[Narrator] A cryptic 911 call
summons officers to a horrific scene.
There was blood on the walls.
It was an incredible, gruesome sight.
[Narrator] The only witness is rendered helpless.
[Roberts] When she was looking at me,
it was almost like she was looking right through me.
[Narrator] As the case unfolds,
investigators zero in on a repeat offender.
[Lloyd] That's the same lady.
That's the same house.
It's the same kind of murder.
[Narrator] The coldblooded truth
will expose a killer driven by jealousy, greed,
and experience.
She kept extensive journals over the years.
He stated upon her recovery,
he was going to move and end their relationship.
The moment somebody leaves
is the moment that is most dangerous.
[theme music]
[Narrator] Placerville, California.
On January 6, 2013,
it's just after 6PM when an unusual call
comes in to the El Dorado County 911.
He stated that he was at his office in Cameron Park.
He was not on scene with the person.
And he refused to answer most questions.
[siren wailing]
[Narrator] Multiple units from
the El Dorado Sheriff's Department
rush to the scene.
[Roberts] Really all we knew was, there was a possibility of
a homicide or a fatality that happened within this house.
We don't know what we're gonna be walking into.
[music]
[Roberts] We established a perimeter.
There were a group of us, including myself,
that responded directly to the front of the house.
It was really dark, late at night.
[Narrator] Inside, deputies see a woman.
[Lensing] She was going on as if nothing was wrong.
The deputies on scene requested that dispatch
contact the residence and call in
to get a hold of the female that was inside.
Our dispatch was able to get her to, uh, to come out
and exit the house.
[Narrator] Deputies meet her at the front door.
She identifies herself as 70-year-old Colleen Harris.
She tells them that her husband
72-year-old Bob Harris, is in bed.
[Roberts] When she was looking at me,
it was almost like she was looking right through me,
like she wasn't talking to me.
She was just talking.
I started to think that maybe she wasn't in her,
her right frame of mind.
She looked at me and said, you just have to go see him.
And then she said that he was beautiful.
[Narrator] Colleen remains outside
while a team cautiously enters the home.
[Roberts] We begin to start clearing the house.
I make my way down a, a long hallway.
And I get to the very last bedroom.
[Lensing] There was blood on the walls.
It was an incredible, gruesome sight.
[Roberts] The bed is made, but you can see
that there appears to be
a person completely covered from head to toe.
I walk closer to the bed,
at which point I see a double barrel shotgun
sitting on top of the blankets.
[Narrator] The deputy slowly approaches.
[Lensing] The deputy pulled back the blanket slightly
to reveal what turned out to be Robert Harris.
There was no mistaking that Mr. Harris could not be saved.
[Roberts] There appeared to be a gunshot wound
to the side of the face.
His face was, was missing.
[Narrator] The deputies lower their weapons
and call for detectives.
[Roberts] Once they arrive, I give them
pretty much a play by play of what occurred.
It was very bizarre.
[Shiloh] They're quickly trying to size up whether or not
this is a self-inflicted death or if it's a homicide.
[Narrator] Detectives examine the gun
laying next to Bob on the bed--
a pistol-gripped, sawed-off shotgun.
[Lensing] It seemed to be neatly placed next to his left hand.
The butt was down fairly low towards his feet
and not within reach of his hand.
So that was the first indication that this was not a suicide.
[Narrator] The second red flag comes
when they take a close look at the gunshot wound
to the left side of Bob's head.
[Lensing] The entry was large, and there was gun powder residu
that would indicate that the end of the,
the weapon that was used
was several inches away from his head.
None of that is consistent with a self-inflicted wound.
A person doesn't hold a shotgun away from their head
when they kill themselves in that manner.
This was not a suicide. This was a homicide.
At that point in time, Bob's daughter, Pam Stirling,
was contacted and given the news
that something had happened to her father.
[music]
[Narrator] Robert "Bob" Harris was born on February 3, 1940.
Growing up in the Bay Area,
Bob studied engineering at UC Berkeley.
He used his degree to turn his passion for the outdoors
into a paycheck.
Bob worked for the U.S. Forest Service.
[Lloyd] He became the administrator
for the Lake Tahoe region.
That is the most coveted position
in the entire U.S. Forest Service.
[Narrator] For many years, Bob focused on his career
and raising three kids with his first wife.
But when the kids left home, Bob's marriage came to an end,
and he enjoyed the unfettered life of a bachelor.
[Phil] Bob was all in the family man.
That divorce did rock the family pretty heavily.
But I don't think it, it destroyed it by any means,
and Bob was still a good father.
[Narrator] In the late '80s, Bob was working in El Dorado County
when he reconnected with an old friend, Colleen Batten.
[Phil] They met when they were in middle school.
And they were maybe kinda boyfriend, girlfriend
at a very young age.
And then they, it rekindled after Bob and my wife's mom
had divorced.
[Narrator] Like Bob, Colleen was also single with grown children
In 1985, she was widowed when she lost her husband,
Jim Batten, a prominent land surveyor.
[Lloyd] Colleen took over Jim Batten's surveying business
Jim Batten had a property portfolio
worth about a million dollars, by some accounts,
so she took over all that.
She successfully ran that company for a number of years.
She was fairly well off when she met Bob Harris.
They called each other and began to talk,
and kind of the rest is history.
They got along well. They then begin to date.
[Narrator] Bob was attracted to Colleen's can-do spirit.
[Phil] She had built a Mercedes engine
in the living room of the house that she had before they met
without the instruction manual.
Real bright, uh, with an engineering, uh, mind.
[Narrator] After dating for four years,
they married on September 2, 1990,
and moved into Colleen's sprawling Placerville home.
[Lloyd] They were sort of society types.
They liked to mingle.
They were well known and respected.
[Narrator] After two decades together,
the hardworking couple had a large enough nest egg
to retire.
They spent their newfound freedom giving back.
[Phil] She was friendly, she was doting over Bob.
She was all in Bob--
was often next to him, would stay by him, uh, a lot.
[Joe] He was a star volunteer at the Sheriff's Department.
He was a man who was really deeply involved
in his community.
[Phil] He always was doing something productive.
And she was kind of that way too.
They were happy.
[Narrator] By 2013, Bob and Colleen had been together
for nearly 30 years.
But on January 6th,
their life together comes to a sudden and bizarre end.
In the bedroom they find Bob,
and it's this absolutely horrific scene.
[Narrator] After El Dorado investigators rule out suicide,
they check in with Colleen,
who is outside the home with Sheriff's deputies.
Colleen Harris was seated in the back of
one of the patrol vehicles.
And she was being very cooperative.
She simply seemed to have no emotion.
Psychologically speaking, it could mean she might be having
a dissociative moment,
where she experienced something traumatic.
[Lensing] I stated to her that she was going to be taken
to our office for an interview
in a more comfortable location to sit.
Of course, I have a lot of questions.
There's a lot of things that need to be answered.
But we need to know more information
about what had occurred.
[Narrator] Coming up--
A hunt for answers ends with more questions.
[Narrator] And a secret past plays into the present.
[Lensing] I receive a text on my phone,
and it said I needed to immediately come out of
the interview room because
they had some very important information
that could spin my investigatio
in a completely different direction
[Narrator] January 6, 2013.
El Dorado County detectives
are investigating the homicide of 72-year-old Bob Harris
after he was found dead in his bedroom
from a gunshot wound to the head.
While his wife, Colleen Harris,
is on her way to the Sheriff's Department,
detectives try to make sense of the horrifying scene
inside the home.
The victim was completely under the blankets,
appeared to be in sleeping attire.
There was a large hole to the left side of his head
near the cheek area
that carried on through the skull
and out the right side of his head.
[Joe] There are some indications that this is not a death
that has happened in the very recent past.
The blood is congealed to a certain point.
[Shiloh] Rigor mortis has set in.
He is cold to the touch.
It appears as if several hours have passed since he was killed.
[Narrator] While the scene in the bedroom is gruesome,
the rest of the house is untouched.
The windows were all secure.
The doors were secure.
And it didn't appear that anybody had tried to break
into the home,
and matter of fact, the home was very, very clean.
At this point during my investigation,
we have little information.
We have a homicide.
And we have a woman, who is the wife of the decedent,
that claims to not know what happened.
[Narrator] Investigators head to the Sheriff's Office,
where they meet up with the widow in an interview room.
[Joe] Du ring the interview, she puts her feet up on,
uh, an empty chair.
She appears in every way to be very calm and relaxed
as they were questioning her.
They're of course wanting to know what happened that evening
and have her lead them through the course of events.
[Narrator] But the only memories Colleen has
are of the night before.
[Lensing] They had a very pleasant evening.
And after nine o'clock, she doesn't remember.
I asked Colleen why her attorney
dialed 911 to report this crime
and she claimed to not know.
She didn't know how that happened.
She remembers nothing until the deputies arrive.
[Narrator] Colleen tells them that she does have
one vague memory from the night
She said she had put a blanket over his head, uh,
because he had a nosebleed.
It was rather strange, because having been in that scene,
what was in that house was a very traumatic, bloody scene
that could not anywhere remotel be confused with a nosebleed.
[Narrator] Colleen attempts to explain her lack of memory.
[Shiloh] If she's truly experiencing
psychogenic amnesia,
the amnesia could have been just for the death of Bob,
the traumatic incident.
And now she's experiencing emotion in real time.
[Narrator] Then the interview takes yet another bizarre turn.
[Shiloh] And at that point,
she starts to become overcome with emotion
and crying.
[Narrator] Stunned, investigators
take a different tack.
So, we let her talk,
and we let her talk about whatever topic that she wanted.
And she had told us essentially
that her and Bob's relationship was great.
[Narrator] Colleen's behavior stumps investigators.
She's truly experiencing psychogenic amnesia,
or she could be portraying an emotional wife who has learned
that her husband has died.
When we look at the very rare situations
in which psychogenic amnesia is present,
this temporary memory loss,
it's protecting the person from what happened in the moment.
[Narrator] Then, investigators get some alarming news.
[Lensing] In the middle of interviewing Colleen,
I receive a text on my phone, and it was the investigators.
They had said they had some very important information
that could spin my investigatio
in a completely different direction.
I left the interview room,
and the detective handed me a case from 1985,
where Colleen was a suspect in a homicide in that very same home.
[Narrator] Coming up--
A disturbing pattern takes shape.
They find that Colleen had been responsible
for the death of another husband.
[Narrator] And alarming details
from her previous husband's death come to light.
[Joe] It was only after she worked with a psychologist
that she was able to somehow remember what had happened.
[Narrator] Investigators in Placerville, California,
are interviewing Colleen Harris
about the murder of her husband, Bob Harris,
when they receive some alarming news.
In 1985, Colleen's first husband, Jim Batten,
was also murdered.
[Lloyd] Someone put out the word, hey,
you remember back in '85, Jim Batten?
That's the same lady.
That's the same house.
It's the same kind of murder.
It's the same room!
There was still a record of the 911 call from 1985.
[Shiloh] He was murdered.
And he also died laying in bed, shot.
And she had also claimed some amnesia in that case.
[Narrator] Colleen was arrested at the scene
and immediately charged with Jim Batten's murder.
[Lensing] The attorney that represented her
during that trial was attorney Dave Weiner,
and that is the same attorney
that had made the telephone call to us on 911.
[Narrator] Upon her arrest in 1985,
Colleen claimed to have amnesia
But at her trial about 5 months later,
she seemed to have recovered memories
from the day Jim was killed.
[Joe] It was only after she worked with a psychologist
that she was able to somehow remember what had happened.
[Narrator] Colleen testified that on the day of the murder,
she confronted Jim with divorce papers.
[Joe] She was confronting her then husband Jim Batten
because he had molested her daughter,
and she was driven to protect her daughter.
[Narrator] She alleged that the discussion escalated
into a physical confrontation.
[Joe] She says he began to sexually assault her,
and that he put a gun to her head.
[Narrator] Colleen claimed that a struggle ensued,
but she managed to get the gun from Jim's hands.
She shot and killed him in self-defense.
She was acquitted.
At trial, the defense really was able to make Jim Batten out
to be a sexual predator.
And Colleen was motivated because of
these terrible, terrible things that he'd done.
[Narrator] According to court records,
while Colleen opted not to press charges
against Jim Batten at the time,
her daughter always maintained
that he was guilty of molestation.
In the end, Colleen Batten was accquited of Jim's murder.
Armed with this new information,
El Dorado county insvestigators head back to the interview room
to confront Colleen about Jim's death.
[Narrator] And when it comes to details,
once again, Colleen's memory fails her.
[Narrator] Detectives continue to hold Colleen
in the interview room as they keep digging.
[Lensing] The investigators were also
making contact with family members
and seeing if they can get more information.
[Narrator] Investigators learn that Bob and Colleen's marriage
had been on the rocks for some time,
largely because Colleen was convinced
that Bob was having an affair with a woman in Mongolia.
I don't know how interested in this other woman he was,
Bob being seventy-two and she's approximately forty years old.
But I know that Colleen was concerned about that.
[Narrator] Whether the affair was real or not,
Colleen claims Bob's dalliance didn't bother her.
[Narrator] Despite Colleen's explanations,
detectives are skeptical.
[Lensing] We have the 1985 case
that showed that Colleen had used the same M.O.
There were a lot of similarities.
We had enough probable cause to arrest Colleen at this point.
[Narrator] Before Colleen heads to the county jail,
detectives request she get checked out
at a local hospital.
[Shiloh] While under observation,
Colleen seems to have cognitive functioning intact
and memory intact.
[Narrator] But they do alert detectives
to some concerning physical injuries.
[Lloyd] She's got this abrasion in the middle of her chest.
She also has a problem with, uh, one of the fingers.
[Joe] Both the injury to her finger
and the bruise to her chest
would be very consistent with Colleen having held
that sawed-off shotgun
and having the gun push back violently
and striking her in the chest.
[Narrator] Autopsy results confirm Bob's cause of death,
but pinpointing the time of death is more complicated.
[Lensing] There'd been beginning stages of decomposition.
That gives me a timeline.
That tells me that this person had died not just recently,
but many hours before we're even contacted,
before the report of the homicide.
[Narrator] Hoping to get more details of the timeline,
investigators reach out to the man
who made the initial 911 call--
Colleen's former defense attorney, David Weiner.
And they soon learn he did more
than just call the police that day.
He had met with his client out at the crime scene
for about an hour and a half before he went to his office
and made that call.
Weiner has always maintained that he never entered the home.
He remained in the driveway,
and he met with his client inside of his vehicle.
He didn't stay at the scene. He didn't stay with his client.
He left her on her own to deal with law enforcement.
He refused to answer any questions.
He didn't know if he was going to be her attorney or not,
and that most of this was going to have to wait.
[Joe] That is what a criminal defense attorney representing
a client almost certainly should do.
The obvious conflict that he would create
if he became a witness in the case
against his client, Colleen Harris.
[Narrator] Investigators push forward,
continuing to build their case.
They reach out again to Bob's daughter,
47-year-old Pam Stirling,
who agrees to come in for an interview.
[Lensing] The very first thing that she brought up is that
Colleen had been the suspect in the homicide in 1985,
and they knew about it.
Bob knew about it, but Bob didn't seem to be too worried
and believed her, that it was in self-defense.
[Narrator] Like Colleen, Pam mentions the infidelity,
but says that Colleen was extremely upset
that Bob might be having an affair--
so much so, that it had driven Bob to seek a divorce
in September of 2012.
She was texting Pam, you know, asking, why he's doing this?
Is he in love with somebody else?
One string of texts, Colleen is very hopeful
that her and Bob are going to get back together.
The next one, she's despondent about Bob leaving her
and about their relationship ending.
[Narrator] Two months later,
Colleen convinced Bob to come back to the family home,
at least temporarily.
[Joe] Colleen was scheduled to have hip surgery,
and she needed someone to help her.
[Lensing] Bob moved back.
He stated upon her recovery,
he was going to move to Tahoe, to a second home,
and end their relationship.
[Narrator] The night before the murder,
Bob was still at the home in Placerville
when Pam received the last text she would ever get from Colleen
[Lensing] During that last exchange,
Colleen indicated that she had caught Bob on the phone
with his girlfriend from Mongolia.
Pam said Colleen was very concerned with Bob
being on the phone with this woman.
[Lensing] Talking to Pam, that kind of gives us
a little bit of context.
Colleen actually was angry about the relationship dissolving.
Colleen never mentioned that to us.
Or anything about Bob leaving the home.
The moment somebody leaves
is the moment that is most dangerous.
[Narrator] Coming up--
The Harris home begins to give up its secrets.
She kept extensive journals over the years.
[Narrator] And investigators catch a break.
[Shiloh] Not only does she leave her home for that evening,
she's able to have the wherewithal
to give her location accurately to AAA.
[Narrator] Days after the heinous murder of Bob Harris,
investigators are homing in on Bob's wife, Colleen Harris,
as the prime suspect.
[Lensing] Once we had received the search warrants,
we went back to the residence,
and we found a series of handwritten journals
that were Colleen's.
They claimed to have started in 1985.
[Joe] She portrays herself in the journals
as a faithful, loving wife whose husband, Bob,
is mistreating her, and she forgives him.
[Narrator] While reading the journals,
investigators can't ignore a growing hunch.
There's aspects of them that would suggest
they're fabricated.
Some of the entries had dates, and most did not.
And again, the chronology.
You'd expect you would write and fill a page
and you'd go on to the next page.
The chronology following it in that context didn't really fit,
and that's why I strongly suspect
that they were written retrospectively.
That would indicate a great deal of planning.
The amount of time that it would take
to fill years' worth of journal
would have to have been started months in advance.
[Narrator] Hoping to bolster their case
for first-degree murder,
investigators keep digging.
We felt that writing a search warrant for
the cellphone records of Colleen
may give us more information.
When we received the results of those cellphone records,
it was alarming.
[Narrator] In the hours after investigators believe
Bob was murdered, they trace Colleen's movements.
During her interview, Colleen had claimed
that she never left the house on Wilderness Way
on the weekend of the murder.
But we found out that her cellphone traveled from
the Wilderness Way address all the way down Highway 50
to Highway 80 and to the Bay Area.
So this wasn't a woman who was in a fog.
This wasn't a woman who had remained in
the Wilderness Way address, like she claimed.
[Narrator] Records show that following Bob's murder,
Colleen made the three-hour drive to San Francisco,
arriving around 10AM.
On her way home, she makes a stop,
because her car becomes inoperable.
And because of that, she has to call AAA
and ask for a tow truck.
[Joe] We were able to get the recording of Colleen Harris
calling AAA from the side of US 80.
[Lensing] She was very articulate.
She stated where she was at, what she needed,
how to get there.
There doesn't seem to be any confusion.
And that was just the information
that we were looking for to confirm
that this claim of amnesia is false.
[Shiloh] They're able to find that not only
does she leave her home for that evening,
then on her way home, she's able to have the wherewithal
to give her location accurately to AAA.
[Narrator] Now investigators want to know
where Colleen was headed and why.
[Joe] We found one of the towers the phone pinged off of
was right next to Colleen Harris' adult son's residence
in San Francisco.
[Lensing] We found that to be odd,
because during this period,
she was claiming to be in a gray fog.
After finding this information,
we attempted to contact her son, Wesley Thornberry.
Initially, Wesley said he didn't have any contact with his mother
on Sunday, January 6.
[Narrator] However, Wesley tells investigators
that his mother did try to call him that morning.
[Joe] She was in the Bay Area,
and she was hoping to meet up with him.
But he insisted that he never actually met up with her.
He was unable to do so because Wesley had gone out to brunch
with his fiancée.
[Narrator] Certain there is more to this story,
detectives take a closer look at Colleen and Bob's finances,
and they stumble across something
that sparks their interest.
[Joe] Colleen and Bob had actually divorced
for about a year in 2004.
And apparently the divorce was done
so that Colleen could take advantage of some financial
death benefits from her former husband, Jim Batten.
She got his survivor benefits-- I think $1100 a month.
They had remarried after Colleen had been able to
secure those benefits.
At the very least, it proved how keenly focused
Colleen was on finances.
[Narrator] Investigators learn that Colleen could expect
another payday following Bob's death.
Bob had had a, a long career and a pension.
And they were well off,
with an estate of approximately a million dollars.
In both cases, she stood to gain from the demise of her husband.
[Narrator] As detectives are collecting evidence
of Colleen's motives,
they get a strange call from David Weiner.
I was contacted by attorney Dave Weiner, um.
He stated that he had some possessions
that were given to him that he wanted or felt that needed
to be turned over to law enforcement.
So he didn't tell us the relevance of it.
And essentially, Attorney Weiner had stated, you'll find out.
[Narrator] Coming up--
The reason for Colleen's trip to the Bay Area
is finally revealed.
The entire collection was probably worth twenty, thirty,
forty thousand dollars or so.
[Narrator] And later, it's déjà vu all over again.
In the middle of the trial,
Colleen says that she starts to get some memory back.
[Narrator] As Colleen Harris awaits trial
for the shooting death of her husband, Bob Harris,
investigators get a surprising phone call.
[Lensing] I was contacted by attorney Dave Weiner.
He'd represented her in Jim Batten's homicide,
and he was representing her in the homicide now.
He had property that belonged to Bob Harris.
And it included a large coin collection.
We subsequently learned that those items were brought to him
by Colleen Harris' son, uh, Wesley.
He took all those items and gave them to David Weiner
as opposed to giving them to the police.
Wesley claimed that he found the items in his garage
after his mother had been arrested
for the murder of Bob Harris.
[Paul] Colleen brought a bunch of coins down to
Wesley's, left them in his garage.
According to him, never saw him, and then driven back up.
The entire collection was probably worth twenty, thirty,
forty thousand dollars or so.
[Narrator] On March 17, 2015,
the trial for Bob's murder gets underway.
When the coin collection is addressed,
it points to more scheming by Colleen.
[Joe] She claimed at trial that she moved the coin collection
so that they wouldn't be stolen
But that never made particular sense to me.
And I've always strongly suspected
that she had some idea that she would stage, uh,
the house to look like it had been broken into.
And could claim that she came home, and she found Bob,
and he must have been killed by whoever broke into the house.
But I've always believed that Colleen had shifting ideas abou
what she was going to do to get away with this crime.
And so, it seems that's something that she,
she abandoned and didn't follow through with.
[Narrator] Prosecutors lay out a timeline of events
leading up to Bob's murder.
[Joe] Colleen and Bob had had dinner on Saturday night
and watched some television.
Bob at some point of time must've disclosed
that it was his plan to drive back up
to the South Lake Tahoe cabin on Sunday.
The moment she snapped
was knowing that he was going to leave.
[Narrator] With Bob set to leave the next morning,
Colleen came up with a plan.
[Joe] She waited until he was asleep,
and she went into that bedroom with that sawed-off shotgun,
and she leaned across that bed and shot him
at near point-blank range...
[gunshot]
[Joe] ...killing him instantly.
[music]
[Narrator] Colleen then spent the next several hours
plotting her defense.
[Joe] One of the ideas was
trying to clean up the crime scene.
And she pretty quickly abandoned that idea, uh,
because it was just overwhelming.
[Narrator] Instead, Colleen called the same man
who helped her back in 1985--
defense attorney David Weiner.
[Phil] She called her lawyer from the crime scene,
and then he calls the police.
And she met with him hours before
law enforcement was notified.
[Narrator] In court, the defense
struggles to find their footing the second time around.
[Joe] The defense kept presenting different defenses--
suicide, accident, self-defense, amnesia.
I mean, they fluctuated between those different ideas,
much like Colleen seemed to fluctuate
between different ideas as to
how she was going to cover up the murder.
The recording of the call to AAA was really compelling,
because the jury was able to hear in Colleen's own voice
and own words that she was aware of her surroundings, cognizant,
she was answering questions and giving information.
This wasn't a woman who was in a fog.
[Joe] Colleen claimed at one point
that Bob had assaulted her earlier in that evening.
[Shiloh] In the middle of the trial,
Colleen says that she starts to get some memory back.
And then she's able to get some flashes about
some sort of struggle, in which she describes
she can feel the shotgun with her hands,
and that Bob ends up taking control
and accidentally fires the weapon.
He is killed.
None of which is supported by
any of the crime scene evidence whatsoever.
[Narrator] After a five-week trial,
it takes the jury less than two hours to reach a verdict.
[Joe] She was convicted of first-degree murder.
She was also convicted of a special allegation of
using a firearm in order to commit the murder,
resulting in an overall sentence of 50 years to life
for Colleen Harris.
[Narrator] Even though Colleen finally ended up behind bars
Bob's family still grapples with what could've been.
[Phil] We think of Grandpa Bob all the time,
and we talk about him.
His children and their children, my kids and his--
five grandkids total.
And that's probably the legacy that hopefully will live on,
and the kids will all learn who he was and what he did
and carry that on forever.
[music]