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- A break-in in the middle of the night.
Stabbed multiple times.
- I can see blood everywhere.
It is a horrific crime scene.
- One of the scariest cases I've ever seen.
- Annie participated in pirate parties
or dungeon parties.
- So we're way past love triangle here.
This is like love trapezoid. - Love spider web.
- There was a lot of anger.
It started going, like, sideways real quick.
- They agreed to a sum of $10,000 to $50,000
to commit the murder.
Somebody left that home to commit the murder.
- Can you tell who's driving? - Nope.
- If I had known, I could have done something.
Maybe that woman would be alive.
♪♪
- Hello and welcome to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
Single mom Annie Hester worked hard
to support her daughter, Alice.
In her downtime, Annie liked fantasy,
role playing as a pirate,
but her 911 call was very real.
Annie had been savagely attacked.
The twisted trail of clues took investigators
down some unusual paths
before they uncovered a secret close to home.
Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Undoing.
♪♪
- It was June 2016, around 3:30 AM
and a car was roaring down a highway
next to the Columbia River.
Minutes before, the police detective
at the wheel, Aaron Turnage, was like most of us
in the middle of the night, dead asleep.
- And I got a phone call asking me to respond in.
It was an assault that had occurred
and that this was likely gonna turn into
a murder investigation.
- Detective Turnage lived in Washington State.
His job was across the river
in the Portland, Oregon suburb of Gresham.
And that was the scene of the crime.
- If I'm getting the call, that means I'm gonna be the one
leading the investigation.
I'm trying to think what I can do today
to assist me five, six, eight, ten years down the road
to make sure that we have a successful prosecution.
- That's the way the criminal justice system works today.
You're thinking about not only investigation but trial
and then eventual appeal.
- You have to start thinking about that on the front end
because if you don't, you'll never get there
on the back end.
- As it turned out, his thoughts that night
foretold the future.
And 30 minutes after he'd been startled awake,
Detective Turnage arrived at the crime scene,
a ground floor unit in the East Park apartments,
Paramedics had already taken the victim to the hospital,
a woman in her mid-30's.
Her name was Anastasia Hester, known as Annie.
When you get there, what do the first officers
who were on scene tell you?
- Uh, they told me that the front door was unlocked,
and when they went inside, they immediately saw
bloody shoe prints.
- Carefully, those officers sidestepped the shoe prints.
- And they could see Annie laying down on the floor
towards the rear of the apartment.
- When police arrive, Annie's still alive?
- Correct.
- So how to get Annie to a hospital
without contaminating that certain to be key evidence
near the front door?
Because those footprints say the killer left
through the front door. - Correct.
The determination was made that they're gonna take Annie
out of the rear sliding door of this apartment.
So the next set of responding officers
tore down a six foot wooden fence,
and they were able to extricate Annie out
and get her out to medical care.
- It was there, behind the apartment
that the detectives saw a back window to Annie's place.
- On the ground is a cinder block,
and it appeared that cinder block was used
to gain access to that elevated window.
- The window led to the bedroom of a child.
The detective went inside.
You see a child's bedroom, but no child.
- Correct.
The initial thought was a kidnapping or an abduction
that had occurred.
So there was immediate efforts to try to identify
who the child was
and then try to determine, uh, if the child was safe or not.
- Detective Turnage quickly made some calls.
The girl was Alice.
She was Annie's daughter and just four years old.
- That's when we were able to identify that Matthew Hester
was her father.
And we started looking to try to contact him
and find out if he had his daughter.
- Some good news. They found Matt.
He had Alice at his place in Portland.
This was like a custody sharing arrangement.
And that night was Matt's night to have Alice.
- That is correct.
- Once you realize that Alice is not in any danger, now what?
- So now we have to start taking a look at the scene.
- The apartment had only one bedroom,
the little girl's.
Annie, it turned out, had been found
on the living room floor next to a sofa bed,
where, by the looks of it, she had been sleeping
when she was attacked.
- It is a horrific and very--
obviously very violent crime scene.
- While you're examining the scene,
you get a call that Annie didn't survive.
- That's correct.
- Annie Hester had been murdered at only 34.
And steps from where Annie had been found on the floor,
the detectives saw a knife, a folding pocket knife.
And near the kitchen, two more knives, bigger knives.
It looked as if they had once resided in the butcher block
in Annie's kitchen.
I would guess that in a murder like that,
you might expect to find a murder weapon.
But not three of them. - Correct.
It's the only time I've seen it where killers
went into the kitchen and got two butcher knives
to finish the stabbing.
- It was an assault so savage that a fact the detective
would later learn still troubles him to this day.
What does it say to you when the murderer tries to
cut the victim's head off?
- The amount of passion and intensity in this crime
is very, very unique.
- The rage, the bloody shoe prints,
the knives, the cinder block.
So much evidence to consider. Using the cinder block
to take the air conditioner out and go in that way
suggests that Annie maybe didn't know her killer.
Or at least didn't let them in through the front door.
- I agree. Yes.
- That kind of fights the whole rage, passion angle.
I mean, somebody random, less likely to have
all this fury against Annie. - How so?
- A murder committed with that much passion,
that says personal.
But somebody who goes in through a window,
that suggests not personal.
- Yeah, it could be random.
You know, maybe they were invited on one day,
but not invited the second.
So the second day they came in through the window
to commit the act of violence.
- Before long, Detective Turnage left the scene
to hold a briefing with his team
at the Gresham Police Department.
That's when he heard the recording of the 911 call
that had led police to the apartment.
The call was not from a neighbor,
not from a family member.
It came from the victim herself.
A 911 call capturing the last words of Annie Hester.
- A desperate and dying Annie begs for help
and gives police a gut wrenching account of her attack.
Coming up...
- I don't think there are words to describe
the level of intensity in that 911 call.
- And the killer leaves a terrifying calling card.
Some sort of message? - Could have been.
That's what we were thinking.
- When Dateline: Secrets Uncovered continues.
♪
♪♪
Detective Aaron Turnage did not have to go far
from Annie Hester's apartment to gather with
his team of investigators.
The crime scene is only about 10 blocks from
the Gresham Police Department. - It's in the heart of Gresham.
It's close to schools, it's close to restaurants
and businesses.
Um, this is not a typical place where we see
violent crimes erupt in the city of Gresham.
- And it didn't take long for news of a murder
on uncommon ground to spread across
the Portland area.
- Police say the woman stabbed at the apartments
was in her 30's.
- I was just crying and howling and, you know,
just like an animal.
- Nicole Palazuelos considered Annie her best friend.
They worked together at a call center
where Annie trained Nicole.
You were a little scared of her at first.
[chuckles]
- Yeah, she was intimidating at first because
if you didn't do your job well, she would call you out on it.
I never met anybody who could do so many jobs at once
and do them all well.
- Annie had always had that take charge attitude,
as the big sister in her family.
Her parents divorced when she was just 7.
As she grew, Annie developed a reputation for reliability.
She worked at an after school program for children
before starting at the call center,
where she rose to supervisor.
In 2008, when she was 26, she married Matt Hester.
He worked as a salesman at a wireless store.
Matt loved video games.
Half sister Tanya and sister in law Diana
say Annie was focused on a more serious game.
- She had told my husband that he was winning the game of life
because he was the first to move into a house,
to buy a new car, to get married, to have a kid.
- Annie saw this as some kind of competition.
- Yeah. - She felt, being the oldest,
that those things should come to her first, naturally.
- And when you feel that way, that's when people settle.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
- Annie Hester was not the first woman in history to settle
and marry a man her family wasn't crazy about.
And at least for a while, it did work.
- She wanted to feel like she was staying
with everybody else.
- And three years into the marriage,
Annie finally was,
when Annie and Matt had a little girl.
Did having the baby live up to the expectation
of having the baby for Annie?
- She was ecstatic having Alice.
- Her world revolved around Alice.
- The same could not be said for her relationship
with her husband.
Less than a year after Alice was born,
Matt and Annie divorced, and Annie became a single mom.
- She'd always make sure to go and get their photos done
for Easter and Christmas.
They always had cute outfits and her hair done up and--
- Sounds like she was really devoted to her daughter.
- Oh, she was.
- Matt and Annie worked out a peaceful custody arrangement
with Alice.
And in addition to her 9 to 5 weekday job,
Annie started a side job as a face painter
with her best friend, Nicole.
- We were working together on the weekends
that she didn't have her daughter,
and she worked so hard,
and she really worked every opportunity that she could, um,
to make the extra money. She did such a great job.
- Along with Annie's life, that all ended
early one morning in June 2016.
It was now Detective Turnage's job to find out
who'd killed Annie and why.
In the first few hours of daylight,
officers from the scene were reporting back
to the police department with what they'd learned.
There were, as it turned out, plenty of potential witnesses.
- We found multiple neighbors saying essentially
the same thing.
About 11:00 PM they hear, uh, sounds of a woman screaming.
Somebody else hears a thud on the outside of the building,
directly below.
Another witness hears what sounds like a conversation
and moaning.
And that person actually turned up their bathroom fan
and turned on the music to drown out the sound.
- And four hours later... - At about 3:00 in the morning,
another set of witnesses are hearing a woman screaming,
uh, a door slam, a car leave.
- Okay, two things from that. One, nobody calls 911.
- Not one neighbor called 911.
- Secondly... So this attack took four hours?
- Yeah, a-about three and a half.
- So this isn't just a murder. This is torture.
- This is torture.
- And then Turnage finally heard who did call for help.
You may well find it wrenchingly hard to listen to.
Detective Turnage definitely did.
- I don't think there are words to describe, um,
the level of intensity in that 911 call.
- That's because the call was made by Annie at 2:59 AM.
It's a chilling six minute long cry for help
made shortly after her attacker
left those bloody shoe prints behind
on the way out.
When you hear that she doesn't know this person,
what's that say to you?
- I believe there's an element of surprise.
When the attack took place, I know that Annie is sleeping.
And if she's taken by surprise, i-it makes sense to me.
She can't identify who her attacker is.
- At Annie's autopsy, Turnage understood
why Annie was in such pain.
There were more than 60 stab wounds,
some as deep as eight inches.
And strangely, something was carved into her shoulder.
- It was a V, an X, and then another V.
And that's not a Roman numeral,
but that's what it looked like.
- Some sort of message, some sort of signature.
- Could have been. That's what we were thinking.
One of the things that haunts me about this case
is just the level of pain that Annie had to endure
for three and a half hours.
And still, Annie has the wherewithal
to fight for herself, call 911,
and give out the information to get law enforcement there.
- It was time for Detective Turnage
to start getting face to face
with those who might know who'd done this to Annie.
- Coming up...
- At this point we're investigating this homicide.
- A two-timing ex-husband is always a good place to start.
While Matt's current wife vouched for him.
- Any chance that, uh, Matthew could have gone anywhere
sometime during the night? - Oh, God.
Every time he moves, he wakes me up.
- When Dateline: Secrets Uncovered continues.
♪
♪♪
- Start close. Close to the victim.
That's in every homicide detective's
Bible of murder investigation.
And since Annie wasn't married,
Detective Turnage started with the next best thing.
Her former husband, Matt Hester.
- Yeah, go ahead and have a seat.
I'll be with you in a minute.
- Matt was 35, but as you can see,
he moved as if he were much older.
Thanks, he maintained,
to some undiagnosed medical problems
that had left him in nearly constant pain
and unable to work for a living.
When he comes in, how does he strike you?
- Matt struck me as an actor.
And he needed an Academy Award for the acting job that he did
when he showed up at the police department that day.
- And so I guess, um, obviously I told you at the house
that your ex wife is deceased. - But you didn't say...
- Didn't say how or anything.
We'll talk about that in a minute or two, um...
- Okay.
- If you think Matt seemed a little disinterested
in learning how the mother of his daughter had been killed,
you are not alone.
Minutes later, another detective told Matt
what had happened to Annie and about her 911 call.
- She said that she had been stabbed.
Officers responded down there.
Um, she had been injured.
She was transported to the hospital
and she was pronounced dead at the hospital.
And at this point, we're investigating this
as homicide.
Did your wife say any-- Ex-wife say anything about
having any problems with anyone?
- I don't talk about her personal life.
- Okay. - Then, as detectives do,
they started locking Matt into a story
about his history with Annie.
- When did you and Ann first meet?
- Uh, we first met in 1999 through a mutual friend.
- Not long after that meeting, there was a wedding.
Not between Matt and Annie. He married someone else.
That union lasted just a couple of years.
- Why did you guys get divorced? - I cheated on her.
- Okay. - So it was less than two years
after his first divorce that in 2008, Matt,
admittedly on the rebound, married Annie.
And then three years later, in 2011, after Alice was born,
this marriage, too, was dissolving.
- I ended up cheating on her. - Mm-hmm.
- I'm not very good at this relationship thing.
- "I'm not good at this relationship thing."
Is that kind of candor unusual in a police interview,
particularly when the person you're talking about
has now been murdered?
- It is, yeah.
- He was good at one thing.
By many accounts, Matt was a loving father to Alice.
- I love being a dad.
- And for about two years after the divorce,
Matt and Annie amicably shared custody of their daughter.
Then in 2014, Matt married for the third time,
to a woman named Angela.
She had children of her own.
It wasn't long before a custody and support battle
began over Alice.
- How are your feelings towards Ann?
[sighs]
- I'm mostly indifferent. I just--
I want to deal with her as little as possible.
- Feelings are one thing.
For the moment, police had more immediate questions.
- So what were you and Angela doing last night?
- Sleeping. - Okay.
Do you know what time you went to bed?
- Um, I usually get into bed around 10:00.
- Okay. And was Angela with you
or was she staying up, doing other things?
- She was with me in bed.
- They had four children under their roof.
There was Alice, who was there part time,
as well as three children from Angela's previous marriages.
Those kids were a handful, Matt said,
and he and Angela were worn out.
She also hadn't been feeling well.
- Have a seat right there.
- In another room just down the hall,
Angela was being questioned.
Like Matt, Angela told detectives
they were in bed by 10:00 PM,
although she said they were both awake.
Matt scrolling on his phone and Angela watching TV.
- I was on the verge of falling asleep
to some Criminal Minds. - When you guys are sleeping,
who gets the inside and who gets the outside?
- Matt's against the wall.
- Any chance that, uh, Matthew could have gone anywhere
s-sometime during the night? - Oh, God.
Every time he moves, he wakes me up,
so it's not a possibility. - Okay.
- And I sleep, like, literally right up against him
in his arms.
- If he would have gotten up out of bed, you would--
You would know it? - Most definitely.
- When the interviews were over, Angela and Matt both willingly
handed over their cell phones because police said
they wanted to download GPS and other information.
Matt's alibi is Angela, and Angela's alibi is Matt.
- Correct. - That's not much.
But it was the middle of the night,
so police wondered who else could alibi Angela and Matt
the night of the murder?
And it turned out there were plenty of people who could.
- Coming up...
- Yeah, our relationship is a little weird.
- Three's company. It's complicated.
- That's a thing in Portland? - It was in that house.
- Because that's kind of weird.
- It's not something you see every day.
- When Dateline: Secrets Uncovered continues.
♪
♪♪
Welcome back to Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
I'm Craig Melvin.
Annie Hester's murder was so vicious,
police thought it must have been personal.
When questioned, her ex husband, Matt,
told detectives he was in bed with his wife that night.
It was a simple alibi.
But as investigators soon discovered,
Matt's life was anything but simple.
Back to Josh Mankiewicz with The Undoing.
- In an ordinary household, a husband might offer
an alibi for a wife,
and a wife might offer an alibi for her husband.
And only children, unreliable witnesses,
for the most part, would be left.
But none of that was true in the rather unorthodox household
of Matt and Angela Hester.
So they had roommates and you spoke with the roommates?
- Yeah, we spoke to all the roommates there.
- All three roommates, to be exact.
It's like a sitcom, except it's not funny.
- Yeah, our relationship is a little weird.
- Roommate number one, Aaron McCraw.
It's a good idea to keep your scorecards handy
because Aaron was Angela's husband
before she married Matt.
Now he's her ex and the father of two of her children.
And Aaron was a tenant of his ex and her next.
That's a thing in Portland? - It was in that house.
- Because that's kind of weird.
- It's not something you see every day.
- Aaron told police he crashed at Matt and Angela's
most of the time,
for lack of a better way to put it,
when he didn't have a better offer.
Lucky for him that the night of the murder,
Aaron said he did have a better offer, that is.
- You were staying at your girlfriend's.
- I was... - Or were staying at home?
- I was not at home.
I was at my girlfriend's. Actually, I was --
- So Aaron is basically no help to you.
He wasn't there. - Correct.
- You might want to remember Aaron McCraw.
You'll be seeing his face again.
Roommate number two. What does he say?
- He was out the evening of the murder
and that he came home
and he saw Matt and Angela laying in their bed.
- At what time did he see Matt and Angela in bed together?
- He thought it was around midnight.
- And it was around 11:00 that the first witnesses said
they heard screams coming from Annie's apartment.
- Correct. About 11:00, 11:15.
- So if that roommate's telling the truth,
he alibis Matt and Angela, at least for
the beginning of that attack.
And presumably they weren't there at the beginning,
they weren't there at the middle or end.
- That's correct.
- And there was also a third possible alibi witness.
- I live with Matt and Angela.
- A third roommate. Her name, Karina Walters.
Karina had been Angela's best friend since high school.
After a divorce of her own, even with a decent job,
Portland's soaring rent prices had left Carina homeless.
Until Angela invited her to live in their garage.
So on the night of the murder, the family's only vehicle,
this silver Mazda, was parked just a few feet
from where Karina slept.
- You ever hear them coming and going?
- Yeah, uh, my-- like I said, I live in the garage.
And the garage door is really thin.
So if their car starts up, I don't know if you --
You haven't heard their car. Of course not.
- No. - Um, it makes this
really God awful rattling noise when it starts up.
- Okay.
- And if they were to go anywhere, it would make--
I'm pretty positive it would wake me up.
But they never go anywhere.
- Did Matt leave last night at all?
- No. - Did Angela leave at all?
- No. - What's more,
Karina told police she'd use the bathroom
between 3:00 and 4:00 AM and on the way there,
she had to pass by the bed in the living room
where Matt and Angela slept.
- They were asleep. Angela snores.
- If Angela or Matt were responsible for this,
and you knew it...
- I would turn them in in a heartbeat.
- Okay. You wouldn't protect them with any--
- Hell no. - Okay.
- In most police interviews, that would be that.
Except in this one, investigators kept going
and asked Karina one more question,
one informed by some digging police had already done.
- Are Matt and Angela into threesomes?
Groupies, Girl on girl, guy on guy, anything like that?
Or is it all pretty normal? - It's very normal with them.
- Most of us have our own definition of what normal is.
Annie had her own.
- I just know that the guy she's seeing
was in a relationship
and Ann was in a relationship with both of them.
The guy and the girl.
- So Ann was, uh, dating both the female and the male.
- Correct.
- The circle of those closest to Annie was widening.
And oh yes, there was one more thing that was mentioned.
Pirates.
- Coming up...
- Pirates love knives. - I've heard.
- And the suspect pool was about to explode.
- We learned that Annie participated in pirate parties
or dungeon parties.
- So we're way past love triangle here.
This is like love trapezoid.
This is like love rhombus. - Love spider web. Yes.
- And you gotta talk to all those people.
- Correct.
- When Dateline: Secrets Uncovered continues.
♪
♪♪
- While investigating the murder of Annie Hester,
Gresham, Oregon police detective Aaron Turnage
soon found himself in a plethora of polyamory.
And the more witnesses his team talked with,
the deeper police found themselves in the rabbit hole
that was Annie's personal life.
Because maybe the devil was in the details.
One of the things that happens in murder investigations
is that everybody's secrets get laid bare.
Did anything that came out about Annie shock you?
- No, I knew most of it already.
She shared plenty of details and information with me
that I didn't really need to know,
but it's like, okay, cool.
She felt like she could tell me pretty much anything,
and she told me a lot.
- Police soon learned Annie explored
the full polyamory experience.
Multiple relationships, multiple partners.
She wasn't shy about it or ashamed.
And while investigators did have to explore
some previously unheard of kinky fetishes,
the primary result of learning about Annie's private life
was that detectives had more and more leads to chase down.
So she was involved with a couple,
a man and a woman and some other people.
- Correct.
- And she was in that kink world.
- Correct.
- And she had an ex with whom she shared a child.
So we're way past love triangle here.
This is like love trapezoid. This is like love rhombus.
- Love spider web. Yes.
- And you gotta talk to all those people.
- Correct.
- The first people on the list, that polyamorous couple
with whom Annie had had a relationship.
They asked us not to show their faces.
They lived 90 minutes south of Portland
and were part of a group Annie belonged to and loved.
A group that took part in role play as pirates.
- Honestly, I was unaware that pirate things were a thing.
- Uh, wait a minute.
So they all got together and dressed up as pirates?
- They did. And Annie was a part of that.
You know, we learned that there are people
that live their lives as pirates,
so we had to explore that a little bit.
- And investigators did explore that,
keeping in mind how Annie had been stabbed to death
with three different knives.
Pirates love knives. - I've heard.
There's a subset of the pirate world
that deals with-- It's a kink or a sexual world.
So people will take knives and they will use them
during sex acts.
We learned that Annie participated in pirate parties
or dungeon parties.
And collectively, when we spoke to
all of those people,
it was pretty clear Annie was not into the knife play.
That became pretty relevant pretty quickly.
She had dabbled in it, but it wasn't her thing.
- What's more, detectives soon learned
that husband and wife Annie had been seeing
had broken up with her six weeks before the murder.
There had been tears, but no hard feelings.
That couple had an alibi for the night of the murder.
- They had an alibi.
They were quickly eliminated from suspicion in this case.
- Detectives were not just looking into
Annie's personal life.
They also had to consider where the crime occurred.
The killer had entered by scaling a fence,
then standing on a cinder block to remove an air conditioner,
then climbing into a window
in the back of Annie's apartment.
Just beyond that fence, there was a sidewalk,
a busy road,
and on the other side of the road,
a heavily traveled path called the Spring Water Trail.
How long before you guys are out walking the trail?
- Immediately.
It's one of our first searches that we do
with a lot of searchers, over several days.
- The detective wondered,
could this have been a random killing, a robbery?
After all, on that 911 call Annie made before she died,
she'd said a couple of times that she didn't know her killer.
- We had thought, like maybe a transient or...
She lived right off of the Spring Water Trail.
Lots of homeless.
- This is Karina Walters, Angela's best friend,
who lived in the garage at Matt and Angela's place,
who told police she would definitely have heard
the family's silver Mazda pull away
if it had been taken from the driveway
the night of the murder.
She says the random robber from the trail angle
was the prevailing theory over at their place.
- That was honestly what we thought.
The air conditioner had been removed.
Somebody came in, killed her,
took a bunch of stuff and left.
- So was that what had happened?
It was a theory the detective had to consider.
- This could have been a robbery or burglary gone bad.
Annie might have been collateral damage in a robbery.
- Okay, but a burglar doesn't stab you that many times
and carve mysterious letters into you.
- Yeah, not typically. I would agree.
Not typically.
Is it outside the realm of possibility?
No, it's not.
- Anything missing from the apartment?
- Uh, not that we could tell.
All the big stuff that you would go for, the jewelry,
the phones, the wallet, the purse,
all that stuff was still there.
So we were pretty quickly able to rule out the idea
of a botched burglary or botched robbery.
- No one deserves to die the way Annie did.
And no matter which trails or avenues detectives explored,
they found no evidence that any of the choices Annie made
in her personal life or anywhere else
had anything to do with her death.
Except maybe in one area.
Her choice of friends.
- Coming up... - I'm sure you've seen TV.
When we have situations like this, you know,
everybody points to the ex-husband did it.
- Yeah.
- Matt issues a challenge to detectives.
- When Dateline: Secrets uncovered continues.
♪
♪♪
- About 12 hours after police first interviewed
Annie Hester's ex husband, Matt, and his current wife, Angela,
the couple was back at the Gresham Police Department
for a late night round two.
Matt was still displaying difficulty walking
from those unexplained medical problems
he told police about.
Detective Turnage thought they represented
something other than illness.
- You're convinced that's for your benefit?
He's not actually in pain?
- I believe it's laying a foundation
that he's incapable of committing such a violent act
because he can barely move across our waiting room.
- Sure, Matt and Angela had two roommates
who'd alibi them and said they were home
during the night of Annie's murder.
That didn't quite do it.
To detectives, Matt was still a person
of the strongest possible interest.
I mean, obviously, we got to consider
all possibilities here. - Mm-hmm.
- And I'm sure you've seen TV, when we have
situations like this, you know,
everybody points to the ex-husband did it.
- I want to help you guys because-because the--
- A-and I wanna --
[clears throat] - Sorry.
The thing I'm worried about is my daughter.
- I hear you.
Matt, if you had anything to do with Ann's death,
I need to know about it right now.
- I did not.
I would never do anything that would endanger my child.
- Okay. And I'm glad to hear you say that,
because that tells me what kind of parent you are.
Is there any reason why I find your DNA
involved in that murder scene? - No, no.
- Detectives asked Matt to take off his shirt,
knowing that if he'd been involved
in such a violent stabbing,
his body would show some sign of it.
They found nothing.
Then they asked about those bloody shoe prints,
presumably left by the killer fleeing Annie's apartment.
Someone who wore a size 9 and a half or 10.
- Do you know what kind of shoes you had right here?
- These are boots. Yeah.
- What size? - Uh, eleven and a half wide.
- Okay. - That didn't fit either.
Nonetheless, Detective Turnage tried a tactic,
you may be familiar with, suggesting to Matt
that police had more than they really did
and trying to rattle him.
- I need to let you know that my investigation clearly shows
that you're responsible for Ann's death
and you're involved in it intimately.
There's-- - You would have charged me.
- No, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't have.
- If you thought I did, you would charge me.
- Nope, not necessarily. - I had nothing to do
with her death.
- He made the comment in the interview,
if you had enough on me, you would arrest me right now,
you know, which I thought was a very, very arrogant comment.
So that was a little bit of a red flag for me.
- And also, do innocent people say to you, historically,
well, if you had enough, you'd arrest me?
- Not at all. - They say, "You're crazy.
I had nothing to do with this. I couldn't kill anyone."
- There's strong denials,
"Absolutely have the wrong person."
They get mad.
I would expect anger and frustration.
T-Those are the signs of a truthful person.
That told me, as the investigator
and the detective,
I need to dig a little bit deeper
and look a little bit more into this conversation.
- Down the hall, detectives were also questioning
Matt's current wife, Angela.
She wasn't feeling well, she said,
but she was willing to answer questions about Annie's murder.
- I'm just going to keep my eyes shut, my head down.
- Okay. How did it make you feel
when you heard about her being killed?
- Shocked. - Mm-hmm.
- Um, non-believing.
Um, extremely sad because Alice had lost her mom.
- Then as detectives once again took Angela through
the timeline of Annie's murder, she volunteered something
that made her interrogators sit up straight.
- Did you guys sleep well? What happened?
Did you get through the night or--
- For the most part, we slept just fine
until my dog started whining.
- Guess what time Angela said the dogs woke her up.
Remember, neighbors heard screams
and Annie called 911 all about 3:00 AM.
- Do you remember looking at a clock or--?
- I half opened my eye to look at the clock slightly
and see that it was around 3:00. - Okay.
Did you actually end up having to get out of bed
to let them out or--? - Yeah.
I got up, walked downstairs, put their leashes on,
took them potty, came back upstairs,
put them in their kennels. - Mm-hmm.
- And then I went to go potty and end up--
I end up puking and sh---ing myself at the same time.
- Oh, that's horrible. I'm sorry.
- And t-that's-- I called Matt to help me
and he came and helped me.
We took a shower to help get the poop off
and rinse some of the sweat off of me
because apparently I was sweating.
- So now, according to Angela, they're both showering at,
coincidentally, the time the murder was committed.
That's not suspicious. - No, not at all.
And it wasn't suspicious when I spoke to Matt
and asked Matt about that.
And Matt said he woke up at 3:00 AM and heard her go out
and let the dogs out, but he never got out of bed.
Matt didn't remember it, says he never got out of bed.
Angela's saying she got out of bed
and Matt helped her take a shower.
So things just weren't adding up.
- The focus was narrowing.
Annie's polyamorous relationships
hadn't generated any murderous rage.
Her friends in the pirate community
had no intention of making her walk the plank.
And this didn't feel like a burglary or something random.
Well, thought Detective Turnage, now we're getting somewhere.
A week after Annie's murder, family and friends gathered
to say goodbye at this funeral home
in Gresham, Oregon.
And among the mourners... - We had 10-12 detectives
scattered throughout the property there.
- Detectives took this video
of Annie's 4 year old daughter Alice,
there with her stepmother Angela and father Matt,
the couple considered by police and by Annie's family
to be prime suspects.
It had to be strange to see Alice being taken care
of by people that you at least suspected of possibly
having some involvement in her murder.
- It was hard knowing that she was with somebody
that we didn't want her to be with.
And there was very little that we could do
at that point in time but just hope that she's safe.
- Inside the chapel, more detectives,
including one undercover officer
who sat right next to Matt and Angela
and who made a game changing observation.
- One of the things that the detective noticed
on the back of Angela's right hand,
she has a about a 1 1/2 inch cut on the, you know,
top side of the webbing between the thumb
and the index finger.
- Investigators who'd so far focused more on Matt
now had another direction.
Did seeing Angela with that cut on her hand
at the funeral
change the level of suspicion that she was under?
- Absolutely, it did.
- So then what would make Angela angry enough
to drive across town in the middle of the night
and torture Annie for hours before killing her?
And how would Angela and presumably Matt
benefit from Annie's death?
Well, therein lies a tale. - Coming up...
- Matt said he considered himself a professional parent.
He and Angela received benefits from their children.
- Was money behind the tug of war
over little Alice?
It sounds like Matt and his wife saw Alice
as almost like an ATM card.
- Yeah, a meal ticket.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
♪
♪♪
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
Detectives suspected Angela Hester
and her husband Matt were involved in the murder
of his ex wife Annie.
There were troubling inconsistencies
in their alibis.
And Angela had a suspicious wound on her hand.
Digging deeper, police were about to uncover
a secret scheme to take away what Annie loved most.
Back to Josh Mankiewicz with "The Undoing."
Police investigating the murder of Annie Hester
wondered if her ex husband Matt and his wife Angela
had anything to gain from Annie's death.
They found out that Matt and Annie
had an amicable divorce in 2012
and shared custody of their daughter Alice.
Matt paid about $200 a month in child support.
Two years later, when Matt met Angela
and they married, the good relationship continued.
Karina Walters lived with Matt and Angela.
- Like, they all had this great relationship
all together.
Like, we took vacations together.
- What changed? - I'm not 100%,
but, like, the only catalyst that I've been able
to put together is that Annie wanted her mom
to watch Alice more often, and Matt didn't want
to give up that time.
- That doesn't seem like a huge issue,
but it provoked a huge problem.
- Yeah.
So then there ended up being the custody word,
like, being thrown back and forth.
- As often happens,
a tug of war involving a child ended up in court.
- Was the custody battle nasty? - It got pretty nasty.
- It got bad.
- How bad?
Angela soon called Oregon's Department of Human Services
to report Annie for child neglect.
In response, Annie sent this email to a friend,
writing, and I'll paraphrase,
"I just cannot comprehend what I did to deserve
"this level of... in my life.
"I am so done dealing with this."
The state found no evidence of neglect.
Then Angela started taking a larger role
in the child exchanges after Matt suddenly claimed
to remember that Annie had abused him
during their marriage.
That seemed reasonable to you?
- No, it wasn't.
And really what it was, was they were trying to build
this case so that Matt could get Alice.
- Matt stopped paying child support,
and Annie, who friends said had initially sought
a resolution everyone could live with,
now dug in her heels.
In an email, Annie called Matt antagonistic,
uncooperative, and more.
As detectives dug deeper into the case file,
they discovered one possible reason Matt and Angela
seemed desperate to gain custody of Alice,
and it was this.
Neither Matt nor Angela had a job.
- Matt said he considered himself
a professional parent.
He and Angela receive benefits from their children,
their children being diagnosed with various medical conditions
which get state benefits or payouts.
So they reap those benefits to the sum
of approximately $2,000 a month total.
And that is their payment for being professional parents.
And if Matt and Angela saw children
as a means of earning money,
what would gaining custody of Alice mean for them?
Well, detectives soon found out
the couple seemed to have plans for Alice, too.
A court ordered custody evaluation found
that three year old Alice was having some trouble
adjusting to going back and forth
between two households.
That's common for children of divorce.
Matt and Angela both said they believed
Alice's behavioral problems could be related
to bipolar disorder.
Annie's lawyers suggested in court filings
it was all part of a scheme.
More children with disabilities
equaled more money from the state.
It sounds like Matt and his wife
saw Alice less as his daughter
and more as-- almost like an ATM card.
- Yeah, a meal ticket.
I mean, that was the word that was thrown around
at the time.
- In the end, a judge had no doubts about who
was the better parent.
Six months before her murder,
Annie was awarded full custody of Alice.
Matt got something, too.
A bill.
$29,000 in court and lawyers' fees
and about $13,000 in back child support.
The total?
A little more than $42 grand.
Did Annie ever expect to see any of that money?
- Not really. Because he didn't work.
- And if things could get worse for Matt,
they soon did.
In Oregon, one of the penalties for not paying child support
is losing your driver's license.
Then, a month before Annie's murder,
a warrant was issued for Matt's arrest.
What was the reaction to that
in the house you were living in?
- A lot of banging and a lot of screaming.
And Angela was crying about how the effing courts
didn't know what they were effing talking about.
And how are we going to pay this?
What I thought was weird was Matt's reaction,
because there was none.
There was nothing. He wasn't even--
like, he wasn't even paying attention.
- Really?
Angela was furious. He was like...
"Whatever." - Yeah, that bothered me.
This, to me, was a--
was a dad who gave up, who didn't care anymore.
- Well, if Matt didn't care,
Angela seemed to care more than enough
for both of them.
In fact, the day of the court judgment,
Angela made a remark Karina won't forget.
At one point, Angela says, "If I killed her,
"nobody would even miss her."
- Yeah.
And I was like, "Okay, you're mad, you're angry.
"I get it." - It's inflammatory.
It's a stupid thing to say, but...
it's not exactly somebody plotting a crime.
- No.
I just thought she was mad.
- Just blowing off steam.
No reason for Karina to call police
or mention it to Annie...
Was there?
- Video cameras essentially captured that car
all the way to the driveway of Annie's apartment.
- A killer's car caught on camera.
- No question, that's Matt and Angela's SUV?
- No question.
Somebody from that house left that home
to commit the murder
and then returned to that home after the murder.
- Can you tell who's driving?
- Nope.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
♪
♪♪
- Gresham Police Detective Aaron Turnage and his team
had solid suspension about Matt
and Angela Hester's possible roles
in the murder of Annie Hester.
They also had no solid evidence.
That was about to change,
starting with a search for security video that night
around their home, just before 11:00 PM.
Oh...
Look at that.
- Their neighbor had a video camera
that recorded the street in front of their house.
That camera captured a light colored
or silver SUV, uh,
coming out of the area of Matt and Angela's driveway.
- There it was.
- No question, that's Matt and Angela's SUV?
- There's no question. - Can you tell who's driving?
- We can't tell who's driving. Nope.
- So this isn't like TV, where you can blow it up
and see exactly who it is.
- Enhance, enhance, enhance. Zoom.
No, it's not like television.
- Still, for investigators, this was astounding,
because that silver Mazda SUV
had a cameo on each of nine more cameras
on its way across Portland to the suburb of Gresham.
- Video cameras essentially captured that car
all the way to the driveway of Annie's apartment.
- The trip took 26 minutes,
putting the silver Mazda
at Annie's at 11:23 PM, right around the time
neighbors reported hearing screams.
Then about four hours later, about 3:00 AM,
the time of Annie's 911 call,
reporting her attacker had just left...
Do you see that silver Mazda
returning to Matt and Angela's house?
- We do.
We were able to follow it essentially right back
to the very first camera that we started with
at the neighbor's house.
The driver, as you can see, turned off the headlights
before stopping, apparently trying to
sneak the Mazda back into its driveway.
- Well, there go Matt and Angela's alibis.
- Indeed.
- What are you thinking when you're looking at that video?
- I think that I don't know who the killer is,
but somebody from that house left that home
to commit the murder and then returned
to that home after the murder.
- So then what about that alibi given by Angela's best friend,
Karina, who said from her bed in the garage,
she was certain she would have heard a vehicle start up
and drive away.
- I think that when they pulled out,
they didn't start the car.
- How'd you miss it? How did you not hear it?
- I don't know.
How could I have not known?
If I had known, I could have done something.
If I had even remotely thought
I could have done something...
- If you had noticed something,
it would have been too late.
I don't think you could have saved Annie's life.
- If I had taken those threats seriously,
maybe I could have.
- Detective Turnage, as you might guess,
has a slightly more cynical explanation.
I think she was lying to protect her friend.
- You don't think she could just be wrong.
- I don't think she was wrong.
- Karina's statement of "The car is loud.
"I would have heard it leave, and it never left."
I think that's a blatant lie.
- We may never know the truth.
But with that damning security camera footage in hand,
detectives next started combing through
Matt and Angela's cell phones,
which the couple had voluntarily surrendered.
There they found another clue,
this one about the bloody shoe prints
found leading from Annie's apartment.
- And we were able to take a look at some of the pictures
in both of their phones.
And we saw that on November 8,
Matt sent Angela a Payless Shoes coupon
to save money off of a purchase.
About an hour later, Angela sent Matt a picture
taken at a shoe store based on the background.
And there were two boots in that picture.
Well, we showed the picture to a manager
at Payless shoes, and the manager said,
"Yes, those are Airwalk Myras."
So we know, based on our investigation,
that is the tread pattern that we're looking for.
- Then the manager told detectives something
they hadn't expected.
- And the manager said, "That picture was taken
"at our Clackamas, Oregon location."
And the reason we know that is because
that's the only store in our district
that didn't have the carpet replaced.
And that's the old carpet you see in that picture.
- That Payless store was about 10 minutes
from Matt and Angela's apartment.
- And the detectives were actually able
to walk over and find the exact tile square
where this photograph was taken.
- Detectives pulled records showing that on that day,
November 8, seven months before Annie's murder,
only one pair of Airwalk Myras was sold.
They were purchased with a credit card.
- The credit card holder was Angela McCraw-Hester.
So our investigation shows that Angela McCraw-Hester
purchased a pair of nine and a--
size nine and a half Airwalk Myras.
That is the same shoe design that was stamped
at our crime scene in blood.
- That's pretty good police work.
- It's solid, it seems.
- Solid gold, that is, especially if you're looking
to get a judge to issue an arrest warrant.
- Investigators have tough questions for Angela.
But first, she has a few of her own.
- Why am I being arrested? You stupid (BLEEP)!
- But what about Matt?
- The murder victim is his ex. - Correct.
- He's on the hook for 40-something large.
He's just the innocent bystander?
- Right. - Or he didn't know anything?
You buy that? - Not at all.
At this point, I know he had something to do with it.
I can't prove it.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Detectives had powerful new evidence
tying someone in Matt and Angela's household
to that silver Mazda caught on camera
driving to Annie's apartment on the night of the murder.
And now it looked as if Angela Hester
had been wearing the boots that had made
those size nine and a half bloody shoe prints.
The question was whether anyone had helped her.
It sounds as if you can pretty definitively tie
Angela to Annie's murder at that point.
- Absolutely. - But not Matt?
- We don't have anything on Matt at that point.
- The murder victim is his ex. - Correct.
- He's on the hook for 40-something large.
He's just the innocent bystander?
- Right. - Or he didn't know anything?
You buy that? - Not at all.
- At this point, I know he had something to do with it.
I can't prove it.
- So investigators kept looking,
and the calendar kept flipping.
- Hello, today is September 5, 2016,
and this is my weekly writing video log
of what I've been up to...
- Matt had begun posting updates
about his life on YouTube.
And what he had been up to
was exactly what detectives wanted to know.
Still six months, a year, no arrest.
Annie's daughter Alice celebrated her fifth birthday
in the care of Matt and Angela,
the prime suspects in her mother's murder.
- I was very fearful for Alice.
I was also fearful for my own family.
I was fearful for myself.
I started walking around with pepper spray in my purse,
and a stun gun, and a Kobotan,
because I didn't feel safe,
and I definitely didn't feel like my niece was safe.
- It's hard to wait, and not know,
and kind of be in that limbo state.
- That limbo went on because detectives
were waiting on DNA results.
Nothing had matched Matt or Angela
until a lab analyst told police about an advance
in forensic technology that made it possible
to generate a DNA profile
with a smaller sample of material.
Bingo.
It was in October of 2017 that Detective Turnage
was finally ready to make his move.
By that time, Matt and Angela had moved their family,
including young Alice,
650 miles from the Portland area
to a new home, here in Pocatello, Idaho.
First, though,
investigators did some surveillance,
and they noticed the Rocky Mountain air
must have had some magical healing powers
for Matt Hester.
- They're going to Costco.
Matt is slinging cases of water and soda
all over the place without any kind of ailments or issues.
- In fact, the man who wanted police to believe
he could barely walk was caught on camera
doing chores like mowing his lawn.
And then, on October 7th, law enforcement moved in.
Angela Hester was arrested barefoot and in her pajamas.
She was charged with Annie's murder,
and she did not go quietly.
- In the car. - No!
- In the car.
I have kids that are gonna be coming home.
Tell me why you're arresting me.
- Get in the car.
- Why am I being arrested? You stupid (BLEEP)!
I have kids. [sobbing]
- Then at the police station, during questioning,
Detective Turnage observed a telling clue.
Remember at Annie's funeral, an undercover detective
saw a large cut on the back of Angela's right hand.
- The more we spoke, the more she became focused
on what is now a scar on the back of her hand.
She is subconsciously massaging that scar
as we're having this conversation.
And that non verbal was a telltale sign
as to we were talking to the right person.
- By now, detectives knew that wasn't true.
Using that new testing method, they'd already matched DNA
from Angela to blood left on the knife block
in Annie Hester's kitchen
and to blood stains in the silver Mazda.
Still, Angela hadn't seemed to understand
that DNA had been her undoing.
- We provided Angela some water
during this interview.
At the end of the interview, Angela took the water cup
and a tissue that she had, and she held the cup by the rim.
She used the tissue to wipe what would essentially be
her DNA off, and then used the tissue
to hold the cup as she threw it down
into the garbage can.
- She's already given you her DNA at that point, right?
- Correct. But she's had 18 months,
or 16, 18 months of wiping her DNA
and cleaning up her trails.
And the switch just didn't flip inside her mind.
And she wiped her DNA like she'd been doing forever.
- Not often that you see a murder suspect
trying to dispose of evidence right in front of you
in the interview room.
- It's not often.
- Police had suspected Matt and Angela of murder.
Now they had a case against Angela.
Oh, and speaking of Matt,
he was at the police station, too.
Shuffling around, as usual, with great effort.
It seems fair to say that Matt Hester
had no idea what he was in for.
The detectives pulled out photos of Annie's autopsy.
Using knives to make those numerals felt,
to police, like an attempt by the killer or killers
to focus investigators on Annie's friends
in the pirate community.
If that's what it was, it didn't work.
And before long,
Matt Hester had an epiphany about Angela.
From there, Matt folded faster
than the overnight crew at the Gap,
admitting that on the evening of the murder,
he was sleeping when sometime around 3:00 AM
Angela woke him up.
Wait a minute.
He's washing blood out of her hair.
Blood's pooling in the bottom of the shower,
but at no time do the words,
"Honey, what happened" cross his lips.
- That is correct, if-- according to his story.
That day, the day after the murder,
Matt admitted cleaning blood stains
from the silver Mazda and lying to police
about all of it.
He continued to deny any part
in the planning of the murder,
until that story changed, too.
And the name Matt mentioned, well,
it was one that had crossed his wife's lips before.
Something about, "In good times and bad."
- Had Angela been shopping for a hitman?
- Matt threw Angela under the bus
on those conversations, and said she's the one
that did all the talking.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
♪
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Police had hard evidence tying Angela Hester
to the murder of her husband's previous wife, Annie.
But what about Matt Hester?
He insisted he did not kill his ex.
But as police turned up the heat,
Matt let a secret slip.
He now said Angela tried to hire a hitman
and it was someone she knew very well.
Back to Josh Mankiewicz with "The Undoing."
- Detective Aaron Turnage had just about had it
with Matt Hester's evasive answers to questions
about who might have helped his current wife, Angela,
murder his ex wife, Annie.
Then, about 90 minutes into the interrogation,
Matt dropped this.
Aaron McCraw. Remember him?
Angela's ex husband,
the father of two of her children,
and an occasional roommate at Matt and Angela's place,
someone police had already asked
about his whereabouts on the night of the murder.
It made sense then.
Now, police weren't sure.
According to Matt, what was the reasoning
behind hiring Aaron McCraw to do the murder?
Is he a killer? - He's not a killer,
uh, you know, according to Matt.
But he was somebody they knew and trusted
and would agree to do it.
Matt told police the discussions with Aaron
happened months before the murder,
in the thick of the child custody fight
over Alice.
He said he was able to recall some
of what they'd talked about.
Ultimately, Matt said the plan fell apart
because, given their financial situation,
he and Angela didn't actually have the cash
to hire a killer.
And according to Matt, that's the only reason
the plan failed.
Not that Aaron said,
"I won't have anything to do with that."
- Matt threw Angela under the bus
on those conversations,
and says she's the one that did all the talking.
- The thing was, nobody really seemed to know
if Angela committed the murder on her own.
And that gave the detective an idea.
With Aaron McCraw and his fiance
on their way to Idaho at that very moment
to pick up the kids he shared with Angela,
the detective asked Matt to get on the phone
and get Aaron to talk.
Matt agreed, and minutes later.
- After we hung up, I was going,
that's a really weird conversation.
I bet he's still in police custody.
- This is Emily, now Aaron McCraw's wife.
And Aaron McCraw.
What's it been like to be caught in the middle of this?
- It's been very much like being caught in a tornado.
- Aaron?
- I'm just trying not to have a PTSD moment
at the moment.
- You didn't have PTSD before all this?
- No.
I had panic attacks. I...
- That's right.
Aaron McCraw says that after that call,
police brought him in for an interrogation
and a polygraph,
and that's what gave him PTSD,
for which he says he's been diagnosed
and takes medication.
- I don't remember any of the-the interview
or anything like that in Pocatello.
Like, my brain has completely blocked it out.
- You didn't get the PTSD in the military,
and you didn't get it from some violent event
in your own life?
[coughing] - No.
- You got it from being asked questions
about that murder, just like I'm asking you now.
- Mm-hmm. - The difference is,
I'm not threatening to arrest you afterwards.
- Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm.
- You don't remember the call where Matt says to you,
"Remember that time I tried to get you to kill Anastasia?"
- No.
- But you remember that that didn't happen.
- Yeah.
- You never had any conversation with Matt
about killing anybody?
- No. - Okay, that's--
I just want to be clear.
That's not something that you don't remember.
You remember that that didn't happen.
- Mm-hmm.
- Aaron, hypothetically, if Matt ever had asked you
to kill Anastasia, Annie, what would you have said?
- Hell, no. End of story.
Walked away. - Why would he make that up?
Why would he drag you into this?
- The only thing I can think of
is to keep the kids from me.
- Through this whole process, they've never wanted Aaron
to have custody of the kids.
- So you think this whole thing about you being
a proposed hitman is just made up from them?
- Yes.
- Detective Turnage does not buy Aaron's denials.
- I do believe there were conversations
between Matt, and Angela, and Aaron McCraw
about the murder.
- Well, depending on when and how you ask him,
Aaron either says that didn't happen,
or he says if it did happen, I don't remember it.
And he says he has PTSD
from you asking him questions about it.
Do you believe any of that? - No.
- You think his PTSD is an act?
- I do think it's an act to get away from answering
the tough questions.
- Police admit there is no evidence, none,
other than the claims made by Matt Hester
that Aaron McCraw talked about hiring on
as a hitman to kill Annie.
Why do you think they would just take Matt's word?
- I have no idea. - They did believe Matt.
In fact, they think you're lying now.
Nothing you can do about that, I guess.
- No. - No.
- A lot of questions, not as many answers.
And so both Aaron McCraw
and Matt Hester walked out of the police station
as free men.
So, the end?
Not by a long shot.
- You know what they say. Follow the money.
- She said that she'd received a call from Matt Hester,
and Matt Hester wanted to know how he could get
a payout of the $100,000 life insurance policy
that Annie had,
that he believed he was the beneficiary of.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
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- Angela Hester was under arrest in Idaho.
And then investigators served a search warrant
and collected from her any evidence
they needed for their case.
Before long, Angela was on her way back to Oregon
in handcuffs, on a charge that carried
the death penalty.
- It was one of the most brutal crimes
that I've ever participated in,
in the investigation and prosecution.
- Prosecutor David Hannah.
- It was a home invasion,
a break-in in the middle of the night,
someone startled from their sleep,
stabbed multiple times.
It's one of the scariest cases I've ever seen.
And not just murder, like torture.
- That's how we charge it. Absolutely.
The amount of violence, uh, that Annie had to endure
is really unspeakable.
- Angela was facing a lethal injection,
and Matt?
Well, he wasn't facing much of a life change at all.
In fact, even though he'd admitted
to participating in discussions
related to Annie's murder, cleaning up blood afterward,
and then lying to police,
Matt faced only a resisting arrest charge,
which was later dismissed.
And he returned to the house
he'd shared with Angela in Pocatello.
The place was mostly empty.
All four kids dumped into foster care,
including little Alice.
Only their very committed roommate,
Angela's best friend, Karina, was still there.
What's going on with him? - Absolutely nothing.
- He's still sitting in his recliner
playing video games. - No, he sat on his bed,
played video games the whole time
while I worked, and worked overtime.
I mean, look, if you think he's involved,
then why are you letting him live with you?
- Because I had my computer on
and I was hoping he would say something so he'd go.
And turned out to be all he did was sit in his room.
- Finally, said Karina, she kicked him out.
Matt went to live with a friend in Washington state.
As for police in Gresham, they kept working,
trying to find evidence tying Matt to Annie's murder.
And now would seem a good time to tell you,
they did find this.
A week after the murder,
Detective Turnage received a phone call.
It was from a woman who worked at a life insurance company.
- She said that she'd received a call from Matt Hester.
And Matt Hester wanted to know how he could get a payout
of the $100,000 life insurance policy
that Annie had,
that he believed he was the beneficiary of.
- 100k.
Okay, minus the money Matt owed in back child support
and legal fees.
I'll do the math for you.
Matt apparently thought he'd come away
with a clean slate, and more than $50,000.
That's a lot of money if you're in his shoes.
A piece of knowledge that somehow eluded Matt
was that Annie actually had two life insurance policies.
One from work, another personal.
Total value of both policies?
I believe $125,000.
- The surprise for Matt, he was entitled to neither.
Who was the beneficiary?
- Well, when the policy was originally initiated,
it was Matt.
They were married at the time,
but after they got divorced,
Annie went in and had it changed.
The main one is Annie's mom, beneficiary.
The work one of $25,000 was in the daughter's name.
- And the woman from the insurance company
told you that Matt clearly had not known
that he was no longer the beneficiary.
- Correct.
- To a suspicious guy like Detective Turnage,
the idea that Matt thought Annie's death
might get him out of debt felt significant.
And together with all the other evidence,
what it felt like was motive.
And so, in June 2019,
a full three years after Annie's murder,
investigators finally made their move
and took Matt Hester into custody.
- I have no idea what's going on yet, so...
- If that was true, it might have meant
only that Matt didn't yet know the specific charge
he'd be facing.
- You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder
and solicitation to commit murder,
the murder of Anastasia Hester.
That is why we're here talking to you.
Signature on that line, please.
If you choose to waive your rights.
- No, I would like a lawyer.
- We charged Matt for solicitation
based on his own admissions that he solicited
Aaron McCraw to kill Annie.
We had corroborative evidence to that confession
based on his behavior before the homicide,
with his motive, and after the murder,
based on him trying to collect
on what he thought was the beneficiary
of the life insurance policy, as well as the fact
that we knew physical evidence
was destroyed, and him admitting to it
by cleaning up Angela after the murder.
- All right, Matt. Thank you so much.
It was nice seeing you again.
- Matt and Angela Hester would soon be under one roof again,
not at their home, at a Portland area slammer.
So now the question was, who'd turn on who?
You already know how it goes.
First squeal gets the deal.
Matt gets locked up, and Angela's locked up.
This is the time when one of them
rolls on the other, right? - Correct.
- Who, if anyone, talks first?
- Love's a wonderful thing. - It's a tight bond.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
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- There's an old saying in criminal law.
Whoever gets to the courthouse first wins.
Meaning the first one to spill can cut a deal
in exchange for cooperation.
And maybe less time in the joint.
So Matt gets locked up, and Angela's locked up.
This is the time when one of them
rolls on the other, right?
- Correct.
- Matt had pleaded not guilty to charges
of conspiracy to murder Annie,
as well as to solicitation in connection with
what prosecutors said was a plot to hire a hitman,
and to hindering prosecution.
Angela had pleaded not guilty to charges
of aggravated murder.
She faced the death penalty.
- We believed that this was a very strong case
that we felt very comfortable taking to trial.
- The big development came from Oregon's state capitol.
Before Angela could be tried,
state legislators in 2019 narrowed the crimes
eligible for the death penalty.
- When the legislature changed the murder statute
prior to our trial, our charges did not qualify
as aggravated murder.
When the law changed,
it qualified as murder in the first degree.
So immediately when the law changed,
the death penalty was never a possibility in this case.
- That was one complication.
The other was this.
Angela wasn't talking with police or prosecutors
about a plea deal or anything else.
- We actually never had a conversation with her.
- As for Matt, who was facing
only eight and a half years behind bars,
I absolutely thought that by the time, you know,
Matt's defense counsel read through discovery,
that there would be a conversation.
- And that conversation would have been,
if you testify against your wife,
you might knock some years off.
- Correct.
But when we went to those interviews with Matt,
Matt continued to tell obvious lies,
things that just defied reality.
And we decided that he was not willing
to have an honest conversation with us.
- But he won't roll on her,
and she won't roll on him.
- Correct.
- Love's a wonderful thing. - A tight bond.
And so the first shoe fell in November 2020.
If you've been keeping track,
it was a size nine and a half.
Angela Hester pleaded guilty to murdering Annie.
Her sentence, 25 to life.
She'll be eligible to apply for parole
in 2042, when she'll be 60.
- From our perspective, given the brutality
of this offense, we felt that the possibility of parole
was far more remote than other types of cases.
- You're going to show up at a parole hearing
25 years later? - I hope so,
if I'm still walking around on this earth.
Absolutely.
- Angela has not responded to our many requests
for an interview.
However, her best friend, Karina, still visits Angela
in the big house,
and says that when she asks Angela about the case,
she gets this answer.
- She said she wasn't talking about that.
That was between her and God.
- As for Annie's best friend, Nicole,
she's taken a perhaps unorthodox
and sympathetic view toward Angela.
- I can't believe that Angela would let herself
get played like that because, you know,
she's a victim here in this, too,
in a sense. - Angela is?
- Yeah, she did Matt's dirty work,
and now her life is ruined as well.
- I mean, Angela was in Annie's apartment.
Angela did the stabbing.
But you think it might as well have been Matt's hand
on the knife.
- Absolutely. Angela was Matt's weapon.
- And Matt, he didn't respond to our requests
for interviews either.
But he did eventually take a deal,
one that did not require flipping on his better half.
In August 2021, prosecutors dropped
the conspiracy to commit murder charge
in an effort to preserve their shot at maybe one day
filing murder charges against him
and avoiding any issues with double jeopardy.
In exchange, Matt pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution
and to soliciting Aaron McCraw to kill Annie.
A judge Sentenced Matt to less than five years
in prison, and he was paroled in 2023.
It's an outcome that left many feeling
as if justice was both delayed and denied.
You think Matt's getting away with murder here?
- I really do.
He should have also been charged with murder.
- When we last spoke with Detective Turnage,
he said he hoped that day will come.
You think we've seen the last charges
filed in this? - I don't think so.
- You don't think so or you hope not?
- Both.
The courts have left it open where,
if we find more evidence, specifically Matt Hester
could be charged, you know, with murder.
If we find evidence showing that he is responsible
for it or knew about or participated ahead of time.
- You think that's what happened?
- I think Matt Hester had a lot more to do
with this murder than he has let on.
- Here's what police think happened that night.
After losing the custody case,
Matt and Angela were angry due to both the decision
and the debts they now owed.
Detectives believe they tried and failed
to hire a hitman before Angela decided
to just do it herself.
There's no sign anyone but Angela
was in Annie's apartment.
So did Matt or someone else help her,
advise her, or drive her across town?
Right now, there's no way to know.
As for Alice, the product of Matt and Annie's marriage...
It took years of fighting in court,
but Annie's mom was allowed to adopt her.
Alice, we were told, is a happy
and well adjusted little girl.
And after the parental whirlwind she was caught in,
where the lines between love, and hate, and money
were blurred again and again,
maybe coming through it in one piece
is the best possible news.
So we saved it for last.
- That's all for this edition
of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.