The Undoing

I'm Craig Malph, cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half-full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way, too. Some really fascinating folks who share their good finding moments, their triumphs, their challenges, their stories are funny, and you're my candidate!

So I hope you'll join me each week, and who knows? You might just come away with your own glass half-full. Search glass half-full with Craig Malph, and from today, on YouTube and wherever you get to podcast. What do you do to your family?

You're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock. These men are going to come after me. Taking them out, it's my golden chance.

Put a bullet in your head. From the co-creator of Ozark. Looks like a family was running drugs. Execution stopped killing it.

Rift the keys. I only tell who they might have been running for. The cartel killed my family. I'm going to kill them.

All of them. MIA, streaming May 7th, only on Peacock. I'm Lester Holt, tonight on Dateline. A home for the friends, family, and lovers.

Which one was a killer? 911. I'll kill you. Do you need a candy land?

Whoa! A break-in in the middle of the night stabbed multiple times. I can see blood everywhere. It is a horrific crime scene.

One of the scariest cases I've ever seen. Annie participated in pirate parties or dungeon parties. So we're way past Love Triangle here. This is like Love Trap is on it.

Love Spider-Whippa. I had a pretty honor. Love her good situation. There was a lot of anger.

It started going sideways real quick. They agreed to some of $10,000 to $50,000 to commit murder. Any chance that Matthew could have gone anywhere or sometime during the night? Oh God, every time he moves he wakes me up.

Somebody left that home to commit the murder. Can you tell who's driving? Nope. If I had known, I could have done something.

Maybe that woman would be alive. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Undoing. It was June 2016. Around 3.30 a.m.

And a car was roaring down a highway next to the Columbia River. Minutes before, the police detective at the wheel, Aaron Turnich, was like most of us in the middle of the night. Dad asleep. And I got a phone call asking me to respond in.

It was an assault that had occurred. And this was likely going to turn into a murder investigation. Detective Turnich lived in Washington State. His job was across the river in the Portland, Oregon suburb of Gresham.

And that was the scene of the crime. If I'm getting the call, that means I'm going to be the one leading investigation. I'm trying to think what I can do today to assist me five, six, eight, ten years down the road to make sure that we have a successful prosecution. That's the way the criminal justice system works today.

You're thinking about not only investigation but trial and then eventual appeal. You have to start thinking about that on the front end because if you don't, you'll never get there on the back end. As it turned out, his thoughts at night foretold the future. And 30 minutes after he'd been startled awake.

Detective Turnich arrived at the crime scene, a ground floor unit in the East Park Apartments. Paramedics had already taken the victim to the hospital. A woman in her mid-30s. Her name was Anastasia Hester, known as Annie.

When you get there, one of the first officers who were on scene tell you. They told me that the front door was unlocked. And when they went inside they immediately saw bloody shoe prints. Carefully, those officers sidestepped the shoe prints.

And they could see Annie laying down on the floor towards the rear of the apartment. When police arrive, Annie's still alive. Correct. So how to get Annie to a hospital without contaminating that certain to be key evidence near the front door?

Because those footprints say the killer left through the front door. Correct. The determination was made that they're going to take Annie out of the rear sliding door of this apartment. So the next set of responding officers tore down a six-foot wooden fence and they were able to extricate Annie out and get her out to medical care.

It was there, behind the apartment, that the detective saw a back window to Annie's place. On the ground is a cinder block and it appeared that the cinder block was used to gain access to that elevated window. The window led to the bedroom of a child. The detective went inside.

You see a child's bedroom but no child. Correct. The initial thought was that kidnapping or an abduction that had occurred. So there was immediate efforts to try to identify who the child was and then try to determine if the child was safe or not.

Detective Turnage quickly made some calls. The girl was Alice. She was Annie's daughter and just four years old. That's when we were able to identify that Matthew Hester was her father and we started looking to try to contact him and find out if he had his daughter.

Some good news, they found Matt. He had Alice. At his place in Portland. This was like a custody sharing arrangement and that night was Matt's night to have Alice.

That is correct. Once you realize that Alice is not any danger. Now what? So now we have to start taking a look at the scene.

The apartment had only one bedroom, the little girls. Annie, it turned out, had been found on the living room floor next to a sofa bed. Whereby the looks of it she had been sleeping when she was attacked. It is a horrific and very, obviously very violent crime scene.

While you're examining the scene you get a call that Annie didn't survive. That's correct. Annie Hester had been murdered at only 34 and steps from where Annie had been found on the floor. The detective saw a knife, a folding pocket knife and near the kitchen two more knives, bigger knives.

It looked as if they had once resided in the butcher block in Annie's kitchen. I would guess that in a murder like that you might expect to find a murder weapon but not three of them. Correct. It's the only time I've seen it.

A killer's went into the kitchen and got two butcher knives to finish the stabbing. It wasn't assault so savage that a fact that the detective would later learn still troubles him for this day. What does it say to you when the murderer tries to cut the victims head off? The amount of passion and intensity in this crime is very, very unique.

The rage, the bloody shoeprints, the knives, the cinder block. So much evidence to consider. Usually the cinder block to take the air conditioner out and go in that way suggests that Annie didn't know or kill her or at least didn't let them into the front door. I agree, yes.

That kind of fights the whole rage, passion angle. I mean, somebody random less likely to have all this fury against Annie. How so? A murder committed with that much passion.

That says personal. But somebody who goes in through a window that suggests not personal. Yeah, it could be random. You know, maybe they were invited on one day but not invited the second.

So the second day they came through the window to commit the act of violence. Before long, Detective Turnage left the scene to hold a briefing with his team at the Gresham Police Department. That's when he heard the recording of the 911 call that had led police to the apartment. The call was not from a neighbor, not from a family member.

It came from the victim herself, a 911 call, capturing the last words of Annie Hester. When we come back, a desperate and dying Annie begs for help. Is that Annie alone? I don't think there were words to describe the level of intensity in that 911 call.

And the killer leaves a terrifying calling card. Some sort of message? Could have been, that's what we were thinking. Detective Aaron Turnage did not have to go far from Annie Hester's apartment to gather with his team of investigators.

The crime scene is only about 10 blocks from the Gresham Police Department. It's in the heart of Gresham, it's close to schools, it's close to restaurants and businesses. This is not a typical place where we see violent crimes erupt in the city of Gresham. And it didn't take long for news of a murder on uncommon ground to spread across the Portland area.

Police say the woman stabbed at the apartment was in her 30s. I was just crying and howling and, you know, just like an animal. Nicole Palizuelos considered Annie her best friend. They worked together at a call center where Annie trained Nicole.

You were a little scared of her at first. Yeah, she was intimidating at first because if you didn't do your job well, she would call you out on it. I never met anybody who could do so many jobs at once and do them all well. Annie had always had that take charge attitude as the big sister in her family.

Her parents divorced when she was just seven. As she grew, Annie developed a reputation for reliability. She worked at an after-school program for children before starting at the call center, where she rose to supervisor. In 2008, when she was 26, she married Matt Hester.

He worked as a salesman at a wireless store. Matt loved video games. Half Sister Tanya and Sister-in-law Diane say Annie was focused on a more serious game. She had told my husband that he was winning the game of life because he was the first to move into a house, to buy a new car, to get married, to have a kid.

Annie saw this as some kind of competition. Yeah, she felt being the oldest that those things should come to her first naturally. And when you feel that way, that's when people settle. Yeah.

She wanted to feel like she was staying with everybody else. And three years into the marriage, Annie finally was. When Annie and Matt had a little girl. Did having the baby live up to the expectation of having the baby?

For Annie? She was ecstatic having Alice. Her world revolved around Alice. The same could not be said for her relationship with her husband.

Less than a year after Alice was born, Matt and Annie divorced. And Annie became a single mom. She'd always make sure to go to the house. She'd always make sure to go to the house.

Matt and Annie divorced. And Annie became a single mom. She'd always make sure to go and get their photos done for Eastern Christmas. They always had cute outfits and her hair done up.

Sounds like she was really devoted to her daughter. Oh, she was. Matt and Annie worked out a peaceful custody arrangement with Alice. And in addition to her nine-to-five weekday job, Annie started a side job as a face painter with her best friend, Nicole.

We were working together on the weekends that she didn't have her daughter. And she worked so hard and she really worked every opportunity that she could to make the extra money. She did such a great job. Along with Annie's life, that all ended early one morning in June 2016.

It was now Detective Turnage's job to find out who killed Annie and why. In the first few hours of daylight, officers from the scene were reporting back to the police department with what they'd learned. There were, as it turned out, plenty of potential witnesses. We found multiple neighbors saying essentially the same thing.

By 11 p.m., they hear sounds of woman screaming. Somebody else hears a thud on the outside of the building directly below another witness. Here's what sounds like a conversation and moaning, and that person actually turned up their bathroom fan and turned on the music to drown out the sound. And four hours later.

At about three in the morning, another set of witnesses are hearing a woman screaming, a door slam, a car leave. Okay, two things from that. One. Nobody calls 911.

Not one neighbor calling 911. Secondly, so this attacked at four hours? Yeah, about three and a half. So this isn't just a murder.

This is torture. This is torture. And then, Turnage finally heard who did call for help. You may well find it wrenchingly hard to listen to.

Detective Turnage definitely did. I don't think there were words to describe the level of intensity in that 911 call. That's because the call was made by Annie at 2.59 a.m. It's a chilling six minute long cry for help.

Made shortly after her attacker left those bloody chuprons behind on the way out. Hang on one. Hang on one. No.

You need an ambulance? Whoa! Do you know the name of the person that did this to you? When you hear that she doesn't know this person.

What's that say to you? I believe there's an amount of surprise. When the attack took place, I know that Annie is sleeping. And if she's taken by surprise, it makes sense to me.

She can't identify who her attacker is. You're bleeding a lot? At Annie's autopsy, Turnage understood why Annie was in such pain. There were more than 60 stab wounds.

Some as deep as eight inches. And strangely, something was carved into her shoulder. It was a V and X and then another V. And that's not a Roman numeral, but that's what it looked like.

Some sort of message, some sort of signature? Could have been that's what we were thinking. One of the things that haunts me about this case is just the level of pain that Annie had to endure for three and a half hours and still Annie has the wherewithal to fight for herself, call 911 and give out the information to get law enforcement there. It was time for Detective Turnage to start getting face to face.

With those who might know who done this to Annie. Coming up, a two-timing X-husband is always a good place to start. I don't know if you, Annie. I don't know if you, Annie.

I don't know if you, Annie. We'll Met's current wife, Vouch, for him. Annie chanced that Matthew could have gone anywhere or some time during the night. Oh God, every time he moves, he wakes me up.

When Dateline continues. Start close, close to the victim. That's in every homicide detective's Bible of murder investigation. And since Annie wasn't married, Detective Turnage started with the next best thing.

Her former husband, Matt Hester. Yeah, he wouldn't have seen anything with you. Matt was 35, but as you can see, he moved as if he were much older. Thanks, he maintained to some undiagnosed medical problems that had left him in nearly constant pain and unable to work for a living.

When he comes in, how does he strike you? Matt struck me as an actor, and he needed Academy Award for the acting job that he did when he showed up at the police department that day. And so I guess, obviously, I told you at the house that your ex-wife is deceased. I didn't say how or anything.

We'll talk about that in a minute or two. If you think Matt seemed a little disinterested in learning how the mother of his daughter had been killed, you are not alone. Minutes later, another detective told Matt what had happened to Annie and about her 911 call. She said that she had been stabbed, officers responded down there.

She had been injured, she was transported to the hospital, and she was pronounced dead at the hospital. And at this point, we're investigating this as long as I did. Did your boy say anything about having any problems with anyone? I don't talk about a personal life.

Then, as detectives do, they started locking Matt into a story about his history with Annie. When did you go in Ann first meet? We first met in 1999 through a mutual friend. Not long after that meeting, there was a wedding.

Not between Matt and Annie. He married someone else. That union lasted just a couple of years. Why did you guys get divorced?

I did not hear. Okay. So it was less than two years after his first divorce that, in 2008, Matt admitted on the rebound. Married Annie.

And then, three years later, in 2011, after Alice was born, this marriage too was dissolving. I don't know if you know me. I'm not good at this relationship thing. I'm not good at this relationship thing.

Is that kind of candor unusual in a police interview? Particularly when the person you're talking about has now been murdered. It is, yeah. He was good at one thing.

By many accounts, Matt was a loving father to Alice. I love being a dad. And for about two years after the divorce, Matt and Annie amicably shared custody of their daughter. Then, in 2014, Matt married for the third time to a woman named Angela.

She had children of her own. It wasn't long before a custody and support battle began over Alice. How are your feelings towards Ann? I'm mostly indifferent.

I just wanted to deal with her as long as possible. Feelings are one thing. For the moment, police had more immediate questions. So what were you and Angela doing outside?

Sleeping. You know what time you went to that? I used to get in bed around 10 o'clock. And was Angela with you or was she saying I'd do another thing?

Two of them. They had four children under their roof. There was Alice who was their part-time. As well as three children from Angela's previous marriages.

Those kids were a handful, Matt said. And he and Angela were worn out. She also hadn't been feeling well. I would see it's right there.

In another room just down the hall, Angela was being questioned. Like Matt, Angela told detectives they were in bed by 10 p.m. Although she said they were both awake. Matt's scrolling on his phone and Angela watching TV.

I was on the verge of falling asleep to some criminal lines. When you got to sleep in, you get to the inside and you get to the outside. Matt's against the law. Any chance that Matthew could have gone anywhere sometime during the night?

Oh God, every time he moves, he wakes me up. So it's a lot of possibilities. I sleep like literally right up against him in his arms. If he would have gotten up out of bed, you would...

Most definitely. When the interviews were over, Angela and Matt both willingly handed over their cell phones. Because police said they wanted to download GPS and other information. Matt's alibi is Angela and Angela's alibi is Matt.

Correct. That's not much, but it was the middle of the night. So police wondered who else could alibi, Angela and Matt, the met of the murder. And it turned out there were plenty of people who could.

Coming up. Three's company. It's complicated. That's a thing in Portland.

It wasn't that house. Because it's kind of weird. It's not something you see every day. In an ordinary household, a husband might offer an alibi for a wife.

And a wife might offer an alibi for her husband. And only children, unreliable witnesses for the most part, would be left. But none of that was true in the rather unorthodox household of Matt and Angela Hester. So they had roommates and you spoke with the roommates.

Yeah, we spoke with all the roommates there. All three roommates to be exact. It's like a sitcom, except it's not funny. Our relationship is a little weird.

Roommate number one, Aaron McCraw. It's a good idea to keep your scorecard handy. Because Aaron was Angela's husband before she married Matt. Now he's her ex and the father of two of her children.

And Aaron was a tenant of his ex and her next. That's a thing in Portland? It wasn't that house. Because it's kind of weird.

It's not something you see every day. Aaron told police he crashed at Matt and Angela's most of the time for lack of a better way to put it when he didn't have a better offer. Lucky for him that the night of the murder. Aaron said he did have a better offer.

That is. You were standing at your girlfriend's. I was not home. I was not home.

I was at my girlfriend's. So Aaron is basically no help to you. He wasn't there. Correct.

You might want to remember Aaron McCraw. You'll be seeing his face again. roommate number two. What does he say?

He was out the evening of the murder and that he came home and he saw Matt and Angela laying in their bed. At what time did he see Matt and Angela in bed the other? He thought it was around midnight. And it was around eleven o'clock.

The first witnesses said they heard screams going from Andy's apartment. Correct. About eleven fifteen. So if that roommate's telling the truth he alibis Matt and Angela at least for the beginning of that attack.

And presumably they were there at the beginning and were there at the middle of our hand. That's correct. And there was also a third possible alibi witness. I live with Matt and Angela.

A third roommate. Her name? Carina Walters. Carina had been Angela's best friend since high school.

After a divorce of her own, even with a decent job, Portland's soaring rent prices had left Carina homeless. Until Angela invited her to live in their garage. So on the night of the murder, the family's only vehicle, this silver Mazda, was parked just a few feet from where Carina slept. You ever hear that coming going?

Yeah. Like I said, I live in the garage and the garage door is really thin. So if their car starts up, I don't know if you haven't heard their car. It makes this really god awful rattling noise when it starts up.

And if they were to go anywhere, it would make it a pretty positive it would wake me up. But they never go anywhere. Didn't matter at least last night at all. Did Angela leave it all?

No. What's more, Carina told police she'd use the bathroom between three and four a.m. And on the way there, she had to pass by the bed in the living room where Matt and Angela slept. They were asleep.

Angela's snores. If Angela and Matt were responsible for this and you knew it. I would turn it in and hardy. Okay.

You wouldn't particularly have to. No. Okay. In most police interviews, that would be that.

Except in this one, investigators kept going and asked Carina one more question. One informed by some digging police had already done. Or Matt and Angela in two, three, some groupies, girl and girl, dad, you know, like that. It was all pretty normal.

That's very normal with them. Most of us have our own definition of what normal is. Annie had her own. I just know that the guy she's seeing was in a relationship and Anne was in a relationship with both of them, the guy and girl.

So Anne was digging both the female and the man. Correct. The circle of those closest to Annie was widening. And oh yes, there was one more thing that was mentioned.

Pirates. Coming up. Pirates love knives. I've heard.

And the suspect pool was about to explode. We learned that Annie participated in pirate parties or dungeon parties. So we're way past love triangle here. This is like love trapezoid.

Love spider whip, yes. When date line continues. While investigating the murder of Annie Hester, Gresham, Oregon police detective Aaron Turnich soon found himself in a plethora of polyamory and the more witnesses his team talked with, the deeper police found themselves in the rabbit hole that was Annie's personal life. Because maybe the devil was in the details.

One of the things that happens in murder investigations is that everybody's secrets get laid bare. Did any of it came out about Annie Pshaku? No, I knew most of it already. She shared plenty of details and information with me that I didn't really need to know.

But it's like, okay, cool. She felt like she could tell me pretty much anything. And she told me a lot. Police who learned Annie explored the full polyamory experience.

Multiple relationships. Multiple partners. She wasn't shy about it or ashamed. And while investigators did have to explore some previously unheard of kinky fetishes, the primary result of learning about Annie's private life was that detectives had more and more leads to chase down.

So she was involved with a couple, a man and a woman, and some other people. Correct. And she was in that kink world. Correct.

And she had an axe with whom she shared a child. So we're way past love triangle here. This is like love trapezoid. This is like love rhombus.

Love spiderweb. Yes. And you got to talk to all those people. Correct.

The first people on the list? That polyamorous couple with whom Annie had had a relationship. They asked us not to show their faces. They lived 90 minutes south of Portland and were part of a group Annie belonged to and loved.

A group that took part in role play as pirates. Honestly, I was unaware that pirate things were a thing. Wait a minute. So they all got together and dressed up as pirates?

They did. And Annie was a part of that. You know, we learned that there are people that live their lives as pirates. So we had to explore that a little bit.

And investigators did explore that, keeping in mind how Annie had been stabbed to death with three different knives. Pirates love knives. I've heard. There's a subset of the pirate world that deals with a kink or a sexual world.

So people will take knives and they will use them during sex acts. We learned that Annie participated in pirate parties or dungeon parties. And collectively when we spoke to all of those people, it was pretty clear Annie was not into the knife play. That became pretty relevant pretty quickly.

She had to dabble in it, but it wasn't her thing. What's more, detectives soon learned that husband and wife Annie had been seeing have broken up with her six weeks before the murder. There had been tears, but no hard feelings. That couple in an alibi, for the murder.

They had an alibi. They were quickly eliminated from suspicion in this case. Detectives were not just looking into Annie's personal life. The killer had entered by scaling a fence, then standing on a cinder block to remove an air conditioner, then climbing into a window in the back of Annie's apartment.

Just beyond that fence, there was a sidewalk, a busy road, and on the other side of the road, a heavily traveled path called the Springwater Trail. How long before you guys are out walking the trail? Immediately. It's one of our first searches that we do with a lot of searchers over several days.

The detective wondered, could this have been a random killing, a robbery? After all, in that 911 call Annie made before she died, she'd said a couple of times that she didn't know her killer. We had thought that maybe a transient or she lived right off of the Springwater Trail. Lots of homeless.

This is Carina Walters, Angela's best friend who lived in the garage at Matt and Angela's place. Who told police, she would definitely have heard the family's silver Mazda pull away if it had been taken from the driveway than that of the murder. She says the random robber from the trail angle was the prevailing theory over at their place. That was honestly what we thought.

The air conditioner had been removed. Somebody came in, killed her, took a bunch of stuff. And left. So was that what had happened?

It was a theory the detective had to consider. This could have been a robbery or burglary gone bad. Annie might have been collateral damage in a robbery. Okay, but a burglar doesn't stab you that many times, and carved mysterious letters into you.

Yeah, not typically. I would agree, not typically. Is it outside the realm of possibility? No, it's not.

Anything missing from the apartment? Not that we could tell. All the big stuff that you would go for, the jewelry, the phones, the wallet, the purse, all that stuff was still there. So we were pretty quickly able to rule out the idea of a botched burglary or botched robbery.

No one deserves to die the way Annie did, and no matter which trails or avenues detectives explored, they found no evidence that any of the choices Annie made in her personal life or anywhere else, had anything to do with her death. Except maybe in one area. Her choice of friends. Coming up, Matt issues a challenge to detectives.

You thought I did. It was not a necessary thing to do with her death. About 12 hours after police first interviewed Annie Hester's ex-husband, Matt, and his current wife, Angela. The couple was back at the Gresham police department for a late night round two.

Matt was still displaying difficulty walking from those unexplained medical problems he told police about. Detective Turnage thought they represented something other than illness. You're convinced that's for your benefit. He's not actually in pain.

I believe it's laying a foundation that he's incapable of committing such a violent act because you can barely move across our waiting room. Sure, Matt and Angela had two roommates who alibi'd them and said they were home during the night of Annie's murder. That didn't quite do it. To detectives, Matt was still a person of the strongest possible interest.

I mean, obviously, we've got to consider all possibilities here. I'm sure you've seen TV when we have situations like this. You know, everybody points to the ex-husband did it. I want to help you guys.

I want to... Sorry. I'm worried about it, but not her. Matt, if you have anything to do with Anne's death, then you know about it right now.

I did not. I would cover you anything. I wouldn't date you much out. Okay.

And I'm glad to hear you say that because I told you a kind of parent you are. You don't even want to find your DNA involved in that murder scene. Detectives asked Matt to take off his shirt, knowing that if he'd been involved in such a violent stabbing, his body would show some sign of it. They found nothing.

Then they asked about those bloody shoe prints, presumably left by the killer fleeing Annie's apartment. Someone who wore a size nine and a half, or ten. You don't have to shoot yet. Two boots.

Yeah. One size. Eleven and a half wide. That didn't fit either.

Nonetheless, Detective Turnage tried a tactic you may be familiar with, suggesting to Matt that police had more than they really did, and trying to rattle him. I need to let you know that my investigation clearly shows that you're responsible for Anne's death. And you're involved in it intimately. Well, it would be a real sharp thing.

No, no, I wouldn't. I would not have thought I'd date you a sharp thing. No, not necessarily a thing to do with her. He made the comment in the interview.

If you had enough on me, you would arrest me right now. You know, which I thought was a very, very arrogant comment. So that was a little bit of a red flag for me. Do innocent people say to you historically?

Well, if you had enough, you'd arrest me. Not at all. They say you're crazy. I had nothing to do with this.

I couldn't kill anybody. They're strong denials. I would expect anger and frustration that those are the signs of a truthful person. That told me as the investigator and the detective, I need to dig a little bit deeper and look a little bit more into this conversation.

Down the hall, detectives were also questioning Matt's current wife, Angela. She wasn't feeling well, she said, but she was willing to answer questions about Annie's murder. I'm just going to keep my eyes shut and head down. Okay.

How did it make you feel when you heard about her being told? Shocked. Not believing. Extremely sad because Alice passed her mom.

Then, as detectives once again took Angela through the timeline of Annie's murder. She volunteered something that made her interrogators sit up straight. Did you guys see what happened? Did you get through the night?

But in most part we slept just fine until my dog started whining. Guess what time Angela said the dogs woke her up. Remember, neighbors heard screams and Annie called 911 all about 3 a.m. Do you remember?

I have opened my eye to look at the clock slightly and see that it was around 3. Okay. Did you actually end up having to get out of bed to let them out? Yeah, I got up, walked downstairs, put their leashes on, took them potty, came back upstairs, put them in their kennels.

Mm-hmm. And then I went to go potty and ended up puking and f***ing myself at the same time. That was horrible, sorry. Then, that's what I called Matt to help me and he came and helped me.

He took a shower to help get the poop off, and it's in the sweat off and it's apparently I was sweating. So now, according to Angela, they're both showering at Coincidentally. The time the murder was committed. That's not suspicious.

No, no, no. It wasn't suspicious when I spoke to Matt and asked Matt about that, and Matt said he woke up at 3 a.m. and heard her go out and let the dogs out, but he never got out of bed. Matt didn't remember it, said he never got out of bed.

Angela said she got out of bed and Matt helped her take a shower, so things just weren't adding up. The focus was narrowing. Annie's polyamorous relationships hadn't generated any murderous rage. Her friends in the pirate community had no intention of making her walk the plank.

And this didn't feel like a burglary or something random. Well, thought Detective Turnage. Now we're getting somewhere. Coming up.

Was money behind the tug of war over little Alice? It sounds like Matt and his wife saw Alice as almost like an ATM car. Yeah, a meal ticket. When Dateline continues.

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A week after Annie Hester's murder, family and friends gathered to say goodbye at this funeral home, Congressional Oregon, and among the mourners. We had 10-12 detectives scattered throughout the property there. Detectives took this video of Annie's four-year-old daughter Alice, there with her stepmother Angela and Father Matt, the couple considered by police and by Annie's family, to be prime suspects. It had to be strange to see Alice being taken care of by people that you, at least, suspected of possibly having some involvement or murder.

It was hard knowing that she was with somebody that we didn't want her to be with, and there was very little that we could do at that point in time. But just hope that she's safe. Inside the chapel, more detectives, including one undercover officer who sat right next to Matt and Angela, and who made a game-changing observation. One of the things that the detective noticed on the back of Angela's right hand, she has about a one-and-a-half-inch cut on the top side of the webbing between the thumb and the index finger.

Investigators who'd so far focused more on Matt now had another direction. Did seeing Angela with that cut on her hand at the funeral change the level of suspicion that she was under? Absolutely. So then, what would make Angela angry enough to drive across town in the middle of the night and torture Annie for hours before killing her?

And how would Angela and presumably Matt benefit from Annie's death? Well therein lies a tale. Police soon found out that Matt and Annie had an amicable divorce in 2012 and shared custody of Alice. Matt paid about $200 a month in child support.

Two years later, when Matt and Angela and they married, the good relationship continued. Carina Walters, who lived with Matt and Angela. Like they all had this great relationship altogether, like we took vacations together. What changed?

I'm not 100%, but like the only catalyst that I've been able to put together is that Annie wanted her mom to watch Alice more often, and Matt didn't want to give up that time. That doesn't seem like a huge issue, but it provoked a huge problem. Yeah, so then there ended up being the custody word like being thrown back and forth. As often happens, a tug of war involving a child ended up in court.

Was the custody battle nasty? It got pretty nasty. Not bad. How bad?

Angela soon called Oregon's Department of Human Services to report Annie for child neglect. In response, Annie sent this email to a friend writing an alparaphrase. I just cannot comprehend what I did to deserve this level of, in my life. I am so done dealing with this.

The state found no evidence of neglect. Then Angela started taking a larger role in the child exchanges. After Matt suddenly claimed to remember that Annie had abused him during their marriage. That seemed reasonable to you?

No, it wasn't. And really what it was was they were trying to build this case so that Matt could get Alice. Matt stopped paying child support. And Annie, who friends said had initially sought a resolution everyone could live with, now dug in her heels in an email.

And he called Matt antagonistic, uncooperative, and more. As detectives dug deeper into the case file, they discovered one possible reason Matt and Angela seemed desperate to gain custody of Alice. And it was this. Neither Matt nor Angela had a job.

Matt said he considered himself a professional parent. He and Angela received benefits from their children. Their children being diagnosed with various medical conditions which get state benefits or payouts. So they reap those benefits to the sum of approximately $2,000 a month total.

And that is their payment for being professional parents. And if Matt and Angela saw children as a means of earning money. What would gaining custody of Alice mean for them? Well, detectives soon found out the couple seemed to have plans for Alice too.

A court ordered custody evaluation found that three-year-old Alice was having some trouble adjusting to be going back and forth between two households. That's common for children of divorce. Matt and Angela both said they believed Alice's behavioral problems could be related to bipolar disorder. Annie's lawyers suggested in court filings it was all part of a scheme.

More children with disabilities equaled more money from the state. It sounds like Matt and his wife saw Alice less as his daughter and more as almost like an ATM card. Yeah, a meal ticket. I mean, that was the word that was thrown around at the time.

In the end, a judge had no doubts about who was the better parent. Six months before her murder, Annie was awarded full custody of Alice. Matt got something too. A bill, $29,000 in court and lawyers fees, and about $13,000 in back child support.

The total? A little more than $42 grand. Did Annie ever expect to see any of that money? Not really because he didn't work.

And if things could get worse for Matt, they soon did. In Oregon, one of the penalties for not paying child support is losing your driver's license. Then, a month before Annie's murder, a warrant was issued for Matt's arrest. What was the reaction to that in the house you were living in?

A lot of banging and a lot of screaming and Angela was crying about how the effing courts didn't know what they were effing talking about. How are we going to pay this? What I thought was weird was Matt's reaction because there was none. There was nothing.

He wasn't even paying attention. Well, Angela was furious. He was like, whatever. Yeah.

That bothered me. This to me was a dad who gave up who didn't care anymore. Well, if Matt didn't care, Angela seemed to care more than enough for both of them. In fact, the day of the court judgment, Angela made a remark.

Karina won't forget. At one point, Angela says if I killed her, nobody would even miss her. Yeah. And I was like, okay, you're mad, you're angry, I get it.

It's inflammatory. It's a stupid thing to say, but it's not exactly somebody plotting a crime. No. I just thought she was mad.

Just blowing off steam. No reason for Karina to call police or mention it to Annie. Was there? Coming up.

A killer's car caught on camera. No question that's Matt and Angela's SUV. No question. Somebody from that house left that home to commit the murder and then returned to that home after the murder.

Can you tell who's driving? Nope. Gresham police detective Aaron Turnich and his team had solid suspicions about Matt and Angela Hester's possible roles in the murder of Annie Hester. They also had no solid evidence.

That was about to change, starting with a search for security video that night around their house just before 11 p.m. Oh, look at that. Their neighbor had a video camera that recorded the street in front of their house. That camera captured a light colored or silver SUV coming out of the area of Matt and Angela's driveway.

There it was. No question that's Matt and Angela's SUV. There's no question. Can you tell who's driving?

We can't tell who's driving. Nope. So this is like TV where you can blow it up and see exactly who it is. Enhance, enhance, enhance, zoom.

No, it's not like television. Still, for investigators, this was astounding because that's silver miles the SUV. Had a cameo on each of nine more cameras on its way across Portland to the suburb of Gresham. Video cameras essentially captured that car all the way to the driveway of Annie's apartment.

The trip took 26 minutes, putting the silver Mazda at Annie's at 11.23 p.m. Right around the time neighbors reported hearing screams. Then about four hours later, about 3 a.m. The time of Annie's 911 call reporting her attacker had just left.

Do you see that silver Mazda returning to Matt and Angela's house? We do. We were able to follow it essentially right back to the very first camera that we started with at the neighbor's house. The driver, as you can see, turned off the headlights before stopping.

Apparently trying to sneak the Mazda back into its driveway. Well, there go Matt and Angela's alibas. Indeed. What do you think of when you're looking at that video?

I think that I don't know who the killer is, but somebody from that house left that home to commit the murder and then returned to that home after the murder. So then what about that alibi given by Angela's best friend Karina, who said from her bed in the garage, she was certain she would have heard a vehicle start up and drive away. I think that when they pulled out, they didn't start the car. How'd you miss it?

How did you not hear it? How could I have not known? If I had known I could have done something, if I had even remotely thought I could have done something? If you had noticed something, it would have been too late.

I don't think you could have saved Annie's life. If I had taken those threats seriously, maybe I could. Detective Turnage, as you might guess, has a slightly more cynical explanation. I think she was lying to a projector friend.

You all think she could just be wrong? I don't think she was wrong. Karina's statement of the car is loud. I would have heard it leave and it never left.

I think that's a blatant lie. We may never know the truth, but with that damning security camera footage in hand, Detective's neck started combing through Mount Angela's cell phones, which the couple had voluntarily surrendered. There they found another clue. This one about the bloody shoe prints found leading from Annie's apartment.