"48 HOURS" EXPLORES A TALE OF TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH AND HOW A KILLER'S HEART SAVED THE LIFE OF A DYING WOMAN, IN "BROKEN HEARTS"

Saturday, March 14, 10:00 PM

48 HOURS and correspondent Jim Axelrod explore the best and worst of the human experience in an unusual take on the true-crime genre in "Broken Hearts," to be broadcast Saturday, March 14 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

It's a story that begins with a murder-suicide, but ends in triumph - when a team of pioneering doctors and nurses save the life of a dying woman.

The emotional hour is built around the senseless murder of a young woman, Karen Ermert. After shooting Ermert, her killer, Mark Willey, took his own life. But the story didn't end there. Though brain-dead, the killer's heart continued to beat. Dr. Ed Lefrak would use that heart to perform the first heart transplant in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The recipient would become one of the longest-living heart-transplant patients in medical history.

"I've been a writer for almost 50 years, and I've never encountered a story that was such a combination of utter tragedy and happiness," says Gene Weingarten, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist.

Weingarten believed there was no such thing as an ordinary day, and to prove his theory, he picked a random date out of a hat. He came up with Dec. 28, 1986. It turned out to be the day of that historic heart transplant, which saved the life of a dying woman, 20-year-old Eva Baisey. Weingarten would go on to learn that Baisey's new heart came at the terrible cost of Ermert's life.

"Something amazing came out of something horrifying," Weingarten says.

48 HOURS and Axelrod tell this gripping story through interviews with Weingarten, the lead detective, the doctor and nurses, and the history-making heart recipient, Baisey.

"In the perfect narrative, Karen Ermert's heart would've been the one that saved Eva Baisey, but that's not how it happened," Weingarten says. "It was the killer's heart that saved Eva Baisey."

48 HOURS: "Broken Hearts" is produced by Liza Finley and Richard Fetzer. Mike Baluzy, Atticus Brady, Marlon Disla, Greg Kaplan and Diana Modica are the editors. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.

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