Caught On Camera: Lee Gilley’s mother-in-law has revealed surveillance footage from the moment he all3gedly made his daring 3scape 0vers3as

“They were crazy in love,” a Houston acquaintance says of Lee and Christa Gilley. “It’s so hard to imagine. They were the happiest couple in the world”

It was another busy day at Houston’s Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in the fall of 2024 when Christa Bauer Gilley slipped into a rehab office with fellow physical therapist Kathryn Reeves to take a break and chat about their careers and future plans. “We felt we had hit the ceiling where we were,” says Reeves, 40. “But we both had kids at home and didn’t want to be traveling all over the place.”

Reeves floated the idea of starting a mobile physical therapy practice together. But Christa — who had two toddlers, Madeline and Gannon, and another baby on the way — spoke instead about her dream of returning to South Carolina, where she had grown up.

“She just wanted to be close to family,” Reeves recalls in this week’s PEOPLE magazine.

Lee and Christa Gilley on their wedding day, Jan. 28, 2017.Hyer Photography

Christa never got the chance. Days later, on Oct. 7, 2024, her husband, Lee Gilley, a software consultant, called 911 and told dispatchers his wife had overdosed on drugs and killed herself at the family’s home in Houston’s upscale Heights neighborhood.

Responding officers found Christa, 38, unresponsive, and she was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The investigation soon took a dramatic turn after the Harris County medical examiner ruled that Christa — who hospital staff said had bruising and apparent trauma to the face — had been strangled. She was nine weeks pregnant.

Lee Gilley in court in 2024.Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle/Getty

On Oct. 11, 2024, Gilley, 39, was arrested and subsequently charged with capital murder in the deaths of his wife and their unborn child. Gilley pleaded not guilty and was released on a $1 million bond and required to wear an ankle monitor and surrender his passport, while his children lived with Christa’s family.

Those closest to the couple were shocked that Gilley — who prosecutors claim had sexual relations outside the marriage and posted on social media “seeking a college-aged female for a friends-with-benefits arrangement” — could have attacked his wife.

“They were crazy in love,” says a Houston acquaintance. “It’s so hard to imagine. They were the happiest couple in the world.”

Police outside the Gilleys’ house in Houston.Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle/Getty

Then, on May 5, another shocking development in the case made national headlines. A month before he was set to stand trial, prosecutors say, Gilley cut off his court-ordered ankle monitor and fled to Italy to avoid prosecution. U.S. authorities are now demanding that Gilley be returned to Texas to face justice, but Italy, which abolished capital punishment, may refuse extradition if the death penalty is a possibility.

(Prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek the death penalty.)

Gilley also faces a federal charge of interstate flight to avoid prosecution. According to Tim Ballengee, an attorney who represents Christa’s family, the news of Gilley’s escape was “devastating.”

Says former classmate Allison Kleiner, 40, who studied physical therapy with Christa at the University of Pittsburgh: “The court system in Texas let Christa, her family and her friends down. Lee never should have been allowed to make bail.”

Born in Pittsburgh, Christa was the oldest of four girls and known for making people feel instantly welcome — whether patients, classmates or friends. Her family moved to Ohio and then to South Carolina, where she built close friendships that carried into adulthood and enrolled at Clemson University in 2004.

It was there that she met Gilley. They went on one date and reconnected eight years later. In 2014, after Christa earned her doctorate, they settled in Houston, where she landed a dream job at Memorial Hermann caring for patients awaiting heart and lung transplants.

Lee and Christa Gilley in 2017.Christa Bauer Gilley/Facebook

At the couple’s 2017 wedding, in Charleston, S.C., Gilley’s best man joked that ­Christa — a die-hard Clemson Tigers fan — had taught Gilley about football while deepening his appreciation for family. The couple welcomed their daughter in 2020 and their son two years later. To outsiders they appeared deeply happy. But prosecutors now say there were fractures beneath the surface.

In a pretrial court filing, prosecutors said they intend to present evidence that Gilley had a sexual relationship with a woman in San Diego in 2023. They also claim that months before Christa’s death, he posted on Reddit that he was “bored” in his marriage.

Christa Gilley and children in an Instagram photo.Facebook

Gilley told police that he and his wife argued after he purchased an SUV without Christa’s knowledge on Oct. 7, 2024. Gilley told authorities the couple put their children to bed and went to separate rooms that night before he discovered Christa dead three hours later and called 911. He claimed he performed CPR. But court documents indicate that he also told police Christa was not suicidal and did not use drugs.

Gilley appeared in court in Turin, Italy, on Monday, May 11, and stated that he fled the U.S. “because I was afraid of being killed. [My wife] died, and I was unjustly blamed. I am innocent.”

Lee Gilley’s 2024 mug shot.Harris County Jail

Meanwhile the Harris County District Attorney’s Office says it is coordinating with Italian and U.S. authorities to secure his extradition, and a county judge has moved to forfeit Gilley’s $1 million bond unless he returns. Gilley’s attorney Dick DeGuerin told PEOPLE he planned to argue at trial that Christa’s death was caused by methemoglobinemia, a rare blood disorder that she was diagnosed with in 2023.

Vigil for Christa Gilley in Houston on Oct. 15, 2024.Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle via Getty

Prosecutors would undoubtedly challenge that assertion in court, but with Gilley’s flight to Italy, supporters now worry that Christa’s day for justice may never arrive.

“She was so much more than the ‘pregnant wife,’ ” wrote friend Liza McGilvery on Instagram. “She was a highly successful professional, a professor and mentor, a devoted Christian, a fiercely protective sister and friend, and the apple of her parents’ eyes. She put family first and somehow managed to make balancing all the rest so easy. She is so deeply missed.”