The Case Against Sandra Garner

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1:52911, where is your emergency? I need a police officer. I want to be John.

2:01No, please. I think he's still alive. He's making noises. Oh, John. Brother, what's up? We got a telephone call from the Ellis County Sheriff's Office saying, hey, we've had a shooting in your city. Her husband's been shot by an unknown male, I believe, that had broken into the house. Hold these.

2:26When I got there, I met a deputy from Ellis County. Where do you have the bedroom? Please help him. And we see the body on the floor. His name is John. John what? Warner. Excuse me, ma 'am, back up on here. He's still warm. Is he lost? No, ma 'am. Come on, sweetie. Come on. You're gonna get him. You're gonna get him. Please! Did you see who did this, ma 'am? Yes! Who? I don't know who. I didn't get him in here. He came in the house? Yes!

3:03Are we sure he's not here anymore? Yeah? Yeah? You may still be here. Huh? Don't know yet.

3:21Did you find it? No, ma 'am. Nobody's here. They had me sitting on the couch in the living room. Ma 'am? How you doing? I'm Sergeant Carr. I'm with Mayboro Police Department. I've never dealt with police at all, so I didn't know they even had video cameras on them. Let me get your name. Sandra. Were you able to see them? I kept going over and over and over. Everything I saw about him, trying to remember everything. He was white. He was a white male. Everything he had on. He had blue jeans on, with a blue hoodie, and a mask. Just still trying to keep that memory going. And I looked at his face once, but I was afraid if I looked again, he was going to kill me.

4:07Can I get you standing right there? I have to pull my phone out. Get a real close up here if you don't mind.

4:17And I started snapping pictures. I'm going to get some pictures back here. We're over the crime scene starting around these trees. We started going ahead and securing the scene. Most small cities like Maypearl, if they have a major crime, I'm going to call Shane and let him know. They will call in a resource like Ellis County Sheriff's Office. It was a little after 2 a.m. when I arrived. Hey, how you doing, sir? After I was briefed, immediately I knew that Sandra needed to be talked to. She was the last one to see him alive. We decided to take Sandra to the sheriff's office. She was very key, our only witness.

5:04It made me think that I was going to help them find the person that did this.

5:17You can bet this could be the last place Sandra Garner expected to find herself. Yet here she was, early in the morning of January 2, 2018, at the Ellis County Sheriff's Office in Waxahachie, Texas, not far from her home in Maypearl. Just hours earlier, she and her husband John had celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary. And now, after a night of unimaginable violence, she was answering questions about his murder. I didn't mind doing it at all because I wanted to help him as much as I could. May Pearl's chief of police at the time, Boyd Norton, was in charge, assisted by Lieutenant Shane Thompson of the sheriff's office.

6:09It was all routine. Sandra's hands were swabbed for gunshot residue, her clothes were collected, and then the questioning began. And I knew I had to stay kind of calm to be able to tell them everything that happened.

6:30Because I felt like if I just let my emotions go that I would lose it all. And I couldn't lose it.

6:49She says she saw a man holding a flashlight and a gun.

7:03And he says, what I came here to do is done. I didn't come here to shoot you. You were having this conversation with the guy who just shot your husband? Well, I said that and he said it back to me, yes. She says he seemed to know both her and John, who he blamed for destroying his life years earlier.

7:30He apparently didn't come just to kill John. He also wanted money. He said, your husband had always talked about how he keeps money in the house. And I need that money. I think I earned that money. She went into the closet and she got the lockbox. That closet has a light that comes on when the door opens. And Sandra says that's how she got a glimpse of the killer. He had a mask on. All I could see was eyes. Was he tall? Was he short? He was taller than me. You recognize the voice? No. She handed him a pile of cash. Exactly how much remains a mystery. I think it was$18 ,000. That's how much was in there the last time I counted it.

8:16$18 ,000? Yes. Sandra says when he left, the killer gave her instructions that were frightening and a little peculiar. He told her to sit down and count to 100. If he heard sirens, he was going to come back and kill her. So I counted to 100 as fast as I did. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. That's how fast you counted to 100? Yes, yes. 9-1-1. Then she made that call to 9-1-1. There was a man in here. Please help me. Investigators now had Sandra's story about John's death, but they needed to learn the story of the couple's life together. Sandra was a twice-divorced mother of two when she met John.

8:58They worked as managers at the same packaging company in Paris, Texas. She was 13 years older than he was. He was just a very sweet man. But he was known as a tough boss. He loved firing people because if they weren't doing their job right, they didn't need to be working for him. The fact that he had fired a lot of people, we knew that there were going to be people out there who didn't care for John. John was kind of a wild, crazy guy. He was prescribed antidepressants. He took those frequently, drank heavily. He was very outgoing. Very blunt. I mean, he's out there. None of that mattered to Sandra.

9:46Two years after they met, they got married on New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. We had an awesome relationship. We loved each other so much. We were partners. We just did everything together. John became a second father to Sandra's son, Wes, but her daughter Andrea was not very fond of him until 2014, when Sandra was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I saw how much he loved her. That's all that mattered. He took care of her. He was her rock. The medicine made me sick a lot. It also made her depressed. She says she thought about suicide and Googled how to do it. How do I kill myself in my sleep? How do I take pills to kill myself or something like that?

10:40Sandra says she didn't want to become a burden to John. Well, I told John one day, you know, I'm just, you don't deserve this. I'm just going to kill myself. And he said, well, if you do that, I'm going to kill myself too. That's when I knew I couldn't do it. As Sandra got sicker, John became the sole breadwinner and caretaker. How reliant on him were you? I was very reliant on him. He was all I had. It was just me and him. In 2016, they moved to Maypearl. Population, just about 1 ,000, to be closer to their families. John's father and stepmother bought the house across the street. And John and Sandra's backyard became the gathering place.

11:28We were over there all the time. I mean, our families just, you don't knock on the door. you walk in. Jessica Garner married John's cousin and she became close to Sandra. I loved her. She was family. That was John's wife. I mean, you love them. They were super happy. So the news that John had been killed came out of the blue. And I just started screaming. I'm like, no, no, he's not. It was a nightmare. It's just a nightmare. Several hours after she arrived, Sandra left the sheriff's office to be with the extended Garner family, which had gathered to comfort her. Police body cams captured the scene.

12:13I'm like, what happened? What's going on? And she told us the story. Did you believe her? I did. Did everybody in the room believe her? No.

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13:43To put it mildly, Sandra Garner had had a bad night by the time she left the Ellis County Sheriff's Office. And things were about to get worse. Her son, Wes, showed up at the sheriff's office looking for her. Wes is somebody that we wanted to speak with because he was the last person John spoke to besides Sandra. He agreed to talk to Lieutenant Shane Thompson.

14:12That was just hours before the shooting. Wes says he went home and didn't know anything was wrong until John's family, including Jessica Garner, showed up at his apartment to give him the news. John's been killed. And he was like, what happened? We're like, we don't know. And he was like, how's my mom? Where's my mom? Wes hadn't seen his mother, but what he had to say about her sure caught Lieutenant Thompson's attention. Wes, very early on, had suspicions about his mother being involved. He seemed to be wondering if his own mother could be a killer.

15:02Meanwhile, at the crime scene, investigators were busy collecting evidence and taking photos. We searched the entire house. We searched all the cars and all of the outbuildings. Sandra's Mustang was parked inside of a detached garage. There was nothing there. It took hours, but the police finally left. And when they did, Sandra went home to live in the house. Sheriff's office. Where less than 24 hours earlier. Please help him. Her husband had been shot to death. It was a little weird, yes. But I knew I needed to be there. Why? I just felt like that's where John would want me to be. And I was really hoping that the guy would come back.

15:51You were. So I could kill him. Investigators already had one killing on their hands, and they were going through all the evidence they took out of the Garner's home. They were particularly interested in the Garner's electronics. You can learn a lot about a person from their electronics. And what they learned from Sandra's iPad and cell phone seemed especially interesting. A few days before the murder, she's searching how to kill somebody in their sleep. She had clicked on a link, 16 ways to kill somebody and not get caught. What was your reaction? Our reaction that Sandra just became more and more of a suspect.

16:36You have a gift for understatement. But it would be hard to understate how well the Goiner House was protected. John had guns, lots of guns, even for Texas. 49 pistols. I'm sorry, how many? 49. And there was probably 12 rifles. He had them stashed everywhere. Because he wanted there to be a gun if he needed it. We were able to account for all the weapons except for one. What kind of gun was that? A.38. John was killed with a.38. And what's more, Norton says, the missing pistol belonged to Sandra. John had given it to Sandra. But investigators couldn't find the gun. On January 5th, three days after John was murdered, investigators returned to the Garner house to search again.

17:31They wanted that gun, and they looked everywhere. We searched all the vehicles again. And they wanted to look inside Sandra's Mustang, but this time they couldn't. The Mustang was still inside of the detached garage, but it was locked. What did you make of that? Well, we wanted to know why it was locked. Wes went across the street where the family was gathered to get Sandra's keys. Wes walked in and said, hey, Mom, they want the keys to your Mustang. She threw down the fork that was in her hand and said, no, you can tell them to off. And I just remember looking at her like... I was pissed. Because?

18:14I knew they were looking at me for it. She says she learned police were looking at her as a suspect just that morning from Wes. I told him no. He said, yes, they are. You scared? No, because I didn't do it. She was not going to let us in that Mustang. When she knew that we were getting in that vehicle one way or another... Can you step back out there for me, please? We're going to get some pictures. She ended up producing the key. When police opened the car, they found a plastic bag under the front seat. And inside, wrapped in wet towels, was a rusty gun. A.38 caliber pistol with no fingerprints or DNA.

18:58It is awfully odd that it wasn't there one day, and then three days later, there it was. Very odd, yes. Got any ideas how that happened? Sandra put it there. Jessica remembers Wes coming back across the street. He said, they found the gun in her car. I just looked at him, and I mean, like, I'm getting goosebumps now. You just, you're like, what? What did that mean to you at that point? Just everything changes at that point. she killed John. How could she kill John? Why did she kill John? Sandra was brought back to the Ellis County Sheriff's Office, and this time, Thompson was assisted by Texas Ranger Adam Sweeney.

19:44Sandra, I need you to be honest. I'm trying, I swear I'm trying to be honest with you. I don't, you don't think I'm being honest? No. And this was not a friendly conversation. It was more confrontational. Did something happen? What happened? I did not kill my husband. That's when they started saying, we know you did this. We know you did this. No, I didn't. Yeah, we know you did. We didn't want you to tell us. That's what we're here for. To tell you what? You only get saved and I did it when I did it. We want you to tell us the truth. That's it. I told you the truth. You're not telling us the truth.

20:21And they questioned her about her gun.

20:35She stuck to her story. She claimed she had no idea how the gun got there.

20:46I was upset because they didn't believe what I was telling them. You know? Why would they not believe it? That might be because five days later, when the ballistics tests came back, they showed the gun in the Mustang was the one used to kill John. And with that, just a few hours later, when Sandra pulled into her driveway, police were waiting. I just got out of the car and I said, we're arresting you. It was horrible. The Garner family was watching from across the street as the woman who had been so close to all of them... Okay, let's get her out of here. ...was hauled off in handcuffs. I'll be completely honest.

21:33We cheered. You cheered? We cheered. And I know that's horrible to say, but it was just a little piece of justice at that moment for John.

21:55After police arrested Sandra Garner, her bond was set at$2 million. There was no way she could pay that. They made her sit in jail for a year and a half, and that should have never happened. Sandra's attorney, Tom Pappas. She's not the kind of person that would do that to John.

22:15in september of 2019 sandra garner aged by prison got to tell her story to a new audience in front of a jury when she went on trial in waxahachie texas are the attorneys ready for the jury to come in for murdering her husband john were you prepared for what that was going to be like? No, I didn't know what all was going to be said. I was hopeful. They didn't have anything to prove absolutely that I did it. So I was confident. But prosecutors Lindy Beatty and Ricky Sipes believed they had a strong case against her. The murder weapon was Sandra Garner's gun. Anybody you tell this story to says who comes to commit a murder and doesn't bring their own weapon.

23:05Beatty ridiculed Sandra's story about a killer coming in, but using Sandra's gun. Damn it, I forgot the gun. At times, she acted out the role of the killer. I wore my trusty mask so no one would know who I was, but I'm going to have a 10-minute conversation with Sandra about who I am and why I'm doing this. And there were those ghoulish searches on Sandra's iPad about killing someone and not getting caught. Big deal. And we did make a big deal about these. Prosecutors could well have considered this case a slam dunk. Sounds good for us, right? Sometimes we don't get that much. But this was a hard case.