09x28 - South of the Border

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NARRATOR: The cold-blooded m*rder

of a guest in a Mexican resort concerned

officials on both sides of the border.

The motive appeared to be robbery.

But the forensic evidence pointed to something more

sinister and revealed a change of plans, identity, and gender.

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Puerto Penasco, Mexico.

Americans call it Rocky Point.

It's a small resort town about miles

from the Mexican-American border,

with everything that you'd expect.

Beaches, sun, sport fishing, championship golf,

and even some culture.

JIM HENDERSON: It's a nice place to just

go hang around on the beach.

And you can buy shrimp straight off the boats in the evenings

and people have cook outs on the beach.

NARRATOR: And it's where the Willoughby family chose

to take their winter vacation in February of .

After several days of enjoying the warm weather,

Dan Willoughby decided to take his three

children to the local science museum.

His wife, Trish, had a headache and chose

to stay at the beach house.

When the family returned from the museum two hours later,

they made a grisly discovery.

MIKE LESSLER: When young Thera and little Hayden

went to the back bedroom, they saw their mother

there lying on the bed with her head

wrapped in a blood-saturated towel.

-Came out crying.

Something's wrong with mommy.

She's all bloody and she's not breathe right.

NARRATOR: Dan gathered his children on the porch

to say a prayer, then called for help.

But neither prayers nor medicine could help Trish Willoughby.

She died several hours later at the hospital

of blunt force trauma to the head.

THERA HUISH: Well, Trish was a very

giving, loving wonderful person.

And she touched the lives and the hearts of so many people

as we traveled.

And they loved her because she was just so warm and so

wonderful and so filled with life and enthusiasm.

NARRATOR: The medical examiner found

a bruise on Trish's abdomen.

And she had been struck in the head with a blunt object

at least nine times.

She had also been stabbed with a kitchen knife.

Police suspected the motive was robbery.

$ was missing from Trish's wallet.

Her wedding ring and an expensive pearl ring

were also missing.

But the Mexican police did little to secure

the crime scene.

-They had very little investigative capacity.

The police department didn't even have a fingerprint kit.

I think they basically arrived at the scene, took a quick look

and sealed it off.

NARRATOR: A resort employee told Dan Willoughby

that some suspicious men were lurking

in the area near the Willoughby's beach house

around the time of the m*rder.

The people living in the town closest to the resort

lived in abject poverty.

The stolen cash and jewelry would've

been the equivalent of six months

income for the average family.

And the Mexican police had a significant problem.

They had no forensic evidence with which

to identify the perpetrator.

The m*rder of Trish Willoughby in Mexico

made headlines in the family's hometown of Gilbert, Arizona.

This prompted numerous calls to the Arizona police department

from concerned citizens who said that all had not

been well in the Willoughby household.

-What can you tell me about this girlfriend?

What do you know about her?

NARRATOR: The callers all said the same thing.

That Dan Willoughby had been having an affair with a woman

named Yesenia Patino, a -year-old Mexican native.

-Clearly, Yesenia Patino was a gold digger.

She basically leeched off of men.

You could describe Yesenia as a full-time prost*tute,

in the sense that she would hook up with a man and live off him.

NARRATOR: Police also learned that Trish

knew about her husband's affair.

MIKE LESSLER: And Trish came over

to the apartment and confronted Yesenia

in the public pool area of the apartment complex

and screamed at her.

NARRATOR: When police interviewed Yesenia,

she readily admitted the affair.

-She told me that Dan Willoughby paid for an apartment

and bought her gifts and a lot of her expenses

and jewelry and things.

NARRATOR: But Yesenia denied having anything

to do with Trish's m*rder and said she wasn't even in Mexico

at that time. LT.

JOE RUET: Yesenia was quite a character.

She was very flirtatious.

And at one point, she leaned into me during the interview

and she said, I know what a man likes.

NARRATOR: At the end of the interview,

Lieutenant Ruet asked Yesenia for some identification.

LT.

JOE RUET: I came across a social security card

with a male name on it.

The birth name was Alfredo Patino.

-And they ask, who is this?

She said, oh, that's me.

And then she told them that was before her corrective surgery.

-And while I sat there professionally deadpan,

inside I was screaming, oh!

I know why you know what a man likes.

You were one.

But it was shocking that she was quite a character.

NARRATOR: When they ran a background check,

police discovered that Yesenia, or rather Alfredo Patino,

had a criminal record before her sex change operation.

LT.

JOE RUET: We found out that she had been arrested

in Oregon for male prostitution.

There was no question about her sex.

NARRATOR: Surprisingly, Dan Willoughby

said he knew nothing about this, despite the fact

the two were lovers.

THERA HUISH: When we talk to Dan about Yesenia

and told him what she was, or what he was before she was

a she, or an it or whatever it is, at that particular point,

Dan sat there with sweat running out of his ears

and down his face and he's hanging his head down.

And his only comment was, well, this is going to be something

that the "National Inquirer" is going to have a big time with.

-I mean, goodness.

She was married twice.

She had numerous boyfriends, before and after this crime.

This wasn't somebody that spoke in a baritone voice

or had an Adam's apple popping out of their neck.

Huh-uh.

NARRATOR: While all of this was interesting,

police found nothing to link Yesenia with Trish's m*rder.

So they decided to drive down to Mexico

to inspect the crime scene. LT.

JOE RUET: The forensic science aspect of the evidence

is critical here.

Like I say, the work that was done by the Mexican police

really lacked resources.

It was just very good that we were able to get a lab

crew down there to Mexico to get in there

and check for fingerprints.

NARRATOR: And they found several on the back door

and on a soda bottle in the kitchen.

These fingerprints belonged to Yesenia Patino.

LT.

JOE RUET: No matter what kind of excuse she gave,

it was absolutely clear based on the forensic evidence,

she was there.

NARRATOR: Police also learned that Dan Willoughby had been

fired from his job months earlier, partially because he

had been padding his expense reports to pay

for his activities with Yesenia.

-After he lost his last job, I think

his life began to spin out of control, really.

He was living on his wife's income.

He had a mistress to support.

NARRATOR: This explained a possible motive.

Trish had a lucrative career of her own.

She and her mother had built a very successful home business

selling nutritional supplements.

THERA HUISH: He could see all this money that was coming in,

and I think he thought he was going

to get half of all of this.

NICK HUISH: He wanted the money so he and Yesenia could

gallivant off to Mexico and live like kings happily ever after.

Because with a few million bucks in your pocket down in Mexico,

you're a hero.

NARRATOR: But police had no forensic evidence

against Dan Willoughby.

The fingerprints implicated Yesenia.

And when police went to arrest her, she had vanished.

When Arizona police interviewed the three Willoughby children,

they told a story very different from their father's.

The oldest daughter, -year-old Marsha

said, that when they left their mother in the beach house

and got into the car, his father said

he forgot something and went back inside alone.

He was gone for about minutes.

-Hayden, leave me alone.

-Touching you.

-Stop it.

NARRATOR: Marsha said she grew hungry

and went back to the house to get a candy bar,

but found the door locked.

-If I'm a dad taking my kids out to the beach

and I run back in the house to get something that I forgot,

I don't lock the door behind me.

NARRATOR: When Marsha knocked, her father

answered and told her to wait in the car.

He came out a few minutes later.

This meant he was alone with Trish just before her death.

Yesenia's fingerprints were found at the crime scene,

but she had fled before she could be arrested.

Trish's family tried to find Yesenia on their on by posting

flyers in Arizona, as well as Mexico.

Trish's mother also made television appearances

in the hopes that someone could provide information

about Yesenia's whereabouts.

REPORTER [ON TV]: She went to the media

because she believes, and so do prosecutors,

that if they can find one person this case may be solved.

NARRATOR: And this produced results.

An informant spotted Yesenia working

as a bartender in Mazatlan, Mexico.

When she was arrested, police found

Trish Willoughby's rings in her possession.

-I can only assume that she probably

removed it from Mrs. Willoughby's finger.

NARRATOR: When confronted with the evidence against her,

Yesenia not only confessed, she implicated Dan Willoughby

as the architect of the crime and said

he was the actual k*ller.

She said Dan first suggested k*lling

Trish months earlier at a restaurant in Arizona.

Yesenia and Dan both went to Rocky Point

together to find an isolated beach house for the m*rder.

She said they both came up with the idea of taking the children

to the museum to secure an alibi.

Yesenia admitted she was in Mexico

on the day of the m*rder.

And that she watched the house from a back road.

The plan called for Dan to take the children out to the car,

pretend he left something behind, then go back inside,

subdue Trish with a blow to the stomach,

then beat her to death.

After he left with the children, Yesenia

went inside to stage the robbery and found

Trish still breathing.

Yesenia said she got a knife and stabbed her.

She took Trish's rings and cash, scattered some papers

to make it look like a robbery and fled.

But she forgot to wear gloves.

When Dan and the children returned home,

he sent the children into the house first.

-Knowing full well what the kids were about to discover,

he let the kids go in first as part of his alibi.

That was just terrible.

-How could you let your children walk in

and find your wife in the state that you left her?

That's-- that's demented.

NARRATOR: At a trial in Mexico, Yesenia

was convicted of Trish Willoughby's m*rder

and was sentenced to years in prison.

Dan Willoughby went on trial in Arizona

and Yesenia was the state's star witness.

-A lot of m*rder cases are prosecuted

on strictly circumstantial evidence.

I think in this case, the circumstantial evidence

was more compelling than you'd find in most cases.

NARRATOR: Dan Willoughby was convicted of first degree

m*rder and conspiracy and sentenced to death.

NARRATOR: But that's not the end of the story.

Several years passed and Yesenia Patino changed her story.

-Before she said anything, I struck her like this.

MAN [OFF CAMERA]: OK. -Six times.

NARRATOR: Investigators turned to forensic science

to find the truth.

Within months after he was sentenced to death

for his wife's m*rder, Dan Willoughby

appealed his conviction on the grounds he was denied access

to effective counsel, and won.

-Because a court determined that the lawyer who represented him

at the first trial was ineffective.

He was a lousy lawyer.

NARRATOR: So the state of Arizona

was forced to retry the case.

-So he's been on death row for nine years.

Since then, all of these major cases, OJ Simpson,

start popping up in your head.

Do they have the same evidence?

Is the guy that's going to be trying this case going

to be as good as the first guy?

The Attorney General's different.

Everything's different.

Everything is totally different.

NARRATOR: And now, Yesenia was telling a different version

of how Trish Willoughby was m*rder*d.

She now said she k*lled Trish by herself

and that Dan Willoughby knew nothing about it.

She said she used a homemade mace.

-When she clawed me, I just went like this.

When I hit her the first stroke, she was unconscious.

She felt unconscious.

The blood was over sideways and on the walls.

MIKE LESSLER: The defense in this case

can be stated in three words.

Yesenia did it.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors asked forensic scientist Tom

Bevel to analyze the evidence.

The first thing Bevel noticed was an inconsistency.

The blood spatter at the crime scene

was not produced by someone swinging a mace,

as Yesenia described in her deposition.

TOM BEVEL: She actually described in the video

an overhand by holding the end of the tether of the mace.

And looking at the physical confines as to what was there

and where the victim was placed, that

would be a physical impossibility because there was

a two-foot depth shelf above the victim's head

that the mace would've had to have-- to have gone through.

That simply was physically not possible.

NARRATOR: And Yesenia's story also

differed from the coroner's report.

-According to the coroner's testimony,

it most likely was a linear object,

that is an object that was long and narrow.

Not a spherical or ball-like object.

NARRATOR: Bevel literally wrote the book

on blood spatter evidence.

When he examined the bloodstained sheets,

he found two types of spatter.

Some of the droplets had a smooth appearance,

like pure liquid.

But others had an irregular appearance,

which was blood that had been exposed to the air

and begun to coagulate.

TOM BEVEL: So we have spatter and/or castoff that is showing

a clotting process that is not consistent with blood loss

at the very beginning of a beating.

But rather, blood that has been exposed, and then some time

frame later, approximately minutes or longer, that

is being disturbed and then landing on the sheets

surrounding the victim.

NARRATOR: Tom Bevel concluded that there were

two separate att*cks on Trish Willoughby in the house

at least minutes apart.

A conclusion that matched Yesenia's original story.

Prosecutors believe this proves that both Dan

and Yesenia were involved.

-It made absolutely no sense that one person would create

that blood source, wait minutes,

and then agitate, if you will, that blood source

to create the coagulated spatter.

That was probably the single most important

piece of evidence in the case.

NARRATOR: And Marsha Willoughby remembered an important fact

that she hadn't mentioned in the first trial.

She said when her father came to the door,

he was tucking in his shirt tail.

And it wasn't the same shirt he was

wearing when he went into the house.

Prosecutors believe Willoughby changed

his shirt because of the blood spatter.

At Dan Willoughby's second trial, Yesenia took the stand

and surprisingly told the same story

she told in the first trial.

Prosecutors believe Yesenia changed her story

after the first trial because she was upset that her jewelry

and other personal items weren't returned to her in prison.

Dan Willoughby was convicted, once

again, of first degree m*rder.

This time, however, he escaped the death penalty

and was sentenced to life in prison.

Dan Willoughby maintains his innocence.

NARRATOR: Trish's family thinks Tom

Bevel's analysis reveal the truth.

THERA HUISH: Many of the jurors told me

that it was his testimony that totally convinced them that Dan

had committed the m*rder and Yesenia

had come in after, just exactly like she said.

It was his testimony that had a great deal

to do with his conviction the second time around,

but we didn't have him the first time.

I was impressed.

-The strangeness of the case-- I mean, it was a case that

was truth is stranger than fiction.

You know, and you look at a case like this and think,

wow, this is too weird.

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