[Narrator] A surprise late night visit
leads to a horrifying discovery.
There were two bullet holes.
He has a revolver in one of his hands.
We start questioning exactly what we had,
if it was a suicide or a homicide.
[Narrator] To get to the truth,
investigators must make sense of a complicated dynamic.
It's very clear this family, these women,
are very close to each other.
There appeared to be a weird and very close nexus between them.
[Narrator] But will this tangled loyalty
come undone from the inside out?
[Kenneth] He starts to relay that,
"There's more going on here that you need to be aware of."
[Keith] She had foreclosure on her house,
her cars were bein' repossessed.
This is out of desperation.
[Ben] The only narrative we have left
is one of premeditated, cold-blooded, calculated murder.
[music]
[Narrator] March 21st, 2016.
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
At 9:11 PM, 911 operators receive a frantic call
from 69-year-old Judith Nix.
[music]
[Narrator] Officers with
the Broken Arrow Police Department
arrive at the rural home of 69-year-old Ken Nix.
When they arrive,
they find Judith Nix in the front yard.
She looks distraught.
[Narrator] Judith directs the officers
towards Ken's bedroom in the back of the house.
[Jackie] Upon arrival,
there was Mr. Nix deceased in the master bedroom
with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head,
and there was a gun underneath his hand.
Mr. Nix had a injury to the left temple,
blood running down his face.
There was blood on his shirt that he was wearing.
[Scott] After seein' that it was a suicide,
they call out to detectives to come out and investigate.
[Narrator] As investigators arrive,
a tearful Judith tells them that she feared this day would come.
Judith says he suffered from this chronic medical condition.
He was in a tremendous amount of pain, he was very unhappy.
[Keith] My dad was on methadone,
because he has neuropathy and a lot of pain issues.
[Scott] Accordin' to her,
he had talked about shootin' and killin' himself.
And initially, you know, it looked like a suicide.
But questions are, are clickin' in your mind that,
you know, is this really a, a suicide?
Or is it somethin' else?
[music]
[Narrator] Ken Nix was born on September 19th, 1946,
to Belton and Betty Nix in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
He had six siblings. My father was the, the oldest.
[Keith] During his childhood in Lake Charles,
he loved to restore cars as a hobby.
And tinkered with the vehicles and motorcycles in general,
'cause he was very much into motorcycles.
[Narrator] After high school,
Ken followed his love for mechanics
and attended technical school,
where he honed his skills before
opening up his own service station.
[Kevin] My dad was a very good mechanic.
He was the youngest Texaco gas station owner
in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
[Narrator] Ken was hoping to find someone
to share his success with,
and in his 20's, he met Manita Moriarity
and fell in love.
My dad told me that when he first met my mother, Manita,
it was at an apartment complex.
My father and my mother were married in 1966.
And then I was born February 20th, 1967.
And then a year later, had my sister.
Just a year right after that, we moved to Tulsa
to be closer to my grandmother.
And after that, they had my brother.
I remember seein' a lot of videos of us
as young children,
and my father and mother just looked happy.
But eventually, there were some issues,
and I know that they got separated.
So, me and my brother and my sister were livin' in
an apartment with my mother, Manita.
[Narrator] Unfortunately, on August 29th, 1974,
tragedy struck the family.
[Kevin] And during that separation,
I was age seven.
My mother called my father and said that
she was gonna commit suicide.
And my mother did commit suicide.
I remember my father bein' there,
and he took us home.
And we never saw our mother again.
[Narrator] Over the next ten years,
Ken married and divorced three more times.
[Kevin] I asked my father, I said, "Dad..."
"Why do you keep gettin' married all the time?"
And he said, "Son, I want you guys to have both a mom
"and a father figure.
And I'm gonna try it 'til I get it right."
[Narrator] While his marriages may have failed,
Ken's professional life flourished.
In 1980, he started his own business.
[Kevin] He opened up Inland Divers business,
a commercial scuba diving business.
[Keith] Inland Divers had salvage capabilities,
so they could pull vehicles out of the water
or boulders near a dam.
He could do anything to make money.
[Narrator] But even with all that success,
Ken never gave up searching for love.
And in 1984, he met Judith Bailey,
a divorced mother of two daughters:
16-year-old Angela and 12-year-old Shelly.
My sister, Kim, was gonna go to a sleepover.
When my sister was bein' brought home,
Judith met my father.
And I guess there was an attraction there.
[Narrator] When Judith met Ken Nix,
she was not looking for romance.
Growing up, Judith spent most of her life in church
and studying, kept to herself.
[Keith] She was born and raised in Texas,
and then she moved to Tulsa, near her parents.
[Narrator] As a young woman,
Judith caught the eye of the preacher's son.
[Jax] Their lifelong friendship turned into romance,
and they married in the late 1960's.
[Keith] Judy and her husband lived out in the country,
30 minutes outside of Tulsa.
And she was an accountant for Amoco at the time.
[Jax] Shortly after having two kids,
Judith and her husband divorced.
There was drinking and infidelity,
and, well, Judith just couldn't take it anymore.
[Narrator] Judith was reluctant to commit to anything serious,
but Ken pulled out all the stops.
Ken introduced Judith to scuba diving,
and it became a shared passion between them.
[Keith] They were very much into diving.
Judy was wonderful.
I never heard them fight.
But then my previous moms,
there were fights, you know...
around us.
But with Judy, I never noticed any issues.
[Narrator] A year after meeting, they married in February, 1985.
And shortly after, Judith moved in with Ken and his kids.
I was probably 13 by the time she moved in.
[Narrator] Her two daughters, Shelly and Angela,
chose to stay with their father, who lived nearby.
They had another high school they went to, and friends.
So, it just was good for their rhythm.
[Narrator] Once the newlywed phase ended,
Ken and Judith got down to business.
They focused on the growth of Inland Divers.
She became part of the business with the administrative side
and then going to the sites with him.
[Narrator] For years,
both their business and family life were thriving...
But after almost three decades of marriage,
the couple found themselves unable to meet on common ground.
[Keith] My father raised me and my brother
to able to be on our own and not dependent on anybody.
But Judy coddled her kids,
financed her kids any time they had a problem,
and that caused turmoil between my father and Judy.
So communication between the two was diminishing.
[Narrator] Judith and Ken divorced in 2011,
ending 26 years of marriage.
But even after five years of being divorced,
the couple had a hard time letting go.
She had went and bought her own house,
but Judith was still stayin' at my dad's house sometimes.
They spent a lot of time together after the divorce.
Judy would come over, and they would eat dinner.
[music]
But their family's world is shattered on March 21st, 2016...
When Judith calls 911 to report that she's just found Ken dead
from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Judith says, "Last time I was here was the night before,
"between 4 to 5 PM,
and left because he got kinda grumpy and tired."
[Narrator] She says she tried calling Ken several times
earlier that day, but he didn't answer.
[Scott] Ultimately, she went to the store
to get some chicken for dinner
and came back to the residence that evening.
[Narrator] Judith says she arrived around 9 PM.
[Scott] That was when she went back to the bedroom
and found him on the bed.
She just noticed the gun layin' next to him.
So, she just assumed that Mr. Nix had shot himself.
Judith says, "I found him like this,"
without further information.
At this point, we don't know what does or doesn't add up.
[Narrator] Before investigators get a chance
to ask more questions,
they notice she seems unwell.
She appears to be physically distraught.
She complains of chest pain.
[Scott] He asked her if she was feelin' okay,
and she said that she wasn't.
The EMS who came out to the scene
determined that she needed to go to the hospital.
[Narrator] Coming up.
A seemingly straightforward case takes a twisted turn.
The medical examiner found that there were two bullet holes.
[Narrator] And investigators uncover family secrets.
There's a lot of bitterness. There's a lot of engrained rage.
They viewed him to be somebody who was mean,
and just someone they, they absolutely did not have
a good relationship with.
[Narrator] In March of 2016,
police in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma are investigating
a reported suicide after Ken Nix is found dead inside his home
with a gun in his hand.
While giving her statement to investigators,
Ken's ex-wife, Judith, begins experiencing chest pains.
[Kenneth] So, they're wantin' to take her to the hospital.
In doing so, they're asking,
is there anything that they can do to help her
or help make sure the house is okay?
And she said, "Yes, call Shelly."
Shelly was her daughter.
She wanted Shelly to come and take care of her dog.
[Narrator] Less than an hour
after officials responded to the scene,
Judith is transported to the hospital,
while detectives head back inside.
[Scott] Once we got to the bedroom, we found him.
The gun was layin' next to him,
and initially, you know, it looked like a suicide.
[Narrator] The medical examiner joins detectives,
and they take a closer look at Ken's injuries.
[Jackie] The blood on the side of his head was dry,
and I could see lividity.
Lividity is the pooling of blood.
Takes hours to develop.
[Scott] We were able to deduct that
he'd been there quite a while.
We had a general idea that it'd been early in the morning
that he supposedly had shot himself.
[Narrator] The medical examiner determines
Ken died around 7:30 AM,
approximately 14 hours before Judith called 911.
[Jackie] We knew that there had been a delay in
the call up to 911.
And that could have been just because
there was no one there to find him.
[Narrator] But then, the medical examiner makes
a startling discovery.
He was able to move the body
and clean off of some of the blood,
and found that there were two bullet holes
approximately an inch apart.
[Narrator] Investigators are immediately suspicious
of Judith's story.
Who commits suicide and is able to shoot themselves
twice in the head?
[Narrator] And upon closer inspection of Ken's body,
investigator Jackie Smithson catches a new clue.
[Jackie] I saw that the blood stain on the shirt
that Mr. Nix was wearing at the time
didn't align with the injury and the position in which he was in.
Blood flows with gravity,
the laws of physics.
So the injury was to his left temple,
and the blood should have ran straight down.
But the shirt was in a position in which
the blood ran at an angle from his left side to his navel,
instead of straight down.
So there was movement after he was shot.
At that point, we realized that we have a homicide.
[Narrator] After the suicide theory falls apart,
the homicide investigation goes into full swing.
The team starts to comb the house for clues.
[Jackie] There was nothing knocked over,
there were no signs of a struggle.
The house was just normal,
there were no signs of forced entry.
[Narrator] In the kitchen,
investigators spot the dinner
Judith reported bringing for her ex-husband.
On the kitchen island there was
a container that was holding fried chicken.
[Narrator] And they find something else of interest.
[Jackie] We did observe that there was a security-type camera
that was pointing toward the master bedroom.
[Scott] We went ahead and seized the camera system,
security system,
we sent that away to a lab to look at it.
[Narrator] As investigators continue processing the scene,
they get word that Judith's youngest daughter, Shelly,
has just arrived at Ken's to pick up her dog.
When Ms. Nix's daughter, Shelly, came to recover the dog,
she made a passing comment
that caused some of the officers to perk up.
[Kenneth] Shelly's talking to officers and says,
"Oh, yes, I was here earlier this morning,
when my mom was here."
Judith told us that she hadn't been at that house
since the 20th, the day before.
[Kenneth] Could there be an explanation?
Sure.
The lady just found her ex-husband's dead body,
that could make anybody distraught.
But it's gonna give them things they need to follow up on.
Her statements, timeline wise,
are not linking up with Judith's.
They ask Shelly to come back to the police station
and give a more thorough statement.
[Narrator] Judith is held at the hospital overnight
for observation.
The following morning, on March 22nd,
detectives sit down with 47-year-old Shelly Davis.
Investigators question Shelly
about her mother's relationship with Ken.
We started gettin' a lot more information on
the relationship between Kenneth and Judith,
that it wasn't a great relationship.
[Narrator] Shelly claims that Ken was hostile towards Judith.
[Scott] Shelly, she made accusations that
he had abused her,
pushed her around, threatened her,
and stuff like that.
[Kenneth] You got very quickly
a sense that they did not like Kenneth Nix,
and Kenneth Nix did not like Shelly or her sister, Angela.
They viewed him to be somebody who was mean,
somebody who was abusive.
They absolutely did not have a good relationship with.
[Narrator] Next, detectives ask Shelly for her whereabouts
the day prior.
She tells police she went to Ken's house
around 11 o'clock that morning.
She said she went to the house,
and she was met at the front door by Judith,
and they exchanged money there.
She never went inside the residence.
[Narrator] With the estimated time of death
at 7:30 AM,
investigators now suspect Ken was already dead
when Shelly stopped by the house.
[Ben] Now we have a problem,
because if Judith's been there all morning,
then it's clear she's known about his death
for a lot longer.
At this point, they don't think that Judith or Shelly
are being completely honest with here.
They already know Judith lied.
[Scott] It's a homicide.
And if you have information,
you need to release that information.
They were tryin' to be secretive about it.
[Narrator] In an effort to pin down the truth,
investigators make a bold move.
[Scott] We charged her with accessory to murder.
We're not lookin' to, you know, put everybody in jail.
We just wanna find the right person.
We thought that we could put pressure
a little bit on Judith that,
"Hey, we arrested your daughter, Shelly.
We're comin' after you. You're next."
[Narrator] But before they get a chance
to pay Judith a visit,
a call comes in to
the Broken Arrow Police Department
from Todd Moore, her daughter Angela's ex,
claiming he has information on Ken's murder.
Todd Moore makes his own phone call to the police
to say, "Hey there's more going on here
"that you need to be aware of.
What's happening is not the way that it's,
it's being portrayed."
[Narrator] Coming up.
A family insider brings forth a shocking claim...
[Ben] He's thinking, "Oh, my goodness.
Why are you coming to me with this and telling me this?"
[Narrator] Leaving investigators
with more questions than answers.
There's nothing really to tell us who did
or didn't actually pull that trigger.
[Narrator] Authorities in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
investigating the shooting death of Ken Nix
are getting ready to question his estranged wife, Judith,
when they receive a call from her former son-in-law,
Todd Moore.
[Kenneth] Angela's ex-husband, Todd,
winds up calling police himself,
trying to give them the information about
what he had at least heard or seen about
what actually took place inside the home.
[Narrator] Todd tells detectives
that around noon on the day of the murder,
his ex, Angela, and her sister, Shelly,
showed up with quite a story to tell.
[Ben] Shelly and her sister, Angela,
actually end up going to
Angela's estranged husband's house,
where they tell him that Judith has shot Kenneth.
He's thinking, "Oh, my goodness.
Why are you coming to me with this and telling me this?"
[Narrator] Todd says Angela and Shelly were desperately trying
to figure out how to help their mother cover up the crime.
[Ben] According to Todd,
they had discussed her fleeing to the Philippines.
At one point, they had discussed staging the scene as a robbery.
[Narrator] Refusing to participate in
their brainstorming session,
Todd urged the women to take a different course of action.
Todd actually encouraged them to self-report,
which caused Angela, I believe, to leave.
She just up, walked away. Obviously distraught.
[Narrator] Todd tells authorities
he has not seen or heard from Angela since.
[Ben] Todd's crucial
because he's the first person who doesn't have
a vested interest in seeing her get away with it, necessarily.
[Narrator] Todd makes it clear to detectives
that Judith and her daughters are unwavering
in their loyalty to one another.
[Ben] It actually puts the picture together completely,
because you have to understand, people lie for reasons.
It's very clear this family, these women,
are very close to each other.
[Kenneth] In the case, in regards to motive
for why this happened,
investigators start looking at the animosity between
both Shelly and Angela,
and Kenneth Nix and Judith.
But there's nothing really to tell us one way or the other
who did or didn't actually pull that trigger.
[Narrator] Before detectives make their next move,
they hear back about the security cameras
found in Ken's home.
[Kenneth] They found there was no memory to recover,
there was no videos to recover.
Unfortunately, they were never able to determine
what exactly happened to the security footage.
But again, this is another red flag.
Something else that adds to the pile of
"this doesn't make sense".
[Narrator] Still hoping to get to the bottom of what happened
inside the Nix home that morning,
investigators head to the hospital
to speak with Judith.
[Kenneth] Once Shelly was arrested,
Judith Nix, in the hospital, tells one of the officers,
"I'm ready to talk to the detectives now."
Judith starts to describe
Kenneth's deteriorating physical heath
and his mental health again,
and that he was angry and uncomfortable.
[Narrator] But then, Judith admits that
she hasn't been completely honest with police.
She presents them with a very different chain of events
leading up to Ken's death.
[Narrator] Judith also tells investigators
what Shelly already reported:
that she had long suffered domestic violence
at the hands of her ex-husband.
[Narrator] The morning of Ken's murder,
Judith says Ken confronted her in the bedroom--
this time, with his gun in hand.
[Narrator] Fearing for her life and acting on instinct,
Judith lunged at him, and a scuffle ensued.
[Jackie] Judith Nix said she panicked after what occurred,
went to her daughters for support and direction
as to what she should do,
and created a worse situation.
[Narrator] There's only one problem...
Judith's account doesn't match up
with the evidence found at the scene.
There does not appear to be really any evidence
of a struggle, signs of a fight,
a physical or verbal altercation that led to somebody losing it.
And we have a man with two bullet holes in his head,
where she said, "I had to shoot him"?
Those facts don't line up whatsoever.
[Narrator] The investigation is far from over,
but they aren't letting Judith leave the hospital a free woman.
[Ben] Judith Nix was charged with murder,
so she is arrested there
and transported immediately from the hospital
to the jail for booking.
[Narrator] There is one person alleged to be involved
who police haven't talked to yet:
Judith's daughter, Angela.
[Kenneth] Shelly and Angela may have been involved with this,
either in planning it, or at the very least,
in helping clean it up and conceal it after the fact.
[Scott] We went looking for Angela.
We knew where she lived in Tulsa,
and we went to her residence a couple of times,
and couldn't find her.
[Narrator] In the meantime,
detectives put in a request for phone records
for Angela, Shelly, and Judith.
[Kenneth] Police are, are talking to Shelly.
They're starting to get some statements from Judith,
but they haven't heard from Angela yet.
They were leaving voicemails of like, "You need to come in."
When they have no luck finding Angela,
they issue a material witness warrant for her arrest.
[Narrator] Coming up.
Investigators reach for a bluff...
[Kenneth] In confronting her with the camera or
the possible footage, she got a little spooked.
[Narrator] And a well-hidden motive emerges.
[Kevin] He was always gettin' his pills taken.
I believe it was to fuel her drug habit.
[Narrator] It's been 48 hours since the murder of Ken Nix,
and investigators have his ex-wife Judith
and her daughter Shelly in police custody,
while they work to track down Judith's other daughter, Angela.
[Scott] We needed to find her,
because we're tryin' to get the three pieces together
just to get the right story.
[Narrator] Finally, three days after Ken's murder,
Angela Moore turns up.
[Kenneth] It takes days of trying to communicate with her,
to get her to come in,
to where the police almost have to issue a warrant
to get her to come in.
She finally comes in and provides a statement.
[Narrator] Despite her ex-husband Todd's claims,
Angela says that she knows nothing about Ken's murder.
Angela made statements of,
"I was in the house, but I didn't go into the bedroom.
I just kinda stayed in the, the front area."
Angela told police she didn't help cover anything up,
and she didn't help stage the suicide.
[Narrator] Investigators don't believe her.
They reach for a bluff,
telling Angela that
the security camera in the kitchen
was in working order.
There was no memory on that camera,
so we had no access to anything that happened
inside that residence.
[Narrator] But instead of getting her to talk,
when investigators bring up the camera,
Angela shuts down.
[Kenneth] In confronting Angela with the camera
or the possible footage,
Angela got a little spooked.
[Scott] She lawyered up on us,
and we really didn't get any information from her.
[Kenneth] In looking at Angela, Shelly's,
and Judith's statements,
none of them appeared, really, to match one with the other.
[Narrator] At the very least,
investigators believe Judith's daughters
tried to help her stage the suicide.
[Kenneth] When looking at Kenneth's clothes, you know,
they appear to be bunched somewhat under the armpits,
like his body had attempted to been moved.
The blood trail doesn't add up or make sense.
And there's no other reason for her daughter
to go into that house,
unless she's going to help her mother
try to set the scene up and make it look different.
[Narrator] To get to the truth,
investigators take a deep dive into Judith and Ken's marriage,
starting with Judith's claims that Ken was abusive.
When Judith Nix raises the flag that
"I'm a victim of violence,"
we want to make sure I'm not further victimizing her
by prosecuting her for defending herself.
So, we take it very seriously.
[Narrator] Investigators do uncover
a few domestic disturbance calls
to the Broken Arrow Police Department
over the last six years.
[Kenneth] In looking at Judith and Kenneth's relationship,
we could tell things started to
deteriorate more towards the end,
to where there were a couple of 911 calls placed between them.
[Ben] There had been several incidents,
but ironically, some of those calls actually involved
Kenneth calling the police and saying that
Judith was threatening to kill him.
[Scott] We had been out there,
but nobody had ever been arrested,
nobody wanted to arrest anybody.
[Narrator] Investigators gain more insight
when they receive phone records for Judith, Shelly, and Angela.
[Ben] Once we get into her phones,
we get into some heart-stopping communications
that Judith was having with her own daughters.
For weeks prior and days prior, she's texting about
how much she dislikes and loathes Kenneth.
When you look at these texts, there's a lot of bitterness.
There's a lot of ingrained rage.
[Narrator] As Judith's hatred for Ken comes into focus,
so does a complicated financial dynamic.
There appeared to be a, a weird and very close nexus
between Judith and her daughters and their financial status.
Judy and my father would talk, and they would agree,
"We can't keep supporting our adult kids."
But she just kept feedin' money to them.
[Narrator] In a disturbing turn, on March 15th,
just five days before the murder,
Judith texts her daughter Angela about a gun.
[Ben] There's a lot of discussion
with her and her daughters.
One of the conversations that comes up involves a gun.
She discusses a .22.
The murder weapon, in this case, was a .22-caliber Ruger.
Here she is, days before the homicide,
talking about a .22-caliber gun.
To detectives, that comes out as intent.
You know that she's thinkin' about getting a gun
and shooting Kenneth.
[Narrator] Investigators reach out to Ken's sons,
Keith and Kevin.
They confirm that the relationship
between Judith and Ken was marred by distrust.
[Jax] Judith stole money from Ken at every turn.
Ken was on to her,
and was fed up with the stealing.
[Kevin] The stealing with his money
was prior to their divorce,
and it was even after
she was coming back over to my father's house.
The stealing was just a constant thing.
[Narrator] But Ken's sons tell investigators
that wasn't the only thing she stole.
[Kevin] He had neuropathy,
and he was always gettin' his pills taken by Judy.
And when he would confront her about the stealing,
she would say that he was crazy,
and that he, that he just took too many pills and forgot.
But she still would steal.
I believe it was to fuel her drug habit.
[Narrator] Kevin explains that's what led his father
to install the camera in the kitchen.
[Kevin] He caught her on camera,
and she'd say, "Sorry, sorry, sorry."
And he was like, "I need that for my neuropathy."
The weekend prior to his murder, Judy was there.
And I talked to my dad.
He was like, "Things aren't good."
He was like, "She needs to leave."
My father was telling my wife, "It ain't good."
Kind of said the same thing to me,
but he's a man.
It's his house, so we can't say anything.
[Narrator] Following the interviews,
investigators look into Judith's finances.
And they find she was under a mountain of debt.
[Kenneth] Not only is she in financial distress,
but you have some very specific statements
from Kenneth of,
"Get me this money by this day or get out."
So, you have that, that clock that's slowly ticking down,
to where she feels like she has no other choice
but to kill Kenneth Nix.
[Narrator] But investigators wonder
if Ken was Judith's gravy train,
wouldn't he be worth more to her alive than dead?
Investigators discover that
a condition of their divorce agreement
may hold the answer to that question.
[Kenneth] After their divorce...
at that point in time, Judith Nix owned her own home
and there was the marital home of Kenneth and Judith,
where she had a partial interest.
[Narrator] At the time of their divorce,
Ken Nix was the sole tenant of the house.
However, according to financial records,
Judith maintained the right of survivorship.
It's kind of a perfect storm,
to where if Kenneth is gone,
Judith receives the house in its entirety.
[Kevin] So her deal was,
"I can kill him, I get the whole house."
So she would sell that, be outta debt easily.
But you can't kill somebody and gain.
So she tried to make it look like a suicide.
[Narrator] Coming up.
Judith maintains her defense.
They hired a, an expert to try to come in
and talk about battered woman syndrome.
[Narrator] But who will a jury believe?
Judith Nix did not seem like she would hurt a fly.
[music]
Judith Nix remains in custody
for her alleged involvement in the murder of Ken Nix.
Investigators believe they have uncovered her true motive.
[Kenneth] The house and the property,
that would have gone to her.
That appeared to be, to us, a driving motivating factor
for Judith committing this homicide.
[Narrator] With the evidence against Judith
getting stronger by the day,
prosecutors and investigators
are ready to move forward with their case.
The only narrative we have left is one of...
premeditated, cold-blooded, calculated murder.
The decision was made to ultimately bring
a murder, first degree charge against Judith Nix.
[Narrator] As prosecutors prepare for trial,
they attempt to bring two unlikely witnesses on board:
Judith's daughters, Angela and Shelly.
[Kenneth] Judith's daughters, as far as we can tell,
we didn't find any evidence
they were involved with trying to plan this or set it up.
[Ben] In this case,
priority number one, if somebody is shot,
is making sure that the shooter, if they've committed a crime,
is held accountable.
Oftentimes that means that people who are ancillary to
or in some ways after the fact, assisting their testimony,
is so necessary that we use that testimony
as part of our prosecution.
When you charge a defendant, they can't testify.
[Narrator] In the end,
Angela and Shelly are not charged in Ken's murder.
While we might have our personal opinions
about what happened,
without some of that actual evidence
to be able to charge,
we felt that it was far better to use their testimony
in the light of witnesses.
[Narrator] Judith Nix stands trial in March of 2017.
[Ben] The defense was tryin' to establish
that Judith was a victim, that she was defending herself.
That she had been consistently assaulted
and battered by him.
Judith Nix was a very sympathetic defendant
in the sense that she did not seem like
she would hurt a fly.
She doesn't seem to be a threat to the community.
These are all pinpoints that the defense focused on.
[Narrator] Prosecutors argue that it was Judith
who terrorized Ken.
And on the morning of March 21st, 2016,
motivated by a mix of anger and greed,
she snuck into his bedroom as he slept.
The evidence was not consistent with Judith's story
about a struggle over a gun.
But it is consistent with
her having approached him while he was asleep,
pressing the gun to his face at very close range.
The first shot was nonlethal, would have been very painful.
And then the evidence would have been consistent with Judith
then taking the second time
to press the gun closer to his head and firing.
The lethal shot was the second shot.
[Narrator] Prosecutors call Angela and Shelly to the stand.
The women testify about the panic that ensued
in the aftermath of the murder.
Judith's daughters said what we needed them to say,
in the sense of they told the bare-minimum facts
to line up the case.
They helped us establish a timeline.
They help us establish when things were said,
and what things were observed.
Their testimony helped us
knock out a bunch of different alternative possibilities.
They did testify against their mother,
and I know that wasn't easy.
And they knew what they were saying,
the parts that were true were gonna be hurtful for her.
[Narrator] On March 10th, 2017,
it takes the jury less than two hours
to reach a verdict.
[Ben] The jury deliberated about an hour and a half,
and returned with a verdict of guilty
and sentenced her to life in prison.
No matter how sympathetic she was,
no jury was gonna side with her,
her decision to murder him in his sleep.
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[Narrator] Today, Ken's children and grandchildern
are a living legacy of the man Ken was.
[Kevin] I want everybody to know he was a great dad.
He built three great kids that could stand on their own
and take care of themselves.
[Ben] The legacy Kenneth left behind
was of a family that loved him deeply,
of sons that miss him very much.
Of great grandkids that are never going to get to meet him.
And his sons essentially give him credit for
everything that makes them who they are every day.
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