Chapter 4 - NATHAN SAW JUDITH ON THE STAIRS
Nathan’s full account took nearly three hours.
He asked for an attorney halfway through.
Police stopped questioning immediately until counsel arrived.
When the interview resumed, the story finally became clearer.
Nathan had been moving equipment near the rear of the guesthouse shortly before eleven on the night Anna died.
He heard voices outside.
Anna.
Judith.
He could not make out everything, but he remembered Anna saying:
“You do not get to decide this.”
Judith responded:
“If Michael finds out, you destroy all of us.”
Nathan stepped toward the terrace doors.
Then he stopped.
He did not want to walk into a private family argument.
A minute later, he heard something fall.
Not a scream.
A hard series of impacts against stone.
When Nathan looked outside, Anna was at the bottom of the stairs.
Judith stood near the top.
That was what he saw.
He did not see a shove.
He did not see Judith touch Anna.
He could not honestly say whether Anna slipped while backing away, lost balance during an argument, or was pushed.
Judith ran down the stairs.
Nathan followed.
Anna was breathing but unconscious.
Nathan told Judith they needed to call 911 immediately.
Judith hesitated.
That hesitation haunted him.
“How long?” the detective asked.
Nathan looked down.
“Maybe two minutes.”
“Why?”
“She kept saying we needed to think.”
“Think about what?”
“What she was going to tell people.”
Nathan insisted he reached for his own phone.
Judith told him to wait.
Then she said Anna had been drinking.
Nathan knew that was false.
He had served Anna sparkling water all evening.
Eventually he called for help himself.
The 911 call records confirmed Nathan made the call.
That detail matched.
But it did not explain the money.
After Anna died, Judith contacted him.
She said reporters might come around.
She said the family needed privacy.
Then she offered Nathan twenty-five thousand dollars through a consulting arrangement with one of the Carter family’s property companies.
Nathan accepted.
He claimed he believed the money was compensation for maintaining confidentiality about private family matters.
The contract described “event security and privacy consultation.”
Nathan never performed those services.
That looked bad.
Very bad.
It still did not automatically prove bribery unless prosecutors could establish corrupt intent.
Nathan admitted the real reason he stayed quiet.
“I knew what it looked like.”
“What?”
“Judith at the top. Anna at the bottom. Then money showing up.”
“Did Judith ever tell you to lie?”
Nathan hesitated.
“Not directly.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me, ‘You didn’t see what happened, because you didn’t see what happened.’”
That sentence was technically true.
He had not seen the actual fall.
But he understood what Judith meant.
She wanted the edges erased too.
Her presence.
The argument.
The delay before help was called.
Nathan accepted the money.
Then repeated Judith’s preferred timeline.
That was why he stopped cooperating when police returned months later.
He knew he had compromised himself.
The investigation now had evidence of concealment.
Still no proof of murder.
The next question became the most important one.
What had Anna discovered that made Judith say Michael finding out would “destroy all of us”?
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The answer was not in Nathan’s statement.
It was inside Anna’s financial records.
