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Nancy Grace

Perfect Son Murder Trial Testimony

Aired December 11, 2012 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight, live, Highland township. The perfect son, high school valedictorian, star athlete, biology major, loving son, now accused in the vicious murder of his own mother, mother of two Ruth Pyne found dead in the garage, found by her 10-year-old little girl, Pyne bludgeoned, stabbed 16 times, hair clutched in the dead mom`s hand. I.D., grainy surveillance video from the morning Mommy is murdered emerges, the so-called perfect son caught on tape, Jeffrey Pyne`s raw and uncensored candid police interrogation just hours after his mother found dead.

Bombshell tonight. Daddy`s love triangle emerges, Pyne`s husband not only sleeping around but also lying to his mistress about his wife`s condition and funneling money out of bank accounts to hide it from divorce lawyers. We learn the dead mom, Ruth Pyne, hoarding an arsenal of knives hidden in the headboard of the marital bed.

Mommy refuses to take meds for schizophrenia, watching religious TV evangelists 24/7, walking around the house holding the bible, and angry at her son, Jeff, now murder defendant, over sex with his girlfriend. The girlfriend says the, quote, "perfect son" lied through his teeth and did it well. This murder mystery turning into a modern-day Peyton Place.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got a girlfriend?

JEFFREY PYNE, ACCUSED OF MURDERING MOTHER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What`s her name?

PYNE: Holly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has she been to your house before?

PYNE: Yes. She knows, obviously, about my mom`s condition. She didn`t really feel comfortable coming over all the time.

HOLLY FREEMAN, JEFFREY PYNE`S EX-GIRLFRIEND: She had been storing knives in the headboard of her bed.

PYNE: She just got crazy, just hyper, just all over the place. She came at me. She launched out of the bed and grabbed me by the throat and started hitting me and stuff.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He just told me that she had come after him with a knife.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was tough, I mean, when she would go manic and everything, but all I ever wanted was to get her on medication.

FREEMAN: She believed her medication was sorcery and witchcraft and therefore it was evil.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have a girlfriend?

PYNE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did she get along OK with your mom or it was just uncomfortable?

PYNE: They got along fine. She just -- she knows, like, that she gets crazy. That kind of makes her a little bit uneasy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us.

Bombshell tonight. The perfect son, high school valedictorian, biology major, loving son accused in the murder of his own mother. Tonight, Daddy`s love triangle emerges. Dead mom Ruth Pyne hoarding an arsenal of knives in the headboard of the marital bed, refusing to take her schizophrenia meds. And now the perfect son, Jeff`s, girlfriend says he lies through his teeth and does it well. This murder mystery turning into a modern-day Peyton Place. Uncensored raw statements, police interrogation of the so-called perfect son -- we have the video.

But first, straight out to Michael Christian, senior field producer with "In Session." The trial is going hot and heavy, Michael Christian, and the more state`s evidence comes in, the better it gets for the defendant, it seems to me. The more evidence they`re putting in, Michael Christian, the more it makes it look as if somebody else may have done it, specifically the father, Mr. Pyne.

MICHAEL CHRISTIAN, SR. FIELD PRODUCER, "IN SESSION" (via telephone): Well, it`s interesting that you say that, Nancy, because we heard from Holly Freeman, Jeffrey Pyne`s former girlfriend, and she said when she heard of this murder, her first instinct was that Bernie Pyne had done it.

We also heard from a woman named Renee Ginell -- the jurors heard from Renee Ginell -- who was Bernie Pyne`s mistress. And she said she didn`t think that Bernie did it but that her adult sons immediately thought that he was the perpetrator. In fact, they were worried for her safety and immediately called her up when they had heard about it on the news and said, Lock the doors. Lock the doors.

So we did hear that Bernie Pyne did have a girlfriend. He was having a sexual relationship with another woman, that he was apparently...

GRACE: OK, hold on.

CHRISTIAN: ... moving some money around...

GRACE: Michael, Michael...

CHRISTIAN: ... for a divorce...

GRACE: ... when you`re in high school, maybe middle school, it`s a girlfriend. When you`re the married father of two with a mentally ill wife at home, it`s called a mistress.

CHRISTIAN: Well, then she was a mistress because they were indeed having a sexual relationship.

GRACE: So Bernie Pyne`s running around, having an affair. You know what? I`m not the church lady. That`s his business. But when your wife turns up dead, stabbed 16 times in the neck, and you are hiding money in the bank, funneling it from account to account so your future divorce lawyers won`t be able to find it, so your wife can`t get it, and you`re lying to the mistress, saying your wife is in a catatonic state -- Michael, tell the viewers what happened at the restaurant when Daddy, Bernie Pyne, takes his girlfriend, his mistress, out to dinner. What happened?

CHRISTIAN: Well, you have to remember that Renee Ginell thought that, according to what Bernie Pyne had told her, that Ruth Pyne was literally almost catatonic, that she needed to be institutionalized, that she was a very sick woman. And she thought that Bernie was going to divorce Ruth, just like she was divorcing her husband, who also, coincidentally, was bipolar.

But they were in a restaurant in January of 2011, which was about four months or so before Ruth Pyne was murdered, and they were having a drink. They were having -- waiting for their dinner. And all of a sudden, a woman came in with a child, who we now know was Julia Pyne, the defendant`s sister. And all of a sudden, this woman came up to the table and said to Bernie Pyne, Hi, honey. How are you? Who`s this?

Well, that was the first that Renee Ginell knew that -- as she said, that Ruth Pyne was a functional, beautiful woman. She had no idea that she was in that kind of a state, that she was that, you know, coherent and cohesive. She again thought this woman was catatonic.

Bernie Pyne apparently was sort of hemming and hawing and said, Honey, we`ll talk about this when I get home. But that was the end of the relationship as far as Renee Ginell was concerned. She dumped him that night. She said she wanted no part of that because he had lied to her about Ruth Pyne`s condition.

GRACE: OK, let me get this straight. So the mistress is having dinner with Bernie Pyne, and the wife, the so-called crazy, bipolar -- some people say schizophrenic -- comes in with the daughter, the little girl, and is perfectly coherent, calm, and says, Hi, honey. Who`s this?

CHRISTIAN: That`s exactly right.

GRACE: That`s what happened. Is -- how soon after that did Ruth Pyne start hoarding knives in her headboard?

CHRISTIAN: Well, you know, we only heard one reference to that. And apparently, that was something that Jeff Pyne told Holly Freeman, his girlfriend, that his mother was hoarding knives in the headboard. But that is the only time in this trial that we`ve heard anything about it, so unfortunately, we have nothing specific...

GRACE: Well, Michael, how many times do you need to be told somebody`s got an arsenal of knives hidden in their headboard? One time does it for me!

Another thing, Michael Christian, that overwhelmed me -- now, Michael, you`ve covered a lot of trials. And between the two of us, I think the two of us have seen everything that can happen in a trial.

I was stunned that the judge allows Jeff Pyne`s, on trial for the murder of his own mother, girlfriend to take the stand and say, He`s a big, fat liar. He lied to me about cheating on me. He had some big, elaborate story that he was -- you know, to cover up the cheating. That`s character evidence coming in on a murder defendant?

CHRISTIAN: Yes, the defense objected to that, but the judge let it in anyway. He overruled those objections. But the interesting thing is, Nancy, even though Holly Freeman didn`t go into details -- all that the jurors heard from her was that, basically, Jeff had cheated on her -- the jurors already know all about it because they`ve heard it from a witness who testified on the very first day of the trial.

Apparently, Jeff told Holly Freeman that he was going off with his boss from Spicer Orchards, Will Cartwright (ph). They were going to a wine tasting weekend or some weekend, and actually, he was going to meet another college girl. Holly Freeman found out about it when she called Will Cartwright looking for Jeff.

GRACE: OK. So we`ve got the father and the son lying about affairs, basically. The star may be raw and uncensored videotape, the perfect son turned murder defendant in the murder of his own mom, caught on video. But is it enough for a conviction? I don`t know.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are those scratches on your forearm?

PYNE: These? Yes. I get scratched up a lot from work. This was a goat got out of the pen and we had to catch him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A goat?

PYNE: Yes, we have a petting farm. And there`s a new set-up, and the one goat always gets out, so...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What`s this on your pants?

PYNE: Paint.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s paint?

PYNE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What were you painting?

PYNE: That was back from the winter/spring. We were painting a new feeder at work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. And please don`t be offended. You know, we got to look at all this stuff and...

PYNE: No, I understand. I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need you to do me a favor. Just I need you to stand up. I need you just to lift your shirt up, make sure you don`t have any injuries on your stomach or your back or anything like that.

PYNE: That`s fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead -- Jeffrey, would you take your shirt right off (INAUDIBLE)

PYNE: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I understand that there was an issue where there was some sort of fight between the two of you, and she ended up getting arrested a while back?

PYNE: Yes, that was back last summer. She was not on her medication. She was very, very manic. And it was early in the morning. I heard my parents yelling back and forth, and it woke me up. And I walked into their room because the door was open, and they were just screaming at each other. And she came at me. She launched out of the bed and grabbed me by the throat and started hitting me and stuff. But I mean, she didn`t hurt me or anything. It was just -- she was manic. She wasn`t herself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jeff, can you take the bandages off your hands for us?

PYNE: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you -- describe to me how -- describe to me what took place with that pallet.

PYNE: It was just laying on the ground flat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

PYNE: I picked it up like this. I used my foot to kind of give it a boost because there was a stack of pallets. So I gave it a boost, and my hand got caught in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dramatic blisters on Jeffrey Pyne`s hands, disturbing photos jurors have seen over and over again. Pyne maintains he got the blisters throwing a wooden storage pallet at his job on a local farm.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I said, That doesn`t look like a pallet would do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: You`re seeing that from ABC`s "GMA."

But to Rita Cosby, investigative reporter. You`re on the case, too. You put up the scorned -- let me just say, scorned ex-girlfriend. I liked her. She should have broken up with him. He lied about cheating. But she`s got an axe to grind, would be the defense. So you put her up and she says, Oh, he had all this strange behavior around the time his mom died.

Rita Cosby, I`m not being devil`s advocate here, but what I`m saying is, this is America and I want the system to work like it should work. Having a girlfriend say he acted weird is not impressing me. I`m not that impressed.

RITA COSBY, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: No, but what they are saying, Nancy, and she`s saying -- because he cheated on her and because he came across as a sort of holier than thou -- he said, Look, I went to Christian school. My mother was a good person -- all these issues. She said it was so easy for him to lie to her about cheating on her two months before his mother was killed, that what else could he be lying about?

The other thing is his alibi, Nancy, it doesn`t fit. He said at the time when his mother was murdered he was changing lilac bushes at this woman`s house who he had been working for, a former teacher. The teacher said, No, those lilac bushes were moved days before.

So there`s a lot of questions here, and that mounting evidence and the fact he could, quote, "seamlessly" lie, will come into question with the jurors. The jurors will think about that when they go to the jury room.

GRACE: Rita Cosby, I`ve got to agree with you. And I`m a little underwhelmed by the state`s case. That`s not the prosecution`s fault. They`re working with what they`ve got.

Unleash the lawyers, Joe Jackson, New York, Darryl Cohen, Atlanta. Darryl Cohen, please don`t give me second verse same as the first, the way defense attorneys always do. Just because a guy cheats, doesn`t mean he`s a killer, blah, blah, blah -- broken record!

Let`s talk about what`s really important here, in my mind, is that he lied about his alibi. He said, Oh, I was transplanting lilac bushes in So- and-So`s yard. Was her name Mrs. Phelps? Was that her name, Clark? Ms. Needham. That was her name. I was transplanting lilac bushes. Well, Ms. Needham took the stand and said, No, he wasn`t, that was the week before.

And I was trying to help the guy out, Darryl, OK? I was trying to do a preemptive strike here and say, Wait, when did they question the defendant? Because if somebody asked me, What did you do three Wednesdays ago, I may not remember it correctly.

Darryl, it was that very same day. It was the day he says he was transplanting lilac bushes, the day his mother was bludgeoned and stabbed to death, he tells police that was the day he was doing this yard work. So he lies to police that very day. He wasn`t confused.

Now you got to decide is that enough to carry the day, Cohen.

DARRYL COHEN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy -- Nancy, you`re saying he lied. I`m saying Mrs. Needham has a memory that is not good. She admitted on the stand that she cannot remember everything at all times. Does she really remember what she had for lunch two days ago? I doubt it. Does she remember when he transplanted the bushes? I doubt it.

He says that he transplanted the bushes that day. That doesn`t make it a lie. And even if it is, even if his memory was confused because he was so upset that his mom was killed, that doesn`t give the state enough to say that he`s guilty of murder. Look at his body language.

GRACE: OK, OK, OK, OK! Wait a minute! You`re preaching to the choir, friend, OK?

All right, Joey Jackson, let me throw the baton to you for a moment because -- and I`m going to go back to Christian on this -- the neighbor was dead certain, and she could explain why she knew that it was the week before. She was dead certain it was not that day. So her memory is not going to be the problem. So where is the defense going to go?

JOEY JACKSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, it`ll go a couple of places. Number one, no one is ever dead certain about anything. She`s not an investigator. She`s not a police officer. She`s not having a legal duty...

GRACE: I`m telling you she nailed it down!

JACKSON: All right.

GRACE: Just -- OK, wait! Just take him away! Give me Michael Christian.

Michael Christian, this woman, Needham, I believe was her name, she was dead certain, and she`s even gotten him on tape the day he`s claiming he was transplanting bushes in this long, rambling phone message he leaves.

But Michael, it`s not her memory that was at fault. I mean, she could back up how she knew his alibi was stinky.

CHRISTIAN: Yes, Nancy. The murder was on a Friday, and she says -- Mrs. Needham, Diane Needham -- says that she knows that the lilac bushes were transplanted the previous Monday. She knows that for a fact because on Tuesday, the following day, which, again, would have still been four days before the killing, she mulched them. She personally took mulch and put them around the newly transplanted lilac bushes. She says she`s absolutely sure of that.

And the defense attorney tried to get her a little bit and say, Well, look, couldn`t you both be right? Maybe he transplanted some of them on Monday and he transplanted some of them on Friday. And Diane Needham said absolutely not. They were transplanted on Monday. I mulched them on Tuesday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you do anything today at all to hurt your mom?

PYNE: No, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In any way, shape or form?

PYNE: Nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you have any arguments with your mom today?

PYNE: I didn`t say anything hurtful to her. I did nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. You have no idea who would?

PYNE: I have no idea who would. I can`t even...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because somebody did.

PYNE: I`m having a hard enough time...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Raw, uncensored, caught on tape, the perfect son turned murder defendant in the brutal death of his own mother.

We are taking your calls. Jean in New Jersey. What`s your question, dear?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, hi. I was just -- Nancy, I just wanted to say thank you for all you do and have a merry Christmas and a happy holiday.

GRACE: Thank you. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just wanted to say, you know, I`m going through a lot of stuff myself right now, and you know, it`s sad because you really think you know somebody and you just don`t. And you know, it scares me because, you know, it`s, like, you try and find out different things about people, and you just never know.

And I just don`t know what the answer to finding that out is. And I`m so confused myself, you know? And it`s just so sad that people can do what they do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PYNE: Yes, just on either side in here, I just picked it up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From -- from -- was it laying flat?

PYNE: Yes, it was laying on the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why wouldn`t you grab the pallet through here? I mean, I guess -- I mean, that just doesn`t seem like a very normal place to grab that pallet. Are you sure you didn`t grab it in the slot, in the main slot here?

PYNE: I tipped it up, tipped it up on its side...

(CROSSTALK)

PYNE: ... this part I had flat on the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

PYNE: ... so then I picked it up, throw it back on the...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you put your hands in...

PYNE: In the slots.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the slots. OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: OK. As you`re looking at this guy -- Liz, if you could play that back without the sound for a moment.

This is the so-called perfect son, Jeffrey Pyne. Now a university biology major. He was a high school valedictorian, a star athlete, a loving son by all accounts, a great big brother to his little sister, Julia, now facing charges he brutally murdered his own mother. And if you listen to him, watch him.

Watch him, Patti Wood. You`re the body language expert. If you watch him and listen to him, he seems so believable about how he hurt his hands, the very day his mother is bludgeoned to death with some type of blunt object and stabbed 16 times in the neck. Never found a murder weapon. When they find him later in the day, no blood on him, no murder weapon, no nothing, except these marks on his hands. Except for this.

The girlfriend, his girlfriend, takes the stand and talks about how he can lie through his teeth with these elaborate stories and everybody believes him.

Hey, Liz, can you re-rack where he`s talking about how he hurt his hands and when you get it ready, tell me.

So, Michael Christian, I`m viewing this with the backdrop of knowing how he lied so well to his girlfriend. What did he tell her? What lie did he tell the girlfriend?

MICHAEL CHRISTIAN, SENIOR FIELD PRODUCER, "IN SESSION": Well, he had gone to see another girl one weekend and he had told his girlfriend that he was going off with his boss from the Spicer Orchard where he worked. That was not true. And we have heard about that earlier in the trial. She found that out. She was devastated. She said that he just lied to her, bald-faced. She couldn`t believe how beautifully he did it, that she -- that he lied to her friends about it, that he lied to her family about it.

And that was really the beginning of the end of their relationship. They didn`t break up exactly but they certainly put things on a back burner. They were maybe trying to get back together, maybe they would have gotten back together, but then when Ruth Pyne was murdered that was really the end of it.

GRACE: OK. Michael Christian, with that as a backdrop, take a listen again to his explanation to why his hands are so damaged and blistered looking the day his mom is found dead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What`s wrong with your hands?

PYNE: This is from work today. I was flipping over a pallet on the way to check the bathrooms, and as I was flipping it over, my hand caught this there and just tore off the skin.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can I see it? Can you undo that?

PYNE: Yes, you can un-pull that and see it. Just ripped the skin right off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me see. That looks painful.

PYNE: It kind of stings when you push on it. I`m just trying to keep it covered for now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It almost looks like a blister.

PYNE: It just tore the skin right off. There was like the skin hanging on it, and I just, like, peeled it off. I washed my hands. I put some alcohol swab on it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was it?

PYNE: Well --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Straight out to Matt Zarrell, producer on the story, and let`s put up Patti Wood as well.

Matt Zarrell, when the cops went out to look at these pallets he claimed he was moving, what did they find?

MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE STAFFER, COVERING STORY: They couldn`t find any evidence, Nancy, of any blood or tissue or skin. They did numerous tests on it and they made sure they test the specific pallet that Jeffrey Pyne refers to on the police interrogation tape.

GRACE: Patti Wood, body language expert, weigh in.

PATTI WOOD, BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT: Well, I want you to listen to how he talks about this accident. No emotion in his voice, his power language lacks vocal variation even when he talks about putting the alcohol on his hands. He`s withholding any emotion which tells me there`s something not right here. Normal emotion is not present, a signal that you`re with holding information, holding in emotion.

GRACE: And interesting, Rita Cosby, the girlfriend also says he comes over to her place the night of the murder. What happens?

RITA COSBY, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, AUTHOR OF "QUIET HERO": Yes, and also, he text her apparently a few hours before and said, I love you. Then he goes over in the wee hours of the morning, he leaves a message, too, which I think is very significant saying, I`m OK, dad`s OK, Julia, the sister, is OK, mom is dead. And says it in a very calm voice.

The other thing, Nancy, also in this interrogation, I think one of the most significant things in the interrogation the cops say to him, guess what, your mother has been murdered. The first thing a normal person would say, oh, my gosh, what happened? How did it happen? Who did this? He doesn`t ask any of these questions and that triggers a lot of things to police right away saying this guy is way too calm. He`s not asking the normal questions a son would ask if their mother was murdered in their own house, in their garage.

GRACE: Everybody, we are taking your calls. This case has turned a murder mystery into a modern day Payton place. The father`s affair, the son`s having an affair on his girlfriend, and lying about it. More and more evidence coming in at trial.

But to you, C.W. Jensen, you`re a retired police captain, I get it. I get that the father`s lying. He may have had motive for murder. I get the son is lying to his girlfriend. It all points to him. But I just don`t see the case. There is no DNA evidence.

When they get him, C.W., cops come to him within an hour or so after they find the body, he has no blood on him. No blood splatter on him.

This was a bludgeoning and stabbing death, C.W. they can`t find any bloody clothes in the home. He`s got a pocket knife in his pocket. It`s not the murder weapon. Nothing else -- nothing else other than he`s got marks on his hands, and he obviously has lied about an alibi. That`s what they`ve got, C.W.

C.W. JENSEN, RETIRED PORTLAND POLICE CAPTAIN: Yes, the one thing I would say is that I always go back to is -- I mean, who would have a motive? The neighbor lady wouldn`t. The husband really -- I mean, he could get a divorce, and it`s just a coincidence. A coincidences happen. I just say, why would all this stuff happen the same day, scratches on your chest, your hands --

GRACE: Well, C.W., I agree with you.

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: You and I know -- no, no, no, the hair in her hands was not traced back to him. That could have been her hair in his hands.

JENSEN: It could have been both of their hair.

GRACE: Yes.

JENSEN: I`m just saying, I`ve never -- in the dozens and dozens of homicides I`ve worked, I`ve never seen a victim pull their own hair out. They`re always reaching. You know, they have defensive wounds. I`m curious why --

GRACE: Well, I have. I have seen it, C.W., because when somebody is grabbing at their throat, I`ve seen it several times, actually, and they`re pulling, if somebody got -- the perp their hands around the person`s throat, they will pull and they can get their own hair and their own skin under their fingernails, and what the DNA shows is that there`s not enough DNA to get a match on the hair. There`s not a nucleus. All they can say it`s from the mother`s side.

That could be her hair, her own hair. That could be her son`s hair. That could even be her daughter`s hair. It could be her mother or her grandmother`s hair, which are clearly out of the picture. So it doesn`t I.D. him and the DNA under her fingers doesn`t I.D. him.

I`m telling you, all they`ve got is him faking his alibi and the blisters on his hands. That`s it, C.W. And what concerns me, I`m not saying he didn`t do it, I`m saying that this jury may say she has been beating her children since they were 8 years old and the jury just lets it go.

JENSEN: Well, you know, the one thing I would hate to see, because this trial really -- I mean, as you and I know, when people kill family members, they`re not -- they don`t go on a crime spree killing strangers, and it may have been better to have waited until some hunter finds a murder weapon and the kid`s clothes that he was wearing or someone was wearing when she was -- and like I say, you and I have seen blood spatter, blood splatter -- I mean, stabbings are not pretty.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What kind of relationship did your dad have with your mom?

PYNE: He was really working on making it better. I Mean, he would get her flowers and stuff. And he was just really trying to kind of fix things between them because she was really mad at him for, like, everything that happened with the medication, and she blames him for, like, trying to take me and Julia away from her like he tried to -- you`ve got to understand. She was manic and crazy, but she thought that he was this bad guy who was, like, trying to ruin her life and take her kids away from her.

And, you know, once she got on the medication, she started being better again. So he was really trying to make her like him again, I guess. He was trying to make the relationship how it`s supposed to be.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Freeman also spoke of Jeffrey`s fear for his now 12-year-old sister being left alone in the house with his mother. A fear she shared with Jeffrey.

HOLLY FREEMAN, JEFFREY PYNE`S EX-GIRLFRIEND: I did not think it was a good idea for Julia to --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That is from ABC`s "GMA."

Michael Christian, this is what I think is going to be the tipping point are for the jury, that`s the little girl. We already know it`s too late for Jeffrey Pyne, the perfect son, now turned murder defendant. We know he was abused his whole life. The mom beat him. She tried to strangle him. She talked about killing him. That`s what we know of. I`m sure that`s the tip of the iceberg, Michael, but now it`s the little girl`s turn.

This little girl left at home alone with this mother walking around the house clutching a bible, ranting and raving, watching these TV evangelists 24/7, refusing to take her bipolar medication, hoarding an arsenal of knives in the headboard of the marital bed.

Come on. You want to leave a little child in a home like that? Hell no, Michael. I mean, I made people Purell before they come in to even look at the twins, much less walking -- or some woman walking around hoarding knives? Not taking meds? High off a TV evangelist?

CHRISTIAN: Whatever he is or isn`t, there`s no doubt he was very concerned about his sister Julie. He was a very, very protective older brother. Everybody says that. And that is apparently one of the reasons why he did not move out of the home. Obviously money was another issue, but he was very concerned about leaving his sister there alone with his mother, and to some extent with his father.

We heard, for example, from Holly Freeman yesterday that Bernie Pyne could be a very demanding taskmaster and that Julia, for example, was afraid to practice the piano in front of him, to do her piano lessons because he was so critical of her.

GRACE: What?

CHRISTIAN: It just wasn`t apparently a healthy home.

GRACE: Whoa, wait, I didn`t hear this. What? Tell me that about the piano lesson again?

CHRISTIAN: According to Holly Freeman, Jeff told her that Julia was afraid to practice her piano lessons in front of Bernie when Bernie was home because he was so critical of her when she would do it. He was just a very demanding father, demanding of both his children. But that`s easy to take when you`re Jeff`s age and not so easy to take when you`re Julia`s age.

GRACE: Well, you know, Michael, the whole thing to me is bass- ackwards in that home. But what I`m worried about is what`s going to happen regarding Jeffrey Pyne. And what I`m thinking, Michael Christian, is that this jury is going to hear about this mother. God rest her soul. Like she was murdered brutally. She was bipolar. Some say schizophrenic. Who tried to kill her own children. And the beating and the attacks were starting on the little girl, Julia, according to some reports.

And I think when the jury gets a snootful of that, they`re going to let this kid go. They`re going to let Pyne walk. That`s to you, Christian.

CHRISTIAN: Yes, clearly Ruth Pyne was a very troubled human being and clearly this was a very dysfunctional household.

GRACE: You know, Michael.

CHRISTIAN: That cannot be lost on the jury.

GRACE: You know -- we`ve been through a lot, OK, you and I covering all these cases. Why do you say very troubled? She was threatening to kill her own children, Michael. That`s more than a little troubled.

CHRISTIAN: I think the jurors will pick that up, Nancy.

GRACE: Do you? Do they have any -- do they show any emotion when they hear evidence like that, Michael?

CHRISTIAN: Well, they`re paying a lot of attention and it`s fascinating because they sit in the jury box in two rows. There`s 15 of them at this point that will be whittled down to 12 before deliberation.

GRACE: Yes.

CHRISTIAN: The first row takes a lot of notes. They write everything down. The second row takes virtually no notes. It`s fascinating to watch.

GRACE: The slackers on the back row.

CHRISTIAN: It`s just so funny.

GRACE: Wendy Walsh, psychologist joining me, expert out of L.A.

Wendy, how -- do you think the jury will do justification, jury nullification, because they`re so fed up with this mom beating these children?

WENDY WALSH, PH.D., PSYCHOLOGIST AND CO-HOST OF "THE DOCTORS": I think if the defense does present that kind of evidence but, Nancy, we have to remember the stories about the knives in the headboard are kind of hearsay that came from perhaps the murder suspect to his girlfriend. The stories about the bible. The stories about her being crazy and medication.

Remember, there`s also a father in the house who has a history of a temper. I don`t know what they`re going to believe. It depends on what the defense presents.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Straight out to Dr. Bill Manion, medical examiner, joining me tonight out of Philly.

Bill, thank you again for being with us. Bill, I want to talk to you about the effect it would have if somebody was coming off their either bipolar, manic depressive or schizophrenic medication. How will that make them act?

DR. BILL MANION, M.D., MEDICAL EXAMINER, BURLINGTON COUNTY, NJ: Well, it`s going to turn them into a more aggressive person. Their paranoia comes up. They don`t believe anybody. They fear everything, they think people are plotting against them. And schizophrenia basically means you have two personalities, a normal personality and the other paranoid personality.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: We remember American hero, Army Specialist Joseph T. Caron, 21, Tacoma. National Defense Service medal, Afghanistan Campaign medal, Global War on Terrorism medal. Varsity football player, state wrestler, loved friends, family, country. Leaves behind parents Jeff and Tammy, stepmother Karen, stepfather Mark, brother Josh, sister Cassidy.

Joseph T. Caron, American hero.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let`s face it. For all intents and purposes, you were the last person that we know that saw your mom alive. So we got -- you know, nobody is accusing you of anything. We just got to make sure that we go over everything as little fine in detail as we possibly can.

PYNE: Yes. I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But that is the pallet for sure?

PYNE: Yes, because I remember it being broken.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: You know, I noticed, Patti Wood, he never looks at the investigator right in the face. He always looks down.

WOOD: Exactly. And in fact, when he`s asked questions, he would nod his head, he even puts his cheek and whole face away. Just the cheek is showing towards the questioner. Very unusual if you`re innocent. Typically you`re going to be leaning forward. You`re also going to be seeking information since in this case he had no idea what happened to his mother, so you`re going to have more forward motions, more leaning in.

Also you see a lot of protective motions, the arms folded in front. He started here. When he was just going to be asked a few questions and he wasn`t under suspicion, you see him in a fig leaf at the very beginning. But as soon as he gets the questions, we see a lot of the masking behavior and downward and protective.

GRACE: Out to the lines, Jack in Florida. Hi, Jack. What`s your question?

JACK, CALLER FROM FLORIDA: Hi there, Nancy. I have a couple of comments and then a good question, I think. You know, with the mother`s love of knives, you could almost think that she might have committed suicide. And of course, that`s a stretch. But in connection with the young man, the perfect son, I can understand him lying about or to his girlfriend about sex and all of that. However, didn`t he volunteer to take a polygraph?

GRACE: Good question. What do we know, Rita Cosby?

COSBY: We know that he has not been fully cooperative. The other thing that`s interesting, Nancy. The garage door, I think this is interesting. There is no sign of forced entry in the house. The way the garage door was when it opened up and the body was found of the mother, the body -- the blood was not smeared on her arm. In other words, detectives right away said it had to have been someone inside the house.

GRACE: Everyone, Dr. Drew up next. I`ll see you tomorrow night 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.

END