♪
Some stories are unforgettable.
This is one of them.
I hear on the news that Desiree Sunford
had been found murdered.
And I screamed.
We were searching through the house
and I could see Desiree on the floor.
She was shot very violently.
Scott was very talkative.
I actually stayed with a friend.
- What's the friend's name? - Oh, her name's Paige.
You're wondering, "Who is Paige?"
That's right. Is he having an affair?
This case had a lot of players involved,
a lot of tentacles.
Every time police asked a question,
it seemed another relationship surfaced.
Desiree and Paige and Scott
all knew each other well. - Yes.
Paige called this tip in.
She says, "I know who the killer is."
That's right.
A name that had never come up before.
He asked me...
In this case, there was a very thin line
between truth telling and betrayal.
It made me ask,
how far should friends go for each other?
This psycho squiggled her way
into their life and created chaos.
Talk about twists. I was completely blown away.
I risked my life to do the right thing,
and I'm being crucified.
♪
This is Dateline: Unforgettable.
I'm Blayne Alexander with a fresh look at
"Deadly Entanglement."
♪
We've all had that fear,
that middle of the night,
home alone in a dark, empty house kind of fear.
I can't imagine what went through her mind.
We hear a noise and the imagination runs wild.
♪
Of course, we usually just shrug it off,
go back to sleep,
and wake up the next morning perfectly fine.
This is not that story.
The woman in this story
woke up alone to that very nightmare.
It was around 3:30 AM.
Someone was in her house.
Nobody there to help her.
Nobody there to defend her.
Someone who was there only to kill.
And it was pretty clear that this wasn't
just a robbery gone wrong.
That's correct.
A diabolical plot born of sex and obsession,
where the killer was as unexpected as the victim.
Who would wanna kill Des?
She had no enemies.
And there was just no reason,
no reason at all to kill her.
One of the first questions we always ask
when reporting for Dateline. Why?
And in this case, I'll never forget
just how twisted the motive turned out to be.
Here, Desiree was in the one place
she should have been the safest, her home.
And that's where she was killed.
As police dug into this investigation,
they uncovered a tangled web of relationships.
And it would take a long time to unravel those
to get to the truth.
Yakima County, Washington,
where a marriage of mountains and countryside
creates a stunning backdrop.
Picturesque, certainly.
But people here are no strangers to crime.
Retired Yakima County Sheriff's Deputy Ed Levesque
has patrolled nearly every square mile of this county
and seen everything from petty theft to homicide.
It's been a ride.
I've seen a lot, learned a lot.
So a late night call to report a possible break-in
wasn't rare.
Like that call on April 7, 2013.
Came out as like, a welfare check.
Sometimes they're absolutely nothing
and sometimes they're bad.
31 Year old Scott Sunford was driving home
to Yakima County when he saw a notification.
An alarm had gone off at his house
where his wife Desiree was home alone.
Deputies were dispatched to the scene,
but Scott got there first.
He called 911 again.
Ed Levesque and two other sheriff's deputies
raced to get to Scott.
But the house was way out of town.
You have to drive down
a series of two lane county roads.
There's no street lights out here.
Further out you go, the less homes you'll see.
Scott was still on the line with 911.
He even gave the operator his wife's phone number to call.
[phone ringing]
It went straight to voicemail.
When Deputy Levesque and his partners finally arrived,
they saw a man standing outside pointing a gun
and a spotlight at the house.
My first thought was that there was
a police officer already here.
And as I approached,
I could see that he was not a police officer.
However, there was a guy standing just outside
the driver's side of that door with the door open.
And I saw that he had a pistol pointed at the house.
It was Scott.
I says, "What are you doing with the gun?
Did you go inside the house and check on your wife?"
He says, "No. I don't know what I'm gonna find in there."
Just steps into the dark house,
the deputies found Desiree on the floor in her underwear,
a bandage on her leg.
I could see part of her body.
And as I got closer,
I could see that she had obviously suffered
multiple gunshots.
And I could see casings on the floor.
I could see a lot of trauma, a lot of blood.
And it was obvious that she was deceased.
You know, I've been to quite a few homicides
that involved firearms, but not like this.
Looking at how many times she had been shot,
it was obvious to me that person
wanted to make sure she was dead.
So it was that very moment in the middle of the night,
in the middle of nowhere that a wild mystery began.
Are there parts of this case
that still kind of linger in your mind,
that still kind of bother you?
There were some red flags
that just didn't seem to add up.
His attitude, his behavior, his demeanor.
His actions were just gross.
She just never seemed like she would be that person
that would be willing to accept
another person in her home.
- In her marriage. - Mm-hmm.
What were you thinking when you heard that name?
My exact thought was, who the hell's that guy?
♪
All through the night,
detectives and forensic techs
arrived at Desiree Sunford's home,
now a crime scene.
Desiree's husband, Scott, remained outside the house,
no longer holding his gun.
We secured the gun,
and we put him in the back of the patrol car.
Meanwhile, local police broke the terrible news
to Desiree's mother,
who then called her son,
Desiree's brother Casey.
Desiree's dead.
[sniffles] That's all she could say.
I think I blacked out a little bit
or something, 'cause I was--
Next thing I remember, I was on the floor,
just talking to--
Crying into the phone with mom.
This is always the hardest part of reporting a story.
Asking someone's family and friends
to go back to the moment they realized she was gone.
It's so emotional, but so necessary
because they know that life will never be the same.
And it just speaks to the enormity
of what the killer took from the world.
Kayla Lewis was one of Desiree's closest
and oldest friends.
What stood out about Desiree?
Desiree was... Are we allowed to cuss?
- Sure. - Okay. I'm sorry.
Give me what you feel.
She was just a badass.
She rode her Harley and carried a sidearm,
and she loved art.
She did a lot of art herself,
but she was just a good person all around.
And Desiree loved cars, classic cars.
Her dad taught her how to restore anything
from a truck to a convertible.
And even after he died from cancer when she was 12,
she kept working under the hood.
Oh, my God!
We surprised her with her first car with the Chevelle
for her 16th birthday.
It was a special day. Very special day.
Turn the key.
[engine starting]
Of course, at 16, she had another focus...
Boys. One in particular,
Scott Sunford.
Her friend Kim O'Dell says
Desiree got a kick out of Scott's goofy side.
He was always the jokester, always the prankster,
always having a good time.
As long as I've known her, it's always been Desiree,
her Chevy, and Scott. - Those three.
Those were-- those three things.
When did they seriously start talking about marriage?
She wanted to be done with school
and then get married and then start having a family.
That plan changed a little bit, though.
It did because he was enlisted
and then had to go to Iraq.
Scott proposed in 2003.
He was 22. She was 21.
The wedding was just days before he deployed.
Everybody seemed happy.
Desiree and Scott seemed happy.
While Scott was deployed, Desiree finished college
and even earned a graduate degree.
Eventually, she got her dream job as an art teacher
at Wapato Middle School outside of Yakima.
Michelle Howell and Desiree bonded as young teachers.
It was nice to have somebody that was relatively my age
that was right there.
You know, every school has a cool teacher
where you just wanna go and sit and eat your lunch,
or just go and sit and just talk.
It sounds like Desiree.
- She was one of them. - Was the cool teacher.
Yep, she was definitely one of them.
By 2012, Scott was back in Washington
working at a National Guard training center.
The couple adopted a dog and named her Ada.
They scraped together enough money to buy a home
way out in the country.
She's married her high school sweetheart.
They have a home together.
Yeah, and she was so proud of that.
Desiree and Scott seemed well on their way
to building a happy grown up life.
But then on April 2,
just five days before she was murdered,
Desiree came home to find
someone had broken into their house
and stolen an iPad and a laptop.
The burglary shook her up.
Scott put up a plywood board over the broken back window.
And to calm Desiree's fears,
they installed an alarm system.
Did Desiree still feel comfortable inside her home?
Once the board got up back on the back door,
it wasn't the end of the world.
She was like, she knew she had her alarm system.
She knew that she could take care of herself,
handle herself.
Desiree owned firearms, too,
and always kept a gun at her bedside.
But neither the alarm nor her gun stopped her killer.
And now the terrible news of Desiree's death
was everywhere.
I was getting ready for work Monday morning,
and I hear on the news that local art teacher
Desiree Sunford had been found killed, or murdered.
And I stopped... and I screamed.
I'm like, "Tell me it's a lie.
Tell me it's a lie. Tell me it's a lie."
Now, down at the sheriff's office,
investigators were digging into the case.
Do I have your permission to keep recording?
Absolutely.
Starting with Scott Sunford.
You willing to keep talking to me now
about what happened out at your house?
Of course.
Scott explained he had been out of town the day before
at his aunt's funeral, when the weather got bad.
He called Desiree.
It was probably 11:00 or so.
And I told her, you know, it's kind of rainy,
it's windy, I'm tired as hell, long day,
and they wanna do a breakfast get together
in the morning.
I'm gonna stay here for the night.
He said he didn't start for home
until 5:30 the next evening.
All along the drive,
I just kept calling her randomly,
trying to get a hold of her,
and, uh, just wasn't getting anything from her.
And it was kind of freakin' me out.
He checked his phone again.
That's when he noticed the alarm had gone off
hours earlier.
He made that first call to 911.
Investigators were curious
about Scott's last minute decision to stay overnight.
They would become even more curious
when he told them where he stayed.
You stayed at your dad's in Kennewick?
Uh, no, I actually stayed with a friend.
What's the friend's name?
Oh, her name's Paige.
She's a mutual friend.
♪
When Desiree Sunford was shot to death
during an apparent break-in at her home,
deputies at the scene noticed right away.
Her husband Scott seemed strangely calm.
He had no emotion, whatsoever.
None, whatsoever.
It wasn't like he was trying to absorb bad news.
I don't believe he ever asked me questions
about how his wife died.
Now Scott was sitting in an interview room.
I just didn't know what the hell was going on.
And something about him
didn't sit right with the detective either.
He asked Scott why he stayed on with the 911 operator
instead of rushing inside to see if his wife was okay.
My stomach was churning. I was shaking.
I had convinced myself by that point
something had to be wrong. - Mm-hmm.
Well, I'm just thinking you're a big guy,
so if anyone's gonna be willing to go charging in the house
and make sure their wife's okay,
it would seem to me that it would be you.
Well, it's not that I was afraid
of anybody being in there.
You know, I'll take on 100 people for her,
that's fine.
What did you think you might see if you went inside?
Roll around a thousand of the worst things
you could think of.
It just was not the normal response for an individual
thinking his wife was hurt or in danger.
Yakima County Sheriff's Detective Dave Johnson,
now retired, worked Desiree's case.
And this is somebody who presumably
could have handled a situation.
He knows his way around a firearm.
He's got a gun?
Yes, he's... He's well-trained.
He has served in combat.
So he would be able to handle the situation,
in our opinion.
The detective interviewing Scott
asked about his military service.
Um, I got blown up a few times,
but nothing really.
Well, I got shot, too, but I was wearing body armor.
How are you coping with that?
Well, according to the military,
I'm what they call mentally resilient.
They said I deal with things quite well.
The detective switched topics and asked Scott
about spending the night away after his aunt's funeral.
You stayed at your dad's in Kennewick?
Uh, no, I actually stayed with a friend.
- What's the friend's name? - Oh, her name's Paige.
At this point, you're wondering,
"Who is Paige?" - That's right.
It's not a normal event
unless he's having an affair with this lady.
She's a mutual friend?
A mutual friend of his and Desiree's.
Did Desiree know that you were going to Paige's?
I don't know. Honestly.
It's not something you had discussed with her?
No.
The red flags are just piling up on this guy
at this point. - It is.
There's more to this relationship
than what he's telling us.
Was it just a platonic friendship,
or were you...
Did you have a sexual relationship with Paige?
You know, I shouldn't go there
because it's kind of rude, but, uh,
well, Des didn't want me to say anything to anybody.
At one point, her and Paige had a little thing going
for a while there, a little experiment.
Okay, so it was Desiree and Paige
who had the sexual relationship.
- Yeah. - But not you and Paige.
Or...? - We all did.
Sometimes you and Paige, too?
- Honestly, we all did. - Okay.
I bet you didn't see that one coming. Did you?
We did not, no. That was something--
Sometimes you think you heard everything
and something new comes up.
Did it seem as though he was trying to almost downplay
his affair with Paige
by saying that Desiree was involved?
Desiree knew about it. She was good with all of it.
Yeah. It was no big deal.
We needed to find out as much as possible
about their relationship.
Was there a major jealousy going on?
The detective asked Scott if he knew of anyone
who had a problem with Desiree.
Nothing.
I mean, who hates an art teacher?
It's an elective.
The detective took a break and stepped out.
Just sit tight for a second.
And Scott kept the conversation going
with himself.
This moment immediately stood out to me,
watching Scott talk to himself
in the interrogation room.
Of course, no one knows how they would act
under that kind of pressure.
A loved one killed and police asking questions,
and hopefully we never find out.
But if you hadn't done anything wrong,
you wouldn't expect to have to coach yourself
to stay calm.
Scott's interview felt rehearsed,
almost like a performance.
And that's what investigators saw as well.
All the suspects I've interviewed over the years,
that's one of the first times I've seen that.
He was just like, he's really psyching himself up,
that he wanted to have his emotions in control.
Was that suspicious to you?
Very suspicious. Very suspicious.
Meanwhile, investigators had been gathering evidence.
There was some DNA under Desiree's fingernails.
That's correct. That was sent to the lab.
There was also a shoe print on the carpet
a few feet from Desiree's body.
The person who made that print
had stepped in some blood.
You were wearing those shoes.
- Yeah. - When you went to the house.
How important was that piece of evidence?
If we found the correct shoe, that would match that,
that would be very huge.
They also collected security video from the area
looking for Scott's car.
And they took his phone.
Then they let him go.
So we can about wrap it up here.
There was nothing that we could, uh,
even come remotely close to charging him
with the murder of his wife,
um, just because he- He was acting funny.
But by the time he walked out of the sheriff's office,
detectives weren't the only ones wondering about Scott.
- After Iraq... - Mm-hmm.
...he was a different Scott.
Different.
♪
The students at Wapato Middle School
were struggling.
Desiree Sunford,
the cool art teacher in room 147, was gone.
When kids started finding out,
those were tough conversations.
How were they taking it?
We had a couple kiddos get really angry, really angry.
Fellow teacher Michelle Howell
was heartbroken too, but she put on a brave face.
In education, you can't think about yourself.
You gotta think about your kids.
Still, she realized just how raw her emotions were
when a student came up to her during lunch break.
And she goes, "I'm sorry that your heart hurts."
And I just broke down.
And she goes, "I'm gonna let you cry."
Sure.
But the commentary that swirled about what happened
and how it happened and who did it...
- Mm-hmm. - That's where the tininess of this valley
starts to really play in.
So there were all sorts of wild theories flying around.
Oh, stupid theories.
There were supposedly that one of our kids had done it,
and then an angry parent had done it.
You just wanted to put cotton in your ears
so you don't listen.
Who would wanna kill Des? Nobody.
At first, Kayla thought it could have been related
to the burglary that happened a week earlier.
Did you think the person came back?
Yeah. I mean, that would be,
I mean, a logical explanation.
When Kayla checked in with Desiree's mother, Connie,
she learned about Scott's strange behavior
at the crime scene.
She told me that Scott called the police
because he didn't wanna go in.
And she was very upset about it because
he, you know, he's military, he had a weapon,
but he wouldn't go in to see if his wife was okay.
I remember thinking
most spouses would charge into that house
trying to see what's happening with their loved one.
And yet, Scott stayed outside.
That decision had raised questions for police, too.
But others wondered if his calm wasn't guilt at all,
but conditioning.
Maybe years of military service,
combat, and trauma made him naturally stoic.
Was his behavior a defense mechanism
or a red flag?
It was a question that stayed with me.
Kayla wasn't surprised that Scott seemed unemotional
at the crime scene.
For the Scott that, you know,
that's not outside of his character.
Correct.
He was not an emotional person.
Mm-hmm.
So it wasn't out of character for him.
Michelle wasn't willing to give Scott that pass.
You could not pay me enough to stand outside
if I thought that someone I loved
or someone that I cared about
was hurt, or dying, or dead inside anywhere.
So when you heard that, what did that make you think?
I was super confused.
I was really confused.
Why would you wait?
Like, why-- What would stop you?
Like, what if she was still alive?
Desiree's brother Casey,
wondered if Scott knew more than he was letting on.
I never told mom this.
I never told anybody.
And I kept saying to myself,
if Scott had anything to do with this.
It's one of those gut feelings that there was...
something he wasn't saying, telling us.
Kim O'Dell had the same gut feeling.
She had known Scott since middle school,
and she saw how much his time in the Army
had changed him.
After Iraq... - Mm-hmm.
...he was a different Scott.
- Different. - How?
Completely different.
Um, just a darker sense of humor about things.
Did Desiree ever say anything about it?
A little bit here and there.
So, she noticed a shift, too?
She did. I think we all did,
especially those of us that were, um,
that were close before and after.
People in Desiree's life
noticed Scott seemed more detached, less loving.
And there was another reason
their marriage may not have been rock solid.
Had you heard that Desiree was stepping out on Scott?
I did.
Years earlier,
Kim found out Desiree had cheated on Scott
before they were married.
Did she ever tell Scott about this?
She did.
Did they have to try and patch things up?
What did that look like?
I think that there was a lot of trust lost in that,
and I think that it was slowly them trying to rebuild.
Between Desiree's infidelity
and the change she saw in Scott,
Kim wondered if Scott had just snapped.
I thought Scott lost his mind.
Scott found out about things that had happened in the past,
and he lost his mind.
Desiree's loved ones were grasping for answers.
But what they didn't know
was detectives thought they might already have one
in Paige Blades,
who was about to tell investigators her story.
♪
Detectives wasted no time in contacting the other woman
in Scott's and maybe Desiree's life.
Paige Blades.
How quickly did you go see her?
It was later that morning.
It was around 8, 9 o'clock that morning.
Paige said she didn't have money for gas,
so detectives drove almost two hours to her house.
She was 23,
shared a young son with an ex-boyfriend,
and she worked at a food processing plant
in Moses Lake, Desiree's hometown.
How long did you talk with her?
We probably talked with her an hour, hour and a half.
How did she come across to you in that conversation?
Didn't seem to be too concerned.
Paige said she and Scott soon became more than friends.
Just as Scott had told them,
Paige said it was all good,
that Desiree was perfectly comfortable
with the arrangement until she wasn't.
That was about seven months before her murder.
So now you're getting a different picture, perhaps,
of this relationship,
than the one that Scott was portraying,
that Desiree wasn't completely onboard
with their dealings.
That's correct.
Paige said her relationship with Desiree may have cooled,
but the affair with Scott continued,
right up until the night of Desiree's murder.
So once we learn about Paige Blades
and hear her side of the story,
this adds a whole new level of complexity.
Unlike Scott, Paige said that Desiree
wasn't completely onboard
with their cozy little throuple.
And it appeared Desiree may not have known
the full truth
of Scott's involvement with Paige.
That gap between what one person believes
and what another is actually doing
can be dangerous.
And it's why investigators told me
they had to take a much closer look at Paige.
As she talked,
detectives thought she sounded a little too practiced.
We asked her if Scott had told her to give him an alibi,
or tell her what to tell the police,
or anything like that, she said no.
He never talked to her
other than he notified her that Desiree had been killed.
Did she come across as believable to you?
For the most part, yes.
But there was still a bit of doubt there somewhere.
There was.
We weren't sure if she was really telling us the truth.
Do you kinda put a bookmark next to her name,
thinking,
she's somebody we're gonna have to dig further into.
Yeah. We need to find out
how deep a relationship they have.
Did they see each other more than what she was telling us,
or what Scott was telling us?
Later, when detectives spoke to those close to Desiree,
Paige's and Scott's stories of a lovely,
amicable three-way didn't seem plausible.
Kim said she'd never heard of Paige.
Desiree never mentioned her as a friend?
No.
When you first hear about her
and kind of her connection in their world,
what did you think?
It just seemed an odd situation.
Like, as far as them having a relationship,
the three of them, I didn't ever see it from her.
I just didn't see that she would ever
venture into that.
Kayla hadn't heard of Paige either.
Never heard of her name before.
She also didn't buy the idea of a three-way affair.
Oh, my gosh.
It's like one of those crazy movies.
The things you only see in movies.
But could Desiree have hidden such an affair?
To detectives, anything seemed possible.
In a case that would be loaded with secrets.
You get a tip that Paige was pregnant
with Scott's baby when the murder happened.
♪
Two weeks after Desiree was killed,
her family and friends gathered for a funeral
as unique as the woman herself.
They had her Harley in there and...
- Inside the church. - Yeah.
There was a beautiful poem that I don't know who read,
but it was The Dash. - Mm-hmm.
And it was basically talking about,
you know, the day you're born,
and then the dash, and then the day you die,
and they wanna focus on the dash,
that time.
When you think about that poem with Desiree,
did you feel that she lived that dash to the fullest?
- Oh, yeah. - Yeah.
What other Harley drivin', gun slingin',
art teacher... - Car restoring.
- Yeah. - She did it all.
She did.
Scott was there at the funeral, of course,
but for Michelle,
that memory is not a pleasant one.
If I lost my spouse,
if I lost someone that I loved
and someone that I cared about,
I sure as hell wouldn't be smiling at their funeral.
- Scott was smiling? - Mm-hmm.
Multiple occasions.
We watched him on his phone walk outside,
because the back part of the church that we were in,
this open venue, there was a wall of windows,
and he's on his phone smoking a cigarette outside
with a smile on his face.
By now, we know there are no rules to grief.
It simply doesn't look the same on everyone.
And that's always part of my approach in an interview.
Could this just be someone's way
of coping with immense pain?
But when does that cross the line
from grieving differently, to being downright suspicious?
One can't help looking at this
and thinking, at the very least,
Scott knows more about his wife's death
than he's letting on.
Detective Johnson was hearing similar stories
that Scott didn't seem like the grieving spouse.
Just a couple days after the funeral,
he was talking to a young lady
at a motorcycle dealership.
He asked for a hug, which is kind of normal
and, you know, need a little emotional support.
But then he asked her out to dinner.
- Like, on a date? - Yeah.
It just didn't seem to add up
that he was really devastated
by the death of Desiree.
But their suspicions were based on
more than his demeanor.
About two months after the murder,
investigators got what sounded like,
explosive news.
You get a tip that Paige was pregnant with Scott's baby
when the murder happened.
What did you think when you heard that?
That definitely would be a motive
to get Desiree out of the picture?
Does that change this picture for you at all?
It makes us work harder
to find out if there's any connection
that would-- did Paige commit this crime,
um, or did Scott have Paige do it for him?
It was just more unanswered questions
for the investigation.
But then some questions were answered
when the lab results came back.
The DNA found under Desiree's fingernails
was male DNA, but...
wasn't Scott's DNA.
It was not.
Results on the bloody shoe print also came in.
No connection to Scott.
We had nothing in the house that matched
any type of shoes that he had in the house.
And the evidence from his phone...
When you were going through that cell phone data,
did it tell you where Scott and Paige were
at the time of the killing?
It showed that he was in the Tri Cities area
during those times.
It was on the route that he would take,
so nothing was suspicious.
They confirmed that Scott's phone
wasn't at the scene of the crime.
Neither was Paige's.
And all those gas station security cameras they checked,
there was no sign of Scott's car near his home
at the time of the murder.
It's like you've got a lot of shiny pennies,
but they're not adding up to much at this point.
Does your investigation start to go cold?
Oh, yes.
Months passed without an arrest.
How hard was that time for you?
It was awful.
There was all the other headlines,
all the other things going on, and she was forgotten.
But her students didn't forget,
and they still wanted answers.
When they became eighth graders,
they were like,
"Whatever happened to that teacher?"
Like, "Did they ever figure out who did it?"
And I would just say, "I don't know,"
and I would move on.
It's not really a conversation you wanna have
with a 13 or 14 year old.
Sure.
Michelle thought an art project
dedicated to Desiree might help.
We spent a Saturday creating this piece of artwork
that is up in our library.
We invaded her classroom and used all of her pastels
and just built this thing.
And then I took it to my classroom
and any of the kids who wanted to come in
and be part of that and put their artwork on there for her
and create a tile of their own for her
is what we called it. And they did.
That's beautiful.
Meanwhile, investigators were taking a harder look
at Paige Blades,
the third wheel in the Sunfords marriage.
Turns out there was another man in Paige's orbit.
She'd brought him up in her interview
with the detectives.
Detectives learned Paige's ex boyfriend Dylan
had actually been involved in a shooting death
two years earlier.
He told officers two men came to his home
in Moses Lake and assaulted him.
So he shot one of them in self-defense.
It was ruled a justifiable homicide.
You did bring Dylan in to talk to him, correct?
Oh, certainly.
We wanted to find out the relationship
that he had with Paige.
Did he know anything about the relationship
between Scott and Paige,
did he know anything about Desiree?
Did you ask him where he was
the night that Desiree was killed?
Certainly.
What did he tell you?
He was home in Moses Lake area.
At the time of Desiree's murder.
He had two firearms registered in his name,
but neither was the same caliber
as the gun that killed Desiree.
And his alibi checked out.
What's more,
when Paige gave birth toward the end of the year,
Dylan asked for a paternity test.
It showed the baby was his, not Scott's.
So in the end, Paige's baby didn't matter to the case.
But that didn't mean there weren't serious problems
between Paige, Scott and Desiree
in the months before the murder.
Investigators learned a whole lot about that
when the digital evidence finally came back.
There it was, a trove of eye-opening texts
between Desiree and Paige
that told a dramatically new story
about the two women and Scott.
He was not being very honest with us.
♪
As detectives searched for Desiree Sunford's killer,
they uncovered text messages between Desiree
and Paige Blades.
Messages that were raised new questions
about what Scott Sunford had been telling police.
He was not being very honest with us.
He was not being forthright about his relationship
with his wife,
or it really isn't relationship with Paige.
The texts began more than a year before the murder
and early on showed a close friendship
between the two women.
Desiree wrote...
Paige answered...
They alluded to one night that wasn't strictly platonic.
Desiree wrote...
Paige responded...
But there was no evidence that they were engaged
in an ongoing affair.
In fact, about three weeks later,
the texts showed Desiree getting tired
of Paige living in her home.
She wanted more privacy with Scott.
Desiree wrote...
Paige responded...
Desiree wrote...
What does this tell you about Paige and Desiree
and their relationship? - It was deteriorating.
They weren't the friends that they started out to be
and that there was becoming a wedge in Scott
and Desiree's relationship,
that Desiree was becoming more jealous of Paige
and just did not want, uh, her involved in their, um--
in their-- at their home.
I remember the first time I learned
about these text messages,
and I knew, okay, this is a turning point.
These days, there is always a digital footprint,
and oftentimes it can cut through the murkiness
of competing stories.
Through these texts, we finally hear Desiree
in her own words.
What she knew, what she didn't,
and most importantly, just how uncomfortable
she had become.
And they reveal a rather sharp, angry side of Paige
that investigators previously hadn't seen.
The texts also revealed something else.
Not only was Desiree unhappy,
she had no idea Scott and Paige were intimate.
She texted Paige...
Paige answered...
In her messages, it doesn't seem
that Desiree has any knowledge or thought
that Paige and Scott are intimate at all.
As far as we can tell that Desiree did not know
that this affair was going on.
♪
From the texts, it's clear that Desiree was worried
about her marriage,
and Paige was making it worse.
In some exchanges, she was downright brutal.
There was one where Paige texted Desiree and said,
"I'm fairly convinced that in the event
"of your demise, I would be the chosen one."
Oh, my gosh.
Desiree says, "Huh?" And Paige goes on to say,
"If you ever die, and he needs a wife,
"I'm half convinced that would be me."
Even just watching you,
I can see that still upsets you.
Yes, it does.
Like, why-why would you even say that?
After that, Desiree finally pushed back,
telling Paige to stay away for good, texting...
Paige's response...
And then she hurled a couple of obscenities at Desiree.
I would imagine this is an important detail
in your investigation.
It gave us an indication that maybe there was a motive,
that they wanted Desiree out of their relationship
so Scott and and Paige to move on with their life.
As provocative as the texts were,
they didn't reveal a murder plot.
But another call to the tip line was about to change everything.
Well, that gives us a new spark in our investigation.
Now we have a name.
A name and a wild story about a stranger
with a strange obsession.
♪
Almost 14 months had passed since Desiree Sunford's murder,
when out of nowhere, a woman called
the Yakima Sheriff's tip line and left a message.
What did the caller say?
It said that the person that killed Desiree Sunford
was a Marty Grismer. - And that's it?
No other details?
No other details.
It's just a name that had never come up
in the investigation before.
And that just breathes new life
into this investigation.
Now, we got-- We got somebody to--
to go after.
Who was Marty Grismer?
To figure that out, job number one
was to find the tipster.
So we had to do some tracking to find out
who called that tip in.
They traced the phone call,
and when they got their answer,
they couldn't believe it.
Who was it?
It was Paige Blades.
You've not spoken to her in months, but now suddenly,
she's saying she knows who the killer is.
Where did that come from?
It came out of the blue.
Well, I really appreciate you coming forward
with this information.
We brought Paige to Yakima.
We sat down and-- and, okay.
You just can't drop this bomb on us.
How do you know this?
Tell us everything that you know about this,
uh, Marty Grismer.
What does he do for a living?
He's a team lead at the plant that I work at.
You guys dated for a short time.
Right. Very, very briefly.
Marty had recently gotten married.
Still, Paige said he kept asking her for sex
and would hit on her at work.
She let him know that wasn't happening, ever.
But he was a friend, a really good friend.
He's the one that got me the house.
He bought my car outright with cash.
I still haven't paid him back for it.
He pays my insurance.
He's done my grocery shopping.
He's taken very well care of me.
He was like her fixer, she said,
would do anything for her,
something she suggested he took too far.
We had just found out about three weeks before the shooting
that I was pregnant.
Marty was one of the first people that I told.
And apparently he decided
that if the baby was Scott's like it was supposed to be,
then Desiree would cause issues.
And Paige claimed Marty recently told her
he took care of those issues.
Let me make sure I understand.
He believed that--
well, you were pregnant.
At that time, you thought it was Scott's baby?
He believed it was Scott's baby.
He thought that Desiree was going to make problems
for the two of you,
and so he decided the best way to fix that problem
was to eliminate her so that you could be happy.
So that we could move forward. Yes.
The baby wasn't Scott's, of course.
Paige insisted Marty didn't make this confession
until more than a year after Desiree's murder.
She said she was shocked when Marty told her,
especially since her relationship with Scott
had cooled,
and Scott was with another woman.
She said Marty offered to take care of that, too.
I was explaining to him what was going on.
Um... - With you and Scott?
Yeah.
And that he just-- He asked me...
And that, she said,
is when she decided to call the tip line.
I have to say, this may be one of the strangest motives
for murder I've ever heard.
Paige says Marty didn't kill to be with her.
Rather, he killed so she could be happy with someone else.
That's not jealousy as we typically think of it.
It's a sort of twisted devotion.
So it presented an interesting problem
for investigators.
Was Marty's motive just too bizarre
to be taken seriously,
or was it so strange it could actually be true?
Have you ever heard a motive like that?
No, I've never had a case like that before.
That just didn't make sense.
Paige said Marty described Desiree's murder in detail.
She said Marty had been to the house before
and knew there was a key hidden near the front door.
These were very specific details about this crime.
That's correct.
Details that only the killer or somebody there
would have known. - Right.
And those details were gruesome.
He, uh, made it look like a burglary.
He took the, uh, board off the door
and, um, make it look like that's how the entry was.
He went back inside again,
grabbed a jewelry box off of her dresser.
He left.
Locked the door,
put the key back where it was hiding.
And this all happened around 3, 3:30 that morning.
He even told her the type of gun he used.
Marty said it was a 9 millimeter.
Did he say what kind of-- what brand?
I don't think he mentioned the brand.
It all lined up with what detectives found
at the crime scene.
Paige said Marty told her he headed home
and got rid of the evidence.
What was her demeanor when she sat down
and told you what Marty had said?
Did she seem scared? - Very emotional.
She broke down and cried.
Just, uh-- she just couldn't believe
that he would do such a thing.
Did you believe her?
We didn't have any reason not to believe her
at this point.
She certainly brought Marty
to the front of the investigation,
and we needed to do as much research
and investigating how he would be involved.
And they had an idea of how to find those answers.
But Marty wouldn't make it easy.
♪
Paige Blades had just told Yakima detectives
that Marty Grismer,
her co worker and sometimes fixer,
had confessed to murdering Desiree Sunford.
What did you think as you're listening to this?
We were wanting to believe her,
that this was the suspect that was involved.
We were also, um, wanting her to maybe
get him to tell this story again.
Ideally, they'd record that conversation.
So they asked Paige to meet Marty again,
this time wearing a wire.
Eight days later, she and Marty got together
at a Starbucks near work.
We had a team of undercover officers.
We were hoping to actually hear
what Marty had to say about it,
in his own words.
If Marty was a killer, this was risky,
both for Paige and for police.
Asking Paige to wear a wire meant
putting her face to face with the same man
she said was obsessed with her.
But she seemed to want proof
to show she was telling the truth,
even if it meant possibly endangering herself to do it.
Paige tried to coax the story out of Marty.
But it did not go as we planned.
Marty seemed to be, uh, looking around
like he was being set up.
Kinda like he was on to you.
Maybe.
Maybe he caught a glimpse of somebody
or Paige was hinky about how she was trying to ask him.
As undercover officers snapped photos
of Paige and Marty leaving the coffee shop,
Paige persisted.
The conversation ended there.
We didn't get anything. He was just--
he was acting suspiciously,
but you can't take that into court.
- Disappointing for you? - It was.
We thought, uh, he would tell her everything again,
but that just didn't happen.
Marty had no criminal history.
His DNA wasn't in the system.
So they scoured every other part of his life
and took a closer look at his family.
He wasn't gonna get any type of relationship with Paige.
So he married this other woman.
Um... - Beth.
Yes.
He was just moving on with his life.
This is Beth Maxwell.
She met Marty on a dating site in May 2013,
a month after Desiree's murder.
What was it about Marty that caught your eye?
He didn't judge me, like-- 'cause I'm a bigger girl,
so, you know, it's something that I get judged for a lot.
He just accepted me for who I was.
The polite man she met online
seemed like a true gentleman in person.
He just was a charmer, kind of.
He was what I wanted, what I've always wanted.
He opened the car door for me.
And Marty quickly fit into Beth's life,
becoming a father figure to her young son.
He was amazing.
He was the dad that I've always wanted my son to have.
Was that a big factor in you saying, hey,
this guy's the one? - Yeah, it was.
And my son picked up on it right away, too.
Like, he's like, that's-- That's my Marty dad.
That's what he called him.
It was a whirlwind romance.
After just four months together, they got married.
But it all seemed too good to be true.
So much so that Beth felt blindsided
by Marty's choice of a best man.
His best friend, Paige.
I want to make sure I'm getting this right.
Marty's best man... - ...was Paige.
- A woman. - Yes.
How did that sit with you?
Uh, it didn't sit great with me.
Beth met Paige for the first time
on their wedding day.
She wanted to dress exactly like Marty.
It was a big fight.
She seemed very controlling,
like this is what she wanted done,
so he had to do it her way.
The honeymoon phase was short.
Beth noticed that Marty prioritized Paige
above all else, including her.
I found out that he had bought her car,
was paying her rent. - Had he bought you a car?
No, he never bought me a car.
He bought her food a lot of times.
- Bought her food? - Like, groceries and stuff.
Yeah. - That's a love language.
Mm-hmm.
You were married to a man who was seemingly
completely devoted to another woman.
Yeah.
You believed that Paige had feelings for your husband?
I think so, mm-hmm.
And that he had feelings for her.
Yeah, definitely.
I started really having issues with it,
because I'm like, why is the best friend
getting treated better than the wife?
In fact, one of Beth's friends told her
Paige had bragged about her power over Marty.
She actually told my best friend
that she could steal Marty away.
Did you believe that she had some control over him
in some way?
He was just that obsessed over her,
and there was just no changing it,
like, at all.
Beth was wondering just what
she'd gotten herself into, when...
There's a knock at the door.
And there's six to seven people at my door.
- Police officers. - Police officers, yeah.
Detectives.
♪
Nineteen months after Desiree's murder,
police and sheriff's deputies were at Marty Grismer's door.
What did you say to him
to convince him to come with you?
We just told him that we're investigating
the death of Desiree Sunford.
He said, "No problem. I'll--"
He got a shirt, got dressed,
came down to the office. He didn't lawyer up.
They started out easy.
Marty said Paige told him all about her affair with Scott.
As you're listening to him, what are you thinking?
This is your first time that you're face to face with Marty.
Okay, Marty, if-if you didn't do it,
and Paige or Scott did it, you're covering it for them.
Whatever happened with Scott and Desiree and Paige,
Marty said he was an impartial observer,
and only that.
And all through that first part of that interview,
his guard is pretty much down.
Correct. He was--
He didn't seem to be under too much stress at that point.
Detectives listened to Marty for about half an hour,
and now the softball portion of the interview was over.
They told Marty they'd been doing some research about him,
had gotten a call from his boss.
Marty was kind of a gun nut.
He liked to buy guns and-and buy gun parts.
Except he seemed to have forgotten how he got
this particular gun barrel.
The fact is, detectives knew all about the gun barrel.
They'd gotten it from Marty's boss
and had rushed it to the lab.
And what do you know?
The lab came back that the barrel that we found,
that barrel was used to kill Desiree.
So now you've got hard evidence
linking him to this crime.
That's correct.
That is the smoking gun, so to speak.
- Almost exactly that. - Exactly.
Marty seemed to realize this interview was going
in a very bad direction.
There's a vein in the side of his head
that just was really protruding.
He was under a great deal of stress during this interview,
and you could tell by his eyes, and--
that he was just trying to think before he spoke.
He was in hyper stress.
And that was only going to get worse
as detectives got to the point.
His emotions were all over the page to a point
where he was almost physically sick.
Like getting ready to vomit?
Yeah, he said he was about ready to get sick.
And then, he said, he remembered something.
He said Paige did have his gun,
fitted with that barrel, at the time of the murder.
Until May, he said, well after the murder.
And then Marty turned the tables on Paige
and said he had long suspected she had something to do
with Desiree's murder.
The detectives weren't buying it.
It was his gun barrel.
And they found it right where he left it.
And that is what they did.
He just couldn't believe that he was being charged
with murder.
But two other people remained on the detective's radar.
Scott and Paige.
It was just that thought in the back of our head
that still she's got to be involved
and Scott's got to be involved.
We still have nothing to tie them,
other than this relationship that they were all involved in.
We also had a few questions for Paige.
Did you and Scott conspire with Marty to have her killed?
♪
November 13, 2014.
Nineteen months after Desiree Sunford
was found shot to death in her home.
Marty Grismer was charged with her murder.
Desiree's friend Kayla thought someone else
should have been locked up along with him.
Paige Blades.
I am thinking this psycho biatch
squiggled her way into their life
and created chaos.
And now my friend is dead over it.
A needless death.
I just... It's unreal.
I honestly think that she asked Marty to do what he did.
Even after Marty's arrest.
Paige's role in the Sunfords' marriage
remained something of a mystery
to Desiree's family and friends,
and to investigators, too.
You were still looking at her.
You still didn't think her hands were completely clean here.
It was just that thought in the back of our head
that still, she's got to be involved,
but we still have nothing to tie them,
other than this relationship
that they were all involved in.
Do you think that there are things
that people get wrong about you?
There are a lot of things that people get wrong about me.
There are a lot of assumptions.
When we last spoke to Paige Blades,
she was 35 years old, the mother of four kids.
She worked in customer relations,
and she said she still had strong feelings for
and about Desiree Sunford.
I love Des,
and I don't say that past tense.
She's still special to me.
There's no part of me that ever wanted
anything bad to happen to her.
It had been more than a decade since Paige's entanglement
with Desiree, Scott, and Marty.
Do you feel like you're a different person now?
Oh, absolutely.
I am a completely different person.
Paige says she's worked hard to battle addiction,
money problems, and the ghosts
of a turbulent, abusive childhood.
She admits to a pattern of troubled relationships,
like what she had with Scott and Desiree.
We became very good friends
and eventually friends with benefits,
and eventually we didn't have a relationship anymore.
She met Scott in early 2011.
They were partying, hanging out.
Paige says when she finally met Desiree,
they became fast friends.
And in fact, it was Desiree's idea for her
to stay with them.
They were in a one bedroom apartment,
and they had a California king bed,
and she was like, "There's plenty of room."
All three of us shared the bed.
So she invited you into the bed?
Mm-hmm.
And she's the one who put Scott in the middle.
During that bed arrangement,
were you all sexually active?
Yeah.
Everybody with each other?
Not all together,
but I was sexually active with Scott
and I was sexually active with Des.
In those text messages, Paige and Desiree
carried on flirty exchanges.
But in other messages,
it seems Paige wasn't being honest
about her relationship with Scott.
At one point, Desiree texted you,
"I still have to say that you two doing anything sexual
"would bother me."
And you responded, "Yeah, he and I doing anything sexual
"is out of the question."
Was that true?
I honestly don't remember that conversation.
Did you ever mislead Desiree into thinking
that you and Scott weren't sexually active?
Not as far as I know or remember.
Paige says she does remember
when Desiree's patience reached the breaking point.
She writes this.
"I'm done with the drama and the BS.
"I'm going to ask nicely for you to distance yourself
"from me, my home, and my family."
And you respond, in part, "Not a problem.
"I've been wanting to do away with you for quite a while now,"
and then go on to call her some names
that I can't repeat on TV.
It sounds like you didn't take too kindly
to her telling you to stay away.
That was the big fight.
I know that I was out of line with how I responded to her.
There were a lot of other things that were going on in my life
at the time that were compounding stress.
Paige moved out, but she kept seeing Scott.
There are people who would look at this
and say that you came into their marriage
and basically just tore it apart.
No, I definitely wasn't there to destroy their marriage.
Did you want to be with him?
No.
Would you have wanted to be his wife,
have a relationship with him, solely?
No. Him, solely?
No.
I want to get you to respond to one more text thread
between you and Desiree.
You write, "I'm fairly convinced
"that in the event of your demise,
"I would be the chosen one."
Desiree says, "Huh?"
And you say, "If you ever die and he needs a wife,
"I'm half convinced that would be me."
What was that about?
I still don't remember.
And that one's come up quite a few times, too.
I walked into that interview with Paige
not knowing what she would tell me,
but I did know I was going to push her.
There'd been some very hefty allegations made against her,
so I wanted her to have every opportunity
to defend herself.
Anytime someone tells me they don't remember a detail
that seems important, it does give me pause.
And as we kept talking, one thing became clear.
To understand Paige, you had to understand her relationship
with the man she says was obsessed with her,
Marty Grismer.
He was my rock for a little while.
He would go on a grocery run for me if I needed,
or if I needed to borrow gas money,
then I would get it from him.
He was the only person that I had that I could turn to
if I had a struggle.
Why was Marty doing all of these things for you?
I assume that it had something to do
with his undying love for me, as he would say.
Paige says she told Marty all about her rift with Desiree,
that she was still seeing Scott and pregnant with his child.
Paige insists she never thought his moral support
would turn to murder,
and was shocked when Marty confessed to killing Desiree.
He went into excruciating detail
of what he did to Desiree.
This was somebody who was your friend.
How hard was this for you to listen to?
It was not just hard. It was a devastating blow.
Who was this person that I had let into my life?
So some people would look at this and say
you had to have planted some sort of seed in his mind
by talking about Scott,
by talking about the fact that you believed
you were pregnant with his baby.
That would make him think, if I get rid of Desiree,
I'm making Paige happy.
I honestly don't know.
I don't know or understand how Marty's mind works.
I honestly never have.
There are many people who believe
that you conspired with Marty,
that you wanted Desiree out of the picture
so that you could be with Scott,
and that you essentially put Marty up to killing her.
Never.
- No truth to that? - None, whatsoever.
I...
I've heard that quite a few times,
but never in a million years.
There-there was never any reason for that to happen.
Did you and Scott conspire with Marty
to have her killed? - No. Absolutely not.
Her friends would say,
if you hadn't been in the picture,
if it weren't for you,
Desiree would have never gotten killed,
that she would still be alive today.
How do you respond to that?
I don't think that's fair.
I believe that if Marty hadn't been in my life,
Des would still be alive.
I understand that to a lot of people,
it probably seems like and feels like
I am central to everything,
but from my own side, I'm on the outside looking in.
I didn't feel like I was the one in the center.
Maybe not.
But her testimony would be key to the case against Marty.
Prosecutors had to worry,
whose case would she actually help,
theirs or the defense's?
This case and investigation raised a lot of questions,
uh, and some of those questions will never be answered.
♪
Paige Blades may have turned Marty in,
but no one close to Desiree saw that as a selfless act.
You buy the trying to do the right thing?
No.
No, I believe she was feeling the guilt,
and I don't think there was--
"I'm gonna be the one to solve it." I don't.
I think it was a guilty conscience.
But there's no denying it was Paige's tip
that got them to Marty.
Still, it wasn't an easy case.
There was no crime scene DNA matching Marty,
no shoe of his that matched the bloody shoe print,
and no video of him in that area at the time of the murder.
Then, as Marty sat in jail awaiting trial,
a call came in from the plant manager
at Marty's job.
They were cleaning out a dumpster,
and they found the jewelry box.
They found the laptop and the iPad.
The stolen laptop and iPad,
taken from Desiree and Scott's house
when it was burglarized five days before the murder.
But that jewelry box was key.
It connected Marty directly to the murder.
Page had told investigators that Marty said he took it
the night he killed Desiree.
It was all found, along with a big clue
as to who left it there.
A receipt with the name Marty Grismer.
- That's big. - That's huge.
Marty must have done the first burglary, too,
and he didn't get rid of anything.
It was not very bright to keep all this stuff
involved in a-- in a burglary and a homicide.
A month later,
detectives got a call from Marty's cellmate at the jail.
And he's had some interesting conversations with Marty.
Yeah, Marty's talking about the evidence that's against him.
And he was also talking about Paige.
The cellmate said Marty was furious with her.
She had turned him in.
Paige would be the star witness against him at his trial.
So Marty suggested a way his cellmate
could solve his problem.
Kill Paige and a friend of hers.
That's quite a swing.
Going from doing anything for Paige, obsessed with her,
will kill for her, to, according to the cellmate,
wanting to put out a hit to get rid of her.
Yeah, he's trying to save his own skin at this point.
No hit ever happened, and the cellmate got cold feet
and refused to testify, which didn't help prosecutors,
who were already dealing with a difficult circumstantial case
full of imperfect evidence and maybe worse,
two possible alternate suspects.
You had wondered about Scott and Paige's involvement
from the very beginning.
Were you concerned that the defense might try
and use that as an alternate theory?
Certainly, it, uh-- it could easily been used.
That's why we-we offered the plea.
This case and investigation raised a lot of questions,
and some of those questions will never be answered.
In December of 2017,
Marty Grismer was offered a deal.
His first degree murder charge would be reduced to second
if he took what's called an Alford plea,
admitting there's enough evidence to convict
without actually admitting guilt.
Desiree's brother felt there was no choice.
Prosecutor told us he'll at least get something
if he-- if he takes this plea.
And we're like, well, we've gotta at least...
give him something.
We can't run the risk of him just walking free.
Kasey attended the sentencing hearing
with his mother, Connie.
She spoke to the court.
Your honor, I can only speak to you
about one thing at this point.
Sentence this evil being to the harshest prison
in our system.
He deserves to be among other evil.
In the end, Marty Grismer was sentenced
to just 15 years in prison.
He's scheduled to be released in 2029.
Desiree's friends and family were angry.
They didn't think Desiree got justice.
Was that good enough?
No, it's not good enough,
because he's still not admitting any guilt,
and he's only getting 15 years.
They also remain angry at Scott.
While he was never charged in the case,
they're certain his affair with Paige
led to Desiree's murder.
The bottom line is that Desiree
would still be alive today if Scott had been faithful.
Scott moved away after Desiree died.
He's now remarried.
As for Paige, she was never charged either.
But still, Desiree's loved ones cannot shake the idea
that she was involved.
There are many people who believe
that you got away with murder,
that you should be in prison, too.
I've heard that.
What would you say to them?
I had nothing to do with it.
It's incredibly unfair that I risked my life
to do the right thing,
and I'm being crucified for existing.
Still, the people who loved Desiree say
they try not to dwell on Scott or Paige.
They want to focus on the good.
On Desiree.
If you were lucky enough to get to know Des,
you'd want everybody else to know it, too.
[engine starting]
Desiree's mother, Connie,
had to sell her daughter's beloved Chevelle
to pay for her headstone.
Hey, Des.
It's been a while.
Connie died before it was installed.
She's buried next to her daughter.
It's a beautiful headstone.
Yeah.
She loved the dolphins.
And she did love roses.
That's her Chevy, her little Tweety bird.
- She loved Tweety. - Yeah.
Spending time with the people who loved Desiree,
you really start to feel what was taken.
She was the kind of art teacher kids connected with.
My heart aches for the students who lost her
and for the ones who will never get the chance
to learn from her.
I also feel so badly for Desiree.
Caught in the middle of these twisted relationships
and an obsession that turned into senseless violence.
Visiting her gravestone that day,
I felt just how deeply she's missed by so many.
It just makes everything so real
when you come here and see it.
Sure, sure.
That she's not going to just show up
in your driveway on a Harley.
♪