A look into insurance salesman's murder reveals secret double life

When insurance salesman Bob Eidman was shot to death in his Missouri office, investigators say their suspicions about the killing initially centered around his wife, Diane, whose own mother was charged with murdering Diane's father decades earlier and was eventually found not guilty.

However, years after Eidman’s murder, a stunning revelation from DNA test results would point to an out of the blue suspect who was never on police’s radar.

On June 8, 2007, Eidman was shot to death at his office in St. Charles, Missouri, in broad daylight. His insurance business included those with poor credit and people who had trouble getting insured, and he often accepted payments in cash. As a result, his office often had a large amount of cash on hand, which investigators suspected could have made it a target for crime.

The community was shaken, as this was St. Charles' first murder of 2007, in a city that averaged just one or two homicides per year.

A new "20/20" episode, "File ‘M’ for Murder" airing Friday, Feb. 7, at 9 p.m. ET and streaming the next day on Hulu, examines the case.

"Police quickly work to gather information about the victim," investigative journalist Pat LaLama said. "His name is Bob Eidman. He's 48 years old. He was married for a very long time, had no children.”

As news spread about an incident at Eidman’s office, concerned friends and colleagues from the insurance industry rushed to the scene. Among them was a longtime coworker, who requested that "20/20" refer to her as “Dana.”

"That's my friend," Dana told "20/20." "I wanted to make sure he was OK. I remember locking up my office. I had a client in there, and she saw how distraught I was. And I'm just in the car, just all the way there saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Bob, no Bob.’”

Diane also arrived on the scene after not being able to reach Bob on the phone.

As investigators searched the area for security camera video footage of potential suspects, they came across a grocery store just a few doors down from Bob's office. A camera there was positioned to point directly at the front door and captured the view outside.

As police viewed that video, they noticed a car that slowly drove past the front doors. Four minutes later, the car was seen driving past again a little slower, almost as if the driver was searching for something.

Detectives concluded that the car was likely a white Ford Focus. Finding that car became a priority, but they faced a big challenge with about 5,000 of those vehicles registered in Missouri.

Authorities soon believed they had caught a break when they found a white car wrecked and abandoned nearby, with one of Eidman’s business cards left inside. Police learned Travis Endsley left the vehicle behind, and when they later questioned him, they noticed a suspicious blood stain on Endsley’s shirt.

Investigators now wanted answers.

"I needed new insurance on my car. My buddy's like, check this guy out and call him up. He gave me a good rate," Endsley told "20/20." "And then a week later, I'd been out, had a couple drinks. I wound up wrecking my car right by my apartment, my airbags deployed and it knocked the sense out of me and I staggered down the hill right to my apartment, not remembering nothing.”

The next day, Endsley said he woke up, walked out the door and didn't see the car.

When Endsley reported his car as stolen, he was shocked to discover that he was a potential person of interest in a murder case. He offered what seemed like a plausible explanation for the blood on his shirt —he told police that he got a bloody nose when he crashed his car. The police investigated his alibi, found it valid and cleared him of any suspicion.

Now, the police focused their attention closer to home -- specifically on Eidman's widow, Diane.

Detective Stefanie Kaiser was assigned the job of interviewing Diane to gain more information and further insight into her husband. Diane explained to Kaiser that she and Eidman had difficulty making ends meet because there wasn't much cash. The insurance business was struggling.

Kaiser observed that Diane seemed forgetful – at one point she couldn't remember her own Social Security number. The detective also inquired about any life insurance policies, and Diane said that she had one small $5,000 policy through her workplace.

The questioning was routine until Diane made an alarming statement to Kaiser.

"One of the first things she says is, 'Don't take this as a confession or anything, but ... this happened to my dad, too,'" Kaiser said. "She makes this statement that is, don't take this as a confession, but something like this has happened before, and I'm not quoting Diane at this point, but 'somebody broke into the house and shot my dad.'"

At 26 years old, Diane's father, Jerome Boelling, a St. Louis police officer, was murdered in his home, where he lived with her mother, Lenore Boelling.

Lenore Boelling was charged with the murder of her husband, and pleaded not guilty. While she was awaiting trial, she moved in with the Eidmans.

According to Eidman's family, Bob was troubled by having an accused murderer living in his home.

"He was scared," family member Pam Eidman said. "He would go to bed every night, and they would bolt his door and lock it closed. He was afraid; he didn't want to be in the house with her."

In 1985, Lenore Boelling went on trial in the death of her husband, Jerome. The jury found her not guilty.

Police investigating Eidman's murder soon discovered that the small insurance policy Diane had initially told investigators about was not the only policy Diane had. With Eidman’s sudden death, Diane was set to receive more than $300,000 in life insurance.

“We did not know if Diane had forgotten to tell us about those policies,” St. Charles Homicide Detective Don Stepp said. “Did Diane know about those policies?”

Police also discovered that Eidman was leading a double life. As investigators continued examining his phone records, they noticed that one phone number kept appearing frequently. It belonged to a man from out of town.

Police discovered that Eidman was having a secret, romantic relationship with a man who lived three hours away. Authorities questioned his secret lover, who provided an alibi. The police also had him take a polygraph test, which he passed. He was cleared of any involvement in Eidman’s murder.

Eidman’s lover told police that he and Eidman had been dating and that they used to meet in motels together.

Detective Kaiser said that Diane told her that she'd learned of her husband's relationship with the man after discovering an email between the two. She said Eidman denied having an affair.

Kaiser said that Diane told her very directly and boldly that she had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. Diane agreed to take a polygraph test to clear her name.

"She doesn't pass, but it's inconclusive," Kaiser said. "So it just still kind of puts her in that iffy category, if you will."

Diane was never charged in Eidman’s murder and the case went cold for months until police received a call from the DNA unit. In the earlier stages of the investigation police notice Eidman's wallet went missing. So detectives confiscated his pants and swabbed his back pocket in case the culprit left behind DNA.

Three years after Eidman was murdered, the results of trace DNA taken from his pants back pocket came in, and there was a match.

To everyone's surprise, the DNA matched a man named Paul White, who had not been on the detectives’ radar and who was serving a prison term for an unrelated forgery conviction when he became a suspect in Eidman’s death.

After several years of leads turning cold, the investigation was heating up.

"I ran every kind of data history check on him," Stepp said, eventually uncovering a potential link to the murder. "The big point with Paul White was, I found out that a neighboring law enforcement agency had issued a ticket to Paul White.” White was a passenger in a white Ford Focus, weeks after the murder— the same make and model as the car caught on a surveillance camera near Eidman’s office the day he was killed.

According to police records, a man named Cleo Hines was the driver of the car with White during the same traffic stop. Authorities quickly brought Hines in for questioning. Hines quickly admitted involvement in Eidman’s murder, but claimed his role was limited to driving White in the Ford Focus to the insurance office and waiting outside as White robbed and fatally shot Eidman.

When Stepp questioned White, he denied all involvement in Eidman’s murder, even after Stepp revealed to White that his DNA matched samples taken from inside Eidman’s pants pocket at the crime scene. Despite White’s repeated denials, he was charged the next day with robbery and the murder of Eidman.

The trial would reveal that, despite all the twists and turns in Eidman’s case, it turned out to be a robbery that resulted in murder.

In August 2012, jurors found White guilty of murder and robbery in the first degree. A month later, he was sentenced to two life terms for his crimes. Hines took an Alford plea and was convicted of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, and was also sentenced to two life terms.

While Hines’ sentence offers the possibility of parole, White will remain in prison for the rest of his life.

After the two men were charged, Stepp met with Diane to inform her that she was cleared as a suspect. “I believe that there was a lot of stress that just came off Diane,” said Stepp. “She was shaking and crying and she was very happy that this was over.”