Piper Rountree said she didn’t do it.

She didn’t shoot her ex-husband to get her children back.

She claimed she was in Houston when it happened. But to win her an acquittal, her lawyer Murray Janus had a mountain of circumstantial evidence to explain away.

Murray Janus, defense attorney: Do you have your suspicions? Sure.  Do you have your probables?  Sure.  But that’s not enough.

Overall, the defense was a little like the “quack like a duck” theory: If airline personnel checked in a Tina Rountree, if a TSA officer approved a Tina Rountree checking in a handgun... If a clerk said she rented a Tina Rountree a car in Virginia, if Tina Rountree had access to both her sister’s cell phone and her car, then maybe it was Tina Rountree in the driveway shooting the ex-husband of her beloved sister, the man who’d caused Piper so much anguish in her view.

Though the jury would never hear from the sister Tina. Neither prosecution nor defense called her to the stand—her presence in the court was almost palpable.

Janus: From the opening statement on, we repeated the name Tina Rountree, Tina Rountree.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: Is it fair to say that Tina, the sister, had issues about her sister’s husband?

Janus: I’d say more that she was supportive of her sister right down the line. And the blood is thicker than water.

Murphy: The jury is hearing about Tina Rountree taking the plane, Tina Rountree checking into a motel, various clerks along the way seeing a blonde woman?

Murray: And some of the witnesses saying the woman was 5’7 seven to 5’9, blonde, and giving a description that more aptly fit Tina than it did Piper.

Piper was a few inches shorter than her sister.

Janus: And the person came about 2 inches up to your height, is that correct?

Allen Benestante (witness): Yes sir.

Janus: That would make the person about 5’9?

Benestante: Yes sir.

And there was a point about the return segment of Piper’s supposed travel that spoke to her defense.

On the Saturday of the murder, with investigators already in full pursuit of Piper, they knew that a Tina Rountree was ticketed on a Southwest Airlines flight from Baltimore to Houston.

So the Richmond cops alerted their counterparts at the Houston P.D. to meet the flight and question Piper if she got off the plane.

Five Houston officers were waiting at the gate, photo of Piper in hand, but none her get off the plane, none saw her pick up her checked luggage.

Murphy: Does that suggest a conclusion that Piper Rountree wasn’t on that plane?

Janus: Certainly does.

Janus (in court): Everyone on that plane, as they were exiting, would have to come right by you at the gate. You were looking at people in the face and comparing them to the picture you had of Piper Rountree?

Breck McDaniel: Yes sir.

Murray: You didn’t find her though, did you?

Breck: No, sir.

And Piper’s best witness helped explain to the jury why the cops didn’t see her get off the plane that day. 

Martin McVey is the Houston lawyer who at one time shared some of his office space with Piper.

In key testimony for the defense, McVey testified, under oath, that he was talking with Piper Rountree in his Houston office on 4:30 the very afternoon of the murder.

Four-thirty p.m. is a critical time because the airplane the prosecution believes that Piper Rountree was aboard didn’t arrive that day until 4:40 pm… and they knew someone calling herself Tina Rountree had been on that flight.

Houston Hobby airport to McVeigh’s office near downtown takes at least 20 minutes.

Janus: October 30^th, 2004-- did you ever see Piper Rountree ?

Martin McVey: I did in my office.

Janus: And could you tell the jury what time you saw her?

McVey: Approximately 4:30 that afternoon.

If he saw her at 4:30, then she wasn’t on the flight and, therefore, probably not in the driveway in Richmond that morning with a gun.

Janus: He’s an attorney-at-law and I can’t believe for one minute that an attorney is gonna commit perjury and risk (a) being indicted and (b) losing his license.

Then came the most dramatic moment of the trial,  Piper Rountree—a one-time prosecutor herself, now charged with first-degree murder—electing to take the stand in her own defense.

The defendant said she had no motive to kill her ex-husband—the divorce had been horrible, for sure—but things between her and Fred Jablin, she said, had greatly improved.

Janus: September, October 2004— how were you getting along with Fred Jablin, compared to during the divorce itself?

Piper Rountree: it was an answer to my prayers. we were doing very good.

As for the circumstantial evidence against her, her jeep parked for three days in the Houston airport garage, clearly she said, the attendants had mistaken her car for someone else’s...  

Murray: Did you drive your car to the Hobby Airport Parking Garage, Thursday October 28^TH?

Piper Rountree: No. I never went to the Hobby Airport Parking Garage.

But most prominently—how could she explain those tell-tale cell phone calls? 

The cellphone and her car, she said, were all but communal property, used not just by her but her sister Tina as well.

Murray: Did you ever use Tina’s cell phone?

Piper Rountree: Yes.

Murray: Did Tina ever use your cell phone?

Piper Rountree: Yes. I own several cell phones  and had access to several.

She also said people constantly confused her and Tina’s voices— they sounded so much alike—explaining how her son and his friend could have confused Tina for her.  

Janus: Has anyone ever confuse your voice with Tina’s?

Piper Rountree: All the time.

And as for the clerks who identified her on the day of travel between Houston and Virginia?

Well, they were simply mistaken Piper said. In a post 9/11 world airline workers are trained to look carefully at photo IDs before letting a passenger board a plane—so if they were looking at Tina Rountree’s driver's license, it must have been Tina they saw that day... and now in court, Piper implied, they were simply confused by a sisterly resemblance.

Janus: Does anyone ever confuse the looks of you and Tina Rountree?

Piper Rountree: My mother can’t tell us apart on pictures.

As far as taking target practice, that’s just Texas-style recreation that wouldn’t be understood by anyone but a Texan—and that’s why she asked her friend not to mention it to detectives.

Piper Rountree: I immediately realized that they would look at this as being very suspicious. And, what is normal for Texans... anyway, it just didn’t look good.

And those wigs sent special delivery? She said it was Halloween coming.

Piper Rountree: There was a Halloween party coming up  and that’s what the wigs were for.

In the end, she says she didn’t kill her ex-husband and didn’t know who would shot to death the father of her three children.

Janus: Did you shoot and kill Fred Jablin on Saturday morning, October 30^th?

Piper Rountree: I did not.

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