Laurie Wolfe
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Falls among adults 65 years and older caused over 34,000 deaths in 2019, making it one of the leading causes of injury deaths.

Approximately 2,500 of those deaths involved fatal stairway accidents. So when paramedics arrived at the home of Joe and Lori Wolf, no one is alarmed. Police rush to perform CPR on the fallen victim. No response and no pulse. Emergency personnel quickly turn to a king tube to probe down the victim's throat. But her throat is an opening. It's already closed.

The victim has rigor mortis. After a fall? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 116, The Death of Lori Wolf. ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. Sharing true crime stories isn't just about the story themselves. It's about getting justice for the victims and their families.

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Now, let's jump right into this week's case. Hey, everyone. Before we get into this story about Lori Wolf, I have a really important true crime update to bring to you. In episode number 39 of Forensic Tales, we covered the Sherry Papini story. If you've listened to the episode or simply if you follow the case, you probably already know that there's been a significant update in the case.

In 2016, then 34-year-old wife and mother Sherry Papini was kidnapped while out jogging near her Northern California home. Within hours of her kidnapping, the police found her cell phone and headphones less than a mile from her house, but there was no sign of Sherry. Her disappearance quickly gained national news attention, and her story had become known as the disappearance of Supermom.

After 22 days of searching for Sherry, she was discovered on Thanksgiving Day 2016. She was found wandering near a California highway. She had suffered a broken nose, she lost a ton of weight, her once long blonde hair had been chopped off, and she had been branded by her kidnappers.

But when Sherry Papini reappeared, some people doubted her story, including the police. And this doubt led many people to speculate whether Sherry had really been kidnapped or not.

Well, now, six years later, Sherry Papini is back in the news. On March 3rd, 2022, Sherry was arrested by the FBI and is being charged with lying to federal agents, mail fraud, and faking her own kidnapping. The FBI alleges that Sherry basically made up the entire story, that these two Hispanic women that she said kidnapped her didn't really do it.

Obviously, there's still a lot to uncover here. And as the story evolves, unfolds, I'll share any updates to our Patreon page. So if you want to follow the case alongside with me, I'll be posting updates as they're made available and posting them to our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash Forensic Tales.

And of course, if you haven't heard the Sherry Papini story, I highly recommend you go back, give episode 39 a listen. Her story is incredibly fascinating and it is definitely worth a listen. Now with that, let's jump right into Lori Wolf's story. At 6.33 p.m. on July 6, 2014, Oakland first responders received a 911 call.

Oakland sits on the east side of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California. The caller, who identified himself as Joseph Bontempo, told the 911 dispatcher that his wife had, quote, slipped down the steps. Joseph, who went by Joe, said he'd been watching TV in the upstairs bedroom and then found his wife at the bottom of the couple's staircase. When the 911 dispatcher asked him if she was still breathing, he said no.

Within minutes, Oakland firefighters and paramedics arrived at the house located at 6700 block of Serrini Drive. As soon as they stepped foot into the couple's home, they found Joe's wife, Lori Wolf, lying at the bottom of the staircase. Her head rested on the carpet, covered in blood. The injuries to her head were so severe that part of her skull was exposed.

Paramedics immediately began performing life-saving procedures on Lori. Although she wasn't breathing, they attempted to save her life by performing CPR. When traditional CPR didn't start a pulse, they started using a king tube. A king tube is a tube that allows first responders to open up a person's airway without running the risk of damaging their trachea.

But when they tried placing the tube in Lori's throat, they had trouble getting it down far enough. It looked like rigor mortis, or stiffening of the body post-mortem, was already occurring in Lori's body. Once first responders did all they could to try and save Lori's life, she was pronounced dead. She was only 57 years old.

Lori Wolf lived to become an extremely successful businesswoman. Raised as an only child, her father taught her how to have a tough and no-nonsense approach to business at a young age.

After her father got older, he turned the family's machine business over to Lori. She immediately excelled at running the business. Not only did the shop's employees respect her, but her customers loved her. She was a complete natural at running a business, just like her father.

One of Lori's friends and former boyfriends, Brent Martin, said this about Lori. She was a phenomenal cook who always had a sense of fashion. She was friendly and sweet to everyone she interacted with. He knew Lori quite well since they dated on and off for roughly eight years. Even after they broke up, they remained close friends. They simply decided that they were better off as best friends.

Lori was almost always in a relationship. All of them were long-term. She would be with someone for five, six, maybe seven years, but it wasn't until she was in her mid-40s that she met and fell in love with Joe Bontempo. They met while in a photography class in the mid-1990s, and there was just something so different and so special about Joe.

Joe was sweet. He adored Lori right from the beginning. But Joe, Joe wanted commitment. He didn't just want to become another long-term boyfriend of Lori's. Instead, he wanted to get married. And that's exactly what happened. Not too long after meeting and dating, Lori and Joe got married. The couple stayed married for the next 10 years until her sudden death in 2014.

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As soon as paramedics pronounced Lori dead, the investigation was immediately turned over to the Oakland Police Department. The first thing the investigators looked at on the scene was the staircase. This staircase isn't your typical household staircase. It was made of dark brown, stained wood steps attached to the wall. That's it. There was no railing. It was just brown pieces of wood that acted like steps.

It was a type of staircase that many people would probably describe as modern. It had this elegant and unique design that instantly gave the entire house a modern touch. Because the staircase didn't have a railing, Oakland police could easily imagine someone falling down. Maybe Lori simply lost her footing. She could have easily slipped, fallen, and without a railing, she had nothing to grab onto.

After looking at the stairs and imagining how this could have happened, the first person the investigators wanted to speak to was Lori's husband, Joe. Not just because he's the husband, but because he was the one who discovered Lori's body and was the person who called 911.

The first time the police spoke to Joe was in the kitchen. Immediately, investigators thought Joe's behavior was suspicious. And when I say suspicious, he wasn't acting the way you would expect a husband to act after they just found their wife dead at the bottom of the staircase. But it's really important to mention here, and this is something that I've talked about in a lot of cases that we've covered on the show, that how someone behaves immediately after discovering a loved one dead is

isn't and shouldn't be an indication of guilt. As humans, as human beings, we all react to tragedy differently. It may take a while for reality to set in for some people. So at first, the person might appear to be cold or possibly indifferent, when in reality, they're in shock.

And then at the same token, other people have very different reactions. Some people might become hysterical almost instantaneously after finding a loved one has died. So the point that I want to make here, and this is a point that I've made before, is that we all act differently when it comes to tragedy and when it comes to death. How someone acts or behave isn't something that should be considered when evaluating whether or not they had something to do with the victim's death.

But in this particular case, Oakland police officers find it hard to ignore Joe's peculiar behavior. To the police, Joe doesn't look like a grieving husband who just discovered his wife dead. Instead, they described him as cool, calm, and collected. He seemed fine, like this was just an ordinary day. Lori was dead, so what's for dinner?

Oakland police transported Joe to the police station for more intense questioning. They needed to separate him from the house so that forensic technicians could begin their investigation of the staircase.

At the police station in Oakland, officers reminded Joe that he wasn't under arrest and that he was free to go at any time. All they wanted to do was speak to him and find out what happened earlier that day. They needed to find out if he had any information explaining how or why Lori fell down the stairs. Joe said this to detectives that day.

He was in the upstairs bedroom drinking wine and orange juice and watching the SyFy channel. He had not heard from Lori in about an hour and a half, which was unusual. So he said he paused the TV, put down his glass of wine, and then went downstairs to see if maybe Lori was busy doing something downstairs. When he got to the staircase, that's when he said he saw her at the bottom of the stairs.

He freaked out when he saw his wife covered in blood at the bottom. He didn't know what to do and ultimately went into panic mode, which isn't uncommon. Some people go into fight mode. Others go into flight mode. And in this particular case, Joe went into flight mode.

So instead of calling 911 right away, Joe said that he went back upstairs to the bedroom and drank some more wine. He also said that he washed her face and washed her hands and also fixed her hair. After that, after doing all of that, he said he finally came to his senses. He calmed down a little bit and that's when he called 911. So let's pause there for just a second.

We know Joe isn't going to win any Husbands of the Year awards here, but at least he was being honest with the police. He said he knew he messed up by not calling 911 right away, but in his defense, he said he panicked. He freaked out when he saw his wife covered in blood at the bottom of the staircase. He didn't know what to do in that moment.

And because he waited to call 911, this could potentially explain the rigor mortis that was present in Lori's body when paramedics arrived.

Sometime during this interview with Oakland detectives, Joe said something a little strange. He said this, quote, I oiled the stairs this morning. She must have fallen because she was wearing socks. I've told her over and over and over again not to wear socks, end quote.

Let's go back and talk again about the staircase because remember, these weren't your traditional household stairs. They were wood steps attached to the side of the wall and there was no railing. Joe and Lori applied oil to the steps to keep the wood looking shiny and new.

So if you wore socks or some sort of shoes without proper gripping on the bottom, then these stairs could be very slippery, especially if they were just oiled earlier that day. So Joe tells that maybe his wife must have slipped because he had just oiled the staircase earlier that day and because she was probably wearing socks. The interview with the police lasted around midnight that night.

During the interview, Joe went on to tell detectives that he had a great marriage with Lori. He said he could count on one hand how many fights they had throughout their 10-year marriage. So after hours of intense questioning, he told the police that he was tired and was ready to go home. Because he wasn't under arrest or considered a suspect at the time, he was free to go home.

Before he walked out the door, Oakland police officers told Joe that he couldn't go back home because the house was still considered a crime scene and that investigators were busy collecting evidence. So instead of returning to his house, Joe went to go stay with one of their friends, Brent Martin, the same friend who Lori dated in the past.

Forensic technicians and detectives were busy examining the evidence at the house. Their job was to figure out if the evidence matched Joe's story or not. Investigators knew that an accidental fall was possible, given the fact the staircase had no railings, but they needed to be sure. So the first question became, is the blood evidence consistent with a slip and fall? When first responders got to Lori and Joe's house, they found blood everywhere.

Let's start with the staircase. One thing I want to mention here before we dive into the blood evidence is the condition of the stairs. Joe told detectives that he knew his wife slipped because he had just polished the stairs earlier that day. He said Lori would always wear socks on her feet and he always told her not to do that. He told her that not to do this for this exact reason. He was afraid that she would slip and fall down the stairs.

But when detectives studied the stairs, they didn't look like they had been just polished. In fact, the stairs were dirty and dusty. They didn't look like anyone had cleaned them for weeks, if not months. So how could the staircase get so dirty if Joe had just polished them earlier that day? Then there was the blood. A lot of blood.

Investigators found blood, hair, and brain matter on the stairs starting from the fifth stair down. This discovery suggested that if Lori accidentally fell down the stairs, she must have slipped either on or before the fifth step down.

As investigators looked down to the fourth, third, second, and first stairs, they saw an increased amount of blood spatter. In other words, as you went from the fifth step down to the first, the more and more blood they saw on each descending step of the staircase.

By the time they got to the bottom, they had found a huge pool of blood on the carpet. The pool of blood was next to Lori's head. Now, how much blood would you expect to find in cases of a person falling down the stairs?

Before we talk about that, let's talk about fatal cases of falls downstairs. So according to the Center for Disease Control, falls among adults 65 and older caused over 34,000 deaths in 2019, making it the leading cause of injury death. Approximately 2,500 of those deaths involved fatal stairway accidents.

So fatal stairway falls are relatively common, but it's not only age. Fatal falls are also common among people who are intoxicated. Now, Lori Wolf wasn't 65. She was 57. So she might not exactly fit into this statistic, but she's only a few years away, therefore making the reality of an accidental fall entirely possible.

Now let's talk about the blood. Oakland investigators encountered a ton of blood on the stairs and on the floor next to Lori's body. So how much blood is common in fatal stairway falls? Well, that's a tricky question to try and answer. It depends. It depends on the type of injuries the victim suffered, how many stairs did the victim fall, and of course the staircase itself. Was it carpet, wood, or was it made of something else?

The most significant indicator of how much blood you'd expect is determined by the victim's type of injuries. Some more severe falls can include deep lacerations to the head and neck or severe head injuries like a skull fracture. In that case, you could expect to see a lot of blood around the victim.

So if Lori had suffered a deep laceration either to her face, skull, or her head, then yes, you'd probably expect to see a lot of blood in the area. And then if she slipped on the fifth step, hit her head there, then continued to hit her head on each step going down, then again, there would be a lot of blood spatter.

Then the pooling of blood found around Lori's head could be explained by the fact that she laid there for a little bit of time before first responders arrived, causing the blood to pool around her head and face.

Based on Joe's own admission to the police, we know that he didn't call 911 right away. He said he didn't know where his wife was for about an hour and a half. And then when he finally decided to go look for her, he found her at the bottom of the staircase. But instead of calling 911, he went back upstairs to drink.

So this means that Lori was probably lying there at the bottom of the stairs on that particular piece of carpet for one, two, maybe even three hours before paramedics arrived. So if she was bleeding from her head, that's a really long time for blood to pool. And that could explain the amount of blood at the bottom of the staircase.

Investigators also found blood spatter on the wall next to Lori's body and the staircase. The only way that blood could have gotten on the wall is if Lori hit her head on it on the way down. They also found hair and brain matter on the wall similar to the staircase. On July 7th, the day after Lori's death, Lori and Joe's friend Brent Martin began calling friends and family to tell them what happened.

Brent decided that he would be the one to notify everyone so that Joe didn't have to. He just couldn't imagine what losing your wife would be like, so he thought that he would do his friend a favor and be the one in charge of calling people. Everyone Brent spoke to was shocked to learn about Lori's death. They almost couldn't believe that it was true. How could a healthy 57-year-old woman accidentally fall down the stairs and die?

But then people started remembering the staircase. Many of Lori's family and friends had been over to her house. They climbed those same steps. So when they found out Lori had slipped, they sort of understood.

Of course, they were shocked and of course, they were heartbroken, but they could imagine how this could have happened. It's a wooden staircase without rails. And if Joe just polished the steps like he said he did, and if in fact Lori did wear socks, then the only logical explanation to this was that it was a terrible, terrible, tragic accident. In fact, some of the people even told Brent how they had slipped on those stairs before.

When family and friends learned that the Oakland Police Department was looking into Lori's death as something other than an accident, they were furious. Lori's family agreed this must be some tragic accident. That's because everyone knew how much Joe loved Lori and everyone testified to how great their marriage was.

So for the local police to believe that this was something other than an accident was just plain crazy. Joe couldn't kill his wife. He wouldn't kill his wife. Even without the support of Lori's family, the Oakland police continued its investigation. Not only was the amount of blood found on the staircase concerning, but equally concerning was the amount of rigor mortis found on Lori's body.

The police suspicions grew more intense when they discovered Lori's financial status. At the time of her death, Lori Wolf was wealthy. Her net worth was estimated at $5 million. Most of her money was tied up in the machine business she inherited from her father, but she also had other assets that included several properties not connected to the business. She had a total of 10 properties throughout California and Arizona.

In addition, she had approximately $800,000 in cash in her bank account. On the other hand, Joe worked as an electrician and locksmith with only $300 in his checking account. So if Lori's death wasn't an accident, could money be a possible motive? Not so fast.

Although Lori had a lot of money, she didn't have a will. The police couldn't find anything in writing that laid out where she wanted her money to go when she died. Investigators found this a little surprising. How could this woman not have a will? She was only 57 years old, but she was worth $5 million. That's a lot of money not to have taken care of in the event of your death, whether your death is expected or unexpected.

So could money really be a motive if this wasn't an accident? This was a question that the Oakland police really had to consider and sit down and think about. And the only possible explanation they came up with was that by default, under California law, without a will, the spouse is typically the one who's entitled to the money. So could Joe have known his wife didn't have a will and that he would be getting the money in the event of her death?

Three days after Lori's death, the Oakland City forensic pathologist performed her autopsy. The police anxiously awaited the report. They were suspicious about the crime scene. Then they were suspicious about the money.

After examining Lori for both internal and external injuries, the pathologist found that she had suffered a total of 57 injuries from the fall. They included one to the left side of her nose, six lacerations on the back of her head, an injury to the right side of her neck, blunt injuries to her arms, multiple bruises on her arms and hands, two lacerations to the fourth finger of her left hand, and a

two abrasions on another finger, bruising on her legs, and bruising and blunt injuries to her torso. The bone in her left fourth finger was also broken, some of her ribs were broken, and the pathologist found bleeding on the brain's surface. Obviously, this sounds like a lot of injuries for a fall down the stairs.

But according to Oakland's forensic pathologist, the injuries he observed on Lori's body were consistent with a fall. He couldn't determine whether this was an accident or a homicide based on the injuries alone. He wanted to wait for all of the other tests to come back before ruling on the manner of death.

While the investigators waited for the pathologist's ruling on the manner of death, they made it known they were looking at Lori's death as a possible homicide, which didn't make her family and friends too happy. Everyone loved Joe, and everyone knew how much he loved Lori. In fact, when some of them found out the police were investigating Lori's death as a possible homicide, they joked that Lori would be the one to beat Joe up, not the other way around.

In the days following Lori's death, Joe continued to stay at their friend Brent Martin's house. But while he was crashing there, Brent started to notice that Joe wasn't at the house very much. Joe even asked him if he could borrow his car at one point. Then he'd be gone for the rest of the day.

While Brent had no idea where his friend was going, Brent knew Joe couldn't be going back to his or Lori's house because the Oakland Police Department still controlled it. But Brent didn't overthink this. Joe was a grown man. He just lost his wife to a tragic accident. Maybe he just needed some fresh air. Maybe he just needed some time by himself to cope with what had just happened.

On July 11th, Oakland police officers secured a search warrant to look at Lori and Joe's cell phones. Not only are they looking for what's on the cell phones, but they also want to see what's been deleted because sometimes things deleted from a cell phone can be far more valuable for what's not been deleted.

The police found that Joe had saved a phone number for a person named Nita. In fact, Nita's name was the second most called phone number on his cell phone, second only to his boss. Right away, detectives suspected that Joe was having an affair with this Nita person. Because why else would he call this person so much as he did? And why did he delete the phone calls?

Through Joe's cell phone records, investigators tracked down Nita's address. Once they had an address, they started doing surveillance on the house. Once they spotted a car pull up to the house, they ran the car's plates and found out the woman's full name was Lenita Davis. Two police officers went up to her house and knocked on the front door. But when Lenita answered, she wasn't exactly thrilled about speaking to the police.

Officers asked her if she knew a guy named Joe Bontempo. Her first response was no. She said she didn't know anyone by that name. But the police didn't let her off that easily. They told her that they searched through Joe's cell phone records and saw that he had made phone calls to her all the time. Lenita suddenly changed her story.

She then explained to them that Joe had done some work on her house recently, and that would explain the number of phone calls between them. When the police asked how well she knew Joe, she said she didn't really know much about him. All he did was perform some work on her house. He came, did the work, and then left.

After speaking with Lenita, the two officers returned to their cars and left. But her story immediately raised red flags in their eyes. They knew she wasn't telling the truth because of how many times they talked on the phone. There was just no way that they talked this much if Joe had only come over a few times to do some work on her house.

So the following day, the police went back to Lenita's house. They asked her again, how do you know Joe Bontempo? We know about all of your phone calls. We know he didn't just come over here to do some housework. So tell us how you truly know Joe. This time around, she offered up the truth, but it wasn't what the police expected to hear.

Lenita tells the police officers she isn't having an affair with Joe. She's his drug dealer. She's been supplying Joe with Norco painkillers for months. Norco is a highly addictive painkiller that combines two pain medications. It works by blocking pain signals through the brain and spinal cord.

Norco is also one of the most commonly prescribed pain relievers for patients with severe pain, which also makes it highly addictive. Lenita Davis made it clear, crystal clear to investigators that she was not romantically involved with Joe and that the reason she lied about knowing him in the first place was because that she's been supplying him with non-prescription Norco and she didn't want to get in trouble.

Oakland detectives are now starting to piece together the real Joe Bontempo. Like many people who have drug addiction problems, they typically keep it to themselves, whether that's because they're ashamed or simply because they just don't want people judging them for their addiction.

Detectives uncovered that Joe was living a secret double life. On the outside, Joe was a nice, quiet guy who loved his wife Lori. No one knew he had a drug problem, but on the inside, the real Joe was much different.

Investigators went back to Joe and Lori's home for more evidence that could prove Lori's death was a homicide. Instead of taking only pictures of the staircase, detectives decided to do something bold. They removed the entire staircase from the house and stored it in the forensic lab. They also decided to take the carpet and part of the wall.

When they examined the stairs, carpet, and wall pieces in the forensic lab, one thing stood out to them. It was something that investigators missed the first time. They discovered multiple head impressions on the bottom stair. Not just one, like you'd expect if Lori fell. They saw numerous head impressions, which indicated Lori's head hit the bottom of the staircase multiple times.

Then there was the section of the wall they removed from the house. Besides the blood spatter, they also saw hand swipes in the blood, like someone was trying to get up and swipe their hand against the wall through the blood. The more and more investigators studied the forensic evidence, the more it started to contradict Joe's story. Investigators learned that Joe was in the business of installing security cameras, which

He had installed multiple cameras around his house as well as in the neighbor's house. So a couple of the police officers decided to go over to the neighbor's house to see if the neighbor's camera caught anything on the afternoon of Lori's death. Lucky for them, one of the security cameras faced perfectly in the direction of Joe and Lori's house.

They studied the film from the afternoon of Lori's death, and on the film, they spotted Joe leaving the house in his van around 5.10 p.m. He was gone for about 30 minutes, then returned home at 5.43 p.m. Now, the police had no idea where he went during this time, but what's important is that Joe never told the police he left the house that day. He left this part completely out of his story.

Not only that, but the first responders who arrived at the house noted that rigor mortis had already begun to set in on Lori's body. They couldn't even get the CPR tube in her throat because of the advanced stages of rigor mortis, which led them to believe that she had been dead much longer than Joe said. This also got the police wondering, could he have used this time to get rid of his bloody clothes?

While detectives continue to comb evidence suggesting Lori's death was a homicide and not an accident, the forensic pathologist finally issued a ruling. Once all of the tests came back, and once he had a chance to review all the injuries to Lori's body, he concluded the manner of death was a homicide. The pathologist was quoted as saying, this could only be an accident in a cartoon, end quote.

While the official forensic pathologist ruling in hand, the police went directly to the Oakland prosecutor's office to move forward with homicide charges. One month after Lori's death, Oakland police officers got an arrest warrant for Joe. When they got to his house, they told him, today is the day. Put him in handcuffs and arrested him.

News about Joe's arrest for Lori's murder came as a total shock to Lori's family and friends. This whole time, they stood behind Joe. They supported him. They didn't believe he was capable of something like this. In fact, several of them even wrote letters to the prosecutor asking them to not charge him and ask them to drop the case entirely.

Even with all the forensic evidence pointing to a homicide, Lori's family simply didn't want to accept her death as murder. On July 23, 2016, two years after Lori's death, Joe's criminal trial began. The trial was going to rely almost entirely on the physical evidence. The jury needed to decide, did the evidence support an accidental fall down the stairs, or did the evidence support homicide?

The forensic pathologist who conducted Lori's autopsy testified for the prosecution. He testified that Lori died from multiple blunt injuries, 57 injuries to be exact. He believed that the amount and type of injuries to her body weren't consistent with an accidental fall. But if Lori didn't fall, then what happened to her?

According to the prosecution, the blood evidence speaks for itself. Investigators found blood smears on the wall like someone had been pushed against it with bloody hands. There was blood on the stairs themselves and blood soaked into the carpet at the bottom of the stairs.

Forensic experts for the prosecution testified that the stains of spatter and saturated blood were consistent with a bloody head being bashed to the ground multiple times. Based on the head impressions on the stairs and the wall, they believe that Lori's head was slammed against the wall 16 times.

Logic says you wouldn't hit your head against the wall 16 separate times if, in fact, you accidentally fell. Next to the staircase, investigators noticed a speaker was knocked over. In addition, a picture on the wall next to the stairs was crooked and had blood on it. According to the prosecution, this points towards a struggle. The prosecution also presented evidence that Lori had defensive wounds on her hands.

The pathologist tested that the bone in her left fourth finger was broken, which suggested it broke during a struggle. Defensive wounds indicate that the victim attempted to fight back. The pathologist also found DNA underneath Lori's fingernails, DNA that matched Joe's.

When it came time for Joe's defense attorney to argue their side in the case, they relied more on character witnesses who knew Joe and Lori rather than the forensic evidence. The defense called dozens of witnesses who testified that Joe, the Joe they knew, couldn't have done this. So even if all the forensic evidence pointed towards homicide, Joe couldn't have killed Lori.

The prosecution knows that it's hard to get a jury to convict a man of murdering his wife in cold blood, especially without a motive. In their opening statements, the prosecution told the jury that they wouldn't be able to provide them with a motive for Joe murdering Lori. They simply said they didn't have one. Yes, money could have been a factor, but

Yes, Joe's addiction to painkillers could have been a motive. But at the end of the day, the prosecution admitted that they didn't have a motive. So for a jury to convict a man of murdering his wife by bashing her head 16 times against the wall without a motive is going to be tough. It's going to be really, really tough to do.

Although a motive isn't required for a conviction in a criminal trial, of course, it always helps. I think at the end of the day, most people want to understand why someone committed a brutal crime if they're going to, in fact, convict them of it. At a critical moment during the trial, the defense seemed to suggest that if Lori's death wasn't an accident like they argued, then it was done in a heat of passion.

Okay, let's stop there for a second. At first, Joe's defense said that Joe didn't do this. It was an accident. But then they kind of changed their story. They said if it wasn't an accident, and the key word in that sentence is if, if it wasn't an accident, then Joe must have killed his wife out of a heat of passion.

Now, I'm not sure what the defense's strategy was at this point to suddenly kind of change their story. And we may never know because Joe never took the stand to testify in his own defense. So once the prosecution heard Joe's defense team basically suggest that he may have killed Lori out of a heat of passion, this entirely changed everything.

The prosecution initially charged Joe with first-degree murder. But if Joe killed Lori from a heat of passion, then we're talking about manslaughter, not murder. For someone to be convicted of first-degree murder, the person must have intentionally killed another. Under California Penal Code Section 187, murder is defined as one person killing another person with malice aforethought.

Malice is defined as the knowledge and intention or desire to do evil. So malice aforethought is found when one person kills another person with purposeful intent. Manslaughter, on the other hand, is different. Under California law, manslaughter is a homicide that is unintentional killing of another person.

So the critical difference or keyword here is intentional versus unintentional. Did Joe intentionally kill his wife, which makes this case a first degree murder case? Or did Joe kill his wife in a heat of passion, which falls under the umbrella of manslaughter?

Regardless of the defense's hint at a heat of passion, the prosecutor in this case believed it was murder, that Lori's death wasn't a heat of passion, it's not manslaughter, and they decided to continue to pursue first-degree murder charges. After 15 days of testimony, the court handed down the case to the jury to decide Joe's fate.

After only a few hours of deliberation, they reached a verdict. Guilty. They found him guilty of second-degree murder, and they sentenced him to 15 years to life in prison. The verdict wasn't what either side wanted. The prosecution wanted first-degree murder, and the defense wanted either complete innocence or, at the very least, manslaughter.

But in the end, the jury decided based on the forensic evidence. They agreed with the pathologist that the amount and severity of injuries to Lori's body wasn't consistent with a fall. The forensic evidence proved that she didn't die from an accidental fall down the stairs. Lori was murdered. Joe performed a heinous crime, murdering his wife in a seemingly happy relationship with

Lori Wolf didn't deserve to die, and we can only speculate on Joe's motive. Was he unhappy? Was he depressed? Was he an addict? Or was he just another cold-blooded killer? To share your thoughts on Lori Wolf's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Do you think there's a possibility that Joe is actually innocent?

Could Lori have accidentally fallen down the stairs like he said? To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each weekly episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. To check out photos from the case, including pictures of the staircase, be sure to head to our website, forensictales.com.

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