- I'm craig melvin
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
A doctor's wife dies after a minor fender bender.
So, why do her brothers believe this was no accident?
- Then I pulled my brother out and I told him you--
You are not going to believe what I just heard.
- The startling news came from their sister's friend.
- And she just kept insisting,
Promise me you'll get a full autopsy.
- The brothers kept it a secret.
- We wouldn't tell our parents,
We wouldn't tell my sister deanna,
We wouldn't tell anybody.
- It was information about a family member they loved.
Would they point the guilty finger?
- There was no way we were going to accuse him.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
Rosie and yazeed essa seemed to have an ideal life,
Two beautiful children, no financial worries,
And a loving extended family.
Then a fatal fender bender shattered it all.
Rosie's death would leave her loved ones
Desperate for answers.
Soon, they would discover her marriage was full of secrets
And it would take an investigation worthy
Of a spy novel to unlock them.
Here's dennis murphy with "bitter pill".
♪♪
- So ironic that rosie essa was just idling away
A few hours that afternoon
When she had only a few precious minutes remaining.
But we never know, do we?
It was February 2005.
She was dashing to the movies
To meet her sister deanna at a matinee.
- At the last minute,
I mean I was already in the movie theater,
She had called and she said, all right, I'm on my way.
She said, I'm leaving now.
- No one knew it then, but rosie's nothing special trip
To the movies that day from her nice home
In suburban cleveland would set in motion
An international manhunt.
Something that became an excruciating five-year ordeal
That would expose mistresses, secret bedrooms,
And new identities, and would involve the fbi,
The middle east, and murder.
And all the injury and the lifetime of sorrow
For so many began on the streets of a perfectly pleasant moms,
Dads, kids, and dogs kind of neighborhood,
Gates millis, ohio.
Rosie and her handsome doctor husband yazeed,
Or yaz, as he was known to one and all, lived here.
She was a nurse.
They met while working at the same hospital.
At 36, he was proud that he, a man of humble roots,
Was able to provide his family with so much.
The big house, the backyard pool,
Money for whatever they needed.
- Once upon a time...
- The kind of son-in-law rosie's parents rocco
And gigi dipuccio could regard as heaven sent.
- She'd send him for two jars of baby food,
He'd come home with 36.
I mean, everything he did had to be big and lots.
- Was it in a showoff kind of way or was he--
Was he being generous? - No! He--
No, he was just-- you know, I used to say to him,
I think god is so good to you in everything you do
Because you're so giving to people.
- Now, rosie, her family would say,
Could not have cared less about the house,
The cars, the status.
She was down to earth and content with what
She'd always had, not the least of it
Her close italian american family.
Her Sunday dinner at her parent's was a don't miss.
- Silly.
Where's your teeth, silly?
- And, of course, the sun and moon of her life,
2-year-old daughter lena and 4-year-old son arvin.
- Was she happy to be a mother?
- Oh, my god, are you kidding?
She would just pinch their cheek and say,
I can't believe I got these beautiful kids.
I just love 'em.
Her eyes lit up when she looked at her babies.
They were her life.
- Happy birthday! Say happy birthday!
- Sorry we're missing your party.
- In fact, rosie and yaz, married for almost six years,
Were hoping for another child.
She was taking prenatal vitamins.
But she would never get to have another baby
Because rosie's 10-minute drive to the movies
In her black volvo suv was going poorly.
Her waiting sister had no idea what had gone wrong.
- I wondered where is she? How come she's not calling?
I held my phone the whole time just waiting for it to ring.
- As it turned out, for a few minutes anyway,
Rosie was on her cell with her friend of many years,
A woman named eva.
She drove on interstate 271 for just one exit
To wilson mills road.
That's when rosie's suv started veering erratically.
Another driver noticed it.
- I saw a black car cross over center
And go back into the lane and hit a car.
And the car just kept going.
And I'm thinking to myself, what is going on here?
What is this woman doing?
- The volvo eventually stopped.
That's when tara tamsin, a medical technician,
Pulled over and ran to see if she could help
The woman in the car.
She found a person in desperate shape.
- When I got into the car, the woman was limp.
And the next thing you know, she started vomiting.
- Meanwhile, patrol officer david skiciano
Of the highland heights police department
Had happened by.
His dashboard camera recorded the accident.
- The female driver was sitting back
And she's just gasping for air.
- Rosie was rushed to the hospital.
When word reached her family, they, too,
Raced to the emergency room worried about her condition.
- I just prayed, you know, please, you know, let her live.
If she's-- no matter how bad she's, you know, broken up,
We'll take care of her.
You know? So just please let her live, god.
- In the er, the doctors working frantically on rosie
Almost an hour now, allowed her husband yaz,
An emergency room doctor himself, to observe.
Rosie's brother would be the one to deliver
The bad news to his parents.
- He looked at me, he was crying,
And he went like this to me.
And I just went down.
- It was sadly over for rosie essa at the age of 38.
The family was brought to a private room for a viewing.
- When I saw her,
I'm thinking she looked like she was sleeping.
I mean, there was not a mark on her.
- And as the stunned family began to prepare
For unspeakably sad arrangements,
Just hours after she'd passed away,
That friend named eva, who had been on the phone
With rosie right before her car crashed,
Got ahold of dominic, rosie's brother.
She repeated what were very probably rosie's last words.
It was literally unbelievable what eva
Was suggesting.
- The first thing I did was I went in the house
And I pulled my brother out and I told him you--
You are not going to believe what I just heard.
I repeated the story to him.
We looked at each other like now what the hell do we do?
What eva said would nearly rip dominic
And his brother rocky apart.
How could they keep such a monstrous thing a secret?
- We wouldn't tell our parents.
We wouldn't tell my sister deanna.
We wouldn't tell anybody.
- And she just kept insisting,
Promise me you'll get a full autopsy.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- The dipuccio family turned to their church for strength
In dealing with the loss of their rosie.
At just 38, snatched away far too soon
In a slow-motion car accident no one could comprehend.
Their beloved daughter and sister,
Mother of two and wife of yaz.
- Where's their lucky mama?
Look at mama.
Look at mama!
- Yaz, yazeed had been born in detroit,
A first-generation palestinian-american,
Son of a ford autoworker.
After medical school,
He'd become an emergency room doctor.
But one with an entrepreneurial itch.
He and his brother had become wealthy as partners
In a satellite dish installation company.
And back in 1999 when they married,
Rosie's parents felt it was a dream come true
For their daughter.
- And I just, uh, think we got a beautiful future together.
- In the years they were married,
Rosie's mom and dad saw only a solid relationship.
- When she got married, it was like a fairytale.
We'd loved them and we cared for him
Because there was nothing we could say we disliked.
- But now, after rosie's death, there was trouble brewing
In the dipuccio family and it brought rosie's two siblings,
Dominic and his younger brother rocky, nearly to blows.
It all started after a conversation
Just hours after rosie's death
That dominic had with his sister's friend eva.
- And I said rosie died, rosie died.
She was hysterical.
She proceeded to tell me that rosie was talking to her
On her way to the movie and she said yaz
Had given her a calcium pill before she left the house
And she started to feel queasy.
Rosie told her, "well, I'm going to call yaz to see
"if maybe this calcium pill is making me sick."
- I'm hearing about some kind of a pill.
He gave it to her, she is being made sick by it
As eva is talking to her over the phone.
- Right.
- And within an hour she's dead.
- Right.
- After the eva conversation, dominic called a family council
Of just the two brothers and their wives.
They needed someplace private, so they got into one car
And drove to their church's parking lot.
Eva's story seemed incomprehensible.
Could there have been something wrong
With the calcium capsule yaz had given rosie?
- And we talked about it and we called eva again.
And she just kept insisting,
"promise me you'll get a full autopsy.
"promise me you'll get a toxicology report.
"promise me, promise me, promise me."
- Dominic's wife julie was dumbfounded.
- How do you have this information
Come to you about somebody that is family?
And there was no way we were going to accuse him.
- Let alone a guy that we knew that was in our family,
That we loved. - And we trusted.
- The brothers found themselves in opposite camps
As far as strategy, dominic, the lawyer wanting to go slow.
First let the coroner do his report
Then see where they stood.
Rocky and his wife rachel were eager to take eva's story
To the cops.
Everyone, though, hoped that yaz was blameless.
- I remember thinking, feeling suspicious
After that phone call,
Feeling like we need to do something
With this information.
- In the dark of the parking lot,
They made a compromise.
Rocky would call the coroner the next day
And ask for a thorough and full examination
Of rosie's body.
There wouldn't be any mention of eva's suspicions.
- The coroner is going to find out how she died.
I mean, this was a matter of two days, three days,
Four days the coroner would come back
And say this is what happened.
- And that's what everyone wanted.
They were desperate to know what had happened to rosie.
The two-car accident she'd been involved in
Had been a minor fender bender and there appeared to be
No serious trauma to rosie's body.
The next day, the coroner performed an autopsy.
Unwelcome news reached the dipuccios quickly.
Cause of death unknown; more tests would be needed.
The wait would only add more stress
To an already stressful situation
Between rosie's two brothers.
Their parents felt the tension.
- They were going at each other
And I couldn't understand this.
- You could see it?
- I could see it.
They were arguing and arguing.
And I'm telling rocco, oh, my gosh,
Talk to dominic and rocky.
I don't know what's going on with them.
- But how long could the brothers keep their secret
From the rest of the family?
- Especially when someone else was also growing suspicious.
- As soon as I got off the phone,
I said I think he killed her.
- Gut instinct? - Immediately. Mm-hmm.
- I didn't know if she had an axe to grind with him.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Rosie essa died in a low-impact car accident.
And almost two weeks later, her family was still awaiting
The coroner's final report on the exact cause of her death.
That's when this woman, on her own,
Decided to get involved.
And it's that involvement that would later prove
Invaluable to the police.
- I didn't want to be the nosy neighbor
In "bewitched",
The gladys kravitz of the neighborhood,
Coming up with these wild convoluted ideas.
- Christine dicillo is a nurse
Who'd once worked with both rosie
And her doctor husband yaz at a hospital.
She hadn't seen much of either of them
In the previous five years.
By coincidence, christine lived right next door
To rosie's friend eva.
And eva told her about that last phone call
With rosie about yaz giving her a calcium capsule.
- It was odd to me that just prior to leaving
For a movie in the middle of the afternoon,
In a hurry, that that was so necessary
That he give her the pill.
As soon as I got off the phone with eva,
I looked at my husband and said I think he killed her.
- Gut instinct? - Immediately. Mm-hmm.
- So, going simply on her gut instinct
That something wasn't right, and unknown to rosie's brothers,
Christine called the authorities.
- But if you were wrong, christine?
- Well, where could they take it if I was wrong?
There was no harm, no foul and they could politely tell me
That I was wrong and thank you for my help.
And I would go away.
- Christine's urgent request to check yaz out
Made it to the desk of gary mckee,
Then a detective with the highland heights, ohio police department.
He was already investigating rosie's car accident.
- I never had met christine dicillo.
And I didn't know if she had an axe to grind with them.
For whatever reason, she didn't care for him
May not have been a valid reason.
So, I wasn't approaching him as a suspect or even thinking
That, you know, this guy is a murderer.
- Still, the detective had some facts that didn't add up.
A 38-year-old woman in good health suddenly dead
In a fender bender.
What's more, the coroner couldn't give him
A cause of death.
At minimum he had to find out more
About those calcium capsules
Christine dicillo had told him about.
The detective called rosie's husband
And he agreed to come down to the police station.
That interview was recorded on an audio tape.
The detective questioned the doctor
About the calcium capsules.
- So, what's your impression of this doctor?
The guy everyone calls yaz?
- Well, he-- he's clearly a smart individual.
Very low key.
- Remember, rosie and yaz were trying to have another child
And she was prescribed prenatal vitamins.
Detective mckee wanted all the pills rosie was taking
Gathered up for testing, including the calcium capsules
That yaz said he bought for his wife.
The interview over, the detective followed yaz home.
- We entered the home.
There was a female seated at the kitchen counter on a stool.
She was margarita montanez.
- Margarita was the daytime nanny.
Yaz had hired her to care for his kids
After rosie died.
He also hired another woman to be the nighttime nanny.
At the time, the detective thought nothing
Of margarita the nanny,
Though that would eventually change.
For now, he was there only to get the pills from yaz.
- Before he retrieved the pills,
He asked me, have you found the cause of death for my wife.
And I said no, we haven't.
So, then he reached up in the cabinet
And retrieved the pills.
But before he handed them to me,
He said why do you want these?
And my response was, you know,
I just want to cover all the bases.
- The next day, yaz asked rosie's sister
To watch his kids overnight.
Then, in the middle of that night,
She got an urgent call from him.
- At four in the morning he left me a voicemail
Saying that his friend's brother was in a bad car accident
And they didn't think he was going to make it
So he was going to go to north carolina.
- The friend's brother was apparently in bad shape.
Yaz asked the dipuccio family to watch his children
Through the weekend.
But on Monday, when the doctor was to return,
Came a bombshell none of the dipuccios
Could ever have imagined.
Rosie's brother got a call from his wife.
- Julie called and said nobody can find yaz.
And I said, what do you mean?
She said nobody can find him.
I found his friend, I found his number,
I called him.
And I said, how's your brother?
And he said, what are you talking about?
And I said, well, yaz told us he was down with you
Because your brother had been in a really bad car accident.
And he said I haven't seen yaz--
Yaz hasn't been here all weekend.
- Dominic went to rosie and yaz's house
And discovered something on the kitchen counter.
- It was an envelope that had obviously recently been opened.
The postage stamp was just a couple of days before.
And it was in an envelope that a passport would come in.
I said, he's gone. He's gone.
- But could this father really have left behind
His two children?
Children who'd just lost their mother three weeks before.
The dipuccios did have questions.
What killed rosie? And why did yaz disappear?
- The autopsy comes in along with a stunning revelation
About those calcium pills.
- What were they filled with?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered.
I'm craig melvin.
Rosie essa died after a fender bender
And taking what her husband yaz said was a calcium pill.
The young doctor gave police the remaining pills for testing
Then suddenly disappeared.
Now, investigators were about to discover
What was in those capsules,
A secret ingredient that would transform the investigation
And launch an international manhunt for yaz.
Once again, here's dennis murphy with "bitter pill".
[laughing]
- Dr. Yazeed essa was gone.
Three weeks after his wife rosie had died a puzzling death,
He'd up and abandoned their two young children,
His job as an er doctor, just flat vanished.
Rosie's brother dominic filed a missing person report
With the police,
Then headed down to yaz's house
And started his own investigation.
- My entire family spent the week at that house
And we were playing detectives,
Trying to figure out what happened.
- What is the puzzle piece telling you?
- Rosie died on a Thursday, less than 24 hours later
He sends a-- a blast email to all his friends
That says just wanted to let you know
That rosie died yesterday in a minor car accident.
She will be missed.
- That's it? - Mm-hmm.
- That was the email. - She will be missed.
- His wife? The mother of his two children?
- That was his blast email.
- Through credit card transactions,
Dominic eventually learned that yaz had bought a plane ticket.
Final destination?
Cyprus, the island in the mediterranean.
Dominic knew it was time to tell the entire family
Everything he and his brother rocky had been keeping back,
About the conversation their sister had with eva
Just before she died, her story about rosie
Feeling sick after taking a calcium capsule
Given to her by yaz.
- Are you, the family, saying out loud in one voice
Yaz killed rosie?
- Some of us are.
It took me a while.
It really took me a while.
- Suddenly, dominic and his wife's family had grown,
Caring not only for their own four children,
But now rosie's two children as well.
- They've not a mother, not a father.
We don't even know where to tell them where he went,
What happened to him. Where did daddy go?
How do you answer that question?
- Then came even more devastating news.
About four weeks after rosie's death,
Test results were in for the calcium pills
That police took from yaz's home.
- We had suspicions about that, of course,
And that nailed it.
- And what were they filled with?
- Potassium cyanide.
- Cyanide, a lethal poison.
Nine pills were in the bottle that yaz
Had turned over to police.
It's from that same bottle that he gave rosie a capsule.
And sure enough, there was enough cyanide in each pill
To kill a person within minutes.
Rosie's death was a homicide.
But how could the man the dipuccios loved so much,
The son-in-law they thought had a near perfect marriage
With their rosie, ever have killed her?
Nonetheless, dr. Yazeed essa was now a murder suspect
And international fugitive.
The local police called in the fbi.
- Initially, he fled from cleveland to cyprus
And then eventually we also obtained information
Through various sources that he had traveled
To beirut, lebanon.
- Phil torsne was a seasoned fbi manhunter.
The agent immediately knew he had a major problem.
Yaz was virtually untouchable in lebanon
Because that country doesn't have an extradition treaty
With the u.S.
So, rosie's husband was living freely in beirut.
The fbi knew it
And there was nothing they could do about it.
- Even if we have eyes on the ground,
You've got an agent say, "I just saw him
"leave his apartment and go down to the bistro,
"he read the paper and he went home."
You can't move in and serve papers on him?
- Right.
- Back in the u.S.
Rosie's family desperately tried to get yaz
To turn himself in.
They held news conferences.
- What we're doing today is making a plea to yazeed,
Um, if he is watching,
To come back to cleveland
And answer to the charges before him.
- By then, the doctor had officially been charged
With aggravated murder in the death of his wife.
But it appeared he had no intention of coming back.
Officials would later learn that yaz took on a new identity,
Maurice khalife.
He was a single, good-looking guy
Always up for a party. Here he's seen at a wedding.
Months went by, then a year.
- Did you ever get the feeling he was thumbing his nose at you
And all the other people looking for him?
- Yeah, I think so.
- And what you have to do is--
Is lure him off the security of his home base
Where he's safe in beirut?
- We hope, at some point, he leaves the country.
- In October 2006,
A year and a half after rosie's death,
Her mom and dad got a phone call
From their local police chief.
- And he said, are you sitting down?
He says I have good news for you.
He said, we got him.
- Yaz had finally slipped up.
He'd left the security of lebanon.
The fbi was aware he was going to be on a flight
Into cyprus' larnaka airport.
How they knew, they won't say.
But cypriot police were waiting for the doctor
When he got off the plane.
And in cyprus, unlike lebanon,
A person can be extradited to the u.S.
But yaz would fight every inch of the way
To avoid facing aggravated murder charges in ohio.
- That's our guy!
- It wasn't until January of 2009 that yazeed essa,
The man in this grainy footage,
Was finally brought back to the united states.
- 50, go ahead. - And detective mckee,
The highland heights, ohio officer
Who first started investigating rosie's death
Four years before, was waiting for him.
- We put him in the backseat of a car
And I didn't say a word to him.
- You didn't say, remember me?
- I think he did.
I don't think I had to say that.
- One question no one had yet answered,
Why would the doctor want his wife dead?
Coming up...
- Are you asserting that there's a little love nest?
A little pad?
- Oh, yeah, there was a-- I thought it was a playhouse.
- A love shack.
And that was it.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- For nearly five years,
The dipuccio family had been waiting for this day.
Dr. Yazeed essa would finally face a jury
For allegedly poisoning his wife rosie with cyanide.
Steve dever and anna feralia
Would prosecute the aggravated murder case for ohio.
- What's the mission?
How are you going to go about it?
- The mission is to define his character
And let the jury get another glimpse of who he is
As opposed to how he appears there in the courtroom.
- As the trial started the prosecution's challenge
Was to convince the jury that yazeed essa
Was a jekyll and hyde,
One face showing the emergency room doctor
Who saved lives and seemed the ideal husband.
The other an evil poisoner
Who planned the murder of his wife,
The mother of his two children.
Rosie's sister-in-law may have seen
One of those masks slip right after rosie had died.
She testified as to how cold and disrespectful
Yaz had seemed in the way he treated his wife's body
Lying on the hospital bed.
- Yaz walked over to rosie...
And abrupt-- very abruptly lifted her up
And pulled the sheet down.
And she was naked underneath and he exposed her breasts.
And he tried to get the necklace off
And he just kind of got it off
And he just treated her very disrespectfully.
And I remember thinking, why is he doing that?
Why is he treating her like that?
That's his wife.
- The state calls eva mcgregor.
- If the prosecution had an indispensable star witness,
It would be this woman taking the stand.
Eva mcgregor had been the friend on the phone with rosie
Just moments before her car accident and death.
Only eva could point to yaz as the source
Of that cyanide-laced calcium capsule
Rosie had taken.
- She had taken a-- a calcium pill
Right before she left the-- her house.
She didn't really want to take it.
And she said as she was in--
You know, rushing out the door,
He said here, take it. Take your calcium.
Now, I don't know if that's what's making me sick.
- The jury would get a lesson in poisoning.
The court was told that cyanide
Isn't something you can just buy over the counter,
But the lethal stuff, according to this poison expert,
Is available only a mouse click away online.
- There was a study done
Where they actually looked at ebay.
There was two times when it came up
That you could buy, on ebay, cyanide.
- And it turned out to be a snap
To shake out the calcium in the capsule
And replace it with cyanide.
- You can literally just take, you know, a pen, uh, cap
And you can scoop it with that and pour it right in.
- That may have been the killer's methodology,
But in the big picture,
The most damning fact against yaz
Was his decision to flee.
Would an innocent father have left his two children behind
Just weeks after their mother had died?
For the story, the courtroom was taken to the middle east
To account for yaz's missing months in lebanon.
- Good morning, sir. - This man, jamal khalife,
A kind of godfather mr. Fix it character
Testified about how he helped yaz live on the lam
With virtually a new life and identity.
- I got the phone call from my brother
That there is somebody coming over
And to take care of him.
- The brother of jamal, the fixer,
Had known yaz's family back in the united states.
Jamal testified he put yaz up in a beirut apartment,
Got him a new passport and a new name,
Maurice khalife.
- We have support in lebanon.
- As he got to know the american doctor better,
A stunning story about rosie spilled out.
- He told me the whole story
That his wife was leaving the home
Going, I think, to a movie.
He told me he grounded the cyanide,
Refilled the pills, and he gave her two pills.
Down the street, she had a car accident and she died.
- A severe blow for the accused--
A second-hand account of a confession from yaz.
And another witness was about to deliver
An even more dramatic roundhouse punch.
- Good afternoon, mr. Essa.
- For ross essa, none other than
The defendant's own brother and business partner,
Took the stand as a prosecution witness.
- I asked him if he was responsible for her death
And he said yes.
- When you found out that information,
What did you say to your brother?
- I told him he was a [indistinct expletives].
- And why did you say that?
- Because he took rosie's life and I loved her.
He just ruined his whole family.
- It was crippling testimony.
The brother,
Once an inseparable blood friend,
Had given yaz an evidentiary kill shot.
Nonetheless, there were still core problems
In the prosecution's overall case.
It was entirely circumstantial
And seemed to beg for a motive.
Why would the doctor do it?
Prosecutors answered by arguing
That yaz the family man, wasn't really,
When you took a closer look.
It turned out he had scads of women on the side.
He was a doctor with a first-degree cheating heart.
- Every Wednesday night,
He would spend with his girlfriend,
With his mistress at her apartment.
- Girlfriends, mistresses, sex partners, lots of them.
The jurors were even shown photos
Of a hidden-away bedroom in the building
Where he and his brother had their business.
- Are you asserting that there's a little love nest,
A little pad?
- I thought it was a playhouse that he had.
- A love shack. - A love shack, that was it.
Um, yeah, that was the place that-- he would use
The apartment over there from time to time to--
To bring his lady friends. - Good afternoon.
- And one of those lovers had been margarita,
The daytime nanny.
She was the woman the detective saw sitting
In yaz's kitchen
When he first went to collect the calcium caps.
Margarita, it turned out,
Had had a long-term sexual affair with yaz,
An affair rosie evidently knew nothing about.
- In 2001, we began our sexual relationship.
- Why did you become involved in a relationship
With the defendant while you were married?
- Me and my husband were having problems
And I thought I was going to get a divorce.
- So, did this begin an affair with the defendant?
- On occasion.
It wasn't a love affair or anything.
- Margarita described it as a friends with benefits
Type of relationship with yaz, purely sex.
- But the prosecution asserted yaz had a deeper,
More complicated relationship with another woman,
Michelle madeline.
Now, she was the so-called nighttime nanny
For his children.
Michelle was also someone prosecutors say
Who fell in love with the doctor,
And he with her.
- State's exhibit 125.
- To make the point, jurors were shown a camisole
Like this one, an intimate valentine's day gift
From yaz to michelle,
Just two weeks before rosie's death.
A representative of the company
That shipped the nightie
Read the card that was enclosed.
- "next valentine's day will be all ours.
"I love you with all my being, yaz."
- He's indicating to this paramour
That next year is going to be all ours.
It's kind of a foreshadowing
Of she won't be around next year.
- The mistress, the nighttime nanny,
Was called to the stand.
- I had a romantic relationship with him.
- Michelle testified that she was a nurse
Who had met yaz on the job.
She asked for and received a court order
To obscure her image while testifying.
- He was telling me that he was so unhappy
In his marriage and I was the love of his life.
And I was his dream come true and he was going to leave her,
So that our relationship could continue.
- She's pushing back saying no,
I can't be with a married man.
And he can't take no for an answer.
And that's his motivation.
That's what puts him on this path.
- A path the prosecution argued
That led directly to murder.
The one-time mistress shared with the court
Yaz's supposed true feelings for his wife, rosie.
- He wasn't in love with her, according to what he told me.
- Okay.
- And that he was in love with me.
He would say she was a good person but she was cold.
He would call her amana. - Amana?
What does that mean? - The refrigerator brand.
- Rosie's family, taking in the testimony,
Were devastated by the mistress's recollections.
- The way he humiliated her.
And on top of everything that he had done to her,
To belittle her or to make fun
Or to mock her with his mistress
Is, you know, sick.
- Your honor, at this time the state of ohio
Would rest its case.
- The defense was about to rise and offer
A completely different theory of the crime.
In fact, the jury had already met the true killer in court.
And it wasn't yaz essa.
- Coming up...
Questions about those cyanide-filled pills.
- If he has successfully killed his wife with them,
Why hold onto the stuff? - Precisely.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Yaz essa was on trial for the murder of his wife rosie.
Prosecutors portrayed the doctor as a serial cheater
Saying he poisoned her so he could be with his lover.
Now, it was the defense's turn and they were about to suggest
Their own startling theory of the crime.
Had yaz been the victim of a secret obsession?
Here's dennis murphy with the conclusion
Of "bitter pill".
- What a good marriage rosie had with yaz.
- Our mandate is to do the best job that we can
And to bring home that w-- bring home that not guilty.
- The defense for yaz essa came down to this.
Sure, he had lots of women on the side
And he got away with it.
So, why did he need to kill his wife?
His two defense lawyers, mark marine and steve bradley
Told the jury straight out
The defendant was never going to be
A husband of the year.
- Yazeed essa regularly, always, maintained
Numerous sexual relationships with other women.
- But, they insisted,
A cheater doesn't necessarily make a murderer.
Especially a doctor who was planning a bigger family.
- Yazeed essa did not commit this crime.
He did not intentionally poison
The mother of his two young children,
The woman with whom he was actively trying to conceive
A third child and add to their family--
Something they both wanted.
- If he were the heartless philanderer portrayed
By the prosecution,
Then how come rosie's family liked him so much?
- Did she have a good life? - Yes.
- It appeared that they had a pretty sound marriage,
Yes? - Yes.
- The marriage, to their friends and to her family,
Is a loving, good, viable marriage.
- By all accounts, they had a great marriage.
- The prosecution theorized that he killed rosie
To be with his mistress named michelle.
The defense's response was that michelle
Was just another "take-a-number" girlfriend.
- Michelle meant nothing.
- Add it up, argued the defense,
And you had a respected doctor
With no money worries, nice family,
And as many girlfriends on the side
As he could juggle.
Bottom line,
He had no reason to kill rosie.
- There's no reason for him to have separated his children
From their mother and their father.
- To do something as dramatic and extreme
As poisoning your wife
Requires some strong motive and it wasn't present here.
- And then there was the way he behaved early on.
Would a guilty man have turned over to the police
That bottle of calcium capsules
If he knew full well the lab would find cyanide
In nine of them?
- Maybe the biggest puzzler. - Right.
- If he has contaminated these caplets
And he has successfully killed his wife with them,
Why in the name of all things we know from television shows
Would you hold onto this stuff?
- Precisely.
- The defense went after the police
For sloppy handling of evidence,
The detective who'd poured the capsules
Into his bare hand after collecting them.
- Are you telling us that you made a mistake?
- In hindsight? Yes. - Yes.
- The forensic expert who didn't check for prints.
- The pill bottle itself would have been conducive
To leaving ridge detail.
Correct? - Yes.
- To be clear then, nobody ever made that request?
- No, sir.
- There was a catastrophe in terms of forensics here.
- And even though the court had learned how easy it was
To obtain cyanide,
There was no evidence presented
That yaz had actually done that.
Still, the stark fact at the epicenter of the case
Against yaz essa
Was his decision to flee the country.
How could that be anything other than the action
Of a guilty man?
The defense spun it this way.
Yaz, early on, had talked to a lawyer who advised him
He might be facing the death penalty
If charged with the murder.
- Yaz was led to believe
That he could be charged with capital murder,
And he just freaked out.
- Then, of course, his lawyers had to defuse
Those explosive allegations from the lebanese fixer
And his own brother
That he'd admitted to poisoning rosie.
- I asked him if he was responsible for her death,
And he said yes.
- Both witnesses had lied on the stand,
According to the defense,
Because each had cut a deal with the prosecution
For leniency on charges they were facing.
- It was the proverbial "get out of jail" card.
- You are free to step down.
- The brother, for instance,
Was looking at almost 12 years in prison
For helping yaz on the lam.
He took a deal.
- He's got five kids, all under the age of 12 years.
He employs a hundred people.
He's got a lovely wife, a beautiful home,
And his world is about to collapse on him.
- So, was foraz well-advised,
In terms of his own survival strategy,
To sing for his supper?
- That's what we believe.
- Jamal, the fixer, had been a fugitive
Wanted by the united states.
- Were you indicted in a 29-count indictment.
- I wasn't-- - just listen to my question.
- Don't scream in my face.
- Listen-- sir, listen to my question!
- The more he talked,
The better off we felt we were.
- Bad guy who's trying to cut a deal?
- Precisely.
- So, if yaz essa didn't do it, who did?
The jury had already met her, argued the defense.
It offered up margarita, the daytime nanny,
As the true killer.
- She is one of the women
That yazeed maintained a long-term,
Ongoing sexual relationship.
- Margarita had a motive for wanting rosie
Out of the picture, argued the defense.
She and yaz had kept their sexual relationship going
Even after both had married.
And don't believe this portrait
Of her as a casual friends with benefits lover,
Claimed the defense.
- Margarita very much wanted to marry yazeed.
- And, they claimed,
Margarita was so obsessed with yaz
That she scheduled her own wedding for the same day
As yaz's marriage to rosie.
- Are you telling us that it is an absolute coincidence
That you selected the same wedding day as yazeed?
Is that what you're telling us?
- Absolutely.
- Margarita worked for yaz's brother
And had access to yaz's house.
The theory, did she sneak over there once,
Place the cyanide in the capsules,
So she'd have yaz for herself?
- The police themselves did very, very little
To eliminate her as a suspect.
- Despite that assertion,
The authorities had investigated margarita
And dismissed her as a suspect.
She emphatically denied having anything to do
With rosie's death.
But by introducing the girlfriend theory,
Had the defense raised enough reasonable doubt?
- The defense would respectfully rest.
- After a seven-week trial and over 60 witnesses,
The case was concluded.
Now, it was up to the jurors.
They deliberated for three days
And announced they had reached a verdict.
- Breathe. That's the most important.
Nice, deep breath.
- I couldn't stop shaking.
I got exactly the same way I did the day rosie died.
- Please rise.
- The lawyers, the families on both sides
Were summoned to the courtroom
For the reading of the verdict
By judge deena calabrese.
- We, the jury in this case, being duly empanelled and sworn,
Do find the defendant, yazeed essa,
Guilty of aggravated murder in violation of...
- Guilty. It was almost over.
At sentencing a few days later,
Rosie's family confronted the man they'd once loved
As a son and brother.
- We lost our rosie for no reason.
The only thing I'm hoping is that from now on
Maybe there will be less nights
That my wife cries herself to sleep.
- I challenge him to find the courage today
To admit what he did,
To provide the apology to my mother,
My father, my sister,
My wife, my brother, rachel deserved.
Are you man enough? Are you?
It's your last chance to save your soul.
Right here, right now.
- Yaz kept his silence.
- I sentence you to life in prison.
- The judge had sentenced the doctor to the maximum.
All along, the detectives,
The prosecutors had wondered about the ifs.
If rosie hadn't called eva on the way to the movies,
If rosie had lost control of her suv on the freeway
And not a local street.
- Had it been a high-speed impact on the--
On the highway, the coroner and the pathologist
Probably wouldn't have looked any further
Than for some blunt force trauma
From the automobile accident.
In a way, it could have been a perfect crime.
- But yaz hadn't plotted the perfect crime,
As the jury saw.
He killed, he ran,
He was caught by tenacious lawmen.
Yazeed essa will be eligible for parole
After serving 20 years.
- Now, that's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.