Ghosts Can't Talk

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Ghosts can't talk.

We wanted to look at any potential motive that she would have. One is Ted's life insurance.

How much are we talking about?

A million dollars.

I'm like, of course, it has to be the wife, it can't be that we're jewelers and it's a robbery. They liked shoes and cars and electronics.

There was a pretty clear gap in data on both of their phones.

This person is accessing the security system.

Multiple times.

I felt like a fool for not having seen it. Hello, take off the blinders.

A jeweler murdered, a robbery gone wrong, or an even more tangled plot? I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.

What happens that night?

You know, it was just a normal evening, just absolutely normal, you know. You eat dinner, you watch a little TV, you go to bed, you're going to wake up and go to work the next day.

Ordinary moments that together add up to a life. Cori Shaughnessy and her husband, Ted, had had thousands of nights like that.

Did you usually say I love you before bed or anything like that?

Wouldn't that be nice? You should do it every night because you just never know.

The little things they took for granted on that quiet street in Austin, where they built their lives, raised their son. A tight-knit family that had everything until the early morning hours of March 2, 2018..

So you're sound asleep?

Sound asleep We're both sound asleep, and then we hear one of the dogs bark.

It was around 4.

He got up, got his gun like he did every single time. And usually it was because there was a deer in the backyard or there was a possum on the porch. As normal, he went to investigate. And I turned over to go back to sleep. And I think I had just put my head back on the pillow when I heard the first shot.

A gunshot?

A gunshot?

Right after that, there was a barrage of gunfire, it was very close, the gunfire actually, it was in the kitchen, which was right off of our bedroom. And so I jumped out of bed and I grabbed my .357, which is always kept above my bed.

As she rounded the edge of the bed, she saw something.

I see a bright light come through. I had a Japanese curtain on the door. I see a bright light come through the curtain and I see the dog get shot. We had our second dog was laying at the foot of the bed.

Their beloved rottweiler, Bark, was killed instantly.

I realized at that point that I'm next. And so I couldn't see a person. I just because of the light that was shining on me, I could extrapolate where the person was.

What was the light?

What was being shined in your face?

It was a very bright white light, small but very bright.

Corey began firing.

I do not remember the sound of my gun, I don't remember anything, I don't remember feeling the recoil. I remember seeing the muzzle from the opposite gun. And I was expecting that I was going to be shot any moment.

So this gun is coming now in your direction.

He's shooting at me and I'm shooting at him.

And then Corey's gun ran out of ammo.

I grabbed my cell phone, I figured if I could just get the line open to 911, that they might be able to. I don't know, maybe find my body, or maybe, you know, send someone.

So you're thinking, I'm going to die.

I knew I was going to die.

She ran into her husband's closet and called 911.

I was expecting the door to open and to be shot, so I was just hoping that I could get the line open.

You're helpless at this point because your gun has ran out of ammunition, so if they do come, you don't even have any recourse.

That's it, nowhere else to go.

Corey, Corey, take a deep breath, you're doing a great job. Okay? The police are on their way.

Were you aware enough of what was happening to think that if that's Ted?

He's dying, he's dead, and I'm not there, yes.

And he could be gone.

Yes.

You want to go save him or help him, or do.

Or just be there when he dies.

Yeah, or be with him and you can't.

Fifteen minutes passed, and then finally.

Oh my god.

H.e.

Go to the door, Ma'am, go to the door, Corey. go to the door, Corey, what do you see?

No police, just silence, yes, and whoever had just murdered her husband out there somewhere.

Oh my god.

H.e.

But.

Where are the police?

They weren't there, they actually went to the wrong house.

Travis County Sheriff's deputies mistakenly went to the house next door, one that looked like the Shaughnessy's. When they made it to the right house, Corey met them at the front door.

What's her demeanor like?

She is extremely emotional.

Travis County Sheriff's homicide detectives James Moore and Paul Salo.

Hysterical is a good way to describe it, and rightly so, based on what the situation was that we were hearing about.

I mean, the trauma that you just experienced.

Your whole body.

Deputies took Corey to a squad car.

Oh, he's mine, he's my entire life. No, no, no.

In the moment you just think about how your life is over, everything is....

Scared, alone and broken, she asked a deputy to call her best friend, Karen Tannert.

Hello Karen.

No, where are you? Where are you? I was just in a panic. How could Ted be dead? What's this?

Karen met Ted when she wandered into the Shaughnessy's jewelry store one day. Ted and Corey built gallery jewelers together over two decades.

I was looking for a specific type of pearl and nobody had it, so I went into his store. He just started up a conversation and he got me what I wanted.

She left with this ring and a new friend.

It's rare that you have an instant connection like that with someone in a store.

Ted's that way. Ted was genuinely interested in the motivations behind what people were doing.

Ted was the face of the store, Corey was the appraiser.

Her personality is very, much more straightforward, she was welcoming, very matter-of-fact.

I think Ted was more comfortable with people on the whole.

Tad Cole was Ted's best friend. They bonded over their love of cars. Ted was an avid racer. He especially loved go-karts. The more they hung out, the more Tad says he wished some of Ted would rub off on him.

I kind of hoped I would get the Ted Dust because he was just very effusive and just easy to be around and very engaging.

Tad and his partner Vicki say the Shaughnessy house was full of life and love.

They both were masters in the kitchen. Once I got invited to their house for dinner, I was in awe of their culinary skills. I felt like I'd kind of hit the lottery in a sense that good friends that enjoyed cars and cooking.

Most of all, the love in that house centered on Ted and Corey's only child, Nick.

They seemed inseparable, they were like the three musketeers thing that people say. They did everything together. They just poured a whole lot of energy into being parents.

Now Corey had to tell Nick his father was dead. I need to call my son.

How did he take the news?

I don't remember, I guess I would have thought it was a complete surprise and shock. I couldn't really form words. Nick, Nick.

Mom, dad's dead.

NicHOlas Just, I need, I need, I need.

What happened? what happened, shooting, shooting, I don't know.

Corey tried her best to explain what happened.

Did you return fire? Yes, yes, I'm in the back of the car out front and the police are here.

And they wanted me to call someone I know you're in college station and I don't know what to do about it.

I'm on my way.

Nineteen-year-old Nick and his girlfriend of a year and a half, Jackie Edison, drove the two hours from where they lived in College Station to Austin. Along the way, Nick called his parents friends, just sitting down for their morning coffee.

He called me and told me that his dad had been shot. I wasn't sure I'd heard exactly what I had heard. I couldn't figure that Ted was dead, I could not.

They raced to Ted and Corey's house. The home where they had spent so many nights with the Shaughnessy family was now a crime scene. When they arrived, Nick and Jackie were already there.

Jackie looked over and saw us standing there. And she ran full speed to me and threw her arms around me and wailed and cried and cried, and cried and sobbed. My heart was broken for her and Nick.

Karen was there, too.

How was Nick handling the news?

He was really urgent and you know what was happening, what's going on, you know, has anyone told you anything?

Investigators were starting to work their way through the house, looking for clues and asking questions.

So tell me about between mom and dad, what's the relationship like?

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket.

A new era is here, it is go time.

Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis.

The race is going to be close, everybody should prepare themselves for that.

Plus, reporting on the ground from the convention hall.

Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead.

The Democratic National Convention special coverage this week on MSNBC.

I thought I was going to die, I really did.

Just hours after her husband, Ted, was shot dead in their home, Cori Shaughnessy sat in a police interview room with her friend Karen, trying to process the horror.

Will you be able to tell if I shot somebody, you know? I mean, that's something that we may be able to learn.

Investigators were busy scouring the Shaughnessy House for evidence, focusing on the kitchen where Ted had been shot four times.

They started inspecting the scene and noticed that there were two different caliber of shell casings in two different locations in the kitchen.

The casings in the kitchen were from.

Are you thinking two shooters, yes, are involved in this? We are.

As investigators made their way through the rest of the house, they found a potential point of entry an open window in Nick's old bedroom.

Did you find any evidence on the window, around the window, near the window?

Ultimately, we discovered a print on the glass of the window.

And there was something else.

So just inside the window, there's a dresser there, and in the bottom drawer there was a box for a .40 caliber Springfield. But it's empty. There's no gun in there.

Are you thinking that that box perhaps once contained the murder weapon?

I mean, ultimately a possibility. I don't know how strongly we thought that at the time.

The Shaughnessys had a home alarm, but it wasn't set, Corey explained. They only turned it on when they were out, but logging into the security system did provide some clues. The system detected that bedroom window being opened at 4.27 a...m, then 17 minutes later, the system recorded glass breaking right around.

I thought someone had broken in and was going to waken us at gunpoint and make us open the safe and rob us. I thought it was a robbery gone bad.

You could have an extensive jewelry collection being a jeweler, sure.

We were flooded with neighbors trying to give us information on suspicious vehicles they had seen and information about the family.

One neighbor, named Kim, lived next door, like most of the neighborhood, she knew the family owned a jewelry store.

And it's not cheap jewelry, just so, you know, like, I'm talking like when they transfer jewelry, like, I'm talking hundreds to millions of dollars of jewelry.

Are we keeping this stuff in their house?

I don't know the answer to that.

But Kim said she did know it wasn't the first time the Shaughnessy's had been the target of a crime.

I think it was about, Yeah, last year someone broke into their car here.

Yeah.

So while a burglary seemed like the most obvious scenario, detectives weren't taking anything for granted. At the scene. They asked Ted and Corey's son about his parents relationship.

So tell me about between mom and dad, what's their relationship like?

Solid as ever, they just had their 30th anniversary in January.

They argue, fight.

No, they bicker like every couple does.

They ever hit each other?

No, no.

They ever threaten each other? No, nothing.

And down at the station, they treated Corey like they would anyone whose spouse had just been killed as a victim and a potential suspect.

I was told that I had to give them my nightclothes I had on sleep, shorts and a t-shirt.

So they're looking at your clothes for possible evidence.

Sure, and I had of course, already been gunshot residue. They did that at the scene, but I'd already told them that I'd shot the gun. So of course, I was going to have gunshot residue.

Something about Corey's burglary-gone-bad theory didn't make sense to detectives. There were at least three cars parked in the driveway. It should have been clear to any intruder that someone was home.

You see, what I'm getting at is somebody doing this at night. It's a very risky thing, especially in Texas. A lot of people in Texas own guns. I mean, it does happen, but I mean, that's a big risk for somebody to try to pull off. I can't imagine anybody knowing us doing this.

Later that day, Corey was free to go, but investigators weren't done talking to her or her son. Nick was about to reveal something that sent them in an unexpected direction.

Her husband was cheating on her and I looked into that for her.

Ted Shaughnessy was killed in an apparent home invasion, a violent crime his wife, Corey, had mercifully survived.

When did it hit you that Ted's not coming home? Our life that we were planning for the rest of our lives is gone.

Instantly in the back of that police car, probably before that, probably in the closet, but I just didn't know it.

Investigators spoke with their son, Nick, at the scene and later down at the station, he told them about an incident that happened years earlier, in the 90s, when his dad ran a pawn shop.

He spoke of somebody actually robbing them back then.

Nick said the armed robber came into the store and opened fire. his father fired back, injuring the robber, who was later sent to prison.

And thought, Well, maybe now they're out of prison. I don't know. Maybe they've come back because they got sent to prison for trying to rob the pawn shop that they owned.

As revenge, yes.

A lead to follow, detectives asked Nick if there was anything else he could think of, and out spilled a curious story. He shared something about Kim, the neighbor investigators had spoken to hours earlier.

Her husband was cheating on her and I looked into that for her.

Kim was going through a divorce and we found out that she actually hired him to follow her ex-husband. I guess he was cheating on her and she wanted proof.

This is so bizarre. Nicholas, the teenager, What is he? A private investigator? I mean, it just sounds odd. That's what she hired him for.

So what did you find out? He was staring at a female's residence for a long period of time and saying he was elsewhere. When I had access to his car. I put a little tracker in it for her that she could see via the app, so she knew where he was when he was. And so much, he said, like, Oh, I'm at the golf course. Well, no, you're at her house.

If the husband had found out, Nick wondered if he'd gone to his parents house to retaliate against him. That was one possibility. Investigators also had to consider this. Maybe Kim had been the intended target.

Was this a potentially a hit? You know, somebody trying to do something to her that went to the wrong house? The neighborhood's very dark, the homes look somewhat similar at night because the street is not lit.

So perhaps the husband was trying to have his wife killed and whoever he hired went to the wrong house.

Right, potentially.

And there were all those cars in the Shaughnessy's driveway, one was a white Mercedes. Kim also drove a white Mercedes. And when deputies responding to the shooting had initially gone to the wrong house, they'd gone to Kim's.

So maybe if the police could go to the wrong house, maybe a killer could go to the wrong house. I didn't think it was necessarily that big of a stretch.

Detectives needed to go back and talk to Kim.

Yeah, we've talked on the phone, hi.

They asked about her relationship with Nick, Kim said she knew him well. He'd helped her out with babysitting, dog sitting, house sitting when she was away.

How about any, like, investigative kind of things, um?

Not so. Detectives wanted to hear more, even as her housekeeper cleaned in the background.

So yeah, I said, I told him this when he leaves, I want you to call him and say, I don't know where he's going, and he did so. That's how I got my information.

So there was more than one occasion when you had a follow up business.

So, maybe two.

So what did Kim say? Did she think it could be the wrong house, that she was maybe a target?

She didn't fear for her life from him. According to her, he wouldn't gain anything by her being dead, and so she did not. She herself did not think that he would have done anything like that.

Yeah, he's a liar, for sure, there's no doubt about it.

Okay, and did your husband? did he know this? like, did he end up and find out that Nick had done this or anything?

No, I never said a word. That lead fizzled out, which brought them back to the woman at the center of it all, Corey. They discovered none of the bullets from her gun had hit Ted. Still, was she somehow involved in the home invasion?

We wanted to look at any potential motive that she would have. One is, you know, being the beneficiary of TED's life insurance.

How much are we talking about?

A million dollars.

Not to mention the business, the house. There's a lot of money at stake.

There is, I mean, obviously the jewelry store and the property was worth a lot of money.

So it was back to the crime scene and that question Where was the Shaughnessy's missing gun?

What were those nights like when you're back in the house so soon after, and this is the house where your husband was just murdered?

Crazy, just absolutely crazy.

How do you even go to sleep?

You don't, you stay up all night and you don't go to sleep until it gets, until the sun comes up. And then you set up zones in your house, and you set up, you set up lines of fire. So that you know that if someone comes for you, you'll know where you're supposed to be shooting.

Nick was there, too. He and his girlfriend Jackie packed up their apartment in College Station and moved in with Corey.

Seemed like the natural course of events, seemed like they were maybe circling the wagons to keep the family together and find strength in doing that.

For Corey, having her son close provided much needed comfort, after all, Nick had been their miracle child.

Had you and Ted really wanted to be parents? Yes, yes.

I was having difficulty staying pregnant and I didn't want to do that anymore. And I came to the decision that it wasn't important for me to give birth to a child. I wanted to be a mother, and so that led to me being interested in adopting a baby.

Those who have been through adoption will tell you the process isn't easy, but the desire to be a parent, to love a child is so strong. You'll do anything, go anywhere. For Corey and Ted, that meant jumping on a plane to Ukraine.

They said, Well, we need to have you here tomorrow.

I can't even imagine your feelings in that moment.

It's crazy because you're going to go and meet your child.

When Corey and Ted got to Ukraine, they went to the adoption facility and were handed a little boy.

He was blonde and he had hazel green eyes like mine, and he was just the cutest little thing, and he was what 16 months old. I think so.

Already walking, yes, but still that really cute age.

Yeah, chubby little cheeks and chubby little hands and chubby little feet. Did you just melt? The moment you saw him? It was just instant love, just instant.

How was Ted as a dad?

Oh God, excellent. They were attached at the hip, so you know, if Ted was doing something, Nicholas was right there with him doing it. He and Nicholas both actually did a lot of cart racing and they did quite well. He enjoyed that very much.

And Nicholas took to it, just like his dad.

Absolutely just like a fish to water. They loved racing together.

Now Nick and Corey had to learn to go on. Without Ted. Investigators were working hard to find Ted's killer. They had a few leads, like the person who went to prison after trying to rob the pawn shop at gunpoint years earlier.

Did you look into that person?

We did, and I mean, it was so long ago. We had no information that this person was anywhere around at the time of this incident.

Detectives had been investigating Corey's theory that the attackers intended to rob the Shaughnessy's, but there were some big questions.

Did you have to wonder why? You know, if they did come there to rob the house, why leave Corey? You know, why not take what they could, or get her to open the safe?

Right, that was something very interesting to us.

They knew from the alarm system logs that a window opened 17 minutes before the shooting occurred.

But there was no indication of them going through anything prior to the shooting. We knew that they had made their way through more than half the house before the shooting occurred.

Was there anything valuable stolen from the Shaughnessy home?

There was nothing stolen from the Shaughnessy home.

Detectives were still trying to track down the.

They started questioning me about a firearm that we owned. Do you know where it is? I said, Yes, I do. We thought that it was at the jewelry store, in the bathroom, on a shelf, because we would keep guns in certain places for protection and whatnot.

And so she allowed us to go with her to the jewelry store so we could look to see is there a.

When we got there, it was not there.

Horry brought detectives to the house to look for it there. she was confident it would turn up somewhere and then police could move on.

That would seem really important. Except that we had a lot of guns and there were gun cases in a lot of closets and a lot of drawers in the house. But they found that one.

At the house, investigators asked Nick if he had any idea where it was. He told them his dad had let him borrow it, but he'd returned it to his father.

Yeah, I took it to college station and then father wanted it back. We have no idea where he may have put it or anything. No, father didn't tell me any intentions with it.

Horry says The whole line of questioning started to feel a little off, and then this happened.

One of the other detectives came in and I remember her telling me, the person that did this might be closer to you than you know.

Hmm.

And so then I'm thinking, Okay, they're looking at me and they're looking at Nicholas.

Does that scare you a lot that you're being looked at for murder?

Simultaneously terrified and enraged.

Horry wanted to protect her son and get justice for her husband.

I'm like, why aren't you looking for the people that did this? Of course, it has to be the wife or the son, because we're the family. It can't be the giant pink elephant that we're jewelers, and it's a robbery.

Horry hoped investigators would be able to cross her and Nick off their list soon, and she tried to go about resuming life without her husband. She worried about the future of the business they'd built together, unsure if she could carry on without the man who had charmed and befriended customers.

Expenses were mounting and I thought I was going to close the jewelry store.

She filed to collect Ted's million-dollar life insurance policy, but the check didn't come, so she called the company to ask about it.

And when I asked her, You know, where's my money? she said, Well, I'm sorry. We can't release that because the police have told us that they suspect foul play. And at that point, that means me because I'm the beneficiary.

Well, because yes, of course there's foul play.

Right, but that means specifically me. And so now I knew if I had any doubt before that I was a suspect, now I know that I'm a suspect.

Corey no longer felt like the investigators were on her side and they weren't sharing everything they knew, like whose fingerprint they found on that open bedroom window.

So a check of the database revealed a match to a particular person.

Who was it?

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket.

A new era is here, it is go time.

Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis.

The race is going to be close, everybody should prepare themselves for that.

Plus, reporting on the ground from the convention hall.

Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead.

The Democratic National Convention special coverage this week on MSNBC. They are the families of the missing in America, and they're desperately searching for answers.

Somebody knows something.

Josh Bankels Join me for season 3 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.

Cori Shaughnessy was struggling to come to terms with the loss of her husband while her family was being scrutinized by law enforcement. And in the middle of all that, just days after the shooting, her world shifted again.

Nicholas and Jacqueline came to you with some big news.

They came to me and they said, We have something to tell you, and they told me that they had been arrested.

Married nearly eight months earlier, in the summer of 2017.

Do you all instantly take to each other?

Ted thought she was awesome, he really liked her.

Over time, Jackie even started to call Ted dad.

You were a little slower to warm up to Jacqueline.

I think so there was nothing about Jackie that I disliked, it's just that, you know, it's my little boy.

What do you think it was that clicked for those two, for Jacqueline and Nicholas?

I think they liked a lot of the same things, they liked shoes and cars and electronics and things. I think they liked to talk about going places, going on vacations and how the future was going to be.

Even though Nick and Jackie were already married, Cori decided to help her son make a formal proposal.

I had told Nicholas to pick an engagement ring, setting out of the case, and Ted and I had kept my mother's original engagement diamond aside. For him to give to whoever at some point. So we had that set into a ring for her, and he gave her that.

You decide to throw them an engagement party.

Jackie wanted to have an engagement party and everything had been so awful.

Planning a party was a welcome distraction. Amidst their heartache, they were family determined to find their way through the pain together.

Once I realized that she is my daughter-in-law, well, I'm going to love her like a daughter.

And Cori did just that in a very shaughnessy way she gave Jackie a diamond pendant.

I gave her a half carat diamond solitaire. It was also a way of welcoming her into our family and telling her that she was welcome.

There was another silver lining. Initially, Cori didn't see a way to keep the jewelry store open without Ted. She didn't think Nick had a keen interest in the family business instead of enrolling in college. Like Jackie, he was trying to make a living day trading stocks, but now Cori had an idea.

I had gone to Nicholas and said, Can you suspend your day trading or maybe do that on the side? And then we could keep the store open. Jackie had taken the rest of the year off from school. I thought, Well, if she helps us this first year, maybe she could work. They were on board with doing that, they were excited to do it.

That must have made you happy.

I thought we could do it, I thought with his help, I could do it.

So Nick and Jackie stepped up and the store stayed open. But what Cori wanted even more was to know who killed Ted. She spoke to detectives, but they just seemed to have more questions for her.

And I started realizing that a lot of those questions were gotcha moments, like Aha, moments, like they were trying to set me up as something.

She didn't trust the investigators to solve her husband's murder. She still thought they seemed fixated on her and Nick rather than finding the real killers.

I assumed at that point that they were looking at him for the very reasons they were looking at me. It was easy. They would always send unmarked cars by the house, which looked exactly like unmarked police cars by the house. So I figured, if they're going to do overt looking at us, they're also probably doing all other kinds of things. And that was fine with me because I had nothing to hide.

Cori replayed the Night of the Murder over and over, looking for clues.

You and Nicholas and Jacqueline actually did reenactments in the House.

We did.

What did it appear to be?

And it wasn't until Jackie said, Oh, was it like this? and she pulled up her phone and used her phone, and it was exactly like that.

So a cell phone light?

It was a cell phone light.

She finally understood what she saw that night. Not that it made anything better. Meanwhile, the real investigators were holding their cards close to the vest. They weren't just looking at the family, they were sorting through whatever evidence they had.

In the database, it revealed a match to a particular person.

Who was it?

So we learned that he was actually an employee of the renewal by Anderson Company and what his job was. He assembled windows.

Oh so, here you are thinking you might have this potential lead, and it's the window guy.

So maybe the print was just left over from the factory to be sure detectives did some digging.

We looked at all sorts of information about him we got with the employer.

It turned out the employee didn't live in Texas, he was all the way up in Minnesota.

And we had no indication he'd ever even left Minnesota.

A dead end. But there was something else about that window, something Nick mentioned to detectives.

He had talked about that, he historically had used that window as a door, that was his own personal door in and out of that house.

And Nick said he wasn't the only one he offered up a name.

So now you have someone, another person, who knows about that point of entry into the house.

Yes.

Those closest to Cori Shaughnessy knew she was in agony after Ted's murder, and they saw how she refused to let herself crumble under the weight of it all.

She's got to be one of the strongest people I've ever met.

Cori without Ted was not. I mean, she is an individual, but you know, they were such a unit, they were each other's friends.

All those years together and what a great relationship you had, and this life that you'd built. And how it was just gone in a matter of seconds.

Absolutely everything that you have can be gone in a matter of seconds. It's really important that everybody knows that.

As Cori grieved, detectives were running down a curious lead they'd gotten from Nick. He said. He often used his bedroom window to go in and out of the house, the very same window investigators now believe the killers used. On the night of the murder, Nick said he usually locked the window, but not always.

I mean, I may have forgotten, I do not know, like, especially if I came crawling, stumbling through the window drunk one night. And what we asked him was, was there somebody else that knows about this window that you use as a door? And he mentioned his friend Spencer.

Spencer was Spencer Patterson, Nick's best friend.

He didn't have a lot of friends, but he had his one good friend, Spencer.

Spencer had even officiated Nick and Jackie's secret wedding. Naturally, police wanted to know more about him.

He's not as fortunate as I.

To have parents that will help him like mine are.

So he worked at his home depot job.

Hating every second of it when he's not there.

He's studying for his job or his school at Texas state.

So a kid who didn't seem to have much money and knew how to get into the Shaughnessy house. Nick also told them Spencer knew where his parents safe was.

Do you track down Spencer?

We do.

Hey, is this Spencer? Yes, sir. Hey, this is Detective Moore. I'm with Travis County Sheriff's Department. How you doing?

Detectives first talked to Spencer over the phone. They asked him about the last time he was over at the Shaughnessy House.

It was more than like, a month ago. Okay, can you tell me, like, how that night went? I mean, that night was fun, we had talks.

The barn was in the Shaughnessy's backyard. Nick and Spencer would have a few beers there late at night.

So when y'all would go to the barn, can you tell me about that? how would y'all leave the house and get back in and all that?

Detectives kept the call with Spencer brief, but they still had questions they hadn't located either of the murder weapons. They were still looking for the Shaughnessy's .40 caliber handgun, and Nick told them about another weapon, a .380 he no longer had. Nick said he had given it to a friend.

We knew he was going in and out of that window and that Nick had also given him a.

380 was used in the murder.

Yes.

So detectives went back to talk to Spencer again, more than once.

Spencer was being for the most part, he was being forthcoming, but we could tell he was holding back some information.

They searched his home, took his cell phone, and, of course, they asked him about that gun.

The.

You've had it with you, yes.

This whole time, yes.

It seemed that Spencer knew more than what he was telling us.

It appeared Spencer had the means, a possible motive, and maybe even one of the murder weapons, had investigators found one of the shooters.

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Travis County Sheriff's investigators were looking closely at a possible suspect in Ted Shaughnessy's murder, Nick's best friend Spencer.

We definitely looked at him as potentially he was the person firing the.

Detectives were also trying to figure out where Spencer was at the time of the murder. For that they turned to his cell phone.

That's where the cell phone records were submitted, as well as part of us trying to pin down his location.

The cell records appear to place him at home during the murder.

But couldn't he have just left his phone at home?

He could have, ultimately, yes.

The big question was the gun that Spencer handed over to investigators, the same caliber as one of the murder weapons. When the Ballistics Test came back....

That weapon was not used in that murder.

So just a coincidence that it was the same caliber.

It just was a coincidence, yeah.

It was useless.

Right?

There was nothing to link Spencer to the crime.

He ultimately was cleared as a suspect.

But the lead about Spencer wasn't a complete dead end. Detectives couldn't help but note who took them down that path. Nick In fact, Since day one, they thought Nick had seemed a little too eager to help.

It was like he was volunteering information for us, you know? It almost seemed to me like he didn't think we were asking the right questions and so he would interject something.

It started in the early hours of the investigation at the crime scene. Nick told police about his parents home security system. He said he could access it from an app on his phone. They're not technologically literate.

So I'm like, the only one that can manage all their technology.

He also wanted them to see his security system back at the apartment he shared with Jackie in College station.

Running around the neighborhood, trying to meet with different neighbors, it appeared like he was probing for information.

Corey's friend Karen noticed it too, but thought it was just Nick being Nick.

He was just very insistent and obviously upset, and he's also a very high-energy person who almost never sits still. So he was very kind of moving around and bouncing, and he was just wanting to know what had happened.

So we had called him over for a gunshot residue kit because his behavior was slightly off, we didn't want to exclude him from a possible suspect. So as we asked him to turn around, he kind of was happy and did a jump as he turned. So just really off behavior and smiling and joking.

Do you think maybe he was nervous, given the severity of the situation?

Didn't appear to be nervous behavior.

So what was it? Nick was pretty forthcoming about his relationship with his parents.

My mother and I, we were in a financial dispute and it was like, really, pretty heated.

He explained that he had a good relationship with his parents, but recently there had been some tension between them. Because they had loaned him $30,000 to fund his day trading.

Nick had dabbled in trading stocks in high school and then told his parents he wanted to skip college and make a career of it. They weren't thrilled.

Ted and I had no illusions.

So Nick moved to college station with Jackie, where she was studying engineering at Texas A&M.

Were you hoping that Jacqueline would push him more toward the college route?

I thought what would happen is he would get bored, and I thought he would end up saying, Hey, I'd like to start the next semester and go to school.

Were you hoping that she would help with that a little bit?

She did put a chunk of cash into a bank account so Nick could start his trading business.

That's a lot of money.

It is a lot of money, but I told him, I warned him, I said, this is basically the equivalent of your college fund. If something goes wrong and you lose it, well, then you're going to have to get a job and you're on your own, and you're on your own.

Cori and Ted also continued paying some of Nick's monthly expenses.

He gave me a little bit of money, plus he was supposed to be reimbursing me for his car payment, his gasoline payment and his insurance payment.

His father's friend, Ted, was supportive. He gave Nick $5,000 to invest.

He seemed to have an intuitive understanding of how markets work.

But pretty soon, Cori said Nick wasn't holding up his end of their deal, wasn't paying his parents back for the car and expenses.

Every time we'd see them, they had on their new clothes, they had on their new shoes, they had all of their new things in their new apartment. And I knew how that was going. So you're spending the money on things that you want and not things that you need, not your responsibilities. Finally, I said, Okay, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it anymore, you're not upholding your end of the bargain.

A few months before Ted's murder, Nick made good on his word.

He paid me back.

Did that feel good that you had to hound him? But he did it?

Yeah, I said, thank you.

That's what Nick told investigators, too, whatever problems they had were in the rearview mirror.

But we figured it out, you know, sat down and figured it out.

It was fine. In fact, while Corey felt like she and Nick were under suspicion, she'd only been half right. Detectives cleared her early on and had been focusing their attention on Nick. That included poring over his financial records.

With Nicholas's financial records, we see, you know, indications that his account's overdrawn. The trading account that supposedly has all these thousands of dollars because he's a successful day trader.

So they're broke.

They are.

Was Nick desperate enough to betray his own parents?

Has he ever directly asked you to kill his parents?

Time doesn't stop after death, birthdays, holidays, life's special moments continue on, colored by grief and loss. Two months after Ted Shaughnessy's murder, his wife Corey celebrated her first mother's Day without him. Her new daughter-in-law, Jackie, gave her a card expressing how grateful she was that Corey had survived the horrible shooting.

I was touched.

Corey was thankful for what was left of her family, a family she knew had been under the microscope. Investigators weren't telling her, much certainly not, how odd they found Nick's behavior and that they found his money trouble highly suspicious.

So all this together really started honing our investigation, or leaning our investigation heavy towards Nicholas, that he may have had some involvement.

Investigators searched Nick and Jackie's apartment, where they found the security system Nick had mentioned.

You can see how many he had.

Strange, but a quick look at the security video did seem to back up Nick's alibi.

They were home the morning of the murder.

They were home at the time.

They were home.

In the apartment, investigators found a safe full of jewelry, watches and weapons. There were also bullets, lots of them.

We found lots of ammo, which is not unusual here in Texas.

What was unusual?

So at the scene, it's Sig 380 and the 380 ammunition that he had, there was Sig 380..

What's more, six rounds were missing from that box.

Okay, so this is not looking good for Nicholas at this moment.

No, we definitely thought there might be a connection with that amount of rounds missing.

To try and root out that possible connection, investigators dug into Nick's cell phone. Both he and Jackie had volunteered their phones to help the investigation.

So one of the first things I noticed almost immediately, there was a pretty clear gap in data on both of their phones.

Matt Danner and Stacey Casimir handled the digital forensics in this case.