Piper Rountree had pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.

Wade Kizer, prosecutor: The evidence of her guilt is overwhelming.

But prosecutor Wade Kizer told the court he would prove she hadn’t been in Houston the day of the murder—as she claimed—but in fact had lain in wait before dawn in the driveway of her former home in Richmond, Virginia.

Kizer: I think she left the hotel room that morning, got in position,  and waited for Fred Jablin to come out to get the newspaper. She stepped out of the shadows at that point, shot him and then fled.

The prosecutor didn’t have the murder weapon, didn’t have fingerprints at the scene, or witnesses to the killing, but he argued he could put Piper Rountree in the driveway that morning through a chain of circumstantial evidence, starting with some curious things she did in the days leading up Jablin’s murder.

Kizer: It was a circumstantial case but there was an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence.

Isn’t it funny, posed the prosecutor, that Piper Rountree went to this gun range to take target practice just four days before the murder?

The friend who accompanied her said Piper asked him not to mention their trip to the police.

Mac McClennahan, witness (on the stand): She said please don’t say anything about the gun range. It’ll just complicate things.

And why, asked the prosecutor, did Piper—that same week—order two wigs—one blonde, one red—on the Internet?

The woman at the wig company testified that Piper wanted them fast.

Eleanor Ceballos, works for wig company: Rush. Overnight, if possible.

And two days before the murder, was Piper the passenger who checked in for a Southwest Airlines using a photo ID license under the name Tina Rountree?

Wearing a long blonde wig, did she buy the ticket from Houston to Norfolk, Virginia?

The airline counter agent identified Piper as the woman who flew that day under the name Tina Rountree.

Prosecutor: Look around the court room and see if you can identify the person to whom you sold that ticket.

Airline counter agent: The lady right here (pointing to Piper Rountree).

And a Houston Hobby Airport, TSA security officer distinctly remembered being called that day to sign off on the blonde passenger’s unusual item in checked luggage: a .38 caliber handgun—a passenger he identified in court as Piper Rountree.

And so it went for the rest of the her travel, argued the prosecutor, the clerk at an off-airport, rental car business, testified that most of their clients were African American so she remembered renting a minivan to the woman she identified in court as Piper Rountree.

Also recognizing her was the front desk clerk at the motel up the road in Richmond, Virginia.

She was certain it was Piper who paid cash and asked if she could register under another name.

But the prosecution’s best evidence against Piper Rountree was a cell phone.

The court would learn that cell phones are capable of doing much more than placing a call or taking snapshots. They do something that probably most of us either don’t know about or don’t give a second thought to. They can tell technicians exactly where you are at any given moment. They are like a GPS mapping gadget.

And the story told by piper’s cell phone threatened to convict her.

Back at the murder scene that Saturday morning one of the questions detectives were asking themselves was where is the ex-wife?

Det. Coby Kelly: We knew that eventually, and sooner rather than later, we wanted to talk to and either eliminate his ex-wife as a suspect.

Lead Detective Coby Kelley got Sprint, Piper’s cell service, to track her phone.

Cellphones  send signals—pings—to nearby towers wherever they are.

Det. Kelly: We were able to get some specific information about where it was around the time of the murder and in fact, where it was at that moment. And we were able to track that the phone had been in the Richmond area at the time that Fred was shot.

And look at one cell phone call in particular, said the lead detective, that Piper made on Friday, the afternoon before the murder.

Det. Kelly: Piper told us that she in fact, was in Galveston on Friday. Recalled making a phone call and talking to her son and so that clearly put that telephone call in her hands—speaking with her son. And we had known that this cell phone was hitting off of towers in the Richmond area.  So, we knew that that part of her story was not true.

Piper had phoned her 12-year-old son and told him she was calling from Texas.

Oddly, she also asked to speak to the friend he was with that day. Not knowing the cell phone was bouncing off a Virginia tower, was she trying to place herself in Texas about 14-hours before the murder?

Had she used her own son and his friend to try to establish an alibi?

Murphy: On Friday, she calls her son and says, “Hi, how’s everything going? I’m in Galveston.”  And the cell phone record shows she’s where?

Kizer: Here in Henrico county.

The prosecutor had portrayed Piper Rountree as a mother so desperate to get her children back that she would cold-bloodedly plot and carry out her ex-husband’s murder. Brushing up her handgun skills, concealing her identity and posing as her sister, a clumsy scheme that Piper, a  former assistant district attorney herself, messed up every step along the way, argued the prosecutor.

Kizer: She did things that might look foolish at this point. But she also went to great efforts to try to avoid detection. And I think lots of times people who commit murders for revenge frequently make mistakes.  And they think that they’re smarter than everybody else.

And to cap it off, investigators said they found records showing her personal car was left in this parking lot at the Houston airport.

Det. Kelly: We later were able to look at the parking records from the Houston Hobby airport parking deck, and they had noted that her tags on that vehicle were in their parking deck during the three days that we were-  very much interested in.

A car, she told investigators, she’d used on a busy few days driving through Texas.

But the garage records—the prosecutor would tell the court—showed otherwise.

Houston Hobby airport garage employee: We have an employee that uses a handheld system that records license plates ...

Det. Kelly: In order to make sure that you and I don’t go there, go on a three week vacation, and then come back and say, “I’ve just been here one day and I lost my ticket.” They go by at four or five o’clock in the morning and actually type in all the license plates of the cars that are still there—to at least give them an idea of—how long vehicles are in their lot.

Murphy: So, her Jeep Liberty enters the Houston Hobby parking garage when?

Det. Kelly: On Thursday sometime and was there through Saturday.

Was the petite woman at the defendant’s table the figure waiting in the driveway that Saturday morning? The one who fired the shots and then ran into the darkness?

Or had there been a horrible mistake—maybe a stolen cell phone—maybe even a sister closer than close exacting a revenge of her own?

The motel was registered in the name of Tina Rountree.

Did Tina Rountree—angry about how her little sister was being treated by her ex husband—kill Fred Jablin?

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