in this Midwestern lake town.
- BRENDA: He had a good heart.
He would have gave his all for anybody at any time.
- He would give you the shirt off his back if he could.
- NARRATOR: But when his barstool goes empty,
his friends go looking.
- ERIC: There was a lot of blood on the floor.
He was lying in a pool of blood.
- The cut to his neck, it was a rather large cut,
several inches long.
- NARRATOR: As news of the gruesome crime spreads,
investigators must sift through rumors
about money, drugs, and obsession.
- He owed some money to a drug dealer.
- He said, "If something happens to me,
it's because I couldn't pay it."
He was scared.
He was literally very scared.
- SCOTT: In any homicide investigation,
you look at a number of things.
But the top three things: money, drugs, and sex.
- NARRATOR: After years of searching,
a smoking gun finally presents itself
from the most unlikely source.
- She wrote down how much she liked her pastor,
how she wanted him to hold her.
- ERIC: You have somebody who
is a good Christian wife and mother,
but who's battling some very serious demons.
- KELLEY: She had addiction problems,
and addiction's hard to beat.
- ERIC: She just had really lost all control.
- ♪
♪♪
- NARRATOR: Wednesday, April 28, 2004.
Camdenton, Missouri.
At 6:30 a.m., Cindy Christensen and Brian Norton
are checking on their friend, 48-year-old Tommy Hope,
who they haven't heard from in several days.
- ERIC: Tommy was known for speaking with friends often,
meeting with them, hanging out.
It was unusual to his friends and to his acquaintances
when no one had heard from him for a while.
- JEFF: They went to the residence to check on Tom.
They knocked on the door and yelled for Tom
and there was no response from inside the residence.
That's when he and Cindy decided that
Cindy would enter the residence through the window.
When she gets inside, she sees Tom laying on the floor
in between the kitchen and the living room.
- There was a lot of blood on the floor.
He was lying in a pool of blood.
- JEFF: That's when she screamed
and run to the front door and unlocked it.
- NARRATOR: Brian briefly goes inside,
seeing for himself what left Cindy so shaken.
- Brian is the one that made the suggestion that they
go to a friend's house and call the police.
- NARRATOR: Cindy and Brian rush to the home of Patricia Strouse
about a half mile away,
and Cindy attempts to explain what they have seen.
- PATRICIA: She was in a panic, of course very upset.
And she told me that he was dead, she had found him.
She didn't know what to do.
And then Cindy called the police from there.
- NARRATOR: As Cindy and Brian talk to the operator,
Patricia tries to wrap her head around what is unfolding.
- He was well liked and such a nice person.
It was very shocking.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Born on June 28, 1955,
Tommy Hope grew up in Texas.
For Tommy and his two siblings,
their early childhood was fraught with trouble.
- PATRICIA: The parents would go places
and leave the three of them, and they would be hungry.
The neighbor would keep his door unlocked
because he knew Tom would come in to get food.
- NARRATOR: Eventually, the Hope children were placed in
foster care, where Tommy faced more hardship.
- BRENDA: There was a lot of abuse in these foster care homes
that he suffered.
And he went without a lot, without food.
He was neglected, he was beaten.
- NARRATOR: While his siblings were adopted,
young Tommy was eager to strike out on his own.
As soon as he was able, Tommy joined the military.
- He was, like, around 18, 19 when he went in.
He was a true patriot.
He loved his country.
And he fought for this country.
He's seen a lot, was witnessed a lot
during his time in the service.
- NARRATOR: Following his discharge in his 20s,
Tommy relished a life with temporary commitments.
- ERIC: He was doing odd jobs
to make whatever money he needed in the moment.
It was not like he was planning for a long-term situation.
He would buy and sell vehicles, repair vehicles,
probably some yard work here and there.
Something that could help him get to the end of the week.
- PATRICIA: He lived in California and he did have
a life partner in California,
which he said was fairly long term.
And I don't know what happened, but she left,
and then he moved to Missouri.
- NARRATOR: By his mid-40s,
Tommy settled in Camdenton, Missouri,
and fell in with a group of locals
he met through the bar scene.
- BRENDA: He just kinda started talking to me one night
at the bar, just struck up conversation.
He was just friendly.
- KELLEY: He loved to drink.
Every time I'd see him, he'd have a beer in his hand.
- BRENDA: When I would close down the bar,
he would find music that we both liked and stuff.
And we'd laugh and sing and enjoy the music.
- NARRATOR: Tommy had little interest in devoting himself
to a woman or a career.
But there was no questioning his commitment to his friends.
- He would give you the shirt off his back if he could.
- BRENDA: He just seemed very loyal, a very loyal friend.
Somebody you could tell your most inner secrets to
and he would take that to his grave.
- ♪
- [siren wailing]
- NARRATOR: Now friends are wondering what secrets
may have led to his grisly death.
- PATRICIA: I knew when I couldn't get ahold of him
that there was something wrong.
You know, I could feel it.
- NARRATOR: Within minutes of the panicked 911 call,
officers arrive at Tommy's house.
- JEFF: I walked over to the body.
And at that point, I could see
that his shirt was soaked with blood.
There was also the stiffening of the body.
And it was obvious he'd laid there for some time.
- NARRATOR: Sergeant Beauchamp can tell Tommy suffered
a violent death, but the circumstances are still muddy.
- JEFF: We're unsure whether or not that it was an accident
causing the death or whether or not it was a, uh, homicide.
It's just kinda puzzling when you have that much blood
and not seeing that there was any type of struggle.
We weren't prepared to make that call.
We were waiting for the medical examiner.
- NARRATOR: While they wait, investigators continue
their search of the crime scene.
- BRIAN: They used luminol
to illuminate proteins in the blood.
And they could see, uh, images of footprints
with blood leading up to the window.
And then, uh, they found
a little bit of blood on the window frame
indicating that somebody who had been inside the house
had gotten out of the house through the window.
The only real explanation of that was somebody had to have
been inside the house at the time of death.
- NARRATOR: When the medical examiner arrives,
detectives learn more about Tommy's injuries.
- JEFF: The first thing that he observed and brought
to our attention was the cut to Tom's neck.
It was a rather large cut, several inches long.
- NARRATOR: For investigators,
it's enough to make one important determination.
- At that point, we made our decision that we were gonna
investigate the crime as a suspicious death.
- NARRATOR: The medical examiner also discovers a bottle of pills
in Tommy's pocket.
The name on the bottle gets the attention of investigators:
Cindy Christiansen.
- The two people who found Tom's body were Brian,
and then Cindy is the other person.
When somebody has your pills in their pocket,
it stands to reason that you would want an explanation
as to why they have your medication.
- BRIAN: In terms of Cindy Christiansen,
we wanted to know who she was,
what type of relationship she had with him,
why her pill bottle and pills were in his pocket.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Investigators uncover deadly vices.
- BRIAN: They had been using drugs
and had continued to use drugs together.
- ERIC: She had left her husband
and moved in with Tom for a period of time.
- PATRICIA: He had made a threat for him to stay away
or he would be sorry.
- She was stalking him, which he took as a threat.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: April 2004.
Investigators in Camdenton, Missouri, have just
recovered a pill bottle on the body of Tommy Hope.
But the name on the bottle isn't his.
It's the woman who'd first discovered Tommy's body.
- BRIAN: If Cindy didn't have anything to do with it,
then we wanted to know if she had some idea who might have.
- NARRATOR: Investigators head to the nearby home
of Patricia Strouse
to speak with Cindy Christiansen and Brian Norton,
the two friends who found Tommy's body.
Cindy explains that she and Tommy go way back.
- She had told us that she'd had a previous relationship
several years prior with Tom,
and actually lived with Tom for a while.
- NARRATOR: Cindy says though their romantic relationship
came to an end, she and Tommy continued to party together.
- BRIAN: She seemed to have a reasonable explanation
as to why her pill bottle would have been in his jacket.
That they had been using drugs
and had continued to use drugs together.
- SCOTT: In any homicide investigation,
you look at a number of things.
But the top three things: money, drugs, and sex.
- NARRATOR: Patricia and Brian chime in,
claiming that Tommy's traumatic childhood
and time in the military
pushed him into a pretty serious drug habit
in his adult years.
- He had a thing for cocaine.
And that--if cocaine was around, he was going to do it.
- He always had some drugs, mainly user amounts.
And people would come over and party together
and use Tom's drugs.
There was a variety of drugs--
methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine.
- NARRATOR: Patricia believes that Tommy's drug use
might have something to do with his death.
- JEFF: She thought that he owed some money to a drug dealer
out of Clinton, Missouri, by the name of Jeffrey Roarke.
- NARRATOR: To investigators, it's a familiar name.
- JEFF: Jeff Roarke was a big drug dealer.
He supplied a lot of drugs to the lake area.
- NARRATOR: Patricia has one other lead for investigators.
She shares that one of Tommy's recent romantic flings had been
with a married woman-- 27-year-old Clara Rector.
- She did mention that Clara and Tom had
had a relationship and that Clara's husband, Jason,
had threatened Tom.
- Tom told me just a few days before he was killed
that Jason had made a threat for him to stay away from Clara
or he would be sorry.
He was worried about Jason, because Tom did say he kept
trying to get Clara to stay away and she wouldn't stay away.
- NARRATOR: Investigators move on to their two new leads.
- BRIAN: It kind of boiled down to two different possibilities,
one being a guy that he owed a lot of money to for drugs.
And the second was Clara Rector's husband, Jason.
- NARRATOR: As they begin tracking down
their new suspects,
investigators receive word that Tommy's autopsy is complete.
The medical examiner reports Tommy died
three to four days before he was found.
- JEFF: They had a possible time of death
of either on late in the evening on the 24th
or early in the morning of the 25th.
- NARRATOR: The medical examiner also determined the large cut
to Tommy's neck isn't what killed him.
- ERIC: That was not the lethal wound.
He had been stabbed eight or nine times
in his torso and his arm.
And there were three of those puncture wounds that
the Medical Examiner determined was the lethal wound.
- JEFF: With the amount of stab wounds,
and the cut to the throat, it would lead me to believe
at that point that it was somebody that was angry at Tom.
- NARRATOR: The autopsy findings
support a motive for both current leads.
- ERIC: This was something
that was more of a personal relationship type thing.
Somebody exacting revenge.
- NARRATOR: Detectives decide to first investigate the affair
with Clara Rector.
On April 28, they find her at her home
and start asking questions.
- ERIC: She was honest about
the nature of her relationship with Tom.
That they had been in a romantic relationship,
that she had left her husband
and moved in with Tom for a period of time.
And Clara told police that she had seen Tom recently,
within the past few days prior to his death.
- NARRATOR: When Clara met Tommy,
it didn't take them long to find common ground.
Clara was born in California in 1976 and, like Tommy,
her early years were marred by upheaval and abuse.
- BRIAN: When she was less than two years old,
she had been removed from her home--her and her brother.
They were eventually adopted by a family
that moved to the Lake of the Ozarks.
And that's how they ended up, uh, at the Lake of the Ozarks.
- AMY: Clara was a sweet, sensible person.
Like, she would want to hug, you know.
It was somebody that she would want to walk up
and give a hug to, and just be friends with.
- NARRATOR: At 19, Clara fell in love and married.
Just after learning she was pregnant, tragedy struck.
Her young husband died in a car accident.
- KELLEY: She told me that she had a husband
that had passed away.
She was very much still in love with him,
and she misses--you know, missed him a lot.
She got angry with God for a while about taking her husband.
- That was when Clara's battle with drug addiction began.
- NARRATOR: Clara soon started dating Jason Rector.
- AMY: I would've thought that Clara and Jason
had been together since high school.
The way that they behaved together,
somebody was touching an arm or a thigh or, you know,
they were just really sweet with one another.
- NARRATOR: In 1999, Clara and Jason married.
Jason adopted Clara's child.
And over the next three years,
the couple had two more children of their own.
Though they appeared happy, behind closed doors,
there was trouble.
- KELLEY: They both were in addiction
when they came together.
Clara had addiction problems. He had addiction problems.
And they were trying to not have that anymore.
I'm not sure if it was pills or pot, or meth or alcohol,
but coming off that stuff makes you irritable.
So they fought a lot.
They were not happy together at that time.
He straightened up. And Clara, it's just--
addiction's hard to beat.
- NARRATOR: When she met Tommy Hope in the summer of 2003,
26-year-old Clara found someone who understood her.
- They both had difficult circumstances
in their childhood, in growing up.
So they probably connected in that way.
- NARRATOR: While Jason worked on his sobriety,
Clara continued to feed her addiction with Tommy.
- ERIC: The call of drugs was very strong for her.
And despite wanting to be faithful to her husband
and wanting to sort of keep on the straight and narrow,
she moved in with Tom.
It was obviously very upsetting to Jason.
He was unhappy, he was angry.
- JEFF: Her husband had kind of interceded a little bit
and came in and got her.
She, uh, ended up going to a rehabilitation center.
- NARRATOR: After finishing rehab in December 2003,
Clara returned home to Jason and the kids.
- JEFF: She moved back in with her husband.
And they had reconciled their relationship.
- She wanted to live a--a life of God.
And that's-- marriage is binding.
And so she wanted to uphold that.
At least give it a try, her best effort.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: But five months after leaving rehab,
Clara now sits with investigators
in the wake of Tommy's murder
and admits that her sobriety hasn't lasted.
- JEFF: According to Clara, she remained in contact with Tom,
and would go by and use drugs with Tom on occasion without
the knowledge of her husband.
She did not want her husband
to know that she was seeing Tom again.
- NARRATOR: Detectives now wonder if Jason found out
about Clara's secret.
- BRIAN: He certainly had motive.
And he might've been the one that actually killed him.
- NARRATOR: After wrapping up with Clara,
investigators quickly turn to her husband, Jason,
who isn't shy about his feelings for the victim, Tommy Hope.
- ERIC: When Clara left Jason to move in at Tom's house
in Camdenton, Jason was very upset.
He blamed Tom for a lot of Clara's problems,
blamed Tom for Clara's drug use.
- He did threaten Tom and tell him he needed to stay away
from his wife.
Jason actually said that he knew that we'd be talking to him
and that he would be a person of interest in this
because of the threats that he had made against Tom.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Had a jealous husband reached a boiling point?
- He said, "I'm glad he's dead."
- NARRATOR: And a new lead pulls the investigation into
an entirely different direction.
- He said, "I owe somebody a lot of money and I don't have it."
- JEFF: This may have possibly
been the break we were looking for.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Missouri authorities investigating the slaying
of Tommy Hope are questioning Clara Rector's husband, Jason.
While Jason doesn't hide his animosity for the victim,
he insists he had nothing to do with the murder.
- When they interviewed him, he said, "I didn't do it,
but I'm glad he's dead."
- He said that he had thought about killing Tom
at one point.
But he said he never followed through with it.
- NARRATOR: Jason and Clara
vouch for each other's whereabouts
during the timeframe investigators believe
Tommy was killed.
- It looked like he had died sometime late
Saturday night/early Sunday morning sometime.
- ERIC: On Saturday,
they had been out together running errands.
And they spent the evening with their children watching movies.
On Sunday, they attended church.
And then afterwards, watched NASCAR at their home.
So they told investigators that they were with each other
the entire time that Tom might have been killed.
- BRIAN: They both said that
they had been together that weekend,
and that's the only information they had provided us.
- NARRATOR: Despite a strong personal motive,
investigators find no proof of Jason's involvement.
- BRIAN: He denied it.
There was just no real evidence that tied him to it.
- NARRATOR: Just hours after
their interview with the Rectors,
investigators hear from
another friend of Tommy's, Brenda McCabe.
Brenda tells them that days before his death,
Tommy had shown up at her door, asking for refuge.
- BRENDA: The look on his face and the look in his eyes,
something was very, very wrong.
And I said, "Well, come on in." And he stepped in.
He said, "They're gonna get me. They're gonna get me."
I said, "Who's they? What are you talking about?"
He said, "I owe somebody a lot of money and I don't have it."
And I was like, "Who are you talking about, Tommy?"
And he said, "I--I--I'm not gonna tell you that."
He said, "The least you know, the better off you are."
He said, "If something happens to me, Brenda,
it's because I couldn't pay it."
He was scared. He was literally very scared.
- NARRATOR: Tommy wouldn't tell Brenda who he was indebted to.
But investigators already have a name in mind
from a previous tip: Jeff Roarke.
- JEFF: This may have possibly been the break
we were looking for.
There's a possibility that this may be the guy.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Investigators head to Clinton, Missouri,
where Jeff has a reputation as a dangerous drug dealer.
- JEFF: We made contact with Jeff in Clinton
and talked to him about Tom.
He was aware that Tom had been killed.
He said that he had received phone calls
from several different people.
- NARRATOR: Jeff admits that the last time he saw Tommy,
he had fronted him a mere $35 worth of marijuana.
- Tom did not have the money for it and so he allowed him to
take, take the drugs, owing him money for those drugs.
This was a couple weeks prior,
and Jeff had not received his money.
- NARRATOR: Jeff tells investigators he has
bigger things to worry about than a small debt
from someone like Tommy.
- ERIC: He admitted that, yes,
they were involved in criminal activity,
but he had nothing to do with Tom's murder.
And he cooperated with the investigation.
- NARRATOR: Jeff also provides an airtight alibi.
- We were able to follow up on the information he gave
and--and it was accurate.
And we could not put him in the area
during the time that Tom was killed.
- NARRATOR: With no new leads to pursue,
the investigation stalls in August 2004.
- JEFF: We went through everything that we had
in the leads.
And we just kept waiting for more to come up.
But as far as, uh, new information that
was valuable, we really didn't receive anything.
- SCOTT: The case was sitting on a shelf.
It had been investigated.
There had been several different theories and lots of ideas,
but nothing that could be proven in court.
- NARRATOR: Investigators have no choice
but to move on to other cases.
- It is frustrating, sad, and I was very angry.
And it's kind of a helpless feeling
that you can't do anything about it.
- NARRATOR: Nine years pass with no new leads,
until April 21, 2013, when a surprising turn
breathes new life into this cold case.
- SCOTT: I go in and--and they're like, "Well, Scott,
we've got some stuff we need to talk to you about."
And so, I thought they were going to invite me
to become a junior deacon.
And I got kinda excited. I was like, "This is great."
- NARRATOR: But the deacons
have more on their minds than church business.
Pastor Jerry Sousley explains that for the last year,
a seemingly upstanding congregation member
has been exhibiting disturbing behavior.
- SCOTT: He goes on to explain
this had been ongoing for several months,
that this church member had been leaving notes
for him at his desk at church, had come to his house.
- NARRATOR: The church member is none other than Clara Rector.
- Clara became attached to Jerry Sousley to the point where
it almost became an infatuation.
- NARRATOR: Clara's obsession with the pastor came to a head
on April 19, when she left a spiral notebook on his desk.
- She wrote down her feelings and wrote a story
in almost like a diary-type fashion.
And the story involved a woman
and how much she liked her pastor,
how handsome she found him,
and how she wanted him to hold her
and other topics that were of a sexual nature.
She wrote these down in a spiral notebook and deposited this book
on Pastor Sousley's desk.
- NARRATOR: Pastor Sousley says Clara's erratic behavior
reminded him of a conversation he had with her in July 2012.
- He was concerned because that previous summer,
Clara had detailed a crime that she might've been involved in
that resulted in murder.
- NARRATOR: Coming up: a pastor clears his conscience.
- NARRATOR: And a cold-hearted revelation comes to light.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Almost a decade after the brutal murder
of Tommy Hope, Detective Scott Hines
gets an unexpected break
when his pastor, Jerry Sousley,
reveals a string of concerning interactions
with one of his parishioners, Clara Rector.
- BRIAN: She was stalking him,
which he took that as a threat, given the fact that she had
confessed to him that she had killed somebody.
- SCOTT: I knew Clara.
Oftentimes we shared the same pew,
usually second from the front.
I couldn't believe that Clara would do something like that.
After the initial disbelief, I had an immediate acceptance of,
okay, I have an obligation to find out what was going on.
- NARRATOR: On April 22,
Detective Hines asks Pastor Sousley
to come to the station for a formal statement.
Once there, Pastor Sousley explains
that he reprimanded Clara four days earlier
for giving him a notebook filled with her
handwritten erotic fantasies.
- NARRATOR: The pastor says that when he refused to give
the notebook back to Clara, she threatened him.
- He became concerned for his own safety
and the safety of his family.
He felt he had to say something to somebody about it.
- She just kept, continued to harass him
and so he filed harassment charges.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask the pastor for more details about
Clara's alleged murder confession.
- SCOTT: He said one night, Clara Rector approached him,
and told him that she had some things to tell him.
And at some point or other, conversation continues,
and she tells him that she had killed someone in her past--
a man in Camdenton, in his home.
- SCOTT: As Pastor Sousley continued to make
the description of what she told him,
it started to click in my mind.
And I remembered, well, there's only one case
that's even remotely close to that,
and it's the Tommy Hope murder.
- NARRATOR: The pastor urged Clara and Jason to go the police
and followed up with the couple a few days later.
- Given the circumstances that she had confessed to him
in a counseling session, in my mind,
it was not inappropriate that he did not tell law enforcement
or somebody else about that confession.
- NARRATOR: Months later, when the sexual advances began,
Pastor Sousley knew he had to say something.
- NARRATOR: When investigators look into what Clara has been
up to in the last nine years,
they find that not only has she maintained her sobriety,
Clara has tried to help others reach the same goal.
- SCOTT: She started kind of
trying to help other people get off of drugs.
In fact, she had written an article for the local paper
about drug abuse and helping people get away from it.
- ERIC: Clara took a lot of strides to better herself.
She really wanted to become a good wife and mother.
She became, I think, a bit more outspoken about her faith
and the way it helped her overcome
a drug addiction and drug habits.
- NARRATOR: Nonetheless, investigators formulate a plan
to place the 36-year-old under arrest.
- SCOTT: We had to get her into custody before we could even
start thinking about talking to her about the murder.
And the only way to do that was to get her on the stalking case,
which we had probable cause for.
- We filed a criminal charge for some type of
harassment based upon her stalking her pastor.
- NARRATOR: Assuming that Clara
will show up at church Sunday morning,
Detective Hines executes his plan.
- SCOTT: We came to the conclusion
that as the church service began,
we were going to shut and lock the doors
Sunday morning.
Just in case Clara showed up,
we didn't want there to be a disturbance inside the building.
Within a few minutes of the beginning of the church service,
the pastor's wife hollers for me.
I charge off towards the back of the building.
And as I go out the door, I see Clara's pickup truck
heading south away from the church building.
So, I get on the phone and I call up to dispatch
and I asked for them to send me a unit.
The on-duty deputy went looking for her.
The church service was still going on.
And he called me and let me know that he had found her
and taken her into custody on the stalking charge.
- NARRATOR: Investigators who worked Tommy Hope's case
back in 2004 arrive at the Camden County Jail
to conduct the interview with Clara.
- SCOTT: They had already talked to her before.
They had the details of the case.
And since they were so intimately familiar with
the case, it was better for them to do the interview.
- NARRATOR: They begin by questioning Clara about
the stalking charges she was brought in on.
- SCOTT: During the interview with her,
initially was about the stalking.
And that was a way for the members of the patrol,
the investigators, to develop this rapport with her,
to get her just kind of talking.
- NARRATOR: But investigators soon shift the conversation to
what they really came to talk about:
Tommy Hope's murder.
- SCOTT: At one point, one of the troopers asked her,
"Clara, do you remember me?"
And physically she kind of leans back a little bit
and says, "No, I don't think so."
And so he says, "Well, we met years ago
while we were talking about this--this other case."
- SCOTT: She knew she was caught.
She knew as soon as they mentioned that she had confessed
to Pastor Sousley, she knew, "Okay, this is it."
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
After nine long years,
a killer hiding in plain sight finally tells all.
- When she didn't get what she thought she would,
she lost it.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Nearly a decade after Tommy Hope's murder,
detectives are in an interrogation room with
36-year-old Clara Rector,
who'd allegedly confessed her involvement in Tommy's murder
to her pastor just one year earlier.
- SCOTT: We know now, based on the evidence at hand
and based now on this confession
that she had given to Pastor Sousley
that we've got the right person.
We knew if we get her in the room, get her talking,
we can get there.
- NARRATOR: Clara recalls leaving her home on that
fateful night in April of 2004.
- NARRATOR: Tommy told Clara that he had already used most of
the cocaine he had on hand.
- When she didn't get what she thought she would,
she lost it.
- NARRATOR: Clara grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter.
- SCOTT: She got mad at him.
And she describes taking the kitchen knife,
and at some point, she climbed up on his back
and cut his throat.
- ERIC: She was stabbing him.
She said that she just had really lost all control.
- NARRATOR: Clara went home to find Jason waiting for her
on the front porch.
- I think she felt an enormous sense of relief for
having finally been able to tell her story to the right people.
- NARRATOR: Following her confession,
Clara is charged with first-degree murder.
But Clara isn't the only one who must face the past.
Police also bring her husband, Jason, into custody.
- SCOTT: After I told him what she told us
and we had that moment of acceptance,
then he says, "Yeah, I--I-- I burned, uh, her clothes,
"because when she got home the night after killing Tommy Hope,
she was--she was covered in blood."
I'm positive Jason had that sense of relief.
Jason was glad to get that information off his chest,
just like Clara was.
- NARRATOR: But Jason won't be held accountable
for his involvement.
- BRIAN: With a charge of tampering
with physical evidence,
there was a three-year statute of limitations
and that expired long ago.
- NARRATOR: In November 2014, 37-year-old Clara pleads guilty
to the lesser charge of second-degree murder.
- BRIAN: I don't think a trial was ever really considered
a possibility given her confession.
I settled on recommending, I think, a 15-year sentence.
Given that there'd been so many years between the time
of the murder until we finally solved it,
there'd been no indication
that she was any risk to, uh, anybody else.
- NARRATOR: Many of Tommy's friends feel like
the punishment is too little, too late.
- PATRICIA: I know her prison sentence wasn't very long.
And it was such a violent crime that--that still makes me angry.
- BRENDA: It made me sick to my stomach.
Tommy was a good guy.
And he had a good heart.
He would have gave his all for anybody at any time.
No one deserves to die like that for any reason.
- ♪