- FEMALE NARRATOR: In an orchard in California,
the body of a beloved father is discovered.
- JANELLE: It was definitely unsettling.
- ANDREA: Why would someone ditch the car and leave
the handgun right there in plain sight?
- NARRATOR: The investigation leads to a hardworking family
harboring a dark secret.
- TONY: He asked for kinda racy type photos, sexual type photos,
and she sent 'em.
- NARRATOR: A cunning mastermind is willing to go to any length
to throw detectives off the trail.
- ARTHUR: They went to this place in Las Vegas.
Crime Scene CSI: The Experience.
They talk about how to defeat DNA, mainly using bleach.
- RAY: The video surveillance
showed a person fairly well disguised wearing a hat,
wearing glasses, bulky clothing.
- TONY: Eventually they tell her, "We know it's you."
- NARRATOR: But when the cards are on the table,
will justice be served?
- JESSICA: I was just completely floored.
I just remember I felt so guilty.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: It's just before 9AM on Sunday, August 25, 2013
in Kern County, California.
On an almond orchard outside Bakersfield,
a worker makes his morning rounds
through rows of almond trees.
- JANELLE: You wouldn't really have any reason to be out there
unless you had work in the fields.
- NARRATOR: It isn't long before the worker stops in his tracks.
- ANDREA: He saw a body laying there in the orchard.
He was rather shocked.
And he approached the body.
He looks more carefully.
The individual is not moving and appears to be deceased.
So he make a phone call to his boss,
who then makes a call to law enforcement.
- [police siren wailing]
- JANELLE: When I arrived on scene, I walked up,
and I met with many of the detectives.
We moved him over, and I located two gunshot wounds
to the right side of his chest.
It was definitely unsettling.
He also had what appeared to be a gunshot wound to his hand
at a very close range.
- It would appear that at the moment he was being shot,
he instinctively raised his hand to try to protect himself.
- ANDREA: Officers talked to everyone involved in terms of
finding the body.
And what they found was that around 7:30 in the morning,
there was workman that was out there in the fields.
And at that time, did not see anything out of the ordinary,
but on a second pass through between 9 and 9:10, saw a body.
So that gave them a timeline to work with.
- JANELLE: Searching him, I located his wallet.
That's when we were able to identify him as Todd Chance,
and it provided us an address.
- ARTHUR: Todd's body was found
around 15 to 20 miles from his house.
- TONY: What happens in Kern County too often is there are
people that are killed.
They take the body and they dump it out in orchards.
- ANDREA: We have a man who is obviously deceased as a result
of being shot to death.
It's clearly not a robbery.
The individual had a wallet in their pocket.
It was a planned and considered murder.
They need to figure out if there's anyone that would want
to hurt him or harm him.
- NARRATOR: Born on March 10, 1968,
Todd Chance was raised twenty miles
outside Bakersfield, California,
in the farming community of Shafter.
- JESSICA: He grew up raising, like,
pigs and around barnyard animals.
Doing everything outside, always into cars and dirt bikes.
- He was very close to his mother and his father
and his brother.
Loved his cars, loved doing things with his father,
was very into guns.
- NARRATOR: In 1995, Todd Chance got engaged to 22-year-old
Carrie Williams and dreamed of starting a family.
- ANDREA: Carrie and Todd were in love.
They were, um, high school sweethearts.
She was actually very close with Todd's parents.
- NARRATOR: But shortly after the engagement,
the wedding was called off.
- Growing up, I had heard of Carrie Williams.
All I knew about her was that things had ended badly.
- NARRATOR: Todd didn't stay single for long.
Later that year, while working as a drugstore security guard,
he developed a crush
on a 28-year-old cashier named Jenea Bullman.
- Todd was attracted to her and pursuing her romantically.
- TONY: They end up meeting up and they started dating.
One thing led to another.
Their life was going in the right direction.
- NARRATOR: While Todd came of age enjoying the great outdoors,
Jenea was a born and raised city girl.
- JESSICA: My Mom was born here in Bakersfield.
She had a amazing relationship with both her Mom and Dad.
She dated my Dad from about middle school until
they eventually got married after high school.
And then she had me when she was 22.
- NARRATOR: Jenea's first marriage ended just before
her daughter Jessica was born in 1989.
- So my Mom was kind of on her own as a single Mom with me.
Working three jobs and going to school full time.
- NARRATOR: Jenea found Todd to be a perfect counterpart
to her hectic lifestyle
as she worked towards her teaching degree.
- They were the same, but they were different.
They were both funny and hard-working.
But then she was a like a little city girl and he was a cowboy.
- KARRI: Jenea was in a situation where she, uh,
felt vulnerable and was on her own.
But Todd came around and just swept her off of her feet.
- NARRATOR: A year after their first date,
Todd and Jenea tied the knot.
- JESSICA: When my Mom and Todd got married,
while they were exchanging rings,
he also presented me with a pearl bracelet
with my name on it.
He was so amazing to me.
I mean, he was in every aspect my Dad,
and he never made me feel left out.
- OFFICIANT: Now Todd and Jenea have given themselves...
- NARRATOR: The couple married on August 17th, 1996.
The new Mr and Mrs. Todd Chance
were well on their way to living happily ever after.
Todd landed a job as a truck driver,
while Jenea completed her teaching degree.
- JESSICA: She just had a passion for helping people,
and especially kids.
And she just always had that drive.
And she just--she made it.
She did everything she set out to do.
- NARRATOR: Todd and Jenea added
two more daughters to the family,
Sarah in 1998 and Samantha in 2000.
- JESSICA: Honestly, we're all raised the same.
We don't even think of each other as having different dads,
to be honest. We're just sisters.
- We found one arm! We found one arm.
- JESSICA: There was times when I used to say Todd
was my favorite parent.
He had this hard exterior, but me and my sisters
could just get him to melt real easy.
So he tried to play tough, but we all knew we had him wrapped
around our fingers.
- JENEA: Gave you pants. - SAMANTHA: Pants!
- NARRATOR: With Todd's support around the house,
Jenea surged ahead on her career path,
going from teacher to administrator.
- KEN: She moved up fairly quickly.
And, um, she served time as an administrator
at a couple different schools,
and then was selected as a principal of Fairview School.
- JESSICA: She was made for that role.
I mean, just sitting back and watching her do it,
she was amazing.
- NARRATOR: By the summer of 2013,
Todd and Jenea Chance were a solid upper middle class couple,
and decided it was time to finally enjoy
the fruits of their labor.
- So they took about three trips, I believe, that summer.
They went to San Francisco, the beach, and Las Vegas.
My Mom had always worked every summer school.
And it was just kind of making up for lost times.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: But now, under a sweltering August sun,
law enforcement officials stand over the body of Todd Chance,
wondering what led to his violent death.
Not far from the body, investigators recover
a cell phone that belongs to Todd Chance.
- ANDREA: His cell phone is found 25 feet, approximately,
away from him.
- JANELLE: The phone had either been dropped by somebody else,
possibly thrown.
- NARRATOR: While surveying the area,
investigators note the absence of blood on the scene,
which suggests that Todd Chance was killed elsewhere.
- It gave us the indication that he had been dumped at the site,
and the crime didn't occur where we found him.
- At that point, we're looking at all scenarios.
Like, how did this happen? You know, how did he get here?
- NARRATOR: Coming up: could the victim's most prized possession
be at the center of his untimely death?
- ARTHUR: It's the kind of car
that's going to grab somebody's attention.
- RAY: Maybe Todd had been robbed,
carjacked for the vehicle.
- NARRATOR: But are the dots a little too easy to connect?
- You have this really nice car with a key and with a gun.
It absolutely looks staged.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: After finding the body of 45-year-old Todd Chance
in an almond grove outside Bakersfield, California,
investigators with the Kern County Sheriff's Department
now face a difficult task.
- You're notifying a person's loved ones that the person
that they loved isn't coming home tonight,
and it's always going to be met with tremendous amount of grief.
- NARRATOR: For Todd Chance's stepdaughter, Jessica Bullman,
it's a moment she will never forget.
- I went into where they were sitting with my Mom.
And, uh, she was crying, so I knew something had happened.
And I started listening to the questions they were asking.
And they were asking questions about guns.
I quickly realized that he was dead.
I remember during that moment, I looked at her and I said like,
Mom, it's okay.
I'm gonna help you get through this.
And she looked at me and said, "Jessica,
how am I supposed to get through the rest of my life?"
And I didn't have an answer for her.
- NARRATOR: Investigators ask Jenea to walk them through her
last moments with her husband that morning.
- ANDREA: Jenea tells detectives that morning that Todd had left
at about 7:30 in his, uh, prized Mustang.
That to her knowledge he was going to a gun show.
- TONY: The rest of the day she talked about
how she was doing work.
She talked about how she was doing laundry,
chores around the house. But she never left the house.
- NARRATOR: Jenea explains that Todd would often attend
gun shows and was a bit of a collector of vintage pistols.
Investigators ask Jenea
if all Todd's firearms are accounted for.
- She went back and indicated that one of the handguns
was in fact missing.
An older, very weathered .38 caliber revolver.
The simple fact that a gun was missing and was not accounted
for was very interesting.
- ANDREA: Officers have many questions at this point,
and one of them is whether or not Todd Chance
was shot with his own gun.
- NARRATOR: Other than the fact Todd was supposed to be
attending a gun show that morning,
Jenea and her daughters can't explain
why he might have left the home armed.
- ANDREA: Jenea said that it would be rare for Todd to,
to take that gun with him
and to have it in the vehicle itself with him.
- ARTHUR: Detectives ask the family members
if Todd was into drugs,
if he had any enemies, had any gambling debts,
anything that might possibly lead them towards a suspect.
- JESSICA: I just remember us, like, all saying like,
no, he was not into drugs.
He was not into alcohol or gambling.
And the enemies thing, there was no enemies.
I mean, Todd was a friend to everyone.
So my first thought was someone killed him for that car.
'Cause he had a really nice Mustang.
- ARTHUR: It was a beautiful, black, spotless Ford Mustang.
It's the kind of car that's going
to grab somebody's attention.
- ANDREA: Jenea tells detectives
that she does not drive Todd's vehicle,
that it's his vehicle, that he does not allow that car
to be loaned out or other people to drive it.
- RAY: So that was obviously a theory initially, that Todd had
possibly gone to a gas station, a Mini-Mart,
had stopped somewhere, and had been carjacked for the vehicle
and then taken out to the scene where he was found murdered.
- NARRATOR: Investigators are just wrapping up their interview
when they receive what could be a game-changing tip.
- ARTHUR: While detectives were at the residence,
they were notified over their radios
that Todd's car had been located.
- NARRATOR: The Mustang has been spotted in an area known for
criminal activity and reported to 911 by a concerned neighbor,
who claims it had been there for about six hours.
- RAY: The person who saw the vehicle noticed it appeared
to be out of place and had possibly been abandoned in
the neighborhood and felt the vehicle may be a stolen vehicle.
- JESSICA: I'm thinking this is gonna hold everything.
They're gonna be able to crack the case with this because
in my mind, I'm thinking it was a carjacking gone wrong.
And that it all had to do with that car.
- [police siren wailing]
- NARRATOR: Investigators race to the location.
- The first thing that they noticed
was that the car was unlocked.
Secondly, that there's a key to the car on the floorboard.
And also visible was the handle of a revolver on the floorboard.
- And it was a .38 caliber revolver.
And Todd's gun was a .38 caliber revolver.
It was a significant piece of evidence that really,
really cinched it for me.
- NARRATOR: The gun is still loaded
and there are two discharged rounds still in the cylinder.
Considering Todd was shot with two bullets,
investigators know they may be looking at their murder weapon,
and it's collected as evidence.
But to investigators, a glaring question emerges.
- Why would someone ditch the car and leave the handgun, uh,
right there in plain sight?
- NARRATOR: Todd's car is found in a neighborhood
known to police as a haven for drugs and crime.
But to investigators, something seems off.
- ANDREA: Normally if a firearm is used in, uh, a crime,
someone is going to take it, they're going to hide it,
they're going to dispose of it.
- ARTHUR: You have this really nice car with the key
right there, nice and visible, and with a gun.
The fact that the car was unlocked, it's almost like, uh,
please steal me sign. It absolutely looks staged.
- RAY: Once the vehicle was located,
deputies and detectives went door to door,
questioning neighbors to find out if anybody had seen
who'd abandoned the vehicle.
- TONY: There were two different witnesses.
They saw a person with a red backpack walk off southbound
out of the neighborhood towards the main street of Panama Lane.
- NARRATOR: The witnesses report seeing this individual at around
9 o'clock that morning.
Incredibly, one neighbor even caught the person
on a security camera.
- RAY: The surveillance showed a person
of medium height, medium build,
fairly well disguised, if you will, wearing a hat,
wearing glasses, and bulky clothing.
- It would be hard to identify the person, uh,
given how they were dressed.
There's still some additional investigation
that needs to be done.
But we do have a suspect for the murder of Todd Chance.
- NARRATOR: Coming up: a shadowy figure emerges
as suspect number one.
- ARTHUR: She has the red backpack.
She has the white plastic garbage bag.
She walks in and she doesn't get anything, then goes off-camera.
- NARRATOR: And a possible motive comes to light.
- ANDREA: Detectives really have to step back and kind of
contemplate that perhaps is there a double life going on?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Investigators have located the missing vehicle of
murder victim Todd Chance.
Now Kern County detectives are scouring the area
where the Mustang was found after a suspicious person
was caught on camera near the scene.
- ANDREA: They start looking at businesses that would possibly
have video showing anyone going in or out of that area
during the time period that was relevant for them.
- NARRATOR: After sifting through all the businesses
in the area, detectives catch a break.
At 9:12 AM on August 25th, surveillance footage shows
the same figure enter a Starbucks
within walking distance of where Todd's car was found.
By now, investigators are convinced the suspect is a woman
with her hair tucked into a baseball cap.
- She has the red backpack.
She has the white plastic garbage bag.
She walks in and she doesn't get anything,
but rather she passes right by the cash reigster
and the lines of people getting coffee
and goes to the area where the restroom is, goes off-camera.
- NARRATOR: Surveillance footage shows the woman reappearing at
9:17...albeit with a new look.
- The top has been changed.
The shoes have definitely been changed.
And it looks like there are, uh, different pants.
The angle and the clarity and just the, uh,
viewpoint of the camera itself,
we were unable to make a facial identification.
There was not a sufficient picture to be able to do that.
- NARRATOR: Though the woman's face remains obscured,
a small detail catches the eye of investigators.
- ARTHUR: You can distinctly make out
in that white plastic bag
is a yellow, cylindrical, plastic container
of Bleach wipes.
- That raises a red flag for officers because you can use
bleach to clean items so that there will be no evidence of,
of DNA or fingerprints.
- NARRATOR: Video from outside the garden area
of a hardware store across from the Starbucks
captured the same woman minutes later
disposing of her original outfit behind stacked bags of soil.
- ARTHUR: Unfortunately, by that point the garbage
had been collected. Everything had been moved.
So they were not able to find anything.
- NARRATOR: Based on the suspect's physical similarities
to Todd's wife and the apparent staging
of Todd's missing car and gun,
investigators have to ask--
could the woman caught on tape be Jenea Chance?
- RAY: By all accounts, there didn't appear to be
any prior history of problems in their marriage, uh,
certainly no history of domestic violence.
Everybody that detectives spoke to
said that they had a good marriage.
- [cheering]
- NARRATOR: After receiving the passcode
to Todd's phone from Jenea,
investigators search the phone recovered from the crime scene,
looking for any clues that might explain a motive.
At first, all they see are happy pictures from
the Chance family's recent travels.
- TONY: All these vacations, being a family,
those two cuddling up together, Todd and Jenea,
cuddling up together.
- NARRATOR: But digging deeper,
investigators discover something more lurid.
Todd had traded steamy messages with his ex-girlfriend,
Carrie Williams, nearly six months prior to his murder.
- TONY: Todd asked for kinda racy type photos,
sexual type photos, and she sent 'em.
- ANDREA: Detectives really have to step back and kind of
contemplate that perhaps, um, there's more than meets the eye
here about Todd, and if in fact he is having an affair,
is there a double life going on?
And is there a way that, uh, Jenea knew?
- NARRATOR: Now with two female suspects in frame,
detectives need to determine which one is on camera.
- ANDREA: Carrie and Jenea were similar enough
that certainly the detectives
would want to look to see if, um,
there was a motive there,
and whether or not there was an alibi there.
- NARRATOR: Investigators interview Carrie Williams
on August 17th, 2013.
- When investigators spoke to her, she was, um,
distraught about his death. She was upset.
She was embarrassed about the fact that she had sent
photographs to him that were compromising.
- ARTHUR: Todd had asked his ex
about the two of them getting together.
But his ex had, uh, declined that.
I believe her exact words were, "No way, married man."
- ANDREA: They basically ask her to run down
where she was that weekend.
And she explains that she had left town.
- NARRATOR: Carrie claims at the time of the murder,
she and her daughter were 170 miles away
in San Juan Capistrano.
And she has the evidence to prove it.
- She actually got a parking ticket that morning.
That alibi for Carrie was absolutely solid.
- NARRATOR: After detectives clear Carrie Williams from
suspicion, they get word that ballistics has finished
the analysis of the .38 caliber revolver
found in Todd's Mustang and it a match to Todd's wounds.
- ANDREA: Detectives now know that Todd
was shot with his own gun.
- NARRATOR: What's more telling
is what they didn't find in his car.
- ARTHUR: They were unable to find any blood in the car.
But clearly the car had been wiped down with Bleach.
They did, however, find
one single solitary fingerprint.
It was on the driver's side door
by the door handle.
And that fingerprint belonged to Jenea Chance.
In addition, they were able to find Jenea Chance's DNA
on the steering wheel and on the gearshift.
- It was Jenea's own statement that she did not drive the car.
She doesn't drive that car.
- DNA consistent with Jenea Chance
both on the wheel and on the gearshift
was utterly inconsistent with what she was saying.
- ANDREA: Detectives, as this investigation went on, go back.
They speak to Jenea.
They narrow their investigation to her.
- NARRATOR: Coming up: a search of Todd and Jenea's home
turns up a surprising new lead.
- ARTHUR: A photograph that caught their attention was
a photograph of the family taken at a place in Las Vegas
called CSI: The Experience.
- NARRATOR: Is this a keepsake
from the family's last vacation together?
Or a blueprint for murder?
- ANDREA: There was one scenario involving a woman who kills
her husband and leaves him in a remote desert area.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Evidence in the murder investigation
of Todd Chance has begun to point to
his wife of 17 years, Jenea.
- ANDREA: There was DNA located on the gear-shift,
as well as the steering wheel, that belonged to Jenea Chance.
And also the very gun that killed Todd was their own gun.
The motive, the text messages, the, the nude photos,
it was everything together that really, really made this case.
It's not one key piece of evidence
that makes the whole case. It's all of it together.
- NARRATOR: With the pieces falling into place,
investigators turn once again to the video surveillance footage
from the morning of Todd's murder.
This time, they find a street camera
near Todd and Jenea's home.
- ANDREA: We see that same figure walking down
the street with a backpack in the same neighborhood
as Todd and Jenea's house is at, uh, shortly after 10 a.m.
- NARRATOR: After reviewing the footage,
investigators need to speak to Jenea Chance once again.
And this time, they bring her down to the station.
- NARRATOR: When Jenea sits down with detectives,
they confront her about the surveillance videos.
- ARTHUR: She's defensive. She's not very happy about it.
She is denying that she is the person in those videos.
- NARRATOR: And when confronted with her DNA found
in Todd's vehicle indicating she had driven the car,
she claims it's an anomaly.
- TONY: Eventually they tell her, "We know it's you."
And she's all, "What?" And then, "We know it's you.
We know you know about Carrie."
- ARTHUR: She indicated that she had no reason to believe that
Todd had either been unfaithful or had tried to be unfaithful
or anything of that sort.
She loved her husband and did not kill him.
That was her story.
- ANDREA: They place her under arrest
for the first-degree murder of Todd Chance.
Police executed search warrants, um, at, uh,
Jenea and Todd's home after she was in custody.
Of particular interest were her computer,
since she had claimed that she had been on it that morning,
as well as any cellphone, bank accounts,
life insurance policies.
- I'm sitting there with my little sisters while we're just
watching about 30 people go through our house,
turning it upside down.
And then all of a sudden, I hear she's been arrested.
And I just, like, about passed out.
I was so overwhelmed with, what am I gonna do?
- NARRATOR: Despite what investigators believe is
a slam dunk case, on September 3rd, 2013,
the DA throws a curveball and refuses to prosecute the case
due to lack of evidence. Jenea is released from custody.
- ARTHUR: We absolutely felt that Jenea was the one who
committed the murder, but we felt that we also did not have
enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt at that time.
- NARRATOR: As months go by, investigators meticulously
sift through the mountains of evidence
seized at the Chance home
to build a stronger case against Jenea.
- During the search of the Chance home,
there were a number of photographs and personal items
that were taken.
One was a photograph of the family--
Todd, Jenea, and their two daughters--
at "CSI Experience" in Las Vegas.
- ARTHUR: It was, uh, basically an exhibit for tourists in Vegas
at the MGM Grand Hotel
dedicated to the show "Crime Scene CSI,"
in which people are offered various scenarios to try
and solve a crime using forensic techniques.
- NARRATOR: On January 22, 2014,
investigators head to Las Vegas to check out the exhibit.
- The detectives also went over.
They went through, um, all the scenarios themselves.
And there was one particular scenario that they wanted to
go through that involved a woman that kills her husband
and leaves him out in, um, in a remote desert area.
- NARRATOR: That scenario seems eerily similar to Todd's murder.
But there's something else about the exhibit
that jumps out to investigators.
- ANDREA: Essentially you act like you are a detective
or a crime lab person.
You're going through this crime scene.
Some of the things that were included in that exhibit seemed
to line up with the murder of Todd Chance.
There was a great emphasis on how DNA, fingerprints, on guns,
on evidence can lead to the discovery of a suspect,
and that a way to, to combat that is to use bleach.
Another thing that was very, very interesting was evidence
can get on shoes, trace evidence can get on shoes,
things can be tracked from shoes.
We saw from the video of the person walking away
from Todd's car, Jenea, and then walking in Starbucks,
is those shoes were changed.
So those things were all very significant.
- NARRATOR: Investigators pair this information
with the surveillance video of the woman
from the day Todd was killed and find a disturbing coincidence.
- ANDREA: It certainly looked like in looking at the video
that a plastic bag with a circular object appeared to be,
like, cleaning wipes, bleach wipes.
- NARRATOR: Investigators still need more physical evidence
against Jenea to arrest her.
In late 2014, detectives send her computer to the FBI for
a more in-depth inspection.
And the process is far more time consuming than they anticipated.
- That examination was extremely thorough, uh, very involved,
and took a substantial amount of time.
In fact, it took over a year.
- It did not appear that there had been any activity on her
computer, uh, during the time period wherein she said she was
home during the time that Todd was murdered.
It really took apart her alibi.
- NARRATOR: Coming up: a critical witness
drops a bombshell.
- ANDREA: She is asked, "Well, if that's your mother,
what does that mean?" And she starts crying.
- I felt so guilty that I had, like, betrayed my Mom.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: After dismantling Jenea Chance's alibi,
prosecutors finally have enough substantial evidence
to indict her on December 1st, 2016
for the brutal murder of her husband, Todd Chance.
- RAY: They got a report back from the FBI.
They had done an analysis on Jenea's hard drive
and determined that there was no activity on her hard drive for
a period of time that included the time that Tom was murdered.
That really kind of sealed the deal.
- ANDREA: That was kind of the last piece of information that
we needed answered before we were willing
to go forward on this case.
- NARRATOR: On December 1st, 2016,
more than three years after Todd's death,
Jenea is arrested for carrying out her husband's murder.
That same night, the couple's children are questioned again
by Kern County Sheriff's investigators.
- JESSICA: When they asked to
take me to an interrogation room,
I asked them, what, why now? What's new now?
And then that's when they start showing the videos.
- ANDREA: Her body language speaks volumes.
A young woman who's seeing things
that she didn't want to see.
There's a red backpack that she picks up on very early on
and says, "Hey, did you find that backpack?
My mom has a backpack like that."
- JESSICA: I was just so overwhelmed,
nothing was really making sense during that time.
When I look back at it, I felt so guilty that I had,
like, betrayed my mom.
- NARRATOR: When Jenea's trial begins on December 9, 2019,
the prosecution is fully aware they have
a largely circumstantial case.
And Jenea's daughter, Jessica, has changed her opinion about
what she saw on the video.
- ANDREA: I was not surprised at all when Jessica backed off of
what she had said during the interview with, with detectives.
She essentially recanted much of--of that testimony.
- The daughters all testified that that wasn't their mom
in the video.
- NARRATOR: Despite the setback, prosecutors paint Jenea Chance
as a scorned wife, stuck in a loveless marriage,
and looking for a quick way out.
- TONY: According to the prosecution, what happened was,
Jenea found out about Carrie Williams sending photographs
to that of her husband.
That sets her off on such a rampage.
She starts gathering everything she needs to do to
basically end his life over these photographs.
My reaction, it's bullsh--.
The motive was lacking on the fact no one ever said that there
was ever any response to her ever finding out about these
photographs to her husband.
- NARRATOR: During the trial, prosecutors lay out their
version of what happened on the morning of August 25, 2013.
Jenea lured Todd away from their home armed with
a .38 caliber revolver.
- ARTHUR: She might have said to him,
"Honey, I think we need to have a, uh, talk.
And I think we need to have it in private somewhere."
And the two of them drove off to have a, a talk.
She pulled out a gun
and fired it twice at her husband and killed him.
- [gunshots]
- NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe Jenea modeled the plan after
the CSI Las Vegas exhibit the family had visited
just months prior to the murder.
- They said this was part of the premeditation and deliberation.
She planned a trip to Vegas.
They all went to the CSI experience.
And allegedly one of the exhibits,
someone died and the body was found in a field.
And that was where she gleaned
her idea of how she was going to kill him.
- NARRATOR: Jenea's defense team disagrees.
- JESSICA: The police using the CSI little walkthrough from
Vegas as evidence against my Mom was such a reach for me.
It was actually Sarah's idea to go to the CSI exhibit.
My sisters had pushed for it.
And so the fact that they used that against her
was just such a reach.
- NARRATOR: After a month of testimony,
the case goes to the jury.
- After the eight days of deliberation,
we finally got the notice that there was a verdict.
- I was confident that the jury
was going to come back with innocent.
- NARRATOR: The jury finds Jenea guilty of first-degree murder.
- JESSICA: I was just completely floored.
I just remember getting out of there as fast as I could
and just going to the bathroom in the courthouse
and just crying and crying.
It was all a blur. She was--it wasn't real.
It's still a hard pill to swallow because I refuse
to take that as an answer.
- NARRATOR: On September 16th, 2020,
Jenea Chance is sentenced to 50 years in prison.
- For the overwhelming, uh, majority the community, um,
I think that it gives hope that, you know, there is, uh, justice.
- JANELLE: At the same time,
I think that your heart goes out to the daughters.
When children lose both parents to such a crime,
it's, it's terrible all the way around.
- JESSICA: If I could say anything to Todd,
I would tell him I miss him and that I love him
and thanks for being so amazing to me, like, over the years.