- She was someone that sees what they want in life,
goes after it.
[Faith] In the game of love, the stakes are high.
- She's a lovely young lady, he's a handsome man,
sparks were flying from both sides.
[Faith] Everilda Duran risks everything
when she bets her future on John Watson.
- Her parents couldn't do anything to stop her
from moving to the US with John.
- They were happy.
[Faith] Until a celebratory trip to Las Vegas.
[tense music]
- "Where is Evie, where is Evie?"
- She was nowhere to be seen.
[Faith] When her luck runs out.
- There was blood spatter on the driver's side
and bloodstains on the left rear seatbelt.
[dramatic music]
- Is there something buried out here?
[Faith] Revealing a killer relationship.
- It was so disturbingly evil.
[tense music]
[dramatic music]
- Love at first sight,
it's something I'm frequently asked about.
Does it exist?
Does it last?
Well, it does for John Watson,
who was instantly smitten with Everilda Duran or Evie,
the moment he lays eyes on her in Guatemala in 1971.
Young but mature, Evie falls for John as well
and the couple spends 33 years together building a family
miles away from their fateful first encounter.
[birds chirping]
[upbeat music]
- Everilda was born on a coffee plantation,
where many families lived.
Even though we didn't have access to running water
and electricity,
we still were happy.
And then Everilda moved to the big city, Guatemala City,
because there were so few opportunities
at the coffee plantation.
- My dad was interning with a professor over in Guatemala
and he met my mother there.
She was working as a housekeeper,
but she was 15 years old
and so he does come back two years later when she's 17
and at that point, she's a lovely young lady,
he's a handsome man.
Sparks were flying from both sides.
- Everilda saw in John that he was a smart guy.
- My father learned Spanish.
He would sing her songs pretty often,
it was his version of a love language.
[soft romantic music] [singing in Spanish]
- My dad fell in love with her spirit,
her feistiness, her brilliance.
- She fell in love with him
and she wanted to come to the US with him.
[Faith] In the early 1970s, it's customary for men
to ask the parents' permission before proposing.
So the couple makes the five-hour journey
to the coffee plantation where 34-year-old John
plans to ask for Evie's hand.
- I think Everilda's family was surprised
about her relationship with John.
Everilda was 17 years old.
They did not approve their relationship,
because they didn't know much about John Watson,
so they were not in agreement
for her to move to the United States.
- My mom was independent,
She saw a future with my father
and went after that.
[Faith] Everilda takes a risk in the name of love.
She says goodbye to everyone and everything she knows
and sets off on a romantic journey with John
a world away to California where the couple is married
on September 24th, 1973.
- My father started working as a math teacher.
My mom went to high school specifically to finish it out
and she was the popular girl.
He said, "You have to go, make friends,
come back home to me."
[soft upbeat music]
- She loved to live in California.
- For her, it was a brand new kingdom,
where she could just go and be a princess.
[Faith] The storybook relationship
writes another chapter in 1979.
- My oldest brother, Juan, was born.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom.
They moved to Ontario where my father taught math
at Ontario High School.
[Faith] Two more boys follow,
Michael, in 1983,
and the youngest, Richard, in 1989.
- Growing up, there was a lot of love in the family.
- We would get together and watch TV,
"Xena: Warrior Princess"
and they would hold hands, they would laugh,
but my parents had very little in common.
My mom was the biggest life of the party,
she would belt out laughs,
you could hear it from across the house.
- My mom was younger and would go out with her family,
with her friends and stay out all night.
- And then my dad, completely opposite,
introvert, where he liked to be on his own
and that was fine with both of them.
- One of my dad's little quirks
was that he was absolutely frugal,
a little on the stingy side.
- My dad does love money.
He set himself up in a way
to where he does not have to worry about anything
when he's retired and anything that messed with that
made him extremely angry.
Tension starts when my mother
wants to do more with the house
and my father is saying, "It's not in the budget."
- Most of the time, they argued in Spanish
to kind of shield, because none of us spoke Spanish.
Financial stress was a huge part of it,
things were very, very tight.
[dramatic music]
I was nine.
They called us into the master bedroom.
"Your mom and I are thinking of getting a divorce
and we wanna know your input."
And my reaction was to just say, you know,
"Stay together, stay together."
- Even though they had grown apart at that point,
my parents still loved each other
and so my parents said,
"We'll take another shot."
[Faith] For John and Everilda, it's an unorthodox approach
to ask their children whether they should get divorced,
but it won't be the last time John lays an emotional burden
on one of his boys.
In March of 2006,
John shares a secret with his youngest son.
- When I was 16 years old,
we're sitting in his Jeep
and he mentions, "Hey, I have colon cancer."
Me, I'm thinking, "Oh, my dad's dying, what's going on?"
And I say, "Did you tell Mom yet?"
He says, "I wanna keep it a secret for now,
but I just wanted you to know."
I said, "Okay, Dad,
I'll keep my mouth shut."
[Faith] Two months later,
still hiding his cancer diagnosis
from the rest of the family,
John retires from teaching after 37 years.
He remains frugal and introverted
and Evie is still the life of the party,
but somehow the couple always seems to meet in the middle.
- They found a way to make it work.
[Faith] And the following month,
Everilda reaches her own milestone,
a 50th birthday.
- On July 9th, John helped prepare
a surprise party for Everilda.
- She was surprised, happy,
he doesn't throw parties like that.
- Their relationship was on solid ground.
They seemed to have more fun.
- Almost at the end of the party,
John said that he was going to take Evie
to Vegas for five days and he also bought a ticket
for Evie to travel to Guatemala on July 15th,
to visit her family.
- My mom does not like long drives,
so my dad leaves on Monday
and then my mom goes to fly out on Tuesday, July 11th.
I drop her off at the airport,
give her a kiss and say,
"Hey, I love you, I'll see you when you get home."
- We figured that they would be having fun
and staying up all hours of the night,
so we tried not to bother them.
But on Wednesday, July 12th,
my dad calls home and he says, "Your Mom is missing."
[tense music]
At the time, I really thought it was just gonna be okay.
After being married as long as they were, you know,
you both go gamble on your own
and meet up hours later.
[soft dramatic music]
My dad said that he was handling it,
so we just waited for him to call us.
[tense music]
- But the next day,
we are starting to get a little worried.
We'd call her cell phone,
it would just ring and ring and ring
and then we'd call my dad,
straight to voicemail.
- At that point,
I knew something had happened to my cousin.
dramatic music]
- Las Vegas is a very dangerous place for a woman
to be walking around intoxicated late at night.
- And then fast forward,
we have a house full of police.
They're rummaging through our rooms,
they're looking for evidence.
- Underneath the carpet was just saturated in blood.
- It was like a "CSI" moment from television.
- Just days after her 50th birthday celebratio
Everilda Watson has vanished in Las Vegas,
while there on a trip with her husband of 33 years,
John Watson.
Though no one can get ahold of Evie,
John assures their three children
that he's looking for their mother
and so they wait.
[somber music]
- At this point, I wanna go to Vegas and find my mom,
but I'm in high school,
so Saturday my brother goes off and calls the police
and says, "Can I put in a missing person's report?
We haven't heard from her."
- Then something strange happens.
Early Sunday morning on July 16th,
240 miles from Sin City,
Everilda's cousin receives a knock on her door.
Standing there is the last person she expects to see.
- Around six a.m., John showed up to my house,
which really surprised me.
As soon as I opened my door,
the first question that he said,
"Where is Evie, where is Evie?"
And I tell him,
"You should know where she is, because she was with you."
John said that Evie got drunk and that she walked away
and that he didn't know where she went.
I was confused.
I didn't know what to think at that moment.
[Faith] After the unexpected visit to Miriam,
John Watson heads home to see his three sons.
- My first feeling was disappointment
and like, "Why are you here if she's not found?"
- He explains she had met someone in Vegas.
"Your mom found a way to leave to Guatemala already."
We're like, "She would've called us."
- It really made my heart drop,
because it meant that we didn't know where she was.
- My dad does not seem upset at all that she's missing.
So as my dad's talking with my brothers,
one of them steps out so that way they can call the police.
[dramatic music]
- On Sunday, July 16th, a little after four p.m.,
we responded down to the Watson House
in the city of Ontario.
We asked John to tell us what had happened in Las Vegas.
He said that he left for Las Vegas on Monday,
drove to the Circus Circus
and Tuesday, she arrived at the hotel by cab.
John said that Tuesday night,
they went to Arizona Charlie's,
which is one of her favorite gambling spots.
There, she won a little bit of money and had some drinks.
Then John said they had had a fight over something
that Everilda had found in his car,
literature from the cancer group.
John told me that Evie didn't know he had cancer
and she was very mad at him
because he had lied to her about this.
She was drunk, upset
and she took off.
John told us that he hung around looking for her,
going in and out of casinos,
she was nowhere to be seen.
- He didn't tell me that he was sick,
he didn't tell my mom that he was sick,
but I could've absolutely imagined,
that if the fight were to happen,
that she would wanna walk away
and perhaps even get her own room.
- John told me that she had 12 to $1,400 in cash
and just raised our level of concern
for a woman to be walking around intoxicated late at night.
Las Vegas is a very dangerous place.
[dramatic music]
And then John tells me that he received a call
the following morning, the 12th, from Everilda.
He told me that Everilda said she had met someone
from Guatemala and that that person, a female,
was going to take her to LAX
to make her flight on Saturday.
- But my mom didn't make it to Guatemala.
- John seemed like he had a story
that he wanted to give to us,
but he is giving off indicators
that he is not being truthful with us.
There were a lot of little points in the case
that didn't make sense
and the first one was that
John Watson never reported her missing in Las Vegas.
The fact that he wasn't really looking for her
was very suspicious.
- It's a well known fact, when someone goes missing,
the first 48 hours are critical.
After that, the chances of finding the person diminish
and it's now been five days since Evie was last seen.
With increased urgency,
detectives received John's permission to search his home.
- They're rummaging through our rooms,
they're rummaging in the master bedroom
where my parents slept.
So to me, the police thought my dad was involved.
They're looking for evidence.
- And then Watson gave us consent to look in the car.
During our search of the car, we found electronic key cards
to the Circus Circus and the Tuscany Hotel.
I didn't feel that it was unusual
he had key cards to the hotels,
I think it's common that people keep them,
but it was also an investigative lead.
In addition, we found bleach, air freshener,
plastic sheeting similar to what you would put down
if you were painting,
antifreeze,
incense.
When I found all this stuff,
that was an eye-opening, like,
what-the-F moment.
It made me wonder if things are about to get worse.
- Five days,
that's how long Everilda Watson has been missing
after a trip to Las Vegas with her husband, John.
- When you get told your mom is missing
and your dad is telling you
that he really doesn't know where she's at,
that's a very scary feeling.
[Faith] Detectives searching John Watson's car
have a similar feeling.
They discover bleach,
air freshener,
incense
and a tarp.
Separately, these items seem innocuous.
Together, they suggest something sinister.
But what detectives find next is even more disturbing.
- There was blood spatter on the driver's side
and bloodstains on the left rear seatbelt.
Blood was found in the storage area,
the back compartment of the car on cardboard.
John's narrative about what happened
was that Everilda had been in the backseat of the car
using his pocket knife to open a container
or a plastic box of flashlights
and that she had cut her finger
and she bled a little bit.
John's demeanor is not anywhere near what I would expect.
He is very concerned about what his consequences will be
versus what has happened to his wife.
He is afraid that he will become
the suspect in her disappearance.
After we discovered the amount of blood in the car,
which was excessive for what would ever be considered
a pocket knife wound,
John Watson's taken into custody for investigative purposes
and transported to the Ontario Police Department.
[Faith] Once there, they find something
in John's possession that raises another red flag.
- His wallet is found to contain two California ID cards
with the name Joe Nunez
slightly spelled different and his picture.
[dramatic music]
- Folks, John Watson was an unassuming math teacher
for 37 years before retiring just a month earlier.
At this point, Detective Bristow and his team
have to be wondering what the heck is going on here?
- We learned that John Watson was using the fake identities
to count cards in Las Vegas.
John knows that the casinos frown upon people
that are counting cards,
so he had fake IDs to check into rooms
so no one would know who he truly was.
Those cards are a felony as false identification.
So on Sunday, July 16th,
John Watson was booked at the jail for the forgery
of the two California state-issued ID cards.
[Faith] Detectives have many more questions for John,
but he asked for a lawyer.
- So we'd lost every opportunity then to ever talk to him.
We moved on with our investigation,
obtaining search warrants on John Watson's phone
and several computers.
[Faith] Investigators impound John's Jeep the next morning
to collect blood samples for testing,
but the DNA and the phone records
will take time to process.
Then on July 18th, seven days since Everilda goes missing,
a piece of evidence surfaces.
[dramatic music]
- I was looking through for some extra clothes
and I saw this old gun.
My dad didn't have a gun.
So, what was this doing here?
Let's turn it over to the police.
- So the gun was taken into evidence.
It was swabbed and gunpowder residue was located,
which means it'd more than likely recently been fired.
The gun is now going to be processed,
trying to recover DNA.
- I remember not being able to sleep well that night,
kind of like had a churning in my stomach.
I started to think that something wasn't right,
that my dad was involved now.
- On July 18th, we got ahold of the Las Vegas Metro PD
and gave them the information about what we were doing
so they would be aware of it.
- The Ontario had already done a lot of legwork,
so I sent an alert out to all the hotels in Vegas
to see if John was ever a guest there.
We didn't get any response on that.
Ontario also asked if we would go to the Circus Circus,
but there was really nothing there that was of any benefit.
- On the 19th of July, we made our first trip to Las Vegas
to work on the investigation.
We were able to obtain surveillance videos
from Arizona Charlie's
where we could see John and Everilda in the casino.
At that point, there was nothing to indicate
that she had poor coordination, balance.
[Faith] However, detectives have better luck
when a search warrant for Watson's credit card information
reveals he was at a Walmart on July 13th,
two days after Everilda disappeared.
- We were able to recover the video and found
that he had used his credit card to buy antifreeze
and we discovered that he had made a second purchase
paying cash for bleach, plastic sheeting,
air freshener,
all items that we had recovered
from the back of John Watson's car.
He was making preparations for not being able
to have his credit cards identify that purchase.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] While detectives continue searching for evidence
and wait for the phone records and DNA results,
John Watson is out of jail,
free, after posting bail on the forgery charge.
- John was put under surveillance by Ontario,
to keep an eye on him.
- During this time, we don't see him.
He...
stays in contact via phone calls to us periodically.
He says that he doesn't want to come back
because he feels like the police are tracking him.
We think he's just being paranoid.
My dad wasn't expressing any worry about my mom,
but he expressed he wants to find her.
- I'm not managing very well.
I kind of shut down.
I personally have been calling my mom's cell phone
just to hear her voicemail at this point.
[Faith] Richard's calls go unanswered,
but on July 20th,
one of the warrants yields a possible clue,
which could lead to Everilda's whereabouts
miles from the Las Vegas Strip.
[Brad] We discovered that on the morning of July 12th,
there were 15 calls from Everilda's phone
to John's cell phone.
We knew the last location of her phone
based on cell phone records
and her phone pinged off a cell tower in Jean, Nevada.
[Faith] Roughly 30 miles south of Las Vegas,
Jean, Nevada is on I-15,
the main route
from Sin City to Ontario.
- There is no way for us to identify
if she was with anyone or not.
We did the due diligence,
but there was no proof
Everilda made those calls herself.
[Faith] And there is no evidence
that Everilda actually left Las Vegas,
but Detective Bristow recalls finding a room key card
for the Tuscany Hotel in John Watson's Jeep.
- So I sent two detectives to the Tuscany Hotel.
- They inquired about him staying there,
the dates that they were known to be in town.
- No one by John Watson had stayed there.
[Faith] Detectives try another name and hit the jackpot.
- Joe Nunez was one of the false IDs
that he was found to have in his possession.
- They found that Joe Nunez had rented multiple rooms
at the hotel on two different occasions.
I think that John Watson had a plan
that he was working off of to commit the crime.
[somber music]]
- Tuesday, July 20th, it's been a little more than a week
since Everilda Watson disappeared.
Her beloved boys are worried sick.
They haven't heard from her and can't help but wonder,
is their mom safe,
is she in danger,
is she still alive?
- I'm thinking, "Mom, we miss you,
your boys miss you.
Please come home.
We don't know where you are."
[Faith] Not knowing is the hardest part
for Everilda's boys,
but detectives are working diligently to find answers.
In fact, they'd just discovered that John Watson
rented multiple rooms at the Tuscany Hotel in Las Vegas
under the alias Joe Nunez.
- When they gave them the Joe Nunez identity,
they found on a trip in June,
Joe Nunez checked into the hotel and stayed in room N120.
Before he left on that trip,
he reserved room N120 for July 10th through the 14th.
He paid for the room cash in advance.
[dramatic music]
- When John returns to Las Vegas in July
for Everilda's birthday trip,
he adds a second room, N118 to his reservation
or to be more precise, Joe Nunez's reservation,
because John and Everilda Watson
are booked at a different hotel.
[ominous music]
- They're supposed to be at Circus Circus.
- Detectives scrub through hours
of Tuscany Hotel surveillance footage
from July 11th to the 14th
and make a bizarre discovery.
- The detectives obtained video
showing John Watson in a disguise.
He was using a cane to walk and wearing a dark-colored wig
and mustache while he checked into the Tuscany Hotel.
- Each time he was seen at the Tuscany,
he was wearing a disguise
and that's what really sparked our attention.
- There was no surveillance of John Watson
going in or out of the room.
The only thing that gives us any indications of activity
in the room were the electronic key card log
that's generated every time you swipe your card at the door.
- From July 11th through the 14th,
the Tuscany log shows what you'd expect to see
from a hotel guest,
periodic random entries in room N118
and in room N120.
But on Saturday, July 15th,
four days after ever Everilda disappears,
the log reveals something highly unusual.
- With John in room 120 at the Tuscany,
that room was entered 20 times within an hour.
- That slot of late night after midnight activity
of the door opening and closing less than 10 minutes apart.
So the detectives search rooms N120 and 118.
They used swabs to check the bathroom and shower,
which give a positive presumptive test for blood
and it was sent to the crime lab in San Bernardino for testing.
It started out as a suspicious circumstances
missing person case...
but now it was pretty much set in my mind
that Everilda had been the victim of a homicide.
- We were convinced that that's where everything happened,
that was our crime scene.
[dramatic music]
We noticed that Room 120 was an end room, ground floor,
so if you came out of that room, the exit of the building
was immediately right there within 10 feet.
There was parking available right outside that door.
Room 118 was a buffer zone,
so that the noise wouldn't be carried over to the next room.
He had his time to do what he wanted to with her.
- And that's why he wanted N120.
[ominous music]
- There is obviously some sort of
decomposing biological material on it,
which is a very unique smell
to anybody who's been in law enforcement.
- My dad breaks it down to me,
"Your mom shot herself."
- I am really concerned that John Watson
is on the way out of town.
is now a potential homicide.
But if John Watson did murder his wife, Everilda,
where is she
and what happened?
Investigators know that John scouted hotel rooms
a month before Evie's birthday trip
and he paid cash
and wore disguises.
These are all signs of premeditation,
which elevates this case to another level.
- Once you know it's our murder, it happened in Las Vegas,
we're gonna be responsible for putting it together
and getting it prosecuted.
- I am a young lawyer assigned to the Homicide Unit
and my boss says,
"I think we need a DA on this early enough."
- So with everything pointing to John Watson
as the suspect in Everilda's disappearance,
it was decided to put a GPS tracker on his car
and we'd also executed a warrant
for a wiretap of John Watson's phone.
On July 25th, Watson leaves the city of Ontario
and heads up to the Northern California area of Kernville.
[Faith] Kernville is about 200 miles from Ontario,
but why would John be taking
a trip to this remote area
so far from home
and especially right now?
- The surveillance unit follows him up to the hills there,
noting different locations where he stops
and appears to be checking a map.
- He pulls off on the side of a road
and is out there for a little while looking around,
then he gets back into the car and drives off again.
- We get ahold of the Sheriff's Department,
who sends an officer out there.
He starts looking around the site for anything disturbed.
He saw some plastic sticking out of the ground.
- It's a large rollout like a paint tarp
and when they pull the tarp out,
[dramatic music]
there is obviously some sort of
decomposing biological material on it,
which is a very unique smell
to anybody who's been in law enforcement.
- They bring it back to the Ontario Police Department
so that it could be processed for DNA.
This was plastic sheeting that, to me, looked like the sheeting
that was found in John Watson's car.
When they matched the pieces of plastic together
and they were an exact match,
it was like a "CSI" moment from television.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] With this new discovery,
it's critical to keep John Watson in their sights
at all times,
but they also can't afford to show their hand.
- The hope was that he was gonna lead us to Everilda's body.
- At some point, the GPS unit was knocked off the car,
so we didn't have that asset anymore.
John Watson left Kernville
and he made his way north toward Las Vegas.
The next morning,
he was driving very fast
and then slowing down,
stopping on the side of the road
for significant amounts of time,
like he was checking traffic.
- Obviously that was a ruse to try to draw them out
into the open so he knew they were being followed.
- John's driving became so erratic and dangerous,
that the surveillance was canceled at that point,
because of the danger to citizens in the area.
[Faith] Detectives have to hope they can find John
when he uses his cell phone again.
Three days later, on July 31st,
the blood samples from John's Jeep
and the shower drain in room N120
both come back as matching Everilda.
But without a body, prosecutors want more evidence.
- Anytime you're doing this job,
you know, you're playing hunches
and they found the plastic out there in Tulare County
with her decomp on it
and then went to Tuscany,
20 times, he went to that door,
opened it and went into the room.
You start putting that together, it's like,
"Okay, something more happened in that room."
And we speculated during that time he was carrying his wife
out to the car in pieces
in the bags.
Now, to dismember a body,
it takes a lot more than your Case knife,
so how did he do that?
[dramatic music]
And you're standing near where he bought cleaning supplies
and you look over there,
there's a home improvement store.
- So Detective Hanna begins to watch surveillance.
[Larry] And sure enough,
he came in and purchased a bandsaw with cash.
- He also bought tools to assemble the bandsaw,
suggestive that he's going to utilize the bandsaw
before going home.
- What's he gonna do with that?
He's out of town.
That means he gonna start remodeling a room
at the motel or what?
- Well, once he's bought cleaning supplies
and he's bought a bandsaw
and his wife is missing,
there's no question that John dismembered Everilda.
[ominous music]
- On August 2nd, the Las Vegas Metro PD
Detective Hanna returned to room N120
to conduct a deeper investigation into the room.
- Our CSIs saw some
dark spots on the rug.
They did a presumptive test for blood
and they came back positive.
I'm thinking the room doesn't look
like a slaughterhouse or anything,
so we went and cut the carpet back
and underneath the carpet was just saturated in blood.
- The samples are sent over for DNA analysis.
John Watson doesn't get arrested
until that DNA is confirmed to be Everilda's DNA.
[dramatic music]
- As someone who spent time in a district attorney's office,
I love what the prosecutor is doing here.
Thanks to great police work,
he's preparing an airtight case
for premeditated capital murder
and in the state of Nevada,
that could mean the death penalty for John Watson.
- The more we looked into the case,
the more it became obvious that John had a plan.
He made hotel reservations paying cash,
which were untraceable,
he had concocted false identities,
he wore disguises.
[Faith] Watson knows he's being followed.
The walls seemed to be closing in.
He makes a call to his youngest son, Richard.
- My dad breaks it down to me,
"Your mom shot herself.
I had to cut her up
because she's so big
and she's gone."
I'm shocked to the core.
There's no way my mom would've committed suicide.
She was happy.
She was living life.
And I say,
"Okay, did you tell the police this?
I don't know what you want me to do."
I start panicking.
He talks to me for another 20 minutes,
that's when the phone drops.
My oldest brother, Juan, calls the police,
lets them know what happened.
We get brought in.
Detective breaks the news to us that our mom's dead for sure,
that my dad did it.
- I felt devastated that my mom was not coming back.
It felt hard to believe that this person who I call Dad,
could murder our mom.
- But the fact that he confessed to the crime
was not legally sufficient to convict him of the crime.
[Faith] On August 9th,
almost four weeks to the day since Everilda went missing,
investigators get the DNA results they need.
- The blood underneath the carpet
taken from room N120 at the Tuscany Hotel
and the plastic sheet from John Watson's car
and the Kernville dump site came back to Everilda Watson.
- We also receive information that there is blow back
or blood down the barrel of John Watson's gun
and that blood matches the DNA of Everilda Watson.
That suggested that John put the gun up
to the head of Everilda and pulled the trigger.
- They started working on an arrest warrant
and by the morning of the 10th, I had it in my possession.
- Because of the pings on his phone,
Watson was staying at a hotel in Santa Ana at the time.
[Faith] Without a second to waste,
the entire investigative team races to the hotel
to catch their suspected killer.
But as usual,
John is one step ahead of the law.
- When the warrant was executed,
John Watson was not found in the room.
Somehow he'd been able to get out of the hotel
and was in the wind.
[sirens wailing]
- On the morning of
just when detectives think they have John Watson in their grasp,
he somehow manages to slip away.
[suspenseful music]
- I am really concerned that John Watson
is on the way out of town.
Mexico is two and a half, three hours away,
depending on traffic.
[Faith] Seven hours later, detectives get a hit.
- His phone had pinged off a cell tower
in Claremont, California.
One of the supervising units remembered that in the past,
John Watson had eaten at a Denny's.
We found John Watson inside having food.
When John Watson exited the Denny's,
I told him he was under arrest for a warrant
out of Las Vegas for the murder of his wife.
- When John's taken into custody,
he has a wig and mustache disguise.
He had a bus ticket to El Paso, Texas,
along with banking information related to Mexican banks.
He was that close to fleeing.
[Faith] On August 10th, 2006,
one month after Everilda Watson said goodbye to her boys
for the last time,
the police have their man,
what they still need
is motive.
[dramatic music]
- When John Watson told his son Richard about having cancer
and asked him not to share that information with his wife,
I believe it was part of the planning for the crime.
[dramatic music]
- I don't believe that he ever had cancer.
- In November of 2006, I spoke to David Guerrero,
a friend of John Watson's,
Guerrero told me about a conversation
where John was making comments about a divorce and money.
- John has gotten his retirement
and he may be giving up half of his money
to Everilda if they get divorced.
So during this conversation,
John makes some sort of statement,
"You know, I could just kill her,"
and the friend's response is,
"John, it's cheaper to keep her."
And John's like, "I'm not kidding,
I could kill her and I could put her body
where nobody would ever find her."
When you don't have the body,
it is really difficult to establish the crime.
But by the time I make it to the courtroom,
I am convinced that I'm gonna convict John Watson
of the murder of Everilda Watson.
[suspenseful music]
[Faith] In June, 2010,
John Watson's trial begins and quickly ends.
After two and a half days of deliberations,
the jury makes a unanimous decision.
- John Watson is convicted of first degree murder
with the use of a deadly weapon
and first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon.
The only question is
whether or not he's gonna die of natural causes
or if eventually all the appeals are gonna go by
and he's gonna be executed by lethal injection.
[Faith] There is one mystery that has never been solved.
What did John Watson do with Evie's remains?
- He dismembered her
and dispersed her in various locations
that are probably, other than just luck,
never going to be found.
- John took a big piece of my heart.
He has no idea what he has done to our family.
- When my father murdered my mother,
he took away one of the brightest lights in my life
and it's hard to come back from that.
- I'd love for my mom to be remembered
for the loving woman that she was,
for the personality that she brought with her everywhere.
If nothing else, try to remember her laugh,
because that's what she did most of the time.
- Ultimately, John Watson seemed to love money
more than his wife
and his greed compelled him
to murder the woman who devoted her life to him.
Pure evil.
But Everilda left something behind
in this killer relationship:
her abundant spirit and eternal love lives on
through her three beautiful boys.