At that time in life, I never would have imagined that
something like this would happen.
It just wasn't a possibility in my world.
[Jeff speaking]
I've hunted all my life.
I know what it looks like when an animal's shot in the head.
It's a horrifying discovery.
[Tina] They tried to frame it like
a robbery so you wouldn't notice it.
[Jacob speaking]
Layers of dark secrets leaves this soccer mom's murder a mystery.
[Buddy] There's no evidence.
-We have nothing. -Somebody has to know something.
It's multiple stories, ever changing.
I thought everything she said was a lie.
-Why are you testifying today? -Because it needs to be said.
[theme music playing]
[theme music continues]
[theme music fades]
[creaking]
When we learned about an arrest in a 20-year-old murder of
a soccer mom at People, we were curious
to find out more.
And what we learned is that not only was a family left
shattered, but perhaps more surprising was how divided
they were over who was being held responsible.
[engine whizzing]
[Corin] In 1992, Sherri Panzer was a Navy air traffic controller
living in Bermuda with her two-year-old son, Jacob.
Bermuda is where I have a lot of my first memories.
We lived on base, it was just my mom and I.
She always had a smile on her face, she was always
laughing and dancing, there was always music in our house.
And I was definitely a mama's boy, I will say that,
a thousand percent.
[Tina] My sister Sherri and I were about 18 months apart,
and best friends.
The year I graduated, I joined the Navy.
The following year, Sherri joined the Navy.
[Tina, archive] This is the good old Panzer family tradition.
[Tina] Sherri and I had each other's back.
[archive] Kick it up higher!
We were kind of inseparable, the two of us.
Hit it, Tina!
Syke!
[Tina] She had a heart like people don't have.
[Nick] While stationed in Bermuda, Sherri meets 29-year-old fellow
Navy Petty Officer Greg Malarik.
They connect over both being single parents.
[Corin] Greg's son, Greg Jr., and Jacob
are just a few months apart in age.
And although Sherri and Greg are both in the military,
he didn't seem like your typical military man.
[Jacob] Greg played guitar. He was in a rock band.
He had a motorcycle, and I remember him picking me
up from daycare and taking me fishing.
I remember him teaching me to ride a bike for the first time.
So not only did my mom see, like, a guy that she could have
fun with, She also saw somebody that cared for her son.
She said, "Greg's the most wonderful man."
Sherri loved Greg.
And Sherri was very protective over little Greg.
And he became her son. And that was his mama.
[Jacob] Little Greg and I would go outside and play together.
And there's like a built-in best friend who is
there with you.
We always had each other's back, just like brothers.
And then when it became a reality,
we were pretty excited about it.
Two years after meeting in 1994, Greg and Sherri got
married at Sherri's family home in Augusta, Kansas.
[Jacob] My dad bought into the dream with my mom of having a big
family and, you know, the Brady Bunch.
And not long after, we moved to Cantonment, Florida, which is
on the outskirts of Pensacola, a pretty big military town.
And by 2000, it wasn't just little Greg and myself,
but there were five of us kids.
[Sherri, archive] Let me get a picture of the cake.
[Jacob] At that time, Greg and myself are 10.
[Sherri, archive] Blow out the candles.
[Jacob] And then you have Jamie, who's six, Jay who's four,
and then Tera would be two or three.
[Tera] At that time, I was very young
but I know that dad was always
trying to find ways to connect with us,
and with so many kids, the interests are very, very
different, but he really tried. -[Sherri, archive] I love you.
-And mom was super mom. -[Tina] Sherri was awesome.
She had meals prepared like a month in advance.
She had the grocery shopping down.
She had the schedule for who to take to soccer, at what time to
pick up soccer. She could juggle it all.
[Nick] Sherri's sister and brother-in-law,
Tina and Jeff, are also in the Navy, and on Friday,
September 21, 2001, they have plans to attend
the Navy's khaki ball.
[Jeff] Our two youngest were going to spend the night with
Sherri and Greg.
Tina and I dropped the kids off roughly around 6:30.
Sherri was not home.
She was picking the kids up from a soccer practice.
As we pulled up in the very back of the yard,
straight through the gate,
Greg was working on Sherri's van, because Sherri had taken
the Ford Festiva to pick the kids up,
so we just kind of waved, kissed the kids goodbye.
We head to the Khaki Ball.
We had a good time, and we get home about 10:30.
Fall asleep kind of quick.
[phone ringing]
11:06, Greg calls.
[phone ringing]
Asks if we've seen Sherri. Tina's like, "What do you mean?"
And he said that earlier that night, she left, and she hadn't
come home yet. Tina said, "Where'd she go?"
Greg said that she had to go shopping.
She was going for milk.
She'd never just left the house and not come back.
Tina said, "Hold on, I'll come over, and I'll stay
with the kids, and you can go look."
He says, "Oh, no, I'm gonna make some phone calls."
[phone ringing]
Jeff and Tina fall back asleep that night,
but then around 6:00 AM, Greg calls again,
and he sounds frantic.
[Tina] Greg says she didn't come home.
That is not a good sign.
[Jeff] I knew without a shadow of a doubt something's wrong.
I get up, I start putting clothes on, and Tina's on
the phone, and she's making phone calls.
[Tina] I don't know what's going on. She wouldn't have disappeared.
This doesn't happen with, you know, a 4.0 sailor.
This doesn't happen.
[Jeff] I was in a hurry to leave the house.
I was going on the assumption that she went to
the store to buy milk.
There's not too many grocery stores up in that area.
I had this mindset that she's OK, I just got to find out
where her van is.
If I find her van, I'm gonna find her.
So it's like 6:30 in the morning.
When I get in Cantonment, the first...
real store I come to is the Winn-Dixie, two miles
from our house.
There's a van that matches her van.
And so I pull in behind it. I walk up to the van.
I see blood through the window.
And I look over, and there's Sherri.
And I'm beating on the window, screaming her name,
"Sherri, Sherri!"
I'm trying to get the door open, and it's locked.
I ran around. The driver's door's unlocked.
And I reach in, and I'm shaking her.
And I touched her arm, and she was cold.
[phone ringing]
She's not moving. She's not breathing.
I've hunted all my life.
I saw the blood coming out of her mouth, no pulse.
You know what it looks like
when an animal's shot in the head.
[phone ringing]
[Tina] I get a call from EMS
and they say, "We are in the Winn-Dixie parking lot
with your husband."
I get Michael, my oldest son, and we drive to the Winn-Dixie
and as I pull up,
I see my husband just shaking his head crying, "No."
And he hugs me, and he apologizes,
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
My son, Michael, he's like, "Where's Aunt Sherri?"
I said, "She's in her car." He sees the ambulance.
He says, "Why aren't they helping her?"
I'm like, "Oh, Mijo...
Aunt Sherri's gone."
His body just rocked and rocked and rocked.
He cried so hard. That was his other mother.
How could this happen to her?
[Det. Nesmith] When I got to the crime scene, I saw a red van surrounded by
crime scene tape.
I walked over and was able to see through the driver's door.
A small stature, long hair, female, identified as
Sherri Malarik, had been pushed unnaturally into the floorboard
with her head and legs in a very weird form.
I walked around to where the passenger door was open.
I did see at least one gunshot wound in her head.
It was...
bad.
And because of the dried blood trails on her face and inside
the van, I knew this was not a fresh body.
I also noticed there was no blood on the pavement.
Now, because a head wound bleeds a lot, if Sherri was
shot on sight at the Winn-Dixie, blood would
have seeped out of the car onto the pavement.
So this is not the crime scene.
While still at the scene, Detective Nesmith asks Jeff
and Tina to walk him through what happened the night before.
[children laughing]
[Det. Nesmith] They said that they planned for a while that Sherri would have
a big sleepover for the kids, because they had this function
on the base that they had to go to.
And when Tina and Jeff got back to their house, they went to
bed and got a call.
And Greg had said that Sherri had went to the store,
and had not returned.
Now, Sherri's purse was not on her person or in the van.
Where's it at? Could have been a robbery.
But if you're robbing somebody, you don't know that person.
So why would you want to shove them into a floorboard?
So the suspect is probably somebody that knew the victim
and was concealing the body from anybody seeing it.
The investigators started asking me, "Does Sherri have
any enemies?" No.
Everybody loves her. Everybody loves Sherri.
[Det. Nesmith] I said, "Give me your opinions.
Do you think Greg could have done this?"
[Jeff] I was like, "No,
"I mean, no, he wouldn't do something like that.
"I don't think he was capable
of killing her."
[Tina] When Buddy Nesmith asked if Greg was capable of killing my sister,
I started having this internal struggle, because
Sherri confided in me something that she didn't want me to tell.
She's not here, do I still have to keep that confidence?
You know what, she's dead.
So I tell him everything Sherri told me.
Tina tells Detective Nesmith Sherri believed that
her husband was having an affair with Jennifer Spohn,
who was also in the Navy.
[Tina] She'd go to see Greg at work, and Jennifer was in there.
And they were a little bit closer than maybe
co-workers should be.
Tina felt very strongly something's amiss, so now
I want to talk to Greg.
[Nick] After speaking with Detective Nesmith, Tina is escorted to
the Malarik home by sheriff's deputies.
[Corin] Greg is then taken in for questioning, and Tina has to do
the unthinkable, and break the news to the children,
who still do not know that their mother and aunt
is not returning home.
[Jacob] I remember my Aunt Tina
saying, "If you could be anywhere, what would be
the best place to be?"
She continued on and said, "You know, heaven
"is the best place you can be, and that mom is
in heaven with Jesus."
I didn't really know what to think, what to say.
That was something I never would have imagined.
Then the tears start flowing. Everybody's crying.
Tera doesn't understand. She's three.
I wish I had more concrete memories.
It bothers me a lot that I don't.
I just knew my mom's there, and then, all of a sudden,
she's gone. -[Sherri, archive] Tera.
Hi, baby doll.
[Nick] Meanwhile, at the sheriff's office, Detective Nesmith sits
down with Greg to get his version of events from
the day before.
Greg tells me he was retired military,
but he worked at the base as a private contractor.
Greg said he leaves work at two something in the afternoon.
He's driving the van. The van is overheating.
He comes home, drives the van to the backyard.
He does not have power out there, and he runs a generator.
[generator rumbling]
And he's working on the van.
[Amy] Sherri picks up the boys from soccer.
He was in the back working on his car.
And Sherri came outside about 7:30, said she was going
to the store.
[Nick] But then Greg adds an interesting detail.
He says an unexpected guest stopped by the Malarik house
around 9:00 PM.
-[doorbell rings] -[knocking]
[Det. Nesmith] He brought it up that that night, his coworker,
Jennifer, brought his lawnmower back.
Tina told me that Greg took up an affair with Jennifer.
But I didn't bring it up.
Because in the interview, you keep a lot of stuff close
to the chest, play it out, see where it goes.
Greg never said that he was having an affair.
[Det. Nesmith] But in Greg's sheet that I wrote my notes on,
girlfriend shows up at house, circle, circle, because this
now is a problem. Why is she there?
And so that night, I sat down with Jennifer Spohn.
Jennifer was straightforward.
She said, Sherri, Greg, and Jennifer all work in
the same traffic control center.
[indistinct radio chatter]
We asked, "Could he have been involved?"
And she said, "There's just no way.
"Greg's a loving man. He loves his family.
He loves his kids."
The red flag comes when Jennifer goes one step beyond,
and says they have an affair,
and starts talking all about it.
Jennifer told me that they were both lonely.
They hit it off.
She admitted where and what hotel they would go to.
And she admitted, "You're going to find my fingerprints in
the van, because we had sex in there."
[Nick] Though Jennifer seemed pretty straightforward about
the affair, there's still one part of her story
that doesn't add up.
-[doorbell rings] -[knocking]
[Det. Nesmith] What are you doing over there that time of night just to
bring a lawnmower when a lawnmower can be brought
during the day?
At this point, there's no doubt she knows something.
Sherri's autopsy reveals the 34-year-old mother of five
has suffered from two fatal gunshot wounds to the head.
[Amy] There's one shell casing found from a .25 caliber firearm
in her clothing.
The second shell casing was never located.
With each passing day, Tina and Jeff grow more
suspicious of Greg, and they speak
with investigators.
[Tina] Sherri was confiding that Greg's cheating,
and he's talking about divorce.
And she doesn't want to put her kids through a divorce.
[Amy] Tina felt like Greg didn't want to be in the marriage anymore
and probably resented Sherri a little bit for being there.
And that really got the investigators rolling.
My next thought was, OK, I want to go talk to the kids.
I can still hear it in my little kid voice like
how I was nervous to speak. I was scared to speak.
[Amy] All of these kids remember her going out the back door.
No one remembers her coming back.
But the children remembered Greg coming back through
the house, and this was about eight o'clock.
[Jacob] So he walks in his bedroom, closes the door,
and then we hear the shower turn on in the master bathroom.
[Nick] For the next hour, the kids continue playing.
-[doorbell rings] -[knocking]
At 9:00 PM, they hear a knock on the door.
Greg Jr. answers it and sees Jennifer Spohn.
Greg Jr. and Jacob also tell authorities something that
piques their interest.
They tell them that just a few months before, their dad showed
them a small handgun that he kept in the shed.
[Nick] After interviewing the kids, investigators believe Sherri
may have been shot in the van, right in her own backyard with
a .25 caliber handgun.
[Det. Nesmith] We decided to do a search warrant, and we go out to
the shed, searching for any evidence of a .25.
And there's nothing there.
And then we go out to where the van could have been parked.
I think some blood did seep out of that car, had to, that much.
We noticed the dirt shuffle, but I couldn't say that what
I saw was where the blood was.
And we didn't have any forensic tests they have today
back then either.
[Nick] However, inside the Malarik home, investigators discover
a key piece of evidence tucked inside a bedroom drawer.
[Det. Nesmith] Nobody's more surprised than we are when we find Sherri's
purse with her credit cards and her checkbook.
I don't know a woman in the world that goes to a store
without a purse or a wallet. Now, that's just bottom line.
About two weeks after Sherri's murder, Detective Nesmith
brings Greg back in for questioning.
[Det. Nesmith] We asked him, "Why did you harm your wife?"
Wouldn't say anything. He just sat there.
And he lawyered up on us.
That's the last time I talked to him.
[Nick] Greg invokes his right to counsel, and Jennifer follows
suit soon after.
And with no hard evidence connecting Greg or Jennifer to
Sherri's murder, investigators are
at a standstill.
I fully believe that night, Sherri's got to be conned to
come out there for something.
It's all set up with the generator,
the car in the back.
She's shot twice with a gun we can't find, shoved down into
a passenger floorboard, transported up the street.
You add it all up, the husband cannot
be eliminated, but I can't make a case on it.
And so we couldn't move forward.
[somber music playing]
[Jacob] Losing my mom was a trauma for myself and for little Greg.
A little bit for Jamie, but for Jay and Tera,
the younger two, they were so young, they didn't actually
hurt and have the pain from it.
There would be investigators pop up kind of periodically
over the years.
And as time goes on, I started to believe that
Greg killed my mom.
I talked to my aunts and uncles.
I talked to my grandma and grandpa on
my biological dad's side.
And they wanted to adopt me for years
and tried to talk me into it.
But at the end of the day, I couldn't leave my siblings.
And I felt like it was my responsibility to protect
and care for them.
[news broadcast] Malarik's family is now offering $4,000 of their own
money, and that's in addition to a Crime Stopper reward of up
to $1,000 for information leading to
an arrest and conviction.
[Det. Nesmith] I worked this case from '01 to '06,
but we were a dead end.
There's no evidence.
Unless Jennifer talks, we have nothing.
But will she do it? Will she do it?
Somebody has to know something.
Somebody somewhere out there would not just help us,
but her children.
Somebody out there, and we're begging and pleading.
There was never, ever, ever, ever any doubt in my mind
who did it.
I knew it was Greg, but Greg had the kids.
And you just kind of dealt with it to keep the kids close.
But it didn't matter.
He pulled the children from everyone.
[Jacob] I remember in high school, that was kind of the first time
where I said nothing's gonna happen with this.
Like, I kind of gave up.
I expected nothing to come in the future.
[school bell ringing]
[Nick] By 2010, Jennifer and Greg's relationship had gone public.
She and her two kids even moved in with him.
But the living situation didn't last long.
My point of view was that Jennifer couldn't handle
Jamie and Jay.
She didn't like the way they talked.
She didn't like the way they acted.
I did think a couple of times that Jennifer wanted to
replace my mom.
And when she moved out, I thought, "Good."
Over the years, investigators would try to give
me hope for something, but it would always
fall through, and it was crushing.
I just had to come to a realization that maybe
he literally just got away with murder.
In 2014, the Navy's Criminal Investigation Service,
NCIS, takes over Sherri's case.
[Amy] The Navy is a big part of this community.
They did take an interest in this case because the victim
and Jennifer were Navy, and Greg was also employed by
Department of Defense, and worked on base.
[Tina] The NCIS investigator went through mountains of work
and handed it over to the State Attorney's Office.
[Amy] Ultimately, when it came down to it, many people have
been re-interviewed.
But we were in the exact same place, really,
that the investigators had been in 2001,
which is, Jennifer knows something.
We have to get information from Jennifer.
At that point, we did know that she was not local anymore.
She lived in Illinois.
The strategy was to arrest Greg first,
based on probable cause, so that she would know he'd been
arrested, and charged with second-degree murder.
The hope was that if we had him arrested, she would be more
inclined to talk out of the fear that Greg would tell
the investigators Jennifer knew something about the case.
Armed with circumstantial evidence, on March 6th, 2020,
19 years after Sherri Malarik was shot to death,
authorities arrest her husband Greg on probable cause for
her murder at his home in Cantonment, Florida.
You're afraid to get your hopes up because nothing's ever
happened, but he's been arrested.
The body of Sherri Malarik was found inside a van in 2001.
Now nearly 19 years later, an arrest for her murder has
finally been made.
[Tera] When dad was arrested for my mom's murder, I just fell on
the ground and was crying my eyeballs out.
I absolutely 100% didn't believe it.
And it was one of the most devastating points in my life.
[Jacob] I suspected Greg killed my mom.
But I didn't expect this to happen.
It caught me off guard.
I didn't realize that there was a plan.
[Amy] The day after Greg's arrest, investigators went to Illinois.
We were authorized to give Jennifer full immunity
for her cooperation.
And Jennifer finally did open up.
-[doorbell rings] -[knocking]
[creaking]
[Amy] She said that she stood outside and talked with him for
a few minutes. They shared a kiss.
She got back in her car and left.
When she first disclosed her story to investigators in
March of 2020, she didn't talk about the gun.
But then during her deposition, I said, "Is there anything else
"about this case that you haven't told me that
you think is really important?"
And that's when she told me that she got rid of the gun.
She said she had a bag with some items in it that
Greg had left in the car.
She was aware that the gun was in the bag.
He told her, "You need to get rid of this stuff."
And so she said she just dumped everything over
the side of a bridge.
And I guess, tried to forget all of this for a very, very
long time.
[Nick] With Jennifer's statement, Greg's charges are upgraded
from second to first-degree murder, and he's released on
bond set at $400,000.
The family is divided.
Jeff, Tina, Greg Jr., and Jacob are all happy to see that
Greg Sr. has been arrested.
However, the three youngest Malarik children believe in
their father's innocence.
[Tera] Knowing that Jennifer had full immunity made me very angry
because if what you are saying is true, then
you helped and you deserve to go away also.
But I thought everything she said was a lie.
I didn't believe for a minute my dad killed my mom.
[Amy] It's the state's theory that Greg got Sherri
to come outside with him.
Once she was outside, Greg got her to get into the van.
While she was in the passenger seat of the van
in the backyard,
he shot her twice in the head and took the van up
to Winn-Dixie.
Winn-Dixie is very close to the house.
It's a few miles down the road.
So he could take the van up and have Jennifer bring him
back and really be gone from the house 10 or 12 minutes.
In June 2022, Greg's trial begins, and Jennifer Spohn is
the prosecution's star witness.
However, the defense sees a way to take her testimony
and exploit it in their favor.
I didn't really believe Jennifer Spohn was telling
the truth at all.
She's there to say Greg Malarik killed his wife
when she supposedly is the innocent tagalong in
a masterful murder by Greg Malarik.
Jennifer is a mistress.
We believe she wanted Sherri's life.
So Jennifer kills Sherri.
And she brings over this lawnmower because she's
concerned someone may see her in the area.
And because of that, I said, "There's no way you can find
Greg guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."
[Corin] The trial lasts for five days.
And after four hours of jury deliberation, there were two
holdouts in the jury who believed that
Greg was innocent.
And to everyone's bewilderment, the judge declares a mistrial.
[Jeff] I couldn't believe it. I'm thinking, how or what?
I mean, are you guys even paying attention to
what we saw?
[Amy] The jury's hang up was Jennifer and her involvement
and her immunity.
It's a little disappointing, but it was better than
not guilty.
So we'll take the deadlock, and we'll do it again.
In October 2023, Greg's second trial begins.
2001.
When Amy did her opening statement, I can't answer for
the other jurors,
but for me, it did hit because Sherri was a mother, and I have
children of my own.
But again, you do have to have that open mind and take
everything that's presented to you into consideration.
Both Greg Jr. and Jacob are called as prosecution
witnesses, while Tera is a defense witness.
[Jacob] During the second trial, I feel like instead of Greg being on
trial, the rest of our family was on trial.
They wanted to take advantage of mine and Greg's testimony,
being children.
From a jury standpoint, after the testimony of
the children, we had to ask, "What was the credibility of it?"
Because over time, kids' memories change.
What actually happened, it's hard to say.
[Tera] Sometimes I felt like my dad's defense team was a little
aggressive with my brothers.
But my dad told me that he did not murder mom.
And I believed him.
They can't just say, "Oh, everything just
pointed at him."
I told my part of the truth and how my dad told me
he loved mom.
[Tera] But there's a divide in the family.
Nobody that was on the prosecution side would look
at me or speak to me.
Just like Greg's first trial, Jennifer Spohn is considered
the star witness.
We were zeroed in on Jennifer as a jury because they told us,
"You're gonna hear from her exactly what happened."
I sat there and I listened to everything she had to say.
[Terri] She showed absolutely no emotion on the stand.
She was robotic.
She didn't elaborate on anything.
She was very short with her answers.
And we felt she was scripted.
Ultimately, Jennifer, we just didn't find her as
a credible witness.
After five days of trial, it's again time for the jury
to deliberate.
[Tera] I just prayed on it and basically said to God,
"If he did this, then fine, help me through that.
"But if he didn't do this, please do not take
my dad away from me."
The jury got the case late afternoon,
and they were out a long time, almost eight hours.
[Madam Clerk] ...so say we all this 13th day of October 2023.
[Chris] I was shocked.
I look over to Greg, and the look on his face was
even more...shocked.
But the evidence has to be Greg, beyond
a reasonable doubt.
If you asked the jurors who found him not guilty,
they're gonna say there was just a lack of evidence.
[Tera] I felt like I could breathe.
I felt relieved that I wasn't going to see dad be
taken away like that.
But there's nothing to celebrate.
Mom is still not here, and we still don't know
what happened.
I feel like you're not innocent.
You were found not guilty. There's a difference.
I know what he did, and I believe that that's
what he did.
I think Jennifer could have done it.
Jennifer wanted mom's life
and thought she could get away with it.
I saw the evidence.
Sherri was in the passenger seat, and she is comfortable
who's ever in the driver's side.
And that is not Jennifer Spohn.
That's what the evidence says.
[Nick] While some family members hope Greg will confess one day,
Jacob is focused on healing and closing the rift
with his siblings.
We're gonna have to have
real conversation and real understanding of the damage
that was done for us to move forward.
[Nick] In the meantime, all of the Malarik children
acknowledge that Sherri loved nothing more than
being their mother.
[Sherri, archive] Tera, hi baby doll, I love you.
[Tera] Jacob told me about how we always came first.
Because of Jacob,
I know my mom a little better and that I'm loved by her.
[Jacob] There was love there. There was kindness there.
There was a parent that we knew was looking out for us,
and loved us and wanted things for us.
[Tina] Sherri was the most
giving person I've ever seen. She was amazing.
And I will see her again, and I can't wait.
♪♪
There was a large scale search for the student.
When she went missing I felt horrible that
I didn't stay with her.
On the one hand I hope that we don't find my daughter.
That means, you know, maybe she's alive.
For 26 years there was this question tattooed on the town.
What the hell happened to Kristin Smart?