To defend Donna Prentice from the charges that she'd murdered her daughter Michelle nearly 40 years ago, her attorney Ron Brower built his case around her ex-husband's character, criminal record and history of abuse.

Ron Brower: I knew while we attacked the character and credibility of Michael Kent that we also, necessarily, dirtied my client up a little bit because she was in association with such a person.

Perhaps the most surprising thing the attorney did was play the jury the audio-taped interview an investigator had done with Mike Kent before he died.

Ron Brower: I played Michael Kent’s tape because it was exonerating to Donna Prentice.

On the tape, Mike talked about a summer day in 1969 when he said Donna went to Michelle’s room to wake her and discovered something was terribly wrong.

(Police interview tape)

Investigator: So you're eating breakfast. Jamie's eating breakfast and Richard’s eating breakfast?

Mike Kent: Right, and then she had called for Michelle to come in, get up and come in.

Investigator: So she called for Michelle?

Mike Kent: Yeah.

Investigator: Then what happens?

Mike Kent: Uh, Michelle didn't come out and Donna went back to get her up.

Investigator: OK, in her bedroom -- she went in the bedroom to get Michelle?

Mike Kent: Yeah, Michelle’s bedroom right here.

Investigator: OK.

Mike Kent: Yeah.

Investigator: Then what happened?

Mike Kent: She came back out and, uh, I remember she had -- all the color in her face was gone and she was leaning up against the house like support, you know.

Mike said the look on Donna’s face prompted him to walk into Michelle’s room to see what was wrong. He said the 3-year-old toddler was curled up in a fetal position -- and she was motionless.

(Police interview tape)

Mike Kent: Just looking at her you could see something was wrong. But it looked like it almost felt she was dead from just walking in and seeing her. My first thought was that she was dead.

Investigator: OK.

Mike Kent: And then I touched her and she was cold.

Investigator: How could you tell she was dead, though, right away?

Mike Kent: She was just plain the way that she was laying. She was cold.

Mike said he turned to Donna and told her "Michelle’s gone." Then Donna said something that troubled him.

(Police interview tape)

Mike Kent: She said, "what are we going to do now?"

Mike said he reacted as if they were in deep trouble and he decided to do something about it immediately.

(Police interview tape)

Investigator: Go ahead, Mike. Tell me what you did.

Mike Kent: This is the part I didn't like. Part of the parts I didn't like. Yeah, I had packed up Michelle in the garage and put it on the floor in the back seat and drove up to the canyon. Dug a shallow spot, wrapped Michelle up in the blanket, covered her -- covered her with stones so that the animals wouldn't get at her and --

Investigator: OK.

Mike Kent: -- put the dirt back in.

After his arrest, Mike took investigators to a canyon where he said he buried Michelle’s body. But her remains were never recovered.

Video   'He was a good father' Jamie Kent proclaims his father's innocence in the death of Michelle Pulsifer. Dateline NBC

Brower told the jury Mike Kent’s word was no good. That Donna never knew that Michelle had died or that Mike had buried her. She was, he said, a good mother.

Ron Brower: Every single person associated with this case says Donna Prentice was a loving, caring excellent mother. There is not one blemish or bump.

And Mike? The exact opposite, he argued. A violent monster, he told the jury.

Brower called witnesses who swore Mike had assaulted them while he owned a bar back in Illinois. A business partner was beaten, a customer was shot, a girlfriend was battered. That girlfriend dated Mike after Donna was out of the picture.

Donna, he told the jury, had believed Michelle was alive and always wanted to reunite with her but couldn't because she was a battered woman, terrorized by Mike.

Ron Brower: He went through what I would call some kind of ritual of terror when he made her go up into the bedroom of the place they were staying. That he took a loaded firearm. He fired several rounds at her head while she sat in the bed, to persuade her that if she contacted the mother or tried to get the child back at this time, that she was going to die.

Brower said Donna was so afraid, so terrified, she dared not tell a soul about Michelle for the next 35 years -- not even after she divorced Mike Kent and moved to a different state.

John Larson (Dateline NBC): Why at one point during the many years that followed, when she did get free of Michael Kent, why doesn't she make a simple telephone call?

Ron Brower: The reason she doesn't make a simple telephone call is because he's still at large. He still knows where she is.

The defense wanted the jury to believe that Kent had actually secretly killed the little girl and buried her, and then convinced Donna that her daughter was at his mom's, and then terrorized Donna into asking no questions about it for four decades.

But if jurors did actually believe Mike's story, he wanted them to focus on one thing. The stunned reaction Mike claimed she'd had when she discovered her daughter dead in her room.

Video   ‘The color in her face was gone’ March 14: Investigators think they’ve made a break-through in a missing girl case after they interview the girl’s father. Dateline NBC

(Police interview tape)

Mike Kent: I remember she had -- all the color in her face was gone and she was leaning up against the house like support, you know?

Brower said that Donna’s reaction -- if it had ever happened -- was proof that she was no killer.

Ron Brower: That was not the description of a person who anticipated finding a dead body.

So had Donna Prentice found her daughter dead and conspired with her husband to cover it up for decades? Had she done worse? Or was she an innocent, battered woman, too scared to find out the truth about her own daughter?

With scant evidence and competing stories, would the jury finally come to a conclusion about what happened to the little girl?

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