Netflix 'Unsolved Mysteries' dives into the death of Canadian woman Amanda Antoni
Antoni's family and the Calgary Police Service are still puzzled by the 2015 case
On Oct. 26, 2015, Lee Antoni entered his home in Calgary, Alta., and found his wife, Amanda Antoni, dead in their basement. Now the Netflix docuseries Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 4 is raising questions about the 31-year-old's death, and if it really was the result of an accidental fall down the stairs.
Throughout the episode titled "Body in the Basement," Amanda's family and Calgary Police Service members present a number of arguments around possible circumstances that led to her death. This includes the analysis of the crime scene and all the pieces of this case that don't necessary seem to fit together.
"There are days when I think, you know, if I ever get to the same place that Amanda went, she’s one of the first people I was to run into," now retired homicide detective, Dave Sweet, says in the series. "What happened to you?”
The episode begins with the audience hearing Lee's 911 call, wailing and struggling to get his words out that his wife is dead.
Amanda had bruises on several parts of her body, with a significant amount of blood present.
"This was the bloodiest scene I have ever walked in on," Sgt. Trent Petersen, who was the first officer at the scene, says in Unsolved Mysteries. "Quite frankly, it was gruesome."
Amanda's husband was the first suspect, but investigators confirmed he had travelled to Saskatchewan to see his mother and was out of the province on the day his wife likely died.
Unsolved Mysteries also evaluates the possibility of an intruder entering the home and killing Amanda, with Lee still uncertain to this day if the back door to the home was locked when he returned from his trip. But interestingly, only Amanda's DNA was found at the scene.
Was there a threat in Amanda Antoni's home when she died?
While that certainly leans towards the likelihood of this being an accident, there are seemingly some elements to that conclusion that don't completely make sense.
Lee recalls being on the phone with Amanda at 7:00 p.m. on Oct. 24 when he heard their dog bark and yelp (a black labrador retriever), and then the line cut out. He didn't hear from his wife again after that, but initially thought her phone died that night and it was charging, and then she was busy with her family the next day.
But if something happened when Amanda was on the phone with Lee, why was the phone found on the main level of the house in the dining room, far away from the stairs to the basement? And why at no point did their dog go downstairs?
Additionally, Amanda's footprints were found at the base of the stairs on the basement level, raising questions about why she never seemed to try to ascend back up.
That leads Sweet to posit in the Unsolved Mysteries that a threat could have still be inside the home, but there hasn't been any evidence of that being the case.
With Amanda's case now "inactive," her family is still hoping that someone may come forward with more information about her death, asking the public to submit tips through Calgary Crime Stoppers or the Unsolved Mysteries site.
