- FEMALE NARRATOR: He was a big man
with even bigger ambitions.
- He had a dream of working for himself.
He always wanted to be the best father he could be.
- He was the vice president
of the Iron Wings Motorcycle Club.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: But his gang can't protect him when shots ring out
in his own home.
- [gunshots blasting]
- It was shocking, vile, and so violent.
- NARRATOR: As the case unfolds,
detectives will explore the seedy underbelly
of gang rivalries.
- He enjoyed being feared.
Nobody messed with Big Mike.
Big Mike was someone to be reckoned with.
- It got into kind of seeing who was the alpha club.
- KEN: The lifestyle that he led,
uh, people that he hung out with, you know,
maybe it was some type of retaliation.
- NARRATOR: Or is someone else in this tough biker's life
out for revenge?
- They fought nearly every day.
- The relationship was in a downward spiral.
- JULIE: He's basically said, "Get lost.
I'm done with you. I'm sick of your [bleep]."
- ♪
♪♪
- ♪
- NARRATOR: April 12, 2012.
10 p.m.
It's a quiet night in Erie, Pennsylvania,
as members of the "Leader of Men" riding club
are winding down for the night in their clubhouse.
- JULIE: The Leader of Men Riding Club,
they're motorcycle enthusiasts.
They enjoy riding motorcycles, they have fundraisers,
they have a band.
- The clubhouse is kind of like their hangout,
their meeting point.
- NARRATOR: But the camaraderie is shattered when gunshots
ring out overhead.
- [gunshot blasting]
- KEN: So, they duck and scatter in the clubhouse
when the shots went off.
- NARRATOR: Club members believe the sounds came from
the apartment upstairs.
- Michael Henry lives in an apartment above their clubhouse,
and he's a member of another motorcycle club,
the Iron Wings.
And he is a prominent member in that club.
- NARRATOR: As the air grows quiet,
Leader of Men club member, Petie Miller calls Mike
to find out what's going on.
- JULIE: He called approximately five times.
Michael Henry is not picking up his phone.
Now he's getting concerned, now he's getting worried.
It's dead silent up there.
- NARRATOR: Petie reaches out to several
of Mike's club members.
Within minutes, a small group of Iron Wings shows up.
- JULIE: They bang on Mike's front door,
which is a door in the middle of the building that exits
out into the parking lot, where everybody is parked.
This door is locked.
They go to the back door, and they find that this door
is ratcheted close with an industrial ratchet.
- NARRATOR: Fearing for Mike's safety,
his club members kick in the exterior door.
As two of the men walk cautiously up the stairs
to Mike's apartment door,
they're met with a horrific sight.
- He then sees Michael Henry
sitting in there on the futon, slumped over to the side.
- There was a large amount of blood on the carpet.
There was a large amount of blood on the futon.
- Petie Miller made the 911 initial call.
He calls and says that there had been a shooting.
- [siren wailing]
- NARRATOR: Officers arrive in minutes and are immediately
taken aback by the gruesome scene.
- He was shot approximately four times.
- JACK: Who could've done this?
Who would've had a motive to do something like this?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: 31-year-old Erie native Michael J. Henry
was known for his big stature and love of motorcycles.
- NICOLE: I kind of known him for pretty much all his life.
Everyone just called him Big Mike because he was big.
He always loved bikes, you know?
Uh, he knew a lot about them.
He was a mechanic, so he knew how to build them too.
Mike actually started his own motorcycle club
called the Iron Wing Club.
- JULIE: They're very serious about their motorcycles.
They're very serious about being bikers.
- NICOLE: It was just a bunch of guys that had regular jobs.
They all hung out together a lot on the weekends
and stuff like that.
It was all about motorcycles.
- NARRATOR: Mike was just as dedicated to the club as he was
to running his own business.
- NICOLE: He had a dream of working for himself.
He wanted to start his own pallet company.
Kind of like you take these pallets, and you...
kind of just pick them up from businesses.
You--you recycle them, and eventually his idea was to take
the pallets and to make them into other things.
- NARRATOR: Though Mike had big ambitions,
he did have a checkered past.
- NICOLE: Mike had a short fuse.
If he got something in his head where that kind of
made him angry, it wasn't so easily to calm him down.
- Mostly, people appeared to be afraid of him.
They were--he was known to start fights with people.
Mike had served five years in prison for aggravated assault
where he beat a man into a coma.
- NICOLE: They were at a bar and someone was harassing
the girl, so he kind of got in a little brawl there
and ended up in jail.
- NARRATOR: After his five-year prison sentence was complete,
Mike worked to turn his life around.
In addition to co-founding the Iron Wings
and starting his own company, Mike found love in 2006
when an old friend walked back into his life.
- NICOLE: I didn't live here for like ten years.
He was actually at my brother's house.
And I went over there,
um, just kind of started talking to him, because I--I mean,
I was attracted to him.
- NARRATOR: Single mother of three, Nicole Spinelli
had no problem seeing past Mike's tough exterior.
- NICOLE: He was really funny.
I mean, he could make me laugh like probably
I'd never laughed before, you know,
um, which was interesting 'cause everyone looks at him
like this big scary guy, because he was huge, you know?
But, um, he was actually just a softy in a way.
- NARRATOR: The two quickly fell head over heels.
- NICOLE: We had a lot of fun.
We would go motorcycle riding.
We were together 24/7 it seemed like.
I just couldn't wait to always be with him.
- NARRATOR: In 2010, after 4 years together,
the couple found out they were expecting a baby.
- NICOLE: He talked about it all the time, you know,
us having a child.
But I really didn't plan on having any more kids.
I think we were both kind of like shocked and excited.
He always wanted to be the best father he could be.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: In May of 2011,
the couple welcomed their son Jaxxon.
- NICOLE: He longed to be a, you know, full-time father,
that's for sure.
That was really important to him.
I think it all stems from him not being around his father
as much as he would have liked growing up.
- NARRATOR: While things were great at first,
Mike eventually slipped back into old habits.
- NICOLE: He succumbed to the pressure of the club.
You know, they were going out every night, you know,
and they wouldn't come home.
It was just kind of like a bad time,
when it should've been a good time.
- NARRATOR: Ultimately, the couple split in 2012.
- Neither one of us really knew what we were going to do.
It was very confusing.
I was gonna do what I could to see if we could fix things.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: But before Mike and Nicole could work out
their differences, tragedy strikes when Mike's life
is cut short on April 12th, 2012.
- ♪
- The police went to the place where 911 had directed
them, which was an apartment over a motorcycle club.
- NARRATOR: As officers begin clearing the apartment,
they hear a faint cry coming from the next room.
- JULIE: They discovered Mike's ten-month-old son
in the crib,
just waking up, starting to cry.
- NARRATOR: Luckily, the child appears unharmed.
- JULIE: You start to think, who would do this?
Who would fire off four or five shots in an apartment with
a 10-month-old child within 15 feet of his father?
- It was shocking, vile, and so violent.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Evidence suggests Mike may have been targeted.
- CHELSEA: The person who murdered Mike wanted him dead.
- Was this homicide committed
by a rival motorcycle club?
Or was it something more personal?
- NARRATOR: And a tangled love affair sparks suspicion.
- JANICE: He had been seeing other women.
She knew that she was not his only girlfriend.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: On the night of April 12th, 2012,
Erie, Pennsylvania, police officers find
31-year-old Mike Henry shot to death in his apartment.
Their first order of business is protecting
Mike's ten-month-old son.
- The thing that got everybody is that his son
was sitting there and then whoever shot him,
shot him, killed him and left.
And the son was still there.
- The child was okay and was removed, uh,
and taken into custody by Child Protective Services.
- I was very shocked when I found this out.
My mom called me and told me Mike's dead and, you know,
the first thing through my head is,
"Well, you know, where's the baby?"
"And the baby's fine."
I mean, I couldn't believe it.
I was thankful that nothing happened to my son.
A lot of thankfulness and, you know, tears at the same time.
It was a very hard time though, it definitely was.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: As Mike's son is taken away,
detectives arrive on the scene and get to work.
- Mike Henry was shot four times.
He was shot once in the leg, twice in the chest,
and once in the head.
We could tell that it didn't take long for him to pass.
It would have been a matter of seconds.
- Thoughts were initially, okay,
was this homicide committed by a rival motorcycle club?
Or was it something more personal?
- NARRATOR: Based on the positioning of the body
and the location of the blood stains,
detectives theorize about what may have happened.
- The individual walked up on him while he had been laying
in bed and initially fired and then, upon him getting up,
continued to fire and walked out of the apartment
right after that.
So, it was almost like walking by, shooting somebody,
and continue to walk out of the apartment.
- NARRATOR: As detectives search the scene,
they recover four shell casings.
- KEN: The shell casings were 9-millimeter shell casings,
which told us that a 9-millimeter handgun
would have been used and that it matched up
with the number of shots that we believe were on Mike Henry.
- NARRATOR: Though detectives are able to determine
the type of weapon used, they are unsure how the killer
gained access to Mike's apartment.
- We're looking, trying to figure out, okay,
how--how would this individual get into this apartment
without Mike Henry knowing?
Being that his size and everything,
and the position that he was in, he was surprised.
- NARRATOR: Although detectives have many questions,
there is one thing they know for sure.
- There's a TV there, there's appliances there,
there's money located in a bedroom.
It doesn't appear that burglary or robbery was the motive.
- KEN: The fact that it looks like they got in there,
shot him, and got out.
That was the intent.
The intent was to kill Mike Henry.
- NARRATOR: Since there were no signs of forced entry,
detectives suspect one of two things:
- KEN: Somebody either had a key,
or they knew how to get into the apartment without having to
kick in the door or pry it open or anything like that.
- So, everybody close to Mike was a suspect at first.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: As CSI continues processing the scene,
witnesses are transferred to the station for interviews.
Detectives first speak with Leader of Men motorcycle club
member Petie Miller.
- He's the one that made the 911 initial call.
We learned that he heard an argument,
some shuffling around, and then pop, pop.
Some more muffled sounds and then a pop, pop, pop.
- NARRATOR: Petie says he hadn't called 911 right away
because he didn't want to upset Mike.
- He said, "If Mike was up there doing something himself,
"I didn't want him to get pissed off at me.
"I'm not going to get involved.
I'm going to let his motorcycle club look into it."
He was a biker, and he lived the biker life.
Nobody messed with Big Mike.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Petie says three weeks earlier,
the Iron Wings and another club had gotten into a brawl.
- JULIE: There was an incident involving Michael Henry
in a fight out in the local bar called the Oasis
a couple of weeks prior.
So, his initial thought was,
"Could this be a continuation of that?"
And that motorcycle club was called
the Lucky 13 motorcycle club.
- The lifestyle that he led,
uh, people that he hung out with, you know,
maybe it was some type of retaliation.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask Petie if someone else
may have been angry with Mike.
While he can't think of anyone,
Petie admits Mike was very popular with the ladies.
- KEN: He was known through his hangouts
as he was a ladies' man.
You know, he didn't, you know, stick with one girl very long.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Armed with multiple leads,
authorities next turn to Mike's heartbroken family
to learn more about his personal life.
- CHELSEA: His mother and his father said, even though he did
have a past, when his son was born,
that was the turning point for him.
And he was starting to turn his life around and better himself
for not only him, but for his son as well.
- NARRATOR: Mike's family says he had dated his son's mother,
Nicole Spinelli, for years, but the two had recently split.
And within a couple of weeks,
Mike started seeing a woman named Rachel Kozloff.
- When we were split up, Michael told me one day,
you know, that he did meet a girl.
Rachel was her name.
- So, at that point, we're trying to gather
as much information as we can about Rachel.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: A native of Erie, 30-year-old Rachel Kozloff
was known for her lively, independent spirit.
- Rachel is a good person,
she has a great personality, she has a great sense of humor.
- NARRATOR: Despite her charismatic personality,
Rachel had never been lucky in love.
- SHANE: Rachel had four children
with four different fathers.
Some of them she remained friendly with, but regardless,
she had four men in her life that gave her children
and nothing else and walked away.
- NARRATOR: What her love life lacked,
Rachel made up for in motherhood.
- My mom is a loving, caring...
mama bear.
She just wants the best for us, and she tried her hardest.
- MARCUS: She's always been a shoulder to cry on,
ear to listen, and a mouth to give advice.
Uh, she's always been there for all of us.
- NARRATOR: Though raising four children
was a financial struggle,
Rachel always found a way to make ends meet.
- SARAH: She jumped around from job to job.
She did, uh, a bunch of different things.
- REBECCA: She instilled in me just to be
an independent person.
You don't need a man or woman to be there
to help you do anything.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: By February of 2012,
Rachel had all but given up on love...
until Mike Henry walked into her life.
- I feel like Rachel was definitely trying
something new in her life when it came to Mike,
because her other boyfriends weren't the same.
They were more, I guess, mild compared to Mike.
- NARRATOR: Though Mike seemed a bit rough around the edges,
Rachel could see a future with him.
- JANICE: He had been seeing other women.
She knew that she was not his only girlfriend,
but I think she thought that maybe they would have
a relationship just the two of them one day.
- SHANE: Rachel loved kids.
You know, and maybe the combination of Mike
having a son and that, you know, she saw that family unit,
you know, and that, that kind of endeared her to Mike.
- NARRATOR: Mike's family says
although he was in a relationship with Rachel,
he and Nicole still loved each other.
- NICOLE: We were, like I said, so much confusion and do you--
you know, do you want to let him go?
Do you want to try to work it out?
And you know, so, you were--so, I was still together with him.
- NARRATOR: According to Mike's family, in mid-March,
Nicole had to leave unexpectedly for a family emergency
and has been there ever since.
- NICOLE: I was actually had to go to Ohio,
and I was going to be in Ohio for like a month,
and it was unexpected, so while I was down there,
he had Jaxxon at the time.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: After finishing up with Mike's family,
detectives track down Nicole.
- JULIE: This is informational in nature,
and we just want to gather as much information as we can.
We want to talk to everybody who may have been involved.
- NARRATOR: Police confirm Nicole was out of town
at the time of Mike's murder, eliminating her as a suspect.
Next, detectives work to track down Mike's new girlfriend.
- We needed to speak with her immediately.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Detectives come face to face with Mike's new lover.
- JACK: She was sobbing and breaking down.
She either didn't do this,
or she's the best actress in the world.
- NARRATOR: And a chilling interview fuels the flames
of a gang retaliation.
- There was a pretty good stomping and beat down
until someone fired a shot.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Just four hours into the investigation of the
brutal homicide of motorcycle club member Mike Henry,
detectives have uncovered a number of leads.
- There was a fight involving Michael Henry
and another member of the Lucky 13 Motorcycle Club,
and he had a complicated love life.
Mike's been in and out of relationships.
- NARRATOR: Though detectives have verified
the mother of Mike's son, Nicole Spinelli, was in Ohio
at the time of Mike's murder, they have yet to track down
Mike's current girlfriend, 30-year-old Rachel Kozloff.
Luckily, it doesn't take long to find her.
- We were given information that Rachel Kozloff
had driven to the police department.
She was downstairs and ready to be interviewed.
Mike's club members had reached out to her and said, "Hey,
the police want to speak with you, come down to the station."
Rachel did not indicate that she knew why she was there.
And we did not tell her.
- NARRATOR: Detectives start by asking Rachel
about her relationship with Mike Henry.
- I ask her to just to go through her--her day,
her evening.
- NARRATOR: Rachel says around 6:30 p.m.,
she stopped by Mike's to have dinner,
and that's when things got intimate.
- Rachel says that when she goes over there,
he asks her to pleasure him.
I asked, "Is this something that you normally do?"
And she says "Yes, this happens all the time."
She said, "But when I go to pleasure him, he smells of sex."
- Rachel says after Mike explained himself,
the two were fine, and she left shortly after.
But around 9 p.m., while she was out with a friend,
Mike initiated a fight over text.
- NARRATOR: Rachel explains that the texts were
going nowhere, so she decided to return to Mike's apartment.
- She wanted to go there and see how he was doing
and make up with him.
- NARRATOR: According to Rachel,
she arrived at Mike's around 9:30 p.m.
and had to park in the adjacent lot since the parking lot
outside of Mike's building was full.
- She says that she walks around the building,
goes in, and lets herself in because she has a key.
And walks into his apartment and says,
"What's up? What's going on?"
- NARRATOR: Rachel says Mike then went to the bathroom.
- And at that point, she sees a number on his phone
that she doesn't recognize.
So, according to Rachel, she memorizes that number.
- NARRATOR: According to Rachel, when Mike came back,
he went into a rage.
- Rachel says he grabs her by the arm,
he pulls her off the futon, and he throws her into the wall.
- NARRATOR: Rachel claims she has no idea
what caused Mike's sudden outburst.
- JULIE: So, she thinks, I'm going to call that phone number
because it's got to be something that's going on,
why he's acting like this.
She says a woman answers on the other end of the phone.
- NARRATOR: According to Rachel,
the woman identified herself as Josie Noble,
an ex-girlfriend of Mike's.
- NARRATOR: Hours later, Rachel says she received
an ambiguous text from one of Mike's friends.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask Rachel if she owns a gun.
- She tells us she lost her gun.
She's not sure where it's at.
The last time she saw it,
it was in Michael Henry's center console in his truck.
- NARRATOR: Though Rachel appears genuine,
detectives can't help but think she's hiding something.
- JULIE: At this point in the interview,
I thought I would let her know why she was actually there
at the police department.
- JACK: There is Rachel Kozloff,
immediately sobbing and breaking down,
and we both looked at each other and said,
"She either didn't do this,
or she's the best actress in the world."
- NARRATOR: Rachel says last month a physical fight broke out
between the members of Mike's club and the Lucky 13 club.
- NARRATOR: Before concluding Rachel's interview,
detectives assess her injuries.
- JULIE: On her right arm,
I did not notice any visual injuries.
When I examined her right ankle, I did however note that it was
a little puffy, and there was a scrape on the side of her ankle.
- NARRATOR: Rachel willingly turns over her phone,
car, and clothing for analysis.
As Rachel's items are sent to the crime lab,
detectives call in one of Mike's fellow club members
and ask if Mike's murder could have been the rival gang
coming back to finish the job.
- NICOLE: They had a misunderstanding,
and they were kind of seeing who--you know,
who was the alpha club?
- He told police that the Lucky 13 and the Iron Wings
were at peace.
- NARRATOR: Investigators work quickly to confirm this claim.
- JULIE: We learned there hadn't been any issues with
Lucky 13 in the past several weeks after the Oasis incident.
- Once our criminal investigation detectives
had time to talk with their club members,
we ruled out that it could be a rival gang that did this crime.
- They were all extremely upset
and concerned about Mike.
And it did not appear to us that they were responsible
for his shooting.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
A new witness turns the investigation on its head.
- CHELSEA: She was threatening, she was rude, she attacked her.
It was not civil at all.
- NARRATOR: And investigators turn up the heat.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: It's been two days since the shooting death
of Mike Henry.
After eliminating a rival motorcycle club for
Mike's murder, detectives decide to track down Josie Noble,
the woman Mike's girlfriend, Rachel Kozloff,
claims was in contact with Mike on the night of his death.
- JULIE: She is a friend of Mike and a former ex of Mike's.
She said that Mike had reached out to her,
and she hadn't heard from him in months.
He subsequently sent a picture of his son to her.
And she responded back cordially, "Oh, he's cute.
How are you?"
And that was the extent of that conversation.
- NARRATOR: Josie says, later that night,
she got an alarming phone call.
- On the other end was a woman that said, "Who are you?"
And of course, Josie said she responded, "Well, who are you?"
As in: who is this woman yelling in the phone asking me who I am?
- NARRATOR: Josie's depiction of the encounter
greatly differs from the one Rachel Kozloff described.
- CHELSEA: It was the exact opposite of what Rachel said.
She was threatening, she was rude, she attacked her.
It was not civil at all.
- JULIE: Following her interview,
Josie was subsequently ruled out as a suspect.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: With Rachel's cell phone already in hand,
detectives pour over her phone records and find a different
type of relationship with Mike than the one she had portrayed.
- They didn't just fight literally only three times.
They fought nearly every day.
- NARRATOR: The final text exchange between the couple
suggests that on the night of April 12th,
Mike was ending the relationship for good.
- JULIE: He's basically told her, "Get lost.
I'm done with you. I'm sick of your [bleep]."
So, she sends out a text to Michael Henry, "Sleep tight,
I'll talk to you tomorrow."
She in turn goes and drives over to Michael Henry's
apartment unannounced.
- NARRATOR: But that's not all the texts reveal.
- JULIE: April 10th, just 2 days before the murder,
we have a text conversation between her and Mike,
asking her if he wanted her to bring her gun
over to the apartment.
So, this dispels her initial story that she lost her gun.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Evidence continues to pile up when detectives
dig up surveillance videos from Mike's building
and catch Rachel in a myriad of lies.
- JACK: The lot was not full.
She instead parked one street over in an effort that
her vehicle--we theorized--her vehicle would not be spotted
by Mike Henry, because the parking lot
was right beneath his window.
- She stated in her first interview that she exited
and left after being thrown down the stairs
the same way she came in.
We could not find that on the video.
Which means she left another way.
- JACK: That only left one other door that she could have
gone out without being caught on camera and that was the door
down through the vacant apartment down to the street.
- NARRATOR: On April 16th, detectives confront Rachel
with the discrepancies they have found.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask Rachel once again
how she got in and out of Mike's apartment.
- She stated she had gone right to the back door
because she had a key, and that's the door she went into.
- She denied no less than 17 times
that she had shot and killed Michael Henry.
She had lied about what she was wearing,
what door she had gone in and out of.
All the discrepancies continued to mount,
and that based on the evidence that we had,
we decided that we were going to arrest her.
- JACK: Our theory of the case was that this was
a very possessive woman, uh,
possessive of her boyfriends.
Rachel Kozloff was charged
with criminal homicide murder,
aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person,
and possessing instruments of a crime.
- NARRATOR: Rachel's family is shocked to learn of her arrest.
- I was devastated.
I was like, "No.
"You know, she would never do that.
She would never do that."
- SARAH: I think I had a lot of emotions.
Anger, worry, like, what's going to happen to her?
What's going to happen to the kids?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
New evidence forces Rachel to change her story.
- If that doesn't say that you're lying,
I don't know what does.
- NARRATOR: But will her harrowing tale
get her off the hook?
- It was either she shoot him and stop him from attacking her.
Or he was going to kill her. - [gunshots blast]
- ♪
- NARRATOR: In November of 2012,
prosecutors in Erie County are working hard to secure
their case against 31-year-old Rachel Kozloff
for the murder of 31-year-old Mike Henry.
- There was not any direct evidence at that point
in time that Rachel Kozloff had committed the murder.
And time and time again, she denied and denied and denied.
- NARRATOR: Then, three weeks before the trial is set
to begin, they receive
a game-changing piece of evidence from the crime lab.
- What we learned was her pants
had GSR residue on them.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Empowered by this new evidence,
when Rachel's trial begins on December 3rd,
prosecutors come out swinging, asserting that Rachel
killed Mike Henry in cold blood.
- JACK: Rachel Kozloff would not accept the fact
that the relationship was, uh, in a downward spiral,
and he essentially was kicking her to the curb.
- JULIE: I think that she suspected
he might be seeing somebody else.
So, the night that she went there,
and she saw that strange number and called it and got a woman
on the other end, that just sent her to the next level.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Prosecutors bolster their claim through
text messages, video surveillance
and the gunshot residue found on Rachel's clothing.
- The evidence pointed right to Rachel.
- She was the person that had been lying
throughout this entire process.
Everything just all led back to Rachel every time.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: When it's the defense's turn,
they finally admit that Rachel shot Mike Henry...
but argue it wasn't premeditated.
- The defense says that it was self-defense,
that Rachel was in fear for her life
during the altercation at Mike's apartment that night.
- NARRATOR: To support their claim,
Rachel takes the stand
and gives a shocking new version of events.
- She stated that she was pushed down the stairs
violently by Mike.
Rachel then testified that she gathered herself
and her belongings at the bottom of the stairs,
when Mike came back down and dragged her up the stairs,
back to the apartment where the fatal fight
ensued at that point.
- [gunshots blast]
- ♪
- It was either she shoot him and stop him
from attacking her, or he was going to kill her.
- It wasn't that she wanted to do it,
it's that she had to do it.
- NARRATOR: Prosecutors counter by noting the evidence
simply does not support Rachel's new version,
even if she did have a slightly swollen ankle
when she was interviewed by police.
- JULIE: This is just my theory.
That she stumbled and fell and was trying to get in and around
and get out of there as quick as she could.
Because there was no indication that Mike had thrown her
or her purse down the stairwell.
- NICOLE: He wasn't a monster like she described.
As far as like, you know, beating up women,
I don't think that was his style at all.
- NARRATOR: On December 7th, 2012,
the jury breaks for deliberations.
- The verdict did not take long, ah,
for the jury to completely dismiss Rachel Kozloff's story
of self-defense.
- The jury's unanimous verdict
was that she was guilty of third-degree murder.
- JULIE: I pretty much gave her every opportunity to tell me,
"Hey, it was obvious from your guys' texts that you had
"problems, you know, please, let me help you.
"Tell me what happened.
If it's a crime of passion, it's a crime of passion,"
but she denied, denied, denied.
- ELIZABETH: Her story just seemed to change.
I think the fact that the baby was there when it happened
was maybe the most disturbing part for the jurors.
- NARRATOR: On January 29th, 2013,
Rachel is sentenced to 18 to 40 years.
- ♪
- NICOLE: I was in shock.
I just still can't believe that she would go to that--
to that level, you know, and--and kill him.
It changed everyone's lives.
- It was devastating for our family.
You know?
My wife and I, the kids, I mean, they lost their mom.
- SARAH: She does feel very remorseful about, you know,
what she did and how it impacted,
you know, so many people.
- SHANE: I believe in all my heart,
when she pulled that trigger, she was defending herself
and her family and, um, unfortunately,
once she started to tell the truth,
it just didn't matter.
- NARRATOR: Though Rachel still maintains her actions
were that of self-defense, many believe
she was just a woman that had been pushed too far.
- I believe that on the night of the homicide,
it was just one rejection too many.
I think Rachel snapped.
- CHELSEA: We're really never going to know what happened
the night of April 12th between Mike and Rachel.
She had proven herself to be a liar.
Which is sad in her case,
because if he did really physically abuse her,
we're never going to know if that's true or not.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Though justice has been served
in the eyes of the law,
the events of April 12th, 2012, have a lasting impact.
- Our family broke up after that.
My parents got divorced.
We all went our separate ways.
My mom's now in Florida.
My dad has all three of the boys.
Uh, the daughter's with her dad and her stepmom.
We're just--we're all split up.
- NICOLE: I think the biggest tragedy is Mike's no--you know,
not here to grow up with his son because, in the end of the day,
that's what he really, really wanted.
He would have been an amazing father, I know it.
- ♪