Snapped: Women Who Murder - Anette Cahill

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

The deadly beating of a young man in West Liberty, Iowa, remains unsolved for 25 years, until cold case detectives are approached by an unexpected witness.Season 27 Episode 17Originally aired...: July 19, 2020Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wonder East Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. A small Iowa town is devastated by a beloved bartender's murder. I need somebody to come out to my garage. I think my fiance is dead.
Starting point is 00:00:32 You just can't believe it at first. I was just in shock. Everybody loved him. That's just the way it was. Something very violent took place inside that bedroom. Because what he means is not, and he's cold. As this small town mystery unfolds over two decades, troubling new details continue to come to light.
Starting point is 00:00:55 She said when she was nine, she heard someone confess to a morgue. The motive was very specific. You have the epitome of this scorn lover. Anybody could understand how the anger would have well done. We're not done. I'll be back. No, not there. You won't. Oh, I will be. I'll be back. Someone who's very enraged, very angry at what has gone on,
Starting point is 00:01:17 they're more than capable of having committed this crime. She says, you know what? There's something I've never shared with law enforcement ever before today that I remember. She had quite a story to tell, and it wasn't a very pleasant story. West Liberty, Iowa is a quaint slice of the Midwest. It's a very rural, farming-oriented atmosphere. It's a type of small town community in Iowa where pretty much nobody locked their doors.
Starting point is 00:02:00 Everyone knows everyone. Everyone went to the same school as everybody else. Grew up together. But on October 13th, 1992, this farming community comes face-to-face with a big city crime. Around 6 p.m., the West Liberty Dispatch Center receives a frantic 9-1-1 call.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Hey, I need somebody to come out to my garage. I think my fiance is dead. The caller is 22-year-old Jody, and her fiance is 22-year-old Corey Winneke. OK, where are you thinking? You might be dead. He's going 20. He's not breathing.
Starting point is 00:02:40 And he's cold. West Liberty first responders brush to the scene. As you're looking into that bedroom, you can essentially see the torso of a victim that's lying on the floor. You could immediately tell if this was a blunt force trauma, type of crime, and the beating had taken place. In the midst of the chaos, Jody contacts Corey's mother, Susan.
Starting point is 00:03:08 When she called me, she's crying hysterically. As she said, he's dead. And I said, no, you can't be. How could he be dead? And by the time I got there, then they had it all yellow taped off. They wouldn't let me go in. When I just wanted to go in one more time, I didn't care what he looked. When I just wanted to go in one more time, I'd care what he looked like.
Starting point is 00:03:26 I just wanted to hold him one more time. Cory Winneke was born in West Liberty, Iowa on March 25, 1970. Cory was a very outgoing person. His family lived across the street from us. There was an open grassy field in behind their house, and we would get all the neighborhoods kids together and start playing baseball games. Cory was just like a big brother to everybody
Starting point is 00:03:58 in the whole neighborhood. He was just a great kid. In high school, Cory poured his energy and enthusiasm into sports. Cory was very, very good. They went to state in football. He played center and defensive line and he was a very, very good football player.
Starting point is 00:04:19 Cory was definitely very popular. Everybody knew Cory and he just was always warm and friendly to everybody. I'd sit up with him and watch TV even in high school, you know, so he told me a lot. We were very close. During his years at West Liberty High, Cory started dating Jody. The young couple fell in love and never looked back. He truly loved Jody and Jody was the one. She was real level-headed and she was smart
Starting point is 00:04:57 and she kept Cory grounded. Outside of school and extracurriculars, Cory put in hours at the family business, a local bar owned by his grandparents. Winks was a very popular bar. It was a busy bar. Around 16 years old, they'd go down and clean the bar on Sundays. He started going in and filling the coolers and stuff
Starting point is 00:05:21 for his grandma. He never was a bartender there until he was 18, until he graduated. Winks became a second home for Cory. So much so that after high school, he actually moved in. There was an apartment above Winks, and he moved in up there,
Starting point is 00:05:39 and Jody moved in with them. As a bartender, the former football star was hands down the most popular face behind the bar. Smiley happy, bubbly, made sure that everybody, everybody was there to have a good time. He didn't care if they called him a mama's boy or anything. He didn't care. He would always come down to the end of bar
Starting point is 00:06:02 and give me a hug and tell him, my mom, I love you. And he kissed me on the cheek. By 1992, Cory and Jody, both 22 years old, had moved into a farmhouse owned by Jody's father. Cory and Jody lived together in a very small house that was on a farm west of West Liberty. They were renting it, and Cory worked in West Liberty,
Starting point is 00:06:28 and Jodi had a job at a bank in Iowa City about a 25-minute drive away. She worked days, and he worked nights, so they'd, a lot of times, only have an hour or so before he'd go into work. In spite of their conflicting schedules, they found a way to make it work. In the fall of that same year,
Starting point is 00:06:47 they announced their engagement. When Cory gave her engagement ring, they'd been dating her for so long that, in our mind, it's just what came next. We really liked Jody. Unconditional, stood by him. Jody loved Cory.itional. Stood by him. Jody loved Korra. Very, very much.
Starting point is 00:07:07 With a job he loved and a woman he adored, there wasn't much Korri didn't have. Her way loved Korri. 22 years old. Had everything going for him. But a vicious attack on October 13, 1992 left local officers wondering who would want this well-loved 22-year-old dead. Investigators with the Sheriff's Department and the Iowa Division
Starting point is 00:07:35 of Criminal Investigation arrive at the scene to assist local police. It's a very violent act. This had the appearance to me of a blitz type, very rapid assault. There were blunt force trauma wounds to Corey's back and his arms, and then one fatal injury to the back of his head. That was, you know, as you can imagine, a terrible looking gash that ran ear to ear.
Starting point is 00:08:04 This is a brutal murder scene. Lots of passion, lots of intensity, lots of blood force trauma. Though investigators are unable to locate a murder weapon at the scene, they have an idea of what to look for. This was probably some type of a cylindrical object. We don't know at that point in time whether we're looking for a pipe or what we're looking for, but that it may have been some type of instrument like that. Investigators believe that whoever came to Corey's home likely brought the weapon with them,
Starting point is 00:08:37 along with the intent to kill. The house wasn't trashed, the house wasn't burglarized. There wasn't tables and chairs overturned. So I think the motive was very specific. And was there to do harm. Given the brutality of Corey's wounds, investigators think it's unlikely that Corey's murder was random. This wasn't a professional hit or something like that.
Starting point is 00:09:04 He was beaten to death with a blunt object. To me, that says rage. To my eye, it's pretty clear that whoever killed Cory Winneke was very pissed off at him. Coming up, investigators search for a motive and stumble upon a clue. He noticed the bat laying on the north side of the roadway. And a logical suspect enters the hot seat.
Starting point is 00:09:32 When you look at a homicide like this, it's somebody who's very close to the victim. Of course, the first thing you want revenge, your mind isn't quite right at that point. right at that point. MUSIC On October 13, 1992, 22-year-old Corey Winnickie was found beaten to death in his rural Iowa home. It appeared that the crime scene was contained to that one room.
Starting point is 00:10:03 The crime scene would include the bed, obviously, a body on the floor. There was blood spatter on the walls. With the hope of finding out who killed Corey, investigators turned first to Corey's fiance, Jody. Quite frankly, you have to be very close to a victim a lot of times in these type of circumstances to get mad enough or passionate enough
Starting point is 00:10:31 to want to end someone's life. So initially, you're always looking at people who are very, very close to the victim. She was obviously extremely upset at that point. She did pull it together enough to engage in a short interview with us. Jody explains that the last time she saw Corey, he was asleep in their bed when she left for work that morning, just after 8 a.m. We went through her day. It had been a very normal day for her.
Starting point is 00:11:01 She had left at 815 that morning to go to work. She had gotten off work. She'd run an errand or two and return home like she normally would. Jody says she expected Cory to be at Wink's bar for his shift, but when she got home, something was off. Everything was out of place for her. From when she pulls in the driveway, the dog was outside. The dog's never outside unchanged. Jody was also surprised to find her fiance's blue Cadillac in the driveway. He was supposed to have reported into work at approximately 5 p.m.
Starting point is 00:11:40 Jody says she entered the home and called out to Cory. When he didn't answer, she went to the bedroom and found him in the middle of a blood bath. When we talked to Judy at the crime scene, she was very credible, she was very believable. It didn't seem like an act was taking place. She was genuinely, extremely upset. And even though someone's extremely upset,
Starting point is 00:12:05 we're going to check and double check their story and we're going to corroborate their story. We've actually talked to someone who was present at the workplace and in fairly short order, Jody was eliminated as a suspect. It doesn't take long for word of Corey's murder to spread. Corey's loved ones struggle to come to terms with the jarring events.
Starting point is 00:12:30 You just can't believe it at first, you know. I was just in shock, crazy, you know, fallen hysterical. Of course, the first thing you want revenge, you don't care about a lot of things. You just, your mind isn't quite right at that point. You just want to know what happened. By dawn, local media is on the story.
Starting point is 00:13:04 Reporters move in on Cory's home where officers have been processing the crime scene through the night. There are media sources that were present at that crime scene. One reporter informs investigators of a potential clue. He was parked in a vehicle to the east of the crime scene behind the barrier tape, and he noticed a bat laying
Starting point is 00:13:29 on the north side of the roadway. Luckily, the DCI crime lab team was still at the residence at that point in time. So they had a crime scene tech perceived to the location where the bat was. The bat was covered in blood. The blood was primarily on what you would consider the striking end of the bat. It was a step in the right direction. You have now recovered the murder weapon or what we certainly believed to be the murder weapon. And we knew that we'd be in a position to try to get some evidence
Starting point is 00:14:02 off the bat. Investigators send the bat for forensic testing. While they wait for results, they search for witnesses. We have a lot of unanswered questions, so we want to conduct a neighborhood canvas. We want to talk to people in the area. We want to know if they have seen anything unusual, just any information that they have at that point in time. They catch a break when they speak with a farmer who lives nearby.
Starting point is 00:14:28 He tells investigators that he'd driven down the road by Cory's house a few times the morning of October 13th. Iowa farmers are just like any Midwest farmers. They drive slow down roads to check their crops. And this particular farmer just would also look for items in the ditch, maybe for collecting them or maybe just keep the ditches clean. But he was very adamant that at 9 o'clock when he drove by,
Starting point is 00:14:57 the bat was not on the road. At 1 o'clock when the farmer goes back to town, the bat is on the road. The bat's not on the road in the morning, and then is on the road on the afternoon. That's really important to us to show the time period when the murder happened. With the time frame of the murder narrowed down,
Starting point is 00:15:19 investigators hold out hope that evidence recovered from the bat will help track down Corey's killer. There's no question that Corey Winnickie was murdered. The question is, who was swinging the bat? When results from the crime lab arrive, detectives hope they will point them toward a suspect. They did the best thing that they could do at the time and that was look for fingerprints on the bat. Finding fingerprints is really hard. Especially when you have a bat that's been left out overnight on the side of the road, condensation, dirt dust, all kinds of things.
Starting point is 00:15:54 We certainly hope that we would get some fingerprints off the bat, that's not materialized. There were no DNA testing available at that point in time. The best that we could get was that they were able to type the blood on the bat, and the blood type was confirmed as being the blood type of the victim. With no major breakthroughs from the murder weapon, investigators hope piecing together Corey's final hours
Starting point is 00:16:22 will lead them to his killer. Did he recently have to throw someone out of the bar? piecing together Cory's final hours will lead them to his killer. Did he recently have to throw someone out of the bar? Somebody in the bar angry with him for some reason. As investigators interview Cory's co-workers and customers, they find no indication that Cory harbored any dark secrets or enemies. I never know anyone that did not like Cory. The normal 22-year-old didn't
Starting point is 00:16:47 do anything different or better, worse, or by loading. This was not a situation that involved gambling. This was not a situation that involved narcotics. I didn't have any real altercations or problems with anybody from the bar environment. So it began to lean more towards what was going on in this personal life. According to co-workers, the last time anyone saw Corey was in the early hours of October 13th, when Corey left the bar after closing with longtime friend Wendy Marshall.
Starting point is 00:17:23 Investigators tracked down 20-year-old Wendy to get her account firsthand. Wendy was someone who was talked with in regards to this crime. She had quite a story to tell about the events of the early morning of October 13th, and it wasn't a very pleasant story. Coming up, Corey's final hours come into focus. Anybody could understand how the anger would have well-dipped cheap, basically, about jumps out of a moving car.
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Starting point is 00:18:59 Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. October 1992, investigators in West Liberty, Iowa are searching for a clear picture of 22-year-old Corey Winnickie's final hours. They are now pressing Corey's friend Wendy Marshall about what happened after Corey's bartending shift the night before his murder. The bar closes at
Starting point is 00:19:32 two Corey would walk out the bar with Wendy to 15 to 30 somewhere in that tie-of-frame. Wendy tells investigators that she and Corey planned to hang out after work but as they headed to Corey's car, they found 29-year-old Annette Hazen waiting inside. Annette was a regular at Wink's Bar. It was a bartender at Wink's from time to time. She was a laborer, a drinker, a recreational drug user. According to Wendy, Annette was noticeably
Starting point is 00:20:07 innibrated that night. Annette was quite drunk and was agitated. Cory brings Wendy to the car. They get in the car. And Cory announces that he is going to take a net to her place, drop her off. Wendy tells investigators that as they drove, a net's agitation morphed into anger. And that is so mad that she basically jumps out of a moving car. She gets out, she walks around in front, and her and Cory have an argument.
Starting point is 00:20:45 Wendy is unsure what the argument was about, but when it was finally over, they both got back in the car, and Cory took Wendy back to her car at Wynx. Wendy, then, drove home. Cory then takes a net home, but then later comes back to Wendy's. Cory goes to Wendy's house to an after-hours party
Starting point is 00:21:08 and makes it home and is seen by his fiance prior to her departure for work. Based on Wendy's account, investigators are eager to talk with Annette. As it turns out, Annette is also eager to talk to them. Annette shows up on her own. So we had not contacted her, but she made her presence known at the police station and stated that she wanted to talk to the police.
Starting point is 00:21:39 This interview with Annette is going to be really critical. Born in 1962, Annette Hazen grew up in Nichols, Iowa with six older siblings. She with steel my grandpa's track can go for joy rides. She'd gone away with a lot of things that her older siblings wouldn't necessarily have gotten away with. Fresh out of high school, Annette and her boyfriend started a family. My parents met married when my dad was 17, and my mom was 19. It was born in 1982, and they had my brother in 85. Less than two years after the birth of their son, the couple split.
Starting point is 00:22:21 They were too young to take it seriously, to take a monogamous relationship seriously. And so there was a lot of playing around and hurt feelings. Despite the separation, Annette shared custody of the two kids. I was often on living with my dad, living with my mom, living with my dad. It just kind of went back and forth
Starting point is 00:22:42 from the time we were little. In the wake of her divorce, Annette moved into a rural farmhouse with her brother and his wife Jackie. She picked up a variety of jobs to make ends meet. Financially, things were not good. Definitely not the high point of Annette's life. She was relatively recently divorced. She was bartending sporadically at Winks,
Starting point is 00:23:07 as well as working other odd jobs. And she drank heavily. Between bartending and drinking at Winks, Annette got to know Corey and developed a crush. Annette is six or seven years older than Corey Winicky. They had met around town when he was a teenager, but didn't really get to know each other until he was 22 and she was 29 in 1992.
Starting point is 00:23:34 They were both in there every night. It seemed like, I mean, she just constantly wanted attention from him. And to be there every night, she was interested. But Cory wouldn't have left Jody. However, as Annette speaks with detectives, she reveals that Cory was more than just a crush. The two had a full-blown flame.
Starting point is 00:23:58 They were just having fun. They were both young. They both had life to live. Annette tells police that on the morning of October 13, when Winks closed around 2 a.m., she'd waited for Corey in his car. What a net thinks is going to happen that night is Corey will finish bar tending.
Starting point is 00:24:18 He'll close up the bar. And then he is going to take a net back to her place, and they will have sex at a net's place. And this is what they do regularly after the bar closes. And the thing that she sees when the door to the bar opens up is not quarried by himself. It's quarried with another woman, Wendy. A net corroborates Wendy's statement It's Cory with another woman, Wendy. A net corroborates Wendy's statement that she and Cory had an argument outside the car that night,
Starting point is 00:24:52 but says she and Cory later resolved the conflict. She was angry at Cory, and then they had sex and made up. Whatever anger there was was no longer at a boiling point. Investigators ask Annette to account for her time later that day, especially between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. when they believe Corey was murdered. Annette says she spent the majority of the day with her sister-in-law, Jackie. She says roughly 8.39 o'clock. She gets dropped off to do this roofing job.
Starting point is 00:25:31 She pulls shingles off the roof for a short period of time, and then Jackie haze and shows up to pick up a net, and they leave. They had traveled to Iowa City. They had stopped different places. However, a net admits that before they headed to Iowa City, they did make one stop at Cory's house. The Winnecube residence happens to be along the way, and she indicated that they had stopped there
Starting point is 00:26:01 at approximately 10 o'clock in the morning. To retrieve a book that she had left. He didn't answer the door, so they haven't talked to it. Though Annette says they left when Cory failed to answer the door, her story raises red flags. Annette's timeline happens to place her at the scene of this crime during the period of time that we believe the crime took place. during the period of time that we believe the crime took place.
Starting point is 00:26:29 But when investigators talk to Jackie, a net story checks out. Jackie was a net's alibi, her corroboration for what took place that day. Jackie told Bonnforcement that she and a network together that day, Jackie Hason provided receipts, a doctor's appointment, notice, other store receipts. To completely rule out a net, she has given a polygraph on October 22nd. And that consented to a polygraph examination and the results of that polygraph examination
Starting point is 00:27:08 were that she did not display any indications of guilt. With nothing to link a net to the crime, other than the suspicious timing of her visit to Cori's, investigators initiate a Hail Mary search for leads. As the investigation began to move forward, the interviews started to climb into the hundreds. And I think approximately 400 interviews were conducted in connection with this case over a four to six month period of time.
Starting point is 00:27:40 You move on to these other leads that are coming in, and that eventually those leads stop coming in. And that's when the case went cold. Coming up, a chance encounter shakes the dust off a quarter-century old case. The charge nurse said what value do you place in a statement from a nine-year-old girl? She had lit black candles, and she was crying,
Starting point is 00:28:07 and she said, I didn't mean to kill you. And a suspect comes back into the spotlight. This always killed me 25 years ago. Literally, almost killed me. The case went cold. The case had been reopened on three or four different occasions over the course of the years. Whether we felt that there was some new information that had been developed or were not available to us, we were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that.
Starting point is 00:28:36 We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that.
Starting point is 00:28:44 We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. We were still not able to do that. The case had been reopened on three or four different occasions over the course of the years. Whether we felt that there was some new information that had been developed, or whether we just brought it out to see if we could shake some new information into the case and make it a viable case to charge. But it wasn't until 2017 that that finally came to fruition. that finally came to fruition. In December of 2017, DCI agent Trent Villada is working a case at the University of Iowa Hospital. It was early December.
Starting point is 00:29:16 I was there for another case. The charge nurse, Jesse Becker comes up to me. She asked, do you know anybody with the DCI that does cold cases? I said, yeah, I'm one of the people that actually work on him, and I asked her why. And she said, well, when she was nine, she heard someone confess to a murder.
Starting point is 00:29:38 She gives me the name of Corey Winnickie as the victim. Trent is now very interested and fascinated by what Jesse Becker's telling him. And so he calls and he says, hey, I would like another set of eyes. Would you come talk to Jesse Becker? On December 15, 35-year-old Jesse Becker sits down with two DCI agents.
Starting point is 00:30:05 She explains that as a kid, she frequently spent the night at a friend's house, where a net hasen also lived. Jesse was 9th of time, and she was friends with another 9-year-old girl, the daughter of Jackie Hasen. So, you know, this is Antonette, too, the girls. One night in the fall of 1992, Jessie slept over at the Hazon Farm, nearing midnight.
Starting point is 00:30:33 She crept downstairs in search of food. She realizes, you know, someone's down there. And as she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she's peering around into, I believe, what they would classify as a dining room area and she sees a net. And she starts to overhear a net talking to herself. She had lit black candles, and she was crying.
Starting point is 00:30:59 And she said, I'm so sorry, Cory. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to kill you. She's not seen by a net. And at some point, she turns and goes back up the stairs. She's scared by what she's heard. If Jessie's story is true, it could be the key to solving a 25-year-old murder.
Starting point is 00:31:23 What we need is someone to kind of corroborate what Jesse's saying. Jesse told us at the initial interview, look, I went home and told my mom so we go to Jesse's mom. And Jesse's mom said the exact same thing. Jesse's mom said, I remember Jesse coming home, telling me that she heard a nut say,
Starting point is 00:31:43 Corey, I'm sorry, for killing you. Jesse's mom, Cindy, explains that complicated circumstances in her personal life kept her from going to police at the time. Chess two young children, and she knew the type of people that a nut was running around with at the time, and she made the determination for her family safety that maybe they shouldn't say anything. The fact that she passed the polygraph test,
Starting point is 00:32:12 people placed a great weight on that at that point in time. Investigators track down a net and learn she is now a net, K-Hell, a mother and grandmother living in nearby Tipton, Iowa. She, from everything we could tell, not long after Cory Winneke's death, had essentially started a new life, had married a man, had a new family essentially with that individual, and was living a very quiet life in a neighboring county.
Starting point is 00:32:47 Detectives ask Annette to come to the station for questioning. She's told me a little bit about herself and her upbringing and how she came to live at the Hazen House. And then she's told me about her relationship with Corey and her feelings and recollections of him. It's clear that Annette's 1992 account of a casual fling has changed. She makes it very clear that she was in love with Cory. She believed she was going to be the new love of his life.
Starting point is 00:33:30 We have talked about Skipping Town. In fact, the following Monday, week after he died, we were supposed to go to our fallen Saturday. I'm sorry. We were supposed to go to our fallen Saturday. I'm sorry. We were supposed to go to Branson to look at Martin's birthday. The idea was Corey would buy the bar, and that would work there. And they basically would start a life together.
Starting point is 00:34:00 A net cuts the interview short to get back to work. It was still a work day. It was still the afternoon. And then she stayed for an hour, 20 minutes, an hour, 30 minutes, and talked and answered any question he asked. Agent Turbett returns to Anet's home two weeks later to continue the conversation. This almost killed me 25 years ago, literally almost killed me. I was doing drugs and drinking myself to death.
Starting point is 00:34:36 She stops me at one point in this interview and she says, you know what? There's something I've never shared with law enforcement ever before today that I remember. I decided to go after I made him stop car. And that was her name. And then he said, I'm nothing to you. And he yelled at me. You're not nothing to me. I love you. Even though Corey confessed his love, a net tells the agent she was hurt that he left her later that night.
Starting point is 00:35:07 You actually cried when he left. You felt neglected and wish that he could have stayed with you. Probably, yeah. Why were you mad? You know the old saying, the fish were cut bait. When she described it in her interview, this fish are cut bait moment, it was abundantly clear that she's never going to be anything other than his sure thing
Starting point is 00:35:30 when the bar closes. I think for a net, it was her dream to finally settle down. When Cory broke up with her, I think that's when her hopes and dreams ended. When Agent Herbitt confronts a net with Jesse Becker's statement, things get heated. You remember being in that house? At Jackie's house? Cory, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I killed you, Cory. I'm so sorry. No! Cory, I'm sorry I killed you.
Starting point is 00:36:00 Wait. I'm going in my lawyer. We're not done in that. I'll be back. Wait, no, not there. You won't. Oh're not done enough. I'll be back. No, not there, you won't. Oh, I will be. I'll be back. Between Jesse Becker's statement and Annette's tumultuous history with Cory, investigators feel they have enough to make an arrest.
Starting point is 00:36:19 I think that, at some point, she was tired of being just someone he was having sex with on the side. You have the epitome of the scorned lover, and Annette was not going to have that any longer. Investigators present their case to a grand jury and obtain an arrest warrant for Annette. On May 31, authorities arrest a net at her home. She told me that I didn't know how wrong I was,
Starting point is 00:36:52 and that was the end of it she said that she didn't want to talk without a lawyer, and at that point we were done talking. So I wrote with her to the jail. Coming up, will new evidence be enough to get a conviction 25 years later? They couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. A last chance witness attempts to save the case. He saw her dumping clothes into a burn barrel. They had blood on them.
Starting point is 00:37:21 What on them? After 27 years, a cold case has new life. In March 2019, 56-year-old Annette K. Hill steps into a musketeam county courtroom where she faces a first-degree murder charge for the 1992 killing of Cory Winneke. Jesse Becker takes the stand and recounts the story she had told investigators. Jesse Becker testified that when she was a nine-year-old girl, she had overheard a net-k-hell confess to killing Cory. She had overheard a net-k-hill confess to killing Cory. For the jury, Jesse's testimony isn't enough.
Starting point is 00:38:12 The jury for mental the judge that they couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. A mistrial was declared. We assumed that at that point, then the defense could rest. And the prosecution would drop the whole situation. At that point, then the defense could rest. And the prosecution would drop the whole situation. After the mistrial, it seems life for a net could go back to normal. That is, until a casual conversation brings a new witness into the case. After a funeral, I just start talking to the wife of a friend of ours, and it always kind of seemed to turn to Cory.
Starting point is 00:38:47 Talk and stuff. And she said to me, I just don't know why they never interviewed my son in the trial. I said, what's his name? And she said, Scott Payne. Cory's mother passes the information to DCI agents. I get a call from Susie Winneke that she wanted me to talk to Scott Payne, and she said that he had information that he wanted to share.
Starting point is 00:39:11 Scott Payne may have been, well, in 1992 and 1993, interviews, but he didn't reveal that he had any evidence in connection with this crime at that point. Now, you have to realize that he was very involved in drugs and didn't have any desire to talk to the police. On July 29, 2019, an investigator sits down with 54-year-old Scott Payne. Scott explains that he was at the hazen farm on the day of the murder and he'd seen a net. He said he saw a net pull up.
Starting point is 00:39:45 He said she had a brown paper sack with clothes. He saw her dumping clothes into a burn barrel and said that he believed they had blood on them. I said to him, well, how did you know it was blood on the clothes? And he gave me one of the best answers I've ever gotten out of a witness. And that was, I used to work at a slaughterhouse. Between Jesse and Scott, prosecutors hope they can finally convict a net.
Starting point is 00:40:16 In September 2019, they face her in court once again. Prosecutors lay out for the jury exactly what they believe happened on October 13, 1992. Cory did not feel about Annette the way Annette felt about Cory. Cory was sick of Annette. Prosecutors also alleged that after Cory left Annette's that night, she didn't stay home crying over her broken heart. What I argued to the jury is that a net followed
Starting point is 00:40:49 Cory to Wendy's and saw that Cadillac park out in front. If you think about how angry a net would have been when she saw Wendy come out of the bar, that anger must have been far worse when she sees that car in front of Wendy's apartment. While prosecutors can't account for exactly what went on between a net showing up at her roofing job and running errands with Jackie, they believe at some point that morning
Starting point is 00:41:18 a net paid a final visit to Cory. And the rage that had simmered all night, boiled over. final visit to Cory, and the rage that had simmered all night, boiled over. When you place a bat in the hand of someone who's very enraged, very angry at what has gone on, she's more than capable of having committed this crime. Jesse Becker makes another appearance on the witness stand,
Starting point is 00:41:44 and Scott Payne makes his debut. Scott Payne testified that shortly after the murder of Cory Winneke, he saw a net-k-hill burn bloody clothing in a burn barrel at the Hayson household. A net's defense contests Scott's credibility as a witness. Mr. Paine has had a really tough life, including years of heavy methamphetamine and alcohol abuse. In addition, Annette's attorneys argue
Starting point is 00:42:17 their client's track record speaks for itself. She's always participated voluntarily in the investigation of the death of Corey Winneke. She just is a person with nothing to hide. It just didn't compute. After hearing impassioned arguments from both sides, the jury delivers the verdict on September 19, 2019. The jury had unanimously found a at-k-hell guilty
Starting point is 00:42:47 of second-degree murder. I was at work, and my fiance actually texted me and said, I'm so sorry. The trial's over. They found her guilty. And I just burst into tears right there at work and had to go home. It's been the next couple days at home.
Starting point is 00:43:09 I think it was an appropriate choice by the jury that she go there with the intent to cause someone's death, maybe, maybe not. But I think that everyone can believe that she did go there and that she went there to commit a bad act that ended in the murder of Cory. And that's essentially what they found her guilty of. For Cory's family, the conviction is minimal consolation. For the loss, they will always feel. You know, I don't like the word closure. It gives you peace of mind. It's never closure because it doesn't bring my son back. She might be there now in prison, but I don't feel sorry for her because she had a life.
Starting point is 00:43:56 She got married more than once. She had kids and then she had grandkids. All the things we wanted Cory to have, and we didn't have him all those the things we wanted Cory to have and we didn't have him all those years and we'll never have him again. I missed going in the wings and seeing him behind the bar. I miss him telling me, Mom, I love you. A net was sentenced to 50 years in prison and is serving her time at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women. She maintains her innocence and has since had her appeal denied.

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