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[Music] [Music] It's like ghosts. You just see the ghosts of them [Music] everywhere. If you close your eyes, can
00:00:38
you still see it? All of [Music] it. The focus of the case is Michelle Renee. She was living with her uh her
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daughter Bria. They were living um in a kind of a secluded house. Does it feel like 22 years?
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Sometimes it does. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it feels like it was last week. I asked the FBI
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to take Michelle back to the house to help reconstruct probably the most traumatic night of her life.
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We came in the door. I put the groceries away. Went in the kitchen. Michelle was a single mom. She was a
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bank manager, somebody who worked hard to gain a job of position of trust and respect. It had been such a long day and
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I was just excited to be home with Bria. We were on the couch. It was just the two of us. I was sitting here. She was
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right beside me and we were playing Game Boy. A group of individuals put Michelle
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under surveillance knowing she was a bank manager and they devised a plan and we just heard this huge the the
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sound just the biggest noise from behind us and we I turned to look and just saw
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three people. They were all lined up one right after the other just rushing in, running in the door that like squat
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style and they had their guns and they were all in black and I just screamed super loud. My daughter screamed super
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loud at that point. My daughter took off this way, but two of them came to me, put guns in my face. One guy grabbed me
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back of my head, forced me down in front of the couch that was right here. They bind her up with duct tape. They put her
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seven-year-old on the ground and bind her up with duct tape. And uh they tell them that uh if they don't cooperate,
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they're going to be killed. They're going to be shot. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. They let me turn around and see my
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daughter laying face down on the floor right here by the door. Um face down with her hands tied and her feet tied.
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Um, right there on the ground, I heard my daughter say, "Are you gonna kill my mommy?" And are you going to kill me?
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And they said, "No, not if your mommy does everything that we tell her to do." They said, "You're going to rob the bank
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for us or we will kill you and your daughter will be first. [Music] [Music] The only monsters that had ever scared
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Michelle Rene's 7-year-old daughter, Bria, were Makebelie. But on November 20th, 2000, just a day before three
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masked men broke in, she calls me, "Mom, there's somebody outside the window." I
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looked out there. I didn't see anything. I didn't see anybody. I just brushed it
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off. Michelle had chocked it up to her child's imagination, but this time was different. She saw them looking through
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the window. They were there the night before. The same men now held Michelle and Bria
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at gunpoint in the living room. The gunman said they'd been following the 35-year-old bank manager for
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months. It was very much that mind control thing that they were doing that we know everything about you. Michelle
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would recount the events inside the house for investigators. and we're going to be here all night with you to make
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sure you know exactly what you're going to do or you will die. Throughout the night, the ring leader gave specific
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instructions about how he wanted Michelle to rob her own bank the next morning. We're going to go over this
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again. This is what you're going to do. When Brinks gets there, you're going to get Brinks's money. As she huddled with
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Bria on the couch, now duct taped, Michelle could hear him talking to a woman on a two-way radio. Money one to
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money two were that's what they called each other. Yeah. They called each other money one to money two. Money one was
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the ring leader. Around 11. The voice on the walkie-talkie got his attention. Car
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coming up the driveway. The roommates there. It was their roommate Kimbra. And they put the gun right here in her face
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right up her nose and said, "Don't make using use this." I pushed the guy's hand
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out of her face and said, "Don't do this. don't hurt her. And he just pointed it right at me and said, "Don't
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ever touch me again." Michelle realized this might be the last night she ever spent with her daughter. It was almost
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morning. I just rubbed her hair so she could try to get some sleep. Wondering if that was going to be the
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last time I was going to get to touch her hair and see her sleep was pretty tough.
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In the morning, the nightmare would continue. It was like 6:00 a.m. He said, "Get up.
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It's time to get ready for work." I got dressed and started doing my hair when he came in and stopped
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me and said, "We need to put the dynamite on you now." Michelle, her roommate Kimbra, and Bria would all be
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strapped with dynamite. Then, Money One showed Michelle what looked like a doorbell. This is a detonation device.
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One false move, I push this button. You will disintegrate. Your daughter will go
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first. and they sat me right here and said, "Now we're going to take your daughter."
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The gunman put Bria in her bedroom closet. I'm just telling her I'd be right back. That everything's going to be
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fine. Be brave, Mommy. That was the last thing she said when before I walked out to go
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to the bank. Did you feel brave? No. As two of the gunmen stayed in the house, Money One handed Michelle a briefcase
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stuffed with a duffel bag before he crouched in the back of her Jeep. With dynamite on her back and a gun to her
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side, she drove to work. So, you pull up into your spot. What does he tell you before you get out of the car? Don't
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Don't this up. And the Brinks truck came at 8:50. I believe right around 8:50 was
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the drop right over here. That's when Michelle grabbed her briefcase and headed to the vault. I brought my teller
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in the vault with me and said, "I'm getting ready to clear out this vault or my daughter and I are going to die. This
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is what's happened all night." And you whispered to her, "I have dynamite on my back." Yeah. I whispered I pulled my
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shirt up. And then you just opened up the duffel bag and started shoveling in money. I did. My heart was racing. My Am
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I fast enough? Michelle's colleagues would alert the authorities, but not before she walked out with $360,000.
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Just get to the Jeep, hurl it in the Jeep, and go and just do what's next. Money one directed Michelle to get out a
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few blocks later and that I would find my Jeep down the street. She found her car and raced home. I don't know if
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Bria's going to be there. I don't know if she's going to be alive when I get there. And I went to open the door and I
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was just screaming and hello, hello. It was eerily silent [Music] and I just heard Bria and I remember
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screaming, "We're back here. We're back here." Bria was still in the closet right where Michelle left her. What was
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that like to hear and see her? Oh my gosh. She was alive. I did it. We did it. We didn't die.
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probably the happiest moment of my life. But then I could still see the panic on
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her face. The dynamite's still on me. Before leaving, the gunman had ripped the dynamite off of Kimbra and Bria, so
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they cut it off of Michelle's back before running to the nearest neighbor. I opened the gates, went down the hill
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real fast, helped them up to the house. Rick Brown lived up a steep hill. I called 911 right away.
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Sheriff, can I help you? Yes. Uh, some neighbors of ours were held hostage. I need somebody out here right away. Soon
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the place was crawling with investigators from the FBI, San Diego Sheriff's Department, and the bomb
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squad. This is the dynamite that was taken off of um Michelle. San Diego prosecutor Tom
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Manning would lead the task force investigating the case. They quickly figured out the dynamite was fake.
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They realize that it actually is two painted dowels or broomstick handles. But as you can see from a distance in
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the lighting, plus it's on your back with the stress of the situation, you're not going to take a chance that it isn't
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real. But during the very real 14 hours they were held hostage. Michelle had held on to any detail that might help
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identify the attackers. Remembering details is just sort of this part of my DNA about people. That was
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kind of my superpower. Details like money one's eyes. And when I turned the light on to go to the bathroom and I saw
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his eyes in there, I I said that those eyes were at my desk. Those eyes were at my desk today. Oh my god. Michelle says
00:11:03
it was a man with whom she'd had an odd encounter at the bank hours before being
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taken hostage. and he sat at my desk for a really long time asking sort of the same questions
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over and over. And then a woman walked in and said, "Chris, we need to get going." And they got up and left. The
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man had handed Michelle his business card. And the name on the business card was Christopher Butler.
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[Music] After hours of police questioning, Michelle and Bria were sent to a hotel. Michelle called her brother Dave.
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It didn't sound like her. It was someone, you know, heavily traumatized. Dave, who lived 3 hours away, rushed to
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his sister's aid. What I saw when I opened that door, it scared the daylights out of me. Are you
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okay? And she would shake. How about Bria? Same thing. In the days ahead, Michelle struggled to
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hold it together for her daughter. She was the strongest person for me. While investigators wanted
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answers, they grilled her about that odd encounter with Christopher Butler. Why was he in the bank? What was he
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saying he was there for? He came in to say that he was a potential client and that he wanted to talk about
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investments. Before Butler handed Michelle his business card, a woman he introduced as Lisa came in and whisked
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him away. Hey Chris, we need to go. It was the same voice Michelle says she heard later that night on the
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walkie-talkie. I kept saying it over and over. Check my desk. Check my desk. Get that card. I
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know that it's them. Through that card, they started the investigation. The FBI soon discovered Butler was a
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convicted felon with a history of robbing banks. They figured out where he was staying and then uh the team that I
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work with set up surveillance. Butler and his fianceé, Lisa Ramirez, lived in a house just a few miles from
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the bank. Some of the people in the house were telling the police who was there when they planned it. Within days,
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detectives identified the two other men. Christopher Huggin. There was a big guy maybe maybe 6'4.
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He's gang ties and the man who' held a gun to little Bria, a gang member called Bones. Real name Robert Ortiz. Ortiz was
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a connection who got the guns. On December 1st, they decided to arrest Butler and Ramirez during a traffic
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stop. In the glove compartment was a uh weapon. It's a It's actually a BB gun. If you look at that in a stressful
00:14:09
situation that looks as real as it can get. What' they find when they pump the trunk? Plethora of evidence. All this
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all this. They found the uh the black bag that Michelle described the money being carried in. Uh several pairs of
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black gloves. and um a homemade ski mask. Oh yeah, look at the eye holes there. Yeah, but they clearly cut
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themselves. Michelle's credit cards were all found in the uh trunk of the vehicle. And then of course the money
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straps from the bank. Also in the trunk, that doorbell detonator. And there was even more at
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the house. They found all the ingredients uh to make the fake bomb. There were broom handles which were cut
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up into small dowels which actually were used in making the the fake dynamite. They also recovered the the actual spray
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cans. Ramirez's uh fingerprint was on one of those cans. It was crazy. I've never seen that much physical evidence
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left at a crime scene. They thought they'd gotten away with it. One thing investigators didn't find on Butler and
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Ramirez, any of the bank's $360,000. But after arresting Huggin that same day, they did recover 93,000
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of the cash that he'd stashed away. Huggin confessed and said that he'd already spent several grand on a trip to
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Vegas. The fourth suspect, Robert Ortiz, was on the lamb. When authorities arrested him three months later in
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Wisconsin, Ortiz still had $32,000 of the bank's money and gave a full confession. Did Huggin and Ortiz's
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confessions corroborate each other? Yes, very much so. So, did Huggin and Ortiz's
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confessions corroborate what Michelle had told investigators? Yes. Almost identical. Butler denied everything,
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even when confronted with direct evidence, his thumbrint on the fake dynamite sticks. And we got fingerprints
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that are yours that went to the bank robber. find out because I wasn't involved in anybody. He tried to protect
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Lisa. Lisa wouldn't have been involved with that. But Lisa was about to start talking. She admitted she was the female
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voice on the walkie-talkie. She even took credit for the idea to use fake dynamite and kidnap the bank
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manager. out of his idea. That was about eight months ago. Jokingly, mine. Lisa said they'd split the money three
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ways, but that her and Butler's share, more than $100,000, had been stolen. And to
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everyone's surprise, she said Michelle was in on the plot. for the reason that they had told me
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that the show lady that's how they know walked out of that um thinking okay Lisa's Lisa is the mastermind behind all
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this and um is it possible Michelle's involved Manning says ultimately he knew Michelle was innocent the first time I
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interviewed her she had Bria with her and I I I saw that bond and relationship and when she left I went she's not
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involved in this but that wouldn't be enough in court. San Diego County Sheriff's detectives Rudy Zamora, Dale
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Martin, and Randy Demurs would have to rule Michelle out as a suspect. Every time we pushed a button, she would
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react in a way a true victim should. They recreated the dynamite packs and strapped them on Kimbra, Michelle, and
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Bria. She was very upset and Michelle was emotional when asked to revisit the horrific details of the kidnapping. And
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then they I had to put her in there and they shut the shut the closet. She was shaken up.
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I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. When Michelle did those reenactments, were her story,
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Kimbra's story, and Bria's story consistent? Yes, completely consistent. In fact, investigators couldn't find any
00:18:33
evidence Michelle was involved. Still, they worried. She was not our normal victim. As they took a deep dive into
00:18:42
Michelle's life, what did they find out about Michelle's past? She didn't hide anything, including the fact that for
00:18:48
years she had worked as a stripper. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed by any of that. Michelle says it was one of the
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choices she had to make for survival at a young age. I ran away at 15. I worked really, really hard to get to where I
00:19:06
was. With no high school diploma, she had climbed the corporate ladder all the way to regional vice president before
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taking the bank manager job to be home more with Bria. And while you were working at the bank, you were still
00:19:19
dancing, still stripping for a while. I was for a while. The money was really great.
00:19:25
But more worrisome were things that went directly to Michelle's credibility. She
00:19:30
falsified resumes, claimed she had various experience, various education, which she didn't have. Bounced a check,
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filed for bankruptcy. Right. That doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. And if you're a defense attorney, you're
00:19:43
licking your chops. Oh, the best verdict I ever got in my life. By spring of 2001, the suspects
00:20:00
were in custody awaiting trial for kidnapping and bank robbery charges. But Michelle and Bria were still reeling
00:20:08
from that night of terror. [Music] I could still hear them. I could still hear the the sounds. I couldn't get it
00:20:18
to turn off. I just wanted to hide. I thought they were going to find us. They were going to kill us still.
00:20:27
In June, Michelle decided to move Bria to Alaska to live with her grandmother. I was going to fly her up there and get
00:20:36
her to safety. I was going to figure out what to do from there. After a few days,
00:20:40
Michelle says she had an epiphany to go back to San Diego and get rid of everything I could possibly get rid of
00:20:49
and drive back to Alaska with a dog. Come here. Some cash. Can do this on a budget. And a
00:20:58
camcorder. Today is July the 6th. She embarked on a 9-day drive. On my way, baby doll. To the last frontier.
00:21:08
You had a deadline. I had a deadline. Bria's birthday was in 9 days, and I promised her I'd be back before her
00:21:15
birthday party. That's when Michelle and Bria say they began to heal. Did you feel safe in
00:21:24
Alaska? Safer. I could be a kid again. Happy birthday to you. By the time they returned to San Diego a year later for
00:21:34
the trial, Michelle says she was ready. There was so much evidence. There was no
00:21:41
way I thought that this trial was going to be anything but slam dunk. Butler and
00:21:48
Ramirez would be tried first. When her case came across your desk, what did you think at first?
00:21:55
She's guilty. You thought she's guilty? Well, yeah. Herb Weston, who represented
00:22:01
Lisa Ramirez, had a problem. His client had confessed on camera. There was a female voters that came all at once a
00:22:10
lot of times. If they play that tape, saying that she wasn't involved would have been
00:22:17
difficult. Weston proposed a plea deal, hoping to save Ramirez from a potential life sentence, but the prosecution
00:22:24
turned him down. We thought we would definitely get state the key statements in that she was involved. But since
00:22:32
Ramirez had also implicated Butler, the judge ruled her entire statement inadmissible.
00:22:40
We now can at least argue to the jury that she wasn't involved. without her confession. The case against Ramirez
00:22:50
relied almost entirely on Michelle. A fact Manning was keenly aware of during his opening statement to
00:22:58
the jury on June 3rd, 2002. You told the jury that this case was about credibility. Right. Michelle's uh
00:23:07
background was was going to be an issue. I knew there were issues, but I believed
00:23:11
her. And you thought the jury would believe her, right? but not if the defense had its way. What was your
00:23:18
strategy going into trial? My strategy was to beat the hell out of the victim and show all these inconsistencies that
00:23:28
the victim is saying. It got very confrontational. I was really really off. That played
00:23:34
right into Weston's hand. Angry witnesses don't come across as credible. I was treated like I was the criminal.
00:23:43
During his cross-examination, Weston implied Michelle was lying about recognizing Lisa Ramirez's voice on the
00:23:50
walkie-talkie. Wait a minute, ma'am. I've looked at all this stuff. Isn't this the first time
00:23:55
you've said that? In fact, he pointed out it wasn't in any of the FBI reports. But Michelle insists she told
00:24:04
them. I did. I 100% did. And Manning says she identified Lisa's voice to him before taking the stand. Does it bother
00:24:13
you that Lisa actually admitted that that was her voice on the walkie-talkie? The fact is it was Lisa. But that's not
00:24:20
the issue for me. It made a great opening to attack her credibility. Weston then grilled Michelle about bait
00:24:29
money. The traceable bills banks keep in their vaults to trap bank robbers. You didn't take the bait money. Did not take
00:24:36
the debate money. Why not? They said no funny money. You say that's suspicious that she must have been in on it.
00:24:42
Correct. Maybe worst of all for Michelle Weston question her maternal instincts.
00:24:50
Would a mother run to a place where her daughter was? If she believes that I have a bomb on my back? She wasn't sure
00:24:59
whether her daughter was dead or alive. Don't you think it's possible that she wasn't thinking straight? Sure. But also
00:25:05
what could be true is she knew there wasn't a bomb and so she didn't have to worry about it.
00:25:12
Did you feel like you were on trial? I 100% felt like I was on trial. I would be sitting in the front row and all I
00:25:18
could think about was it's going to take me maybe 6 seconds to get from this point to the offender. That is how I
00:25:26
rate I was day after day listening to this listening to this. Is it fair to beat up the victim? Absolutely. While
00:25:33
Weston hammered on every decision Michelle made that day, the attorney representing Butler went after
00:25:40
everything else. What was the worst thing they asked you about my sex life? They were trying to paint me as somebody
00:25:47
that was irresponsible, a selfish, terrible mother that would do anything for money.
00:25:55
And they picked apart Michelle's finances. She's in uh financial uh distress and that could be the motive.
00:26:03
Isn't it kind of odd that we're talking about motive when we're talking about a victim? It is. The defense in the case
00:26:09
was to uh make Michelle a uh uh a culprit here. After Michelle's grueling three-day testimony, it was Christopher
00:26:18
Butler's turn. He protected Lisa on the stand, claiming Michelle was the mastermind and
00:26:26
that they'd had an affair. I was shocked. It's almost laughable. What was his story about how the two of you met?
00:26:34
From what I understand, we met in a grocery store and that I recruited him. Butler claimed that he'd gone to
00:26:40
Michelle's house that night with Huggin and Ortiz. He said that in the early morning hours while smoking pot,
00:26:47
Michelle brought up the bank robbery idea again and decided they should do it that morning. His evidence of this, his
00:26:54
proof of this, zero. If any of this were true, he would have thrown Michelle down
00:26:58
in a heartbeat in his interview. The jury deliberated for 5 days before finding Butler guilty of the bank
00:27:06
robbery and Bria and Kimbra's kidnapping, but they hung 9 to3 on the charges of kidnapping Michelle. When we
00:27:15
talked to the jurors, you know, we discovered it was one juror who completely believed Butler and the other
00:27:20
two jurors were unsure. And they found Lisa Ramirez not guilty on all counts. Oh, the best verdict I ever got in my
00:27:30
life. Mind-boggling. The fact that it was her idea to do this to a mother and a child and laughing and proud of it.
00:27:39
How involved do you think she was in this? Very involved. The investigators kept saying she she was the brains of
00:27:44
the outfit. So the brains of the outfit walked, right? The second trial would go very
00:27:51
differently with Huggin and Ortiz easily convicted. In so many of uh the stories
00:27:57
that we tell, the ending is the conviction. But in your case, in a lot of ways, that's just the beginning.
00:28:19
All righty. Is it working? Yes. If you close your eyes, can you still see it? Okay.
00:28:27
All of it. I can still see all of it. Even though the men who had terrorized them were now serving multiple life
00:28:37
sentences, Michelle and Bria would never be the same. There's aspects of that night that are
00:28:44
going to be with me for the rest of my life. They were treated for post-traumatic
00:28:49
stress disorder for over two years. They had their guns. Michelle says dealing with the breakin led to a
00:28:57
breakthrough. It was two choices. Call them monsters and stay angry and blame everything of my life on them. Or I can
00:29:06
take this other road. The best thing I could do for Bria is to be an example. Enjoy the book. Michelle wrote a book
00:29:13
action which was made into a TV movie and she and Bria went on speaking tours to discuss their experience with trauma.
00:29:22
A lot of people coming out of this would want to just forget about it, put it behind them. But you and your mom talked
00:29:28
openly about it. Yes. And I think it was the best decision for us. We're speaking
00:29:33
out about our experience. I was showing people that it's not always the end all be all when something bad happens to
00:29:41
you. You can come out of it stronger. 2. And by 2011, she really turned the corner and started enjoying her life
00:29:50
again. The girl who had hidden from everything was a high school senior and competitive cheerleader. She loved it.
00:29:59
It was her absolute passion. Yeah. You're thriving. You're living the dream. You said you dreamed of this. You
00:30:06
were living the dream. I was. Then suddenly senior year in December, I started feeling a little
00:30:16
off. I was dropping things. Showed up at my work at 6:00 dragging her leg going,
00:30:22
"Mommy, something's really wrong. Something's wrong. I don't know what's happening." I said, "Mom, I'm really
00:30:26
scared." They had no idea Bria was in for the fight of her life. And we rushed her to
00:30:34
the hospital and they started pricking her leg and she couldn't feel it and her heart rate started going crazy. Oh my
00:30:44
gosh. By 8:00 p.m. that night, I was paralyzed on my left side. Couldn't talk, couldn't
00:30:50
swallow, blind in my left eye. We found abnormalities in the brain is all they could tell me that night. It almost
00:30:58
sounds like there's that same feeling of helplessness that you had the night that
00:31:02
you were held hostage completely. The next morning, Bria was diagnosed with an acute onset of multiple
00:31:09
scerosis, an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks its own
00:31:15
tissues. Based on the scans, she has tumactive MS, which is not only rare in and of itself, but people Bria's age at
00:31:23
18 rarely get MS. Bria says she was told she might never walk or talk again. Just like that. Just
00:31:31
like that. One, two, three, go. My life just ended again. There you go. I was 18 trying to go off to college, do
00:31:41
cheer in college, and that was never going to happen for me. So much of your healing had been talking, and now you
00:31:50
couldn't talk. No, I couldn't talk. What is it? and push. I couldn't feed myself
00:31:57
anymore. She had to relearn all of that. Up good. But it was as if they'd been training for this for years.
00:32:05
Do you think in some way what happened to you when you were seven prepared you for battling MS? Yes. I think it made me
00:32:15
strong enough to go through what I went through with MS. It was here we go again. Here we go again.
00:32:23
Bria would spend six weeks in the hospital, two to three times a day of physical therapy, occupational
00:32:31
therapies, speech therapy. After she could talk again, she turned to me and said, "Kidnapping was a piece
00:32:39
of cake compared to this. Do it again." And just as with the kidnapping, Bria wanted to inspire
00:32:48
others. She wrote her college essay from her hospital room, from her wheelchair.
00:32:53
It is my hope that my college experience and said, "I'm going to college. I'm going to be the first person in my
00:33:00
family to graduate college no matter what. I now know that there is no time to waste. Life can change so suddenly."
00:33:08
She chronicled her journey on her Facebook page. Bria, what? I love you. She fought tooth and nail every single
00:33:18
day for every single step she took. She walked out of the hospital. This time it
00:33:24
was Michelle doing the cheerleading. Pray for us. The rehab started in the hospital, but the real rehab was
00:33:34
Michelle, constantly on her. We're going to do this. It's okay. Good job. We were
00:33:40
a total team. We just ended up going into full gear. We lived in a house with stairs. Good. That was really good. She
00:33:47
couldn't do stairs anymore. So, once again, you're out of a home that you've been living in. Yeah. And I
00:33:53
had to become her full-time caregiver for about a year and a half, two years and rebuilding our life again despite
00:34:02
the odds. Three, four, five. Oh, she made it to college. She relapsed three times her first year in college and had
00:34:10
to come home, but she did it. She follows in her mom's footsteps, teaching her how to get her foot to stay on the
00:34:17
line. I with the tenacity and the never give up philosophy that they have. Lift your knee up. Ready? Go. Bria is walking
00:34:25
talking proof. So they told you you would never walk again? Yeah. I would never walk again, never see again, never
00:34:32
anything like that. And I would say I beat the odds yet again. Yes. Exactly. But 20 years
00:34:41
after their world first came crashing down, they'd be faced with the unimaginable once
00:34:47
again. Christopher Butler could be released. [Music] It's been over 20 years. What stands out about this case
00:35:11
in hindsight? The victims. From the very beginning, the case hit close to home for prosecutor Tom
00:35:21
Manning. the fact that there was a a little girl. My daughter was the same age as Bria when this happened. Nearly
00:35:29
20 years later, in June 2020, Christopher Butler was up for parole. He's the one who lied about me.
00:35:39
Manning made sure he was at the hearing. And you had a plan going in. I did. He saw a chance to set the record straight
00:35:48
by asking Butler about the story he'd told on the stand. I told Michelle if I felt it was right, I was going to go for
00:35:56
it. What'd you think about that? Go for it. Ask away. Even though that's risky. It's a little risky. This guy could go
00:36:05
to the grave with these lies. The risk paid off. Butler recanted his whole story, admitting he and Michelle never
00:36:14
had a relationship. How did that feel to hear that? It's about time. I wanted everybody who
00:36:23
ever doubted me to read this parole transcript. I want to blast it all over the internet that there was never ever a
00:36:32
chance that I would ever ever have been involved in anything like this ever. Bria says it's a bittersweet victory for
00:36:41
her mom. Feels good, but it's a little too late. You can search my mom's name and it can come up on the internet. You
00:36:49
can't take that back. Why is it taken so long to come clean? And it's probably because he had an opportunity to be
00:36:58
free. Even though Butler was unequivocal that Michelle was not involved, he still
00:37:04
hasn't really taken responsibility. He blamed his old flame, Lisa Ramirez. But Butler said he was sorry
00:37:14
for what he put his victims through and even said he'd read Michelle's book more
00:37:19
than once. He said, "Some of the passages in your book really got to him." Yeah. On the road trip to Alaska,
00:37:26
I really started to think about what it would be like to try to just understand.
00:37:33
Michelle says that's when she started to wonder about the people behind the masks. This is someone's son. This is
00:37:43
someone's brother. This is someone's grandson. What happened to them in their life that got them to the point where
00:37:50
they thought the only option was to attack a mother and her daughter? Do you accept Christopher Butler's apology?
00:37:58
I do. Yeah. A thousand%. I appreciate him finally being honest after all this time. I hope he keeps digging deeper.
00:38:08
Yeah, I forgave him a long time ago and I accept his apology. But neither Bria nor Michelle want
00:38:15
Butler released. He's already been denied parole twice. The irony isn't lost on Dave. All
00:38:22
he really did is free everybody else. He's held hostage with his life in a very weird way.
00:38:31
I could breathe. I could exhale finally after all this time. While they don't believe Butler has changed his ways,
00:38:41
they feel very differently about the other two men who held them hostage. They confessed. They take accountability
00:38:50
for what they did. And that's a big thing. Are you actually rooting for these guys to succeed at this point?
00:38:57
Yes. They were younger than what I am now. If they are doing the work, I want nothing but the best for them.
00:39:05
Especially Robert Ortiz. Robert Ortiz. At the sentencing, Robert Ortiz is the only one that turned around and looked
00:39:12
at me and said, "I'm sorry." He mouthed it. They wrote to Ortiz back in 2011 and received a reply 9 years later.
00:39:24
Out of respect for him, I'm not going to say everything that's in the letter. I can say that it's beautiful. It's
00:39:33
heartfelt. And I can't wait to see where that leads. This is the young man who held a
00:39:40
gun to your daughter's head. Yes. And she spoke at his parole hearing in his favor.
00:39:49
There's my puppy. We're road tripping. In the meantime, Michelle has written a follow-up book. So, we're on our way
00:39:56
about the road trip that changed her point of view. Great morning. Really great morning. It is about healing. Just
00:40:04
called 9 days, which is how long I was on the road to Alaska. It is possible to forgive. I do believe that through this
00:40:14
terrible tragedy, it's possible to see beauty again. that something beautiful was meant to come about.
00:40:23
It has built these people into these incredible human beings. And through it all, they say they
00:40:32
wouldn't change a thing, even the kidnapping. So, if you look back at the last 20
00:40:40
years, what has this journey been about? raising a remarkable daughter. It's the
00:40:48
best thing I've ever done in my life is be her mom. It seems like both of you look at
00:40:54
this at least a tiny bit as a gift. Mhm. Yeah. I wouldn't change it. It gave us a chance to build the bond that we
00:41:06
have today and it's just gotten stronger. Yeah. [Music] [Music] I can only describe it as evil,
00:41:33
something horrible. From 48 hours, this is trained to kill the dog trainer, the ays, and the bodyguard. He couldn't
00:41:41
control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or
00:41:48
wherever you get your podcasts.