Secrets of the Snake Farm

It was shot eight times. Why would someone want to kill Ben? You had a real whodunit on your hands. We did. Everyone thought it was his brother.

Did Lindley say what the brothers were fighting about the farm money? They were having marital problems? Finding out that she was in another relationship so soon after the murder was a big red flag. He was toxic.

She was afraid of him, His texts to her were awful, evil. We had to ask ourselves, Why is this happening? I just broke down, it can't be real.

I believe that the truth will come out and, trust me, this is not the truth. Some people might say. This beautiful piece of property is cursed. There's a lot of history out there, it's not all pretty. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.

Help me.

Here's Andrea Canning with secrets of the snake Farm.

It was a warm June evening in 2017, just before dusk, down a long road in rural Missouri. Out here, it was desolate, isolated, about an hour outside of bustling St. Louis. But a world away, this family farm was once a place of happy memories, with plenty of room to raise kids and let them roam.

And on this evening, like so many others, all was quiet still. Then came the call, 911. What's the address of the emergency? Oh my, there's blood everywhere. All that came through were desperate cries, confusion.

Okay, I'm sorry. What did you say?

So we asked for additional information. Was he conscious, did he have a pulse, respirations? Had CPR been started, the 911 dispatcher still couldn't get much from the woman on the line.

Okay, is he conscious right now or breathing? I don't know. My brother-in-law just went inside. A minute later, the woman's brother-in-law got on the line Hello, yes.

Okay, we've got everybody on the way. Do you know what happened? No, I had a little shake, literally. I don't know where the sink is.

Oh my God, hear that. A snake apparently on the loose while we were en route. It came across that they believed a 600-pound anaconda had caused this damage. Very unique call.

Yeah, I mean, have you ever heard anything like that? No, I had never heard anything like that. Dee and her partner flew down the dusty driveway toward the property, a 72-acre farm with several homes and buildings. You arrive on the scene, lights are flashing, you guys are in a huge hurry. What do you see?

As you're pulling up multiple deputies out, guns drawn, ready to go into this building. But they're still afraid to go in because they think there's a 600-pound snake on the loose.

Deputies from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department had arrived there first, their body cameras rolled. There's a little snake on the loose. Yeah, I'm not good with that. I'm not scared of snakes, but I'm scared of this one.

The deputies located the victim's wife, Lindley Runnick, who had called 911.

And I was not aware it was a snake facility, but my partner was because he was local to the area. Some of the deputies also knew this farm was home to more than 2,000 snakes housed in a facility on the property, and they knew who it belonged to. Ben Runnick, a world-renowned snake breeder So I learn it's a snake farm, and here's all of these country guys that are terrified of snakes. I had been raised with a snake.

I wasn't afraid of a snake, so they've all got out shotguns and they're ready to just start blasting at a snake. If it comes at them. I'm like, come on, guys, the police, yes, the police.

It's a 600-pound snake, you're gonna see it coming. So Dee went inside, only to find she was too late. It was obvious he was gone, there was no helping Ben Runnick.

Dee thought he'd been dead at least a few hours. It fell to Dee to give his wife Lindley the news. Once there was no life and I went to her and told her that he was dead, what was her reaction to getting that news? It was guttural.

She was devastated, She acted like her life was completely over. She was completely devastated, worried about her children, how they were going to survive without their father. She looked so weak. Were you trying to console her?

Of course, deputies still had a dangerous suspect to track down the massive missing Anaconda Harley. If you see a snake come out of your eye, you better shoot that son of a bitch. I got him row after row. The building was filled to the brim with reptiles of every size.

What do they do with these things? They sell them? It's like a little shop. Deputies cautiously made their way through the facility, all too aware that this snake could be a killer.

Fellas, something got him. Paramedics said there's a bite mark on him, so there's a snake loose in here, so watch your ass. And now a dangerous hunt was on.

Do we have anybody we could call to deal with an anaconda? I'm gonna kill it, we'll see it. They were looking for a dangerous snake. But as the twists and turns of this case began to unfold, investigators would uncover a far more venomous plot than they could have ever imagined.

This family farm in New Florence, Missouri, had gone from calm to chaos. I'm gonna kill it, we'll see it. Ben Renick had just been found dead. His big brother Sam had come running when Ben's wife Lindley called him to help.

It was Sam who first alerted authorities about the snake on the 911 call. Could you see what the nature of the injury was? His skull was crushed, so I didn't know what to think. My first thought was, of course, the snakes. Sheriff's deputies combed the area with guns at the ready.

They were hunting for a possible slithering perp. Family friend Bobette Tucker also heard about the snake as she raced to the property that night. They had said that Ben had died and they think that it was a snake. Oh my gosh, what are you thinking when you hear snake? How could this happen?

Ben had loved animals even as a child, which wasn't a surprise to his parents since they owned a thriving pet food company. He particularly liked exotic reptiles, lizards, turtles and snakes. Your parents actually encouraged exotic animals? They did. We were encouraged to have exotic pets as kids, and Ben had a variety of unique pets at a young age.

The Renick's sprawling farm was the perfect place for Ben, Sam and Bobette's son to run wild, secluded in a world all their own. Was it the kind of place the boys would run around and discover nature, or maybe their ATVS? I don't know that kind of thing. There was a little pond out there.

The boys were in the woods all the time. I mean, Sam will tell you that they've got buried treasures out there. Did you become really close because of the location of your farm? We did, yeah, we did everything together for the longest time.

Ben was also a talented drummer. In his early 20s. He played in a local metal band that would change his life. Through the band. He met a special woman. What did he tell you about her?

Told me that he'd met someone and that they had a lot in common and he was head over heels. For Lindley, Lindley was from a small town, just down the road from the Renick's. A single mom raising her young son. Lindley was very sweet, She was perfect for Ben, she was very outgoing, bubbly.

She was everything that Ben ever wanted. Her father, Lindle, says. The couple was a perfect fit. They seemed like a great couple together and I liked Ben a lot. He was really easy to get along with. Yeah, I was very happy.

The whirlwind romance turned into an instant family. The two got married and had a daughter.

With a growing family, Ben left his music career behind and turned his passion for reptiles into a budding business. But hopefully this girl will be good to go.

Lindle says breeding and selling snakes was a lot of work, but Lindley didn't mind. Why do you think Lindley was okay with that? Not every woman would be. She loved animals, she loved taking care of things.

She was just a compassionate person. We do breed smaller females than this. Ben operated out of this large facility on the family farm and made videos for his YouTube channel. Under the name Rennick Reptiles. In this video, we are going to show you how we ship all of our reptiles.

Now, Ben was dead in the very place his business came to life. Back at the scene, the chaos had only escalated as deputies tried to figure out how a snake might have killed him. Well, even a small snake, if it's really toxic, if it's supposedly heavy, poisonous. Boy, it's my understanding. Perhaps, like Sam first thought, one of the large snakes had crushed Ben's skull, like the reticulated python or the anaconda. Not your everyday house pets. How big were Ben's snakes?

At the time, I think his biggest one was 12 feet. Now that I have her, it's been a couple of years and she's a little bit bigger. This here is a male green anaconda. Wow. his name is Blue Megan Kelly, or as her followers know her, Megaconda is an anaconda breeder and friend of Ben's.

What is the most likely scenario? If a snake were to kill someone, it would be by strangulation, and it would be purely like an accident. You could see how someone would think that Ben might have been killed by one of his snakes. When you get up close, it's very powerful.

Megan found it hard to believe that someone with Ben's experience would end up the victim of an attack. It comes with experience and knowing what you're doing with him, and Ben was very experienced on the scene. That night, Emt Dee Wassman was thinking the same thing. Remember she'd grown up with snakes? Could you tell if this indeed was a snake injury?

To me, it did not seem like a snake injury at all, Lindley told the police. That, too.

How many times was Ben shot? Ben was shot eight times. Ben was a beloved father, husband and animal lover who was cold-hearted enough to kill him. Missouri Highway Patrol investigator Devin Faust would now join the case, looking for a killer whose intentions seemed clear.

This person definitely wanted to kill Ben, they were gonna make sure that he was dead. And for the first time, he'll reveal what went on inside the investigation into this brutal homicide.

29-year-old Ben Renick's death had been ruled a homicide and the crime was brutal. The snake breeder had been shot eight times. Investigators from the Missouri State Highway Patrol arrived on the scene to take over the investigation. You're on call on this particular day and you get a very strange call, that's correct.

This is the first time Missouri Highway Patrol investigator Devin Faust has talked about the case on national television. He told me he got the call around 8.30 that night. They spoke of how they believed a murder had occurred and there was a victim with gunshot wounds and there was no gun present. And that this occurred in a snake farm or a snake facility, you already know that this is a murder, this was done by a human, not a snake.

It was apparent by the time we had started that evening that this was gonna be a homicide, an unsolved homicide. When he arrived at the sprawling property, he was struck by the size of the facility and the number of animals inside. I don't wanna say there's a typical crime scene, but that's the only crime scene I've worked where you're surrounded by snakes. One of the first things we did was try to get a handle on what the snake facility really was. And if there was a danger present. Ben's wife, Lindley, called in a friend of Ben's to help out with handling the snakes.

He also had some helpful information. He let me know that he was aware of the sale of a large portion of those snakes to a hockey player. That's when I first learned that. Apparently he was gonna be selling a lot of snakes, and he let me know that a couple of these snakes. He had just sold two snakes for a total of $85,000, that's a lot of money, right?

That could be the kind of thing you might kill someone over, that kind of money. Sure, you know, financial part of it could play a motive. Do you wanna get interviews done immediately with people who might be able to shed some light on what happened to Ben? Absolutely, to start learning about his life and his family and his business, to start really working his case. Who was your first person that you wanna talk to?

The first person we talked to was his wife, We talked to Lindley. Renick. I know you talked to a handful of other people today.

About how your day went. But if you wanna walk us through it.

Did they come at the beginning, or from, say, from this afternoon? Lindley told investigators she'd been at work that day at the spa she owned in Columbia, Missouri, about a 45-minute drive from the farm. You mentioned that you did speak with Benjamin.

Before you left the farm, what time was the last time you spoke? 3.45? He said. Are you still good for kids tonight? Or do I need to? I said, I need you to. I'm not going to be able to leave right now. On her way home, the phone rang.

It was the school the kids had not been picked up that afternoon. I was like, Okay, well, I'm on my way, I'm so sorry.

And then I tried to call Ben in the facility a couple of times and send him some messages, Ben wasn't responding. Obviously he got a little more worried, but he's like, Okay, well, a thousand things could be why he's not answering. And then I got home and.

I told the kid I was gonna stay in the car since he wasn't answering. And he's never forgotten them.

She still seemed to be in shock.

I'm not friends with Ben.

With Lindley, it was almost like checking a box. Our first interview with her was just a common lead to start sorting out a family function. And who this person is, and their job, and any grievances they may have with anybody else. And no one doubted Lindley's love or her commitment to Ben and his snakes. She spent long days working with him at the snake facility and helping him build an online presence for Rhenic reptiles. So here, Ben is going to show you essentially what we do from the moment that they hatch out of the eggs.

Everyone in the snake industry seemed to admire the couple's obvious synergy. Former N.FL linebacker Chad Brown is a successful reptile breeder and owner of a reptile shipping company in Denver. Ben was a good dude, and then the fact that it was Ben and Lindley. And I've always got a heart for folks who are entrepreneurial, who are trying to build something. After the couple's success with Rhenic reptiles, Lindley wanted to try a business venture all her own.

She took her former training as a massage therapist and, with Ben's help, opened that spa in Columbia. That's a big step. Oh wow, they put a lot of money into this spa and it was top of the line.

It was beautiful. Back in the interview room, Lindley told investigators how much she admired Ben as a hardworking businessman. And father Ben's So, I mean, he just makes everything okay. Ben and Lindley seem to have the perfect little family.

But she had a lot to tell Corporal Faust about someone else who was very close to them. Was there any family issues?

Like, between Sam and Yeah. Did Lindley have any idea who might've wanted to hurt Ben? That evening, Lindley started to perhaps paint a picture of Ben's dealings with his brother and how they didn't get along as well as they used to. Does your antenna go up when you hear that you've got a murder on your hands?

And now you're being told that there's a family feud. Sure, it was something to take into account, but the feud was much more involved than it first sounded. Investigators would soon learn the brothers had a history that read like a tragic novel. There was big tension between the brothers.

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The people pressed shoulder to shoulder. They'd heard the gossip and the whispers about a family teeming with passion and hate. About a mysterious disappearance and a pile of bones found burning in a lime pit. And now they wanted to know what really happened. But even they were not prepared for the story that came, spilling out the secrets, the lies, the confessions and the ending so unimaginable.

And now you will hear it, too. The Dead Alive on Morrison Mysteries, a true story that became a classic novel. Listen now to wherever you get your podcasts.

From the moment Corporal Devin Faust stepped onto the Renick family farm in June 2017, he had many questions. But he was laser focused on the obvious. One who would want to kill Ben Renick? A lot of things to figure out. Quite a mystery, correct? yeah?

There's a lot to get lined out very early, so you don't miss anything that you can't go back and do later on. The investigator had spent the early morning hours after the homicide questioning Ben's wife, Lindley. Do you have any thoughts or ideas, or do you know what happened tonight? I don't.

The more Lindley talked, the more a story emerged. It was about Ben's brother, Sam, and the farm. Ben. And I actually own all of the property. Sam kind of basically just went to Ben. And he was like, you need to give me half of the property? Ben was like, No, I'm not gonna give you half of the property.

Investigators learned the brothers were feuding over the Renick Land, a property with a long and tragic history. Welcome to the Renick household. Their parents, Frank and Kim Renick, bought the farm in the 80s and raised their young family miles from the nearest town or grocery store. Was it kind of a sanctuary? It was their sanctuary, it really was.

From the beginning, the Renicks had their own way of doing things, and the family farm was at the center of it all. They did everything big, they didn't buy a bottle, they bought a case, but a shadow of hardship seemed to follow them. In 1992, the family's newly built house was destroyed in a suspected gas explosion.

We're leaving Sam's room, going into Ben's room. They rebounded, though, and replaced it with a 10,000 square foot home, complete with a pool and diving board. Was it nice? Oh yeah, it was beautiful. Yeah, Kim did a fabulous job, you know, interior decorating and stuff.

It was beautiful. But their piece of paradise couldn't escape another tragedy. Ben and Sam's mom, Kim, was diagnosed with cancer. It just became a part of their life, you know, because she managed with it a long time. In 2008, after 15 years of living with cancer, Kim died in her bedroom in that beautiful house.

After fighting so hard for so long, it must have been just so devastating. She was the strongest woman I'll ever know for what she went through. The boys dad Frank seemed to crumble without their mom. She was Frank's rock, and when she passed away, he lost a big part of his life. And, you know, changed.

As a person, Ben and Sam wouldn't understand those changes. Until years later, Frank, sadly, took his own life. Yes, Father's Day.

Oh, on Father's Day. mm-hmm. wow. Just like one tragedy after the next. Yeah, yeah, Ben found him.

The series of tragedies left the Runick sons sudden landowners of the family's massive property. They were only in their 20s. What happened to the land? And the boys? Did they take it over?

Yeah, Frank had things set up for them not to lose the farm, you know, the farm was also, you know, that was their legacy as well, and it meant everything to them. Would you say that everything that happened really strengthened the bond between Ben and Sam? Oh, yeah.

But now Lindley was telling Corporal Faust that the land that once bonded the family had been tearing the brothers apart. In this case, Ben received the land and Sam lived on it. Sam had an issue with how they were paid and being able to still live on the land. So Sam and his wife were married at that time, but no kids. And so they moved into that house and they were talking to us about buying half of the property from us, and then they would have that house.

But that never ended up happening. That's when Lindley said Sam asked Ben to give him half of the property and Ben refused. Then they were like, Well, we can't afford to live out here, we're going to have to move. Lindley said. She tried to intervene.

And so I sent Sam a message like, I don't think you understand how much that really hurt Ben. But she said it was too late. His wife sent Ben and I a message that was basically just kind of like, F you. And there for a while, Sam and I were like, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. Sam was on the property when Lindley found Ben.

So police dug deeper, had the brothers feud fueled and enraged Sam to kill Ben. What is Sam's demeanor like in general? I mean, he has kind of a depressed personality.

He's overly dramatic.

I don't know, he's just so different than Ben.

He's a lot more in your face. First responder Dee Wassman remembered Sam complained about his brother at the crime scene.

They were just very off-color remarks to be being made on a scene. What else was he saying? He was saying, That's right, I'm the brother murderer, brother murderer.

What did that mean?

Yeah, Lindley's dad even heard the chatter about Sam. What did you make of the rumors that were going around that Sam killed Ben? I didn't know exactly what to make of them. Ben and Sam were not as close as what a lot of people are led to believe.

Corporal Faust had heard those rumors, too, from almost the moment he walked onto the farm, just hours after Sam and Lindley discovered Ben's body. Were you told about some of the strange things that Sam had been saying at the scene? We were, and I don't remember really even how those came across to us. Whether it was almost like people in the crowd or whether it was another sheriff's deputy.

But it did make us kind of excited for that first interview with Sam, but it was how he was excited, or how he was sweating so much. I think he changed a shirt. And so all those were something that we took into account, you know, that evening. And it wasn't just Sam's behavior at the scene that night that investigators had to consider.

Sam had a motive, Potential motive Sam did have a potential motive. He wanted to stay on that farm, and he was afraid that that land wouldn't always be there and it wouldn't stay in the family. So Corporal Faust had a lot of questions when Sam walked into the police station just hours after his brother was found murdered.

Is Sam there? I'm dead. When do you usually get off work at five? I'm not.

After work, I picked up the babies, took the kids back to the farm. Sam lived in his parents big house on the farm with his wife and two small children. That evening, Sam let us know that he was meeting with some potential babysitter and that girl's mother as well, somebody that may watch his kids. They were present up at the Big house, what I refer to as the big house at that time.

While he was talking with them, Lindley called him, she was frantic. And he basically left his kids with this potential babysitter and her mother and went down the hill to meet with Lindley. Lindley calls screaming, screaming because she just found her husband dead.

Sam said he was devastated by the loss, but he admitted he didn't always get along with his brother. He talked about how Ben didn't have any fun and he was the one that had fun, and he talked about how he would go out and Ben would always work. Ben and I aren't close, Ben and I don't have a lot in common, Ben doesn't drink.

He's really serious, he doesn't have any fun at all, he doesn't leave the farm much.

I'm the opposite of Ben in almost every way.

Sam admitted the terms of their inheritance made things complicated.

The farm was also a money pit, Sam said, which is why he was planning to leave.

That's an expensive place to live, the house I'm staying at, the big main house on the left out there, it's falling apart. It needs $50,000 to put in there.

I'm spending more than I'm making, I'm taking money from the treasurer every month, I can't afford to live there. Sam, Ben and Lindley appeared to be in a bad place before the murder, so investigators put Sam on the spot.

Sam, Did you have anything to do with the death of?

Sam appeared to be cooperative. He promised to take a polygraph and make himself available, so police let him leave the station. But for Corporal Faust and his team, the work was only just beginning. I would imagine the sun's probably coming up at this point.

It was we worked all night and it was evident this was going to be a full-scale homicide with a lot of leads. To sit down and ride out and start handing them out to people to start getting a handle on this because there was a lot of things involved early on. And as investigators dug deeper, the pool of suspects grew.

Ben's colleague said he was a lovable guy with a knack for breeding snakes, but had he been involved in a business deal gone bad? I tried to think, you know, there have been some beefs in the reptile world. Maybe somebody feels they got the wrong end of a deal or something like that. Could Ben have had some beef with somebody?

I don't know. Sam Rennick had spent hours with police at the crime scene and down at the station. I'm not going anywhere. If you guys need me, I'm 100 available. Like I said, I'm out of the book.

Investigators found him cooperative and agreeable, but Sam's interactions with police were undercut by how he was behaving in public. There was his bizarre and seemingly self-incriminating behavior at the murder scene that night. He's cheap.

Contradictory behavior for a man who claimed to be trying to help the investigation. When Sam sat down with us, he said, there was an explanation for all of it. Beginning with that sign, I did something stupid. I blocked the road and I put a sign up that said, I'm drunk and I'm armed. And uh....

Whoa, why? Well, I didn't want any company at that point in time. I didn't know, you know, who could have been done something like that, or who could be out there. Did you worry that people might take that as that?

You were guilty that this was, you know, you were acting irrational, that maybe you were capable of murder. I don't know if that was all that irrational for me at that point in time or not. No, I wasn't concerned about that. Sam told us he was simply a man struggling to make sense of his brother's death, and says that explains his crime scene rantings. There was some talk that you were acting strange.

Anything you want to say about that? How does one act after they lose their last family member? You know, I had a hard time.

After everything that we've been through, losing Ben was devastating. In fact, he says, he doesn't even remember calling himself a brother murderer. He passed his polygraph and remained cooperative with police, but he understood why they would need to look at him.

Was there thought that there could be a motive there for you with the financial interests of the farm? Well, I'm sure the finances came into it along with the investigation, and if they were looking for motive, we had been in my finances. We're intertwined quite a bit, especially with the property.

Sam told us he never demanded half of the property from Ben. They had already come up with an informal agreement to split up the farm. We had always planned to have the property divided. That's the way my father and mother had asked us to do it, and that's definitely something Ben had planned to do. This was a temporary situation.

Exactly, and whatever ups and downs the brothers might have had, Sam says he never harmed Ben. Did you have anything to do with the murder of your brother? Absolutely not. What is going on with Sam at this point?

Is he still a suspect? Sam is still, I would say, he's kind of off to the side, you know, maybe a soft suspect at that time. You haven't ruled him out.

No, why not? It's just a good practice not to get ahead of ourselves and start focusing too hard on one thing. It doesn't hurt to just set something off to the side for a while and focus on a new path. But if Sam didn't kill Ben, then who did?

We had problems with people out there looting the place. Sam had given police his own theories on the case. For starters, he thought maybe this could be a burglary gone bad. He didn't like the doors, he didn't like the doors or anything.

That was something Corporal Faust was hearing, too, was one of the theories. You were looking at a possible burglary. That came because Linlin let us know that at some point they'd had money stolen out of the facility, several thousand dollars. Sam confirmed that Ben's house on the farm was robbed of $6,000 a couple of years earlier.

But that kind of money would have been nothing to Ben compared to the scaly valuables he had on the property, his prized collection of snakes. How big of a player was Ben in the business? At this point? Ben was at the cutting edge of producing new and interesting morph animals, his ability to combine different genes to create, you know, new, brand new, fascinating animals. He was at the cutting edge of that, towards the top.

Ben owned some incredibly rare snakes, like this t-positive albino anaconda, apparently the only one in the world a snake like that could fetch as much as $100,000. I tried to think, you know, there have been some beefs in the reptile world. Maybe somebody feels they got the wrong end of a deal or something like that. Could Ben have had some beef with somebody?

What could have possibly been the cause or origin of this, you know, his death? And Ben seemed to get along with everybody. He didn't have those kind of reptile beefs that I've heard about with other breeders. But maybe there could have been a rival that you didn't know about, or a disgruntled customer? Yeah, was it a disgruntled customer?

Was it a disgruntled employee, you know? Was it a rival where a deal went wrong, or somebody was jealous of Ben's collection? Investigators were carefully studying the snake industry and Ben's place in it. I bet you had no idea that the snakes were worth that much money, no, we were all pretty shocked to learn how much the snakes just one of them would be worth, how rare some of the ones were. To begin to learn how he bred these snakes and why they were worth so much money.

Lindley told investigators Ben was actually looking to get out of the business altogether and suggested that might have upset some of his colleagues. In the snake world, Lindley was inferring that possibly someone might have killed Ben over the snake business, correct over the snake business, or over him getting out of the snake business. Apparently, Ben had entered into an agreement to sell the business to NHL goalie Robin Lenner. Ben valued everything at 1.9 and then they settled on 1.2..

Corporal Faust learned that Ben and Lenner subsequently had some disputes over payments. Ben died before the sale could go through. Doesn't sound like a perfect relationship. I would agree. It was not a perfect relationship. Was Robin Lenner ever a suspect?

He was always something that we'd kind of set aside anytime, you know, if you have a sale that large. I never directly talked to him, but he was always a potential path. Investigators couldn't rule Robin out but set him aside for the time being to explore other theories. And there was one other theory surrounding Ben's death that also involved money. And another difficult chapter in the Rennick family's story. Right before he died by suicide, Sam and Ben's dad, Frank, was indicted on three federal counts of mail fraud.

Remember, Frank ran what seemed like a successful pet food company? But the government alleged that behind the scenes, Frank was taking millions from investors with no intention of paying them back. He faced 20 years in prison and died before the case could go to trial, leaving his investors upset. Had one of them come back to exact revenge on the Rennick family, we have to keep our minds open that, you know, this could still be something from the Rennick's past coming back to their land.

So that was something that we maintained an idea of, you know, throughout the earlier parts of the investigation. Did you think this could be related to your dad's business? Even though that was so long ago, that just unfinished business that definitely crossed our mind, we definitely thought that that was a possibility.

Did that lead you anywhere? It did not. We ruled that out because it's amazing when you look back and you see that, you know. Their house exploded and Frank was embezzling money, and it all seems like it could potentially add up to revenge or murder.

Yeah, I would agree. If the killer wasn't Ben's brother Sam, or a rival from the reptile world, then who could it be? As police kept working to find the answer, whispers around town began growing louder. Lindley Rennick wasn't exactly acting like a grieving widow. It was a big red flag that she had moved on to another relationship so fast.

While investigators were busy evaluating several possible suspects in the Ben Rennick murder, they weren't sharing any information with the public. We would question what's going on with that? You know, is there any suspects? You know? Well, yeah, there is, but you know, we can't talk about it. As for Lindley, the young widow was now busy raising her two children as a single mom.

It left little time to focus on Ben's enormous snake collection, so Lindley called a professional this man. Do you go by David or Dave Dealer's choice?

David Levinson was good friends with Ben, They'd become close on the Reptile Show circuit. He admired Ben and the magic. He worked breeding his snakes, he was putting animals together and creating colors that nobody had seen before.

A lot of first-time things in the industry. His name was really getting around, that he was the guy worldwide, yes. So when Lindley reached out to David about Ben's one-of-a-kind creations, he didn't hesitate. You're on a flight to Missouri to help with the collection.

Essentially anything I could help with, just yes, just headed right out there when I had the first chance.

David put his own life on hold and took charge for weeks. He fed the snakes and cleaned their cages, all in the same facility where his friend was shot eight times. David says it was the least he could do. Lindley was in no condition to go back into that building.

Was Lindley really struggling? She was extremely emotional when I got there, you know, a lot of crying, a little bit of isolating herself. Sitting on the porch, David says things got so painful for Lindley that she left the farm and moved in with her dad.

Corporal Faust visited Lindley at her dad's house several times. He, too, had noticed she was struggling. She'd been to the E.R. I learned from her friend that was there, that she'd been to the ER for a panic attack or something close to that. He also talked often with David, who continued to live and work on the property.

Are you using him at all as someone to talk to, just someone to sort of keep an eye on? You know what's going on over there? I am Dave and I would talk quite a bit and he would kind of keep me up to date with things.

And I would kind of keep him up to date, he helped quite a bit. One day, David found what seemed like an important clue I found a shell casing at one point while cleaning some of the caging. Did that just creep you out finding that?

Um, yes, I mean, anything to do with it gave me an uneasy feeling most of the time. It was surprising and there was a part of me that was kind of excited. Like, you know what if this is something? The case had got quiet.

You know, nobody was really talking too much about it anymore. Finding that again was kind of exciting to me because I was like, what if? And he had been taking the racks apart, the trays out and the racks apart to clean them and move them. And while he was doing that, a shell casing fell out. He gave me a call and we had another investigator run down there and pick it up.

And it was just one that we had missed from that evening. But true to form, investigators kept their findings to themselves, and David was left to wonder if it was even safe to stay on the property. You're on this property and the killer is still out there. The property was terrifying.

Family friend Bobette Tucker didn't spend much time at the property, but she did keep in touch with Lindley. We would meet up and talk and she'd come by, and, you know, we kept in real close contact. And then it was kind of like she started fading away and harder to get a hold of.

Is Lindley kind of withdrawing, yeah, from you, just seeing her less and less, hearing from her? Yeah, she wasn't answering our calls and stuff, and, you know, it was frustrating.

Sam was also frustrated. We tried to communicate with Lindley for quite some time, however, we were to no avail. And it was disconcerting that she would isolate herself and the children. Corporal Faust thought he knew why Lindley was keeping to herself.

He suspected she was hiding something from the start. He'd been carefully studying her social media conversations. And they revealed her marriage wasn't quite as she portrayed it, and her spa was in trouble financially. You believe then that she was hiding things from Ben?

I know she was because they would have arguments about it and he would say, I keep finding this out. I want to help you with your business. Her reply would be, Well, you know, I want to take care of this on my own.

This is definitely not the picture that was painted of Ben and Lindley as being the Ken and Barbie of the snake world. That, you know, they had this great life, everything was really good between them, right? That all started to change.

In fact, Faust had even brought her in for another interview just 11 days after the murders, and asked her a blunt question.

Wow, what's that moment like when, just on a hunch, you're asking her this question and she admits it? I was pretty sure the validation, you know, was there. I wasn't happy about that. It was good to have another piece of what was going on. So now it's, you know, where's this going to take us next?

Eric was a local radio personality who sometimes helped Lindley with marketing at the spa she owned in Columbia. Okay, um, how long has that been?

We, I mean, we met once a month to go over my numbers for the spa. And he would maybe pop in once a week to check on me and how everything was going.

Lindley surprised the investigator by saying Ben had even met her new lover on a few occasions without knowing it. He's met Ben a few times.

So what are you thinking when you now have this piece of information? Are are your sights really on? Lindley? You know, that shift had already started, but it definitely kept us going down that path. With what else is she not telling us? Sure enough, everyone was about to discover Lindley was hiding a much bigger secret.

Corporal Devin Faust had discovered Lindley Rennick was keeping secrets, and in the late summer of 2017, he was collecting them one by one. Including a particularly juicy one. Eric, the man she'd been having an affair with behind Ben's back, was not the only other man in her life. How does Brandon Blackwell get on your radar? This is another, you know, yet another man who's in Lindley's world. I'd mashed up some different records and kind of another little bit of a hunch there.

She'd met Brandon just before Ben's murder and was often seen with him afterward, too. David Levinson took notice.

He was introduced to me as a close friend. I think it was a couple months later, it became very apparent, or maybe soon after that, that there was a relationship there. Did he seem like a nice guy? He did seem like a very nice guy, very cordial, very polite.

David tried not to get involved in Lindley's dating life. But then, over a year after Ben's death, she stopped by to visit and this happened. She has some news, some big news. She had come by. I don't remember the exact month, but she was pregnant. Is this feeling a little premature to you? It was a surprise.

I think I found out through her friend, it was on her Facebook page. What's the timing on that? Well, it was awful soon and that surprised me. What are you thinking then?

She's moving forward, she's a young woman, beautiful, attractive. But Sam saw it differently. Finding out that she was in another relationship and publicly so soon after the murder was a big red flag. Do you reach out to the police or talk to the police about Lindley having this relationship?

We made sure that they knew, but at that point in time, they knew a lot more than we knew. Sam wasn't wrong. Police had talked to Brandon, who was head over heels. What did he say about Lindley when you asked him about her? He was basically in love with Lindley?

When I interviewed him, it'd been a little while after the murder. And he didn't feel bad about telling me how much he liked her and what he thought of her. Yeah, I think he even told me he was in love with her already. Lindley and I have definitely formed a very special connection and she's the most amazing woman I've ever met. Meanwhile, Lindley was also selling the beloved family farm, Sam says, without even telling him. We were given notice that we had 30 days to leave.

That's how you found out you had to leave, that's right. Moving was the toughest. She left all of my brother's belongings behind, she never returned to the property.

She actually left all of his things there and abandoned them. David discovered Lindley was trying to sell Ben's prized anacondas, also without saying a word. She essentially had asked a friend of mine in the hobby to sell them or help relocate them. Without talking to you, without talking to me.

You've been spending months for free taking care of the animals. That definitely put me off. Lindley wanted to sell the snakes to Ben's friend, Megan. Yeah, I got really nervous with it. I was like, What do I do?

I called Dave immediately and he's like, just kind of go along with it and see where she takes it. Megan had no intention of going through with the deal, and when she walked away, Lindley blamed David for interfering. He said she sent him a threatening text. I just keyed in on like four words, and one was lawyer, there was a phone number. And you should be ashamed of yourself.

It was just so mean, not the Lindley he thought he knew at all. For the first time, he wondered had she been telling the truth about Ben's death? Are you starting to think that Lindley might be involved? There was some suspicions, just based on conversations and some other things.

But Lindley's dad said there was nothing sinister about the way his daughter acted after Ben's murder. He believes she was just a widow trying to put her painful past behind her. She had no control over the sale of the farm, says Lindle. It was up to the trustee in charge of Ben's father's estate, and he says Lindley might have seemed distant to Ben's circle. But she was just trying to rebuild her life and raise her children.

Did you think she was trying to help the kids cope with the loss of their dad? She was, but I was also. Them children had an emotional state of their own that had to have been taken care of.

Plus, Lindley was dealing with her own personal drama that summer after she had her baby with Brandon, their relationship turned toxic. I know she did come to our house a couple of times because she was afraid of Brandon. Were you scared for Lindley?

Yeah, I was scared for myself. Also. He's a pretty good-sized guy and he'd already threatened to kick my ass, so had he been threatening Lindley? Not when I was there personally, but to the best of my understanding, yes.

According to Lindley, Brandon didn't just threaten her. On one occasion, she told police he wouldn't let her and the children leave the house and he put his hands on her. He was arrested for assault and Lindley was granted an order of protection, but Brandon's attorney told us the assault never happened. He said Brandon never laid his hands on Lindley, nor did he threaten her dad.

Brandon was released, and Lindley says he still wouldn't leave her alone. Connie Sullivan is an attorney Lindley hired after Brandon was accused of violating the terms of the court order. He began truly stalking her, texting her 150 times a day. His own mother called the police, called Lindley and said, Get out, get out, get out.

He's on his way to your house, he says. He's in your backyard, He says. he's going to sleep in your driveway. Lindley told Connie that Brandon terrorized her for weeks. He ended up going to jail for felony stalking, an allegation he denied.

There wasn't a snake in that facility more venomous than Brandon Blackwell, and he was controlling and determined to run her life. The whole Brandon situation, dreadful as it sounded, didn't seem to have any connection to Ben Rennick's murder. But when investigators heard about it, it gave them an idea. Brandon had been so taken with Lindley the first time they interviewed him, he hadn't offered much.

But now that things had soured, they thought maybe he'd say more, boy, were they right? What Brandon had to say would turn the investigation upside down. My information is out of the horse's mouth, OK?

And by the horse, you mean Lindley, or we'll get to that, OK?

The air hung heavy in the courtroom, the people pressed shoulder to shoulder. They'd heard the gossip and the whispers about a family teeming with passion and hate, about a mysterious disappearance and a pile of bones found burning in a lime pit. And now they wanted to know what really happened, but even they were not prepared for the story that came spilling out.

The secrets, the lies, the confessions, and the ending so unimaginable. And now you will hear it too. The Dead Alive on Morrison Mysteries, a true story that became a classic novel. Listen now to wherever you get your podcasts.

How did a master cyber criminal and a Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin hack into America's financial system, scamming millions? CNBC presents the crimes of Putin's traitor. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. They are the families of the missing in America, and they're desperately searching for answers.

Somebody knows something? I'm Josh Banquets. Join me for season three of Missing In America. Listen carefully, because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery. We have seen miracles happen.

Dateline missing in America. All episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

In January 2020, Linley Renick was emerging from a fresh trauma. Her boyfriend Brandon was in jail on charges of felony stalking. Was there some relief with Linley that he was behind bars? Yeah, Linley was in a very vulnerable spot and he knew that.

More than two years had passed since Ben's murder, but investigators worked diligently on his case. Then, that winter, they got a call from a jailbird. It was Brandon Blackwell on the line, so, you know, a fight occurred between Brandon and Linley.

Brandon ultimately gets arrested, and during that arrest he decides it's time to call our investigators back. Because he feels it's the right time to tell the story, that he knows that Linley's told him in the past. If Linley thought getting Brandon sent to jail meant her troubles with him were over, she was wrong. He was about to detonate a major bomb in her life. Your dad gave me a call today and said that you wanted to talk to us.

Yeah, Brandon started by claiming to investigators that Linley had blown their disputes out of proportion and she was making up lies about him. She's gotten convinced that I'm this evil, savage human and I'm the farthest thing from that. The investigators promised to work with him if he helped them solve the case. They'd been working for years. Ben's murder.

My information is out of the horse's mouth. OK, the whole situation, Brandon says. As their relationship progressed, he wondered if Linley knew more about Ben's death than she was saying.

I just, you know, just had a really odd, strange feeling about it and just little stories weren't right. And so, yeah, I kind of kept poking her about it. And, you know, it was like, just laid out like, you know, it's going to go anywhere, you know, I need to know what really happened, he said.

Linley eventually agreed to talk. They were in a cabin on vacation. She put their cell phones in another room. Why did she take them? I mean, she was just paranoid, you know, just thought you guys were listening in on it, you know, and just not, you know, she's on TV. It's real and what's not so?

Brandon already knew that Linley and Ben's marriage had been far from perfect. Now, she told Brandon that Ben was getting ready to call it off. When he died, Ben was getting to the point where he was going to leave her. She was sucking money out of him for her business, and their relationship wasn't going well, but what Brandon said next was an explosive allegation.

He said Linley was so worried Ben would take the kids from her. She decided to do something drastic. She hatched a plot to kill him. Yes, according to Brandon, Linley was Ben's killer and now sitting in jail. Accused of stalking, he said he was done keeping her secrets, whatever she ended up, I could get to at this point.

What she's put me through, he said. Linley didn't do it alone she roped in an old boyfriend, someone she dated before marrying Ben. He worked odd jobs and had a history with drugs. His name was Michael Humphrey.

How did she get Michael to get on board with this? She said that she just knew, based on his past and other things, that it's probably not too far from stuff he's been involved in before. And the way their relationship ended and whatnot. That he kind of owed her, that owed Linley, Brandon said. Because Michael had gotten her hooked on painkillers, she didn't mention paying him to do it or anything like that.

There was no money involved on the day of the murder, he told investigators. Michael picked Linley up at her spa and together they drove out to the farm. And then it was Linley who grabbed the gun and marched into the facility. Ben's in there, you know, cleaning whatever up against that back wall, and she walks in with the gun and Ben's like, What the f are you doing? And she just shoots him a bunch of times and leaves.

Did she ever break down when she was telling the story? Or just non-emotional, pretty non-emotional? Yeah, it wasn't like a remorseful like, almost like he deserved it and he made her do it type deal.

Yeah, I mean, she just snaps in her head, like, and makes up her mind. Linley may not have been remorseful, but Brandon said he was that living with a secret like that for more than two years hadn't been easy. You know, ever since I found this stuff out, it's been in my head every f***ing day. Why do you think she told you, like, I know you said, because you were asking, but why do you think she trusted you to tell you?

I guess, I don't know, I guess. She came off as trustworthy, you know. She just thought she could get away with her, you know? And I think just the way I presented it to her. Like that, I wasn't gonna and didn't for a long time, you know, let it bother me like it should. Turns out, what Brandon was saying made a lot of sense to the investigators. And if Linley had anything to do with this, I want her sitting in that seat.

So that's where she deserves to be. Investigators got a warrant and three days later, Linley and her old boyfriend, Michael were arrested and charged with Ben's murder. For Ben's brother, Sam, the news was a long time coming. How do you get word that Linley has been arrested? They let me know the morning of that.

It was going to happen and it was a huge relief knowing that there was going to be finally be some justice. And I was like, Oh my God, I just broke down. I just like, it can't be real, this is real.

It just shook our world. Linley's family and friends were shaken, too. They said her arrest was all wrong because Brandon's story wasn't true, and one of Linley's lawyers would soon fight back, pointing to jailhouse phone calls as evidence Brandon was simply out for revenge. I was trying to burn that bitch.

I mean, that's about all I know to do. Do you believe Brandon Blackwell is a liar? Without a doubt? He's definitely a liar.

Linley Rennick was under arrest charged with the murder of her husband, Ben. Her father couldn't believe it. Well, I thought, this is crazy, this can't be happening. Just, you know, I knew it wasn't true.

Lyndall Gallatin says the daughter he raised could never have killed anyone, nevermind the man her two eldest children called Dad. The children are her life. She would do anything for them, anything to protect them kids and to take care of them. That was what she lived for.

And it wasn't just Linley's loved ones who felt the police had it wrong. Emt Dee Wassman, who'd been at the scene the day Ben was killed, didn't buy it either. When I found out that Linley had been arrested, I called her defense attorney and told them I did not think Linley was guilty. And that if I could help in any way, to please contact me. Remember, Dee is the person who told Linley that Ben was dead. What was it about her that day that you felt compelled, all that time later, to make that phone call?

She was genuine, there was something about her that I just could never get out of my head.

It still hangs with me. Dusty Braschler was also in Linley's camp. She's an investigator for the Missouri State Public Defender's office. She met Linley for the first time in the county jail. What's your first impression of Linley?

I've met with a lot of people accused of a lot of different crimes, and it just felt off. It felt wrong to Dusty. Linley was an unusually straightforward client. I would ask questions, she would answer them.

She never held back, she was an open book, it was easy to get information out of her. As Dusty dug into this case, she came to believe that Brandon was an angry ex-boyfriend who hoped to get out of jail. Whatever it took, we requested his phone calls, his jail phone calls.

The whole time he's saying I'm going to make some journalist career, I'm going to f up Linley's life. Excuse my language, but he said he's going to ruin her. Linley's defense provided dozens of those calls to Dateline. while many are mundane, some make no bones about how Brandon felt about Linley.

No, she's going to be in prison, and that baby's going to be mine. What's going to f***ing happen? It's about time to burn that bitch. I mean, that's about all I know to do. He's just mad at the world, saying he's going to screw her life up.

Dusty said the calls suggest that Brandon would have said anything to get out.

Connie Sullivan, the attorney who Linley hired to guide her through her stalking case with Brandon, agrees. You believe Brandon going to the police with this accusation about Linley was all an act of revenge, revenge. And in order to get a deal and get out of jail. He'd just been told he was going to be held there without bond until his trial date, which could easily have been six months away. Connie says Brandon had been threatening to point the finger at Linley for some time.

Linley even documented it when she applied for her orders of protection against Brandon when their relationship ended. Two years to the day after Ben's death, he threatened if she took his child to go to the police and tell them that she'd murdered Ben. She was very open about that from the beginning. She made numerous police reports, all stating that that was one of his threats. And she testified to it under oath, in front of two different judges. Brandon's attorney said his client never stalked Linley and was talking to police because he was upset about sitting in jail for something he didn't do.

But if Linley had really committed murder, Connie says, wouldn't she have scrapped the stalking case against Brandon to keep him quiet? Connie thinks the investigators bought Brandon's story way too quickly. I must say that they just swallowed it all. Hook, line and sinker. They didn't investigate his motive to lie, they didn't listen to his jail phone calls.

I was an assistant prosecutor for 10 years. I like to think I have a certain amount of being able to tell. Linley is not a murderer. What is it about Linley? Why do you have a soft spot for her? Sometimes you meet somebody and you just click.

Linley was that kind of warm, open person. We hit it off and she never lied to me. So what do you say to anyone who says she's playing you? That's what they think, and I understand why they think that, but it's not true.

But Corporal Faust said he and his team had been gathering the puzzle pieces for years. They just needed Brandon to put them together after Brandon Blackwell spilled the beans. If you will, why did you believe him? Because he had an axe to grind with Linley, We didn't really have to believe him.

There's no way he could have known that he couldn't make up a story with all our pieces that we'd gathered, that he didn't know. We had, if that makes sense, all of our records, all the stuff that we hadn't released to anyone during another interview or to the public. He had all those pieces together, so it wasn't whether we believed him or not.

It was just that, was it? It made sense, right?

But now the case against Linley would have to hold up in court, and the man who was at the farm with Linley that day would soon take the stand. She was at the end of the corridor, whatever you want to call it, posed up like this with a gun.

On December 6, 2021, Linley Rennick went on trial for Ben's murder. His brother Sam had been waiting for this day for years. We were definitely ready for this. We needed to seek justice for Ben, we needed to see it through.

But what Sam was not prepared to hear was how diabolical the crime actually was. The prosecutor said. Linley didn't just pull her old boyfriend into the plot to murder Ben. She roped in the manager of her spa, too, seen here in this promotional video for the business.

Ashley Shaw was the state's star witness. Investigators had spoken to Ashley early in the investigation, but did not realize the scope of her involvement until they spoke to Brandon Blackwell.

Ashley said that leading up to the murder, Linley had been confiding in her about troubles with Ben fighting emotional abuse. She says. Linley even said one day he sexually assaulted her while she slept.

I was shocked and felt sorry for her, kind of hurt for her, I guess, she said. Linley told her she had to get away from Ben, but if she divorced him, he had the money and resources to take away her kids. She didn't really think of any other option, and that she asked if I could help her with murdering him.

Ashley said that after that plan failed, she and Linley tracked down Linley's old boyfriend, Michael. Then Michael and Linley headed out to the farm to confront Ben. Do you recall about what time of day it was that she left the spa? It was afternoon, two to three, somewhere around that time frame. Ashley also said Linley asked her to provide an alibi.

She said Linley had intentionally left her phone at the spa, so while Michael and Linley were on their way to the farm, Ashley used Linley's Facebook account to send Ben a message. I just said, I'm not feeling well, I'm going to lay down, I think, is what I said.

And Ashley wasn't the only spa employee from that video who said she knew about the murder before it happened. I'm Rachel, I'm one of the institutions here, employee Rachel Hunt told the jury Linley had confided details to her as well. What did she tell you? Her and Michael Humphries? Linley and Michael Humphries were going to take a gun and go see Ben, and they said they were going to murder him.

Could these ladies have stopped this murder from the spa? They could have. anyone could have stopped this murder by calling 9-1-1. But they did not. To tell the jury what actually happened at the farm, the prosecution called their surprise witness. Call your next witness, Michael Humphry.

Michael, Humphry, Michael and Linley had been arrested for the murder at the same time, but now Michael was going to point the finger directly at Linley in his orange uniform. He told the jury he hadn't seen her in six or seven years when she showed up at his house and asked him to help kill Ben. Initially, I thought she was just exaggerating some, you know?

Did you respond? I told him that that was crazy, but then he said he ended up going with Linley to the farm anyway, he said. She told him she changed her mind about the murder and just needed support while she collected her things. Why would you help her in this manner?

I thought that was going to be a peaceful resolution. According to Michael, he picked Linley up after 2 p..m. on June 8th, a charge on her card showed. They got gas on the way to the farm when they arrived, he said. Linley told Ben a cover story about Michael being a high school friend who wanted to see his snakes.

What is his reaction? Can you see what his reaction is? He was just, I guess, momentarily hesitant as to, you know, just randomly showing up there, but was like, Fine, that's fine, come on in. Michael said he had just walked inside when he heard the first shot.

I was looking at a whole lot of snakes.

And then I heard a shot come out, which inside there was extremely loud, so I kind of ducked a little bit. I looked down through there and she was at the end of the corridor, posed up like this with the gun, he said. He ducked out the door as Linley continued to fire shots into Ben. She comes out the door, I'm still standing there, she runs around to the passenger side of the car.

And starts screaming at me to drive, basically on their way back to the spa. He said. Linley was an anxious mess. She's, I'm going to call it, freaking out, the prosecutor said. Remarkably, Linley hadn't promised Michael a dime for his help with the murder. She hadn't offered Ashley or Rachel anything either.

With all this testimony about Linley's deceptions and so many firsthand accounts of her role in the murder, the case against her looked formidable. But defense attorneys Tim Hessman and Katherine Berger said all was not what it seemed. Right off the bat, I sort of said to myself, this is all witnesses, there's no DNA, there's no fingerprints, no gunshot residue either.

Linley's hands had been tested after the murder and they were clean, they said. The state's theory of motive just wasn't true. It's been said that Linley was afraid because Ben had all the money. That he would be able to put up a big fight for the kids and that she could lose out, that, I don't think ever entered Linley's mind, she said No, my mom was a social worker.

I know how this works. It takes a lot for courts to be willing to take kids away from their parents when those parents love them and are competent caretakers. The defense said the whole case against Linley was based on the words of three people who had very good reasons to lie. Given what Linley's employees, Ashley and Rachel, knew about the plot, they were trying to avoid jail time themselves, the defense said. The police leaned on Ashley in particular.

Here is a woman that is inside of an interrogation room with no attorney, who's 29 years old and is told expressly. If you continue to help Linley Rennick and you do not help us, you're not going to leave this room now. Who, in that situation, would not tell the police anything they wanted to hear? Really, almost like a threat, it was a threat. And Michael, who'd already been tried and convicted for Ben's murder months earlier, was getting a reduced sentence for his testimony.

Instead of life without parole, he now has a chance to get out, but you're eligible for parole, right? Hopefully we'll not die in there. They also said Ashley's story just didn't ring true. Ashley Shaw claims she's approached and asked to murder a man. And she agrees, for no reason and for no compensation, to do that. Not once, but twice.

We don't think that that's believable. But how would they explain Linley's gas station stop shortly before the murder, or Ashley's phony Facebook message to Ben? The defense said that the truth was that Linley did know more about the murder than she told police. Linley was about to tell that story to the jury herself.

Linley Renick had a lot to answer for. The prosecutor said she'd had affairs, lied to the police and shot her husband eight times. So the courtroom was buzzing when Linley took the stand. Can you please introduce yourself to the jury? Hey, I'm Linley Renick.

In her soft voice, Linley admitted that, yes, she'd gone to the farm with Michael the afternoon Ben was killed. But her intention wasn't to end his life, it was to end their marriage. Why were you really there?

To ask Ben for a divorce, you weren't going to kill Ben, No.

She said there was never any murder plot. Her marriage to Ben was in shambles and she'd been involved with other men she wasn't proud of that. Do you regret it? Yes.

And she said she did not want Ben dead. She claimed the poisoning story wasn't true, that she and Ben both drank a bad protein shake a week before the murder. Did you get sick? Yes.

And everything just went numb. She said she was in total shock and denial as they drove back to the spa. I mean, I didn't know what had happened. That wasn't even a thought that was in my mind at that point that Ben was dead or could be dead. I truly was just not there in my body or present for any of those moments.

Linley said it was only later, when she got a call from her kid's school, that she realized Ben might really be hurt. Is this when that, for lack of a better word, fantasy that nothing had happened, started to crack for you? Yes, I just started to panic because Ben would not pick the kids up. But to the prosecutor, Linley's story sounded preposterous.

If you're willing to lie to the police about such a vital matter, why should these jurors now believe you? I was lying to protect myself and I told a lot of really awful lies. Just to do that, all I can do now is just sit up here and tell the truth. Plus, Linley testified Michael threatened her so she'd keep her mouth shut.

Her dad said she had good reason to be afraid. This was not a threat. This was a promise. You feel like he could kill her? Oh, I feel like he would definitely, most definitely.

The jury deliberated for almost 12 hours, then sent the judge a message they had reached a verdict. We the jury find the defendant, Linley Renick, guilty of murder in the second degree. What was her reaction in court? She just shocked.

She crumbled. Linley got 13 years for the murder, plus three on a related charge for a total of 16 years behind bars. She could have been convicted of first-degree murder with a much longer sentence. Still, her father was despondent. With the health problems I got, I don't know whether I'll be alive when she gets out.

Ben's loved ones thought the sentence wasn't nearly enough. We were hoping for first-degree murder. Why do you think she didn't get first-degree murder? I think that she put on a heck of a show.

Linley says she wasn't putting on a show, not on the stand or to us. When we visited her at this maximum-security women's prison north of St. Louis, she told us she had no motive whatsoever to want Ben dead. Out of everybody here, I had the most to lose. Why did you have the most to lose?

I mean, I lost everything. With Ben dying, Linley said she went to the farm to ask Ben for a divorce. But messages she sent him earlier that day didn't seem like they came from an unhappy wife. Why did you send Ben nude photos that day if you were planning on going there to talk to him about separating? I don't have a very healthy relationship with sex or my body, and it is very much a way. And in that moment was a way to put Ben in a good mood and make him happy. How would that continue to make him happy?

It wouldn't continue to make him happy, but you've never tried to soften the blow. Not like that. No, okay. We also wondered why she felt she needed to bring someone with her to the farm. Why did you bring Michael with you?

Since Ben and I's marriage was kind of falling apart and everything had kind of started escalating, with him being a little bit more controlling and physical. Ashley had told me that she wanted me to have somebody that would be there with me and so that nothing would get out of hand. But then why would Michael shoot Ben?

No, it just seems to me like you would want to know why, or that there was a reason. Have you ever experienced any sort of trauma that just absolutely unearthed every part of the life that you have?

Where you don't know the ground that you stand on or the air that you breathe. Have you ever experienced that? Because if you haven't, I don't know, if you haven't, I don't know that anybody would understand. We also wanted to know why Lindley didn't call 9-1-1 as soon as she realized Ben had been shot.

My hope would be that if I heard my husband getting murdered, that I would call 9-1-1.

I would really hope that, too. Why didn't you call 9-1-1? why didn't you run in to help him?

I ran away, I mean, I heard gunshots, and I ran away. Did you kill Ben? I did not kill Ben? Did you have Michael? Kill Ben for you?

I did not have Michael kill Ben.

I never wanted Ben dead. We also pointed out that four people implicated her in the plot. Are you saying that all four people in this case were lying? Then? Michael, Brandon, Ashley, Rachel.

All telling lies, yes, and what do you say to anyone who says, you know, it's kind of hard to believe that all four people would be lying?

Some don't even know each other. I can see how that would be hard, and you know. But having walked through it and lived it and seeing the motives and threats and intentions behind everyone, I don't think it's that hard. Lindley's eldest son and the daughter she had with Ben are being raised by her family. Brandon is raising the son he had with Lindley.

All charges against him, including felony stalking, were dropped after Lindley's conviction. And Sam, he has no parents to lean on and no family farm to go home to. It's in the hands of new owners. Still, Sam is resilient.

He's made a home of his own. You have had a life of tragedy, There's been a lot of tragedy. Yes, it is what it is. We've been through a lot, but I'm here.

We made it and we have to move forward.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. And a reminder. We'll see you again Sunday at 7 6 Central, and, of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News, Good night.