Secrets In The Sand

A Wife Is Murdered, Her Husband Shot Four Times. Who Pulled The Trigger?

(CBS) 
They had lived like this for more than a year when, in the summer of 2002, April came to Jacksonville to celebrate their third wedding anniversary. On the night of Saturday, Aug. 17, they went out for dinner and drinks.

After dinner, Justin says the couple shot a few games of pool and then went for a drive.

Justin says their destination was a remote state beach, where he and April had been before. "We had been there a few times before. April's previous birthday, and I think perhaps our anniversary the year before. It was a place that we would go to be alone on the beach," he explains.

The couple took off their shoes and started walking along the shoreline. Suddenly, Justin says, a strange and threatening man appeared right in front of them.

"He was Caucasian. He had a hat on. It's a dark hat with a logo," Justin tells Dow.

Asked if he thinks it was a robbery, Justin says "Yes." He also says he saw a gun.

Justin says he lunged at the man. Then shots rang out. Justin doesn’t remember what happened next—he thinks he passed out.

When he came to, he says he didn't see anything at first—April was nowhere to be seen and didn't respond to his calls.

Justin’s wife and his attacker had both disappeared into the darkness. "I ran down the beach. I couldn't find her. I was screaming," he remembers.

After desperately scouring the beach in search of his wife, Justin says he finally found 27-year-old April floating face down in the surf. He rushed into the water and tried to revive her.

"She wasn't responding to me," he remembers.

Justin says he pulled April to shore, and that’s when he noticed she’d been shot. He tried several times to lift her into his arms, but he couldn’t do it. "My body was not responding the way that I think that it should have," he remembers.

Panicking, he bent over April’s limp body and grabbed the waistband of her pants, then dragged her several hundred feet.

"We got to the point at which the boardwalk meets the sand. And then there’s a set of stairs that lead up to the boardwalk," Justin tells Dow. "I couldn’t very well drag her up the stairs. I wanted to lean her over my shoulder and try to carry her that way to the road."

But his last ditch effort to lift April also failed. "I dropped her. And I think the sound of her hitting the ground caused a reaction in me. I knew at that point that what I was doing was just not working."

It was at that moment that Justin says he figured out what was wrong. The reason he couldn’t carry his petite wife to safety was because Justin himself had been shot—and not just once—but four times. And now Justin says he was forced to do the unthinkable: leave his wife on the beach, while he blazed a trail to find help, alone.

Realizing he had left his cell phone at home, Justin says he darted into the middle of the road to wave for help but three cars whizzed past him.

"I ran to our vehicle," he recalls. "I remember getting in the truck and driving back to town." Shaken and injured, Justin sped off into the darkness.

"I was driving very, very fast with my four-way flashers on. Driving erratically. I was looking for help. I was looking for attention," he explains. "I remember seeing a red light. And stopping there and cars were there. And I started yelling for help."

At a major intersection, Justin says he finally found a good Samaritan who called 911.