♪
♪♪
-A husband does the unthinkable.
-I was told, "Your father shot your mother."
I still don't know how to take that.
-There were glaring questions
that we needed to get answers to.
-Was this death a fatal agreement?
-In his mind,
he's someone who gave his life in exchange for hers.
-Or is it cold-blooded murder disguised as a mercy killing?
-They feared for their lives.
They thought he would come and hunt them down.
-He was overwhelmed.
He was just gonna take matters into his own hands.
[ Gunshot ]
-In the end, you can't go around playing God.
♪♪
[ Line rings ]
-On March 27, 2017, there was a call to 911
about a shooting outside of a memory care center.
The caller calmly reported what he had done
and was relatively unemotional.
The caller is 62-year-old Stephen Kruspe.
The victim was his wife, 61-year-old Pam Kruspe.
♪♪
-Given the bizarre nature of the call,
detectives approach the scene with a mix
of curiosity and dread.
-When that call came out, my mindset was, you know,
"This is not possible.
Someone's just not calling to say, 'I just did this.'
This could be a prank."
As I'm driving along,
the dispatchers were giving us additional details
that made me realize, "Oh, this is actually real.
This person is still on the phone."
-At one point, he's talking to her still,
as if she's still alive.
It was almost like he was in some kind of disbelief.
-As we approached Parkside,
it's an assisted-living facility
and it is pretty much the only physical building on that block.
We're expecting some sort of chaos
because we're responding to a shooting.
When we approached, we saw nothing.
The parking lot was empty,
so that even added to our confusion.
So, we're communicating on a radio with our dispatchers,
asking, "Hey, have the person come out to the parking lot
so we can see them."
Officers are looking for him
and then dispatchers were still trying to get him to come out,
but he was hesitant.
Once he actually listened, he came out to the parking lot.
When we laid eyes on him,
we didn't see a typical homicidal maniac.
We just saw an older man who does not appear
that he can hurt a fly, just walking out.
He was not agitated, you know, he looked a bit sad,
but he was quite cooperative at the time.
Once we put handcuffs on him, we asked him,
"Okay, where's the gun and where's your wife?"
And he told us,
"She's in the back of the building by the patio."
♪♪
Lo and behold, we found her on the ground in the grass,
just a few feet away from the actual patio.
We did not see a bloody murder scene.
All we saw was a lady laying there on her back
with a very small wound on her chest.
She was shot.
-It was at close range.
There were not multiple shots
and there was very little blood for someone
who was shot to death in the heart.
It looks like it was done by someone
who really knew what he was doing
and wanted to end her life right away.
This was no ordinary perpetrator,
this was a marksman,
this was someone who knew where exactly to shoot.
-As we looked at the body,
there's nothing about the body
that suggested any kind of struggle.
No scratch marks, no defensive wound.
We did find the gun with five additional rounds
in the magazine and the gun was already made safe
and placed on a half wall at the patio.
-It's clear to police
Stephen Kruspe isn't trying to hide.
His straightforward and thoughtful cooperation is
in stark contrast to the crime before them.
But he is clear this wasn't a struggle or an accident.
It was a request.
-He said, "I just shot my wife.
She asked me to do it."
We were in disbelief,
and she's not here to actually speak for herself.
The way I looked at it, automatically, I'm like,
"This is a homicide," and we had the person
who did it in custody.
It may appear that okay, yes, he was doing something to help her,
but ultimately he is a killer.
You killed your wife and it is, in fact, a crime.
-The night of the incident, I was 37.
My sister called and said,
"You need to get down to Parkside," and I was like, "Why?
What's going on?" "There's been an incident.
I can't tell you. Get down there.
You got to go."
"O...kay."
My mom was at Parkside assisted-living facility
for about two to three months at this point.
I honestly thought, like, my mom had injured herself.
She was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia
a little more than a year before this happened.
It's a very aggressive form of Alzheimer's and at night,
a lot of times, my mom would get aggressive
and so I figured this may have been one of those incidents
and they just needed somebody else down there
to help control the situation.
I get there and there's cops everywhere.
This is a little more than just my mom being aggressive.
And I remember walking up to the scene and there was
a police officer there and he was like, "Who are you?
Can I help you?"
"Uh, my name is Matthew Kruspe.
My father and mother are here,"
and, uh, a detective came towards me.
He goes, "Um, I need -- I need to inform you
that your mother's deceased," and he was like,
"Um, your father shot your mother."
♪♪
I didn't -- I-I-I--
I still don't know how to take that.
My mom was a huge influence in my life.
She was honestly the strongest woman that I know.
My initial reaction is like, "You've got to be kidding me.
Like, what happened?"
My mom and dad met at a Marine Corps ball in 1974.
-She was working as a civilian at a Navy contractor
and he was in the Marines guarding
Arlington National Cemetery.
He was willing to dance
when none of the other guys were willing to dance
and they danced together.
-One of their favorite things to do was swing dance
and they could move.
They could -- They could really, really move.
-Pam and Steve complemented each other.
They were two sides of each other's heart.
They always were thoughtful
and respectful about what each other thought and felt
and they didn't operate unless it was together.
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
-They got married in 1976
and they had three children in four years.
Andrew was the oldest and then Stephanie
and then Matthew was the youngest.
He was born in 1980.
-The children were always respectful, happy, playful,
fun, curious and just delightful, delightful children.
-My parents were married for 47 years,
but the first half of my childhood,
my dad was always gone.
You know, he was in the military.
He was constantly deployed here or there,
come home for a few months and leave.
-Stationed in North Carolina
as part of Special Warfare Operations,
Steve's mission was to train America's elite soldiers,
Navy SEALs and Green Berets.
-A lot of the stuff he does,
I don't know and probably never will know.
But when he was deployed, my mother was God.
She had to be the head of the household.
She had to be the disciplinarian.
But she also was my mom.
So she had this loving, caring, nurturing side of that.
-In 1994, Stephen retires from the Marines.
After settling his family in Florida,
he devotes his time to the classroom,
training high school students through ROTC.
But by 2001,
retirement leads him to an unexpected new passion.
-When he retired from the military after 23 years,
he became a lighthouse keeper
and Pam would go and help him there.
-My parents were married for 47 years
and they just gave me the best example of what it means
to truly love someone else.
You know, the selflessness, you know what I mean?
The sacrifices for each other and you could see that.
And now I have a police officer telling me
that my father shot my mother.
I was pissed. I was angry.
I was trying to push back that cop to go in the back
to find out what was going on.
And my wife is standing to my -- to my right
and she sees my dad being escorted in handcuffs.
I didn't see him.
Had I saw him that night,
I would have probably been in jail myself.
I would have went after my father.
I was -- I was enraged, you know,
because I was just told that he killed my mother.
Come to find out, like we saw later,
that just wasn't clear cut as it -- as it should be.
-No other family member said
that Pam Kruspe wanted to commit suicide.
Pam wanting to die was perhaps a creation
in Stephen Kruspe's mind.
♪
♪♪
-Matthew Kruspe and his two siblings are looking for answers
after learning their father, Stephen,
is responsible for the death of their mother, Pam.
-My sister, she -- she arrived at the facility.
My brother didn't come till later.
We were just kind of in shock.
We didn't really understand what was going on.
-Within a couple of hours of the crime,
Stephen Kruspe is taken to the Boynton Beach Police Department,
where he's interrogated.
When they asked Stephen Kruspe if he was hurting,
he said it was his heart and that really will get you
because here's a person who, by all accounts,
loved his wife dearly.
Police, meanwhile, who are sympathetic to him,
are still trying to drill down
whether this was the crime out of compassion for his wife
or a crime of convenience.
-Stephen told the detective that Pam started forgetting things
and getting agitated about four years earlier.
The simplest tasks were just overwhelming to her.
-She noticed she was having issues at work with the numbers
and I just thought that was kind of odd
because numbers were always her thing.
-She had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's
at, like, age 59, which is really, really rare.
-A lot of things,
rapidly, that she loved to do, she could no longer do anymore.
She could brush her own teeth, but I had to remind her.
She could eat on her own, but I had to remind her.
This strongest woman I know...
♪♪
...and in this moment, she's, you know, reduced to a child.
-There were times when it became sometimes combative
and even violent.
-Sometimes she was very aware and she knew what was going on
and then other times, she completely had no control
and I think that must have been terrifying.
-Despite moments of clarity, Pam's violent outbursts
and refusal to come to terms with her condition
leave her family struggling to get her the help she needs.
-This is not Pam Kruspe they all knew,
this was someone in the body of Pam Kruspe
who mentally was someone entirely different.
-They got to a point in 2016 where they made a decision,
as a family, to go ahead and put her in a memory care facility,
but she absolutely hated being in that facility.
-There were times she thought she was working
at the assisted living, that she was there to help people,
because she just didn't understand she was
one of the patients.
-Stephen walks investigators through the moments
leading up to shooting his wife.
-It was early evening.
They went and had a coffee
and then he drove her back to the facility in the parking lot.
-The whole time, she's pretty much begging him, like,
"If you loved me, you would do this."
It just was getting more and more and more desperate.
-Stephen Kruspe, a Marine, kept a gun in his car.
-He stood really close.
Almost close enough,
he could have kissed her and he held the gun against her chest.
-According to Stephen,
she seemed to be encouraged by seeing the gun
and wanted to die.
[ Gunshot ]
♪
♪♪
-In an interview room in Boynton Beach, Florida,
Stephen Kruspe gives a harrowing account
of how he helped his wife, Pam, end her life.
-And the gun went off.
[ Gunshot ]
The bullet went through her heart.
-He explained that when he looked at her face,
all he saw was relief.
-He put the onus on her
that this was a killing because the victim wanted it.
He was adamant that it was an assisted suicide, not murder.
He said he did it for compassionate reasons.
But even though Stephen said that Pam wanted to die,
in this situation, he said that he did it.
He's the one who pulled the trigger.
-The state of Florida does not have mercy killing.
If you take someone's life,
regardless of the reason you give us, it is still murder.
-At the end of the interview, he's arrested.
He's taken into custody and charged with murder.
As per normal practice,
law enforcement did a DNA swab not only of Kruspe,
but also of the gun.
Stephen told law enforcement
that he had thought about doing this before,
so this showed premeditation and that's first-degree murder.
According to the state of Florida,
that makes you not only eligible for life in prison
but the death penalty.
-Stephen Kruspe made it clear from the outset
that he was not guilty of murder
and that the reality was that Pam wanted to die.
She had been asking Steve for a long time to help her with that.
He was hoping that she would change her mind,
but he also understood that by having the gun
that it made it possible for -- for this to happen.
His only objective and only wish
was to see this charge reflect the truthfulness
of what occurred.
-As Stephen remains in jail,
insisting it was a mercy killing,
detectives look to the three Kruspe children
who struggled to comprehend their father's claims
as they speak to police.
-Oh, the kids were in shock.
They were kind of in disbelief that this had happened
and they were disappointed that their dad hadn't talked to them
or asked for help, or let them know how bad it was.
-I believe he murdered my mother.
I do not want to talk to you.
I have nothing to say to you at all.
-Andrew, Stephen's oldest son and Stephanie, his daughter,
also thought he was a murderer, basically, that they had --
He had taken the easy way and murdered their mom.
They started telling the cops
that he was overwhelmed by trying to take care of Pam
and he wasn't asking for help
and he could have asked for help.
They said that he was one of these people
who had such hubris about being able to take care of everything
and fix it,
that he was just going to take matters into his own hands.
-One key detail Stephen gave police
is firmly rejected by his children.
-No other family member said
that Pam Kruspe wanted to commit suicide.
-I knew she was declining,
but she had very lucid moments with us.
She would never flat out say, "I want to kill myself.
I want to die."
-Also Pam Kruspe was very religious.
She converted to Catholicism
and so suicide would be a real no-no.
-In the Catholic Church, if you take your own life,
you're, you know, eternally damned.
-And that's why her family and others
thought that the whole wanting to die
was perhaps a creation in Stephen Kruspe's mind.
-On April 10th,
less than a month after Pam Kruspe was shot and killed,
her husband, Stephen, appears in court for his arraignment.
-We announced that we were seeking
first-degree murder charges.
We also said that we would not be seeking the death penalty.
As prosecutors, we're human beings, too,
and we're sympathetic to the fact that he was a caregiver
and he loved his wife.
But in the end, you can't go around playing God.
-Stephen pled not guilty and said
that this was not premeditated murder.
-Stephen and Pam's youngest son, Matthew,
finds that as time passes following Pam's death,
he begins to see more of his father's side.
-It took me about a month and a half
after the incident took place.
I had gotten over my anger
and I just started to process, you know,
what was my mom going through, what was my dad going through?
Do I agree of what he did?
No, absolutely not.
Of course I didn't agree with it,
but I understood why.
My dad's a fixer.
If something's wrong, he's gonna figure out why and fix it.
And the one thing he couldn't do
and would have never been able to do...
is fix my mother.
I didn't know a lot
of what my dad was going through at this time.
Um, a little bit of me feels guilty.
I was there for my mother,
but I was not involved in a lot of her care
and I could have been there maybe a little more.
If my mom was truly aware of what was going on
and I believe she was,
my mom didn't want to live like this
and I think they both had a hand in it.
-This change of heart is welcomed
by Stephen's defense team,
who are gearing up for an arduous battle.
-As we started defending the case, it was clear
that the police felt it was an open and shut case.
As a result of that,
they didn't examine and evaluate everything that should have been
and there were glaring questions
that we needed to get answers to.
The big question was, was there reason
to suspect that this was possibly a suicide
as opposed to a homicide?
And was there more investigation
that needed to be done to uncover the truth?
♪
♪♪
-Accused of killing his wife, Pam,
Stephen Kruspe watches from jail
as his case stalls for months, then years.
-Because it's a homicide,
these court cases take a very long time.
And the fact that COVID happened
delayed the process even longer.
So, he was in jail, in prison,
awaiting trial for quite a bit of time.
-While both sides wait for their day in court,
the Kruspe siblings work on finding common ground,
despite their differences.
-Me and my brother and sister,
for about two or three years after the incident,
we still had a good standing, good relationship.
I, at this point, supported my dad.
They -- They supported my mom's side.
But we still talked because we made an agreement.
We said,
"Hey, let's not let this destroy us
because it really doesn't involve us.
So, let's let the courts handle this
and let's not let this ruin our relationship."
-Three years pass until in 2020,
the family prepares to meet in court again for a bond hearing.
-In Florida, the court has discretion to grant bond.
We took a considerable amount of time to build a defense case,
to say that he should get a bond,
so that he can be at home and we can finish preparing the case.
We had witnesses from all walks of life, military,
people that knew him in his personal life and family,
Matthew, who had prepared a bedroom for him
and a place to stay.
-Everything was fine.
A week or two before my dad's bond hearing,
that was the moment things and people shifted.
I get a call from my brother.
"What do you know about this bond hearing?
What about the bond hearing? Did you know about it?"
"Yes, I did." "Why didn't you tell any of us?"
"I thought we made an agreement
to let the courts handle the courts."
He was like, "Yeah, but this is a little more serious.
Are you thinking about taking him in?"
And I was like, "Yeah, if it goes down."
And then we 3-way'd my sister in and it just got more
and more and more.
You know, they said some things,
"I can't believe you're, you know,
you would take in a murderer."
-The tensions between the family come to a head
on the day of the hearing.
-About six months after COVID shut everything down,
he finally got a bond hearing in September of 2020
and everybody in the court were masked.
-All three siblings testify at the bond hearing,
Matthew for the defense and Andrew and Stephanie
on the side of the prosecution.
-This was a split family and this was something
that really weighed on those who loved Pam Kruspe.
-Stephanie basically told the judge
that she didn't trust her dad.
There was no way, after what he had done with the mom,
that she could believe in him.
He had sacrificed their trust.
-My brother and sister,
they called him narcissistic,
they called him controlling, unstable, irrational.
They feared for their lives.
They thought my dad would come and hunt them down.
They both painted a view I never knew they had of my father.
But two, one that doesn't exist of my father.
-Stephen's oldest son, Andrew,
was on Zoom for the bond hearing as well
and he was vehement that he'd just stay in jail.
-When Andrew appeared remotely at the bond hearing
and said, "I heard my dad say
that he wanted to put a round in her chest,"
it's really damning, not only because it shows premeditation,
but it also shows
that Stephen Kruspe allegedly had this intention
before things got even worse,
that he was thinking about it at least a year in advance.
-My dad was hurt for a while because of my brother and sister
and the things they said during that bond hearing.
He still loves them. He still cares for them.
Don't think that he doesn't,
but he's hurt because the words don't line up with
how we were raised with what took place.
He feels abandoned by them.
-When the judge announced her ruling,
she denied bond,
saying the evidence of premeditated murder
was too strong to release him.
-He was being put on trial for murder.
What's to say he wouldn't try to kill himself or others,
especially because he seemingly had some sort of Messiah complex
where he believed in killing other people
for their own benefit.
We were there to do justice for Pam.
This was an unjustified killing,
a homicide that needed to be punished appropriately
and we were not going to stop.
♪♪
♪
♪♪
-After a contentious bond hearing,
Stephen Kruspe is denied bond and sent back to prison
to await trial for the murder of his wife, Pam.
-Stephen went back to jail
and our focus turned on finding the best experts
in crime-scene reconstruction and DNA analysis,
all with the objective to prove
that this was an assisted suicide and not a murder.
-The defense enlists forensics expert Tiffany Roy
to aid their case.
They ask her to go back over the evidence collected
at the time of the incident.
-The first thing I do in every case
when I get the case file notes is to check for human error,
because human people do this work and they make mistakes.
-As we're going through this process,
we found out that Pamela's hands should have been tested
for gunshot residue and were not.
-Back at the time,
this was such an open and shut case
that the medical examiner had no evidence of GSR,
gunshot residue.
This is missing. This data would be important.
-The presence or absence of gunshot residue
on someone's hands might be telling.
-If gunshot-residue testing had been done,
as it should have been,
it could have shown that Pam assisted in the suicide.
-Seeing this discrepancy,
the defense strategy is to turn the State's evidence
against them in an effort to show
that not enough was done to rule out suicide
as the cause of Pam's death, starting with the DNA.
-DNA was important in this case
because they tested the murder weapon,
which was a gun that was owned by Mr. Kruspe
and drew conclusions that Mr. Kruspe's DNA was
on his own firearm.
But the tools that were being used at the crime lab
can only examine certain parts and pieces of the profile.
So there were things that were being missed.
And so, we needed a higher-powered tool
to examine that information.
-Tiffany helped us do additional testing on samples
that law enforcement have.
-There were several samples after they were examined
that showed DNA traits
that were similar to Mrs. Kruspe on the firearm.
The area where Mrs. Kruspe's DNA was most present was the grip
and that made it a very real possibility
that she could have handled that weapon.
-This was huge,
because her contact with the gun suggests that, in fact,
she was involved in the discharging of the weapon.
-But can the presence of her DNA alone prove assisted suicide?
-We could argue, as prosecutors, that she did not want to die.
She was trying to push the gun away.
-We knew the prosecutor would attempt
to show a pushing away of the gun.
So, we hired an expert on firearms,
forensic reconstruction of shootings
and he reconstructed the shooting to see
whether or not the wounds to the shirt
and the DNA on the gun were consistent with showing
that Pam embraced and pulled the gun toward her.
This showed that Steve did not act alone
and that Pam very likely assisted in her own death.
-This stunning evidence suggests Pamela may have assisted
in the shooting that night.
Stephen never mentioned this detail to anyone,
including his own defense attorney.
-I think the reason he didn't mention
the specific act of pulling the gun toward her
at the time was that the investigators never asked
for the specifics in terms of how it happened.
He said he shot his wife. That was uncontested.
However, they never asked what Pam did
or what role she may have played.
And so, by not asking the questions,
the investigation never got into that part of the case.
I also think that often under periods of stress,
people sometimes don't remember everything exactly as it happens
and they oftentimes will fill in gaps
or missing information with information
that's most detrimental to themselves.
And because of her faith as a strong Catholic,
on some level, he believed that by not talking about that,
he was protecting her in a sense.
-The defense informs Stephen's son Matthew of their findings,
which forces him to reconsider his mother's final moments.
-There's no other way that my mom's DNA
could have got on there unless she was holding that gun.
After the DNA evidence, what I believe happened is,
yes, my father went to the car and got the gun.
Yes, my father presented it to my mother.
At which point, um, my mother...
[ Sighs ]
I still -- I still battle with this.
Like...[sighs]
I believe my mom took her own life
and my father did give her the gun.
And when...
when she shot herself, um,
just all the guilt of it came back to my father.
So, I do believe my dad had a portion in it.
I don't think he solely pulled the trigger himself.
I think the ultimate decision
to take my mother's life was my mother's.
-Faced with the defense's new evidence of assisted suicide,
the state's attorney needs to rethink their approach.
-This was a game changer because we were all set
to pursue murder charges and when you're a prosecutor,
you have to prove cases beyond a reasonable doubt.
The fact that we now had some doubt meant
that the jury certainly would.
♪♪
♪
♪♪
-What seemed like a straightforward murder case
against Stephen Kruspe takes a turn
when forensic evidence gives the defense room
to argue it was a mercy killing.
-The defense paid a lot of money for an expert,
who then revealed that Pam's DNA was found on the grip of the gun
and that's why we decided to enter into conversations
about lowering the charge.
In Florida, there's a rarely used statute,
a manslaughter by assisted suicide.
So, we met the evidence where it was and told the defense
that we'd be willing to enter into an agreement
where the defendant would plead guilty to manslaughter
by assisted suicide
and would leave it up to the judge to do the sentencing.
-When Stephen learned of the offer, he was relieved.
He felt that finally, after six years,
we were getting an offer that was consistent with the truth
and at that time he pled guilty to manslaughter
by assisted suicide.
-In August 2023,
Stephen finally gets to go back to court for sentencing.
-With no priors,
he was eligible for a sentence of between 10 and 30 years.
Our case was reinforced by the fact that the family members,
at least almost all of them, were on our side.
They were the ones who wanted Stephen Kruspe to go to prison
as long as possible.
They clearly did not like him.
They hated what he did.
They did not forgive him and they wanted the maximum penalty.
-During sentencing,
my brother and sister gave victim impact statements.
I-I -- A lot of the stuff they said to me was just...
...vindictive.
If you viewed my father that way,
then why would you even be around him?
Their words and their actions didn't line up to me
and I didn't understand that.
-What struck me was
when Stephen Kruspe voluntarily chose to give a statement
at sentencing and I was a bit surprised at how defiant
and angry he was.
-He finally gets to speak in court.
He basically says, "Well, where was everybody helping me?"
-The judge, she was not unsympathetic to Stephen Kruspe.
She understood where he was coming from.
If the family wasn't so adamant,
if Stephanie and Andrew didn't feel the way they did,
then this would have been probably treated differently.
In the end, she decided to go for 20 years.
♪♪
-When they came back with 20,
I was just at a loss for words.
It's a life sentence for my father. He's old.
-In his mind,
he's someone who gave his life in exchange for hers.
He's not going to be able to be buried
at Arlington National Cemetery.
His family is permanently divided.
-My dad is currently 72.
I still go visit him.
I talk to him at least once a week on the phone.
My dad has not spoken to anybody, my brother or sister,
since the incident.
I have no plans to ever speak with my brother or sister again.
♪♪
[ Voice breaking ] I miss my mom a lot.
Um...
She raised me. She was my best friend.
No matter what I was going through,
whenever my mother smiled, I knew it was okay
or it would be all right.
[ Sighs ]
I just want to see her smile one more time.