Secrets Of Palm Beach

A Socialite's Secret Love Life Leads To Murder

(CBS)  Detectives learned that Linda was growing tired of financially supporting Jamrock and some other family members. Now they had a theory

"In his inebriated state, because he stopped by his aunt's house on the way home and he asks for money and she says no," Keith theorizes. "And in a fit of rage, he kills her. Sets the place on fire and then drives home. The problem with that scenario is the vehicle. Where does the vehicle go?"

Linda's stolen car was found at a train station, an 80-mile roundtrip from her home. It was a significant piece of evidence, just not against her nephew. Police couldn't figure out how he could have dropped off his aunt's car and made it back to Boca Raton by the time deputies arrived at his door

It was a roadblock, but cops continued to keep the heat on Jamrock. "I was walking out of the police station. And there was a uniformed police officer. And he yells out, 'Jamrock.' Of course, I turned around. 'Don't go far. You're goin' to jail.' That freaked me out," he remembers.

Despite their threats, investigators weren't solely focused on Jamrock. They were also digging into Linda's private life.

At 55, Linda was just hitting her stride after undergoing gastric bypass surgery and losing 70 pounds six months before her murder. Friends say it was a remarkable transformation in more ways than one.

"She was more outgoing, more positive, more peppy. She felt better health-wise. She felt like she could get up and go. She was back," remembers hairdresser Penny Chaimowitz, who helped Linda through her recovery. "I think her self-esteem was better, you know? She just, she had a little pick-me-up. She felt better about herself."

But those close to her say the newly confident and improved Linda was still missing something. "So, she was very happy. The only thing, she was very lonely. She wished she had somebody in her life," Linda's sister Bernice remembers.

According to Linda's friend Linda Marchese, the dating scene in Palm Beach is difficult. "Most of the women I know are single. As you get older in my group of friends, you're not dating as much," she explains.

And Bernice says her sister didn't have good judgment when it came to men.

Det. Keith was now focusing on Linda's social life, and that's when the investigation got interesting. "Some of the men that she dated, I mean, from our perspective were probably high risk type men," he explains.

Just days before she was murdered, Linda had gone to the movies on a first date. "Linda brought the popcorn bag back to her mom that night. Her mom still had it. So we collected it for fingerprint processing," Keith explains.

On the bag, police found fingerprints belonging to Linda’s date, James Bell. She had met him just days earlier at a stop light.

Bell remembers Linda leaning out the window and talking to him. "She just says I was a handsome man and that they had a benefit ball and that I should've been there," he recalls.

Barbara Wolff was with Linda that night she met Bell. "He passed by in a truck. And, she was, I told you she was very outgoing. And, she was waving out the window, to him and I think she threw out her number -- she gave it -- she yelled it out the window and he called her. I didn’t really know anything about him," Wolff says.

It turns out Bell had quite a past, with arrests for battery, DWI and more.

Asked if he told Linda about his criminal record, Bell says, "I don’t think I really knew her that long."

And that night at the movies, he definitely didn't mention his guilty plea for attempted second degree murder years earlier. "He shot somebody following an altercation, up around a pawn shop that he either ran or owned, which showed a propensity for being a hothead. I mean, same kind of scenario. Did Linda do something to upset him? And he killed her in a fit of rage?" Keith asks.

At that point, with his history, Det. Keith says investigators thought he might be the guy.