(tense music)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Every suspect accused of a crime
has the right to remain silent.
Many agree to be interrogated anyway,
but they can stop the interview at any moment,
making it a race against time.
(dramatic music)
Justice hangs in the balance.
(sirens wailing)
- When we arrived on scene
and pulled up in front of the house,
Kaye Willoughby was standing outside
and said that her husband, Ron Willoughby,
had shot himself inside their residence.
(camera clicks)
When I walked in the bedroom,
I immediately recognized the victim
laying in the bed under the cover.
When I uncovered him,
he had one bullet hole in the center of his chest
and there was some blood stains on the sheets.
(camera clicks)
- First responders show up
to render medical aid.
When they found that Ron was warm to the touch,
they thought there might be
some chances of life,
but Ron was deceased at that point.
(dramatic music)
- Ron was a very outgoing person.
There was definitely not a shy bone in his body.
He ran a hardware store called RonMart.
He was absolutely a proud owner.
It was just about all family working at the store.
- We had a little dog named TJ, it was a Boston Terrier
and that was his favorite little dog.
Went to work with him and came home with him every day.
I feel like Dad was the rock that held us together.
He was always there for us.
- I worked with him.
We could just sit and talk, you know,
we'd talk in between customers
and I'm just glad we could have that time
to be together.
(tense music)
- At first when we arrived,
Kaye Willoughby thought maybe Ron had shot himself.
So they're looking around his body for the gun
and they're not seeing one, it's not in his hands.
It's not readily visible.
And then they saw a brown towel
that was sort of tucked underneath his body.
They unfolded the towel and found a two inch barrel.38.
If it was a suicide,
certainly to have it wrapped in the towel
didn't make a lot of sense.
So that raised a lot of flags with law enforcement
that something was amiss.
We also don't have a contact wound,
and the medical examiner's opinion was
that when the gun was fired,
it was no closer than 12 inches and up to 18 inches away.
So that would be an unusual way to shoot yourself,
to hold the gun as far away from your body as possible
and hope that you hit something vital.
Just doesn't make sense.
And we learned that Ron is left-handed
and in order for him to have shot himself
with the trajectory of the bullet
going into the left upper chest,
traveling towards the right of the body,
he would've had to choose
the most uncomfortable position possible
in order to shoot himself like this,
which was a big red flag.
- I had been involved
in more than a hundred suicides involving weapons.
That was the first and only time
I've ever seen anybody shoot theirself in the chest.
Also, if he had shot hisself,
there was no way he could have pulled the covers
all the way up to his neck and covered hisself completely.
- Nothing in the world
was pointing towards Ron shooting himself at that point.
(suspenseful music)
- When we first went in the house, everything was very neat.
Wasn't in disarray.
Mr. Willoughby's shoes
were between the coffee table and the couch.
Not put up, but just kind of scattered.
The rest of the house looked in place.
We found Mr. Ron Willoughby fully clothed.
All of his stuff was in his pockets, money, keys,
even a prescription bottle in his pockets.
That was another thing that struck me as odd.
- They checked all the doors, no signs of forced entry.
Nothing was outta place.
That's not something you would typically see
with break-in homicide.
- Mr. Willoughby's death was very suspicious at that time.
When we come back out and told Kaye
that Mr. Willoughby was deceased, she showed no emotion.
She was not distraught. She was very calm.
I don't think I ever seen her cry at all.
Just didn't feel right, didn't look right.
We needed to call the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in.
- Normally if there's a homicide, smaller agencies,
they may not have an investigator,
so they request our assistance.
(tense music)
Shortly after I arrived,
we had determined we were going to attempt
to collect gunshot residue from Mrs. Willoughby's hands.
- The crime lab came back with gunshot residue on her hand,
which would be consistent
with her having shot a gun earlier.
It really put her right in the center of it.
At this point, the evidence seemed to be overwhelming
that Kaye was involved in Ron's death.
(suspenseful music)
- And it turned out Ron and Kaye
were going through a divorce
and it appeared Mr. Willoughby was trying to take steps
to protect his assets in the days just leading up
to when he had filed for a divorce.
Apparently he had changed the will, removing her from it.
- Ron was very solid financially.
He had his RonMart business.
He had two red trucks, one brand new one
that he had paid for in cash.
He owned the house that they were living in on Loveless Way
and they were in the middle of building
a beautiful house together out on Stagecoach Road.
So there was a huge financial motive
for Kaye to carry this out.
(tense music)
(phone beeps)
- We arrived at the house
a little after 8:00 in the evening.
When we went inside,
Mr. Willoughby was sitting in a chair
in the front room.
He seemed nervous.
He said he was going the next day to talk to his attorney
and put in the paperwork for a divorce.
His main question was,
"Is my wife gonna have access to the house?
Is she still gonna be able to get in here
and get her stuff?"
And he's like, "In all honesty, I fear for my life
because she's the beneficiary of my will."
And he's like, "I'm afraid she might do something
because she will benefit from my death."
Soon after that, when she showed up to the house,
it was humorous to her that he had called the police on her.
She's like, "Little old me, little old me?"
And then she started to get her stuff and left.
(suspenseful music)
- It was important to get her locked into a statement
and basically just keep the cooperation going
and gathering as much information as I could.
(clock ticking)
Her actions that morning were odd.
After she heard this loud noise
that she believed to be a gunshot,
she doesn't contact law enforcement.
She calls a friend
and he actually made the call to 911.
(dramatic music)
- She was very willing to give her side of the story,
but I knew that there were some inconsistencies
in her initial statement.
- He was a good family man.
He loved being around the grandkids.
He was their Papaw.
If they wanted something, he didn't bat an eye
about going and getting it for 'em.
- Dad was very loving and caring.
Growing up, I learned a lot about working on cars.
He would be pulling out motors
and I would actually help him.
And when we'd go to the beach,
he's the one that taught me how to ride waves.
I miss those things.
(dramatic music)
- Kaye's whole statement was shrouded with several lies
where she tried to lead us astray.
One of the things that really stood out
was she heard a handgun go off around nine o'clock,
but the call to law enforcement wasn't until 9:30.
- We know from looking at her phone
that she called Willie C. at 9:30.
So there's a half hour of unaccounted-for time
in Kaye's story.
(suspenseful music)
- They went and interviewed Tommy Woods and he said,
"Kaye was with me the night before,"
and you know, they've had had a romantic relationship
between the two.
"And then she left my house maybe around 7:30
and then went back home."
So she had lied about her whereabouts
the night before the murder.
Why would somebody do that
unless they had something serious to hide?
(tense music)
We got all of the text messages between Kaye and Tommy,
a hundred pages of text messages.
It gave a real time view of what Kaye's mental state was.
And it was becoming a very volatile situation in the house.
Ron was angry and wanted her gone.
You could tell she was losing control,
clearly she was getting angrier.
And when that control is ending,
that's when things get dangerous.
(suspenseful music)
- When I came back to her for the second interview,
I wanted to change my tone so she would understand,
this is a homicide investigation and you're lying.
- As Kaye was providing her statement,
she was not scared to make eye contact,
but she was lying and I wanted her to understand
holes were being poked in her story.
She was evasive, but it wasn't a very detailed story.
So there were only so many things
that I could trip her up on that early in the game.
But once we knew that she was willing to lie
about smaller things,
I knew that there was a lot that she was holding back.
(tense music)
- Ron spoke with a number of people
in the weeks leading up to his death.
And the universal theme is that Kaye had threatened him
and that he was in fear that she was going to kill him.
For instance, Ron Willoughby had a ex-wife
and she said Ron had talked to her the night before and said,
"I think something's gonna happen to me tonight."
Call me tomorrow morning by seven o'clock
and if I'm not here, then call the police
'cause she finally got me."
- She would tell him that
he better keep his gun close to him.
"Watch out. You never know what's gonna happen to you."
He just didn't trust her not to do something to him
even while he slept.
- A couple days before he died,
dad came down to my house and he said
she made the comment, "Ron, when you go to sleep,
make sure you keep one eye open and one eye shut
and have your bullets ready."
- Ron had told people that he was certain
that his wife was going to kill him.
So it became important to show his state of mind
that he wasn't contemplating suicide,
he was fearing for his life.
But in a state of Georgia,
anything that Ron was saying outside of the court
would be hearsay.
And there really wasn't a lot of certainty
as to whether or not these witnesses
would've been allowed to testify.
And then Kaye could walk out with a not guilty verdict.
(tense music)
After Ron's death,
Kaye was just emotionally flat about the whole situation.
She was very driven by getting as much money outta him
as she could.
She hired a lawyer to represent her
and she wanted more and more
in addition to all the assets that she's claiming,
she also wanted $150,000.
The family settled the whole mess
by giving Kaye outright the house
which she sold for $100,000.
- I was really upset. She's having a good time.
I know she did that and yet I don't know who else to push,
who else to talk to.
We had just come to a point where
we thought she was never gonna get punished for it.
(birds chirping)
(dates clicking)
(pensive music)
- One of the changes that allowed us to go forward
was that Georgia adopted a new evidence code in court
that allowed in those witnesses
that Ron talked to in the weeks leading up to his death
in that he was convinced that Kaye was going to kill him.
Now we knew we had enough evidence
to seek justice for Ron and his family.
(dramatic music)
(dates clicking)
(tense music)
(clock ticking)
Going into the final interview,
it was an opportunity for me to show the person that she was
and I knew that it would
not be beneficial to her down the road
because the jury's gonna see her arrogance and greed.
(tense music)
- She was trying to be assertive to get her point across.
She would cut me off quickly
and just in that portion of the conversation,
it really begins to call everything else into question
and it can paint a picture for a jury
that she was holding back the truth.
(clock ticking)
I'm like.
- She began to kind of smirk or smile,
as though she was taking pride in everything
that had happened.
There didn't appear to be any type of empathy
for anybody else aside from herself.
- She was very willing to communicate about money.
She began to present herself as being greedy
and everything appeared to be centered on finances.
And to me, that was the most poignant moment
surrounding all of that.
- [Wendell] The jury's gonna see that greed
could be a potential motive for Mr. Willoughby's death.
- Whatever he was offering her just never seemed to be enough.
I wanted to confront her with that.
- She tried to paint him as being in financial dire straits.
It was quite the contrary.
Ron was very secure in his finances.
His problem was he wanted her outta his house.
He had offered her money, but she wanted more and more.
(suspenseful music)
(tense music)
- As I began to confront her, her story changes.
Mrs. Willoughby had already indicated
that she and her husband were the only two individuals
in the residence that morning.
She didn't deny it.
So I definitely wanted to highlight that point.
(dramatic music)
- It was just a strange thing for her to say.
Do you mean like he just wanted to wing himself
by shooting himself in the chest?
It just didn't make a whole lot of sense,
unless she had something to hide.
Her story was falling apart.
She may have felt somewhat, you know,
defeated in that moment.
And she primarily deflected
to place the blame on someone else.
She had quick responses for everything.
She had a narrative and as the interview proceeded,
I wanted to provoke her into a confrontation.
(tense music)
- It was extremely valuable
to know that she was sticking to her story
that Ron must have killed himself.
We wanted to make sure
there wasn't gonna be some kind of surprise defense.
That was another key point
that Wendell locked down in his interview.
- We knew that there was a will out there
that left a lot of money to Kaye.
And if she killed him,
the balance of everything would go to Kaye.
- He was gonna leave the business, the house,
everything to her.
But the relationship became so rocky
he changed the will without her knowing.
- There was a level of arrogance from Kaye
and there was tension in the room.
But to see a case through successfully,
you have to put your feelings on the back burner.
(dramatic music)
(tense music)
(clock ticking)
I had a copy of the indictment with her name on it.
I thought that that might make it more real for her.
(Kaye chuckles)
(suspenseful music)
- I felt confident the interview
didn't paint her in the best light.
I knew that the jury's gonna see,
not only did she not tell the truth, she doubles down,
avoids it, has a smug attitude about it.
- The interviews were absolutely crucial
because they locked her into a story.
They locked her into a timeline
and cemented her in some lies
that would be pretty difficult to overcome.
(dramatic music)
(dates clicking)
(tense music)
That jury heard the recordings.
So they knew she had lied about her whereabouts
the night before the murder and the morning of the murder.
She lied about something significant
within hours of her husband being killed.
And then her 30 minute time gap,
her not calling 911, the gunshot residue.
And the interviews showed there was a huge financial motive
for Kaye to carry this out.
(suspenseful music)
The defense attorney asked a question,
"Did you love Ron Willoughby?"
And she stared up at the ceiling for a while
and she looked around and she said, "Well,
maybe not enough to have married him," on cross-examination.
I said, "Did you really mean to say that?"
And she said, "Yeah."
- She just sat there very stoic.
There was absolutely no expression to her.
You know, it was an attitude of, "I'm better than this.
I can't believe you're making me sit here."
(dates clicking)
(suspenseful music)
- For a long time, I felt really hopeless.
When that lady stood up and said,
you know, her verdict.
I cried happy tears.
She got what she deserved.
- The jury saw right through her.
I was satisfied with what she got
because I wanted her to have time to sit in a cell
and think about what she had done.
- At times, the justice process can move a little slowly.
But after this case, Mr. Willoughby's family members
approached me and, you know, they had kind things to say.
So if there was any satisfaction, it just came from,
you know, them having some sense of relief.
- The family lost a father, lost a brother,
lost a grandfather.
I don't care how old the case is,
there's no statute of limitations on murder.
(pensive music)
- I remember I talked to Ronnie on the phone
the day before he died.
He was laughing, talking, joking, you know,
seemed in good spirits.
And so I just miss, you know,
having him around to talk to anymore.
I'm glad that, you know,
Ronnie finally got justice in the end.
(somber music)