Watch CBS News

48 Hours: Every picture tells a story

Every Picture Tells a Story 40:47

Produced by Paul LaRosa and Peter Henderson
This story first aired on Jan. 29, 2011. It was updated on Aug. 6.]

On Valentine's Day weekend in 2009, Alec and Cathy McNaughton celebrated their love for each other over breakfast.

"The morning of February the 15th I got up early; I brought my wife coffee in bed. And then we had our Valentine's celebration," Alec McNaughton says. "I gave her a card. She gave me a card..."

They expressed their appreciation for each other in handwritten notes in those cards. They even exchanged chocolates.

"He painted a picture of lovers ... and talked about how sweet and caring and tender they were with each other," said Criminal Investigator Jason Fetner.

But what began as a romantic celebration ended in a most devastating way.

Investigator Jason Fetner was only 29 and had just started working homicides in Coweta County, Ga., not far from Atlanta. This was his first major murder case and it was a doozie.

"Mrs. McNaughton was wearing jewelry, gold and diamond jewelry on her person that had not been broken or ripped off or stolen," he told "48 Hours" correspondent Richard Schlesinger.

Fetner says the crime scene "looked like a horror house that you might go in on Halloween."

Cathy McNaughton had been stabbed more than 30 times. She was a most unlikely victim.

"By all accounts, Mrs. McNaughton was a really nice person with no enemies. Everybody loved her," said Fetner.

"She was definitely chatty, very chatty. We called her Chatty Cathy," said Michelle Mendenhall, Cathy's youngest daughter. "She always saw the best in people, always gave people the benefit of the doubt."

Cathy had retired after a long career at Delta Airlines - "worked from the bottom up" Michelle says - and was in training to join an investment firm.

"So your mother was really sort of a self-made woman," Schlesinger noted.

"She was," Michelle said. "She always was independent, financially independent. She used to always say, 'Don't rely on a man,' you know, financially."

But emotionally, she was not as independent as she would have liked. After nearly 21 years of marriage, Cathy got a divorce.

"I don't think she thought in her middle age she'd be divorced," said Heather Mendenhall, Cathy's eldest daughter. "It's kind of like, I'm 50 years old and, you know, I'm lonely."

Cathy's two adult daughters say their mother dated, but there was no one special. "She wanted to be happy and grow old with somebody," said Heather.

Cathy went looking for love online. That's where she met Alec McNaughton, a lawyer from Enid, Oklahoma.

"She was intelligent. She was well-read, well traveled," McNaughton told Schlesinger in an exclusive interview. "We had a lot of those things in common. I mean, love is sumthin' that just happens. There's not a whole lotta logic to it sometimes."

Alec McNaughton was 55 and had been married three times. Cathy fell for him quickly and hard.

"They had dated for about five, six months and then they were already talking engagement," Michelle said. "We definitely questioned like, 'Mom, don't you think this is a little too fast?' And she would just be like, well, 'He's it. He's it. He's my soul mate.'"

On Nov. 15, 2004, less than one year after they met, Cathy and Alec McNaughton became husband and wife.

"It was a small wedding. My mom wore a big white dress," said Heather.

"Was that out of character for your mother?" Schlesinger asked. "Did she do things quickly, impulsively..."

"No," Heather replied.

Asked what she thought of this, Heather said, "I thought that she was happy."

There were some problems. McNaughton told Cathy he was having trouble getting his Georgia law license. So he became a car salesman, but they managed.

"How was the marriage?' Schlesinger asked McNaughton.

"Very good," he replied.

"You were happy together?"

"We were."

But the good times ended when McNaughton's daughter, Alexis, from a previous marriage was killed in a car accident at the age of 22.

"This girl was a show stopper," Heather said. "... Columbia University, Women's Studies major, had interned with Hillary Clinton. She was going somewhere."

Of his daughter's death, McNaughton said, "It almost killed me. I went into a depression."

Asked if it affected his marriage, he replied, "Yeah. It affected me. And -- you don't recover from sumpin' like that. My wife saved my life."

When police questioned him after the murder, McNaughton told them he and Cathy were still very much in love.

Alec McNaughton: I loved her to the-the-the depths of my heart.

"He told me that he didn't know what happened to his wife and that he wanted to find out," said Fetner.

Alec McNaughton: I want you to find the son of whoever killed my wife, OK?

Investigator Fetner: You know we will.

Police spent hours with an emotional McNaughton over the next couple of days.

Alec McNaughton: I got nothing. Ever. My life's over (cries).

"It was important to go over the details involving his daily activities so that we could exonerate him and move on to find out who did murder his wife," Fetner explained.

McNaughton told police where he had been that day. He said he went to his mother's about an hour away.

"He said he left his home sometime around 11 a.m. or 12 p.m. that day," said Fetner.

And he had left Cathy this message on their home answering machine, saying he'd arrived there: Hey, honey, it's me. I'm up at mother's ... I love you, baby. Bye.

McNaughton also told Fetner that he did not return home until 7:30 p.m., when he discovered his wife's body.

"He was very specific about the time frame that he gave to the authorities," said Fetner.

McNaughton seemed to have a solid alibi. He was cooperative and had willingly locked himself in to a timeline that investigators could now check.

"He was allowed to leave the sheriff's office and I believe he went and stayed with his mother," said Fetner.

As the victim's husband, of course there was reason to suspect McNaughton ... but there was no physical evidence against him. Jason Fetner had to figure it all out.

"I didn't see any blood on him ... there was no blood on his hands, there was no blood his clothes," he tells Schlesinger. "What you've got is no murder weapon ... you have a husband who's a former attorney that says he didn't do it ... and a woman who's been stabbed to death. It's not your traditional crime scene."

And there was one other thing to consider: Cathy's ex-husband who lives in Texas.

"It was their wedding anniversary, that day," McNaughton said. "He was in town that day. What was his motive - he's jealous."

Long before Cathy met Alec McNaughton, she was married to airline pilot Gary Mendenhall. Their daughter, Heather, remembers a happy childhood.

"I think that we were a pretty typical American family," she told Richard Schlesinger. "Two working parents ... two kids, lived in suburbia, good schools."

But the relationship was troubled. Eventually, Cathy and Mendenhall divorced and he moved to Texas.

"From time to time, Mr. Mendenhall would come to the Atlanta area on business or to visit with his daughters," Sheriff's Investigator Jason Fetner explained. "He happened to be in town on the day after Valentine's Day."

The day Cathy McNaughton was murdered.

"One of the first things Mr. McNaughton did is begin throwing out a list of people that he quote, 'highly suspected,'" said Fetner.

Alec McNaughton: I think somebody that knew her went there with that purpose...

Gary Mendenhall was on McNaughton's list.

Asked what he told police, McNaughton tells Schlesinger, "I said, 'Look, I can't imagine who would kill Cathy. She's nice and sweet ... the only person I know she's ever had a problem with is her ex-husband."

Fetner called Mendenhall in for an interview:

Investigator Fetner: What is your relationship to Cathy McNaughton?

Gary Mendenhall: I'm the ex-husband. I was married to Cathy for approximately 21 years.

Investigator Fetner: Why did you get divorced?

Gary Mendenhall: For irreconcilable differences.

As they talked, Fetner noticed something interesting about Mendenhall. He had a cut on his hand.

Investigator Fetner: What happened to your thumb?

Gary Mendenhall: Oh right there -- I was cleanin' up Heather's apartment here yesterday and washin' the countertop and I caught some kinda rack she had there. Tore it up.

Investigator Fetner: It takes forever for those to heal.

Gary Mendenhall: Oh, I know.

"When you stab somebody 31 times, like the killer murdered my wife, your hand slips down the knife and you cut your hand. Gary Mendenhall's dominant right thumb was cut," McNaughton explained.

There were some other potentially troubling things about Mendenhall, according to Prosecutor Kevin McMurry.

"He drove a silver car," McMurry pointed out. "There was a silver car seen at the residence."

A silver car was seen leaving Cathy's home the day she was murdered. And Gary Mendenhall had rented a silver car that very day. But Alec McNaughton also drove a silver car.

Two men with two alibis. Rookie homicide investigator Jason Fetner had his work cut out for him.

"I'm looking at it and saying, 'I need to make sure I'd run down all these different leads,'" he said.

The first priority was figuring out when Cathy McNaughton died. The medical examiner could not establish a time of death so police turned elsewhere.

"...from the phone records, we determined that Cathy McNaughton had a call from inside her house to her friend in California and that phone call ended at 11:55, so we knew Cathy McNaughton had to be alive at 11:55 a.m.," said McMurry.

McNaughton had already given investigators a detailed account of his whereabouts that day. And he told them he left home between 11 a.m. and noon.

Alec McNaughton also told investigators he was at his mother's house about an hour away when he left Cathy a phone message at about 2:30 p.m.

McMurry says there's one problem with that story.

"The critical piece, the piece that matters, is that cell phone call was originated on Tower 309, a tower that is less than two miles from his house and that tower is 40 miles from his mother's house. So Mr. McNaughton is not at his mother's house when he's calling his home phone," he explained.

Investigators believed they had caught McNaughton in a lie and they wanted to know why an innocent man would be lying about the day his wife was murdered.

"Where were you when you made that call at 2:33?" Schlesinger asked McNaughton. "And think about this, because it's important."

"I was at my mother's house," he replied.

"The police were quite certain when they found these call phone records that they had caught you in a lie," said Schlesinger.

"That's right," McNaughton laughed. "And they made a big deal about me lyin.' I didn't lie about anything in this case."

McNaughton insists the phone records -- no matter what they show -- are just plain wrong.

But Fetner was starting to poke more holes in McNaughton's story.

Take his call to 911:

Alec McNaughton: She's not moving. And she's not breathing and her eyes are not moving and she won't, she won't respond. There's blood on her, on her, on her hands, and her, on the wall.

"He claimed he was kneeling down at his wife's body, that he was touching her body, that he was tiltin' her head back and movin' her body and trying to render aid to her," said Fetner.

Video: Listen to excerpts of the 911 call

911 Operator: I want you to kneel by her side.

Alec McNaughton: OK.

911 Operator: Close to her head.

Alec McNaughton: OK.

911 Operator: And bare her chest, OK?

Alec McNaughton: OK.

Fetner wondered: why didn't McNaughton have any blood on him?

"There was blood soaked into the carpet around her body," the investigator pointed out. "If you knelt down next to her body, it would be reasonable to believe you'd have blood on your pants, on your hands."

But McNaughton says it's more important that the police didn't find any scratches on his body when they looked. He says that helps prove he's innocent since Cathy desperately tried to fight off her killer.

"She fought for her life," he said. "Her hands were cut up from the killer's instrument and her fingernails were broken off from fightin' the killer."

But when investigators even raise the possibility that McNaughton killed his wife, he becomes agitated:

Alec McNaughton: You're full of s--t. I didn't kill my wife, I loved my wife, she loved me and I'm tired of the questions. So you either f---ing arrest me or take me home."

Police weren't ready to arrest anyone, but they were ready to clear someone. Very soon, they concluded Gary Mendenhall had absolutely nothing to do with Cathy's death.

"In fact, we actually got it down to an exact time frame, where it's nearly impossible for one to believe that Mr. Mendenhall could have flown here from Texas, did the things that he did ... murdered his ex-wife. Clean up. Get back. Change clothes and then meet with his daughters for dinner. The time frame didn't work out," Fetner said. "It wasn't Mr. Mendenhall."

Fetner continued his investigation and got an earful when he talked to Heather and Michelle about Alec McNaughton.

"They painted a picture of a selfish man that ... didn't like his wife that much. They said that he was argumentative, that he was very controlling and domineering," he said.

At the same time, Fetner was being inundated with calls about McNaughton. Some of the calls were from people who know McNaughton very well.

"We received calls from his own siblings who called us and said, 'Hey, I wanna be off the record ... 'cause I'm scared of him, but I think my brother did it,'" said Fetner.

"If you talk to people in prison, if somebody gets arrested or accused of murder, the family turns against 'em nine times out of 10," McNaughton told Schlesinger.

"Well, I don't know about that, Mr. McNaughton. I mean, I don't think my family would call and say, 'He's a murderer,' if they're --"

"I didn't think so, either, Richard."

"All of them expressed an extreme fear of Alec," Fetzer said. "And that's just something else that you add to this pile of things that are mounting against him - why is everybody afraid of you?"

Investigator Fetner was about to find out. Police found three disposable cameras in Cathy's closet with unprocessed film inside.

"We knew we had to find out what was on 'em," he said.

They say every picture tells a story -- and this one was a shocker!

"Everything that my mom knew about Alec was all the good things -- like everything that he had achieved, everything that he had acquired, his accomplishments," Cathy's daughter Heather Mendehall said.

At least that's what Heather thought. But in May 2006, a year-and-a-half after Cathy married Alec McNaughton, Heather had a terrifying phone call with her mother that began with a dinner invitation.

"She said that she'd love to come to dinner, but she couldn't," Heather recalled. "She sounded funny on the phone, and I just, you know, kept pushing her a little bit and she said, 'I can't.'"

Soon, Cathy confided in her daughter and told her a shocking story: that her husband, Alec McNaughton, had beaten her.

"She was on her way to work and he had violently followed her out to the car ... opened the car door and pulled her out and took her by the hair and was like literally like dragging her [by her hair]," Heather explained. "He was in a violent rage ... she said that there's no way that she could be seen in public."

But McNaughton says he and Cathy had only a small argument over a car. He says he tried to grab the car keys from Cathy in the driveway and she fell off her high heels.

"Well, she fell off her heels as we were struggling and skinned her elbow, I think, and her knee and her chin," McNaughton explained. "... she stumbled and we fell. She got scuffed up."

Heather was frightened. "I'm like, 'Well, did you call police?' She's like, 'No, I did not call the police and I'm not going to.'"

Instead, Cathy started her own investigation of Alec McNaughton and even kept a secret file with notes and undeveloped photos in disposable cameras. Police found it all hidden inside her closet.

"I took the three disposable cameras to a local developer here in the area. When I got it back, I was shocked," Fetner recalls. "There were pictures of her ... holding her hands up. And there was a huge bruise on her face and she's got bruises and scratches on her arms."

McNaughton has his own explanation for all the bruises. He says Cathy's ex-husband, Gary Mendenhall, must have done it.

But that was not Investigator Jason Fetner's opinion. Heather told him that McNaughton had beaten Cathy. Fetner knew those photos could be a key piece of evidence against McNaughton if police could answer some crucial questions, including, who took the photos?

The photographer had to authenticate the photos -- say when they were taken and if Cathy said Alec McNaughton had injured her.

Fetner wondered, "How come nobody's called to say, 'Hey, I took pictures of her when she was beaten up.'"

Police began searching for the photographer, but there were other important things in Cathy's closet: Very damaging notes about shady financial deals and worse.

"She had written down that 'he threatened to kill me,'" Prosecutor Kevin McMurry said. "She describes all the lies he's told to her."

Cathy was onto McNaughton, but she was conflicted. She compiled a list of "pros and cons" about McNaughton. And despite the abuse, under "pros" she wrote: "sweet, loving, handsome." Under "cons" she wrote: "no sex, depression, bankruptcy."

"Alec McNaughton told us that they had a perfect relationship, that they never had any physical altercations, that they were deeply in love and that they shared a wonderful marriage," said Fetner.

But that sure looked like a lie. Cathy's daughter, Michelle, says Cathy and McNaughton were having a lot of problems and argued constantly about money. "The marriage she basically was financing," she said.

And then, one night, the couple's disagreements over money exploded into a loud argument. And Alec McNaughton taped it.

Cathy McNaughton: You know, that tells you about your credit, because I never had a problem with my credit.

"I - always carry a tape recorder in my briefcase my whole career," McNaughton explained. "She was outta control. So I just took my tape out so that, if later on, she said sumpin', I'd just play it back and say, 'You lose your temper over - minor stuff.'"

Cathy McNaughton: You started yelling first ...

"I could tell from listening to it that she did not know she was being recorded," Fetner said. "You could hear Cathy screaming at the top of her lungs at Alec."

Cathy McNaughton: ... and I'm gonna hire me a f---ing attorney.

Investigator Jason Fetner says the recording backfired on McNaughton when Cathy began referring to the time she said he beat her:

Cathy McNaughton: If you ever raise your hand to me again, to even threaten to strike me, it is over. I will get on that phone and I'll dial 911.

"She says, 'I've got pictures. I've got affidavits,'" said Fetner.

"Yeah. That was right after we'd had the struggle in the driveway over the car. So I knew what she was referring to," said McNaughton.

But as it turned out, this was not the first time McNaughton was accused of abuse, as Fetner learned after tracking down McNaughton's first wife, Linda, who had divorced Alec nearly 40 years earlier.

"And they said, 'Alec McNaughton has murdered his wife.' And my stomach sank to my toes," she said.

Despite the decades that have passed, she has never forgotten what she says her ex-husband did to her.

"He beat me with his fist, with a Coke bottle. He broke my nose. He fractured my jaw. He beat me hard," Linda told Schlesinger.

"I never abused my wife or any woman ever," said McNaughton.

The evidence against McNaughton was piling up: His past, the tape, the photos of Cathy's bruises, her notes and those cell phone records that seemingly proved McNaughton was not where he said he was on the day of the murder. Fetner called McNaughton in for a follow-up interview and the former lawyer sneered at the evidence.

"I think the comment he made was, 'There's not a snowball's chance in hell that a jury would convict me on this,'" Fetner recalled.

"Well, that's very different from, 'I didn't do this and they're lying.'" Schlesinger pointed out.

"It is. It sounds like a challenge to me."

And on Feb. 27, 2009, Alec McNaughton was arrested and charged with murder for stabbing his wife, Cathy, more than 30 times. He was thrown in jail with no bail.

"They railroaded me," McNaughton said. "They put the blinders on that night. That homicide detective, in his very first murder case ... was overwhelmed; he didn't know what to do. And he decided it was me right there at the scene, and never considered anybody else."

And now the prosecutors had one very big problem. They still had no idea who took those damning photographs. Without that crucial information, the law says the photos could never be shown to a jury. And the trial was about to start.

As the murder trial of Alec McNaughton approached, Prosecutor Kevin McMurry was haunted by the photographs Cathy McNaughton left behind.

"It became obvious that Mrs. McNaughton was making an effort to preserve what had happened to her," he said.

The law says if McMurry wanted to show those photos to the jury, he'd have to find the photographer. So he had to scramble.

"For the longest time, we really ran into some dead ends," he said. "We took these pictures to witnesses and asked, 'Have you seen these injuries? Did you take these pictures? Are you familiar with any of this?' And time after time, the people closest to her said 'No.'"

The trial was only a month away and McMurry was getting desperate. He finally turned to Delta Airlines, where Cathy had worked, to see if she had asked anyone there for help. McMurry says that was the turning point.

Sandra Harmon was a counselor who did some work with Delta.

"At the point that I saw her, it was obvious that she had bruises on her body," she told Schlesinger. "Cathy looked very disheveled."

Harmon says Cathy told her McNaughton had attacked her outside their home just the day before.

"The first thing Cathy did when she sat down was to ask me if I would take pictures of her," she explained.

Harmon agreed to take the photos and now found herself thrust into the middle of a murder trial.

Prosecutor McMurry: Mrs. Harmon, did you have any confusion over whether or not she was talking about her current husband or someone that she had been previous married?

Sandra Harmon: Oh, absolutely no confusion whatsoever. She was very clear.

Prosecutor McMurry: And you understood it to be -- to be who?

Sandra Harmon: Alec McNaughton, her husband.

"She's lying if she says that my wife said that I beat her up," maintained McNaughton.

McNaughton, who was a practicing lawyer, says Sandra's testimony is nothing more than hearsay.

"Why would she make that up?" Schlesinger asked McNaughton.

"Because she's the star, Richard. She's the prosecution's star witness," he replied.

"She seem like a liar to you?"

"People don't lie intentionally, but people get persuaded by the police when they're the star witness in a high profile murder case. It happens all the time," said McNaughton.

The photos were powerful evidence and McNaughton's defense lawyer, Michael Kam, could not make them disappear, even though he happens to be a semi-professional magician.

Kam says the law is a lot like magic; it's all about altering perceptions.

"There was a complete lack of evidence," Kam said. "Clearly, this was a violent death and she had numerous, numerous stab marks. There was blood all around her. There was blood under her ... He had no bruises. There was nothing to indicate that somebody had actually cleaned up the crime scene ... there was no evidence ... of his DNA on her fingernails..."

But the prosecutors had more damaging evidence. They put all three of McNaughton's ex-wives on the stand. His first wife, Linda, describes what she says happened after she refused to have sex with him.

Linda McNaughton: He then beat me badly.

Deputy D.A. John Cunningham:: How did he beat you? Would you please describe that.

Linda McNaughton: With his fist and with a Coke bottle.

"She's lyin," Alec McNaughton said. "There's no witness alive that corroborates that story."

McNaughton's second wife, also named Linda, tells jurors what she says happened the one time she said 'No' to her then-husband.

Linda McNaughton (Second wife) : And he grabbed me by either shoulder and just slung me over into a glass top dining table that fell over.

Deputy D.A. John Cunningham:: Were you scared of the defendant after he threw you?

Linda McNaughton: I was scared of him before that.

Video: Deputy D.A. John Cunningham on the case built against Alec McNaughton

"Did you throw her into a coffee table and ..." Schlesinger asked McNaughton.

"I pushed her outta the way," he replied. "She's exaggerating. She's not lyin.'"

But it is Susan Knox, McNaughton's last wife before Cathy, who tells the most frightening story. She says there was always tension between Alec and their daughter, Alexis, but it got dangerous one night when McNaughton pulled out a shotgun.

Susan Knox: I just said, "Alec -- what are you doing with that gun?"

D.A. John Cunningham:: What was his response?

Susan Knox: He said in a very slow, monotone voice -- he said, "I'm gonna kill Alexis, and then I'm gonna kill you and then I'm gonna kill myself."

Alexis was in another room listening to it all and dialed 911.

911 Operator: Oklahoma City 911.

Alexis McNaughton: Hi, um I just woke up, my parents have had a huge fight last night ... and I was listening downstairs and my mom woke up and my dad said he was going to kill us ... and he's capable of doing that, so ..."

911 Operator: OK, we'll send an officer out there.

Officers calmed everyone down and took away McNaughton's shotgun.

"Is that normal behavior?" Schlesinger asked McNaughton.

"Well of course not -- it's emotional behavior," he replied. "My daughter's 18 and brilliant and beautiful and admitted to Barnard College at Columbia ... and her's life's work is there in front of her and she decides to drop outta high school."

"Would you have shot her?"

"Of course not," McNaughton said. "I never shot anybody in my life, not even a bird."

The testimony of McNaughton's three ex-wives is hugely important, although McNaughton doesn't seem to notice.

"It was devastating," Kam said. "He thought everybody loved him ... he thought he was the smartest guy in the room no matter what room he was in."

In the courtroom, someone needs to explain McNaughton's side of the story. Alec McNaughton decides there's no one better than Alec McNaughton.

Kam says he did not want his client to take the stand and told him so.

"... and not so politely either. I said, 'You are so arrogant and unlikable, I'm afraid that you're gonna blow it when you take the stand,'" he explained.

But McNaughton insists.

"So when you heard them stand up and say, 'we call Alec McNaughton,' what was your first thought?" Schlesinger asked Prosecutor Kevin McMurry.

"My first thought was, 'this is a rare opportunity."

Alec McNaughton is either the smartest man in the courtroom ... or the dumbest. The alleged killer is about to gamble his freedom on his way with words.

He can't get death, but he could get life as he takes the stand in his own defense.

"I hoped that Mr. McNaughton would take the stand," Prosecutor Kevin McMurry said. "He underestimates everyone else, overestimates his own abilities, and the result is he's easily trapped in his lies."

Defense Lawyer Michael Kam wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter.

Michael Kam: Alec, did you kill your wife, Cathy McNaughton?

Alec McNaughton: No.

It was Kam's only question.

Immediately, Prosecutor McMurry begins tearing apart McNaughton's story about where he was on the day his wife was murdered.

"He wasn't as smart as he thought he was," said McMurry.

McNaughton has always maintained that, at 2:30 p.m. that day, he was already at his mother's house an hour away in Sandy Springs, Ga., when he called home and left a message. But the cell phone records show he was actually within a few miles of his home.

Prosecutor McMurry: You were not in Sandy Springs at 2:33 p.m. on February 15, 2009, isn't that true?

Alec McNaughton: It's not true. I was ... I was at my mother's.

Prosecutor McMurry: So those records are wrong.

Alec McNaughton: They are.

"That phone call was absolutely critical to this case from the very beginning, and it was Mr. McNaughton's fatal mistake," said McMurry.

McNaughton talked to police early in the investigation. Detectives poked holes in his story almost immediately. And prosecutors say McNaughton should have known better, considering he's a lawyer.

Video: Excerpts of McNaughton's police interview

"Had he not talked to the police initially, it would have been a very, very difficult case to prosecute," said McMurry.

Why did he talk to police? "Because I wanted to find out who killed my wife," McNaughton told Schlesinger. "And I would've done anything," he cried. "And so that need to find out who had killed my lovely wife overrode my legal judgment."

But Investigator Jason Fetter thinks McNaughton had another reason.

"He did his best to mislead that dumb, redneck investigator," he said.

"Who's that dumb, redneck investigator?" Schlesinger asked.

"I think that's me."

Prosecutor McMurry: You told investigators that you had never hit Cathy McNaughton, but that wasn't true either.

Alec McNaughton: That is true.

Prosecutor McMurry: That is untrue, isn't it?

Alec McNaughton: No, it's true.

Cathy's daughters, Michelle and Heather Mendenhall, watched McNaughton testify.

"He clearly lied about a lot of things on the stand," Michelle Mendenhall said. "I knew what the truth was."

"I can't believe my mom was married to someone like this," she continued. "Who is this person?"

Even his own lawyer can see the effect McNaughton is having on those in the courtroom.

"I'm looking at the court personnel ... and the expressions on their face changed," Kam said, showing they rolled their eyes.

"There are times during that cross-examination that what Mr. McNaughton said in the face of the evidence was so preposterous," said McMurry.

Alec McNaughton: There was a robbery.

Prosecutor McMurry: There was a robbery?

Alec McNaughton: Yes sir.

Prosecutor McMurry: Was there a TV missing?

Alec McNaughton: No.

Prosecutor McMurry: Was there a computer missing?

Alec McNaughton: No.

Prosecutor McMurry: Was her watch taken?

Alec McNaughton: No.

"I think everyone, myself included, sought to not visibly display our disbelief," said McMurry.

McNaughton denies everything his accusers say about him. "She's lying ... I did no such thing ... that's not true ..."

McNaughton has had his say. Now, the lawyers get their last chance to persuade the jury.

"For the first time in my career, we have a case where the victim has spoken from the dead. She recorded what has happened to her with that man," McMurry addressed jurors. "And the evidence shows who killed Cathy McNaughton."

"There were no calluses on his hands, no cuts, no bruises, no blood. No DNA. The only, only verdict you can render is that Alec McNaughton is not guilty of any offense," Kam said in his closing.

The jurors begin to deliberate on what looks to most people like an open-and-shut case.

That first night, the jury goes home with no verdict. At the end of the second day, the jurors announce they've decided: Guilty of murder.

Alec McNaughton, the man Cathy once thought was her soul mate, is convicted of killing her -stabbing her more than 30 times in the home they shared.

McNaughton says he was "stunned" that he was convicted.

"I still believe that justice will prevail and my wife's killer will be found, tried, convicted and executed," he said crying.

"This is a question I ask a lot of people in your situation," Schlesinger said. "What does justice feel like?"

"It definitely doesn't do anything to fill the void that she's not here, that we'll never physically see her again," Heather replied, tearing up. "I'll never hug her again ... it doesn't help those things."

It also doesn't answer one lingering question. How did a woman like Cathy -- a strong woman with friends, family and money - end up a victim of domestic violence?

"I feel like if my mom had said, 'One time's enough,'' maybe she'd still be here today and I wouldn't be sitting her talking to you," she continued.

And even though it is Alec McNaughton who stands convicted, it is Heather and Michelle who are left feeling guilty.

"For a good year, that's all I felt - guilt and regret that I didn't say anything and I just kept it to myself," Michelle said. "I didn't speak out when I had the chance, and you know, you cant - it was too late."

Alec McNaughton was sentenced to life in prison.

He now is represented by a public defender and is trying to get a new trial.

Domestic Violence Resources:

National Domestic Violence Hotline: (800)799-SAFE (7233)

Partnership Against Domestic Violence (Metro Atlanta): (404) 873-1766

Battered Women: Why They Don't Leave

Valentine's Day: Does "V" Stand for Domestic Violence?

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.