Jody Scharf
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. 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. In Burgeon County, high above the sky, lies a romantic resting cliffside called Lover's Chair, a hidden gem overlooking Rockefeller Lookout.

Couples come to Lover's Chair to experience each other, reconnect, and fall in love all over again. On September 20, 1992, Stephen brought his wife to enjoy an unforgettable evening together. After a few bottles of wine, tragedy struck. There's been an accident. Someone has tumbled over the cliff.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 80, The Murder of Jodi Scharf. ♪♪♪

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

If you're interested in supporting the show, getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and much more, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us.

Now, let's jump right into this week's case. Rockefeller Lookout is a spot widely known across Bergen County, New Jersey. Couples looking for a secluded part of Rockefeller Lookout went to a place called the Lover's Chair. The Lover's Chair was a popular cliffside ledge about 200 yards away from the Palisades Park picnic area. But it was also a dangerous spot. If you want to visit this cliff, hikers must be willing to take a little risk.

Along the wooded path, there are signs everywhere warning people to stay on the main hiking trail. But some don't listen. On September 20, 1992, at roughly 8 p.m., Bergen County Police received a 911 call. Most of the 911 calls the police received were to report a suicide off the cliffs or a terrible car crash on the road.

But this person wasn't calling to report a crash or a suicide. The caller says that there's been an accident, a different accident, at the lover's chair. The caller told the police a man stopped him alongside the road and told him that he needs help, that there's been an accident, and his wife fell off the cliff. Burgeon County Police dispatched several officers to the scene.

As the officers pull up and park their patrol cars, they spot a man who appears to be distraught. Officer Paul Abbott approaches the man. Stephen Scharf tells the police that he's the one who flagged down the car to have him call 911 because it's his wife who fell off the cliff. As Stephen provides his story about what happened that night, dozens of additional police officers and first responders begin arriving at the cliff.

As the minutes tick by, first responders understand that if they have any chance at saving this woman's life, they have to work fast. Stephen says that him and his 44-year-old wife, Jodi, arrived at the cliffside about an hour or two earlier that evening. They were headed to dinner at a comedy club in New York, but decided to stop by the Rockefeller Lookout first.

The plan was to bring a couple bottles of wine with them, a nice cheese plate and a blanket, and of course, enjoy the view offered by the 200 foot drop off the lover's chair. Stephen says that at some point after a few glasses of red wine, he decided that he would go back to the car to grab another bottle and the blanket because it was starting to get cold outside.

As he got up from the ground, he turned around towards the direction of the car. Jodi also got up. She tells Stephen, no, no, don't go. As soon as she's getting up from the edge of the cliff, she loses her footing and slips off the edge.

Stephen said he then immediately ran towards the cliff's edge to see if he could find his wife. He screamed and called out her name, but didn't get any response. So he began panicking. He didn't know what to do next. One minute ago, he enjoyed quality time with his wife on a beautiful cliffside. The next minute, she was gone.

After the police get Stephen's initial story, they need to find out the exact spot where she fell. So Stephen and the police officers made their way up a trail created by hikers. Along the way, they have to pass through overgrown bushes, foliage, and all sorts of branches. Even tree limbs blocked portions of the trail. Using police flashlights, they reached a flat rock at the edge of the cliff.

It's a perfectly flat rock that resembles the shape of a chair, hence the name, the lover's chair. When they all get out there, it's dark. Officer Abbott asks Stephen where his wife had fallen, and Stephen points in the direction of the flat rock and says, there, that's the spot where my wife fell. The Eaglewood Fire Department is called in to help. To get to Jodi's body, they need to set up a repel system along the side of the cliff.

The plan was to have the firefighters repel down the ridge in order to get to Jodi. The cliff is steep, riddled with brush and trees, so there's no other way to get down to her. As the fire department starts to repel down the mountain, Stephen is placed in a police car to be taken back to the station. Officers then decide to turn the police radio off just in case there's news about Jodi's condition and it's broadcast over the radio.

They don't want this poor man learning that his wife is dead over the radio. Once in the police patrol car, Stephen's completely distraught. He's acting exactly how you'd expect a man to act when he just witnessed his wife slip and fall off the side of a mountain. He arrived at the police station a little after 8.20 p.m.,

At the station, Detective Ronald Karnak interviewed him and asked him more questions about the accident. He repeats his story that they walked out there together to enjoy some quiet time together. He even referred to the cliff as, quote, their spot. They had a few glasses of wine. And when he went back to the car to get a second bottle, Jody got up, slipped, and accidentally fell off.

He was very adamant, he was open, that they both had several glasses of wine that night. So it was entirely possible that Jodi may have had one too many glasses of wine and when she stood up, she got dizzy and misstepped. The cliffside, firefighters are set to come down this entire drop.

On their way down, they find several items they believe belong to Jodi, like her purse. They also find patches of blood and what looked like a small clump of hair. But they can't find Jodi. The officers finally repel their way down to the bottom. And that's when they expect to find Jodi lying on the ground. But when they got there, they don't see anything. No Jodi. Nothing.

The officers decide to expand their search of the area. It's possible that after falling and hitting the ground, Jodi may have rolled down to a different location. So the officers expand the search at the bottom of the cliff. And then finally, after nearly two hours, they find Jodi. And it's not good. If you're like me, you're a bit overwhelmed by all the teeth whitening products on the market today.

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smilebrilliant.com, promo code TAILS to get 30% off. Jodi Scharf was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C. She was the youngest of two children. Jodi and her brother Jonathan grew up in an all-American military family. Their father was in the military, so they were always moving and switching schools.

Because the family was always packing up and moving, Jodi and her brother Jonathan were incredibly close to each other. Sometimes, they were each other's only friends. Growing up, Jodi was smart. After high school, she went on to graduate college at the University of Georgia. There, she met Stephen. And from the moment they met, Jodi knew that he was the one for her. And he felt the same way about her.

When Jodi brought Stephen home to meet her parents and older brother, they all thought that he was perfect. Jodi's parents loved that Stephen served in the military like Jodi's father. And most importantly, their daughter was happy. Jodi and Stephen got married in 1978. Shortly after that, they welcomed their first child together, a boy who they named Jonathan after Jodi's older brother.

By the early 1990s, Jodi and Stephen lived about 60 miles away from the lover's chair in Hackettstown, New Jersey. Stephen worked as an engineer, and Jodi worked for AT&T while also being a devoted mother to 10-year-old Jonathan. When first responders finally found Jodi's body, they knew instantly she was dead.

She obviously suffered a terrible fall. She had horrific trauma to her head, to her torso, that no one could survive a type of fall like this. Her body was found in a location about 52 feet away from the cliff's base where she and Stephen sat. She had been wedged between a rock and a tree.

Finding Jodi 52 feet away from the bottom of the cliff was, well, unusual. You would expect to see her as close to the bottom of the cliff as possible. If Jodi accidentally slipped when she got up, she would have experienced what is known as a passive fall.

Passive fall is like if you're standing on top of a roof, you lose your footing and you fall off the side of the roof. You'd likely land in a location on the ground right underneath the edge. Based on the location of Jodi's body, again, 52 feet away, this was more consistent with a propelled fall or a fall in which someone is pushed or thrown off a ledge.

But even though the location of Jodi's body was well suspicious, when first responders arrived, they could also smell alcohol on her body. It was very clear that Jodi had been drinking that night. So this observation is not only consistent with her story, her husband's story, but it also makes a fall entirely possible, regardless of how far she was found. So the police break the news to Stephen at around 11 p.m. that night.

And rightfully so, he's completely devastated by the news. He just can't believe this happened. He can't believe his wife is dead. Around midnight, so about an hour later, the police let Stephen go home for the night. When he gets home, he calls Jody's family to tell them the heartbreaking news. He tells the family exactly what he told the police. Jody's family was destroyed.

It was heartbreaking to lose their daughter in such a tragic accident. But one of Jodi's family members was a little skeptical about Stephen's story. When Jonathan first heard the story, he couldn't believe that his sister would have even have agreed to go out there on those rocks. Jodi was terrified of heights.

So Jonathan was so surprised about what his brother-in-law said that he decided to pick up the phone and call the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office didn't provide him with much information. They simply told him that Jonathan, hey, we're aware of the case, but at this point, it looks like it was an accident.

They also say that Stephen was brought in for questioning right afterwards and was free to go. They said that the only suspicious detail they knew about the incident was just how far Jodi's body was found away from the bottom of the cliffside, but that was it. So the next day, the Bergen County Sheriff's Department decides that they want to bring Stephen back in for more questioning. By this point, the police suspect that it was an accident.

But they need to confirm some of the remaining details of Stephen's story to close the case officially. That's when they learn a lot more about Jodi and Stephen's marriage in the weeks and months leading up to the fall. When Stephen sits down with investigators, he drops a bombshell. Stephen tells the police that he and Jodi have been in an open marriage for the last 13 years.

He admits that he's been with 50 to 60 other women while he's been married to Jodi. But after a little more digging, it seems like Stephen's definition of what an open marriage really is, that definition is a little off.

That's because it's only Stephen who's seeing other people outside the marriage. It turns out Jodi wanted nothing to do with this open marriage idea. And not only did she want nothing to do with it, she actually wanted a divorce. Just a couple weeks before the accident, Jodi filed for divorce, citing abuse and infidelity.

Stephen admitted to the police that he didn't want Jodi to leave him. So he agreed to stop seeing other women. He also denied all the abuse allegations, except for one small fight he had with Jodi several years ago. He told the police that he wanted to do everything to try and save the marriage and that this trip to the cliff was the first step to fix their relationship together.

At this police interview, Stephen agrees to be photographed and also allows the police to search his car. Inside of the car, they don't really find anything suspicious. Everything in there seems to match up with the story. They find a Coleman's cooler with an empty bottle of wine inside. They find another full bottle of wine and then some glasses. There's also a box of cheese crackers and a small knife that was probably going to be used to cut the cheese.

Other than that, there wasn't really anything else inside. There certainly wasn't anything in there to suggest that this was anything more than just a tragic, tragic accident. Bergen County's medical examiner, Dr. Mary Ann Clayton, was in charge of Jodi's autopsy. Jodi's injuries were extensive. Dr. Clayton found lacerations across her entire skull, including one that spanned across the entire top of her head.

She also had abrasions and cuts to both the right and left sides of her face. Her right eye socket, nose, and cheek were broken. She had a nine-inch long and four-inch deep laceration from her right armpit down across her right breast. She had dozens of cuts and scrapes all up and down her arms and legs. She dislocated her right shoulder, and she had many broken bones in her ribs.

She also sustained substantial injuries to her organs. The sac around her heart, her spleen, and the chambers of her heart were all torn. The injuries to Jodi's skull alone would have caused instant death, and the internal injuries would almost instantly kill her too. Her injuries were consistent with someone falling 10 stories, likely hitting rocks on the way down.

No one, no one could possibly survive these types of injuries. As a routine part of every autopsy, Dr. Marianne Clayton requested a toxicology report. She knew from what she read in the police reports that Jodi had been drinking before the fall, but she wanted to make her final ruling on the manner of death, and in order to do that, she needed to review the toxicology report.

So while she waited the results, her initial ruling for the manner of death was pending investigation. A couple of weeks after the autopsy, the toxicology reports come back. The report found that Jodi's blood alcohol level at the time of her death was 0.120. She was considered to be legally intoxicated.

And without knowing Jodi's exact weight at the time of her death, a .120 blood alcohol level could be anywhere from three to maybe five drinks that night. And of course, it's well above the legal .08 limit for what many jurisdictions consider a legal driving limit. The toxicology report seemed to support Stephen's story.

So in January 1993, the medical examiner, Dr. Mary Ann Clayton, ruled that she couldn't determine the manner of death. She couldn't determine whether Jodi's death was an accident or it was something else. The medical examiner's ruling in January 1993 meant that Bergen County prosecutors couldn't really do anything in the case.

Even if they and the police and some of Jodi's family suspect that something else happened, there just wasn't any forensic evidence suggesting otherwise. So the case turned cold. Ten years passed. Stephen moved on with his life and married another woman. However, Jodi's family had difficulty trying to move on with their lives, especially Jodi's older brother, Jonathan.

And it wasn't only Jody's family that had a hard time accepting Jody's accidental death. The police and prosecutor's office also had their suspicions. For all these years, the sheriff's department and prosecutor's office believed that this wasn't an accident. But up until this point, they had no solid forensic evidence suggesting otherwise.

So after 10 long years, the police decided to reopen the case. And a new lead cold case investigator, James Bordino, was assigned to take another look. After receiving the case, Detective James Bordino partnered with Wayne Mello, a trial prosecutor with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. Their first initiative was to determine the manner of death.

Remember, the medical examiner signed the death certificate as undetermined. She couldn't figure out whether Jodi's death was an accident or murder based on her autopsy findings. Undetermined meant that prosecutors couldn't move forward with the case 10 years earlier.

So Detective James Bordino and Prosecutor Mello decided to reach out to Dr. Marianne Clayton in August of 2005 to see if she was willing to take a second look at the case. Dr. Clayton agreed because she also suspected that it may not have been an accident.

But before she would agree to reopen and re-examine the case, she requested that a second medical examiner be retained to help. Back in 1992, Jodi's death was the first death connected to the cliffs that she ever examined. So she didn't have much experience with those types of injuries caused by a fall like that.

But since Jodi's death in 1992, she's performed autopsies on many cliff deaths. So by 2005, when this detective and prosecutor reached out to her in order to reopen this case, she now knows much more about the types of injuries that you would see in a fall like this one.

Dr. Clayton decided to enlist the help of fellow medical examiner, Dr. Michael Baden. Dr. Baden is a world-renowned medical examiner who's consulted on many high-profile cases, like O.J. Simpson, as well as the assassination of JFK, and that's just to name a few. So Dr. Clayton was thrilled when someone like Dr. Michael Baden agreed to take a fresh look at the case with her.

When Dr. Baden examined Jody's case, he was surprised that the prosecution didn't bring any charges against Stephen back in 1992. Because when he reviewed the police reports stating where Stephen said his wife fell and where her body was found 52 feet away,

A person who accidentally slipped couldn't travel 52 feet away unless they were propelled off the side of the cliff, at least according to what Dr. Baden believed. So Dr. Baden also didn't believe that Jodi's injuries were consistent with an innocent fall. Of course, you'd expect the injuries to be severe in an innocent fall, but Dr. Baden thought that her injuries were worse.

that her injuries were more consistent when someone is pushed or is thrown off the cliff. After his detailed review, Dr. Baden informed Dr. Clayton of his findings. Based on the forensic evidence, he believed Stephen pushed her. This was no accident. This was a homicide. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Scary Time. Introducing the Scary Time podcast.

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After Dr. Clayton consulted with Dr. Baden, she went back to Detective James Bordino and Prosecutor Wayne Mello and told them that she agreed with Dr. Baden's ruling. But before she'll change it, she wanted to go out to the cliff herself. Believe it or not, until 2006, Dr. Clayton hadn't been able to see the cliff firsthand from the bottom.

So in 2006, the same police officers who recovered Jodi's body accompanied her to the tree in which Jodi was found. The officers also pointed out the area of the rocky cliff where they collected blood and tissue. By allowing Dr. Clayton to view the scene from the perspective of where Jodi's body was found, as opposed to just from the top of the cliff, she was better able to understand how this could be a homicide.

Standing at the tree, she just couldn't imagine how Jodi's body could have been thrown so far. Coupled with Dr. Baden's findings, her years of experience examining cliff fall injuries, and now her perspective from the scene, she was ready to change the manner of death on the death certificate. Over a decade after Jodi's death, the medical examiner changed it to homicide.

Once the medical examiner changed her findings on Jodi's death certificate, the new detectives and prosecutor started digging a little deeper into Jodi's personal life. They were looking for anything that could suggest a motive for Stephen wanting to kill his wife. First, they discover a therapist that Jodi worked with just weeks leading up to her death.

So they obtained a search warrant for the reports typed up after these meetings. Inside the reports, they read dozens of pages about Jodi's conversations with her therapist detailing her marriage with Stephen. The reports indicated how their marriage was basically over and that she wanted nothing to do with him.

There was also mention that on more than one occasion, Stephen had become violent and abusive towards her, not just that one time he admitted to. There were years worth of physical, mental, and emotional abuse documented in their marriage. But one of these reports stood out to Bardino and Mello. A report that Jodi mentioned how Stephen had asked her to go to Rockefeller Lookout,

He told her he wanted to take her out there for a picnic and talk things over. But Jodi was adamant with her therapist that she did not want to go to the cliff with him. She did not want to have a picnic with this guy. She was trying to divorce him, not reconcile anything in their relationship. One of the last reports written by the therapist was how Jodi expressed being afraid of her husband.

Bordino and Mello learned that Stephen had taken out a rather large insurance policy out on Jody. In fact, in the weeks leading up to the fall, he even increased the payout to over $300,000 and updated the records to reflect him as the sole beneficiary. Even worse was that he also added a double adenomy clause to the policy on May 31st, 1991.

This clause means that if Jody dies and it was some sort of accident, he's entitled to double the insurance payout. In other words, when Jody died and the case was ruled an accident, Stephen cashed out on a nearly $700,000 life insurance policy.

What's interesting to me about this policy is that the policy's definition of, quote, an accident actually included murder. Of course, unless the named beneficiary on the policy is the killer. Before going to a judge seeking an arrest warrant, Bordino and Mello wanted to speak with one last person who might be able to shed some light on whether Stephen could have killed his wife.

And that was the couple's then 10-year-old son, Jonathan. Initially, they were apprehensive about talking with Jonathan because after Jody's death, he went to go live with his father. So they weren't sure how he would react once he learned that they reopened his mother's case. And they also didn't know if he would turn around and tip off their father, his father, about the case after speaking with him.

But when they sat down with Jonathan, who was now an adult, they were surprised by his reaction. He told these new investigators that he hated his father mostly because of what happened to his mom. Jonathan and his mom were so close. And when he went to go live with his dad afterwards, he became controlling and demanding of him, not the kind of parenting style that he was used to with his mom around.

After speaking with Jonathan, investigators derived a theory about how Stephen could have persuaded Jodi to go out with him to the cliffs that night. The theory involved Jonathan. Investigators thought Stephen used their 10-year-old son Jonathan as bait to get Jodi to go out with him that night.

The only way Jody would agree to spend any time alone with Stephen is if it was to talk about a custody agreement with the pending divorce. Investigators believed that Stephen told Jody he wanted to talk to her about custody arrangements, and that's the only reason why she followed him out onto the cliff that night. Detective Bordino and Prosecutor Mello now had enough evidence against Stephen to ask a judge for an arrest warrant.

The judge spent about a day looking the case over and decided that there was enough evidence, physical and circumstantial, and issued an arrest warrant for Stephen in December 2008. Even though the police possessed an arrest warrant, they didn't choose to arrest him right away. They spent a few days surveilling him 24-7 to get an idea of his daily routine.

They wanted to make sure that he would go into custody without incident. He had gotten away with what the police believed to be murder for so long, they had no idea how he would react. After about a week of surveillance, they had Stephen's schedule down. He worked overnight shifts at his job, going into work around 11 p.m. and coming home around 6 a.m.

A little after that, his new wife would leave the house to go to work. One morning, a dozen officers waited outside Stephen's home for his wife to leave the house. Around 7 a.m., the officers knock on the front door with a warrant for his arrest. But after they knock on the door, no one comes to answer it. So they decide to pound on the door once more. Again, no answer.

After the third announcement, officers break down the door and enter the house. They know Stephen is inside because they just watched him return home from work, but they have no idea what he's about to do. Is he going to go down in a suicide by cop situation? Is he going to kill himself before they can get to him? When the police officers get to the master bedroom, they see Stephen.

They see him lying in bed, asleep. They wake him up and announce that he's under arrest. The only thing Stephen says in response is, what agency are you from? They tell him they're from Bergen County, New Jersey, the place where his wife died all those years ago. He had no further questions. 16 years after Jodi died, her ex-husband Stephen was under arrest for her murder.

Investigators and prosecutors believed they had enough physical and circumstantial evidence to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Jody didn't fall off that cliff accidentally. Opening statements in the trial began on April 19, 2011. The prosecution's case was primarily built on Jody's relationship with Stephen at the time of her death.

They also added forensic witnesses who testified about the condition and location of her body. Over the first two days of the trial, the prosecution called Jonathan, Jodi and Stephen's only son to testify. And Jonathan's testimony was damning for the defense. That's because Jonathan testified that the three of them went out to dinner the Saturday before Jodi's death.

He told the jury that his mom didn't want to go to dinner with Stephen alone because she was afraid of him. He also told the jury that his parents had never been to the cliffs before, which wasn't their spot like his dad had claimed. And finally, he also confirmed his uncle's claim that yes, Jody was afraid of heights and that there was no way his mom was going to go to that part of the lookout.

After Jonathan, the prosecution called two women to the stand who both had affairs with Stephen right before Jodi's death. Both of these women told a story about a man who denied ever being married. He told one of these women that his wife died in a car crash years ago. He told the other woman that he was divorced and that his son was from a previous relationship.

The prosecution called these women to testify because they wanted to show the jury that Stephen was indifferent towards Jodi, that he was trying to build a life with other women, and in order to do that, Jodi needed to be out of the picture. Other witnesses called to the stand were many of Jodi's family members and friends, including her therapist.

All of them shared similar stories about how Jodi was filing for divorce. She was afraid of him. She would never go anywhere alone with him. The prosecution did a really remarkable job showing the jury just how strained their marriage was at the time of the fall.

Over the course of seven days, the prosecution presented evidence and testimony from 14 expert witnesses concerning forensic and physical evidence. One witness was a land surveyor who testified about the distance from the bottom of the cliff and where Jodi's body was found.

They also had an investigator testify who conducted videotaped experiments in which he dropped sandbags matching Jody's weight off the side of the cliff to replicate the fall. In all of his experiments, they all came to one conclusion. The only way Jody's body got to where it was is if it was thrown or pushed off the cliff.

and based on his experiments, it was against the laws of gravity and physics to suggest otherwise. Finally, the state called two medical examiners to testify, Dr. Mary Ann Clayton, who performed the original autopsy, and Dr. Michael Baden, who was called in on the case in 2004.

Both of these medical examiners concluded that based on the forensic evidence and injuries to Jodi's body, the manner of death is homicide. The injuries to her body were consistent with being thrown off the cliff in a propelled fall, not a passive fall. The state rested its case on May 24th, 2011.

When it came time for the judge to read the jury instructions, the judge only instructed the jury on murder charges, not manslaughter. Meaning, the jury could only consider a murder conviction in the case, and they could not consider the lesser charge of manslaughter. This is kind of a risky move for the prosecution, because that leaves the jury to only decide on one criminal charge, murder.

If any jury member thought that he should be convicted of manslaughter, that meant a full acquittal. But it also meant that if the jury found Stephen guilty, he'd be facing a lot more time behind bars. The jury in the case deliberated for two and a half days before returning with a verdict. Stephen was found guilty of first-degree purposeful and knowing murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison and is eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 30 years. Following the conviction, he immediately appealed it, to which the appellate division offered to hear the case. The issue at the hearing was if the trial court erred in admitting hearsay statements from Jody's therapist, family, and friends.

The statements suggested that Jodi was afraid of Stephen and was afraid of heights. In this case, these types of statements can be considered hearsay, and hearsay typically is not admitted in criminal trials.

So in this case, it's not Jodi offering up statements directly to the jury that, yes, she's afraid of Stephen. It was her therapist and friends offering these statements to try and prove this truth.

So after weeks of testimony, the appellate court ultimately ruled that the trial court did make a mistake in their decision to allow this type of testimony and that the trial court should have deemed the testimony inadmissible because it's not Jodi directly testifying to how she feels about Stephen.

So, because the trial court did make a mistake, at least in the eyes of the appellate division, they overturned Stephen's first-degree murder conviction. Immediately following this ruling, the state turned around and appealed the decision, and they brought up the case to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

After days of testimony, the state Supreme Court overturned the appellate court's decision and reinstated the murder conviction.

One of the justices wrote in the unanimous opinion that, quote, End quote.

The Supreme Court believed this testimony was anything but irrelevant, and in their ruling, they cited several other state cases in which a victim's state of mind is relevant to their actions. After exhausting all of his appeals, Stephen Scharf is currently serving his life sentence in a New Jersey prison. He won't be eligible for parole until he's served at least 30 years of his sentence.

Even then, his release is not guaranteed. It took over 15 years for Jodi's family and friends to finally see justice in the case. From the beginning, her closest friends and family members never believed this was an accident. But until there was enough physical and forensic evidence to prove that this was a murder, her killer remained free for years.

The conviction will never bring Jodi back to those who loved her, but the first-degree murder conviction does serve as a small piece of justice. It's a case that proves that a case is never too cold to be reopened. There's no case that determination and a little forensic science can't solve. To share your thoughts on the Stephen Sharf's case and the murder of his wife Jodi,

Be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Let me know what you think. Do you believe Jodi's death is an accident or a murder? Do you think there was enough forensic evidence to support a conviction? To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode.

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