[reporter] Stemple's husband of 11 years originally told police his wife
went to the store in the middle of the night to get medicine.
Her body was found just off the shoulder of highway 75
a few hours later.
[Brett] This became an enraged, brutal murder
that's unthinkable.
And so I wanna make it perfectly clear that both
of them are equally liable for this horrendous act.
[James] It broke my heart that he hurt that woman.
You know, he was my son.
I didn't think that he would do something like that.
It hurt for years. It didn't go away.
There were three people out there that night,
and only one of them is still alive.
And so how do I know I'm getting the whole story
from this guy?
I think everybody has things about themselves
that they don't want people to know.
[Terry] I feel like I'm more than just my crime.
You know, I mean, that was a horrible time.
That was a dark period in my life.
You know, a lot of people are hurt.
But I feel like I just wanted people to see me and have
a chance to, you know, see me as more than just something
they read on the internet.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
[eerie music plays]
[reporter] Prosecutors say Stemple was a husband who first
cheated on his wife, then killed her for money,
nearly a million dollars in life insurance,
and because he had a girlfriend.
They say he offered his girlfriend's cousin,
Terry Hunt, $30,000 to help beat Trisha Stemple,
then run over her with a truck and make it look
like a hit-and-run accident.
[reporter #2] Prosecutors say this case was one of the worst crimes
they've ever seen.
You know, if I could -- if I could take that moment back,
you know, I mean, it would...
it would...
I can't say that my life would have been better
or that I wouldn't have went along to prison,
but Trisha would still be alive.
Her family wouldn't be missing someone that they loved.
You know, and I would say that
it -- it was a horrible crime.
It was -- it was...
There's no getting around it.
[soft eerie music playing]
You know, and I'm not saying that I didn't --
don't deserve to come to prison,
you know, and do a lot of time. I don't -- I don't
deny that or dispute it.
But I would say that,
you know, that
while I participated in that,
you know, that's not who I am.
You know, it's hard to, you know, tell people,
"Hey, you can trust me now." You know, I mean,
that was then, you know, and I've changed.
I'm not, and I don't think anybody's the same as they were
when they were 16.
[ominous music plays]
[Terry] Shaun Stemple was my cousin's boyfriend,
and I got to kind of looking up to him he seemed
like a upstanding guy, I mean, he had a lot of the things
that I wanted, like he had a house,
you know, he had a car with a stereo system.
You know, he seemed like he had things together.
Just seemed like a good person. You know, I didn't find out
till, you know, shortly after I met him
that he was actually married.
One day, I don't know if he came over my house I talked to him
and I asked him, I was looking for a job.
He said, "Well, what would you do for $50,000?"
And I was like, "Anything." You know?
Sixteen, $50,000 sound like a couple million.
And then he asked me to help him kill his wife.
I don't remember
exactly what
I said to him, but I agreed with it.
I agreed to do it. I remember that.
[producer] Were you scared?
Yeah, I mean, of course.
You know, I mean, who talks about killing somebody
and I -- just blinded by greed,
you know, I didn't really think about backing out, you know,
once I told him yes.
I don't pretend to say that,
you know, that I didn't know
right from wrong. I -- I knew it was wrong.
You know, that was a --
that was a hard time in my life.
He was to tell her that the truck had broken down,
'cause we'd had the hood propped up to make it look like
it was broke down on the side of the road.
And he wanted me in the bushes, waiting.
He pulls up,
and he has her hold the flashlight
in front of the -- on the hood.
And while he gets in the driver's seat
and starts the truck up, you know,
and the signal was, you know, when he revved the engine.
[engine revs]
[suspenseful music plays]
That's when I ran up the small hill and hit her
with -- hit her with the bat twice.
[producer #2] Did it knock her out?
No.
The first one didn't, and the second one
knocked her to her knees. I remember that.
[producer #2] Shaun takes the bat from you.
-Right. -[producer #2] And he continues to hit her.
[ominous chord strike]
How are you feeling in this moment?
You must have been scared out of your mind.
[stammers] I was.
I remember crawling up
in the passenger side of the seat after that.
And in my mind, all I see is it plays over and over again
is seeing him doing that.
And that's what haunts me more than anything.
There's no
there's no quitting at that point.
[producer #2] And then what happened?
You know, I understand that this is important,
but I also understand that Trisha's family
is gonna watch this.
And I'm...
I -- I don't want them to have to relive the details, you know.
They -- they know 'em. I've told 'em.
[soft music plays]
Yeah.
That's a picture of the crime scene with...
her body there.
[music continues]
Crazy.
In doing a job like this, you end up -- you end up having
things in your mind you can't
unthink.
And, you know, I certainly, to this day, it's been
28 years, 27 years.
You know, I still have those in my mind.
I do think about her.
She was, you know, she was living her life.
And she thought, you know,
obviously nothing, you don't ever fathom anything
like this happening to you. And I...
She was, I mean, from what I was told by everybody,
she was a great person. And she...
she was brutally murdered.
At the time,
on the media, it was being displayed
as a traffic accident.
But I would say we believed from the outset
that it was a murder.
Yeah.
That's the baseball bat that was used
in the death of Trish Stemple.
Shaun Stemple went to the house, picked her up under the premise
that his car had broken down. He got her out to the scene.
Once she got out of the car, Terry
began to beat her with a bat, and they had a bat that was
wrapped in saran wrap
as part of their premeditation, and he began to beat on Trisha.
And at some point,
Shaun became dissatisfied with that and took the bat himself
and beat his wife, probably at least 30 times.
[soft music plays]
[Brett] I think it was survival. She was fighting.
I mean, you don't know what somebody would be thinking.
I'm sure she was thinking, "Why?"
But, you know, I think
she was fighting. And ultimately,
um, she's run over by the truck.
[soft eerie music plays]
This is the truck.
Yeah, that is the truck that was used.
I wish you could see that right bumper.
There was actually her handprint
was on the right front bumper,
uh, visible.
So that goes to her fighting.
She had crawled, I think, probably a couple feet.
I mean, again, I mean, she was just a fighter.
And they drove over her again.
And...
I mean, I get choked up about it, but the severity of --
of her injuries were -- were
gruesome, um.
It was some things that are unimaginable, what -- why
a human being would do that to another.
She was just a good person, and the way she died was, um,
was horrible.
I think, at some point, he just decided that the only
way he was gonna be able to deal with that
was to get rid of his wife.
We further developed that there was a insurance policy
of around a million dollars.
We came to the determination that Shaun Stemple was
the person that did it.
And we ultimately came to the conclusion
that Terry Hunt had helped him.
And so, I wanna make it perfectly clear that both
of them are equally liable,
responsible for this horrendous act.
And there's no way around that.
I mean, what Terry Hunt did was evil.
And I'm not gonna sugarcoat that.
I mean, he was sentenced to life
for his evil acts. And I feel comfortable in that.
[James] That's Terry.
Yeah, he looks worried to me, and he should be worried.
Yeah, he had just
been involved in something very, very, very, very bad.
Well, I was hoping it wasn't true, of course.
I was devastated. I was devastated
my son was involved in it.
It was a very vicious, bloody crime.
No doubt about it.
I didn't think that I ever brought him up that way.
I never did.
And it was the most brutalist crime
that there was in Oklahoma.
Well, Terry was pretty smart,
pretty normal.
We did a little fishing. We did a little camping.
We had a great time, as far as I know.
He didn't start getting off the, you know,
until he was around 14.
[James] You become the company that you keep.
Says it in the Bible.
He did drugs and did whatever he wanted to do, and that got
Terry off the, you know, way off the path
of doing right.
[ominous music plays]
I'd take him to school and he'd beat me home.
You know, we didn't live that far from the school,
but if we dropped him off, we figured that he'd go,
so we got him in the car, took him, dropped him off.
And when we got home, there he was, you know?
So we called the school.
They sent the policeman out there, you know?
And the policeman told Terry,
"You got a choice here.
"You can either go to school or you can go downtown and live
off the street, whatever you wanna do."
He said, "I'll live off the street."
So they took him downtown and dropped him off.
One thing that he did that, you know, scary to me,
he took my gun.
Yeah.
I knew it was getting worse, but there was nothing
I could do about it.
You know, he refused to come home.
And he got in with Stemples and, you know,
and that woman got killed, you know?
[ominous music plays]
Well, I remember
the day after,
I came back and I -- and I
forced myself to go to sleep.
And I remember the day after, you know,
I'd -- I'd seen it on the news.
You know, I looked out.
You know, I'd constantly be looking out the window,
you know, thinking, "They're coming."
And there was just...
And I would just throw myself on the bed crying, you know?
I mean, it's -- it's like it scarred me,
you know what I mean?
There wasn't nothing, there wasn't no, you know,
like celebration or nothing crazy like that.
It was, it -- it --
it bothered me, you know, as it slowly sunk in
that this was, you know, we'd killed somebody.
We did the absolute worst thing you can do
as a human being.
Whether you get caught or not, you don't get away with murder.
You know, it -- it --
it haunts you.
It's something that's internal, and there ain't no punishment
externally that anybody could do to you, even life in prison
or the death penalty, that would, that can be any worse
than what you do to yourself in your own mind.
So, I mean, there's -- there -- I'm walking around
with the torment and worried about going to jail.
We set up in the interrogation room,
me and this cop, for, I don't know, something like hours,
but it was probably maybe an hour or so, and the detective
come in and let me talk to my lawyer.
My lawyer was like, man, I mean,
he's pretty much, "They got you."
And I just, I said, "I'll tell 'em."
[eerie music plays]
You know, in my mind, I play it.
And, like, I play that part over and over again.
And it was...
it was -- I can't
pinpoint the exact number of it,
but I know that it was -- it was quite a lot.
You know, I mean...
Yeah.
Right.
[Terry] When I was at the preliminary hearing,
when you get in them situations,
you want it to be over with.
You wanna get it over with as quick as possible.
You know, and after the preliminary hearing,
I laid in my rack, and I thought about it, you know, and --
and I remembered that, you know.
I mean, I didn't forget I did that, but I knew I didn't
tell them that at the preliminary hearing.
And I knew that that was, you know,
something that happened and that needed to be told and so,
the next time I talked to -- to the lawyers,
you know, I told them that. You know, I mean,
that didn't help my case, you know.
In fact, that made me more culpable than what I was prior.
Right.
I can recall, I think he rolled over
trying to drive over her head. I remember that.
Right. Over her chest.
Yes.
I didn't know what to do.
I was just kinda... I don't wanna say autopilot,
but he was directing it, and he's telling me,
you know, what to do.
Well, like he'd come, he'd tell me to like, you know,
help him move her, and you know.
Oh, yeah.
He -- he was --
he was definitely in charge.
[ominous music plays]
I think -- I think I'm living my punishment.
You know, I think.
I mean, I -- I -- and while I hope, you know, to get out,
you know, I'd like to get out and do something.
I know I owe a big debt to, you know, to a lot of people,
to society, and I'd like to do something to...
make my life count, you know, 'cause in prison,
you're kind of, it's like everything's on pause.
I've been in almost 30 years, and, you know, I don't know
if I'm any closer to getting out than I was, you know,
30 years ago.
All right.
[producer #2] If you could just tell me your name.
My name's Maureen Hunt.
[producer #2] And how are you related to Terry Hunt?
I'm Terry's wife.
In the state of Oklahoma, you can throw a rock and hit
somebody who has a loved one that's incarcerated.
And so, I have some really good friends,
whose son was incarcerated.
And so I was introduced to Terry.
"This is a guy who I think that you would get along with."
You know, "He's a great guy." And so we started writing.
He's a great writer.
And so we wrote back and forth a lot.
And, you know, it was like six months before he actually
told me about his crime.
He wrote me a letter and said, um,
"I -- I wanna go ahead and talk to you about my crime."
Because I think we were both really enjoying
each other's company, and he didn't want
to get too far into it,
even as a friend, and then tell me what happened
for me to turn around and say, "I'm out."
And so I did what everybody else did, and I got online,
and same thing, "Terry Lee Hunt," you know.
And it pops up. And...
saw that headline.
I thought, "Yeah, this is not your average...
murder." This is...um,
this is bad.
Yeah, that's, um,
that's probably the first headline that comes up when
you Google him -- "Teen Beat Woman to Death on Tulsa Road."
I have friends who've lived here for a long time,
and they remember this crime. It was notorious.
And it made me really sad because I thought,
"This isn't the guy I've gotten to know at all."
I can't.
I could not wrap my head around it, to be honest.
But according to Terry, "Teen Beat Woman to Death"
is not accurate at all.
Terry did not beat her to death with a bat.
He started to. You know, he hit her twice.
And then he told Shaun, "I can't do it, I can't do it."
There were three people out there that night, and only one
of them is still alive. Shaun was executed in 2012.
How do I know I'm getting the whole story from this guy?
And so I took a year to make sure that he was exactly who he
said he was, and not who the internet said he was.
I confronted him a lot.
I go to visit with my list of questions, and ask him,
because I had to know the answers.
And it was difficult.
I was ashamed of what he did.
But I feel like the person
that Terry was then
was a completely different person than I know now,
28 years later.
People are led,
and 16-year-olds are even easier to lead.
And Shaun knew that.
He knew exactly what he was doing
when he was grooming Terry.
Terry was manipulated by Shaun.
I believe in him so much. I have so much hope.
And, you know, hopefully the world will see
him for who he is.
[James] Stemples made him do it.
He was forced to do what he had to do.
[producer #2] You think he was forced?
Oh, yeah, he was forced.
I don't think that -- I don't think that he was brought up
to do that, and I don't think that he had the courage
to do that.
He was pressured. You know, he was, uh,
Stemples, the guy that hired him to help him
kill his wife,
he had threatened him about me and my wife and my other son,
said, "If you don't go through with this,
I'm gonna kill them."
And that's, you know, that's how he got involved deeper.
I wish he'd have told me. You know what I mean?
He was, uh, took advantage of because he was a young kid,
and this guy was a coach.
You know, if you got a coach, he can -- he can
manipulate kids. That's what he does.
Now he's paid for what he did, you know?
Now he's looking for chance to get out,
and that's what he -- what he deserves.
He deserves one more chance.
That's Shaun Stemple.
I really don't think much of this guy.
I mean, he's
pathetic.
I think he's a very good manipulator.
I think he -- that's what he thrived with.
He was very accomplished in his profession as a soccer coach,
so he had a little bit of a reputation, I believe,
for having some charisma, and people liked him.
And I think that he used that to gain whatever he wanted.
I think that's just a part of his personality.
He just seemed very controlling and manipulating, and, I mean,
exactly what he was.
Terry was so young. He's just a kid.
Terry was very vulnerable, and as any predator does,
they're gonna pick somebody they can manipulate,
and that's -- that's exactly what happened here.
He was ripe for the picking because of his age
and his problems he was having.
But he was just as guilty and just as involved
as Shaun Stemple, plain and simple.
In fact, there was another attempt prior.
My understanding was a couple weeks prior to the actual
murder, they had made a tentative date
to commit the crime,
and they ended up not being able to do that
because they could not get Trisha to go along with it.
She wasn't feeling well.
I believe she was ill at the time.
Yeah, me and Nate were out there waiting,
and she was supposed to show up.
And then, when
we seen the car pull up, it was Shaun.
You know, and he was saying that she was sick
and couldn't come.
And so they had to change plans.
Terry Hunt knew what he was doing.
He had many times to say no, and he chose not to.
Yeah, I mean,
I did have the two weeks, and I've heard the detective
say that, you know, "This guy had two weeks to change
his mind, and." During those two weeks
I thought that there would always be something that would
come up, you know, that this, like, I never really believed
that this would ever happen.
It didn't become real to me
until it started happening, until, you know, they pulled up
and she was there.
Just looking, looking back.
If I could take that back, that would...
I know that her family misses her,
and I'd hope that they know that I know
that I've hurt 'em,
and I'd hope they know that I'm sorry.
Why -- why should people believe --
believe you now?
Is there anything you can say to...
That's a tough question because,
you know, I mean,\⁠ people -- people --
I mean, I understand I'm in prison.
I'm in prison for murder,
and I've tried to educate myself.
I got my GED when I first come to prison, you know.
I've earned an associate's degree.
I almost got my bachelor's degree.
I've talked to young kids, you know, kids they brought
into the prison.
I've tried to use my time as wisely as possible and try
to contribute wherever I can.
I would like to think that, you know, that,
you know, I've done enough to show that I'm...
[stammers]
better, you know, that I've improved myself,
that I've -- I've grown up,
I've matured,
you know, and that I have something to offer, you know.
If they let me out, that I have something that I can give back.
[producer #2] I think essentially, you're asking people
to kind of make a leap of faith.
I mean, that's what parole boards do every time
they recommend somebody for parole
because at the end of the day, you know, only you know
what you think and what you're gonna do.
[Maureen] When Terry proposed to me, I knew for the rest of my life
I was going to be the wife of a murderer,
even after he was out of prison.
And I had to face him, face to face,
and look at him in the eye
and reconcile that in my mind.
And that took a while, you know?
It took a while for me to get past that
because that's not the man that I know now.
I have no reason not to believe him.
And I do feel like he is remorseful, and I do feel like
he's compassionate and a good person and someone that I love
so much and believe in so much
that I did end up marrying them.
I could have just turned my back on him,
like everybody else has,
especially last year when he didn't make parole.
That was, oh, God, that was one of the hardest days of my life.
I could have just turned my back and said,
"I can't do this anymore." And he was
terrified that I was gonna walk away.
No, I never thought about it, because walking away would have
been abandoning the best thing that ever happened to me.
He said, "Well, what would you do for $50,000?"
I was like, "Anything," you know?
Sixteen, $50,000 sounds like a couple million.
I don't pretend to say that I didn't know right from wrong.
I knew it was wrong. You know, and...
[producer #1] And that's where the greed comes in.
That's where the greed comes in.
[producer #2] I can see it upsets you.
You know, that was a --
that was a hard time in my life.
It's hard to see that.
I've never seen him cry, I'm --
the day that he called me after the parole board denied him,
he called me on the phone, and I had to say,
"They said no."
And he cried, and I had to hear him cry,
and all he would say is,
"I'm sorry I can't come home to you.
I'm sorry I can't come home to you."
And that's the only time I've ever heard him cry.
And that was tough.
It was really hard.
Twenty eight years later, he still has nightmares about it.
It's not something he'll ever forget.
The crime will never change.
You can't go back and erase that.
That's history. Yeah, that's history.
And if he could go back and change it,
of course he would.
I don't look at him and look at him and think,
"This guy's a killer." He's grown into the kind of man
who deserves a second chance.
[Brett] I believe he's entitled to...
to have a consideration to be let out,
so that, I thought maybe
my unique involvement might help.
You know, my oldest, my son, is an addict, and is sober
10 years now, but that's definitely
changed me for the better.
It's made me a better person, it's made me a better lawyer,
and it's made me more empathetic.
Terry Hunt was very, very young when he was sentenced to life.
He did a horrible act, despicable,
no excuse.
And in the same breath, he has done the time.
And he hasn't just done the time, he's done the work.
He's very accomplished within the prison system as being
a productive member of that system.
If the system doesn't look at that and say,
"Well, maybe we need to consider letting him out,"
then I don't know
what the system's for.
I don't know what else he can do to better himself or put
himself in a position to be eligible to get out
with a life sentence.
I say all this with the understanding
that the family of Trisha Stemple
are, um,
in agreement with this.
I would never go against their wishes.
Oh, of course not. I would never, I mean, that's
the furthest thing from my mind.
You know, I mean, that does no good.
Violence is failure.
Violence is...you know,
there's too much of it in this world.
And I know that, you know, people, that's what
people fear is somebody getting out of prison
and harming somebody.
That's why it's so hard to get out of prison.
Yeah.
Yeah, I...
I think about her and I pray that she would understand
that I'm sorry that I didn't,
that I ever thought that any amount of money was worth
taking anybody's life.
You know, I'm sorry that I didn't
take them two weeks and go to the police.
That I could have stopped all this,
you know, that
I was the one person that could have,
you know, changed the whole outcome, and I didn't.
I failed.
You know, I have faith, and I believe if you pray
for your sins to be forgiven, you know, and you do it
with a sincere heart, God will forgive.