- That morning, a neighbor heard two explosions
and looked outside and saw the fire.
- The woman was found dead inside the house.
- She was gone.
I was devastated.
My mom never hurt nobody.
- The evidence that they found in the home
is normally used for outside grills.
- My mom had been in the fire service.
She knew that you didn't store that in the house.
- This is not by accident.
This is premeditation.
- But arson is hard to prove,
especially if you don't have any witnesses.
- Then police get a tip that turns the whole direction
of the investigation.
- That woman thinks she's seeing a ghost.
The victim is still alive.
This was a diabolical plan to kill
that was two years in the making.
- We needed to find out what's going on
before it was too late.
[dramatic music]
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
[soft tense music]
♪ ♪
- I was a firefighter for the Horn Lake Fire Department.
I got to work a little early that morning,
and it was a quiet morning.
But at about 6:15--
[phone rings] We got the fire call.
[alarm wails]
- The neighbor heard an explosion in Northwood Cove
and looked outside and saw the smoke and the fire
and called 911.
[siren wailing]
- When we got there, we laid a big line in from the fire plug.
And then one of the people on the scene came up
and said she was Linda Leedom.
And she said a neighbor called her and told her about the fire
because she was Lula Young's best friend.
She said Lula was in the house, in the back.
- Some of the firefighters were shocked to see
that the home belonged to Lula Young.
They said Lula had worked with the fire department.
So several of them were actually friends with her.
- When we found out that she was in there,
we immediately assembled a team,
and we went around the back.
The neighbors pointed where the bedroom was
that supposedly Lula was in.
So we broke the window.
As we entered the room, you could see
the fire coming through the top of the door,
and you could feel the heat.
So we started crawling, looking for Lula.
We looked around the bed and found her
between the bed and the wall.
Lula was not breathing, so getting her up was hard to do.
And then as we were trying to rescue Lula--
[explosion booms]
There was another explosion.
Uh-oh.
There's something else happening here.
We didn't know whether it was a trap set in that room
or in the hallway.
So it was real important that we got her out
as fast as we could, dead or alive.
[dramatic music]
- Once the firefighters were finally able to get
Lula out of the home,
she had died already,
presumably from smoke inhalation.
- Once the fire is out and all the hot spots are done,
there was a quietness.
Nobody was talking to anybody.
And Linda Leedom was devastated by the death of her friend.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- Me and Lula's son, Mike, were preparing to go hunting.
We got a phone call from Linda,
the fact of telling us that Lula's house was on fire.
- He talked for a minute, and he hung up.
And he said, there's been an accident at your mom's.
It's not good.
I said, she all right? He goes, no.
She didn't make it.
We left and probably drove
the better of 100 all the way home.
When I pulled in, I'm in just--
in shock.
I found it hard to believe that she was gone.
The house that I grew up in was gone.
I was devastated.
- Investigators want to speak to Lula's family
at this point to find out more about our victim.
[pensive music]
- My mom and my dad got married when they were 18
and had two kids.
I'm the oldest, and my sister, Stacey, is
six years younger than I am.
But then in 1981, her and my dad divorced.
She had to go find a job
and take care of two kids on her own.
She became an EMT for the ambulance service.
And then she had started a cleaning business.
She worked hard to provide what she could for me and my sister.
- She was always still happy with life.
She never let it get her down.
But then '85, Lula found out she had breast cancer.
- She had to have a surgery,
and she did chemo and radiation,
which made her sick as a dog.
But she never complained.
- And her friend Linda Leedom was a blessing
to Lula along the way.
She'd make sure Lula had groceries in the house,
and she would know when her appointments was
and make sure she got to them.
And she developed leukemia.
And probably mid-summer of '94,
Mom had gotten to where she was having trouble getting around.
And mom lived by herself, so she had to have
a wheelchair because she couldn't stand.
She was taking pain medicines.
She was in pain a lot.
[soft dramatic music]
I talked to mom the day before the fire,
and she said that she was in good spirits,
and she still felt pretty good.
She was going to beat cancer or die trying.
That was the last time I spoke to her.
♪ ♪
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
While I'm standing at the house,
the roof was gone off of it.
You could see through the house from one end to the other.
It was awful.
I wanted to know what happened.
♪ ♪
- The arson investigators go in and start
looking for how this started, where it started,
what caused it.
- The evidence that they found in the home immediately
raised a red flag.
- The investigators find a space heater
by the front door.
- It was determined that the heater was
plugged in and turned on at the time of the fire.
- The placement of the heater was odd.
- Why would a space heater be located inside the front door
instead of in a normal location where a space heater may be,
next to someone's chair or bed?
- Then in the same area, fire investigators find
a propane tank up against a wall.
Upon investigation, they did find that the valve was opened
about a quarter of the way, and that lets out
just enough gas for it to be a problem.
- Why would a propane tank that's normally used
for outside grills be located inside a house?
And why would Lula, who worked for EMS
with the fire department, have a propane tank
with a valve open in a room next to a heater?
So at this point, investigators are looking at the possibility
that Lula's house fire was set intentionally.
It seems like now we have
a murder investigation on our hands.
- So we needed to have an autopsy
to figure out what happened.
[soft tense music]
♪ ♪
- And there was no damage to Lula Young by fire,
so she had been properly identified.
And the autopsy came back and confirmed
that Lula's death was caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.
♪ ♪
Also, toxicology reports showed that there were
sleeping pills in Lula's system.
Sleeping pills are a common medication
that people use all the time.
But the questions raised were, was this an accident?
Did the sleeping pills found in her system cause
poor decision making,
like leaving the propane tank valve open and the heater on?
Or did someone else do it?
At this point, investigators need
to question friends and family to determine
how the propane tank got in the house.
Why was the heater there?
Was it common that Lula took sleeping pills?
[tense music]
- I talked to some investigators,
and I told them I had stopped by that Friday before
to see Mom, and there were no space heaters there.
And there was not a propane tank in the kitchen.
I said, she had been in the fire service.
She knew that you didn't store propane in the house.
And to my knowledge, she never took sleeping pills.
I had been a fireman for almost eight years.
I knew enough to know that something wasn't right.
The math wasn't mathing.
[tense music]
- The presence of sleeping pills raised the question,
did someone give her the pills?
And was it meant to keep Lula asleep?
But without a witness
or without someone admitting they did it,
it's almost impossible to prove that.
So investigators are still going through the evidence
and searching for what they can to back up their suspicions.
- I was a reporter covering the death of the Lula Young.
Lula had been in the community about 20 years.
She was well loved.
She was well known.
So the community took this investigation
a little personal.
At this point, they want to find the answers.
♪ ♪
- Two weeks later, investigators get a tip
that really turns the whole direction
of the investigation.
We receive a call from a woman,
and she tells us that she just ran into Lula
at a local shopping center.
- She thinks she's seeing a ghost.
- Police are shocked and confused to hear this.
- How could this be possible?
What is she talking about?
♪ ♪
- Someone had actually taken out
four insurance policies on Lula Young's life.
- And those policies added up to nearly $1 million.
This wasn't just a murder.
It was a blueprint for the ultimate act of betrayal.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[phone beeps]
- A woman named Brenda Driver calls in
to give a tip on the case.
Brenda shared how she had heard about Lula's death on the news
but swears she had just saw Lula
at a local shopping center in Horn Lake.
[tense music]
Investigators know this can't be possible
because Lula had been positively identified
using photos.
But Brenda says she's an agent for Nationwide Insurance.
And four months prior to Lula Young's death,
she had been to Lula's house
and sold Lula a $500,000 life insurance policy.
And she said a policy of that value
requires a medical evaluation.
The medical evaluation showed that Lula
didn't have any health issues.
Police found this odd because in their background on Lula,
they had found out that she had just undergone
treatment for breast cancer.
- Brenda is sure that the woman she saw
come in that discount store was Lula Young.
And she's positive that this person is still alive.
- Investigators wonder if Brenda is getting confused,
and so they decide to do a photo lineup
with different women from Horn Lake,
as well as Linda Leedom and Lula Young.
Looking at the lineup, Brenda Driver immediately said
that that's the woman she sold the insurance policy,
as well as the person she'd seen at the store
a few days before, and points to a photo
of Lula's best friend, Linda Leedom.
[dramatic music]
All the more shocking, Lula had put
the beneficiary on the policy to be Linda Leedom.
Investigators are beginning to wonder
whether Linda Leedom posed for Lula Young.
- So the police go speak to Linda Leedom
about the insurance policy.
- Investigators are shocked.
Linda admits to the insurance fraud
but says that it was Lula's idea.
According to Linda, Lula decided
to get the life insurance policy
and put Linda as the beneficiary
so that if and when she died,
Linda would use the money to take care of Lula's family
and the money not go to the kids
and them spend it all at one time.
- Linda told police Lula wanted
her to represent her during the medical examination.
The intent of the identity swap was so that Lula could
hide evidence of her cancer.
Then Linda tells investigators that Lula wanted
to commit suicide with the fire,
because if she had died through cancer,
the children would not have received any money
from the insurance policy.
- Sure, it was plausible that because of her illness,
Lula was involved in the insurance fraud part of it.
But dying by fire is an extremely painful way to die.
Surely, you would never agree to die in a house fire.
I'm thinking, there's definitely
something strange going on.
But Linda insisted that she didn't have anything
to do with setting the fire.
She said she had been with her family all night.
So investigators call her family,
and her alibi checks out.
- I am a private investigator insurance companies will hire
when the claim is suspicious.
In this case, investigators knew
Linda didn't start the fire.
But she is not an innocent woman.
Linda took the medical exam on Lula's behalf.
And even though she claims
that Lula asked her to do it, it's still fraud.
- So the case is elevated to the FBI
and the postal inspector because she was
putting the insurance policies in the mail.
And using the U.S. Postal Services
to commit insurance fraud is criminal.
And looking at all the evidence,
they decided to go forward with the insurance fraud
and mail fraud aspect of the investigation.
- Through further investigation,
we find that Linda had already received
several hundred thousand dollars
from the insurance payout.
- So by this time, $275,000 of the $500,000
has been paid to Linda Leedom.
But payments are now halted due to the fraud investigation.
- When investigators talk to Linda,
she had told them Lula knew that Linda would use the money
to take care of Lula's kids.
And so now investigators need to go interview the kids
and find out what they know about the situation.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- I had a conversation with a postal inspector,
asked me, did I know about insurance policies?
I said, Mom told me that she had
a $10,000 life insurance policy.
Basically, the insurance policy was supposed to do the burial.
But then he said, she had insurance policies
over $500,000.
I started laughing at him.
I said, there is no way.
I said, she couldn't afford the premiums
for $500,000 life insurance policy,
so I know she wouldn't have it.
The investigators made it clear
that Linda had been posing as mom
and had received all this money.
And I told him Linda never gave me money
from Mom's insurance policy.
At this point, I'm very angry to the fact
that she would do this
'cause Mom trusted Linda with everything.
- At this point, investigators need to find out
more about the relationship between Lula and Linda.
- The investigators did call us a couple of times,
and I told her, approximately 1978,
when Lula and John Young moved into Horn Lake,
one of their neighbors was Linda Leedom and her husband.
- Linda and Mom got to talking and stuff,
and they kind of hit it off.
They would go out to lunch, to the flea markets,
things of that nature.
She had been my mom's best friend for 20 years.
- She was a good friend of Lula's.
She was even friends with the rest of the family.
- She would come to my grandmother's with my mom,
and Linda did taxes.
She did taxes for my mom.
She did taxes for both of my aunts,
one of my uncles.
[pensive music]
- Linda Leedom did accounting for people in Horn Lake.
Her father was a police commissioner.
Linda Leedom was very well respected
in the Horn Lake community.
Her full-time job is working as a nurse.
And she saved up her vacation days
so that she could use those days to work on taxes,
where she could make up to $100,000.
Residents in Horn Lake say that Linda Leedom had
a healthy obsession for money.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- In further investigating the case
and digging through Linda's financial records,
it was found that Linda had gone on a spending spree.
- She's buying cars.
She's buying homes.
Linda is spending the insurance money rather quickly.
Little, if any, of that money has gone
to the children of Lula Young.
That is shocking.
♪ ♪
- At this point, we know Linda Leedom is
the only person with a motive.
And she got a huge dollar amount motive,
which raised the question, was Linda really capable
of killing Lula,
or had she paid someone else to do it?
♪ ♪
[soft tense music]
♪ ♪
- Once Linda Leedom, Lula's best friend,
admitted to the insurance fraud aspect,
it gave the investigators motive that she could have
been involved in Lula's death.
- Investigators tried to keep everything
as tight as they could, as far as what they knew
and how they were operating.
But Linda Leedom knew people around the community.
She knew people at dispatch.
And she was trying to check in
to how the investigation was progressing.
That looked suspicious to investigators.
- Linda Leedom is our primary suspect,
so we wanted to make her think
that the case was ruled an accidental fire.
- So the fire investigators told her
it could have been a faulty electric cord
that could have started the fire.
- At this point in the case,
there's more than one investigation going on.
There's the fire investigation.
There's a possible murder investigation.
And then there's the insurance fraud investigation.
First, investigators put together
their insurance fraud case.
[suspenseful music]
- Once the investigators started digging,
looking through the databases,
it was found that Linda had actually taken out
four insurance policies on Lula Young's life.
There was two Metropolitan insurance policies,
one for $75,000 and one for $200,000.
The third insurance policy was with Nationwide
in the amount of $500,000.
And then there was another small insurance policy
a month before the fire in the amount of $38,000.
- And Linda, once again, is set up as the beneficiary.
- So at this point, the investigation was
turned over to the U.S. Attorney's Office
because arson is hard to prove,
especially if you don't have any witnesses
or someone who confesses to starting the fire.
So the U.S. Attorney's Office want to first prosecute
Linda for insurance fraud
while detectives build a case for Lula's murder.
♪ ♪
- Two years later, the feds finally indicted
Linda for the insurance fraud and mail fraud.
And she actually pled guilty on those charges.
Also, Linda had to give back the money
from the insurance policy and was put on probation
while we continued to work on the murder investigation.
[tense music]
- It really made me think Linda was connected
to the death of my sister, Lula, because of the fact
she was the one that had something to gain.
- I felt that she was responsible,
but I didn't know how,
because Linda's a lot of things,
but she didn't have the stones to do it on her own,
nor did she have the knowledge.
So she might have wanted Mom dead,
but I didn't understand how she could have got Mom dead.
And I was told to trust the process,
that they was working on things to get that answer.
[ominous music]
- There was a mountain of evidence
against Linda for murder.
But it's all circumstantial evidence.
And Linda had an alibi on the day of the fire.
Investigators know the tools that were
used in the arson, that being the propane tank
with the valve slightly open
and the electrical heater in the room.
It's just that they don't know who exactly did it.
- Fire always messes up everything,
where it's hard to determine what happened.
And fire can destroy any evidence
that can be left behind.
- Linda is not admitting anything,
and efforts to prove that Linda has done
anything other than the insurance fraud
have not come to light.
It's very frustrating because at this point,
we're at a dead end.
The fire investigation and the murder investigation
have pretty much stalled out.
♪ ♪
- And then just months later,
there's a big break in the case
when the DA's office receives a tip from a jail informant.
A man claimed he was close friends
with both Lula and Linda
and had learned of Lula's death,
and it was weighing heavy on him.
- He dropped a bomb.
He told us he knew the person who killed Lula.
This is the lead we've been waiting for.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I receive a call one day from county jail
stating that they had a guy named David Vincent
that claimed he knew something about the death of Lula Young.
So I go to the jail and talk to David Vincent.
[suspenseful music]
He told me that somebody that done some work for him
named Charles Wayne Dunn had confided in him one day
that he burned Lula up in a house fire for Linda Leedom.
David, the confidential informant,
hadn't come forward before this point
because he didn't think Linda was really
capable of killing Lula.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- David had explained to investigators
that he just wanted to keep his head down.
But then guilt started to get the best of him.
- He felt like he had to let somebody know
what Dunn had told him about
and get the investigation pointed in the right direction.
When I finished that interview with David,
it becomes imperative that I come up with a way
to corroborate his statement.
So I checked into Dunn's past and saw where Dunn was
on probation for a possession of cocaine charge.
So I called Dunn's probation officer and said,
have him come in for a meeting.
I want him to just sit in the lobby of the probation office.
And then I took David out of jail, wired him up,
and sent him in to the probation office lobby,
like he was getting on probation.
♪ ♪
- When Charles walks into the parole office,
he's surprised to see David there.
The two strike up a conversation
and catch up on old times.
- David eases into the conversation with him,
gets him relaxed, and brings up wanting to kill somebody
and how he remembered how guilty Dunn felt.
- And Charles kind of shakes his head at David
and says to think twice about it
because he's had a hard time escaping his own past.
- He didn't deny it.
He didn't say, what are you talking about?
I didn't ever tell you I did any of that.
His response affirmed that he had indeed had
that conversation with David in the past
about killing Lula.
I'm thinking that this is what we needed
to move forward in questioning Dunn.
[tense music]
So I go to pick up Dunn to bring him in
for questioning on the case.
When he opened the door, he said, I've been waiting
on you guys to show up.
It was at that point, I bring in Charles Wayne Dunn
to the District Attorney's Office for questioning.
- When Charles is brought in, to the investigators' surprise,
he immediately confesses
to starting the fire that killed Lula.
- Dunn stated that he knew Lula,
and he was also friends with Linda Leedom
and actually dated her daughter.
And in 1994, a month prior to Lula Young's death,
Linda had approached Dunn with a proposition to kill Lula.
Linda stated she'd pay him $5,000 to kill Lula
and to make it look like an accident
and said that Lula was a part of the plan
because she was dying from cancer,
and they didn't want to take any chance of the policy
not paying from the cancer.
Of course, I believe Lula would never agree
to be tortured by fire.
- Dunn claims that Linda had told him
that she was such good friends with Lula
that she couldn't bring herself to kill Lula,
but she could get someone else to.
Linda wanted Lula dead at all costs.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Dunn stated that him and Linda came up with a plan
to make the fire look like an accident.
The plan involved using a propane tank
and a space heater.
And we didn't share that information with the public,
which led us to believe that Dunn was being
truthful in the matter about what happened
and how it was done.
According to Dunn, Linda gave him the funds
to make the purchase of the heater.
And Linda dropped the propane tank off at Lula's house,
asking her to store it there because it was
a Christmas gift for one of her kids.
[tense music]
After Dunn confessed, he was arrested and charged
with capital murder and arson.
♪ ♪
- When I found out that they had arrested Mr. Dunn
for the murder of Lula,
and we found out they tried to convince investigators
that Lula committed suicide, it did surprise me
because Lula would always believe "fight on."
- Plus, one of my mom's biggest fears was burning.
She would never be a part of a plan of a suicide.
I was very angry to the fact that they would do this.
Mom never saw this coming, not in a million years.
[tense music]
- Now that I have Dunn in custody,
I devise a plan to wire him up
and send him in to Linda's house.
We needed her to admit her involvement in Lula's death,
to prove this was a cold-blooded,
premeditated murder.
I'm thinking we finally have her.
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- In order to try to corroborate
Charles Dunn's statement Linda Leedom had paid him
to set Lula's house on fire,
so I devised a plan to send Dunn to Linda's house
with the wire, and he talked to Linda.
♪ ♪
- Charles mentions the police has been sniffing around,
and they've been asking him questions about Lula.
And he wanted to know what to do.
Linda's a pretty savvy lady.
Linda doesn't take the bait.
She just says, hey, I'll give you $500 to get out of town.
This is not the behavior of an innocent woman.
- But Linda did not say anything incriminating
that would give us the evidence necessary to charge her.
- So investigators need to get more information
from Dunn about what happened on the night of the fire.
- Dunn reveals to me that he went over on the night
of December the 18th and parked his car in Lula's driveway--
[doorbell rings] And goes in the house.
Him and Lula were friends, and it wasn't uncommon
for him to go visit with her.
Dunn and Lula were socializing,
and Lula asked him to fix her some tea,
and he slipped the sleeping pills
in her drink while he was fixing the tea.
- Charles tells them, after Lula went to sleep,
he was able to go to his truck and retrieve the heater.
He brought the heater into the house,
plugged it in, crumpled up newspapers,
and opened the valve to the propane tank
that Linda had dropped off earlier.
And then he left the house and drove off into the night.
- A few hours later, the heater ignited the paper
and caused the explosion.
[explosion booms]
Dunn told us, the next day he went to Leedom's house,
and she paid him $1,000, with the remainder
of the balance to be paid in smaller increments
over a period of time.
The things he told us lined up
with the arson investigator's findings on the case,
which led us to believe that Dunn was being truthful
about what happened and how it was done.
- At this point, investigators got a judge to issue
a search warrant for Linda's home.
When investigators went to Linda's house,
she was in shock.
She acted as if she didn't know why they was there.
- While I was doing the search at Linda's house,
I located the four separate policies on Lula Young.
- They also discovered another insurance policy
that listed Linda as a beneficiary,
set up for a man named Robert Stovall.
At this point, investigators are concerned.
Was Linda plotting more than one murder?
[dramatic music]
Investigators need to speak
with Robert Stovall as soon as possible
to find out if he knew Linda
and if he agreed to make her a beneficiary
of an insurance policy.
♪ ♪
- In checking up on his background,
we learned Robert lived in Somerville, Tennessee,
in a home designed for a special needs person.
So we went to talk to him.
- Investigators quickly realized that Robert Stovall is
a 44-year-old disabled man,
who was incapable of agreeing
to having insurance policies taken out on him.
Not only did Robert Stovall not consent,
he didn't even know Linda.
That within itself is a crime because in order to take out
an insurance policy, there must be consent
from the insured party.
- I'm thinking maybe Linda had also asked
Dunn to kill Robert Stovall.
- Investigators head to the jail
to re-question Charles Dunn.
Dunn admits that after Lula's murder,
Linda then approached him with a request
to kill Robert Stovall.
Linda offered him $10,000 to commit the murder,
and he said that he'd do it.
- Dunn told me Linda's mother was
Robert Stovall's home caregiver.
And this is how Linda learned about his disabilities
and decided to target him in another insurance scam.
- Fortunately, the scheme was never carried out
because Charles was arrested on unrelated charges.
Detectives had long believed
that Linda was responsible for Lula's murder,
but they could not prove it until now.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Finally, more than two years after Lula's death,
we presented the facts of the case
to a DeSoto County grand jury,
and a warrant was issued for Linda's arrest.
[radio chatter]
- To look at Linda, you wouldn't think
that we had a killer here.
But she was arrested for capital murder
and conspiracy to commit capital murder,
arson, and three counts of fraud.
♪ ♪
- Well, I was pissed.
You were supposed to be my mom's best friend.
We treated you like family.
And now, you know, you're going to do my mom in?
I found it very disturbing.
I have never wanted to inflict harm on someone
so bad until that day.
♪ ♪
- Linda Leedom has gone from the nice lady next door
that everybody knows to a criminal mastermind.
Just about everyone had concerns that
if for some reason she got found not guilty on the murder
and only got convicted on the insurance fraud,
the time would have been minimal.
- At this point, we still need to prove
Linda plotted for months
and then carried out a brutal murder.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- This case had finally come to fruition.
The courtroom was packed.
Linda Leedom was stoic.
She didn't show a lot of emotion.
And Linda's defense was
that Lula was a part of this plan
to get the insurance policy's benefits to her children.
♪ ♪
- But there was no way that Lula would have
chosen that manner of death.
- And the children didn't receive a dime
from the policies.
- And then prosecutors laid out all the evidence
and pieced together the steps
of Linda Leedom's diabolical plan to kill
that was two years in the making.
♪ ♪
- First, in 1992, Linda Leedom begins purchasing
life insurance policies under Lula's name.
- Those policies added up to nearly $1 million.
- Then two years later, in November 1994,
she approaches Charles Wayne Dunn
with a proposition and a complex plan
to kill Lula in the fire.
- Linda purchases a propane gas tank
and asks Lula to keep it in her home.
Lula agrees, never questioning the motive of her friend.
- The next day, Linda gives Dunn money
to purchase a small space heater.
- On the night before the fire, Charles Dunn goes
over to Lula's house and spends time with her.
- During the visit, he slipped sleeping pills
into her drink to sedate her.
- Once Lula is asleep, Dunn retrieves the heater
from his vehicle and sets it up inside the house.
- He then crumples up paper, scatters it around the heater,
and then opens up the propane tank.
- After several hours, the combination
of gas buildup and heat results in a deadly explosion.
And Lula dies in the fire.
- The next morning, Linda pretends
to be distraught over the death of her best friend.
- Then, over the next few months,
Linda cashes in on the four life insurance policies.
[soft dramatic music]
- Linda Leedom had been planning
my mother's demise for some time.
This was the most premeditated, coldest,
callous murder that I've ever seen from an individual.
- This wasn't just a murder.
It was a blueprint for the ultimate act of betrayal.
♪ ♪
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
The court does not side in Linda's favor.
They find her guilty of capital murder
and guilty of conspiracy to commit capital murder.
- The judge told her, and I quote,
"You do not deserve to stand in the light of freedom.
"And I'm going to make sure that you never see
"the sunshine without a prison wall in front of it.
"I hereby sentence you to life
without the possibility of parole plus 20 years."
♪ ♪
- I feel like it was a just sentence.
Linda's got to wake up every day locked behind bars
and think about why she's there and what she's done
with the person that she called a friend.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- My mother never got to see my son.
I would like to think
that she would be proud of who he is,
a kid that is more willing to help somebody
than to hurt him.
My mom never hurt nobody.
She tried to help everybody.
And for a young man that never got to see his grandmother,
I see so much in him from her.
That makes my heart feel good.
And that's what I want the world to know.
♪ ♪