As time goes on,
new and remoter aspects
of truth are discovered.
Mariet Ford left home early on the morning his 8-month-pregnant wife, Tess, and their 3-year-old son, MoMo, were murdered.
A lot of things Mariet would later say about this day are suspect, but there's no reason to doubt that he called home a little before 8 a.m.
In the Fords' one-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Elk Grove, the phone rang and rang, but Tess and Momo couldn't come to the phone.
They were dead.
It was Thursday, Jan. 16, 1997.
Mariet was no ordinary man. In sports circles, Mariet was was famous, especially in the Bay Area's high concentration of Stanford and Berkeley grads.
Fifteen years earlier, Mariet had secured his footing in collegiate football history in 1982 when, with no time left on the clock and the opposing band already on the field, he pitched the ball so a teammate could score the winning touchdown in a kickoff return so spectacular sports fans would know it simply as “The Play.”
But “The Play” was 15 years behind him and his football career long gone from Mariet’s life by that morning in 1997 when his 8-month pregnant wife and 3-year-old son were murdered, set on fire and left to burn.
