The prosecution team of Donna Pendergast, Mark Bilkovic and John Skrynzski pieced together a timeline for the jury of the weeks leading up to Flo’s death. By mid-October, 2003, the Unger divorce proceedings had gotten very ugly. 

Amy Folbe (in court): Mark told her that he was going to get custody of the children, he was going to get the house.  She would get no child support and little alimony.

Mark Bilkovic, prosecutor: Did she tell you how she felt about that?

Amy Folbe: She felt very threatened.

Peter Stern: She told me that she would live in a box before she let the kids go.

Steve Frank: She said, you know, “I don’t want to have to do it but if he tries to take the kids from me and the house I’m going to have to get nasty about the divorce.”

And she did lash back at Mark — in a divorce hearing on Tuesday, October 21^st, four days before she died. There Flo insisted she would fight hard to keep the boys — though Mark had begged her not to — she demanded the release of all the records of Mark’s gambling debts and drug addictions. The battle spilled over at home. Flo told friends it was the worst week of her life.

Susan Witus: She said, “I don’t want to talk about it in detail, but I was very upset.”  And “I’ve been crying on the bathroom floor for the last two nights.”                  

Bilkovic: Did she ever use the term warring with you?     

Witus: She said they’ve been, that, yeah, that they’d been warring all week.

Glenn Stark: She said Mark had become increasingly erratic.  And, uh, unpredictable, withdrawn.

Flo told this man, Glenn Stark, that she had spent hours that week locked in the bathroom, crying.

Bilkovic: Did she ever characterize or give a nickname or a paraphrase to the type of behavior that she indicated the defendant was exhibiting?

Glenn Stark: Yes.  She said he was exhibiting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behavior.       

Prosecutors had another reason for putting stark on the stand. His relationship with Flo hinted at a motive for murder.

Bilkovic: Now you and Florence Unger had a very close friendship, is that fair to say?

Stark: Yes.

Bilkovic: And did that friendship ever turn physical?

Stark: Yes, it did.

Stark testified that he and Flo had a secret affair and had sex a few times over a two year period, the last time just a week before her death. 

Mark Unger described Stark as his best friend. In fact, Stark was an overnight guest in the Unger home the night of the divorce hearing.  There is no evidence Mark knew about the affair, but Stark said he seemed distant and hostile.

Stark: I asked Mark if he was uncomfortable with me being there and if he’d preferred that I stayed somewhere else.     

Attorney: And how did he respond?     

Stark: He replied that, no, he wasn’t angry with me being there, I wasn’t the one who was divorcing him.

The next day, Wednesday, a neighbor encountered Flo kneeling in her garden crying.

Ronald Loeb, neighbor: I said “Hi, Flo, how are you,” and she looked up at me and she was crying, and she said “Not very well.” She told me that they were going  up north.  And that she did not want to go.  And that she was afraid to go.

But on Friday, Flo and Mark took the boys on the long drive up north to Watervale.  After dinner, the boys settled in to watch a movie, Flo and Mark went down to the boat deck. 

There they had a conversation with this man. He told jurors it was pitch black out and he told the Ungers he was about to take his boat across the lake.

Fred Oeflein: And she said, “Oh, I could never do that because I’m afraid of the dark.”

Donna Pendergast, prosecutor: So in this brief conversation you had with the Ungers she made that fear known to you?

Oeflein: Yes.

And that point was critical to the prosecution’s case — that Flo was so afraid of the dark she never would have stayed out on the boat deck alone. 

Kathy Stark: She was afraid of the dark.   

Ronald Loeb: She was very afraid of the dark.

Flo’s father said she’d been afraid for as long as he could remember.

Harold Stern, Flo's father: When she was a little child—she said, “Hold me, Daddy.  I’m scared of the dark.”  And now, 30 years later, she’s put in a place where she’s gonna be in the dark forever.

A frightened woman, an escalating custody fight... tears and betrayal. Prosecutors told the jury the pressure boiled over out here on this deck. The Ungers argued. Maybe Mark snapped, pushed Flo and then returned to the cottage.  But all of that was circumstantial—some of it pure speculation, proving the next part of the prosecution’s case was crucial: that Flo didn’t die from an accidental fall, Mark had to have pulled her from the cement into the water, where she drowned.

“The only way the injury like that can occur is the result of blunt force...”

“Looking down on the spinal cord, which we had to cut off, to remove the brain.” 

Prosecutors called on a series of forensic experts and prepared jurors to get familiar with the fine print in Flo’s autopsy report.

Donna Pendergast: In this case, it is like CSI.  In this case, the body tells the story.

The doctor who performed Flo’s autopsy catalogued her many bruises—her broken hip, internal injuries, fractured skull.  He said she became unconscious the second she hit the concrete.

Dr. Cohle: I have a hard time understanding how she got into the water.              

This controversial neuropathologist was emphatic that Flo was immobile on the cement and was placed in the water, where she drowned.

John Skrzynski, prosecutor: Now, Doctor, based on these injuries and based on the physical condition that Mrs. Unger would have been in as a result of the injuries, would she have been capable of getting into the water on her own?

Dr. LJ Dragovic: No, sir.

Skrzynski: In your opinion what was the state of her consciousness when she first went into the water?

Dr. LJ Dragovic: She didn’t go into the water.  Being unconscious, she could have only been placed into the water.

And this doctor, Paul McKeever of the University of Michigan, looked at samples of Flo’s brain tissue. He performed several tests — and said one showed proof of a brain injury that could only have appeared if Flo had been alive on the cement a very long time.

Dr. Paul McKeever: An hour-and-a-half. She would have been alive for an hour-and-a-half.

And that was the crux of the prosecution’s medical case.

Donna Pendergast: And if she was not capable of getting into the water on her own power, then somebody put her into the water.  And they had a long time to think about it before they did it.

Your honor, at this time, the people would call Linn Duncan to the stand.

The prosecution wrapped up its case by returning to Linn Duncan’s doubt — how had Mark known to run right to the body in the water.

Pendergast: Had you told or given the defendant any information whatsoever about where Florence’s body was?

Linn Duncan: No, none.

As its final piece of evidence the prosecution presented this... a videotape recreation of Mark’s route down to the water that October morning made to show he could not have seen where Flo’s body was and so could not have run right to it unless he knew it was there.

FREE VIDEO Unger's route Prosecutors presented a recreation of Mark Unger's route down to the water. It showed he could not have seen where Flo's body was and could not have run right to it unless he knew it was there. Dateline NBC

The last image was an inflatable female dummy used in CPR training, facedown in the water. 

Dramatic yes, and to some, deeply disturbing. The prosecution rested hoping it would all add up to pre-mediated murder.

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