00:00:04
This is one of those cases that haunt you. It's about two missing women that disappeared at the same time. [music]
00:00:14
In 1982, my sister Amy Hurst and her husband Bill moved to Florida. When I was 9 years old, my mother left
00:00:24
and I always wondered why. All of a sudden she stopped calling and when she didn't call my mother on her
00:00:29
birthday, we knew something was wrong. The other young woman that went missing [music] was Wendy Huggy. She was 17
00:00:38
years old. Wendy's mother Susan was a Playboy Bunny. My name is Angelyn Chester and I worked
00:00:45
with her. She flew on Hugh Hefner's plane. She was a jet-setter. So, Wendy might
00:00:53
have felt rejected by her mother and they fought a lot. She said she wanted to go to Florida
00:00:59
and stay with grandma and grandpa and she knew that they could help her out. She went to [music] a party
00:01:06
and disappeared from there. Two women missing for 30 years, where do you start? Now, at that time, we had a serial
00:01:14
killer in the area. But his thing was to kidnap women, take them out on a boat, put them in the
00:01:21
water alive, tied to a cement block and let them drown and die. September 5th, 1982, what happened on
00:01:29
there? A fisherman found a body floating in the Gulf of Mexico. This body was weighted
00:01:35
down with one concrete block. Oh boy. You can see how far offshore she had drifted.
00:01:41
It had no face. It was badly decomposed and there was [music] no way to identify
00:01:45
it. Was this Amy? Was this Wendy? The body itself was wrapped in a homemade-looking Afghan.
00:01:53
Then there was the Afghan. It had very distinctive markings. This led us to another suspect.
00:01:59
One that's still out there. I think we're about to find him. The cases are connected. We couldn't
00:02:07
have solved one without the other, and we're not done yet. Someone thinks they got away with
00:02:13
murder. No way. >> [music] >> My concerns are danger. [music] More than 30 years after Amy Hurst and
00:02:44
Wendy Hughey disappeared, Detective Lisa Schauerman is about to make an arrest. We had received information that he did
00:02:51
carry a gun. She's tracked her suspect from Florida to Michigan. Finally hitting pay dirt here in the
00:03:01
backwoods town of Dawson Springs, Kentucky. And her fugitive knows she's here. And he told his friend that if I had
00:03:10
pushed him any further, that he was going to take the gun out and shoot. And this doesn't seem to phase you. Well, of
00:03:16
course I'm going to be cautious. I don't want to take any unnecessary risks. But this
00:03:22
case means a lot to Schauerman. Why is your heart in cold cases? Cuz they're the hardest. You know, they're the
00:03:29
toughest. When I do bring closure to a family, there's nothing better than that.
00:03:36
Unless perhaps it's two cold cases intertwined. That's what she's juggling now. Two victims, two distraught
00:03:44
families, two eerily similar situations forever linked. Both began some 30 years ago in Pasco
00:03:54
County, Florida, Schaumann's home turf. The first to go missing was a 16-year-old girl named Wendy Huggy, who
00:04:03
vanished in April of 1982. Wendy Huggy was a beautiful 5'8, 5'9 blonde girl who it came to Florida to visit her
00:04:14
grandparents and to live here. And she'd only been here for a short time. Her grandparents were going to pick her up
00:04:20
at Countryside Mall. They got a phone call from her and she said, "You don't need to pick me up. Um Don's going to
00:04:27
bring me home." Don? Don, whoever that is. Unfortunately, we don't know. She never arrived home. And
00:04:33
that's the last anybody has seen or heard of Wendy Huggy. >> anybody has ever seen or heard.
00:04:41
Always my darling girl. Patty Sprague is Wendy's aunt. She was just a girl. She was just
00:04:49
a regular little girl. Patty says Wendy moved to Florida from Chicago in part to get away
00:04:56
from her mother, Susan, Patty's sister. I know she didn't always get along with her mother. I know they fought.
00:05:03
Who doesn't? Susan, who died a few years ago, was a single mom and a Playboy bunny, which apparently aggravated the
00:05:11
usual problems between teenager and mother. Well, it definitely did not involve what people usually thinks it
00:05:19
involves. Angela Ann Chester, who worked with Susan in the Chicago Playboy Club, says
00:05:25
Wendy had no reason to object. The job was basically that of a waitress, but in a costume. Certainly not the same thing
00:05:33
as a Playboy Playmate. The difference is that a bunny is an employee. We have a uniform. A
00:05:40
Playmate is nude. And they are in the centerfold. Doesn't make them bad. It just means that that's
00:05:46
the difference. In any case, Susan soon was promoted to flight attendant on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's private
00:05:54
plane. That meant lots of travel and even more problems with Wendy. The fact that she
00:06:03
was gone, maybe she thought that she didn't care about her. But Angie says Susan was in fact a devoted mother. She
00:06:11
was always concerned about her. In Chicago, Wendy often stayed with Susan's parents. And when they moved to
00:06:19
Florida, the 16-year-old who had dropped out of high school was quick to follow.
00:06:26
She just wanted, I guess, come down here and start over. She was going to go back
00:06:30
to school, and she was very excited about going to work. Her new job in a fast-food restaurant was to have started
00:06:37
on April 8th, 1982. She disappeared the day before. Two days later, the grandparents got
00:06:45
very concerned, and they came here to the sheriff's office and reported her missing.
00:06:51
The Pasco County police investigation turned up neither the friends from the mall nor the mysterious Don.
00:07:00
But it did stumble across one fact that stopped the [music] investigation cold. Wendy Hughey was married. Under the
00:07:09
criteria, that made her an adult. If you're an adult and you want to go missing and there's nothing to lead us
00:07:16
to believe that you're a harm to yourself or somebody harmed you, you can go missing. This is a teenager. Who
00:07:21
cares if she's married? She's still missing. >> I agree with you, but for whatever
00:07:25
reasons, he took her out of the system. With the case in effect closed, neither the husband nor anyone else was actively
00:07:34
investigated. That infuriates Wendy Hughey's uncle, Robert Richards, but as a former cop, he understands why.
00:07:43
I don't think they had a whole lot to go on. Florida has a pretty high transient
00:07:47
population. People come and go. And the people that make people disappear can come and go.
00:07:55
What seemed to be the handiwork of one of those people surfaced not long after Wendy went missing.
00:08:04
Here off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico, about 5 months after Wendy Hughey disappeared, a fisherman spotted
00:08:10
something odd in the water. He soon realized to his horror that he was looking at a dead body. He left it right
00:08:16
where it was and immediately called the Coast Guard. When I first saw the body, all you could
00:08:22
see were uh blue jeans and bare feet. Greg Stout was on the Coast Guard boat sent to the scene.
00:08:29
The body itself was wrapped um in a homemade-looking Afghan in a real bright green um bedspread. Was this the body of
00:08:38
Wendy Hughey, the teenager so excited about her future and her new life? Whoever it was, her killer probably had
00:08:46
been confident she would never be seen again. Then there was rope around the waist of
00:08:53
the body, and then you could look down in this clear water, and you could actually see a concrete block floating
00:08:58
below. >> [music] >> The body found in the Gulf of Mexico in September of 1982 was 27 mi offshore,
00:09:24
carried out by the tide. It's kind of floating like a cork. The Coast Guard couldn't pinpoint where the body went
00:09:32
in, but theorized it might have been near what's now the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
00:09:38
It had been in the water about a week, rising to the surface as it decomposed, despite the concrete block tied around
00:09:47
the waist. The medical examiner was pretty sure that there was blunt trauma to the back of the head.
00:09:53
Um they also thought that she was actually alive when she was tossed in the water. Was there any way, if anybody
00:09:59
had had known who the relatives were, could they have identified this person? No, not at all. If you put a body in
00:10:06
water over a period of time, um it's really the uh the worst condition that you can find a body. Still, the
00:10:13
victim's family might have recognized personal effects, as well as that green bedspread and that
00:10:20
distinctive Afghan. Which was she wrapped in first, the bedspread or the Afghan?
00:10:25
>> first, and then the Afghan was on the outside. Wendy Huggy had gone missing about 5 months before this body was
00:10:32
found. Is there any indication at all that it an attempt was made to determine if this might be Wendy Huggy?
00:10:39
Not that I'm aware of. There was, remember, no ongoing investigation. So, Wendy's family never saw the bedspread,
00:10:47
[music] Afghan, or the jewelry. Never even knew a body had been found. An oversight that decades later would help
00:10:55
solve a crime. The unidentified body ended up here, in this Tampa cemetery, in the Potter's
00:11:05
Field section, in an unmarked grave known only as Jane Doe 82120. It would be years before Jane Doe's true
00:11:14
identity was known, and then only because of the heartache of another family, a family some 1,200 mi away.
00:11:24
Just outside Flint, Michigan, in 1982, the family of a woman named Amy Hurst was coping with her sudden
00:11:33
disappearance. Amy Hurst also went missing in Florida about the same time and in the same county as Wendy Huggy.
00:11:41
The two women's descriptions were similar, but Hurst was older, 29, and a mother of two.
00:11:49
Oh gosh, Amy was full of energy. Um, she was a wonderful mother. Laura Champagne was Amy's niece. She just
00:11:57
loved her kids to pieces and um was very devoted to them. Which made it all the more shocking that spring when Amy
00:12:05
announced she and her new husband Bill were moving out of state, leaving her kids with her ex-husband.
00:12:13
She just came up to the house and said that she was going to Florida and she was going to, you know, we would be able
00:12:19
to go down there and see her. She'd be back to visit us. Amy's son Jeff was eight, her daughter Lisa then 10.
00:12:26
I can remember her like talking about us coming down for Christmas and for Easter.
00:12:31
And stuff like that. She just said bye and she left. I didn't care much for Bill.
00:12:40
Amy's sister Sharon blamed the move on Amy's second husband Bill. He drank a lot.
00:12:46
And Bill was abusive. When were you first aware that there was actual domestic violence involved here? I saw
00:12:54
the bruises. Um, and there was one incident that I that I witnessed where he hit her in front of
00:13:00
me. I never understood with Amy why she stayed in that kind of a relationship. She didn't need to.
00:13:09
Amy and Bill settled in New Port Richey in Pasco County, Florida. Bill got a job
00:13:14
as a truck driver. Amy worked in a grocery store. At first, she kept in close [music] touch with her family.
00:13:22
I had a whole shoe box, as a matter of fact, full of letters. And Amy always called her mother on her birthday
00:13:30
until that year. When my grandma's birthday came and went and Amy didn't call, my grandma got on the phone to all
00:13:37
of us and and you know, something's wrong. And that's when I called the Pasco County Sheriff's Department. They
00:13:42
called me back the next day and said they went out to check and Bill was there. And they asked him about Amy.
00:13:48
And he said that they got in a fight 3 days earlier and she left. They uh contact her work. They find out
00:13:57
that she's not been to work. Nobody's heard from her. Nobody's seen her. Bill Hurst was a suspect in Amy's
00:14:03
disappearance from the very start. Everybody knew that he had something to do with it. His actions only seemed to
00:14:09
confirm it. They did ask him if he would take a lie detector test. And he said he would. But when the
00:14:15
police showed up the next day, he was already gone. He left in the night. And just as in Wendy Hughey's case, the
00:14:23
Hurst investigation stalled before it even began. This time, because of a clerical error involving her maiden
00:14:31
name, Amy Rose. And when our sisters reported her missing, they reported her as Amy Rose.
00:14:38
Not Amy Hurst. Her sisters contacted police, but no one ever changed the records. A simple mistake that had
00:14:46
disastrous results. We kept making inquiries over the years and um you know, really getting the
00:14:52
runaround. Not really getting any answers. And did you at at any point just acknowledge even privately that
00:15:01
in all probability we're not going to see Amy again? Yeah. I knew Amy would not go that long
00:15:06
without talking to her kids. That is not Amy. As for Bill Hurst, at one point they had
00:15:15
found traces of him in one of the New England states. And then after that, it just
00:15:20
kind of fell off and nobody did anything about it. But 20 years later, a new suspect
00:15:27
surfaced. Unfortunately, there was a lot of female bodies that were being recovered in this
00:15:33
area. Were Amy Hurse and Wendy Hughey both [music] victims of a serial killer? For years, Amy Hurse's family clung to
00:15:58
the hope that as long as no body had been found, there still was a possibility Amy was alive somewhere.
00:16:08
Amy's son, Jeff. I always thought for the longest time that she started a new life, maybe. And
00:16:14
then one day she would just show up. Amy's sister, Sharon, was sure of it. I remember one time I was driving and I
00:16:22
looked in my rearview mirror and I could have swore the person in the car behind
00:16:26
me was her. I opened my car door and jumped out of my car and I thought, "How stupid." You know, but you know, you
00:16:34
always hope. It was much the same for Wendy Hughey's family. Her uncle, Robert Richards, says that in
00:16:42
the decades after the 16-year-old's disappearance, her distraught mother, Susan, barely
00:16:48
could bring herself to mention her daughter's name. I think she had some of the guilt of, you know, maybe I could
00:16:55
have kept her here. Maybe I could have changed jobs sooner and been at home more.
00:17:03
It was not not something that she liked to talk about. Wendy's aunt, Patty Sprague. It was
00:17:12
devastating. But I would think at any sort of family gathering, this is sort of the elephant in the room, right?
00:17:17
You're always aware that she's not there, you know, when you have Christmas and birthdays. And birthday, yes,
00:17:24
birthdays. In 2001, Wendy would have celebrated her 36th birthday. About that time, some 20
00:17:34
years after she went missing, a Pasco County cop decided to take a fresh look at this very cold case.
00:17:43
His name was Robert Ham. He became fascinated with it. And then to the point of obsessed. I mean,
00:17:51
he was [snorts] determined to find Wendy. Ham soon unearthed the 1982 report of the body found in the Gulf. In his
00:18:00
heart, he knew he was on to something. Now, at that time, we had a serial killer in the area, Oba Chandler.
00:18:10
They His thing was to kidnap women, take them out on a boat, put them in the water alive,
00:18:16
tied to a cement block, and let them drown and die. Ham thought, "Oh my gosh, it has to be
00:18:22
Wendy." He was convinced that she'd been kidnapped, and she was another victim of
00:18:29
his. But from death row, Oba Chandler refused to talk to Bobby Ham, and eventually
00:18:35
Chandler was executed. His silence didn't stop Ham. He retrieved Wendy Huggy's dental
00:18:44
records and asked the medical examiner's office to exhume the body. The The grave
00:18:50
is right over here. Yes. So, the exhumation takes place. Everybody thinks that they know who this is
00:18:57
already, right? Oh, Bobby was so sure. He was telling everybody, "This is Wendy. I've done it. I found her. It's
00:19:03
going to be her." Right. And unfortunately, it wasn't. He kept trying until he passed away. He He kept trying to
00:19:12
find her. He didn't give up. I mean, he was devastated. He was discouraged, but he continued to try.
00:19:18
And after he he was gone, I've continued to try. But for all their efforts, the identity
00:19:24
of the body dug up from Potter's Field remained a mystery. But there's a good side to that story.
00:19:32
Because she was exhumed, now we can get DNA. Well, the medical examiner did some
00:19:37
DNA testing and they had a recreation of her, what she may look like, done and placed her on the Doe Network.
00:19:46
As in John and Jane Doe, the network is set up to locate the missing and identify the dead.
00:19:54
Information about the exhumed body, information Bobby Ham dug up in his failed search for Wendy, sat there
00:20:01
unnoticed until years later when Amy, her son Jeff, went online searching for clues about his mother.
00:20:10
>> He was having a really hard time his whole life not knowing what happened to his mother and one day decided, "That's
00:20:16
it. I've got to do something and I've got to know I tried. I've got to know what happened."
00:20:24
In 2009, 27 years after his mother Amy disappeared, Jeff stumbled across the Doe Network website with its description
00:20:34
of the body in the Gulf. The artist's rendering didn't look familiar, but something else on the
00:20:41
website did. What did you see on there that piqued your interest right away? The bedspread.
00:20:50
Jeff and his sister Lisa had loved bouncing on it as children. The bedspread. Anything else?
00:20:58
>> Turquoise jewelry. An afghan. The Afghan really hit home. The Afghans are a big part of our family. My
00:21:16
grandmother made everybody Afghans. My mom made them, and my aunts made them. Everybody made them. And one of them had
00:21:21
been wrapped around the body in the Gulf. Amy's sister was sure of that the second she saw the description on the
00:21:28
website. It's made of multi-colors. It's basically white, but my mother would take all her leftover pieces of
00:21:36
yarn, and she would make the little squares out of them. And we have numerous Afghans
00:21:42
that we all have still today. And all those same colors are in this Afghan. This is the Afghan that Amy's mother
00:21:50
made for her and that was wrapped around the bedspread that was wrapped around her
00:21:56
body. You can see why that's something that you would recognize. >> Oh, absolutely.
00:22:01
>> very distinctive. Yes. And each of the sisters had one of these? >> Yes. No one in Amy Hurst's family needed
00:22:09
any more evidence. When I saw the Afghans next to that, I was 100% sure. We knew then that it was
00:22:17
her. Despite their certainty, the Afghan and jewelry didn't prove this was Amy Hurst.
00:22:27
For that, Shoneman needed hard evidence, and she would find it in, of all places,
00:22:33
Potter's Field, where faithfully the Hurst and Hughey cases would intersect. The body dug up in 2001, the body that
00:22:44
was not Wendy Hughey, would DNA prove it was Amy Hurst? Tests and analysis to match it to Jeff's DNA took 2 years. I
00:22:54
would have thought you'd be pretty frustrated. >> I was. Why did it take so long? There's
00:22:58
so much backlog DNA, and it just waited and waited and waited and In July of 2011, an excited detective
00:23:05
Shaunaman called Jeff with the results. And she just says, "Are you sitting down?" I was like, "Do I need to be?"
00:23:11
And she says, "I don't know. She says you might want to." I said, "It's her, Jeff. We found
00:23:16
her. It's her." It wasn't good news at all. I mean, it but it was good news for me to know that
00:23:22
we found We knew where she was at. And I just started shaking. Just shaking, shaking, shaking. He called me and um we
00:23:30
cried together. You You were glad to know that you had an answer, but then it was permanent,
00:23:37
you know. It was um like she just died. Cuz you just found out to you she had just died.
00:23:46
After 30 years, there was no longer any question. Amy Hurst had been murdered. And for Amy's family, no question who
00:23:55
did it. We knew absolutely it was Bill. But we have no way to prove it. I thought he
00:24:00
would get away with it. Amy Hurst's killer had gone unpunished for 30 years, only to be tripped up by a
00:24:20
very stupid mistake. When we confirmed that she was murdered and where she was found,
00:24:26
there could be nobody but Bill. Especially when she was found with the blankets off her own bed. You don't go
00:24:32
off with somebody that kills you and then they bring you home and wrap you in your own blankets to dispose of your
00:24:37
body. You were at home when you were murdered. And it doesn't take a great detective to
00:24:43
figure that out. Now all this detective had to do was find him. Did you at that point know
00:24:48
where Bill Hurst was? >> I thought he was in Michigan. I went to see his sister, who still
00:24:53
lived up there. And uh she told me where he at. She even agreed to call him. She said, "Bill, the
00:25:01
police have been here. They found Amy's body. What did you do?" You wanted to make him nervous.
00:25:05
>> Of course. What happens when you get nervous? You make mistakes. >> Yeah, she did.
00:25:10
>> [laughter] >> Hurst had been living here in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, a small town in the
00:25:16
[music] western part of the state, once the home to the Imperial Clans of America. But if he thought his neighbors
00:25:23
would stick up for him in his time of need, he was sadly mistaken. Elmer Cruise, a retired tool and die
00:25:31
maker, was a close friend. What did you think of him? What was he like? Well, he
00:25:36
just seemed like one of the guys, you know. I mean, he was he drank a lot, but so would do a lot of
00:25:41
people, you know. Did he tell you he'd been married? >> He told me that he uh had had had a
00:25:46
girlfriend named Amy, but he said just all of a sudden she got up and left. After his sister told him the cops were
00:25:54
on his trail, Hurst called Elmer. Yeah, he sounded really, really down and really bad, and and so I went over
00:26:01
there. And heard a shocking admission. My past has finally caught up with me. He said uh "I'm going to go to jail for
00:26:09
the rest of my life if they don't execute me. I thought I'd got away with it." But he said uh "Evidently," he
00:26:14
said, "I think they they found the body." And then I thought, "Whoa." I get to town. I contact the local
00:26:21
police department, which were great. Not a lot happens in their town, so this really excited them.
00:26:27
>> [laughter] >> Turns out Captain Craig Patterson already had his eye on Hurst for
00:26:33
allegedly selling prescription drugs. But the idea that he had murdered somebody and put their body in the Gulf
00:26:39
of Mexico was not something >> No. No, that was not anything that I would have ever guessed
00:26:45
in a hundred years. So, where did the break in this come? The break came when uh Elmer Cruise walked into the police
00:26:53
department here and said Bill Hurst told me he disposed of a body a long time ago
00:26:58
and it had caught up with him we knew here's our break we've got to go now. They hatched a plan to trick Hurst.
00:27:06
Elmer would go back up to his house with a surprise. Wait a minute wait a minute.
00:27:12
>> [laughter] >> Elmer agrees to wear a wire? Yeah. Why do you think he did? Because he said
00:27:18
it wasn't right to kill somebody. I would not let anybody get away with murder. It's that simple.
00:27:25
48 Hours obtained the tape of their extraordinary conversation. I'm not worried about it too much.
00:27:33
They're trying to say I took this body out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and dumped it.
00:27:39
I didn't have access to a boat. Well, out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico it would have never
00:27:43
been found anyway. Hurst is nervous and wants reassurance. Like I said if they had any hard
00:27:50
evidence they'd arrest me when they came to the door. But they don't so they have no way of
00:27:57
proving that I had anything to do with anything. They can't there's no eyewitnesses.
00:28:04
You know, I made sure of that. Based on Elmer's tapes a grand jury indicted William Hurst for first-degree
00:28:12
murder a few weeks later. It had been 29 years since the murder and now it was time for an arrest.
00:28:21
Schoneman was leaving nothing to chance. Hurst had become a recluse hunkered down
00:28:27
in his house. He wasn't coming out, you know, he was barricading himself in there. And he was
00:28:34
heavily armed. He had a 45 that he had bought pistol and they had bought a 380 and a couple
00:28:41
of rifles. You all always have to worry about that but you can't let it stop you. If I let that stop me I'd never
00:28:47
make an arrest and, you know, I just have to be prepared for it. A SWAT team was hiding outside, almost
00:28:55
ready to pounce, when Hurst's dog did them a huge favor. You know, he cared enough about the dog when it got tangled
00:29:02
and couldn't reach its water that he left the seclusion of the house to come out and untangle him. And that's when
00:29:08
they grabbed him. Yes. Yes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used
00:29:17
against you in a court of law. You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not make any statements or
00:29:23
answer any questions. Do you understand those rights? 48 Hours was at the station when Hurst
00:29:29
was questioned. He did not ask for a lawyer. I have a reason to arrest you for your wife's murder, but I would like
00:29:36
also to hear your side of the story. Do you want to tell me that, your side of the story? All I can tell you is um
00:29:42
I didn't kill her. If you didn't kill her, how she die and how she end up in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?
00:29:48
That's about as much as I want to say right now. He still doesn't specifically ask for a
00:29:54
lawyer and Detective Schooneman plows right on. And I know you were there when she died and I know you got rid of her
00:30:00
body. I'd like to know why. Hurst tells her, blaming Amy for what happened. She went to kick me. Uh-huh. And when she
00:30:09
kicked me, her foot slipped and she fell and she hit her head on the back of the
00:30:12
concrete floor. Was it just the one time that she fell? >> Did she bleed or did she What happened?
00:30:18
>> I didn't notice any bleeding and I panicked and I didn't know what to do. All just a terrible accident, he says.
00:30:25
And I rolled her in the blanket and I did dispose of the body. That I'm guilty of.
00:30:32
Well, how Where did you use a boat to do it or >> No. Um off Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Why didn't
00:30:39
you just call the police, Bill? I mean I don't know. I just panicked out. I don't
00:30:43
know why. I know I should have done that, but I don't know why I didn't. I just wigged out and I didn't know what
00:30:49
to do. So, I couldn't for the life of me bring cuz that woman I loved with all my heart, I
00:30:56
couldn't bring to bear the fact that she had passed. Hurst almost seems to think
00:31:01
he deserves sympathy. They going to release me to go back to my house or what? I'm now Bell. You're under arrest,
00:31:08
buddy. You've been charged with first-degree murder and you're going to be staying in custody.
00:31:14
With Hurst behind bars, Schooneman makes the call she's been looking forward to for years to Amy Hurst's son, Jeff.
00:31:27
Jeff, guess what? It's over, dude. It's all over. It's all over? He's in custody. He's been charged with your
00:31:36
mother's murder. No kidding. That was a great call. I didn't tell them I was going.
00:31:44
I didn't tell them what I was doing initially cuz I didn't want them to be disappointed.
00:31:50
Please be seated. Uh this is State of Florida versus William Hurst. But disappointment may be coming. Before
00:31:57
trial, a judge rules that most of Schooneman's interrogation can't be used as evidence. All because of one
00:32:05
sentence. That's about as much as I want to say right now. The judge found that because he said he didn't want to talk
00:32:11
about it. He had implied his right to remain silent. So, he didn't allow my conversation to be heard by the jury.
00:32:18
But without Hurst's candid admissions of how Amy died, how he rolled her body in
00:32:24
the afghan, how he dropped her off the bridge, what would a jury decide? >> It's been 30 years since both Wendy
00:32:48
Hughey and Amy Hurst disappeared. Wendy's fate is still unknown. But in searching for clues about Wendy,
00:33:00
Detective Lisa Shanamen solved the mystery of Amy. The final chapter now about to be
00:33:07
written in [music] a Florida courtroom. Ladies and gentlemen, just like every good book has a title,
00:33:13
this story has a title. The title is I almost got away with it. So begins the prosecution's case against
00:33:23
William Hurst, charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Amy. For Amy's family, the trial is a
00:33:31
necessary but painful ordeal. Sitting in that courtroom, you know, 20 ft from this guy.
00:33:38
That was That was hard to do. I couldn't look at him when I was on the stand. >> I stared at him the whole time I
00:33:44
testified. I had to. Look him in the eye. Laura Ann Champagne, Amy is my aunt. Family members recount Hurst's physical
00:33:54
abuse of Amy. Amy and Bill were arguing back and forth, yelling. Bill told her to shut up and he backhanded
00:34:03
her across the face. Black guys, fat lips. I saw him hit her with an iron skillet.
00:34:10
He threw a threw a shower enclosure into a bathtub and down a flight of stairs. You recall this as a kid?
00:34:16
>> That was a one that you don't ever forget. Did you ever recall Mr. Hurst threatening to kill your mom? Yes.
00:34:25
Hurst's defense is not a surprise. This death was an accident. She tried to kick
00:34:31
him. She fell. She hit her head. She died accidentally and that is not a murder.
00:34:44
There were two gashes to the back of the head. They're right here and here. On the left
00:34:51
side of her head there was another marked contusion somewhere over here. But the medical examiner, Dr. Russell
00:34:56
Vega, the multiple injuries indicate that Amy's death was no accident. Would you expect to see those types of
00:35:05
injuries when someone falls and hits their head? Not three injuries, no. My opinion of the cause of death is
00:35:11
unspecified homicidal violence. But proving murder could be a problem for prosecutors because the judge has
00:35:22
ruled that they can't use the tape of Hurst's incriminating interview. I can't remember if if she died instantly or if
00:35:31
she was just knocked out because it was like 3 days between the time that it happened to the time I
00:35:38
disposed of the body. Detective Shaunaman admits she wanted the jury to hear that.
00:35:45
>> Were you completely confident in your own mind that she would be okay without it?
00:35:51
You never completely confident. You know, you don't know what the jury is going to think. He had his elbow on his
00:35:57
coffee table, had his head in his hands. But the jury does hear Elmer Cruz's chilling testimony.
00:36:04
>> So he said, I got rid of the body the way you're supposed to get rid of a body. He
00:36:08
said I wrapped it up in plastic, tied a concrete block around it, and took it out and dropped it in the water.
00:36:16
This is what he uses. Perhaps the most damning evidence of all, the secret audio tapes Elmer Cruz
00:36:25
made in which Hurst brags about his crime. They had no way of proving that I had anything to do with anything. There
00:36:32
was no eyewitness, you know, I made sure of that. Thank you, sir. You may step down.
00:36:38
You're free to go. What was that like for you? It was a new experience. It's the first time I'd ever done anything
00:36:43
like that. But see, when you tell the truth, you don't have to worry about what's right.
00:36:48
My wife tells me every day I get done with a good thing. The defense calls no witnesses. This is
00:36:55
a case of a tragic accident. >> [music] >> And William Hurst does not take the stand.
00:37:01
>> I'm upset about that. Really? Why? I want to know I want him to tell me what happened.
00:37:06
You still want to know exactly what happened? >> Absolutely. This defendant, William
00:37:10
Hurst, is guilty of first-degree murder. Thank you. What was your frame of mind when the jury went out? At that point, I
00:37:18
just wanted to go home. But they said sometimes it takes it could take 8 hours, sometimes it can take 20 minutes.
00:37:23
In fact, the jury is out a mere 3 hours. I understand the jury has reached a verdict.
00:37:32
>> Yes, sir. Then please rise. State of Florida versus William Hurst, verdict. The defendant is guilty of murder in the
00:37:38
first-degree as charged in the indictment. So say we all this 4th day of April Can you describe your feelings when you
00:37:48
heard those words, guilty? I had something in me that I didn't know it was even there.
00:37:54
What do you mean? I just gasped out and started crying, and my cousin was sitting next to me, and we both just
00:37:59
cried and cried. Mr. Hurst, you are well and truly an evil man. I sentence you to
00:38:05
life in prison. Life with no chance of parole for 25 years. Did you want him to get the death
00:38:16
penalty? >> Mhm. We don't want death penalty. Cuz that's easy way out. Amy's family gathered at Elizabeth Lake
00:38:26
in Waterford, Michigan, where Amy had often spent family vacations. Precious were spread on the water.
00:38:38
And they had roses on it, and they had rose petals out there, and it was absolutely beautiful.
00:38:47
>> [laughter] [snorts] >> It's been 30 years. Time heals. But as [music] we stood there on that
00:38:52
boat, and I thought to myself, it's just like she died yesterday. Her kids in so much pain.
00:39:02
Um they've had to live all these years without their mother. I drive by there all the time.
00:39:12
I always look at the water. But it gave you a sense of maybe she's at peace. >> Right. Yeah.
00:39:21
>> [music] >> Amy's family acknowledges that peace would not have been possible were it not
00:39:28
for Wendy Hughey. What would you have to say to the Hughey family? Don't give up.
00:39:37
Never give up. Something could still happen. Do you think there's any hope that you'll ever know what happened to
00:39:43
Wendy? Honestly, uh no. I don't. It's really really a long stretch. It's a beautiful 17-year-old [music]
00:39:53
girl who just disappeared. Mhm. Where is she? What happened to her? But cold case
00:39:58
detective Lisa Shoneman is not about to give up. >> Just came across a couple the other day,
00:40:04
but it wasn't her. But you're not going to stop looking? Oh, no. No, I'll keep looking.
00:40:08
I'll find her. I'll find her. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Every time you got an unsolved murder,
00:41:11
you got somebody walking around in your community that's killed somebody. David was just a very, very nice guy.
00:41:22
>> [music] >> They were just the normal all-American young couple living next door.
00:41:29
My husband and I were asleep in bed and just startled [music] by a series of loud thumps on the other side of the
00:41:38
wall. It just a sound [music] that I'd never heard before. I said, "I am going to put my ear to the wall and if I hear
00:41:44
anything else, I'm calling the police." I heard nothing, [music] absolutely nothing.
00:41:51
For the next hour or more, I was just still awake and restless. The next thing that happened was I heard
00:41:59
a loud pounding on the door. And it was Melinda. >> [music] >> When David Harmon got murdered, I was on
00:42:09
call that weekend. According to police, sometime during Sunday night there on Sheridan Drive in Olathe My name is Paul
00:42:15
Morrison. In 1982, I was an assistant district attorney here in Johnson County. The intruders
00:42:22
went into Hyland's house, awoke Mrs. Hyland That was the first murder scene that I'd
00:42:27
ever seen. One of the most brutal murder scenes that I've ever seen in my career.
00:42:33
It was very, very bloody. He was disfigured so badly that the initial officers thought he'd been shot
00:42:39
in the face with a shotgun. It traumatized a lot of people because what came out publicly was that there
00:42:46
was this horrible home invasion, these people beat this [music] poor guy to death in bed.
00:42:51
It was one of those cases where you're going, you know, what? We don't believe this. There's more to this story than
00:42:56
meets the eye. This was a place [music] where people felt that they could get away from the
00:43:04
city, raise a family, and live a peaceful life. I think when this happened, it hit home.
00:43:13
>> [music] >> The people involved in this murder are members of the Nazarene Church and go to
00:43:19
the college there. So, uh this kind of rocked their community a lot. I'm Bill Wall. I'm a detective with the
00:43:27
Olathe, Kansas Police Department. There are a lot of murders, but this is intriguing. It's got a bit of a sex
00:43:32
appeal to it. We got religion, we got a lovers' triangle, we [music] got money, and we felt that it was a case that
00:43:39
could be solved. It was 19 years old when we opened it up. When I'm reading through this case file,
00:43:46
I think that [music] we got a shot. I mean, eventually you got to go knock on the door, and that was the turning
00:43:58
point, [music] obviously, of this case. A knock on the door. >> [music] [music] [music]
00:44:36
>> Today, Olathe, Kansas, is a major crossroads. A fast-growing [music] suburb of Kansas
00:44:44
City. Home to a large conservative Christian community. But back in 1982, [music]
00:44:55
it was just a dot on the map. In 1982, this was a community where you didn't have to lock your doors,
00:45:01
basically. I know that's a cliché, but uh there was not a lot of uh danger. Andy Hoffman was a reporter for Olathe's
00:45:09
Daily News. >> The people that lived here were God-fearing. They believed in the Bible, and when
00:45:16
this horrendous murder happened, it changed the landscape of the community. >> [singing]
00:45:26
[music] >> There weren't a lot of homicides in Olathe, so the unsolved murder of David
00:45:38
Harmon was a nightmare that stayed with them for more than two decades. First time I heard about that case was
00:45:48
maybe in the oh, early '90s. Bill Wall was a young patrol officer at the time. >> It was always kind of a a case that had
00:45:57
never been solved, and it was kind of a legend throughout the department. It might have stayed cold if not for a
00:46:06
simple request in 2001 and some new technology. >> The crime lab came down [music]
00:46:11
and they had some time and they wanted to use their DNA expertise. Do you got any old uh cold cases? We had one.
00:46:20
Okay, and then what's that? The Harmon case moved out of the evidence vault and into the hands of
00:46:27
detectives Bill Wall and Steve James. For us this is uncharted territory. I mean, we really didn't have a lot of
00:46:33
experience in in opening up cold cases. They went through all the evidence to learn what happened back in 1982. Once
00:46:41
we get started to it, it's so intriguing you don't want to put it down. There were accounts from police officers
00:46:49
including J.W. Larue, then 27, one of the first responders. It was a very very brutal crime scene.
00:46:59
He found David Harmon's body upstairs in [music] the master bedroom. It is the most gruesome crime scene that I've
00:47:07
[music] seen in 28 years of being a police officer. He was just massacred. Harmon had been beaten repeatedly with a
00:47:19
blunt object. [music] >> Blood splattered everywhere. It is on pillows, sheets, it is on a comforter,
00:47:27
carpet, >> [music] >> the nightstand next to him. It's everywhere. I mean, I think this is a classic case
00:47:35
of an overkill. David's [music] wife Melinda was the only witness. She told police two men,
00:47:42
possibly black, had broken into their duplex. She's awakened by these these sounds of
00:47:48
someone beating her husband. And then all of a sudden she's pulled out of bed and taken downstairs. She hears one
00:47:55
intruder say to the next, I think you hit him too hard, you may have killed him. She said they demanded the keys to
00:48:01
the bank where David worked. >> And that's when she's knocked unconscious. Melinda says when she came to, she ran
00:48:10
next door for help. Her neighbor called the police. Then Melinda asked her to call friend Mark Mangelsdorf.
00:48:21
It was a horrific incident. A a very close friend of mine was murdered and you know, I was close friends both with
00:48:29
he and his his wife. They kind of took him in. They'd have him over for dinner frequently. He'd be over there hanging
00:48:35
out. Their friendship began at MidAmerica Nazarene College where Melinda was a secretary. Melinda was quite
00:48:46
professional. She was not much older than our students. Don Stelting was Dean of students at the college and Melinda's
00:48:53
boss. Part of the responsibility of my office staff was to make a warm front door for the students. She was a
00:48:59
friendly person and and she worked hard at that. One of the students she befriended was Mark
00:49:05
Mangelsdorf, the student body president. He was impressive impressive young man,
00:49:10
good student. Melinda introduced Mark to her husband David. >> David was in many ways like a a big
00:49:18
brother to me. You know, he took me under his wing. They shared a passion for sports, business,
00:49:24
and their church. As word of David's murder spread, it stunned Olathe's Nazarene community.
00:49:37
I remember when the phone call came, how unreal it was. Pam and Don Stelting were
00:49:42
among the first to hear the news. >> [music] >> I don't think we could even talk. It was
00:49:46
such devastating news. It shook us all very deeply because here was someone that we
00:49:52
thought [music] was just a perfect example of what church and the college stood for and he was gone. His life
00:49:58
snuffed out. His friends at the [music] Patrons State Bank were shocked. Why? Why would this happen?
00:50:08
Why David? Joy Hempy and Hazel Hendricks. We didn't have murders in Olathe. And then to have it happen to a person
00:50:18
that you worked with every day. It was very scary. Well, at first everybody bought the
00:50:30
story. Paul Morrison is now the district attorney, but back in 1982 [music] I'm just a guppy back then, you know. He was
00:50:39
still learning the job. And I think everybody thought, gosh, this is just a horrible home invasion thing here and we
00:50:45
got to find these guys because they're obviously extremely dangerous. Police immediately staked out the bank
00:50:53
in case anyone tried breaking in. Of course it never happened. Stealing David's keys baffled Joy Hempy. If they
00:51:01
got inside the bank with the keys, all they would get would be pencils, erasers, and paper clips. You couldn't
00:51:08
get in the vault. It was on a timer. So those are actually his then? It didn't take long for investigators to
00:51:16
realize the pieces of the puzzle just weren't adding up. No forced entry to the house.
00:51:22
There was nothing else taken. Plus, the person that's able to get them access to the bank, they kill
00:51:28
immediately. I don't think anybody >> [music] >> was comfortable saying that first day, you know, we don't
00:51:34
believe it, but there are eyebrows beginning to [music] be raised about this story. Uh
00:51:40
As doubts grew about Melinda Harmon's story, the focus of the investigation [music] shifted. And sure some of those
00:51:47
detectives back then were thinking, "Hey, this is not right. There is something more here." Did they believe
00:51:52
that Melinda Harmon was involved in her husband's murder? And they suspected she had help. Some
00:52:02
questions [music] came up and in particular question about uh this person Mark Mangelsdorf.
00:52:09
>> [music] >> They were focusing on Mark. [music] He was being suspected for such a
00:52:32
horrible thing. I just knew it wasn't possible. Even after all these years, the memories
00:52:40
are still very painful for Pam Stelting. I thought I could talk about what that crime,
00:52:47
but Pam and her husband Don still [music] can't believe Aurora police suspected Mark Mangelsdorf was involved in the
00:52:54
murder of David Harmon. It It seemed to be uh an indication of very bad judgment on the part of the of
00:53:02
the police. In our minds, there was someone out there who really had done this horrid
00:53:06
murder and why aren't they looking for them instead? But police and prosecutors say there
00:53:13
were no signs of intruders. Instead, all the evidence seemed to point to those closest to David. His wife Melinda and
00:53:22
his best friend Mark. And what's more, investigators believed they knew the motive. No one was talking on the
00:53:29
record. Everyone in the community was talking about it off the record. Andy Hoffman has covered the case for more
00:53:36
than two decades. And what were they saying? It's the Nazarene divorce. I believe
00:53:44
she did this because she couldn't get a divorce. In her mind, it was much better to be
00:53:51
the widow Harmon than the divorcee Harmon. District Attorney Paul Morrison believed
00:53:57
Melinda Harmon was unhappy in her marriage and caught up in a secret affair with Mark [music] Mangelsdorf. It
00:54:04
was definitely a romance. But because of their strong religious beliefs, Morrison doubts it was sexual.
00:54:11
The promise of sex, the lure of sex, unfulfilled, can be stronger than the actual thing. The conservative
00:54:19
Christian world they lived in had strict rules of behavior. You didn't go to the movies, we didn't
00:54:25
dance. Mark Wood was a student at MidAmerica Nazarene College at the time. The old joke we used to have back then
00:54:33
was that uh you don't you don't smoke and you don't chew and you don't date the girls who
00:54:38
do. >> [laughter] >> And when you marry, you marry for life. Back in 1982 uh in the Nazarene church
00:54:47
um divorce was not the option that it is today. It would have not been a good thing.
00:54:54
Would have caused a certain amount of shame and scandal. To believe that one would have to
00:54:59
to not know the Nazarene church at that time. To think that [music] someone would plan murder to avoid
00:55:08
divorce is ludicrous. >> [music] >> Mark Mangelsdorf and Melinda Harmon always denied they had a romantic
00:55:17
relationship and at first they cooperated with investigators, but that soon stopped and leads dried up. There's
00:55:25
a lot of people that remember this case that were uh members of the church, members of our community. They all
00:55:31
thought that uh the suspects had been identified. Why aren't we moving forward? Investigators had a bloody murder scene,
00:55:40
but no footprints or fingerprints and no murder weapon. Not enough evidence to prosecute. [music]
00:55:47
The question of is that going to be provable beyond a reasonable doubt? Probably wasn't quite there. With no
00:55:53
charges against them, Mengel Dorf and Harmon both left Olathe. Melinda Harmon headed back home to Ohio
00:56:02
with her parents. Mark Mengel Dorf went off to Harvard Business School and became a successful
00:56:08
corporate executive. [music] Definitely went on with my life and uh it's not something that you know, I
00:56:15
really dwelled on or or focused on a lot. He and his second wife, Christina, live
00:56:20
in a million-dollar home in Pelham, just outside [music] New York City. He's the father of four
00:56:29
with one more on the way. The Mengel Dorfs sat down with 48 Hours for their only television interview.
00:56:37
When's the first time that you heard about this? Um it was fairly shortly after we started dating, honestly. My
00:56:45
first reaction was this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. There's no way that he could have done
00:56:50
this and and you know, he didn't need to give me any of the facts of the case or
00:56:54
any assurances that he hadn't to know that you know, no. I mean, it's not in his
00:56:59
personality. Uh the fact that the police considered me as a suspect uh in the course of their investigation was
00:57:05
hurtful and uh you know, certainly leaves an impression on you. Did you kill David Harmon? I did not
00:57:13
kill David Harmon. And Mengel Dorf doesn't believe Melinda Harmon was involved, either. Melinda was
00:57:19
my good friend and I choose to believe that uh that that was not in her character.
00:57:30
Back in Olathe, the unsolved Harmon murder had been shelved for almost two decades, but never forgotten.
00:57:38
They didn't have it on the front burner, but they did not forget about it. The community wouldn't let them forget about
00:57:43
it. When you read it, it's kind of a no-brainer. The suspects are identified. These
00:57:49
people did it. And now we got to prove it. As detectives Bill Wall and Steve James
00:57:56
began going over the 19-year-old evidence, they found it odd that blood spatter was all across Melinda Harmon's
00:58:03
pillow case. If she's laying in bed, her head should be here, right? Right. >> Should be a void. There should be a
00:58:10
spot. Where there's no blood? >> Where there's no blood. With so much blood on the pillow case,
00:58:16
Wall and James were surprised how little blood was on Melinda and her nightgown.
00:58:22
You would think you would see at least some blood up in this general area up here toward the top of the
00:58:28
nightgown. The only blood was at the bottom of the gown. She's standing away from [snorts] the bed and it's cast off
00:58:38
to her. They also had doubts about Melinda's story of being knocked out by intruders.
00:58:46
If she truly was knocked unconscious for that period of time, she wouldn't have remembered anything.
00:58:53
Evidence was mounting, but they still didn't have a case. They needed to re-interview the suspects.
00:59:02
In December 2001, detectives Wall and James showed up at Melinda's home in Ohio.
00:59:09
This is our shot. We wanted to catch her cold. Are you nervous? Yeah, I'm nervous.
00:59:15
What happens? Knock on the door. She answers. And what happened next would forever
00:59:22
change the course [music] of this case. Had she not let you in, where would we be today? We would not be sitting here
00:59:29
today. >> [music] >> When Melinda Harmon left Olathe, Kansas in 1982, she never looked back.
00:59:56
She moved to this Columbus, Ohio suburb and started over. This is an upscale neighborhood, a very nice house. She's
01:00:04
living pretty good life here. >> [music] >> Known here as Melinda Rash, she's a soccer mom with two children, married to
01:00:11
a successful dentist, >> [music] >> active in her community and her church. Everyone thought that Melinda Rash was a
01:00:18
perfect person, as a great neighbor, just doing everything right. So, when detectives Bill Wall and Steve James
01:00:25
showed up out of the blue at the Rash home in 2001, they didn't expect her to talk to them.
01:00:32
Steve and I both thought that she's probably going to say, "Hey, I left that back in Olathe. You're going
01:00:38
to have to talk to my attorneys." Something along those lines, but she didn't. Instead, she invited them in.
01:00:44
It's beyond what I expected to happen. As they sat in her kitchen, Rash told the detectives about the night her first
01:00:51
husband, David Harmon, was murdered. She says that she was awakened by these horrifying sounds
01:00:58
of someone striking her husband. She sees a shadowy figure. And she runs to the bathroom. This isn't the same
01:01:08
story as two decades ago. This is definitely not the same story. What happened to the two black guys who
01:01:14
broke in demanding bank keys? What happened to I think you hit him too hard. You may have killed him. None of
01:01:20
that. She didn't remember the lie she told. For 19 [music] years, detectives had waited for this
01:01:26
kind of break. I accused her. I said, "I know you you killed him. You know, you killed him or he did."
01:01:32
What did she say? Well, I assure you it wasn't me. And Melinda didn't stop there. Instead
01:01:38
of ending the conversation or calling her lawyer, she kept talking. >> She wanted to please us. She didn't want
01:01:46
her neighbors to be talked to about this. I don't think she ever shared with anybody about what happened in 1982.
01:01:53
She just wanted you to go away. Absolutely. And she thought she could manipulate us to get us to go away.
01:01:59
But they didn't go away. In fact, after 3 hours, Rash agreed to continue talking
01:02:05
at the sheriff's department. Only now the interrogation would be videotaped. Because he'd established a rapport with
01:02:15
Rash, Detective Bill Wall conducted the interview. I put 3 or 4 hours at your house.
01:02:23
I'm sorry. I should have offered you a drink at the house. It's all right. I'm usually a very good hostess. Sure
01:02:28
you are. Investigators had always believed Melinda Harmon Rash and Mark Mengel Dorf
01:02:35
conspired to murder David Harmon so they could be together. Now Bill Wall needed
01:02:40
details of their romance to prove motive. She said they were friends at first. We're friends. Well,
01:02:49
later on as their relationship blossomed, she said that there there became an emotional bond between the two
01:02:55
of them. You shared innermost deepest feelings. In a way that is inappropriate. Right.
01:03:02
You should have been sharing with your husband, probably. >> Right. She said that her feelings were
01:03:07
inappropriate. And that her husband, David, would definitely not approve. But according to
01:03:14
Rash, Mengel Dorf wanted more. Did he ever come out and say "I love you. I want to have sex with
01:03:20
you"? I would say so. He said that? I would say so. She told me that she got the impression
01:03:30
he wanted her to get a divorce. There were innuendos made. Okay. Innuendos made about what?
01:03:42
About he didn't like being different. He didn't like the fact that you were married. Right.
01:03:49
With their romance established, Bill Wall now needed Rash to connect Mark Mengelsdorf to the murder. If you did
01:03:57
not kill him, Mhm. you know who did. Mhm. And we've been down that road. >> Mhm.
01:04:01
And now you're trying to lead me to believe >> Well, I know in my heart You know in your heart what?
01:04:08
That Mark did? Mhm. In my heart I know that. She told Wall she didn't see Mengelsdorf
01:04:16
that night, but sensed his presence. Where was the presence coming from? The stairs. Why is she saying she felt
01:04:26
Mengelsdorf's presence rather than "I saw him bludgeon my husband"? I I just don't think she wanted to go there yet.
01:04:33
Uh she she knew if she said that, then uh that would implicate her further. So, she's holding back. Absolutely.
01:04:41
Rash wanted to know the consequences before giving up any more information. I don't know where I stand. Okay. So,
01:04:48
there is a little more here. >> There's a little more. But, we just want to get a little deal here before we go
01:04:53
forward. Yeah, because I don't You need to know what consequences Yeah, I need to know where I stand.
01:04:58
Bill Wall called District Attorney Paul Morrison in Olathe. I, like everybody else, was shocked that she talked to
01:05:05
him. And told him Rash wanted to discuss a deal. I remember telling Wall that I wasn't going to buy a pig in a poke cuz
01:05:14
we didn't know exactly what she had to offer. That in my opinion, she had already made
01:05:20
some serious admissions. So, let's not make any deals today that we might regret later.
01:05:29
After almost two decades of frustration, Morrison finally had a toehold. But it would take two more years of pouring
01:05:38
over every piece of evidence [music] to make a case. You've got no statute of limitations on a murder case. So, we had
01:05:44
the luxury of making sure that we got our ducks all lined up as straight as we could before we uh went into battle.
01:05:51
In 2003, with those ducks lined up, Melinda Harmon Rash [music] was finally arrested and charged with her husband's
01:05:59
murder. The news [music] stunned Mark Mangelsdorf. It did surprise me. It caught me off guard. I thought that this
01:06:07
thing had potentially run its course, and it of course had not. >> [music] >> Well, I know in my heart
01:06:32
You know in your heart what? That Mark did Mhm. Melinda Rash's news story of the murder
01:06:38
was the end for Mark [music] and Christina Mangelsdorf's quiet life in Pelham, New York.
01:06:44
It was just about exactly 10:00, and the phone rang, and Mark answered it. The person just said, you know, "This is
01:06:51
Detective Hines from the Pelham Police Department. Could you come downstairs, please?" And we we knew what they were
01:06:56
there for. Living with a cloud of suspicion for 23 years, Mark Mangelsdorf knew this day
01:07:03
could come. But for Christina, there was no preparing for what happened next. The
01:07:09
minute Mark opened the front door, I mean, there they were and the handcuffs were on him like that and they they walk
01:07:15
him off within about 30 seconds. And I was busy looking at the detective saying, "Wait, you know, can I kiss him
01:07:20
goodbye? What What do I do now?" Mark Mangelsdorf was arrested and escorted back to Kansas to face murder
01:07:29
charges for the 1982 [music] slaying of his close friend, David Harmon. He was charged with first-degree murder
01:07:38
[music] and conspiracy to commit murder, the same charges Rash is facing. Just 1 week after Mangelsdorf's [music]
01:07:49
arrest, Melinda Rash goes on trial for the murder of her first husband. By her side, showing support, is her
01:07:58
current husband. In spite of the dramatic interrogation tapes, prosecutor Paul Morrison knows
01:08:06
getting a conviction after 23 years will be tough. About 2:33 a.m., David Harmon
01:08:13
was beaten to death in his bed. He begins by setting out [music] to establish a motive for the crime. Her
01:08:21
world revolved around the church. Divorce was a unthinkable option. You've got that sort of perverted thinking
01:08:29
about that not being an option and it manifested itself in what most of us would consider to be
01:08:37
the unthinkable. And that is that you kill him. Morrison sets out to prove a case
01:08:47
largely built on circumstantial evidence, evidence of an alleged love affair, They were just standing very
01:08:53
close together. and lies. First, Rash said she was in bed while her husband was being beaten to death,
01:09:01
But prosecutors show her pillow covered in blood. Then there is her claim she was knocked
01:09:09
out for more than an hour. That didn't fit at all. And in fact, she didn't have any
01:09:13
any real injuries other than a tiny bruise on her cheek. Prosecutors begin unraveling Rasch's story of what
01:09:20
happened that night, weaving a different story. She delivered us about 20 cards and letters from
01:09:27
Melinda Harmond to Mark Mangelsdorf. Prosecutors produce a stack of cards and letters found in Mark Mangelsdorf's
01:09:34
apartment, suggesting signs of an intimate relationship. Do you recognize this item? Yes. These were just [music]
01:09:40
signed either Melinda or love Melinda or I love you Melinda, that type of thing.
01:09:46
As the evidence mounts, [music] it is the 2001 police videotape that cements the case against her and Mark
01:09:54
Mangelsdorf. You had to known that was him. In my heart I knew it was him. As prosecutors slowly built their case,
01:10:07
Rasch's defense team knew they had to confront the allegations of an affair and murder head-on.
01:10:14
To do that, they turned to the person at the center of this case to testify. But
01:10:19
it was not their client, Melinda Rasch, they called to the stand. It was Mark Mangelsdorf.
01:10:28
I plan to tell the jury the truth, just exactly as I told the police 23 years ago. And for the first time in 23 years,
01:10:36
Mark Mangelsdorf and Melinda Rasch are together again. This time, the only thing they are
01:10:42
sharing is the charge of murder. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be
01:10:47
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. You may be seated.
01:10:51
Thank you. Mangelsdorf's testimony is crucial for Rasch's defense and ultimately his own.
01:11:00
The defense wants to show Mengelsdorf is not capable of murder and that he and Rash couldn't have conspired to commit
01:11:07
such a crime. I felt that it would be an opportunity for me to tell the truth to potentially
01:11:15
assist in uh un- uncovering the truth for the jury, giving them full information, full
01:11:20
facts. Mark Mengelsdorf's defense [music] attorney Mickey Sherman said it's a gamble worth taking even though anything
01:11:28
Mengelsdorf says could be used against him. Why were you so willing to have him testify?
01:11:33
Truth is the truth. Uh I felt that uh I'd rather put him on the witness stand now and let the jury, let the world know
01:11:43
what his recollection was rather than have this cloud over his head. Questioned by Rash's defense attorney
01:11:50
Tom Bath, Mengelsdorf answers questions point-blank about accusations of an affair.
01:11:56
Mr. Mengelsdorf, were you having an affair with Melinda? No, I absolutely was not. Were you
01:12:01
romantically involved with her? No. Um were you physical in any kind of sexual way with her? No, I was not
01:12:09
physical with her. Melinda Harmon was my friend. And how about David Harmon? David Harmon was also my friend. And did
01:12:16
did you kill David Harmon? I did not kill David Harmon. Mengelsdorf looks calm on the stand even
01:12:24
under tough cross-examination from prosecutor Paul Morrison. Were you aware of the fact that she said it was uh
01:12:33
an emotionally inappropriate intimate relationship? I'm aware that she made that statement.
01:12:39
>> Were you aware of the fact that she said that you told her, "I want to have sex with
01:12:45
you."? I read that statement as well. Were you aware of the fact that she said she
01:12:50
thinks you killed David Harmon. I I don't know the specific words, uh but I I did view the tape and so I'm
01:12:59
Your words, yes? >> Yes. How did he do on the witness stand? >> I thought he did fantastic. We all
01:13:04
thought he did fantastic. For defense attorney Mickey Sherman, this was a dress rehearsal. He got to see how his
01:13:10
client will do as a witness. But true crime writer Andy Hoffman believes Mengel Dorf taking the stand
01:13:17
may not have been the best defense for Rash or for himself. There was no feelings of sorrow for
01:13:26
David. You know, no, it was all it was all just rehearsed and I'm in here and I'm going
01:13:33
to walk my way out of here and I'm not showing any emotion. I think you really saw Mark Mengel Dorf as Mark Mengel
01:13:38
Dorf, totally controlled, totally sure of himself, but something's wrong there. Please rise.
01:13:51
Melinda Rash never took the stand or spoke publicly about the murder of her husband.
01:13:57
After nearly 3 weeks of testimony and over 60 witnesses, Rash's trial comes to a close.
01:14:08
After 2 days, the jury reaches a verdict. The court will read the verdict of the jury.
01:14:14
On count one, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder. On count two, we the jury find the
01:14:22
defendant guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. >> [music] >> Did Mark help or hurt her on the stand?
01:14:29
>> He hurt her. If they believed him, they wouldn't have convicted her. Out on bail, Mark Mengel Dorf was at
01:14:40
home with his wife Christina when they learned of Rash's fate. When you saw the word guilty, what was your reaction? Uh
01:14:48
I think surprised and disappointed. You thought she was innocent? Yes. Christina believes the outcome will be
01:14:56
different for her husband. It wasn't like we looked at this and said, you know, oh my gosh, you know, this same
01:15:02
thing is going to happen to Mark. I mean, there's still a confidence that it's a very different case and that that
01:15:07
Mark will ultimately be found innocent. As Mangelsdorf now starts [music] to prepare for his own trial, Melinda Rash,
01:15:14
facing life in prison, sits in a Kansas County jail awaiting sentencing. But as he will learn,
01:15:21
she's not sitting quietly. >> [music] >> Here in Olathe, Kansas, Melinda Rash is
01:15:44
behind bars, facing [music] life in prison for the murder of her husband, David Harmon.
01:15:53
Back in Pelham, New York, [music] Mark Mangelsdorf begins to prepare for his trial, confident a jury will find
01:16:00
[music] him innocent. When they see the evidence as it's presented, we think they'll come to the
01:16:06
the the same conclusion that we know is is the reality that that I'm innocent. I
01:16:12
believe in Mark and I believe that a jury will believe in Mark, both in his innocence and his character.
01:16:18
Defense attorney Mickey Sherman is on the offensive. What's your best evidence? Mark Mangelsdorf getting on
01:16:24
the stand and telling the story. And the lack of such a story on the part of the state. While Sherman makes his
01:16:31
plans for Mangelsdorf's defense, he's unaware Melinda Rash is making plans of her own. You begin to think about your
01:16:38
children, I think. You begin to think about your future. Writer Andy Hoffman. And you can begin
01:16:43
to think, "Oh my god, I'm convicted and I'm facing life in prison. What can I do?" With few choices, Rasch makes a
01:16:50
stunning move and turns to prosecutor Paul Morrison, looking to make a deal. In exchange for a lighter sentence, she
01:16:58
says she'll finally tell the truth of what happened that night her husband was brutally murdered.
01:17:06
Melinda Rasch admits for the first time she took part in the murder of her husband, David Harmon. And she says she
01:17:13
did it with Mark Mangelsdorf's help. It sounds like a big break for the prosecution, but it could be a bigger
01:17:22
break for the defense. I think it's going to be great fodder for the defense. She told a lie
01:17:29
in '82. She told half-truths in 2001. She was convicted in 2005. And now, facing life in prison, she's
01:17:39
going to come clean and tell the truth. Well, do you believe her? How concerned are you about her testimony?
01:17:45
Well, I I could put on a big act and say it's no big deal cuz she's lied before,
01:17:49
but of course I'm concerned. The usually confident Mickey Sherman knows this could be trouble. I mean, this is
01:17:56
someone who was obviously going to implicate him, and her credibility, her believability is going to make a great
01:18:03
difference in whether or not Mark Mangelsdorf is a is going to be convicted or acquitted. There we go. The
01:18:09
stakes are high. If convicted, Mangelsdorf, now a father of five, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
01:18:22
In February 2006, [music] appearing in court for a pre-trial hearing, Mark Mangelsdorf shocks
01:18:29
everyone with a statement of his own. Mr. Mangelsdorf does plead guilty and agrees that he did participate in this
01:18:36
crime. After 24 years of maintaining his innocence, Mark Mangelsdorf now admits he helped kill his close friend David
01:18:47
Harmon. I felt that it was time for me to to plead guilty and to get this behind us. By his side
01:18:56
is his wife Christina. I love my husband and he is the best husband and best father that he can be and we're going to
01:19:03
be there for him. During the summer of 1981, the two kissed for the first time in the family room of the duplex.
01:19:09
Pleading to second-degree murder, Mangelsdorf stands there while prosecutor Paul Morrison reads Melinda
01:19:16
Rash's confession. The week before the homicide, Mangelsdorf informed Melinda that he had
01:19:21
purchased a weapon, specifically a crowbar, with which to murder David Harmon. He indicated that the time for
01:19:26
the homicide was getting closer. And in the confession, Melinda Rash related a chilling scene. At her
01:19:35
husband's funeral, Mark Mangelsdorf whispered in Rash's ear he got rid of the murder weapon.
01:19:41
Remarkably for a couple who now admits they committed this brutal murder to have a relationship,
01:19:48
it was the last time they were together. She was ready to testify that uh during
01:19:53
this relationship that she had with Mark Mangelsdorf, during their discussions of
01:19:58
how they were going to end up together, her and Mark, that for her it came down to the fact that she chose murder over
01:20:06
the social stigma of divorce. Bottom line is that she was just one of the factors which we all considered in
01:20:11
deciding whether or not Mark should plead guilty. Mark finally made the call himself. He wanted to get on with his
01:20:17
life, he saw the possibilities of conviction, saw the possibilities of acquittal, and elected to plead guilty.
01:20:26
All right. On May 12th, 2006, in two separate hearings, Mark Mangelsdorf and Melinda
01:20:33
Rash are sentenced for the horrific murder of David Harmon. I do not suggest that this punishment is
01:20:41
equivalent to the crime itself. No punishment could be. They are both sentenced to 10 to 20
01:20:48
years in prison. To the Harmon family, words do not adequately express the things I feel in my heart. Just
01:20:57
words are not enough. I'm horrified beyond words that I was ever connected to this. And I knew the minute it
01:21:03
happened that it was wrong. For that, I'm very, very, very sorry. I have pled guilty to this.
01:21:11
I've acknowledged my involvement. I'm truly, truly sorry for David's death and for the loss of the time that you've
01:21:21
experienced not being able to spend time with him. Mr. Harmon Good afternoon, Your Honor.
01:21:27
But for David's father, John, Melinda and Mark's apologies will never [music] be enough. Melinda
01:21:35
I hold you more responsible than Mark. You as a wife could have called a halt to the entire plot at any time.
01:21:42
Mark, you're not only a murderer, you're also a thief. You took our one and only child in a
01:21:50
vicious, not just normal, a vicious attack and act of violence. You conned everybody while you were
01:21:58
living a lie for over 20 years. It took 24 years, but for this small town of Olathe, Kansas, the memory of a
01:22:10
haunting murder can finally be laid to rest. And for David Harmon a 24-year-old injustice
01:22:18
has come to [music] an end. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Amber. She'd been waiting for a year for this
01:23:23
day. [music] She's been into animals since she was still in diapers. Her science [music] project is to raise
01:23:34
a baby lamb. She was all excited when I left that morning. She was like, [music] "Thanks,
01:23:41
Mom. I love you so much. Thank you for the lamb." I think I've known Amber since she was
01:23:46
about 4 years old. Me and her mom were friends for a long [music] time before we started dating.
01:23:52
With bunny ears. >> [crying] >> To me, Amber's my baby girl. All Amber wanted that day was to go pay
01:24:00
for her lamb. And when I left, I wrote the check for her to grab on her way out the door.
01:24:07
Amber, say bye-bye. I was the last person that seen Amber. I think Dave called and he says, "Amber
01:24:18
never made it to school." And I said, "What?" I knew as soon as Dave said [music] she
01:24:28
didn't make it to school, someone had taken her. There was no question in my mind.
01:24:34
Tonight, a 14-year-old girl is missing, and Escondido police [music] are asking for your help in finding her.
01:24:39
The Amber Dubois case is one of the most frustrating cases that we've been faced.
01:24:44
Typically, you have evidence, you have witnesses. In this case, we had nothing. It didn't make sense to me how she could
01:24:53
be in front of her school with 2,000 other students, and someone was able to take her.
01:25:00
It's like she just vanished. Maurice Dubois, Amber's father, did not give up. Nothing's more important than
01:25:09
the search for Amber. Search and rescue volunteers canvassed the area, but still
01:25:13
no Amber. We're definitely 100% a team, all of us. Every weekend, I get my hopes up.
01:25:27
And the weekend's over, and I just fall apart. Mark your holidays [music] with tears.
01:25:33
There is no holiday when your child is missing. You know, you >> [music] >> you start looking at everybody you know.
01:25:40
I mean, you suspect, and you don't trust anybody. You think anyone could do it. >> [music]
01:25:46
>> There's a part of me that I'm not 100% sure when it comes to Dave. Before this all happened, Kerry and I
01:25:54
were doing better [music] than we've ever done in the history of our relationship. And in a matter of no time
01:26:00
at all, that [music] all went away. We're getting so much information from different [music] sources saying, you
01:26:07
know, you need to look at Dave. Many people said, "Well, look at the step parent. It's always the step
01:26:13
parent." Couldn't lay in the same bed with the man who [music] I thought might have
01:26:17
done something to my daughter. Why would you look at me? I don't understand why you would look at me.
01:26:23
Do whatever you need to do to find Amber, but hurry up and get done [music] looking at me so you can start looking
01:26:30
in the proper direction. Taken, the Amber Dubois story. >> [music] >> Let us pray. We ask that you'll watch
01:27:19
over each one of the searchers [music] and lead us to that crucial piece of evidence that's going to bring Amber
01:27:25
home. Amen. Amen. It has been 22 days since Amber Dubois disappeared. Amber is a 14-year-old girl, 5'5",
01:27:37
130 lbs. And the desperate search for the straight-A student Search and rescue with the sheriff's department
01:27:44
>> is in high gear. More than 400 volunteers are combing 200 square miles of countryside on foot. Be
01:27:51
observant. Watch for things that are out of place. >> The crisis has brought together a
01:27:55
fractured family. Amber's mom, Cary McGonagill. Every morning she'd wake me up before she left for school and give
01:28:02
me a kiss and tell me she loved me. Amber's father, Moe Dubois. We're not losing hope, not in any way. And the man
01:28:09
Cary lives with now, Dave Cave. Amber lives at my house and I come home to her every day. She's my daughter to me.
01:28:17
She's my baby girl. Amber, say hi. It's the spirit of a special child that keeps their hopes alive. My daughter
01:28:26
Amber is my sweetheart. She's She's a little girl who always has a little smirk on her face. Tease me all the
01:28:31
time. Give me a hard time about my receding hairline and that's my kid. She loves to read. She
01:28:37
has friends at school and stuff, but she doesn't go to the mall. She hates to shop. She doesn't wear makeup. She's a
01:28:42
bookworm. But as the days pass with no breaks in the case, the stress starts taking a
01:28:48
toll on all three parents. >> This is tearing Carrie's heart out of her. She's She's just
01:28:56
I hate seeing what it's doing to her. Consumes you, you know, you don't know where your daughter is, you know, your
01:29:02
child [music] is and it just changes your whole your whole world. I don't want to make it to a month.
01:29:10
I want I want to hug tomorrow. I want to hug tonight. I want to see her. Someone call us tonight and say we we've
01:29:17
got her. She's coming home. In the next hour, you'll witness a remarkable and intimate journey.
01:29:26
For a year and a half from the time Amber first went missing, 48 Hours has been with her anguished family.
01:29:33
You'll see how the strain of her disappearance wore them down and for a time tore them apart.
01:29:42
The mystery of Amber Dubois' disappearance began here on the day before Valentine's Day.
01:29:48
She was seen by two different parents walking up the street. Amber was last seen
01:29:53
around 7:00 a.m. just blocks from Escondido High School. She was walking by herself the first time and the second
01:30:00
time there was a man standing next to her, a kid. When Amber didn't show up at home by 4:30 that afternoon, her
01:30:06
stepfather Dave went looking for her. I went to her first class and her teacher told me
01:30:13
that she she had not shown up to class. And immediately I I knew something was wrong. I get a call
01:30:21
from Carey saying, "I don't know where Amber is." in hysterical and tears. Her panicked family went into immediate
01:30:30
search mode, retracing Amber's route to school, plastering the town flyers, and knocking
01:30:36
on every door in the neighborhood. >> [music] >> Nobody in Amber's family is willing to
01:30:41
give up hope, even down to the smallest member, Dave and Carey's 7-year-old daughter Allison.
01:30:47
She'll hear people say kidnapped or abducted and she kind of freaks out, you know, and "Amber's not
01:30:54
kidnapped." And and she wants to search. So, at night we go we go on walks with the dogs and we go We have six on that
01:31:01
side, too. and search for her sister cuz she wants to be she wants to participate. Amber's father Mo puts his
01:31:07
life on hold, taking a leave from his job as an electrical engineer in Los Angeles, and moving to a nearby hotel
01:31:13
with his partner Rebecca Smith. Usually end my night by about two or three hours
01:31:18
of crying. I have to have my point to release if volunteers and everyone around here
01:31:25
start start to see my frustration, then it'll it'll trickle on through them. As the days pass, hope begins to fade,
01:31:32
[music] replaced by a growing suspicion that Amber may have met with foul play in her
01:31:38
own home. I want Escondido police begin focusing on one member of the family in particular,
01:31:45
>> [music] >> Amber's stepfather, Dave Cave. How soon after her disappearance did you realize
01:31:50
that you were a person of interest? I don't think it actually really set in for me for a
01:31:56
couple of weeks. Dad had surgery. He said, "You can't be being involved with any of the search because you do not
01:32:03
want to be the person who finds Amber. And I have kind of looked at him like, why not?
01:32:09
And they said, if you're the first if you're the person that finds something, they are going to pin it on you.
01:32:17
I I was the last person that seen Amber. Tell me about the morning of of February
01:32:22
the 13th. [music] Amber was up and ready to go to school on time uh without any prompting because she
01:32:28
knew she was getting a check to get her lamb. Dave walked us through what he says happened the morning Amber
01:32:34
disappeared. About when I finished getting dressed, Amber came into my room and said, "Dave, you got my check for
01:32:39
the lamb?" And I said, "I'll give it to you before I leave, sweetie." So, she came up several times and I think it was
01:32:44
the fourth time that she asked for the check, I said, "Sweetie, I will give you a check before I leave. Just go
01:32:49
downstairs. You'll have a check, I promise. Just relax." So, I came downstairs and I sat
01:32:54
down at the table right here. I wrote out the check uh for the lamb and I walked right in here. I sat the
01:33:01
check down on the arm of the couch and Amber was sitting on the floor right there. She was eating a bowl of cereal
01:33:06
and I said, "Sweetie, here's your check for your lamb. I'll see you later. I love you." And I turned around and
01:33:11
walked out the door and and went about my day. That was the last [snorts] you saw of
01:33:15
her? Oh, yeah, absolutely. But it was what this man of routine did not do that quickly made him a key
01:33:21
suspect. Dave Cave did not show up for work that day. He says he went to the gym and then home
01:33:29
to do [music] his taxes. And when I came back to the house, she was gone. So, I you know, I figured she went to school.
01:33:34
She should have been at school by then. But while he was at home, Dave somehow did not get the message
01:33:41
from the high school secretary alerting them that Amber, the girl with perfect attendance, had failed to show up at
01:33:47
school. Fairly early on into the investigation, suspicion was swirling around your partner, Dave. Oh, yeah. But
01:33:55
eventually, you became suspicious as well. You know, Dave had come to my work that day
01:34:03
and brought me some chocolate-covered strawberries and some roses that day. That's a nice gesture. Yeah. Well, it
01:34:09
was. It was for Valentine's Day. It was 13th. Except that Dave doesn't celebrate
01:34:14
Valentine's Days. And he stuck around for like 45 minutes that day and I'm like, but I had it I had asked him to
01:34:20
leave. I'm like, "Dave, you need What are you doing here? Go." Another concern for investigators
01:34:26
centers on some tension between Dave and Amber that led the family to counseling.
01:34:31
Amber and I didn't always get along perfectly. It's a house, there's rules, she's a teenager.
01:34:38
She doesn't want to follow the rules. There's going to be a certain amount of conflict. They really didn't talk for
01:34:44
the whole month before Amber went missing. It was a constant bicker. But Dave claims the night before Amber
01:34:52
disappeared, they finally called a truce. I know the night before she went missing, we went out and went shopping
01:34:59
and went to the bookstore and stuff and and we had a really good time. But could
01:35:03
Amber possibly have said or done something the next morning to set Dave off? Escondido police are taking a hard look
01:35:11
at Dave and the answers he gives police will raise Carrie's suspicions even further. We're sitting with the
01:35:17
detectives and everything and he's telling what he did that day and I'm like, "Just take him in." That's how bad
01:35:22
he looked. When I went in for my original interview with the police, they took pictures of my hands.
01:35:41
Take your shirt off, pictures of my arms, my back, my chest. They needed to make sure I didn't have any marks on me.
01:35:51
Within days of Amber Dubois' disappearance, Escondido police start zeroing in on
01:35:57
Dave Cave, the man the missing 14-year-old called her stepfather. The detectives asked you the question
01:36:04
directly, "Did you kill Amber?" They never I don't think they used the word kill.
01:36:10
They asked directly, "Do you know Amber's whereabouts? Do you know anything about Amber's
01:36:17
disappearance?" Things like that. And And in the polygraph test, they asked questions like that. You took the
01:36:23
polygraph exam eight times. Why so many? They're They had nothing to go on. They're
01:36:30
clearly looking for something to go on. But they kept on coming back to you. Statistics point at me.
01:36:37
Statistics point at the male of the household that the child lives in. Did police ever come to you and say, "We
01:36:45
We believe Dave may be responsible for Amber's disappearance?" Did they come straight out and say that?
01:36:51
No. Did they hint >> [music] >> to that? Absolutely. Well, this is probably someone that you trust, I would
01:36:58
assume. >> Mhm. I trust. You loved him. Yeah. Uh-huh. He's the father of my child.
01:37:03
But you also believed he was capable of murder? I had doubt. Did Carrie ever ask you the question,
01:37:13
"Were you responsible for her disappearance?" >> Oh, absolutely. She asked you. This is a woman you're in
01:37:18
love with. And she suspected you as well. Mhm. What did this do to your relationship
01:37:26
with Carrie? I I don't know where my I don't know where Carrie and I's relationship goes in the future.
01:37:33
Six weeks after Amber goes missing, Carrie makes a heart-wrenching decision. She packs up and moves out, taking
01:37:41
Allison, the daughter she shares with Dave. Did the police tell you to move out?
01:37:46
Nope. You decided on your own? >> Oh, I had to. Why? >> I couldn't lay cuz I couldn't lay in the
01:37:51
same bed with the man who I thought might have done something to my daughter. Did I think honestly that Dave
01:37:57
premeditated this, that he could have? No. Did I think maybe Amber bugged him five
01:38:03
or six times about the check like she did? And there was maybe a confrontation, maybe she fell down the
01:38:08
stairs. I had I don't know what what I can't tell you what went on through my head.
01:38:15
But did I think that Dave >> [snorts] >> planned to kill Amber? Absolutely not. Did I think an accident might have
01:38:20
happened? Yeah. And he hid it. Yeah. I feel like I'm 100 years old. It's It's It's taken a huge toll on
01:38:37
everybody. It's It's just It's just destroyed everybody's lives. Dave neglects his scaffolding business,
01:38:44
which begins to crumble. I was the driving force of my company and I quit driving.
01:38:50
And we're paying the price. >> [music] >> I don't know that we make it through. And Amber's father, Mo, loses his job
01:38:58
and his savings financing the search. With no leads in the case, the whole family lives in a constant state of
01:39:06
paranoia. I'm scared to death that something could happen to Allison. My daughter pretty much doesn't [music]
01:39:13
get out of my sight when when she's with me. She doesn't go to the playground here
01:39:19
without somebody sitting in that front yard. I just I've lost faith in people. My heart tells me she's still alive and
01:39:38
we're going to we're going to find her. In August, six months after Amber vanished, Carrie's mother hires a team
01:39:45
of live scent search and recovery dogs to retrace Amber's steps on the last day she was seen.
01:39:52
Quincy and Jack are trained to follow the odor of one specific person and to exclude all others. They have an
01:39:56
outstanding track record when it comes to cold cases. They followed the trail from our house
01:40:03
up the freeway. The dogs lead searchers to Escondido High School. And then along a 15-mile stretch of
01:40:13
highway to the remote Pala Indian Reservation. It's a baffling clue. I've never brought her here and so I
01:40:24
believe that she was brought here by whoever took her. Carrie is convinced Amber is still
01:40:33
nearby and alive. And she's probably within what, 50-mile range, I think. Which just drives me crazy, but then you
01:40:42
look around here and look how much land there is to cover, you know. I got to keep the faith.
01:40:48
It's hard. After countless sleepless nights, on February 13th, 2010, Amber's family find
01:40:56
themselves marking the 1-year anniversary of her disappearance. That one is. Grab a table, Cody.
01:41:04
We We've decided to have a walk-a-thon to help raise money to further her her uh efforts.
01:41:15
It's a nightmare, you know, every day, you know, it never ends. We're back at square one.
01:41:24
You know, something's got to break in this case. We just don't know when or how.
01:41:30
But somebody knows something. Escondido police and sheriff's homicide detectives were following a lead in the
01:41:35
case when they made this discovery. Breaking news, authorities are searching a North County neighborhood this morning
01:41:52
in hopes [music] of finding a missing teenager. Almost a year to the day that Amber
01:41:57
Dubois disappeared. She's about 5'5 weighs 115 lbs. >> wakes to the news that another promising
01:42:04
teen is missing. My roommate came into my room and she said, "Carrie, there's uh another girl
01:42:11
missing." She's 17, her name's Chelsea. Chelsea King, an honors high school student,
01:42:19
fails to return from her afternoon run near Lake Hodges. Her car found at the Rancho Bernardo
01:42:25
community center, which is about 10 miles >> from where Amber disappeared. Her grief-stricken parents, Brent and
01:42:31
Kelly King, appeal for help. Anybody out there, if you know anything, [music] please just help us bring her home.
01:42:38
She's a great kid. >> She's such a good girl. She needs to come home. What was your immediate thought? My
01:42:44
immediate thought is I wanted to get in my car and drive over there and help search for her.
01:42:50
The next morning, armed with 3,000 flyers and hundreds of volunteers, We're just part of the
01:42:56
search team for Chelsea King and we're helping >> Amber's family joins the search for
01:43:00
Chelsea. I knew it was a very, very difficult time for them and whatever support we
01:43:05
can give to them, the family, the group, we wanted to be there for that. I said a
01:43:10
prayer that she was found fast. But while searchers comb the area, unbeknownst to the public, police had
01:43:21
already discovered a vital clue. Chelsea's underwear and socks are found near a running trail.
01:43:28
They are sent to a lab for DNA testing. Then, just 72 hours later, the San Diego
01:43:37
Sheriff makes a stunning announcement. At approximately 4:20 this afternoon, uh investigators with the Fugitive Task
01:43:44
Force arrested 30-year-old John Albert Gardner III. DNA on Chelsea's underwear is linked to
01:43:53
John Gardner, a convicted sex offender on parole, with a criminal record dating [music]
01:44:01
back 10 years. Gardner had recently spent 6 years in prison for savagely beating and sexually
01:44:10
assaulting a 13-year-old girl. And Gardner is also identified by another woman, Candace Moncayo, as the
01:44:21
man who attacked her on the same jogging trail just 2 months earlier. He threw me down onto the ground, and he
01:44:28
pinned me to the ground, and I Like I said, I was screaming, and he said, "Shut up." And I said, "No." Did you
01:44:33
Moncayo told her story to CNN's Larry King. And I said, "Well, you're going to have to kill me first, because I thought
01:44:39
that he was trying to rape me." He said, "That can be arranged." But Moncayo, the daughter of a world
01:44:49
kickboxing champion, was fighting for her life. I took my right elbow, and I bashed him in the
01:44:55
nose. And he grabbed his face, and turned away from me. And I got up, and I ran faster than I think I've ever run in
01:45:05
my life. Under questioning, Gardner denies any involvement in King's disappearance or
01:45:13
the attack on Moncayo. Just 48 hours later, San Diego DA Bonnie Dumanis is meeting
01:45:22
with top cops when they get the news everyone has been dreading. We were all sitting around the table
01:45:28
when every beeper in the room started going off. You could just feel the room change. And
01:45:42
they were notified, each one of them, that they had found Chelsea. And that she was not alive.
01:45:50
Devastating news from Lake Hodges after investigators announced they believe they have found the body of 17-year-old
01:45:56
Chelsea King in a shallow grave. Gardner is charged with the murder of Chelsea King
01:46:06
and the attack on Moncayo. Despite Gardner's arrest, Amber's family still doubts he has
01:46:17
anything to do with her disappearance. Does it feel like to you that John Gardner might have abducted your
01:46:24
daughter? No. But I don't know if that's just denial. Kerry appears on CBS's The Early Show
01:46:31
with Harry Smith the day after Gardner's arrest. You think somebody else may have
01:46:36
done it? Yeah. He seems a little sloppy in what he does. As of yesterday, they hadn't found
01:46:42
anything that linked him with Amber. But behind the scenes, a secret agreement is being hammered out.
01:46:49
Gardner's attorneys are quietly reaching out to San Diego DA Dumanis trying to save Gardner from an almost
01:46:56
certain trip to death row. >> [music] >> The discussion was, I think we can lead
01:47:03
you to Amber Dubois. We had a family that didn't know what happened to their daughter. And if we
01:47:11
could bring Amber home, that was the most important part of this conversation. With the blessing of Chelsea King's
01:47:20
family, the state makes a deal. If Gardner will lead them to Amber, prosecutors will not pursue the death
01:47:28
penalty against him for Chelsea's murder. It was a serious and heavy agreement. And we made the decision and kept it
01:47:39
very secret. You don't know whether or not he's telling the truth. [music] You don't know whether you're really
01:47:49
going to find Amber. And you don't want to raise the hopes or the fears of the family before you know.
01:48:01
Late the following evening, Carrie and Moe are summoned [music] to the Escondido Police Station. Moe and
01:48:08
I had no idea why we were there. The time, the fact that they asked us to come in
01:48:13
immediately. And my heart just dropped. I knew at that point it wasn't going to be good.
01:48:35
I knew when I got the phone call, I knew it was bad. 13 months after Amber Dubois
01:48:40
disappeared, Escondido police deliver the news her parents have been dreading. >> And they said, uh,
01:48:46
we found remains last night and we were able to identify them to confirm that it's that it's Amber's
01:48:52
remains. Carrie and Moe sat down with us just hours later. I was still holding out,
01:48:58
but when they told me it was it was a sense of relief. Closure. Denial. It really hurt [music] the most when
01:49:15
they described the condition, her condition, and I wasn't ready to hear that. They don't have all of her yet.
01:49:23
Her Her entire body has not yet been recovered. We don't know if it's because of wild
01:49:31
animals or or what, but we just know >> [snorts] >> our whole baby hasn't been recovered
01:49:37
yet. Human skeletal remains have been positively identified as being those of our missing 14-year-old Amber.
01:49:44
In a bitter irony, investigators finally locate Amber's remains near the Pala Reservation, just a mile from where the
01:49:52
live-scent dogs led Amber's family just 6 months earlier. And her family learns that Gardner, a
01:49:59
convicted sex offender, had hundreds [music] of parole violations, which should have sent him back to prison
01:50:05
months earlier. He should have not have been on the street. He didn't belong on the street.
01:50:11
But Gardner's confession clears up one mystery that's [music] been haunting Amber's family. Dave is no longer a
01:50:18
suspect. Well, how did you feel when he was cleared? I felt Well, I felt relief. Right. You know, of
01:50:28
course. Um Do you feel a little guilty? No. No. It's my daughter. But Dave is still struggling to
01:50:38
understand why Kerry ever had doubts about him. There's hurt that will never that will never pass.
01:50:47
I've I've had things said to me that are more hurtful than anything that's [music] ever been said
01:50:55
to me in my life. People that should have had 100% faith in me didn't, and that's a hurt that's
01:51:02
never going to go away. Friends and family gather 3 weeks later as Amber is laid to rest.
01:51:16
I carry Amber close to me and she's by my side and she always will be. I feel a sense of closure.
01:51:23
I think he feels devastated. Where my anger is going to keep me going to bring justice for Amber.
01:51:33
Judge on the 130 calendar, item number 16, John Albert Gardner. On April 16th, 2010, in a San Diego
01:51:41
courtroom, John Gardner pleads guilty to the slayings of Amber and Chelsea and the attack on Jagger Candice Moncayo.
01:51:50
Do you admit the truth of those facts? Yes. But Gardner's guilty plea is not enough
01:51:57
for Carrie, who feels the need to confront her daughter's killer face-to-face. Why did you need to speak
01:52:05
with him? I needed answers. What to what questions? How he got Amber. You know, I needed to know if she
01:52:13
um if she cried for me, if she begged for her life. Authorities won't let Carrie see
01:52:21
Gardner, so she takes to waiting at the entrance to the jail, sparking a confrontation with Gardner's mother, a
01:52:28
psychiatric nurse. I just want to visit your son. >> Excuse me. Don't Don't touch me. Don't
01:52:35
touch me. Don't touch me. I'm not Stay away from her. I'm not hungry. I'm not here to harass you. I want to
01:52:41
talk to your son and find out why he murdered my daughter. It pisses me off then the mom didn't go
01:52:50
public and say, "I'm sorry. You know, my son's a monster. You know, he's still my
01:52:55
son. I still love him cuz he's my son. But I'm sorry I reach out to the families and apologize for what he did."
01:53:01
You know, she just runs and I just feel that's weak. Leave my mom alone. What about Gardner? Why would she let Gardner
01:53:08
visit with Amber's mom? >> didn't do anything. We're sorry. We're sorry, Diane. You don't even know.
01:53:13
Then, just 2 days before sentencing, >> [music] >> Carey is granted a meeting with Gardner.
01:53:18
I had been coached by Escondido Police Department that if I showed rage, if I showed
01:53:23
anger, that I wouldn't get the answers that I wanted. And so, when I went in there, I had a mindset of
01:53:29
just I'm going in to ask the questions. The biggest thing was how did he get my daughter?
01:53:35
How was he able to get Amber in his car? And when he finally told me how it happened,
01:53:40
it made sense then. According to Gardner, he was driving in the neighborhood at about 7:00 in the
01:53:46
morning when he spotted Amber walking alone down an empty side street. She wasn't anywhere where any of us thought
01:53:53
she was. She She was not [music] anywhere near the school. In an exclusive interview with 48 Hours,
01:53:58
convicted killer John Gardner told us exactly how he abducted and murdered Amber Dubois. I passed her driving down
01:54:06
the street. And that's the first time that I saw her. I pulled up next to her with the windows
01:54:17
down in the car. Uh I had uh the knife out and visible and told her that I also had a gun
01:54:25
and to get in the car or it was going to be a lot worse. She actually looked at me
01:54:35
uh in kind of shock and disbelief and asked me if I was kidding. And I raised my voice and yelled, "No,
01:54:46
get the F in the car." And I could see the whole thing, how how she looked at him and how she was
01:54:56
how she was scared when she saw him. I drove to the remote area and um on driving I
01:55:06
uh put the music on. She wanted to hear music so that she could pretend she wasn't there.
01:55:15
During the 40-minute ride to the Indian reservation, Gardner says a terrified Amber badgered him, begging him to let
01:55:23
her go. She asked me why I was doing it, what was wrong. But she wasn't crying. She She never
01:55:28
cried. And she just kept going, "Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?" And
01:55:32
asking a lot of questions. When we got up to the Pala area I turned into uh like a little uh
01:55:44
it's a little plateau dirt area that was just off of that road. And that's where everything the rest of
01:55:52
it took place. He took her to um the location. He raped her. And um then out of the blue, he doesn't know why, he
01:56:06
just grabbed the knife, ran over, and and and stabbed her. For a half an hour, Kerry listened
01:56:14
spellbound as Gardner filled in the missing pieces of her daughter's last day on Earth.
01:56:20
But surprisingly, instead of breaking her, Kerry says it gave her strength. So how did you feel when you left that
01:56:29
meeting? Great. Felt great? I felt great. Because? Because I had, in my opinion, I had
01:56:37
complete closure. I had the answers I was looking for. I saw a little light at the end of the
01:56:42
tunnel. Which is something I hadn't seen for 13 months. I I'm the most dangerous type of
01:56:49
sexual predator. I never want to be let out. I will kill. I am the type that needs to be locked up
01:56:57
forever. It's sentencing day for John Gardner, and Amber's mother, Carrie, is preparing
01:57:12
a victim impact statement for court. All right. I'm going to have to try to read this a
01:57:18
million times before I so I don't cry today. 15 months ago, I kissed my daughter
01:57:22
goodbye. I don't think I can read this. >> [snorts] >> I read it last night. >> [snorts]
01:57:42
>> Today, after 15 months of the most agonizing pain, worry, anger, and grief, I'm supposed to address the court and
01:57:48
put into words the impact of the criminal acts this stranger brought upon my loving daughter.
01:57:55
I'll never forget the pain that you caused or the loss I feel. I'll never forget that you stole from me God's most
01:58:00
precious gift. For the crime of murder in the first degree of Amber Dubois, life in prison without
01:58:08
the possibility of parole. Just after receiving his formal life sentence, [music]
01:58:14
John Gardner continued his exclusive interview with us. I I'm the most dangerous type of sexual predator. I
01:58:22
will kill. I know I will. I am the type that needs to be locked up forever. Gardner says he's been violent since he
01:58:31
was a child and has taken countless medicines. I was on about 16 to 20 different medications throughout my
01:58:38
life. Lithium, Tegretol, Mellaril. These are drugs usually prescribed to control severe psychiatric disorders,
01:58:47
but Gardner says [music] nothing has helped him control his rage. I've done things to my family members.
01:58:54
I've hurt them. I've hit people. I've beaten people. I I've done a lot of things that I
01:59:00
regret in my life and I wish I could take back, but I still do the same things over and over again. It's I'm on
01:59:06
meds right now. And I you can see the anger in my eyes just of trying to talk. I get angry. I
01:59:13
blow up. I explode. I don't know how to describe it. I can't I feel like I'm out
01:59:17
of control of myself at times and then I go and I do things that I regret for the
01:59:21
rest of my life. He claims he's haunted by the memories of his victims. It's like torture.
01:59:28
I I hurt so many people in such a bad way and I have to live with that knowledge.
01:59:34
But he has trouble saying [music] he's remorseful. Honestly, I I do have remor The word remorse I I I regret it
01:59:42
completely. I don't even know what the meaning of that word remorse. I say regret. I regret
01:59:48
everything that I've done. Uh I think he's a sociopath. I don't think any sociopath is capable of
01:59:54
remorse. San Diego DA Bonnie Dumanis believes the tears Gardner shed in the courtroom were
02:00:00
just an act. I think what we saw was >> [clears throat] >> Mr. Gardner trying to make us feel that
02:00:08
he had remorse. And the true Gardner came out when Candace said, "How's your nose?"
02:00:17
I came here today to stand as a witness for Chelsea and Amber. It was a brief, but revealing moment.
02:00:23
And it came when Candace Moncayo gave her statement in court. Candace is the jogger who survived her
02:00:29
encounter [music] with Gardner by punching him in the nose and outrunning him. I [snorts] came to watch as justice is
02:00:37
served for the horrifying acts he has committed. >> [sighs] >> And finally >> [snorts]
02:00:44
>> to ask him how his nose is. And just like that, the rage in his eyes. That's the real Gardner.
02:01:05
On May 17th, 2010, John Gardner was transferred to Corcoran State Prison. I'm probably going to
02:01:15
twiddle my thumbs in some solitary confinement and and beat myself up for however long that I'm around. And
02:01:22
eventually it will happen, eventually. Someone will come and get to me. But he says the sooner death comes, the better.
02:01:31
That will be a release for me. I'm going to torture myself more with the memories that I have and the how
02:01:38
much I beat myself up of it than death itself. Oh, and I'll probably it's either they're going to be that or I'll
02:01:44
end up killing myself, one of the two. I can't stand I can't stand to be confined.
02:01:49
I'm like an animal, just like they [clears throat] said. I'm an animal. How do you begin to move forward in this
02:01:59
new normal of of your life? [clears throat] Well, I'll I'll never forget, you know.
02:02:07
Taking things slow, you know, enjoying time with Allison, Amber's little sister.
02:02:14
Hi, baby. What's up with that? >> [laughter] >> Thank you. But remarkably, today Cary
02:02:21
says she's finally able to forgive the man who killed her daughter. I have to say it's Amber making me
02:02:29
forgive him. But I have to forgive in order to live my life. I could sit here and be angry at the
02:02:38
world. What's What's that going to give me? How's that to How's that going to benefit my 7-year-old daughter that I
02:02:46
have to raise still? And at least for now, Dave and Keri will be raising her together. They're in
02:02:53
counseling and living together again. There are times when everything [music] is nice and mellow and there are times
02:03:00
that everything isn't quite so nice and mellow and that's you know, that's the way it's going to be.
02:03:06
We can only go one day at a time. Pretty much it. One day at a time. >> [music] [music]
02:03:34
[music] [music]