Caught In The Crossfire

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

(CBS)  Four days after Charla's murder, there was still no sign of Darren Mack. His daughter Erika was now safely in hiding, but Charla's friends were still on edge

Mark Phillips was Charla’s boyfriend at the time of her death, and admits he feared he might be the next target.

Asked what he did to protect himself, Phillips tells Roberts, "I always had the shade drawn in my house. I would walk through the backyard to see if there were any disturbances before I went inside…. Always had everything double-locked."

While the people of Reno were lying low, Darren Mack was living large at a resort in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. It was familiar territory for Darren; he had been there a year earlier for a swinger’s convention.

Newspaper reporter Martha Bellilse went to Mexico to retrace Darren’s steps and met hotel employee Virginia Delgadillo, who said she met a man fitting Darren’s description last June

Virginia had no idea the guest flirting with her in the gym was a wanted man. "He was looking at me like (makes face like he’s checking her out) and just standing here and just like what is your name or something," she remembers.

Mack’s aggressive come on also caught the attention of another guest in the gym.

"There was a pilot who had also stayed at the same resort and was working out at the gym," Det. Chalmers explains. "He said the man was extremely arrogant and cocky and continuously was flirting with the young female employee."

When that pilot flew back to the states, he gave authorities the break they were looking for. "He saw the national media coverage of Darren Mack and believed that was the same person he’d see in Cabo San Lucas," says Chalmers.

The pilot called the FBI, but by the time agents got to the resort Darren was long gone, heading across the Sea of Cortez to another sunny Mexican shore.

Reno investigators, working with the FBI, were tracking Mack across Mexico, but he always managed to remain one step ahead. Then exactly one week after he disappeared, Darren Mack shocked everyone by offering to surrender

Mack called Dick Gammick, Reno's district attorney, who is a long-time Mack family friend. "He did express confidence to me that he called me because I'm the only one he trusts in the system," Gammick explained during a press conference.

While still in hiding, Darren also retained two high-priced defense attorneys, David Chesnoff and Scott Freeman.

They took over the surrender negotiations.

Neither Chesnoff, nor Freeman, would say Mack had killed his wife Charla.

"That’s not in dispute, is it?" Roberts asked.

"I think everything in this case is in dispute," Freeman replied.

What’s not in dispute is that they see Darren as a man pushed to the limit.

A series of e-mails Mack was sending while he was still on the run reveal a disturbing picture of this man. For example, in one message he holds himself up as a martyr for the father's rights movement saying, "remember, they want me as a sacrificial lamb. They want the pleasure of executing me."

In the same vain, he later writes that his story must get attention "To save the hundreds of thousands yet to go through little Nazi Germany in the divorce industry."

Asked what that suggests to him, Chesnoff tells Roberts, "I mean if that isn’t a clear example to a lawyer, or my colleague to have a psychiatric analysis of our client which I believe this calls out for that’s what I make of that."