48 Hours Mystery: Daddy's Girl

It was Thursday, July 19, 2007, around 12:30 p.m. when San Diego, Calif., homicide investigators J.C. Smith and Brett Burkett arrived at Tim MacNeil's home on Marraco Drive.

Tim MacNeil had come home at noon to have lunch with his stepdaughter, Brae.

"Dispatchers received a phone call, from Brae Hansen… she and her father had been tied up and she described witnessing this masked intruder shoot and kill her father right in front of her," says Detective J.C. Smith. "…the victim was face down in a pool of blood. He was wearing a dress shirt and no pants. There was a zip tie near one of his hands."

Excerpt: Brae Hansen's 911 Call

"The stepdaughter, Brae Hansen, had been zip tied, was crying," says Investigator Burkett. "She was upset, she saw what happened," adds J.C. Smith.

Based on the information they had, investigators thought a masked intruder was still on the loose. They believed Brae, 17, the only surviving victim of the crime, was now their best eyewitness.

"A lot of times we don't have witnesses in murder cases, so she was our number one key to getting who did this," Burkett tells "48 Hours Mystery" contributing correspondent Tracy Smith.

If they were going to solve the case, police needed her help.

Brae told investigators the shooter fled out the back door, where the gun had been found. Next, police canvassed the neighborhood on foot and with search dogs hoping to find more evidence and witnesses.

"I heard, pop, pop, pop, pop," neighbor Ernest Torgeson tells Smith. "I didn't think anything of it and then 20 minutes later, something like that, the place was just crawling with police and helicopters."

People in the neighborhood say they heard the shots and then they saw a young man jump out of hedges and take off in broad daylight down the street and up a flight of stairs.

"You could see he was definitely putting a lot of effort into it and he was definitely trying to run away from a situation," eyewitness Christopher Miles explains. "He immediately started to run directly down [the] path and all the way up the stairs… at that point that's where I lost track of him."

Investigators soon discovered two key pieces of evidence near the stairs.

"About halfway or three quarters of the way up the stairway, where witnesses saw this person running from house, up in a tree, they found a wad of black clothing that got caught in a branch. That was a black shirt and the mask," says J.C. Smith.

Neighbors, like Torgeson, were stunned by the murder of Tim MacNeil.

"We didn't go out and have dinner or anything like that," he says of MacNeil, "but it's someone you see on a regular basis. You say 'hi' and, you know, to see them gone, it's like wow - it hits you hard."

Police were also surprised. "He doesn't fit the stereotype of the typical homicide victim," J.C. Smith explains. "He didn't live a high-risk lifestyle. His behavior - his activities - weren't something that you would expect someone to kill him."

Tim MacNeil, 63, was a well-respected defense attorney.

"He was a great guy, the best possible big brother I could ever have," says Rick MacNeil. Younger brother Rick says Tim also had a wicked sense of humor. "He was a very big joker. He could find humor in just about anything."

College fraternity brothers Dr. Jim Wilson and John Keifer say Tim MacNeil had skills on the court and in the courtroom.

"We played basketball together. He was called 'The Spider,'" says Wilson.

"He was a master in the courtroom and he won all the time," adds Keifer. "I never saw him lose a case."

Erin MacNeil Ellison, Tim's daughter from his first marriage, describes her father as, "the funniest, most easygoing, nicest guy. He just could walk into a room and work it. He could talk to anybody."

After divorcing Ellison's mother, Tim MacNeil met and married Doreen Hansen and quickly took on the role of stepfather to her young daughter, Brae.

"Brae always called me her sister," says Ellison, "and since I didn't have any other siblings, and she was younger than me, I always let her kind of do that… She was super happy. She was always smiling. She was smart. She learned French, she could speak French fluently."

Brae shared a close relationship with Tim McNeil. "Oh, he was 'daddy.' It was 'daddy,'" says Ellison. "I never even called him 'daddy.'"

"Brae was just cute, Tim really liked her," says Bonnie MacNeil, Tim's sister-in-law. "She called him 'daddy.' Everything a father does, he did."

With a deep sigh, Ellison says her dad treated Brae "really, really well. Even in the will, you know, it was 'I raised her as my daughter.' I mean it was a split 50/50, so I think that pretty much says how important she was to him."

When Ellison learned the terrible news about her father's murder, she immediately thought of her stepsister. "Where is Brae? How is Brae? Is she OK?"

Ellison got a call from her Aunt Bonnie telling her that Brae was safe. "And when I heard that I just went, 'Oh my God, what is she going to do now?'"

As investigators continued to interview Brae that afternoon, they came back to one part of her story that puzzled them: Brae had told the 911 operator the masked gunman had disguised his voice.

"I think we asked a second time, 'What was the suspect's voice disguised like?' And we heard 'a cartoon character,'" J.C. Smith says. "People who do home invasion robberies, they want to come across as very intimidating. It was just unusual. I haven't heard, in my entire police career, that a home invasion robber used a cartoon character voice. And I think we both thought it was a little strange."

Several hours after the shooting, police took Brae to her Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Rick's house.

"They had asked Brae if there was a place that she wanted to go where she would feel safe, and she wanted to come to our house," says Bonnie MacNeil.

As police continued to question her there, the 17-year-old said another strange thing: she called the masked gunman by the name "Nathan."

J.C. Smith says, "Brae said 'Nathan.' Detective Rivera wrote it down, let Brae continue to talk, and she switched back to the masked intruder and Det. Rivera let Brae finish her statement and then said, 'You said the name Nathan a few minutes ago.' It wasn't so much that she said the name Nathan, it was when she denied saying it."

Investigators were growing suspicious. Brae Hansen, the surviving victim of a brutal crime, was beginning to look like she knew more than she had at first let on. And sure enough, after police left for the night, Brae said yet another strange thing.

As her cousin, Shelly, showed Brae a sketch of an unmasked man neighbors described running in the neighborhood shortly after the shooting, Rick MacNeil says, "…she said something to the effect of, 'Oh, no. His chin wasn't that square.'"

"Shelly looked at her and said, 'Oh, really? I thought you said he was wearing a mask?'" Bonnie MacNeil recalls. "Brae just kind of backed up and Shelly came out and called Rick. Rick said, 'Call the detectives.'"

When investigators heard that Brae had described the gunman's face, they knew she had been lying to them all along. They rushed back to Rick and Bonnie MacNeil's house. Their victim was now a suspect.

"We thought we had enough at that point to arrest her," says Burkett. Around 11 p.m. that night, less than 12 hours after the crime, Brae Hansen was arrested for the murder of her stepfather, Tim MacNeil.

"She stood right up, turned around and put her hands behind her back," says J.C. Smith. When asked if that's typical behavior, he says, "it's typical of someone who knows they've been caught."

"If you're not guilty, you're gonna protest," adds Burkett.

Investigators were now sure that Brae was somehow involved in her stepfather's murder. They began to interrogate her to find out exactly what she had done and why.

"I was initially surprised at how small she was," J.C. Smith says. "She was tiny, she was a little, tiny girl."

Brae Hansen knew she was caught. She began to give investigators details about a complicated and diabolical plot to kill her stepfather.

"At first I thought my dad had won and that Nathan had gotten shot," she tells them. "But then I looked back and I saw my dad saying, 'You shot me, you killed me.'"

Excerpt: Brae's Police Interrogation

It was a plot she said was executed by Nathan, her older brother and Tim's stepson. It was a plot that got out of hand. Brae says she couldn't stop it.

"You did everything you could to stop it?" Tracy Smith asks.

"[I did] everything in my mind that I could think of at the time to stop it," Brae says in an exclusive interview with "48 Hours." "I did think about calling the police once or twice and I had it dialed. I just couldn't push the send button. I was too afraid."

Tim MacNeil was gunned down just one day after his 63rd birthday. No one felt the pain more than his daughter, Erin MacNeil Ellison.

"It's one of the only times in my life when I physically lost control," she tells Tracy Smith.

But what was worse was that her little stepsister seemed to be involved. "I've never really had my heart broken. I think that was the only time I had my heart broken, because I never thought anything bad about her… she was a sweet, sweet, person."

Even though investigators J.C. Smith and Brett Burkett had arrested Brae, they were far from solving the case. They needed to find out about Brae's brother, Nathan, who she said was living in Arizona where he was a college student.

"I didn't even know she had a brother Nathan until she said it," J.C. Smith says.

And now Brae was telling police her brother had tied her up, and murdered their stepfather in cold blood.

"I don't know exactly how this part happened, because it happened so fast," she tell police, "but I think my dad lunged at him and tried to get the gun and I kind of turned away and was just like freaking out majorly."

As Brae described that horrific afternoon in greater detail, she suddenly made a stunning admission: "I had some play in it, so yes; I did kind of start the whole thing, even if it was, I don't know, lapse of judgment or whatever."

With Brae admitting she was behind the plot, investigators were now beginning to realize the crime had something to do with a troubled relationship between Tim MacNeil and both of his stepchildren.

"She told us a story about how she and her brother Nathan had planned to kill her stepdad on his birthday several days prior," says J.C. Smith.

Not only did they plan to kill Tim MacNeil, but this is how Brae said they planned to do it: They considered beating him with a baseball bat or injecting him with a toxic household cleaner. Brae even claimed they eventually hired a hit man and left cash, a key and a gun belonging to Tim MacNeil in a box on his patio. But, Brae tells police and "48 Hours" that when the hit man didn't show up, that's when she changed her mind.

"It was just more of going through the motions and I just never believed it was really going to happen," she says.

But then, Brae says Nathan showed up at Tim's house anyway, with that same gun.

"'You're gonna tie his hands behind his back, then we'll kneel him down in the laundry room…'" she tells police during her interrogation." He missed once, I know. [Nathan] hit the side of his face once, I know, and then he fired another shot in the back of his head once, once he was down, because he was twitching."

As she gave police her statement, they say she appeared cold and callous.

"It appeared she was trying to cry, but no tears were coming out," investigator Brett Burkett says. "[She] just looked me straight in the eye and, almost emotionless, would talk about how they planned it and how they killed him."

Excerpt: Brae's Police Interrogation

When asked how many shots were fired, Brea told them, "I'd say one, two… four."

"It was unusual," J.C. Smith says. "This was such a terrible thing that happened and here's this 17-year-old girl matter-of-factly telling us in great detail each shot that was fired into her dad. And there was no emotion."

So why didn't Brae tell police the truth when she called 911?

"[Nathan] warned me about that. He said, 'You know if I get caught you get caught and we're both goin' down no matter what you do. No matter what you say, they're always gonna believe me over you,'" Brae explains.

San Diego investigators alerted Arizona authorities and Nathan was rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and arrested for the murder of his stepfather. The next morning, Burkett and Smith were on a plane to Phoenix to question Nathan, who denied even being in San Diego.

"I said, 'Hey, we've spoken to your sister and she told us everything,'" says Burkett. "Then he asked for an attorney."

"I need a lawyer, this is too powerful," Nathan tells police during his interrogation. "I'm trying to tell you guys I wasn't involved."

When asked by "48 Hours" if he killed Tim MacNeil, Nathan replies, "No." When asked if his sister, Brae, killed Tim MacNeil, he says, "I can't answer that. I don't know."

And what would he say if he could offer an explanation? "I can say my sister probably went into panic mode and just automatically blamed her brother," he replies.

When Brae was asked the same question, "Did you kill your stepfather?" she tells Tracy Smith, "No, I didn't."

Investigators knew that to solve the crime they needed to discover what had turned a seemingly normal relationship between Tim MacNeil and his two stepchildren toxic.

When the siblings entered Tim's life upon his marriage to their mother, Doreen Hansen, Nathan was 6, and Brae was 4.

According to Tim's friends, Brae was a bright and happy kid; Nathan was a problem child.

"There was a big authority issue, and probably Tim, trying to be his father and anything, he just was disruptive and he was problem," says John Kiefer.

It was no secret that Doreen had her share of problems with alcohol and depression. Brae and Nathan claim she frequently took her troubles out on them.

In her interrogation, Brae talks about her mother, telling police: "…basically she treated me like I was her slave and that my only purpose in life was to serve her."

"My mom was not normal," Nathan says with a sigh. "My mom was abusive, and so it made me shy away from her."

"She'd spank you?" asks Smith.

"Kind of. It was more of a 2-by-4 incident," he says. "Turns out she was braggin' about it."

At age 12, to escape trouble at home, Nathan moved to Arizona to live with his grandmother. He seemed to thrive after moving there says childhood friend Joshua Wood.

"He was actually just a pretty decent guy, like very true to himself I would say … He was a good guy to know, especially with your computers - that's what he was known for, that's what he was good at," Wood says. "We were able to relate because we kinda had tough childhoods; his, of course, tough - tougher than mine."

In 2006, Doreen committed suicide by overdosing on pills.

"After my mom died, I had started talking to Tim more often," Nathan says. "My girlfriend at the time, she described it as a professor/student-type relationship. You know, he's older, he's been there. He's successful, you know?"

Nathan says he had no reason to harm his stepfather. "I personally had more to gain from him being alive. I'm now seeing him much more often. You know, I did computer work for him, built him a new computer and repairing it and stuff and such."

According to Nathan, it was Brae who was angry with Tim.

"My sister had been angry," he explains. "She was angry a lot of the time and it… it had gotten worse and worse."

"I was just - I was really, really pissed off at my dad," Brae told police during her interrogation. He basically made me feel like I was nothing, I was not worth anything."

Investigators speculated that Brae's sense of rejection may have ignited her anger, especially after she revealed that she was jealous of the other woman in her stepfather's life: his new girlfriend, Kim Mara-Bieda.

"He was basically gonna cut me out of his life completely and just -I knew he had already chosen his girlfriend over me and it hurt, really, really bad, because this is the man that I thought loved me and was my dad," Brae told police.

"She seemed offended that her father didn't make their lunch date they had set up on his birthday," J.C. Smith says, "but he instead chose to go with his girlfriend, Kim."

With her mother dead and her stepfather embarking on a new relationship, investigators wondered if Brae may have felt she had no one and she was blaming Tim.

"What did you love about Tim?" Tracy Smith asks Brae.

"Everything. Absolutely everything," she says.

"How could it go from loved everything about him to this?"

"I don't know."

As for Nathan Gann, even though he claimed he wasn't in San Diego at the time of the murder, police weren't buying it because the evidence told a different story.

Nathan's DNA was discovered on the ski mask found near the crime scene and the eyewitness descriptions of a man running in the neighborhood after the murder matched Nathan, too.

According to J.C. Smith, "the way this was carried out, they did this together."

Nathan's defense attorney, Ricardo Garcia, says, "Nathaniel is not a cold-blooded person. He's not a monster." Garcia also says he can't find a motive.

With brother and sister squarely pointing the finger at each other, it will now be up to a jury to decide which sibling is telling the truth… and which one is lying.

Brae Hansen, the little girl Tim MacNeil had raised as his own, is now 19 years old. She's had a lot of time to think about her stepfather's murder while in jail awaiting trial.

"I've mourned him and grieved him. But only to a certain point, because I've been in here and I haven't had to live out in the world without him," she tells "48 Hours."

Brae and her brother, Nathan Gann, face charges of first-degree murder by means of lying in wait - a special circumstance that carries a mandatory life sentence.

In November 2008, nearly a year-and-a-half after Tim MacNeil's murder, his stepson goes on trial.

With Brae's trial still pending, she's unwilling to testify in her brother's trial; therefore, her statements to police implicating Nathan can't be used against him in court.

It's not an easy case for Prosecutor George Bennett: there's no physical evidence that points directly to Nathan as the shooter. His fingerprints aren't found in Tim MacNeil's house or on the gun. And the DNA that was found on the gun does not specifically point to Nathan.

Investigator J.C. Smith says police found low levels of DNA on the gun belonging to Nathan, Brae and Tim MacNeil.

Nathan's attorney, Ricardo Garcia, isn't impressed. "The physical evidence doesn't tell a clean story," he says.

But Bennett tries the case with circumstantial evidence - including the mask with Nathan's DNA and the eyewitness accounts of a young man matching Nathan's description seen running from the crime scene.

After six days of testimony, the jury gets the case. They deliberate for just one day before making a startling announcement: the jury is deadlocked. The split vote is seven guilty and five not guilty.

The judge declares a mistrial.

"It was just like a punch in the stomach. I mean, it was just like - it hurt so bad," Tim's daughter, Erin MacNeil Ellison, says of the decision.

The mistrial is also disappointing to the investigators who know of one important interrogation that the jury was not allowed to hear - something that could very well have changed the outcome of the trial.

During Nathan's initial interview with detectives, just moments after he asked for an attorney and shut the interrogation down, Nathan changed his mind and said he wanted to talk.

J.C. Smith says, "I told him we can't talk to you without an attorney and he threw his hands in the air and said: 'For the time being, I will waive my right to an attorney for now, and then, until further notice.' So we went back in and he started to talk to us in little bits and pieces."

Nathan finally admits to police he was present during the murder and begins to give his own account of how it happened. "I know Brae had plans but, they're not the plans for me," he tells police.

And he tells police Tim MacNeil's dying words, as he lay face down before that final, fatal shot to the back of the head.

"I don't - I just know I panicked... I remember him saying it like a thousand times. Just 'you killed me, you killed me. Why did you kill me?'"

But when Judge Frederic Link declared Nathan's statement inadmissible at trial, he dealt a crushing blow to the prosecution's case.

"Judge Link said there [were] Miranda issues," says J.C. Smith.

"Because he asked for an attorney?" asks Tracy Smith. "Yes."

"So in the judge's opinion, you should've just left when you guys were first walking out?"

"…or read his Miranda rights again, maybe," Burkett replies.

And if they'd just walked away? "We only have Brae's side of the story and really nothing to corroborate it," says Smith.

Four months passed since the first jury deadlocked, but George Bennett is back in court ready to try again. This time with a new strategy: try the brother and sister together.

In an unusual arrangement, the evidence is being evaluated by two juries - one for each sibling.

"I think it helps the jury to see that they worked together, that they did this together, that they're being tried for the crime together," J.C. Smith explains.

"I need a lawyer… this is too powerful," Nathan tells police during his confession, which is still inadmissible. But Brae's attorney, Troy Britt, isn't so lucky.

"I had to deal with my client's statement being played for the jury," he says.

"He knew I didn't want to go through with it, but I did anyways, so it's my fault," Brae confesses during her interrogation.

Britt stuns the jury, admitting Brae hatched the murder plot.

"I'm conceding to you all right now that she did start this plan," he tells jurors. "But what she also did was she tried to withdraw from this plan."

It's a calculated gamble, since Britt also tells the jury Nathan is really the one who wanted Tim MacNeil dead:

"She's telling him, 'I don't want to do this anymore. Please don't do this.' But her brother wouldn't stop. He threatened his only sister. He pointed the gun at her and said, 'You're gonna end up like Tim if you try to stop this.' He wouldn't let her out of it."

"Is it a little risky to turn to the jury and say 'Yeah, my client's a liar, but eventually she told the truth. Yeah, my client planned a murder, but then she tried to back out of it?'" Smith asks Britt.

"Well, absolutely," he says. "And the difference, though, is the law allows somebody to withdraw from a conspiracy."

But it's a challenging argument to make to jurors who listen as Brae matter-of-factly describes how Tim MacNeil begged for his life:

"He was like 'Nathan, don't do this, you know, you can go back now. I promise I won't call the cops or anything,' blah blah blah. I was like 'Nathan, maybe we should listen to him."

"[Brae] was mesmerized by watching herself on the video," Bonnie MacNeil observed of her niece's actions while watching her interrogation video in the courtroom. "There's no feeling, there's no remorse, there's not even the - 'my dad died.' There's nothing."

Brae admitted that she lied to police. So why should people believe her now?

"Because if I was gonna lie to them, why would I implicate myself at all?" she says.

Prosecutor Bennett now turns his attention to Nathan Gann, and introduces a controversial witness - a convicted drug dealer who says he met Nathan in jail.

"Out of the blue one day, [Nathan] said, 'I'm gonna tell you what happened, and he whispered the whole entire thing to me,'" the witness tells "48 Hours" in a whisper.

The informant, "CG", who "48 Hours" agreed to call by his initials to protect his identity, claims Nathan confided to him the details of how he and Brae plotted to kill Tim MacNeil.

"They were gonna take care of him," CG testifies. "He ended up driving to San Diego very quickly. When he got there, he saw his sister and she said 'I'm so glad to see you,' and gave him a kiss. And he told me it was like Judas kissing Jesus."

He tells Tracy Smith, "I got the sense that Brae had a lot of influence on him in his decisions."

CG's story matches the one Nathan told police.

"[Nathan] said he shot him and [Tim] fell down on the ground," he says. "And then when he kept saying, 'Why are you killing me?' and kept sayin' his name, 'Nathan, why are you doing this to me, Nathan, Nathan,' he just flipped out and finished him off."

CG says Nathan even told him where he got the black clothing he allegedly wore during the murder.

"He went to Goodwill and picked up a shirt, gloves, I think pants, and drove out to San Diego from Sun City."

And Bennett presents a receipt proving Nathan went to a Goodwill store on July 18 - the day before the murder.

Nathan's attorney seizes on discrepancies in CG's story and hammers away at his credibility.

"In addition to the conspiracy to distribute ecstasy, you were convicted of a conspiracy to launder money, is that right?" Britt asks. "Yes," CG replies.

"And you agreed with the feds that you would testify against your co-defendants. Is that right?" "Yes."

"And when you snitched on your friends, you got a better deal than they did, didn't you?" Garcia raised his objection.
"I think my case is about showing that the prosecutor's star witness is a liar," Garcia explains. "He's a convicted drug dealer. He's a convicted money launderer. These are crimes of complete dishonesty."

But for Brae's attorney, CG is a godsend.

"He told you that he is the person that shot Tim MacNeil, correct?" Britt asks in court. "Yes," CG replies.

"And while he was shooting Timothy MacNeil, Brae Hansen was screaming her lungs out, correct?" "Yes."

"And, in fact, Nathan Gann told you that he pointed the gun at her. Isn't that right?" "Yes."

"And he told you he was going to shoot her, right?" "Yes."

Tracy Smith asks Nathan how CG got the details about the crime.

"Oh, they were everywhere, on the Internet, paper. That's how I figure," Nathan says. "But I don't tell him anything. I never - this man is not all there. There's no reason why I would trust or confide in this guy."

Against the mounting evidence, Ricardo Garcia calls character witnesses to show it's just not in Nathan Gann's nature to kill.

"The defense put witness after witness on the stand talkin' about how Nathan was a good 10-year-old boy," J.C. Smith says. "And we wanted to bring someone in that could talk about the adult that Nathan Gann grew up to be."

That someone, now 22, is a former high school girlfriend who says she knows Nathan's darker side. Her identity is not being revealed because of the sensitive nature of her testimony:

"Are you afraid of Mr. Gann?" Prosecutor Bennett asks in court.

"Yes," the woman replies, crying.

"I'm gonna have to ask you to describe to the jury how Mr. Gann was sexually abusive to you."

"I hate saying this." She pauses before saying, "He - he's raped me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she cries."

But Nathan claims his ex-girlfriend is crying crocodile tears - payback for jilting her in high school.

"That's a horrible, horrible story. And I can't believe she's so vindictive as to come and lie in court like that," he says.

"What motivation would this young woman have to come all the way to a court and sit there and cry about really personal details? Share those with the world?" Smith asks Nathan.

"I've seen her cry for real. And I've seen her fake cry. That was obviously her fake cry," Nathan says.

In his closing, Bennett states the witness "saw a different side of Nathan Gann than the people did 10 years ago, because she saw the same side of Nathan Gann that Tim MacNeil saw on July 19th."

Bennett saves his harshest words for Brae. "She wanted him gone. She wanted him dead. For what? For money? Because she was angry? Because she was upset? Because she felt unloved? You know, that's too bad."

He then presents a letter found in her cell. Brae says she wrote it the night of her arrest.

"It wasn't addressed to anyone, but in fact, it was meant for my aunt and uncle and my sister," she tells "48 Hours." "I was planning on killing myself that night. I wanted them just to have the full story and not something that was gonna be twisted later."

Brae's letter is chilling… and damning.

"She says, 'It was supposed to be one clean shot, easy shot to the head. No pain, no suffering. That's the plan.' She never tried to withdraw from any conspiracy. It just got messy. And those tears and that expression is too late," Bennett says. "Brae Hansen controlled this thing the way you control a dog on a leash. She had that dog, Nathan Gann, on a leash, holding him back, holding him back, holding him back, and then she let it go."

Read Brae's Letter

"Why didn't you do more to stop it?" Tracy Smith asks Brae.

"I was afraid Nathan would kill me," she says.

After two weeks of testimony, it's up to the juries. Who will they hold accountable?

Nearly three weeks after the trial began, juries are now separately deciding if Brae Hansen and her brother, Nathan Gann, murdered their stepfather, Tim MacNeil.

"Why would I even want to harm Tim? I'm not guilty of the crime, I can tell you that," says Nathan.

"I believe in redemption," Brae says. "I really believe that God is gonna get me out of this."

Brae's hoping that she'll get off, but that her brother won't. "He's done enough damage already," she says. "If he were to get out, I would be afraid to walk down the street."

Brae may just get her wish. Nathan's attorney is not sounding terribly optimistic.

"If I did my job right, we'llng this again, you know, in six months," Ricardo Garcia says, realizing the best he can hope for is another hung jury. "You know, the facts are the facts in this case. And there are some problems."

As for Brae's own attorney, Troy Britt says, "There were seven of 12 jurors who looked very stern and didn't look like they wanted to listen to anything I had to say."

It's clear that Brae Hansen has been thinking a lot about a possible guilty verdict, but in a most disturbing way.

"Maybe it's a good thing that you're talking to me now in case things don't go well," telling Tracy Smith, "I've been suicidal since I was 11." Brea says she would kill herself "without a second thought. I would be dead within a few months."

Brae and her lawyer are shocked and concerned when the jurors in her case announce they've reached a verdict not long after they began deliberating.

"The thing that gnaws at my soul is that these jurors were only out for six hours. It's a first-degree murder case," Britt says. "I'd like to think that means they bought my argument. But in the end, it might just mean they didn't buy it and that's why they reached a decision so quickly."

It may have been a quick verdict, but Brae and her attorney will have to wait to learn what it is. The judge decides to delay revealing it until her brother's jury has also reached a verdict.

Garcia believes Nathan Gann deserves a second chance. "I'll feel very responsible if he doesn't," he says.

Nathan's jurors take much longer to consider his fate. They deliberate for two-and-a-half days before reaching their verdict: guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.

Nathan must serve a minimum of 25 years to life in prison.

"The prosecution basically proved that you're the masked intruder," Tracy Smith says to Nathan.

"I was convicted, he says. "I don't agree with it."

"Do you think you could have saved yourself by testifying?"

"I think that if I had testified there would have been a non-guilty verdict. Can't talk about that right now… I have to wait 'til appeal time, you know what I mean?"

For Tim MacNeil's family, the guilty verdict is most welcome news. At a press conference, Rick MacNeil has a brief message for his brother's stepson: "Rot in prison and burn in hell. That's basically it."

The next morning, the judge brings Brae Hansen's jurors together for a reading of their verdict. The jury found Brae guilty of the murder in the first degree.

Brae is treated far harsher by her jury. Besides the murder conviction, she is also found guilty of lying in wait - in effect, ambushing her stepfather. She could end up spending the rest of her life in prison with no chance of parole.

"I would give anything to have my dad back," Brae sobs. She tells Tracy Smith, "The reality is there's no time machine. I can't change the past. I can't, you know, undo it."

Despite the overwhelming loss of her father, Erin MacNeil Ellison, who was close to Brae, has sympathy for her stepbrother and stepsister.

"I genuinely care about her," Ellison says. She says she feels bad for them, "because of the life they could have had. They didn't have enough love in their heart or enough love in their life to know that something like this decision wouldn't be worth it.

"Seeing her fall apart, I mean, my dad wouldn't want that. I don't want that," she says. "At one point, I wanted to just go over and hug her and just tell her it was gonna be OK."

Compassion is something that Brae Hansen may never fully understand.

When asked if she forgives herself, Brae says, "To a certain extent I do." She also says she thinks "almost everyday" of how none of this would have happened if she had not called Nathan.

"She'll have the rest of her life to decide if it was worth it to her," says Ellison. "And she'll have to live with that."

Brae Hansen's jurors found the trial emotionally grueling, the evidence overwhelming and the guilty verdict the only fair decision they could reach.

"I think there was one piece of evidence that was introduced on the last day that will live with me forever and - I'm sorry," the male juror says as he becomes overwhelmed with emotion. "'It was supposed to be one clean shot to the head... instead of three that missed and one at point-blank range.'"

Those shocking words were contained in the letter Brae Hansen had written to her family.

"I've cried over this for days," the male juror says.

The jurors said they wanted to find Brae not guilty.

"I want to believe in the good of everyone and that people aren't capable of these things….let alone a young woman of 17," the male juror says.

But jurors convicted Brae Hansen of murder.

"That's right. She knew the plan. She went along. And she never stopped it. Clearly she was a party to the murder," the male juror says. "Heroes are born from people you'd never expect. Murderers are born from people you'd never expect."

Brae tells Tracy Smith, "I honestly didn't think it was ever gonna happen. You know, I was mad at my dad. We all get mad at our parents."

"But not all of us plan their murder," Tracy Smith says.

To this, Brae has no response.

Nathan Gann got 25 years to life. He will be eligible for parole in 2032. He will be 44 years old.

Both are appealing their convictions.

Produced by Marcie Spencer, Gayane Keshishyan and Ira Sutow