Caught In The Crossfire

Who Is To Blame For A Wife's Death And A Judge's Shooting?

(CBS)  But things changed after their daughter, Erika, was born in 1997.

"Erika had a very normal life with her mother-movies, play dates, sleepovers, parties. That was Charla's life, was to make Erika's life so beautiful and so fulfilled with kid things," remembers Charla's friend Ann.

Charla told Darren she was no longer interested in swinging. As the marriage began to crumble, letters and e-mails 48 Hours obtained document an increasingly abusive relationship.

"I have told you consistently if you didn’t stop physically and verbally attacking me I would divorce you," one correspondence read.

But it wasn’t Charla who claimed to be the victim. It was Darren.

"He kept a diary, in which he said she kicked him in the testicles, but missed, she scratched his car, she yelled at him on the phone. Oh, yes. She belittled him in front of his friends, went on, and on and on for six pages like this," says Robb.

Darren’s friend Michael Small says that despite his imposing stature, Darren Mack lived in fear. "He was very scared of her. I was with him a couple of times when she called and threatened him."

Small says a big part of Darren's desire to end the marriage was the alleged abuse. "It’s a known fact that he carried a gun right here because he was worried she was gonna come kill him," he tells Roberts.

But Charla was apparently looking over her shoulder, too. "He showed up at the house where she and Erika were and they had some kind of confrontation. And he had her by the neck and was trying to strangle her," says Ann.

In the end, it was Charla who filed for divorce and Darren moved out. The couple fought constantly over Erika but fought even more over money, which Darren claimed was running out.

Family Court Judge Chuck Weller ordered Darren to pay Charla $10,000 a month until the divorce was settled. But Darren thought the ruling, and the judge, were unfair.

Just after 11 a.m. on June 12, 2006, bystanders in downtown Reno heard a loud bang echo off the buildings.

Detective Ron Chalmers joined hundreds of police officers to shut down the city, while swat teams fanned out searching for what they believed was a sniper.

"You're looking up. You're checking buildings. We could at least narrow down the area the shot came from because the bullet went through a glass window," Chalmers remembers.

"People were hiding in different businesses and restaurants, trying to get people off the street because they didn’t know if the shooter was still shooting," recalls Reno Gazette Journal reporter Martha Bellisle, who rushed to the scene.

It turned out only one bullet was fired that morning, exploding through the window of Judge Weller and spraying him and his assistant with shrapnel.

It was just minutes after the shooting when police got a break from a phone call.

The caller was Dan Osborne, a childhood friend of Darren Mack’s, and he had a disturbing story to tell.

Osborne told police he had been at Darren's home that morning when Charla dropped off their daughter. He and Erika stayed upstairs while Darren spoke to Charla privately.

"Downstairs somehow Darren lured Charla into the garage," says Robb. "The daughter upstairs heard a dog yelping and told Darren’s friend 'I think your dog is yelping.'"

After the frantic barking continued, Osborne told police he went to check on his dog. That’s when he ran into Darren coming out of the garage. Osborne said Darren brushed past him with a weird look, his hand wrapped in a towel, and that he didn’t say a word.

"Few moments later, the dog came in, covered in blood," says Det. Chalmers.

"He became incredibly frightened and said to the little girl 'We have to leave.' They left," Robb explains.

Osborne put Erika in his car and started driving; minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was Darren.

"And Darren says 'Meet me at Starbucks.' The friend, who is completely flipped out at this point, meets him at Starbucks with the little girl," Robb tells Roberts.

Mack took his daughter aside and spoke to her for a few minutes and then drove off on his own.

"If he thought that maybe Charla had been injured that morning, why would he allow Darren Mack to see his little girl?" Roberts asks Chalmers.

"Well I think that Dan Osborne felt that he probably owed Darren Mack some gratitude. He was an employee for the Mack family. Whether it's poor judgment or not, he chose to allow Darren to see his daughter," the detective replies.

Based on Osborne's story, police rushed to Darren's condo. "As we looked around the property a little closer, we found three droplets of blood in the driveway near the garage door," Chalmers remembers.

Behind that garage door was Charla Mack’s lifeless body. According to writer Amanda Robb, Charla was found wearing no shoes or socks and was stabbed seven times.