11x37 - Step by Step

[bunniefuu]

A wealthy socialite
died after falling down stairs.

Was it an accident?

Or was it m*rder?

The laws of physics and an
accident reconstructionist

provided the answer.

The Lucas family was
well-known in Tyler, Texas.

The family patriarch,
Baker Lucas,

owned a successful
real estate business

specializing in
residential home sales.

: He owned

a lot of real estate properties.

He had a large real
estate business.

And he was so respected
by the community

that they did ask him to run
for the position of mayor.

He accepted and he was our
mayor from 1970 to 1978.

The family donated
generously to charity

and was so active socially
that Bette Lucas was

known as the First
Lady of Tyler.

She was quite social.

She liked parties, belonged to
a garden club and literary club.

And Symphony League
when it began,

she was one of the
first members, I'm sure,

that was in it.

But the family
fortunes changed dramatically

in 1985, when Baker
Lucas was k*lled

in an automobile accident.

Vo: It was a very
traumatic time for her,

because for Bette Lucas,
her husband was her life.

He was her connection
to everything in Tyler.

He waited on her hand and foot,

and she was very much loved him.

You know, she was
going to be by herself,

and that was a real
blow, because they'd

been together all these years.

Steven, the Lucas's son,

took over the family business.

But things were never the same.

In fairness to Steve,

his father was such a
charismatic, well-liked person

that it would be very
difficult for him

to step fully into
his father's shoes.

I think that probably this is
something that was not lost

on him, and he attempted
to manage the business,

but not as well as Baker had

Three years later, there

was more bad news
for the family.

Bette Lucas fell down a
flight of stairs in her home

and was rushed to the hospital.

Sadly, she never
regained consciousness.

: She was

in on life support
for at least a day.

She was taken off
that and she died,

and she was buried the next day.

It happened very quickly.

Even those people
who were close to her

did not find out about the
funeral till the last minute.

At the time, no one
saw the need for an autopsy.

Nobody would

have expected her
to die like that.

We'd had plans for what we were
going to do in the rest home

when we got to the
rest home together.

And it was such...
Just unbelievable

that she would be gone.

Two people witnessed
Bette Lucas's fall... her son

Steve and his 20-year-old
daughter, Stefani.

Steve said his
mother, a frail woman,

started to carry a
VCR up the stairs.

He said he tried to carry it for
her, but she wouldn't let him.

This was one of the early VCRs,

and it was large and very heavy.


tremendously heavier

than what we normally
think of now as a VCR.

At the top of the stairs,

Steve said he made one
last attempt to carry it.

And in the process of him trying

to take that from
her, she jerked away,

and the motion of
her jerking away

propelled her over the
staircase banister.

She landed on
the lower flight of stairs

and slid to the bottom.

The VCR left a dent
in the molding,

and the painting on
the wall was askew.

But after Bette's funeral,
the ambulance crew

told police that Steve
Lucas behaved suspiciously

when they arrived at
Bette Lucas's home.

: They said

that Steven Lucas
was standing outside.

He was not even in there with
his mother when they rolled up.

So Mrs. Lucas was laying
there on the floor,

dying, if you will, all alone.

We received several anonymous
calls at the police department

telling us that we needed to
investigate the death of Bette

Lucas, that it really
was not an accident

and that perhaps
it was a homicide.

So investigators decided

to look further into
Bette Lucas's death.

Bette Lucas, the millionaire
socialite of Tyler, Texas,

was dead after a fall
down a flight of stairs.

Her son Steve described
the fall as an accident,

but not every one in the
community believed it.

A call
came in telling the sheriff's

department that they really
needed to take a hard look

at the case, because this person
who was a friend of the Lucas

family's thought that Steve
had k*lled his mother.

Since there had been no autopsy,

investigators
petitioned the court

for permission to
exhume Bette's body.

And
the fact that they brought her

back out of the ground,
that was hard, to take, too.

But we were happy that they
did, if they were going to find

some proof of what had happened.

- I think the town very quickly
formed two different camps.

One camp thought that
Steve was a rich guy who

was going to get
away with m*rder.

The other camp thought it would
be unthinkable for someone

in that social class
to be prosecuted.

The medical examiner found

six crescent-shaped lacerations
on the back of Bette's head.

Nothing on or around
the stairs could

produce these types of wounds.

Toxicology tests for dr*gs
and alcohol were negative.

But x-rays of the body
provided even more surprises.

It found that there's

no broken bones of
a 66-year-old woman.

There's no... any major bruising
on the rest of her body.

It's very suspicious in a story
about a fall down the stairs.

- No one knows what the
actual m*rder w*apon was.

One of the things that
the pathologist speculated

might have been used
was a candlestick,

because the base
of a candlestick

would fit the shape of an object
that he envisioned could cause

the curvilinear
lacerations on her head.

And investigators found

similar circular indentations
on the hand railing

in between the seventh
and ninth steps.

Forensic scientists analyzed
a pair of candlesticks that

were on the mantle
of the Lucases' home.

One of them was dented.

But forensic testing
found no traces of blood.

Investigators were also
surprised by the lack of blood

at the scene.

: Three

of us went up and down
that first flight of stairs

on our hands and knees
and with laser lights,

looking for tears,
blood, fibers... anything

on that runner and that carpet,
or anything on the carpet

or on the post that
held up the hand

railing, that would
have been out of place.

But they found
nothing... and soon learned why.

Members of the ambulance crew
said that Bette's granddaughter

Stefani, along with a neighbor,
were cleaning up blood

in the foyer when they arrived.

And neighbors said it looked
like Steve had cleaned up, too.

Just after the body left,

some of the neighbors
reported his shirt being wet.

And his neighbor
across the street

said it was actually his...
The chest area was wet.

So investigators
sprayed leucomalachite green

onto the foyer floor, which
revealed a 4-foot area

of blood that had been cleaned.

: Then we

interviewed the daughter,
Stefani, who was supposedly

in the home at the time,
and her story did not

match with his story, as far
as placement of where struggles

took place, where
certain things occurred.

So all that began to add it to...
Something is not right here.

But if Bette had been
m*rder*d, what was the motive?

According to friends, Bette and
her son Steve never got along.

Best we could determine,

Bette was somewhat ashamed
of Steve because of the fact

that he was never able to
achieve the type of things

that Baker was able to achieve.

And Steve just did
not like his mother.

Talked about her,
made fun of her,

the way she looked in her
clothing... just very much

did not like her.

And the two had
financial disagreements,

as well.

Steve borrowed close to a half
million dollars from his mother

and hadn't bothered to repay it.

Bette hairdresser, Patsy Denman,

told the authorities
that Bette had told her

in the days leading
up to the m*rder

that she was very fed up with
Steve's inability to hold a job

and to represent
the family well,

and that she was going to
cut him out of the will

and she was going to
tell him about it.

But Bette died before
she ever changed her will,

and her son Steve
and his family were

the beneficiaries of
her $4 million estate.

So now investigators
faced a dilemma.

The victim's son
and granddaughter

both claimed Bette's
death was an accident, yet

the preliminary evidence
suggested otherwise.

: The problem

with this case is you have
two witnesses who have reasons

to lie, and you have no one
else, except forensic science,

to support the claim that it was
a m*rder and not an accident.

The problem was, investigators

didn't have much
forensic evidence.

To find out what really
happened to Bette Lucas,

investigators asked accident
reconstructionist Alan

Weckerling and physicist Mike
Andrews to compare the crime

scene to the
witnesses' statements.

The victim's son, Steve,
and his daughter, Stefani,

both gave the same basic account
of what happened... that Bette

walked up the steps carrying
her VCR while Steve trailed

behind her, trying
to carry it for her.

At the top of the stairs,
Bette refused his help,

pulled away from him,
lost her balance,

and fell over the
railing, landing

on the lower flight of stairs.

Weckerling found a gouge
in the molding near where

Steve said she
landed with the VCR.

But a closer look
revealed an inconsistency.

: I had the piece

of wood and the VCR... we
brought that back to Dallas...

And examined it under
a stereomicroscope.

And with close-up
photography, was

able to show very
clearly how that dent had

gone from the bottom to the top.

We had the orientation and
the direction of force.

If the VCR fell down
the stairs, as Steve claimed,

it would have struck the
molding in a downward direction,

not upwards.

And Weckerling was
confused by what

he found at the
top of the steps,

where this incident
allegedly took place.

Steve and Stefani both
claimed that Bette fell over

the 3-and-1/2-foot-high railing.

But Bette Lucas was 5'5", which
meant that the railing was

higher than her waist, higher
than her center of gravity.

: The center

of gravity on this case is
important, because you can't

get a body, be it a human
or a physical object,

to go over something else unless
you have the center of gravity

go above that.

In addition, when
Bette fell over the railing,

she did not fall straight
down to the foyer floor

through this 3-foot gap.

Instead, she traversed the
gap and landed on the stairs.

: That come in

at a high enough
angle that she doesn't

hit the banister of the
stairs and break that.

- Well, the laws of physics,
when an object falls it gets

pulled towards the Earth.

So any time an
object falls, it's

going to fall directly
towards the Earth

in a vertical direction.

In other words,
for Bette to have flown

over this gap, she would have
had to pull the VCR towards her

at about 30 feet per second
to carry her backwards

at sufficient speed to
traverse the 3-foot gap.

She was actually lower

than the banister, so she had
to go up and over the banister.

So she had to jump
up, so to speak.

The landing point and the
actions of the falling body

just didn't make sense.

Furthermore,
Bette's friends did not

believe she would
have carried the VCR

up the steps in the first place.

: There

was a lot of people
who said Bette

would have never
picked up a VCR.

She would never have
carried anything.

- She wouldn't pack a
purse if it was too heavy.

So we knew that just
didn't make any sense,

that she had packed that thing.

They're heavy.

One of
the most ridiculous concepts...

And many women will
understand this... Bette was

in a long nightgown and the
theory is that she picked up

a VCR and marched up the stairs.

Any woman knows if
you were holding a VCR

and you were going
up a staircase

with a long nightgown, you
would step on the nightgown

and fall on your face.

But of all the inconsistencies,

prosecutors were most
impressed with the molding

on the side of the stairs,
where Steve said the VCR hit.

If the dent was made
from the bottom up,

it proved that the
scene had been staged.

It completely refuted the theory

by Steve Lucas and his defenders
that the VCR somehow tumbled

over the railing and caused
damage to the chair rail...

To the railing on the stairs,
going up the stairway.

It just doesn't make any sense.

In April of 1991, Steve Lucas

was arrested and charged
with his mother's merger.

The grand jury did not
indict his daughter

Stefani due to the
lack of evidence.

I don't
know whether Stefani witnessed

the m*rder, whether she
participated in the m*rder,

or whether she was simply
out of the room when

the m*rder took place.

But the question remained...

Was there enough evidence
to convince a jury?

Prosecutors believed that the
death of millionaire socialite

Bette Lucas was no accident.

They knew that her
son, Steve, was

in serious financial trouble
and owed close to a half million

dollars to friends and
financial institutions.

He
Was borrowing money from family

friends and failing
to pay that back.

Banks had threatened
to foreclose on him,

and he was reaching
a desperation point

where it was all going
to come tumbling down.

And prosecutors had
witnesses who said that Bette

knew all about
her son's problems

and planned to cut him
out of her will, an estate

worth approximately $4 million.

On the day of the m*rder, Steve
went over to his mother's house

with his daughter,
Stefani, to return her VCR,

which they had borrowed.

Prosecutors don't
believe that Bette

tried to carry it up the stairs.

Instead, they think there
was some kind of argument,

possibly over money.

As Bette started
to walk upstairs,

prosecutors think that
Steve lost his temper,

grabbed a nearby object,
and hit his mother

on the head six times.

As she fell, Bette grabbed
hold of her own portrait.

Some of the blows missed
and struck the hand railing.

Steve cleaned the blood from the
m*rder w*apon and his clothes,

then tried to make
it look like Bette

fell while carrying the VCR.

To support his story, he
created the gash in the molding.

: I think

he thought he had it made.

He didn't think anybody
would ever... would ever

be able to go back and look
at the mark on the wall

and say that it came
from the wrong direction.

The defense submitted
an animation to prove that it

was theoretically possible
for someone to fall over

the railing backwards and land
on the second set of stairs,

the way Steve Lucas described.

That's
another big issue in this case,

was how you get her body
and the very heavy VCR

both moving up and over.

I assume she's carrying
it down a little bit low,

and so she's got to bring it up
and over, along with her body.

And if you're saying
that the VCR drags her

over the banister, then you have
to throw the VCR pretty hard

in order to get it to
carry you over the railing.

Both prosecution
experts say that Bette Lucas

would have struck and
damaged the banister,

had she fallen this way.

But the banister
showed no damage.

: The lack

of the breaking of the handrail
made me feel that the defense's

story didn't hold water at all.

It wasn't true.

There was... the physics
didn't back it up.

Surprisingly, after a
week of deliberations, the jury

couldn't reach a verdict.

The
first trial ended in a mistrial

because the jury was
divided eight to four.

But prosecutors didn't give up.

Steve Lucas was retried
three years later.

This time, prosecutors
put far more emphasis

on the forensic evidence and
stressed the significance

of the molding, which
supported their view

that the crime scene was staged.

: You really

have to have the railing
to understand how important

the damage to the molding
is to Steve's story.

I think that having the
stair railing actually

in the courtroom
for the second trial

was very important
to allowing the jury

to draw the picture of the
VCR and the path of the VCR

as related by Steve.

Prosecutors
also presented experts

to corroborate the findings
of the medical examiner.

The other thing

that is important to
know, when you deal

with a forensic testimony
of the pathologist,

is that opinion was
corroborated by Dr. Charles

White at the University of
Texas Southwestern Medical

School, who's the director
of the neuropathological unit

there.

And he was very clear
that it was homicide,

once he saw the
forensic evidence.

Steve Lucas took
the stand in his own defense

but was unable to
convince the jury.

- Go up the stairs, of
course, to the landing,

around on the upstairs.

: When you're

able to scientifically
and forensically say

with a high level certainty...
No, this is how this was made.

This is how this
indention was made.

It was made from this
angle... your suspect

no longer has a leg to stand on.

In November of 1994, Steve Lucas

was found guilty of
his mother's m*rder

and sentenced to


I sat through two trials.

I heard all the evidence.

The forensics made a
difference in this case

to me, because
they... the defense

could not come up with
any logical reason

or any logical evidence
to support some

of the forensics
that doesn't lie.

Steve Lucas created a story

about the death of
his mother and tried

to convince a jury
that it was true.

But forensic science
proved it was not true

and that Bette Lucas was
m*rder*d by her own son.

Without the science,

I believe it would
have been an acquittal.

If we did not have an objective
proof which would discount

the story that Steve told, I
believe that a jury would have

been very hesitant
to convict him.

Science was key in this case.

- With the science and the
physics and the forensics,

it proved... it was his downfall.