In the courthouse a jury of 12 would now decide if Piper Rountree,  one-time soccer mom,  former Texas prosecutor, would spend the rest of her life in prison. 

They included a desktop analyst, a sign technician, a salesman, a hospital worker, and the foreman, a manager at a courier company.

In a circumstantial case with no eyewitnesses, no confession to the crime, the jury was going to have to work its way though the evidence piece by piece.

Polly, juror: When I first got started in the trial, I still asked “well, maybe somebody framed this lady.”

Timothy, juror: Nobody really saw her shoot him.

Polly:  I thought she was innocent. She looked like she just a normal lady, you know, a mother.

As the jury started to put together the trail of circumstantial evidence as laid out by the prosecutor, they struggled to come to terms with the horror of it all— Was Piper Rountree even capable of lying in wait to kill the father of her three children, her husband of almost 20 years?

The prosecutor had said yes—and told them of a divorce so bitter, so off-the-charts ugly, that Piper Rountree, a stay-at-home mom, had not only lost custody of her kids but was ordered to pay her ex-husband child support as well.

Timothy: The picture that they were basically painting for us is that something in her snapped. Fred had her kids, she basically owed him you know, owed him all this money. And she probably wasn’t doing what she wanted to do with her life as far as her job is like and what not.

Polly: I think something went wrong in their marriage and she just went off the edge.

Jim: She was getting beat up with Fred, by Fred with child support. I think she was resentful of Fred for that.  

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: She came out very much on the losing end of this divorce suit?

Joe, juror: Yes, she did.

But half of the marriages in the country end, many in hard-fought custody battles. Not enough to build a murder case on its own, but the prosecutor had also told them had told them of a detailed plan to kill her husband that began with those wigs bought on Internet, express delivery.

Piper said she ordered them for a Halloween costume—the prosecutor said they were for a disguise so she could travel to Virginia undetected to kill her ex-husband.

Polly: I knew right then that she had those wigs for a purpose.

Murphy: To cover up, to conceal her identity?

Polly: That’s right.

And she had gone to a shooting range just four days before Fred Jablin was killed.

Polly: That was really important to me. Why she was learning how to shoot.

But it was the cell phone records that the jurors found most disturbing— those signals that showed her phone was making calls in Virginia when she says she was in Texas.

Joel, juror: I think the biggest weapon in this whole thing was the cell phone.

Bruce, juror: Cell phone records are the thing that just ‘til the end of time will stand out to me  and how they pinned  her, to pinpoint places throughout her time in Virginia.

Timothy: What really solidified it was when her kids, you know, recognized like her voice and they documented that when she spoke to her kids she was here.

And none of the jurors thought Piper Rountree helped herself by taking the stand in her own defense.

Joe: When Piper took the stand I was expecting a lot more emotion. I don’t care what kind of relationship I had with a spouse, if by some chance they were killed in accident or by someone else I would be just so torn up I couldn’t imagine, and here she was showing little or no emotion.

Jim: I hate to be flip about it but she’d quite frankly have had more credibility with me if she’d come out and said ‘yeah he’s dead and I am glad he is. I would have believed that.    

But what about Piper Rountree’s alibi witness—Martin McVey, the Houston lawyer, who says he was with her at 4:30 the day of the murder—making it impossible for her to have been on the plane back from Virginia that day?

Murphy: Here’s this friend who’s a lawyer, he’s taking the oath not to tell you a lie and he saying “I saw her at 4:30 Saturday afternoon?”

Bruce: Completely uncredible.

Polly: I just think that he was just being a friend to her.

But the defense attorney had suggested a more likely killer—Piper’s sister Tina.

It was Tina’s name on the plane and car reservations, he pointed out, and Tina had access to her sister’s cell phone.

Joel: We heard Tina’s name more than we heard Piper Rountree’s name. They used that constantly. But that was Tina’s credit card or this, look at Tina in this picture?

Bruce: Not for one moment did I believe that Tina Rountree murdered Fred Jablin.

Tim: Plus the fact of the matter, Tina was technically placed at the clinic during that time frame.

But the jurors did consider this—why if Piper Rountree was on that flight back to Houston that Saturday afternoon did five officers miss her as she got off the plane and picked up her bags?

Joel: They missed her and it was unusual that they missed her. Don’t know how they did because they had the right flight they were on the correct ramp.    

In the jury room, they were trying to reach a verdict.

Would Piper Rountree be found guilty of murdering the father of her three children, her one time husband of almost 20 years?

Bruce: It was a little overwhelming here, we’ve got somebody’s life in your hands and though we’ve all had all this evidence you still question yourself at the very end of—am I making the right decision?

Finally, after much thought, the jurors reached a unanimous verdict.

Sheriff (reads the verdict): We the jury find the defendant guilty of the first degree murder of Frederic Jablin.

Piper Rountree was found guilty of murdering her ex husband and sentenced to life if prison.

But she says the jury got it wrong and the real killer is still on the loose.

Murphy: If not you, who did it?

Piper Rountree:  I don’t know if we’re ever gonna find out. I have got ideas, you know. I’ve been sitting here and I’ve been trying to figure out what happened. I’m not a whole lot closer than I was. I’ve got some very good ideas as to what happened. There are a lot of pieces missing.

Piper Rountree is appealing her conviction. And Tina Rountree? Once asked if she felt "used" by her sister's defense, she said that it didn't bother her.  But she does deny killing Fred Jablin. She did, however, plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of attempted evidence tampering after she helped her sister dispose of one of those wigs. She served 9 months of community service, and her record was cleared. One final note: Fred Jablin's brother has custody of the couple's children.

This report originally aired Dateline NBC Tuesday, January 23, 8 p.m.

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