NARRATOR: For a city its size, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
has always had a low crime rate, especially in the suburbs.
While most big city police departments
are swamped with cases of rape, robbery, and murder,
the caseload for the cops in suburbs like Ross Township
is decidedly lighter.
So in November of 1994 when the cops got a call from paramedics
telling them that they had found a woman
dead in her own hot tub, they had
no reason to suspect foul play.
Our community homicide is a rarity.
We might have a homicide every 10 years here.
NARRATOR: November 6 1994 started
out like any other Sunday for Tim and Maryann Boczkowski.
After church, the couple ate a quiet dinner
and put the kids to bed.
According to Tim, he and his wife watched a movie
and then went out to the hot tub to have some drinks.
At 12:48 AM, the phone rang at the home
of Susan and Wesley Semple, the Boczkowski's friends
and next door neighbors.
It was Tim.
He said there was a problem with his wife.
Immediately, Wesley Semple rushed
over to the Boczkowski's house.
In the backyard, Wes found Tim standing next to his hot tub.
Below him in warm roiling waters was the lifeless
body of his wife, Maryann.
Tim told Wes said after a few minutes in the tub,
he went upstairs and took a shower,
but Maryann stayed in the hot tub, and according to Tim,
continued to drink.
An hour later, Tim returned to check on his wife.
That Tim told Wesley, is when he discovered her floating face
down in the hot tub.
MAN: Supposedly they both had some wine before they went
into the hot tub, and the glasses were sitting outside
by the hot tub, but she was sitting in the hot tub,
her head was above the water.
She was a deadweight.
NARRATOR: While, Tim was telling West simple what
happened to his wife, Wes was trying to pull
Maryann from the hot tub.
But instead of helping out, Tim made a phone call,
not to 911, but to his parents.
Unable to lift Marianne out of the hot tub by himself,
Wesley Semple waited on Tim for nearly five minutes.
Then, Semple called 911 himself.
WESLEY SEMPLE: I started realizing it's odd.
Why was I talking to 911?
Why did he call me first?
You don't call a neighbor and your parents,
then you call for the paramedics.
NARRATOR: Moments later, emergency rescuers
arrived at the Boczkowski home.
As the paramedics went to work on Maryann,
Tim went inside, changed clothes,
and came back to the hot tub carrying a jug of wine.
WESLEY SEMPLE: The paramedics were out on the deck with her.
He runs over to the refrigerator,
pulls out a big jug of wine, and said
Maryann drank half of this.
Then he went to tell also that she drank 13 beers that night.
And I just thought that was real strange.
Why did he pull out the wine and show
everybody that that's what she had been drinking that night?
NARRATOR: About the same time the cops showed up,
Tim's parents did, too.
That's when things got truly bizarre.
Tim was in the kitchen and his mother and father walked in,
and his mother seemed almost agitated.
She seemed angry, and she said to him, what happened?
And he began to tell her about her drinking,
and they had this quarrel.
But then they had made up and everything was OK,
and then he came back outside a short time
later and found her unconscious in the hot tub.
And during this discussion, he got very, very nervous,
and he said, I don't want any of them trying to pin this on me.
And she was lying on the deck just a few feet away,
and they were attempting to revive her,
and he was talking about worrying about if this
was going to be pinned on him.
This guy just supposedly went through--
he found his wife dead in the hot tub.
He's supposedly devastated.
Not him.
He was cool, calm, and collected.
I didn't see any emotion with this guy.
I'm like, where's the tears?
Where's the devastation here?
It's not there.
NARRATOR: After talking to Tim, Waters
decided to check out the hot tub where
Maryann has supposedly drowned.
Like Tim Boczkowski, it, too, seemed a little off.
GARY WATERS: Inside the hot tub, her glasses were on the bottom.
Her hair tie, girls get in hot tubs, they put their hair up.
That's floating.
The thermometer for the hot tub is broken in half.
There was a white handkerchief in the hot tub.
That definitely rose suspicion there.
NARRATOR: And those suspicions were aroused even further when
homicide detectives learned of the autopsy report
from the Allegheny County Coroner's office.
GARY WATERS: This girl was head trauma to the head
to the back, her legs, and her legs were all black and blue.
This was internal trauma to the top of the head,
a lot of trauma around the neck from strangulation
when he was trying to kill her.
NARRATOR: But none of the physical evidence
was as compelling as a bit of circumstantial evidence
the cops got from Tim Boczkowski's own father.
All the hustle and bustle of the paramedics
had just sort of subsided, and I said
something like what a shame that these three children
are upstairs.
And in the morning they're going to find
out probably that their mother has passed away.
And the neighbor said to me, well,
those are not her children.
She was their stepmother.
And at that point, the father said their mother's deceased.
And we said, well, when did that happen?
And he got very nervous and sort of agitated.
And he said, well, she died under similar circumstances.
NARRATOR: The cops let Tim Boczkowski
go home for the time being.
They needed a few days to sort through all the evidence
before they officially charged him with murder.
While prosecutors were getting all their ducks in a row,
Tim Boczkowski remained a free man.
He kept a pretty low profile, until Maryann's funeral,
that is.
RUTH SCHUMANN: He rode in the limousine with Pat and Lou
and John, Maryann's parents and brother.
Tim sang every song.
He never missed a word on all the prayers.
He was a very, very dutiful Catholic that day,
which was a very horrid thing to be under those circumstances,
but he managed to do it.
By that time, we all believed that he had murdered Maryann.
NARRATOR: While Tim was playing up his good Catholic boy
shtick, the Allegheny County DA's office was busy prepping
their case against him.
On November 15, the DA doled out the indictment,
officially charging Tim Boczkowski
with first degree murder.
But then just two days after Tim was indicted up in Pittsburgh,
news came from North Carolina.
The Guilford County DA had learned of the indictment
in Pittsburgh and reopened the investigation into the death
of Tim's first wife, Elaine.
Two days later, prosecutors charged
Tim Boczkowski with a second count of first degree murder.
News that home grown resident Tim Boczkowski had been charged
with killing both of his wives ripped through the Iron City
like Jerome Bettis on third down and short.
It definitely shocked me.
I never thought I'd know a murderer.
I used to have this man over to my home.
I used to send my kids over there with him.
He used to come up to our cottage
and spend the weekend with us.
I had my kids around this murderer.
I never thought in a million years
I'd ever meet anyone that was a murderer.
NARRATOR: On October 21, 1996, the State versus Tim Boczkowski
for the murder of his first wife, Elaine,
was scheduled to begin.
And as Tim Boczkowski headed South, so did his luck.
In a 180 degree decision the other way,
the judge in North Carolina ruled
that the details of Maryann's death
could be admitted as circumstantial evidence
in Elaine's murder case.
With the similarities between Maryann
and Elaine's death laid out for the jury to see,
their verdict came quick.
On November 1st, 1996, they found Tim Boczkowski
guilty of first degree murder.
They sentenced him to life in prison.
But he didn't stay locked up in Carolina very long.
Boczkowski was shackled up and put on to a plane
bound for Pittsburgh.
The jury, in Pittsburgh ruled the same way their counterparts
in Greensboro had.
On May 6, 1999, they found Tim Boczkowski
guilty of first degree murder.
After reading the verdict the court
adjourned to decide whether Tim should get life
in prison or the death penalty.
They promised us that they would
put emotion inside and make a decision based on the evidence.
I don't think he does he deserves
the right to walk the face of this Earth ever again.
NARRATOR: The next morning Tim Boczkowski was sentenced
to death by lethal injection.
He got exactly what he deserved.
In my eyes, he's a cold blooded killer,
and he took away two lives that.
And he affected so many other lives--
the families, the friends, the children.
NARRATOR: Today Tim Boczkowski sits
on death row in a maximum security facility
in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.
GARY WATERS: You know, what goes around comes around,
and it caught up to him.
And this guy killed the first one.
He walked the streets for four years laughing at the system,
and he thought he was smart enough to kill the second one
and get away with it.
But it just didn't work out that way this time.
NARRATOR: His attorneys are still appealing his case,
and Tim Boczkowski still maintains his innocence.
Justice in Tim Boczkowski's case does have its downside.
The three children were left parentless,
out two mothers and a father.
I feel bad for them.
They're good kids.
And Maryann loved those kids more than anything,
and I think she's watching over them now.
I really do.