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You're talking about people that lived in a gated community in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Metro Detroit. We lived in a beautiful house, had a boat, a plane. Life is too short and life is too good to fight over stupid things.
Certain pictures, you'd be able to get everybody smiling, get an impression that we were a happy family. You put on a happy face sometimes. They would yell at each other, you know, and argue with each other. I didn't think it was that out of character for two married people to yell at each other. You really saw his temper start to get worse and worse, and then the fights were worse. My dad could say things that would make you madder than you would ever believe.
Him being such a physical guy, there's just no doubt in my mind that it led to a kill or be killed situation. And I heard a split steps coming toward me. He grabbed me. Bob liked to grab and squeeze. I thought he just lost it. You no good bitch. I don't love you anymore. I hate you. I've wasted my life with you. Why can't you just die? I think she snapped. I feel the handle of the hatchet. I picked it up and I swung it.
She put the hatchet down, she grabbed the knife and continued her attack with the knife. Bob Seaman had a total of 38 different wounds. I did not plan or intend to hurt my husband. I loved him.
I couldn't picture her killing him. Him attacking her instantly popped into my mind. My dad would not have been my best friend if he had ever struck my mom. He elevates our dad to this untouchable pedestal. For Greg to have a different opinion of my dad and of the circumstances involving the situation is not surprising to me. He's not only lying about things that he knew, but he's actually making up stuff. It's very easy for both of us to tell lies. It's very difficult to tell the truth. Blood Feud.
And last but not least from Longacre Elementary, Nancy Seaman. Just four years earlier, a camera captured one of Nancy Seaman's proudest moments as she accepted an award for doing what she loved, teaching.
I still cannot believe that it was that many hits because in my mind it was not. But now, many cameras are fixed on Nancy Seaman. And I'm so ashamed and so humiliated. The award-winning teacher known for her patience and kindness is accused of a horrific crime. His body was found in the back of your SUV. The hatchet murder of her husband, Bob Seaman. I loved him.
If I had to redo May the 10th, I wish I would have let him just kill me. You don't think you're guilty of murder? No, I am not guilty of murder. What made her do it? This is a very complex case. It wasn't as simple as wife kills husband with a hatchet.
The answer, according to Nancy, has been kept well hidden for so long. Mrs. Seaman, please not guilty. Behind these private gates, inside this sprawling home, Nancy Seaman says she lived the life of a battered woman. Was your father abusive to your mother? Yes. Verbally? Yes. Physically? Yes.
The case will turn on their two sons, Greg and Jeff Seaman. You know what really hurts me the most about the battered wife defense is of everything I know of her, she was not a battered wife. What they say about their parents' marriage and the life they all shared will condemn their mother or free her.
How can there be two totally different opinions from two guys who are brothers who are only just a couple years apart? Well, a lot of it's not opinion. It's just truth. To find the part of the truth that nobody disputes, you have to go back more than 30 years. That's when Nancy first met Bob. It was 1972. No one could argue with love at first sight. He was very charming.
He was very confident. He was a very strong personality and I felt very secure. He was my knight in shining armor. The two made a brilliant couple, literally. Nancy was valedictorian of her high school class. She was just an extremely bright person. And Bob was an engineer on his way up. First at Ford Motor Company and later at automotive manufacturer BorgWarner. Was he considered a brilliant engineer? He was. He was a brilliant engineer.
Diane and Rick Cox are close friends of the couple. During his tenure at BorgWarner, it was one of the most successful divisions that BorgWarner had. From the beginning, there were cracks in the marriage. She says they were newlyweds when the first incident occurred. We're in the car coming home from his brother's wedding reception.
and Bob was drunk. He had much too much to drink and he reached over and he tried to push me out of a moving car and he's pounding me with his fist. What are you thinking at this point? You've been married for two weeks. I was in a state of shock. I had never experienced anything like this before. I'd never witnessed anything like it. Why would you choose to stay knowing that he tried to throw you out of a moving car? Frankly, I was naive. I was only 21 years old and I
I just loved him and I said this has to be a fluke. This is a one-time thing.
That storm blew over and soon there were two reasons to stay. The boys. First Jeff and then Greg. From the outside looking in, how would you describe the Seamans? We were the perfect family. We had it all. We were huge baseball fans. My dad would always coach the baseball teams. He'd coach my brother one year and me the next year. We weren't mega spoiled, but we never went without.
He was just such a happy person and we would spend so much time together and we always got along so well. We went on vacations, I had a nice life, we had two beautiful sons.
But Bob's controlling and explosive nature became more and more evident. If things didn't go his way, I mean, he would take things into his hands physically. Some friends and I carried him out of a bar one night where he was about to punch the chief engineer. He would have lost his job. We knew it. But we actually physically took him out of the location so it didn't happen. It was always very abusive. I mean, it was very...
- Aggressive and... - Would he call her names? - Oh, yeah. - It's always, "I'm an unbitch. I'm always an ungrateful bitch." It's kind of hard to believe that never in all the time that he was saying all these condescending and nasty things to you that you never stood up for yourself. I knew that if I talked about that way, it would escalate the abuse, it would escalate his anger and his rage, and I knew not to do that because if I did that, it made the situation worse.
Once, Nancy did call the police when Bob allegedly struck her, but no charges were filed. Bob would never forgive or forget. As the boys grew up, Nancy wanted them to love and admire Bob. Both kids became engineers just like their father. I pretty much modeled my life after my dad and his choice of profession, his degree in college.
For the first 20 years, Nancy says the physical abuse was sporadic, maybe one or two incidents a year. But in 1995, there was a new strain on the marriage. Bob lost his high-paying job just as Nancy was about to launch her own career as an award-winning elementary school teacher. It all started to spiral out of control when my dad stopped working and my mom started working, and my dad started to lose some of his identity, and my mom started to feel some resentment.
because now she was the major breadwinner and he wasn't. Meanwhile, Bob decided he would pour his heart into something that had always made him happy: baseball. He opened a batting cage for kids called the Upper Deck. Was your mom happy about the batting cage business? She viewed it as another wedge that was between them. That now he had his own activities he wanted to do separate from her.
Nancy felt the real wedge between them was a happier family Bob met through the business, the Dumbletons. It was almost like my dad assumed this father role with their family. The Dumbletons really became like substitute relatives for my dad. Bob coached their kids. Their mother, Julie, volunteered to be his bookkeeper. But Nancy felt there may have been more to that relationship. Do you think your father was having an affair with Julie Dumbleton?
We would say that we hoped he was because the behavior was so eerie that it was the only thing that could possibly explain it. That's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard. I mean,
You know they were friends, but my dad was better friends with her husband Dick who he initially met and everything Whatever the relationship was with Julie Nancy says her husband's behavior toward her was becoming increasingly violent on June 29 2001 Nancy says Bob threw a chair at her sending her to the hospital Why didn't you reach out at that point and say?
I'm being abused. Somebody's hurting me. That was the day that I was going to tell because I had been there before. So why didn't you? I walked in and I sat down in that triage room in tears and I was crying and I looked over and I saw a parent from my school and I knew if she found out the grapevine at school, I just couldn't do that. My career was everything to me.
It is my honor to introduce to you... When Jeff married his college sweetheart, Becca, in August of 2001, Bob and Nancy's relationship was more fractured than ever. Yet Nancy hoped that things would somehow work out between them. She took a vow when she got married, and she didn't believe in divorce. She believed she could work it out. She loved him.
But the marriage was not about to end in divorce. Did you go to Home Depot with the intention of buying a hatchet and coming home and murdering your husband? No. Did you plan to murder Bob? No, I did not. Did you plan to do him any harm? No, I did not. At any point? My God, not. My God, a hatchet. No. ♪♪
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The Seamans were a family who had more cars than people. An expensive Ferrari, a classic Shelby. But it was a fight over a broken-down 1989 Mustang that would be the point of no return. Not only for husband and wife, but also for father and son. That really created the wedge between the two of us. Restoring that old Mustang was meant to be a bonding project between Greg and his dad. He was verbally abusing Greg, telling him what an a**hole he was.
He was. He didn't know what he was doing. And he just started flipping out about how I wasn't working fast enough. And he told Greg to pack his things and he threw them out on the street on his birthday and told him to never come home again. It was just a car, but it was also a symbol of a disintegrating family, which crumbled even more when Bob eventually gave the Mustang to the Dumbletons. Were you jealous of the Dumbletons? No. Well, you know, I guess I was because...
They were really, in my eyes, they were taking my father away. You know, they already got a father. Leave mine alone. My dad gives away the car for free. And then the most insulting thing was he actually helped work on it with this other son. Why is it that the falling out with Greg had such an impact on the relationship with Bob? If Bob beating you up and smacking you around verbally and physically wasn't enough to... I couldn't stand to see him hurt my son.
Nancy still wasn't willing to give up on the marriage. And to live under the same roof, Nancy says she planned her mornings to get out of the house before her husband was awake. So Bob found another way to express his frustration. They had had some argument where she had said, "You don't ever do anything around the house." And so he wrote sticky notes that described every task he'd done in living in a house for 15 years and posted them everywhere.
40 notes in one day on fixing the dishwasher, emptying the trash, even about spending time together. By February of 2004, Nancy had enough. So you devised a plan, an escape hatch, so to speak, and you pulled the boys in on it. Yes, I did.
She secretly purchased a brand new condo and slowly began to box up her things. She told Bob the condo was for Greg. She said, "You guys can't tell your father about this. He'll kill me. You can't tell." Meanwhile, Bob was making his own plans to leave the marriage. It was almost like you could tell he was done. Done with her. Did he express any regrets? Probably regrets that he hadn't done it sooner.
Baum went to Arizona to consult with his brother Dennis about his options. You're going to walk away with half and she's going to walk away with half. Get used to it. The glass is still half full.
It was Mother's Day weekend 2004. Bob flew back to Michigan, excited about the prospect of starting over. That was kind of the epiphany for Bob because he really realized that he had a good long life ahead of him, that he could do something with it. Nancy was spending Mother's Day at Jeff and Becca's house. On Sunday evening, everyone returned to the house on Briarwood Court.
Immediately, a blow-up ensued. Nancy wanted to borrow Bob's Ford Explorer to pick up Greg from college. He said no. Why do we have to have an argument every time? Because it's not about the Explorer. It's about the confrontation. It's about the power. Fight starts brewing, and Becca and Jeff leave. They left me. Jeff and Becca left at about 7 p.m.,
At 7:37, surveillance video from a nearby Home Depot shows Nancy buying a hatchet. She claims the hatchet was to chop up a stump in the backyard. You don't decide in 20 minutes, "Oh, I think I'll kill my husband. Oh, let me go buy a hatchet." The hatchet was bought for yard work because I did all the yard work. Nancy says she came home from the store and went to bed.
On May 10th, the day after Mother's Day, Nancy says she got up at about 5:30 a.m., got dressed, and was getting ready to make her lunch. But there was no avoiding Bob that morning. According to Nancy, by the time she got down to the kitchen, he was already sitting at the counter. Neither one spoke a word, but they were about to have the last argument of their marriage. Then he said, "I think we need to talk about going our separate ways."
And he was very calm about it. And what did you say? I responded in a way that was probably antagonistic because I said,
I am so ready to do this. Let's just do it. That's when it started because he said, who the hell do you think you are? You think I don't know that you have a condo and that it's not for Greg, it's for you? I know all about the condo. So the jig was up. The jig was up. In the past, Nancy says Bob never used a weapon against her. But this time, he grabbed a kitchen knife. And I'm sure he didn't mean to kill me with it at that point.
but he just took and he says you and he just sliced across just across my hand nancy says she knew she had to get out of the house she grabbed her keys her bag and she ran to the front door but when she got here she noticed something strange the key used to open the door from the inside which was usually kept in the lock was missing she says at that point she knew the only other way out of the house was to run down this hall
and out through the garage. He kicks me, he grabs me, then he came for the last time toward me. He's telling me, you no good effing bitch. I'll never let you have half of my assets. I will see you dead first. And when he bent over and he's telling me he'll see me dead, I'm hoisting myself up. I feel the handle of the hatchet. I picked it up.
And I swung it. For the first time after 30 years of arguing and alleged abuse, Nancy Seaman says she fought back. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop hitting him. I was terrified out of my mind. I didn't know if it was one time, two times, three times. It was 16 times with the hatchet. Then with the knife, she stabbed him 21 more times in the back.
That is rage. It was not rage. It was terror. I was terrified. There is a difference between rage indicates anger. I was not anger. I was terrified at this point for me. After the killing, she didn't call the police. She didn't call her sons. Nancy took a shower and managed to get herself to school, just like she always did.
How did you compose yourself well enough to go in and teach a bunch of elementary kids? It was a blur. It was a blur. The only thing I can tell you is that for me, going to school was always a safe place. I went there so many times after he abused me, and it was the only place I ever felt good about myself. That morning I was in shock for sure. After school, Nancy began a frantic cleanup, buying bleach, rubber gloves, a tarp, and duct tape. You bleached the floor?
You painted the walls. You cleaned up the blood. Yes. Why not just call the cops right away? Why not just pick up the phone and say, "Oh my God, I killed my husband. He was trying to kill me." The horror of it is something you can't even imagine. You cannot possibly think that there's any rational thought there. The only thing that happened at that point was I was on autopilot doing what I had done for 30 years. I was fixing the ugliness. I was fixing it because when the ugliness was gone, it was like it never happened.
Briarwood Court. Husband's been gone two days. I want to report him missing.
Tuesday night, just after 10 o'clock, the Farmington Hills Police knocked on the front door. Nancy Seaman came to the door, acted surprised. She told that officer that her husband was having a midlife crisis and that he was just trying to find himself. But Bob wasn't far from home. In fact, he was in the driveway, getting away in Nancy's SUV.
Days went by. And the calls to report Bob Seaman missing were pouring in. Strangely, none of them were from his wife, Nancy. Probably because she wishes he was dead.
The police were baffled and they returned to the house on Briarwood Court. They looked everywhere. They even made a point of stopping in the garage and commenting how clean the garage was.
Lisa Ortlieb is the prosecutor on the case. They noticed that it had an odor of bleach and paint. It smelled nice. Why did you lie to the police when they asked you on more than one occasion, where is your husband? Do you know where he is? I just think it was probably shock. I could never accept what happened. I don't think, and the police don't think, she ever would have turned herself in. She was going to dump the body. She had already taken painstaking efforts to hide her role.
On Wednesday afternoon, Nancy went to the store again and purchased more gloves and a bottle of air freshener. Shortly after she returned home, the police came back again to press Nancy about where they might find her missing husband. And she actually said, "Why don't you look in his SUV?" And they said, "We want to look in yours." And she said, "Why don't you look in his?" And they said, "We want to look in yours."
They walked with her to the back of her SUV. She opened it. As the hatch opened, it was immediately apparent that's where Bob was. She immediately went and pushed her hands down on what she had put on his body to conceal it. And she said, "That's just my condo stuff. That's my moving stuff."
There, near the bottle of air freshener, wrapped in a blue tarp, was Bob's body. The fight over the cars and every fight of their 30-year marriage was over. Soon, both sons received the most disturbing phone calls of their lives.
turned on the radio and they found a body on Briarwood Court. I actually at that time thought that my dad had killed my mom and then probably killed himself. So at that time I was thinking I probably lost both parents. Why did you think then that your father had killed your mother? Well, because she was getting out, you know, and to picture her ever doing something like this would, you couldn't.
From the moment of her arrest, Nancy began to launch her controversial defense.
She had the police photograph her body. These evidence photos show numerous bruises on her arms and legs. Nancy has put her fate in the hands of defense attorney Larry Kaluzny, a low-key lawyer known for taking high-profile cases. I believe Nancy killed him, but I believe she did it in an act of self-defense. I believe she thought she was going to die that day.
The case that has torn apart one family will be handled by another, a father-son team. Both of the sons in this case lost their father, and there's a chance they could lose their mother. Todd Kaluzny will try the case alongside his dad. It can make a big impact on the jury if they see all these different dates. June 1973, he hit me in the face. 1974, he kicked me in the leg.
To bolster their theory, the Kaluznis hire Dr. Lenore Walker, the country's leading expert on abused women. I had no question that Nancy Seaman was a battered woman. And she says it's not uncommon for a woman to keep her abuse a secret.
even for 30 years. People in general don't want to believe that somebody as smart as Nancy Seaman would really have been battered for that length of time. I want to help victims and in this case the victim was Bob Seaman. Lisa Ortlieb is not only the prosecutor on the case, she also runs Oakland County's domestic violence unit. Do you believe Nancy Seaman was abused? I think the only domestic violence in this case was when she killed him.
Nancy Seaman's claims of abuse, says Ortlieb, are nothing more than a strategy for her trial. She couldn't claim she was insane. She couldn't claim she didn't do it. So what is she going to claim? She's going to claim self-defense. I had to do it. Finally, on November 29, 2004, the brilliant teacher and mother of two went on trial for first-degree murder.
She hit him 15 times with the hatchet. Bob had zero defensive wounds. Nothing. She chose to be a killer. Yes, Nancy ended her husband's life, but she is not a murderer. Any objections? No objections.
Lisa Ortlieb firmly believes that it was rage, not fear, that drove Nancy Seaman to kill. She was going to be losing the beautiful home, the beautiful picture, the family life that she led everyone to believe was occurring in her life. Ortlieb says that although Nancy was secretly plotting to leave Bob, he was actually planning to divorce her first.
In this letter, Bob writes, "You alone will decide how amicably or bitterly we divide the property." The prosecution says it was Nancy who had the temper. She was stinging over Bob's relationship with the Dumbletons, especially Julie Dumbleton.
She called my house and threatened my son and threatened me. Julie says she and Bob never had an affair. But Nancy's jealousy led to a shouting match at Bob's business. She was angry. She called me a name. She was yelling.
There was one more clue to what the prosecution says took place in the garage, the substantial marital assets. Remember Bob's conversation with his brother Dennis? So you had suggested just give her half and be done with it. Right. Dennis advised Bob that he would be entitled to half of whatever Nancy had, including her brand new condo. It's probably the most regrettable thing I have is that ever...
Telling him something that he I know darn well. He went back and probably said right to her You think that factored into what happened? I think that sent her right over the edge that led her to leave and
to go straight to Home Depot where she went straight to the hatchets. The prosecution says this was premeditated murder, that it happened on Sunday and not Monday morning as Nancy says. The compelling proof? Bob Seaman was found dead wearing the same clothes he was last seen alive in on Sunday evening.
And that first Home Depot tape was not the most damning. Let's go to Tuesday, May 11th. The prosecution presents a second store video recorded two days later.
Ortlieb says this time Nancy stole a hatchet identical to the one used to kill Bob. She went right back to the hatchets and she shoplifted one. Here, store cameras record Nancy returning that stolen hatchet using her Mother's Day receipt in an effort to erase all traces of her original purchase. She'd be able to say, I never used a hatchet. I returned that hatchet.
But the most crucial evidence was about to unfold. The boys who grew up under the same roof will tell two completely different stories. Is your mother lying about the abuse? Yes. Is your brother lying about the abuse? Yes. Do you believe in any way that it was self-defense for your mother? No. Is Jeff lying? Absolutely. I just can't believe that my brother would lie to hurt his own mother, my mother.
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Jeff Seaman will testify for the prosecution. Greg Seaman will testify for the defense. Greg, you obviously are related to Nancy, is that correct? Correct. She's your mother? Yes. You see her in court today?
The boys clash over every point in their mother's story, starting with what happened after their father lost his job. He was a lot more irritable. You could tell he was getting stressed out at the fact that he had been fired and he couldn't find work. Was there any...
mental decline. No, I think there was no mental decline. In fact, the funny thing is my dad actually mellowed as he got older. Right before this happened, Jeff was just like everybody else saying, "I can't believe how nuts he's going. I can't believe... I don't know this guy. I don't know if
He's lying to himself or he's actually convinced himself of that. And they have conflicting explanations for what brought their mother to Home Depot that Mother's Day night. My mom did it all. She cut the grass, she maintained the yard, she maintained the house. When I hear things like, "Your mom was buying an ax in a driving rainstorm to chop up a tree stump,"
That's ridiculous. Yeah, tell me another one. I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. But nowhere is the divide between the brothers deeper than over their mother's explosive allegation that she was a battered wife. At any time did you suspect domestic violence was occurring in your parents' home? Not at all. My mom was never an abused wife.
What did you observe as far as physical abuse? On a couple different occasions, I saw him hit her with his forearm, kind of shove her out of the way. She was never physically abused. Did you personally see bruises and cuts and contusions on your mom? We saw bruises all the time.
For years, Greg says his mother would come up with excuses for her injuries. My mom would always try to cover up by saying, oh, I just bumped into something, oh, I just fell, or I think you can only fall so many times. If my sons knew they'd hate their father and I couldn't let them hate him, I wanted them to love him.
Jeff admits he did see bruises. Would you define her as graceful, klutzy? She's definitely klutzy. And he says his mother only mentioned abuse once she decided to leave, a move Jeff believes she devised to gain an advantage in the upcoming divorce. She showed us
a bruise on her arm and claimed that a wrist that she'd had problems with was broken by my dad in a fight. The wrist was something that she'd injured a long time ago tripping on a sidewalk. You're saying she was laying the groundwork? Yes. You think she was making it up? Yep. Jeff, you were really close with your dad. Yes. Right? You idolized him. Yes. You want to see your mother convicted in this case, don't you? No.
that doesn't fix anything does it larry they asked me to tell the truth and i tell the truth nancy's sons couldn't agree on what they saw so her colleagues are called to the stand did you ever have an opportunity to observe any bruises or injuries and nancy's body i remember a black eye i can recall a black eye i recall a black eye an injury to an arm and i recall
some kind of arm brace. Do you ever suspect any domestic violence in her relationship with her husband? When I saw the black eye, yes. Paulette Schleider is one of Nancy's oldest friends. And she was afraid? She was afraid. Paulette recalls a disturbing conversation she had with Nancy just two months before Bob's death. The very last time I saw her, her hands shook.
She said, you know, there's something the matter with him. He's going crazy. But she did not tell me that he was beating her or hitting her. But she was visibly shaken. She was afraid of him. What was the last thing that Nancy said to you? Pray for me. Nancy, see him into the scene. Now it will be up to Nancy to convince the jury she was a battered wife and not a murderer.
There were times when Bob's short fuse and his anger and his rage would erupt. She tells the jury she suffered 94 attacks at the hands of her husband. It was hard to think about them. Why? I didn't realize there were so many of them. Nancy, I'd like you to show the jury
how you were laying on the ground. In the most dramatic moment of the trial, Nancy demonstrates how she defended her life that day. And I'm covered up. I'm cleaned up and covered up. He's coming toward me and he's mad. He's mad. So he's standing somewhere. Right about where you are. Right about where you are, yes. And I can see his shoes just like your shoes. As I'm getting up, there's a black railing around the generator and I'm using it for leverage and as I get up, I'm
Feel the handle of the hatchet.
Then what happens next? I pick it up and I swing it at him. She tries to explain what turned the attack into an overkill. I don't physically remember stabbing him, but obviously I did. But I was screaming at him to get off of me, get off of me, just get off of me. You run, you go into the house, where do you go? I run up to my room and I slam the door. Even after she knows he's dead, she doesn't accept that. She still thinks he's going to come up the stairs and get me.
He's not dead. And I think that's hard for anybody to understand. The bleaching, the painting, scrubbing the crime scene clean,
Even her attempt to put the hatchet back in the store. She's been a fixer. That's the whole, the big theme of this case. That was Nancy doing what she had always done. He's punched a hole in the wall. She fixed it herself. Kicked a hole in the door. She fixed it. And as irrational as this may sound, she thought at that point in time, I can fix this. But after two days, Nancy says she realized there was no fixing Bob.
I sat down and cried because I couldn't fix him. I couldn't fix everything else. I had everything else and I couldn't fix him. Fix him no matter what. I did fix him. He was... I kept saying, Bob, why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me? Why?
She hated him when he was alive, and she's hating him when he's dead. Now, Nancy Seaman, alleged battered woman, comes face to face with a domestic violence prosecutor. Your husband didn't have any marks at all on his right arm? You saw that? No. Not on his left arm? No. Did you hit him on any place that wasn't vital?
I was swinging it. I wasn't aware of it. Sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn't. So between the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the fifteenth time you hit your husband about the head and the face, you were standing like that? It's happening in the chaos of a moment, not as you're saying it.
So show the jury with your arm how you did it. When I said I was hitting him, it was fast. Finally, the prosecutor asks Nancy if the situation was as bad as she alleges, why didn't she go for help? When did you call a shelter or a hotline? I did not. You never got a protective order against your husband, yes or no? No, I would not do that. So was Nancy Seaman abused or not? The defense calls the expert, Dr. Lenore Walker.
Dr. Walker should have been the star witness, but Michigan law will only allow her to describe the characteristics of battered women in general terms. The most dangerous time is at the point at which the woman is preparing to leave the relationship.
But had she been able to testify about Nancy? I would have told the jury that it wasn't just him coming after her this time with a knife, but all fragments of other incidents that have happened to her over the years that terrified her. But will the jury see Nancy Seaman as the assaulted or the assailant?
Which picture of Nancy Seaman will the jury believe? Nancy Seaman. The warm-hearted teacher or the cold-blooded killer? He's coming toward me and he's mad. He's mad. Which picture of the marriage... My mom was never an abused wife. I was going to be safe in just a couple weeks. ...will the jury believe? Why so many blows? Fear.
She wasn't trying to punish him. She wasn't trying to kill him or hurt him. She was afraid. The problem with their case, it's based on a string of lies, the defendant's lies. Lie after lie after lie after lie. As proof, Lisa Ortley points to the very bruises Nancy said were evidence she'd been battered. Those bruises could be consistent with killing.
with cleaning, with painting, with scrubbing, with wrapping, with tarping, with taping and loading. Those bruises weren't from Bob. My dad wouldn't have been my best friend. I wouldn't have been best friends with a wife abuser. He got up on the stand, under God, under oath, lied. He lied. Seven months after Bob Seaman was killed, the case of the People v. Nancy Seaman is in the hands of the jury.
It took Nancy 30 years to end her marriage. It takes the jury less than five hours to decide on the rest of her life. The verdict is guilty of murder in first degree.
Despite her emotions on the stand, Nancy shows no reaction to the verdict. My mom was wrong. My mom made a mistake. She did something wrong. And if you look through the entire trial, never at any point did I ever hear her say she was sorry, she was wrong, she screwed up, she did anything wrong. I mean, it was always, you know what? I was forced into this position. I had to do this. I don't believe she got what she deserved at all. What did she deserve?
I don't think she deserved anything. One month later, Nancy Seaman goes to court one more time. Only Greg comes to stand by his mother as she is sentenced. I lost a father who I loved. Robert Seaman accomplished a lot in his life, but everything that he accomplished will forever be overshadowed by the fact that he was a wife-beater.
In a stunning move from the bench, the judge calls Jeff a liar. And I have my opinions as to who was lying in the case. And it wasn't your son who testified today, just now. What his opinion is mattered very little to me. What matters to me are what my family and what my friends think.
And my family and my friends and people that know me and know my dad know what the truth is. And they know that it isn't Judge McDonald's opinion. Judge McDonald goes on to sympathize with the teacher convicted of murder. I can't believe, for instance, that you went out to Home Depot to buy a hatchet to kill your husband. It just doesn't make any sense. I don't take any pleasure in sentencing you to life in prison, but I have no discretion in imposing the sentence I have to impose by law.
I only feel pity for you and I feel pity for your family. Court is now in recess. In the end, Nancy Seaman traded a life of privilege behind these private gates for a life behind prison bars. And saddest of all, the family Nancy says she tried so hard to keep together would turn out more broken than ever. All I can say to my sons is I'm very sorry. And I want them to know that I love their father. They know that I did.
I want the boys to know that I love them with all my heart and I wish that I could undo what happened May the 10th. But I hope they find their way back together. Now streaming. When everything's on the line, real heroes rise to the occasion. TV's hottest show is Fire Country. We're firefighters. We're gonna find a way to get you out of here. We take the hits together. We're on the same team. I'm right here with you, no matter what. I would never leave you hanging in the deep end.
This place is a way of giving you new family. Fire Country. All episodes now streaming on Paramount+.