I just remember thinking, like, there's no way this is my one answer.
I said I just needed something to fix, not break my entire life and break my family and leave these kids fatherless.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murmur.
We've often said that our primary goal on this podcast is to advocate for not just the victims of violent crimes, but for the survivors as well.
That could mean the children of a murdered parent, the wife of a murdered husband and even the many friends and extended family members of the people lost to homicide.
We believe that their stories and their perspective on loss and justice are a crucial part of their healing process and can maybe even provide strength to others going through similar experiences.
Today's story is as much about its survivors as it is about the victim.
It's about a mother and her then five children whose lives were forever changed by a deadly incident of gun violence.
But for Ashley Boyson, the survivor's journey has also been about reconciliation not only with the homicide, but also with the betrayal that led directly to that tragedy.
Back in the early 2000s, Ashley was a bright-eyed undergraduate at Utah State University.
She was working in the school gym when she met upperclassman Emmett Corrigan, a popular Boise native, bound for law school.
It was sparks right away with Emmett and I.
We both just connected on so many levels and similarities and we were kind of inseparable.
It was clear from the beginning that Emmett was ambitious and eager to get on with his big plans for the future.
In fact, he and Ashley had only been dating for two months before he popped the question.
I wasn't surprised at all.
Like six weeks in.
We just started talking about our future and it wasn't like an option to not have a future together.
It was a huge storybook wedding the newlyweds beaming with youth and optimism for a long, happy life with each other.
After a spring break honeymoon on the Oregon coast, Ashley went back to Utah State, a married woman.
Their twins arrived during Emmett's first year of law school.
The young couple was deeply in love but, as you can probably imagine, juggling books and babies is no easy task.
I remember during law school just almost feeling this, we got to make this work.
I mean, he was busy most of the time and I was in the depths of motherhood, but I never saw it as a burden.
I was just like this is what we're doing, and we're just going to get through this and then life together will start really.
It was kind of a, we have to push through this school time and then it's all going to be amazing.
Eventually the couple moved to Emmett's hometown of Boise, where he would begin his career as a lawyer and Ashley would begin building the home and the life of their dreams.
And he always wanted to have friends over and parties and cook food for everybody.
And he'd even invite like everyone from our church over and we'd have this huge pig roast.
He just was a connector and never wanted anyone to feel alone.
He was an only child and just always wanted to be surrounded by people.
And he just loved people and people loved him.
But according to Ashley, she had some reservations about putting down roots in Boise, a place where she knew Emmett had a long and sometimes troubled history.
When he said, I've got a job in Boise, let's move to Boise.
I had some doubts and I'll tell you the main reason why is he grew up here and knew a lot of people and also, during his high school years, made a lot of really bad choices.
And I was like I don't know if I want to move to the place where you had rough patches in your life.
I kind of want to get a fresh start somewhere else.
But this literally was the only option and we ended up moving here.
And by 2011, the couple had five children, a comfortable house, a couple of cars in the driveway and from the outside, it appeared they had everything anyone would have ever hoped for.
It was kind of one of those, like, you drew up your life when you were a kid, and now you have it.
You're pregnant with your second boy, you have the white picket fence, your husband has this amazing job, this amazing career, and yet I just kept feeling this like is something not right.
So it was a very torn time.
Like I was living my dreams and internally something fell off a lot.
After opening his own law practice, Emmett was working long hours, regularly staying late at the office.
And with Ashley juggling five kids at home, the couple began to experience what many couples do a growing distance between them, both physical and emotional.
It had gotten to the point where he hardly was home.
He was always running to the jail.
He was always meeting with clients or he wasn't coming home.
And I didn't know why a lot.
And I wanted my family.
I wanted my marriage.
I wanted back the man who I fell in love with and who I loved and, whatever it was, we were going to face it together.
And that was kind of my mindset.
Ashley also saw the return of one of Emmett's old demons.
After years of sobriety, he had started drinking again.
He would come home sometimes and I could smell it.
And that was some of the demons that I was afraid to move back to Boise because he had struggled with that when he lived here before.
But by February of 2011, Ashley felt that there was something else causing a rift in their marriage.
It was a rising suspicion that her husband was hiding something from her, that perhaps he was not being faithful.
I don't know if I didn't want to face the truth or if I just felt safer living in cognitive dissonance.
I don't know, but there was always something inside of me pointing me in the direction that I knew something was wrong.
I tried to find evidence of something wrong or some other woman or something.
It was always a dead end, except for the pit in my stomach.
It just wouldn't stop.
A month later, Ashley knew it was time to confront Emmett about her suspicions and hopefully convince him to begin the process of healing their marriage.
I remember that morning waking up, and it had been months of me thinking, Starting to dig in a way that a full-time mom with five little kids can
I remember waking up though, and I'm like I'm not going to go through his truck while he's in the shower.
I'm not going to try to get in his phone.
That has proved to not work.
I'm going to find an answer and I don't care what it is.
I'd gone to like a marriage therapist and asked him for help.
I'd gone to someone at church and asked him for help.
And I'm like, I got this.
And I remember kneeling down by my bed going, Heavenly Father, I just need one answer.
Tell me what's going on and I will fix it.
I'm a woman.
I'm strong.
I can face it.
I'm ready.
Just help me figure out what it is.
On the evening of March 11th, Ashley set Emmett down for a heart-to-heart, baring her soul in the hopes that Emmett would do the same.
At one point I said you know lately, when you don't want to be intimate with me, I feel like either I'm not doing it for you or someone else is.
And he was silent.
But instead of being open to the conversation, Emmett went on the defensive, denying that he was having an affair and instead accusing Ashley of being unfairly suspicious, ungrateful and unhinged.
As a lawyer, Emmett was really good at his words.
And so when his actions didn't match the words, I doubted me before I doubted his words.
It was just like, I have anxiety because I'm not trusting.
Like my parents got divorced.
Maybe I'm not a trusting person because of this or this or my past.
And I would just always turn it inward.
But the fear sometimes of knowing the truth keeps you from even wanting to look at it.
As Ashley recounted to us, she finally convinced Emmett to speak to a friend who was also a marriage counselor.
By the time he got off the phone I had put the babies to bed and just kind of was waiting for him to come out.
And I was hoping we were going to have this night where we just fought for each other.
You know, you get those images of what this night could be.
I had this grand idea that he was going to talk to him and his heart was going to be softened and he was going to come back and open up to me.
And we were going to face it head on together.
Instead, Emmett emerged from the bedroom, grabbed his coat and headed for the front door.
He looks at me and he goes, I'm going to run to Walgreens real quick.
I haven't been feeling really good.
I have scratchy throat.
I need to get some medicine.
And like that feeling of anxiety and chaos that I felt, it was like 400 times stronger.
And I just got this like pit in my stomach.
I'm like, Emmett, please don't go.
At a little before 9 p.m., Emmett left.
It was the last time Ashley would see him alive.
10.15, I called Emmett's phone like four times in a row.
And just text him like, are you okay?
What's going on?
I knew something was wrong.
And you know what?
I pictured for a moment, I'm like, maybe he wrecked his brand new truck.
He's going to need me.
We're going to go to this hospital.
I'm going to take all five of these babies.
And for the first time in a long time, he's going to be sitting there humbled and actually need and want his family.
And we're going to be there.
And this is what's going to heal us.
Then, just after 10 pm, a flurry of 911 calls were received at a local police department in Meridian Idaho.
Witnesses reported hearing gunshots in the parking lot in front of a local Walgreens.
At Linder and McMillan, you said there were two gunshots?
Three.
Three gunshots at McMillan and Linder.
And when I drove by, there were two people down.
One of the 911 calls was from a woman identifying herself as Candy Hall.
And in the recording, you can hear her frantically begging for help.
The person that did this, where did they go?
First responders rushed to the scene, and what they found was anything but typical for this part of suburban Boise.
Two men lying on the pavement, both suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.
One is identified as the female caller's husband, Robert Hall.
The other is 30-year-old Emmett Corrigan.
He got shot in the head!
Please!
Who did this, dude?
Hey, you hear me?
No, no, no!
Robert Hall had what looked like a graze wound to the side of his head, but was still conscious.
Emmett Corrigan, lying just a few feet away, had suffered two gunshot wounds, one to the chest and one to the head.
He was declared dead at the scene.
Ashley Boyson would get the news about her husband just a few minutes later.
I don't even know how long I was asleep when I heard the pounding on my door.
So I slowly walked myself to my door and I remember opening it and I'm like it's going to be cops and they're going to be like come with us.
We have him.
Instead, it was three detectives who were all in street clothes.
Making a death notification at the home of a family member is one of the hardest jobs a police officer has.
But when that death has come as a result of a homicide, it is filled with its own set of challenges, not the least of which is gathering important information that may help to solve a murder.
And they're like, we just really need you to sit down.
And we all walked in and sat around this giant leather couch that Emmett and I had saved forever for and finally had this dream couch in our dream house.
The plainclothes detectives informed Ashley that her husband had been shot.
News that was still almost impossible for her to process.
For the first second, I'm like, OK, he's shot.
He's at the hospital.
They're going to take me there.
And I think the detective knew.
He was like, Ashley, he was shot in the heart and in the forehead.
And he died.
The bullet that hit Emmett's chest had passed through his sternum, through the right ventricle of his heart, through his left lung and impacted his spinal column.
That second bullet entered his skull, and I'm going to be pretty specific here.
The bullet entered just inside the hairline of his upper right forehead, traveled in a slight downward and leftward direction through the entire right side of his brain.
And I just remember thinking like, there's no way this is my one answer.
I said I just needed something to fix, not break my entire life and break my family and leave these kids fatherless and leave me broken for the rest of my life is what I thought in that moment.
Both gunshots were fired from close range.
Ballistic tests would later confirm that the bullets came from a gun found at the scene, a 380 caliber automatic pistol with a laser sight.
A gun that was registered to the other male victim, Robert Hall.
Hall was a 41-year-old former deputy and part-time salesman who lived just a few minutes away from where the shooting took place.
According to Hall, the two men had gotten into an altercation in the parking lot, a scuffle during which his gun fell out of his sweatshirt pocket.
He claimed it was Emmett who picked up the gun and fired first the bullet grazing the side of Hall's head.
Hall went on to describe how he then managed to wrestle the gun away from Emmett and return fire, striking Emmett twice, once in the chest and once in the head.
He claimed that he acted instinctually out of fear for his own life.
So Hall admitted to shooting Emmett Corrigan, but whether it was done in self-defense, as he claimed, or was premeditated, that would still have to be determined and then proven out by the evidence.
So was this argument over a parking space?
A falling out between friends or business partners?
To answer those questions, police would rely on the one witness that actually witnessed the shooting, Rob Hall's wife, Candy Hall.
While her husband was being stitched up at the hospital.
Candy had been brought to the police station, so investigators could immediately take her statement.
The information she shared would be vital in piecing together the events leading up to the shooting and whether her version matched up with what was being described by her husband.
Are you good with talking with us right now?
I mean, you got brought down here as a witness.
And the way I'm looking at this is you know, are you willing to voluntarily talk to us and tell us what happened tonight?
Yeah.
The first and most important revelation, these two men were not strangers.
And this argument was not over a parking space or business.
It was over her.
It turned out that 40-year-old Candy Hall worked in Emmett's law office as a paralegal.
And her husband had suspected that she and her boss had been having an affair for months.
He was very, very, very, very jealous of, well, not very jealous, I don't want to say that.
He was just upset about my action lately, which is just basically, I just had enough.
I just had enough.
When police asked Candy if she and Emmett had a romantic relationship, she denied it.
No.
No.
You ever been romantic, Emmett?
No.
Is there anything that's going to come out later that we're going to look back at this and say, hmm?
But, as you can imagine, police were curious if they would turn up any evidence at the scene that might contradict her statement.
Would you have a problem with the guys that built the scene to photograph your car?
Open the doors, look through it and If they see anything of evidentiary value, they'll take it.
They'll leave you a receipt.
Are you okay with that?
You're fine with that?
Okay.
Sure enough, law enforcement discovered printed personal emails in Rob Hall's truck between Rob and Candy that indicated that he had uncovered the affair between Emmett and his wife months earlier.
So this had all the makings of a classic and tragic love triangle, which meant that a motive for the altercation at the Walgreens parking lot may well have been coming into focus.
But investigators still had plenty to figure out.
Like, was this really just all a heated argument that turned deadly?
Or was it a planned ambush?
Was it a matter of self-defense or cold-blooded murder?
On March 11, 2011, gunfire had broken out in a parking lot in Boise, Idaho.
When the smoke cleared, two men had been shot.
41-year-old Rob Hall had survived.
30-year-old Emmett Corrigan had not.
I hear pop, pop, and then pop.
And that's all I heard.
And I turned around and both of them are laying on the ground.
The sole witness of the shooting was Hall's wife Candy, who claimed that her jealous husband Rob, had been increasingly agitated and angry in the hours before the shooting.
Incredibly, their argument was occurring just as Ashley Boyson was confronting Emmett over her own suspicions about his infidelity, suspicions that turned out to be well-grounded.
They had met with an attorney that day to file papers for Candy to get a divorce.
According to Candy Hall, she left her home around 9 pm to meet Emmett parking next to his black Range Rover in the lot of a local Walgreens.
Here's a recording from her interview with police on the night of the shooting.
He was there when I got there.
He was like, hey, I didn't feel the gas.
You want to come with me?
Let's talk about what's going on.
And then I drove around and I parked my car and I got in his truck and we went.
Yep, that's exactly what happened.
The video will show that.
Yep, yes it will.
Little did she know, her husband Rob had decided to follow her.
His arrival was even caught on security video at the scene.
On the video footage at Walgreens, you see Rob, his truck pulls up in just like a normal stall.
You can see his whole truck pulled.
And in the video, you see him get out of his truck with his hands in his pocket.
And as he's walking inside Walgreens, his hands don't leave his pocket.
He's like frantically looking through Walgreens and you can see through the Walgreens cameras him going up and down every single aisle and just kind of looking around.
As Emmett and Candy were driving back to the Walgreens pharmacy, Candy received a call from her irate husband, who had spotted Candy's car in the parking lot.
Here's more of that interview with Candy Hall.
So then Rob calls, and I pick up, and he's like, what are you doing?
And I said, I am out.
He said, are you out with Emmett?
And I said, I am.
And he said, what are you doing?
And I said, we're just talking.
And then Emmett goes, let me talk to him.
And then Emmett got really upset with Rob on the phone, said something like break your head or something.
Remember, Candy is the only witness to what happened next.
But according to her, Emmett was riled up and itching for a confrontation.
And when they returned to the parking lot, Rob was there waiting.
Emmett's a very aggressive man.
At this point, Candy says that her attempts to de-escalate the situation failed, so she turned away and headed back to her car to leave.
This car went by me, and I don't know where it went.
I waited for this car to go by and I turned around to watch my car and I hear Pop, pop and then pop.
And then she turned back around to find both her husband and Emmett bleeding on the ground.
I didn't know what it was.
And I was like, what?
And I turn around and I hear Emmett go, oh, and kind of like, oh.
And then he fell.
And then I looked around and he's on the ground in blood all over.
Candy's version of events painted Robert as a jealous man whose emotions might have spiraled out of control.
However, she also claimed that Emmett was the aggressor in the confrontation.
Now, it's important to note that Candy never claimed to have seen the actual shooting.
She only heard the gunshots.
So police still don't know for certain what happened.
Did Emmett really fire first, as Rob Hall said?
No.
The truth seemed to lie in the sequence of gunshots.
Your back was turned.
My back was turned, yeah.
You heard pop, pop, pop, like a pause?
Yep.
Okay, like how long of a pause?
Those are time questions can be tough, but... Seconds.
But a definite pause?
Yeah, it was pop, pop.
Now, you may be asking, why is this important?
Well, just think about it for a second.
If you're looking at it from a self-defense perspective, the one shot first, followed by two more shots, may mean that Rob's version could be correct, that he was shot and then fired two shots in self-defense.
Or, if you're looking at the other version, two shots pop, pop and then a single pop could mean that Rob fired first two rounds and then turned the gun on himself and fired a self-inflicted, non-lethal round.
And Anastasia.
This would be a really important point if they can narrow it down and really figure out what happened.
I mean, this is one of those things, as prosecutors, that we would.
I mean, I'd probably use this in my opening and my summation, right?
Because what Candy says, it's absolutely going to be admissible at trial.
And here's your like legal trial evidence 101 for the day.
It's called an excited utterance because she says it in the heat of the moment, when she's still under.
You know that mindset of what is happening at that moment.
And what she says clearly is pop, pop, pop.
So you're going to have to look at it, because it certainly seems that what she recounted during that call sounds like someone is intentionally firing multiple shots, at least initially.
So I would go with the way that you ended that Scott with.
Like this is someone who is firing and then just maybe turn that gun on himself.
Yeah, and I certainly see that this is an important aspect of the state's case to try to determine who was the aggressor here.
Something clearly doesn't add up, but it shows how important that testimony will be.
And while firsthand witnesses can obviously be invaluable to a homicide investigation, Candy's relationship with both men meant that investigators would have to rely on physical evidence to verify her story.
They can't know for sure if she's telling the truth or if maybe she was I don't know complicit in the murder or the cover-up, or maybe none of them.
But now that this horror has happened, police have to consider if she is going to stick with the last man standing, her husband, Rob Hall.
First thing we want to do is collect gunshot residue.
See if there's any gunshot residue from your hands.
Okay.
So we have a kit for that.
All right.
We're going to collect your clothes because they have blood on them and that will help maybe help piece them apart.
Needless to say, Emmett's wife, Ashley, was blindsided by the events of March 11th, 2011.
First, there was a shock of her husband's violent death.
And then the revelation that her husband was cheating on her with the wife of the man who shot him.
And it was at that moment she began to question so many things, even about herself.
So it's not just the incident of your husband was cheating on you and now he's dead and this guy killed him.
It's like every insecurity just grows inside of you.
And so the disassociation and the fog isn't just you went through this moment.
It's what did that moment tell you about yourself?
And what do you think everybody else thinks about you now?
And I think that was the biggest trap that I was stuck in for so long.
I'm living in this fishbowl.
Everybody knows I wasn't enough.
Every time I go anywhere and they see me like they feel sorry for me, but they're also like, oh my gosh, in your head.
This is what I'm thinking.
Oh my gosh, of course, look at her.
She's this and this and this.
And I just felt like everything I had ever appreciated about myself, everything I ever thought I did well, it was all stripped.
Like I was just nothing and broken.
And that was my destiny.
One of the hardest things to face after she learned the truth about her husband's relationship with another woman was that she actually knew the other woman, Candy Hall.
And while Emmett had described the older woman as just a friendly coworker, Ashley had always had her suspicions that there was something going on between them.
I honestly only met her a few times.
Like I would go to an appointment for my pregnancy down by the office and I would stop by.
And some of the other paralegals and secretaries were like, you should just walk in.
He's in there with candy and said just weird stuff.
And so I did.
I just walked in and then Emmett looked at me like I was a ghost.
Like, oh, hey, what are you doing here?
Not acting sooner on those suspicions still haunts her to this day.
But at the time, she had been committed to keeping their family together.
But following her husband's death, the last time they would all gather together as a family would be at Emmett's funeral.
I remember getting there and the first thing I was afraid of and this became the first thing I was afraid of everywhere I went for a very long time is what if she shows up?
I mean, she's claiming she was his lover.
What if she shows up?
So a lot of the funeral, I was on like high alert, just watching for Candy.
On March 13th, 2011, investigators from Meridian Police sat down with Rob Hall.
He'd been released from the hospital and now they were going to question him about the night of the shooting and try to get a clearer picture about what happened.
Would he double down on what was sounding like an unlikely scenario or would he maybe come clean?
But Rob Hall exercised his right to an attorney and chose not to make a statement.
And so he was placed into custody, charged with the murder of Emmett Corrigan, and then transported to the county jail.
A traveling judge offered bail and his mom paid it and he ended up getting out of jail like 28 days later.
And when I called frantic about that, they're like, oh, don't worry.
He wasn't mad at you.
He even had a letter on his seat that was addressed to you, that was going to tell you everything that he was going to mail to you.
And they thought that would make me feel better.
But in that moment, I'm like, well, why the hell didn't he just mail the letter?
We could have worked together and figured this out and not had someone die.
A trial was set for the fall of 2012.
Yet another painful ordeal to be endured by Emmett Corrigan's widow and their five young kids.
I, for a long time, was like, I'm not going to be part of this murder trial.
I'm just, I got to put it in the past.
I got to march.
And then as it got closer, I just couldn't not.
I had to have the rest of the puzzle pieces.
Puzzle pieces that would come courtesy not from the only witness to the shooting Kenny Hall, but from the physical evidence left behind at the crime scene.
The prosecution's case against Robert Hall was that he had gone to the Walgreens parking lot armed with a loaded, unholstered gun with the intention of confronting Emmett Corrigan.
He had the motive, his wife's infidelity, the means, a loaded automatic handgun with a laser sight, and the opportunity, knowledge of exactly when and where to find his targets.
Robert Hall claimed he acted in self-defense.
His attorneys would insist that he had no intention of killing Emmett, but only fired his gun because he believed his life was in mortal danger.
He also claimed that Emmett, who was younger and more physically imposing, had attacked him first during their argument, pushing him to the ground, taking the gun and firing first grazing Hall on the side of his head.
Rob's claim during court was he had to defend himself.
At one point, Emmett had the gun and then he handed it over to Rob and then Rob shoots.
However, forensic evidence contradicted Robert's claim of self-defense.
On the night of the shooting, investigators had done a gunshot residue test on all three people present at the crime scene.
Rob Hall, his wife Candy, and the deceased victim, Emmett Corrigan.
Those tests proved that Hall was the only one who had fired the gun found at the scene.
Rob Hall's DNA was also found on the trigger.
The DNA and all the gunpowder tests and everything, nothing was on Emmett's hand.
It was all on Rob's and Candy's because she ended up picking up the gun and throwing it later.
So his self-defense story didn't really add up.
The gunshot residue test undermined Hall's entire story.
His credibility was shot.
Prosecutors also pointed to Candy Hall's own recorded statement in which she described the sequence of gunshots that she heard.
I turned around to walk to my car and I hear pop, pop.
And then What she described in the aftermath of the murder did not support her husband's story that Emmett shot first pop and then he returned fire pop, pop.
But the medical examiner determined that Emmett's wounds to his chest and head were instantly fatal.
So then the question is, who fired that third shot?
The prosecution's theory, Rob Hall himself.
Considering the path of the bullet that caused Hall's wound, the gunshot residue on his hand and the sequence of gunshots heard by his own wife, prosecutors argued that after Hall shot and killed Emmett Corrigan, he turned the gun on himself.
Incredibly, a statement surfaced from a jailmate of Hall's that this may not even have been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
He was talking to someone in jail with him that he had practiced to know exactly how to get a graze wound, so it looked like self-defense.
And so if the prosecution could prove that this was not, in fact, an act of self-defense, the next step would be to decide if the murder was carried out in the heat of the moment or whether it had been planned.
You know, when I think of the gunshot residue test is a big thing for me.
The fact that the victim, Emmett Corrigan, had nothing in his hands to reveal that he had pulled the trigger completely surprised.
Blows a hole in the self-defense case, right?
And it's the defendant's demeanor, also on camera, that pacing back and forth before the shooting that the surveillance cameras captured is important, I think, for the prosecution's case to show state of mind.
And I agree that I really think it's the front end of this that is so telling.
I mean, let's just look at this.
You have Rob Paul going to the place that he believes his wife to be with the man that he believes she is having an extramarital affair with.
He doesn't just go on his own.
He brings a gun.
He has the gun with him when he confronts them.
You have...
Candy's quick rendition of the way that those gunshots are heard.
Remember she is saying that as the 911 operator is taking the call, as the officers are first responding.
I mean that is within moments before she has time to think or reflect or to make up like what might sound or what might help her husband at that point.
It really does point to the fact that again, whether he planned to go kill him or just planned to confront him and hurt him,
And then again, in that heat of passion, which what that does?
It still affects a crime, but it takes it potentially from murder to manslaughter.
It definitely seems to point much more in that direction, just based on common sense, than with what Hall is saying to police.
In backing up even what you're saying is.
You know there was a fiery conversation with them moments before the victim was challenged to a fight.
And for Rob, the answer was in his pocket, a small caliber semi-automatic handgun.
And even after the initial confrontation in the parking lot Hall still had time to de-escalate that situation if he wanted to right.
He could have simply left.
Instead, he drew his weapon and fired more than once.
And keep in mind, it wasn't just any weapon.
He was trying to have it just be self-defense.
And yet the gun that he brought it was a present that Candy gave him that he kept at his parents' house.
That was his only gun that had a laser pointer inside.
So it was one of those, like, a lot of people said, no, this is first degree.
You went to your parents' house, got a specific gun, had it in your hoodie pocket.
During the trial, Rob Hall's wife, Candy, was called to testify as a witness to the murder.
It remained to be seen whether she would be able to offer a truthful and believable account of the shooting.
So when Candy was on the stand, my stomach was just in knots and I just had to pinch myself.
It was very, very triggering, but I couldn't look away.
Like I just had to watch it.
Candy Hall did finally admit that she and Emmett were indeed involved in a physical relationship and that on the night of the murder the plan was not just to drive around and talk, as she told police.
And her story is they went and had sex in some new neighborhood.
She's talking about their relationship.
She's talking about that night.
The person dead.
Everything can be brought up about them, every weakness they've ever had, every struggle they've had.
So she got to talk about whatever she wanted about Emmett.
But in the end Candy Hall came to her husband's defense, testifying that she had never intended to leave him and was committed to their marriage.
They stayed together.
Even in the middle of court, they'd be like, I love you and like whisper to each other.
In regards to the shooting, her testimony veered from her original statements to police.
Luckily, they took an interview with her the night it happened.
She told all of what happened exactly.
She said there was a pop, pop, pause, pop, and everything's on video.
And then he got out 28 days later, went home to her for a full week without any stipulations.
And so what the theory is, is they had time to kind of plan out a new story of what happened.
And that's kind of the story she brought to court.
The new story was, oh, I actually heard a pop, pop, pop.
It was clear to the judge and jury that Candy had changed her story.
And so the veracity, the truthfulness of her entire testimony was thrown into question.
She was up there for two days because her story didn't match what she had said the night of.
And they just kept asking her questions over and over and over.
And the judge at the end was like jury anything she said here.
I just want you to discredit everything she said.
We'll just show you the video footage of the night.
Candy Hall was clearly unfaithful.
She tried to cover up her husband's guilt.
And now she was a perjurer.
The judge said she is the most discreditable witness he's ever called to his stand.
On October 25 2012, Rob Hall was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
I actually requested probably nine times to be able to talk to him, but they never approved it because anything I would have said could have been used against me in court.
I wanted to tell him how it felt to have a four-year-old who didn't sleep for a year and to have little children that would come and say mom, what if the bad guy comes in and takes it?
Like I wanted him to know what his choice had done to me and my kids.
For Ashley, the loss of her husband was compounded by both the pain of his betrayal and the knowledge that another woman, Candy Hall, was still living just a couple of blocks from where Ashley was raising her children.
I ran into Candy once at a restaurant.
When I saw her, I ran into the bathroom and was just like, okay, this is it.
I get to talk to her.
I get to tell her how it felt.
I went up to her table.
And I didn't say a word.
I just like, my body was shaking and I just stared at her.
I just had this like feeling washed over me.
She doesn't care how it felt for you.
Incidentally, just two months after the trial, Candy Hall would be convicted of theft for embezzling 300000 from a former employee and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
As for Ashley, she went on to rebuild her life.
She has since remarried and she and her husband have added two more children to the family, bringing the total to seven.
They're doing amazing.
They're successful.
They're just out living life.
And that was the goal.
And I mean, they have fears come up and we have to work through trust issues sometimes.
And just like everybody else.
You know the world's sometimes kind of hard to live in, but I see them showing up anyway.
And I am just so proud to be their mom.
I'm proud of the people they're becoming.
In the years since her husband's death, Ashley has created a blog called The Moments We Stand, in which she shares her personal journey of loss and healing.
And when I turned it into a book, it was mainly because my grandma was printing off every story that I wrote and sending it to all of her friends.
And I was like, OK, there's got to be an easier way, Grandma.
Through her blog, her now multiple books and speaking engagements, Ashley hopes to provide support for those dealing with grief, loss and trauma, particularly focusing on widowhood, and surviving infidelity and homicide.
I wanted to hug every single person who had sent me their story because I would sit on my bed at night and just ball and just read their stories and like how are people so strong?
How is the human spirit still alive?
Like, how are we still functioning?
Because everybody's got a hard, hard story and I don't want them to be alone in theirs.
So here we go.
And we just kind of like throw up events and meet together and cry together and learn from each other.
Ashley also founded a nonprofit to empower fellow survivors.
The nonprofit is called A Reason to Stand.
The purpose of it was just to help anyone who's ever felt broken not feel alone.
And we want to thank Ashley for being so candid about her experience with such a traumatic and painful event in her life, one in which she and her kids will always be coping and healing.
I literally had a man in chains in front of me.
And I didn't realize I also was just bound by the fears of what this experience told me I could live in.
And letting go of the wrongs that people have done to you.
I know sometimes like you want justice, but mercy is also part of healing and just letting go and knowing that You're going to be watched over and in the end you're going to understand some of the things you went through.
The irony of Candy Hall's role in this tragedy is almost too stark to comprehend.
Her choices, calculated yet impulsive, didn't just set the stage.
They built it brick by brick for a confrontation that would leave her husband locked away for decades and Emmett murdered.
She was the fragile thread that tied them together and tugging on that thread, everything unraveled in devastating fashion.
I was so impressed how Ashley was able to endure, find love once again and raising her now seven children while advocating for others on how to forgive and find a way forward.
I was so sad to hear her say that she felt that she wasn't good enough.
She wasn't pretty enough, not worthy enough for her husband's attention.
Ashley turned unimaginable pain into purpose a story of survival, redemption and a path forward that inspires others to do the same.
What happened to Emmett Corrigan is awful.
And yes, Emmett's infidelity was wrong, obviously.
But Rob Paul's revenge?
You don't get to take a life because someone did you wrong.
Paul also took a father away from five children and a husband from a woman Ashley, who still loved him very much and, at least at the time, wanted to try and make their family work and to get it back on track.
Talking with Ashley for this interview struck me for many reasons.
For the pain she lived through while she didn't know what was wrong in her marriage.
And then to be hit head on with her husband's murder, his infidelity, and that the murder was at the hand of the husband of the other partner in the affair.
Devastating.
Yet even with all that, it is Ashley's openness and strength that stays with me even now.
She made it back into light out of deep darkness.
It is Ashley's goal to help others out of the darkness by sharing her experience.
And for me, for us, that says so much about who she is.
Survivor Strong.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original.
Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond.
Researched by Kate Cooper.
Edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
Meow.
