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Dateline: Unforgettable - Season 7 Episode 7 -
The Agent's Wife

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Fun
Transcript
00:00:00Some stories are unforgettable. This is one of them.
00:00:04We had heard something about a shot. The message that I left was, lock your doors, I love you, be safe.
00:00:12We immediately started calling every hospital because we knew. In our heart of hearts, we knew what had happened.
00:00:18She was shot and killed by her husband, the FBI agent.
00:00:23Shot her four times.
00:00:24Shot her four times.
00:00:25He says she attacked him.
00:00:27A person has the right to defend themselves.
00:00:28Yes, sir.
00:00:29And police did find a knife in her hand.
00:00:32This is the knife. Can you show us?
00:00:33This is it right here.
00:00:35I was spooked looking at the actual knife.
00:00:38It was impossible not to think about that violent confrontation in the kitchen.
00:00:41We believe the knife was placed in Julie's hand.
00:00:44She would never, ever be capable of coming at somebody with a knife.
00:00:49And there were questions about his love life, too.
00:00:52It's deeply creepy.
00:00:53It does have a very creepy feel to it.
00:00:55Was it self-defense?
00:00:57I think Julie lost it.
00:00:59She snapped.
00:01:00I would bet my life on it.
00:01:02Or something else entirely.
00:01:04Is this changing for you by the minute?
00:01:06It is.
00:01:07After three trials, we were finally waiting for justice to be served.
00:01:11And it was one of the most dramatic moments I've experienced in a courtroom.
00:01:14Eight hundred and thirty-two days comes down to one hour.
00:01:18I put my life in the hands of God.
00:01:20This is Dateline Unforgettable.
00:01:30I'm Dennis Murphy with a fresh look at The Agent's Wife.
00:01:33They comprise America's elite law enforcement team, the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
00:01:45Let's go!
00:01:46And their careers begin here at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, where trainees are taught how to lead, how to survive, and how to shoot.
00:01:56In a kind of backlot movie set of a small town, a place called Hogan's Alley, agent recruits are taught that when they face a deadly threat, they need to eliminate it.
00:02:07Stimulus response.
00:02:09It's kill or be killed, with no time to overthink the situation.
00:02:17But back in April 2013, something happened just down the road from the Academy involving one of the FBI's own.
00:02:25A call to 911.
00:02:26I'm an FBI agent. Please, please hurry.
00:02:29This law enforcement community struggled to understand the ghastly thing that had happened here in just seconds.
00:02:35I remember dropping the phone, falling to my knees, and just crying.
00:02:40Friends and neighbors sat in disbelief.
00:02:43We know that that's not what happened. It just doesn't make any sense.
00:02:47While a family lay torn apart.
00:02:49You relive that moment every time you think about it.
00:02:55Soon you'll learn all about that moment and the federal agent behind it, Art Gonzalez.
00:03:00Just who was this FBI man?
00:03:02That was a big challenge in telling this story, figuring out his human dimensions beyond the public figure with a badge and a firearm.
00:03:09What made Art Gonzalez tick?
00:03:11What was the marriage about?
00:03:13And most importantly, what exactly happened behind the closed doors of their home?
00:03:20Our story begins here in the leafy suburb of Stafford, Virginia.
00:03:24It's a quick commute to Quantico for the many FBI agents who live here.
00:03:28Safe and secure as a town can get.
00:03:33That's exactly why it appealed to Bureau Special Agent Arthur Gonzalez.
00:03:38Back in 2010, he and his wife, Julie, moved to this quiet, conservative community with their two young sons, Chris and Aiden.
00:03:46Terry Smith and her daughter, Taylor, were their neighbors across the street and became close to Julie.
00:03:51So how'd you come to know them?
00:03:53Well, we met at the block party right across from our house and it was like an old friend, even though I had just met her.
00:04:01The couple were devoted parents.
00:04:03Art coached soccer for the boys at their school and Julie was the dutiful soccer mom.
00:04:08Did she like being a mother?
00:04:10Oh, yeah.
00:04:11She loved her boys their whole life, everything.
00:04:14Julie is a lot like me.
00:04:16Art's sister, Arlene.
00:04:17We both have a really bubbly personality.
00:04:20I think that we're very friendly people.
00:04:22She was like my sister.
00:04:24Her and I were two peas in a pod.
00:04:27Julie and Art had been born and bred in New Mexico, where the two met cute in college.
00:04:33He's a three-sports athlete, star, right?
00:04:35Right.
00:04:36Valedictorian of the class?
00:04:37Correct.
00:04:38Art's very focused, goal-driven.
00:04:40And his biggest goal was a career in law enforcement.
00:04:45Out West, Art racked up 15 years service as an FBI field agent, covering his wall with awards.
00:04:51Then he got his dream job, recruited to be an instructor at the elite FBI academy at Quantico.
00:04:57That's reaching high.
00:04:58That's as good as it gets.
00:04:59Yes.
00:04:59And I knew he'd succeed.
00:05:01Art always succeeded at what he put his mind to.
00:05:03That's who he is.
00:05:04Julie's dad, Ray Cerna, said his son-in-law took pride in that FBI badge and would carry his Bureau-issued gun just about everywhere.
00:05:13It went to church with him, and he made sure that everyone saw him as an agent.
00:05:22So he liked the persona of being an FBI agent.
00:05:25Yes.
00:05:26For a time, Julie had joined the Bureau, too, as a civilian hire, working as an evidence technician on some high-profile cases.
00:05:33One of them involved the takedown of a major Mexican drug cartel.
00:05:38She was good at the job.
00:05:39She was great at her job.
00:05:40She was great at everything that she did.
00:05:42But Julie's FBI days were behind her.
00:05:45She had quit to raise the boys.
00:05:47And when they moved to Virginia, she took a low-stress job as a teller for their local bank.
00:05:52Here she is, rehearsing a speech for a training program there.
00:05:55I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you.
00:05:59It's not hard to love Julie.
00:06:00Co-worker Tiffany Clark became a close friend.
00:06:04It took all of a couple of days to realize just what a great person she was.
00:06:08But as Tiffany got to know Julie, she sensed that her cheery disposition hid some trouble at home.
00:06:14During the summertime, she had lifted up her hand and showed me she was no longer wearing her wedding ring.
00:06:19No wedding ring.
00:06:20After 18 years of marriage, Julie and Art were going through some rough times.
00:06:25There was even talk of divorce.
00:06:27She came to visit me and the kids.
00:06:29She was crying more than I had ever seen her cry.
00:06:36Then came the day that would change everything.
00:06:39It was a Friday in April 2013.
00:06:42Art had gone to his instructor's job at the FBI Academy.
00:06:46Julie had the day off and spent the morning doing errands and grabbing some lunch with a neighbor.
00:06:51But that afternoon, a friend called Tiffany at the back and said that something was very wrong in Julie and Art's neighborhood.
00:06:58She told me of a story where there was some kind of shooting.
00:07:02A shooting in the seemingly safe haven of Stafford.
00:07:06Tiffany called Julie and left a message to warn her.
00:07:08When I called Jules, I told her, you know, Julie, there's been a shooting in the neighborhood.
00:07:14Lock your doors.
00:07:16Go upstairs.
00:07:17You know, I love you.
00:07:18Be safe.
00:07:19Then the news got even worse.
00:07:22The shooting wasn't just in Julie and Art's neighborhood.
00:07:25It was in their very own house.
00:07:27What is your emergency?
00:07:30Coming up.
00:07:32What had happened in that house?
00:07:34Who'd been shot?
00:07:36And who'd done the shooting?
00:07:38But ultimately, the hardest question of all, the one that would take years to answer, was why.
00:07:43I just didn't want to believe it.
00:07:45There was still that shred, that shred of hope that, you know, this couldn't be happening.
00:07:51When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:07:57April 19, 2013, 2.21 p.m., in this quiet tree-lined suburb of Stafford, Virginia, a frantic man called 9-1-1.
00:08:16What is your emergency?
00:08:17I need someone.
00:08:18I need someone.
00:08:18I need someone.
00:08:20It was Arthur Gonzalez.
00:08:22I'm an FBI agent.
00:08:24Please, please hurry.
00:08:24The agent's wife, Julie, was lying on the kitchen floor with gunshot wounds.
00:08:29First responders rushed to the scene as the operator began talking Art through instructions for giving CPR.
00:08:36Now listen to me carefully.
00:08:38Pump the chest hard and fast 30 times, at least twice per second.
00:08:43She kept him on the phone with deputies moments away.
00:08:47Julie had been shot, but how?
00:08:49What had happened inside the Gonzalez home?
00:08:51On route to the scene, it was this man's job to find out.
00:08:56I'm running lights and siren myself over there.
00:08:58I was one of the responding officers.
00:09:00As soon as Detective Todd No Sal hit the ground, he knew this was no routine case.
00:09:06Did you know he was an FBI agent?
00:09:08When I got on the scene, I was immediately informed of that.
00:09:10And that FBI agent, the distraught husband who had called 911, had just walked out of the house, hands up, holster on his hip, as captured by dash cam video.
00:09:22Now he was in the back seat of a sheriff's cruiser.
00:09:25That's because Art admitted right away that he was the one who just shot Julie.
00:09:29The detective followed the cruiser and Art downtown to the sheriff's department for an interview.
00:09:36When I read him as Miranda, he was agreeable to talk.
00:09:40Obviously, you're an FBI agent, so you kind of know how this goes.
00:09:45We have a job to do.
00:09:46Certainly, Art knew the drill, knew the camera was rolling, as No Sal began to take down Art's story of what had just happened in that house.
00:09:53So how does this story come out?
00:09:55I just started asking him a very open-ended question, you know, why don't you tell me what happened?
00:09:59I went to eat lunch at Moe's with a friend.
00:10:02I took a friend back to the academy.
00:10:04And after that, I drove straight home.
00:10:05I drove up to the house, and she was there.
00:10:08Art told the detective that he was surprised to see Julie's car in the driveway.
00:10:12The couple had recently separated.
00:10:14Art was staying in the house with the boys while Julie had moved to an apartment nearby.
00:10:19I said, what are you doing here?
00:10:20I said, you need to call me before you come here.
00:10:22So he was annoyed she hadn't called before stopping by, but said he saw an opportunity to talk about the relationship and get Julie to agree to a quick divorce.
00:10:32We were standing in the kitchen, and I told her, look, it's over.
00:10:35We need to complete this process.
00:10:38And then she said, well, I thought we were trying to reconcile.
00:10:41I said, no, Julie, we're not.
00:10:43I said, I love her anymore.
00:10:45She said, well, I can't take this anymore.
00:10:47I turned around for a second.
00:10:48I guess there was a knife scene on the counter.
00:10:49She attacked me.
00:10:50Julie, he says, charged at him with a knife.
00:10:54The FBI agent told the cop that what happened next was pure reflex.
00:10:58She came at me.
00:10:59I put up my arm.
00:11:01And I pushed her away.
00:11:04She came back at me again.
00:11:05Before I said stop, and at that time I just reacted and fired by the shot.
00:11:11Art said his FBI training had kicked in.
00:11:13To neutralize the threat with a weapon he had at the ready right there on his hip.
00:11:19A tragic case, he said, of self-defense.
00:11:21That's really the extent of what happened.
00:11:23Self-defense.
00:11:24She came at me with a knife.
00:11:25Self-defense.
00:11:26I'm trained to deal with threats.
00:11:27It's his estranged wife.
00:11:29He has exclusive use of the home.
00:11:31But Detective No Sal had law enforcement training, too.
00:11:34And his reflex, to be skeptical of any situation where a husband shoots his wife.
00:11:40In fact, from the start of the conversation, he'd been watching Art very closely, even as he talked about Julie's condition.
00:11:47Is she okay?
00:11:48Well, obviously, she's not okay right now.
00:11:51She's been treated medically.
00:11:53Once I get an update on her, I'll let you know.
00:11:55Detective No Sal sounds pretty convincing, doesn't he?
00:11:58Well, the truth was he knew that 42-year-old Julie Gonzalez had been pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.
00:12:04No Sal told me his plan was to wait a good while before telling Gonzalez his wife was dead.
00:12:09The strategy, keep Art talking before emotions potentially overwhelm the interview and gauge his reaction.
00:12:17Keep in mind, investigators have no obligation to tell the truth during the interview process.
00:12:23The detective asked Art another one of those open-ended questions.
00:12:28This one about their marriage.
00:12:30What kind of relationship did he have with your wife?
00:12:33Excellent.
00:12:34I've been up to the point that four years ago, I don't know what happened to her.
00:12:38Something happened.
00:12:39Art told the detective that the marriage had been unraveling for years.
00:12:44Julie, Art said, was unstable and had a serious drinking problem.
00:12:48Four years ago, it was nightmarish.
00:12:51I wasn't taking care of the boys.
00:12:53Just hours after shooting his wife, Art was recounting a litany of aggressive acts, things she'd done to him.
00:13:00She went to me and I got my shirt and just ripped her out of my back.
00:13:04I had a scratch from here, you know, down to my shoulder blade.
00:13:08That was another time when we had to call with deputies and, you know, they actually had her in a hack house before.
00:13:12Detective No Sal steered the interview back to that day's tragic shooting.
00:13:16He asked about the defensive move the agent says he made with his left arm.
00:13:20I asked him several more times to expound on things or just take me again from the top of what happened that day.
00:13:33Standard procedure.
00:13:35Lock in a story, then check for inconsistencies in the repeat cycles.
00:13:40How many rounds do you think you're fired?
00:13:42Two or three.
00:13:43I don't know.
00:13:44What happens to her then?
00:13:45I think she takes a step back and falls on the ground.
00:13:48Um, I have to get a phone call line one.
00:13:50My wife just detected that I haven't had to shoot her.
00:13:52Does he tell you he's giving compressions and breath that he's doing the whole CPR regimen?
00:13:56He did.
00:13:57About 40 minutes into their talk, Art again asked how his wife was doing.
00:14:01I got some bad news.
00:14:05She's dead.
00:14:07She, I guess, passed on the way in the ambulance.
00:14:11Art put his head down and saw.
00:14:16All right, I'm just going to step out for a second, okay?
00:14:18All right.
00:14:20Minutes later, he was back, a tough cop expressing his sympathies.
00:14:24Obviously, this is probably one of the worst situations, especially a law enforcement officer
00:14:28could be in when, you know, you're defending yourself and it's the mother of your children.
00:14:32After hearing multiple recountings of his story, Nossal looked across at his fellow lawman
00:14:38and told him it seemed like a case of self-defense.
00:14:41It's not making things better and it's not going to change how today is.
00:14:47But, you know, I mean, you have to defend yourself.
00:14:53Back in Art's neighborhood, news of Julie's death had quickly spread across the street.
00:14:57I knocked, came at the door.
00:15:00It was a police officer and he asked me if I could go get the children from school
00:15:06because there was an incident at Art and Julie's house.
00:15:09Terry Smith, Julie's good friend and neighbor, could barely wrap her head around the awful news.
00:15:14I just didn't want to believe it.
00:15:17When Julie's work friend Tiffany started hearing the shooting involve Julie,
00:15:21she didn't want to believe it either.
00:15:23She started frantically calling the hospitals, hoping her friend had just been injured.
00:15:28There was still that shred, that shred of hope that, you know, this couldn't be happening,
00:15:32you know, this worst nightmare, but they confirmed that she had died.
00:15:37Julie, the only other person in the kitchen that April afternoon, was dead.
00:15:42But, was there more to the story?
00:15:46Coming up.
00:15:48A husband's love life raises eyebrows.
00:15:51Her undies are upstairs.
00:15:52That is correct.
00:15:53And his story raises doubts.
00:15:55This is the first thing that doesn't jive with what I just heard in the interview room.
00:16:00When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:16:02Art Gonzalez had just told the detective his self-defense story.
00:16:14But now, he braced himself for something even harder, telling his family that Julie was dead.
00:16:20During an interview break, Art phoned his dad.
00:16:23At her home in Texas, Art's sister's cell phone was blowing up with urgent messages from family members.
00:16:44She called her father back first.
00:16:45I said, Dad, what is wrong?
00:16:47And he said, Julie attacked Art with a knife.
00:16:51And he shot her, and she didn't make it.
00:16:57And I said, what?
00:16:59And at that point, I just, I remember dropping the phone, falling to my knees, and just crying.
00:17:05After Art broke the tragic news to his family, he called his boys, then ages 10 and 12.
00:17:13They knew something happened to their mom, but no details.
00:17:17Art decided not to reveal anything over the phone.
00:17:20Hey, are you okay?
00:17:22We'll talk about later, okay?
00:17:26Um, like I said, just know, whatever happens, I love you with all my heart.
00:17:31During another break in the interview, Detective Nosal had his own tough call to make.
00:17:37He had to tell Julie's father that she was dead.
00:17:40My first thought was that she might have suffered.
00:17:45I didn't want that.
00:17:47And he told me, I don't think so.
00:17:51And after the detective broke the terrible news, he gently asked Julie's dad a few questions.
00:17:56One concerned her drinking.
00:17:58She drank an occasional beer or an occasional glass of wine.
00:18:04So you wouldn't say she was a problem drinker?
00:18:06No, no, no, no.
00:18:07His response was immediate, and it kind of took me back.
00:18:11I heard an hour and a half of Art telling me a story about Julie Gonzalez being an alcoholic.
00:18:16I go, okay, this is the first thing that doesn't jive with what I just heard in the interview room.
00:18:20So now, Nosal was starting to wonder if there were perhaps other contradictions or inconsistencies in Art's story.
00:18:28By nightfall, Art was still in the chair when Nosal began receiving reports from investigators at the house.
00:18:34One discovery in the master bedroom was big news to him.
00:18:37Some ladies' undergarments in there, as well as there was some mail in the master bedroom, and it had the name Kara Kast on it.
00:18:46And who was this Kara Kast?
00:18:49Suddenly, there's another woman in the picture.
00:18:51And her undies are upstairs.
00:18:53That is correct.
00:18:53And you've got the husband in the chair, who has just shot his wife four times.
00:18:58So now the tone shifts a little bit here in the second pass at Arthur Gonzalez, doesn't it?
00:19:03It does.
00:19:03I just got a question or two for you.
00:19:07I guess in your bedroom, I guess in one of the hampers, there were some female panties or undergarments in there.
00:19:17Were that your wife's?
00:19:19Who is it?
00:19:20It's a friend of mine who's going to stand over every once in a while.
00:19:24Okay.
00:19:25Detective Nosal, a trained interrogator, knew that words mattered.
00:19:28And this wasn't the first time Art had characterized Kara as just a friend.
00:19:34I went to eat lunch at Moe's with a friend.
00:19:37That unnamed friend Art saw just before the shooting turned out to be Kara.
00:19:42And earlier in their interview, Art had mentioned Kara Kast to Nassau once in passing as someone who'd know how to reach the boys.
00:19:50Kara worked at the FBI alongside Art and was almost 20 years his junior.
00:19:55I'm not the morality police, you know.
00:19:58Like, are you guys hooking up?
00:20:01We're good friends.
00:20:03You guys having sex and stuff like that?
00:20:05Okay.
00:20:06What's the importance of finding the lover's underwear?
00:20:08I think that hurt Art Gonzalez's credibility in the interview room that I'm not hearing this.
00:20:13Why hasn't he offered it up?
00:20:14I figure, especially as a trained law enforcement officer and somebody working with the FBI,
00:20:20he would have probably volunteered that at some point during the interview.
00:20:22And then, of course, when I started talking to him about it, I felt he was being evasive and minimizing it.
00:20:28And Nassau noticed that when he asked what Julie knew about Kara, Art seemed to fumble around with his answer.
00:20:34Did she know about you two?
00:20:38Um, I think she'd seen us out before.
00:20:41I think it was a secret.
00:20:42Okay.
00:20:43I mean, did she know you guys were in a relationship or anything like that?
00:20:48I never hid it.
00:20:50Okay.
00:20:52Did she know she stayed there at Tums?
00:20:54Yeah, I'm sure.
00:20:55Yeah, because she'd say that a few times.
00:20:57And I don't know if she knew her.
00:20:59Is this changing for you by the minute?
00:21:02It is.
00:21:02It obviously starts putting some chinks in Arthur Gonzalez's story.
00:21:06So this is topic number one?
00:21:08It is.
00:21:09Detective Todd Nassau had caught an unusual and difficult case to analyze.
00:21:14This wasn't a whodunit, no question about that, so much as it was a whodunit.
00:21:19Only two people knew what went down, and one of them was dead.
00:21:23He says she comes at him with a knife and that he reacted and shot her.
00:21:27Shot her four times?
00:21:28Shot her four times.
00:21:29The mother of his two children.
00:21:31The mother of his two children.
00:21:32In what used to be her home.
00:21:33And then you have to wonder, is this self-defense or not?
00:21:35What's going on here?
00:21:36So you guys have to figure out, is this story true?
00:21:39Yes, sir.
00:21:40By the end of the first day, Art Gonzalez was a free man.
00:21:44Not under arrest, but under a cloud.
00:21:46So he doesn't spend the night in your jail?
00:21:48He does not, but we were going to continue with the investigation.
00:21:51Coming up, Art discovers some disturbing pictures of his lover and takes one of his own.
00:21:57It's deeply creepy.
00:21:59It does have a very creepy feel to it.
00:22:02When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:22:05To figure out what really happened in that kitchen, Detective Todd Nossal realized he needed to dig deeper into the lives of Art and Julie Gonzalez.
00:22:23In that interview, Art had painted a portrait of a woman with a drinking problem, who was desperate to get back together with him.
00:22:31And then she said, well, I thought we were trying to reconcile.
00:22:34I said, no, Julie, I have, we're not.
00:22:37No, Sal and his fellow investigators now wanted to examine it from Julie's point of view.
00:22:41For starters, how did she regard their failing marriage?
00:22:46Terry, what do you think was happening?
00:22:47He was telling her she couldn't do anything right.
00:22:49Terry Smith, more than just a neighbor, told detectives she invited Julie to live at her home at the beginning of the separation from Art.
00:22:56She said Julie had complained that Art had belittled her constantly.
00:23:01Terry also said Julie characterized Art as a control freak and that ultimately she was glad to be out from under his thumb.
00:23:09She said, I'm just going to be happy to be able to watch a TV program and not be told I'm silly for watching it.
00:23:13And before the shooting, Terry's daughter noticed that Julie, now living in her own place, was really coming into her own.
00:23:20She never thought that she could be that happy alone, but it turned out that being alone was like this amazing thing that she had forgotten how to do, I guess.
00:23:29On what would be the last day of her life, Julie spent time with Terry.
00:23:34About 1030, she texted me, hey, I'm off today, you want to get together?
00:23:37Terry invited Julie over to her house for Chinese takeout.
00:23:41Was she talking about reconciliation?
00:23:43Of getting back together with Art no matter what it took?
00:23:46No. No, she wasn't.
00:23:48Tiffany Clark, Julie's pal from the bank, told investigators that she'd seen Art treat Julie in a demeaning way.
00:23:55And she said in the weeks before the shooting, Julie was finally over and done with Art.
00:24:01She didn't want anything to do with the relationship anymore.
00:24:03Was she in a good place, did you think, Tiffany?
00:24:05Absolutely. Yeah.
00:24:07She was ready to move on?
00:24:08Yep, for sure.
00:24:09That all contradicted what Art had told Detective Nossal, that the trigger for Julie's attack was his declaration that he didn't love her anymore and they'd never get back together.
00:24:20In fact, Julie's friends and family said nothing about Art's story made any sense.
00:24:25There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that she would never, ever be capable of, you know, coming at somebody with a knife.
00:24:35When you start talking to the family and you start talking to other people, they made it clear that there was a different version of Julie Gonzalez.
00:24:43This has become a very complex issue.
00:24:45It was.
00:24:46So Nossal then turned his attention to Art.
00:24:49What was his state of mind before the shooting that day?
00:24:52By that point, the detective's investigative team had grown.
00:24:55I got a call that afternoon from our sheriff's office.
00:24:58Eric Olson and Kristen Bird were the Stafford County prosecutors assigned to the case.
00:25:02They were first intrigued by the way Art seemed to downplay his relationship with that young FBI employee, Karakast.
00:25:09We wondered whether it had anything to do with what happened inside the house that day.
00:25:13So we tried to build up the timeline of that relationship.
00:25:18So detectives headed to the FBI Academy with a search warrant and found something intriguing.
00:25:23In like an inbox on Karakast's desk, I find, I believe it's a nine-page letter.
00:25:28It was this rambling, romantic letter that Art had written to Kara four months before Julie's death.
00:25:35In it, Art wrote,
00:25:37Kara, the special connection between us is undeniable.
00:25:40We are two pieces of a puzzle that fit perfectly.
00:25:43Yin and Yang, Ricky and Lucy, SpongeBob and SquarePants.
00:25:48You complete me and I you.
00:25:50We belong together, and I wish you could see that.
00:25:53To me, this was the moment the investigation headed south for Art Gonzalez.
00:25:58Finding a goopy love letter to an FBI colleague, Art had another woman.
00:26:04And this didn't seem to be some small fling in his mind.
00:26:07In an unexplained death investigation about your estranged wife, that's never a good fact.
00:26:12None of us are psychologists, but what do you think is going on with a guy in his mid-40s writing this kind of document?
00:26:18It was described to us by one of the witnesses and one of the individuals who knew Mr. Gonzalez well and worked with him,
00:26:23that it seemed like it was an older man obsessed and in love with a younger woman.
00:26:27Detectives pulled the records from Art and Kara's phones and started to learn more about Art's behavior in the days and hours before he surrendered to deputies.
00:26:36Two nights before Julie's death, the couple slept together at his house, and late that night, Art discovered something.
00:26:43He picks up Kara's phone while she's sleeping and goes through it, and then he sees that there are photos in her phone of her and a FBI agent that she had been seeing.
00:26:55Another younger agent, a romantic rival for Art.
00:26:59He's snooping in her phone.
00:27:00He's snooping in her phone, and the pictures are pictures of Kara undressed.
00:27:06This is graphic evidence, Detective, that she's got another guy.
00:27:09Yes.
00:27:10And he's very much in the picture.
00:27:11Yeah, that is correct.
00:27:11In the picture on the phone and in her life.
00:27:13That is correct.
00:27:14And Noselle says that after Art forwarded those nude selfies of Kara to himself, he then took this strange photo of his own.
00:27:22She appears to be sleeping, and he appears to kind of be hovering over.
00:27:26So you want some pictures.
00:27:27Here's another picture for your collection, huh?
00:27:30It's deeply creepy.
00:27:32It does have a very creepy feel to it, yes, sir.
00:27:36The investigators then talked to some of Art's colleagues at the FBI who saw him in the office the following morning.
00:27:42What was his demeanor at work?
00:27:44That Thursday, he was described as being unkempt, disheveled.
00:27:49And I believe at one point we were told that he even said, is it possible for her to love both him and me?
00:27:56And just far more emotional than his friends had ever seen him before.
00:28:03We end up hearing from Art's office mate that there was a confrontation with Kara over those pictures.
00:28:09To prosecutors, it all looked as though Kara had dumped Art for that younger man.
00:28:14Based on that, they now believe that if anyone had reason to be angry and unhinged in the kitchen that day, it wasn't Julie.
00:28:22It was Art.
00:28:23He was completely obsessed with Ms. Kast and completely devastated when the relationship ended.
00:28:29So, if Art had hidden the truth about his girlfriend and distorted facts about his wife, the investigators wondered what else might he be hiding about the shooting.
00:28:40Coming up.
00:28:41The knife Art says Julie was holding when he shot her.
00:28:45What makes more sense for an overhand kind of thrust?
00:28:47The old slasher movie, you know, psycho style.
00:28:51But that's not how a deputy remembers seeing the knife in Julie's hand.
00:28:54It was like this.
00:28:55Leaving detectives to ask, was she ever holding it?
00:29:00When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:29:11Days into the investigation, Todd Nossal now believed Art had been less than honest about the women in his life, Julie and Kara.
00:29:18So, the detective decided to take another look at his interview with Art from the day of the shooting.
00:29:24I got some bad news.
00:29:26Specifically, the moment when he told the agent that his wife was dead.
00:29:30And his reaction was what?
00:29:31He started sobbing.
00:29:33He didn't have tears.
00:29:35Is that a red flag moment for you?
00:29:37No, it's not at that point.
00:29:39Being on a lot of death scenes in my career, you see all kinds of different forms of folks grieving.
00:29:45But looking back at it, it's one of the red flags that go up.
00:29:49I put that in the negative boxes as I'm checking the list.
00:29:53Initially, the detective told Art he understood his need to defend himself.
00:29:57But now he was looking at everything in a new light, including the level of deadly force.
00:30:03A lot of people outside the world of firearms and law enforcement would wonder,
00:30:08can't you shoot her in the foot if you feel you actually got to produce your weapon, fire a shot into the ceiling?
00:30:12Something short of putting four-round center mass, torso.
00:30:14Most use-of-force policies are to protect, you know, the officer's life or other human life
00:30:21and to stop the aggressive action.
00:30:24But the glaring difference is that this wasn't an unknown suspect.
00:30:30It was the mother of his two children, so why was it necessary for four shots?
00:30:36Art's story was that he was trained to react instinctively,
00:30:39trained to pull the gun that was right there in his holster, he said,
00:30:42when faced with a deadly threat, i.e., the knife.
00:30:46This is the knife. Can you show us?
00:30:47This is it right here.
00:30:49Detective Nossal brought it along for a demonstration.
00:30:51It's the all-business blade that Julie had in her hand when the responding deputies arrived.
00:30:58But one of the officers noticed she was holding the knife in what he said was an unnatural three-fingered grip.
00:31:03The bottom three fingers were grasping the handle of the knife.
00:31:07What does that suggest to you as what kind of emotion that would be?
00:31:10Well, given the way that Arthur Gonzalez describes the attack,
00:31:15he basically acts like he's defending from an overhead blow.
00:31:19So the only thing you can envision is almost an awkward...
00:31:23What makes more sense in terms of a grip for an overhand kind of thrust?
00:31:27You want to go with probably the old...
00:31:30Slasher movies.
00:31:30Yeah, the old slasher movie, you know, psycho style.
00:31:34But that's not the way the deputy recalls the blade in her hand.
00:31:37No, sir. It was like this.
00:31:39The detective had to wonder, was the knife placed there?
00:31:44And if Art was lying about that,
00:31:46nothing in his self-defense instinctive reach for the gun story could be believed.
00:31:51So as he went about picking apart Art's account of the day,
00:31:54the detective pulled video from the restaurant where he said he had lunch right before the shooting.
00:31:59These freeze frames, notice Art's right hip, gave the detective his aha moment.
00:32:04The red flag was flapping in the wind as I'm going through the Moe's video,
00:32:09and I realize he's not wearing a holster or a gun.
00:32:13No gun on his hip.
00:32:15Video proof, the detective thought, of another big lie.
00:32:18If Art wasn't wearing the holster out in public at lunch,
00:32:22he almost certainly wouldn't have it on when he stopped at his own house a short time later.
00:32:27The detective believes the FBI agent strapped it on after the shooting
00:32:31just to make it look like self-defense to the arriving officers.
00:32:35It's a very good story to say I came in, I had a holster on my hip when I was attacked.
00:32:41I just reacted, it was just from my training and experience that I was defending myself against a threat.
00:32:49So Nossal and the prosecutors developed a theory as to how and why the shooting went down.
00:32:54They believed Art was an emotional mess and ready to explode
00:32:58after he'd been dumped by his young girlfriend for a rival FBI man.
00:33:03I think the fuse was lit when he pulled up into the house.
00:33:06He doesn't expect to see his wife, and yet there she is at the house.
00:33:09What do you believe happens next?
00:33:11He sees her vehicle in the driveway.
00:33:13He would have the thought of WTF, you know, what's she doing here?
00:33:17And then he goes inside the home.
00:33:20Carrying his bureau-issued Glock in hand.
00:33:23Then in a rage and unprovoked Nossal beliefs, Art shot Julie in cold blood.
00:33:29You believe this wasn't self-defense at all?
00:33:31Oh, no.
00:33:32This was murder?
00:33:32Our belief was it was murder, yes, sir.
00:33:35Julie's dad had also become convinced his son-in-law was a heartless killer.
00:33:39He had promised to keep her out of harm's way, to do whatever he needed to do to protect her.
00:33:46But he failed in that, and he betrayed her, and he betrayed us when he killed her.
00:33:54Prosecutors believe the shooting was not premeditated, but it was intentional and certainly not self-defense.
00:34:00Three weeks after the shooting, Art Gonzalez was indicted for second-degree murder.
00:34:06The FBI man was now behind bars, waiting to stand trial.
00:34:10Julie's people thought they knew what happened.
00:34:12So did Art's.
00:34:13But we the people, the criminal justice system, would have a much harder time deciding.
00:34:20Coming up, more questions about Julie's behavior.
00:34:24Julie liked to pick fights with Art when she was drinking.
00:34:28She knew how to push his buttons.
00:34:31When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:34:33FBI agent Art Gonzalez was released on bomb, suspended from his FBI job without pay.
00:34:49His sister Arlene, Julie's close friend, remembers the first time they talked about the shooting.
00:34:54I said, did you shoot her in self-defense?
00:34:58And he started crying, said yes, I did.
00:35:00I swear to you, I swear, she came at me early and there was nothing else I could do.
00:35:06And I believed him.
00:35:07And at that point, I chose to stand by my brother because I knew.
00:35:12As an FBI agent, we respond to the truth.
00:35:17Retired agent Doug Merrill stood by him as well.
00:35:20He's the man who first hired Art at the FBI Academy.
00:35:24Do you think they had enough to go on to Commonwealth to bring those charges?
00:35:27I was very, very surprised when an indictment was handed up.
00:35:33It's a clear case of self-defense.
00:35:36His former colleague and sister were by Art's side as his trial began in March 2014.
00:35:43They all listened as prosecutors made their case that Art Gonzalez was a liar and a murderer.
00:35:49He was trying from the beginning to paint a portrait of self-defense.
00:35:54And we knew a large part of that portrait was a lie.
00:35:56The prosecutors told jurors how on the day of the shooting,
00:35:59they believed the FBI agent was emotionally unstable, driven by that breakup with his girlfriend.
00:36:05It was an obsessive, deeply romantic relationship.
00:36:09And that was the context for what happened in the house that day.
00:36:12They laid out in court their theory of a man fueled by rage.
00:36:16One who murdered his wife, then staged the scene to look like self-defense,
00:36:21strapping on his holster and inventing the knife attack.
00:36:24We believe the knife was placed in Julie's hand.
00:36:27As proof, Olson called experts who noted that gunshot residue was found on the handle of the knife,
00:36:33suggesting it was touched by the shooter himself.
00:36:36It's the only way that we could figure how the gunshot particles could get on the handle of the knife.
00:36:41And although Art had a few cuts on his body.
00:36:44There is no blood in the blade of this knife.
00:36:46It's supposedly cut through the shirt and cut his arm three times.
00:36:49We don't believe that that knife was used to cut him.
00:36:53And the prosecutors believe they had final definitive proof that Art's story was a lie.
00:36:58They played that 911 call Art had placed after he had shot Julie four times in the chest.
00:37:04Jurors could hear the operator instructing him to perform CPR on his wife.
00:37:09We're going to do this 600 times until I can get somebody to take over, okay?
00:37:13All right. Don't do it. Don't do it.
00:37:15We got CPR going again?
00:37:17Yeah, I'm taking it.
00:37:17You got it? Okay, okay. Keep doing it.
00:37:19The visual image that one gets listening to that is the one that I got the next day is a bloody crime scene.
00:37:26So the prosecutor assumed that after Art performed CPR, blood would be all over that white shirt he was wearing.
00:37:33Except the evidence told a much different story.
00:37:36We take a look at the clothes, and he has no blood on his clothes, and he has no blood on his hands.
00:37:43But an arriving deputy who did perform CPR on Julie came to court and testified to what happened when he began compressions.
00:37:51He describes that the blood starts oozing from the wounds in the chest.
00:37:55His hands are covered with blood.
00:37:57Prosecutors told the jury all this could mean just one thing.
00:38:01Art Gonzalez never performed CPR on his wife.
00:38:04It's not just that he's not doing CPR, he's faking doing CPR.
00:38:09The state said it was the foundation lie for the case, completely flying in the face of the FBI agent's story.
00:38:15His story was that I didn't want to shoot my wife, but I did it because I had to do it.
00:38:20There would be no reason not to do CPR if that was the case, but there'd also be no reason to fake doing CPR if that was the case.
00:38:28None of it made sense to Julie's friend, Tiffany Clark.
00:38:31So you believe the prosecution's case?
00:38:33Absolutely.
00:38:34He shoots her in cold blood?
00:38:35Yeah.
00:38:36And when she's on the ground, puts the knife in her hand and stage the scene?
00:38:39I think that he walked in that house and probably had that gun in his hand for intimidation because that's, you know, that was him.
00:38:46And I think that he probably intended to scare her at first, but the rage brought him to, you know, even further.
00:38:54And he just decided to kill her.
00:38:57Not at all the case, said the defense.
00:38:59The physical evidence supported Art's report of what happened.
00:39:04Art's attorney, Mark Gardner, told the jury what happened on that April afternoon and said it was the same story Art had been telling since that first 911 call.
00:39:13And there was nothing except speculation to counteract that physical evidence.
00:39:19Take that knife, for example.
00:39:21All of the talk about how Julie was gripping it was based on a single witness, one of the first responders on the scene.
00:39:28We know that the officer saw her hand lying down with the blade sticking up, but then the officer kicked it out of her hand.
00:39:35So we don't have a photograph of that.
00:39:37And experts testified that the gunshot residue on the knife's handle could have gotten there when it was kicked across the floor or...
00:39:45It's consistent with being found on the knife if the knife was in her hand at discharge.
00:39:51But the evidence also showed that it absolutely is possible for her to have gripped the knife and not completely covered the handle.
00:40:00As for the confounding lack of blood or DNA on the knife, a forensic expert testified that Art's wounds were minor.
00:40:08She could not rule out the possibility that that knife inflicted those wounds without leaving any blood on the blade.
00:40:14I wish we'd been allowed cameras in the court for no other reason than that you could watch Mark Gardner go about his courtroom lawyering.
00:40:22As I watched him work his magic, I noticed he was soft-spoken, no theatrics, and very, very effective.
00:40:28He's in my personal Dateline Defense Lawyers Hall of Fame.
00:40:32In court, the attorney was determined to shift attention away from Art and his relationship with that young FBI employee and make sure the jury focused on Julie.
00:40:41That's a risky road to go down for you, right?
00:40:44Well, it is.
00:40:44On the other hand, it's absolutely essential to an understanding of what happened for the jury to have a clear picture of what was going on in her personal life.
00:40:54The defense presented evidence that in the months before the shooting, Julie had been seeing a psychiatrist for depression, taking medication.
00:41:02And while they can see Julie wasn't drinking on the day of the shooting, she had recently been treated at an alcohol rehab center.
00:41:09Art's dad says his side of the family saw the problem and had been trying to get Julie help for years.
00:41:15Were you worried about it?
00:41:16Yes, I was very worried about it.
00:41:18Matter of fact, I talked to Julie several times about her drinking and her behavior.
00:41:24But it didn't stop, did it?
00:41:25It didn't stop.
00:41:26And during their separation, a judge had given custody of the boys to Art.
00:41:31She was sad, she was depressed, she was lost, she was tired.
00:41:36And anyone who's gone through depression or alcoholism, a divorce, anything that emotional, you can just see it in their face.
00:41:44And it broke my heart.
00:41:46And Arlene says that over the years, Julie would confront Art, sometimes aggressively.
00:41:51Julie liked to pick fights with Art when she was drinking.
00:41:55When you say that, what do you mean?
00:41:56She knew how to push his buttons.
00:41:58She liked to poke at her.
00:41:59But in the end, the defense's case would really rise or fall based on the testimony of one man, Art himself.
00:42:08No cameras were in court for his testimony, but he did sit down in front of ours.
00:42:14Coming up, the death of Julie Gonzalez according to the man who killed her.
00:42:19I had and still have nothing to hide.
00:42:21When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:42:36Not every jury in a murder case gets to hear from the accused.
00:42:40This one did.
00:42:42Why'd you elect to take the stand?
00:42:44I had and still have nothing to hide.
00:42:46Everything that happened is what I testified to.
00:42:50I believe that they needed to hear it from me.
00:42:54And Art Gonzalez wanted us to hear his story, too.
00:42:58I had first gotten a sense of Art at his home, where he let Dateline shoot in the very kitchen where Julie died.
00:43:05That kind of access was unusual for us.
00:43:08As the day grew long, we ordered in pizza for everybody.
00:43:11When it arrived, Art set a brief grace over the food.
00:43:14We ate pizza by the kitchen island that was once a crime scene.
00:43:18When we eventually sat down for an interview, he seemed nervous as we began speaking.
00:43:23Start the clock there.
00:43:24You're coming in the driveway, Art.
00:43:25What do you see?
00:43:26As I drive down the driveway, I see Julie's car parked.
00:43:31And, you know, I'm kind of surprised.
00:43:33And I say, you know, if you're going to come here, you need to let me know or something like that.
00:43:38And she says, I know I should have called you.
00:43:40And I say, hey, do we need to talk?
00:43:42And she says, yeah, let's talk.
00:43:43I follow her into the kitchen.
00:43:45She walks between the island and the counter where the sink is.
00:43:51I stop just before the rain.
00:43:54So, I don't know, maybe five feet away from each other.
00:43:58We have a brief conversation.
00:44:00What's the conversation, Art?
00:44:01And, you know, Dennis, I can't remember verbatim.
00:44:05It was about speeding up the divorce.
00:44:07There was conversation about, you know, me not loving her anymore.
00:44:11And, you know, the final thing that I remember her saying is I turn away and she asked, do the boys know her?
00:44:18And I look up at her and I say, yes.
00:44:22Do the boys know her?
00:44:24Art says Julie was referring to his girlfriend, Kara.
00:44:28It was a detail he mentioned on the stand, but one he never told detectives.
00:44:32Still, as Art described what happened next, his story was largely consistent.
00:44:37And at that point, I turned back to the counter.
00:44:39Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her coming at me.
00:44:41I see her with her arm raised.
00:44:43I put up my arm to block it.
00:44:46This kind of emotion.
00:44:47Right.
00:44:47I pushed her away.
00:44:48And as I pushed her away, I saw the knife in her hand.
00:44:51And I pushed her away far enough, probably where she stepped back about three steps.
00:44:58And I remember vividly her first step was coming at me again.
00:45:01She raised her arm.
00:45:02Her right foot stepped right in front of our dishwasher.
00:45:06And at that point, it happened.
00:45:10I drew my weapon and I fired.
00:45:12Four times.
00:45:13I didn't know how many times, but four times, yeah.
00:45:16I need someone with my wife.
00:45:17This is accurate.
00:45:18And I have to have the shooter.
00:45:19And Julie's down on the floor.
00:45:21Yes.
00:45:23Is she making any noises?
00:45:24Is there anything?
00:45:26Is she moving?
00:45:29She's not moving.
00:45:31And I'm having the discussion with the 911 operator.
00:45:34What's going on in your mind at that moment?
00:45:38It was surreal.
00:45:41I was thinking about Julie, hoping that they'd be able to revive her.
00:45:45I was thinking about the boys.
00:45:47I was just praying that she'd be okay.
00:45:49You didn't know whether she was dead or alive as you left the house.
00:45:52No, I didn't.
00:45:53And then you're in the back of a car.
00:45:54Right.
00:45:55The FBI agent being detained.
00:45:58Right.
00:45:59You knew you were in trouble.
00:46:01If you could have stepped back and looked at the situation.
00:46:03Well, I don't know.
00:46:05I understand what they were doing.
00:46:08But ever since the day I walked out that door, I knew that what happened or what I was forced to do was justified.
00:46:18Art, anybody looking over my shoulder at this point is going to say, couldn't he have de-escalated that moment?
00:46:25Couldn't he have turned and backed out of the kitchen?
00:46:28If he drew his weapon, couldn't he have fired into the ceiling or maybe shot her in the foot?
00:46:32Could there have been some way without four-shot center mass?
00:46:35Dennis, I've thought about this every day of my life since then.
00:46:42I had no choice.
00:46:44I didn't have time to consider any other alternative.
00:46:48She came at me so aggressively.
00:46:51Could you have done anything else?
00:46:53I couldn't have.
00:46:54There was nothing else I could have done.
00:46:56Nothing.
00:46:57And in the years of my training, we're never taught to retreat.
00:47:03We're never taught to back down.
00:47:08In court, Art told the jury about his multiple stints of firearms training in his 18-year career.
00:47:14In FBI speak, law enforcement speak, the assailant is called the threat.
00:47:18Yes.
00:47:19And the person being attacked has to, what, eliminate the threat?
00:47:22Right.
00:47:23They engage the threat until there's no longer a threat.
00:47:25You know, they're taught to shoot center mass, which is the biggest part of the body, of the target.
00:47:32That's the way that we're trained to address a threat.
00:47:35In fact, he'd been recertified in that training on the range at the academy just one month before he shot Julie.
00:47:42And yet, Julie wasn't a target on the range.
00:47:44She wasn't a home invader.
00:47:45Right.
00:47:45Threatening you with a gun.
00:47:47She was Julie.
00:47:48She was your wife of almost 20 years, mother of your children.
00:47:53It's not the standard threat.
00:47:55No, but I do believe that the Julie that was in that kitchen that day wasn't the same Julie that I had known for the previous 20 years.
00:48:07You know, there was just, it was something different about her.
00:48:09All of that, Art says, is the truth.
00:48:16He believes the lies in this case are all those prosecution theories of what he did, beginning with his relationship with his girlfriend, Kara Kast.
00:48:25He says he wasn't distraught or angry with her, and that by that last night they slept together, he already thought a breakup was coming.
00:48:32Why are you going through her phone that night?
00:48:37You're snooping, right?
00:48:39Yeah, well, I had suspected something, and she was lying down, and I looked at it, and I found what I found.
00:48:48What's the word?
00:48:49Is it anger?
00:48:50No, it was disappointment.
00:48:51I wasn't angry because I had suspected it, and with the person that I had seen, I had known that there was some history.
00:49:01So my disappointment was in the fact that she was...
00:49:03You knew who the guy was in the picture.
00:49:05Correct.
00:49:05Another agent.
00:49:06Right.
00:49:07So my disappointment came from the fact that she wasn't honest with me.
00:49:11And he says that when they had lunch on that day of the shooting, it was a calm and civil conversation to talk about that breakup.
00:49:17So that was what lunch was about?
00:49:19Yeah, pretty much.
00:49:19Well, are you volcanically angry with her?
00:49:22No.
00:49:24As for his holster, Art says it's true that he wasn't wearing it at the restaurant, but he says he holstered up right after lunch, stopping by the FBI Academy and then heading home.
00:49:34So let's tell the story of your arrival at the house in the kitchen from the prosecution point of view.
00:49:39They're saying, follow the holster.
00:49:41It doesn't make sense, jurors, that he would have this holster on when he's going home.
00:49:45He sees the car.
00:49:46What is going on?
00:49:48And brandishes the gun.
00:49:51He's got it out and with him as he goes through the front door.
00:49:55And there's not this dialogue about, you know, we need to speed up the divorce.
00:50:01Right.
00:50:01Does any of that happen so far?
00:50:03No.
00:50:04This is the prosecution's story of how this goes down.
00:50:06Right.
00:50:07However they developed that theory, I have no idea.
00:50:10When I walked in the house, my weapon was in my holster on my hip.
00:50:14I'm clueless as to how they came up with that, and I was surprised whenever they alleged it.
00:50:19But what about that cornerstone of the prosecution's case that after the shooting, Art faked CPR?
00:50:25Keep pumping, fast and hard.
00:50:28I'm going.
00:50:29I know you are.
00:50:30Keep on going.
00:50:31Did you do CPR?
00:50:32I did.
00:50:33Art says there wasn't much blood on his hands and shirt because he'd had little CPR training, and what he did know, he did badly.
00:50:40It was surreal to me when I was giving CPR.
00:50:43I was doing everything that she said, and I don't know if I was afraid to hurt Julie.
00:50:47I do remember every time I gave a rescue breath that it was wrong.
00:50:53You know, her lips were cold, and it just wasn't the same Julie.
00:50:56You did do it.
00:50:57I did do it.
00:50:59I don't know what I'll say.
00:51:00I did it.
00:51:01I did CPR the best that I could.
00:51:03And I wish there was a camera in that kitchen, you know, so everything that happened could have just been, you know, put inside the DVD player, and they pressed play.
00:51:20Would that show you pulling your weapon, killing Julie in cold blood, and then placing a kitchen knife in her hand?
00:51:27That would show everything as I described it.
00:51:28That would show me with me facing the counter, Julie coming at me with a knife in her, with something in her right hand, me blocking it, pushing it her way, her taking a few steps back, coming at me again, and me drawing my weapon.
00:51:43The jurors had heard two very different stories of what happened in that kitchen.
00:51:48Which one would they believe?
00:51:53Coming up.
00:51:53A woman's life taken, a man's life at stake, not a decision to rush.
00:52:00We expected that it would take quite a bit of time.
00:52:03I don't think any of us expected as long as it took.
00:52:05But the biggest surprise was still to come when Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:52:11Charged with murdering his wife, Julie, FBI agent Art Gonzalez had just told his story of self-defense to judge and jury.
00:52:30The prosecution's calling you a liar, manipulator.
00:52:33Is that painful, that personal attack?
00:52:35Yes, it was.
00:52:36When they asked me difficult questions, I told the truth.
00:52:38And Arlene, who says she and Julie were so close, hoped the jury would see that Art was also telling the truth when he described that confrontation in the kitchen.
00:52:48What do you think was in Julie's head?
00:52:50You know, I think Julie lost it.
00:52:53I think her mind finally snapped when Art said there was no possible reconciliation between them.
00:53:02She was already depressed, she was already sad, and for Julie to think that she had just lost her entire family and that another woman was possibly going to come into their lives, she snapped.
00:53:17I would bet my life on it.
00:53:19After an emotional two weeks, the jury retired to deliberate.
00:53:23Now Art and his family awaited his fate.
00:53:25A conviction could mean 40 years in prison, separation from his two young boys.
00:53:31If he was found guilty, there was no goodbyes, no nothing, they would just take him.
00:53:38And the hardest part for me with that was his boys.
00:53:42His boys wanted to sit there and they wanted to stand by their dad every single day.
00:53:47And, I mean, that's not a place for them, but, you know, at the end, when we were waiting for jury, yeah, I chose to bring them and sit with their dad for the last few moments if they were going to come back guilty.
00:54:01They could come back any minute and you could be given the jumpsuit and put in the van and be gone.
00:54:07Right.
00:54:08You don't know.
00:54:09I was fully aware of that and, you know, that wait was excruciating.
00:54:13Julie's family and friends focused on their hopes, praying for a conviction.
00:54:19It's a hard job for a jury.
00:54:20I remember watching people cry when the prosecutor was up.
00:54:25For prosecutor Kristen Byrd, it was only the second homicide case of her young career.
00:54:31As a prosecutor, I think the most important thing that you can do is give a voice to their loved one in that courtroom and tell the story, tell the true story.
00:54:40And we did that.
00:54:41One entire day passed without a verdict.
00:54:45And they're out and they stay out.
00:54:47What's going through your stomach and your brain?
00:54:49We knew that there was a lot of evidence, so we expected that it would take quite a bit of time.
00:54:54I don't think any of us expected as long as it took.
00:54:58On day two, the hours ticked away.
00:55:01What did you think was going on?
00:55:04I had to pull myself away from trying to speculate.
00:55:07The jury kept deliberating into a third day.
00:55:10Then it came, a note.
00:55:12The jury was deadlocked.
00:55:15The judge declared a mistrial.
00:55:17We were relieved, but disappointed.
00:55:20Julie's friend, Tiffany Clark, so convinced of Art's guilt, could not believe it.
00:55:25They couldn't come to a solution.
00:55:27They were hung.
00:55:28Mistrial.
00:55:29For me, it's like any logical person could put two and two together.
00:55:33Speaking with people that briefly heard the story, every conversation that I had with them was, how does an FBI agent shoot his wife four times and there's a mistrial?
00:55:46How is there any question?
00:55:47Detective Todd Nossal, whose team had kept investigating even during the trial, knew more work lay ahead.
00:55:57It's hard to stomach, but you know, it's one of those things is it's a tie and you get to fight another day.
00:56:02There was no question about what we were going to do.
00:56:04We were going to try him again.
00:56:05There was not.
00:56:05No question.
00:56:06You were going to go for it.
00:56:06There was not a moment's hesitation.
00:56:08We were going to try Art Gonzalez again.
00:56:09Eric Olson has been featured in multiple Dateline reports.
00:56:13His office's support for our reporting has always been very welcome, and this time was no different.
00:56:18Olson told me he was eager to run this case through the courts again.
00:56:22But for Art, the decision to be tried again was a crushing blow.
00:56:26I was hoping that Mr. Olson would have seen that, you know, maybe there was some error in his ways of thinking and he would have dismissed it at that point.
00:56:36He gets up within nanoseconds and says, we're going for this trial again.
00:56:39Right.
00:56:40After that trial, Art was fired from his job at the FBI.
00:56:43A number of agents had testified against him, but Doug Merrill, the former agent who hired him, continued to stand by Art.
00:56:51I saw the arguments, and my loyalty was not to Art, but to the truth, and I believed what Art had said was the truth.
00:57:05Self-defense, it's an awful incident, but we're done here.
00:57:07Exactly right.
00:57:08The judge later polled the jury and learned they'd been deadlocked 10 to 2, with 10 jurors in favor of an acquittal.
00:57:16Two votes short of getting the verdict you wanted to hear, not guilty.
00:57:19That's the official vote. What I had learned is the vote that the jury had taken as they walked out of the jury room was 11 to 1.
00:57:29So it was even closer than the official tally.
00:57:31Right.
00:57:32For the prosecutors, that near acquittal meant they had an uphill battle and needed a new strategy for round two.
00:57:40After the post-mortem, so to speak, on the jury trial, we realized that if we could better explain some of the forensic evidence that we had.
00:57:49More science.
00:57:49More science, then we would be in a little bit better shape.
00:57:54So they turned to a new star witness, in fact a world-renowned one, and she said that science told her the real story of what happened between Art and Julie Gonzalez.
00:58:04Coming up, she's the fact behind the fiction of a best-selling mystery series.
00:58:13Case Garpetta in the Patricia Cornwell novels was modeled after Dr. Fierro.
00:58:17And she dropped a courtroom bombshell.
00:58:20That Julie Gonzalez was shot on the floor.
00:58:22When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
00:58:37Stafford County Courthouse in Virginia.
00:58:39A bleak winter's day in January 2015, as parties arrived for the second murder trial of Arthur Gonzalez.
00:58:46Art was free on bond, so he could use the front door of the courthouse to arrive in the morning and leave at night.
00:58:53But that also meant he'd run into the people from Julie's side.
00:58:57People who used to sit together as family at Thanksgiving are now on very opposite sides here.
00:59:03It was a true ordeal.
00:59:05It all made for an uncomfortable scene when Julie's friend and neighbor Terry Smith would run into Art's side in court.
00:59:11How did it feel to be going into a courtroom in a murder trial?
00:59:15I thought I'd be all right, but I was not.
00:59:17I was very intimidated.
00:59:20There he is right in front of you.
00:59:22Yeah, I had a hard time looking over there.
00:59:24Art's sister helped him get past all those angry glares.
00:59:28I stood by my brother's side, literally.
00:59:31I would not let him walk in or out of that courtroom without me by his side.
00:59:34I guess I felt like his protector.
00:59:36Art and his defense attorney were optimistic after the last deadlock jury split 10 to 2 in their favor.
00:59:43We were both encouraged that we had come so close, and yet the other side of that coin is,
00:59:49oh my God, we came that close to an acquittal, and now we have to go through this all over again.
00:59:55I don't know what I'm expecting out of this next court,
00:59:57but hopefully they'll have new information that they can present in that courtroom to help convince those people.
01:00:04There is no reasonable doubt.
01:00:07In the months between trials, prosecutors Eric Olson and Kristen Byrd believe they found just that,
01:00:13a new witness with new forensic evidence to bolster their case.
01:00:17Her name is Dr. Marcella Fierro, the former chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
01:00:23But if you've ever read one of these hugely popular crime novels,
01:00:27you'd know her by another name, Kay Scarpetta.
01:00:30Kay Scarpetta in the Patricia Cornwell novels was modeled after Dr. Fierro.
01:00:35It's my understanding the author actually worked with Dr. Fierro.
01:00:38Impeccable resume.
01:00:39Absolutely.
01:00:40Now this was a kick for me.
01:00:42As someone who devours crime fiction, I knew very well Kay Scarpetta,
01:00:47the mystery-solving medical examiner,
01:00:49protagonist of more than two dozen books by Patricia Cornwell.
01:00:53And here was the real-life inspiration for that character,
01:00:56testifying in a trial I was covering.
01:00:58Cool.
01:00:59Dr. Fierro came to court with her report, and it was a bombshell.
01:01:05Art Gonzalez had always maintained that he'd shot Julie four times
01:01:08while she stood facing him in the kitchen, coming at him with that knife.
01:01:13Examining the photos from the scene and the autopsy photos of Julie,
01:01:17Dr. Fierro noticed something.
01:01:19In CSI language, it's called a shored bullet.
01:01:22A shored bullet is a bullet that, as it exits, is met by resistance,
01:01:27by something firm and hard.
01:01:30Dr. Fierro says she clearly saw a wound on Julie's back caused by a shored bullet.
01:01:36And in this case, the bullet couldn't even go any further,
01:01:39so it had to be a hard surface.
01:01:42Given the possibilities at the crime scene,
01:01:44to her, that could mean only one thing.
01:01:47She was down when she got that shot.
01:01:49She came to the remarkable conclusion, and the inescapable conclusion,
01:01:54that Julie Gonzalez was shot on the floor.
01:01:56She was not standing up.
01:01:57The prosecutor saw a game-changer.
01:02:00What it means is that Art Gonzalez is not telling the truth
01:02:02when he says that Julie Gonzalez, all four shots,
01:02:05she was still coming at him with a knife.
01:02:08She was on the floor for at least one of those shots.
01:02:10So if you believe Dr. Fierro, this is clearly a murder.
01:02:13We believed at all times.
01:02:14Her science, her narration of this.
01:02:15We believed at all times that it was a murder,
01:02:17and Dr. Fierro's opinion and testimony certainly confirmed that.
01:02:22If the jury believes her, you're done.
01:02:24Right.
01:02:25She's saying she's on her back, he's above her.
01:02:27Right, yeah, she creates that.
01:02:28Threat is over.
01:02:29I think that's what she was trying to infer.
01:02:31And, you know, when that came out, it was heartbreaking.
01:02:34I was dumbfounded.
01:02:35It never happened.
01:02:36Art's sister says that given the trajectory of the bullets
01:02:40and the tight space where Art and Julie were in the kitchen,
01:02:43Fierro's theory just won't work.
01:02:46If you've seen the kitchen and you've seen the positions,
01:02:50my brother would have had to have been standing in his sink,
01:02:54literally, to do what she said was done.
01:02:58And, I mean, it was absolutely absurd.
01:03:01And Art's defense attorney believed he had the evidence
01:03:04to refute Fierro's findings.
01:03:06The doctor who performed the autopsy did not agree with Dr. Fierro's conclusion.
01:03:12It was stressful to have an opinion that went against the grain.
01:03:15Dr. Jennifer Bowers is the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.
01:03:19She said Dr. Fierro's testimony surprised her.
01:03:22If that's her position and she's comfortable with it, it's fine,
01:03:26but I happen to disagree.
01:03:28The M.E., a prosecution witness, ended up helping the defense.
01:03:32She told jurors the shored bullet wound could be caused by any number of things,
01:03:37not just the floor.
01:03:38It can be a brassiere or something hard and flat up against the skin, such as a wall.
01:03:44Until you're able to rule all these possibilities out, you have to consider them all.
01:03:48And even though she's a prosecution witness, in effect,
01:03:51she is at odds with the prosecution on this pivotal issue.
01:03:54Yes.
01:03:55Then the defense called its own expert, who told the jury there was no way the floor
01:04:00could have caused that shored exit wound.
01:04:03In this case, I believe it was her brassiere.
01:04:05Dr. Donald Jason said definitively that the bullet was stopped by the bra Julie was wearing,
01:04:11not the floor.
01:04:11The bra was made of fairly hefty material.
01:04:16It was elastic.
01:04:17It caught the bullet like a catcher's mitt would.
01:04:19As Art's defense team fought back, Art himself may have been wearing down.
01:04:25He testified again in his own defense,
01:04:27although his own lawyer said he may not have gotten better with time.
01:04:31He had lost weight.
01:04:33He was not as strong.
01:04:34Every day of his life, he had this hanging over him and the uncertainty of it.
01:04:39And I think that took a toll on him and affected how he testified.
01:04:43And during cross-examination, the prosecution hammered at that extra detail he first gave
01:04:49on the stand and later told us.
01:04:51And she asked, do the boys know her?
01:04:54And I look up at her and I say yes.
01:04:56That led the prosecution to another theory in this why-done-it,
01:05:00a possible motive for Art wanting his wife gone.
01:05:03They speculated that Julie, armed with information about the other woman,
01:05:07may have threatened to use it against Art in a custody battle.
01:05:10For a man that was meticulous about making sure that he got custody of these boys,
01:05:16the potential for danger was very, very real,
01:05:20that she had some ammunition for custody now.
01:05:24After eight tense days of trial, Julie's dad was even more convinced.
01:05:29The second time made me a stronger believer that he did it on purpose,
01:05:34that he murdered her.
01:05:35Would the jurors agree the decision was now in their hands?
01:05:42Coming up,
01:05:43for the second time in less than a year,
01:05:47Art Gonzalez and his sons wait to hear his fate.
01:05:50Both of them said, hey, Dad, we read this and we thought about you.
01:05:53God saves his toughest battles for his mightiest warriors.
01:05:59When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
01:06:01When the jury is out, deliberating your fate for the second time,
01:06:14there's not much a defendant can do but pace and be nervous again.
01:06:19It was difficult.
01:06:20I would say my prayers and just finding ways to pass the time.
01:06:25It was excruciating.
01:06:26And every time the door opened, we'd jump.
01:06:29Every time.
01:06:30We would think, oh, the jury's back.
01:06:32But you also knew that you might not see Art again.
01:06:34Right.
01:06:35We tried not to talk about that.
01:06:37We tried to stay positive.
01:06:39And we needed to remain strong, not only for ourselves,
01:06:41but more for his boys and for Art.
01:06:44Art said his sons, 11 and 14 years old,
01:06:47when the second jury was deliberating, kept him going.
01:06:50Both of them said, hey, Dad, we read this and we thought about you.
01:06:54God saves his toughest battles for his mightiest warriors.
01:07:03And those two boys, for everything that they've been through,
01:07:10have been one of my greatest sources of strength.
01:07:12The two trials have been no less hard on Julie's dad, Ray,
01:07:17such a long way from his home in New Mexico.
01:07:20He sat in the Stafford County Courthouse
01:07:22and waited for the conviction he hoped was coming.
01:07:25It's kind of like ping pong.
01:07:28You get your hopes up that it's going to be resolved,
01:07:31and you hope the resolution is favorable.
01:07:34You hope for justice to be served.
01:07:38But then, after only a few hours of deliberations,
01:07:41Julie's dad and everyone else was hearing once again
01:07:44that the jury was struggling.
01:07:46Did you take a straw vote just to see where you stood?
01:07:48Yes, we did.
01:07:49This man knew exactly what was going on behind closed doors.
01:07:54Juror Paul Brastrom recalled for us the debate
01:07:56as they went around the table, laying out their choices.
01:08:00Guilty of second-degree murder,
01:08:02guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter,
01:08:04or not guilty at all.
01:08:06And one thing was clear right away.
01:08:08They were sharply divided.
01:08:10So we had some work to do, yeah.
01:08:12To this juror, the critical evidence
01:08:13wasn't the scientific dispute
01:08:15whether Julie was standing up or lying on the floor
01:08:17when she was shot, but another issue.
01:08:21Had Art, in fact, really tried to do CPR to save Julie's life?
01:08:25He didn't think so.
01:08:26If that part wasn't factual, that I could really believe that,
01:08:31what else couldn't I believe?
01:08:33He even thought Art was capable of staging the whole scene.
01:08:36He's an FBI agent.
01:08:38He's probably had cases like this,
01:08:39and so you can't just discount his abilities,
01:08:44and that's what I told other jurors.
01:08:45But not everyone agreed.
01:08:47Some made the case for reasonable doubt, not guilty.
01:08:51After a few more hours of going back and forth,
01:08:53they sent a note to the judge.
01:08:55They'd hit a brick wall.
01:08:58The lawyers could only guess the cause of the impasse.
01:09:00One of my concerns was that there was a debate within the jury
01:09:05between second-degree murder and manslaughter.
01:09:07We didn't know what the debate was.
01:09:09We had already gone through one mistrial,
01:09:11and we didn't want another one.
01:09:12So, what to do?
01:09:14The judge convened a closed-room conference
01:09:16of prosecution and defense.
01:09:18Hoping to break that log jam in the jury room,
01:09:20the prosecutors agreed to have the judge dismiss the murder charge.
01:09:25Well, that essentially acquitted Art of Murder,
01:09:27leaving the jury to deliberate only on the manslaughter charge.
01:09:31Did you have to hold your nose to come to that conclusion?
01:09:33It was not taken lightly.
01:09:34It was a very, very difficult decision,
01:09:36because if I was wrong about that assessment,
01:09:40then if it ended up still being hung,
01:09:42we couldn't try him again on a second-degree murder.
01:09:45Ironically, it didn't matter to the jury.
01:09:48The prosecutors, it turns out, did guess wrong.
01:09:51They didn't know the jurors on their own
01:09:53had already rejected the murder charge,
01:09:55but were still divided on manslaughter.
01:09:58Some refused to convict Art of anything.
01:10:00But they all kept talking, and then...
01:10:03Jimmy wrote another note to the judge and said,
01:10:07we're stuck.
01:10:08Another hung jury.
01:10:11Your second mistrial there.
01:10:12Second mistrial.
01:10:13Years of work at this point.
01:10:15It had been a long haul.
01:10:17How'd you handle it?
01:10:18It was devastating.
01:10:20But the prosecutors, with their new star medical witness,
01:10:23felt they were headed in the right direction.
01:10:25Last trial, it was 10-2 for acquittal,
01:10:28this time a complete 180.
01:10:30Ten of the 12 jurors voted guilty.
01:10:32We put on a very compelling case,
01:10:34and the evidence was there.
01:10:36But for Art, an even split of 24 jurors
01:10:40over the course of two trials
01:10:41meant an abundance of reasonable doubt.
01:10:44I was cautiously optimistic that they would just dismiss the entire case
01:10:48and not go for a third trial.
01:10:51But without any hesitation,
01:10:53prosecutors said they were going forward again.
01:10:56But trial number three would be different.
01:10:58There'd be no hung jury.
01:11:00That's because there'd be no jury at all.
01:11:03The defense and prosecution had agreed to what's called a bench trial.
01:11:07The judge hearing the evidence,
01:11:09the same one from the previous two trials,
01:11:11would decide for herself whether Art Gonzalez was guilty or not.
01:11:15Third trial's going to be different.
01:11:17It was going to be directed to the judge.
01:11:18There'd be no jury.
01:11:20And it's going to be resolved.
01:11:21And there has to be a result.
01:11:22That's right.
01:11:26Coming up,
01:11:27there would be a result,
01:11:30but would there be a resolution?
01:11:32When she started speaking,
01:11:33you know, it was a roller coaster ride.
01:11:36When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
01:11:49By the summer of 2015,
01:11:51two juries had hung in the previous murder trials of Arthur Gonzalez
01:11:55in the shooting of his wife, Julie.
01:11:58Now the decision on the FBI agent's fate
01:12:00would be up to Judge Sarah Dennecke,
01:12:03the same judge in the earlier trials.
01:12:05And this time,
01:12:06she would permit cameras in her courtroom
01:12:08to record portions of the trial.
01:12:10All right, Mr. Olson.
01:12:12The second-degree murder charge had been dropped
01:12:14in the prosecution's 11th-hour gamble the last time around.
01:12:17Now it would only be a matter of manslaughter.
01:12:21Still,
01:12:22Art faced a potential 10-year prison sentence.
01:12:25Tiffany sat in court and prayed for a conviction.
01:12:28You're not going to have a hung jury.
01:12:29This is going to be a decision.
01:12:29Yeah, you're going to have a decision.
01:12:31It's going to be done and over with.
01:12:33But is it going to be the decision
01:12:34that we've wanted for these last two and a half years?
01:12:37The crucial questions at trial three remained the same.
01:12:41Did Julie attack Art with that knife?
01:12:43Or had he placed it in her hand?
01:12:46Was Julie an unhinged alcoholic?
01:12:48Or was Art enraged over his breakup with his girlfriend?
01:12:52Tiffany took the witness stand one more time
01:12:55to say that Julie was nothing but a gentle soul.
01:12:58Did she ever, in your experience with the two of them,
01:13:00get aggressive with Mr. Gonzalez?
01:13:02Not at all.
01:13:02In your experience with Mrs. Gonzalez,
01:13:04in the time that you knew her,
01:13:05did she ever get aggressive with anybody in your presence?
01:13:08Never.
01:13:09No further questions.
01:13:10As they had in the last trial,
01:13:12those three medical experts each came to court
01:13:15to answer that other key question.
01:13:17Was Julie standing up when she was shot?
01:13:20Or was she on the floor?
01:13:22But the prosecution's case really hinged
01:13:24on how the judge viewed Art Gonzalez.
01:13:27What I hope to show is that he simply can't be believed
01:13:30when he's the only one saying
01:13:32that Julie Gonzalez came at him with a knife.
01:13:35Again, prosecutors argued he lied about performing CPR,
01:13:40lied about his girlfriend, Kara Kast,
01:13:42and lied about when he holstered up that day.
01:13:45And they added still another layer of doubt about Art,
01:13:48calling some of his former FBI colleagues
01:13:51from his days out West to testify against him.
01:13:54Are you aware of whether or not
01:13:56he has a reputation for truthfulness
01:13:58in the community out there?
01:14:00Yes, ma'am, I am.
01:14:01And do you know whether it is good or bad?
01:14:03It's bad.
01:14:04FBI agent Janet Johnson also recalled a conversation
01:14:07she says she had with Art about his plan to move to Virginia.
01:14:11One prosecutors believed further showed him
01:14:14as a controlling, manipulative husband.
01:14:16He told me that he was going to lure Julie out here.
01:14:21He said, I'm going to buy her a good house.
01:14:23She has no job.
01:14:25She has no money.
01:14:26She has no place to go.
01:14:28He told me that his plan was to file for divorce
01:14:31and that the custody laws here were more favorable.
01:14:36And Prosecutor Olson had another tidbit to chip away at Art's character.
01:14:40This photograph, one Art had taken for his attorney
01:14:43to demonstrate Julie's position in the kitchen that day.
01:14:47Have you seen this picture before?
01:14:48We showed that picture to one of Art Gonzalez's good friends
01:14:52who knew his son Christopher
01:14:54and he identified without question that that was Christopher.
01:14:58To prosecutors, it meant Art had used his son
01:15:01to help illustrate the shooting scene.
01:15:03When Julie's dad heard about it,
01:15:05he was so furious he had to leave the courtroom.
01:15:08I was so upset that I wanted to jump over that rail
01:15:12and punish him because he's a narcissist
01:15:16that will use anyone, manipulate anyone,
01:15:19including his own children, to get what he wants.
01:15:24Art admits his son did stand in for a moment in the photo,
01:15:28but he says he was appalled that the prosecution
01:15:30would try and use his own children against him.
01:15:34If I had thought it would have been harmful in any way
01:15:35to anyone, I would have never have done it.
01:15:38In his closing statement to the judge,
01:15:40the prosecutor said that she should believe
01:15:42nothing Gonzalez said in court.
01:15:44Art Gonzalez is dishonest.
01:15:46He is just a liar.
01:15:47And it's so frustrating for him to wrap himself
01:15:50in the cloak of the FBI
01:15:51that so many of us have such respect for
01:15:54and to just be such the liar he is.
01:15:57Art's attorney appealed to the judge's assessment
01:15:59of the law and the evidence.
01:16:01Judge, I maintain that there's no real evidence
01:16:05to contradict Art's claim about what happened in that kitchen.
01:16:11If it does not contradict him, then he's not guilty.
01:16:17With closings complete, the judge said she would take
01:16:20an hour-long break to prepare her decision.
01:16:22Those on both sides of the Gonzalez case
01:16:25now face a very tense lunch hour.
01:16:27The first thought that I thought was, you know,
01:16:30832 days, 832 days comes down to one hour.
01:16:34What'd you do during that hour?
01:16:36Huh.
01:16:37What I did every hour since this happened,
01:16:39spend as much time with the boys as I possibly could.
01:16:42All stand.
01:16:43Then it was back to court.
01:16:45I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life.
01:16:48What came next was an extraordinary scene.
01:16:51The judge would deliver her verdict in the case,
01:16:54but only after she ticked through the evidence,
01:16:56what she believed, what she didn't.
01:16:59I got to say, the minutes that followed
01:17:00were some of the most intense I've ever spent in a courtroom.
01:17:03The judge laying out her thinking about
01:17:05all the evidence and theories presented.
01:17:08It was both fascinating and nerve-wracking.
01:17:11I don't think I have to tell anybody here
01:17:13that this is a difficult case.
01:17:15First, that knife Art said Julie used to attack him.
01:17:19Prosecutors argued its position in her hand when she fell
01:17:22meant Art had staged the scene.
01:17:25There's something unnatural about the position
01:17:26of that knife in that hand,
01:17:28but that's the best that I can say about it.
01:17:30There's something unnatural about it.
01:17:33A point for the prosecution.
01:17:34But that wasn't all she had to say about that knife.
01:17:37The knife, when viewed in person,
01:17:40is a scary-looking knife.
01:17:42There is no question that if this knife was in her hand
01:17:46as she came at Mr. Gonzalez,
01:17:49that that knife constitutes a deadly weapon.
01:17:52And not just that.
01:17:53The judge weighed in on the gunshot residue evidence.
01:17:56The Commonwealth's position is that the gunshot residue on the knife
01:18:00must have occurred when the defendant touched the knife
01:18:03while planting it in the hands of the victim.
01:18:06But the more likely explanation is that the knife was in the path
01:18:12of the firing range of the gun,
01:18:14as were the hands of Julie Gonzalez.
01:18:17A score for the defense.
01:18:19But what about that question that had loomed over so much of the case?
01:18:23Did he or did he not perform CPR to try and save Julie?
01:18:28I find that very doubtful, given the evidence that I've heard here.
01:18:30I can't conclude that he did certainly perform CPR.
01:18:34It looks most likely that he didn't.
01:18:36With that, the prosecution might have sensed victory.
01:18:39But the judge had other surprises.
01:18:41We have to address the issue of Kara Kast.
01:18:44The prosecution had presented hours and hours of testimony
01:18:47about Kara Kast, the other woman in Art's life.
01:18:51The Commonwealth's presented a theory
01:18:52that upset over that relationship may have contributed,
01:18:57but I don't find evidence to support that.
01:18:59The judge basically threw it all out the window.
01:19:03Still, she wasn't revealing her verdict just yet.
01:19:05She had another shocker.
01:19:07Evaluating the work of those three medical experts
01:19:10and that question of whether the floor or Julie's bra
01:19:13had stopped that bullet.
01:19:15The judge made her call.
01:19:17I'm not sure we'll ever know exactly what happened,
01:19:19but I do find that under all of the evidence that I've heard
01:19:23that the most likely explanation for that short exit wound
01:19:28is the floor.
01:19:29The floor.
01:19:30That alone could make the difference
01:19:32between an acquittal and a conviction.
01:19:34I put my life in the hands of God at that point
01:19:36and just waited.
01:19:38I was holding hands with friends and family,
01:19:41and I hear, you know,
01:19:42well, I agree with the Commonwealth on this.
01:19:44The evidence proves this.
01:19:45But on the other hand,
01:19:47we're squeezing hands going, you know,
01:19:50she's about to say it.
01:19:51After 33 minutes of explanation,
01:19:54the judge was about to deliver her verdict.
01:19:57I have considered all of the evidence in this case.
01:20:00Coming up.
01:20:02After three trials, finally, justice.
01:20:07But for whom?
01:20:08Have you ever had a more traumatic moment in court?
01:20:11No.
01:20:11When Dateline Unforgettable continues.
01:20:15The only thing that I'm 100% sure of
01:20:27is that Julie Gonzalez should not be dead.
01:20:29Her even-handed analysis completed.
01:20:32Judge Denecke had finally gotten down
01:20:34to the nitty and the gritty.
01:20:36After one statement, I said, okay, I'm okay.
01:20:38After another statement, I'm like, oh no, I'm in trouble.
01:20:41I felt positive that it would be our way.
01:20:43I was hoping for a conviction.
01:20:45We will proceed to the decision.
01:20:48Have you ever had a more traumatic moment in court?
01:20:51No.
01:20:51It is the conclusion of the court
01:20:53that the Commonwealth has proven beyond a reasonable doubt
01:20:57the crime of manslaughter.
01:20:59Art gulped and blinked.
01:21:00Was it over?
01:21:01Had he lost?
01:21:02She said that the prosecution had proved manslaughter.
01:21:06I mean, my heart just sank.
01:21:08But the judge wasn't done talking.
01:21:10But it is also the opinion of the court
01:21:13that the defendant has met the burden
01:21:15of raising a reasonable doubt
01:21:18as to whether this offense occurred in self-defense.
01:21:22Meaning she found the defense had raised reasonable doubt.
01:21:26And that trumped everything else.
01:21:28I have no choice under those circumstances
01:21:30but to find the defendant not guilty
01:21:33of the crime of manslaughter.
01:21:35And this court is adjourned.
01:21:37Three trials, two and a half years,
01:21:39and it was finally over.
01:21:41I looked to God and I said, thank you.
01:21:44An emotional Art Gonzalez
01:21:45was whisked out a side door to freedom.
01:21:48On Art's side of the aisle, there were hugs.
01:21:50You know, I had to call Christopher
01:21:51and I told him that, you know,
01:21:53Daddy's coming home tonight.
01:21:54And to hear my brother tell him,
01:21:56Daddy's coming home
01:21:57are the most beautiful words I've heard
01:22:01in such a long time.
01:22:04That God gave Art back to his boys.
01:22:09They had already lost their mom
01:22:10and I couldn't even imagine them losing their father.
01:22:14On the prosecution side, tears of disappointment.
01:22:17I think as a young prosecutor,
01:22:19you try to figure out how you deal with that,
01:22:22how you look at the victim's family
01:22:24and essentially say, I'm sorry,
01:22:25we tried as hard as we could.
01:22:28Todd Nossau, the detective who lived this case
01:22:30since the very first day in April 2013,
01:22:33tried to console a distraught prosecutor, Kristen Byrne.
01:22:38He felt her pain and his own.
01:22:40I respectfully disagree with the judge's decision.
01:22:42So it's got to be a tough day for you.
01:22:45Tough day. Horrible.
01:22:47There are going to be a lot of people
01:22:48who think he got away with murder here.
01:22:51I think he got away with murder.
01:22:53Are you going to be okay
01:22:54with that kind of innuendo
01:22:56and whisper following you around, Art?
01:22:58You know, I have no choice, Dennis,
01:22:59but what I've learned over the past two years
01:23:01is the people who know me
01:23:02know that all the allegations
01:23:05that have been made against me aren't true.
01:23:07And that's where I place my faith and my hope.
01:23:11In the end, did I figure out
01:23:12what happened that day in the kitchen?
01:23:14Not really.
01:23:15Art Gonzalez remains an enigma to me.
01:23:18As a footnote, during the 18 years
01:23:20Art served in the Bureau,
01:23:21he never fired his gun at anyone
01:23:23until the day he killed his wife.
01:23:26In April 2018,
01:23:28Art was successful in getting the Virginia courts
01:23:31to expunge his record of any mention
01:23:33of the shooting of his wife.
01:23:35On official records, it never happened.
01:23:37Not involving him, anyway.
01:23:39Do you have remorse that you can share
01:23:40with Julie's family?
01:23:42Absolutely.
01:23:43You know, from the bottom of my heart,
01:23:44I just want to say that I'm sorry.
01:23:47If there was something
01:23:48that I could have done differently,
01:23:49I would have done it.
01:23:50You know, they lost a daughter
01:23:52and the boys lost their mother.
01:23:58But the boys won't ever forget their mother.
01:24:00I won't ever let them.
01:24:03In honor of Julie,
01:24:05Tiffany Clark gave her son
01:24:06a meaningful middle name,
01:24:08Julianne.
01:24:10When I'm looking at my children,
01:24:12you know, she'll never get that chance again
01:24:14to hug her boys,
01:24:16to tell them how much she loves them.
01:24:18Ray Cerna passed away in 2022.
01:24:21When we last spoke,
01:24:22it was clear he was forever changed
01:24:24by the loss of his daughter,
01:24:26a tragedy no parent
01:24:27should ever have to experience.
01:24:29Ray, when do you miss Julie the most?
01:24:31I miss her all the time.
01:24:34We get up in the morning
01:24:37and we're doing things,
01:24:39and it hits me
01:24:41that she's gone.
01:24:45Birthdays,
01:24:45Christmas,
01:24:49Thanksgiving,
01:24:49she's gone.
01:24:52repverte her song,
01:25:07she's going to be so sweet,
01:25:07and we love to make the world
01:25:09make the world love
01:25:11and the abilities rather than They
01:25:12don't give us joy.
01:25:13I still love to them,
01:25:14but you enough faith
01:25:15will become more beautiful.
01:25:17That she knows
01:25:17the one another
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