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she had everything to live for.
She was really looking
forward to having a
baby and being a mom.
So her death raises
more questions than answers.
It was pretty obvious that
something wasn't right here.
Years pass,
then someone reveals
a clue about the victim.
I'm thinking to myself,
why are you telling me this?
Can a dead woman
buried for almost a generation
solve the mystery
of how she really d*ed?
In the spring of 1985,
Margaret Purk
and her husband, Scott,
were planning a bright future.
Margaret and Scott met
in high school,
and they had been married
just a little over three years.
The young couple
and many of their relatives
lived in and around Akron, Ohio,
about an hour
south of Cleveland.
Scott worked
as a security guard.
an aspiring writer,
was pregnant
with their first child
and was thrilled
about becoming a mother.
Margaret had written to her
grandparents letting them know
that everything was
really well with her,
everything was fine,
she was happy,
looking forward to the birth
of their first child.
"I feel great
and full of energy.
Just think, any day now,
I'll be a mother. A mother!
It's even hard for me to believe
but I'm looking forward to it
and so it Scott.
For the baby coming,
she was ecstatic.
Me being the little brother
and still not very mature,
it got on my nerves
a little bit,
just hearing about it
all the time.
Margaret's family
and friends were relieved
by her newfound optimism.
She hadn't always been
so full of hope.
There was one incident
in Margaret's past
where, you know, she was upset
about something,
and she had threatened to harm
herself by using a cord
from a mini-blind in
one of the rooms of the house.
It's more or less
a feeble attempt
because, you know,
it's really not gonna happen,
and you don't really
want to do it.
The family was convinced that
any possibility of self-harm
was part of the distant past.
But that changed on March 18th,
shortly before Margaret
and Scott's baby was due.
Scott Purk was taking a bath,
and he saw his wife walk
past the door a couple of times.
He said he got
out of the bathtub
about five minutes later
and he observed that his wife
had somehow tied a rope
from the banister
on the second floor
and had hung herself.
Margaret d*ed
a short time later.
And to compound an already
unimaginable tragedy,
the baby did not survive.
But the first thought was, "Why
would she do this, this close?"
You know, she was within like
two weeks of having the baby.
So, you know, it just...
it really didn't make
a whole lot of sense.
Everyone was shocked.
What happened seemed
so impulsive,
especially with a baby
on the way.
Even first responders and
Akron police were suspicious.
The detectives really thought
there was more to it.
The EMTs thought
there was more to it.
No one had answers...
not Scott, not the family,
not Margaret's friends.
It was left to the coroner
to decide what had happened,
and the fact that Margaret
had attempted su1c1de
years earlier
played into his ruling.
With all the information
that the coroner was given,
he looked at everything
in totality and decided,
"I'm gonna rule it a su1c1de."
Ultimately, the coroner
ruled that it was a su1c1de,
and the police were really,
you know, kind of forced
at that point
to just stay with that.
Years...
decades, actually... went by.
Margaret's family mourned,
but refused to believe
she k*lled herself.
My mom would call once a year
just to see if there's any way
they could reopen it,
and, unfortunately,
with that ruling,
the case was closed
and they weren't allowed
to do anything about it.
In the years
after Margaret's death,
there was another series
of crimes
that seemingly had nothing
to do with her,
until police decided
to take a closer look
at who those crimes and why.
After
his wife's su1c1de in 1985,
Scott Purk moved on
with his life.
But tragedy's seemed
to follow him.
In March of 2009,
police were called to a fire
at the house Scott shared
with his new wife
and their two teenage children
in Stow, Ohio.
When you first pull up, the
house was absolutely destroyed.
It was gone.
It was unsavable.
Luckily, Scott Purk
and his family escaped unharmed.
Scott woke up around 3:00
in the morning
to go to the bathroom,
and that's when he discovered
the fire.
He alerted everyone,
and they were able to get kids
out of the house.
Veteran arson
investigators soon realized
why the house went up so fast.
There was a trail of gas
that was poured.
You could see the pour pattern
on the grass
leading all the way to the house
and around the foundation.
Since detective
Ken Mifflin assumed
he was dealing
with an arson fire,
he asked Scott Purk
the obvious question...
"Was there anyone who would want
to harm him or his family?"
And Scott immediately
volunteered a possibility.
Scott and his wife
had an open relationship.
They were swingers, and they had
an interesting lifestyle,
to say the least.
They openly date,
even long-term-dating
the same people
within the marriage,
and they're both comfortable
with that.
They both have their own
girlfriends and boyfriends
and so forth.
Was it possible
a boyfriend or a girlfriend
from outside the marriage
had att*cked the family?
That does open a door
to the possibilities
that there were other people
that could be involved
with this situation.
As police explored
this possibility,
they also did a standard
background check on Scott Purk,
and that turned up
more than a few surprises.
Scott was an ex-convict
with an infamous reputation.
He was known by local media
as "the ninja burglar."
He was arrested for committing
at least 10 different burglaries
or breaking into cars
and homes and businesses.
And he was pretending
to be a ninja.
He would dress up
in dark clothing
and then break into women's
homes, single women.
Normally, he would take,
you know,
car keys, things like that,
but he would take
their underwear, typically,
as his trophies, I guess,
for lack of a better term.
This string of burglaries,
for which Scott served
seven years in prison,
happened just months
after the su1c1de
of his first wife, Margaret.
There was probably
no connection to be made,
but Detective Mifflin couldn't
get over an unusual exchange
he had with Scott
the night of the fire.
Scott and I are having this
conversation about his house
literally burning down
right in front of us,
and Scott says to me,
just out of the blue,
you know, that he was married
back in the early '80s
and his wife, his first wife,
who was nine months pregnant,
had hung herself,
thereby k*lling her
and her baby,
their first child together.
So, he just brought that up
out of the blue.
No reason for the conversation.
I had no idea.
Nothing... I didn't even know
Scott Purk
prior to first coming
to the scene.
Detective Mifflin didn't know
what to make of this.
Neither did his
fellow investigators.
We found it very odd that
Scott Purk's home is burning
and he just kind of blurts out,
"By the way,
my first wife k*lled herself
when she was
nine months pregnant."
Detective Mifflin,
a seasoned veteran
with decades
of investigative experience,
later said this was one of the
strangest moments of his career,
so strange that he decided
to look back
into Scott Purk's past.
And what he found
unearthed secrets
that were literally
buried with the dead.
Detectives
investigating the 2009 fire
that b*rned Scott Purk's
home to the ground
found that wasn't his first
brush with a nearly fatal fire.
Back in 1980, the home
he lived in also caught fire.
If something in your life
happens one time,
that's exactly what it is.
It's just an incident
that happens.
When it starts to happen
more than one time
and bad things happen
as a consequence of that,
it's a pattern.
Detectives discovered
that in this most recent fire,
Scott took some
highly suspicious precautions
before the flames started.
He had loaded up his minivan
with all their
important possessions.
They had clothes in there,
CDs in there,
but they also had things
like photographs
and a very old cookbook,
some things that had
some sentimental value
that they wouldn't want
to have burn up in a fire.
All the evidence
appear to indicate
that Scott set
his own house on fire.
But why?
It was determined that he
set the fire to his home
because he was well over
$200,000 in debt
and he was hoping to get
some type of insurance money
by burning down his house.
In fact, one of the key pieces
of evidence against Scott
was something he said
to his wife
while making the 911 call
about the fire.
He had moved his favorite
possessions out of the house,
but he forgot one... the family
pet, a ferret named Tito.
It's totally not something that
individuals would talk about,
typically,
when your house is burning down.
This was planned out.
Somebody was supposed to get
this ferret out of the house,
and that person failed
to do their job
and left the ferret behind.
And, of course, it met
its demise in that fire.
Investigators prepared
to arrest Scott Purk for arson,
but they couldn't let
go of Scott's
seemingly offhand comment
about his first wife,
Margaret's, long-ago su1c1de,
made for no apparent reason as
his house b*rned to the ground.
I think there were certainly
a lot of family members
that believed all along
that Scott did it.
You knew deep down
inside she didn't k*ll herself,
but, you know, you had to resign
yourself to the fact that,
"Well, this is what
it was ruled, you know,
so that's how it sits."
And it sat that way
for more than 20 years,
but now investigators were
taking a fresh look at the case.
Could it be possible that,
after all this time,
they would finally discover
how Margaret Purk really d*ed?
There were still things
to be solved here,
still things needed to be done,
but we needed justice
for Margaret.
Investigators reopen the case.
In most m*rder investigations,
the victim's body is
a primary source of evidence,
and this case was no exception.
In September of 2011,
investigators got a court order
to exhume Margaret Purk's body.
You just never know
how things are gonna turn out
when someone has been deceased
for, you know, almost 30 years.
There was so much water
in the actual vault
where the casket was,
and then once we got
the casket back
to the medical examiner's
office,
we weren't able
to open the casket.
They actually had to get
some tools
and come in
and break open the casket.
And then there was a lot
of water inside the casket.
But to the amazement
of nearly everyone,
the body was
in remarkably good condition.
The chemicals in the embalming
fluids will preserve you.
You may have some, like,
mold or mildew,
but essentially the body
remains, you know, intact.
And the embalming fluid
will delay the decomposition.
I'm not saying it's not
getting decomposed,
but they will delay
the decomposition.
We were able to,
you know, examine all organs
that were not really properly
looked at
during the first autopsy,
so we were able to
gather evidence in this case.
While a second autopsy
was conducted,
Scott Purk was arrested
on the arson charge.
Detectives took the occasion
to update him
about the investigation
into his first wife's death.
Detective Mifflin tells
him, "Oh, by the way, Scott,
we got a court order to exhume
your first wife's body."
And it's almost like a valve
opened
and drained all the color
out of his face,
and his air of arrogance
was totally gone.
It was that moment where he
knew that, "I screwed up."
The question before
investigators
was whether they could prove
Scott Purk staged the su1c1de
of his first wife, Margaret.
Scott claimed she'd hanged
herself by anchoring a rope
on a stair banister
and jumping from a second floor.
Investigators had photographs
from Margaret's first autopsy,
conducted way back in 1985,
and now they had her body,
exhumed in 2011.
So, how did she die?
Forensic pathologist
Dr. Maneesha Pandey
is a consultant to this program.
In a hanging, usually
what I would look for
is a ligature to see,
you know, how the neck is,
what kind of ligature
has been used.
And what is a ligature?
It's anything which is used
to compress your neck.
A hanging will usually create
a v-mark at the back of the neck
because the pressure
is coming from below,
from the victim's weight.
It goes upwards
and goes up behind the ears
and then comes up
to the back of the head
in a v-shaped fashion,
so it will come out like this
because the noose
is at that "v."
But if someone is strangled,
the mark looks different
because the pressure usually
comes from behind the victim.
There's no v-shape.
There's no angling up
behind the ears,
and it just goes around.
And the ligature mark is going
to be similar to all the...
you know, whatever
ligature has been used.
Scott claimed that
when he found Margaret's body,
the first thing he did was cut
the rope from around her neck.
But amazingly,
after her exhumation
and despite all
that time under ground,
Margaret's skin told
an entirely different story.
Because the skin...
it's elastic,
so it tends to hold the marks.
You're not living.
You're not healing.
So, if there's no healing,
the mark will remain
permanently.
The surfaces of most ropes
are rough, a little grainy,
but the marks on Margaret's neck
were smooth,
leading to speculation that
a belt might have been used.
To test this theory,
detectives set up a simulation
with a rope, a belt,
and clay to play
the part of human skin.
What we did was we put the clay
under the cans
and then we took the belts
and then we put it over the clay
and started squeezing
the belt closed,
like as if you were gonna
strangle somebody.
You could see
the perfect indentation.
The stitching from the belt
made the same impression
on the clay
that we saw on Margaret's neck.
And our "aha" moment was that
he used a belt to strangle her.
And now detectives got
an explanation for the strange,
previously unexplained mark
across Margaret's chest.
This was most likely
from a rope.
Margaret, just days
from giving birth,
weighed a lot more than Scott.
The evidence showed that,
to get Margaret in position
to stage the su1c1de,
Scott wrapped a rope around her
to drag her to the right spot.
That would be the only
explanation why
that mark
would have been on her chest.
In January of 2014,
Scott Purk
was charged with felony m*rder
and tampering with evidence.
But the role of science
in this case was far from over.
Before the trial, prosecutors
took a highly unusual step.
They teamed with investigators
to re-create and videotape
the alleged su1c1de scene
in the actual apartment
where it happened.
Amazingly, the banister
that Scott claimed Margaret
hanged herself from
was still in place.
The owner of the apartment
had indicated
that no changes had been made
in 30 years to those banisters.
They were the
original banisters.
The banisters
were made of soft pine wood.
Prosecutors used a mannequin
of Margaret's height and weight.
The mannequin was thrown
from the second floor,
simulating Margaret
jumping to her death.
This time, the rope made
a deep indentation
in the soft pine wood.
What was discovered
is that if a rope was used
and somebody who weighed
a couple hundred pounds
was hanging off that banister,
it would cause an indentation
in the wood of the banister.
Prior to this simulation,
there were no marks,
no indentations
on any of the banisters,
disproving Scott Purk's story
of su1c1de.
is standing trial on charges
that he k*lled
Margaret Anne Purk.
In November of 2015,
Scott Purk was found guilty
of Margaret's m*rder
and tampering with evidence.
He won't be eligible for parole
until he's 87 years old.
When the jury came back
with their conviction,
it was just like...
what a sendoff gift
for my retirement.
One question nags detectives
and Margaret's family...
why did Scott do it?
Theories abound,
and Scott is staying silent.
My personal opinion is
I don't think Scott
was ready to be a father.
I don't know if there's anybody
that could ever figure him out,
no matter, you know, how much
time they have to study him.
Perhaps the oddest
part of a very odd case
is that if Scott had just
kept his mouth shut,
he probably never
would have been caught.
Scott would have gotten away
with what he had done
had he not said
what he did the day of his fire.
You know, it was a challenge.
He was throwing it out there,
letting us know
how smart he was.
Scott Purk got what he deserved,
even though it was
He has been found guilty.
He is guilty.
He violently k*lled his wife,
who was due to deliver
their baby any day.
It's a horrific crime,
and we are extremely pleased
that he was found guilty.