Jessica Fein: Welcome. I'm Jessica Fein, and this is the “I Don’t Know How You Do It” podcast, where we talk to people whose lives seem unimaginable from the outside and dive into how they're able to do things that look undoable. I'm so glad you're joining me on this journey and I hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Welcome back to the show. Last week we began the devastating and powerful story of Susan Altman and her sister Stacy. We heard how Susan received that life shattering phone call, and immediately knew her sister's undetermined death was anything but natural.

For three years, Susan watched Dateline for investigative clues, persistently reached out to detectives, and refused to let her [00:01:00] sister's case grow cold while struggling to maintain her own life and family. If you missed that first episode, you might want to go back and listen to it before tuning into this continuation.

Today we're picking up after Diablo's arrest. Remember, just when it seemed the case might never be solved, a chance conversation at shiva connected Susan's family with experts who finally validated what Susan had known all along, Stacy was murdered by her husband. But that validation turned out to be just the beginning.

Today we'll uncover the motive behind this calculated crime. We'll walk through the grueling four additional years it took to finally secure justice seven years total after Stacy's death, and we'll find out how Susan transformed her personal tragedy into purpose, becoming a fierce advocate for other families trapped in similar nightmares.

Also on a personal note, at the end of today's episode, I'll share how I'm working [00:02:00] one-on-one with people like Susan to help them tell their own powerful stories, and also let you know about a new community for anybody interested in connecting, learning, and working alongside other writers. 

And now, without further ado, I bring you back to Susan Altman.

We're three years out. Was he arrested at that point? 

Susan Altman: So I got the call, I think on a Thursday or Friday that Diablo was gonna be arrested, and I was so grateful that I had the relationship that I had with Detective Denison and with Maggie, the prosecutor. I. That they gave me a couple days to get from Boston to Colorado so we could be there when he got arrested.

Stacy's children were 10 and 11 at that time, and we needed to make sure they didn't get into the system, that we had to have guardianship in place so that they could stay with the family. Imagine, I know that Diablo's gonna be arrested. [00:03:00] And I can't tell anybody. It's crazy. And so I've got this built up anxiety and emotion in my body and I get myself on a plane.

I get to Colorado, I call Detective Denison, and I say, we're here. When's it gonna happen? I. And he said, we've got a little paperwork to do. And we were able to go to family court and get guardianship and we weren't hiding in Denver. Like nobody could see us there. Diablo, Stacy's friends, like we were really kind of undercover.

So we were granted guardianship of the children and were kind of laying in, wait. So we're all sitting around the table at my Aunt Ruthie's house and finally Detective Denison calls and he says, Susan, it's done. We've arrested him, he's in custody. I dropped my head to the table. I burst out crying, and my family that's sitting around me didn't understand why I was crying.

Like this was happy, but the emotions of what I had just gone through to get to this [00:04:00] point was really, really overwhelming. 

Jessica Fein: Did you give the children a heads up before this happened? Like what did they know at this point? 

Susan Altman: They knew nothing, the children did not have a heads up. They went to school that day.

They were picked up by a social worker. They were brought to a mutual meeting place where then I was there to pick him up. And I hadn't seen him in a year and a half because Diablo had really put a big wedge in between himself and the children and our family. And he just started living his life in a very different way and did not include our family in what he was doing.

Jessica Fein: Did you tell the kids? 

Susan Altman: I did tell the kids that we think that your dad had something to do with the way your mom died. 

Jessica Fein: So there's still a missing piece here, which is why, right? I mean, what was the motive? I. How did it go from this guy doesn't seem right to what might have happened that day? [00:05:00] 

Susan Altman: Right. So Stacy did know that Diablo was not faithful to her.

He admitted to her that he was a sex addict. And what I found much later on in this process was that a woman had called my sister the morning that she died and asked her if they were separated. Diablo had met this woman on Tinder and they had seen each other a couple times. And she was really into him.

He had manipulated her into sleeping together on their like second date, or you could call it a date, but really he just brought over a half drunk bottle of wine to her house and then they slept together. They had made plans to go out the following weekend and he blew her off. And she thought, that's weird.

I'm gonna do a little Google search. And she found my sister, she called and she said, listen, I had sex with your husband. He told me you were separated. My husband did this to me [00:06:00] and I wish somebody had told me. And if you're not separated, I just, you know, thought you should know. And that afternoon was when my sister ended up dead.

So what ended up happening was this woman that was really into Diablo ended up doing a Google search and found that Stacy had died the same day that she had called my sister. I. And another hero enters the scene here because she called Crime Stoppers and they put her in touch with Detective Denison, and all of a sudden, detective Denison knows now that there's motive.

This is well before the end of the three years. So Detective Denison knows that they've got motive. Yet the prosecutor said it's still not enough evidence to convince a jury to convict him. 

Jessica Fein: And she did not wanna take it to trial until they knew that they could get a conviction. 'cause you can only take it to trial once.

I [00:07:00] just need to ask, what's Crime Stoppers? You said she called Crime Stoppers. 

Susan Altman (2): You know, I think she called the homicide department first and nobody called her back. And then she called Crime Stoppers, which is one of the news station's investigative units. 

Jessica Fein: Okay. And the reason this now starts to give us a motive is because we can presume that Stacy confronted Diablo.

Susan Altman: So I've made up the whole story in my head. You know, one thing I didn't say is that the children were at religious school, and they did not get picked up on time when they were supposed to be picked up. It was a Sunday morning 

Jessica Fein (2): on the day of the death

Susan Altman (2): the day of the death, and the, the religious school kept calling the children's mom and dad, my sister and Diablo.

You know, you're supposed to be here to pick up the kids. Stacy was supposed to come, she didn't come. So Diablo, are you gonna come get the kids? So in my mind, I'm thinking the religious school is calling Stacy. She's supposed to pick up the kids. She [00:08:00] didn't pick up the kids if it were me. And I didn't pick up the kids, my husband would've been worried and freaking out and checking on me. Diablo never did that with Stacy. Apparently. He picked up the kids an hour late around one o'clock, he took them to the Purim carnival. Then he took them to a bike shop, and then he finally went home. So I believe that he dropped the kids off at religious school at about 8:30 in the morning.

He came home, Stacy had just had this conversation with this woman. She said, pack your bags and get out. And he had told her that he would never divorce her. He said, I am a product of divorce. It ruined my life and I'm never gonna do that to my kids. Stacy told me that he told her that. So he comes home, she says, leave, and he decides to kill her.

She had 80 contusions and bruises all over her body. He didn't just kill her. He beat the shit out of her. He beat her up [00:09:00] and she fought back.

Jessica Fein: So he's arrested. We're three years out. And you must have thought, I mean, I would think that means it's done. He's been arrested. Now he'll go to jail and you know, case closed, right? Not exactly what happened. 

Susan Altman: No. What happened was the judge set bail at $2 million. By the way, Diablo didn't work an honest day in his life.

He was a crook. He was a con. He could not support the family financially, and all of a sudden he's got a $750,000 life insurance policy after he killed her. He cashed in the life insurance policy. He lived life for those three years, very, very large in a way that he was never able to support my sister.

And he hired a big time attorney using her money. After six months, they went back to the judge and said, you need to lower bail, [00:10:00] because $2 million is not accessible and bail is supposed to be accessible to the people that get bail. So he got outta jail after six months and was back home on home arrest.

Then the trial got postponed and postponed and postponed because of his antics. So he took that money and used it on the defense attorney. We then sued and said he shouldn't be able to use her life insurance money, and we lost that case. So he got outta jail and was back at home, torturing everybody, torturing us, torturing the people in the neighborhood, torturing my sister who was raising the children at the time.

It was horrible. And because of his high-power lawyer, he got to do these things that kept postponing the trial. In my mind, innocent people wanna go to trial right away so that they can be free. So here he's just playing these games always, always [00:11:00] playing the game, always, always manipulating the situation.

And then Covid hit, and then we were gonna have the trial, but it was gonna be behind screens. And then we were gonna have the trial, but people were gonna have to have masks on. And our prosecutors are like, you can't do a murder trial with masks because you have to be able to see expression and faces.

And she was really worried about it. The trial kept getting postponed over and over and over again, and so it was not until seven years later that Diablo finally went before a jury. Seven years, 

Jessica Fein: seven years, years, and years after that initial arrest. Take us into the courtroom.

Susan Altman: It really was surreal. It really was like walking onto a set of Law and Order.

I had never been in a courtroom like that before and it was just what you see, that was a big podium that this master judge sat behind, and Diablo was so [00:12:00] close to me. I could feel his energy. He wouldn't really look at me. Day after day after day of listening to what he did to her body, and he never had any expression, nothing at all.

You just felt exhausted and dirty. At the end of the day. I was really walking and following the motions, but I wasn't able to comprehend that we were at my sister's trial for her murder. 

Jessica Fein (2): How long did the trial last? 

Susan Altman (2): It was supposed to take about three weeks, and it ended up lasting a little over two weeks.

The defense ended up not having much of a defense to present, and they really rested their case after a day and a half. The reason that we were able to go to trial, was because of our expert witness, Dr. Smock and Dr. Smock took the stand for about a day and was able to point out to the jury all of the, I'm not gonna say [00:13:00] mistakes that the medical examiner made, because the medical examiners just did not have the knowledge that they need to determine this kind of murder. And I will say that the prosecutor, since learning how to determine murder by strangulation and suffocation, has had other cases where she was able to put the determination as murder and not undetermined. And that was because what she learned from Stacy's death and the knowledge that she didn't have.

So Stacy has saved lives, maybe not saved a life, but she has helped another family not go through the turmoil that I went through trying to get justice. 

Jessica Fein: As have you, and we're gonna get to that in a minute, but just tell us first about what happened when the jury went to deliberate and then came back with their verdict.

Susan Altman: You know, it's so scary to be in a murder trial because there are a [00:14:00] lot of rules, so you can't look at the jury. You can't make eye contact with anybody. You can't talk to anybody. We couldn't talk to Diablo. I. It was everything in my power not to try to read the faces of the jury. During this time, there was a lot of legal talk before the judge dismissed the jury to deliberate.

It could be murder one, murder two, manslaughter, like they had to determine what it was, and it was about three o'clock in the afternoon. The judge dismisses the jury and he says, we haven't had a lunch break yet, so I'm ordering you guys pizza. You can eat your pizza and deliberate and you know, let us know.

So the judge said to all of us that we're waiting. That we couldn't go far away because if the jury comes back, we have to be ready to go, you know, right into the courtroom. 

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Susan Altman: So again, it's three o'clock murder trial. The court closes five o'clock sharp. So in our minds we're thinking there's no way we're gonna get a conviction today. Five minutes to five, my phone rings and it's our victim advocate who says that the jury's back. You need to get back to the court. From the little teeny bit of knowledge that I know about [00:16:00] jury deliberation, it's usually a good sign if it's a short deliberation for obvious reasons.

So I am like giddy jumping outta my skin. I, I have no emotion. We're smiling, but we're not allowed to show emotion, so we walk back into the courtroom. It is dead silent. Diablo is sitting there and now there's like cops and sheriffs and all these big guys surrounding him, standing behind him in the courtroom, and finally the judge read the verdict and I didn't even understand it because there was so much legal talk that my daughter sitting next to me was the one who actually explained it to me and said, mom, you did it.

You did it and she's crying and hugging me. I did it. I pursued this case pretty much on my own, not knowing what I was [00:17:00] doing. And finally I got this sense of like, okay, now Stacy can rest in peace and she can know that I fought for her and I wasn't gonna stop until that man was in jail because she deserved that.

Nobody deserves what she had. He could have divorced her, and he decided to kill her instead. And I'll never understand that. But I finally got justice for her, and I am definitely, we are my family. And Stacy, we are the lucky ones because it wasn't easy and it didn't have to go that way. And all of our ducks lined up in a row.

Everything had to happen. Even all of the postponements had to happen in order for this to go the way it went, and I'm just grateful that I had the people on my side that believed in us. He was sentenced, first degree murder life in prison with no chance of parole. I gotta tell you, I mean, [00:18:00] I think even the prosecutors were surprised that it was life and that they only deliberated for two hours.

Again, we had Dr. Smock, but there was, there was nobody saying that, you know, Diablo was there. The prosecutors were not as convinced as I was. 

I've obviously listened to all of your shows and a lot of your guests talk about hope, and I wanna talk about that because those of us that live in this world of uncertainty, the only thing we have is hope.

And I had hope. The only thing I had was hope, because never in my mind was this gonna go any differently than the way it happened. Even with all those people telling me, you know, family members that are prosecutors, that, that prosecuted cases like this said, it's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen.

And in my mind, it was always gonna happen and I couldn't give up that hope. 

Jessica Fein: Well, thank you for saying that and [00:19:00] I'd love to understand how in the world did you hold onto that hope seven years setback after setback, people telling you to drop it. People who love you and care about you and your wellbeing are saying enough.

Susan, you've got to rejoin the world and you to not give up the hope. How did you not give it up? I 

Susan Altman: I couldn't. I couldn't rest. First of all, I couldn't let a murderer walk free. And possibly do it to somebody else. And I couldn't live without seeing my niece and nephew, and I couldn't live knowing that this dangerous person was raising my sister's children.

And I don't know how I did it. I just put one foot in front of the other. It was never a question that I wasn't going to do this. You know, she was my baby sister, my best friend, the person I was gonna grow old with, the person I was gonna live with. When we were old and senile, you know, we were gonna take care of each other.

And [00:20:00] I actually said to Detective Denison at one time when he was also frustrated. I said, I can't imagine that you are going to go to your grave knowing that you were had by this con man. And that's how I felt too. Like I wasn't gonna be had by him. He wasn't gonna get me. He got me a lot. And I'll tell you, he did get me a lot, but not this time.

Jessica Fein: Now you could have very easily and understandably received this verdict, had the validation, the relief that you got justice for your sister, your best friend, and left this whole world that you had been immersed in this Dateline world. If you will go. You didn't do that. You alluded a moment ago to the fact that what happened to Stacy has helped other families get justice sooner, and you yourself have become quite the advocate and change maker.[00:21:00] 

Susan Altman: You know, as a Dateline fan, I would watch those shows and I would, in the back of my mind, I was like, this is nothing compared to my story. I wanted to tell the story, and being Jewish is a big part of my life and Stacy's life, and the kids were at the Purim Carnival at Sunday School, you know, when she was murdered.

And in our community, in our world, we don't talk about bad things that happened to us. You know, remember back in the day when you know somebody had cancer? Well, that's what I feel like about murder and it is happening so much to people like me and you, and we don't think about this happening in our world and we don't think it's gonna happen to us.

And what I've learned is that Stacy was in a relationship where there was a lot of domestic abuse. I. And even though you asked earlier about whether he hit her, there's [00:22:00] so much more to domestic violence and domestic abuse that I didn't know about. And what the abuse that she and her children were suffering was financial abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse.

He had stripped every part of who she was away from her and I needed to tell her story because there are hundreds of thousands of women living in situations like this. Very, very dangerous situations that don't understand what abuse is. Especially if it's a loved one that you see being abused, that you don't know what to do or don't know what to say, which is how I felt.

And not that I have any magic answers other than I never said anything to Stacy about her and what I saw was a unhealthy relationship. And I didn't say anything to her about that because I was afraid if I confronted her [00:23:00] about my true feelings about her husband, she would get so upset with me that she would cut me out of her life and I couldn't have that happen because if I wasn't there for her, who would be there for her to help her to listen to her.

And so I chose, purposely chose to support her by being there to listen and listen to her cry and tell me about all the terrible things that he was doing to her. And at some points I said, let us help you get away from him. And she would go away. For several weeks, or they separated for a time, but he would always draw her back, which is again, part of that coercive control.

And he would say he's gonna change and he's gonna go to therapy and, and do all these things and make her life better, and he didn't. And so I wanna tell my story so that I can share that. If I could do it again, I would've taken a risk and I would've talked to Stacy about my true feelings [00:24:00] about the life that she was living and maybe we could have safely gotten her to a to a better place.

Jessica Fein: So now this case is changing the way other cases are investigated. 

Susan Altman: Exactly. I have started to do some advocacy work with the Alliance for Hope International, and they are. Determined to change laws in every state so that scenes like this get a full investigation. What happened with our investigation was that Diablo set the scene, he staged the crime scene, and when the detectives got there, there were rabbis there and my parents were there, and aunts and uncles were there.

And you know, it's a middle class home and there's religion and there it's a tight support group, and Diablo is saying she was healthy. She collapsed in the shower, and he was the bereaved grieving [00:25:00] husband, and he acted as such and he couldn't answer questions because he was so distraught. And he kind of made the detective think that this was just an accident.

And so the detective did enough, thank goodness to go to trial, but probably could have done more in the beginning. But he was convinced that it wasn't a murder, that this man couldn't have, have murdered. 

Jessica Fein: Now because of your work and the work of the organizations you've aligned yourself with, when the investigators come upon a scene that seems at face value to be, you know, accidental, they are now investigating in a different way.

Susan Altman: So we were lucky that Diablo was not smart enough to stage a suicide because stage suicides are different than staged homicides. And in this country, if cops come to a scene and it appears to be a suicide, they don't investigate at all. [00:26:00] They have a predisposition that it's suicide and the partner typically, you know, is the one telling the story and they stop.

So we are changing laws. We've changed the law in California. We're working on Illinois. New York, Oregon, and Massachusetts right now, and we're changing laws so that the detectives have to investigate regardless of what their preconceived notions are. When I talked about earlier being lucky that we have a conviction, I have met several other families whose loved ones were murdered by a stage suicide, and they are probably not going to see justice because their cases have been closed, and it's really hard to open those cases again, Jesse, I am here for these other family members who are going through this, but my heart breaks for them and I do not know. I, [00:27:00] I do know that I would not be here talking to you, spreading her message, saving lives if I didn't get justice for her.

I don't know how I would've lived. I really don't. I don't think I could have gone on, I was a mess for those three years until he got arrested. I lost my memory. I gained lots of weight. I couldn't function. It's heartbreaking. 

Jessica Fein (2): What do you think Stacy would say to you now about not only, you know, fighting for justice for her, for the way you're fighting for justice now for so many other families and for the work you're doing to change the way these kinds of cases are investigated to continue to give other families the very hope that you held onto for those seven years? 

Susan Altman (2): She's so proud of me. She's so proud that I never stopped because when people said she would want you to live, and I would say she would be doing [00:28:00] the same thing for me, and I know she would've done the same thing for me.

I know she's with me and I know that she is just cheering me on. I was the big sister that she always looked up to and you know, I'm still doing that for her. 

Jessica Fein: Susan, thank you, thank you. Thank you for sharing this with us today. I know that sharing Stacy's story is making such a huge difference, and personally, I'm thrilled that you're not only sharing it with listeners, whether that's listeners to this show or people who are listening to Dateline, but that your book will come out and so many other people will learn from what you have to share.

Susan Altman: I'm grateful to you, Jesse, because you're helping me write my book and we are together saving lives and people need to read the story because everybody has somebody in their life that has had a questionable relationship, and we need to know what [00:29:00] that is, and we need to understand it, and we need to bring some of these women to safety.

Jessica Fein: Susan's story is such a testament to the extraordinary power of love and determination. Seven years after that devastating phone call, justice for Stacy was finally served, not just through Diablo's conviction, but through the lives. Susan continues to touch through her advocacy work. I believe so strongly that our personal experiences can make a huge difference.

When we're brave enough to share them, they can educate, inspire, entertain, and even save lives. That's one of the reasons why I'm passionate about helping people tell their stories. I'm currently working with writers at all stages. People who have memoirs, they want to write, people who have written memoirs and don't know how to navigate the publishing landscape.

People who have substack they wanna launch, or just people who feel a story burning inside of them and don't know where to start. If any of these sound like you, I would love to help you bring your [00:30:00] story to life. And if you are interested in connecting with other writers for accountability, critique, and connection, I'm gonna be launching a writing community where we learn, grow, and create together in a nurturing environment.

To learn about either of these opportunities, connect with me through my website, www.jessicafeinstories.com. That's Jessica Fein. F like Frank, EIN stories.com, or reach out to me through Instagram or Facebook. Your story matters, whatever it is, and I am here to help you tell it. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you next time.