's plumbing system, which gave Patti the opportunity to crawl right back into the hymies, pliable mind and of course, his heart.

If both you and the person that are parallel with the toilet empty out the water enough, you can speak through it as though you're writing the same rules very clearly. It's incredible.

Separated by both Brick and Ba, himI and Patti were now, ironically, closer than ever. The communication with her was. Intoxicating means so much that I started to believe. Everything, again, that she was telling me about the man, what did you say to each other through that two punch? I love you an Sari's. We'll get through this together. I promise, Patty, that I'll make you walk, you'll get away with this an empty promise.

Well, perhaps not much of the case against Patty would be based on Hymies confession.

She just said, OK, you have to make it look like an accident. OK, so she she purchased the life insurance with the purpose of cashing in on it by this him being murdered and you guys making it look like an accident. Correct.

But now Patty was telling himI just what he should say in court to provide a match for the tale. Patty told Detective Lensink back in Salt Lake City.

She admitted she was involved in the in the whole thing. But at the very last moment, she called it off because she couldn't do that to her husband. And then from that point on, himI Ramos was the one that continued with the plan and killed her husband. So she was not involved and then came and kidnapped her. Exactly. To get rid of the only other witness that he had. And she was defending herself by shooting him. She would be the hero that she she killed the person who killed her husband.

The D.A. of Eldorado County, Vern Pierson, says without Hymies testimony, convicting Patty would be troublesome. There's a big difference between knowing and believing that somebody is criminally responsible and being able to prove it. And so night after night, Patty's disembodied instructions and her sweet nothings echoed down the plumbing and the hymies cell. She promised if she walks, she'll marry me in prison. Officials to visit me every day should put money in my books. You were prepared to go along with it?

I was prepared to spend the rest of your life in prison, spend the rest of the life on the. Patty Davis, Patty Hymies robotic devotion was obvious to all who saw the two in court and the way that he looked at her, I wanted to throw up.

He looked at her with such lust and to sit there and look at this woman the way that he did was it was gut wrenching for us as a family that she had that much control over something and still did after she tried to kill him.

You couldn't see a movie like this. James Clark, I'm his court appointed attorney, said he'd never had a case like this and 30 years of practicing law.

I like the kid, but you know what? I also like the victim. You seem to be a good guy. What's your assessment of her? My, my my viewpoint of her is she is a she's a reptile and she has no hard feelings, no emotions. There's only one person she's interested in. That's her. You ever seen this kind of manipulation before? Never to the extent that I saw it here. What did you say to her about that?

And what can you say to anybody who's in love with somebody? I mean, you know, it's irrational. If there was to be any hope for his client, Clark says Hymie would need to tell the truth to take the stand at trial and actually testify against Patty.

Evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. The issue was just how was he to be punished? That was the issue. So Clark made a call to the one person who had the power to break Patty spell Hymies grandmother. I brought the grandmother up here along with the two aunts, and they told him to tell the truth and do the right thing.

My family told me, when have we ever lied to you? When have we ever hurt you? I couldn't think of anything. So then why then do you not believe us? The police. Everybody, even her own children, are saying how evil this woman is. I cannot believe this. It made me realize this is the truth. It is the truth. I have to tell the truth. I can't stop lying. I can't stop denying this.

And that's when that moment forward, I stop contacting her in every way and instead gave a truthful account of Ron's murder before a grand jury. One of the grand jurors that I don't think that young man would have ever harmed to fly in his life, but for the fact that he ran into two patty years where the car went over. And then Hymies showed detectives, Lensink and Hajjis, the 14 mile route he took with Ron Korps pressed against him in the suburban.

A little further ahead is where I got rid of the ladder and search. And next they search for a chair ladder rung bloody evidence. And he said he jettisoned along the roadside. They came up empty until they stopped at a small glade along Charlie Barr Road where he sat back there.

That's the area. They shouldn't be further than that.

And they're buried in the leaves.

Detective Lansing found something looks like a blue rug hidden underneath. Somebody intentionally put leaves over the top of it. This is the rug that Ron president was on at the time he was murdered, and you can you can see some of the the remnants of his blood in those moldy spots there.

Now, himI had to prepare himself for the day when he'd have to take the witness stand face Patte, the woman he still loved and condemn her. I was telling myself I was going to do my best not to look at her, that if the only time I had to look at her was when they told me if I had to point. Which usually I see in movies. Can you please point to, you know, the defendant and then couldn't imagine doing that?

I couldn't imagine doing that, but I felt like, OK, I have to do that real quick and then I can look at my family.

But three days before the trial, Patty, suddenly and without explanation, pleaded guilty to all charges.

First degree murder of Ron, attempted murder of himI. When I found out that it was true. This wait, just. Weight off my shoulders and. I thank God for that. Why Patty pleaded guilty is a mystery. I think at some point she's probably been lying to her family, her own family all these months about what actually happened. And she knew this goes to trial. They would learn the truth and what her real responsibility was in this case.

And it was so against her character as a person, I was shocked. I, I and if it was good to hear her say guilty, I don't care if it was for her own reasons, whatever she had to do for herself to hear that out of her mouth was good.

A month later, in a packed courtroom, Patty, aloof and alone, was sentenced 40 years to life. Detective Mike Burnsy was there to watch.

This woman is the most evil and cold hearted murderer that I've dealt with. Why do you hate him so much?

I don't know that she hated him. She just loved herself more.

And himI he too pleaded guilty to first degree murder and casting shamed PENITENTE looks at his family, was sentenced to 25 years to life. But before being let off to prison, he agreed to meet with Ron's daughters. April enlistee.

He explained that the little amount of time that he knew my dad, he was also growing to love him. And and it's hard to hear that from somebody that brutally murdered him. That's the hardest part for me.

And that he would still do this and still take him away knowing the type of person he was and to follow through with it. The forest home where their father cared for them is a dark place now, an ugly place to live. My dad lost his life in here. It's horrible. I want the house to be burnt down. There's so much evil that took place in here that it's just not comfortable.

How did she do it? How did this woman exert such a magical hold over any man, let alone this one?

And yet she did it because I wanted her so much. And you're still doing it. And I still do. Do maybe is sometimes, sometimes, but it's going away, it's going away.