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Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day, the most romantic day of the year, the perfect time to profess new love or to restoke all fires of desire.

For Richard and Stacey Shack, Valentine's Day 2010 was their opportunity to do just that.

The plan was to meet up in a secret-sacluded spot in the pitch darkness of the Northern Georgia countryside, a perfect place to drink some wine, exchange the Valentine's and maybe more.

Tragically, they'd never get that chance.

Join me now as we take a look into a Valentine's Day that turned deadly.

We'll learn how detectives faced with a mysterious tragedy soon discovered a startling and unexpected web of lies and a conniving woman at its center.

Not many experiences compared to lifting off in a hot air balloon, taking off on an adventure, the exact destination unknown, only that it's downwind, somewhere.

It's a romantic idea, a metaphor for living, control what you can control and let the wind do the rest.

As the wicker basket leaves the ground, suspended beneath the balloon, the feeling is surreal, no G-forces, no lurching, no violent acceleration, just floating, higher and higher above the ground.

Once in the air, there's another surprising sensation, there's no wind or at least it feels that way, because the wind and the balloon are moving at the same speed.

It's calm, quiet and serene. Suspended this way, 3,000 feet above the ground, moving only at the speed of the wind, is arguably the best way to view the scenery and landscape of northern Georgia.

It's a perfect view, with all the time in the world to take it all in.

On May 23rd, 2010, 38-year-old Stacey Shack took off in a hot air balloon just northeast of Atlanta, Georgia. It was the first time she'd ever been in one. It would also be her last.

Floating high above Gwinnett County, the Atlanta skyline is visible on the horizon, just beyond Stone Mountain to the southwest.

To the north, the shores of Lake Lanier come into view, and far beyond them on clear days. The view extends all the way to the spring mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

As Stacey floated high in the sky, just below her balloon, the innumerable suburbs and manicured subdivisions of metropolitan Atlanta drifted past.

One of them, a predominantly upscale suburb called Snellville, it was where Stacey had lived with her husband, 46-year-old Richard Shack, and her three sons.

On any other day, Stacey would have been smiling from ear to ear riding in the basket, but this wasn't a normal day.

Just three months earlier, on Valentine's Day, Richard had been tragically and brutally murdered.

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