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♪♪ ♪♪ -At first glance, when you come
to this area in Oklahoma, it is very beautiful.
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It's serene. But we have missing people
that are never found. There are homicides
that are never solved.
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There's lots of dark secrets
that live here. My name is Dakota Black. I'm a tracker and detective
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with the Pottawatomie County
Sheriff's Office, and I was brought into the missing persons case
for Makayla Meave.
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And as soon as
we arrived on scene, we started tracking the area
and trying to locate her.
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[ Dog barks in distance ] We had multiple deputies
and detectives in the woods looking for her.
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We were searching every place that we could
potentially think of to try to locate Makayla.
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[ Dog barks ] -I was not looking for an
individual that was breathing. I was looking for
my daughter's body
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and I don't know why. -Sometimes it's hard to
not take cases personal. They tug at your heartstrings
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and this one was one of those. -What was it about this woman
that fueled you this way?
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-Just who she was. -My sister Makayla is
the strongest person I know, has the biggest heart,
is the most caring.
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Wants to take care of everyone
and put everyone before herself. -I love you.
-I love you most.
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-I love you more. -Her main goal in life
was to be around children, to help children,
especially ones in need.
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-Everybody that knew Makayla
had nothing but love for her. We had a huge response
from our community.
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Everybody really
wanted her found. -I don't even know. -We just went out there
looking for her.
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Didn't sleep for days,
didn't eat for days. It was raining, cold --
we were just out there for days.
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-Was there a part of you that say, "There's a chance
we may not find her?" -Yes.
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It seemed day after day, the chances were getting
more slim of finding her alive.
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[ Police radio chatter ] -I just knew
that she was gone. -I can't imagine
how scared she was.
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It's just sad. Sad that it ended
the way it did. It didn't have to end this way.
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I was driven
and I was not going to go home. I was not going to stop
until this case was solved.
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♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The guys at
the sheriff's office call her a cool dude
with long hair
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because they say she's
meaner than any of them... on the gun range
and in the field.
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-That fence that's hanging, I had to go underneath that
into the water. -Her name is
Lieutenant Dakota Black.
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She's a trained tracker
and detective with the Pottawatomie
County Sheriff's Office
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in Shawnee, Oklahoma. -I go out to scenes
when there's manhunts or trying to locate individuals.
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-Her specialty is finding the
missing, whether alive or dead. -I have found them underneath
piles of leaves and trees,
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in abandoned homes, sheds. I've found them pretty much
in any area you can think of.
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-Often by her side,
her partner Deputy Haven, a trained therapy dog. For kids and other
family members
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caught in the crossfire
of tragedy, Haven provides comfort
and consolation -- a consoling presence
she herself would rely on
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in the coming months,
as she embarked on one of the most heart wrenching
cases of her career.
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-This case will stay
with me forever, and it will be one that I always
remember through my whole life
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because of how cruel it was. -The last thing we said
to each other... was, "I love you."
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-Friday, September 15th, 2023 began like most days
for Andria Meave with a 7 a.m. phone call
from her best friend
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and younger sister, Makayla. -I wish I would have known,
I would have said so much more.
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I'm grateful for that. At least I said, "I love you." -The next morning,
Saturday the 16th,
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the phone rang as usual
around 7 a.m. only this time,
it wasn't Makayla. It was Makayla's husband,
Frank Byers.
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-He's hysterical,
crying, screaming. I can barely understand
what he's saying and he says, "Makayla
didn't come home last night."
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He ended up telling me
that Makayla went on a date the Friday night before with
a bald man in a white truck.
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"They left, and she never
came home last night." -At the time,
Makayla and Frank
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were headed for divorce,
says Andria. They were still living
on the same ten-acre property
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in Macomb, Oklahoma,
but in separate homes. So at first,
Andria wasn't worried. -My first thought is,
"She's single.
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I hope she had fun." -But Andria's
mood began to shift when her many calls to Makayla
went to voicemail.
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-By noon, I was worried. 1:00 I was really worried. -Their mother, Barbara Harper,
was also anxious.
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Makayla was supposed to help out at the family restaurant
that afternoon, but she didn't show
and hadn't called.
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Unheard of for Makayla. -And the more
I prayed about it, the more I realized that
something serious had happened.
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-Frank also reported
Makayla missing to the Pottawatomie County
Sheriff's Office that afternoon.
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The deputy on duty,
Dustin Richardson, felt he needed to
put eyes on the ground.
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He got to Macomb around 4 p.m.,
his body cam rolling. -He'd given me
the information over the phone,
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but I just wanted to see
where she was coming from and -- and see more of the details.
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-Frank made a point
of showing the deputy the last Facebook message he said Makayla sent him
after she left,
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assuring him she was, quote,
"fine" and to "back off." -Then he told him the story
about Makayla driving off
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with a bald man
in a white truck. Deputy Richardson then asked
if he could see the house
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where Makayla was
temporarily living. But the shed-like home
was locked, and Frank said
he didn't have a key,
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but he did have something to say
about their relationship. At that point, the deputy
decided to take a quick drive
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to the school where Makayla
worked as a teacher's aide. Maybe she had gone there.
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[ Phone rings ] He called his son,
also a deputy, from the car. -The sensation was
that there is nothing
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about this story
that is really true. -While the deputy
was at the school, friends and family started
showing up at the property,
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including Makayla's mom,
Barbara. -When I first got there,
I didn't even speak to anyone.
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I was on my hands and knees, crawling through brush
out in the pasture. We've got to find
where she's at.
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-This is Deputy Richardson
with his body camera rolling as he returned to the property
late that afternoon.
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Frank had smashed open the lock to Makayla's place
with a hammer. -I looked, and I immediately
saw empty shell casings
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from what appeared
to be .22 caliber. He told me that she sits in
there and shoots out at animals,
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the coyotes and stuff. -By then,
more deputies had arrived. -I had asked him
where she kept that gun
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and he said it was in his house. I had him walk me to his house, and he walked inside
and he pointed at it.
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I had pulled it from
where it was in there... ...and put it in my vehicle. -The gun,
according to the deputy,
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appeared to have been
recently fired. -I made phone calls to, um -- get our criminal
investigation team out there
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because I just -- it was off. There was something that
needed to be looked into more.
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-Investigators ushered
family and friends off the property
and blocked the driveway.
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-I remember walking
back to my car and just screaming at God,
asking him, "Why?"
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♪♪ [ Sobs ] "Why did you do this,
let this happen?" "Just take me. Take me and let us find her
and just take me."
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-The missing persons
investigation was now a possible criminal
investigation... and that's when
the call went out
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to lead Detective
Lieutenant Dakota Black. -We definitely needed to
figure out what was going on.
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♪♪ ♪♪ -As soon as Lieutenant
Dakota Black got the call that Makayla Meave was missing,
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she jumped in her vehicle
and sped to Macomb. What was your
immediate mission? -To locate Makayla.
We -- We needed to locate her.
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We didn't know where she was. -It was 1366?
-Yeah. -Detective Black
and her partner on the case,
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Detective Marcus May,
now the undersheriff, put out a BOLO alert --
Be On the Lookout.
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-It was, "Be on the lookout
for a white male with a beard, bald head,
driving a white truck."
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We wanted all of
the local law enforcement and surrounding agencies aware that we do have a situation
developing over here.
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-The tips from this rural area where everyone seems to know
everybody, came pouring in.
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-Every white pickup truck
with tinted windows was getting called
into the sheriff's office.
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-None of the sightings
panned out, but the search took
on a life of its own. -Fliers were posted everywhere.
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Social media ads
were everywhere. -Makayla Meave was
beloved by everybody. They were demanding
every resource possible
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to go find Makayla. -And Dakota, this was a woman
with enormous heart, right? -Absolutely.
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She loved her family.
She loved her friends. She loved children. -Makayla fell in love
with children
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when she herself
was still a child. Her mom, Barbara, ran a daycare. -We weren't just a daycare,
we were the family.
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And she loved those kids,
especially the babies. -Sadly, Makayla was unable
to have children of her own,
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but that didn't stop her. In her 20s,
Makayla fostered and would eventually
adopt these two kids,
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a brother and sister. -She dropped what she was
doing, went to -- and took classes,
got certified to make sure
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that she could give
those kids a home. She did. -Around that time,
an old high school classmate
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named Frank Byers contacted her out of the blue
through Facebook. Frank, who was divorced,
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had primary custody
of four young daughters. -Frank was telling her a story
that the current girlfriend
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he was living with was
abusing his four daughters. So my sister took him
and all four girls in
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and just started basically
taking care of them. -She felt like the kids needed
her and she sure needed them.
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Probably the happiest
I'd seen her in a long time,
with those girls. -Frank and Makayla
got married in 2022.
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They built their lives together
in Macomb, population 24. -It's just country.
It's 100% country.
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The kids are 100% country. -Makayla was going to college
to get her teaching degree
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while working at
the local elementary school. -And she would stand up
for the kids and --
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and if she saw a child
that was dirty or wasn't taken care of, she would take it
to the principal
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and, you know,
bring awareness to it. -I think that was
her biggest thing in life,
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was to help little innocent kids
that needed adult's help. She always felt
responsible to do that.
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-County wide,
dozens of people turned out in the cold and pouring rain
to slog through mud
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and tick-infested woods in
search of their beloved teacher. But one person at the heart
of this mystery
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conspicuously appeared
not to search -- Makayla's husband, Frank Byers. -He never participated
in a single search.
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He never volunteered to go out
with any of the search parties, to go out and try
to find Makayla.
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-It wasn't like,
"Oh my God, my wife is missing." He never seemed like,
concerned about that,
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he seemed more concerned
about himself. -What were you noticing
about Frank Byers?
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-The lack of any human emotion. I mean, he did not seem scared, he just wanted to know
what we knew.
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He just --
he didn't seem human at all. -Investigators were already
zeroing in on Frank.
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-We strongly suspected Frank. -Three days after Makayla
was reported missing, Frank Byers agreed to be
questioned by Detective Black
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at the sheriff's office. The interview was audio only. The detective tried
to win his trust
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by playing the good cop. She pressed him, but not enough
to make him stop talking.
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After answering questions
for 2.5 hours, Detective Black let him go home. The search for
Makayla continued.
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Barbara remembers
crawling through brush wearing snake protectors when
she says she had a premonition.
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-I heard Makayla tell me,
"Mama, I'm in a tinhorn." I said, "Oh my God, she just
told me she's in a tinhorn."
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[ Sniffles ] -Barbara frantically
started looking for tinhorns, pipes or culverts used
to divert water under roads,
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but there was no sign
of Makayla. Then came the call to 911,
on day five, that would prove her
mother's intuition was right.
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♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Insects chirping ] ♪♪ -The chatter of locusts
permeated the air, an eerie sense of foreboding.
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Makayla Meave had been
missing for five days. -I got a phone call
from my friend
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and she said,
"I need you to sit down." And she said, "They found
someone and it's a female."
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And I'm like,
"Is she dead or alive?" -Earlier that day,
a cousin and her friend
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had been out searching about
half a mile from Makayla's house when they were stopped
in their tracks
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by a strong, sickening odor. The friend followed
the intense smell down a ditch to a tinhorn.
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He saw something sticking out. It was a hand. ♪♪ It was the call Detective
Dakota Black had been dreading.
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-It was devastating
to everybody. I mean, it was
absolutely terrible. -Just as Barbara had imagined,
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Makayla was in a large
drainage pipe beneath the road. -She had been drug
into the middle area
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and she was wrapped
in the carpet. She had one sock on her foot
that had teddy bears on it,
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and her shirt was
actually pulled up over her face to cover it. I mean, it was hard.
It was really hard.
00:20:04
So dark in there. -Detective Black
wouldn't leave Makayla's side. The two women had been born
one day apart in the same year,
00:20:13
but that wasn't their only bond. -I did feel a connection
with Makayla. I have a history also.
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I've been in bad relationships. It could have been me.
[ Sniffles ] On more than one occasion,
I just got lucky.
00:20:31
-While the detectives
were working the scene, Makayla's family gathered
just up the road.
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-You could hear --
hear them crying up there, and they were trying to
come down here where she was.
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-But the crime scene
was blocked off. -We can't let you
through the tape. [ Police radio chatter ]
00:20:53
-I never once doubted
that it was her. -I felt like
I needed to see her... because she'd been out there
for five days without me.
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And I just needed
to be with her, and they wouldn't let me. She needed me,
but I wasn't there.
00:21:25
-Makayla's remains were placed
in the coroner's van for the journey to
the medical examiner's office.
00:21:32
-My mom and I both realized that it was probably
her in there. That we would never be able
to hold her and hug her again.
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My mom started to chase the van. -I just followed it down the
road just as fast as I could,
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and somebody hollered at me
and asked me what I was doing, and I said,
"My baby is in that van."
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-Detective Black was so angry
she had to hold herself back. -I wanted to leave that night
and go and arrest Frank,
00:22:09
but I knew it's better to move
thoroughly than to act quick. -The two investigators
had already begun building
00:22:18
a strong circumstantial case
against Frank Byers. The bullet casings in her home.
00:22:24
His unlikely story that Makayla
agreed to an open marriage... ...and left with a bald man
in a white truck.
00:22:38
-When you asked Makayla's family about this open relationship,
what'd they say? -Absolutely not.
00:22:45
They said there was
absolutely no possible way that Makayla would
have ever done that.
00:22:52
-Investigators learned
from interviews and from Frank's own
social media accounts
00:22:58
that he was the one
who was cheating. -Frank Byers is
the biggest cheater. He was cheating on her
as soon as he moved in.
00:23:07
Every time he would
go out of town, he was creating dating profiles. -Frank worked for an
environmental cleanup company
00:23:15
cleaning up hazardous materials. He spent a lot of time
on the road. -He would meet women
at gas stations,
00:23:22
he would meet up with
them at hotel rooms. He would text them while
he was home with Makayla
00:23:29
and hide it from her. -He was communicating
with females the day Makayla was murdered,
and immediately afterwards.
00:23:36
-He was sending pictures to
women the day of her funeral, asking,
"How do I look in my tux?"
00:23:45
-Frank's cheating got so bad, Makayla moved out about
three months before her murder.
00:23:52
-She packed a bag and she came
and stayed with me for a week. I held her while
she cried every night.
00:23:58
She felt like a failure. -[ Speaks indistinctly ] -But Makayla's love
for the little girls
00:24:04
kept drawing her back,
says Andria. -I love you.
-I love you most. -I love you more.
-I love you most.
00:24:12
-Makayla went back
to the ten acre property, but not to Frank. She temporarily moved into that
little structure behind his
00:24:21
to stay close to the girls. Frank tried to win her back,
promising to change, but the cheating continued.
00:24:28
Detective Dakota Black would
later discover this conversation in which Makayla told
Frank she was done.
00:24:40
Makayla recorded it
two days before her murder. Detective Black believes
she recorded it
00:24:49
to expose Frank's infidelity. -That Friday, September 15th, Makayla returned from work
to pick up her things
00:25:11
and leave for good. But Frank, it seemed,
had other plans. Detectives would later
recover these images captured
00:25:20
on a home security camera
on his phone. Detective black believes
he thought he had deleted them.
00:25:29
Where is Makayla
in this picture? -This is Frank's home, and she's coming through
the front door.
00:25:34
-Makayla stayed
for 14 minutes. The detective believes
they were arguing. -Here's Makayla again.
She's leaving.
00:25:45
-This is the last picture
of the series. Frank standing at
the door of his home.
00:25:52
And what do you believe happened after this last
photograph was taken? -I think this is when
he exited his home
00:25:59
and went to her home
and killed her. I think this is when
he killed Makayla. Within minutes.
00:26:06
-Makayla was shot
in the head. -Makayla had a gunshot wound
right here in the front.
00:26:13
She had one on the left side, and then she had a graze wound
on the same side. -The last image she may have
seen on this earth
00:26:20
was her own husband
holding a rifle, and then the shot fired. -Yes. ♪♪ ♪♪ -It started as
a simmering anger...
00:26:49
...and grew into a raging fury. People wanted to know why
Frank was still walking free.
00:27:00
-The most difficult
part was knowing that we were accumulating
evidence to Frank's guilt
00:27:05
and Makayla's murder, but we
were unable to release that or share that with the public.
00:27:09
-We knew Frank was guilty. We knew Frank was
not a good husband. We knew Frank was lying.
00:27:15
We knew lots of things, but we couldn't
prove everything. And I wanted to prove everything
to make sure he stayed in jail.
00:27:23
-Detective Black spent
18-hour-days at the office with her sidekick Haven, the
therapy dog now there for her.
00:27:33
Give me a sense, emotionally,
how tough this was for you. -It was tough mentally.
I was drained.
00:27:39
I was mentally exhausted,
I had lost weight, I was tired, but I was not going to go home
until this case was solved.
00:27:48
-Frank used the time to
defend himself on social media. He also appeared on local news.
00:27:59
-Even today I called her. I mean... [ Sniffles ] I know she's not here, but... It's just the fact that
I have her number still
00:28:13
and her phone's still
on somewheres. And, uh -- it just -- it would have been nice
just to hear her voice.
00:28:20
-Many in the community tuned in
to watch Frank Byers' interview, including Lieutenant
Dakota Black.
00:28:27
Did it make you angry? -It did make me angry. It was sickening to see that a beautiful woman
was gone from the world,
00:28:35
and that while he's on TV
professing his innocence, he's still in communication
with other women trying
00:28:42
to have intimate
relationships with them. -Detective Black tracked
down scores of these women.
00:28:48
Crystal Cantrell was
Frank's girlfriend before he met Makayla. -He's very good at
making you believe him.
00:28:56
And then he's kind of
like a snake, once he gets you in there,
he bites you. -Detective Black learned
Frank wooed Crystal
00:29:05
the same way he wooed Makayla, with a false story that his
daughters were being mistreated
00:29:11
by his current girlfriend. And like Makayla,
Crystal had a soft heart. -I love kids.
00:29:18
You know, I have kids of my own, so I just felt
really bad for them. -Shortly after they moved in
together,
00:29:25
Crystal says Frank started
to show his true colors. He isolated her
from friends and family
00:29:33
and controlled her every move. They fought. One night, she woke up to see him looming over her,
00:29:40
clutching a pair of handcuffs. -I closed them so
he couldn't use them on me, and then after that, he just got
on my back and was choking me.
00:29:49
He had wrapped
his arms around me and had his hand on my throat,
and he just didn't let go.
00:29:54
-Crystal was able to get away, but was too afraid to report
the incident to the police.
00:30:00
She left Frank for good, but says it could have been
her in that ditch. -He would have killed me.
00:30:11
-If Frank ever harmed Makayla, she never told her mom
and sister. Sometimes they saw bruises,
00:30:17
but Makayla always said
they were just from roughhousing with the kids. [ Sighs ]
00:30:26
-I think if I think
about it too much... is where I will go down
a dark hole and not come out,
00:30:35
because I did see the bruises and I just chose to believe
and not question. And maybe if
I would have questioned,
00:30:45
it would come out differently. -Bit by bit,
Detective Black and her team built a profile of a murderer.
00:30:56
-So this photo
was taken at Walmart. -Using the date on
a Walmart receipt found on Frank's property,
00:31:04
the detective was able to track
down this security camera photo. What's in the cart?
00:31:11
-There is bleach,
ammonia, and a mop. -And mop, ammonia, and bleach equals what in your mind
as an investigator?
00:31:20
-Crime scene cleanup. -They were also able to match
the carpet in the ditch... ...to one a neighbor had given
00:31:30
Frank and Makayla
for their dogs. -Frank took the carpet that
was given to him by the neighbor
00:31:41
and used that to roll
Makayla's body in. -They believe Frank killed
Makayla around 4 p.m.
00:31:51
and left her body in her home. He then picked up
his girls after school and drove them around...
00:32:00
returning home about 8 p.m. That's when
the detectives believe he started to move her body.
00:32:10
-The kids reported in interviews once they returned home that Frank was outside
most of the night.
00:32:17
He wasn't in his bed. -Detective Black says there
were fresh tire tracks leading
00:32:23
to Makayla's little house. -We believe that the tire
tracks actually came from a vehicle backing up
to load her body,
00:32:30
to take it to where
she was located. -The detectives believe
Frank drove Makayla's body
00:32:36
to the edge of the ditch,
pulled her out, and then let her body topple the 12 to 15 feet
to the creek bed.
00:32:45
They believe Frank
then climbed down and dragged her into that pipe
underneath the roadway.
00:32:53
Once Frank got rid of the body, he concocted a plan
to cover up his crime. Remember he told the deputy
00:33:06
that Makayla had messaged him
from her phone that evening, telling him, "back off."
00:33:13
But investigators would
later find Makayla's phone in Frank's bedroom. Detective May confronted Frank
in a second interview.
00:33:42
But investigators
did have an explanation. Makayla had two phones,
an iPhone and a Moto G phone.
00:33:51
Frank had both of them. -The Moto G phone was
an old phone of Makayla's that she hadn't been using
for quite some time.
00:33:59
-So you just
push in that hole it pops the tray out. -Frank knew how to
get into that old phone...
00:34:04
So there's the SIM card
for those who don't know, that's what it looks like. ...so he switched the SIM card
from her iPhone.
00:34:11
Why does he do that? -To gain full access
to all of her accounts. That's how he was
texting himself,
00:34:19
pretending to be Makayla. And in fact,
it was him the entire time. -The evidence was mounting,
00:34:26
but they were still waiting on
two key pieces of evidence they had sent to
the forensic lab for testing.
00:34:34
-I needed a smoking gun
that I knew was not going to let him out. I knew it was going to
keep him there.
00:34:39
-What have you
just unwrapped here? -This, uh --
what have here is is the projectile recovered
from the two by four
00:34:45
inside Makayla's bedroom. -In addition to the
shell casings found on the floor
in Makayla's home,
00:34:51
they later found this bullet
wrapped in what they believed was Makayla's hair
embedded in the wall.
00:34:59
They hoped it would test
positive for Makayla's DNA. And then there were these boots.
00:35:06
-So these are
Frank's work boots. They were recovered on the night
of the missing persons report
00:35:11
from his bedroom. -And what did you spot
on these boots that was of interest? -So we had found a substance
00:35:20
that we believed could be blood. But he also works
with lots of chemicals, so we were unsure if that would
be something that got on there
00:35:26
while he was at work. -38 days after
Makayla went missing, they finally got the results.
00:35:33
They weren't able to get
a genetic confirmation on the hair, but the boots
were a different story.
00:35:39
The substance on
Frank's boots was blood. Makayla's blood. -As soon as we got that,
we were like,
00:35:48
we're going right now. -You had your man.
-We had our guy. Yes. [ Police siren wails ]
00:35:53
♪♪ ♪♪ -We were waiting for
that arrest... so it moved fast after that. -It was close to midnight.
00:36:18
Flashing police lights
lit up the darkness. 38 days after Makayla
was reported missing,
00:36:24
Detective Black,
Deputy Richardson, and a special ops team
moved in to arrest Frank Byers.
00:36:32
-I got with the SWAT team,
organized the takedown and went in and got him. -He thought he was
smarter than everyone,
00:36:47
but he was outsmarted, right? -Yes.
I think he was surprised. ♪♪ -Lieutenant Black finally
had Frank in her grasp
00:37:00
and right where she wanted him
in handcuffs, headed to jail. Detective May called
Makayla's family with the news.
00:37:08
-That was a "Hallelujah" moment. That was "About time," moment. We couldn't get her back,
00:37:15
but we knew he wasn't
walking free anymore. -Detective May says they
were done with Frank's lies.
00:37:24
And they confronted him
with the hard evidence they'd taken weeks to gather. Frank Byers was charged
with first-degree murder.
00:37:52
The D.A. was seeking
the death penalty, but the defense requested
a deal to save his life.
00:37:59
15 months after Byers arrest, he agreed to plead guilty
and serve life without parole.
00:38:11
Makayla's mom was
bitterly disappointed. -I feel that the plea deal
was a cop out.
00:38:19
The moment... the second that she took
her last breath, he chose that. And he got to choose what
he got for punishment, too.
00:38:32
And that's not okay. It's not okay. -The plea deal isn't the
only thing upsetting Barbara.
00:38:41
She doesn't think
Frank acted alone. You're absolutely convinced that
Frank had somebody help him.
00:38:48
-I'll go to my grave
believing that. -I think he had to
have had an accomplice. I don't think that he
could have moved her body
00:38:58
on his own at all. -Physically,
he could not have done it. -No, I don't believe so.
00:39:03
-I think we all agree
that it would absolutely be difficult to move her. But people are scared,
they can do amazing things.
00:39:13
-What they're saying
is not unreasonable. If the evidence is
presented to us one day,
00:39:18
that -- that suggests
that we will take it and we'll run with it
to its fullest extent.
00:39:23
♪♪ -I come and I sit and I look
at that place down there. I went down and hung all kinds
of crosses and different things.
00:39:40
He didn't just take from us. He took from his own children
someone that loved them,
00:39:47
that put them first. -It didn't have to end this way. -He could have let her leave.
00:39:54
But he didn't. -There's cold justice
for Makayla. For Detective
Dakota Black, tracker,
00:40:04
her painful work continues. -Makayla would want
her life to mean something. -Barbara is starting Makayla's
Purple Butterfly Foundation
00:40:17
to fight against
domestic violence. -That was her goal. Her mission in life was when you
see someone in need, help them.
00:40:27
When I think of Makayla,
I think of sunflowers. I think of joy. -She would love that, though.
00:40:39
You know she would,
with all those sunflowers. I sure miss her smile. Her laugh, oh, that laugh
was something else.
00:40:49
-She was my best friend. I strived for her to be proud of
me because I looked up to her
00:40:56
even though she was
the little sister. I still lay in bed
and talk to her like she's still right there.
00:41:03
I feel like she's watching
over us every day. ♪♪ ♪♪