Peter Van Sant and 48 Hours, one of television's most popular true-crime series, will investigate the murder of Vanessa Mintz in an episode titled “The Ultimatum” at 10 p.m. (eastern time) Saturday on CBS.

A beloved mother, wife and businesswoman, 53-year-old Mintz was found shot to death at her family-owned Saluda Mountain Lodge on the morning of Feb. 19, 2011. Nearly $200 was missing from the cash drawer.

The murder and robbery left Mintz's family stunned and a town fearing a killer was on the loose, according to a CBS News press release on the upcoming show. The law enforcement investigation into what happened to Mintz would expose a hidden secret, and her two daughters, Jessica Freeman and Andrea Little Gray, would emerge as powerful advocates for their mother.

“This was certainly a very violent death,” Steve Modlin, a special agent with the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation says in the release. “There was no forced entry.”

Freeman arrived at the lodge on the morning of Feb. 19, 2011 to find a grisly scene. The door to the lodge was open. The lights were out. The television was blaring. Mintz was dead, lying on a bed in the back bedroom of the manager's quarters. She'd been shot twice – once in the arm, once in the face.

Travis McGraw, Mintz's husband, a police officer and Air Force Reservist who was also a former firefighter and EMT, said he was 12 miles away visiting his teenage son from a previous marriage when Mintz was killed, according to the release.

“My heart has been ripped out, and it's laying there dead with her,” Freeman says on the upcoming show.

The killer took only $200, but left behind other valuables. According to the release, whoever did the killing got sloppy.

“We worked the crime scene in great detail, and found a piece of crucial evidence that only the killer could have left,'” Modlin tells 48 HOURS.

McGraw told police he had nothing to do with the murder, and willingly turned over his cache of guns to police. However, it was what was found in McGraw's cell phone records – intimate texts to Mary Beth Fisher, who he was secretly dating – that took this case in a very different direction, according to the release.

At first, he told Fisher he wasn't married. But after Fisher found out he was, McGraw said he and his wife were business partners only and no longer together as a couple.

“This was money- and sex-driven,” Gray says on the show. “How disgusting is that to murder someone for?”

Van Sant and the 48 HOURS team piece together Mintz's life and the search for her killer through interviews with her family, McGraw's father, Fisher, Modlin, prosecutor Alex Bass and others.

48 HOURS: “The Ultimatum” is produced by Alec Sirken, Elena DiFiore and Michelle Feuer. Anthony Batson is the senior broadcast producer. Susan Zirinsky is the senior executive producer.

Vanessa M Mcgraw