Now the prosecutor had his chance to cross-examine Piper Rountree, to grill her about her cell phone that he argued put her in Richmond the morning of the murder.

Piper Rountree: I know where I was.

Wade Kizer: It’s your telephone.

Piper Rountree: My phone is used by different people. Tina used it. And it basically was a community phone.

How could she explain the phone call to her son on Friday—the day before the murder—telling the boy she was in Texas when in fact that very phone she called on was in Virginia?

Kizer: You used it on Tuesday. And then, Saturday night when Detective Kelley calls you on it, you’ve got it then. But while the crime’s being committed , you don’t know where it is?

Piper Rountree: I can’t tell you definitely.

And how did she explain her Jeep Liberty the prosecutor said was parked in the Houston airport garage when she told investigators she’d used it to drive all around Texas on the days in question?

Kizer: Thursday, Friday and Saturday you were driving the black Jeep Liberty, correct?

Piper Rountree: Yes.

Kizer: Well, can you explain why the records from the Houston Hobby Airport show that your vehicle was in their parking lot on Thursday, Friday and Saturday?

Piper Rountree: No. I have no explanation.

“I can’t explain,” “I don’t know,” “I can’t answer that”: Piper Rountree’s risky gamble to take the stand was going poorly on the scorecard of some courtroom observers.

Murphy: Did she make a poor choice do you think?

Kizer: I think she probably did. I think it’s consistent with Piper’s personality to try and talk her way out of things.

Throughout the trial, the defense had tried to seed the thought with the jury that it might actually have been Piper’s older sister, Tina, who’d flown to Virginia and committed the murder.

The prosecutor went for the jugular, pressing her hard for virtually throwing her sister to the wolves. 

Kizer: You had the blonde wig?

Piper Rountree: Yes sir.

Kizer: Where is that?

Piper Rountree: Last time I saw it Tina had it.

Kizer: You want this jury to think that Tina committed the murder, don’t you?

Piper Rountree: I have no idea what happened.

The only problem with the "maybe Tina did-it" alternate theory was this: there was testimony that Tina Rountree was in Houston that Saturday morning and not in Fred Jablin’s driveway.

To prove that point, the prosecutor called an employee from Tina Rountree’s health-care clinic. A woman testified that Tina had been seeing patients in Houston that morning.

But still the prosecutor was not able to rattle Piper Rountree’s key witness—Martin McVey.

The attorney was adamant that Piper was with him in his office on 4:30 that Saturday afternoon—making it impossible for her to have be on a plane that day flying back to Texas. 

Martin McVey: I have told everyone that has asked that question. “I saw Piper Rountree on October 30^th at 4:30.”

Passenger manifests, cell phone records, wigs and witnesses—had the prosecution done enough to prove its theory that Piper Rountree tried to win in the driveway what she’d lost in family court—the custody of her three children?

Or was it the version the defense implied—did her sister Tina decide to exact revenge and kill Fred Jablin for Piper?

Was it Tina with the cellphone and the rental car?

Tina walking right past the cops at the Houston airport on the lookout for her sister?

It was up to the jury to decide Piper Rountree’s guilt or her innocence. If convicted, the 45-year old woman could spend the rest of her life in prison.

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