Did Wife Shoot Herself Dead with Left Hand?
GRACE: And now to North Carolina, in the last hours, detectives seize Yahoo! and Internet records when a wife is found dead in her home. At first thought to be a scene that looks to be suicide. She`s in bed, dead, holding the gun in her left hand. One problem, she`s right handed.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At first, cops assume that Sarah Long had committed suicide.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Found shot in the head in an upstairs bedroom after a man who claimed to be her lover contacted police and said he hadn`t heard from her.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: According to police a man who claimed to be Long`s lover came forward and told him that she`s been depressed.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Medical examiner said evidence did not suggest suicide.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now police are conducting a suspicious death investigation as they try to determine exactly how Sarah Long died.</s>GRACE: OK, Pat Lalama, investigative reporter, she`s dead in bed. It reminds me of a murder I prosecuted while back where we found, once I got to the crime lab, we put the sheets, the woman found dead in bed committed suicide, we put the sheets up in front of a light, a light bulb, and noticed that there was blood spatter under where her pillow had been. Impossible. So blood spatter can`t get under your pillow while you`re lying on it and you shoot yourself in the head. So in this case, she -- is she ambidextrous? Did she shoot herself with a left hand, although everybody says she`s right handed? What do we know?</s>PAT LALAMA, INVESTIGATION DISCOVERY: Well, what we do know is that this has got the makings of a made-for-TV movie because check it out, as you mention, she`s right handed, she`s not ambidextrous and by the way, Nancy, not a drop of blood on the hand. That`s a little suspicious but then it even gets weirder because the way cops found her, some gentleman called and said, I`m really worried about my friend Sarah Long, please go check on her, and that`s how they find the body. But then he calls them up the next day and says OK, I have all this stuff I need to get off my chest. I was having a secret affair with Sarah and she was very depressed. She had cancer and I was trying to help her and she`s been very suicidal and she has an abusive ex-husband and gee whiz, we just couldn`t tell anybody because we`re both married. And then of course the plot thickens.</s>GRACE: OK. Hold on. Hold on. So are -- I heard the emphasis on gentleman. Are you suggesting that he waited and waited and waited for somebody to find her dead body and when nobody did, he finally called police himself?</s>LALAMA: Well, they believe that she had died three days -- approximately three days prior to discovery. So perhaps he sat and sat, if in fact, this is all very suspicious. In fact, he sat and sat, OK, now it`s time to call police because gee, I`m really worried about my friend. And it`s really quite an interesting case because he claims that about a month before she died that she had a gun to her head and she wanted to blow her brains out because she had this cervical cancer. And by the way, Nancy, the doctor disputes any such thing about cervical cancer and then, if I might go on.</s>GRACE: OK. Wait. Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Let me absorb that.</s>LALAMA: OK.</s>GRACE: Dr. Michelle Dupre, two questions to you -- medical examiner, forensic pathologist joining me out of Colombia. Dr. Dupre, number one, there`s a big difference between cervical dysplasia, which is what she apparently had, which is you have abnormal cells, that over time may turn into cancer. What you do with that is you just laser it off or lop it off. All right. And two, what`s all the business about there was no blood on her left hand? Why is that so significant?</s>DR. MICHELLE DUPRE, M.D., MEDICAL EXAMINER AND FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Well, Nancy, usually in suicides, you`re going to find a little bit of blood spatter or back spatter on the hand that is holding the gun. The fact she was right handed and the left hand was holding the gun, that in and of itself is suspicious. So we just take a look everything. The other interesting part is, sometimes we do find people who commit suicide, they will use their non-dominant hand to pull the trigger but then they will steady the gun with their dominant hand. In her case it would have been her right hand. She didn`t do either of that.</s>GRACE: OK. Joining me right now is Joe Marusak with "The Charlotte Observer". Joe, thank you for being with us. What more do you know? By the way, no one has been charged and there is not a person of interest or such person of interest or suspect named in this case. Go ahead, Joe.</s>JOE MARUSAK, REPORTER, CHARLOTTE OBSERVER: That`s correct, Nancy, although the boyfriend is mentioned in several of the police search warrants, the police have not named a suspect in the case. I want to point that out. What we`re at now is the phase where they are doing a lot of electronic investigation part. They`ve -- they say that they got a search warrant to search Sarah Long`s wireless router, AT&T wireless router, which was on in her townhouse at the time police say she was killed. So what would that wireless router do? It could identify any other electronics, including those of male subject that police say was seen entering her townhouse with her that night.</s>GRACE: OK. Hold on. Ben Levitan, telecommunications expert, joining me out of Raleigh. Now when you walk into someone`s home and you`ve got your iPad or your iPhone with you, you don`t have to join their network? Is this set up so whenever anybody comes, it immediately will show up on the person`s iPhone or iPad?</s>BEN LEVITAN, TELECOMMUNICATIONS EXPERT: Well, Nancy, when you have a wireless device whether it`s a cell phone or an iPad or anything, you`re going to connect to the strongest signal that`s around and you`re going to register to that device. Now if you walk into the house and the strongest signal is her Wi-Fi router there, you`ll attempt to register. You probably won`t be granted access but the router may have -- when they look at this router, it may have a collection of what they call, you know, serial numbers of the devices that could be tracked -- traced back to a specific subscriber, even though he didn`t use that router. And if it`s somebody who regularly goes to that house, he may have the codes and he may have been attached but that router should have a list of device serial numbers that can be tracked back to specific phones and specific devices that may be registered to the subjects.</s>GRACE: Unleash the lawyers, joining me out of New York. Michael Mazzariello, defense attorney. Out of Miami, Yale Galanter, defense attorney. All right, Yale, rut-row. Sounds like the perp may have gone in her home. A, she`s not ambidextrous. She did not shoot herself with her left hand. She`s found holding the gun, and Yale, she`s lying there in bed with the gun perfectly in her hand posed on her chest. Now you know with the jolt, the shock of a gun being fired, your hand will fly out, not lie in repose with the gun still in your dead hand on your chest, number one. But number two, what do you think about what Ben Levitan just explained? You walk in somebody`s home with your iPhone or iPad, it`s going to leave a trail on the person`s router.</s>YALE GALANTER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, that`s true. I mean, we live in a society where electronics will identify where you`re at and how you`re there. But this case is the classic cause of death-manner of death. For the prosecutors to bring a case, Nancy, as you well know, they`ve got to prove what was the cause of death. Was this a self-inflicted wound or was this a wound inflicted by somebody else? And in order to get out of the gate with the prosecution, they`ve got to have this be a homicide, as opposed to a suicide and then build the case from there. Whether or not it was the boyfriend or something else, that evidence will develop, but the science really has to tell us whether what the cause of death was here.</s>GRACE: Hold on. Wait, wait, wait.</s>GALANTER: And right now we just don`t know that.</s>GRACE: Now hold on, gentlemen. Let`s not mislead the viewers because medical examiners, when they are determining cause and manner of death can look outside the forensics in the dead body to determine whether, for instance, there was arson, whether this was suicide or homicide. They don`t have to just look at the body alone. The fact that they now know she`s not left-handed, that changes everything, Maz, everything.</s>MICHAEL MAZZARIELLO, DEFERENCE ATTORNEY: No, I agree with the pathologist you had on before with from Colombia. Sometimes it does happen where they use the opposite hand, depending on the caliber of the gun of the bullet, maybe there was no blood.</s>GRACE: Put him up. Put him up. Put him up. Michael Mazzariello --</s>MAZZARIELLO: Depending on the caliber of the gun.</s>GRACE: You`re saying sometimes.</s>MAZZARIELLO: A very good evening to you, Nancy. Very good evening.</s>GRACE: Sometimes, when? Name me one case. I love it when you defense attorneys go well, there are cases that blah, blah, blah, blah.</s>MAZZARIELLO: Nancy, you have --</s>GRACE: But you never can name one.</s>MAZZARIELLO: You had a doctor on that just said that it`s not unusual --</s>GRACE: I`m asking you.</s>MAZZARIELLO: Well, I -- I know for a fact of several suicides where they used to --</s>GRACE: Name one.</s>MAZZARIELLO: I`m not at liberty to do that, Nancy. But they use their opposite hand and we`ve done many homicides where there was no blood on the hand. None. Not a trickle. And if there was blood, why didn`t the cops act on it immediately?