Almost Paradise
48:17 Share

Summer's here and Nordstrom has everything you need for your best dress season ever. From beach days and weddings to weekend getaways and your everyday wardrobe. Discover stylish options under $100 from tons of your favorite brands like Mango, Skims, Princess Polly and Madewell. It's easy too with free shipping and free returns. In-store order pickup and more. Shop today in stores online at nordstrom.com or download the Nordstrom app.

Summer on the south side of Chicago is heating up. You planning revenge? On two. This Chi is back on Paramount+.

It's the season of the women. Women, this is our chance. It's time to get to work. But the men aren't giving up without a fight. The tree's always going to have a villain. No one is backing down in the Showtime Original Series from Emmy Award winner Lena Waithe. Why do black women always have to save the day? If we don't do it, who else will? The Chi, new season now streaming on the Paramount Plus with Showtime Plan. ♪♪

The Hamptons is a playground for the rich and the famous. A couple hours from Manhattan. Money runs like water. Fancy cars, huge estates, security gates, seclusion. In October of 2001, Ted Ammon was brutally murdered in his East Hampton mansion. There was nothing that was really disturbed in the house. There was no ransacking. The perpetrators had opened up the door to the bedroom, walked in, approached the bed.

This was an individual sleeping. Somebody who's jumped on and doesn't have a chance to do much fighting back. He was beaten about the head and probably fairly early on in the assault was dragged off the bed. The individual over him is literally raining blows down on his head until he's struck some 30 to 35 times, which is a conservative estimate. Ted Ammon. I thought he was the greatest. He's the all-American guy.

6'4", good looking, smart, got a personality that'll knock your socks off. This guy's doing billion dollar deals. It's not surprising that Generosa ended up with a person like Ted Ammon. It fits the profile of the person that she had been looking for. Generosa was my first cousin. We grew up together in California. There was never a doubt in my mind that Generosa would succeed when she went to New York.

Ted saw that fire in her eye. Don't really think that he knew what he was getting in for. I sincerely think that they were very happy together at first. I think they were best friends. They were partners. And then it just got uglier and uglier. She was every blue collar guy's dream. She was a woman divorcing in the prime of her life. She had everything going for a guy like me. Danny Pelosi walked into Generosa's life just from nowhere.

I walked in, I got a beer at the bar and the bartender looked at me and he says, "Hey buddy, I think you're in the wrong place." Danny and Generosa? Come on. He's a street guy. Are you kidding me? I was in love with this woman. Ted Ammons dead. There's a lot of money at play. My first thought when I heard about the murder was where were the children? That's what went through my mind.

This story has everything. It's got murder, megabucks, anger, affairs. It's got glamour, it's got poverty, it's got revenge. And an ending you won't believe. It was the princess and the pauper. Let me turn back into a frog, please. It's easier to be a frog. Murder in the Hamptons.

It has all the ingredients of a Hollywood drama, a horror story in a fairy tale setting, complete with love and hate, money and murder. It's a good story. It's a big story. I mean, bad news is a good story. Kieran Crowley, a reporter for the New York Post, has written a book, Almost Paradise, about the murder of Ted Ammon. This guy was tall, dark and handsome. He was brilliant.

Ted Ammon had a middle-class childhood spent side by side with his sister Sandy. He loved playing the trumpet. He breezed through Bucknell College as a frat boy and lacrosse player. He married and moved to London to practice law.

He was so sharp that he had a tutor and he studied for and took and passed the bar exams without going to law school. That's how smart he was. When his first marriage ended less than 10 years later, Ted was looking for an apartment in New York City. He booked an appointment with a real estate agent named Generosa Rand. He didn't show up. He was being flaky. He blew her off. She called him the next morning and basically cursed him out.

and said, "Who do you think you are?" Generosa was tough and outspoken and Ted Ammon wanted to meet her in person. She told him, "I'm not really a real estate agent. I'm an artist and a photographer." And he found her fascinating. She was charming and sparks flew right away. They met on kind of rough terms. Generosa's cousin, Al Legay. I think when they got together, they were a pretty interesting couple.

because they're both strong people. Ted and Generosa married in 1986. Ted went on to make tens of millions of dollars on Wall Street before he quit. That was when he and Generosa adopted two-year-old twins from the Ukraine. Did they seem happy? Seemed extremely happy. A few years later, the Ammons abruptly left New York to move into this rambling stone manor house in the English countryside.

She was trying to pull Ted out of New York City in the very busyness of his life. Ed Meyer was one of Generosa's lawyers. She persuaded him to start to relax, to enjoy the family, enjoy the English countryside. But the couple didn't enjoy it for very long. Ted took frequent trips back to New York, and Generosa became convinced they were not all for business. She began telling friends Ted was having an affair.

By the summer of 2000, they were both back in Manhattan, but living separately. Generosa had filed for divorce and was looking for more than $1 million a year in living expenses. Between $100,000 and $150,000 a month was not that much, believe it or not, when you're talking about that kind of income.

Generosa evidently wanted to hurt Ted and not just financially. She was in the business of riling up, riling up her husband. Before the divorce was final, she found a new boyfriend, Danny Pelosi, and he was everything Ted was not. She came from a world of enormous wealth, been to every continent. I've been to Florida. Yeah.

It all started in the fall of 2000 when Generosa hired Danny to supervise the multi-million dollar renovation of her new townhouse. I ended up staying at the job instead of driving all the way back to Long Island. And one morning Generosa showed up and found me sleeping in the truck. And she said none of her work is done.

sleep in the truck. She turned around and said, "You come stay at the Stanhope. I'll get you a room at the Stanhope." The Stanhope is one of the swankiest hotels in New York. Generosa and her two children were living there during the renovation. Of course I was flirting. I was in the middle of a divorce. And this was a very attractive, elegant lady who told me she was getting divorced. She told me she hadn't had sex in two years.

Before long, the two were dating. His sister Barbara watched as the woman who had everything decided she had to have Danny. She was crazy about Danny. That was the first thing I picked up on right away. But they were a good match? They were a perfect match, I thought, because she was very good to him and she

genuinely cared about him. And just to think she wanted something to do with me blew me away. It was the biggest ego trip in the world. Danny Pelosi is a high school dropout and former drug and alcohol abuser with a rap sheet filled mostly with drinking and driving charges. But things were looking up. He'd no longer have to worry about drinking or driving. The next thing I know it I was driving around in a limousine putting a wine menu in front of me that's not even written in English, you know.

I drink Bud Light. It's that easy. That summer, Danny became a fixture in the Hamptons. Did he look funny in that mansion in East Hampton? He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to act. He would sit out there sometimes on the front porch with his cell phone and his coffee and say to me, "Can you believe this? Can you believe we're here?" Did you fall in love with her? I mean, did you love her? Yes. Yes, I absolutely did.

I absolutely fell in love with her. But Generosa's divorce from Ted Ammon was consuming most of her time by the summer of 2001. The world's worst divorce. The divorce from hell. Now for like a year and a half, they had no communication between each other. Instead, Danny says, the Ammons used

private detectives to find out what they needed to know. - It was like spy versus spy there. Generosa spy on Ted, Ted spy on Generosa. There were people falling out of the trees at the beach house. - Somebody fell out of the trees? - Yeah, video recording. - What were they recording? - Me and Generosa in the backyard. - That'll ruin the moment.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, right there. But the real victims, by all accounts, were Ted and Generosa's two children. The parents were so involved in the divorce, they forgot about the kids. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't right. By October 2001, after more than a year of bitter feuding, Ted and Generosa Ammon were close to settling. Generosa would get about $25 million. I think he wanted to get it over with. They all needed to get it over with.

But just before the divorce papers were to be signed, Ted Ammon was found bludgeoned to death in his East Hampton mansion. And the investigation began. Now streaming. Hi again. TV's quirkiest crime solver. I'm Elsbeth Tassioni. I work with the police. Is on the case. I like my outlandish theories with a heavy dose of evidence.

And ready to go toe-to-toe with a cavalcade of guest stars. Are you saying that this is now a murder investigation? It's starting to look that way. Don't miss a moment of the critically acclaimed hit, Elsbeth. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and return CBS Fall. That sounds like fun. Obviously, murder's not fun. Shortly after 5 in the afternoon on October 22, 2001, Ted Ammon's battered, naked body was found in his East Hampton mansion.

The entire assault probably took place in less than five minutes. Prosecutor Janet Albertson. He had clearly had covers or bedding thrown over him. You can see the smears from the bloodstains on the side of the mattress and on the frame. He's got defensive wounds to the backs of his hands, which clearly indicated that he had been down on his hands and knees at some point with his hands over his head, moving back and forth to try to protect himself.

There were far more potential suspects than there were solid leads. There was Ted Ammons ex-wife. There was also his girlfriend who was one of the last people to see him alive. And there was the business partner who discovered Ammons body. But it didn't take long before police focused their attention where they usually do.

on the spouse, in this case a very angry, very scorned, Generosa Ammon. She despised him. Danny's sister Barbara saw the hatred. This was an ugly divorce. This was an ugly divorce. But Danny was also a suspect, especially when police found out that he was the one who'd hired a company to install a video surveillance system in the East Hampton mansion, which Ted Ammon used when Generosa wasn't there.

Did he say where he wanted the cameras put? He left that basically up to me, but he wanted a general location, making sure all the certain areas were covered. This here is a live shot. The system was installed by John Cundall six months before the murder. It allowed Danny and Generosa to watch whatever was going on inside the house, even at moments like this, when Ted Ammon thought no one was watching.

All they had to do was log on to their remote laptop computers. All I know is that you went to the thing, you hit Beach House, and boom, there was the Beach House. That's what I know. But he says the system was installed because Generosa wanted to spy on Ted as their divorce got more and more nasty. The system was installed originally to prove that Ted was removing items from the house.

But police started to wonder if Danny and Generosa could see when Ted Ammon was alone in the house, would they know when to make their move? I have to ask you this because people have said this about you and this is an awkward question. No, I did not murder Ted Ammon. You knew what the question was? I know what the question was. I've been trying to scream it since day one.

But Danny was a suspect from day one because the heart of the surveillance system, a computer hard drive that records images from the cameras,

had been removed from its hiding place in a remote part of the house. The first thing you have to say is who would have known it was there, much less known how to remove it. I never had anything to hide. But Danny claims he has an alibi for the night Ted Ammon was murdered. He can prove he drove out from Manhattan to Long Island very late Saturday night to attend a wedding the next day. He stopped at his sister's house,

which is about an hour from East Hampton, where Ted Ammon was killed. I know that he arrived at 1.20. At about 2 a.m., Danny met up with a friend. He says they went out for beer. Barbara's daughter, Kelly, remembers hearing Danny come home a little later. Did you talk to him? Yeah. He wanted to know where the blankets were so he can...

go to sleep. And you looked at the clock? Yeah. And what time was it? It said three. I don't remember the other two numbers clear at all, but I just know for a fact that the first number was three. They were not in or around the vicinity of Middle Lane and East Hampton at the time Ted Ammon was murdered. We had what I view as an airtight alibi for both of them. But Danny and Generosa remained the focus of scrutiny and suspicion, and soon they gave everyone even more to talk about.

Generosa, the wealthy widow, and Danny, her blue-collar boyfriend, got married in January of 2002, just three months after Ted Ammon's murder. Did you worry about how it would look? No. I had nothing to worry about. Did she worry about how it would look? No. No, not at all. And then Generosa surprised everyone when she moved with her two kids to Danny's hometown, Center Moriches, a nice town

but hardly a millionaire's playground. She wanted her kids to have a family. She wanted me to be around my kids. My kids live five minutes from here. All she wanted was a family. She wanted him to be close to his family. Joanne Matheson, who was Generosa's full-time housekeeper, says her boss was happy with her new life. As long as she was with Danny, she didn't care. If she was in East Hampton over there, it didn't matter to her. She was happy. Put Buddy on the boogie board.

But the fun would soon end.

It was mind-blowing. It was earth-shattering. It was unbelievable. Just months after they were married, Generosa learned she was dying of breast cancer. She was just 46. It was just like, what else can go wrong? How are these kids going to make it through this? Not just me. Joanne says Generosa and Danny tried to make the best of the time they had left. He got along great. She thought he was really funny. They would play Scrabble.

all day long because now she was getting you know she was sick but the investigation was continuing and generosa and danny were now the prime suspects it wasn't long before their marriage started to fall apart under the pressure of it all everything was going hey why

In July of 2003, after a year and a half of marriage, Generosa left Danny and moved with her two children back to the East Hampton mansion, where she would spend the last weeks of her life. Even after she was sick, she wanted to make sure that Danny was protected because her words to me was,

This was my husband and my life. Danny had nothing to do with this and I'll make sure that Danny is always protected. - Generosa Ammon died in August of 2003, leaving Danny as the lone suspect. - I was freaking out. I was freaking out big time because that's when I realized this is real. It was part of her wish. It was part of her talks that we had.

It made perfect sense to Danny Pelosi at the time, going to the Stanhope Hotel for a farewell drink with his wife's ashes. She told me to take her remains and go to the bar and sit in the booth that we sat in every night. She told you she wanted you to do that? She told me just like I'm telling you right now. Did that seem weird to you? Generosa was different. She was different.

Photographer Robert Kalfas found Danny sitting in a booth drinking a beer. That's the box with the ashes. Yes, it's Garden State Crematory. And there was a, I guess it was a wedding ring set up on the napkin. And he ordered her a drink? Yep, cosmopolitan, a little cigarette there. When the New York Post ran the picture the next day, Danny started to have some regrets. Were you embarrassed by that? Was I embarrassed by that picture they showed? Yes, absolutely.

But Danny Pelosi would soon have a lot more than his image to worry about. Do you look over your shoulder for cops? I don't have to look over my shoulder. They fly over my house. They drive by my house. They harass my family. They harass my friends. Danny had become the lead suspect in the murder of Ted Ammon. Ultimately, when you looked at everything together,

It just always came back to him. Finally, in March 2004, after a two and a half year investigation, Danny Pelosi was arrested and charged with murder. We had some pretty powerful circumstantial evidence, but we, you know, did not have the smoking gun. Didn't have DNA, didn't have fingerprints, didn't have blood. And by no means was this a slam dunk. Good morning.

Danny Pelosi hired one of the best defense lawyers money can buy, Jerry Shargell. You know, he may not speak the King's English, and he doesn't have a Ph.D. And, in fact, he's a high school dropout, but he's not a killer. I ain't doing nothing.

There was no physical evidence linking him to the murder, no forensics, no witnesses. And Chargel insists that Danny, who was only Generosa's boyfriend at the time of the murder, had no motive because he had no right to Ammon's wealth. I will tell you that there was absolutely no motive here. There was no financial motive and there was no other motive of any kind. There were a lot of people out there that had a lot more to benefit.

from Ted Ammon's death than Danny. In fact, according to attorney Ed Meyer, Danny actually got along with Ted Ammon. He liked Ted Ammon. I know he liked Ted Ammon.

But everyone knew Generosa hated Ted Ammon. In fact, she hated him so much, she didn't want his family caring for her twins after her death. Generosa had no family of her own. She was raised an orphan. Her mother died of breast cancer when Generosa was just 10. Her father was an Italian sailor she never met.

Eventually, she was taken in by Al Legay's family. I remember her as a little girl. She had a pretty traumatic, tragic life. When she left here and she went to New York, it was like she closed that chapter of her life. As she entered the final chapter of her life, Generosa had to pick a guardian for her children. She thought Danny was unsuitable, so that left only one person, a 57-year-old British nanny, Kay Maines.

Do the kids like her? No. Did they tell you that? Yes. Danny spoke to Generosa about how the kids felt about Kay. Your children are very upset. More upset than you know. Danny had a habit of recording his private conversations, he says, to protect himself legally. I'm very concerned for your children.

It's not good. It's not good at all. Well Danny, you seem to forget. I'm still alive. These are my children. I make the decisions about my children. They've lost their father, now they're losing their mother. I'm not gonna allow them kids to be raised like you are. I'm not! Danny, you and I don't agree on how to raise children. I'm not raising my children the way you raise your children. Kate carries out my wishes with my children. Period.

When Generosa Ammon died in August of 2003, she took the answers to a lot of questions with her to the grave. Is it possible that Generosa, who made no secret of her hatred for Ted Ammon, could have done this? Let's take that question again. Is it tough to answer?

Go with that question again. There's a certain amount of logic to that. I mean, here's a lot. There's logic. There's logic. And the next thing you know, they're going to say I had part of it. Well, okay. I'll ask you that. Did she ask you for help? I have nothing to say. That's not the same as saying no. I have nothing to say.

But prosecutor Janet Albertson insists Danny had a lot to say, which was great for her, not so great for him. He was his own worst enemy, as far as I'm concerned. He did a lot of talking, and of course, any time a defendant does a lot of talking, it's not good for him, it's good for the people. Let's go to trial. I have had nothing to hide.

Follow and listen to Fly on the Wall everywhere you get your podcasts.

So this is a very sweet photo. Yeah. Here he's giggling. He's never seen his father? No, only pictures. His father's never seen him? Nope. Last year when Danny Pelosi was arrested for murdering Ted Ammon and jailed to await trial, he was trying to move on with his life. He was expecting a new baby with his new fiancee, Jennifer Zolnowski. What's it like here by yourself? It's horrible. Everything I see reminds me of him.

But now there is another woman in his life, Janet Albertson, the prosecutor. DANNY PELOSI, Prosecutor, "Dandy Pelosi is a drinker. He's a gambler. He's a petty thief." Albertson can call him whatever she likes. Proving he's a murderer is a little more difficult. DANNY PELOSI, Prosecutor, "We're happy to be finally underway in this case, and we're hoping that the jury sees through the defense."

As the trial begins, all Albertson has is a lot of circumstantial evidence to offer as proof that Danny killed for one of the oldest reasons in the world, money. I think that money is certainly at the top of the list. Not a very exotic motive, is it? No, most murders aren't for exotic motives, except in novels.

The jurors have no trouble believing that he saw a future with Generosa, a rich one that would be richer with Ted Ammon out of the picture. He wasn't willing to give it up. It was all about the money, all about the money. They can see why Pelosi might have wanted Ted Ammon killed, but it's a little harder to convince them how he could have done it. You didn't have anything that said absolutely he was there at that time.

or around that time when the murder occurred. So who says Danny Pelosi was at the murder scene? According to Janet Albertson, one very important person. Danny himself, who she says confessed to a number of people. I think he was his own worst enemy, and he's the only one who didn't realize it. But don't you have to be awfully stupid to admit to a murder?

Yes, that's why the defendants are presumed to be innocent, not intelligent. Stupid people do stupid things, and that's how we catch them. The jurors heard from a devastating parade of witnesses. A contractor Danny worked with said Pelosi was talking about killing Ted Ammon a full year before the murder. Danny's ex-girlfriend testified he confessed to her and said Ammon, quote, cried like a bitch during the beating. She said when she asked Danny why he did it,

He said, "Because I have a monster in me." But this man may be the most damaging witness of all. It's not just what he says, it's who he is. Danny Pelosi's own father is a witness for the prosecution.

Pelosi's father testifies that Danny asked him just hours after the murder how to dispose of something where no one could find it. The prosecution thinks Danny was trying to get rid of evidence from the crime scene, especially that hard drive with all those pictures from the night of the murder. That unit recorded 24 hours a day. So, of course, it would have recorded the image of the murderer coming in, going out and removing all of the evidence from the house.

How do you feel when you see him? I love him. But for jurors, it isn't what his father said that was most telling. It was what Danny said as his father was leaving the courtroom. Danny snarled at him in front of the jury and said, I hate him. You saw that. You saw Danny snap at his father. What effect did that have on you? That had a tremendous effect on me. Not just his relationship with his father, but his...

the anger and the rage that suddenly came up just like that. In 35 years of being a criminal defense lawyer, I never saw a father come in voluntarily as he testified and give evidence against his son. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

Jerry Shargell argues Danny and his father have a love-hate relationship. These pictures were taken at a family reunion just one month after the murder. But Shargell points out it was a full year before Danny's father took his story to the police.

And Shargell tells the jurors that each of the witnesses had a reason to lie about Danny confessing. No one has come in here without an ax to grind, an agenda that's hidden or not.

A motive to falsify. Do you believe Danny was capable of doing this? Now I know. Another relative, Danny's sister Barbara, was subpoenaed by the prosecution. Generosa had hired her to monitor the surveillance system on her laptop and spy on Ted in the mansion. She says she saw something suspicious earlier in the evening during a routine check and

And that when Danny arrived the night of the murder, she asked him to log on and check it out. I think I heard Danny because I told him to go on the computer that night because he honestly did not ask me to turn it on. But Albertson says Danny had his own reasons for logging on to the computer that night.

I think what he wanted to know was, first of all, when Ted Ammon was at the house. I think he also had an interest in knowing whether anybody else was there. We would like the opportunity to present the jury... Janet Albertson has spent weeks telling her side of the story. Now it's Jerry Shargell's turn to tell his. Don't, you know, rush to judgment. Don't make any snap judgments. Wait until you see the whole case.

Shargell hammers away at the fact that there is no evidence that Pelosi was even at the crime scene. Ted Ammon died at a time when Danny Pelosi, by the prosecution's own evidence, evidence that you heard earlier this week, was not on eastern Long Island. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the case. Ted Ammon ate dinner at this restaurant, paid for his meal, and left at around 9.30 p.m.

He then went to a beach near his house. At 9:44, Ammon made what could be the last phone call of his life to his girlfriend. He said he saw something that scared him and he was heading back home. That phone call is the cornerstone of Shargell's defense. Some of us might walk into a bad neighborhood, feel uncomfortable and leave. That's one thing. But to have what seemed to be a confrontation or near confrontation, I think is significant.

Chargel says someone could have followed Ammon home from the beach and killed him. The timing of the call fits neatly into Chargel's theory. Time of death is somewhere around three to four hours after the consumption of the food.

According to Shargell's star witness, Dr. Werner Spitz, a world-renowned scientist, there was still enough undigested food in Ammon's stomach to prove he could not have lived more than four hours after eating.

Dr. Spitz insists Ted Ammon was dead by 1 a.m. and Shargell proves Danny was miles away from East Hampton during that time. His cell phone records show he was driving from Manhattan to his sister's house. Of course, the prosecution's medical experts say Ammon could have been alive much later, giving Pelosi time to get to him.

When do you think Ted Ammon was killed? I think that probably the closest estimate I could give would be around 3 o'clock in the morning.

But as the trial wears on, all eyes turn to the one expert who really knows if Danny could have killed Ted Ammon, Danny Pelosi himself. He's feeling the pressure, as he told me in a phone call from jail. I'm afraid to look at the jury. I'm afraid to do anything. Why? Because I'm too emotional, everyone says. I'm too emotional.

And everybody also says he talks too much. There's no sense of release. Let's go to trial. I've had nothing to hide. We all know I didn't do nothing here. But now he says he'll be quiet for once and he won't take the stand in his own defense. Follow the advice of my attorney because it looks like I don't even have to testify at this point. But can Danny Pelosi really keep his mouth shut? What do you think? All of a sudden,

At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, there he was, sitting on the stand, talking to us.

A late and surprising development in the Daniel Pelosi murder trial. Today was the day Jerry Shargel hoped to hand his case over to the jurors. Thanks, Anthony. But there's a surprise witness, one Shargel never wanted to call. Danny Pelosi, who decided, against Shargel's advice, to take the stand. Is there something that you do as an experienced lawyer on mornings like this before your guy is about to face the wolves? Yes, try not to throw up.

My mouth dropped to the floor. I couldn't believe he took the stand. I think I turned around. I said, you're kidding.

Pelosi told us by phone from jail he knew what was at stake from the moment he took the oath. When I got on the stand, the first thing I had to do was get my heart back in my jacket. I was really hoping to keep him on the stand long enough that he would start to lose what little control that he had. You were trying to get under his skin. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. She got under my skin a few times, and I know I came back a little arrogant a few times, but the woman was attacking me.

Did your opinion of him change when he was on the stand? I don't think it did. He didn't say anything to hurt himself. He was very controlled. I saw him grit his teeth several times. While he was on the stand, Danny dropped a bombshell. It's a story he's been telling us off the record for about a year, but he's never said it under oath before.

He says Generosa asked him to kill Ted Ammon for her, but he refused. And, if you believe Danny, Generosa's alibi that she was in her Manhattan apartment the night of the murder was a lie. In fact, according to Danny, Generosa left that apartment before he did. This woman told me a hundred times she was going to kill her husband. A hundred times. Maybe this time it happened.

While he was on the stand, Danny only suggested Generosa was involved. But later, in a phone conversation, he went further, much further. But once again, Danny could not keep his mouth shut. He said the evidence shows Generosa did it, but

But not alone. Somebody like Generosa. How many other people?

In his closing arguments, Jerry Shargell repeated one question. Where was Generosa Ammon that night?

I think she was right there. Surely you don't think she killed Ted Ammon? I don't think she was there alone, but she wasn't there with Danny Pelosi. This is Danny Pelosi's trial, so this jury doesn't have to decide beyond a reasonable doubt whether Generosa was physically there or not there. The fate of accused killer Danny Pelosi hanging in the balance. Tomorrow morning, a jury... They've been listening to the evidence a long time. After more than two months of testimony, the jurors got the case late on a Friday night.

All through the weekend, both sides camped out and waited. This first day of deliberations, the Danny Pelosi jury hit the ground running. This is a jury that's essentially sifting the clues, and I'm very happy that they're doing this with the care and deliberation that seems to be occurring.

Inside the jury room, the jurors were troubled by the lack of any physical evidence. There was no eyewitness there. There was no murder weapon recovered that had his fingerprints on it. And that was reason for Danny to be optimistic. If they do their job properly and they weigh the evidence, I'm going to be sitting home for Christmas with my son that I still haven't seen. But late on a Monday afternoon, after three long days of deliberating, the jury reached a verdict.

Danny Pelosi was convicted of second-degree murder. When he heard the verdict, the man who could never shut up was speechless and began softly crying. When that jury came back in there and said guilty, I was in shock. In the end, the jurors could not ignore that missing hard drive that could have recorded images from the murder. The person who committed the crime is the one that took the hard drive out

and disposed of it. And who was that person? Oh, that was definitely Danny Pelosi. Why do you say definitely? I should really say it was definitely by request of or Danny Pelosi. You had to know where it was. You had to know where it was.

And there was the matter of the millions, Ted Ammons' fortune. Jurors believe Danny was worried he might lose access to the money if Generosa signed a proposed divorce settlement as scheduled. And it was that weekend that Ted had to die because Monday the agreement was supposed to be signed. This was a case where it really came down to

you know, all the witnesses and all the evidence. And when you pieced it all together, there was no other individual that fit. He fit. He fit, but some jurors still believe there's room for more suspects. He wasn't by himself. There were voids in the patterns of blood spatters. There had to be people standing on one side.

In fact, even after the verdict, some jurors still aren't sure what role Pelosi played. Nobody could put him there. So how did you satisfy yourself then, eventually, that he was there? I kind of thought somebody else maybe helped him. Maybe he didn't go there himself.

Maybe he had some friends. All kinds of things go through your mind. But do you believe now, today, as we sit here, that Danny Pelosi killed Ted Ammon? If not directly, through someone else. Do you think he was there? I'm not sure of that. Still, to this day? Yes.

But in the end, the jury voted that whatever his exact role was that night, Danny intended to kill Ted Ammon and took part in the murder. Pelosi was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. I'm not doing it for 25 years. Listen to me loud and clear. I am appealing this issue. And on the appellate circuit, it will be heard. I guarantee that.

But at least for now, the man who went from the world of blue collars to the world of blue bloods will have to get used to the world behind bars. Daniel Pelosi's appeal for a new trial was denied.

The hunt is on.

No matter how good you are, no matter how good your team is, you're not good enough. Don't miss the new season of Criminal Minds Evolution, now streaming on Paramount+. Summer on the south side of Chicago is heating up. You planning revenge? On two. This shy is back on Paramount+. However.

It's the season of the women. Women, this is our chance. It's time to get to work. But the men aren't giving up without a fight. The tree's always going to have a bill. No one is backing down in the Showtime Original Series from Emmy Award winner Lena Waithe. Why do black women always have to save the day? If we don't do it, who else will? Don't miss The Chi. New season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.