The Sleepwalker

Scott Falater was an engineering manager at Motorola who lived in northeast Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife, Yarmila, and their two children, Megan and Michael. Friends and neighbors knew him as a quiet family man with no history of violence.

Late on the night of January 16, 1997, neighbor Greg Koons looked over the wall into the Falaters’ backyard and saw Scott holding Yarmila’s head under the water in their swimming pool. Koons called 911. Yarmila had been stabbed 44 times with a hunting knife before she was dragged into the pool. Falater told police he had no memory of the attack. Detectives found his bloodstained clothes, his boots and the knife packed into a plastic container in his car.

At his 1999 trial, Falater’s lawyers argued he had been sleepwalking the whole time. Sleep experts and relatives testified about episodes from his past. Prosecutor Juan Martinez and sleep specialist Mark Pressman pointed to what Falater did afterward, including changing his clothes, hiding the evidence and calming the family dog, as far too deliberate for a man who was asleep. On June 23, 1999, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. On January 10, 2000, Judge Ronald Reinstein decided against the death penalty and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. In a 2021 interview, Falater said he still could not remember that night.