The detectives simplified the question. "Is Bill dead in your house?"
"No, he's not," Dana answered.
That denial did not stop the questioning. Police told her they believed something important had happened around the 9th and that her efforts to cover William's disappearance made the situation look increasingly suspicious. Dana continued saying the smell was sewage and that she had been trying to remove anything in the basement that smelled bad.
The detective then began laying out a theory. He referred back to William's message about the burger and the 15-hour sleep and suggested Dana might have obtained some type of medication, given it to William in food, and tried to make him sleep because she wanted a break from him. He stressed that this was his theory, not yet a proven fact. Dana denied giving William anything and insisted she did not know whether he was dead or, if he was, how he had died.
Investigators confronted her with another issue: the newly poured concrete. They asked why there was cement in the basement closet. Dana said her father had worked with concrete there previously and that she had only been adding to or removing material as part of her cleanup. The detective immediately challenged the idea that, with a broken foot, she had chosen that period to pour or work around concrete in the hidden area.
The conversation about the concrete became the point where Dana's explanations were hardest to reconcile with the physical scene. She suggested William had done concrete work in the basement before his disappearance and that she was only continuing or cleaning up around it. Detectives contrasted that claim with her broken foot, the concealed room, the strong odor, and the timing of the fresh pour. They told her that while none of those details alone established murder, together they made the basement look less like a repair project and more like an effort to hide something.
At the same time, officers at the residence were no longer working from theory. They were excavating the area under the new cement while the interview continued miles away. The detective told Dana he was receiving updates from the house and that the search was about to give them an answer neither side would be able to argue around. That was when the interview shifted from testing stories to confronting her with the practical reality that police were physically digging through the place she said was only contaminated by sewage.
Finally, the detective told Dana what he believed the search team was about to confirm. He said officers were digging up the new concrete and that, based on his experience, he believed William was underneath it. He was careful in the recorded exchange to say he could not know with absolute certainty until the excavation was complete, but he told Dana the combination of the odor, the moved furnishings, the money, the lies, and the fresh cement made the picture look very bad.
"I didn't kill my dad," Dana said.
The detective replied that William appeared to be dead regardless of how he died. He suggested something had been moved from the area where a recliner had once been to the newly cemented section of the basement. Dana still denied ever moving or interacting with a dead body and said the only reason she had to think there might be one was because detectives were now telling her about the evidence.
As the confrontation reached its breaking point, Dana realized where the interview was heading. "I'm guessing this is where I need to ask for an attorney, then," she said. Once she invoked counsel, the interrogation could not continue in the same way. Investigators nevertheless had enough at that moment to arrest her on the evidence they had already uncovered.
Police informed Dana that a body had been found in the house. At that point, according to the source, they did not yet have enough information to charge her with murder because the cause and manner of death still had to be established. She was placed under arrest for concealing a dead body while the forensic investigation continued.
The autopsy would later change the case again. According to the source, investigators concluded that William had died from an overdose involving horse sedatives. A forensic review of Dana's computers then reportedly showed that she had ordered the medication through eBay shortly before William's death. Those later findings provided prosecutors with evidence that went far beyond concealment of a body or financial exploitation after an accidental death.
Dana Jennings was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder. The source states that she was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison. What began as a welfare check prompted by a son who simply wanted to hear his father's voice had become a homicide case built from contradictions, a forgotten phone, financial records, a strange odor, fresh concrete, and evidence recovered only after police returned with a warrant.