DID A CARTOON PLAY A PART IN THE DEATH OF A CALIFORNIA MAN?

"48 Hours" Investigates In "The Bugs Bunny Defense"

Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015

Linda Duffey shot her husband - that is clear. What's not so clear is what led up to the shooting. Prosecutors say it was a cold-hearted murder. Duffey, however, maintains it was an accident that occurred when she and her husband Patrick reenacted a moment from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Richard Schlesinger and 48 HOURS investigate the death of Patrick Duffey and the incredible story his wife told police about what happened in "The Bugs Bunny Defense," to be broadcast Saturday, Oct. 31 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The case was so shocking that it left police questioning whether what happened was a situation of an accidental death imitating art or if it was an intentional murder.

In April 2007, Linda Duffey called police saying she accidentally shot her husband. Later, while being interviewed by police without an attorney, Duffey told them she and Patrick were cartoon buffs, and would recite lines from Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck.

"She said that we have this thing... that we always do where we morph into cartoon characters," homicide detective Shaun McCarthy tells 48 HOURS.

When police questioned her after her husband's death, she told them she and her husband had been imitating a cartoon in which Elmer Fudd convinces Bugs and Daffy that a gun is unloaded by saying "no more buwwets." She said she had picked up one of the revolvers they kept in the house when her husband said "no more buwwets" in his Elmer Fudd voice, and she took it to mean the .38 revolver was unloaded.

"I wanted to believe her story," McCarthy adds.

McCarthy's partner, though, did not believe Linda's version of the events, specifically how she said she fired the gun.

"There was so many highly improbable events that would've had to have all lined up for this to actually have been an accident," says Detective Shannon Laren.

Was it an accident? Was it murder? The investigation would drag on for five years.

With a new prosecutor urging them on, police arrested Linda and charged her with murder in 2012. By then, she was remarried and living in Mississippi. At her first trial, her team used the Bugs Bunny defense. The case ended with a deadlocked jury.

Schlesinger and 48 HOURS are there for her second trial and to interview investigators, forensic experts, friends and family.

48 HOURS: "The Bugs Bunny Defense" is produced by Josh Yager and Dena Goldstein. Greg Fisher is the development producer and Michelle Fanucci is the field producer. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer. Susan Zirinsky is the senior executive producer.

48 HOURS: "The Bugs Bunny Defense" is the second part of a Saturday night double feature. The first, 48 HOURS: "The Pact," will be broadcast at 9:00 PM, ET/PT, and features Richard Schlesinger and 48 HOURS' investigation into the murder of a Massachusetts teenager and his family's more than 40-year quest to find out what really happened to their son.

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