It's almost crazy to say out loud, right?
I think my husband, the person I have two children with, the person I live with, I think he's trying to kill me.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anna Siga-Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murmur.
In my career as a prosecutor, I've been part of many long and winding cases.
Pretrial hearings, deciding what evidence is and is not admissible.
Trials, mistrials, verdicts and appeals.
Sometimes it seems like there are a million things that can delay and even derail justice.
One of the concerns we hear most often is how long it seems to take between the moment law enforcement is convinced that they know who committed a major crime and when that person is tried, convicted and ultimately punished.
And today's story is a perfect example of that long road to justice.
And while the courtroom twists and turns often pique the interest of all you legal eagles out there, like any homicide case, it begins with a sudden and heartbreaking death, this time in the quiet suburb of Pleasant Prairie, which is part of Kenosha, Wisconsin.
So Kenosha County is between Milwaukee and Chicago.
We're right on Lake Michigan.
You know, I can see the lake outside my window as I sit here.
And that's the voice of Carly McNeil, a prosecutor at the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office.
I grew up here.
I went to grade school here.
I went to high school here.
I was really drawn to criminal law and particularly being a prosecutor.
For me, there wasn't a lot of thoughts about what I would do after law school other than go into the public service that is, being a prosecutor.
Clearly, Carly is a person after my own heart and we both wanted the same things.
We just did it in different ways.
I went to the Big Apple and served my prosecutor years there, while she stayed closer to home in Kenosha.
We're not a huge place.
The county is probably a little over 150000 people and Pleasant Prairie is a great place to live, a great place to you know.
Raise your family.
But, as we've learned time and time again, big cities do not hold the monopoly on murder or headline grabbing, criminal prosecutions, especially ones that stretch over 10 years.
There's nothing quite like this Jensen case.
It is a unique case.
You know even our other homicide cases.
You'll maybe be in trial for a week, and it will be a long week, but it is still quite different from what we confronted here.
So let's go back. to that quiet but cold afternoon in December of 1998.
That's the day that Kenosha native Mark Jensen, along with his two young sons, pulled into the driveway of their home in the quaint lakeside community of Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
It should have been a day like any other.
Instead, it was the beginning of a decade-long nightmare.
Mark's 911 call was placed at 4.30 p.m.
The emergency?
He had just discovered his wife, 40-year-old Julie Jensen, face down on their bed and she wasn't breathing.
EMTs arrived in less than five minutes, but their attempts to save Julie's life were unsuccessful.
The otherwise healthy mother of two was pronounced dead at the scene, but with no visible injuries, no blood or any apparent signs of trauma.
The cause of her death was still a mystery.
She certainly was in the prime of her life, so not someone who it's expected or it's shocking for her age.
And so certainly it was always going to be investigated just due to that alone.
But there were immediately things that were concerning when Julie Jensen was reported dead, not the least of which was the way her body was found on the bed.
Her face on the pillow, her arms positioned strangely under her body, as if her body had been moved prior to the EMTs arriving.
But when investigators arrived, Mark denied having done anything to his wife's body after discovering her unresponsive in their bed.
In fact, he appeared distraught and in shock as any husband would be.
I don't believe that Mark Jensen was saying anything strange or unusual to investigators, just reporting as a upset husband.
You know, I found my wife dead.
She wasn't feeling well.
So I don't think there was anything concerning to the immediate responders about his reaction or what he was reporting.
But he was able to offer investigators some information that might explain her sudden death.
According to Mark, Julie had complained of feeling sick that morning, which is why she was home in bed while Mark had gone to pick up the kids from school.
He also dropped another nugget of information that his wife had been struggling with depression and had recently been prescribed antidepressants.
He had gone to their family doctor to report that she had been depressed and things like that, shortly before her death.
And he had gotten medication for her saying that she couldn't sleep.
The presence of both sleeping pills and antidepressant medication in the home led investigators to consider the possibility of an accidental overdose or even death by suicide.
But investigators knew that it would take more than just an autopsy to know for sure.
A medical examiner simply looking at test results and slides.
It's going to be really hard to make that determination without knowing the entire context of this person's life.
So let's try to understand that life.
At the time of her death, Julie Jensen was just 40 years old.
She was a loving mother of two young boys, a devoted wife and the only girl in a close-knit family of six siblings.
Her friends and family described her as a sweet, kind-hearted woman, strong in her faith, and they also all agreed that taking her own life would have been the last thing that Julie Jensen was capable of.
Everyone who knew Julie knew that she would never leave her kids.
So, you know, certainly tragedies happen.
People who are parents will take their own lives.
But you know, when you're looking at who Julie was as a person, anyone who knew her knew she would never make that choice.
It was a sentiment shared by her husband Mark, who was eager to cooperate with police and doctors in their efforts to understand the cause of his wife's sudden death.
He was talked to over and over again by the detective on the case.
You know just sort of like hey, we want to solve this.
We want to get to the bottom of it.
What happened here?
And so they had those types of conversations over and over again, even while waiting for the autopsy findings.
But Julie's autopsy yielded limited information and failed to determine a definitive cause or manner of death.
Additionally, Julie's toxicology results came back negative for sedatives or any type of overdose of prescription medication, accidental or otherwise.
Now, the absence of conclusive findings only added to the mystery surrounding Julie's death, and detectives could not rule out foul play.
So investigators did what they do best in these situations.
They started to dig, gathering as much information about Julie as they could, her life, her friends and, of course, her husband.
Julie and Mark had caught each other's eye when they both worked part-time at a local Sears department store.
And within weeks of graduating college, they had tied the knot.
By 1995, they had two kids and a beautiful home in Pleasant Prairie.
And with Mark's well-paying job as a stockbroker, Julie was able to stay home, dedicating all of her attention to raising their sons, supporting her husband and, as any mom knows, doing the million of unseen things that keep a household running.
So at this time she was not working outside the home but she always had hobbies and friends and the book club and was volunteering through her son's school.
On the surface, the Jensen family appeared to be the picture of happiness.
But as we all know, looks can be deceiving.
One of the things that makes this case, I think, so interesting is the normal life that these individuals had.
They had the ideal life, right?
They had the house, the picket fence, right?
They had the pool, two lovely children.
Mark Jensen was making good money as a stockbroker, so they didn't have any significant financial concerns.
In this situation.
You have this kind of idealized life, and I think that's what people from the outside would have seen.
It's only the people that Julie trusted who she gave some indication that there were problems.
And it was only a few of Julie's closest friends who knew the truth that, like many couples, Julie and Mark had experienced some rough patches in their marriage.
They had been married for a significant amount of time, years before their oldest child was born.
There had been a time period where Julie Jensen had once filed for divorce, but they had sought counseling.
And those problems had persisted for years.
But according to those who knew her best, Julie was determined to make her marriage work for one reason her children.
The thing you'll hear over and over about Julie Jensen is how devoted she was to her children.
Even if things were not going well in the marriage, there was never any question about her devotion to her kids and caring for them.
So the state of the marriage at this time certainly was not good.
But one thing that was always constant was her devotion to her kids.
A troubled marriage can definitely be a stepping off point for a potential homicide investigation.
But in this case the local Pleasant Prairie Police Department had an entirely different reason to suspect that Julie may have been the victim of foul play.
Something that I think was a huge factor here is that for years leading up to Julie Jensen's death, there was something that was very strange that was going on with the Jensens, and it's the harassment that Julie had continually reported.
According to multiple reports filed with the Pleasant Prairie Police, Julia Mark had been enduring persistent harassment from an unidentified stalker for over seven years.
This harassment came in the form of hang-up phone calls, threatening emails and even evidence that the stalker had been inside their home.
One of the things that would happen is she would find pornography around the home, like it had been stashed both inside and outside the home in the garage.
Mark Jensen would report that he found some on his car at work.
And so over years, Julie Jensen reported this harassment to the Pleasant Prairie Police Department.
Despite several visits to the Jensen home, law enforcement could never identify the perpetrator.
But Mark Jensen had his suspicions about who he believed was responsible.
When she had initially filed for divorce years ago, she had had a weekend affair with a coworker, and she admitted that to Mark Jensen.
And so when Julie Jensen died, the police had that knowledge and information.
An ex-lover, a stalker, and now a suspicious death.
The potential connection between all three was impossible to ignore.
But the truth would prove to be even stranger than they ever could have imagined.
For seven years prior to her sudden and mysterious death, Julie Jensen had been tormented by a single mistake a weekend affair with a former colleague during a rocky patch in her marriage to Mark Jensen.
The affair went nowhere.
But when she and Mark were harassed by threatening calls emails, even pornographic photos left around their property, Julie had suspected that the co-worker was behind it.
And that suspicion, documented by over a dozen complaints to the local police, was enough to make him a serious person of interest in Julie's possible homicide.
However, when police finally tracked him down, not only was he shocked to know he was suspected of stalking Julie, he claimed to not have even set foot in Wisconsin for years.
Police were eventually able to verify the co-worker's alibi, that he had been home in North Carolina when they thought that Julie may have been killed.
But police weren't ready to give up on the theory that infidelity may have been at the root of her possible murder.
But the infidelity they began to focus on wasn't hers.
After speaking to some of Mark's coworkers, detectives discovered that it was Mark that was embroiled in a very obvious and very current affair with a married coworker from his firm.
One, they found that Mark Jensen was having an affair with Kelly Levante, who was a co-worker.
And of course, that completely changes how the police look at this investigation.
Now there's a clear and present motive for Mark Jensen to want his marriage to end.
In fact, it was reported that Mark's girlfriend had even left her husband shortly after Julie's death.
And supposedly Mark returned the favor by disposing of much of Julie's personal belongings just days after she had died.
He already has the next Mrs. Jensen lined up.
So, Anastasia, I think this is a really important step back moment for investigators right here.
Is this a grieving husband or a husband who wanted to end his current marriage by murder?
I mean, this really is an important fact here.
And I think often we see where these type of facts... ultimately lead.
However, again, it could be coincidence.
So we don't want to have tunnel vision here.
And just like the police didn't.
But it certainly was something that, as soon as they realized that this was going on and had been secret for all these years, it just lended itself to those eyebrows being raised all the more.
The detective asked Mark Jensen directly about a woman named Kelly that he had worked with.
And were they actually romantically involved?
This is a portion of that conversation Mark Jensen had with investigators.
The quality of the audio is not great, so listen closely.
So she's your girlfriend now, or at least...
He initially denied it and just referred to her as, you know, some kind of work acquaintance.
Still, Mark Jensen was now squarely in their sights.
And while Julie's death still had not officially been declared a homicide, investigators were eager to search the Jensen's home in search for that proverbial smoking gun.
Now, normally police would need a warrant for this kind of search, but not in this case.
They did not have to because Mark Jensen certainly wished to appear cooperative.
He was not the person who said, hey, please get a warrant.
So he gave the police consent to search the home.
They took a bunch of pictures of the home and they seized the computer and searched the computer with consent.
Utilizing what was then breakthrough technology for the late 1990s, investigators conducted a forensic search of the Jensen family's home computer.
It's astonishing what they were able to find on this computer.
And that, I think, ended up being some of the most powerful evidence in the case.
Police were able to successfully retrieve not just the Internet searches, but also a trove of deleted messages and files.
They revealed both proof of Mark's affair and what appeared to be cryptic clues to his twisted intentions.
Right when things are getting serious with Kelly Labonte.
There are increasingly suspicious searches on the computer.
It started off as things, you know, very strange like pipe bombs and searches of that nature.
And then it turned to things like physician-assisted suicide.
And then it turned to poisons.
Here were some of the notable search terms that appeared in the Jensen's computer.
Assisted suicide, botulism, toxicology, poisoning.
Additionally, someone had visited a website containing information about the effects of a chemical called ethylene glycol, more commonly known as antifreeze.
And that prompted investigators to quickly return to the medical examiner's office to request further testing of Julie's tissues, specifically to see if they could detect any trace of ethylene glycol in her system, which presents itself as tiny crystals in a person's organs.
The results were positive.
That's just an alarm bell for poisoning.
You must explain why that is in her system.
So it's only there if it slipped to her or if she took it intentionally.
Now you may be asking if the presence of antifreeze is definitive proof of homicide, or is it possible that she ingested it herself?
I mean, there are plenty of cases of people committing death by suicide by drinking antifreeze, but you'd have to really look at the person and the history and the victimology of that person.
And here's what the average person might not know about antifreeze or ethylene glycol, which is that it's basically either flavorless or known to have this naturally sweet taste, so that even adults can be fooled ingesting it without being aware that it's poisonous.
So again yes, because of that.
Unfortunately it has been used as the means of assisted or someone who purposely commits death by suicide.
But it also has been used for homicide for just that reason.
And this really kind of goes back to how important the find of the family computer is, not only of what is being searched, but who is using it and who had a habit of never using the family computer.
Julie Jensen as a person.
She just was not a computer person.
Mark Jensen was the opposite.
He wanted this family computer.
He was on this family computer.
He was very familiar with computers.
And so when you go back to look at those internet searches about poisoning and ethylene glycol, you get a pretty good idea of who in the Jensen family would have been on the computer at that time.
Because this is 1998, you're using dial-up.
People aren't on the internet all day.
And so we could see the times when the internet was being accessed on this computer and it wasn't being used when Julie was alone.
So during those days when she was at home, the computer wasn't being used.
It was when Mark Jensen, when he would have been home from work.
So the timing of when the internet was used, as well as the evidence of Julie as a person, showed that it was Mark Jensen who was doing these extremely suspicious searches.
Armed with this information, detectives concluded that Julie Jensen had been intentionally poisoned, likely by her own husband, Mark Jensen.
Which means that this was not death by suicide or an accident.
This was murder.
Four months after Julie's death, detectives conducted another interview with Mark Jensen, this time at the Kenosha Police Department.
During this very long interview the detective is kind of continually asking about you know how she died, whether there's some kind.
During that conversation, Jensen again walked investigators through the events of the morning.
Julie died.
But then his story began to change, eventually leading to a stunning admission.
There was a point when he described watching her die and then, you know, put some words in her mouth.
Like you know, don't call.
Like.
The reason that he didn't do the most common sense thing on earth and call for help is because Julie told him not to.
And so yeah, his story did evolve in that way, when he was being interviewed, that she must have taken something to kill herself.
And he was only listening to her when he did not call for help.
So Mark was claiming that his wife had intentionally ingested poison.
And despite arriving to the home to save her life, he had just followed her instructions to let her die.
So what he's describing is basically semi-assisted suicide which, for the record, was not and has never been legal in the state of Wisconsin.
But even so, there was more circumstantial evidence that suggested that that too was a lie.
And it came courtesy of the couple's son.
David had told his teacher at school that his mom was sick.
And so David very much wanted to know how his mom was doing when his dad picked him up from school and brought him home.
But apparently when they got home, Mark had kept his son from entering the home.
What David, the older child, had apparently told the police is that their father told them to stay outside when he went to the home and then found their mother dead.
And Scott, that really is telling to me, because why, on that day of all days, would he not allow his son to go into the home?
Like yes, there's that innocent explanation if we go with that assisted suicide story that he gave.
But it also really goes to using their child both as sword and shield unfortunately, right.
Going to the school so that you're not there at the time.
You would expect Julie to die, but then at least trying to shield your child to some degree by not letting them be the one to go in and find her.
You know, is he somebody willing to murder his wife, the mother of their son, and then be concerned enough to prevent him from seeing this horrible sight?
It doesn't really make sense to me that he would go to that extreme to prevent the child from entering the home unless he really knew what he was about to witness.
And that's exactly it, because common sense tells you that Jensen wasn't not letting his child go inside to see his mother sick.
It was because he most likely knew she was dead.
Despite the mounting suspicion that Mark was responsible for his wife's death, detectives still lacked the definitive evidence that would prove Julie's poisoning was intentional homicide.
That is, until police were handed a letter that placed the blame squarely on Mark Jensen.
The author, none other than his own murdered wife.
This is the kind of headline grabber part of this case which is, you know, Julie Jensen wrote her, you know, just pouring her heart out letter that she gave to her friend and just laid out all of her concerns, what she was afraid of that if she ended up dead, that Mark would be her suspect.
And she gave him this letter and said, if I die, you know, I need you to give this to the police.
In a letter dated November 21st 1998, just weeks before she was found dead, Julie Jensen expressed her belief that if anything terrible were to happen to her, the person responsible was her own husband, Mark Jensen.
A letter Mark first learned about when the detective handed it to him during the interview.
Here once again is audio from that interview.
I have been doing this 15 years Mark, and I've never had anybody leave me a letter telling me that if they die, it's this person that killed me.
It's her handwriting, right?
There's nobody else's handwriting there.
You did something.
I need to know what.
Be truthful with me, Mark.
I don't know.
The letter is sort of the dramatic summary of what Julie felt and feared.
But she said that she was afraid that Mark was trying to poison her, that she was afraid that he would make her look crazy and try to take the kids.
In the letter she also revealed that she had discovered a terrifying shopping list in Mark's journal that included syringes, razor blades and a variety of lethal drugs items that she believed he planned to plant as evidence that she was suicidal.
She went on to stress that she was a healthy person who did not smoke or drink, and she urged police to consider any illness as suspicious.
Just think about that for a moment, a foreshadowing of what her husband may be capable of.
It's almost crazy to say out loud, right?
I think my husband, the person I have two children with, the person I live with, I think he's trying to kill me.
Even imagining for a moment what must have been going through Julie's head to put these thoughts to paper is terrifying, yet pennant she did.
And, according to the letter, Julie believed that Mark had never forgiven her for the brief affair she'd had seven years before, and she feared he would one day take his revenge.
You have to imagine the desperation of a person who sits down to write that, who then seals it, who then actually walks over to the neighbor and gives it to them, who then gives the neighbor instructions on when to act upon the letter.
But as shocking as it sounds, what we're talking about is an all too familiar story of domestic abuse how years of emotional and psychological abuse can metastasize into physical abuse and tragically, even murder.
It also points to a horrifying reality and why it was that maybe Julie didn't just take her suspicions about Mark directly to the police.
So often in domestic abuse cases, even to express a fear that your life is in danger can be used to try and make a woman, or any person at all, the other partner, I should say, look unhinged.
And that itself can be used as a weapon.
She had that real suspicion.
She knew something was wrong, but she also had a very sincere concern that she would look crazy and that that would be used against her.
And with custody of her children at stake, she may not have been willing to take that risk.
And really the explanation for why she just didn't leave Mark when she had these concerns and suspicions is because she wasn't going to leave her kids.
And she was deeply concerned that if she disappeared in the middle of the night, you know, even if she took the kids with her, that Mark Jensen would get them back because he would call her crazy.
Confronted with the explosive accusations contained in Julie's letter, Mark continued to vehemently deny any involvement in his wife's death.
So Anastasia, does this letter raise a tremendous amount of suspicion around Mark?
And I say, absolutely.
But unfortunately, there's no statute in the penal law for suspicion.
So clearly more work needs to be done.
But my question to you is about the fact that he would not or did not render any aid.
You know, where does that stand in the law?
There is no good Samaritan law.
It's actually been ruled unconstitutionally.
While morally we can say that that's reprehensible, there is no legal duty to help someone else.
But even this letter, I can certainly tell you for New York, it would never be admissible, right?
Because it is hearsay and there's no exception.
But for police and for prosecutors, it certainly would be building blocks of a case.
But for me, even here, there isn't true clarity just yet.
Despite being convinced that Mark Jensen killed his wife.
The case against Mark Jensen sat in limbo for eight long years.
During that time, Jensen went on to establish a successful construction company, married the woman he'd been having the extramarital relationship with and even had another child.
But all the while, the Kenosha DA refused to give up on his quest to find justice for Julie.
All he needed was that last piece of the puzzle that would convince a jury that Mark was not the loving father and dedicated husband he purported to be, that he was actually a cold-blooded killer.
That last puzzle piece would come courtesy of a new, albeit reluctant, witness.
The way we found Ed Klug as a witness is we had other co-workers who were witnesses and they told us you need to talk to Ed Klug.
Now, with some prodding from police, a co-worker of Mark's revealed that he had been privy to an alarming conversation with Mark just weeks before Julie's death.
Ed Klug had been at a conference with Mark Jensen, so a work conference in St.
Louis.
And they were, you know, just drinking that night after the conference and it was getting late.
Mark Jensen was talking about killing his wife and ways that you could do it, finding something that would be undetectable.
Eventually the co-worker realized this was not just some dark humor between two disgruntled husbands.
At the beginning, Ed Klug's thinking we're just doing a little bashing of our wives.
And then only, I think it was maybe around six weeks after that is when Julie Jensen died.
As a member of law enforcement, I'd be wondering why this guy didn't come forward earlier.
But you'd also have to understand why potentially someone would be hesitant to come forward.
You know, is Mark Jensen talking nonsense after three or four drinks?
Or is this a cold and calculated murderer?
You know.
Either way, in hindsight, of course, I'm assuming that friend does have some level of guilt.
But it did at least give the DA additional evidence not just of intentional homicide but of the steps taken to cover it up.
The premeditation that's necessary for a first-degree intentional homicide.
It doesn't have to be long at all.
It's really like moments.
And so you know.
Anyone giving someone poison at any point, even if they thought about it two seconds before they gave them the poison well, that's going to be enough for a first-degree intentional homicide.
Klug was really important, showing the careful planning that Mark Jensen did to make it appear that he was not in fact involved in Julie's death.
Eight years after Julie's murder, her husband Mark, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
But for the police, the prosecution and, of course, Julie's family, the battle for justice was still far from over.
We knew it was going to be a slog.
Mark Jensen had certainly had the means to pay for his representation and was going to fight this tooth and nail.
And of course, there was going to be talk about Julie's mental health and maybe this was a suicide.
And then, as it played out, there was an excruciatingly long fight about the admission into evidence of, you know, the most dramatic piece of evidence, which is the letter.
The letter, of course, was Julie's own claims that she believed her husband Mark was trying to kill her.
And typically a letter making an accusation like this would be deemed inadmissible in courts, because the law gives defendants the right to face his or her accuser in person.
And without getting too into the legal weeds.
It basically comes down to what's been termed the confrontation clause, which is a right we have based on the Sixth Amendment.
It allows, in court, criminals to confront or cross-examine witnesses that are providing testimony against them.
And since you can't cross-examine a letter, certainly where someone is no longer available well, the courts have said like hey, there is no exception to this.
So it's just not coming in.
However, in this case it was deemed that at trial Julie's letter would be allowed to be introduced.
Mark Jensen went on trial on January 8th 2008 and in their opening statement, prosecutors read Julie's letter portraying her as a terrified woman who had expressed to both police and friends that Mark wanted her dead.
Bob Jam Boys has talked about talking to Julie's brothers about that decision.
And it did matter to them that the jury heard from Julie.
Her own words, you know, not through a witness, what she wrote.
In addition to all of the circumstantial evidence, prosecutors were also able to introduce testimony from a couple of surprise witnesses.
Usually you have the case you have when you charge it and it only gets worse.
Witnesses disappear, that kind of thing.
But in this case some witnesses did come forward.
Prosecutors presented testimony from an inmate at the county jail who claimed that Mark had not just confessed to killing Julie, he admitted to something even more chilling.
According to this inmate's testimony, when Mark entered the bedroom after poisoning his wife, she was still clinging to life.
So he positioned her face over her pillow until she couldn't breathe.
We believe what happened in the end is that Julie Jensen did not die when Mark Jensen needed her to be dead and that he suffocated her in the end.
As expected, the defense argued that Julie had not just committed death by suicide, but that she had orchestrated her death to implicate Mark in her murder.
The jury just didn't buy it.
So he was found guilty of the first degree intentional homicide charge.
In March of 2008, Mark Jensen was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, but he never stopped fighting his conviction.
And after spending years in prison, an appellate court ruled that Julie's letter should never have been admitted during that trial.
I think when people hear about this case it's hard to imagine that the law would not allow that piece of evidence.
I think it's hard for the non-legal scholars to kind of wrap their minds around that.
As a result, Mark Jensen's conviction was overturned and he was released from prison.
But this legal battle was still far from over.
Even after his conviction was reversed in the federal courts, it was reinstated once in the state courts before the appellate courts vacated that
And then finally it became time where we simply had to try him again.
This time without Julie's letter.
The new prosecutor assigned, Carly McNeil, who also tried this case with another colleague.
While she was still in grade school when the murder occurred, Carly was clearly up to the challenge.
I would never want to be a prosecutor who shied away from a case like this.
The whole reason why I choose to do the job I do is basically to take a case like this.
In the second trial, the prosecution revisited testimony from witnesses and all of the circumstantial evidence that pointed to Jensen as the killer.
But they were also able to introduce some critical new evidence as well.
To me, the big thing was the computer evidence.
It's not lying, right?
You don't have to worry about it forgetting or being unavailable or things like that.
I just have to make sure that the jury understands it the way I understand it.
When it comes to criminal prosecution, time is often not your friend.
But in this case, prosecutors got a huge assist from recent advancements in digital forensics.
And it shed new light on those threatening emails that Julie had been harassed with for years before her death.
Something that happened with the computer evidence is.
You know, we're both looking at it anew, right?
And when my computer expert's looking at this, he's like, this is so weird.
You know, I'm finding these emails that are saved that are just so strange.
As it turns out, these were emails that Mark Jensen sent as part of the harassment.
And so you can see that he is the one sending this email, but it appears to be from the anonymous harasser.
You know that was a pretty awesome find because, you know, even in the first trial, Mark Jensen claimed that he wasn't the person who was doing this harassment.
And to me, this was the smoking gun of, yes, it was you.
The hangups, the threatening emails.
They were all part of a cruel campaign of harassment conducted by Jensen out of spite and revenge.
We believe that it was Mark Jensen the whole time who was doing this as a punishment to Julie Jensen, because at the time when she had initially filed for divorce years ago, she had had a weekend affair with a co-worker and she admitted that to Mark Jensen.
We believe he never forgave her for that and continually wished to punish her for that.
Even the pornographic images left around the house were proven to be evidence of years of psychological and emotional torture.
We think almost certainly these things were from the internet.
The thing about this kind of emotional abuse is he wanted her to think that maybe it was her.
And so you know, Julie Jensen at times was almost convinced, or convinced, that it's me in these photos, suggesting that when she had this weekend affair, the person that she slept with must have taken these secret pictures.
And now you're being, you know, continually... and perennially punished for it.
As for the defense, they stuck with the death by suicide theory which, as Carly points out, seemed cruel and unusual in its own right.
When the only way that Mark Jensen is innocent is Julie Jensen committed suicide.
Who Julie was as a person mattered.
And of course, it wasn't just that Julie Jensen committed suicide.
It's that she framed her husband.
It would take a special kind of devious person to try to frame someone after your death.
And that Julie, wasn't that.
The jury deliberated for more than seven hours.
If you ask any prosecutor about deliberation, it takes a year off your life.
And so I was certainly on pins and needles waiting for the jury to come back.
Ultimately, the jury found Mark Jensen guilty of first-degree murder.
And once again, he was sent off to prison, and this time for the rest of his life.
And while justice was ultimately served, we can't help but wish that Julie had been given the chance to escape what she tragically knew was coming.
I think...
What was happening was Julie was trying to form a plan, but she didn't want to just run off without having preparation and having a plan, because her main fear would be acting in a way that was viewed as rash would cause her legally, to lose her kids.
As we've said before, often these cases of domestic abuse can turn fatal.
We also can't help but wonder why someone would choose murder over, say, a divorce.
But of course, when you're dealing with that level of cruelty and evil, there's just no rational answer.
He was a person who didn't want to part from any of his money, didn't want to share control of the kids with anyone.
It's hard to, I think, for just regular people to understand whatever rage or whatever was driving him.
But he had dedicated years of his life to punishing Julie for her weekend affair.
And sadly for Julie, there was no escape.
I think Julie had a plan.
I think Mark just enacted his plan faster.
Mark Jensen spent almost his entire marriage to Julie tormenting her and punishing her for the affair that she had during their relationship.
Then, once he found her replacement, he put a plan in motion, researching ways to kill Julie without a trace.
So he thought.
Just days later, after his wife's death, he asked his friends if they thought it was appropriate if he brought his girlfriend, the woman he would eventually marry, if it was right, if she can be by his side at Julie's funeral as well.
Can you imagine that?
This wasn't just insensitivity.
It was an outrageous display of disrespect.
But Mark wasn't done yet.
At his trial, he played his final desperate card.
He wanted the jury to swallow the tallest of tails that Julie took her own life to frame him.
The jury's verdict obliterated that story.
And for me, this is not just a case of murder.
It's a saga of calculated cruelty and a chilling reminder that sometimes the most dangerous monster is the one who once vowed to love and to cherish.
I've known about and actually followed what was happening in Julie Jensen's case for a while now.
At one point, I even considered going to Kenosha to watch the retrial back in 2023.
Every murder gets me in a different way.
This one because of how many years Julie Jensen was made to suffer emotionally the fear that her husband was going to one day take her life.
And she lived like that for so long before he ultimately did just that.
Her sons were just eight and three when they lost their mom.
And that is just another level of heartbreak in and of itself.
Both boys, now men, have stood by their dad, at least outwardly during both trials.
And I've seen this before, with children supporting their living parent.
Even when the evidence seems clear, and while i may not completely understand it, i come out that i support whatever the children need to do or believe for their own inner peace.
The pain and inner turmoil must be incredibly hard to bear.
The tragedy of homicide runs deep and thick in ways most cannot even fathom.
Julie, you are remembered and mourned And we support your children's journey and hope they are well, as we know that you would have wanted, since they were always the most important thing to you in life.
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 Frasetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
I approve!
