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A cryptic 911 call summons officers to a horrific scene. There was blood on the walls. It was an incredible, gruesome sight. The only witness is rendered helpless. When she was looking at me, it was almost like she was looking right through me.
As the case unfolds, investigators zero in on a repeat offender. That's the same way. That's the same house. It's the same kind of murder. The cold-blooded truth will expose a killer driven by jealousy, greed, and experience. She kept extensive journals over the years. I don't know why I did what I did.
He stated upon her recovery, he was going to meet and end their relationship. The moment somebody leaves is the moment that is most dangerous. Placerville, California. On January 6th, 2013, it's just after 6 p.m. when an unusual call comes in to the El Dorado County 911.
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He stated that he was at his office in Cameron Park and he was not on scene with the person and he refused to answer most questions. Multiple units from the El Dorado Sheriff's Department rushed to the scene. Really all we knew was there was a possibility of a homicide or a fatality that happened within this house. We don't know what we're going to be walking into.
We established a perimeter. There were a group of us, including myself, that responded directly to the front of the house. It was really dark, late at night. Inside, deputies see a woman.
She was going on as if nothing was wrong. The deputies on scene requested that dispatch contact the residents and call in to get a hold of the female who was inside. Our dispatch was able to get her to come out and exit the house. Deputies meet her at the front door. She identifies herself as 70-year-old Colleen Harris.
She tells them that her husband, 72-year-old Bob Harris, is in bed. Where's the bedroom at? Go in the door and down the hall. I'll put a blanket over it. OK. You didn't check the pulse or anything like that? I just need to know if I need medics to show up here. When she was looking at me, it was almost like she was looking right through me, that she wasn't talking to me. She was just talking.
I started to think that maybe she wasn't in her right frame of mind. She looked at me and said, "You just have to go see him." And then she said that he was beautiful. Colleen remains outside while a team cautiously enters the home. We begin to start clearing the house. I make my way down a long hallway, and I get to the very last bedroom. There was blood on the walls. It was an incredible, gruesome sight.
The bed is made, but you can see that there appears to be a person completely covered from head to toe. I walk closer to the bed, at which point I see a double-barreled shotgun sitting on top of the blankets. The deputy slowly approaches. Deputy pulled back the blanket slightly to reveal what turned out to be Robert Harris. There was no mistaking that Mr. Harris could not be saved.
There appeared to be a gunshot wound to the side of the face. His face was missing. The deputies lower their weapons and call for detectives. Once they arrive, I give them pretty much a play-by-play of what occurred. It was very bizarre. They're quickly trying to size up whether or not this is a self-inflicted death or if it's a homicide. Detectives examine the gun laying next to Bob on the bed.
a pistol-gripped, sawed-off shotgun. It seemed to be neatly placed next to his left hand. The button was down fairly low towards his feet and not within reach of his hand. So that was the first indication that this was not a suicide. The second red flag comes when they take a close look at the gunshot wound to the left side of Bob's head.
The entry was large and there was gunpowder residue that would indicate that the end of the weapon that was used was several inches away from his head. None of that is consistent with a self-inflicted wound. A person doesn't hold a shotgun away from their head when they kill themselves in that manner. This was not a suicide. This was a homicide.
At that point in time, Mom's daughter, Pam Sterling, was contacted and given the news that something had happened to her father. Robert "Bob" Harris was born on February 3, 1940. Growing up in the Bay Area, Bob studied engineering at UC Berkeley. He used his degree to turn his passion for the outdoors into a paycheck.
Bob worked for the U.S. Forest Service. He became the administrator for the Lake Tahoe region. That is the most coveted position in the entire U.S. Forest Service. For many years, Bob focused on his career and raising three kids with his first wife. But when the kids left home, Bob's marriage came to an end, and he enjoyed the unfettered life of a bachelor.
Bob was an all-in family man. That divorce did rock the family pretty heavily, but I don't think it destroyed it by any means. And Bob was still a good father. In the late '80s, Bob was working in El Dorado County when he reconnected with an old friend, Colleen Batten. They met when they were in middle school. And they were maybe kind of boyfriend/girlfriend at a very young age. Then they rekindled after Bob and my wife's mom had divorced.
Like Bob, Colleen was also single with grown children. In 1985, she was widowed when she lost her husband, Jim Batten, a prominent land surveyor. Colleen took over Jim Batten's surveying business. Jim Batten had a property portfolio worth about a million dollars by some accounts, so she took over all that. She successfully ran that company for a number of years. She was fairly well off when she met Bob Harrison.
They called each other and began to talk and kind of the rest is history. It got along well. They then began to date. Bob was attracted to Colleen's can-do spirit. She had built a Mercedes engine in the living room of the house that she had before they met without the instruction manual. Real bright, with an engineering mind.
After dating for four years, they married on September 2nd, 1990, and moved into Colleen's sprawling Placerville home. They were sort of society types. They liked to mingle. They were well-known and respected. After two decades together, the hardworking couple had a large enough nest egg to retire. They spent their newfound freedom giving back.
She was friendly. She was doting over Bob. She was all in. So often next to him, would stay by him a lot. He was a star volunteer at the Sheriff's Department. He was a man who was really deeply involved in his community. He always was doing something productive. She was kind of that way too. They were happy. By 2013, Bob and Colleen had been together for nearly 30 years.
But on January 6th, their life together comes to a sudden and bizarre end. In the bedroom, they find Bob, and it's this absolutely horrific scene. After El Dorado investigators rule out suicide, they check in with Colleen, who is outside the home with sheriff's deputies. Colleen Harris was seated in the back of one of the patrol vehicles, and she was being very cooperative.
She simply seemed to have no emotion. Psychologically speaking, it could mean she might be having a disassociative moment where she experienced something traumatic. I stated to her that she was going to be taken to our office for an interview in a more comfortable location to sit. Of course, I have a lot of questions. There's a lot of things that need to be answered. We need to know more information about what had occurred. Coming up...
A hunt for answers ends with more questions. Okay, it seems like you've lost pretty much all of today. I have. And a secret past plays into the present. I received a text on my phone and said I needed to immediately come out of the interview room because it had some very important information that could spin my investigation in a completely different direction. January 6th, 2013.
El Dorado County detectives are investigating the homicide of 72-year-old Bob Harris after he was found dead in his bedroom from a gunshot wound to the head. While his wife, Colleen Harris, is on her way to the Sheriff's Department, detectives try to make sense of the horrifying scene inside the home.
The victim was completely under the blankets, appeared to be in sleeping attire. There was a large hole to the left side of his head near the cheek area that carried on through the skull and out the right side of his head. There are some indications that this is not a death that has happened in the very recent past. The blood is congealed to a certain point.
Rigor mortis has set in, he's cold to the touch. It appears as if several hours have passed since he was killed. While the scene in the bedroom is gruesome, the rest of the house is untouched. The windows were all secure, the doors were secure, and it didn't appear that anybody had tried to break into the home. And matter of fact, the home was very, very clean.
At this point during my investigation, we have little information. We have a homicide and we have a woman who is the wife of the decedent. The claims do not know what happened. Investigators head to the sheriff's office where they meet up with the widow in an interview room.
During the interview, she puts her feet up on an empty chair. She appears in every way to be very calm and relaxed as they're questioning her. They're, of course, wanting to know what happened that evening and have her lead them through the course of events. But the only memories Colleen has are of the night before. So, um, what happened the next morning?
They had a very pleasant evening. And after 9 o'clock, she doesn't remember. I asked Colleen why her attorney dialed 911 to report this crime. And she claimed to not know. She didn't know how that happened. She remembers nothing until deputies arrive.
Colleen tells them that she does have one vague memory from the night. I remember seeing a gun. I had a nosebleed. What was your first thought? I thought he was having a nosebleed. He gets a lot of nosebleeds. And was he actively bleeding? I saw just a little bit of blood on his mouth. I'll tell him, Julia. She said she had put a blanket over his head because he had a nosebleed.
It was rather strange because having been in that scene, what was in that house was a very traumatic, bloody scene that could not anywhere remotely be confused with a nosebleed. Colleen attempts to explain her lack of memory. You talked about a gray fog. Yeah. It's like everything around me is like you have kind of a shadow.
Okay. Because it seems like you lost pretty much all of today and part of last night. Okay. If she's truly experiencing psychogenic amnesia, the amnesia could have been just for the death of Bob, the traumatic incident. And now she's experiencing emotion in real time. Then, the interview takes yet another bizarre turn. Well...
And at that point, she starts to become overcome with emotion and crying. Stunned, investigators take a different tack. So we let her talk, and we let her talk about whatever topic she wanted.
and she had told us essentially that her and Bob's relationship was great. - Colleen's behavior stumps investigators.
She's truly experiencing psychogenic amnesia, or she could be portraying an emotional wife who has learned that her husband has died. When we look at the very rare situations in which psychogenic amnesia is present, this temporary memory loss, it's protecting the person from what happened in the moment. Then, investigators get some alarming news.
In the middle of interviewing Colleen, I received a text on my phone, and it was the investigators. They had said they had some very important information that could spin my investigation in a completely different direction. I left the interview room, and the detective handed me a case from 1985 where Colleen was a suspect in a homicide in that very same home. Coming up...
a disturbing pattern takes shape. They find that Colleen had been responsible for the death of another husband. And alarming details from her previous husband's death come to light. It was only after she worked with a psychologist that she was able to somehow remember what had happened.
How did he die? He died. He was a child molester and he ended up dying.
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In 1985, Colleen's first husband, Jim Batten, was also murdered. Someone put out the word, hey, you remember back in 85, Jim Batten? That's the same lady. That's the same house. It's the same kind of murder. It's the same room. There's still the record of the 911 call from 1985. What's the problem? I think they have a case. Were you having an argument that this occurred? I think so.
He was murdered. And he also died laying in bed, was shot, and she had also claimed some amnesia in that case. Colleen was arrested at the scene and immediately charged with Jim Batten's murder. The attorney that represented her during that trial was attorney Dave Weiner. And that is the same attorney
that had made the telephone call to us on 911. Upon her arrest in 1985, Colleen claimed to have amnesia. But at her trial about five months later, she seemed to have recovered memories from the day Jim was killed. It was only after she worked with a psychologist that she was able to somehow remember what had happened
Colleen testified that on the day of the murder, she confronted Jim with divorce papers. She was confronting her then-husband, Jim Batten, because he molested her daughter. And she was driven to protect her daughter. She alleged that the discussion escalated into a physical confrontation. He says he began to sexually assault her and that he put a gun to her head.
Colleen claimed that a struggle ensued, but she managed to get the gun from Jim's hands. She shot and killed him in self-defense. She was acquitted. At trial, the defense really was able to make Jim Batten out to be a sexual predator. And Colleen was motivated because of this terrible, terrible things that he had done.
According to court records, while Colleen opted not to press charges against Jim Batten at the time, her daughter always maintained that he was guilty of molestation. In the end, Colleen Batten was acquitted of Jim's murder. Armed with this new information, El Dorado County investigators head back to the interview room to confront Colleen about Jim's death.
And when it comes to details, once again Colleen's memory fails her. I don't know.
Detectives continue to hold Colleen in the interview room as they keep digging. The investigators were also making contact with family members and seeing if they can get more information. Investigators learned that Bob and Colleen's marriage had been on the rocks for some time, largely because Colleen was convinced that Bob was having an affair with a woman in Mongolia.
I don't know how interested in this other woman he was, Bob being 72 and she's approximately 40 years old, but I know that Colleen was concerned about that. Whether the affair was real or not, Colleen claims Bob's dalliance didn't bother her. He said, "You're the most perfect wife anybody could ever want." I did what I did. He said, "And I work hard." And I said, "And I know you unconditionally."
Despite Colleen's explanations, detectives are skeptical. We have the 1985 case that showed that Colleen had used the same M.O. There were a lot of similarities. We had enough probable cause to arrest Colleen at this point. Before Colleen heads to the county jail, detectives request she get checked out at a local hospital.
While under observation, Colleen seems to have cognitive functioning intact and memory intact. But they do alert detectives to some concerning physical injuries. She's got this abrasion in the middle of her chest. She also has a problem with one of her fingers.
Both the injury to her finger and the bruise to her chest would be very consistent with Colleen having held that sawed-off shotgun and having the gun pushed back violently and striking her in the chest.
Autopsy results confirm Bob's cause of death, but pinpointing the time of death is more complicated. There had been beginning stages of decomposition. That gives me a timeline. That tells me that this person had died not just recently, but many hours before we were even contacted, before the report of the homicide.
Hoping to get more details of the timeline, investigators reach out to the man who made the initial 911 call, Colleen's former defense attorney, David Weiner. And they soon learn he did more than just call the police that day. He had met with his client out at the crime scene for about an hour and a half before he went to his office and made that call.
Weiner has always maintained that he never entered the home. He remained in the driveway and he met with his client inside of his vehicle. He didn't stay at the scene. He didn't stay with his client. He left her on her own to deal with law enforcement. He refused to answer any questions. He didn't know if he was going to be your attorney or not and that most of this was going to have to wait. That is what a criminal defense attorney representing a client almost certainly should do
The obvious conflict that he would create if he became a witness in the case against his client, Colleen Harris. Investigators push forward, continuing to build their case. They reach out again to Bob's daughter, 47-year-old Pam Sterling, who agrees to come in for an interview. The very first thing that she brought up is that Colleen had been the suspect in the homicide in 1985, and they knew about it.
Bob knew about it, but Bob didn't seem to be too worried and believed her that it was in self-defense. Like Colleen, Pam mentions the infidelity, but says that Colleen was extremely upset that Bob might be having an affair, so much so that it had driven Bob to seek a divorce in September of 2012. She was texting Pam, you know,
asking why he's doing this, is he in love with somebody else? - In string of texts, Colleen is very hopeful that her and Bob are gonna get back together. The next one, she's despondent about Bob leaving her and about their relationship ending. - Two months later, Colleen convinced Bob to come back to the family home, at least temporarily. - Colleen was scheduled to have hip surgery and she needed someone to help her. Bob moved back.
He stated upon her recovery, he was going to move to Tahoe to his second home and end their relationship. The night before the murder, Bob was still at the home in Placerville when Pam received the last text she would ever get from Colleen. During that last exchange, Colleen indicated that she had caught Bob on the phone with his girlfriend from Mongolia.
Pam said Colleen was very concerned with Bobby on the phone with this woman. Talking to Pam, that kind of gives us a little bit of context. Colleen actually was angry about the relationship dissolving. Colleen never mentioned that to us or anything about Bob leaving the home. The moment somebody leaves is the moment that is most dangerous. Coming up.
the Harris home begins to give up its secrets. She kept extensive journals over the years. And investigators catch a break. Not only does she leave her home for that evening, she's able to have the wherewithal to give her location accurately to AAA. Days after the heinous murder of Bob Harris,
Investigators are homing in on Bob's wife, Colleen Harris, as the prime suspect. Once we had received the search warrants, we went back to the residence and we found a series of handwritten journals that were Colleen's. They claimed to have started in 1985. She portrays herself in the journals as a faithful, loving wife whose husband, Bob, is mistreating her. And she forgives him.
While reading the journals, investigators can't ignore a growing hunch. There's aspects of them that would suggest they're fabricated. Some of the entries had dates and most did not. And again, the chronology, you'd expect you would write, fill a page, and you'd go on to the next page.
The chronology following it in that context didn't really fit. And that's why I strongly suspect that they were written retrospectively. That would indicate a great deal of planning. The amount of time that it would take to fill years worth of journals would have to have been started months in advance.
Hoping to bolster their case for first-degree murder, investigators keep digging. We felt that writing a search warrant for the cell phone records of Colleen may give us more information. When we received the results of those cell phone records, it was alarming. In the hours after investigators believe Bob was murdered, they trace Colleen's movements.
During her interview, Colleen had claimed that she never left the house on Wilderness Way on the weekend of the murder. We found out that her cell phone traveled from the Wilderness Way address all the way down Highway 50 to Highway 80 and to the Bay Area. So this wasn't a woman who was in a fog. This wasn't a woman who had remained in the Wilderness Way address like she claimed.
Records show that following Bob's murder, Colleen made the three-hour drive to San Francisco, arriving around 10:00 AM. On her way home, she makes a stop because her car becomes inoperable. And because of that, she has to call AAA and ask for a tow truck. We were able to get the recording of Colleen Harris calling AAA from the side of US 80.
Yeah.
She was very articulate. She stated where she was at, what she needed, how to get there. There doesn't seem to be any confusion. And that was just the information that we were looking for to confirm that this claim of amnesia is false.
they're able to find that not only does she leave her home for that evening, then on her way home, she's able to have the wherewithal to give her location accurately to AAA. Now, investigators want to know where Colleen was headed and why. We found one of the towers the phone pinged off of was right next to Colleen Harris's adult son's residence in San Francisco.
We found that to be odd because during this period, she was claiming to be in a gray fog. After finding this information, we attempted to contact her son, Wesley Thornberry. Initially, Wesley said he didn't have any contact with his mother on Sunday, January 6th. However, Wesley tells investigators that his mother did try to call him that morning. She was in the Bay Area and she was hoping to meet up with him.
but he insisted that he never actually met up with her. He was unable to do so because Wesley had gone out to brunch with his fiancée. Certain there is more to this story, detectives take a closer look at Colleen and Bob's finances, and they stumble across something that sparks their interest. Colleen and Bob had actually divorced for about a year in 2004.
And apparently, the divorce was done so that Colleen could take advantage of some financial death benefits from her former husband, Jim Baffin. She got his survivor benefits, like $1,100 a month. They had remarried after Colleen had been able to secure those benefits. At the very least, it proved how keenly focused Colleen was on finances.
Investigators learned that Colleen could expect another payday following Bob's death. Bob had had a long career and a pension, and they were well off with an estate of approximately a million dollars. In both cases, she stood to gain from the demise of her husband. As detectives are collecting evidence of Colleen's motives, they get a strange call from David Weiner.
I was contacted by attorney Dave Weiner. He stated that he had some possessions that were given to him that he wanted or felt that needed to be turned over to law enforcement. So he didn't tell us the relevance of it. And essentially, attorney Weiner had stated, you'll find out. Coming up...
The reason for Colleen's trip to the Bay Area is finally revealed. The entire collection was probably worth $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 or so. And later, it's deja vu all over again. In the middle of the trial, Colleen says that she starts to get some memory back.
As Colleen Harris awaits trial for the shooting death of her husband, Bob Harris, investigators get a surprising phone call. I was contacted by attorney Dave Weiner. He represented her in Jim Batten's homicide, and he was representing her in the homicide now. He had property that belonged to Bob Harris, and it included a large coin collection.
We subsequently learned that those items were brought to him by Colleen Harris' son, Wesley. He took all those items and gave them to David Weiner as opposed to giving them to the police. Wesley claimed that he found the items in his garage after his mother had been arrested for the murder of Bob Harris.
Colleen brought a bunch of coins down to Wesley's, left them in his garage. According to him, never saw him, and then driven back up. The entire collection was probably worth $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 or so. On March 17, 2015, the trial for Bob's murder gets underway. When the coin collection is addressed, it points to more scheming by Colleen.
She claimed at trial that she moved the coin collection so that they wouldn't be stolen. But that never made particular sense to me. And I've always strongly suspected that she had some idea that she would stage
the house to look like it had been broken into and could claim that she came home, she found Bob, and he must have been killed by whoever broke into the house. But I've always believed that Colleen had shifting ideas about what she was going to do to get away with this crime. And so it seemed that's something that she abandoned and didn't follow through with. Prosecutors lay out a timeline of events leading up to Bob's murder.
Colleen and Bob had dinner on Saturday night and watched the television. Bob, at some point of time, must have disclosed that it was his plan to drive back up to the South Lake Tahoe cabin on Sunday. The moment she snapped was knowing that he was going to leave. With Bob set to leave the next morning, Colleen came up with a plan. She waited until he was asleep.
She went into that bedroom with that sawed-off shotgun. She leaned across that bed and shot him at near point-blank range, killing him instantly. Colleen then spent the next several hours plotting her defense. One of the ideas was trying to clean up the crime scene. She pretty quickly abandoned that idea because it was just overwhelming.
Instead, Colleen called the same man who helped her back in 1985, defense attorney David Weiner. She called her lawyer from the crime scene, and then he calls police. And she met with him hours before law enforcement was notified. In court, the defense struggles to find their footing the second time around.
The defense kept presenting different defenses. Suicide, accident, self-defense, amnesia. I mean, they fluctuated between those different ideas, much like Colleen seemed to fluctuate between different ideas as to how she was going to cover up the murder.
The recording of the call to AAA was really compelling because the jury was able to hear in Colleen's own voice, in own words, that she was aware of her surroundings, cognizant. She was answering questions and giving information. This wasn't a woman who was in a fog. Colleen claimed at one point that Bob had assaulted her earlier in that evening.
In the middle of the trial, Colleen says that she starts to get some memory back. And then she's able to get some flashes about some sort of struggle in which she describes she can feel the shotgun with her hands and that Bob ends up taking control and accidentally fires the weapon in which he is killed. None of which is supported by any of the crime scene evidence whatsoever.
After a five-week trial, it takes the jury less than two hours to reach a verdict. She was convicted of first-degree murder. She was also convicted of a special allegation of using a firearm in order to commit the murder, resulting in an overall sentence of 50 years to life for Colleen Harris. Even though Colleen finally ended up behind bars, Bob's family still grapples with what could have been.
We think of Grandpa Bob all the time. We talk about him. His children and their children, my kids and his five grandkids total, and that's probably the legacy that hopefully we'll live on and the kids will all learn who he was and what he did and carry that on forever.
Colleen died in prison in July 2022. She was 80 years old. Wesley Thornberry was never charged with any crimes. David Weiner has never been charged with any crimes in connection to Bob Harris's death.
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