Secrets In The Sand

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

(CBS) 
So the family brought Julie back to Oklahoma, and Kendon soon followed, against Justin’s wishes.

"He was really angry. None of us understood why he cared so much about it except for if he liked the appearance of being such a noble guy to take in these children," Amber says.

She says she realized appearances were very important to Justin. "He would put his high school jeans on once a month to make sure they still fit. And if they didn't, he would fast until they did. He gave April a hard time about weight to the point where she was almost paranoid about gaining weight. And she was tiny," Amber remembers.

Amber also knew that April suspected Justin was having an affair in Jacksonville. When confronted by his wife, Amber says Justin denied the affair.

Det. Cole discovered the "other" woman was Shannon Kennedy, who worked at the agency where Justin’s company rented cars. Cole invited Shannon to the police station the same afternoon he was interviewing Justin.

"Shannon Kennedy came in right away. And she was very honest. She said it started out as kind of a social relationship. They'd go out, have drinks and what not. And eventually progressed into a sexual relationship," Cole says.

Justin, however, was less honest, at least at first. "He adamantly denied having any affairs with anyone, Shannon Kennedy specifically. I said, 'Well, I'm gonna bring her in this room. We're gonna get to the bottom.' He said, 'No, no, no.' He said, 'I did sleep with her. I have been having an affair with her.' Only confronted with her and he being in the same room did he tell the truth. To me, that's huge," Cole says.

When he searched Justin's apartment, Cole made another discovery: two life insurance policies, one in Justin’s name, one in April’s, for $2 million each.

April’s aunt Patty says she had always been troubled by that. "April thought it was a lotta money. Neither April nor I could understand why he was insisting to have a $2 million life insurance policy on her life," she explains.

Amber Mitchell thinks she knows why: "He was in debt up to his eyeballs," she says.

Stock market losses and other expenses had left Justin over $50,000 in debt. And by the summer of 2002, between the affair and the money problems, April had had enough.

"She was leaving him. She told him, the last time she saw him alive, that she was leaving him," Amber says.

As circumstantial evidence implicating Justin was mounting, Cole began to examine the crime scene more closely. And now, even the fact that Justin had been shot four times began to seem suspicious.

"He had one wound to his left shoulder, which was out and away. He had another one in his right shoulder. Same thing. It was kind of out and away," Cole says.

None of the wounds were near his vital organs.

But Justin and his brother Charlie found Cole’s description of the wounds preposterous. "It hurt him. He was in a lot of pain for a few weeks after. He had to keep the one arm in a sling," Charlie says.

Then, just months after the murder, while police were still trying to gather hard evidence against him, Justin suddenly moved to Oregon, where he got a new job, a new woman, and started a new life, far from Det. Cole’s scrutiny. But suspicions about Justin persisted.