- NARRATOR: After his family endured a heartbreaking tragedy,
she stepped in to fill the void left behind.
- She agreed to adopt us all
and become basically our new mother.
- NARRATOR: And after years of turmoil,
she finally felt she belonged.
- She had a very noticeable and deep scar
that she carried with her for the rest of her life.
- He didn't see that, he saw the beautiful person on the inside.
- NARRATOR: But a terrible crime
abruptly upends the life they built together.
- The family found him inside of his vehicle.
He was struck, blunt trauma,
right side of the head over the ear.
- It didn't happen in the vehicle.
- NARRATOR: As an investigation launches,
detectives must wade through a sea of lies
and deception to catch a killer.
- She pretends to be an entirely made-up flight attendant.
He seems confused.
And he says he's never even heard of the couple.
- She was using me in a lot of her scams and cons.
- NARRATOR: Detectives quickly find that outward appearances
can't disguise the monster within.
- When a person closes the door at night,
nobody knows what goes on inside.
- They would get into huge fights,
and they were all yelling fights, screaming matches.
- She goes ah, "I don't remember anything about this murder.
I don't remember being a part of the murder".
- If the word evil could be applied to a person,
it would definitely be applied to her.
- *
- NARRATOR: In the late 1980s,
Wilton Manors, Florida had all the charm of a beach town
without the hustle and bustle of visiting tourists.
- Wilton Manors has been a small, quiet area
where people move to to get away from Ft. Lauderdale
and the noise that you would get from the beach area.
- A quiet bedroom community for the most part,
definitely a low crime area.
- NARRATOR: But on March 24, 1987 at 9:22 PM,
an urgent 911 call comes in from the family
of 37-year-old Bernie James, reporting a dire situation
outside the family home.
- It was reported to us that the, uh, victim's wife
found him inside of his vehicle with the, uh, front seat,
the front passenger seat fully reclined.
He was slumped over to the side.
He was unresponsive, and the family, as reported,
removed him from the vehicle and began CPR on him.
EMS responded, along with Wilton Manors P.D.
- When the first unit responds on scene
the person was on the lawn being attended to with CPR.
- EMS determined that the, uh, victim was deceased.
- NARRATOR: Assessing his injuries, it's clear
37-year-old Bernie James didn't die of natural causes.
- The first officer observed that there was some blood
on the right side of the ear.
- There's blood inside the car by the center console.
There's clear trauma to the right side of, uh,
the victim's head.
The victim also had ligature marks around his neck.
That means that somebody was strangling him.
- This was done to him and, uh, quite effectively,
because he was lifeless.
The first thing the officer is going to find out,
how did he get there and what happened?
- NARRATOR: When detectives arrive on the scene,
they find three of Bernie's family members outside:
his brother-in-law, Michael, his mother-in-law, Jane,
and his wife, 36-year-old Patty James.
- The family is shocked.
This is not someone you would expect to be murdered.
He's known as a man that everybody loved.
- NARRATOR: Born on July 1, 1949 in Washington, DC.
Bernie James was raised within a large family
in the Maryland suburbs.
- Bernie was the eldest of nine children.
My father was really big into Boy Scouts and nature
and, you know, he loved to camp.
He loved to canoe, hiking.
- NARRATOR: After high school, Bernie enlisted in the Marines
and ended up in Vietnam.
- He served two tours,
was a lance corporal in the Marine Corps.
He wouldn't talk about Vietnam very much, but I do know it,
it had a profound impact on him.
- NARRATOR: In the 1970s, Bernie returned to Maryland
and joined the fire department.
- He became a firefighter because he did-
he did have a pro- very protective nature,
and he loved to help people.
He was a paramedic, which is how he met
my mother, Lisa Jean Paul.
They were both paramedics, and they actually met on- on a call,
they were both responding to a medical situation.
They kind of hit it off a little bit
and one thing led to another,
and they were married within a year.
- My mom and dad just loved each other so much.
They had, like, a magnetic attraction to one another.
- NARRATOR: Bernie and his beloved wife, Lisa,
welcomed three kids in just over three years of marriage:
Michael, Irene, and Nicholas.
- My brother is two years older than me.
My sister is one year older than me.
I am the youngest.
- NARRATOR: But the close-knit family would be ripped apart
just before Christmas 1980.
- My mother, Lisa, had an aneurysm and collapsed.
Unfortunately, there was nothing the doctors could do for her
and after the 12 hours, they, you know,
had to cease life support.
- NARRATOR: With three children under three years old,
Bernie struggled to hold his family together.
- My mother's death had a huge impact to my father.
He was completely distraught afterward.
He didn't know what he was going to do,
because he had to raise three children
who were all very close in age.
- I can imagine how difficult it must have been
to be a single man with three very young children.
- NARRATOR: As the years passed,
the single father yearned to find love once again.
And in 1982, yet another chance encounter
would bring him just that.
- My father was working dispatch for the fire station,
and he was working in, you know, the emergency line.
This was the days before 911.
And this woman named Patty called him up.
- She was looking for a different person,
but he was the one on duty that day.
They struck up a conversation and, you know,
he told her about his problems, and they kind of build up
a little bit of a friendship over the phone.
- They got to talking.
She would call every single day just to talk to him.
- He'd been a widower for two years now,
and was having hard time raising his children.
So a woman expressing interest in him was appealing to him.
She seemed nice. She really seemed to like us.
Patty and her family were from Silver Spring, Maryland.
Her father was a police detective,
her mother was a banker.
She was the middle child.
- NARRATOR: Despite her stable upbringing,
Patty struggled with her self-confidence.
- She had this scar that literally dragged
a portion of her face down.
Um, so that physically is the first thing
that you really notice with her.
- Patty developed the tumor when she was very young.
Had to have it surgically removed.
That left her with a very noticeable and deep scar
that she carried with her for the rest of her life.
It became like, the- the focus of her life.
Is like, you know, "I'm- I'm hideous, I'm deformed.
No one's ever gonna like me or ever love me."
- NARRATOR: In spite of her insecurities,
Patty found love not once, but twice.
- She had two prior marriages.
Previously, she had been married to Richard Mahnken
which was, who is a Ft. Lauderdale police officer.
- NARRATOR: Divorced in 1982, Patty was ready to put herself
out there again when she struck up her friendship with Bernie.
- Things were going well with Patty and Bernie on the phone,
you know, they just clicked.
But she was a little apprehensive
to meet him in person because of course
she didn't know how he'd react to that scar on her face.
- NARRATOR: Finally, Patty and Bernie agreed to meet.
- He didn't see that scar on her face.
He didn't see that.
He saw the beautiful person on the inside.
- As we speed up the relationship,
she ends up moving in with, uh, Bernie.
Patty ended up being the surrogate mom
to these three children of his,
because basically he was working all the time.
- Patricia made it seem like she would be a loving,
devoted mother to us, that she would help him,
and that, you know, like I-I could imagine that he saw it
as a great weight lifted off of his shoulder.
- NARRATOR: The couple quickly married in 1982,
and Patty took steps to show her commitment
to Bernie's three toddlers.
- She said, you know, she really loved us
and she wanted to be our mother, you know,
legally as well as, you know, in a name.
So, you know, she- she agreed to adopt us all
and become basically our new mother.
- NARRATOR: About a year after their wedding,
the James family made an abrupt move.
- So we were living in Edgewater, Maryland.
Our father's family is there and all of Patty's family
has moved to Florida, so she decides to move us
all down to Florida to be with her family.
- NARRATOR: Florida provided a fresh start for Bernie
to pursue something he was passionate about.
- He finally landed the Florida State Park job,
what, uh, affected his decision to become a park ranger
and his love of the outdoors stem from his time in Vietnam.
- I used to go with him, um, on some of his ride-alongs.
He was charged with keeping for the alligators.
So when we got down to Florida,
you know, everything is hunky-dory.
This is gonna be good for us.
NARRATOR: But 3 years later,
things have gone terribly wrong.
- Patty discovers him seated in the front seat of the vehicle
unresponsive.
- NARRATOR: Patty explains to detectives
she is willing to help with the investigation
as much as she can, but first,
she needs to tend to her children.
- She's got to, uh, focus her attention on the kids,
while the detectives are, like, standing outside
trying to piece together, uh, what happened out there.
- NARRATOR: While Patty and her family head inside
to break the news to her children,
outside a homicide investigation begins...
- EMS and Wilton Manors P.D. then secures the scene,
and we come in to do our job.
We had motor oil off to the side
and some tools inside the vehicle.
The victim's wallet was, uh, a few feet from the vehicle.
It was- it appeared to been rifled through and it was,
uh, tossed all on the driveway area.
- There was no cash, but his ID and credit cards
was still in the wallet.
- In my experience, if someone's gonna commit a robbery
and they take a wallet or a purse,
they're not gonna inventory it right there.
They're gonna run down the street or hop in the car,
and we'll find the purse or the, or the remnants of their wallet,
you know, blocks away, not at the scene.
That's an inconsistency with,
uh, a traditional type of robbery.
- NARRATOR: With Bernie's murder
seeming less like a random act of violence,
investigators suspect something more sinister may be at play...
- So police were asking the question now, was this personal?
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
A potential suspect emerges...
- She came out there and he was talking to a black guy.
- NARRATOR: And a calculated scheme is revealed...
- The scene was set up.
- Somebody's not telling the truth.
- NARRATOR: March 24, 1987.
Wilton Manors, Florida.
Investigators are inspecting a puzzling scene
outside the home of murder victim Bernie James.
- We have the wallet, which was strewn about.
You also had the victim who was,
again, out laying on the driveway,
partially on the grass outside of the vehicle.
We also have the vehicle,
which is a significant piece of evidence
because this is where the crime is alleged to have occurred.
- NARRATOR: As the crime scene survey wraps up,
and Bernie's body is sent to the medical examiner's office
for a proper autopsy, reality sets in for Bernie's kids,
who are just six, seven, and eight years old.
- At that time, we were living with Jane Donahue,
Patricia's mom, and Patricia woke us all up,
and she brought us all into her bed.
And she had said, you know,
"I have something terrible to tell you.
Your father has been murdered."
And I remember crying.
I started to shut down.
- I'm in total shock.
I-I can't believe anyone would ever kill my father.
He was the nicest person in the world.
No one should ever have had a reason to kill him.
- NARRATOR: After settling her children,
Patty heads back outside to recap
the chilling events that led to the 911 call.
- Patty initially told the detectives on the scene
that they had just gotten home from the grocery store,
and she was putting the groceries out.
Bernie told her that he initially had to do,
uh, take care of an electrical problem in the vehicle,
and also had to do an oil change on the car.
And she went- subsequently went inside the house
and he stayed outside, uh, in the front yard with the vehicle.
- Patty, she's in the house.
She decides to go outside and check on Bernie.
She came out there, and he was talking to a black guy,
who's looking for some matches.
He just wanted to light a cigar down the road.
- NARRATOR: Patty says though she got a good look at the man,
she didn't recognize him.
- He was approximately six feet tall,
in his twenties, spoke with a French accent,
uh, was wearing a light-colored shirt and dark-colored pants.
- NARRATOR: Though Patty thought the situation was good,
she says her husband told her to go back into the house.
- She said she went back inside the house.
Uh, approximately twenty minutes later,
she come back outside the house
and that's when she found Bernie inside the vehicle
and the black male gone.
So she went back in the house and,
and called her mother who came outside,
and checked on him and found that he didn't have a pulse.
- She then calls her brother, Michael,
who lives just a few houses down the street.
- That's kind of what- out of the ordinary
to call her brother before she called fire and rescue.
In stressful moments, people react differently,
and sometimes panic and the first time,
thing they do is they call somebody that they know
to come help them.
- NARRATOR: After speaking with Patty,
police turn to her mom and brother,
who'd rushed to her side after the discovery of the body.
- Patty's mom, Jane, said that evening she was sick,
and she went to bed about six-thirty,
'cause she wasn't feeling well.
And approximately 8:45, she was waken up by Patty,
screaming, calling, telling her to come outside.
And basically her story is consistent with Patty had said.
- They corroborate everything that she,
she's telling the police.
Her brother saying, "Yeah, my sister called me
and she's crying, she's screaming.
I couldn't understand a word, but she said,
"Get over here, something has happened to Bernie."
So he rushes over.
- Her brother came over to the house
and removed him from the vehicle
and then began doing CPR.
- NARRATOR: With the immediate witnesses' stories
all matching up, investigators take a different approach.
- Patty works with a sketch artist
to give him all the details and describe the man
who she saw talking to her husband.
- This is a quiet residential neighborhood in Wilton Manors,
so things like that don't usually happen,
and people know who's in the neighborhood.
So once the sketch is done, the police went around
knocking to, knocking on doors of several houses
in the neighborhood, uh, showing the composite,
and they got no response from anybody
that had seen this individual.
So the first night of the search basically nothing comes up.
There's no, uh, suspect located that night.
- NARRATOR: The next morning, investigators hope the autopsy
will help explain the horrific chain of events.
- The victim was struck, blunt trauma,
right side of the head, over the ear.
He had several ligature marks that were around his neck
in a ascending position, which means somebody
was p-pulling up on his neck with some type of ligature,
whether it be a rope, whether it be wire.
He died of asphyxiation as determined
by the medical examiner.
- Bernie doesn't have any defensive wounds at all,
which means he was probably surprised by his attacker.
- So basically, he didn't know it was coming.
He just got hit, went down, ligature's applied.
He's choked out. He dies of asphyxiation.
And that could not have occurred in the car.
- It didn't happen in the vehicle,
because there was no room in the vehicle
to be able to strike somebody in the head.
And with blunt force trauma to the head,
you're going to have a tremendous amount
of bleeding coming from the ear and that area.
Uh, so, in this instance when you have observed the vehicle
and the passenger side, you're not seeing
that amount of blood that should coincide
with the type of injury that he has sustained.
- Now detectives know that the murder
didn't happen in that car, it happened somewhere else.
- NARRATOR: After reviewing the medical examiner's findings,
investigators turn to the victim's vehicle for more clues.
- We have a garage facility where we conduct
further investigation, uh, about the vehicle.
We take blood samples from inside the car.
We look for any other trace evidence that may be present.
- One of the things that Patty said
was that he was going to do an oil change.
They checked the dipstick.
They noticed the vehicle was at full.
So that's inconsistent to what she had said
that he was going to do an oil change.
- NARRATOR: The discovery casts doubt on Patty's initial story.
- The lack of excessive blood within the vehicle.
The way the scene was set up with the, uh, the oil cans
when the car didn't need oil.
The fact that the wallet was, uh, rifled through
within a couple of feet of the vehicle.
When you look at all the physical evidence,
it is absolutely inconsistent with the report to 911
and to the police.
- Somebody's not telling the truth,
and investigators begin to look at Patty.
- We need to talk to her again.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Investigators learn things aren't all they seem
in the James household...
- I could see it in my dad's eyes and face
that he just wanted to get far away as possible.
- NARRATOR: And a stunning confession
adds a new twist to the investigation.
- She paused for a second, she lowered her head,
and said that she knows who killed him.
- NARRATOR: Two days after beloved father
and park ranger Bernie James was murdered,
investigators in Broward County, Florida
are beginning to poke holes
in his wife, Patty's, initial statement.
- Patty implied that the murder
must have happened outside the house
'cause she had seen him earlier with the black male,
and then twenty minutes later, she comes out again
and then he's dead.
You know, just didn't make any sense.
I think she totally made up the story.
- NARRATOR: Rather than tip Patty off
with probing questions, they begin digging
into her relationship with Bernie through other means.
- We want to know what their personal life was about.
So we start talking to other people
to see if there's any issues with the, with the two of them.
- NARRATOR: On March 27 1987, investigators question
Bernie's parents, Delores and Bernard James, Sr.,
and they paint a troubling picture
of the couple's relationship.
- Bernie's parents fly into town for their son's funeral,
and detectives do meet with them.
And they discover that after Bernie married Patty,
there was definitely some bad blood within the family.
- Patricia had told my dad "I'm the woman of the house now.
Care for me, care for your children,
don't care for other people."
And so he kind of stopped helping out his parents.
He stopped buying them food, you know,
stopped doing all those things, and she had somehow
convinced my dad to move down to Florida,
because there was this rift in the family.
- Bernie's mother, Delores, said
she hadn't talked to her son very often.
One of the things that she did bring up
is that they left Maryland and moved,
and they lost contact with them.
Delores kind of said that the reason
that Bernie married Patricia is to fill a void in his life
and have somebody who could take care of his children.
So in that capacity, he kind of rushed
into this whole relationship with her.
- I never saw them kiss. I never saw them hold hands.
I never saw them hug.
I saw it more of like a companionship
or friendship-type relationship.
- NARRATOR: Bernie's parents say that a lack of affection
wasn't the only issue plaguing Bernie and Patty's marriage.
- They would get into huge fights,
and they were all verbal, yelling fights,
screaming matches, and she would make him leave.
As I got older, and I started to see their dynamic,
I could see it in my dad's eyes and face
that he just wanted to get far away from her as possible.
- NARRATOR: Bernie's mother says that after years of silence,
she finally heard from her son in the fall of 1985.
- Before my father's murder was the first time
he, he called his mother in years.
My father told her that he was coming home,
that he was going to leave Patty, that he had had enough.
He was going to, you know, leave her, divorce her.
- NARRATOR: But, Delores says,
Bernie never followed through with the move.
And almost a year later, she received
a disturbing communication from her son.
- Delores had said approximately six months prior to the murder,
she received a typewritten letter
supposedly coming from her son that he had been drinking
and that he had been abusing Patricia
and she felt that was kind of odd
that he would send her a typewritten letter.
- It was completely out of character for Bernie.
So the family started to wonder if Patty wrote that letter.
- NARRATOR: On April 8, 1987 investigators confront Patty
with their suspicions about the staged crime scene
and her strained relationship with Bernie.
- So originally Patty, uh, was called down to the station
to look at some mugshots and she,
uh, said she couldn't identify anybody.
And from that, they segued into some questions
that they, uh, wanted to clear up.
- Her story just doesn't make sense.
I don't know who has an oil change
that late at night, you know?
- Whatever people say from the first time
they speak to a law enforcement, they're locked into that.
If they change their story,
they're gonna have to explain why.
- NARRATOR: As investigators push Patty,
her demeanor suddenly shifts.
- The detectives asked Patricia
if there was anything else she had to say.
She paused for a second, she lowered her head,
and said that she knows who killed her husband.
- NARRATOR: Investigators press Patty for more details...
- Patty says she knows who killed Bernie,
but she didn't see what happened.
And she says the man that did it
she met a few months ago at a bowling alley
and his name is Tim Ott.
- NARRATOR: According to Patty, she, Tim and Bernie
were in a bowling league together,
and Tim had witnessed firsthand the abuse
she'd endured at the hands of Bernie.
- One of the incidents she recalled is that one time
her and Bernie were at a bowling alley,
and Bernie became abusive with her,
and Tim had seen that incident.
- NARRATOR: Patty's new story is that a few weeks later,
on the night of March 24th, she and Bernie
went to Tim's house to discuss the bowling schedule.
- Patty says when she gets there,
she doesn't feel well, so she asked to use Tim's bathroom.
- NARRATOR: Once she went to the bathroom,
Patty says things took a turn.
- She noticed the volume of the TV was up.
She said when she tried to get out,
the bathroom door was locked,
and she was unable to get out of the bathroom.
- Tim tells Patty to stay inside the bathroom.
After a while, he lets her out.
When she gets out, she doesn't see Bernie in the living room.
Tim grabs her by the arm and takes her outside
and that's when she sees Bernie inside of his car.
- According to Patty, Tim drives her back to her home.
Tim then drives back home, gets inside Bernie's car,
and drives Bernie's car back to Patty's house
and then leaves on foot.
Patty says once she felt safe,
she went outside and she checked on Bernie,
but she says Bernie didn't have a pulse.
- Patricia realizes that, uh, Bernie's dead.
- NARRATOR: Patty claims that she felt
she had to keep this horrible secret.
- BARBARA: She was afraid of Timothy Ott.
So she engineered this robbery scenario.
- NARRATOR: To detectives, the thought that Tim
would orchestrate such an elaborate plot
to save Patty from Bernie's alleged abuse feels far fetched.
- The police ask her to take a, a polygraph test.
She said that she couldn't take it at that time,
that they would reschedule it.
- NARRATOR: Though Patty's story sounds extreme,
without anything to hold her on,
investigators release her and immediately bring in
Tim Ott for questioning.
- He agrees to cooperate with the police
and go down to the police station.
When they get down there, he's very soft spoken
and very intelligent, and he proceeds to,
uh, answer all their questions.
- Detectives ask him about his relationship
with Patty and Bernie, and he seems confused,
and he says he's never even heard of the couple.
- They then show him a Polaroid picture of Patricia James,
and he goes and tells them, "I know her by the name of Demi,
I don't know her by the name of Patricia."
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Investigators unmask a master of deception.
- She is pretending to be not only one,
but two different people.
- She was using me in a lot of her scams and cons.
- NARRATOR: And a chilling plot is exposed...
- They discussed several different ways
on how to kill Bernie.
They were going to ground out apple seeds
and apricot seeds along with some Valium.
- NARRATOR: Investigators sitting down with
potential murder suspect Tim Ott
are shocked to learn that the woman who accused him of murder,
may be leading a double life...
- They're presenting him with
photo IDs of Bernie,
the, the victim, and Bernie's wife, Patricia,
and he's, like, confused, and he goes, "What?"
He goes, "That's Booth and that's Demi."
That's how I know them, we're on a bowling league."
He goes, "Demi's a friend of my fiancée TJ."
- Tim says T.J., his fiancée,
is a woman that he's only met over the phone.
- And he goes, "Booth was married to my fiancée TJ
and she told me he's an abuser."
- He also says that T.J. told him
that Booth was a child molester.
- NARRATOR: On the night of March 24, 1987,
Tim says he and Demi, AKA Patty,
put a murder plot into motion to stop "Booth"
from hurting anyone else ever again.
- Tim says that they show up at his apartment
and Demi goes to the bathroom.
Tim knows that this individual was a child molester
and sometime during the conversation,
he grabs, uh, a baseball bat
and hits Booth on the side of the head.
He said that he didn't go down,
so he grabbed some wire and began to strangle him.
And he said he had a hard time gripping the wires,
so he had to have several times where he had to readjust
the wires in order to strangle him
where he had no breath left.
Ott went on to say that they then load Booth in his car,
and he drove 'em back to the house.
- NARRATOR: After listening to Tim's chilling confession,
detectives attempt to understand the roles
of the other people involved in the plot
and their real identities...
- At this point they know that Patty
is pretending to be Demi, and they know that Patty
brought Bernie to the apartment to get killed.
Now they're trying to figure out who is this mysterious T.J.
- So Ott, uh, after making the statement,
produces a picture of T.J. from his wallet
and shows the investigators.
It's not somebody that the investigators knew at all.
- NARRATOR: Since Tim says he has never met TJ in person,
investigators have a sneaking suspicion
she may not even exist...
- Based on all of Patty's manipulations,
police are now realizing that Patty
is pretending to be not only one,
but two different people. She pretends to be TJ,
an entirely made-up flight attendant.
And then when she realizes that T.J.
is going to actually have to meet Tim in person,
she creates Demi.
Demi is actually the one that goes
and meets face to face with Tim
and puts the entire murder plot in motion.
- NARRATOR: Tim says he and Demi, AKA Patty,
had discussed several potential plots prior to the murder.
- They discussed several different ways
on how to kill Bernie.
One way was they were going to ground some Valium
and bake it into a cake.
They did that, but it only made him sick.
Then they talked about shooting him,
but they couldn't find a remote field to make that plot happen.
- NARRATOR: Ultimately, the pair decides Tim's apartment
was the most secure location to commit the crime.
- Ott, after the statement, said that he tried
to clean everything up, but there was still spots
of blood on the carpet.
- NARRATOR: Tim accompanies investigators to his apartment
on April 8th, 15 days after Bernie's murder.
- He brings the detectives to his house.
He shows them where the event took place.
There is still a little bit of blood there,
even though he said he had cleaned it.
It just came together.
- When we, uh, did the follow-up investigation
at Mister Ott's apartment, when w-with Luminol,
we discovered a great amount of blood there.
Our discovery is consistent
with the explanation that the,
uh, incident, the, uh, blunt trauma,
was initially induced in the bedroom
of Mister Ott's apartment, and adds credibility
to the confession that was obtained.
- NARRATOR: Detectives formally charge Tim Ott
with first-degree murder.
But before they go after Patty,
they circle back to Bernie's family and uncover more evidence
about the extent of her deceptions.
- Patty was a manipulative con artist,
her primary means of income was frivolous lawsuits that she won.
- If you, you start to look at her background
you go wow, you know, this was a, a culmination
of a lotta years of her going around and scamming people,
and getting what she wants.
- She was using me in a lot of her scams and cons.
I was the focus for her scams,
because I was the easiest to manipulate.
- One of the scams that Patricia did was, uh,
she went and told everybody her son Nicholas was deaf.
She tried to raise money, uh, for Nicholas and for the family.
- We would go to library and she would check out books
on American Sign Language and, you know, she would try
to teach it to Nicholas and have him do to it back to her.
- She used this as a way to scam churches out of money.
- NARRATOR: On top of using her children for financial gain,
Patty isolated them from the outside world
as much as possible.
- Neighbors were shocked to find out that Patty had children.
They said they had never seen them before.
- We never really left the house.
Maybe we were allowed to go to the backyard,
but we didn't, you know, play on the street.
We didn't go outside really, people didn't really see us.
- NARRATOR: According to Bernie's family,
Patty even kept them from their own family.
- I know that she was trying to cause a rift,
not only just between him and his family,
but between him and us.
One of the stipulations working as a park ranger
is that you're on site.
And she would hardly ever let him see us.
She was completely trying to isolate us three from everybody.
- We were kids, we absolutely trusted Patty implicitly.
We didn't really know any better.
- It was clear that those children
suffered years of abuse by Patty.
- Her being so abusive to the children
and involved in so many other scams,
the police come up with she was this person
that can manipulate someone to commit a murder.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
A layered motive exposes he twisted mind of a criminal.
- She had him take out a life insurance policy on himself.
- She tells them that she has suffered abuse the entire time.
- She knew how people were sympathetic to her,
and she knew how to manipulate them.
- NARRATOR: After learning more about Patty James'
capacity for manipulation and violence,
investigators are nearly certain she's responsible
for the murder of her husband, Bernie James.
- At this point, um, we're realizing
that she was capable of doing that.
They think she is. Now they're trying to figure out
what her motive was to have him killed.
- NARRATOR: Investigators believe Patty felt forced to act
when Bernie decided to leave her.
- In my opinion, she realized that, ah,
her husband, Bernie, was going to divorce her
and she couldn't handle it.
- Patty couldn't stand rejection.
And this would have been her third-
If, if my father had successfully divorced her,
it would have been her third divorce.
- NARRATOR: Investigators contact Bernie's insurance agent
and learn of another possible motive.
- Before my father died, she had him take out
a life insurance policy on himself
and had all three of his children
declared non-beneficiaries.
So Patty was the only beneficiary to his policy.
- With the physical evidence, Tim Ott's confession,
the life insurance policies, and the history of abuse
and manipulation, detectives now believe
they have enough for an arrest warrant.
- NARRATOR: On June 8, 1987, investigators make their move.
Police were able to build their case
and meet with the prosecutors that led to her arrest
at the childrens' school.
- The police go to the school.
She drops off the kids.
She sees police, and they effect the arrest on her
for first-degree murder.
- NARRATOR: Now in custody, Patty says
she is finally ready to come clean.
- She tells them that she has suffered abuse
the entire time she's been married to Bernie,
and she just couldn't take it anymore.
- NARRATOR: But according to Patty,
it wasn't really "her" who orchestrated the plot...
- She literally drops her head down.
It's quiet for a few seconds, she pops up and then she goes,
ah, "I don't remember anything about this murder.
I don't remember being a part of the murder.
It must have been TJ, who is another personality in me."
- NARRATOR: Investigators are not convinced,
and she remains in custody to await trial.
While Patty is ready to take her chances in court,
her accomplice isn't willing to risk it.
- So rather than take his chances with a jury,
Tim decides to take a plea for second-degree murder
and testify against Patty.
- NARRATOR: On November 30th, 1987,
Patty's trial kicks off.
- The prosecutor painted Patty as being the manipulative one
who set up the murder of her husband.
The defense came back and said this was all Tim Ott's dealing.
He was the one who did the murder,
and Patty was the victim of the case.
- NARRATOR: When both sides rest,
it's hard to tell what the jury will believe.
- There was, uh, one juror who stopped listening,
stopped looking at the evidence,
would not engage in discussions.
When it went back to the jury,
and he refused to
say guilty or not guilty.
He just refused to, uh, work, and that point
the court had no choice but to enter a mistrial.
- NARRATOR: But in Patty's second trial,
she is quickly convicted of first-degree murder
and sentenced to life in prison.
- I think they did a great job
with building the case against her
and showing what a manipulative person she was.
- If the word evil could be applied to a person,
it would definitely be applied to Patty.
She has no conscience, no compassion, no remorse.
She truly doesn't care about anyone else but herself.
- I don't view her as human,
that's why I called her my evil step monster,
it's because she is pure evil.
- If I could talk to my father right now
I would say, you know, "I wish you'd never married Patty.
I wish you'd ne-never met her.
I wish we'd been closer because I-I do miss you.
I miss you tremendously."
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