- In the criminal justice system,
detectives and prosecutors face daunting challenges
when money is the motive for murder.
[dramatic sting]
- The new proprietor of the lodge
was in there on the bed, dead.
- Investigators discover a culture clash
surrounding the murder
of a California real-estate mogul.
- Camp Nelson Lodge had become a money pit.
- Sucking all their finances.
- We became aware of a stranger.
What's his connection to Bonnie Hood?
- And a startling verdict leads to a second shooting.
- The number of times he got shot--I had never seen that.
- The two killings were inexorably tied together.
- As prosecutors, we carry the heaviest burden
in the American law.
- These men and women dedicate their lives to law and order.
These are their true stories.
* *
[dramatic sting]
[insects chirping]
[eerie music]
- The call came in sometime after 3:30 in the morning.
The caller, who identified himself as Rudy Manuel,
said he had been shot.
[sirens wailing]
- On the night of August 19, 1990,
my pager went off--
shooting in Camp Nelson at the lodge.
Beautiful mountain resort for the elite.
There were no lights anywhere,
so it was darker than the ace of spades.
I walked in.
Rudy Manuel's laying on the floor
with a gunshot graze across his forehead.
He was talking, and he said, Bonnie's in there on the bed.
Bonnie Hood was the new proprietor of the lodge.
Rudy Manuel was another employee of the lodge.
I walked into the bedroom.
Bonnie Hood was on the bed,
and she's dead.
We transported Rudy to the hospital.
I remember putting him on the gurney.
After Rudy was gone, they called the detectives.
- When I got there, the scene was still contained.
In the bedroom, Bonnie's body was found lying on the bed--
partially one leg out of the bed,
and the other one was on the bed still.
So it was like, maybe she was attempting to get out of bed.
But before she was actually able to, she was shot.
- She was laying with her hands crossed like this
and a bullet hole in her head.
- Crime techs processed the cabin
and discovered a .38 slug lodged in the headboard,
along with a blood trail leading away from the bedroom.
- It appeared to be that Rudy managed to crawl on the floor
into the living room to make the 911 call.
Point of entry was determined to be the rear door.
It was a screen that was cut,
and there was some pry marks found.
And there was fingerprints dusted throughout the cabin.
Other than evidence of the blood on the bed
and on the floor and the possible point of entry,
there wasn't much there.
In my mind, it eliminated the possibility of a robbery.
If they was in there to rob,
they would've gotten what they wanted first
and then killed them.
It wasn't a robbery or a crime interrupted.
It was...
He went in there with the intent to kill.
Eventually the body was identified as Bonnie Hood.
- Everyone knew Bonnie Hood.
She and her husband, Jim, were from Newport Beach--
the wealthy new owners of the Camp Nelson resort.
- My husband and I, we would go up and rent a cabin
with our kids in Camp Nelson.
It felt so personal.
It felt like such a violation of this community.
I remember calling my husband, and just sobbing
and saying, somebody shot Bonnie.
Somebody shot Bonnie.
The community was in shock.
Why did it happen?
Who did it? Are we safe?
- I was sick to my stomach and frightened.
* *
- Bonnie was from the Newport Beach area,
and she was married to Jim Hood.
Jim and Bonnie were like the golden couple.
They had a beautiful house in Newport Beach.
They each had a Mercedes.
- Jim was in the developing business,
and he had a golden touch.
Nothing that he built had any problems with it.
- Jim had this business that he was building,
and they had a lot of money.
- They were so well known in Newport Beach
and Orange County social circles.
- They had two beautiful children.
When her kids got a little older,
Bonnie wanted to start a second chapter of her life.
* *
- Bonnie had come up here as a child,
and Jim and her had come up here as a vacation.
Three years before the shooting,
they saw the lodge was for sale, and they bought it.
* *
- Bonnie Hood came to Camp Nelson
knowing that she wanted to make the Camp Nelson area
a retreat for people from a metropolitan area,
where they could come up and live the high life,
only live it in the mountains.
* *
We weren't subject to wanting change.
We didn't want the metropolitan area to come up here.
We couldn't be bothered with that.
We were country people.
- Investigators questioned,
was this influx of coastal elites
so threatening to locals that it made Bonnie a target?
- It was two completely clashing cultures,
and Bonnie became more and more estranged
from the Camp Nelson community.
So Bonnie and Jim--
they kind of invented this commuter marriage.
Bonnie would be down in Newport Beach.
She would go, like, a Tuesday to a Thursday,
be there for the kids, homework.
And then every other weekend,
Jim would come up with the kids.
So, when Bonnie first hired Rudy to help at the lodge,
I think Jim was relieved.
Rudy was hired to build fences
around the lodge property.
He's building things. He's riding the horses.
He's lugging stuff around. He's doing all of this stuff.
And I think Jim thought,
oh, finally, there's somebody there who is helping her
in ways that I can't.
And as Rudy became more and more inseparable with Bonnie,
there was just obviously something sparking
between them.
- There was speculation--
if there was something going on between Rudy and Bonnie--
but nobody could prove it.
I mean, the husband was coming to town only on the weekends.
- There may have been different reports
from different people, but you can't dispute
the evidence we found at the scene,
which was that they were both in the same bed
on the night of the shooting.
We need to speak to Rudy and find out what his story is.
[dramatic sting]
[siren wailing]
Rudy was very fortunate,
because the bullet did not penetrate the skull.
He was up front about his and Bonnie Hood's relationship,
that they were having a sexual relationship.
There was an affair between Bonnie Hood and Rudy Manuel.
So that automatically lets us know
that there's more to this investigation.
- He was a Native American,
lived on the reservation nearby.
Certain white residents of Redwood Country in the area
believed that a Native American
shouldn't have been in bed with a white woman.
- He said that him and Bonnie Hood shared a cabin.
He had recalled securing the cabin doors
and turning out all the lights.
They were in bed.
And then the next thing he recalled was the light
coming on to the bedroom.
And this individual confronted him with a gun in his hand,
told him to get down off the bed and get on the floor.
* *
Rudy did not comply.
He said, if you want me down,
you're going to have to put me down.
And that's when he was shot.
And then he remembers hearing two shots.
[muffled gunshots, door creaks, car engine turning over]
A vehicle was heard leaving the property.
[engine revving]
* *
Rudy never made it to the window,
seeing the person drive off.
Rudy Manuel provided as much of a description
as he could of the individual--
a white male, late 30s, blondish-brown-colored hair,
medium to heavy built.
* *
We had the description that Rudy Manuel had indicated
was the shooter.
Camp Nelson is a mountain community.
They have that neighborhood type of environment,
where everybody knows each other.
There's two lodges in business there--
Camp Nelson, and the other lodge was Pierpoint Lodge.
- The detectives started coming up and asking questions
at Pierpoint Springs Resort.
They asked if we could identify the man
that supposedly shot Bonnie.
[dramatic sting]
* *
On the Friday night prior to the murder,
a man came into Pierpoint, and I served him.
Stranger walks in, and you spot him right away
because he's not your local people.
He ordered his drink.
He sits down at the end of the bar.
He sits there for a little bit, gets up because we have music.
And he went and sat down next to another lady,
made some off-color remarks.
The lady that he was sitting next to approached me.
She said, I really don't like that guy sitting next to me.
I said, not a big deal. I got it.
I walked out from behind the bar.
I said, I'm sorry, sir, but we don't need your kind in here.
You can leave, and you don't need to come back.
He got up. I took his drink, and he left.
Where he went after that, we have no idea.
* *
The stranger that came in had sandy-blond hair.
Could have been shoulder length,
but it was very, very curly, kind of disheveled.
- To our surprise, he kind of matched the description
that Rudy Manuel had put out.
This might be the shooter.
Let's find out who he is and why he was there.
What would have been his motive for killing Bonnie Hood?
* *
He was either being threatened or blackmailed.
- The morning after the murder of Bonnie Hood,
detectives pursued the identity of a man
who matched the description of the shooter
and was seen locally on the night she was killed.
[dramatic sting]
- Tight-knit community, word gets around.
There was talk that we were trying to find out
who this person was.
Ray Torrey, who works part-time at the bar,
remembered this individual dined at the restaurant.
* *
- They described him to the detectives,
and they described the same man that we had described.
- Ray recalled that this stranger
had come in with his own beer
and left the bottle sitting on the table.
Ray had set it behind the bar
to be cleaned up in the morning.
The bottle was still there.
- A beer bottle's a very difficult item
because so many people touch it,
but it was collected
to see if any unidentifiable fingerprints can be found.
* *
- Meanwhile, Jim Hood had been notified after the killing
and arrived at Camp Nelson in a haze
after breaking the news of Bonnie's death
to their children.
- He was asked what the relationship was
between Rudy Manuel and Bonnie Hood.
He said they were just good friends.
He was never aware of any sexual relationship
between the two.
- Jim maintained that he and Bonnie had a solid marriage
and wouldn't acknowledge an affair,
even when told that his wife was in bed with Rudy.
- We felt that he was trying to conceal something,
like he had a perfect relationship with Bonnie Hood.
They were fine. There was no issues.
During an investigation like this,
you start looking at what type of financial records
would have her name on it, have the husband's name on it.
We need to try and bring up more information.
He was asked what type of financial issues
the lodge might be in.
- Camp Nelson Lodge,
which was the beloved project of Bonnie Hood,
had become a money pit.
- They were struggling to get all the rentals filled.
While Bonnie had this dream
about what she wanted to do with it,
it was really impractical,
given where this place was located.
The lodge--it became a kind of black hole
just sucking all the money out of their finances.
- It was losing between $100,000 and $300,000.
* *
- Investigators recognized clear motive--
the financial burden of the lodge
and Bonnie's seemingly public affair,
which Jim was outwardly denying.
* *
- My heart is hurting
for Bonnie Hood and her family.
* *
Happy family guy.
The Jim Hood that I knew
from our days together as students at San Jose State--
very outgoing, very gregarious guy,
and he was a good student.
And so the two just didn't mesh,
that he would be involved in anything
that would result in somebody getting hurt,
let alone his wife getting killed.
- During that interview, there was nothing unusual.
I mean, he acted surprised at some of the questions,
like, no, there's no way.
There was never a problem with our marriage.
As far as an alibi, he was far away.
He was home in Southern California.
Jim Hood was somebody we continued
to consider as a possibility being involved.
* *
Rudy Manuel had a sister,
and she worked part-time at the lodge.
When she was at the lodge the weekend before,
she had seen an individual
and thought he matched the description
that Rudy had given her of the shooter.
And one of the things she added was that the individual
she had seen had been doing a roofing job
at one of the local cabins.
The resident deputy directed us towards
one particular cabin that had roofing work done on it.
* *
Mr. Penner was the owner of the cabin.
He confirmed that he did have the roofing redone
on that cabin the weekend before.
He said the roofers were friends of his,
and he provided the names Mark and Matthew Stewart--
two brothers who were in construction.
And they're from Fresno.
* *
Mark and Matthew Stewart were contacted.
They both indicated that they'd gone up to the lodge,
but they were done with the roofing job
a week before the shooting occurred
and had not returned.
Mark and Matthew Stewart did not match
the description that Rudy Manuel had indicated
was the shooter.
Mark and Matthew Stewart were interviewed.
A friend of theirs just happened to be at the house--
Rick Lamar--
and he looked very similar to the physical description
given by Rudy Manuel of the shooter.
Rick Lamar was asked
if he had ever gone to the Camp Nelson Lodge,
and he said no.
Photographs were taken of both of the Stewart brothers,
Matthew and Mark, to be shown to Rudy Manuel.
Rick agreed to allow his photograph
to be taken as well.
[dramatic sting]
[monitor beeping]
- Rudy, while he was still recovering,
was given a lineup, and he pointed to somebody.
* *
- He selected Rick Lamar as being the shooter.
[dramatic music]
- Shot dead at 3:00 a.m.
The intruder shot both Bonnie
and her hired caretaker, Rudy Manuel,
in the head execution style.
Bonnie died instantly, but Rudy somehow was spared.
* *
- Rudy Manuel selected Rick Lamar
as being the shooter.
Immediately, our focus turned back to Rick Lamar.
Rick Lamar told us, the weekend that the shooting occurred,
he had been off on a fishing trip with his dad.
The dad--he was contacted by telephone
and confirmed the information.
There was no connection between Mr. Lamar
and Bonnie Hood or Rudy Manuel.
We need to gather more evidence
that actually places him at the shooting.
* *
[dramatic sting]
* *
Sergeant of the unit got a phone call from the FBI
indicating they had identified a usable print
from that beer bottle.
* *
The fingerprint was identified to a Bruce Beauchamp,
who had a criminal record, from Fontana, California.
* *
Bruce Beauchamp's photograph was shown to other witnesses
who had placed him at the lodge that weekend
and the weekend before.
* *
- Once we saw Bruce Beauchamp, we knew who he was.
We knew that he was the stranger
that had come into the bar.
- His photograph was shown to Rudy Manuel.
This was weeks later, so he's had time to recover.
He's not under a doctor's care and under medication.
And Rudy Manuel selected Mr. Beauchamp as the shooter.
But he said he did not know this person,
had never seen him before.
* *
Okay, who is this Bruce Beauchamp?
Where did he come from?
Why was he there at the bar on the day of the homicide?
What's his connection to Bonnie Hood and/or Rudy Manuel?
* *
- After Bonnie was murdered,
there's a chapel up in Camp Nelson.
There was kind of a coming together
of the different pieces of Bonnie's life
just to recognize her.
I think it was a way of trying to just let her know
they were sorry for the ways they weren't supporting her
and just a way to have everybody celebrate her.
* *
[dramatic sting]
- Tulare County detectives
reached out to Bruce Beauchamp,
who agreed to meet them at the local precinct.
* *
- I expect him to lie, but it was just the opposite.
He admitted he had been up there
the weekend of the shooting.
He had gone back and forth to Pierpoint Lodge,
the Camp Nelson Lodge,
but he didn't know Bonnie Hood.
Mr. Beauchamp's reason for being up there
was because he had set up a date with some female...
and she never showed up.
So he was there at the lodge on that Saturday night
from 8:00, waiting for her between both lodges.
And he stayed there till closing.
I thought it was unusual to come so far from Fontana.
- Beauchamp claimed that he had driven four hours
back to Fontana after the bar closed at 1:30 a.m.
- That didn't make sense to me.
- Given Beauchamp had no apparent connection
to Bonnie Hood,
investigators angled at a financial motive
and pushed him to reveal a source of income.
- Bruce Beauchamp said that Jim Hood
is his employer
at a construction company in Fontana.
* *
Okay, so Beauchamp does have a connection to Jim Hood.
* *
We focused on trying to identify, what's the motive?
You know, it could be financial.
And then there was another lead that was developed.
Jim Hood collected a fairly large life insurance
on Bonnie Hood.
Was the motive the life-insurance policy
that he had out on her?
* *
- With the murder of Mr. Hood's wife
in Tulare County,
it appears from the evidence that the Hoods
were coming apart.
- The District Attorney's Office
and the Sheriff's Office--
we're trying to achieve the same thing.
I always wanted to get their opinion,
say, okay, this is what we have.
What do you think?
- We know Bruce Beauchamp had a bit of a shady history.
- From the reports,
we had learned Mr. Beauchamp had a drug issue.
He had recently refinanced his home.
He was needing money.
- We know Mr. Hood had life-insurance policies
on his wife.
The theory is that Mr. Hood hired Mr. Beauchamp
to eliminate Mrs. Hood
and, just incidentally,
to collect all those insurance proceeds.
* *
- There are plenty of upsides.
The lodge would be gone.
He'd sell it.
It would get rid of his cheating wife
and to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars
for her personal insurance.
- There was no direct evidence to connect Jim to the crime.
Meanwhile, Bruce Beauchamp was arrested
for the murder of Bonnie Hood.
* *
- If your theory is that Jim Hood
bought a hit on his wife,
you'd like to find the source of funds.
In Bruce Beauchamp's checking account--
or savings account,
a $10,000 payment he can't explain, right?
That would have been the linchpin in proving
that Jim Hood had ordered the hit.
* *
- There was a search warrant issued
for Beauchamp's residence.
* *
But there was nothing to connect him to it.
* *
- As long as Bruce Beauchamp wouldn't roll on Jim Hood,
then Jim Hood was in the clear.
His innocence, or his freedom,
depended on the goodwill and financial relationship
of Bruce Beauchamp.
- I've been asked not to discuss it in great detail,
but he did work for me.
And I'm just-- I'm a little surprised.
In fact, I'm very-- you know, I'm shocked by it.
We're all amazed.
- Investigators suspected that Jim Hood had hired
Bruce Beauchamp to kill his wife, Bonnie,
yet Beauchamp was the only one being charged with her murder.
[dramatic sting]
[dramatic music]
* *
- In this case, I believe Mr. Hood
was the driving factor in the murder of his wife,
but the DA's Office decided not to use that connection.
They felt that that would just muddy the case.
- A man police finally arrested--Bruce Beauchamp.
- Although prosecutors had evidence against Beauchamp,
without his cooperation,
they had little to implicate Jim Hood.
They decided not to include Hood
and go all-in on their case against Beauchamp.
- I think that the Jim Hood information
should have been factored into this trial,
but I try not to second-quarterback prosecutors
because that's not my field.
- Playing to their only strength,
prosecutors intended
for Rudy Manuel's planned testimony
to corroborate all of their circumstantial evidence
against Beauchamp.
- As the sole eyewitness, he was pretty much the linchpin
of the case in that county.
- I felt reliable in the information he provided.
- But then he didn't tell the truth
about the nature of his relationship with Bonnie.
- Rudy Manuel got on the witness stand
and denied that he had a sexual relationship
with Bonnie Hood.
- Whether it was shame or something else
that drove Rudy to change his story,
in a crushing turn,
his credibility and the case were ruined.
[dramatic sting]
* *
- The Tulare County jury found Bruce Beauchamp
not guilty...
* *
And subsequently was acquitted.
He can never be tried for it again
because of the double jeopardy rule.
He's a free man.
Mr. Beauchamp was also free
to point the finger at Jim Hood.
- When you talk about a jury of your peers
and all the peers
are white, blue-collar,
and the person who is on trial is white, blue-collar,
looks like them, and the person who is accusing them
is Indian,
I think that very much factored in this trial.
I could not accept the fact
that Bonnie would be this victim
who would never have justice
and would never have peace, in a way.
- "Fontana resident...
"accused and acquitted
of murdering Bonnie Hood."
I have great faith and great confidence in the jury system,
but my life's experience in the practice of law,
having practiced law now for 40 years,
the jury does not bat 100%.
A lot of lives were shattered
as a result of the murder of Bonnie Hood.
When you tell me there's a life-insurance policy,
I'm not going to pre-judge,
but it certainly causes me
to be more questioning...
about who was doing what.
* *
- Jim Hood was still a free man down in Orange County,
and everybody went about their business, I think,
until March 22, 1992.
[dramatic sting]
* *
[line trilling]
- This crime occurred in an industrial complex
in the front office.
There was bloodstains on the office chair,
and there's bloodstains on the floor.
[line beeping]
No one could say what happened in that room
in the office.
According to Jim Hood,
Beauchamp just walked into the business
with a gun to shoot him.
Beauchamp was just crumpled on the floor,
laying there with his hand out,
with this gun just sitting in his hand.
I had never seen that,
and no one I talked to had ever experienced
where a person had been shot with the weapon in his hand,
and it still was in his hand when he hit the ground.
It just doesn't happen.
* *
[indistinct chatter]
- The gun that was in Beauchamp's hand,
it didn't bother me too much
until we actually started getting
into the bloodstain pattern of the case.
[camera shutter clicking]
* *
These are the impact spatters
indicating that there was a point of origin
very close and low to the ground in that area.
First shot entered the top of his head.
* *
When there's an impact to your head from a gun,
you'll have impact spatter,
and Beauchamp's right hand
is on top of spatter near his head.
But the funny thing about this
is there's no blood spatter on his hands,
no blood spatter on the gun.
So what that indicates is the hand was there
after the blood spatter hit the floor.
* *
- We think he staged the scene inside his office
before he called the Sheriff's Department.
- Two years after Jim Hood was suspected
for the murder of his wife, Bonnie,
he was now tied up in another killing.
- Tonight's top story-- Bonnie Hood,
murdered mysteriously in an isolated resort,
but now the man they tried is dead
amid the most unexpected twist of all.
* *
- 911 Emergency.
[dramatic sting]
- We had Jim Hood transported
to the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office.
When Jim Hood was interviewed by the detectives,
he continued to keep his story straight,
that it was totally self-defense.
- Jim Hood says Beauchamp and his wife's brother
were engaged in a number of nefarious activities,
including stealing equipment from the construction site
of a shopping center that Jim Hood was developing.
And so Hood--
he fired the brother-in-law, who was also working for him.
Beauchamp was upset that his brother-in-law had been fired.
* *
- Jim Hood claimed
that's what the meeting in his office was about
and that Bruce threatened him first.
- He claimed Bruce Beauchamp reached behind him,
pulled out a .357 Magnum,
and aimed it at Jim Hood's chest.
Jim Hood pulled a Glock 9 from his drawer
and started shooting at Beauchamp.
Shot him seven times.
- The number of times he got shot,
there was no way that that was self-defense.
It just doesn't happen that way.
- Hood claimed that he feared Bruce Beauchamp
would show up to hurt him,
so he had his own gun ready at his desk.
- We run background checks on all the witnesses and victims.
And then when we found out
that Beauchamp had been acquitted
for the murder of Bonnie Hood,
myself and another detective
went up to Tulare County.
* *
[dramatic sting]
* *
- The two killings were inexorably tied together.
Mr. Beauchamp was hired to kill.
He got acquitted, much to Mr. Hood's surprise.
- And that once Bruce Beauchamp was acquitted,
he was able to extort--
or he thought he would be able to extort
plenty of money from Jim Hood.
- Mr. Hood was not going to take that chance.
I try not to get involved personally in a case,
but I just want the justice part of it to work.
Let's get it done.
- And then we get a copy of the report.
- The gun was found in his right hand,
when, in fact, he was left-handed.
* *
- Evidence was stacking up
that Jim Hood had staged the crime scene in his office.
- So, in March of 1992, almost exactly a year
after Bruce Beauchamp was acquitted
for the murder of Bonnie Hood,
Jim Hood was arrested for the murder of Bruce Beauchamp.
* *
[dramatic sting]
* *
- The theory of People versus Jim Hood
is that he bought a hit on his wife, Bonnie Hood.
* *
However, Bruce Beauchamp was acquitted.
- He was going to expose Jim Hood
for his complicity in the murder.
- That made him a threat to Jim Hood
that had to be eliminated somehow.
- Investigators theorized
that Hood was not about to be extorted,
especially by someone he had already paid.
- The prosecution will prove
that this defendant lured the victim to his office,
that, in fact, shot him
and then planted the gun on him.
And this is not going to be done by witness testimony,
but rather cold, hard facts.
- I set it up to have a video done,
the animation of the crime itself.
It was one of the first times
that they had animation in a homicide case.
- So right now in San Bernardino County,
it's a case that involves love and sex,
a contract killing, and now computer animation.
- Mr. Beauchamp showing up.
Mr. Beauchamp not carrying a weapon.
There's a series of shots.
* *
The gun in the hand...
staging the scene.
The defense generally presented Mr. Hood as a good guy
who was trying to act in self-defense.
- He wants this case to go to trial.
He wants to be vindicated.
He's worked all of his life
to get where he is,
and he wants to keep that.
If he would leave with these charges hanging over his head,
everyone would assume that he was a cold-blooded killer.
He does not want that for him.
He does not want that for his children.
He does not want that for his friends
and the rest of his family.
- Mr. Hood had enormous resources
and could present things to contradict our positions,
like the computer animation.
- Our evidence will demonstrate to you that he acted properly
under the law in self-defense.
- The defense agrees that Hood did indeed kill,
but provided its own animation--
one portraying a gun in the hand of the dead man
and Hood as an innocent victim of all of this.
- His eyes were looking at me
like he was gonna beat the living heck out of me.
I'm scared to death.
I thought, you know, he was going to kill me.
* *
- And then he reenacted what he said happened,
with a dummy standing in for Bruce Beauchamp.
And that was very peculiar.
- I sat through the trial.
I couldn't imagine this jury could be listening
to all the evidence that I was listening to
and come up with any other decision
than that he was guilty.
But there was a part of me that worried
that he was going to get away with this.
- Tonight on "Hard Copy"...
Jim Hood lost his wife to a mystery man's bullet.
Now he's been shot dead, too.
Jim Hood pulled the trigger.
Was it murder or self-defense?
While Jim Hood sat in jail, a new scenario emerged.
[dramatic music]
* *
- Sharon, who was Bruce Beauchamp's wife,
was called as a witness and testified.
* *
- Sharon testified that Jim paid him $50,000
to kill Bonnie.
- Once Bruce Beauchamp got acquitted,
Mr. Beauchamp decides to milk Mr. Hood
for all he can.
- Sharon indicated he went to ask for more money.
You better pay me another 100,000,
or I'm going to say you paid me to kill your wife.
- And so the jury
had to decide what happened
in those two minutes or three minutes
inside Jim Hood's office.
- And, of course, all the defense has to do
is convince one person that they're not guilty,
and we don't get a conviction.
- In the end, the seemingly damning evidence and testimony
weren't enough to convince the jury
beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Jim Hood's trial results in a hung jury.
It seemed impossible to me that he would not be convicted.
- The case was declared a mistrial.
- There's nothing you'd less rather do
than try a case twice.
* *
[dramatic sting]
* *
- So, in June of 1993,
Jim's second trial begins.
- When Mr. Hood got on the witness stand,
he had conformed his version of events
to match the physical evidence
he had heard in the first trial.
What's an innocent man have to do
with changing his testimony?
- The prosecution seized the opportunity
to call jurors from the first trial,
who testified that Hood had told them a different story.
- Jim changed his story
about how Bruce was after he'd been shot.
He'd physically laid down and shown one thing,
and then he physically laid down and showed something else
in the second jury trial.
And I knew.
I knew that he had just hung himself.
* *
- The jury had a verdict,
and that verdict was that Jim Hood was guilty
of first-degree murder.
When the verdict comes back,
there's a certain sense of justice done for the victims.
However, the hit for hire--
sending Beauchamp up to kill Bonnie--
is a theory that has never been proven.
As a result, the murder of Bonnie Hood
is considered unsolved.
* *
- A lot of people forget
that there were two children in that Hood family
that endured this whole thing.
They lost their mom. Their dad went to prison.
* *
They're the biggest victims of all in this case,
* *
[somber music]
* *
- It's just a shame.
* *
When I picture Bonnie now,
I think of her in her jeans and her flannel shirt,
blond hair down,
sitting on Mulberry, her horse, riding the trails.
I think she's still up there in Camp Nelson.
I think that was her happy place.
* *
- I tend to want to disbelieve that my fraternity brother
would do something like that.
I've been married to my wife for 52 years.
It's just hard for me to understand
how somebody could get to that point in rage--
the enormity of taking someone's life.
But I have no reason to believe he did.
But I have no reason to believe that he didn't.
* *