With Faylene floating in the tub, according to the state's latest theory, Doug then casually made breakfast for one of his sons while his 11-year-old stepdaughter Jenna — a key witness for the prosecution — got ready for school.
Doug then pretended to "find" Faylene, yanked her out, and carried her to the bed, after which he rushed the kids out to a neighbor's house.
In her journals, Faylene wrote that she would await Doug and Hilary's arrivals in the Celestial Kingdom. There, they would live eternally as husband and wives.
Details
First of two parts. Read Part Two
here.
Related Content
More About
Doug then acted out the "phony" rescue scene, which included the call to physician assistant Chad White, but neglected somehow to call 911 in the process.
If the sex-fiend theory sounds flimsy, think again:
Defendants, guilty or innocent, can be convicted simply because jurors don't like them.
And the panel certainly may not cozy up to the likes of a Doug Grant, especially if it believes the testimony of Kari Handley, a second cousin and onetime good friend of Hilary's.
Handley is expected to say that Hilary told her (in the presence of Hilary's sister Holly) at a luncheon just one day after Faylene died that she and Doug had met in a park the previous night.
According to Handley, Hilary told her that Doug had greeted her by grabbing her hips and saying, "God, I missed those."
Handley also recalled Hilary telling her that Doug had insisted that Hilary "wait" for him after his remarriage to Faylene. If true, this suggests Doug knew his wife wouldn't be around for long.
Also, by Handley's account, Doug had told Hilary after his remarriage to watch a 1995 movie about King Arthur called First Knight, which depicted how his own quirky love triangle was meant to end.
In the movie, the character Doug identifies with winds up in a relationship with the character he identifies with Hilary, and the Faylene character dies.
Hilary continually has denied the "hips" and the "wait for me" comments, and her sister has backed her under oath.
Someone is lying.
But Hilary has admitted meeting Doug in the park a few days after Faylene died, where he showed her Faylene's "desire for you to be married immediately" letter and gave her several hundred dollars in cash.
Under any circumstance, jurors are not likely to appreciate a narcissistic Lothario who (guilty or not) proposed marriage to his ex-girlfriend just two weeks after his wife died and then wed her before the first mourning flowers at Faylene's burial site had wilted.
Juan Martinez is as comfortable and aggressive in a courtroom as is his counterpart, Mel McDonald, the former Superior Court judge and United States Attorney who has served as Doug's defense lawyer since the summer of 2005.
But this is the rare case in which the prosecutor, not the defense, will have to throw curveballs at jurors to deflect attention from the myriad weaknesses of their evidence.
The battle royal is right around the corner.
Gilbert police did little at first to investigate the tragic incident on East Michelle Way.
Officers took just five photographs inside the home on the morning of September 28, 2001, and spoke only perfunctorily to Doug Grant and other family members.
A few days after his wife's death, Doug met at his home with members of his and Faylene's family.
He turned over the "goodbye" letters Faylene had left behind for many of them, in which she thanked them for loving her and told them everything would be fine.
At Faylene's well-attended funeral in Mesa, her half-brother Douger Eaves described how Faylene had visited the LDS temple just about every day during the previous months.
"This is where she kept her sanity," Douger said. "She was either smiling or crying; there was no in between."
Douger said his sister "deserves where she is. She is very happy, I know that . . . Heavenly Father has a plan, and this is part of it."
Faylene's mother, Glenna Eaves, said at the funeral, "I know that Doug loved her. I'm so grateful that her mission wasn't complete until she got her family back together."
Doug Grant spoke near the end of the service.
"These last two months have been the most incredible months of my life," he said, his voice breaking. "It's been absolutely like living with an angel."
All remained outwardly friendly for a while after Faylene was buried.
But as months passed, some members of the Eaves family began to seriously question the circumstances of her death, and the fall a few days before that in Utah.
"As we got back to Earth, my gosh, it hit all of us. I mean, we all had questions," Glenna Eaves told Detective Sy Ray in early 2002.
Her husband, Doug Eaves, added in the same interview, "We know as sure as the world that [remarriage with Faylene] was more than he could stand. I'm sure it just turned into a hatred."
Unquestionably, the signal event that forever turned the Eaves family against Doug Grant was his marriage to ex-girlfriend Hilary DeWitt, exactly one month after Faylene's funeral.
Everyone in Faylene's immediate family knew Hilary, a striking and sweet-natured young woman.
In October 2000, after Faylene filed for divorce from Doug, her brother Douger had hired Hilary as a receptionist at Grant's company, Optimal Health Systems.
