[Jeannine speaking]
KARI: When Jeannine met Jeff, she saw
what most girls her age dreamt of --
Prince Charming.
It was all about show for him.
Look at my beautiful home, look at my beautiful children,
[Jeff speaking]
look at my beautiful wife.
[Jeff speaking]
At the drop of a hat,
it was Jekyll and Hyde.
There would just be this soulless
person standing in front of you.
It would scare the hell out of you.
He liked the idea that mom needed him.
That gave him power over her.
When she didn't need him anymore,
that's where things began to spiral.
KARI: And I started to worry about her safety.
This isn't gonna end well.
Something's really wrong.
[music climbing]
[theme music playing]
[mellow music playing]
NARRATOR: Jeannine Glanda and her husband,
Jeffrey, throw a typically extravagant birthday party for
their two-year-old son, Tyler.
My mother is trying to coax me
into opening one of my birthday gifts.
TYLER: And one of my friends is sitting in
front of the box, starting it for me.
My dad carries me over, and...
my friend gets it ripped open.
Look at that!
TYLER: Once I see that the box is ripping open,
then I charge back over and decide that
I want a part of this.
My parents were very over the top
when it came to what they got us.
For me, it was whatever the top toy was at that moment,
that's what I was gonna end up getting.
[indistinct talking]
NARRATOR: Jeannine met Jeff six years earlier.
TYLER: My parents first met when my mother
had graduated from Albany College of Pharmacy.
She started working at a pharmacy in Tupper Lake,
and that's where my father was born and raised.
She saw this, you know, good-looking, tall,
dark, and handsome guy come in.
He said all the right things, did all the right flirting,
whatever, made her feel special and beautiful,
and that's how it started.
NARRATOR: They marry in October 1983,
and Tyler arrives 18 months later.
Jeff was a court stenographer, so he knew, um, people,
you know, lawyers and judges and stuff like that.
TYLER: He held that in a high regard.
Mom didn't really seem affected by the amount of
time that work took,
because it provided the lifestyle
that they both enjoyed.
[Jeannine talking]
They had a beautiful pool in the backyard.
Jeff was very extravagant.
JEFF: Jump!
JAN: Jeff liked his tanning booth.
I think his tastes were
a little bit more expensive than anybody else's.
KARI: When he saw Jeannine, he saw a beautiful,
smart, career-driven woman that was gonna bring him up
a step in his status and what he wanted to look like in life.
My father was a very charming person, and he was very flashy.
The way Jeff carried himself was
he thought he was suave.
He had the nice suits, gold jewelry,
and the nice watch, and the pinky ring
and drove a Mercedes.
He pulled it off well.
Everything about Jeff was planned, from what he would wear
for that day or what jewelry he would pick out.
It was very important to him that other people would
look at him and think, oh, he's -- he's something.
He's got it all together.
He's got the great family, the great house,
the great kids.
It was all about show for him.
Tennille was Jeff's daughter from his first marriage,
and so she was Jeannine's stepdaughter.
TYLER: She's nine years older than me,
and we've always been very close.
She would spend weekends with us, go on vacations with us.
JEFF: No.
NARRATOR: The day after Tyler's second birthday party,
Tennille joins the family for Easter Sunday.
Easter in my family was like a second Christmas.
[Jeff speaking]
Gifts were important to my father, as you
can see in the videos, like he captures,
you know, what those things are,
and you have to hold them in a certain way.
[Jeff speaking]
TYLER: Show everybody what it is, because eventually,
he's gonna show this video to somebody else
to show what a great father he is.
[Jeff speaking]
He wanted everybody to know that whatever he bought,
it was a top-of-the-line item, it was premier.
[Jeff speaking]
My mother was just kind of like a tagalong
to this lifestyle that he was portraying.
It was important to Jeff that his wife looked the part.
TYLER: With my mother,
she had to look a certain way.
If she put on weight, she had to figure out a way to
get rid of it, because he couldn't be seen
with her like that.
JAN: Jeff was tough on her for her weight.
He would weigh her to make her lose weight,
and I don't know why, because she was beautiful.
TYLER: It was hard to live up to those standards.
He made it impossible for anybody to just
be who they were.
There was a certain expectation that if you didn't
look good with him,
you weren't gonna be around him.
My dad went all out one year and got me the entire
Ghostbuster outfit, as well as all the tools
that came along with it,
every accessory that you could imagine.
[Jeff speaking]
1989, my sister Jordan came along.
[Jeff speaking]
TYLER: I was very excited.
[Jeff speaking]
TYLER: I think in a typical household
when you have a newborn child,
both parents try to split duties evenly,
and that wasn't really the case with my dad.
KARI: After the children were born,
that's when I started to see
them arguing or unhappy at get-togethers.
I think that's when she started
to see the different side of Jeff,
more selfish side.
He was more involved in his things,
and they just had to play the role so that the people
that he thought mattered
would think that he was a great guy with the perfect life.
I believe Jeannine, at the beginning of
their problems, thought that it was work,
you know, that was keeping Jeff away.
It became clear to her that it was Jeff, not the job.
TYLER: She felt like he was being pulled away all the time.
It just continued to get worse after Jordan was born.
She felt like dad was being unfaithful.
[Jeff speaking]
NARRATOR: In a rare moment of family time,
Jeff Glanda captures the action on video.
JEFF: Okay, now...
[Jeff speaking]
It looks like a perfect little picture...
Dad!
...but it's very unusual to see it.
It's almost like the movie was being made to send somebody to
say, "Hey, look-it, I'm father of the year."
[Jeff speaking]
TYLER: When in reality, as time wore on,
dad had pulled himself away
from the family and isolated himself.
NARRATOR: One night, Jeff comes home smelling of
perfume and with lipstick on his collar.
TYLER: Mom was noticeably upset about it.
My father denied everything.
He said that she was crazy, that she was
making this all up in her head, that nothing inappropriate had
ever happened, and I think it just got to
a point where she was just tired of hearing
that he was doing nothing wrong when clearly there was
something going on,
and it just continued to deteriorate the relationship
to a point where it was irreconcilable.
NARRATOR: Jeannine moves out of the family home and into
the small house in the backyard
of the Glanda property.
KARI: I think Jeannine stayed there for a couple of reasons.
One, it didn't cost anything,
but mainly for the kids.
It just made it easier and more convenient
for the children.
That's what she'd say to us.
I want them to be happy.
It was all about her children.
I think with Jeannine moving out,
um, for Jeff, the worst part was
that people were gonna know that
they were having issues, that they weren't
the perfect little family,
that Jeff Glanda did not have the perfect everything.
I know it made him angry.
NARRATOR: One month later,
Jeff pulls a move that changes everything.
TYLER: Dad needed a secretary to do his dictation.
That's when he hired Cheri to start taking over
some of the transcripts -- dad had updated
the basement apartment.
Cheri was gonna be moving in there.
That did not go over well with Jeannine at all.
It's kind of like a slap in the face.
There was no question about it
that dad was physically attracted to her.
He was buying her gifts.
He ended up giving her his Mercedes
and purchasing a new one for himself.
My mother living up on the hill, she's not that far away,
starts to take notice of the fact that all these things
that she was longing for, he was doing for somebody else.
She felt that there was a lot
more to it than just being a secretary
and her being hired.
In 1994, mom started realizing that the marriage was done
and that she needed to create a life for herself.
Randy was an old flame from high school,
and he made her feel beautiful.
NARRATOR: Randy Hume works at a gas station in nearby
Elizabethtown.
He would tell her all the time that she was smart.
Um, it just boosted her up again.
There was a point in time where mom
really started to come out of her shell.
KARI: Some of that spark was coming back.
I loved seeing her happy.
TYLER: Mom taking that step was devastating to dad.
Not, I'm losing somebody that I care about.
It was, I'm losing control over the situation.
He didn't want her but didn't
want anybody else to want her either.
He liked the idea that she still
needed him -- that gave him power over her.
Once she got to that point where she didn't need
him anymore, that's where things began to spiral.
KARI: In April of 1995,
um, there was an incident that first started me feeling like
she may be in danger, actual danger.
Jeannine had gone to Plattsburgh.
I believe she was meeting Randy up there.
And while she was gone,
dad became obsessed and was trying to find out
who she was with, where she was going.
KARI: And while she was away, phone calls started happening,
Jeff calling me asking where Jeannine is.
TYLER: When the phone calls
started coming in to different people,
they realized that this was a serious situation
and that she was not going to be safe.
KARI: I told my husband that I think he's in her house,
and that's where it all started from there.
NARRATOR: Jeannine's family fears that Jeff has broken
into her house and is lying in wait to confront her.
They call the police.
[siren wailing]
KARI: The state trooper and my husband went up
to the house and noticed that Jeannine was home.
The state police officer went in,
asked Jeannine, "Is Jeff in here?
Is Jeff in your home?"
And she's like, "I think he was, because I found
this bottle and an empty glass, um, here on the counter,"
and
they asked if they could check the house.
All the trooper saw was Jeff in
the dark, in boxers, with a glass.
Why is he in that house?
Why is he drinking? Why is he in his boxers?
And there was a steak knife on the TV.
What he was gonna do with that, I don't know.
I don't think she looked far enough into it like we did.
I think she just was more annoyed
than frightened at that point.
NARRATOR: As the house is Jeannine's residence,
not Jeff's, the police arrest him for burglary.
I remember him being handcuffed and screaming
at my mother that she needed to drop the charges,
because he was gonna lose his job.
KARI: After they asked Jeannine
if she wanted to press charges,
and she said no, they just let Jeff go.
He went back down to his house.
Mom kind of just grabbed us and put us in the car.
KARI: They spent I think three nights with us.
Then she decided that it was time to go back home.
I remember my husband and I
pretty much begging her,
"Please don't, we don't feel good about this.
He can get in that house. He's proven it."
And she went back.
TYLER: There was a point in time where I had
been walking through the kitchen and he goes,
"Come here. I want you to listen to something."
And it's a phone call between my mother
and presumably Randy trying to make plans to get together.
He goes, "See, this is why we can't be a family.
"I've been trying to get things worked out with your mother.
But I can't stop her from seeing all these different men."
And as a 10-, 11-, 12-year-old kid,
I'm hearing from my dad how heartbroken he is,
that all he wants is his family together.
And I'm hearing my mother talk to this other man.
He would continuously do this with me for the next 3.5
to 4 years, having me listen to really
anything that she was doing.
NARRATOR: Tyler tells his mom that Jeff is spying on her.
I let out
a deep breath and said, "There's something I have to tell you,
"and you --
"you can't say anything, because I don't want dad
to be mad at me."
And she asked me what it was,
and I said, "He's recording all of your phone calls.
"I don't know how, but he's
"listening to everything that's happening in your house,
"and he's had me listening to these tapes,
"and that's how I know about this and this
and where you were last weekend,"
and all of the color just kind of faded from her face.
It dawned on her that he had been spying
on her, that he had tapped her phone lines,
and the stalking had never stopped.
NARRATOR: Jeannine meets with a divorce attorney.
JAN: She was very happy.
She said, "I just spoke to the lawyer,
and she said we have him by the balls,"
and she was very excited that she was getting
somewhere in the divorce proceedings.
And this was the first time that, you know,
there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
[indistinct shouting]
And it worked!
NARRATOR: Two days later, a relaxed-looking
Jeannine enjoys her niece's sixth birthday party.
She was happy, you know, and finally moving forward.
KARI: But by that time,
I started to worry about her safety.
You're right there in his backyard.
You make it way too easy for him to still get at you.
I wanted her to move away. I wanted her out of there.
But she said, "He's the father of my children.
He's not gonna hurt me."
But that's not how it happened.
The morning of August 19th,
I was supposed to get picked up by mom,
and she hadn't shown up yet.
[phone ringing]
So I called mom's house a couple of times.
There was no answer.
So then I called the pharmacy to see if she had gone to
work and just had forgotten that she was supposed to bring
us that day.
Nobody had seen her yet.
So then I -- I called my grandmother, her mother,
[phone ringing]
and told her that I hadn't heard from mom.
At that point,
my mother-in-law called the state police,
because it just --
it was 100 percent out of character
for her not to show up on time or be where she needed to be.
I called my husband at work,
and I told him, "Your sister is missing.
"We don't know where she is.
"She was supposed to be at work for nine o'clock, and, uh...
I need you," because I was just starting to really fall apart.
NARRATOR: A New York State trooper
calls at Jeannine's residence.
HEIDE: It was just standard operating procedure,
send a trooper to the house to take a look.
So a trooper went to the cottage that Jeannine was
living in, and as he's looking
in the windows and looking in the garage,
Jeff shows up and volunteers essentially that he doesn't
know where she is.
He didn't seem concerned that
the mother of his children was missing.
NARRATOR: Seven miles away, a driver pulls into
a parking lot on the shore of Cascade Lake.
He discovers personal items that belong to Jeannine Glanda.
A gentleman found Jeannine's purse and when
he spoke to the state police, he said,
"The purse is at the top of the hill," and it was as though
everything with Jeannine's name on it was facing up.
It didn't look like it was randomly disposed of,
but someone organized the identification
so it was face up.
That was suspicious.
The area in question, it's a steep incline where
the road goes down to the lake.
When the state police located where the purse was found,
they looked down the slope of
the hill, and they saw there was
I think a birch tree that had been broken off and recently
shattered, and that caused the police to go down to
the edge of the shoreline and look further.
They found a part of a Ford Explorer
that they could see in the water.
They sent some divers down, and they saw that she was --
she was in the car.
RONALD: We knew it was Jeannine Glanda.
The police knew. I knew.
So there was no doubt about
the identity of the person found in the lake.
KARI: It was a state police officer that stepped up
to my father-in-law and said that,
you know, "We found Jeannine
She's deceased," and...
I just -- I don't even know how to explain it.
[exhales heavily]
Sorry.
It's been 25 years. You'd think, like...
It's just the pain that, um,
that moment was just...
too much for everybody.
[laughter]
When dad told us that they had found mom, he was sobbing.
Um, you -- you could tell that
he had been crying for a while.
His entire face was red, his nose was red,
and he looked back and forth at both of us and...
said, "Mommy's been in an accident, and she's in heaven."
I didn't hear anything.
From there, it was white noise.
Jeannine was found in the car, but she also was found oddly.
Jeannine was a person who dressed carefully,
who wouldn't go out of the house unless she had on
proper clothes, and her body had a nightgown sort of a top.
Her jeans were only pulled up to her hips,
not all the way up to her waist.
There was no underwear, there were no socks,
there were no shoes,
at least one of her slippers was loose in the car.
So it made no sense.
MICHAEL: Just by how the car went into the water,
I just knew from the get-go that this wasn't an accident.
She didn't just drive down the road
and go off the road like that.
There was obviously some foul play.
She was in the car, you know, with her pajamas on.
That was one of my first red flags.
NARRATOR: Investigators interview Jeff Glanda.
He says that he left work to look for Jeannine
the moment he learned that she was missing.
Jeff says to the police in his first long interview
that he decides to go home, heading north
towards Plattsburgh.
That route makes no sense.
And Jeff's bizarre explanation for going that way is he
thought perhaps he could spot Jeannine's car,
because he thought that maybe she met her boyfriend somewhere
along that route for a sort of rendezvous.
RONALD: It became clear over time that he wanted
the investigation to look into Randy Hume.
That was crystal clear.
HEIDE: And at the time of her death,
that relationship was known,
although she was discreet, because the divorce was pending,
and Randy was spoken to by
the police, and he was fairly quickly
dismissed as a possible perpetrator.
RONALD: The investigator called me to tell me
that Jeffrey Glanda wanted to take a polygraph test,
which is most unusual.
He showed up, and I was told
he was wearing soiled sweatpants,
no jewelry, no watch, no gold bracelet.
And he seemed to have a very flat affect.
He passed the polygraph test.
He was not found to be lying.
HEIDE: But in New York State, polygraph
exams are not admissible in court.
And that's because polygraphs are not foolproof.
NARRATOR: A discovery at the Glanda property reveals that
Jeff was obsessed with knowing who his wife talked to.
RONALD: Jeannine's home was searched.
We found that recording device, and it was hidden in
the kitchen there above the cabinetry close to
the ceiling.
He didn't have a plausible or reasonable
explanation of why he had it there.
But he volunteered and reiterated
to the state police that
he would never harm the mother of his two children.
Dad became more and more
pissed about the fact that people wanted to know what
happened to her -- why couldn't they just leave it alone?
HEIDE: Jeannine is transferred to Albany for autopsy.
The autopsy showed that Jeannine
had died essentially from drowning.
The only thing that was unusual was she had
red marks on her throat that were described
and photographed, but no cause of them was identified.
[music climbing]
I recognized those marks.
They were stun gun marks.
HEIDE: The police are looking at Jeff.
He's their main suspect.
But they hear from a man that there's a local guy
who's bragging that he was hired to kill somebody.
He's bragging that he's gonna come into a lot of money.
He's a guy named Nick Pecararo,
and Nick knew Jeff.
NARRATOR: Nick Pecararo is the handyman that
Jeff Glanda employs to maintain his property.
He helped doing just various odd jobs that
my father wasn't gonna get his hands dirty for.
NARRATOR: New York State police tail Nick to test
how he reacts to knowing that he's under surveillance.
RONALD: The feeling was that if he participated in the murder of
Jeannine Glanda,
he would have a hard time living with himself, so
they would have a state troop car follow Nick.
Every time he looked in his rearview mirror,
there would be a troop car behind him, and he became more
and more unnerved over time.
And that's when he finally broke.
He panicked, and that was all part of the plan
to have him unwind.
NARRATOR: Nick boards a bus to New York City.
RONALD: And so they followed it and intercepted
the bus in Glens Falls, New York
and he started gushing a confession.
At this point, it really appeared
that Nick had been carrying
guilt for too long for him to hold,
and now he had the chance to unburden himself.
Jeff would sit with him or walk with him
and talk with him and tell him what a horrible person
Jeannine was -- in fact, it was part of
his grooming of this accomplice over time.
And Nick describes how Jeff Glanda approached him,
intimidated him,
and in Nick's words, forced him
to participate in the murder of Jeannine Glanda.
Jeff made it very, very clear to Nick that
he wanted this to look like a single car accident
and that Jeannine died alone in that car.
He explained how Jeff had settled on this idea
of drowning Jeannine
in her home and dumping her body in a car
in Cascade Lake.
NARRATOR: Lake water has a chemical signature that
differs from tap water and from lake to lake.
Jeff knows that for investigators to believe
Jeannine drowned in Cascade Lake,
the medical examiner must find lake water in her lungs.
He tells Nick that it's important
they use water from Cascade Lake to drown Jeannine at home.
It became clear later that he did
that was because he had been the court reporter
in an accidental death that involved fresh water drowning,
and the source of the water is
important, and he wanted the waters to match.
So Jeff took a number of empty jugs
and brought them down to the lake and filled
them with water and kept them handy in his garage.
RONALD: Jeffrey and Nick Pecararo
broke into Jeannine's house and waited for
her to return from her night out.
HEIDE: Nick explained that he went up
behind Jeannine and grabbed her,
bringing her to the ground.
Jeannine was on her back on her floor.
Then Nick described Jeff took something,
a black something, and used it on Jeannine's neck.
What Jeff had done was knock Jeannine out
cold by jamming a stun gun into her neck.
When a stun gun is pushed onto flesh,
you get four burn marks, and those four-pronged marks were
documented and preserved in the autopsy.
They stun gunned her into unconsciousness.
They poured the water retrieved from
the Cascade Lake down Jeannine's throat in her home.
They took Jeannine and dressed her and brought her
into her car.
And Nick drove to the Cascade Lakes in Jeannine's car while
Jeff stayed behind and cleaned up the house
so that nothing in her home seemed
disturbed or looked disturbed.
HEIDE: Nick described how he drove down to Cascade Lake.
What he did was get out of the car,
pulled Jeannine halfway into the driver's seat over
the console,
and pushed the car off the edge
so that it went down the side of
the lake into the water itself and sunk.
NARRATOR: Nick agrees to work with the state police
to try to record an admission from Jeff.
RONALD: And at the same time, get Jeff Glanda out of the home
so that if an arrest is to be
effectuated that there was no opportunity for Jeff to use
the children as pawns or as hostages in some way,
in some fashion -- the plan was to have Nick Pecararo
call Jeffrey from a pay phone and tell
Jeff that the police are on to me.
I want you to bring me the money
you promised me, the $10,000, and I need it now,
because I'm going to take off.
Jeff said, "What are you talking about?"
He wouldn't admit to anything on the phone,
but he said, "I'm coming right now."
As Jeff pulled into the station, he swung the door
open and said, "Get in the truck, get in the truck."
And Nick Pecararo said, "I'm not getting in the truck."
And then Jeff yelled out,
"You're working with the state police," and he took off at
a high rate of speed.
[tires squealing]
[sirens wailing]
And there were two or three police cars
in hot pursuit, traveling at about
75 miles an hour back to Lake Placid.
On the police radio, be on the lookout, be on the alert.
Whatever you do, don't let him
get into the house with the children.
[indistinct radio chatter]
MICHAEL: I kept hearing the transmissions on the radio.
They were giving speeds of 70 and then 80,
so I just started heading up towards Jeff's house.
[siren wailing]
They wanted us to set up a roadblock.
So I had the car crossways in the road.
Then I realized that Jeff wasn't gonna stop.
[tires squealing]
[crashing noises]
I heard the truck hit.
I saw the truck go over
the front of the cop car into the windshield.
It's just like slow motion going [mimics crashing noises].
I heard metal and I heard stuff breaking, and then it just
kind of spun around sideways and kind of come to a stop.
Jeff drove into him full tilt,
wrecking that patrol car injuring that officer,
and wrecking Jeff's car, as well.
NARRATOR: Jeff is only bruised and cut in the collision.
Troopers arrest him at 4:20 a.m. on the charge of murder.
When prosecutors dig into Jeff's records,
they find damning evidence.
Jeff was a guy who liked material things.
He liked his fancy cars.
He liked his fancy clothes.
He made money, and he liked to spend money.
The forensics showed that Jeff
was really in trouble financially.
RONALD: If Jeff and Jeannine were to be divorced,
the financial house of cards would collapse.
NARRATOR: Forensic accountants find that Jeff
took out life insurance on Jeannine.
That on face value was worth $50,000.
unless she died in a single-car accident.
Then he would get double indemnity of
$100,000 for her death.
And Jeff did his best with Nick to
make it look like a single-car accident.
Very, very powerful.
NARRATOR: Prosecutors stepped through Jeff Glanda's
motive for murdering his wife.
He doesn't have to worry about the divorce anymore
if Jeannine dies.
He doesn't have to worry about his kids possibly going to her.
He doesn't have to worry about alimony,
splitting his belongings and so on.
Jeannine came home, Nick grabbed Jeannine
and brought her to the ground.
[stun gun clicking]
Jeff poured the water onto her mouth
and throat and drowned her.
Nick and Jeff tried to dress Jeannine,
and they carried her out to her car.
Nick drove down to Cascade Lake.
What he did was get out of the car,
pulled Jeannine halfway into the driver's seat over
the console,
closed the driver's door, and pushed the car off the edge
so that it went down the side of
the lake into the water itself and sunk.
The jury heard from both sides, and they decided to sentence
Jeff Glanda to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Jeff Glanda is truly one of the most evil people.
TYLER: Once the verdict came in,
he told me how disappointed he was in me.
And I said, "Imagine my disappointment
waking up every morning without my parents."
And that was the last conversation I had with him...
for a long time.
[indistinct exclamations]
And it worked!
JAN: When she died,
it created a huge hole in our lives.
It made no sense.
She was married to a narcissist who had
a very good way of hiding
the fact that he was emotionally
and mentally abusing her.
Jeannine was in a domestic violence situation.
If somebody watching this can recognize that in either
themselves or a loved one, that would be helpful.
That's what I want.
TYLER: My mother was so afraid of taking that step
and walking away that it ended up costing her her life.
The idea of survivor's guilt is a real thing, and...
in my eyes, 12 years old, it doesn't matter.
I should have been able to protect her.