I show you state's exhibit.
>>.
Mayday. I've I've been stabbed.
3 miles northwest of uh Oh my god.
>> Well, let's.
Uh consider all the possibilities.
>> I didn't kill my husband.
I love.
My husband. You have to leave me.
>> Libby Parsons has everything a woman could want.
A beautiful home perched on the Pacific Northwest waterfront,.
A 4-year-old son named Matty who lights.
Walks into, and a devoted husband named Nick whose latest business deal has just made them richer than ever.
To celebrate, Nick surprises her with the gift of a brand new sailboat, a romantic weekend at sea, just the two of.
Them. Matty will stay with Angie, Libby's closest friend and Matty's preschool teacher, a woman Libby has trusted since childhood.
That night, the boat drifts gently under a black sky.
Libby falls asleep curled against her husband, completely at peace.
She has no idea this is the last peaceful moment she will ever have.
>> I'll drink to that. >> She wakes up alone.
The sheets are soaked, her hands are soaked, everything is soaked, and it isn't water.
It's blood. Disoriented and dizzy, Libby stumbles up onto the deck calling Nick's name.
There's no answer, only a trail of crimson smeared across the wood.
She follows it and finds a bloody knife lying on the planks.
Without thinking, she picks it up.
That's when the spotlights hit her.
A Coast Guard cutter has been racing toward the yacht for the past half hour.
Nick, they say, radioed in a mayday before going overboard.
He told them he'd been stabbed.
Now here stands his wife, drenched in his blood, holding the murder weapon.
A voice through a megaphone orders her to drop the knife.
Libby is too stunned to even form a sentence.
>> This is the Coast Guard.
Drop the knife.
And step away. >> What follows is a nightmare in slow motion.
No body is recovered.
Anything? >>.
No. >> He's a very strong man.
Libby.
>> But the blood type matches Nick's perfectly, and prosecutors argue the case practically writes itself.
>> They determined it was a wrongful.
Death, and you You're being formally charged with his murder.
>> I'm sorry, Libby.
>> Not in front of my kid, okay?
>> A wife, a $2 million life insurance policy,.
A husband missing at sea. >> Can Angie keep looking after Maddie?
Okay. >>.
Okay. >> Do you think I killed him?
>> What we think doesn't matter.
>> It matters to me.
>> No, of course.
I don't think you killed him.
>> They paint Libby as a cold-blooded killer who murdered her own husband for the payout.
The jury barely takes an afternoon.
Guilty.
>> Before she's shipped off to a women's prison hours away, Libby does the only thing a desperate mother can do.
She signs custody of Maddie over to Angie, the one person on Earth she still trusts.
She insists the $2 million in insurance money be placed in a trust for her son.
Then she's taken away in chains, and her old life ends.
>> Get down.
>> For a while, Angie keeps her promise.
She brings Maddie to the visiting room.
Libby holds her boy through the glass and tells him to be brave.
But then the visits stop coming.
The letters stop.
When Libby finally manages to phone Angie's number, a robotic voice tells her the line has been disconnected.
Libby spirals.
She paces her cell. She screams.
She breaks down. Until a fellow inmate, an older woman with sharp eyes, leans in and tells her to stop crying and.
Start thinking. People don't just vanish.
Angie had to leave a forwarding address somewhere.
That somewhere turns out to be the preschool where Angie worked.
Libby uses the prison phone, pretends to Angie, claims she never got her final paycheck, and asks the secretary to please confirm.
The forwarding address.
One more time. The secretary cheerfully reads it out, San Francisco,.
A new phone number. Libby writes it down with shaking hands.
She dials immediately.
Angie picks up. The moment Angie hears Libby's voice, she goes pale and starts stammering excuses,.
Promising she was just about to bring Matty for a visit.
Libby asks to speak to her son, and then she hears it.
Matty's small, happy voice rings out in the background.
"Daddy!" Time stops.
Libby hears Angie hiss at the boy to be quiet.
She hears footsteps,.
And then a man's voice, deep and familiar,.
Sharp with panic, snatches the phone away.
The line goes dead. Nick is alive.
The realization hits Libby like a physical blow.
Her husband is alive. He faked his own death.
He framed her. He took her son.
And he took her best friend.
While she rots in a cell, Nick is living somewhere warm with Matty calling another woman's lover "Daddy."
And $2 million of insurance money funding his brand new life.
Libby tries to fight back from inside.
She calls her lawyer, the sheriff, the insurance company.
She tells them Nick is alive.
Nobody believes her. They think prison has finally broken her.
The San Francisco number, of course, is no longer in service.
And that's when fate sends her one last lifeline.
The same older inmate, it turns out, was once a successful attorney before she killed her own abusive husband.
She listens to Libby's story, and then she smiles in a way that's almost cruel.
"There's a clause in the United States Constitution," she explains.
"It's called double jeopardy. A person cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
Libby has already been convicted of murdering Nick Parsons.
So, legally, technically,.
The day Libby walks free, she can walk up to her her put a bullet between his eyes, and the government can.
Never lay another charge on her for it.
>> And here's your Christmas present.
This is the best goddamn advice you're ever going to get.
You ever hear something called double jeopardy, fifth amendment to the Constitution?
No person may be tried for the same crime twice.
That means that when you leave here, you find him, you can kill him.
And pull the trigger, and there's.
There's nothing anybody can do about it.
Keep stirring.
>> Something cold and patient settles into Libby's chest.
From that moment on, she becomes a different woman.
She runs laps in the yard until her lungs burn.
She does pull-ups on the bars of her cell.
She lifts whatever she can find.
While other inmates rot, Libby sharpens herself into a weapon.
Six long years pass this way.
Her body becomes lean and dangerous.
Her mind becomes laser-focused on a single objective.
Find Nick. Find Maddie. Make him pay.
>> Maddie's eighth birthday, honey.
>> When the parole board finally meets her, Libby gives them exactly what they want to hear.
She admits she killed her husband.
She weeps.
She talks about remorse and rehabilitation.
And second chances. It's the performance of her life, and it works.
She's released to a halfway house where she's to spend the next 3 years under strict supervision.
And waiting for her at that halfway house is Travis Lehman.
Travis is a broken man pretending to be a hard one.
A former law professor whose career and family both fell apart years ago, he now drinks whiskey out of a flask he.
Keeps in his coat pocket and runs the halfway house with the dead-eyed cynicism of someone who has watched too many parolees.
Disappoint him. He lays out the rules for Libby in a bored monotone.
Curfew, a job, no criminals, no drugs, no alcohol.
One violation and she goes back inside.
Travis has no idea who he's just been handed.
Libby has zero intention of waiting 3 years to find her son.
That very first night, she slips out and heads straight to Angie's old preschool.
The director recognizes her and refuses to give up any information,.
Gently telling Libby that Matty has a new life now and disrupting it would be cruel.
Libby thanks her and walks away.
Then she comes back after dark and breaks in.
She finds Angie's file. She rips out a single page with an address scrawled across it and bolts as the alarm screams.
The police catch her sprinting across the beach.
By morning, she's in a holding cell.
Travis arrives the next day disgusted and exhausted.
He doesn't even pretend to hide his contempt as he handcuffs her to the door of his prized vintage car and drives.
Them onto a ferry headed back toward prison.
He takes the page with Angie's address and pockets it.
Then he goes up to the upper deck for coffee, which he secretly spikes with whiskey from his flask.
This is the mistake of his life.
Down in the car, Libby notices he left the keys in the ignition.
With one hand cuffed to the door handle, she twists,.
Manages to start the engine and begins reversing and lurching the car forward against a metal post on the ferry deck, trying.
To smash the door handle off.
Travis hears the chaos and comes thundering down the stairs.
Libby slams the car into the vehicle in front of her, sending it tumbling off the ferry into the ocean.
Then she locks her own door.
Travis smashes the window and dives in just as Libby floors it straight off the side of the ferry.
The car plunges into water. Alarms blare overhead.
Life preservers splash down. Underwater,.
Travis fumbles desperately, finally unlocking her handcuff.
But the second she's free, Libby grabs his pistol from his holster, cracks him across the head with it, and kicks away.
Into the deep. Travis is hauled out by rescuers,.
Bleeding and humiliated.
Libby, fueled by 6 years of training, swims all the way to shore.
His boss is not pleased. A ego, a stolen sidearm, an escaped parolee.
Travis is reprimanded and put on a leash, but Travis, for the first time in years, feels something burning under his skin.
This isn't about a job anymore.
This is personal. He sets out after her without authorization.
Libby hitchhikes to her mother's farm.
Her mother, who never doubted her for a second, hugs her tight and quietly hands her a small stash of cash she's.
Been saving for years, just in case.
With that money, Libby buys an old green pickup truck and disappears down the highway.
Her next stop is a BMW.
Dealership,.
Where she sweetly tells the salesman she's a woman named Angela Green and asks if he can run a credit check using.
Her social security number. The salesman taps away at his keyboard and then frowns.
"Ma'am, this says your last name is actually Ryder now and your address is in Evergreen, Colorado."
Libby smiles,.
Thanks him, and walks out with the address scribbled in her palm.
>> What about the car? >> Travis, three steps behind, leans on an old contact, a former parolee now working at a.
Government office, and coerces her into running Angie's social security number, too.
Within hours, he has the same address Libby has.
>> Think I'm good, Orville.
>> I know.
>> Libby races to Evergreen, Colorado, her heart pounding.
She pulls up to the house with a gun in her bag and revenge in her veins,.
But strangers answer the door. An old woman tending the yard next door wanders over and tells her the whole story.
Angie and her family used to live there under different names, sure, but several years back, there was a terrible gas explosion.
In the kitchen. Angie was killed instantly.
Her husband and the little boy moved away.
Nobody knows where. Libby stands frozen in the yard.
Is there anything Nick won't burn down to protect his secret?
She doesn't believe for a second that explosion was an accident.
>> Can you remember what kind of car she was driving?
>> Well, it was an old truck.
>> Yeah? Well, what color was it?
>> She goes to the public library and digs through microfiche until she finds the news report, officially ruled accidental.
But in the photograph of Angie standing in her kitchen, Libby spots something hanging on the wall behind her, a Kandinsky painting.
Nick collected those obsessively.
They were his prized possessions,.
His vanity, his weakness.
If he's anywhere in the world, he's still buying Kandinsky.
Libby drives to an upscale art gallery, walks in dressed like money, and tells the dealer she's looking to expand her Kandinsky.
Collection. The dealer is delighted.
He pulls up his database and tells her one was recently sold by a private collector,.
A gentleman named Jonathan Devereaux, a very respected hotelier down in New Orleans.
Libby's hand tightens on the counter.
She's found him.
But Travis has found her, too.
He spots her green pickup outside the gallery, called in by the same elderly neighbor in Colorado.
He walks in just as the dealer steps away.
Libby, with seconds to spare, grabs the printout with Devereaux's address and slips out the back door.
Travis chases her into the parking lot.
She rams her truck right through his car, which he'd parked to block her in, and roars off.
He gives chase on foot through the streets, but she vanishes.
She ditches the truck and books a flight to New Orleans.
Travis, putting it all together, races to the airport behind her.
New Orleans is suffocating in heat and noise.
It's Mardi Gras. The streets are packed, and somewhere in the heart of the chaos lives a man named Jonathan Devereaux, who.
Was once Nick Parsons.
Libby walks into the lobby of his lavish hotel and asks for him at the desk.
"He's not in," the clerk says, "but he'll be here tonight for a charity bachelor auction."
When Libby gently asks about a little boy named Matty, the receptionist's smile falters, and she clams up.
Libby checks into a different upscale hotel, where she overhears an older woman give her room number at the spa.
Libby uses that name and room number to charge a stunning designer gown and accessories to the woman's account at the hotel.
Boutique. By evening, Libby Parsons looks like she owns the city.
Travis lands in New Orleans, marches into the local police station, and convinces them to issue a BOLO.
An escaped parolee, armed with a stolen service weapon, hunting a prominent local citizen.
>> She's very pretty for a convicted murderer.
>> The cops aren't thrilled to be chasing a parole violator during Mardi Gras, but they put the bulletin out anyway.
That night, the auction is in full swing.
Tuxedos,.
Champagne,.
Laughter.
And then, from somewhere in the crowd, a woman's voice raises the bid on Jonathan Devereaux.
Nick freezes on stage. He knows that voice.
He scans the room, but a sea of feathered masks and gowns hides her.
Another woman keeps bidding against her.
Libby raises her paddle again and again and again until she wins him outright.
She walks up to her husband on the stage and quietly calls him by his real name.
>> Hello, Nick.
Well, aren't you going to give me a kiss?
>> Nick goes white. Smiling for the cameras, he pulls her aside.
She tells a circle of his glamorous female friends she's his wife and watches them scatter in confusion.
Then, alone, he begs her to listen.
He claims he was on the verge of bankruptcy,.
That faking his death was supposed to save her and Matty, that he never imagined she'd actually be convicted.
Angie's death, he insists,.
Was a real accident. Libby looks at him with the cold patience of a woman who has rehearsed this moment for 6.
Years. >> I will swear on my >> Just give me Matty.
>> She tells him she will leave him in peace if he gives her back Matty.
Nick swears the boy is at boarding school.
They agree to meet the next day.
Later that evening, Travis comes knocking at Nick's hotel office.
Nick puts on a brilliant performance, claiming he has no idea who this deranged woman is, this stalker pretending to be his.
Wife. Travis warns him that she's armed, but as Travis turns to leave, his eyes catch on the Kandinskys hanging on Nick's.
Wall. Something clicks.
Okay. >> He gets on the phone to his Washington office and asks them to fax over driver's license photos for every.
Nicholas Parsons in the state of Washington.
Meanwhile,.
Libby ducks into a quiet bar to eat.
The owner recognizes her from the police bulletin.
Instead of turning her in, he warns her cops are on the street outside and hands her a red umbrella to disappear.
Into the rain. She slips into the crowd just as Travis, riding in a patrol car, spots a flash of red.
He leaps out, chases her down, and grabs the wrong woman.
By the time he realizes his mistake, Libby is gone.
She calls Nick from a payphone.
"Bring Matty to the cemetery tomorrow," she says, "a public place.
A funeral will be happening, so there will be witnesses.
Don't try anything stupid."
The next afternoon, Libby walks among the marble tombs as mourners weep in the distance.
Nick appears and points across the lawn at a small boy.
"There's Matty," he says, "he's just a little shy."
Libby's heart almost cracks open. She steps toward the child, calling his name softly.
The boy looks up, panics, and bolts.
She runs after him. That's when Nick steps out from behind a mausoleum and clubs her across the back of the head.
The world goes black. Nick drags her limp body into the stone crypt, lifts the lid of an ancient coffin, and dumps.
Her inside next to a leathery, centuries-old corpse.
He slams the lid shut, locks the mausoleum door behind him, and walks out into the sunshine.
Outside,.
He hands the little boy some folded bills.
The kid pockets them and runs off.
He was never Matty. He was a stranger paid to play a part.
>> This way, man, you're going to have to You ever arrest anybody you thought was innocent, Mango?
>> Nick goes back to his hotel office, utterly serene, convinced his wife is now buried alive with a mummy.
>> Mr. Devereaux?
>> Inside the coffin, Libby wakes up in pitch darkness.
Her hand brushes something dry and brittle.
A faint light from a stained glass window above flickers across hollow eye sockets.
She screams.
Nobody hears her. The funeral is over.
The graveyard is empty. Then she remembers Nick never searched her.
Travis's pistol is still tucked into her waistband.
She wrestles it free in the cramped dark and aims it at the hinges of the coffin lid.
Two deafening shots in that confined space and the lid sags.
She heaves it open with the last of her strength and stumbles out into the gloom of the mausoleum.
The door is locked. She hurls a heavy vase of dead flowers through the stained glass window and climbs out into the.
Daylight, scraped and shaky.
Walking back through the city, she rounds a corner and comes face-to-face with Travis Lehman.
For the first time, Libby doesn't run.
There's nothing left to run with.
She just breaks.
She bursts into tears and to her astonishment,.
Travis pulls her into his arms and holds her.
"It's over," he tells her quietly.
He believes her now.
The faxes from Washington had come through.
There are six Nicholas Parsons registered in the state and the third one looks exactly like the man calling himself Jonathan Devereaux.
The Kandinsky sealed it. Nick is alive and he is everything Libby always said he was.
Travis pays Nick one last visit.
Alone, he lays out the photographs on Nick's desk.
"There are several Nicholas Parsons," he says casually,.
"six in fact, and number three is sitting right in front of him."
Nick tries to play it cool, saying it isn't a crime to change your name.
"Ah, but insurance fraud," Travis reminds him, "that's a different conversation."
Travis pretends to reach for the phone, then pauses theatrically and suggests an alternative.
$1 million and he'll forget everything.
Nick doesn't have that on hand, but he offers the 100,000 he keeps in his safe and a promise of the rest.
Tomorrow. As he opens the safe, he laughs and tells Travis the bigger problem, Libby, is already buried.
The door swings open behind him.
Libby walks in with the gun raid.
Nick stiffens. He reminds her, almost mockingly, that Louisiana has the death penalty.
Libby tilts her head and quietly explains to him what double jeopardy actually means.
She has already been convicted of his murder.
She cannot be charged again. Travis confirms every word.
Nick's face finally cracks. >> assure you she is right.
>> Where's my son?
>> But all she wants, she says, is Matty.
Nick, voice trembling, tells her the boy is at St.
Alban's School in Georgia. Libby raises the pistol and puts a bullet through one of his beloved Kandinskys.
The painting splits.
Travis tells Nick they're walking out of here, and if he so much as twitches, they'll frame him for Libby's disappearance and.
Bury him in federal prison. They turn to leave.
>> You better get out of here.
Nobody's going to arrest a guy for her murder.
>> Nick draws a pistol of his own from inside the safe.
The shot rips through the room, and Travis crashes to the floor.
Nick swings the gun toward Libby, ready to finish what he started 6 years ago.
Libby fires first. One clean shot.
Nick collapses across his desk, his fortune and his lies dying with him.
When the police arrive, an officer looks around the bloody office and tells Libby that as Nick's legal wife, she has just.
Inherited herself a hotel. Libby doesn't even glance at it.
She doesn't want a single thing he ever touched.
Travis,.
Bleeding but alive, stops her at the door.
She's still officially a fugitive, he reminds her.
She'll have to go back to Seattle,.
But he'll testify for her. And as it turns out, he had quietly recorded the entire conversation in Nick's office on his.
Cell phone, including a confession that the man in that room was Nick Parsons.
The case against her will collapse.
She will walk free, fully cleared, fully pardoned.
>> And a little pink poodle.
>> Travis loses his job for everything he did off the books.
He doesn't seem to mind. The two of them drive together across the country to St.
Albans School in Georgia. They wait outside in the green sunlight as a class of small boys files out into the yard.
Libby spots him instantly.
Six years older, taller, but unmistakably hers.
Maddie stares at her, uncertain at first, the way you'd stare at someone from a dream you only half remember.
His father and Angie had told him his mother was dead.
He takes one slow step forward, then another.
Then he's running, and Libby is on her knees in the grass, and her son crashes into her arms after six lost.
Years. She holds him tight enough to make up for every single day she missed, and somewhere behind her, Travis Lehman smiles.
For the first time in a very long time.
The law that once buried her ended up being the very thing that set her free.