Melissa Rocuba's Final Moments

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2:41At the end of the day, I put my son to sleep, and I went to bed. And I remember my phone going off, and it was my father. There's been an accident, your mom's okay, the ambulance is on the way. And I was like, whoa. And I just ran out the door.

3:00I lived right next door. I had no idea what happened until I got over there. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. She was laying on the bed. The blood was just all over the floor, the side of the bed. Where's your dad at this time? He was on the phone somewhere, maybe downstairs. And I couldn't really see what he was doing. And then I grabbed a towel off the floor, and I held a towel on her head. I just remember yelling to him to please help me. And I remember asking her, please, mom, just squeeze my hand. Did your mom respond to you? No. Do you remember asking him what happened? Not that night.

3:54At one point, I remember him saying he was putting the gun away under the bed, and she sat down, and the gun went off. Did you know at the time that he had also been shot? I remember his hand being wrapped up. I didn't know if he was just holding a towel or what he was holding. He had shot through his hand when he shot my mom. He just said it was like this freak accident. And we thought, like, well, who's going to shoot themselves? He never wavered from the story that it was an accident. At Trooper P.J. McDurand, we're here at the residence with the homeowner, Bruno Rakuga. Why do you think your father was so open about talking with the police?

4:39I think he was trying to prove that he was innocent. So we were both in bed, and I reached over. I grabbed it. My wife was sitting on the bed on that side. I was on this side. And I pulled the trigger by accident. My sister, Melissa, died Saturday morning. I'm worried about the girls. Their mother is gone. My dad, everyone felt horrible for him. That's his wife of 25 years. I just lost my mom, and I was probably going to lose my dad. Did you expect that your father would be charged with something? I thought maybe negligent homicide, because he was negligent with a gun. I just went like this. He didn't spend a single night in jail.

5:28And not every shooting is a crime. You really do look at circumstances, but apparently they did, and they were convinced that they couldn't prove a case.

5:43I was reviewing all of the open case homicides, and this one caught my attention, and we just went down that rabbit hole of putting all the pieces together. And the alarm bells went off when I saw a surveillance system and evidence. No one had looked at this. This is the last time she's ever seen. That time of year, their window was open, so you could also pick up sound from inside of the bedroom as well. We were able to hear their last conversation together. And then a gunshot goes out. There's so many twists and turns, and this is the story for generations that we have to tell. And that's pretty sad.

6:46On a steamy August night in 2013, Melissa Rekuba was airlifted to this hospital, still clinging to life with a bullet wound to her head. Her then 22-year-old daughter Chelsea was already there when the helicopter arrived. I had no idea how I got down there. I was just panicked and frantic. Her sister Sabrina, who lives in Wisconsin, sped to the airport in tears. It was just a lot of me just praying to God that my mom was going to be okay. Melissa's sister Joanne and their father, then a police sergeant in another county, raced to Melissa's bedside. It was a few hours of driving. Not that night.

7:30We got there really fast. Bruno was being treated at a different hospital, where specialists operated on his hand. He had a hole through the middle of his hand. Pennsylvania State Police detectives wanted to know how the bullet went through Bruno's palm and hit Melissa in the head. Got home from work at 3.30 in the afternoon. Less than 15 hours after the shooting, with Bruno's hand freshly bandaged and Melissa on life support. Detectives asked Bruno to walk them through his house and explain what happened after the couple arrived home from a night out with friends. And we came home just before 10 and after that we went downstairs, washed up, came up to go to bed.

8:21Using a toy gun provided by police, Bruno demonstrated how he claims his.40 caliber pistol went off accidentally. My wife was home alone all last week, so I left him top drawer on the nightstand for him because of recent break-ins. He said their grandson was coming over the next day, and he wanted to safely store the gun. I went to check the chamber to see if there was a round in there. Sitting on the mattress still stained with his wife's blood, Bruno tried to show them what happened. I went like this and she was sitting in the bed there and I went like this and she was watching TV and it was, I just went like this and she leaned back toward me and I must have pulled it away and then shot through my hand.

9:18Earlier, investigators had gone through the house shooting video of the scene and collecting evidence and didn't note any signs of a struggle. Hospital staff found no other injuries on Melissa and Bruno said they had been getting along just fine. Any discussions or any arguments or anything before that happened? No. He looked me in my face and said, we walked in the house holding hands. There was no arguments that night. Jack Wilczewski and his wife Tanya were out to dinner with Bruno and Melissa that evening. And he says everything seemed fine. No arguing? No arguing, no nothing. They were fine that night.

9:58The day after the shooting, Bruno agreed to a polygraph exam. According to police records, the results were inconclusive. Worried about her father, Chelsea says she suggested he speak with attorney Joe D 'Andrea. Did you wonder why he was calling you? Well, I'm a fairly well-known criminal defense lawyer around, and police had talked to him without my participation or knowledge. I guess he was curious if there was anything he had to worry about. Melissa spent several days in intensive care. I remember talking to the neurologist, and I was like, there's got to be something you can do. And they were just trying to calm me down and tell me that there's no hope.

10:45Three days after the shooting, Melissa's family made the agonizing decision to take her off life support. We knew she was suffering. It was August 10, 2013, at 1.45 a.m., when Melissa passed away. Joanne says they were all in shock and even though no one in the family wanted to believe Bruno had deliberately shot Melissa they were surprised when he was never arrested. My grandfather said if that happened in Bucks County where my grandfather was a police he was like your dad would have instantly been in cuffs he was like he didn't spend a single night in jail which is really weird. Joe D 'Andrea says the district attorney's office felt they didn't have enough evidence to charge Bruno with murder and decided not to charge him at all.

11:36They were convinced that they couldn't prove a case. Melissa's death certificate listed her cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head. The manner of death was left pending. No one said to you, we've concluded it was an accident. No, it was just still an open, open case. But as the family began to catch their breath and process Melissa's death, they slowly started comparing notes about Bruno's version of what happened and his behavior before and after the shooting. And a case for murder began to unfold. I just couldn't, I couldn't justify any of his stories.

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15:38The daughters of Melissa and Bruno Recuba say they grew up believing they had the ideal family. So did all my friends. I remember my best friends were like, your family's so loving and happy and you guys do everything together. I always wanted my sister's life. She had the kids, she had the marriage, the good guy. The couple met in the summer of 1988. Back then, Melissa, who was just 19 years old, was a police officer. Bruno, 22, was enlisted in the Navy. And what did you think of Bruno when you met him? I loved him. He seemed to love my sister.

16:24She loved being a wife and she loved being a mother. She was an amazing mom. And Bruno was a great dad, says Sabrina. My dad was wonderful. I mean, I can't complain about him as a dad. We went hunting together. We went fishing together. When I was really young, I wanted to cut my hair to be like my dad. Like, that's how close we were. But as the girls grew older and became parents themselves, they say they began to see flaws in their parents' marriage. We had moved in there, me and my ex-husband, with my parents when my daughter was about nine months old. And it was like all the time, they were constantly arguing.

17:06The breaking point was when they got really drunk one night, and my dad grabbed her by the back of the hair, and he whipped her into the wall. It made a really loud thud, and she couldn't breathe. I was like, we can't stay here anymore. This isn't healthy. I tried talking to my mom, and she was just like, well, everybody has disagreements. And she downplayed, she never wanted to talk bad about our dad to us. Two weeks before the shooting, Chelsea says her mother shared a startling secret about something Bruno had done to her. She took me for a ride in the car and told me, you know, that he had pulled a gun on her before.

17:40My mom told my sister that my mom didn't want to have sex with my dad one night, and my dad pulled a gun on my mother over this. Why would she tell me this now? She's never said a bad word about him before, and all of a sudden it was, Chelsea, I just need you to know that, like, your dad's not always who you think he is. Chelsea admits that she had a bad feeling about her mother's shooting from the start, but stayed silent for the sake of her father. I didn't want to just say something that would have put him in jail if he really didn't do it. Joanne says she also had her doubts about her sister's death Because just months before the shooting, Melissa told her she wanted out of her marriage.

18:26She was questioning things. And asked how she would be able to do it on her own. Was Bruno controlling? Very. My sister couldn't go anywhere without him knowing her every move. Joanne says it wasn't long after Melissa's death when her mind began to race. I started playing back everything, everything that I could remember. For starters, says Joanne, Bruno spent very little time by his wife's side as she lay dying. He would come there, maybe stay like an hour, and then leave. When she died, he wasn't there. He was at the house. Chelsea says her father's behavior began to haunt her as well. For instance, just hours after the shooting, Chelsea says her father asked her to bring him her mother's cell phone, which had not been collected by police.

19:28She says her father wanted to erase a few text messages that he feared investigators might take the wrong way. It was like, I don't want them to think anything because of a little argument or something they had. Maybe it was that week or day. Did that strike you as odd at the time? It did, but you don't want to believe it. With their mother still in intensive care and with the police finished collecting evidence, the girls say their father had another strange request. He asked us to get rid of the mattress. Bruno asked his girls to clean his house and get rid of the blood-stained mattress. He's like, I can't go home to that.

20:09I don't want to see all the blood. And here I am, 21, 22. Now as an adult, I'm like, wow, I can't believe he asked us to do that. But I just kept going, and I kept wanting to make sure he was okay. We were so concerned because he kept making comments that he was going to take his own life, that he couldn't deal with this. How did you get rid of that mattress? We took it in the back of a truck, and we burned it in the woods.

20:36Chelsea and Sabrina say that before their mother was even buried, their father asked for help purging all traces of her. He wanted us to get rid of everything. It's like he wanted her erased. All my sister's clothes. We had to go down to the thrift store where they donated the clothes, and I had to get clothes for my sister to bury her in. Bruno even got rid of Melissa's dog, Zeus. My mom loved that dog, and my dad got rid of him right after my mom died. It wasn't long before Joanne says she began to suspect that Bruno had another motive for erasing the memory of Melissa. My sister's best friend said that Bruno contacted her not too long after my sister had passed away and said, how long do you think it is before, you know, you can kind of like go public with dating someone?

21:33And she said, are you freaking kidding me? And he was dead serious. Bruno was talking about Tanya Wilczewski, Jack Wilczewski's wife The couple that Bruno and Melissa were out to dinner with on the night of the shooting We were together 15 years at that time Jack says he has no idea when the relationship began But says he started noticing a big difference in his wife's relationship with Bruno the day after the shooting, when he walked into Melissa's hospital room and found Tanya and Bruno. I thought they were kissing. Of course, they said they were talking to each other's ear, but they were embraced with each other.

22:17Jack says in the weeks after the shooting, he would often come home from work and find Bruno's car in his driveway. After a couple times, I was like, why are you coming here? Can you wait till I get home at 5 o 'clock or 4 o 'clock? And how did Tanya explain it? Of course, they always made me out like I was a fool. I was seeing things I didn't see. Within months of Melissa's death, Jack says his wife went missing from their home, and he knew exactly where to find her. I woke up 2 o 'clock in the morning, and she wasn't there. I'm thinking, go to Bruno's house. I went and pulled out in front. I blew the horn, and she'd come walking out with her purse with barely any clothes on.

22:58Got in her car, drove to our house, packed her bags, and moved in with them right there. Chelsea now had a new neighbor, Tanya Wilczewski. I remember looking out my window and she was cooking Christmas dinner in my mom's kitchen. I wasn't invited. Chelsea says she forced herself to accept what was because she didn't want her father to be alone. Then, about a year and a half later, she says her father casually revealed an alarming new detail about her mother's shooting. I kind of always knew and I didn't want to believe it, but when I heard it come from his own mouth, I couldn't get past it.

23:53As the months ticked on, it was now 2015, about a year and a half since Bruno Rekuba had allegedly accidentally shot and killed his wife, Melissa. His daughter Chelsea says she was still struggling with her father's relationship with Tanya Wolchewski. I had to live here. I had to see her. She cut her hair like my mom. She would go get her nails done like my mom. She sat on my mom's front porch in my mom's chair. With the passage of time, she says she finally had the courage to ask her father for an explanation about his actions on the night of the shooting and says she got an astonishing answer.

24:32He said, I didn't mean to kill her. I just tried to scare her. Chelsea says that Bruno changed his story and admitted that he and Melissa had been arguing the night of the shooting. The gun, he said, was just meant to frighten her. Then Chelsea says her father abruptly changed the subject. He said he had groceries in the car and he turned around and walked out like he hadn't just said what he said to me. That's when I knew he actually held a gun to my mom on purpose and I couldn't ever look at him the same. Chelsea says she spent months agonizing about what to do next and then told her father she was going to share their conversation with investigators.

25:12And he was like, go ahead, anything you tell them, I'll ruin your credibility and nobody will believe you. Chelsea says she was now determined and went down to the state police barracks and filled out a report, which included information about the incident she says her mother shared not long before her death. About that time Bruno threatened her with a gun when she refused to be intimate with him. It took a lot for you to go down there. What were you hoping would have happened? I was hoping they would have reopened it. And what actually happened? Nothing happened. Chelsea recalls being told that it was her word against her father's.

25:53And she says an investigator suggested her coming forward could have been motivated by money. And at that point, I had no idea I was even entitled to my mom's inheritance. Melissa left behind a will and over$300 ,000 meant to be divided between her husband and daughters. But not long after Melissa's death, Bruno had his daughter sign paperwork that gave him complete control of their mother's estate. He had sent me a paper in the mail, said, do not look at it. Go with this notarized and sign and send it back to me, which I did. I didn't question it. It's my dad. Sabrina says she knew she was signing away her rights to the money, but felt pressured to do it.

26:39He was so good at manipulating me and making me feel guilty. Chelsea signed those same papers, but says she was in shock and didn't understand the consequences. That hurt that he would take from us, and especially from his grandson. The sisters say they began to wonder if money had been the motive for their mother's shooting. But without police action, they felt they had to move on. So I kind of started letting it go. Chelsea says she even let her son Greg build a bond with his grandfather. I hated him for taking my mom from me, but I loved how good he was to my son. Four years later, in 2020, Corporal Greg Allen was assigned to investigate open cases for the Pennsylvania State Police and says this case caught his eye.

27:33What about this case stood out to you? To me, it was the original 911 call. What's the problem? A gunshot wound, my wife. On the 911 call, I hear three different accounts of what happened. Okay, was it self-inflicted? No, we were fighting. He says, we were fighting. When questioned, Bruno quickly changed his story. You said you guys were arguing? No, we were playing around with the gun. We were shooting it. We were going to go shooting it. and I pulled the trigger and it went through my hand. He also offered this version. I was playing with the gun and I let it go off. Bruno knew his way around guns, says Corporal Allen.

28:27So why would he have his finger on the trigger of a gun that was loaded? This is the gun that was used. Crime unit supervisor, Corporal Dan Nylon, was asked by Corporal Allen to examine all the evidence, beginning with Bruno's police interview. I grabbed it. My wife was sitting out of bed on that side. I was on this side. I went to check the chamber to see if there was a round in there. My wife leaned back toward me. Maybe she didn't know I was doing it. And I pulled the trigger by accident or else I let the slide go and it discharged. There were so many red flags that we knew he wasn't telling the truth.