[Female Narrator] She was a widowed teacher
getting a second chance at love.
[David] She was ready to move on
from a very painful part of her life.
[Winnie] They were so good together.
I just thought that they had the world by the tail.
[Narrator] But their storybook romance
would come crashing down,
when a family vacation turns deadly.
[Bill] It started out as just a normal good Christmas.
It ended up turning into one of the worst ones imaginable.
She appeared to be shot with a high-powered rifle.
He said, "It's got to be a hunter's stray bullet."
[Narrator] As investigators piece together the case,
bizarre rumors will emerge.
He passed him off as his illegitimate son.
He was way too close to this guy.
[Narrator] Exposing a passionate affair
and a betrayal born of greed.
There was an insatiable need for money.
He made sure he looked like the innocent party.
But you know what? He's just a liar.
He played upon her vulnerability
and was there to drain every penny she had.
If he's in love with somebody, he'll do anything
that they want him to do.
[theme music]
[Narrator] Situated halfway between the bustling cities
of St. Louis, Missouri and Nashville, Tennessee
lies the quiet river town of Paducah, Kentucky.
[Michael] It's a close-knit community.
Everybody waves at everybody. Everybody speaks to everybody.
[Spissinger] There's a lot of wildlife.
There's a lot of outdoors.
You're in the general area of duck hunting, fishing,
and deer hunting.
[Narrator] On the afternoon of December 27, 1990,
Bill Mathis is at home,
enjoying the holiday season with his family.
[Bill] My father-in-law, Charles Chumbler,
and his wife Nelda Chumbler, came in for Christmas that year
and had spent the night there at our house.
Charles and Nelda were going to drive down
to his mother's house to see them.
He was gonna take my son Shane with him too,
and they were going to stop and feed the horses.
Shortly after the phone rang, and Charles's mother said,
"Bill, get down here, someone shot Nelda."
She was pretty hysterical.
Soon as I hang up from her, I call 911,
and then I jumped in my truck.
I was a firefighter and EMT.
I wanted to get down there in anyway possible
to try to treat her.
It was a really cold, gray, bitter day,
quite a bit of snow on the ground.
I was going as fast as I could in a four-wheel drive truck
without braking.
The roads were really slick,
it took a little bit to get down there.
Of course, a thousand things were going through my mind.
[Narrator] As night falls, Bill Mathis arrives at
the horse pasture on the farm owned by Charles's family.
[Bill] A rescue truck, he got there just ahead of me.
Nelda was laying on her back.
I could tell, looking at her jacket
that she had on, it looked like she had been hit
right up under the collarbone.
She didn't have a pulse.
She was already as cold, as cold as it was that day.
Charles was crying, and he looked pretty shaken,
and I asked him, "Where's Shane?"
'Cause I didn't see him, and he said,
"He's down at my mom's."
[Narrator] Officers from state and local agencies
quickly converge on the scene.
When I got out there, I found Charles Chumbler.
I asked him what he seen because everyone's a suspect.
"What'd you see? What'd you hear?"
was there anybody else around?
He said, "Well, we were feeding the horses,"
he said, "I heard a shot."
He dives on the ground to protect his grandson.
And he looked over, and Nelda wasn't moving.
[Narrator] Charles carried his grandson, Shane, back to the car
and drove straight to his mother's home nearby
to get help for his wife.
Charles said, "There's been a terrible accident."
"Somebody shot Nelda."
He told somebody to call an ambulance
and left the grandson there and then went back.
I wasn't really sure what to think about at the time
I was in shock still.
But somewhere in the back of my mind,
I knew this isn't right,
nobody would've just shot her down.
[Narrator] Tampa-area high school science teacher,
Nelda Mason,
had loved and lost for much of her adult life.
[Winnie] She lost her husband of many, many years to cancer,
and she went through an extended period of medical care
and support for him,
and it was grueling and expensive
and time consuming.
[Bill] Nelda had a rough time in the past, you know,
due to her husband and mother dying.
Nelda had two kids.
She was just, you know, really good as a schoolteacher
and loved her job and spent a lot of time at school.
[Winnie] People at her school loved her.
The staff loved her, the kids loved her.
Everybody loved her.
[Bill] Nelda was a really good person.
She was soft-spoken, just really sweet.
[Narrator] Nearly a decade after her husband's death,
Nelda's life would change forever
when Charles Chumbler swept into town.
[Winnie] He had been a pastor, a minister,
at one time in Paducah.
When I met Charles, he started being the minister
at the church where I played the piano.
Everybody loved him, and they trusted him.
They looked up to him.
We had two kids. And he did love his children.
But after I separated from Charles,
he wanted to go to Florida.
[Donald] Nelda met Charles in the school system,
and he was an English teacher.
He could charm your socks off.
He would bring in baked goods from home and pass it around.
He put you at ease
and made you feel really good about yourself.
He totally was genuine.
[Narrator] Charles may have had many admirers,
but he only had eyes for the sweet widow
with the heart of gold.
Nelda was ready to move on
from a very painful part of her life,
and Charles seemed to present that opportunity.
[Winnie] She told me how happy she was
because Charles swept her off her feet.
They were married
and living together in her house,
and they were so good together.
I was kind of jealous.
I just thought that they had the world by the tail.
[Narrator] After three years of marriage,
Charles and Nelda made plans to spend Christmas
at his daughter's house in Paducah.
[David] Charles thought that Nelda would enjoy getting away
for a little while, and so he suggested
that they could go up to the Chumbler farm
in Paducah, Kentucky,
and have a nice Christmas vacation.
[Bill] It started out as just a normal good Christmas,
ended up turning into one of the worst ones imaginable.
[Narrator] As investigators speak to a devastated Charles,
he claims the bullet that struck his wife
appeared out of nowhere.
I asked him, "Did you see anybody there?
"Was there anybody else around?"
He kept saying, "I heard a shot way off,
"and it's got to be a hunter's stray bullet."
Hunting season was in, duck season was in,
bird, quail season, rabbit season.
There was a lot of hunting goes on in that area.
He said, "That's all I can really tell you."
[Narrator] After taking Charles's statement,
investigators and the McCracken County Coroner
take a closer look at the victim and search for evidence
to confirm the theory
that Nelda was shot accidentally.
[Jerry] The body was face up.
There was a gunshot wound
that appeared to be to the left upper chest,
and it seemed to exit
in the right midline of her back.
I noticed there was a wooden split-rail fence post
very near the body,
and it appeared to have a defect to it.
My first assumption was that that projectile
went through her remains and then into that fence post.
[Michael] We tried to fence off the area
after they had secured the victim.
It was dark,
and we was out there with flashlights trying
to see what we could see.
We walked all the way around in the general direction
that the bullet would had to have come from,
and we did not find anything.
[Narrator] Investigators put a hold
on their crime-scene investigation
and turn to the only other witness,
Charles and Nelda's grandson, four-year-old Shane Mathis.
[Bill] That afternoon, they took my son, Shane Mathis, with the.
He always wanted to spend a lot of time
with his Papaw.
[gunshot]
[Narrator] Shane's account
mirrors his grandfather's account,
except for one detail,
[David] Charles insisted there had been only one shot,
whereas his four-year-old grandson
remembered hearing two shots.
[gunshots]
Now, if there's two shots,
that lessens the possibility of an accident.
[Narrator] Coming up, A witness account
further suggests Nelda's death was intentional.
He said, "There's something strange about this guy."
They kept trying to drive away as the rescue vehicles
and the cops were coming.
[Narrator] And a possible motive begins to form.
They'd already just about broke Nelda financially.
[music]
[Narrator] In Paducah, Kentucky, authorities are investigating
the death of 52-year-old Nelda Chumbler
after her husband Charles and grandson Shane
witnessed the shooting in a field near their family's hoe
[gunshot]
The following day, Nelda's autopsy gets underway.
[Jerry] We're able to see exactly where that wound is.
It went through the apex of the top of the left lung.
It fractured a rib on the front and severed the spine.
So, one of the things we know after autopsy
is that Miss Chumbler would have been dead
at the moment of impact.
She appeared to be shot with a high-powered rifle.
[Jerry] That type of hunting ammunition,
it tends to fragment.
Which forensically we call that a lead snowstorm.
If you look at it on X-Ray,
it looks like these tiny little chips of lea.
Now, when you realize that, that bullet has fragmented,
that sort of rules out the possibility
of that projectile or bullet going through
her remains, and then into that fence post.
So that, that to me made me feel
that there were two shots fired as opposed to one.
[gunshot]
One striking the post and one striking Nelda Chumbler.
[gunshot]
It would be difficult for me to believe
that there were two stray bullets
that were fired within seconds of each other.
So, once we establish that two-shot theory,
then I, I think we certainly realize
we had a homicide versus
an accidental stray bullet striking her.
[Narrator] Now, the question remains,
who would want to kill Nelda Chumbler?
Investigators return to the crime scene
and canvas the area for eyewitnesses.
[Michael] We have to go research everything that's said.
We actually did a perimeter search
completely around, about a half mile around,
just to discredit the idea that,
there was somebody out here shooting,
and a stray bullet hit Nelda.
[Donald] We now run into a neighbor.
He didn't hear the shot,
but he did see a vehicle.
He said two people kept getting their little car
stuck in the snow,
and he was jumping out of the car
and pushing it a few feet and then jumping back in the car
trying to get out of there.
He described the guy pushing
was a tall, slender, dark-headed guy.
He had a moustache.
He couldn't see inside the car 'cause it appeared the car
was all fogged up or stuff was stacked up in the car
like they were moving or going someplace.
They drive away as the rescue vehicles
and the cops were coming.
[Narrator] The neighbor identifies the vehicle
as a silver Nissan Sedan.
Unfortunately, he was unable to catch the license plate.
Investigators continue searching the Chumbler property for clue.
[Michael] We was trying to figure out
the trajectory of the bullet.
So, you actually went backwards.
You come from where, approximately where the bullet
may have went into the ground
after it passed through Mrs. Chumbler,
and we was able to
find where it went through a tree,
where it went through a part of the corral
and actually was able to trace, with a string,
all the way back to the shed that was off to the right.
[Narrator] The shed sits on the Chumbler family farm,
nearly 25 yards away
from the horse pasture where Nelda died.
[Donald] So, I look inside the shed,
we find several cigarette butts are in there.
Newport was the type of butt inside the shed.
People don't really smoke them a whole lot,
not down in this neck of woods anyway.
I collect what few cigarette butts
I could collect in there.
[Narrator] As investigators continue searching the shed,
a crack in the wall stands out to them.
And it looks like, to us, that someone was standing
inside that building
and shot through one of the cracks.
[Donald] That told me that somebody in that shed
is the one that shot the rifle.
I really thought, in my mind, that this was premeditated.
Something like this just don't happen
unless it's been thought out.
This was a planned ordeal.
[Narrator] Detectives send the cigarette butts
from the shed for forensic analysis.
[Donald] Back then, Kentucky didn't have the money
or the means to do the DNA,
but they can do the blood typing with your saliva.
We got trace evidence, and we was able to track it
and type the blood that the person had
that was smoking the cigarette.
This told us we was looking for somebody
with A positive blood.
[Narrator] Since investigators believe Nelda's murder
was premeditated, they turn to those
who knew her best, in her hometown of Tampa.
I said, "Y'all got your bags packed?
"We're going to Florida."
[music]
[Narrator] Less than 48 hours
into Nelda Chumbler's death investigation,
Kentucky authorities have designated the case
a premeditated homicide and are searching for leads
in Nelda's hometown of Tampa, Florida.
[Donald] When we get to Florida, I go around, and it's my job,
to interview Nelda's friends and co-workers.
[Winnie] I received a call
during my Christmas break, from Charles.
He was crying on the phone, and he said that his wife,
his beautiful wife, had been shot and killed.
I couldn't believe it, I was stunned. I was stunned.
How could that happen?
I couldn't find anybody
that said anything negative about Nelda.
[Winnie] She was just real and honest.
And she had had the success and joy of being
a well-respected teacher in that school.
[Narrator] Despite Nelda's seemingly perfect life,
investigators learn that she was experiencing
major financial issues.
[Winnie] Nelda had received
quite a large insurance settlement
when her husband had passed away in the early '80s.
[Donald] It was a lot of money.
I'd say probably close to $300,000 now.
[Narrator] According to friends, her financial situation changed
when Nelda and Charles received some unexpected news
nearly a year into their marriage.
[Michael] One day, there was a knock at the door
and Nelda and Charles went to the door,
and it was Michael Kariakis.
Charles was saying that Michael was his illegitimate son.
He said this was from a previous affair years ago.
Nelda had no idea who Michael Kariakis was.
[Narrator] The 24-year-old told Nelda and Charles
that he was sick
and had no other family to turn to.
Michael, supposedly, was suffering from cancer.
[Winnie] He didn't have any health insurance,
and he needed money.
Here's her husband's illegitimate son,
and now he was suffering.
It probably dredged up all the old memories
of what she went through with her previous husband.
And so, she wanted to help out.
[Michael] Nelda just brought him right on in.
She welcomed him in with open arms.
[Donald] Nelda paid for his apartment,
She paid for his treatment and paid for his food,
and his vehicle, and his fuel.
Nelda spent oodles and gobs of money on Michael.
Money was going out faster than it was coming in.
[Michael] We interviewed so many people,
a lot of her co-workers.
There was lots of information,
and they all felt like the same thing.
They all knew Michael Kariakis 'cause she had talked about him.
They all had warned Nelda that he was taking advantage of her.
[Narrator] Nelda's co-workers tell investigators
that in the months that followed,
Michael's behavior grew increasingly bizarre.
[David] Michael was a strange character.
He had a fascination with violence.
Nelda said he told tall tales.
At one point, he was a manufacturer
of psychedelic drugs.
He was an ex-Army captain
who had gone through special training.
He was a Greek hitman.
He told all these tales to give people
an-an-an aggrandized view of, of who this guy was.
He was always acting like he was gonna do something to somebody
or hurt somebody or whatever.
[Michael] After a while, Nelda became very suspicious
of Michael Kariakis.
For someone that had cancer, he was in very good shape.
[Donald] Michael did have expensive taste.
He liked guns. He liked dressing well.
[David] Nelda began to realize this young guy
is driving me broke,
and she began to complain to Charles.
Eventually telling him, "I don't want Michael Kariakis
"around this house anymore."
[Narrator] But friends claim Charles wasn't willing
to turn his back on his son.
When Nelda stopped paying for Michael's apartment,
Charles became irate.
So, her and Charles had a major, major fuss,
and Charles actually left and went away for a while.
[Winnie] It was really impacting the relationship
between Nelda and Charles, and the next time I saw Nelda,
she was not the happy person she had been.
[Michael] Well, Charles comes back sometime later
and was trying to make amends to Nelda.
Seemed like things were going very well,
and Charles decided, "Let's go to Paducah
"for Christmas. Let's go up there and see all my family."
[Winnie] She was very excited to go,
and I think that she hoped
that they would leave this problem behind
and just enjoy themselves for a while
and recommit to each other and the marriage.
[Narrator] In light of these revelations,
Michael Kariakis is now investigators' primary suspect.
When they run a background check,
they discover that Michael is no stranger to the law.
[Michael] We actually was able to run Michael Kariakis' name
through NCIC, and lo and behold, there was a warrant
for his arrest, that he was involved in
the burglary theft of his mother's residence.
[Narrator] Investigators also discover
that Michael Kariakis drives a silver Nissan sedan,
the same vehicle seen fleeing the area of Nelda's murder.
The person in the car was a tall, slender,
dark-headed young man, and Michael was tall, about 6'1,
dark-headed and thin.
So, we had a warrant for his arrest.
Immediately, we started searching for him.
From our information, he'd been staying down
in Tampa area, and come to find out in the meantime,
they had arrested him, on our warrants,
in Tampa, Florida,
and they were holding him down there.
[Narrator] Investigators secure a warrant
to search Michael's residence.
When they arrive at his apartment,
they are surprised to find a woman living there.
[Donald] In his apartment, there's a girl named Holly.
She's tall, and she's thin,
and she's not really pleased that we're there.
She told us Michael was her husband.
I said, "That's interesting. I didn't know
Michael was married."
[Narrator] When investigators ask Holly for her whereabouts
on December 27th, she claims that she
and her husband were visiting family
in Clarksville, Tennessee, for the holidays.
They had receipts where they had been
with Michael Kariakis' name on it.
[Narrator] Investigators serve Holly with their warrant
and begin to search the home.
In the living room, they make
an intriguing discovery on the coffee table
[Donald] Lo and behold, I saw the cigarettes,
the same type of cigarettes, brand name cigarettes,
that matched the cigarette buts at the scene.
The cigarettes have a stamp on 'em,
indicates what state they're sold in,
and these cigarettes were sold in Kentucky.
That enhanced my suspicions really well.
That in itself is not prima facieevidence,
but it is circumstantial.
[Narrator] Investigators decide to bring Holly Kariakis
in for questioning.
I was thinking, "This is incredible.
"The puzzle is coming together."
[Narrator] Coming up.
The true nature
of Michael Kariakis's relationship to the Chumblers
will completely alter the course of the investigation.
He was basically obsessed with him.
It just kept getting weirder and weirder.
[music]
[Narrator] Less than a week after the fatal shooting
of Nelda Chumbler,
the primary suspects are Michael Kariakis,
the long-lost son of Nelda's husband, Charles,
and Michael's wife, Holly.
Kentucky authorities are investigating Holly's claims
that the couple was two hours away
in Clarksville, Tennessee, on the night of the murder.
[Donald] So, we called the Clarksville Motel,
and the clerk said, "That's weird.
"The guy paid for the room and left, didn't stay."
Well, at that time, it was a bombshell in my mind.
We got to be able to put them in this area, some way.
Because we didn't have any evidence
that they were there at this time.
So, we had our deputies go around to different hotels
trying to figure out if they'd stayed there.
And sure enough, we was able to find one hotel,
The Thrifty Inn.
The Thrifty Inn is not very far from the scene.
The girl at the motel said she remembered a guy
fitting that description coming in.
She said he was tall, about six-foot, dark hair,
and he had a moustache.
I asked her, "Was there anybody with Michael?"
And she said, "Yeah, there was a lady,
"and she looked to be in her early 20's,
"and she was tall and skinny."
So, that put Holly, in the car, with Michael.
[Narrator] Investigators decide it's finally time
to confront Michael, but he's less than cooperative
and denies any involvement in Nelda's murder.
When investigators process Michael's belongings,
they catch a break.
They've arrested him, and we asked to look at his property,
and I was looking through his billfold,
and lo and behold, I pulled out a business card
from a local gun shop there in Tampa,
and I said, "Surely, he's not this stupid
"to have this on him."
We made a phone call to the owner,
and sure enough, he remembered him right off the bat.
He confirmed that he had sold a custom-made rifle
to Mr. Kariakis.
It was a one-of-a-kind-built rifle.
Michael gave him seven hundred for it.
[Narrator] A ccording to the gun shop owner,
Michael had a specific use in mind for the weapon.
He said he was going to go deer hunting in Kentucky.
[Michael] We know that Michael bought a firearm,
we know he was going to Kentucky,
and he was going to kill him a deer.
Was that a two-legged deer?
[Narrator] Investigators decide to follow up
with Charles's family
to ask if they have ever met Michael Kariakis.
that's when they drop an unexpected bombshell
about Charles's relationship with Michael.
[Donald] I had a telephone conversation
with Bill Mathis,
who was Charles' son-in-law, and he told me
that he thought they had a romantic relationship.
I was stunned. I said, "Really?"
[Narrator] According to Charles's family,
Michael is not his son, but his lover.
I'd understood that Charles met Michael
when he was 16 years old.
Michael worked in tobacco farming
at Charles's home.
There's a big age difference between the two of 'em.
[Donna] I only met Michael about three times.
I knew, immediately, when I took a look at Michael
and the way he was acting and everything,
that it was probably a lover, you know. It had to be.
Both of them argued that they were just friends.
But I knew in my heart it wasn't. It was different.
Charles was basically obsessed with Michael.
[David] He's a young, physically attractive man
sucking up to an older man who feels the need
to care for him and to pay for his whims.
Michael hit Charles up for money constantly,
day and night.
[Donna] Charles, I think he would do anything Michael
told him to do. He was just that way.
Michael had that control over him.
Charles only had a few hundred dollars to his name
when he moved to Florida. He was broke.
[Bill] He came back to Kentucky,
and he said he was going to declare bankruptcy,
then marry Nelda. Up until that time,
I'd never really even heard of Nelda.
It was just, kind of, out of the blue.
I was like, "Wow."
[Donna] I think the whole family
thought he was turning over a new leaf.
Michael was out of the picture as far as we knew.
So, we thought maybe he was changing
and that he really wanted to, you know, be married to Nelda.
[Narrator] Investigators need more evidence
to prove the affair and to determine if Michael
acted on his own volition or if Charles
was involved in the plan.
[Michael] I was given some information
that I needed to look out back at Nelda and Charles's house
and look in the backyard for a very large dishpan.
Didn't really know what I was going to find.
I thought, "Well heck, you know, who knows?"
[Donald] So, we had to do the search warrant for the house
and we go in the backyard.
[Michael] So, I got back there, and sure enough,
I found this very large dishpan,
and I said, "Well, let's dig it up."
[Donald] And I turned the washtub over
and underneath the washtub, is freshly turned dirt.
I said, "That's unusual that you'd have
"freshly turned dirt this time of year, even in Florida"
And I dig down about a foot and a half
and I find a box.
In that box are photographs of Michael and Charles.
They are kissing and in romantic positions
and sex toys.
[Michael] We felt like this evidence kind of
concurred with evidence and the information
that we already had
about Michael and Charles's relationships.
The further we went, the more we believed
that they were in it together to murder Nelda,
and we had to have a motive behind it.
[Narrator] Investigators believe that Nelda's assets hold the key
to the motive.
We found out she had a life insurance policy
that doubled as an accidental policy.
She took out, at his insistence, a $35,000 life insurance policy
that would pay $70,000 to Charles
if she died accidentally.
I thought, "Wow. The motive's money."
[music]
[Narrator] One month into the murder investigation
of Nelda Chumbler, authorities have discovered
an illicit affair between her husband, Charles,
and Michael Kariakis, whom she believed
to be her son-in-law.
The discovery of a life insurance policy
has shaped the theory that Charles's marriage to Nelda
was simply a long con to profit from her death.
[Michael] They'd already just about broke Nelda financially.
We believed that they were in it together, to murder Nelda.
[Narrator] Based on family statements,
investigators believe Michael's wife, Holly,
was a pawn in Michael and Charles's plot.
[Donna] Holly was a front.
Michael was always good at having a front.
I wonder if Holly knew what she was getting into.
I've always wondered that.
Holly was just along for the ride,
and she was doing what her husband told her.
But investigators believe she was the getaway driver.
[Donald] Now, at this point, in my mind,
I've got enough evidence to tie Michael and Charles and Holly
all in this homicide conspiracy together.
We go to the Grand Jury, we get the indictments.
We had to extradite them back to Paducah.
[Man] Michael Kariakis is charged with murder.
The state says he hid in this shed
and fired a high-powered rifle shot
through the Florida school teacher
as she stood by this fence.
Charles Chumbler, her husband,
is charged with complicity to murder.
The prosecution says Chumbler led his wife
into Kariakis's gun sights.
Holly Kariakis, Michael's wife,
is charged with complicity to murder.
The state will try to prove that she came to Paducah
with her husband when Nelda Chumbler was killed.
What started out as a reported accidental shooting,
turned out to be this onion that you keep peeling
layers back and peeling layers back.
Supposedly they were lovers,
and it's just getting crazier and crazier.
The planning of it and just the backstory of it
was just unbelievable. It's what movies are made of.
[Winnie] I couldn't believe it. I was stunned.
All the things I thought I knew about Charles disappeared.
He became a narcissistic psychopath
who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
[Narrator] Less than a year after Nelda Chumbler's death,
on October 8th, 1991,
the defendants' joint trial gets underway.
Prosecutors say the plot to murder Nelda
was driven by Michael's greed coupled with Charles's lust.
There was an insatiable need for money for Michael,
for whatever Michael needed.
The car, the place to live, the lifestyle,
whatever it was, Michael was given it by Charles,
and no matter how he had to get it.
[Donna] I know Charles well enough to know
that if he's in love with somebody,
he'll do anything that they want him to do.
[Narrator] Prosecutors assert that after Charles
charmed Nelda, Michael entered their lives
under the guise of being Charles's long-lost,
cancer-stricken son.
Nelda dug deep in her own financial worth
to provide for Michael's cancer treatments.
To use somebody like that, based on a lie,
is unconscionable.
[Michael] He played upon her vulnerability,
and Michael was there to drain Nelda
with every penny she had.
But when the money run out, they got desperate.
And I think that started the spiral
of their plan,
to get Nelda's life insurance.
[Narrator] Under the pretense
of a family vacation to Kentucky,
prosecutors say Charles lured Nelda into an ambush.
Michael Kariakis bought this gun,
took his wife, Holly, on an overnight drive
from Tampa to the Chumbler farm,
and he hid in a shed not far from the main house.
[Donald] Charles has his four-year-old grandson with him.
Tells his parents that we're gonna stop,
and I'm gonna show the horses to Nelda.
They drive down the road just a little piece
to where the barn is and where the horses are at.
[David] Charles told Nelda to stay where she was,
that he and his grandson were gonna go ahead
and feed the horses themselves.
Michael fired two shots from the shed.
The first one missed.
And then Michael Kariakis shot and killed Nelda Chumbler.
Holly was in the car with Michael, trying to escape
as rescue squads were descending upon
Nelda in the snow. So, she was obviously on scene.
I'm certain from the word go they thought they were going to
get away with it.
[Donald] The gun was never recovered,
and I suspect that Michael probably threw it
in a river or the lake.
Lots of water between here and Florida.
[David] They were also able to take cigarette butts
left in the shed,
send them off to the FBI,
and confirm the identity of Michael Kariakis.
[Narrator] Taking the stand on his own behalf,
Charles denies being in a sexual relationship
with Michael.
Charles maintains that Nelda was killed
in a tragic hunting accident.
Charles made sure he looked like the innocent party.
[Narrator] When the prosecution calls two of Charles's
former students to testify, they provide information
that contradicts his deep love for his wife.
Charles goes to a couple of his students one day
and said, "I hate her. I wish she was dead.
"Could you kill her for me?"
And he said, "I'll give you ten percent
of her life insurance policy."
I really thought, "You've got to be kidding me."
[Donald] They thought he was pulling their leg,
and they didn't say anything to anybody about it.
They said they wished they had've now,
knowing that Nelda is gone.
[Narrator] Like Charles, Michael and Holly Kariakis
also take the stand in their defense.
[Jerry] All of the evidence points to
you having a high-powered rifle,
you bringing your spouse to Kentucky,
taking her to this area and setting up that homicide.
And so, I think the jury from McCracken County
saw through that.
[Narrator] On October 29, 1991, the jury returns their verdict.
[David] Michael Kariakis and Charles Chumbler
were both sentenced to 25 years to life
with no chance at parole.
Holly, I believe, got a slightly lesser sentence.
[Narrator] In 1995, the Kentucky Supreme Court
overturns the convictions
finding the prosecution's portrayal of Michael
and Charles's alleged sexual history overly prejudicial.
Rather than try all three defendants again,
prosecutors agree to an Alford plea deal
for reduced sentences
[Bill] Charles ended up serving maybe twelve years
and Holly about eight or ten years.
And Michael, I think, sixteen years.
Charles and Michael and Holly do not deserve
to breathe the same air that you and I breathe.
My wife, she says, "Why are you doing this?"
Because I don't want people to forget Nelda.
'Cause she's the victim here.
[Bill] I thought it was a bunch of crap.
When you can kill somebody
and not serve no more time than that
then justice wasn't done.
Nelda didn't get a reduced sentence.
[Winnie] She wanted to be happy again,
and she deserved to be happy again.
But that's not what happened.
She was denied her happiness for the rest of her life.
[music]