> reporter: for his part, frank says he wasn't trying to hide anything from police. > reporter: there was just an attraction you couldn't fight? > yeah, that's the way - i fell in love with her. how did you meet her? > we found each other basically playing at a gambling table one night. now frank had to tell his family embarrassing details about his other life, the one he had been living in california with his mistress, suzanne. > reporter: there is never a good time to get caught cheating, but getting caught by police while your wife is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head has to rank as one of the worst. and it was like okay, this is not a good situation. you know? > reporter: you guys were the cleavers. you know? > reporter: that's a hard thing to hear. and he said, the reason they're looking at me so closely is that i've been having an affair. > my dad actually called me at work and said, you know, i got to tell you something.

then he had a heart-to-heart with each of his kids. > reporter: though frank says that at the time he didn't think innocent people needed lawyers, he hired one anyway. you know, they always suspect the husband so, you know, get a lawyer. > reporter: why would they say that? > because they've seen shows like 'dateline nbc' and said that's what they always tell you to do. and we think that before you talk to them anymore, dad, you need to talk to a lawyer. > they just started telling me that something's not right. and it was like, you know, this line of questioning is concerning. Got in that room and they just kept hounding and hounding and hounding on my dad. she was still in intensive care but making progress. > at the hospital doctors were optimistic about nancy's condition. > because obviously money can prompt people to give information. > again, whatever - > once we get to the point where we've exhausted all our investigative leads, that's another step we would take. > i mean, if there's, you know - you put up a reward or do anything like that, i'll be - > okay. > in addition to turning over his cell phone, frank told the cops to let him know if they needed anything else from him, anything at all. > would you have a problem if we ran an analysis on your cell phone? > no. and so in order to confirm that i asked if i could see his cell phone. he knew that she was going to church service. he confirms that he had actually sent a few texts and e-mails back and forth to nancy. > doesn't sound like frank is really able to help you with anything. it was more like so confuse - like we just couldn't cross the hurdle of where she could have been to and i'm like, i'm sorry, what? > that must be the most bizarre phone call. > it's a close friend of me mom's calling to say your mom's in the hospital with a gunshot wound. a police officer who belonged to the howards'church got word to nancy's eldest daughter ashley.

but as it turned out, her husband was out of town. > the cops knew they had to notify nancy's family. > but there had not been any robberies for people actually being robbed at gunpoint for their property. > there had been some break-ins in the area? > there were some home break-ins that we were looking at to see if they may be related to this, but at this point we were kind of checking out everything to see if there was anything that may be related to this. it seemed unlikely, but they couldn't rule it out. they wondered if the shooting was part of a pattern of crimes in the area. obviously, when it rains people were inside. > police officers could find no one in the neighborhood who'd seen or heard anything. > what details did you get from that 911 call specifically? > nancy was able to give us suspect description of the person that shot her. > did you have any reason to believe when you arrived that there was anything other than a burglary gone bad? > we didn't have any other reason to suspect that it was anything other than an aggravated robbery given the information that nancy had given us. but the rest of the house appeared to have been untouched. > the garage and the hallway leading into the house were bloody. > you could see exactly where she'd gone through the house. as paramedics rushed her to parkland hospital in dallas, detective wall turned his attention to the crime scene.

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