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00:00A husband does the unthinkable.
00:04And you say your wife is beyond help?
00:07Yes, ma'am.
00:09I was told your father shot your mother.
00:13I still don't know how to take that.
00:16There were glaring questions that we needed to get answers to.
00:20Was this death a fatal agreement?
00:23She started almost incessantly with,
00:25I'm gonna kill myself, I want you to kill me.
00:27In his mind, he's someone who gave his life in exchange for hers.
00:32Or is it cold-blooded murder disguised as a mercy killing?
00:36They feared for their lives.
00:37They thought he would come and hunt them down.
00:44He was overwhelmed.
00:46He was just gonna take matters into his own hands.
00:50In the end, you can't go around playing God.
00:579-1-1, what is your emergency?
01:02Um, I just shot my wife.
01:07You just shot your wife?
01:10Yes, ma'am.
01:12Okay.
01:13Is she awake?
01:14No, she's dead.
01:15On March 27, 2017, there was a call to 9-1-1 about a shooting outside of a memory care center.
01:33Do you still have the weapon?
01:34Yes, but I'm unloading it and setting it off to the side.
01:36The caller calmly reported what he had done and was relatively unemotional.
01:40What is your name?
01:41Steve Crusby.
01:42The caller is 62-year-old Steven Crusby.
01:57The victim was his wife, 61-year-old Pam Crusby.
02:03And you say your wife is beyond help?
02:07Yes, ma'am.
02:14Given the bizarre nature of the call, detectives approached the scene with a mix of curiosity and dread.
02:21When that call came out, my mindset was, you know, this is not possible.
02:26Someone's just not calling to say, I just did this.
02:28This could be a prank.
02:30As I'm driving along, the dispatchers were giving us additional details that made me realize,
02:35oh, this is actually real.
02:37This person's still on the phone.
02:39You okay, baby?
02:40I'm fine.
02:41Okay, who are you talking to, Steve?
02:43What's that?
02:45Who are you talking to?
02:46I was just talking to her.
02:48Okay, so she is breathing?
02:51No, ma'am.
02:53At one point, he's talking to her still as if she's still alive.
02:57It was almost like he was in some kind of disbelief.
03:02As we approached Parkside Inn.
03:04It's an assisted living facility.
03:06And it is pretty much the only physical building on that block.
03:09We're expecting some sort of chaos because we're responding to a shooting.
03:15When we approached, we saw nothing.
03:18The parking lot was empty, so that even added to our confusion.
03:22So we're communicating on the radio with our dispatchers asking, hey, have the person come out to the parking lot so we can see them.
03:30Can you walk out to the street, Steve, for me?
03:33But I want you to have your hands up so that they know that you don't have the gun on you.
03:37Okay?
03:38Yes.
03:39Officers were looking for him.
03:41And the dispatchers were still trying to get him to come out.
03:44But he was hesitant.
03:46Let me know when you're with them, Steve.
03:48Ma'am, I gotta go get with my wife.
03:50No, I need to make sure the officer gets you, Steve, because I don't want anything to happen to you, okay?
03:55All right.
03:57Once he actually listened, he came out to the parking lot.
04:01When we laid eyes on him, we didn't see a typical homicidal maniac.
04:06We just saw an older man who does not appear that he can hurt a fly just walking out.
04:13He was not agitated.
04:15You know, he looked a bit sad, but he was quite cooperative at the time.
04:20Once we put handcuffs on him, we asked him, okay, where's the gun and where's your wife?
04:24And he told us she's in the back of the building by the patio.
04:32Lo and behold, we found her on the ground in the grass, just a few feet away from the actual patio.
04:38We did not see a bloody murder scene.
04:44All we saw was a lady laying there on her back with a very small wound on her chest.
04:52She was shot.
04:55It was at close range.
04:57There were not multiple shots, and there was very little blood for someone who was shot to death in the heart.
05:04Looks like it was done by someone who really knew what he was doing and wanted to end her life right away.
05:10This was no ordinary perpetrator.
05:12This was a marksman.
05:13This was someone who knew where exactly to shoot.
05:17As we looked at the body, there was nothing about the body that suggested any kind of struggle.
05:22No scratch marks, no defensive wound.
05:26We did find the gun with five additional rounds in the magazine, and the gun was already made safe and placed on a half wall at the patio.
05:35It's clear to police Stephen Crespi isn't trying to hide.
05:41His straightforward and thoughtful cooperation is in stark contrast to the crime before them.
05:47But he is clear this wasn't a struggle or an accident.
05:51It was a request.
05:53He said, I just shot my wife.
05:55She asked me to do it.
05:57We're in disbelief, and she's not here to actually speak for herself.
06:01The way I looked at it, automatically, I'm like, this is a homicide.
06:06And we had a person who did it in custody.
06:09It may appear that, okay, yes, he was doing something to help her, but ultimately, he's a killer.
06:15You killed your wife, and it is, in fact, a crime.
06:22The night of the incident, I was 37.
06:24My sister called and said, you need to get down to Parkside.
06:28And I was like, why, what's going on?
06:30There's been an incident.
06:32I can't tell you.
06:33Get down there.
06:34You got to go.
06:36Okay.
06:39My mom was at Parkside assisted living facility for about two to three months at this point.
06:45I honestly thought, like, my mom had injured herself.
06:51She was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia a little more than a year before this happened.
06:58It's a very aggressive form of Alzheimer's.
07:01And at night, a lot of times, my mom would get aggressive.
07:05And so I figured this may have been one of those incidents, and they just needed somebody else down there to help control the situation.
07:13I get there, and there's cops everywhere.
07:19This is a little more than just my mom being aggressive.
07:26And I remember walking up the scene, and there was another police officer there, and he was like, who are you? Can I help you?
07:34My name is Matthew Crusby.
07:36My father and mother are here.
07:38And a detective came towards me.
07:41And he goes, I need to inform you that your mother is deceased.
07:46And he was like, your father shot your mother.
07:50I didn't, I, I, I, I, I still don't know how to take that.
08:03My mom was a huge influence in my life.
08:09She's honestly the strongest woman that I know.
08:13My initial reaction is like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, what happened?
08:18My mom and dad met at a Marine Corps ball in 1974.
08:25She was working as a civilian at a Navy contractor, and he was in the Marines guarding Arlington National Cemetery.
08:33He was willing to dance when none of the other guys were willing to dance, and they danced together.
08:38One of their favorite things to do was swing dance.
08:43And they could move. They could, they could really, really move.
08:47Pam and Steve complimented each other. They were two sides of each other's heart.
08:52They always were thoughtful and respectful about what each other thought and felt.
08:56And they didn't operate unless it was together.
09:02They got married in 1976, and they had three children in four years.
09:07Andrew was the oldest, and then Stephanie, and then Matthew was the youngest. He was born in 1980.
09:13The children were always respectful, happy, playful, fun, curious, and just delightful, delightful children.
09:22My parents were married for 47 years, but the first half of my childhood, my dad was always gone.
09:28You know, he was in the military. He was constantly deployed here, there, come home for a few months and leave.
09:33Stationed in North Carolina as part of Special Warfare Operations, Steve's mission was to train America's elite soldiers, Navy SEALs and Green Berets.
09:43A lot of the stuff he does, I don't know and probably never will know.
09:47But when he was deployed, my mother was God.
09:52She had to be the head of the household, she had to be the disciplinarian, but she also used my mom, so she had this loving, caring, nurtured side of that.
10:01In 1994, Steven retires from the Marines. After settling his family in Florida, he devotes his time to the classroom, training high school students through ROTC.
10:10But by 2001, retirement leads him to an unexpected new passion.
10:17When he retired from the military after 23 years, he became a lighthouse keeper.
10:22And Pam would go and help him there.
10:26My parents were married for 47 years, and they just gave me the best example of what it means to truly love someone else.
10:34You know, the selflessness, you know what I mean, the sacrifices for each other.
10:39And you could see that.
10:43And now I have a police officer telling me that my father shot my mother and I was pissed.
10:50I was angry.
10:51I was trying to push back that cop to go in the back to find out what was going on.
10:58And my wife is standing to my right, and she sees my dad being escorted in handcuffs.
11:07I didn't see him.
11:09Had I saw him that night, I would have probably been in jail myself.
11:13I would have went after my father. I was enraged, you know, because I was just told that he killed my mother.
11:21Come to find out, like we saw later, that just wasn't clear cut as it should be.
11:29No other family member said that Pam Crosby wanted to commit suicide.
11:35Pam wanting to die was perhaps a creation in Steven Crosby's mind.
11:45It got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore.
11:58What if he was primera?
12:02Matthew Crosby and his two siblings are looking for answers after learning their father, Steven, is responsible for the death of their mother, Pam.
12:11My sister, she arrived at the facility, and my brother didn't come until later.
12:15We were just kind of in shock.
12:17We didn't really understand what was going on.
12:20Within a couple of hours of the crime, Stephen Crespi is taken to the Boynton Beach Police
12:27Department, where he's interrogated.
12:28When they asked Stephen Crespi if he was hurting, he said it was his heart.
12:39And that really will get you, because here's a person who, by all accounts, loves his wife
12:45dearly.
12:46Police, meanwhile, who are sympathetic to him, are still trying to drill down whether
12:50this was the crime out of compassion for his wife or a crime of convenience.
13:16I always told her that that was okay, and I told her about that.
13:20And then she said she wanted to kill herself.
13:24Is that what she said today?
13:27She's been saying that for four months now.
13:32Stephen told the detective that Pam started forgetting things and getting agitated about
13:37four years earlier, the simplest tasks were just overwhelming to her.
13:41Things became most pronounced in 2012.
13:46She started to withdraw.
13:48She worked at the clerk of courts, and she just said she couldn't stand to go to work anymore.
13:53She noticed she was having issues at work with the numbers.
13:57And I just thought that was kind of odd, because numbers were always her thing.
14:03She had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at, like, age 59, which is really, really rare.
14:24A lot of things rapidly that she loved to do, she could no longer do anymore.
14:33She could brush her own teeth, but I had to remind her.
14:39She could eat on her own, but I had to remind her.
14:46She's the strongest woman I know.
14:55And in this moment, she's, you know, reduced to a child.
15:03There were times when it became sometimes combative and even violent.
15:07It was like 2 o'clock in the morning, and she sprung up out of bed again, and she said
15:12let me get the up, and she grabbed me by the shirt, said Pam, you gotta stop, Pam, you gotta stop.
15:18And then she started striking me.
15:21Sometimes she was very aware, and she knew what was going on,
15:25and then other times she completely had no control, and I think that must have been terrifying.
15:30Despite moments of clarity, Pam's violent outbursts and refusal to come to terms with her condition
15:36leave her family struggling to get her the help she needs.
15:41She wouldn't go to the doctors like she was supposed to, and she wouldn't let me help her.
15:46Every time I would do something to try to get her more help, she would get very, very agitated.
15:56This is not a Pam Crusby they all knew.
15:59This was someone in the body of Pam Crusby who mentally was someone entirely different.
16:06They got to a point in 2016 where they made a decision as a family to go ahead and put her in a memory care facility.
16:13But she absolutely hated being in that facility.
16:17There were times she thought she was working at the assisted living, that she was there to help people,
16:22because she just didn't understand she was one of the patients.
16:25Did you leave your house today saying this may be the day that this is going to happen?
16:28Yes.
16:29OK, so you left your house today thinking, if she asked me to do this, you're going to do it?
16:32Yes.
16:34Steven walks investigators through the moments leading up to shooting his wife.
16:38I took her out for coffee after she ate dinner there.
16:44It was early evening.
16:45They went at a coffee, and then he drove her back to the facility in the parking lot.
16:51She goes, do we have to go back there?
16:53And I was like, well, yes, we do.
16:56The closer we got, the more unhappy she would get.
16:59Incessantly with, I'm going to kill myself, I want you to kill me.
17:03I mean, the anguish that she was going through just unbelievable.
17:11It was a horror story.
17:13Went out and started walking around with her.
17:16The whole time she's pretty much begging him, like, if you loved me, you would do this.
17:20Just was getting more and more and more desperate.
17:23She said, I feel like I'm trapped here.
17:25I'm never going to be able to get out.
17:27This is not how I want to live the rest of my life.
17:30She kept, you know, going on and on and on.
17:33And just got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore.
17:37Steven Crespi, a Marine, kept a gun in his car.
17:41You leave her outside and then go to your car to get a gun?
17:44Yes.
17:48She was looking me dead in the eyes.
17:50OK.
17:51Did she say anything?
17:52Yes.
17:53What did she say?
17:54She said, I want you to kill me.
17:56How far away from her were you?
18:00I went in close.
18:01Yes.
18:02I thought maybe if I took it out, that she would maybe say, don't do this.
18:07He stood really close.
18:08Almost close enough he could have kissed her and he held the gun against her chest.
18:12According to Steven, she seemed to be encouraged by seeing the gun and wanted to die.
18:17In an interview room in Boynton Beach, Florida, Steven Crespi gives a harrowing account of how he helped his wife Pam end her life.
18:38She just stood there and it was like, I want to die, I want you to kill me.
18:45And I couldn't take it anymore.
18:47She was so broken hearted.
18:49And the gun went off.
18:54A bullet went through her heart.
18:55He explained that when he looked at her face, all he saw was relief.
19:16I was willing to sacrifice anything I had to sacrifice to get her where she wanted to be.
19:24He put the onus on her that this was a killing because the victim wanted it.
19:29He was adamant that it was an assisted suicide, not murder.
19:33He said he did it for compassionate reasons.
19:37But even though Steven said that Pam wanted to die in this situation, he said that he did it.
19:44He's the one who pulled the trigger.
19:45The state of Florida does not have mercy killing.
19:48If you take someone's life, regardless of the reason you give us, it is still murder.
19:53At the end of the interview, he's arrested.
19:55He's taken into custody and charged with murder.
19:59As per normal practice, law enforcement did a DNA swab, not only of Crespi, but also of the gun.
20:08Steven told law enforcement that he had thought about doing this before, so this showed premeditation.
20:14And that's first-degree murder.
20:16According to the state of Florida, that makes you not only eligible for life in prison, but the death penalty.
20:22Steven Crespi made it clear from the outset that he was not guilty of murder and that the reality was that Pam wanted to die.
20:35She had been asking Steve for a long time to help her with that.
20:40He was hoping that she would change her mind, but he also understood that by having the gun, that it made it possible for this to happen.
20:55His only objective and only wish was to see this charge reflect the truthfulness of what occurred.
21:03As Steven remains in jail, insisting it was a mercy killing, detectives look to the three Crespi children who struggle to comprehend their father's claims as they speak to police.
21:15All the kids were in shock.
21:16They were kind of in disbelief that this had happened, and they were disappointed that their dad hadn't talked to them or asked for help or let them know how bad it was.
21:25I believe he murdered my mother. I do not want to talk to you. I have nothing to say to you. At all.
21:34Andrew, Steven's oldest son, and Stephanie, his daughter, also thought he was a murderer, basically, that they had taken the easy way and murdered their mom.
21:44They started telling the cops that he was overwhelmed by trying to take care of Pam, and he wasn't asking for help, and he could have asked for help.
22:07They said that he was one of these people who had such hubris about being able to take care of everything and fix it, that he was just going to take matters into his own hands.
22:30One key detail Steven gave police is firmly rejected by his children.
22:35No other family member said that Pam Crosby wanted to commit suicide.
22:42I knew she was declining, but she had very lucid moments with us. She would never flat out say, I want to kill myself, I want to die.
22:52Also, Pam Crosby was very religious. She converted to Catholicism, and so suicide would be a real no-no.
22:59In the Catholic Church, if you take your own life, you're, you know, eternally damned.
23:05And that's why her family and others thought that the whole wanting to die was perhaps a creation in Steven Crosby's mind.
23:14On April 10th, less than a month after Pam Crosby was shot and killed, her husband Steven appears in court for his arraignment.
23:24We announced that we were seeking first-degree murder charges. We also said that we would not be seeking the death penalty.
23:32As prosecutors, we're human beings too, and we're sympathetic to the fact that he was a caregiver and he loved his wife.
23:39But in the end, you can't go around playing God.
23:42Steven pled not guilty and said that this was not premeditated murder.
23:52Steven and Pam's youngest son, Matthew, finds that as time passes following Pam's death, he begins to see more of his father's side.
24:01It took me about a month and a half after the incident took place.
24:05I had gotten over my anger.
24:09And I just started to process, you know, what was my mom going through? What was my dad going through?
24:14Do I agree with what he did? No, absolutely not.
24:19Of course I didn't agree with him.
24:22But I understood why.
24:26My dad's a fixer.
24:29If something's wrong, he's gonna figure out why and fix it.
24:33And the one thing he couldn't do and would have never been able to do is fix my mother.
24:48I didn't know a lot of what my dad was going through at this time.
24:55A little bit of me feels guilty.
25:00I was there for my mother, but I was not involved in a lot of her care.
25:07I could have been there maybe a little more.
25:10If my mom was truly aware of what was going on, and I believe she was, my mom didn't want to live like this.
25:21And I think they both had a hand in it.
25:26This change of heart is welcomed by Stephen's defense team, who are gearing up for an arduous battle.
25:32As we started defending the case, it was clear that the police felt it was an open and shut case.
25:40As a result of that, they didn't examine and evaluate everything that should have been.
25:46And there were glaring questions that we needed to get answers to.
25:49The big question was, was there reason to suspect that this was possibly a suicide as opposed to a homicide?
26:00And was there more investigation that needed to be done to uncover the truth?
26:06To uncover the truth.
26:19Accused of killing his wife Pam, Stephen Crespi watches from jail as his case stalls.
26:25For months, then years.
26:27Because it's a homicide, these court cases take a very long time.
26:33And the fact that COVID happened delayed the process even longer.
26:38So he was in jail, in prison, waiting trial for quite a bit of time.
26:43While both sides wait for their day in court, the Crespi siblings work on finding common ground, despite their differences.
26:49Me and my brother and sister, for about two, three years after the incident, we still had a good standing, good relationship.
26:58I, at this point, supported my dad. They supported my mom's side.
27:03But we still talked, because we made an agreement.
27:06We said, hey, let's not let this destroy us, because it really doesn't involve us.
27:11So let's let the courts handle this, and let's not let this ruin our relationship.
27:17Three years pass until, in 2020, the family prepares to meet in court again for a bond hearing.
27:26In Florida, the court has discretion to grant bond.
27:30We took a considerable amount of time to build a defense case to say that he should get a bond,
27:39so that he can be at home and we can finish preparing the case.
27:43We had witnesses from all walks of life, military people that knew him in his personal life,
27:52and family, Matthew, who had prepared a bedroom for him and a place to stay.
27:56Everything was fine. A week or two before my dad's bond hearing.
28:03That was the moment things and people shifted.
28:07I get a call from my brother.
28:10What do you know about this bond hearing? What about the bond hearing? Did you know about it?
28:14Yes, I did. Why didn't you tell any of us?
28:16I thought we made an agreement to let the courts handle the courts.
28:21And he was like, yeah, but this is a little more serious. Are you thinking about taking them in?
28:25And I was like, yeah, if it goes down.
28:28And then we three waved my sister in, and it just got more and more and more.
28:32And, you know, they said some things, I can't believe you're, you know, you would take in a murderer.
28:36The tensions between the family come to a head on the day of the hearing.
28:43About six months after COVID shut everything down, he finally got a bond hearing in September of 2020.
28:49And everybody in the court were masked.
28:52All three siblings testify at the bond hearing.
28:55Matthew for the defense, and Andrew and Stephanie on the side of the prosecution.
28:59This was a split family, and this was something that really weighed on those who loved Pam Crosby.
29:12Stephanie basically told the judge that she didn't trust her dad.
29:16The claim that this was an accident is absolutely false.
29:19There was no way after what he had done with the mom that she could believe in him.
29:24He had sacrificed their trust.
29:25When the going got tough, he chose to take things into his own hands and make it go away.
29:31My brother and sister, they called him narcissistic.
29:35They called him controlling, unstable, irrational.
29:39If murdering someone is his way of showing love, then I would hate to know what he could do to other loved ones if he had let out into the real world.
29:46They feared for their lives. They thought my dad would come and hunt them down.
29:49They both painted a view I never knew they had of my father, but two, one that doesn't exist of my father.
30:06Stephen's oldest son, Andrew, was on Zoom for the bond hearing as well, and he was vehement that he just stay in jail.
30:12When Andrew appeared remotely at the bond hearing and said, I heard my dad say that he wanted to put a round in her chest, it's really damning.
30:35Not only because it shows premeditation, but it also shows that Steven Crespi allegedly had this intention before things got even worse, that he was thinking about it at least a year in advance.
30:52My dad was hurt for a while because of my brother and sister and the things they said during that bond hearing.
31:00He still loves them. He still cares for them. Don't think that he doesn't, but he's hurt because the words don't line up with how we were raised, with what took place.
31:11He feels abandoned by them.
31:13When the judge announced her ruling, she denied bond saying the evidence of premeditated murder was too strong to release him.
31:24He was being put on trial for murder. What's to say he wouldn't try to kill himself or others, especially because he seemingly had some sort of Messiah complex where he believed in killing other people for their own benefit.
31:35We were there to do justice for Pam. This was an unjustified killing, a homicide that needed to be punished appropriately. And we were not going to stop.
32:00After a contentious bond hearing, Steven Crespi is denied bond and sent back to prison to await trial for the murder of his wife, Pam.
32:13Steven went back to jail and our focus turned on finding the best experts in crime scene reconstruction and DNA analysis,
32:23all with the objective to prove that this was an assisted suicide and not a murder.
32:31The defense enlists forensics expert Tiffany Roy to aid their case. They ask her to go back over the evidence collected at the time of the incident.
32:40First thing I do in every case when I get the case file notes is to check for human error because human people do this work and they make mistakes.
32:47As we're going through this process, we found out that Pamela's hands should have been tested for gunshot residue and were not.
32:58Back at the time, this was such an open and shut case that the medical examiner had no evidence of GSR gunshot residue.
33:06This is missing. This data would be important.
33:09The presence or absence of gunshot residue on someone's hands might be telling.
33:14If gunshot residue testing had been done, as it should have been, it could have shown that Pam assisted in the suicide.
33:23Seeing this discrepancy, the defense strategy is to turn the state's evidence against them in an effort to show that not enough was done to rule out suicide as the cause of Pam's death, starting with the DNA.
33:36DNA was important in this case because they tested the murder weapon, which was a gun that was owned by Mr. Crespi and drew conclusions that Mr. Crespi's DNA was on his own firearm.
33:47But the tools that were being used at the crime lab can only examine certain parts and pieces of the profile.
33:55So there were things that were being missed. And so we needed a higher powered tool to examine that information.
34:01Tiffany helped us do additional testing on samples that law enforcement have.
34:10There were several samples after they were examined that showed DNA traits that were similar to Mrs. Crespi on the firearm.
34:18The area where Mrs. Crespi's DNA was most present was the grip.
34:23And that made it a very real possibility that she could have handled that weapon.
34:29This was huge because her contact with the gun suggests that, in fact, she was involved in the discharging of the weapon.
34:40But can the presence of her DNA alone prove assisted suicide?
34:43We could argue as prosecutors that she did not want to die. She was trying to push the gun away.
34:49We knew the prosecutor would attempt to show a pushing away of the gun.
34:53So we hired an expert on firearms forensic reconstruction of shootings.
35:00And he reconstructed the shooting to see whether or not the wounds to the shirt and the DNA on the gun were consistent with showing that Pam embraced and pulled the gun toward her.
35:18This showed that Steve did not act alone and that Pam very likely assisted in her own death.
35:28This stunning evidence suggests Pamela may have assisted in the shooting that night.
35:33Steven never mentioned this detail to anyone, including his own defense attorney.
35:37I think the reason he didn't mention the specific act of pulling the gun toward her at the time was that the investigators never asked for the specifics in terms of how it happened.
35:52He said he shot his wife. That was uncontested.
35:56However, they never asked what Pam did or what role she may have played.
36:01And so by not asking the questions, the investigation never got into that part of the case.
36:08I also think that often under periods of stress, people sometimes don't remember everything exactly as it happens.
36:19And they oftentimes will fill in gaps or missing information with information that's most detrimental to themselves.
36:28And because of her faith as a strong Catholic, on some level, he believed that by not talking about that, he was protecting her in a sense.
36:39The defense informs Steven's son Matthew of their findings, which forces him to reconsider his mother's final moments.
36:47There's no other way that my mom's DNA could have got on there unless she was holding that gun.
36:51After the DNA evidence, what I believe happened is, yes, my father went to the car and got the gun.
37:01Yes, my father presented it to my mother.
37:04At which point, um, my mother, I still, I still battle with this, like, I believe my mom took her own life.
37:23And my father did give her the gun.
37:27And when, when she shot herself, um, just all the guilt of it came back to my father.
37:38So I do believe my dad had a portion in it.
37:41I don't think he solely pulled the trigger himself.
37:43I think the ultimate decision to take my mother's life was my mother's.
37:51Faced with the defense's new evidence of assisted suicide, the state's attorney needs to rethink their approach.
37:58This was a game changer because we were all set to pursue murder charges.
38:03And when you're a prosecutor, you have to prove cases beyond a reasonable doubt.
38:07The fact that we now had some doubt meant that the jury certainly would.
38:10What seemed like a straightforward murder case against Stephen Crespi takes a turn when forensic evidence gives the defense room to argue it was a mercy killing.
38:35The defense paid a lot of money for an expert who then revealed that Pam's DNA was found on the grip of the gun.
38:45And that's why we decided to enter into conversations about lowering the charge.
38:49In Florida, there's a rarely used statute of manslaughter by assisted suicide.
38:57So we met the evidence where it was and told the defense that we'd be willing to enter into agreement where the defendant would plead guilty to manslaughter by assisted suicide and would leave it up to the judge to do the sentencing.
39:13When Stephen learned of the offer, he was relieved.
39:19He felt that finally, after six years, we were getting an offer that was consistent with the truth.
39:25And at that time, he pled guilty to manslaughter by assisted suicide.
39:31In August 2023, Stephen finally gets to go back to court for sentencing.
39:38With no priors, he was eligible for a sentence of between 10 and 30 years.
39:47Our case was reinforced by the fact that the family members, at least almost all of them, were on our side.
39:53They were the ones who wanted Stephen Crespi to go to prison as long as possible.
39:57They clearly did not like him. They hated what he did. They did not forgive him. And they wanted the maximum penalty.
40:04During sentencing, my brother and sister gave victim impact statements.
40:10A lot of the stuff they said to me was just vindictive.
40:17If you viewed my father that way, then why would you even be around him?
40:23Their words and their actions didn't line up to me. And I didn't understand that.
40:29What struck me was when Stephen Crespi voluntarily chose to give a statement at sentencing.
40:37And I was a bit surprised at how defiant and angry he was.
40:40If he finally gets to speak in court, he basically says, where was everybody helping me?
40:46The judge, she was not unsympathetic to Stephen Crespi. She understood where he was coming from.
40:53If the family wasn't so adamant, if Stephanie and Andrew didn't feel the way they did,
40:57then this would have been probably treated differently.
41:01In the end, she decided to go for 20 years.
41:04When they came back with 20, I was just at a loss for words.
41:14It's a life sentence for my father. He's old.
41:18In his mind, he's someone who gave his life in exchange for hers.
41:24He's not going to be able to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
41:28His family is permanently divided.
41:31My dad is currently 72.
41:35I still go visit him.
41:37I talk to him at least once a week on the phone.
41:40My dad has not spoken to anybody, my brother or sister, since the incident.
41:45I have no plans to ever speak with my brother or sister again.
41:55I miss my mom a lot.
41:56She raised me. She was my best friend.
42:07No matter what I was going through, whenever my mother smiled, I knew it was okay.
42:13Or it would be alright.
42:15I just want to see her smile one more time.
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