[music playing]
[phone ringing]
[radio chatter]
ED LEVESQUE: When I rolled up to the residence,
I saw somebody had this spotlight on the house.
And he had a pistol drawn.
That person was later identified as Scott Sunford.
And I asked him what was going on.
Why didn't you go in?
He said, I don't know what's in there.
It was a very odd answer to give.
I entered the house.
And I remember walking down the hallway.
And the first room to my left--
and there were bullet casings on the floor.
To the left, I could see the body of Desiree Sunford.
Whoever shot her wanted her dead.
At that point, went ahead and exited the house,
and walked over to Mr. Sunford, and told him that there was
a deceased woman in the house.
We believe it's your wife.
I remember telling him, I'm terribly sorry.
I'm terribly sorry.
He had a stone-cold look on his face.
It seemed like it meant nothing to him.
And I told this to detectives when they arrived on scene.
I think this guy knows something about this.
Either he did it, or he knew who did.
[music playing]
DAVID JOHNSON: He was a 31-year-old veteran
in the National Guard.
He actually worked at the local training
center for the military base here in Yakima County.
Scott informed us that he had gone down to the Tri-Cities,
which is about an hour and a half, two hours south
of Yakima, to attend a funeral.
And he attended the funeral Saturday afternoon.
And then he had called Desiree.
Said he was going to spend the night down there.
DAVID JOHNSON: He received texts from the alarm company,
saying something had gone wrong or something tripped the alarm.
DAVID JOHNSON: It didn't make sense that a husband would
stand back and not go into the house to see
if his wife's hurt or injured.
ED LEVESQUE: In my 30-year career,
I have never seen anything like this.
For a guy his size, stature, and armed with a .45
to wait for a police officer to show up to check
on the welfare of his wife--
He's understanding everything we have to say.
But he's just not showing any emotion-- no anger, no sorrow.
It just-- just not right.
DAVID JOHNSON: We're in the beginning
of this investigation.
As we learn more and more, we were finding out
there was some type of a love triangle.
Paige Blades was a 23-year-old mistress to Scott Sunford.
DAVID JOHNSON: We felt that we were
not getting the full story.
It's a relationship between a mistress
and a gentleman and that he's--
his wife is dead.
OK, how much is he involved?
Or how much she involved?
Or are they both involved?
[music playing]
We suspected that Paige maybe was giving him an alibi,
that he maybe was not there that evening.
But his phone was not anywhere near the residence
at the time of the homicide.
Even though he's still our number one person of interest,
it just wasn't connecting him to the crime at the time.
[music playing]
A tip came through the local Crime
Stoppers telephone network.
And the person told us that the name of the shooter
was a Marty Grismer and that he had killed Desiree Sunford.
We had not heard that name anywhere in the investigation.
We needed to confirm how this person that was calling us
knew about this stuff.
And it turned out that it was Paige Blades' phone number.
If she knew this information, why
didn't she call us directly?
Things are just not adding up.
Paige told us that Marty is a friend of hers,
that they work together and he kind of takes care of her.
DAVID JOHNSON: At one point, I believe she told us
that he just worshipped the ground she walks on,
like he was obsessed with her.
[music playing]
DAVID JOHNSON: We were skeptical about what type of information
she was providing.
Is she throwing him under the bus?
Or is she directing it differently for us to follow?
[music playing]
The sheriff's office received a phone call from one
of the other managers-- was cleaning
where Marty had his office and found a bag of gun parts.
So our team immediately drove to Moses Lake,
recovered the gun parts, and took them directly to the crime
lab to have them examined.
It was determined that this barrel was on the gun
used to kill Desiree Sunford.
The bullets that we recovered from her autopsy
came from that barrel.
We had evidence in our hands that gave us enough to arrest
him on the spot.
But we'd really like to have a confession.
[music playing]
DAVID JOHNSON: An Alford Plea is he's
not admitting to the crime.
He's not confessing to the crime.
He's just saying that the state, which would be the prosecution,
has enough evidence to get a conviction.
[music playing]