Ex-"Survivor" producer: "I didn't kill my wife"

Produced by Paul LaRosa, Josh Yager, Ana Real, Avi Cohen, Ira Sutow,

Jamie Stolz and Alec Sirken

"One of the things that upsets me a great deal though is that no one's really talking about Monica and about what an amazing person she was. She was funny and warm and bright and beautiful," Bruce Beresford-Redman told "48 Hours Mystery."

In his only interview, Beresford-Redman recalls his wife -- the woman he calls the love of his life and also the woman he's accused of suffocating.

"She was as lovely a person inside as she was beautiful on the outside. And in all the accusations and all the discussion and everything, I think very few people have said anything about her, about what my children have lost, what I have lost," he said. "She was amazing."

Amazing... and friends say Monica was a perfect match for Bruce... a behind-the-scenes star in the world of reality television.

"He's a very, very bright, talented guy. ...He and a partner created 'Pimp My Ride'....Bruce was involved in 'The Contender'" said Jeff Wald, who worked with Bruce on "The Contender," a boxing reality show with a high testosterone cast who tried everyone's patience.

"He handled Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard and 16 boxers," Wald explained. "The guys who hit other guys for a living can be very volatile and very physical... and I watched him diffuse situations...never raising his voice, never being imposing. He's a big guy, Bruce... he did it in a really smart way. I was very impressed with that right off the bat."

Back then, a lot of people in Hollywood were impressed with Bruce. He was moving from hit show to hit show and he'd already proven his mettle as a supervising producer in the early years of "Survivor," the world's most popular reality show.

Of course, the situation Bruce now finds himself in is somewhat ironic given what he used to do for a living.

"This is a guy who creates drama for people for entertainment purposes," said Pat Fanning, a noted defense lawyer. "I wonder how he feels with all the cameras pointed at him instead of him being the one directing the cameras."

Bruce Beresford-Redman wasn't just surviving in Hollywood -- he was thriving. And at his side was then-girlfriend Monica Burgos, an alluring Brazilian national who owned a popular Los Angeles nightspot.

"She was gorgeous. She was this exotic, tall, beautiful creature with long at the time, very dark, curly hair. She was just spectacular and she had this accent that was like listening to honey through gauze. It was beautiful. It was mellifluous," said Bruce.

"She liked to entertain. She was a very good entertainer and she had a marvelous rapport with people. People were drawn to Monica. She had a charm about her," Bruce's mother, Juanita Beresford-Redman, told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Troy Roberts.

"So what were your impressions of Monica when you first met her?" Roberts asked.

"First impression, strikingly beautiful, very sweet. She was so delighted to meet us," Juanita replied. "I just thought, you know, 'She's a lovely girl.'"

Bruce and Monica married in 1999, and had two children: Camila, now 7, and Alec, now 5.

"In the beginning, it appeared they had a solid marriage?" Roberts asked Monica's sister, Jeane Burgos.

"I think Monica loved him very much...she felt strong about him. She fell in love for him and I think he fell in for her too 'cause Monica was his opposite," she said.

Burgos says her sister, Monica, was the flashy extrovert and Bruce was the quiet intellectual.

"She had life. She was a very self-confident person," Burgos said. "Bruce was a very well read person. He can be very eloquent...so I feel that was attractive to Monica."

"I went back to see her. The food was OK, but I went back to see her. And I spoke to her again and then got up enough courage to ask her on a date and we were together from that pint on," Bruce recalled.

They were a handsome couple and lived in a stunning $2 million home in Palo Verdes, California.

But today, a Mexican prison is home to Bruce Beresford-Redman. The television producer is under arrest and awaiting trial for a sinister crime. He's accused of killing his wife, Monica, and stuffing her naked body in a sewer.

Producers Josh Yager and Ana Real were able to meet with Beresford-Redman inside the prison. He wanted to talk on the record. The interview was recorded using a cell phone.

Read more: Inside prison with Bruce Beresford-Redman

"This is the first time I've chosen to speak. ...everyone seems to have decided along time ago that I killed my wife. I didn't kill my wife, I really didn't," he said.

"I'm not the greatest guy in the world. But I'm also not a criminal. I've never been arrested in my life...until this, I've never been in jail. I've never been in trouble."

"Did you ever ask him the question directly: 'Were you involved in Monica's death?'" Roberts asked Juanita.

"No, I didn't feel I had to, but at one point, he did say to me, 'You do know I didn't do it, don't you?' And I said, 'Of course I do.' But I would never dream of asking him. I mean, he's not a violent man," she said of her son.

Bruce admits he was not the perfect husband. Monica's sister, Carla Burgos, saw that first hand when she met Joy Pierce, Bruce's go-to casting director.

"I went with him to a party of his office...it was a club...we got to the place...she jumped on his lap like here and here and I was like you know..." she said.

"You were stunned," Roberts noted.

"Yeah," she replied.

Carla Burgos says Monica began to suspect Joy Pierce was not just Bruce's casting director -- she was also his girlfriend.

"She found out he had given, like, presents to this woman and he used to work with her," she said. "...they were lovers for years, I guess."

Eventually, Monica confronted Bruce and the reality show producer found himself thrust into a real-life soap opera complete with confessional emails.

He wrote Monica: "Joy and I were lovers." "We first had sex in Detroit...since that time, we have had a sexual and emotional relationship."

And in a separate email to his girlfriend, Joy Pierce, Bruce promised "to get therapy for being a liar."

The emails drip with intimacy, including pet names. She's "Little Wing;" he's "Buckethead."

"It was their lives. They had to sort it out," said Juanita.

Distraught, Bruce even confided to his mother about the affair.

Asked if she encouraged her son to break off the affair, Juanita told Roberts, "I did. I said, 'You know, that's the only smart thing to do. You will hurt yourself. You will hurt Monica. ...I got the impression that he had really fallen in love and it was going to be very difficult for him to break it off."

Juanita said she felt quite badly for her daughter-in-law.

"She was hurt. Of course she was hurt...but she was as determined as Bruce not to do anything to hurt the children," she said. "I said to her at one point in one of these conversations, 'Do you still love Bruce?' and she said, 'I'm not sure, I think I do but I don't want a divorce...'"

Juanita encouraged Bruce and Monica to stay together and even proposed an unorthodox solution.

"I said, 'You have a huge house. Let him live in the guest quarters and when the children are around, everything would be normal,'" she said.

Emotions were pitched on all sides. Even Joy Pierce and Monica were emailing each other. Joy the girlfriend - without a hint of irony - told Monica the wife that Bruce "is not a man of his word."

By spring 2010, Monica had reached her breaking point. She fled the Palo Verdes home, drained their joint bank account and took the children to Hawaii.

"So she went to Hawaii to contemplate about her future?" Roberts asked Jeane Burgos.

"Yes," she replied.

"And when she returned, she decided that she wanted to try to save this marriage."

"Well, when she came back Bruce totally shifted...he start crying and really...creating this emotional -- situation around her that he never had done before," Jeane said. "...she start, like, kind of falling into it. 'Oh maybe he really regret, you know, everything that he did.'

"He start, you know, asking forgiveness," she continued. "'I just found out you are really the woman of my life...It's your birthday. You can chose to go wherever you wanna go.'"

Their choice was Cancun. Monica would give Bruce and the marriage one last chance. With their two young children in tow, the couple took off on a trip that would change the family forever.

Their once vibrant marriage on the rocks and in danger of breaking apart, Bruce and Monica Beresford-Redman came to Cancun.

"We needed therapy a little bit. We sort of took a time out. It was her birthday. We took a family trip. We said let's go have a good time," Bruce Beresford-Redman told "48 Hours Mystery."

They'd check into the Moon Palace Hotel, a bit of heaven laced along a perfect beach... a peaceful place where a family might repair itself.

"You know...I'm not -- I wasn't the perfect husband. There are times since Monica's death sitting in prison, having nothing but time, that I thought that she probably deserved better," said Bruce.

He hoped Monica might forgive him for his affair with Joy Pierce.

"I saw him a few days before he left Mexico. He talked about the fact that he was trying to work something out with his wife -- but he was also prepared, if need be, to be divorced," said Jeff Wald.

"They had their squabbles. I mean they truly loved each other. They loved the children," said Bruce's mother, Juanita Beresford-Redman.

The children, Alec and Camila, got to come to Cancun too.

"They never took a holiday. They never took a weekend without them," said Juanita.

The family of four would sleep in the same room. Room 7816 was spacious and airy with an ocean view and even a Jacuzzi.

"We just said, 'Look, let's just go and have a good time,' and that was it. So while there were issues that preceded it, there weren't any issues going on at that time. We were just enjoying each other," said Bruce.

Monica and Bruce took Alec and Camila to a water park and a ride down an underground river.

"So at one point Bruce and the two kids clamored up the side of this slope onto a walkway," Bruce's father, David Beresford-Redman, said. "And in doing so he scratched his shins and ankles. I guess"

Those scratches, and others on Bruce's body, would later become one of the keys to the case and would raise suspicions about his entire story.

"Did either of you hear from her while she was in Mexico?" Troy Roberts asked Carla Burgos.

"Yeah, I talked to her on Sunday," she replied.

But Monica's sisters, Carla and Jeane, say the plan to repair the marriage was already falling apart. Monica found out that Bruce was still texting his girlfriend.

"She was devastated," Jeane said. "And I told her, 'Monica, don't worry. You know, come back here, just move on with your life.'"

April 5, 2010, was another beautiful day as the sun broke over Cancun.

"It was a morning that she disappeared. OK, it was a morning that I last saw her," said Bruce.

According to Bruce, Monica decided to take a trip into town.

"Monica's plan, and this was part of her birthday present, was to go shopping and spend the day just for herself, and go to some spas maybe," said Bruce.

Monica's sisters say that's just the first thing about Bruce's story that doesn't add up.

"How many times did I see my sister go to a spa? None," said Carla.

"Never?" asked Roberts.

"Never."

"Monica's not a spa person," said Jeane.

By 11 p.m., Monica hadn't come back. Bruce didn't call her, he says, because she left her cell phone in the hotel room.

"Her cell phone was so cracked and damaged, that you had to shout to make yourself heard. And she just didn't take it with her. So I couldn't call her," said Bruce.

"She didn't take her cell phone? She left the kids all day with him? She never does that, ever," said Jeane.

"She must have gone through cell phones like crazy. She would drop them in water. She dropped one in a sink. She would break them," said Juanita.

That night, Bruce says he was nervous and worried, watching his sleeping children and waiting for his wife.

"And of course had the sort of silly hope that I'll go back in the room and she'll be home. She'll be back, but she never was," he said.

The next morning there was still no sign of Monica.

"So I called the hotel, to the front desk and said, you know, 'I expected my wife back last night. She didn't come back. What do I do?'"

Then Bruce says he dialed his sister-in-law.

"When Bruce called you to say that Monica was missing, what went through your mind?" Roberts asked Monica's sisters.

"'Oh, my God. My sister missing. Monica?'" Jeane replied. "It doesn't make sense."

"'Monica went shopping.' I said, 'Oh really, why didn't she take the kids?'" said Carla.

But Monica would never come home to her children. And after a day, her deeply worried sister, Jeane, would head from Los Angeles to Cancun and begin her own search.

"I looked at him and I say, 'Bruce, where is my sister?'" said Jeane.

Two days later, the mystery of Monica's disappearance would come to a horrific end.

"What did the manager say to you?" Roberts asked Jeane.

"'They found your sister,'" she replied.

On what would have been her 42nd birthday, Monica Beresford-Redman's beaten, suffocated body was found, dumped like garbage, in a hotel sewer pit.

"How could someone put a person naked in the sewage. Very, very, very horrible," said Jeane.

"It's not something you're prepared to hear or to handle," Bruce said. "You know, you live your life, you meet a girl, you start a family, buy a house...all of a sudden everything you know and everything you love and you care about just sort of disappears."

After Monica's battered body was discovered, a roadmap began to take shape. And details emerged about her final hours in Cancun, leading police to focus on one suspect.

"They immediately question Bruce at length," said Jen Heger, a reporter for Radar Online, who has covered the case since the beginning.

"It is alleged that he did kill his wife and that his two children would be in the room," Heger explained. "It was one room with two beds."

Mexican police say screams came from that room the very night Monica went missing.

"Two teenagers that were staying in the hotel...heard screams coming from the hotel room that Monica and Bruce and the two children were staying in. These were female screams crying for help," said Heger.

Bruce says the screams came from his children, and that they were all simply playing a loud kids game.

"Remember it's one large room," David Beresford-Redman said. "Was there screaming? Clearly there was. Was there yelling? Clearly there was."

"Was there a woman crying out in distress?" Roberts asked.

"It couldn't have been," David replied.

But there'd be more. Hotel housekeepers say the day Monica died, there was a "Do Not Disturb" sign hung on the door of room 7816.

"The Mexican authorities believe that Bruce wouldn't allow the maids to clean the room that day because there was a dead body inside, and that dead body belonged to his wife, Monica," said Heger.

Mexican police would examine the electronic door lock and find that the night Monica disappeared someone had been in and out of the room multiple times. The implication: It was Bruce going in and out of the room looking for a place to dump his wife's lifeless body.

"I would get up. I would walk up and down [the] balcony outside our room, or I would walk around that area a little bit. But my kids were sleeping in the room, so I went back very quickly every time to check and see that they were OK," said Bruce.

The situation was chaotic. Still, what no one could quite understand was Bruce Beresford-Redman's final plans for Monica.

"I was at the police station and the mortuary guy was there in my room...and he asked me what I wanted to do with my sister's body," Jeane told Roberts. "And I told him, 'I'm going to bring her back to Los Angeles.' And he said, 'Oh, you are?' And I said, 'Yes, why?' And he said, 'Because Bruce just paid for the cremation."

"Why do you think Bruce moved to have Monica cremated?"

"Well, the only thing that I can think... at this point is to get rid of any evidence," said Jeane.

"Burn any evidence or whatever," added Carla.

Mexican police would continue their investigation. They had Bruce's passport, but it didn't really matter. Soon the star television producer was gone.

"I was asked by the police to give a statement, um, which I did-- in the hopes that it would help them find whoever killed my wife," Bruce Beresford-Redman told "48 Hours Mystery."

Beresford-Redman stayed in Mexico for two weeks after Monica's murder, but then decided to return to the United States.

"He didn't want to stay and assist in the investigation?" Troy Roberts asked Bruce's mother, Juanita Beresford-Redman.

"Everything that we know about what happened from the coroner's report to the forensic scientist that we hired to go over the scene, says it was an unbelievable mess," she said. "...nobody was wearing gloves, Red Cross workers, onlookers were walking across the scene, back and forth. What in the world could he have done."

But the way Bruce left Mexico cast greater suspicion on the TV producer. With his passport in police custody, Bruce hitchhiked to the border town of Nuevo Laredo and crossed the Texas border using his driver's license. After staying there for three days, he took a train to Los Angeles.

"You know all this surreptitious traveling makes him seem a little concerned about people thinking that he was guilty," Roberts commented to Juanita.

"I object to the word surreptitious," she said. "I mean, he went to the border, they looked at his license. They asked him a couple of questions and he walked down to cross. He was exhausted and he was upset..."

"They didn't ask him to stay in Mexico?"

"No one ever told him to stay," she said.

But "48 Hours Mystery" spoke to Mexican authorities who insist they did request that he stay -- but never legally required it.

"My children were already safely back home," Bruce said. "And -- I met with my attorneys. And, after a couple days, they said, 'Look, the police have spoken to you. And you've spoken to them. Go home and be with your family.'"

Bruce's parents were fighting on two fronts - trying to keep their son from being charged and battling Monica's sisters in court to see who would be granted custody of the Beresford-Redman children.

"The kids were used to being with us, and I feel we love those kids more than anything else in the world," Jean Burgos said. "...it's not...what is good or what is bad, it's what is the best for the kids."

"The sisters have professed their deep love for the children. I know they love the children, I'm sure of that," Juanita said. "If that was a true and honest love, wouldn't they want the one person in the world these children need more than anyone else, their father, to be able to come home to them?"

A judge agreed to appoint Juanita and David Beresford-Redman as guardians.

"Monica is gone. It's horrible but she is...the children have Bruce left. That's all and they adore him," said Juanita.

And when Bruce surfaced in Los Angeles, it surprised pretty much everyone. Jen Heger of Radar Online said Bruce clearly was showcasing the instincts he'd developed on "Survivor."

"He was able to outwit, outlast and outsmart the Mexican authorities and he surfaced here in southern California. I think it was a big shock to the Mexican authorities and made them look very bad," said Heger.

By this time, Bruce Beresford-Redman found himself on the other side of the prying cameras as his attorneys rushed to his defense. His lawyer, Richard Hirsch, laid out Bruce's theory of who may have killed Monica.

"What does he think?" Roberts asked Hirsch.

"He has suggested to us that she was murdered by someone else...it may have been a hotel employee, it may have been anyone. We don't know. But clearly he would say that he is innocent of this crime," he replied.

There's no question Mexico can be a dangerous place for visitors. Over the past 10 years, more than 500 American citizens have been murdered here, according to the U.S. State Department. Very few of those cases occurred in tourist areas or this resort, but it can happen.

In fact, Moon Palace has its own troubled history. Since 2007, two other Moon Palace guests have died under suspicious circumstances. And just three weeks after Monica's murder, there was yet another violent incident, involving a female guest and a hotel worker.

Karen and Eric Hamilton from Baltimore, Maryland, had scheduled their wedding at the Moon Palace. Friends and family called their attention to Monica's murder, but they were determined to carry on.

"We kind of brushed it off and [said], 'Yeah, we're going, we're going. Don't worry, don't watch the news!'" said Karen.

"We weren't at the point where we weren't gonna cancel anything," Eric said. "And by no means did we."

Family members had all checked in at the resort, including Eric's sister, Emily.

"So when you arrived at the property, did it seem like a secure and safe property?" Roberts asked Emily.

"Oh, yeah. It was very nice," she replied.

Until one night when she ordered room service... The waiter began flirting with Emily and her roommate, Casey.

"My friend, Casey, she works with hearing impaired children so she knows sign language and he started asking, of course, what cuss words and stuff are," said Emily.

"He asked to learn how to sign what?"

"How to have sex," Emily replied. "That's when we stared getting really, really uncomfortable and that's when we asked him to get a bottle of wine but to have somebody else bring it. 'Cause that was our way of having him out of the room."

At that point, Casey went out on the balcony to make a phone call, but the same waiter came back and that's when it got terrifying for Emily.

"He threw me on the bed. He had his arms around me and I was trying to force him off and, um, I remember feeling pain...'cause I thought I could fend for myself but he was too strong and overbearing and that's when I yelled for my friend, Casey, and she came back in and that's when he was pulling up his pants and that's when he ran out of the room," said Emily.

"So you must've been frightened out of your mind," said Roberts.

"Very much so," Emily replied.

"What do you think would have happened if Casey wasn't there?"

"Who knows. I could be dead right now," Emily replied.

Emily's stepfather, Dave Howard, reported the crime the following morning.

"I said, 'Somebody's attempted - that one of your employees have attempted to rape my daughter,'" Howard said. "And they tried to -- to basically blow it off like I was orderin' a sandwich."

But a hotel representative later told the family the waiter had been fired within days.

After all they went through at the Moon Palace, the Hamilton family believes that Monica Beresford-Redman might well have been murdered by an employee of the resort.

"Given your experience, is that within the realm of possibility?" Roberts asked Howard.

"Oh absolutely, absolutely," he replied.

But the case against Bruce Beresford-Redman was building. The Mexican government pursued him across the border. Seven months after the murder, Bruce was arrested and held at the federal detention center in Los Angeles.

"And kept from his children by an outrageous injustice in this country for no good purpose, for over a year," said David Beresford-Redmond.

Bruce fought extradition for more than a year, but on Feb. 8, 2012, U.S. Marshals escorted him back to Mexico to face murder charges.

"I believe that Bruce now probably feels that he is trapped in the worst reality show that he can ever imagine," Heger said. "There is a very strong case against him."

It's been almost two years since Bruce Beresford-Redman hitchhiked his way out of Cancun, leaving behind a troubling crime scene. He's returned on a midnight flight to Mexico, wearing handcuffs and a bulletproof vest.

"I had hoped that the United States would take a look at the request from Mexico and say: 'Not good enough. There's no sufficient evidence. There's no probable cause, here.' They didn't agree with me. And it became clear to me that the longer I stayed in the United States, I was simply wasting my time," Bruce told "48 Hours Mystery."

Bruce is transported to the prison where he'll do his time if convicted. The next morning, he appears in court to hear the evidence against him.

"It was not at all like...the courts in the United States. But there was a judge and there were attorneys representing the Constitution and there were attorneys on my behalf," he said.

The prosecution hopes to convince a judge at the preliminary hearing that there's enough evidence to go to trial. Bruce looks on from a cage in the courtroom with a translator by his side.

"...they claim that in one hotel room with my two small children...that I killed her and then I left her in a room all day long, while my children and I went in and out," Bruce said. "All the while, Monica's dead body is supposedly in the room. ...It's ludicrous and it's also completely false."

Alison Triessl is an attorney representing Monica's two sisters.

"I discount and discredit anything that man has to say," Triessl said. "...this man, we believe, killed his wife in front of his children. ...And if that is in fact the case and he has, how incredibly horrific. How horrible!"

There's no evidence the children saw anything out of the ordinary, says Bruce's Mexican attorney, Jaime Cancino. In fact, he says, there's no physical evidence linking Bruce -- or his hotel room -- to Monica's murder.

"Our experts...say it is not possible to kill someone and produce that type of injuries without leaving blood," Cancino explained. "If that have happened there...it would produced a humungous quantity of blood."

Investigators found only two tiny specs of blood in the hotel room and they were not from a female.

"I don't even understand how they come up with a theory like this..." said Bruce.

Mexican prosecutors feel they have a strong circumstantial case. They cite the fact that Bruce would not allow any hotel workers to service his room the day Monica disappeared, those English teenagers who heard loud screaming coming from Bruce's room, and the suspicious scratches on his body.

"I don't think there is a circumstantial case against me," Bruce told "48 Hours Mystery." "And it makes sense that there isn't because I'm innocent. I didn't kill my wife. I haven't killed anybody."

If the hotel guests on the floor below heard screams around 6 a.m. that woke them, Bruce says, "What they heard in fact was my son and my daughter squealing and laughing and playing...And just roughhousing."

As for those scratches, Bruce says he got them on two separate family outings before Monica disappeared. Investigators never checked under Monica's fingernails to determine if she had scratched her attacker.

"Well, you know, I had a couple of scratches on my fingers and on feet which have long since healed," Bruce explained. "And my daughter remembers putting Band-Aids on those cuts."

The prosecution's case against Bruce Beresford-Redman has significant holes and weaknesses. Much of the evidence that was recovered from the crime scene went missing. Some that was saved was contaminated. And two key prosecution witnesses, it turns out, are away on vacation.

"There were a lot of mistakes... serious omissions made by the investigation," said Cancino.

In fact, when a judge ordered prosecutors to produce their physical evidence, they could not. Among the items missing: Bruce's sandals, a pillow with blood specs, and a swab containing a blood sample.

A defense forensic expert testifies the way the blood settled in Monica's body proves she was not killed in her room as prosecutors argue, but believes she died close to the sewer where she was found.

"...it is almost impossible that you can carry -- a body...go two floors down, cross one hallway, cross one path to which more than 20 rooms...have a view, and nobody sees nothing," said Cancino.

Another defense witness tells the court there were footprints from two unidentified people near the body, but neither was a match for Bruce.

"They never found her clothes," Cancino said. "They found her bag. And they didn't found none of her money...her credit cards were missing. And all of her money was missing."

Bruce has always maintained his wife went off shopping, alone, the day she disappeared. A local shopkeeper testifies he saw her in his jewelry store. He told "48 Hours Mystery" she was there for 30 to 40 minutes and identified herself by name. He even recognized her picture. The shopkeeper seems to help the defense case, although he cannot remember the exact day he saw her.

For Bruce and his defense team, it all adds up to one thing: Hope.

"It's OK to hope -- but only a very little bit," Bruce said in prison. "Hope is like a drug. You can get addicted to it in here."

By the sixth and last day of the hearing, Bruce is convinced he is just hours away from going home.

"I can't imagine how anyone who listened to everything said could possibly think I had anything to do with killing my wife," he said. "All I want is to get back to my children."

"Being in prison in the first place is horrible...You can't go where you wanna go. You can't be with your family. You can't go outside when you want to. You can't do any of the things that are so elementary to just being human," Bruce Beresford-Redman told "48 Hours Mystery" from inside his prison cell.

When the judge finally rules on Bruce's fate, she breaks the news to him in private. His lawyer breaks the story in a media frenzy at the prison.

"The judge decided to file a trial against our client..." Jaime Cancino told reporters.

Bruce was convinced he was going home. Now the judge says his trial can officially begin.

"It just devastated me..." he said. "I really didn't think I was coming back here. I thought...they were gonna just finally put an end to this part of the nightmare. ...And when they told me that I was gonna be held for trial, I just couldn't believe it."

The judge gives both sides two weeks to appeal her decision.

"We're gonna fight it. We're completely against it," Cancino told reporters.

Now Bruce is resigned to the fact that he won't be leaving Mexico any time soon. His trial here could take as long as two years.

"I don't have any more tears. ...You learn to cry quietly under the sheets at nights," he said. "I just could not understand how this decision was reached. It doesn't make any sense to me.

"I don't understand how I can be charged in the first place. But I also don't understand how I can adequately defend myself against evidence that I don't have the opportunity to challenge because it's missing."

While much of the physical evidence may be gone, Monica's sisters have lingering questions about what he did.

"I wish I could believe that he didn't have anything to do with my sister's murder. But the evidences are very strong," said Jeane Burgos.

Monica's sisters are still struggling to go on without her.

"Everything's a memory," Jeane said. "Just seeing her face and looking at her smile. And she had those little dimples... I think even the good memories get shaded by all the tragedy at the moment."

The Burgos family is fighting Bruce's parents for custody of the children.

"I really believe that we are closest to the mother," Jeane said. "How could two older people take care of two kids under the age of seven?"

"Carla and Jeane believe that because of your advanced ages, it may prove to be too much of a handful," Troy commented to Juanita and David Beresford-Redman.

"We manage very well. We are both extremely healthy," said Juanita.

"Every evening when we sit at the table, Alec raises his glass. And -- he says, 'Family cheers.' And we all touch our glasses together," added David.

"It's all right. It's OK. Alec instituted this toast. He -- he takes his glass and he says, 'To mommy,' no, 'to daddy and to mommy in our hearts,'" said Juanita.

Bruce is a world away from the life he led in Hollywood. His 6x9-foot cell is open to the elements -- there's no steady source of electricity or drinking water, and watery beans from a plastic bucket at mealtime. Still, it's more than Monica has.

"If he really killed my sister, which it looks like he did, I want him in jail but it doesn't make me happy to see him in jail," said Carla Burgos.

Just this week, a riot erupted at Cerezo prison. Three people were injured, but Bruce was not harmed. He talked to "48 Hours Mystery" by phone moments after it ended.

"How are you and what happened today?" Troy Roberts asked.

"I'm OK...a little shaken up," he replied. "There was a great deal of screaming and yelling...I climbed up on my sink and looked out the bars and I saw riot police with, you know, helmets and black jackets and machine guns running towards the building..."

"I know that you're hopeful, but what happens if things don't go your way. What if you are convicted? Can you do the time there?" Roberts asked.

"I've gone through and experienced things that I never in my life thought that I would ever have to experience and I've had to endure things that I never would have thought that I could endure," Bruce replied.

"If I'm found guilty I'm facing 30 years in Mexican prison," Bruce said during his prison interview.

It's a reality that's all too real for a man used to exposing the reality of others.

"To my children, to Camila and Alec...I love you guys so much. I miss you so much...I'm sorry that mommy's gone and now daddy's gone, too. I'm doing everything I can to come back to you guys as quickly as I can. To my parents, who have been extraordinary throughout this whole thing, thank you guys for stepping in and raising my children... This is not a simple story. This is not a simple, easy to tie up case. This is not 'CSI' or 'Law and Order' or any of those shows, where at the end you have a satisfying resolution. ...Am I a survivor or not very much remains to be seen."

Monica Beresford-Redman's sisters will be in a Los Angeles court on April 2, asking a judge to remove Bruce's parents as permanent guardians for the children and appoint them instead.

Monica was brought back to Los Angeles by her sisters, where she was buried.