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00:00a devoted mother is found dead from an apparent suicide her body was in the bathtub she died
00:12from drowning there was no other explanation for it they found a journal she had been having some
00:20problems with depression but her loved ones aren't convinced she loved her family she loved her job
00:29she loved her friends everything she did in her life was take care of her children law enforcement
00:38isn't convinced either the fact that there was blood in the water there was frothing in the mouth
00:44i call it homicide your body's not going to let you kill yourself drowning in shallow water
00:51the investigation reveals a possible murder for hire a woman told them that her
00:59stepmother had hired a hitman to kill someone else they said i need somebody to take care of him
01:09he said i know somebody who can help you at the center of it all is a woman with a personal
01:17vendetta one that could endanger even more lives she had killed my mom my life's probably in danger too
01:26we know her to be however you define it evil
01:31may 24th 1992 jackson mississippi
01:51it's sunday afternoon and richard mosby and his new wife are dropping off his two young sons at their
01:58mother gail's home
02:00they were to return the children to their mother at 5 p.m
02:12we knocked on the door my mom didn't answer
02:14doors locked and it never locked
02:17i was trying to figure out what's going on because my mom's car is right there
02:22i'm so young i'm not thinking anything's you don't go there when you're that age
02:30but i got the sense that bill understood something was wrong
02:39richard's wife deborah leaves a note on gail's car and they ask the next door neighbor to call if they
02:45hear from her about six o'clock the neighbor was concerned because gail was very responsible there
02:54was some reason why she would not be there so he had a key and he went into her home to look for her
03:02everything seemed orderly in the house which was consistent with the way she did think she was
03:13apparently a neat housekeeper but everything appeared to be in order at least until he reached the main
03:21bathroom and he was horrified to find that she was in her bathtub and gail mosby was dead
03:32she was unclothed her body was in the bathtub with her feet hanging outside the bathtub her head was
03:44still under water she had died from drowning there was no other explanation for it
03:54gail's neighbor immediately calls 9-1-1
04:02police and paramedics arrive on the scene minutes later when the police arrived they noticed no sign
04:11of a struggle they didn't see anything being disturbed
04:17they found her clothes had been folded and left by the bathtub they also found a journal
04:25also they did find some prescriptions i can't specifically recall what they were but the kinds of
04:31things you would expect somebody who had been depressed to have been prescribed
04:38you put that package together that kind of tips you over towards suicide
04:43but before that determination can be made police must do a full evaluation of the scene
04:49that evening uh i was just on active patrol and i got the call of a deceased subject at that location
05:04and there was no signs of any any disturbance any foul play i did notice that one of her legs had a small
05:11bruise on the inside of her left ankle i could tell there was frothing from the mouth and there was some a
05:20small amount of blood in the water which would indicate the lungs were struggling for air
05:26to an experienced officer something immediately stands out
05:31the thing that got me is the fact that the water was shallow your body's not going to let you kill
05:37yourself drowning in shallow water your body's going to fight it's not going to let you drown in inches of
05:44water normally i probably would not have even called the homicide detectors out but the fact that there was
05:53blood in the water that there's just inches of water in the tub i call it homicide they thought that my
06:02mom had committed suicide i never believed that for a second my mom valued family the most in life
06:10i knew something happened to her
06:12gail petkozak was born september 13th 1952 in natchez mississippi she was one of three sisters raised in
06:27a devoutly catholic home my grandparents frank and jackie had three daughters gail lisa and jackie
06:36gail was the eldest my mom is lisa she was the middle child and then jackie was the baby they were
06:44a loving household my grandparents understood that you had to work hard to be able to appreciate the fun
06:52things in life my aunt gail growing up they always described her as very studious she was very very
07:01intelligent she graduated as salutatorian of her high school when my mom graduated from high school
07:08she went to northwestern to study to become a nurse post-graduation she became a very successful
07:16nicu nurse where she took care of the tiniest and most fragile little babies and enjoyed her job immensely
07:26by her late 20s gail had a thriving career in jackson mississippi
07:36and she was ready to start a family of her own my mom and dad met when my aunt liz who worked with
07:42my mom introduced them richard mosby was from canton mississippi he was referred to as happy or smiley
07:50he always had a a big smile on his face richard's fun-loving nature was the perfect complement to gail's
07:58ambition after a brief courtship they decided to tie the knot my parents were married in 1981 they had my
08:07brother bill in 1982 and then i was born in 1985. they appeared to be very happy very much in love
08:15and gail was happy to finally have found someone
08:23to support their growing family richard started a tire business in hammond louisiana
08:30he and gail bought a house there and settled into their new life
08:35my first memories of life were growing up in hammond my dad was a great dad and my mom was a great mom
08:41i felt loved by both of them my father had a family tire business in canton mississippi that was fairly
08:49successful and i think my dad wanted to try to duplicate that but unfortunately the business failed
09:00gail continued to work as a nurse but two children and rent payments were too much to afford on one
09:07so she and richard made the difficult decision to move back to jackson when they moved back richard
09:16went back to work i understand for the tire company he was not making the money he had made prior there was
09:23a lot of stress the failure of the tire business and the strain economically that it put on
09:30that it put on uh my family ended up leading to them divorcing my parents got divorced in 1986 but they
09:38still got along great i mean it was a happy family still it's just that they weren't married following
09:45the divorce my mom had full custody and my dad had every other weekend they got a long better post
09:51divorce than they did when they were married they were very amicable
09:56two years later richard remarried but gail remained single for her motherhood came before everything
10:08else my mom's greatest aspiration was to be able to see me and my brother successful
10:14and grow up to be the best we could be i don't know how my mother could be as patient as she was with me
10:22that's what made my mother such a great mother is how much i sensed that she cared about me
10:33after being a single mom for six years gail has been found dead in her bathtub of an apparent suicide
10:41her journal found at the scene offers a potential reason for why she would end her own life
10:47she had been having some problems with depression at the time it describes a very unhappy breakup with
10:57the woman she had been having um apparently pretty long-term relationship with
11:04i never really knew that they were dating at the time my mom and uh her girlfriend but i still remember
11:10my mom on the couch after they they had broken up you know crying and just being very very affected by
11:19this this breakup
11:23in mississippi in the early 90s having a homosexual relationship would have been a very troubling thing
11:33to do in terms of societal acceptance that would cause someone to have a hard time expressing their heartache
11:44mississippi's still a conservative state and there still is a stigma among certain people and
11:49the climate at that time our relationship would have been defined a lot differently
11:55even with that potential motive not everyone on scene that day is convinced that gail mosby chose to end her life
12:07there was just something amiss and it's that old police gut feeling that something was wrong
12:15everything was just too damn neat
12:18it almost looked staged there's something we're missing here and i can't i can't put my finger on
12:29coming up investigators hear about a personal grudge she was very nasty towards my aunt gail she did not
12:38like her and an informant agrees to wear a wire it does establish that they were in the house when gail died
12:48and they weren't there for honorable purposes
13:07on the night of may 24th 1992 with several questions lingering about single mother gail mosby's apparent
13:15suicide jackson police send homicide detective al ladue to the scene he was a great detective and he
13:26paid attention to detail he immediately started working at us as a murder
13:30there was a possibility that maybe she she took some meds had a bad reaction but you know you got to
13:42explore all possibilities there was absolutely nothing that would indicate anything was wrong
13:49other than there was a dead woman in the bathtub he and i both just knew there was just something we
13:55were missing but we didn't know what it was and he was gonna find it
14:06he looked around a lot and did not see anything turned over you know no indication that anybody had
14:13tried to break in a window or the door but he did happen to notice that there was a framed picture the the
14:20glass was cracked the more i looked at it the more i got suspicious of it and so was the lead detective
14:29you know we just said this this is there's something wrong
14:37investigators look to the coroner to confirm their suspicions
14:41the crime scenes the crime scene's mine the homicide case is the homicide detectives but the body belongs
14:49to the coroner as part of his duties he he pronounced her deceased and you know looked at the scene and
14:58there was nothing to indicate foul play there was a small abrasion on her nose but nothing that indicated
15:05that anybody had beaten her into an unconscious state and put her in the bathtub
15:13the coroner rules gail's death accidental i said really can you really drown in this bathtub
15:23and and his word was to me exactly this he said you can if i say you can
15:28and i knew then okay this is where it's going to go he and i got along up until this point all the years
15:38we worked together but i thought it was a bad judgment call on his part and he wasn't willing to
15:47look at any other options and for some reason he dug his heels on this particular case due to the fact
15:53that the lead and i both felt that there was something wrong we put on our offense report there
15:59was a death pending and that left the door open for us for further investigation
16:08for now their next step is informing gail's immediate family of her death by apparent suicide
16:16ex-husband richard is left the grim task of delivering the news to their children
16:21and he said look we got to tell you something your mom's dead
16:28and i said you're joking well then my dad started crying and then i knew
16:36and i collapsed and i don't ever remember getting up
16:43even at that age i understood what suicide was so to have someone tell me that
16:48my mom committed suicide was just the most absurd thing that i could think of
17:00as investigators contact more of gail's family about the circumstances of her death
17:05her loved ones say it's more likely someone did this to her
17:11two weeks prior to her death and gail called my mom
17:14and was worried that something was going to happen and she said she didn't feel safe
17:22my mom as a sister would do i tried to reassure her i'm sure everything's going to be fine
17:28but my mom had to go so she cut the conversation short and unfortunately that was the last time she spoke with
17:34her her sister suspects gail's concerns had something to do with richard and his new wife deborah
17:47she says tension has been growing between them since deborah and richard got married four years ago
17:55after the divorce and gail and uncle richard they were very amicable
17:59um co-parented very well after debbie came into the picture the parenting dynamic changed a little bit
18:09debbie was married before she met my dad she had two children one of them did not survive infancy
18:18and after my dad and debbie got married they had a daughter sarah debbie treated my brother and i
18:24tremendously different than the way she treated sarah debbie and my father's relationships sort
18:31of made us a little bit more secondary it was now this third party that controlled what we were going
18:39to be doing all of a sudden my mom and my dad they started having custody battles they're in and out of
18:46court there's alimony disputes and it was clear that debbie was the one spearheading those problems
18:57gail's family tells police that deborah resented any reminders of richard's life before her
19:04she didn't even like the fact that my aunt gail didn't change her last name post-divorce
19:11dan gail simply stated it was because that was her boy's last name but i know it very much was a
19:17problem for debbie there couldn't be a more striking difference living with my dad and debbie versus
19:24living with my mom my mom was loving living with my dad and debbie it was like a complete absence of love
19:32debbie was very nasty towards my aunt gail it was very evident that she did not like her
19:44her utilities been cut off she had no proof who it was but we all assumed gail and me and the police
19:53department that it was coming from debbie
19:55and investigators learned the situation had been a contributing factor to gail's recent breakup
20:05whatever relationship that gail had with the woman that ended because of all the drama that was
20:11involved in it
20:16but without evidence to support the idea of murder there is little investigators can do
20:22in the absence of some information that indicated death by another identifiable person there just
20:33wasn't anywhere to go with it and so nothing really happened until the fall
20:38in september a woman who we now know as vicki mordecai went to the office of the fbi on a sunday afternoon
20:53and she was terrified and what she said changed the investigation
21:08she said she was a victim of the death of the death of gail moseby
21:13four months after the death of gail moseby a woman approaches the fbi seeking protection in exchange for
21:21information about the case what vicki mordecai tells this fbi agent was that she and her husband
21:30down in ricky mordecai were in the business of raising marijuana up in northeast mississippi and that
21:38an entire crop had disappeared they were in business with her stepfather roy kyle roy kyle was accusing
21:47them of having stolen the crop she told them that her stepfather she felt was going to hire a hit
21:57man to kill her and her husband to kill her and her husband and that she was terrified because she knew
22:03that he had hired a hit man to kill someone else previously a woman in jackson gail moseby
22:11she began to describe this scenario this woman in the bathtub they went over to this woman's house
22:24and then you know killed her she said in the course of it something glass got broken he looks at this set
22:34of circumstances and says i don't know this was this is a little too crazy but he called the jackson police
22:41department homicide and robbery division when jackson homicide detectives hear about the broken glass
22:50they immediately know vicki is telling the truth because that detail was never made public
22:57so the detectives said i want to talk to her so she came over there and you know told him the story
23:06and he says from whom did you get this information she told him that she had heard this from her sister
23:16debbie mosby
23:16according to vicki her and debbie's stepfather roy kyle was only the middle man deborah said i need
23:30somebody to take care of gail can you help me with it he said well yeah i i know somebody who might can help
23:40you what vicki says that deborah mosby told her was that billy ray ford this hitman had come over to
23:51their home they lived in canton picked up her husband richard mosby and they drove over to gail's house
24:02there was no sign of any forced entry because gail thought she was only letting richard in
24:08and she didn't know billy ray was hiding behind the door vicki says once the door was open billy ray attacked gail
24:25and in the ensuing struggle the picture frame shattered
24:31the murder had covered her mouth and nose with a rag soaked with something until she was
24:38unconscious
24:42and then he had taken her to the bathtub poured the water until it got high enough and it drowned
24:56when investigators run a background check on the alleged hitman billy ray ford they find a history of
25:03violence including a past conviction for the attempted murder of the sheriff in warren county mississippi
25:13it was reversed on appeal so that was not a viable conviction to use against him but
25:19you know he was a known criminal element out there
25:25detectives put out a bolo on ford and turned their attention to deborah mosby
25:33we knew she was harassing gail to the point of utter absurdity just to get her to back off collecting
25:44the child support the child support that she was certainly entitled to
25:50deborah's history with gail adds credence to vicky's allegations and gives jackson police enough to open an
25:57official investigation we believe at that point that gail did not commit suicide that did not happen
26:06so got to do something about this
26:11coming up a history of tragedies raises even more questions
26:17couldn't get past the idea that we're talking about two people who drowned in a bathtub
26:21it sure is unusual and investigators face a political battle to prove their case she was buried without an autopsy
26:32so we get an order to have gail's body exhumed
26:44we'll see you next time
26:51richard and deborah mosby have emerged as the primary suspects in his ex-wife's murder
26:59but for now the only evidence detectives have comes from a confessed marijuana farmer
27:07with more direct evidence needed detectives ask both ricky and vicky
27:12mordecai to wear a wire ricky and vicky get wired up they go up to richard and deborah's house
27:20ricky and vicky are still thinking that billy ray ford has a contract to kill them
27:28so they go there to talk to deborah and richard about how terrified they are and can deborah intervene
27:35and keep this pitman from coming to kill them just as he did gail
27:46with investigators listening in deborah admits knowing billy ray but denies hiring him to kill anyone
27:55what deborah was talking about was not that she hired him to murder her
28:00she hired him to go over there and scare her or rough her up or you know just make her go away
28:10the language is not the smoking gun we want but it's helpful
28:17it does in fact establish that billy ray ford and richard mosby were in the house when gail died
28:29after the sting operation police subpoenaed deborah's phone records about a month prior to gail's death
28:38one night deborah mosby calls her stepfather who happens to have connections with a hitman
28:46roy calls billy ray ford who in turn calls deborah and then deborah calls him back to our knowledge
28:55deborah had never known billy ray ford before she was put in touch with him by roy kyle
29:03call logs show that in the month leading up to gail's death deborah and billy ray spoke several times
29:11these people don't know each other from adam's house can't but they're having all these conversations
29:16it looked pretty bad smelled pretty bad but did we really have it not so sure
29:22so we indicted them for conspiracy to commit murder
29:31authorities arrest richard deborah and billy ray without incident
29:37the bizarre murder plot captures headlines throughout the region
29:43my father and debbie they were trying to tell us that it was my grandparents and my aunts and they
29:49were out to get us there's no truth to it whenever i found out that debbie was also arrested my initial
29:58thoughts were swear makes sense i didn't think that my dad would have done something like that
30:05that wasn't who he was
30:10news of the arrest also reaches someone from deborah's past
30:15deborah's ex-husband who's accounting mike mclean he contacted me told me some just horrendous
30:23things about her
30:26mike tells authorities about a tragedy that occurred in may 1988 before his divorce from deborah
30:33they had a child named angel and angel was wheelchair bound and then they had another small child
30:47mike told me that the wheelchair-bound child was supposed to be watching the child in the bathtub
30:53and the child drowned
30:57mike said that deborah tried to blame the wheelchair-bound child for the negligence that caused that child to die
31:12prosecutors can't ignore the similarities between the two incidents
31:17and you couldn't get past the idea that we're talking about two people who drowned in a bathtub
31:23did just kind of take your breath away doesn't it nobody ever could prove anything about that but it sure is unusual
31:33even with this new suspicious discovery prosecutors aren't sure there's enough to get a conviction
31:47what you have to have in order to convict someone is proved beyond a reasonable doubt we weren't there yet
31:55the da's office continues to build its case
31:59but their urgency increases when richard and deborah are released on bail
32:06they had custody of those little boys i've never known that to happen richard being the natural father
32:15they went to live with richard and debbie completely believing that debbie had killed my mom now i'm living
32:22with her i know that my life's probably in danger too
32:28the
32:43nearly eight months after gail mosby was found dead in her bathtub
32:48the two prime suspects in her murder her ex-husband richard and his new wife deborah
32:54have been released on bail
32:58they've also retained custody of gail and richard's two sons joe and bill
33:09my grandparents knew that bill and joe were being mistreated
33:14um when they were in richard and deb's care and they were doing everything they could
33:20um to get custody of them gail's parents ultimately prevail in the custody battle
33:28we moved to baton rouge and started with my grandparents which
33:34was just life-changing because now it's the first time that we've had some sense of normalcy since my mom
33:40was killed
33:45the prosecution however is still facing a major roadblock
33:51despite the evidence collected the county coroner will not reverse his ruling that gail's death
33:57was a suicide we knew that the cause of death was drowning but we didn't
34:04now conclusive proof that the manner of death was homicide
34:08she was buried without an autopsy
34:10one of the next things that we did was to get an order to have gail's body exhumed and do an autopsy
34:20one thing that we wanted to know was whether or not we could prove
34:26that she had chloroform in her system but that was not successful we couldn't prove or disprove that
34:33because the body was too decomposed the only way we were going to get this case is to call the outside
34:44pathologist my office hired dr michael biden who was the premier forensic pathologist in the country
34:53i tell him this whole story and it was like he knew exactly where where i needed to go he said go get
34:59your autopsy pictures and so i did and immediately he just zones in on this little bruise on her ankle
35:10he knew exactly what had happened
35:16but he said you know once you're unconscious then you you're not struggling anymore they could take her
35:24unconscious body and pick her up by her ankles place her in a in a body of water and all they had
35:32to do was to get the water level over her nose dr biden noticed abrasions on her nose which is
35:41consistent with with a rough cloth like a towel being held over her nose it was used to make her unconscious
35:50it was dr biden said this is not suicide this is not an accident this this is a homicide
35:58he made the same statement i did you can't commit suicide in the shallow water
36:06it didn't change the coroner's mind he took the position that it was still a suicide and continued to
36:12do that he took the position that he was the corner and that was the gospel and there was no getting
36:19around it to me the the victim was way more important than his ego
36:27prosecutors hope that dr bodden's expert opinion will be enough to convince a jury
36:36on october 10th 1994 the joint trial of deborah mosby richard mosby and billy ray ford begins
36:45tommy tommy and i decided that we would try the conspiracy to commit capital murder first
36:57as the state lays out its evidence for the conspiracy charges
37:02one of the defendants decides to turn against the others
37:06it's not looking good to billy ray so his lawyer comes over to council table and says my client wants
37:14a deal and he will agree to testify against richard and debbie which is golden
37:22ford's statement settles once and for all who the mastermind behind the murder really was
37:29he actually dealt with deborah who retained him and she was the one he was talking to richard
37:37apparently pretty much did what deborah told him to do
37:44it's the break prosecutors have been looking for
37:48now they just have to convince a jury this was a case that had a lot of moving parts
37:54the state never knows if there's going to be one person who just doesn't believe they proved the case
38:10the case that had a lot of moving parts of the case that had a lot of moving parts of the
38:16case that had a lot of moving parts of the case that had a lot of moving parts of the case
38:18with billy ray ford agreeing to testify against deborah and richard mosby
38:24the couple's cases are severed they will be tried separately for capital murder
38:31in may 1995 the proceedings against richard begin
38:36richard decided to plead guilty to murder so of course the death penalty was off the table at that
38:45point and it was confusing time emotionally because as is hateful and as angry as i was
38:51the sense of relief was just overbearing it was very important to know that he pleaded guilty
38:58prosecutors then turn their attention to the woman they believe orchestrated the crime the mastermind
39:09is deborah mosby and we know her to be however you define it evil
39:18debbie was the catalyst of this whole thing
39:21deborah's trial begins in december 1995 three years after gail's murder the prosecution's star
39:35witnesses are the confessed hitman and a nationally acclaimed pathologist
39:43you can't discredit dr biden you can't do it he's too good
39:48he put the case together for us
39:55deborah refuses to take the stand in her own defense
39:59leaving state prosecutors to speculate on motive
40:04if gail died then the child support would stop and that social security which start for the boys
40:15which i believe at that time was going to be thirteen hundred dollars a month
40:23my impression was that she just didn't like gail mode but in fact i think she hated her
40:30and she just decided her life would be better without her and it was worth having her killed
40:35the jury convicts deborah on all charges but becomes deadlocked on recommending the death penalty
40:49instead she receives a life sentence
40:52it was the final nail in the coffin in the sense of wow she's where she belongs she's in prison and
41:01now she can't hurt anybody else
41:07in 2007 billy ray ford and richard mosby were released from prison
41:13in 2021 deborah was released as well after serving 26 years of her sentence
41:23one thing i learned from debbie's conviction and from my dad's sentencing is that life in jail doesn't
41:29mean life in jail it's a huge gut punch knowing that they're out of prison but i'll say this based
41:37on how my grandparents raised us it's made the anger that we had towards them it's made it small
41:43because what we have it's way more important
41:50what keeps my mom alive to me today is the relationship that i have with my brother
41:56because she really instilled in us a sense of family and we've never let that go
42:02i like to remind my my own boys that you know i was a product of one of the greatest mothers
42:10this world could have ever had so i want them to be able to understand that
42:16that even though she's not around she's still all with them
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