This made for TV Movie is based on the true story of Barbara Stager, a Durham, NC woman convicted of the murder of her second husband, Russ Stager, a popular high school baseball coach. The script keeps the basic outlines of the true story, but inexplicably changes just enough details to make Jaclyn Smith's character more attractive and sympathetic than her real life counterpart. In this case, the true story is both stranger and more frightening that the fictional counterpart.
The movie suggests that for days after the shooting, Barbara Stager was not suspected of complicity in her husband's death. The truth was that her story began unraveling with the first telling, and by the time police asked her to recreate the shooting on videotape, they had accumulated considerable evidence of her guilt and motives. The subsequent discovery of audio tapes, in which the husband "spoke from the grave" about his fears that he would be killed by his wife in a shooting made to look accidental, was much more chilling in real life.
The movie suggests that for days after the shooting, Barbara Stager was not suspected of complicity in her husband's death. The truth was that her story began unraveling with the first telling, and by the time police asked her to recreate the shooting on videotape, they had accumulated considerable evidence of her guilt and motives. The subsequent discovery of audio tapes, in which the husband "spoke from the grave" about his fears that he would be killed by his wife in a shooting made to look accidental, was much more chilling in real life.