[ominous music playing]
[narrator] Up next, a family mourns in unexpected death...
[Julie] They came to the conclusion, she fell off the step-stool
and ruled it accidental.
[narrator] But some things about the scene don't add up.
Was it as it appeared initially
or is there something else going on?
[narrator] Local police assured everyone, there is no foul play.
A grieving family disagrees.
They hired a private investigator to take a second look.
[narrator] And he finds that quiet, rural neighborhoods
can harbor some very dark secrets.
[Don] They'd only been there for a few months
their finger pointed straight at him.
[theme music playing]
[narrator] Michigan is divided into the upper and lower peninsulas,
the lower peninsula is famous for being shaped like a mitten.
The tiny village of Hubbardston,
home to less than 500 people,
sits right in the middle of it.
It's a very close-knit community,
they all kind of know each other.
I love the town Hubbardston.
[narrator] For all her 80 years, Hubbardston was home to Bernita Cunningham.
The mother of seven and grandmother of ten
was known to everyone as Billie.
[Tim] Mom and Dad went to school together
and, then, after Dad got back from the service,
he was in World War II in the South Pacific.
They ended up getting married and my Mom lived in the house he whole life.
We always called it the good side of town.
[scoffs]
[narrator] In 2006, Billie had been widowed for 17 years.
She was notorious for being a creature of habit.
[Don] She did the very same thing on every day of the week,
every Tuesday she'd do this, every Wednesday she'd do this
and, uh, it wouldn't take long for you to pattern her in Hubbardston
where there's almost zero crime goes on.
[narrator] So, on November 30th,
when there was a break in Billie's routine,
her next-door neighbors noticed.
She didn't come over for an afternoon cup of coffee,
which she did every day.
And that night they noticed yet another break in Billie's routine.
[Julie] One of them got up in the middle of the night
and they noticed the lights were on.
Like, at 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock in the morning.
And they thought, "Oh, Billie must not be sleeping well."
In the morning, the curtains were open.
She wasn't sitting at the dining room table
where she should have been at that time,
having her coffee and saying her prayers.
And that was suspicious.
[Michael] So, they called Billie's son Bill Cunningham
who lived just a couple miles down the road
and suggested, he come and check on his mother, so he did
and Bill and the neighbor went into the house together and found Billie dead.
[narrator] Billie was lying face-down in the foyer.
It looked as if she'd met her death
after accidentally falling off a step-stool
while hanging a Christmas decoration.
[Don] They said she hit a very large mirror, shattered it on the floor.
Then she went down on the floor
and, uh, laid there
and probably moved around quite a bit which caused a lot more cuts to take place.
[narrator] The circumstances of Billie's death were clearly unusual.
Local police, who had little to no experience investigating murders,
believed the possibility of foul play was unlikely.
But, to be sure, they still called for an autopsy.
[Stephen] In Michigan,
the law really doesn't absolutely require autopsy in any cases,
it's always up to the decision of the local medical examiner
and then, hopefully, but not always,
a forensic pathologist to do the case.
[narrator] This autopsy officially ruled Billie's case an accidental death.
She had trauma to her neck and some fractured bones in her face.
The pathologist said this damage and the blood at the scene
resulted from Billie smashing into the mirror before she hit the floor.
[Julie] After they found out she was diabetic,
they came to the conclusion, she fell off the step-stool.
They ruled it accidental.
They said that she probably had a diabetic spell
and fell.
[narrator] Billie's family wasn't so sure.
After the scene was processed and Billie's body removed,
they were let into the house
and immediately grew concerned.
[Julie] My Mom was very organized.
The house was always spotless.
[Don] Julie and several people
described Billie to me as being very, uh, organized.
Everything is going to be in the exact place, she's very neat.
Uh, and she's really, um, anal about that type of things.
[narrator] So, it didn't make sense
that a lot of things were out of place in rooms
far away from where Billie's body was found.
[Tim] We noticed some things that weren't correct.
Just some things that were just not characteristic
of how Mom would have kept her house,
some chairs tipped over and some things like that.
[narrator] The question now was
if this was not an accidental death,
was there any way to prove it?
[theme music playing]
[narrator] Hubbardston, Michigan sees very little violent crime,
so, when Billie Cunningham's death was officially ruled an accident,
townspeople didn't give it a second thought,
but Billie's family did.
People in town didn't wanna believe...
that Mom was murdered.
Couldn't happen in their little town.
No, it had to be an accident.
They didn't wanna believe that...
she was murdered.
[narrators] The family didn't just conjure up
this murder theory out of thin air,
as they did their own post-mortem examination of Billie's house,
they noticed all sorts of things
that simply didn't make sense.
The contents of a care-package Billie was preparing
for a great-nephew serving in the military were all over the place.
And everybody says,
"No way... would Billie,
uh, leave something that, like that laying on the floor."
[narrator] Perhaps, most disturbing
was the finding of a family heirloom shattered against one of the walls.
A Christmas Santa Claus statue was broken,
a piece of it was 22 feet away in an opposite room
[narrator] And this statue shattered with such force
that it left a fist-size dent in the wall.
[Brian] Where she was found
or where she would have fallen, if that were to happen,
that Christmas decoration wouldn't have gotten around the corner
and hit the other side of the, the living room.
[narrator] But it was some missing money that convinced Billie's family
that police didn't realize they were dealing with a potential murder.
[Julie] We go back to her bedroom where she kept her purse
and I started going through her wallet and there was no money.
Mom always kept a $100 bill in her... Hidden in her wallet for emergencies
that my Dad made her do that, early on.
And there wasn't any there.
Just some loose change.
And I said, "Uh, something's up here."
[narrator] Despite an official ruling that there was no foul play,
Billie's family was convinced, she'd been attacked
and the scene may have been staged to make it look like it was an accident.
We had, uh, a cousin that was a retired state trooper,
we told him what we had found
and he said, "Well, you really need to get a private detective
involved in this."
And, and at that point we, we did.
[narrator] Don Brookes,
a 25-year-veteran of the Michigan State Police
and a Private Investigator for 15 years
was well-known and respected by law enforcement all across the state
and after examining photos of the scene,
he reached his own preliminary conclusion
about how Billie Cunningham died.
Based on what the family told me,
based on what the evidence I've seen
and based on the amount of blood and the amount of injuries,
I would have treated it like a homicide from day one.
[narrator] And as he started asking questions,
he uncovered some potentially disturbing information.
It turned out that Billie Cunningham was herself worried
that she might come to harm in the days before she died.
I learned that Bernita Cunningham, Billie,
um, had a certain amount of fear for a couple of kids in the town there.
[narrator] In the original investigation,
these teenagers had been questioned
and eliminated as potential suspects.
Now, the people involved in this new, technically unofficial, investigation,
wanted to re-interview them.
But these unofficial investigators found themselves in a tough spot.
[Don] As a private investigator,
I do not want to cross the line
and interfere with anything the investigate--
police investigation going at the time
'cause I know if any of the investigations I did when I was running these...
Um, as a detective,
uh, I'd have been a little bit ticked off.
[narrator] But when the Michigan State Police took their own look at the case,
they reached the same conclusion
as Don Brookes and Billie Cunningham's family.
It was clear that there was violence at the time of her death,
I believed we had a homicide.
[narrator] But if Billie was murdered, who had a motive to kill her?
This, after all, was an elderly woman with no known enemies
in a town that saw almost no violent crime.
[theme music playing]
[narrator] After weeks of official and unofficial investigations
into the circumstances of Billie Cunningham's death,
Michigan State Police became convinced, she'd been murdered.
The question, now, was proving it
and some serious obstacles were in the way.
There wasn't a lot of evidence at the time,
we had some pretty good photographs from the scene, the day of.
Lot of it was circumstantial evidence up until that point.
[narrator] One of the biggest problems,
after Billie's death was ruled an accident,
her house had been cleaned by a company that specialized in cleaning crime scenes
and they were very thorough.
Now, keep in mind, the crime scene clean-up crew had been there already
and cleaned up the home.
[narrator] Another problem,
the original autopsy which, despite Billie's considerable injuries,
was conducted by a general pathologist, not a forensic pathologist.
This turned out to be a crucial distinction
in what was now looking less and less like an accidental death.
[Don] We had a doctor who was not a forensic pathologist,
he was going right along with what the, uh, the sheriff detective...
"This kinda thing doesn't happen around here
and let's see how we can, uh, justify these injuries from the, the crime scene."
And that's what they did.
[narrator] Even worse for investigators,
Billie Cunningham had been embalmed and had been buried for weeks
and investigators had already talked to everyone in this small town
who had any interaction with Billie Cunningham.
Early on in the investigation, we had, probably, 30 or 35 persons of interest
that we felt necessary to rule out.
[narrator] But one potential suspect still stood out.
Just before her death,
Billie Cunningham became concerned about a young man
who had recently moved in just across the street from her.
[Brian] Justin Stephens was originally from Texas.
The family he was living with up here in Michigan,
he had met while they were living in Texas.
He ended up dating one of the girls of the family
and he moved up to Michigan with them
and they were living across the street...
from where the incident happened.
[Michael] He was unemployed
but, suddenly, Justin was known to be in possession of about $100
near the time of the crime.
[narrator] He was 17-years-old,
and had apparently interacted with Billie Cunningham shortly before her death.
[Michael] Billie Cunningham went to the neighbors for coffee,
and mentioned to them that, "The neighbor boy came over to my house this morning,
asked if he could borrow a phone,
and offered to help me put up Christmas decorations."
[narrator] Billie told her neighbors
she didn't want this young man in her house.
So, she handed him her landline phone
and insisted he make the call from the foyer.
But phone records showed no call from Billie's phone during this time period.
It looked as if Justin faked needing to make a phone call
so he could get inside Billie's house.
[Michael] We were able to determine that with a strong likelihood
that Justin's knocking on Billie's door that morning was a ruse.
So, my theory was that he had cased the house that morning.
I was able to pull phone records for her landline for that date
and we determined that there were no outgoing phone calls that day.
[narrator] Even more concerning,
a background check on Justin Stephens
revealed some disturbing information.
[Michael] Justin Stephens had quite a criminal history,
almost all of them were burglary.
One was an assault.
So his criminal history fed into the theory
that he had burglarized Billie's home and assaulted her.
[narrator] In the story, Justin was telling detectives
that Billie had invited him into her house,
made no sense to anyone who knew her.
Well, that in itself, it is a red flag for me.
A teenage boy offering to help an 80-year-old woman hang Christmas decorations...
I considered abnormal.
[theme music playing]
[narrator] Once Michigan investigators concluded
that Billie Cunningham had been murdered,
all roads led to Justin Stephens
but detectives had no physical evidence,
until they got an incredible,
and as far as they knew, unprecedented break.
The company that cleaned the scene after Billie's death,
was in the business of cleaning crime scenes.
Despite local police telling them they were cleaning up an accident,
this cleaning crew had seen a lot of crime scenes
and they weren't so sure.
The people that came to do the clean-up,
also voiced their opinion that there's something not right here.
[narrator] And, so,
this cleaning company kept some items from Billie's house in storage
on the off-chance they might get a call from investigators
which is exactly what happened.
I contacted those people at that time
and, uh, talked to them
and they said, "We're kind of glad to hear from you."
And they said, "We're not buying that, she had way too mirror injuries
for what, you know, the scene showed.
There is a massive amount of blood and it was over a very, very large area."
[narrator] In this crime scene clean-up company's unofficial evidence locker
detectives found parts of the shattered mirror.
Six hairs were pulled from that wall mirror,
five of which were determined to be grey and female.
There's an assumption that most of those were probably Billie's hairs,
but one hair was an animal hair.
[Brian] The people that Justin was living with across the street had dogs.
Uh, me and Detective Morey traveled to their house where they had moved to
and obtained samples from those two dogs that they had.
There was packages and something, you see, there was her DNA testing
to be compared to the hair that was seized at the house.
[narrator] Even if that single hair placed Justin Stephens at the scene,
prosecutors had a huge problem.
Billie Cunningham's death had been officially ruled an accident,
which any good lawyer would use
to create reasonable doubt with the jury.
So, investigators made an unusual decision.
They decided to exhume Billie's body and redo her autopsy,
even though she'd been embalmed and buried for weeks.
And for this autopsy, investigators turned to a pathologist
who was used to dealing with suspicious deaths.
[Stephen] They just decided, "Look, let's just take it
to a forensic pathologist and have a re-look."
So, about two and a half months or so later, that's what happened,
she was exhumed and sent over here.
[narrator] As in the first examination,
Dr. Cohle saw extensive damage to the victim's neck.
She did have some cuts on the skin made by something sharp,
could've been glass.
But, upon examining the body,
uh, some of these sharp forced wounds penetrated rather deeply into the body
and that was inconsistent with her falling on the floor
and shards of glass from the broken mirror cutting her.
Thus, I probed some of these wounds,
I said, "Man, these are stab wounds,
you're not gonna get stab wounds from a broken mirror."
[narrator] This answered why there was so much blood at the scene.
In the second autopsy,
Dr. Cohle determined another detail missed in the first autopsy.
She also had some fractures of her face
including the nose and some facial bones,
that's a blunt force injury, that's a severe blunt force injury.
You're not gonna get that from falling off a stool and from sharp shards,
so, it looked like there was a lot more going on than just a simple accidental fall.
[narrator] This second autopsy led to a conclusion
that directly contradicted the original finding.
This was unusual case in which we, we did a 180-degree turn,
from accident to homicide and that was, that was satisfying,
I felt pretty good about that.
[narrator] Prosecutors believed Justin Stephens had been casing Billie's house
and knew she often left her door unlocked.
On the day of her murder, that's what she did.
And Justin later confessed that he slipped into the house while she was gone.
He was looking for money or something to steal
when Billie unexpectedly returned.
She grabbed her phone to call 911.
Justin overpowered her,
shattering the whole mirror.
Justin had to act fast,
grabbed the nearest thing at hand and hit Billie with the Santa statue.
Justin apparently decided, there was no turning back.
He stabbed Billie to death.
Then, may have staged the scene
to make it look as if she accidentally fell off a step-stool,
and it almost worked.
Except for one thing he missed,
a shard of glass covered with Billie's blood
held a hair from a dog who lived in his house.
[Michael] And that was huge.
In my 22 years as a detective, this was only the second...
homicide that I ever investigated that involved animal hair.
And the first that resulted in a positive match.
[narrator] In 2011,
a jury deliberated for just three hours
before finding Justin Stephens guilty of first degree murder.
As a minor, when he killed Billie Cunningham,
his sentence was ultimately decided
at a minimum of 40 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison.
As for Billie's family, they mourn her loss,
but are gratified that science proved their hunch was right all along.
Her death was no accident.
I think we all believed it would happen,
that we would get justice, eventually, but we didn't know how long it would take.
[Don] My satisfaction is from watching the family get resolution.
They were right and I, I'm so happy for them.
[Michael] I have to admit, there were times in this investigation
where I was getting frustrated.
This went on for four years
and, ultimately, when Justin was found guilty,
I absolutely felt like it was worth every minute of those four years.