Trial and Final Verdict

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We didn't find anything like that you start to run scenarios through your head, why wouldn't somebody wake up when there was a roaring fire right next to them Stange discoveries at the scene create new questions Usually you can see a burn pattern, but we didn't see nothing like that. I start to think maybe they were poisoned Propfol is going to cause a person to sleep and a sufficient concentration can lead to death. The investigation reveals a family in crisis, and a killer who will do anything to keep up appearances Her son stated that viights were happening more often she didn't want people to know the truth She wanted to appear to be the perfect family, have the perfect home She stated very loudly that if she wanted to get rid of someone, she knew she could M fifth, twenty eighteen It's a quiet Saturday morning in Centerville, Iowa But for one local man, the weekend starts with an unexpected emergency. Someone was leaving Centerville that morning As he was leaving town, he drove by South Park and notice smoke coming from the residents. Centerville is a real close knit community. Neighbors help each other out He stopped, tried to see if there was anything he could do to render assistance. Uncertain if anyone is inside the home, he calls nine hundred and eleven We knew that this was home of Kim and Bar Paza because their are kids associated with my kids As soon they opened up the door, they was met with a dog that come running out and then heavy black smoke from floor to ceiling. Once they discovered that, they'd started to advance on down the hallway into the room where they seen some fire in air The fire at that point was contained primarily to a master bedroom on the southeast corner of the residence The blaze is extinguished before it engulfs the house, but as the smoke starts to settle Firefighters make a gruesome discovery They're inving somebody in On the bed, they find the charred remains of a middle aged man Although the damage to his body is severe, First responders know the family well enough to recognize the victim is fifty year old Tim Paza Since we know that there's a body inside of the structure, it changes the content of everything we got another team together, which ended up doing a search of the entire house because we got more people in here Several people tried to make contact with Barb. We didn't know where she was We just h there's two kids or they kind of We're checking underneath bed, we're checking on top of beds and everything. We'll go there first Wh the in prer Thaty clear Fourth quter we're going to the bakerment check in all the rooms just to clear and make sure there's nobody else in the house Hgh just saidays that there was two kids and Hugh just wanted to make sure that they were accountable They let here Bar, which was Tim's wife was not in the house. We radio that to our command, which is outside. Let them know we've done a search and nobody else has been found It was shocking to me when I received that news that Tim had passed away I'd known him for a long time, and when I was younger just out of high school, we'd all spent a lot of time together. It was definitely not the phone call I expected to get that day. Timothy Dale Pazza was born and raised in Centerville He attended the only high school in town where he made lifelong friends I went to high school with Tim And he was just an all around good guy. He's the youngest of four children, I believe Loved music loved playing the guitar Tim and several other guys would come out to my parents' house and set up in the garage He played the guitar as good as anybody I'd ever seen The music, I believe was Tim's outlet He ended up being a lead guarp play in a fabulous country band At one of his shows in nineteen ninety nine, Tim hit it off with a twenty five year old local named Barbara Glascock. Bar grew up in Centerville and graduated from Centerville, highigh schoolool She worked as a nurse Once I got to know her, it didn't take long to realize that she was funny, she was witty She was more outgoing than Tim was And she had told me that, know, she loved to see him on stage. She loved his demeanor. He was calm to her storm And that was something that attracted her to him Barb started showing up at all of Tim's shows, and the two quickly fell in love. They got engaged in a few months and then got married And then they start a family. Their son was in my son's class. and the daughter was also in my other son's class Tim was a very present father. He was at every single event that I attended. Anytime we spoke, he bragged up his kids. They were doing this and they were doing that Even from Tball days when they played, he would always be, you know, right at the fence watching and cheering on the boys He was always involved and his pride of them just shone through. They were his greatest gift Both Tim and Barb worked hard to provide for their growing family He was always working worked at Lock Ridge for several years and then became an EMT And then he became a customer representative for Alliant Energy here in town. Barb worked for Mercy One Medical Center here in Centerville She was a nurse in the surgical unit. I felt that she was a very caring nurse Joey seemed like she wanted to be there. She truly cared about the people she was takaking care of. After eleven years of marriage, the Pazas were doing so well that they bought and remodeled a home in an upscale neighborhood Barb and Tim seemed to have a great life and she was so proud of her home. She always had pictures on Facebook It seem to be a well rounded family But now, their picture perfect life has gone up in smoke Firefighters have just found Tim's dead body in the smoking ruins. Police and fire departments are anxious to know how it happened peopleeople had been trying to call Barb to let her know that the house was on fire. and she didn't answer him. Once the fire was contained and extinguished Th then firefighters removedved the body of Tempazit from the residence They had a lot of trouble with it just because of the size Tim was a big individual I just start looking around the room see if I see anything else I noticed a candle on the left side of the bed, which would been opposite side of where we found the victim at Ithing was actually done on the floor. that was a little suspicious We noticed that a smoke alarm inside the master bedroom area was on the ground The battery was out of the battery compartment and the smoke alarm was not melted or burned like you would see in a typical fire. We also noticed on the opposite side of the house, a separate smoke alarm between the two kids' bedrooms The battery compartment was open, making it inactive. These were just some things that kind of stuck out to me as red flags because this is not normal stuff that you usually see You start to run scenarios through your head and start to try to figure out, know what could have happened here, Was it an accident, or was it purposefully set Coming up Barb Paza blames herself for her husband's death I said, We found a candle in there. Do you know why it was in there? She said, I lit it But an autopsy reveals the shocking truth. They found no smoke inhalation in Tim's lungs M fifth, twenty eighteen Police and fire investigators are working to determine the cause of the deadly blaze that killed Tim Pazza at his home His wife Barb rushes home after learning about the fire peopleeople had been calling her, but she'd said that she didn't have self service where she was. traraveling to the soccer game. Eventually, she did answer one from her daughter who was on the school bus received information too that their house was on fire Once she did finally arrive on scene, I went and made contact with her and advised her of Tim's death. When I relay that Tim had passed Barb didn't seem to have any emotion I think we all chalked it up to shock and overwhelming situations that morning People grieve differently We don't know what's going through her mind at that time offfficers in the fire department started kind of talking with Barb trying to put together at how the things had transpired before she left She told him that she'd left earlier in the morning to go to a kids soccer tournament She'd stayed up tonight. It would been Friday night late ntil about midnight She was baking cookies, making snacks and things like that to take to the soccer tournament She went to bed and then about five thirty AM she woke up, again, started making breakfast for the kids to get them ready for their soccer meet. About six AM the kids woke up They had breakfast, the barb had prepared for them She said she left the residence between six fifty AM and seven AM that morning pretty determined Tim was not going to go to the soccer match that day the residence, Tim was asleep in bed and snoring. When they ask Barb if she knows why the smoke detectors were disarmed She says that was her fault She said something had burned while she was in the process of baking. and set off the smoke alarms So she asked him to take the batteries out of the smoke alarms until they could get the smoke cleared out of the room. That made sense, you know Most of us have probably done that in our house at some point I said, we found a candle in there Do you know why I was in there She said, I lit it I don't remember if it was on the bathroom sink or if I put it on the in table in the bedroom The reason I put it there and I lit it was because the dog was in there and the dog peed on the carpet and it was kind of covering up the smell After answering investigators' questions Barb asks to see her husband's body. I explained to Barb that Tim was in the ambulance and that he had been burned very, very badly She was insistent on spending some time with him Barb told Assistant Chief Moore that, you know, I'm a nurse. I've been a nurse for a long time I've seen things like this This is my husband, and I want to see him before he's taken away We see that a lot with family members that they do want to see their loved ones at the scene rather than maybe later at a funeral home decided to let her go into the ambulance And I gave her a couple minutes to spend alone with Tim When she came out, you know, we were waiting for her And she was very stoic I just thought she was in shock She didn't show a lot of emotion and I was concerned that when she broke it was going to be It was going to be bad Yeah. Anytime there's a death where it's not under doctor' supervision, an autopsy is going to be completed to determine the cause of death to get the answers needed when I told Barb that an autopsy would be conducted. She became almost mad that it was going to be conducted and she had no say in that I thought Barb's reaction to that was not typical And I just felt that maybe she was being overwhelmed with everything that had gone on that morning Despite Barb's reservations, Tim's body is transported to a funeral home in preparation for the autopsy. Barb had said she was going to her mom. she was taking the kids there, and that she would be staying there At that point, we were not able to determine if the fire was started because of the candle or if it had any relevance to the fire knew where the items were found and located and It was just something suspicious in nature I went back and look on the end table to see if I could see the markings where the candle actually was setting. before it was, you know, in case it was moving up canannot find it So it was really, really puzzling to me. We start looking all the electronic Sge protectors, the wires and everything Theyre looking and see if for there's any possibility of where that stuff could have shorted out In this case, we didn't find anything like that. The fire marshal determines that the candle barb hasaza put in the bedroom isn't to blame either He had told us that in his opinion that the fire had burned rapidly. more so on top of the bed and is also on the the side of the bed where Tim was sleeping, which was opposite side of where this candle was Investigators face another mystery In a situation like that, whenever there's fire Especially if it's on your person or it' somewhere, you're going to be moving to get away from it Even if a smoke alarm didn't go off, the smoke, the heat, and the flames would have woken somebody up And there was no indication that that happened And that was another little part of an investigation that piques your interest as to why. Why wouldn't somebody wake up when there was a roaring fire right next to him Things just kind of started looking a little more suspicious Three days after the fire that claimed the life of Timpaza Centerville authorities are hoping an autopsy will provide answers one big question was is what is the autopsy going to show us as far as the nature and the cause of death Part of that autopsy, they do a full examination of the body They wanted to make sure that there were no obvious signs of death, such as stab wounds, bullet wounds in general like that All of those things were ruled out While there are no immediate signs of foul play The medical examiner does note something unexpected. They found no smoke inhalation in Tim's lungs That was the key piece of information that we were looking for Because for that to happen, Tim had to have been deceased before the fire Marbert told us that when she had left the residence, Tim was asleep in bed and snoring That was not possible. Tim was already deceased when she left the residence There is no natural reason, no indication of bad health or heart attack or anything such nature. Now we need to etermine what actually took place that morning completely changes our investigation into a homicide investigation In light of this development, police wonder if Barb's lack of emotion at the scene wasn't shock But the reaction of a guilty conscience You start putting these pieces together. is going start moving us towards a criminal investigation. I start to think of, well, something had happened to incapacitate them where they were not able to wake up Maybe they were poisoned. It was determined that Barb was diabetic. and so we did find a lot of diabetic medication, insulin, syringes throughout the house. We inform the Medical examiner the vials of insulin that were found at the residence and gave him that information to try to locate in the toxicology report insulin in Tim's body At that point, they were not able to locate any insulin in the talks called As far as investigators are concerned Barb is now a person of interest in a potential murder TheQestion is, what reason could she have to want her husband dead? Later that night, I was contacted by family member Pazas who advised me that him and Barb's son. wish to speak with me in regards to the fire and Tim's death. I agreed to meet with Tim and Barb's son. later that evening at the Law Center in Centerville He advised that The evening before the fire Tim and his father, Tim, had gone on a walk together. and Tim had expressed to him that They were going to be getting a divorce and that that was going to be taking place sooner rather than later Mam Barb's son was very distraught and upset He stated that it hadn't been good for quite some time, that fights were happening more often than not It was apparent that he truly believed that Barb may have had something to do with Tim's death I've been around Centerville my whole life, and there's been very few intentional homicides in this community But the original picture that you have starts to change From what we saw at the very beginning to where we were now was substantially different up A marriage on the brink of disaster. I probably lived paychck to paycheck. We got behind under a mortgage and had to refinance. And detectives find the smoking gun. That conversation led the laboratory to test for a drug called prokhol This episode is brought to you by SoFi, the all in one finance app where you can bank, borrow, and invest. SoFi makes it simple to start investing with an easy to use app And the sooner you start investing, the more potential you have to build your money. If you want to invest but aren't sure where to start, Sopfi Wealth's Robo advisor can do it for you If you want to be more hands on, SopFi also offers self directed investing with SopFi securities, all in the same app And SoOFI Invest is offering up to one thousand dollars in stock when you open and fund a SfFI self directed brokerage account of at least fifty dollars. Terms apply Get started today at soopFi dot com slash AMa This is a paid advertisement by SFI teechnologies and is not intended to be financial advice or investment recommendation. Investing involves risk including total loss and is not guaranteed. Active investing via SFI Securities LLC member FiNRA sl SPC Officers now have a suspect in the fiery murder of Tim Paza hisis wife of eighteen years, Barbara Paza To understand her motive, detectives need to know just how deep the problems in their marriage go generally want to speak with friends and family members and try to to see what you can come up with One of those in particular was Sonya Carson She had reached out and she had some information that she thought maybe we would want to know I knew Barb all through when she was in school. two thousand four, two thousand five is when we became closer friends Aarb and Tim were never an affectionate couple Even when the kids were younger, they'd never were one to touch each other or show affection I just thought That was Barb's demeanor. She wasn't really an emotional person. and I think if she would have been more affectionate Tim would have reciprocate that According to Sanya, Tim and Barb's relationship continued to deteriorate over the years I think they stay together for the kids Um primarily just for them And I think Barb she did not want to have a marriage that ended in divorce in her eyes she would have felt like she wouldn't be accepted or that she wouldn't be able to do things with us as couples as we sometimes did because of our children The relationships seemed to reach a breaking point in twenty eighteen twowo weeks before the fire. We had gone out to eat one evening And there were three of us and we were just sitting there talking about, you know, life, our kids Our husbands And out of the blue sheet stated very loudly She was very upset with him. She talked about Pnding divorce. and how she was concerned if the kids would actually want to stay with her or if they would want to be with him and she was concerned about their finances I think she really wanted people to know how much she was giving or how much she was doing I believe she was trying to portray herself to be the perfect mom Perfect family Barb always wanted the kids to have the best of everything And you know, they drove nice cars, they had newest shoes or whatever that they wanted She also spent a lot of time shopping for herself And also for friends, spending money was one of our favorite things to do She continued to become more upset about it and said that She hated him. she said it with A lot of emotion and that If she wanted to get rid of someone, she knew she could When she said that I kind of chuckled because I thought, you know, I'm sure we've all been mad at our husbands and have said that. I didn't think anything of it. I just thought she was venting Investigators wonder if Barb decided to make good on her threat We found documentation showing that the house was about to go into foreclosure We saw credit card bills that were way past due. Barb had maxed out Tim's life insurance from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand dollars. That had happened approximately five months prior to this incident We were also able to determine that she had increased the amount on the homeowner's insurance for the residents Knowing how far Barb and Tim were in a financial struggle, Tim was worth a lot more to her dead than alive She was going to, quite frankly, make a good payday upon his death Barb's motive seems clear But there is still no direct evidence she had anything to do with Tim's death A lot of it was circumstantial evidence We needed to try to get Barb to answer our questions and tell us the truth about what place that morning Investigators ask Barb to come in for a more formal round of questioning Hi, Bar You guys are thatt stay close to me. You' sm not very good wanted to get a baseline from Barb about her relationship with him and the family setting Barb did admit that her and Tim had talked for quite some time about getting a divorce But that Financially, she didn't know how that would work. We probably lived paycheck to paycheck. We got behind under mortgage and had to refinance some creditors. We guys able to find common ground at least to handle. He handled the bills for a while and then he got tired of it kind of half ass handed them back to me Aside from confirming what police already know, Barb is not very forthcoming She was fine speaking with us about the relationship and the financial situation. But when we pressed her about the morning of the fire. She just started to close up What was the breaking point for you? I don't have anything to say.t I didn't have a breaking point You understand why I'm coming back You watch the TV shows. You're in the medical field. You know they're gonna be able to tells callolog you and figure out what happened with and that's gonna come back on you The fire didn't destroy his body That's gonna to connect to you. and then it's just gonna be evidence I'm here so I can understand Take me through it, what led up to that decision? Because we know there was no decision She asked to stop the interview She told them that she wanted to go speak to her children and talk to them, and then she would come back. It was my belief that she knew at that point that she was caught And she wanted to tell the kids what took place before she admitted to what she had done Prior to Barb leaving the law center the day of the interview, we executed the search warrant of her vehicle and also seized her cell phone for a search warrant to be conducted on the cell phone The following morning, while waiting for Barb to return. Investigators receive a shocking call At approximately eight in the morning Dispatch received a nine hundred eleven call from other's residence advising that our was having seizure like symptoms I recognized the address and I went to the location. and observe Barb was overdosing At that point, she was transferred to a hospital in D Morne Barb had taken some type of overdose of medications. She was kept for about ten days under observation Of course in a small town, people are talking A lot of people questioned, you know is she grieving? Is it because she's so heartbroken? But at this point, even though it was a few short days after Tim's passing, it was pretty evident that most people believed that it was because she was guilty of a crime that she committed Barb Paza in the hospital recovering from an overdose Police focus on finding evidence that she orchestrated her husband's death After the initial autopsy report and toxicology test did not reveal anything We asked for an additional toxicology test to look further into other substances that may have been in his body The case's history was that Barbara Pasa was a nurse in a medical field and had access to some of the drugs that are specifically used for anesthesia That conversation led the laboratory to test for a drug called propofol Propofol is a fast acting drug that is most commonly used to sedate patients undergoing surgery The injection of propofol is going to cause a person to sleep and it can also affect the heart and lower blood pressure can cause an individual to stop breathing and the sufficient concentration can lead to death The amount of propofols found in Tim's body waszero point one eight milliliters whichich is not something that a normal person would have in their system. that analytical finding is the propofol that's present in the blood It doesn't go to show you where the propofol is present in other parts of the body So the finding in the blood does not account for the p propofol dose that was administered. We did interviews. we We were able to determine that Tim was not a drug user Tim was not in the medical field. It's clear to investigators that Barb was the only person in the Paza household that had direct access to prokofol They spoke with hospital officials Potocfol is used If it's in a vial and say it's ten milliliters and they only used five. It can only be used one time, so it was thrown in trash. Barb's job in the surgical center was to then dispose of those containers contontainers are such that Bar would be able to reach in and grab a small vial of So stick it in a pocket and no one would know Anything different Barb's access to the drug confirmed, investigators ree examamine her timeline On the morning of the fire police, she left the house a little before seven AM More than thirty minutes before the fire was reported But when police reach out to Barb's coworker, Meghgan Decinna, she says otherwise On the morning of may fifth As I was driving to work, I happened to notice that Ar's vehicle was at home I knew it was her vehicle based on the personalized plates that she that she had that spilled out Paza Megan has an app on her phone that she uses for her work and it tracks where she's at at certain times She showed us this app And it showed that she had been by that house. at about seven twenty two that morning aboutbout ten minutes later seven thirty three or thereabouts is when the nine hundred eleven call was made. that there was smoke coming out of the house It's a pretty short period of time. for somebody to be there And then gone and that also starts to tell me that fire might have been going for a while before she actually left the house Detectives are able to track her movements after leaving the house using her financial records that morning. she had gone to an ATM location here in Centerville and withrew two hundred dollars from that ATM. We were able to also get video around that eightTM, which proved it was barb. and that she was in her vehicle at seven twenty five AM in Centerville So having all this evidence between the autopsy the interview statements, the financial information all led us to know not being truthful with us and that harb was involved in death at him and the fire at the residence. Armed with more solid evidence Investigators present their case to the district attorney I think Barb is a in a bad place financially She wanted to appear be the perfect family, have the perfect home, the perfect cars And I think it got to the point where She was not going to be able to uphold that appearance That's why she did what she did Barb snapped because she didn't want people to know the truth She didn't want him to know that Her life was not as it was portrayed So based on our investigation in this case, we believe that sometime in the early morning Barb was able to inject him with propopfol Once that took place, Barb then decided to try to destroy all possible evidence If we suspect that it was arson or whatever, usually you can see a burn pattern, but we didn't see nothing like that. So I believe that she stacked stuff up on top of him But it be closed, pillows or whatever. started it on fire I believe her intent was to burn the house down or burn it along resation where you couldn't see what was happening and then leave At this point, we believe we had enough probable cause to make an arrest for the murder and the arson While investigators have been gathering evidence, Barb Paza has been in a hospital bed recovering from an overdose. When she's released on may eighteenth, twenty eighteen, officers are waiting to arrest her Barb was placed under arrest and charged with the murder of Tim Paza, as well as arson It's small town So you start hearing things, you know, about I heard there was no smoke in his lungs and things like that So when I heard that she'd got arrested, I was not surprised at all I really wasn't Angry, yes Surprised? No Barb's trial begins on september seventeenth, twenty nineteen More than a year after the crimes took place pleaded not guilty At that point, she was looking at life in jail without parole on just the murder alone plus the arson charges But prosecutors know their case is still largely circumstantial You have to convince The full jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the person that was charged committed the crimes that were alleged You know, we didn't have video of Barb lighting the fire We have to prove that the information we have based off of all of our investigation leads to nobody else. It had to be herard According to the defense Police arrested the wrong person. One of the defenses that Barb tried to use was that her neighbor, who is also a nurse and deals with anesthesiologists was someone that could have possibly entered the residence. and injected him with the propofol. There's just was nothing that we found that ever showed he was involved in it It was determined that he actually left at five thirty that morning of the incident head to Des Moines for a conference. He was not around that day Barb chose to take the stand in her defense. She did show some emotion throughout her testimony, which was not similar to what we had seen throughout this investigation. She talked about in her previous marriage that she had lost a child at some point, which definitely is a traumatic experience I think she truly wanted to convince people. She was not the evil person that everybody knows that she is by saying that she could not do that to her children or do that to Tim. The tears that she was given Oh. Sony The entire thing was fny.