A Bathtub Drowning

0:00Music

0:12She was my best friend. Sometimes she was my only friend. I wish every single day of my life that I could have my mom back. My mom died when I was 11. Some people think it was an accident. Some people think it was a suicide. But I know it was a murder.

0:37My stepdad murdered my mom. Faylene is a good person. I have never hurt anybody in my life, ever.

0:50911 emergency. I just got a distress call from a friend of mine. He said that his wife is unconscious. Doug called me very frantic. He just said he found her in the tub and that she was not responding to him. She's not responding? This wasn't working. I had my hand on the door handle to her bedroom. As it was happening, your mom drowned. in her own bathtub.

1:25I've been working on this story for a number of years. By all accounts, Thalene Grant is a wonderful woman, very, very close to her family, and especially close to her church. This is something my mom wrote in her journal. I love my family and don't want to leave them. But it is Heavenly Father's will that I leave this mortal spirit to fulfill a mission on the other side of the veil. She also wrote, I must have faith in Doug's vision. He dreams it every night now, that I will get to go to the celestial kingdom. Douglas Grant used organized religion in killing Feline Grant. The motive in this case is a married man wanting to be with a younger woman.

2:13I'm the lucky one. Think what you want to think, that's fine. Have there been other women in his life? Yes, but he's not a murderer. I know that my brother Doug is innocent. I mean, if you saw the volumes of letters that she wrote, her journals, it's bizarre. Here is a woman who has talked to God. God has told her that she's going to die. She did not want to die, but it was Mr. Grant's vision that she would. and she accepted the death sentence that was meted out by her husband. I didn't kill my wife. Never in a million years. This one is a classic. It's got this epic sweep of sex, drugs, and religion.

3:03Homicide, suicide, or accident. Was there even a murder here? Deadly Prophecy.

3:26Things I want to have in a spouse. Loves the beauty of the earth. Sunrise. Sunset. I will be with you always. Failing. It sounds very poetic. Watching sunsets just made all the difference in the world. But eight years after Feline Grant's death, her husband Doug Grant is fighting for his future on trial for her murder. You had visions in church, right? No. So she's a liar. Isn't it true that you were there to snoop? No, absolutely not. You knew he was another woman's husband? Yes, I did. She wanted these letters to be rid of, right? Objection, ask and answer. Sorry, I'm confused. Sorry, confused, and he swears not guilty.

4:27I was just yelling, Faleen, Faleen. Objection, relevance. This has nothing to do with Faleen. He just wants to tell a story.

4:40Indeed, he does want to tell his story. A story that begins in 1993, the second he laid eyes on a striking 27-year-old single mother named Faelene Eves at his gym near Phoenix. She's a great person. Loved life. Loved her family. Mr. Doug Grant! Just another day at the office for Doug Grant. Doug is uniquely qualified. At the time, Doug Grant was a 27-year-old divorcee, single dad... There's a lot of confusion in the market. ...and a rising star in the world of nutrition. Doug, what's the difference of real food and junk food? The carrot is the real food, right? With a growing list of celebrity clients...

5:26Barkley, the assistant! Like Charles Barkley and Danny Ainge of the Phoenix Suns. Doug gives good counsel to the players. What we're trying to do is focus in on the immune system. He remembered Faelene from high school. She'd recently divorced and had two kids, Austin and Jenna. My mom is the type of lady you meet and you're like, wow, I want to be friends with her. I came home one day and I had a new CD and it was that song, Ain't No Mountain High.

5:59I grabbed the shampoo bottle. She had, like, the telephone, and we're jumping up and down on the couch, playing the song over and over again and just singing. That's my mom. Oh, there's Doug and Faelene. At first, Doug's sister, Tammy Fuentes, says it seemed a perfect match. Faelene is a lot like Doug. Especially since they were both Mormons. She also loved nutrition and helping others. They married just four months after their first date. She's a good person and brought out the good in Doug. However, Jenna worried Doug wasn't bringing out the good in her mother. He's the man of the house and she listens to what he says.

6:41So there was never any question who was ruling the roost here. It was always dead. Doug needed to guide Faelene, says Tammy, who is becoming alarmed by her new sister-in-law's mood swings. She was either really up, really happy, or she was really, really sad or depressed, but would never admit she needed help. I would go to their house and she would be in her bedroom with the door locked, and the children would just be there. and I would want to see her and they would say, no, no, don't bother her. She says Faelene spent much time alone, writing in her journal, not uncommon in the Mormon faith, or praying at the temple, sometimes for hours.

7:32I do feel it was fanatical. To the point, Tammy says, that by the late 90s, Faelene had lost touch with reality. She said, I've been to the temple, and God has told me that I need to divorce Doug. Tammy remembers Faelene even said God had told her why. Doug had a girlfriend. Faelene had no proof of an affair, but God's word was enough. She filed for divorce. He was devastated. He is truly a family man. She thought you were having an affair. Yes. Was that true? Not at the time. Maybe not right then, but Doug had had affairs, including one with a Louisiana beauty queen. And then in 2000, in the midst of his divorce, along came more temptation.

8:38Vibrant. bubbly, great person for the job. And a great person to later feature in his promotional materials. Grilled yogurts are a fun and healthy snack. A new receptionist and fellow Mormon. Hillary DeWitt, age 19. Doug Grant fell hard. I became romantically involved with Hillary right at the divorce of Faeleen. Not before. Oh no. In fact, after his divorce from Faleen, Doug says he had cleaned up his act, gone through church counseling, and planned to marry Hillary. I don't know that I can express my love, my devotion. I'm in awe of him, to be honest. In August of 2001, though, those plans hit a snag.

9:29A big snag. Feline had had revelation in the temple from God that she needed to put her family back together. For the children's sake, God now was telling Feline to marry Doug all over again. Doug claims nobody was more surprised than he was. But the divorce hadn't been his idea after all, and he says he wanted to believe. I knew I had to give it a shot.

10:03You certainly did a 180 on this, didn't you? You ended up not only marrying again, but marrying the person that you had divorced. I have the chance to be able to try to make things right and get back with her. Absolutely. To celebrate their new beginning, the Grants vacationed here in the Tippanogos National Park in Utah. and Doug says they were hiking on September 24, 2001. According to him, when Feline reached roughly this spot, she had some sort of vision. She saw something off in the distance. So what did she do? Incredibly, she climbed over this rock wall down to that tiny ledge to get a better view.

10:48According to Doug, this picture was taken just seconds before disaster struck. She looked up and she could kind of see the image of Jesus in the clouds and said, come out here. So I start going over that wall to go out there and she fell. It was a 60-foot drop. Doug Grant says he was sure his wife was dead. I yelled, I screamed and she said shut up. I mean that was her exact word, shut up. So you knew she was okay? I knew she was alive. Doug took Feline to a nearby hospital, very banged up, but alive. Given how far she supposedly fell, that makes no sense at all to Chief Ranger Michael Gossie.

11:41The height of that fall, the jaggedness of the rocks below, a fall of that serious nature, a person would have some severe injuries from. She definitely thought she was going to die young, but it was an accident. It was an accident. But as Doug's sister Tammy was about to discover, it may have been no accident at all. You have no idea that you're going to find what you find. No.

12:27I got a phone call from Doug from the hospital, and he told me that Faelene had fallen. When she heard about Faelene's close call in Utah, Tammy Fuentes immediately went to the Grants' home to get it ready for their return. You have no idea that you're going to find what you find? No. She got the shock of her life. She had prepared her house as if she was not coming home. Tammy says Feline had left notes of Mormon scripture everywhere, plus bags of personal items, clothing, pictures, with instructions to give them all away. Feline's fall now made perfect sense to her. She thought that she was going to die on that mountain.

13:14She tried to kill herself. I know she did. and I knew then that I wanted to confront Faleen about it and I was going to confront her about it. But when Faleen came home two days later, it didn't seem like the time. Faleen was real sore. She had been injured, you know, in the fall. She was hurt. She was hurting pretty bad. Doug had asked his friend, physician's assistant Chad White, to examine Faleen at home. She seemed happy to me, regardless of all of her injuries. She had no broken bones, but still she was in pain and couldn't sleep. So White prescribed a muscle relaxant and the sleep aid Ambien, recording in his notes that he specifically told Doug not to fill the Ambien prescription without calling him first.

14:04I just simply didn't want her taking the two together. White next heard from Doug just after 7.30 the following morning. He was very alarmed, very panicked. He told me that she had gone in to take a bath, that he was laying on the bed and had fallen asleep. When he woke up, Doug said he found Faelene unconscious in the tub, her head underwater. What did you do when you found her? Cut her out, put her on the bed, started CPR. You knew CPR? I know CPR. I asked if he'd call 911. What did he say? He informed me that he had not called 911. I asked him why and he relayed to me that he was afraid. White jumped in the car and called 911 himself.

14:56911 emergency. Yes, I just got a discreet call from a friend of mine. Meanwhile, at the house, Faelene's daughter Jenna says her stepfather was freaking out. I hear Doug and he's screaming. He's panting and he's having a hard time. It looks like he's bracing himself. and then he told me to take my little brothers to the next door. She ran to the home of Andrea Rogers, who raced to the Grants to see if she could help. Doug came flying to the door so upset, my whole body just reacted to the terror in his eyes. Chad White showed up minutes later and took over. He had obviously pulled her from the tub and she was laying there unresponsive.

15:37She did not have any vital signs. With Doug looking on, White tried CPR until the paramedics arrived. He was crying. He was bawling. He was yelling out, please help her. Please help her. The paramedics got her heart going again and rushed her to the hospital, where Jenna remembers a bizarre scene. As my mom is laying in a bed unconscious with tubes running through her nose and her arms, Doug takes me out into the hallway and he tells me, If your mom wakes up, she might say weird things. Jenna says Doug seemed too eager to accept the possibility that Failene might not wake up. Do not tell me my mom is going to die.

16:19But as she watched her mother's heart rate on the monitor, she knew Failene wasn't coming back. I kept looking at the screen and just kept going down and down from 100 to 75, 50. And then I realized what was happening. She was dying.

16:40Soon, doctors said brain activity had ceased, and Doug authorized taking her off life support. At 4.37 p.m. on September 27, 2001, Phalene Grant was pronounced dead. Official cause, drowning. But tests showed a whopping 50 milligrams of Ambien in her system. Clearly, Doug had ignored Chad White's orders. You didn't call him when you chose to fill the prescription. I didn't feel I needed to call to fill the prescription. Still, investigators seemed unconcerned. In this bathroom and out here in Feline's bedroom, they shot just five photos.

17:25In coming days, they would fail to interview key witnesses. They even lost evidence, including the pill bottles. Then again, they had ruled this death an accident the very day Feline was found. Feline's family was upset. It took months of pressure from them before police started taking a closer look at Doug Grant.

17:52And that's when Detective Cy Ray got the case. I felt there was a lot of unanswered questions. So I primarily focused on just trying to answer some of the real basic questions. The first thing we looked at that helped us do that was the phone records. Ray found a slew of calls from the months before Feline died, between Doug's phones and Hillary DeWitt's. Prosecutor Juan Martinez says authorities became even more intrigued at reports that Doug and Hillary had met in a park only hours after Feline's death. When he saw her, he grabbed her around the hip area, pulled her towards him and said, oh, I missed these.

18:35That scenario is chilling. Well, it is chilling and it isn't a scenario, it's something that happened. Hillary admitted meeting Doug in the park, but she wasn't sure when, and she adamantly denied any conversation about her hips. But nobody denies what happened a few weeks later. We got married soon. You got married really soon. Absolutely. In fact, less than a month after Failene's death, Doug and Hillary became man and wife. I know how people feel about us getting married so quick. I don't care what people perceive about me. I am who I am, and that's my life. Doug and Hillary had started a new life, but Cy Ray had no intention of moving on.

19:22I had a lot of concerns about the way he reported things happening, just some real common sense things that I felt just didn't quite fit in. Chief among them, Ray says he just couldn't get over that Doug never had called 911. I know with every fiber of my being that I called them. You called 911? I called 911. Phoenix area records show no such call. Still, Ray didn't have enough for an arrest until the sudden appearance of a new witness, a reluctant witness. I didn't want to get involved because I knew what was going to happen once my name hit the papers. Caught on tape with a story about what Doug Grant told him really happened the day Faleen died.

20:06It's the missing piece of evidence that we're looking for.

20:18After Faleen's death, Jenna and her brother Austin went to live with their biological father. while Doug and his new wife Hillary settled into life with a blended family. Four children from various marriages, including a daughter of their own. Nevaeh, try to land your front flip. Nevaeh. There you go. That's heaven spelled backwards. Oh, look at that one. Despite such wholesome appearances, Detective Cy Ray remained convinced Doug Grant was a killer, but... Nothing really jumped out and said this is what happened. She's right here. Faleen's sisters always suspected it was Doug. He didn't call 911.

21:06He didn't call 911. He married Hillary three weeks later. Three years passed. Then one day, Feline's sister, Sherlene, called Ray with explosive news. An old friend of Doug's was claiming Doug had confessed to killing Feline. The friend's name was Jim McEllier. He told me that she was ready to go to heaven. He said I put her in the bathtub until she was underwater. But there was a problem with Jim McAulier's story. Before he'd tell it to the cops, he wanted money from Faleen's family. And how much money does he want? He's asking for$10 ,000. $10 ,000. He's very clear that it's a loan. You buy this?

22:02I have a hard time buying a lot of things that Jim said. But at that point, we were obligated to see it through, to see what this information is and see if there's any validity to it. So Cy Ray set Macaulay up. He told Sherlene to arrange a meeting in a Walmart parking lot. Hi Jim. Hi. How we doing? With hidden cameras rolling. You alright back there Jim? Yeah, I'm fine. When the money changed hands, Here you go. Ray moved in and told Macaulay he could charge him with extortion. Instead, he got Macaulay to agree to help get a confession out of Doug on tape. The plan at that point is to bring Jim and have him confront Doug on this information while wearing a wire.

22:53Macaulay did just that. Later that day, wired for sound, he met Doug and told him police were asking him questions. They're threatening to arrest me because they think I have information. And he needed to know exactly what happened to Feline. I believe his initial response was, I did help her into the bathtub.

23:23Doug admitted nothing directly. But when McAulier tried to leave... He kept saying, tell me what you're going to say. Saying how damaging it sounded. If they have anybody says that Doug Grant put her in the tub and put her to sleep, then it's over. Trying to get me to reword it. If it was me, I would say, yeah, we were good friends and you're there to console me and you don't remember. It's been years ago. It was hardly a full confession. End of story. Get out of my face. But to Cy Ray, it was more than enough. So in the summer of 2005, police arrested Doug Grant for the murder of his wife, Feline.

24:05Doug immediately made bail and soon returned home. He is not guilty. There was no crime. Doug's lawyer, Mel McDonald, says there's no evidence Doug even wanted Feline to die. Just the opposite. When you look at Doug's efforts after her fall, crying for help, running to her rescue, taking her to a hospital, leaving her alone with people, that is hardly the evidence of a murder. Doug had been here... As far as Detective Cy Ray is concerned, though, it was all part of an act. Their version of the story is just nonsense. I think something happened to her while they were here. I don't know what. So what do you do when there's no evidence?

24:51Let's throw in the infidelity. Let's throw in the younger woman. It's got nothing to do with the question of homicide, but let's just throw the dirt on the wall. Maybe it will stick. What the defense wants to stick is that Faelene Grant's death was not a murder, but rather an accident or a suicide. If you doubt it, they say, I can't tell you how devastated I feel. Just listen to Faelene's own words from those astonishing journals. I am choosing to give up the life I have. Jenna still reads them today. I can't tell you how devastated I feel, and that I'm suicidal, and that I think of crazy things to do to myself.

25:34It's right there in the writings, repeated references to her upcoming death. I felt like I should just drive off a cliff and quit wasting space and air on this planet. But daughter Jenna can't seem to reconcile the words in those letters and journals with the mother she knew. She would have never committed suicide. If you only read a small portion of something taken out of context, it's not going to be what the writer intended. My mom didn't want to die. She was a happy lady. She was a great mom, a great wife. I don't think that points to someone that suicidal. And if the writing suggests otherwise, she says it can only be because Doug planted the idea.

26:23Her husband, who obviously she trusted, who she remarried, is telling her she's going to die. I never encouraged it, nor did I ever dream it, nor did I ever say it. Just as hard to fathom is Faelene's relationship with Hillary, a rival whom you'd think she might hate. Far from it. Remarkably, Faelene's journals show that the two became fast friends. Faelene, she filled voids in my life at a time period where I needed it. And she's part of this family. I'm so thankful Hillary is able to share her feelings with me and me with her. I want so much for her to know of my love and respect for her. So much does she love her that Faelene names Hillary the perfect new wife for Doug Grant.