- I'm Kate Snow and this is
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
He was well liked;
he was well loved.
He was smart, he was fun.
I had the most senseless
empty feeling.
This is how it ends?
Why would somebody do it?
Now what?
- White hat, wide open smile.
A handsome young veterinarian
in Big Sky country.
- He loved helping animals.
- He asked me out that night.
I was excited.
- Then they found him
dead on the floor.
- Two shots went off
and then the third shot
into his chest.
- Three gunshots that launched
a long-running mystery.
Who killed the veterinarian?
- I think
the perpetrator stood there
and watched him die.
- There were so many
different leads and rumors.
- I felt like
if it wasn't for me,
it never would have happened.
- Jealousy, rage, revenge.
- It was your classic
"who done it".
- Could anyone solve it?
- Look at what
it's done to our family.
- It was hard.
- I wanted justice
for my brother.
**
- Hello and welcome to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
Bryan Rein was smart
and good looking,
a veterinarian
who moved to Montana
to set up a practice
and stumbled into
a messy love triangle.
Then the doctor
was gunned down.
Clues at the crime scene
led detectives to a young man
with a secret obsession
but the trail went cold.
Then years later
a surprising detail
would turn their cases
upside down.
Here's Keith Morrison with
"Mystery in Big Sky Country".
There was a broad swath
of prairie
where the cattle
outnumbered the people
and a sad summer breeze
sang around
the modest dwelling
in the grass.
- They called it the bunkhouse,
though it was really
just an old single-wide trailer.
- A nondescript little place
out on the Montana prairie
a bit worn around the edges.
- The sort of place
a young vet could live cheap
while he built his business.
- When the local sheriff's
deputies arrived,
they found a body in the middle
of the kitchen floor
lying on its back,
blood had pooled under its head.
On one foot was a shoe of
the sort
people wear in the water;
the other was bare.
A .357 magnum was on the floor
not far from
the dead man's left hand.
Marlene Protsman
saw all this too,
same time as the deputies.
But she could tell right away,
as apparently,
they could not,
that she'd been wrong
on the 911 call.
The man did not shoot himself.
- Bryan had a cut on his nose
and the way his shirt was ripped
and just the blood on the floor,
it just...
- It looked like a struggle.
- Yeah.
It wasn't a suicide.
- But the deputies
went about their work
as they saw fit and thus,
on Sunday, July 14, 1996,
they clouded a mystery
that has come down
all the way to us.
- There were so many
different theories,
different suspects and
so much conflicting evidence.
It was your classic
"who done it".
- Or perhaps
your classic nightmare.
- I'd lay awake at night
and ask God
to give me some insight here.
Where do I go now?
- The victim,
the man on the floor,
was Bryan Rein, veterinarian,
Charlene and Teresa's
big brother.
- He was my brother;
he was my best friend;
he was my business partner.
- They grew up together
in Scott City, Kansas.
- We shared bedrooms,
we shared clothing.
Everybody shared.
- Bryan was the eldest.
- So, what kind of
an older brother was he?
- Protective, ornery.
- Ornery?
- We were always playing pranks
on each other,
and especially Teresa because
she didn't take them so well.
- That Bryan was very smart
was a given.
Maybe a little too smart?
- I remember
turning to him once
and saying
I just want to know how--
what time it is,
I don't need to know
how the clock was made.
- Here's what they got to do
growing up in a small town.
They joined 4-H and
Future Farmers of America.
They raised
their special animals,
showed them off in fairs
and exhibitions.
And Bryan knew
from the very beginning
there was one job
he was meant to do.
- I never knew Bryan
not wanting
to be a veterinarian.
- After finishing vet school,
Bryan moved to Montana,
big wide-open country,
cattle ranches galore.
An outdoorsman's paradise,
really,
which absolutely suited
Bryan Rein.
He took full advantage of
what Montana had to offer
and often.
So, in 1995, a year before
the events in our story,
Dr. Rein set up shop
in a speck on the map
called Geraldine,
population 300.
- It's always a struggle
starting a new business.
- Sure.
- And starting a vet clinic
is very expensive.
But it was doing very well.
- Young Dr. Rein hired Marlene
to help him run the office
and moved into
the unused bunkhouse
Marlene and her husband owned
on their property
11 miles outside of town.
So, she was both
landlady and employee.
- Bryan had a heart of gold.
He was, you know,
part of the family.
- Mind you,
a good-looking young vet
in such a tiny place,
there was interest.
Lots of it.
- I remember asking him
is there anybody there
you're dating and he's like,
well, there's --
there's some girls
but they're just not the ones.
- It was possibly
an overly modest answer.
The handsome
young vet's arrival
was practically a news event.
Heads turned;
hearts may have followed.
Certainly, gossip did.
And then summer of 1996.
- I was like again
the same question that I ask.
So, what is going on?
Do you have a girlfriend?
Well, there is this one girl.
She comes over and
she does things for me.
And I said, things like...?
And he said, well,
she'll clean up my house
and stuff.
So, I was like shame on you.
You should be over there
cleaning her house.
- It was strange
what began to happen
after he took up
with that young lady.
Weird things.
Not exactly frightening,
more like unsettling.
Like the rock that crashed
through a window of the clinic.
- Didn't tell you
what he thought it was?
- No.
- Or who?
- No.
And he did find a footprint
out in back of the building.
But nothing really
ever came of it.
- Not long after,
Dr. Rein called both sisters
with a request.
- At one point, he told me
quit calling and hanging up.
I was like, "Bryan,
I'm not-I'm not hanging up."
- He just ha-ha'd it off.
You know?
He was like,
it's not a big deal, Teresa.
It's not a big deal.
- But was it?
On July 10, 1996,
Dr. Bryan Rein drove to Bozeman,
three hours away,
to attend a conference.
He returned home
Friday evening at 12.
No one saw him on Saturday.
And then on Sunday the 14th,
Marlene's husband drove over
to Bryan's bunkhouse.
- It was about, I don't know,
5, 10 minutes later
he came back
and walked in the door
and was very distraught,
crying.
- Such a shock,
which is maybe why her husband
got the mistaken idea that
Dr. Rein killed himself.
But later that same day,
when Marlene heard
an undersheriff
repeat the mistake
to Bryan's grandparents,
here's what happened.
- Verna Mae jumped up
and she said
no way in hell would my grandson
commit suicide.
- Then, next day
when state investigators
led by Agent Ken Thompson
of Montana's
Department of
Criminal Investigation arrived
and looked at
the ruined crime scene...
- My partner and I
would look at each other
and think, oh, my lord.
You know?
- Yeah.
- It certainly makes
things very difficult.
- Difficult?
Oh, yes.
Difficult was not
the half of it.
- What did happen to Dr. Rein?
The crime scene tells a story.
- Coming up...
Blood on the doorstep,
bullets in the kitchen.
The search begins
for a killer.
- I think the perpetrator
stood there
and watched Bryan die.
**
On a summer Sunday afternoon
outside tiny Geraldine, Montana,
local sheriff's deputies
used towels
to mop up the blood around
what they took to be a suicide.
The town's veterinarian
Dr. Bryan Rein,
age 31, was dead.
His own .357 magnum
lay near his left hand.
And the emissaries
of sudden death
delivered their message
to Dr. Rein's sister, Teresa,
back in Kansas.
- I remember saying,
"Mom, I need to talk to you."
- I can't imagine
what it would be like
to tell your mother
that her firstborn son is dead.
- Yeah. It was hard.
- It was evening
before the news
found younger sister Charlene.
- I was actually in Las Vegas.
We had been told that
he had committed suicide.
- Did you believe
that could be true?
- Absolutely not.
It was a long plane ride home.
- Do you remember
what your mind was doing to you
during that plane ride?
- How can this happen?
Why would somebody do it?
- Those questions because
none of them believed
Bryan capable of suicide.
And sure enough,
the next morning
an autopsy revealed
abrasions and contusions
on the doctor's head,
a swollen right eye.
Clearly there had
been a struggle.
And he'd been struck
by three gunshots,
two in the lower right forearm
and then a fatal shot
to the chest.
The conclusion?
Obvious it was not suicide.
It was homicide.
- How is it possible at first
they thought it was a suicide?
- I can't answer that.
I think you have to understand
that that county
had not had a homicide in,
I think it was like 19 years.
- It was Monday when
State Department
of Criminal Investigation
Agent Ken Thompson
was called in.
And by the time he got to
the doctor's bunkhouse,
the locals had been gone,
the scene left unguarded
for more than 24 hours.
- Montana is a remote state.
Sometimes
you'll drive eight hours
to get to a crime scene.
So, it's not like a big city
where you can roll in
and everything is pristine.
- No, not even close.
In fact, the deputies
and local coroner
had spent just a few hours
tromping around Bryan's kitchen.
They'd taken
about a dozen photos
and in the process,
had done things that
couldn't be undone.
Like cleaning up blood
on the floor,
under the victim's upper body
and tossing into the garbage
a telephone handset
found under Dr. Rein's head
without swabbing for DNA
or dusting for fingerprints.
Those discarded materials
were beyond recovery
by the time
Investigator Thompson arrived.
The local deputies
did tell him
they found a water shoe
on the bunkhouse doorstep.
It appeared to have been
knocked off in the struggle.
The other one was found
on Bryan's left foot.
And then Investigator Thompson
saw the blood drops
out on the doorstep.
- We knew that that's where
the shooting had occurred.
Blood had dropped
straight down.
- Yeah.
- And so, it was just --
just outside the trailer.
- Did you find some bullets
around there?
- They found two bullets
lodged in the kitchen cupboard.
So, the two shots
that went through the arm
went through the arm
and through that wall
and came out into kitchen
cabinets on the other side.
- I see.
Thompson and his partner
used string
to simulate
the path of the bullets.
They even tried to act out
what might have happened.
And before long
they came to some conclusions.
- How far away
was the shooter?
- Pretty close range.
- So, if it was a struggle
and the gun went off,
it would be. Right?
- Some kind of conversation
went on and a struggle ensued.
Two shots went off
and then the third shot
into his chest.
I think that Bryan
then struggled
to get in to call for help,
that he sat there.
I think the perpetrator
stood there
and watched Bryan die.
- And as for the location
of the gun
so close to Dr. Rein's own hand?
- So, the killer
must have put it there.
- Correct.
- But were there any
fingerprints on the gun?
- No, it looked like
it had been wiped off
with a solvent.
- So, investigators
now thought they knew
how the murder occurred
but when it happened,
that wasn't clear at all.
Friday night?
Saturday?
It was an important
question, of course.
But just how important
they might not have
fully imagined just then.
But there was no clear answer.
In fact, the pathologist
who conducted the autopsy
left the space
for time of death blank.
Remember, Dr. Rein returned home
from a conference
on Friday evening
but his body
wasn't found until Sunday.
Investigators canvassed
nearby farms and...
- There was a neighbor
that lived
probably about a mile away,
maybe a little less
as the crow flies,
that had seen an ATV
go by that night
and then said he heard two loud
retorts about --
about that time.
- That is, Friday night.
But...
- It could have been that night
or the next morning.
- He said it was light.
Well, at first,
he wasn't sure
and then he wasn't sure
of the date.
- Phone records
showed the last time
Dr. Rein received a phone call
was at 10:15 on Friday night.
- Nobody heard from Bryan
after that last phone call
on Friday night.
The thought that
he would go all day Saturday
without having any contact
with anybody
was just really highly unlikely.
- On the other hand,
Dr. Rein could have
hung around his bunkhouse alone
that Saturday morning
or maybe he intended to
go fishing.
There were those water shoes.
And they found a fishing pole
near the door.
Of course,
all this when and how
did nothing to shine a light
on who killed Dr. Rein.
A question that was consuming
everyone who knew him.
- My mind was just spinning
trying to think who, you know,
any little lead at all.
- There was, she knew,
this friend of Dr. Rein's,
Larry Hagenbuch, whose behavior
had recently been erratic.
And she also knew that
some people in town said
they'd heard Larry
badmouthing Bryan
in the local bar,
though Larry denied it.
But investigators
almost immediately
had a different lead
that seemed worth pursuing.
And it was related to
that broken window
at the vet clinic
and those hang-up phone calls
Dr. Rein had asked his sisters
if they were making.
- So, he had no idea
who was doing it?
- After he eliminated me,
he had an idea.
- So, he knew or thought he knew
who the hang-up caller was
but he didn't seem
very worried about it.
- Everything was
gong to be okay.
Bryan was not
afraid of anything.
- Maybe he should have been.
- Coming up...
A new relationship.
- I thought he was handsome.
I was excited.
- And a jealous ex.
- Should I file
a restraining order
or should I do something?
- What would investigators
make of him
**
Veterinarian Bryan Rein's family
went into a tailspin
at the news of his death.
And when they heard that
somebody murdered him...
You kind of fell apart
after that, huh?
- Yes, it was difficult
to figure out where to go,
what to do.
- Bryan's mom was practically
paralyzed in her grief.
And so,
much of the dreadful work
that demands to be done
after such a death
fell on Teresa.
- And I can remember
sitting through the funeral
and sitting there
thinking to myself,
"I am so tired
I just want to go to bed."
- And maybe that played a role
in Teresa's mood
because on that July day in 1996
when Dr. Rein was buried
in his hometown in Kansas
and a large contingent
of Montanans
made the trip to say goodbye,
among them was that young woman
from Geraldine;
the one who'd gone over
and cleaned his house,
the one Bryan had
recently started seeing.
- I was almost annoyed
she even came.
And she was standing
in our home
and I really thought,
why are you here?
I was pretty irritated.
- And those feelings
were not lost on that young lady
in the middle of
her own grief and confusion.
- I just felt out of place
because I felt like, you know,
they didn't know who I was.
- Her name is Ann.
She was 21 then.
She had known Dr. Rein
just two months,
met him at Rusty's Bar
in Geraldine.
- I thought he was handsome
and I was like,
"What is this guy
doing in Geraldine?"
It was just kind of
surprising to me.
- They talked all night,
she said.
And in the morning...
- How did you feel?
- I was excited.
I felt giddy,
just excited
that somebody
would be interested in me.
- Ahh, but complications.
Ann had a live-in boyfriend,
a guy named Tom Jaraczeski,
her high school sweetheart.
They had been together
4-1/2 years,
and though their relationship
had its issues, who knows,
she might have married him.
And then she had that
heart-to-heart with Dr. Rein.
- He was like you're too young
to be settling down
and somebody
telling you what to do.
- And how did that strike you
when he said that?
- I agreed with him.
- Like why have I been with
that guy all these years?
- Um-hmm.
Yep.
It made me see that
I would be better without it.
You know?
Because it hadn't been
a good relationship for a while.
I had a reason now
to move on and let go of that.
- And she was going to
tell Tom
as soon as
she got up the nerve.
But then, oh, boy,
Dr. Rein left a message
on her answering machine
at the apartment
she shared with Tom
who, of course,
heard the message.
- And he called me up
and asked me
what the hell was going on.
- Well, a boyfriend
would want to know what --
what the hell was going on.
Right?
- Yeah.
- And when she told him...
- He just started crying
and saying he couldn't believe
I was doing this
and how I was
throwing away everything.
- But Ann was done.
She moved back to
the family farm
outside Geraldine.
And Tom begged her to come back,
promised to do better.
- He told me that Bryan would,
you know,
when he got tired of me
he'd dump me and then I'd see.
- And then
the phone calls started.
Over and over again.
- I asked him
to leave me alone.
I said I needed time,
I needed space.
- And he wasn't giving you any.
- No.
- One day,
Ann agreed to go for a ride
in Tom's new pickup truck
so they could have the talk.
Big mistake.
Tom drove out of town
and kept on driving.
Wouldn't let her
get out of the truck.
- So, I was like, okay.
I started looking at the ditch
thinking that's, you know,
I can land in that grass,
I'll be okay.
So, I opened the door.
I was going to jump out.
And he grabbed my arm
and was like,
"What the hell are you doing?"
- How did it eventually end?
- He finally took me back.
- Did you go home that night?
- No.
My brother was out of town
so I asked Bryan
if I could stay with him
because I didn't
want to be home alone.
- It was a big step.
Did you feel safer?
- Yeah.
- But then Tom,
all of 23 years old,
barged into Bryan Rein's place,
middle of the night,
when she was there,
demanding to know
the 31-year-old
doctor's intentions.
- What did Bryan
think of this?
- He thought
he was a stupid kid.
- Well, he was being
a stupid kid.
- Um-hmm.
- You would have to
agree with that.
- Yeah.
Because I asked him;
I said, should I file
a restraining order
or should
I do something?
And he said, no,
he's just a stupid kid.
He'll get over it.
Just give him time
to get it out of his system.
- But he didn't get over it.
And one night
when nobody was home,
he went into Ann's house,
into her bedroom.
- And he said he found
my journal and read it.
- What did it feel like
to have your personal journal
read like that by him?
- It just felt like
I'd been violated.
- How did Ann learn about it?
Tom told her and
quoted from her journal.
- At the end I said,
and it was in a sarcastic way.
- Uh-huh.
- But it was like here,
I can't believe
I'm thinking
I met the man of my dreams;
he'll probably get killed
in a car wreck
and Tom will
probably kill himself.
Just thinking of...
- Yeah, all
the negative possibilities.
- Yeah, like here something
wonderful has happened,
something awful
is going to happen.
- And, Ann,
actually it turned out to be
kind of a prophecy, didn't it?
- Yeah.
- It plays back
like a bad dream now.
How she told Bryan
what Tom had been doing
and then discovered
it was even worse
than she thought.
- He goes, well,
I've got one better than that.
He came over here last night
saying he had car trouble
and asked to use the phone.
He said he let him use the phone
and went back to bed.
- Had to have been a ruse,
Bryan figured,
designed solely to see
if Ann was sleeping there.
All that was just before
that conference Bryan
attended out of town,
the one he returned from
on Friday night.
That last phone call
he was on at 10:15 p.m.?
He was talking to Ann.
- All of a sudden, he's like,
well, I've gotta go.
And before I could say
goodbye, he'd hung up.
- Really?
- It was--
I thought it was
kind of weird
but, you know, it was late.
I didn't want to read
too much into it at the time.
- No.
- You know,
I kind of wondered.
- And now that Bryan
was dead,
Ann wondered a lot about
something she'd remembered
Tom said years earlier.
- If you ever cheat on me,
I'll kill him
and I'll kill you.
- So, it will not
surprise you to know
that when he heard
all this,
Investigator Ken Thompson
made arrangements
to call on young
Tom Jaraczeski right away.
- You know, I was beginning
to form an opinion
that it was somewhat
a crime of passion.
So, I thought,
well, let's-let's see
where this goes,
you know?
That maybe if this
is heavy on his heart
and it was, uh,
just a tragic situation,
maybe we will get
to the truth tonight.
- Oh, if only the life
of an investigator
were that simple.
- Coming up...
- Police have some questions
for the envious ex,
- Welcome back to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow.
Bryan Rein was gunned down
in his kitchen
some time after
abruptly ending a call
with his girlfriend Ann.
She told investigators that
her ex-boyfriend Tom Jaraczeski
was secretly stalking them
and wondered
if he was involved.
Now, detectives
wanted to talk to Tom.
But if they expected
to find a defensive ex,
they were in
for a surprise.
Back to Keith Morrison
with "Mystery
in Big Sky Country".
- It was dusk
that Monday in Montana
after the weekend murder
of Dr. Bryan Rein
when investigators
drove out
to a farm 11 miles east
of Geraldine.
Here, Agent Ken Thompson
of the local undersheriff
intended to confront
23-year-old Tom Jaraczeski,
the young man
who'd lost in love
and didn't take it well.
- When you arrived,
what was his demeanor?
- Well, I think his-his demeanor
was, uh, to be helpful.
He was welcoming,
very polite.
- Tom Jaraczeski
admitted loving Ann
and being upset
when he heard
another man, Dr. Rein,
leave a phone message
for his live-in girlfriend.
- Tom did not deny
that he'd behaved badly then.
He freely admitted
that he phoned
Ann's family
and her friends.
He even called some of
Bryan's former girlfriends.
- What did that say to you,
that behavior?
- He was literally doing
his own investigation
on Bryan.
He was calling Ann's friends,
trying to get all the dirt
he could on Bryan
so that he could
turn around and...
- Give it to Ann
and she would drop him.
- And give it
to Ann and say,
you need to end
this relationship.
This is a bad guy.
He's just using you,
and you-you need
to come back and be with me.
- In fact,
Tom admitted nearly all
the strange behaviors
Ann described.
The constant hang-up calls,
showing up at Bryan's place
in the middle of the night,
sneaking into Ann's empty house
at 3:00 in the morning
snooping around
in her bedroom
and reading her diary.
- He was actively
pursuing her,
aggressively pursuing her
to-- for her
to change her mind,
to end that relationship
with Bryan
and-and come back
and start over.
It was just
a continual spiral,
the things that
he was doing,
the more obsessed
he got with her.
- It was, by his own
admission, pathetic.
Like when he drove
an ATV over
and hid outside
Ann's family farmhouse
just hoping for
a glimpse of her
and was then chased off
by Ann's brothers.
- But Tom had an alibi
and a pretty solid one
for most of the weekend
when Dr. Rein was murdered.
Except for Friday night.
Oh, and yes, he did admit
he phoned Dr. Rein that night.
- Investigators had
been thinking that
though the medical examiner
couldn't tell them,
Friday night was possibly
when Dr. Rein was murdered.
And after they heard
Tom's story,
how he didn't have
an alibi for Friday night,
that seemed to them
to clinch it.
- And then Tom dug
a deeper hole for himself.
Remember, it appeared
Dr. Rein scuffled with somebody
before he was shot dead.
Well, guess who told
the agents
that he'd hurt his back
that very Friday night
falling out
of a pickup truck?
- But the next day
Tom went to a hospital
and was treated
for back pain.
The only things Tom denied
in that interview?
Faking a vehicle breakdown
ten days before the murder
and knocking on
Dr. Rein's door
to use the phone
in the middle of the night.
- But investigators
weren't buying Tom's story.
- When you left at the end
of that first interview,
what did you think?
Did you think
this-this is our guy?
- I thought clearly
he was a suspect.
He clearly had done some things
that were very troubling.
- Sure.
- But did that mean
he was the killer?
What would
Tom Jaraczeski say
if we asked him?
- Coming up...
- They started accusing me
of killing Bryan.
I was scared to death.
- Tom under the microscope.
But could there be
another person of interest
in this case?
- We looked at him
very seriously.
- The plains of Montana
are no stranger
to sudden violent death.
History is littered
with it.
But for the people
living the history,
in July 1996,
after the murder
of the town veterinarian,
Bryan Rein,
it was all
very, very hard.
- Mom, for probably
the next five years,
crawled in a hole
and didn't come out.
- And Ann, that young woman
in the middle?
- I was devastated.
I just thought here,
you know,
here I've met somebody
that treats me nice
and treats me
like an equal.
- Somebody you felt
special with
when you were with him.
- Yeah, yes.
And to have that ripped away
and not even know
nothing may have
ever came of it,
but I, you know, didn't get
the chance to find out.
- But what was worse,
Ann felt an overpowering
sense of guilt.
- You felt responsible?
- I felt like
if it wasn't for me,
it never
would have happened.
- Because, of course,
she broke up with him.
- It's just unbelievable.
- And here he is,
Tom Jaraczeski, Ann's ex,
otherwise known as
the prime suspect.
- It seems like a bad dream
that I couldn't wake up from.
- How'd you find out
that he was killed?
- Um, from my mom.
She just said that
she'd gotten a phone call
that the veterinarian
in Geraldine had been killed.
- And, of course,
Tom knew perfectly well
who his mother
was talking about.
His rival, the man
who'd taken his girlfriend
and made his life
so miserable.
And so...
- You had to be sort of
a little bit okay with that.
- No, not at all.
I had no ill feelings
towards Bryan.
- Oh, really?
Come on, you had to have had
ill feelings towards Bryan.
- Uh-uh, not for somebody
to lose his life.
- He took your girl away.
- Yeah, but not for somebody
to lose their life.
- Tom said he knew
immediately
that he would be high
on the list of suspects
as, of course, he was.
So, he wasn't surprised
when Agent Ken Thompson
and the local undersheriff
showed up
at the family farmhouse.
- I was nervous.
I mean, both guys
had guns on their hips
and came into my house,
and, you know,
I proceeded to tell them
all these things
that I was doing
as far as the phone calls
and-and the stalking.
And-and when I told them
all about that,
then they totally
changed their tune
and started accusing me
of killing Bryan.
I was scared to death.
I was worried that they were
going to charge me that night.
- But they didn't.
While it was true,
as we said,
that the crime scene
was compromised,
there were hairs
and fibers and fingerprints
and blood samples
yet untested.
So, the investigators
said their goodbyes
and told Tom
they'd be back.
- All these years later,
what--?
- Sitting here now,
two decades later,
Tom told us
yes, he did love Ann.
He thought they had
a future together.
- You know, I felt like
she was the one
and-and we'd be
together forever.
- But when he heard
that phone message
left by Dr. Rein
at the apartment
he shared with Ann...
- What did that feel like?
- Like my heart
was torn in half.
- You did some things
then, which, in retrospect,
probably you must think
were not the brightest
in the world.
- Yes.
- What bothers you
as you think about it?
- Well, I didn't know
anything about Bryan.
So, I started calling up
some of Ann's family
and some of Ann's friends
to see what they knew
about Bryan.
I was concerned because
he was a veterinarian
and he had access to drugs.
I thought maybe he was
giving Ann something.
- Because why would she
leave you for another guy?
Must be drugs involved
or something like that.
Something other than just
wanting to make a switch.
- Yeah, that was
my initial impression.
- And all that other stuff,
the hang-up phone calls,
the stalking,
going into her bedroom
to read her diary?
- Not great behavior.
- No.
It was wrong of me
to do that.
I wanted to see
her thoughts,
what she had to say
about me,
what she had to say
about Bryan.
- You were having a lot
of trouble letting it go.
- I did, yes.
There's no manual on
how long it takes
to get over a relationship.
- Yeah.
- And for me,
it-it took a while.
- But he swore to us here,
as he did when he talked
to the investigators
way back when,
that he had nothing to do
with the murder
of Dr. Rein.
Even though it looked
pretty bad for him.
- They told me right away
that this happened
on a Friday night
and I was home alone
on a Friday night.
I had no alibi.
And so, I-I was kinda stuck.
- Although remember
the medical examiner
was unable to settle
on a time of death.
So, despite what
the detectives told Tom,
the murder could have
happened on Saturday
when Tom did have
an alibi.
Which made another of
the detectives' interviews
particularly interesting
because yes, in fact,
there were
other persons of interest.
And another man
they went to visit
did have an alibi
for Friday,
but not Saturday.
That man happened to be
a close friend of the victim.
His name was
Larry Hagenbuch.
- How seriously
did you look at Larry?
- We looked at him
very seriously.
- Hagenbuch was the one
who encouraged Bryan
to move from Kansas
to Montana.
But Larry wasn't
a stable man just then.
His wife was leaving him,
he had been drinking a lot.
He tried to take his own life
a month before the murder
using animal medications
he'd gotten from Bryan.
In fact, it was Dr. Rein
who intervened
to help save Larry.
And here's the thing.
Detectives had heard
that Larry seemed to know
intimate details
of the crime scene
which had not been
made public,
as if he was right there
when it happened.
The problem?
- His story never
stayed the same
when he was even
revealing it.
I mean, at one point
he said that
there was bullet holes
everywhere.
- Yeah.
- Later he would say
there was only two holes.
At one point he indicated
that it was a rifle.
And then it was a pistol.
- This is
Agent Kenneth Thompson,
Montana Criminal
Investigation Bureau.
- Still, from the sound of
this 20-year-old recording,
Agent Thompson wasn't
accusing Larry
of murdering his friend
in cold blood,
more like things got
out of hand somehow.
- Not much more the detectives
could accomplish at that point.
In those days, DNA took
its sweet time getting tested.
Would the results put
either of those men
at the crime scene
firing the gun at Dr. Rein?
Seemed like maybe it was time
for something hands-on.
Or nose on, if you will.
Enter Calamity Jane.
Well named, that dog.
- Coming up...
- That was the closest thing
we had to a link.
- Calamity Jane
sniffs out a clue
- The week after
they buried Bryan Rein
near his childhood home
in Kansas,
sister Charlene
came to Montana
curious about the progress
of the investigation.
And that's when
local deputies told her
about the mess up
at the crime scene,
how they threw away
some potential evidence.
Charlene was horrified.
- Have you ever heard
of such a thing before?
- No, he goes,
no, we-we cleaned it up.
We didn't want
the family to see it.
- Wow!
- I'm like, why?
Where is everything?
We got rid of it.
- But then when she went
to her brother's bunkhouse,
Charlene discovered
that someone else
must have gotten rid
of something too,
something the cops
didn't know existed.
And in an instant,
Charlene's discovery
changed the whole theory
of how the murder happened.
- They had found
the gun beside him.
And I said,
well, where's the gun case?
The gun case was missing.
It was a gun case
that Bryan had made.
- And so, the gun is
always in the gun case.
- The gun was either in it
or beside it.
- A perimeter search of
the property was organized
and lo and behold,
the gun holster,
a leather case inscribed
with Bryan's initials
was found lying
in tall grass
84-feet
from Dr. Rein's door.
How did it get
way out there?
Well, as he thought
about it,
the whole scene seemed to gel
in Ken Thompson's mind.
The way it happened,
that is.
The killer must have stolen
Bryan's own gun in its case
while Dr. Rein was away
at his conference.
Then brought it back
that night
expressly to kill Bryan,
discarding the holster
on the way to the door.
- If it hadn't been
for that holster out there,
it could have been
somebody came to the door,
knocked at the door,
Bryan came to the door
with a gun
to maybe threaten him.
And there was a tussle.
- That could have been.
- The gun changed hands.
- Sure.
- And boom, boom.
- It could have been.
Absolutely.
But that holster
being out there,
um, there just--
there's just no other reason
why that holster
would be out there.
- That was Agent Thompson's
theory anyway.
Was Tom Jaraczeski
capable of such a thing?
Well, he'd already admitted
he sneaked into Ann's house
when it was empty.
And so,
thought Agent Thompson,
he must have been
perfectly capable
of walking into
Dr. Rein's place, too,
and stealing that gun.
- He had plenty of
opportunity to get the gun.
The trailer
was never locked.
- But why would he
get Bryan's gun?
He could get a gun anywhere.
It's Montana,
for God's sake.
- Yep, yep.
- Everybody's got a gun.
- He certainly had the ability
to go over there undetected
and walk into that trailer,
ample time to look around,
uh, to grab the gun.
- So, that became
the leading theory.
Larry Hagenbuch,
the doctor's troubled friend,
if that's truly
what he was,
remained a person of interest
but the primary suspect,
no question,
was still Tom Jaraczeski.
But how to prove it.
Well, as luck would have it,
a bloodhound was at
the crime scene that day,
owned by a local guy.
A dog named Calamity Jane.
So, they let the dog sniff
Tom's baseball cap.
And...
- The dog went into
the trailer,
went right to--
right out the back door,
went right to where
the holster had been found,
went right to
the caragana bushes
where, uh, there was
an indication that somebody
had been standing
in there.
- What did you think?
- Well, we believe that
that was a connection.
That was the closest thing
we had to a link
from Tom to the holster
to a possible hiding spot.
- Right, so,
you must have thought,
we got him!
- Well, it was the best
that we had,
given that we had
no physical evidence.
- Poor thing kept trying
to find some of that, too,
at Tom's place.
- What did they want
from you?
- They took
everything imaginable.
Shoes was the biggest thing.
They probably took
at least ten pairs of shoes.
And they took other items
like sleeping bag, binoculars,
um, the inside lining
of a winter coat.
- But not one thing
from those searches
could link Tom
to the crime.
Months passed.
A year, and more.
Back in Kansas,
Bryan Rein's sisters watched
their mother suffer.
- It got very difficult
to talk to her
on a daily basis
because she was so down
and she wanted answers.
- She also frequently
called Agent Thompson.
And this was curious.
So, did Thompson's
prime suspect Tom Jaraczeski.
- He was always
wanting to know
where we were
in the investigation.
- Turns out Tom
also had something to share
with investigators.
- Coming up...
Another family distraught.
- You want to do anything
to you can to help him.
- And help would arrive
for Tom Jaraczeski
in a most unusual way.
- I mean, I just thought,
oh, my God.
- Welcome back to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow.
Bryan Rein's brutal murder
left his loved ones
desperate for answers.
Investigators believed
they knew
who killed Bryan and why,
but now their chief suspect
was about to share a secret
that would trigger
an arrest.
But the twists in this case
were just getting started.
Back to Keith Morrison
with "Mystery
in Big Sky Country".
- Veterinarian Bryan Rein
was dead,
shot with his own gun.
Police quickly zeroed in
on Tom Jaraczeski,
a young man who admitted
to some strange behavior
after the doctor stole
the love of his life.
But with no evidence
linking Tom to the crime scene,
the case had stalled.
Finally, January of '98,
a year-and-a-half
after the murder,
detectives ran
a bit of a bluff with Tom.
- We just pose it to him
that, you know,
why would we find
anything in the house
that would lead us to believe
you were in that house?
And he says,
okay, I'm going to tell you
something I didn't
tell you before.
- Perhaps you remember,
detectives heard
that Tom once showed up
at Dr. Rein's place
in the middle of the night
saying his truck broke down,
he needed a phone.
Back then, Tom swore
up and down
that didn't happen.
But now, 18 months later...
- They didn't have Tom's prints
anywhere on the table,
of course, but Tom had
admitted lying the first time
and now was explaining how
they might have found his DNA
or prints
at Bryan's place.
- He was only telling us things
he knew we could confirm.
- And in your experience,
that's what guilty people do?
That they change their story
when they realize--
- The story evolves? Yes.
- And it wasn't long before...
- I was leaving my apartment
to go to work.
Some guy standing behind
the stairs said, Tom,
and I turned around
and, with guns drawn,
they put the handcuffs
on me.
- What was that like?
- Shocking.
I couldn't grasp that
it was actually happening.
- Tom Jaraczeski rode
in that police car
to Fort Benton,
where they booked him
into the county jail
and charged him with
deliberate homicide.
What was it like
to hear that?
- Refreshing.
Good to have it solved
and put it behind us.
And hopefully, Mom
and Dad could pick up
and-and keep going again.
- Meanwhile, Tom's parents
and five siblings tried
to get their heads around
what seemed to them
an outrageous accusation,
cruel and unjust.
What's it like to have
your little brother
charged with murder,
facing life in prison?
- You feel angry.
You want to do anything
you can to help them.
- It was just devastating.
We've never been through
anything like that
in our family.
- There simply wasn't
the money to hire
some fancy
high-priced attorney.
So, Tom got a state appointed
lawyer, Bob Peterson.
- What were your
impressions of this kid?
- When I met him,
I knew that he
couldn't have done it.
- Oh, come on.
- I've represented...
- What a typical thing
for a defense attorney to say.
- I've represented hundreds
and hundreds of defendants.
- Yeah.
- And you get
a sense of people.
And I got a sense of Tom.
And I was pretty sure
that he hadn't done it.
So, then as the evidence
started rolling in,
then I became very certain
that he wasn't the one.
- Attorney Peterson could
have said "lack of evidence"
because, in fact,
despite test after test,
not a single
physical thing.
Not DNA, or fingerprints,
or anything else connected Tom
to those few square feet
where it all happened.
Except there was plenty
of circumstantial evidence.
The phone calls, the stalking,
the middle of the night visits
to Dr. Rein's bunkhouse days
and weeks before the murder.
But most of all, there was
that dog, Calamity Jane,
who, with one sniff
of Tom's baseball cap
led the cops from the doorway
of the bunkhouse
to a grove of bushes
where the cops found
and marked some footprints
with a theory being
that Tom lay in wait for
his opportunity to confront
Dr. Rein at the door.
Mind you, Calamity Jane
did her sniffing
a full ten days after
the body was found.
So, what did Attorney
Peterson think of that?
- To me, it wasn't evidence.
I made a motion before
the judge to decide
whether or not it should
go before a jury.
- Besides, he said,
Tom already admitted
he'd been around
there days earlier.
Maybe that's what
Calamity Jane hit on.
So, Bob Peterson got
Calamity Jane's handler
up on the witness stand
at a hearing
here at the courthouse.
And what do you know?
Neither dog nor handler
were properly certified.
- When I asked him
for all the paperwork,
he told me about how
he had put the paperwork
about the dog and himself
up on the top of his Suburban
and it unfortunately
had all blown away.
So, he couldn't
provide it.
- Not quite "the dog ate
my homework", but close.
Agent Thompson was also
in the courtroom that day.
- What really hurt us was,
is when they asked him
on the stand, well, that had
happened 18 months earlier,
where's your training documents
since that time?
- Uh-huh.
- And he said he didn't
have any.
- Right.
- I mean, I just--
it just-- I thought,
oh, my god.
- So, what did
the judge do?
He threw out the evidence.
And just like that, the state
dismissed the case against Tom
because without Calamity Jane,
the prosecution decided,
there simply wasn't
a provable case.
Tom Jaraczeski
was a free man.
- I felt like a weight has
been lifted off my shoulders.
This is done and over with.
No more interrogations,
no more search warrants.
I can go on
with my life.
- But Bryan's family felt
like they'd lost him
all over again.
- That was very disappointing.
- Yeah.
- Did you think at that point,
okay, it's all over,
we're never going
to find out?
- I, you know, I think,
back in your mind,
you think,
well, maybe one day.
- There was a reason she kept
that in the back of her mind,
why both sides did.
Because the judge,
that day in 1998,
dismissed the charge
without prejudice.
- Meaning?
- Meaning that the state
can bring it back up
if they choose to.
- How much of a worry
was that to you?
- You always have
this nagging thing
in the back of your mind,
as a defense attorney,
when something is dismissed
without prejudice.
You know that something
could happen in the future.
- Agent Ken Thompson could
simply have filed it away
as one lost cause, tough case,
it didn't work out.
- I mean, you talk
about a case
where it seemed like everything
was stacked against you.
- Yeah.
- This was that case.
- But he didn't let it go.
Just couldn't.
Mind you, there were
new assignments
and lots of other cases.
Years went by.
But...
- I kept, you know,
those ten four-ring binders.
I moved them from one office,
to another office,
to our third office.
I mean, it was always on
a bookcase in my office.
- Always on your mind.
- It was always on my mind.
You know? And that's...
to solve it.
- There were times
that Ken would call us
and say we're working
on it or, you know,
we just don't
have anything.
It just laid there.
- Two years, five, 10, 13.
The file stared down from
its shelf like an accusation.
But, of course, we wouldn't
be telling you this story
if something didn't happen,
now, would we?
But what?
It turned out to be
quite a surprise.
- Tom Jaraczeski moves away
and moves on with his life
but a new investigator is about
to put fresh eyes on the case.
- This is a homicide.
We owe it to the family
to go forward.
- Another chance to
solve this murder?
- I just wonder what
the hell is going on here.
- Accusations like the one
leveled at Tom Jaraczeski
can do corrosive
things to a person.
Sour the joy of a sunrise
in the Montana prairie...
alter the look on
a neighbor's face
down at the local store.
After prosecutors
decided to dismiss
murder charges against him,
Tom felt like he just
couldn't live here anymore.
- I couldn't stay in Montana.
I needed to move away.
And I decided to
move to South Dakota.
- So, you set up
a new life there.
- I did.
I got married,
had a couple kids.
Life was good.
- And truly you
thought it was over?
- I really did.
I never thought it would
ever come back again.
- Neither did Tom's
old girlfriend Ann,
though she firmly believed
Tom killed Bryan,
the man she'd
left him for.
Montana soured
for her, too.
She went to visit a sister
in Arkansas and stayed.
Never found out
that Tom moved away.
- I didn't feel like I could
go back home to Montana.
- Why?
- Because Tom was there.
And I thought if he's willing
to kill somebody
to be with me, I didn't know
what he would do.
- Corrosive,
that's what it was.
But then 13 years after
Dr. Rein's murder,
this man got
a new job.
His name, Brant Light.
And in 2009 he became
the top prosecutor
in the Montana
Attorney General's office.
One of his duties was
to help small counties
prosecute particularly
difficult cases.
Cold cases.
- We don't get the slam dunks
turned over to us.
We get the older cases;
we get the difficult cases.
And we're expected to
go forward with those cases.
- Like the one Light
told friend Ken Thompson
had never really given up
on solving.
- So, I felt comfortable
to go to Brant and say,
would you just review this
and see what you think?
- What'd you think as you
reviewed the information?
Was it something that
was worth trying again?
- Yeah. Well, we--
we had some work to do.
I wanted him to go back out
and to make sure everybody
is still around.
We had to see what kind
of shape the evidence was in.
- Evidence was resubmitted
to the crime lab.
Witnesses were reinterviewed.
More years passed.
- Is there ever a case to
be made to just let it go?
How do you look
at these things?
- Well, I-I will let it go
if we don't have evidence
beyond a reasonable doubt.
I'm not going to roll
the dice with somebody's life.
This is a homicide.
We owe it to the family
to go forward.
In my bureau, that--
that's what we do.
- And then in
February 2014,
nearly 18 years
after the murder,
Agent Thompson traveled
to South Dakota
with an arrest warrant
for Tom Jaraczeski
who heard his name
called out one day at work
and was ushered into
the back of a police car.
- And I just wondered what
the hell was going on here.
And, uh, maybe a minute
went by and then Ken Thompson
popped his head through the--
through the door
and said,
"Tom, you remember me?"
I told you I'd
be back for you.
- Tom called his family
and asked them to track down
that attorney who helped him
so much all those years before,
Bob Peterson,
who, for some reason,
had been listening
to a nagging little voice
in his head all those years
that told him,
"keep the file."
- Usually, I destroy all
my files after ten years.
But for whatever reason,
I maintained his files.
- And so, when Tom was
charged again with murder,
Peterson got busy.
First, he got Tom out on bond,
attached to a GPS monitor.
And then he read
through his old files
and asked to see
the prosecution's new evidence.
- My whole position
was let's see
what they think
they have.
- When he did,
Attorney Peterson
could not have been
more surprised.
- It was almost verbatim
the same affidavit
that was used in 1998
to charge him.
- No new evidence?
- None.
I couldn't believe that
they would bring these charges
back up again and not have
one piece of new evidence
to justify them
doing that.
- You were mad.
- It made me mad. Yes.
And I know I'm not being
very outraged about that.
We defense attorneys have
to control our emotions.
[laughing]
- Who was the defense
attorney angry with?
- We had a prosecutor
with a big ego
who fashioned himself
to be a cold case expert
and an investigator who has
stewed about this case
since the beginning
of it in 1996
and had an obsession
with Tom.
Then all he wanted to do was
get this case squared away...
before he retired.
- You're not really
suggesting that a detective
would persuade a prosecutor
to go ahead with a case,
a favored case of his
just because he happened
to be retiring.
- Yeah, I really am.
- To which both
Investigator Thompson
and Prosecutor Light replied,
no, it was justice
they had in mind,
not retirement.
Oh, and when Attorney Peterson
asked a judge to
throw out the murder charge,
the answer was oh, no,
it wasn't going to go away.
Not this time.
- After almost 20 years,
the case heads to court.
- It was murder.
- Tom Jaraczeski in
a fight for his life.
- The veterinarian's
little bunkhouse was long gone,
burned, it's embers ground
into the prairie dust.
The young woman who had
fallen hard for the dashing vet
was a happily married
Arkansas mother of three.
And the young man accused
of killing Dr. Bryan Rein
had growing sons
of his own.
But two decades were
a mere whisper of time
to the law and the historic
Choteau County Courthouse
where in September 2015,
six years after the case
was reopened, 19 years
after the murder,
Tom's sister and the rest
of the Jaraczeski family
assembled on one side
of the courtroom.
- It was hard seeing people
that you thought
were your friends sitting
on that other side
of the courtroom.
- That would be a number
of local people,
along with Dr. Rein's family
whose attitude must be said
was unlike that
of many victims' families.
- I remember having
a huge sinking feeling
in my heart thinking,
can we not just let this go
and be done with it?
- So, you weren't excited
at the possibility
that finally justice
would be done?
- Nope.
- Well, a tough case,
to be sure,
said Prosecutor Brandt Light,
but...
- To just throw up your hands
and say, well, this is too tough
or I don't want to lose a case,
that's just not right.
- Mind you, Prosecutor Light
himself could not be
in the courtroom.
He had another fight on
his hands against lung cancer.
So, he handed the trial
to two trusted deputies,
Dan Guzynski
and Mary Cochenour.
- It was murder.
It was murder
that was planned,
it was a murder
that was premeditated,
and it was a murder where
no evidence would be left.
- The big evidence
was, of course,
Tom Jaraczeski's
bizarre behavior
in the weeks after Ann
broke up with him
and began
dating Dr. Rein.
This friend of
Ann's testified.
- I thought that Bryan
should watch his back.
- And herself told the jury
about the hang-up calls,
about the time Tom
snuck into her house
and read her diary,
about his middle-of-the-night
visits to Dr. Rein's trailer.
- I'm scared.
I'm like what-- I didn't know
what was going to happen
after he'd-- after Tom
had been acting so weird.
- The stalking was
just unbelievable.
I mean, he was overwhelmed
by the fact that he had lost,
um, lost Ann Wishman.
He had done everything he
could to try to break them up.
And I think at the very end,
when he understood that
that wasn't going to happen,
the only thing left
was to take-- to take Bryan
out of the picture.
- In fact, remember this?
Ann testified about
that time she said Tom
once threatened
to do just that
should she ever cheat on him
with any other guy.
- He said, if you ever
cheat on my,
I'll kill him
and I'll kill you.
Or I'll want to kill you.
- Tom, by the way, has long
denied ever saying that.
But even after
the murder, Ann said,
Tom kept pursuing her.
Letters, cards,
phone calls.
- He said he dreamed
that we had gotten married
and we had kids
and was telling me,
you know, like we had--
went into detail about a life
we were
living together.
- Then there was
the strange story
one of Tom's next girlfriends
told the jury.
- Did he ever mention to you
an ex-girlfriend named Ann?
- Yes.
That was the love
of his life.
He said he wished
the vet was dead
because that way him and Ann
could get back together
because that was what
was keeping them apart.
- By then, of course,
the vet was already long dead
by Tom's own hand,
the prosecutors argued.
- Nobody else had
the opportunity
and nobody else had the means
in this very tiny community
to kill Bryan as--
as Tom did.
- So, how did he do it?
He put his plan into action,
said Prosecutor Light,
when Dr. Rein was away
at that conference.
Before returning home
on Friday, July 12th.
- I think Tom Jaraczeski
had finally made up his mind
and I don't think
he had any problem
going in the trailer.
And I think
he located the gun.
- Yes, he argued.
Tom stole Dr. Rein's own gun.
Then that Friday night Tom
placed a hang-up call to
Dr. Rein at 9:45 p.m.
to ensure he was home.
And soon after that,
a second call
to a second location
in another town
half an hour
down the road.
- He calls, Ann answers,
he hangs up.
So, now he knows
Ann's in Great Falls.
That's 36 miles away.
- So, he knew that
he could go over there
and not find anybody there
besides Bryan.
- Then he got onto his ATV,
headed over to the bunkhouse,
Is that what
his neighbor saw?
- A while later,
towards the evening,
I did see
a four-wheeler go by.
The ATV was dark green.
- Mr. Jaraczeski owns
a green and black ATV.
And within 19 years,
no one has ever stepped forward
to determine who else
in that small community
had a green
and black ATV.
Nobody did.
- When Tom arrived
at the bunkhouse,
said the prosecutor,
he waited in the bushes
where he could see
Dr. Rein's door.
- He's got the weapon there.
And I think at
the appropriate time he decides
that he's going to walk up
to the back door.
- And that must have been
when Tom threw the holster
in the grass where
it was found later,
said Prosecutor Light.
- Now, it just so happens
that Ann makes a call to Bryan.
They even talk about getting
a restraining order against--
against Tom Jaraczeski.
And then Ann says that
Bryan almost abruptly
gets off the phone, as if--
as if somebody's there.
- According to Ann,
that was about 10:40 p.m.
- I think Bryan then heard him,
went to the back door,
and I think at that point,
when there is
Thomas Jaraczeski
sitting on that
back porch, has a gun,
I think immediately Bryan
knew what was going on
and the fight was on.
And I think
it was a struggle.
I think he shot him
twice in the arm.
I think he then--
Bryan struggled back to try
to get the phone and Thomas
just shot him in the chest,
left the weapon,
got on that ATV.
- And took off.
And then he-he
had hurt his back,
so, the next day he had
to go to the hospital.
And there you go.
- And that was
the prosecution's case.
All circumstantial.
No physical evidence
was ever found to link Tom
to the murder scene.
But the pieces,
said the prosecution,
fit together to tell
quite a story.
But only a story,
Tom's defenders
were about to say.
A tall tale,
if you will.
Which they added
a good Montana steak
would undo in a hurry.
- A whole new theory
of the crime.
- It doesn't seem like
a plausible time of death.
- Dr. Rein's last meal
would tell a tale of its own
Welcome back.
Tom Jaraczeski was on trial
for the murder of Bryan Rein.
The prosecution argued
that Tom killed Bryan
in a jealous rage after
his girlfriend Ann
dumped him for
the dashing veterinarian
and supported
their theory,
testifying Tom had
stalked the new couple.
Now, it was
the defense's turn
and they were about
to put Bryan's love life
under the spotlight.
Back to Keith Morrison with
"Mystery in Big Sky Country".
- A harrowing thing happened
to Bryan Rein's sisters
at the murder trial
of Tom Jaraczeski.
They re-felt all the searing
anger, loss, and grief
they tried to put behind them.
- I can distinctly remember
sitting there almost feeling,
"Great... we're going to
have to re-live this
"all over again."
- Like attending a nightmare
version of his funeral.
- But at this funeral,
we're not saying anything
nice about him.
- Why would that be?
Because the sisters knew
Defense Attorney Bob Peterson
and his new co-council
Jennifer Streano
would not only attack the case
against Tom Jaraczeski,
they'd bring up all the old,
long-forgotten gossip
about Bryan,
about what a ladies man
he was purported to be.
- When they went on about
how he was a womanizer
and he was having
multiple affairs...
- So, she knew it was coming,
but in fact,
the defense went beyond that
and cast out
on the very idea
that this 19-year-old mystery
could be solved at all.
- Throughout this trial,
you will have the urge
to want to solve this
and that's only natural.
But this case
cannot be solved.
That was really the biggest
point to stress to this jury,
that your desire is going to
want to close this book,
close the chapter,
give this family
the relief they deserve,
but it just cannot be done.
- All that immature behavior,
said the defense,
couldn't change two facts:
that Tom had never been
a violent person
and that not a shred
of physical evidence
linked Tom to the murder scene,
said this forensic scientist.
- You never found
any fingerprint
belonging to Tom Jaraczeski
in any of the items
that you tested, did you?
- I did not.
- I mean, they had all
of his creepy behavior, sure.
But beyond that,
they had nothing.
I mean, they had
nothing inside the house
that connected him
to this offense.
There was no hair or fiber
or blood or tissue
or anything like that
found inside that trailer,
found on Mr. Rein himself,
found outside the trailer
that belonged to Tom.
And trust me,
they looked.
- Those first responders
all those years ago
certainly gave the defense
a juicy target,
given how they treated
Dr. Rein's murder at first
like a suicide.
- You did not take
any blood swabs that day.
- Not that day.
- You did not take
any fingerprints that day.
- Not that day.
- And what about throwing away
potential evidence
like that telephone they found
under Dr. Rein's head?
- We all looked at it
and I'm sure decided
there was nothing on it,
just to- to save it
or we wouldn't
have thrown it out.
- The defense called them
to the stand one by one
to admit their mistakes.
- Looking back now,
Deputy Dollum,
you probably shouldn't
have done that.
- Yeah, we shouldn't have.
- And if the state could make
such a mess of things
at the crime scene
confusing the manner of death,
said the defense,
maybe its theory
about the time of death
was wrong, too.
- The state had concluded
that the time of death
was Friday night
and our question to them
always has been, why?
Why did they choose
that time
other than
it's the only time, really,
Tom doesn't have an alibi?
- But what if the state
was wrong?
In fact,
said Tom's defenders,
the state was wrong.
How did they know?
Well, for one thing,
there was Cody,
Dr. Rein's dog.
- If the state's theory
was correct,
Cody then would have been
left in that trailer
with no exit for Friday
to Saturday night,
to Saturday
till Sunday morning,
without going to
the bathroom at all.
There was no evidence that
he had gone to the bathroom
at all in the house.
- Dr. Rein's sisters
disputed the idea
that Cody couldn't have
found some way
in and out of the trailer,
but the defense said it had
even more dramatic evidence
that the murder
did not happen
until, at the earliest,
Saturday morning
when Tom had an alibi.
Remember, Dr. Rein returned
home from a conference
on Friday night,
but at about 7 p.m.
that evening,
two local men testified
Bryan stopped for dinner
at a place called
The Square Butte Country Club.
- We ate and visited
with him.
- And what Dr. Rein
had for dinner,
according to these witnesses,
destroyed the state's theory
of time of death.
It was this retired rancher,
too ill to testify in-person,
who delivered the haymaker
by remembering
clearly, he said,
what Bryan had
on his plate.
- And do you recall
what he was doing
when you sat down
across from him?
- I, uh, other than
sitting there
eating a good-looking
Montana steak,
that's what he seemed to be
most interested in.
- A steak.
Why was that important?
Because the autopsy,
the one in which
time of death was left blank,
did not reveal any steak
in his digestive tract.
How could that be
if he died Friday night?
The defense called
a forensic pathologist.
- So, if he had eaten a steak
at 7 o'clock at night
and was shot and killed
at 11 o'clock at night,
would there be steak still
in his stomach contents?
- Yeah.
My opinion is that
it doesn't seem like
a plausible time of death.
- So, what was
in Dr. Rein's stomach?
According to the doctor
who did the autopsy...
- There appeared to be
scrambled eggs
and green pepper
and tomato.
- And in the bunkhouse,
eggshells in the garbage,
dirty dishes in the sink,
as if he'd made breakfast.
Although Dr. Rein's sister
testified
that it was Bryan's habit
to stay up late,
and make eggs, and work late
into the night.
The defense said
the evidence pointed
to Dr. Rein being killed
not Friday night
but sometime Saturday.
And there was
a certain someone
who had no alibi
for Saturday.
Someone you've already met.
Remember him?
Larry Hagenbuch was about
to take the witness stand.
- And, it's your statement
that you then just went home.
Is that right?
- Correct.
- And you were home alone
that night.
- That's right.
- No question what the defense
was about to imply,
that the killer
could have been him.
- Coming up...
The 19-year-old mystery
takes a sudden dark twist.
- He started describing things
that you wouldn't know
unless you had been there.
**
- On day eight of his trial,
Tom Jaraczeski's defense team
attempted to
flip the playing field.
Not only did they challenge
the prosecution's theory
that Dr. Bryan Rein's murder
occurred on a Friday night,
they also pointed
their suspicion
at a man who had no alibi
for Saturday.
- Larry Hagenbuch,
that friend
of Dr. Rein's
whose wife was leaving him,
who'd used medication
he purloined from Dr. Rein
to try to kill himself
a month before the murder.
- But you took
this combination of pills,
so that you could check out.
You wanted to kill yourself.
- It was time.
I mean, I was done
with all the BS.
- It's, to me,
very plausible
Larry goes to
Mr. Rein's trailer,
he's upset,
he's been drinking,
he wants either more pills
from Mr. Rein,
Mr. Rein refuses,
and Larry goes for the gun.
- The thing is, the day
Bryan's body was discovered,
Larry admitted he had
gone over to the bunkhouse.
And the morning after,
Larry broke down crying
in the waiting room
of a counselor's office.
And while people
around him listened,
he described things
only someone with intimate
knowledge of the crime scene
would know about.
- He started describing things
you wouldn't know
unless you had been there.
Um, he-- that Mr. Rein
was laying on his back
with his feet crossed,
blood all over.
But the one fact that I think
that's the most important
that stood out to me
was that he told this woman
on Monday morning
that Mr. Rein was shot
with his own gun.
- In fact, this woman
who worked in the office
overheard Larry.
- Did Mr. Hagenbuch
make any statements
about whose gun that was?
- Uh, he said it was Bryan's.
- Sunday,
during that investigation,
these officers did not know
that this was Mr. Rein's
own firearm
that had been used in this--
in this shooting.
So, to me, that stood out
as a major red flag.
- How did you know Bryan
was shot with his own gun?
- I don't.
I probably said a gun.
By that time,
I was in pretty good shock.
- Do you recall telling her
that Bryan was shot
Saturday night?
- No.
- Do you recall telling her
that you were going to go out
and have a six-pack of beer
with him?
- No.
- So, if she knows all of that
information Monday morning,
do you know where she would
have gotten that information?
- I guess from me, but I don't
remember any of that
because I do remember
telling our counselor
that my best friend
got shot.
- So, nobody saw you
from Saturday morning,
7 in the morning until--
they didn't see you
all Saturday night,
is that right?
- Correct.
- And Sunday you hear--
you come out
to Bryan's trailer.
Right?
- Yeah.
- So, that's the first time
anybody sees you
from Saturday morning
to Sunday morning.
- Correct.
- Larry denied any role
in the shooting.
And remember, detectives
didn't charge him with anything.
But the defense
had made its point.
- It comes back
to they made a decision
that Mr. Rein died
on Friday night.
And so, Larry was around
some people Friday night.
But all day Saturday
and Saturday night
and Sunday morning,
he wasn't around anyone.
- and then finally,
as if to twist the knife,
the defense brought up
one more thing.
The thing that so upset
Dr. Rein's sisters;
the fact that in the underwear
Dr. Rein was wearing
at the time of his death
there was DNA
that was unidentified.
- So, my question would be
as to when that would have
gotten there
and how and-
and more importantly who.
- The implication, of course,
that he was seeing
and having sex with someone
in addition to Ann,
another potential suspect
added to the pot.
- We're just saying Tom
may not be the only
ex-boyfriend out there
who would have been upset
with Mr. Rein.
- That, in essence,
was Tom Jaraczeski's defense,
anyone but Tom.
- Did you kill him?
- No, I didn't.
- Do you think Larry Hagenbuch
did kill the doctor?
- You know, I have no idea
who killed Bryan.
I know what it's like to be
an innocent person
wrongly accused
and I'm not going to sit here
and accuse somebody else.
- The end was coming
very soon.
- Coming up...
- And he committed this crime
masterfully.
- Did he, or didn't he?
- This was an incredibly
tough case.
- When "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Imagine the poor jury
with such a decision to make.
The dreadful loss
of a young man
with a bright future.
But 19 years,
a whole generation ago,
bad and suspicious behavior
by the defendant
but no physical evidence.
But they did have to answer
the question,
did Tom Jaraczeski
pull the trigger.
For prosecutors,
the question for the jury
was who else could have
done it.
- Tom Jaraczeski
was the only person
with the opportunity,
the only person
with the motive
to take Bryan Rein
out of this world.
And he did it.
And he committed this crime
masterfully.
- The defense in its closing
took a swipe at Ken Thompson,
the agent who for two decades
wouldn't let the case go.
- We don't convict people
because the lead investigator
is retiring
and wants this case
resolved
just so we can
close the book.
- The jury went out first thing
in the morning the next day.
They did not return
as quickly
as one side, at least,
expected.
- It's just the worst time
when you have a jury out.
Every hour that went by
was pretty painful.
- And then, minutes before
the 5 o'clock whistle...
- All right, thank you,
ladies and gentlemen.
Mr. Foreman, have you reached--
has the jury reached a verdict?
- Yes, sir.
- I kept thinking
if they said guilty,
I thought,
I'm going to fall down.
- My heart beating
so hard, so fast.
Either I was going
to have a life
or I wasn't going
to have a life.
- We, the jury,
duly empanelled and sworn
to try the issues
in the above-entitled cause,
enter the following
unanimous verdict.
To the charge of deliberate
homicide, not guilty.
- Not guilty!
- I cried.
I put my head down
on the table and I cried.
- I just put my arm around him
and said, it's finally over.
- The case is dismissed;
the defendant is free to go.
Thank you.
- Go get a group hug.
- Yeah, get up there.
- His family, overjoyed,
watched them cut off
the GPS monitor.
[applause]
- Did you realize
it was finally over?
- Yeah.
And it was a sense of relief.
And seeing tears of happiness
from my family,
it's the greatest thing ever.
Calling my boys
up in South Dakota,
telling them I'm comin' home,
that was a wonderful call
to make.
- But while that was going on,
across the courtroom...
Do you remember that moment?
- I do.
- Yeah.
Almost like you lost him
all over again.
- I remember walking
out of there and thinking,
and it turned out exactly
the way I thought it would.
Why did you waste our time?
- Did he?
Ken Thompson didn't think so,
of course. But...
- Of course,
I was disappointed.
My heart fell,
but I truly was more at peace
that people
got to hear it all
because a jury said
he was not guilty;
I don't think that changes
things for most people.
They either believed he did
or believed he didn't.
- What do you believe?
- That he got away
with murder.
- Clearly not
what the jury believed.
We asked Judge Greg Penske,
who spoke to the jurors
after the trial.
- This was an incredibly
tough case to prove.
It was a tough case
to prove in 1998.
It became an incredibly
tough case to prove in 2015.
- What did the jury think were
the weaknesses in the case?
- Timing. Timing.
They wanted to know why
this case was coming to trial
after 19 years.
I think juries are motivated
a lot by what they see on TV.
- Uh-huh.
- And when they see
an old case on TV,
they expect
that there was
some new scientific
technological advance.
- Sure. Some DNA
or something. Yeah.
- Some DNA that suddenly
cracked open this--
this cold case after 19 years
and-and brought it forward.
And that-that's
not this case.
- A couple of months
after the verdict,
we went to Arkansas
to spend some time
with the woman at the center
of that long-ago love triangle
and discovered
she is still tormented
by a guilt
that will not go away.
She wonders
if it hadn't been for her,
would Dr. Rein be alive?
It's odd, really.
Whether or not
Tom killed Dr. Rein
and especially if he didn't,
Ann could have had nothing
to feel guilty about.
And yet, she does.
I know everybody says
this to you, but stop it.
It's not your fault.
- I know.
- It really isn't.
Not even for a moment.
- Well, I was hoping
that if he was convicted,
maybe that feeling
would go away.
That's what I wanted--
I wanted them to say
he's guilty.
And then I could quit
feeling guilty.
And they didn't.
- No, they didn't.
- So, now I've gotta figure out
a different way.
- So do they all.
The prosecutor, believing
he had the right guy
all along,
closed the case.
But the judge...
- I mean it
when I told the jurors
when they wanted to find out
who did this,
when they wanted to solve
this crime, that literally,
if they believe
there's another world
that they go to someday,
look up Bryan Rein
when you get there
and ask him who killed him
because that's the only way
that we're ever going to know
who killed Bryan Rein.
- That's all
for this edition
of "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow.
Thank you for watching.