When Calgary resident Lee Antoni returned home after spending the weekend with his mother in Saskatchewan, he had no way of knowing just how drastically his life was about to change. On Oct. 26, 2015, Lee found his wife, Amanda, lying dead on the floor of the couple’s basement. “This was the bloodiest scene I’d ever walked in on,” says Sgt. Trent Petersen of the Calgary Police Service, one of the first officers who responded to Lee’s 911 call. “Quite frankly, it was gruesome.”
Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4, Episode 2, “Body in the Basement” explores the unanswered questions surrounding Amanda’s death. A number of strange details immediately piqued detectives’ interest as they examined the crime scene: Lee found Amanda’s body after telling investigators he’d spent a weekend away, though he claimed it was unusual for them to spend a weekend apart. As Amanda’s husband, suspicion immediately fell on him. But when investigators realized they could definitively place him in a different province at the time his wife most likely died, what exactly happened to Amanda became an even greater mystery.
Lee Antoni and Amanda Antoni.
Did an intruder enter the home and attack her without leaving any evidence of their presence? Did her migraines play a role? Was Amanda’s death the result of a freak accident? While her friends and family continue to mourn her loss, they hope that someone can help shed some light on what happened that horrible weekend.
Raised by a pair of loving foster parents and two doting older brothers, Amanda Antoni is remembered as an animal lover and playful prankster with a kind heart. She met Lee in her 20s, and the two got married in 2009. Lee says they were inseparable — the weekend of her death was one of the rare times they were apart. Like many couples, Amanda and Lee had their problems. At one point, Amanda’s brothers report, Amanda was the breadwinner, running a housecleaning business while Lee struggled to hold down a job.
In the days leading up to Amanda’s death, she had planned to join her husband on his trip to Saskatchewan. But she was prone to migraines, and on the day of departure she made a last-minute decision to stay home with their dog, Ruby. Amanda and Lee remained in close contact throughout Friday and Saturday, and that Saturday evening, around 7 p.m., they had what would turn out to be their last conversation over the phone. After Amanda told Lee that her headaches were subsiding, Lee recalls that Ruby began to bark and yelp, and Amanda attempted to calm her down. Then he heard a crunching sound and the phone cut out. When he tried to call her back, the call went directly to voicemail. His texts went unanswered as well. Though he didn’t hear from her again, he assumed there was a reasonable explanation for the abrupt end to the call and that she was simply busy with other things.
Castleridge, the neighborhood where the Antonis lived, had a statistically higher level of crime, and transients had at times their backyard to collect recyclables. While investigating the case, police heard from Amanda’s neighbors, who reported that around the time Lee was on the phone with Amanda, they heard a loud baring coming from the Antoni home followed by the sound of yelling. Another resident reported seeing someone running away from the area through a neighbor’s backyard. There were no signs of forced entry, so if there was an intruder, they either entered the house with a key or went through the back door. Lee couldn’t recall if the door was locked or not when he arrived home and let the dog out.
Amanda’s autopsy revealed that blunt force trauma caused Amanda to bleed to death. Despite numerous bruises and a broken right orbital bone, analysis showed that only her DNA was found at the scene. As intruder theories began to seem more unlikely, investigators had to consider the possibility that Amanda’s death resulted from a tragic accident.
Her family, however, doubts this theory. For those who loved Amanda, there are too many details that can’t be explained away by the idea that she simply fell down the stairs: an overturned chair in the dining room, a broken piggy bank on the ledge (whose fragments were found embedded into her forehead), and the odd fact that the family dog did not go down into the basement to be with her for almost 48 hours.
Perhaps most bewilderingly, detectives know that Amanda stood up at some point after her fall. Her bloody footprints were found at the base of the stairs, but for some reason, she didn’t climb them.
See more bonus material for “Body in the Basement” below, including additional evidence and blood pattern analysis from the crime scene.
Watch “Body in the Basement?” here.
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