- FEMALE NARRATOR: A cold-blooded killing
rocks a small Texas town.
- She found him facedown.
She began to say, "What's going on? What's the matter?"
- I could see that he had a wound to his chest,
but he was probably dead before he left the scene.
- NARRATOR: When officers arrive,
they are in for more than they could have known.
- JEFF: They put her at gunpoint,
and she just looked extremely confused and frightened.
- RODNEY: She had everything to lose,
why would she kill this man?
- Detectives took the time to chase down every rumor,
talk to every person.
- NARRATOR: To solve a vicious crime,
investigators must sift through lies in search of the truth.
- You have to wonder why his cell phone pinged there,
and then soon after the crime, he is immediately hours away.
- RODNEY: Mexia's just a little small community.
Everybody knows everybody, sometimes by first name,
but when this case came up, it makes you wonder,
do you really know everybody?
- ♪
♪♪
- NARRATOR: March 31, 2011, just after 7 a.m.,
operators in Mexia, Texas, get a frantic 911 call.
- BETH: She sounded very out of breath,
panicked and upset.
It was very fuzzy, but it was clear
that she was saying that somebody had been shot.
- NARRATOR: With limited information,
police are dispatched to the potential shooting
at a local scrapyard.
- NARRATOR: Police learn from the caller
that the victim is 56-year-old, Ray Jacoby,
the owner of the scrapyard.
- As the, uh, police officers pull up on scene,
you're able to see a woman standing by the gate
with her hand up on the gate,
and it appears that she's on a phone.
And Ray is laying next to her on the ground facedown.
- REVENDY: We roll him over, start assessing him.
That's whenever I could see that he had a wound to his chest.
- NARRATOR: As paramedics work to save Ray's life,
police are anxious to secure the scene.
- REVENDY: I notice out of the corner of my eye
there was a police officer knelt down,
one knee on the ground with his pistol drawn,
pointing it toward the back of the scrapyard.
I said, "What are you doing?"
And he said, "We think the shooter's back here."
- ♪
- And I was like, "Oh crap, let's get this guy and go."
So, at that moment,
we basically just scooped the guy up on to a backboard,
threw him on a stretcher in the ambulance,
and we cleared the scene.
- NARRATOR: With Ray on his way to the hospital,
and the potential of an active shooter,
backup arrives to help clear the vast scrapyard property.
Among them is Sergeant Rodney Irvin,
who recognizes the 911 caller as 54-year-old, Mary Jacoby,
the victim's ex-wife and business partner.
- I knew Mary and Raymond from dealing with them personally,
just from being a customer,
and due to some criminal investigations
that led me to their business.
It was just tragic.
You really don't know what's going on in their life.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Ray Jacoby's scrapyard business
was built on a lifelong interest in mechanics
and his own personal charm.
- He was born April 30, 1954.
He was very well-liked and lighthearted, laid-back.
Dad loved working on cars and any and all equipment.
He could make just a pile of junk run.
- CHRIS: Raymond from a pretty early age was around cars.
This was something that defined who he was.
It wasn't just his chosen career
when he eventually opened a salvage yard.
This was his passion throughout his entire life.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Ray started racing on dirt tracks
when he was just a teenager.
After a short marriage right out of high school,
Ray fell in love again
with a woman named, Diane Petty.
- RON: He met my mom at the "R&R Saloon."
That was the place to stop and have breakfast.
Mom was a waitress there.
Mom always said Dad was handsome,
and he was nice and happy.
- NARRATOR: Diane and Ray married in the mid-'70s,
and their son, Ron, was born in 1977.
Though Ray tried to commit to domestic life,
his first love was always the track.
- Mom thought that he was pumping a little too much
attention and time into the racecar.
Dad begged her to not leave, he really loved her.
He did not want mom to leave.
I've heard that from Mom,
and, uh, you know, irreconcilable differences,
and they divorced.
- NARRATOR: After the divorce, Ray was a fixture around
California's '80s dirt track scene,
which is where he met Mary Green.
- RON: Mary was a "trophy girl."
Back in the day, the gals would hand the trophy to the guys
after they won the trophy dash or the main event.
- CHRIS: Mary was a single mother,
so her priority, of course, was her young son, Chapin,
and she would do a lot of different jobs
that are what she described as man's work.
She didn't have any fear of getting her hands dirty.
- RON: She was a little bit of the hippie,
and Dad was a little bit more, uh, "I'll have a whiskey,
and that's good enough for me."
- Ray found something that he was wildly attracted to in Mary.
They began to date for a number of years,
and then finally tied the knot in 1983.
- NARRATOR: Newly married,
Ray and Mary moved to Trout Creek, Montana,
to start their new life.
- RON: Dad told me that Montana was the cheapest place to live.
The goal was to go there and build
Tuscor Speedway, a dirt track.
Those were pretty good years with Mary,
we were all pretty happy.
- NARRATOR: But as Mary and Ray ran the racetrack together,
they soon realized
that maintaining romance and a business partnership
wasn't in the cards for them.
- RON: There was certainly some complaining
about money from Mary's side.
Dad had used a lot of her inheritance money
for a part of the track.
He was probably a little too giving,
and a little too easygoing,
wanting everybody to have a good time.
So, when the track was done, it was free beer for all,
and it shouldn't have been.
- NARRATOR: After decades of fighting,
the couple divorced in 2003,
and that's when Ray had his most lucrative idea yet:
to open a salvage yard in Central Texas.
- He had actually asked Mary to come help him run the scrapyard.
So, at that point, their relationship kind of becomes
more of a business relationship.
- He still cared about Mary even though they were divorced.
He didn't want to see her fail.
He didn't want to see her starve, so he employed her.
- RODNEY: Raymond set up a warehouse
that he bought and remodeled,
and made into a living quarters
approximately one block away from the scrapyard
for Mary to reside in.
- NARRATOR: The unconventional relationship seemed to work,
but 55-year-old Ray still longed
for a romance that would last.
- Somewhere in 2008,
Ray decided that he wanted to try to find a wife,
maybe a kinder, softer, gentler person.
- That's about the time where he started going
to the Philippines, trying to find a companion
to spend the rest of his life with.
- Ray legitimately was looking for somebody
who he had chemistry with.
- NARRATOR: Ray found what he was looking for
when a friend introduced him to 30-year-old Atina Cagadas,
a single mom living in Manila.
- They began writing letters back and forth
and communicating,
and that was something that Ray was big on
was, if somebody'll sit down and write you a letter,
then you know that you mean something to them.
- They started having phone calls,
and hit it off pretty well.
On May 3, 2009, he went to the Philippines,
and spent two weeks over there.
- I know that that was a second or third penpal girlfriend
he met over there,
but the first one that he felt really good about.
He thought, "This is the gal for me."
- BETH: He had proposed to her,
and she thought he was kidding.
And he said, "No, I'm serious,
"I will petition for you to move to the United States,
and marry me if you want to do that."
And so, she told him that she would do it.
- CHRIS: Ray applied for a fiancée visa,
and arranged for Atina and her young daughter
to move into his home in central Texas.
- BETH: That's the first father
that her daughter had ever known anything like a father figure,
and they really hit it off really well.
And Atina was really happy
that he was willing to embrace her daughter that way.
I think that really sealed the deal for her.
- NARRATOR: Atina and 10-year-old Charmaine
finally arrived in Texas in January of 2011.
- I know Dad was eager to train Atina to run the office
of the yard for him.
He was gonna teach her everything she needed to know.
- They had 90 days to get married,
uh, or her visa would expire.
So, they planned to get married on April 4.
That was going to be her 31st birthday.
- NARRATOR: But just five days before the wedding,
an unthinkable act
could potentially destroy the joyous occasion.
On March 31, 2011,
local law enforcement is at Ray's scrapyard,
where he was shot by an unidentified assailant.
- RODNEY: Mr. Jacoby had already been transported
to the local hospital.
The patrol officers were still treating the scene as if,
uh, there was still an active shooter present.
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
Had the nature of Ray's business made him a target?
- Unfortunately, the people that came and scrapped there
weren't the greatest of people.
- They kept a large amount of cash inside that business
to be able to pay people $10 to $15,000 a day.
- NARRATOR: And tensions rise as officers face the possibility
of an active shooter.
- As they came in, they were really at a disadvantage
from a tactical standpoint.
That made the scene very dangerous
for those initially responding officers.
- ♪
♪
- NARRATOR: Law enforcement officers
in Mexia, Texas, have surrounded a local scrapyard
where its owner, Ray Jacoby, was found shot
near the front gate.
With Ray en route to the hospital,
detectives turn to the 911 caller, Mary Jacoby,
a familiar face to police.
- RODNEY: A lot of theft investigations that we did have
led us to the scrapyard.
If I went over there looking for a stolen piece of merchandise,
they were cooperative in telling me
who had brought it in there,
so, I was familiar with Mary Jacoby.
So I went over and asked her what had happened.
- CHIP: She had called Ray,
I believe around 6:50 in the morning,
and said that she was coming around to the scrapyard.
Uh, Ray was eating breakfast,
and, uh, he said he'd open the gate when he was done.
- JEFF: She said that after she spoke with Ray,
about 10 to 15 minutes later,
she had gone to the salvage yard.
- RODNEY: She said when she got there,
she pulled up in front of the scrapyard,
and she noticed that the entrance gate
to the scrapyard was slightly open.
She walked over, she found him facedown.
She began to say, "Ray, Ray, what's going on,
what's the matter?"
- JEFF: He had made a noise that she described continually
as kind of like, "Uh, uh," or like a--
like a coughing sound.
And that she didn't know what had happened to him at first,
but that she then went to try to roll him over and couldn't.
She sees the bullet hole,
then goes back to her car, gets her phone, calls 911.
- NARRATOR: Though Mary can't think of why anyone
would want to harm Ray,
investigators have begun speculating.
- REVENDY: The first thing that pops into your mind,
this guy has a scrapyard,
you hear, uh, rumors about this guy
that he's got money.
- JEFF: The salvage yard, being a cash business,
obviously, they kept a large amount of cash
inside that business to be able to pay people.
Ten to fifteen thousand dollars a day, they would pay out.
- CHIP: Unfortunately,
some of the people that came and scrapped there
weren't the greatest of people.
Knowing that there was a large amount of money
at that location from time to time,
it was a concern that it could have been a robbery.
- NARRATOR: But before investigators can confirm,
they need to clear the scene.
An active shooter or shooters could be hiding anywhere.
And Mary says Ray's fiancée, Atina, and her young daughter
are somewhere on the property as well.
- They were trying to secure the scene as best they could,
um, that was challenging.
- JEFF: As they came in, they were really at a disadvantage
from a tactical standpoint.
Lined on that street was just a whole bunch of junk,
for lack of a better term,
that quite frankly, made the scene very dangerous
for those initially responding officers.
They certainly had their work cut out for them,
clearing the inside of the salvage yard,
and securing the scene.
- CHIP: They set up a perimeter,
they kind of went through looking for people.
When they were doing that,
they found a lady by the name of Kayla Wendt.
- NARRATOR: The 21-year-old identifies herself
as the girlfriend of Mary's son, Chapin.
- Chapin was in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
serving some time.
Mary and Raymond let Kayla stay on the, uh, property.
- JEFF: Kayla was living in a travel trailer on the property.
She said that she was asleep.
I guess she just slept hard enough
that she didn't hear the gunshot.
- NARRATOR: Kayla is placed in a patrol car
while police continue clearing the scene.
Inside the building that houses both Ray's office and residence,
they find a woman doing housework.
- BETH: She had a broom in her hand,
and when they came in and they saw her, you know,
they were hollering to-- to put her hands up.
- NARRATOR: The woman identifies herself as Ray's fiancée, Atina,
and when she doesn't comply with the commands
of law enforcement, tension only grows.
- JEFF: They put her at gunpoint,
and she just looked extremely confused and frightened.
- NARRATOR: Investigators soon realize
Atina's lack of cooperation is due to a language barrier.
- She understood some very basic words,
but not concepts at all.
They wanted to know if anybody else was in there,
and since she wasn't responding, they handcuffed her.
They took her upstairs to wake up her daughter.
And then they took the cuffs off,
and took them outside where the police were,
and where Mary was out where Ray's body had been.
- NARRATOR: With all the scrapyard's residents
now in custody,
police search for anyone who's not supposed to be there.
But whoever fired at Ray Jacoby seems to have vanished,
leaving little in the way of evidence behind.
- JEFF: They did locate,
I believe it was two bullet holes in the fence
that they believe could have been in the same trajectory,
um, of where Ray's body would have been standing
when he was shot.
And inside one of those holes,
they were able to locate a projectile.
- NARRATOR: A thorough search of the main building
only adds to the mystery.
- BETH: The office was open,
and there was just cash in the drawers of the office
that they used to pay people
when they brought in their scrap.
There were guns that weren't taken that were sitting there
that would've maybe had some value.
It just didn't look like a robbery.
- JEFF: Obviously, the police confiscated every gun
that they could find.
All of the guns that they did locate
were inside either the office or the living quarters.
Those guns and those weapons belonged to Ray Jacoby.
- NARRATOR: As investigators continue processing the scene,
there's bad news from the hospital.
- REVENDY: They had pronounced him dead at the hospital,
but you know, he was probably dead before he left the scene.
- NARRATOR: Police deliver the news to Ray's loved ones.
- RODNEY: The chief of police walked over to the truck
where Mary was standing,
and he said, "Uh, well, Mary, Raymond didn't make it."
Mary looked at him,
and she just kind of fell to the ground.
- Mary started crying and hyperventilating,
and it got very emotional.
- RODNEY: We called EMS in.
They came in to check Mary out,
they cleared her.
- Atina, on the other hand, did not have much of a reaction.
She just looked at the ground, and just could not figure out
what had in the world had happened.
- NARRATOR: Investigators hope more focused interviews
in a new environment
with the three women who live at the scrapyard
will yield some leads.
- I transported Atina and her daughter and Kayla
to the, uh, Mexia Police Department to interview them.
Mary drove in her own vehicle,
and it was there that other investigators, Hunley
and, uh, the ranger begin to interview them.
- We know that he was alive at 6:55
when he was talking to Mary on the phone.
And we know at 7:06,
he's been shot because of the 911 call.
So, what we had to figure out
was what happened in that 11 minutes.
- The natural inclination when you have a murder
is to get whoever did it locked up as fast as possible.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
A potential suspect comes into focus.
- We noticed that this number had been calling her
just about every day.
- He probably had some knowledge of a plan to kill Raymond.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: March 31, 2011,
in the hours following the murder of Ray Jacoby
at the gate of his own scrapyard,
detectives in Mexia, Texas, prepare to speak
to three women found at the scene of the crime.
- RODNEY: Kayla was a girlfriend of Mary's son,
and she stayed in her travel trailer on the property.
She did not hear any loud noises,
she didn't hear any--
she didn't hear anything until she was woke up by the police.
- In her interview, Kayla was very evasive in her answers.
- JEFF: She didn't really have an alibi
because she was the only person inside of the trailer,
that she was asleep,
and so the answers to her question typically were,
"I don't know, I don't have any information."
- CHIP: Her interview wasn't that long,
she just--she didn't respond well to police.
- NARRATOR: Investigators turn their focus
to Ray's fiancée, Atina,
and find a way to break through the language barrier.
- RODNEY: I remember her telling me,
"I can understand you if you speak slowly."
- NARRATOR: Atina confirms what Mary told police on the scene
about talking to Ray on the phone.
- She said he sounded like he was,
you know, kinda agitated by it
because she was bugging him this early in the morning.
- BETH: When she was doing that, she went into the restroom,
she looked out the window,
and she saw Mary sitting in her truck.
- CHIP: She saw Ray walk out to the gate.
When she saw Ray start to open the gate,
she went back to sweeping,
and went back towards the back of the house.
And she said she heard a boom.
- RODNEY: We're like, "Okay, what do you mean by boom?"
She says, "There's a lot of noises
"and heavy equipment moving around,
I didn't think anything of it."
- JEFF: Atina was cooperative, she was forthcoming.
She was able to communicate to the best of her ability.
- NARRATOR: Though Atina's presence at the scrapyard
during the timeframe of Ray's murder
made her an initial suspect, after speaking with her,
investigators can't rationalize a motive.
- RODNEY: Atina had everything to lose in this.
It's like, why would she kill this man
and face deportation back to the Philippines?
That's the last thing that you would want to see happen,
you know, and have all of your dreams shattered
a week before you were to get married.
- NARRATOR: With Atina becoming a less likely suspect,
investigators ask her if she noticed any conflict
between Ray and his ex-wife, Mary Jacoby.
- NARRATOR: With the information from Atina in hand,
investigators have their first real chance to question Mary.
- NARRATOR: Investigators press harder,
even questioning whether Mary was upset
about Ray and Atina's upcoming wedding.
- NARRATOR: Mary insists she's happy about Atina marrying Ray.
- Mary was acting how I've always known her to act,
uh, just kind of calm.
It wasn't anything out of the normal.
- NARRATOR: Mary also seems to be incredibly cooperative.
- Mary lets them see her phone,
so now Chip is going through her phone,
looking at her call log.
- NARRATOR: As investigators scroll through her call history
from the morning of Ray's murder,
one contact stands out.
- NARRATOR: Though the mysterious Dennis is a red flag,
Mary seems to have an answer for everything,
and investigators run out of questions.
- RODNEY: We decided to do a gunshot residue
on all three of 'em.
I did two of 'em on, uh, Kayla and Atina.
The other investigator did the gunshot residue kit on Mary.
- NARRATOR: Unfortunately,
the results could take months to complete,
until then, the women are all free to go.
- Once we wrapped up all the interviews,
um, they left together.
- NARRATOR: With the women gone,
investigators dig deeper into Mary's cell phone records,
and make a suspicious discovery.
- We noticed this number had been calling her
just about every day, 30--like, 32, 33 times,
we were like, "That's odd."
It came back to Dennis Killy.
- NARRATOR: The same man who called Mary
about an hour before the murder.
- CHIP: Dennis was a former employee
of the scrapyard as well,
and, uh, a couple of years prior to the murder,
he and Ray had actually got into a fist fight.
- NARRATOR: In her interview, Mary had claimed
that Dennis was calling from Dallas that morning,
nearly 90 miles away.
- CHIP: When we tracked his GPS location,
we actually found him in Mexia the morning of the murder.
And then he was going back to East Texas,
where he lived.
- CHRIS: You have to wonder why he was there.
His cell phone pinged there, and then soon after the crime,
he is immediately hours away.
- NARRATOR: Investigators need to talk
to Dennis Killy straight away.
- Unfortunately, it was tough to track Mr. Killy down.
I would like to be able to find out the truth.
Is it possible that Dennis was involved in the murder?
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Had a hit man cashed in a bounty on Ray's head?
- He just tensed up,
and he was like, "You know what, we need to end this interview,"
and he just shut down.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Forty-five-year-old Dennis Killy
has just become a prime suspect in Ray Jacoby's murder
when phone records place him in the vicinity of the shooting
on the morning it happened.
- Dennis was a former employee of the scrapyard as well,
and, uh, a couple of years prior to the murder,
he and Ray had actually got into a fist fight at the scrapyard.
- NARRATOR: The dozens of phone calls
between him and Mary
only add to the suspicion of his possible involvement.
- He was in question as well, and--and, uh, unfortunately,
it was tough to track Mr. Killy down.
- NARRATOR: While officers attempt to track down Dennis,
detectives are desperate for more details
on Ray's scrapyard business.
They speak to some of Ray's employees,
who paint a much different picture
of Mary and Ray's relationship
than Mary had led police to believe.
- CHIP: She said her and Ray got along,
even though they were divorced.
But she minimized her dislike for Ray,
according to other people that were always around them.
- CHRIS: In one particular incident,
an employee described intervening in a fight
that was escalating between Ray and Mary.
And Mary turning to that employee,
and saying, "I wish Ray was dead."
- NARRATOR: Another employee describes driving Ray
to the airport about ten days before the murder.
- BETH: When he came back from the airport,
he went in the office, and he heard Mary say,
"If that plane would crash,
it would take care of their problem."
- NARRATOR: On April 15, 2011, 2 weeks after Ray's murder,
a friend of Ray and Mary's comes forward
to get something off his chest.
- RODNEY: We had been looking for Dennis Killy,
and we hadn't been getting any leads.
We're sitting at the office one day,
and in walks Robin-- Robin Dabney,
and his wife, Kim Dabney.
Robin sat down at the desk, and he took a long sigh.
- He said, "Mary wanted to give me $30,000 to kill Ray."
And we're like, "Dude, what?"
- BETH: I believe it was in October of 2009
when Ray had gone to see Atina the second time.
Kim and Robin Dabney were having dinner with Mary
in her fifth wheel in the scrapyard.
And at the end of dinner,
she asks Robin if he would kill Ray for her.
- She said she would find the body.
And that she would take care of them
for the rest of their lives basically.
- He said that Mary actually took $15,000,
and put it on the table.
And said, "I'll give you half now,
and half when it's over."
And Robin declined.
He said, "I'm not getting involved in that."
And Kim backed the story up.
Ultimately, the DA asked us to have them both polygraphed,
and they both said they would.
And they both passed with flying colors.
We knew that Mary wanted Ray gone at that point.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Robin's statement
is a huge piece of the puzzle for detectives,
but it's not enough for an arrest.
- CHRIS: They needed to have a solid case
to bring to the prosecution to present at trial.
It was all circumstantial at this point.
They didn't wanna leave any stone unturned.
- NARRATOR: On July 6, 4 months after Ray Jacoby's murder,
investigators finally track down Dennis Killy.
- RODNEY: We got to working with the authorities
up in Henderson County.
And then we later learned that he was recently arrested
on an unrelated charge, and was currently in jail.
Ranger Cantu and I went over to interview him.
- NARRATOR: At first, Dennis seems forthcoming.
He swears he had nothing to do with the murder,
and explains that the altercation
between him and Ray all those years ago
was just a misunderstanding.
- Ray thought Dennis had taken a tire or something
from the scrapyard,
and, you know, Dennis said he didn't.
One or both of 'em were charged in that,
just kind of disorderly conduct-type deal.
- RODNEY: When we begin to question him
about past history with law enforcement,
then I guess he just tensed up,
and he was like, "You know what, we need to end this interview."
I felt like he thought
that we were probing him to some other area,
and he just shut down.
- NARRATOR: With Dennis refusing to talk,
detectives are still looking for more evidence
to bring charges in the case.
Finally, in September,
the gunshot residue test results come in.
- JEFF: In giving the GSR,
the three elements that they're looking for
are antimony, barium, and lead,
and it needs to be in a high enough concentration
on the same general location on your skin
for them to be able to say that this is consistent
with being gunshot residue.
- RODNEY: Atina and Kayla had one element on their hands,
which is an element that is typical
just from probably working in the environment
that they were working in.
Mary came back with all three elements,
and I was like, "Oh boy, this ain't good for her."
- NARRATOR: Detectives feel an arrest warrant
is almost within reach,
but they hope for one more piece of evidence
to push them over the edge.
- RODNEY: From conversations that we had
with the county attorney,
it was more like we're almost there,
but you had the feeling like it was something missing.
So it was--it got to a point where it's, like, okay, well,
let's let her get in her own comfort zone.
Since it's taken so long to make an arrest,
maybe she will slip up,
and give us that key piece of evidence
that we were looking for.
- NARRATOR: The case drags on for months,
then years, as authorities conduct hundreds of interviews.
- There were so many rabbit trails
we had to go down in this investigation.
That's probably why it lasted five years.
It just always came back to Mary.
- We didn't want to just jump to that conclusion,
and immediately accuse the ex-wife.
And of course, we just kept looking for the weapon.
That would've been very nice to have.
- NARRATOR: While investigators spend years chasing leads,
Mary takes over the scrapyard.
- After Ray dies, Mary's walking around the scrapyard
like she owns the place.
Uh, to many people on the outside,
it appeared that she had taken over the business entirely.
- Atina was scared, she was afraid of Mary,
and then Mary was goin' over to the yard in and out there,
while Atina and Charmaine were trying to be, you know--
trying to get through this rough situation
that had just occurred.
- Ron, Ray's son, hears word of this,
comes in, takes over the yard.
And before you know it, Mary doesn't have a job.
- NARRATOR: Mary's son, Chapin, is released from prison in 2016,
and with no job left for Mary in Mexia,
the two move 300 miles away to George West, Texas,
both hoping for a fresh start.
Back in Mexia, Ray's loved ones
wonder if justice will ever be served.
- RON: You gotta be persistent, you know,
and if you don't go, you know, make the wheels squeak,
no one's gonna do anything.
- CHIP: Ron and his mom,
they were continuously calling us,
and--and, you know, "When are you gonna arrest Mary?
When are you gonna arrest Mary?"
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
A new witness statement reinvigorates the case.
- We didn't have to prove she's the one that pulled the trigger.
She's just the one that got him to the dance.
- Finally, we were getting what we had waited for.
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- NARRATOR: Five years after Ray Jacoby's murder,
all suspects other than his ex-wife, Mary,
have been eliminated.
- Of course, it's hard to hold onto a secret like that.
You know, we all thought at some point,
Mary might brag about it or admit it to somebody,
or somebody would come forward that she had talked to about it.
- NARRATOR: But when no new information comes to light,
prosecutors decide to take their chances with what they have.
- CHRIS: So the D.A. is gonna take a gamble here,
because there is a lot of circumstantial evidence,
but that gamble pays off with the grand jury.
They come back with an indictment.
Mary Jacoby is arrested on April 22, 2016.
- CHIP: She had no facial expression.
I really expected her response was gonna be different,
but when she just kind of smirked,
it just showed you how cold she was.
- It was most certainly joy,
and--and some satisfaction, you know,
and feeling like finally we were, you know,
gettin' what we had waited for.
- NARRATOR: As prosecutors prepared for trial,
they revisit an initial person of interest
in the case--Dennis Killy,
who has recently been released from jail.
- JEFF: I would say approximately
six months before the trial,
we were able to arrange a meeting with Dennis Killy,
and our goal of that meeting was just basically to listen.
And it was at that time that he informed us
that Mary had at some point prior to the murder
actually asked him if he would kill Ray.
- NARRATOR: The offer described by Dennis
matches up with Robin Dabney's previous statement.
- That was one of the most damning statements about Mary,
which was that she had asked him before
to kill Raymond for $30,000.
- NARRATOR: At trial, in October of 2017,
the prosecution paints the story
of a woman driven by jealousy and greed.
- JEFF: With Atina and Charmaine coming in,
and--and helping Ray run the salvage yard,
I think there's several factors coming together kind of
all at once that led to this March 31 date.
- Mary wanted life to continue to be business as--as usual,
once Raymond was out of the picture.
Chapin would come home from incarceration.
He would run the yard,
and she would continue to run the office there
at the recycling center.
- JEFF: When Atina had come to live with Ray
in March of 2011,
she's really starting to see the writing on the wall
as to kind of what's happening.
- CHRIS: Now she's being pushed out of the picture,
or so she thinks.
Her life was going to change on April 4,
and that was a big threat to what her plans were.
- CHIP: I think she shopped around
with Killy and Robin Dabney
to find somebody to do her dirty work,
and she never could find somebody to do it,
so she ultimately did it herself.
- RON: I think she had a bit of a broken heart,
and I--and that's part of the reason why I think she did it,
'cuz she shot him in the chest.
I think she was tryin' to hurt his heart.
- [gunshot]
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- NARRATOR: Between Mary's shifting timeline,
Atina's testimony about seeing Mary at the gate,
and the positive gun residue test,
the prosecution lays out a compelling case,
though questions of a potential accomplice remain unanswered.
- Is it possible that Dennis was involved
in the murder? It is.
Um, did he fire the--the shot?
I--I believe that the evidence supports
that Mary was the one that--
she either fired the weapon or handled the weapon.
Now, Dennis could have got rid of the weapon, who knows.
- BETH: We didn't have to prove she's the one
that pulled the trigger.
She's just the one that got him to the dance.
And you know that clearly,
she had done that with the phone calls,
and changing the schedule.
And she's the one with the motive,
and all the other statements.
And had tried to get somebody to do it before.
- NARRATOR: After just two hours of deliberation,
the jury finds Mary guilty.
She is sentenced to life behind bars.
- I don't know how someone in her shoes
can't stop and think about the children.
You know, who's thinking about
my--my--my son and my daughter
that will never meet their grandfather?
- BETH: It was hard to understand
how a 56-year-old woman,
who had benefited so much from this man's generosity,
and giving her a job even after they were divorced.
It was hard to get our head wrapped around the fact
that she was mean enough to kill him.
- Mexia is a small town, and everybody knows everybody.
But when this case came up, it makes you wonder,
do you really know everybody?
- It breaks my heart, 'cuz I know how much he gave.
You could always count on him.
He'd always be there to help you.
The world misses a hard worker,
and a man that would always love and give as best he could.
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