00:00:00
This could have been anybody's child, anybody's sister. She just disappears. AJ's wallet was sitting on the couch.
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Something has happened abruptly. She would never run away. It was looking more and more like an abduction.
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Do you think AJ is in the van still alive? Yes, I do. I said, I know what you did.
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They said, we need you to tell us where AJ is. They were just asking questions nonstop.
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We found ammunition hidden in a vent in his hotel room. It was very much an abandoned looking home.
00:00:38
It's like out of the movies. It had a very creepy feel to it. It kind of all came crashing down at that moment, the reality of it.
00:00:46
Heartbreaking, but also a sense of, well, now there are some answers. Norfolk, Virginia, home to the nation's largest naval base, where ships of war crowd the harbor, symbols of safety and security.
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Life here is tied to the slow, predictable ebb and flow of the surrounding waters.
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But in March of 2015, a crime hit this seaside community like a hurricane and upended its sense of security.
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This was a massive story. You know, an 18-year-old girl, a beautiful girl who grew up in this community just disappears basically out of nowhere.
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The investigation that followed was anything but predictable. It quickly spiraled into something much, much larger.
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And revealed how evil penetrated an inner circle of friends and family, sowing seeds of lies, betrayal, deception,
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and proving how sometimes those closest to us can hurt us the most. It's just horribly tragic that somebody could do something to someone who trusted them so very much.
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It all started when Angelica Hadsall, also known as AJ, came home from college on spring break and simply vanished.
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This could have been anybody's child. This could have been anybody's sister. Reporter Kayla Gaskins covered the story for NBC affiliate Wavy TV.
00:02:16
Was there thought in the community that maybe AJ ran away? Every single person that knows her has said,
00:02:22
this is extremely out of character. This is not what we expect from AJ. She doesn't just fall off the face of the earth.
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It was mid-afternoon when AJ's dad, Wesley Hadsall, said he got a text from his wife.
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Her words were, have you heard from AJ? And I says, no, why? She said, I texted her and she said she was out with friends.
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That was surprising. If she went somewhere, she would normally tell us where she was going.
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So Wesley said he sent AJ a text of his own. I've asked her very specific, where are you? What are you doing?
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Did you get any response? I got responses, but she wouldn't tell us where she was at.
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She said she needed time. She needed space. Later that evening, AJ's mom returned home from work.
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AJ wasn't there, but a note in her handwriting was. What did it say? It said, dear Madre, with everything that's going on, it's a lot to deal with.
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Both parents knew AJ was dealing with a lot of stress. It was her freshman year in college, which proved to be harder than she thought.
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Plus, she was breaking up with her boyfriend, Josh Campbell. Was she in love with this boy?
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She was head over heels. He was the one. Could you see that she was hurting from the breakup?
00:03:35
Yes. She was devastated. Also devastating, right before spring break, AJ learned her dad, Wesley, had started abusing drugs.
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AJ's mom asked him to leave the house, forcing him to move into a nearby hotel. AJ took the news hard.
00:03:52
She looked at me, and she had some tears in her eyes. I went to give her my hand, and she's like, you know, just get away from me.
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I don't want to talk to you right now. You could see the disappointment in AJ's eyes?
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Yes, ma'am. Yes. This is not a good time for AJ. It was just piling on. AJ's parents reached out to her friends.
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No one had seen or heard from her. By mid-afternoon the next day, the texts from her phone stopped coming altogether.
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My wife got off of work. I had asked her if she had heard from AJ. She said no. She's like, what do you want to do? I was like, well, we need to go to the police.
00:04:25
Norfolk police detective David Benjamin got the case. After speaking to her parents, he constructed a timeline of the day she went missing.
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Timeline begins on March 2nd at 7 in the morning. According to her mom, that's when she left AJ at home so she could take her other daughters to school and then head to work.
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AJ seemed fine. Her dad Wesley said he last saw her shortly after noon that day when he met her at this gas station to give her money.
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He stated that he gave her $200 and then spoke with her for about a half an hour.
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She didn't say why she needed the money. She seemed to be okay. He said that she was wearing her university jacket.
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It's like a blue jacket, had her name embroidered on it. He also said that when the two parted, AJ headed home.
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But a couple of hours later, when her sisters returned from school, she wasn't there.
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The door was unlocked. There was half-folded laundry in the living room. AJ's wallet with money in it was sitting on the couch.
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All very odd. Angelica would typically not leave things undone, so she would have finished the laundry.
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She would have taken her wallet if she was going to leave. What does that say to you when you're trying to put this puzzle together?
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It said that something has happened abruptly. Are you starting to fear the worst?
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That something has happened to AJ? I'm not fearing the worst, but I was scared. I was scared for her safety.
00:05:50
I didn't know what was going on. A daughter seemingly in distress Had AJ reached the breaking point Or was something more sinister at work That note her mom found was supposedly from A
00:06:07
But did A.J. write it? It was very odd that she would leave a note. It's not something she ever did.
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And the first break in the case. This was a little suspicious, too. I saw a little white rectangle on the ground.
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I saw her name on it. Did any alarm bells go off that here this is her ex-boyfriend who happens to find her credit card?
00:06:28
It did seem like a big coincidence. A.J. Hetzel had been missing for over 24 hours.
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Text messages from her cell phone indicated she was stressed out, overwhelmed, and in need of some time alone.
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But to Detective Benjamin, none of it made sense. Had anyone seen her? Nobody had seen her.
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Nothing? No. What did you learn about AJ? Who was she? She was an athlete. She's very outgoing.
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Good kid. No issues with drugs or alcohol. Really was kind of flying straight. She was a star on the softball diamond.
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It's where she developed a reputation for being tough. What was AJ's personality like?
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She was quiet and reserved, you know, but when she was in her element, she was hell on wheels.
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She did everything that the boys did. She had more guy friends than girlfriends.
00:07:33
Corey French was one of those friends. They dated briefly in junior high. What was it about AJ that drew you to her?
00:07:40
When I met her, she just had this thing about her, and I just couldn't stop wanting to see her more.
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She had something about her, and I just couldn't steer away. She was gorgeous. Yeah.
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I mean, I'm sure you must have noticed that. Oh, yeah. She was beautiful. AJ grew up relying mostly on her mom and caring for her two younger half-sisters.
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She never knew her biological dad, and a bitter divorce put a wedge between AJ and her first stepfather.
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Then Wesley married AJ's mom. Wesley and AJ quickly hit it off. Eventually, he asked to adopt AJ.
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I adored Angelica. She was my daughter, you know. She was my family. So it felt right to just make it official.
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What did she say to you? She said if I was being serious that she would like to take my name.
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The feelings that I felt were overwhelming. She felt happy, like she got the father figure that she had wanted.
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I think it was something that she had been missing for a while. She felt like that part of her family was now complete.
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When AJ was 17, she left Norfolk and headed to college. What were her dreams? She had a lot of aspirations.
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She was definitely an overachiever. She was trying to graduate with a double major in three years.
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But all the recent stress in AJ's life left the detective of wondering if the young overachiever had pushed herself to the breaking point.
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Did you think that maybe she ran away? Initially, that was one of the possible theories.
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Just overwhelmed. Just possibly could have just said, I can't deal with this anymore.
00:09:13
Correct. But the more people Benjamin talked to, the more he learned that simply wasn't AJ.
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Was she the type who would ever run away if things got too heavy? No, she's a fighter.
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She would take things head on. She would never run away. She wouldn't run away from anything.
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AJ's friend Andre Barr felt the same way. Nobody thought she had just ran away. Why?
00:09:34
AJ wouldn't have done that without telling at least one of us. But it seemed AJ was trying to reach out to her parents.
00:09:42
After all, she left that note for her mom at the house. But there was something peculiar about it.
00:09:47
It looked like her daughter's handwriting, but it was very odd that she would leave a note.
00:09:53
That's not something she ever did. As for those text messages, there was something odd about them too.
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One, she refused to say where she was or who she was with. Two, she was using language that was inconsistent with how she would normally send text messages.
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I became more and more concerned that she was in danger. It was looking more and more like an abduction.
00:10:15
But who would want to kidnap AJ? The detective started to build a list of suspects working from the inside out.
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High on that list was her boyfriend, Josh Campbell. Remember, they were breaking up.
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When I first met Josh, I felt like his affect was strange and a little inconsistent with what he should be like based on the situation.
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Meaning what he should have been more upset or? More upset and perhaps more involved in the search process.
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Did you think that there could be a motive there? That maybe AJ broke up with him?
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He was unhappy with her? Absolutely. But Josh had a strong alibi, and he said the breakup with AJ was mutual.
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Was he cleared or was he set aside? He was set aside. There were very few people that were completely eliminated.
00:11:06
Then, three days into Detective Benjamin's investigation, the first significant clue.
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It wasn't actually us that found it. It was a friend of Angelica's, Corey French.
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You make a big discovery. Yes. Corey said that while walking home from work, he spotted a piece of a credit card on the side of the road.
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I saw a little white rectangle on the ground, so I went toward it, and when I picked it up to flip it over, I saw her name on it.
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It was AJ's. Police searched the area and found several more pieces. Did any alarm bells go off that here this is her ex-boyfriend who happens to find her credit card?
00:11:44
I mean, that's a pretty big coincidence. It did seem like a big coincidence. When investigators questioned Corey, he told them he and AJ were close, but that he hadn't
00:11:53
seen her for months. He had reached out to AJ when she was home for spring break and wanted to see her and kept asking to see her But Wesley told police this was far more than a coincidence
00:12:06
He insisted they needed to investigate Corey. We had gotten some information from Wesley that Corey was obsessive in reference to Angelica and that he really wanted to be with her again.
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Corey French was the ex-boyfriend. They had a bad breakup. Even for kids at that age, it was considered bad where he just hung around, made his presence known.
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You're thinking at this point that Corey French had something to do with AJ's disappearance.
00:12:31
Correct. Then, the next day, a game changer. AJ's other friend, Andre Barr, called police and said he found another piece of the puzzle.
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There it was. Plain sight. Another clue linked to Corey French. Does your mind jump to, maybe Corey did this?
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It did. It's trophy behavior. Someone who kills somebody and wants a trophy to remember that event.
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It's making me look really bad. Almost a week had passed since A.J. Hadsel disappeared.
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By now, practically everyone in Norfolk had heard about the missing teen. Her close-knit community rallied behind her desperate family to offer its support.
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How was AJ's family holding up? They were constantly talking to the media. They were doing the interviews.
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We got the impression they wanted to do everything in their power to find AJ and to bring her back.
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Reporter Kayla Gaskins. Her family and her friends held a balloon release. AJ's mom Jennifer was there
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Everybody has her in their prayers And everybody's got hope And praying for her to come home every day
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Jennifer worked behind the scenes But Wesley seemed to be everywhere She didn't go on her own
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She's not just sitting somewhere happy Watching TV, watching this I became the leader at that point
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You're driving around, talking to people Correct Trying to see if anyone's seen her
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Correct He is the person organizing everyone to go and find his daughter. He is helping pass out flyers.
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Family and friends spread the word throughout Norfolk to be on the lookout for AJ.
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Her story even went national when we featured it in our Missing in America series.
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Meanwhile, Detective Benjamin called in help. We involved the state, we involved federal agents,
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we involved the Center for the Missing and Exploited Children. The clock was ticking in this case.
00:14:40
Correct. Then the investigation went into overdrive after Andre Barr found a stunning new clue.
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He observed AJ's Longwood University jacket, the item that she was last seen alive in by Wesley Hatzel.
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It was found in the house where Corey French lived. This is huge. It is huge. Remember, AJ's middle school boyfriend had just told police it had been months since he last saw her.
00:15:10
They hadn't seen each other. They had not seen each other. AJ and Corey. She never met up with him.
00:15:14
Correct. So there would be no reason. Correct. When you saw the jacket there, what are you thinking?
00:15:21
Just angry. More than anything. Nothing made sense. Andre didn't tell Corey what he saw.
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Instead, he left the jacket where it was and immediately called the police. Does your mind jump to, maybe Corey did this?
00:15:35
It did. It's trophy behavior. You know, someone who kills someone and wants a trophy to remember that event.
00:15:42
So Benjamin wanted to talk to Corey again, this time as a suspect. Investigators brought Corey to police headquarters while they searched the teen's home.
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We're wondering what other pieces of evidence might be found, or is Angelica there?
00:15:56
Is it possible that we're going to find her body in the house? They didn't find AJ, but they did find her jacket, behind a couch cushion, just as Andre described.
00:16:06
Back at the station, Benjamin turned up the heat on Corey French. We did begin to lean on him pretty hard.
00:16:13
You know, we went through a basic interview, and then we started to get more and more accusatory as the interview progressed.
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They were asking questions. They were asking my relationship with Angelica, how much I cared about her.
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And then eventually they hit me with, we know you had something to do with it, and we need you to let us know what it is you did.
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What did you say to them? I don't know where she is. I don't, I don't, why are you asking me this?
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Then, the big reveal. Benjamin pulled out the jacket. He had an extreme reaction to seeing the jacket.
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He physically pulled away, came up out of his chair a little bit. He swore. They said, we found this in your house, behind your couch cushion.
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Had you ever seen that jacket before? No. How did that jacket get in the house then?
00:17:01
My mind was asking that over and over and over and over again Corey continued to deny having anything to do with AJ's disappearance
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My answers were always the same I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about
00:17:15
It kept going, it just was a tennis match the whole time and I kept losing You found the credit card and the jacket is now found in your house
00:17:23
Yeah, so it's making me look really bad But at the end of a lengthy interrogation, Detective Benjamin let Corey go home
00:17:30
We have the jacket, but that's all we had. We were in that very uncomfortable gray zone where we've got someone who looks very bad in terms of, you know, being a suspect, but not enough to charge them for it and to get them off the street.
00:17:47
After learning police released Corey, Wesley took matters into his own hands. I felt Corey French was definitely involved So I thought that something drastic needed to happen to get some answers Wesley really did go after Cory He posted himself up across the street from Cory house and he got an air horn
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and he was blowing the air horn repeatedly throughout the night. Wesley even sent Cory a pizza with a message on the box.
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I said, I know what you did. That was it. It's big black letters. I know what you did.
00:18:18
And I said, hey, go deliver that to their house. To some in the community, Wesley's vigilante behavior crossed a line.
00:18:25
To others, it was understandable. I think people gave him a pass for that behavior
00:18:30
because of the situation. I think people related to him as a dad, a father, in pain,
00:18:39
who wants to know what happened. Despite Wesley's insistence that police look no further than Corey French,
00:18:46
Detective Benjamin expanded his focus. He now set his sights on yet a third person,
00:18:51
AJ's first stepfather, Zach Hoffer. We really, really looked carefully at him. Was your gut telling you anything?
00:19:02
Like, I feel like we're going to find this person in her inner circle. We felt so.
00:19:07
But Wesley was growing frustrated with the pace of the investigation. He was accusing us of not looking in the right places,
00:19:15
essentially not being as committed to the case as we should be. The search for AJ Hadsall was well into its second week.
00:19:36
Her father was now telling anyone who would listen that he knew who was responsible for her disappearance.
00:19:42
Corey French. Was the community really zeroing in as well on Corey French? AJ's friends were. AJ's family was.
00:19:50
his own friends started to spy on him. Still, no one knew for sure what had happened to AJ.
00:19:57
There must have been such frustration from the family and friends as each day goes by and no
00:20:02
sighting of AJ. They're frustrated, but determined. They were going to do their own work aside from
00:20:09
police. They were going to organize their own searches. Like this one for AJ's phone. Wesley
00:20:16
said he got a tip that it was in this field. So he rallied the troops to search for it, but they
00:20:21
found nothing. You were taking charge of searching, reaching out to people. I was reaching out. If I
00:20:26
knew something or heard something, I reached out to people. How did you feel about how the police
00:20:30
were handling this? I had no feelings other than helplessness. They weren't telling us anything.
00:20:36
He was becoming quite frustrated with us. He was accusing us of not looking in the right places,
00:20:42
essentially not being as committed to the case as we should be. Detective Benjamin ignored Wesley's complaints
00:20:49
and continued to focus on those closest to AJ. Was your gut telling you anything?
00:20:54
Like, I feel like we're going to find this person in her inner circle. We felt so because she had a very kind of defined group of folks that she stuck with.
00:21:03
Next on investigators' list of suspects was Zach Hoffer, AJ's first stepdad. They learned that Zach's relationship with AJ had become strained.
00:21:13
It was a relationship that began when she was a toddler. She ultimately started calling me daddy when she was like probably two, something like that, and I became daddy.
00:21:23
So she became my child. I mean, it was just that simple. Soon after marrying, AJ's mom and Zach had two daughters of their own.
00:21:32
Angelica was an amazing big sister. They were my life, my three daughters, my three cubs as I called them, you know.
00:21:38
When AJ was eight years old, things between Zach and AJ's mom started to fall apart.
00:21:44
At the same time, the relationship between AJ and Zach also started to fall apart.
00:21:51
A divorce happened. There was a lot of strife between the family. Then Wesley came along. Even though Zach wasn't the biological dad, he fought for custody of AJ and lost.
00:22:02
Zach was feeling marginalized from the family, his girls, and from Angelica. It must have stung when Wesley adopted AJ. Now he's officially her dad.
00:22:12
Yes, she was Angelica Hoffer her whole life before that. That was what everybody knew her as.
00:22:18
I was angry and hurt, so I felt like it was a stab in the heart. Detective Benjamin wondered, could Zach have felt betrayed, leading him to ultimately harm AJ?
00:22:28
Did you bring Zach in multiple times? Multiple interviews, some very lengthy ones, some very, um, some accusatory.
00:22:37
How was Zach acting as you're interviewing him? He seemed to be overly interested in the progression of the case.
00:22:46
But the harder they looked, the less suspicious he seemed. They determined he was nowhere near AJ at the time she went missing.
00:22:53
Still, as it was with almost everyone he looked at, Benjamin wasn't yet willing to clear Zach.
00:22:59
He was not put on a back burner. He was always kind of right there. He was on the burner.
00:23:05
Yes. As the investigation headed into its third week, Benjamin learned Wesley and a friend of AJ's made another major discovery.
00:23:15
Wesley said a tip led them to articles of clothing along the side of the road. Turns out they were AJ's.
00:23:21
But to the detective, there was something unsettling about the discovery. The friend who helped find the clothing was Andre Barr.
00:23:30
So Andre finds the jacket in Cory French's house, and he happens to also find the next large piece of evidence,
00:23:37
which is Angelica's clothing strewn about on South Battlefield Boulevard. Are you starting to think Andre might have something to do with it?
00:23:44
It just seemed very odd that, you know, two of the three major pieces of evidence so far in this case was found by Andre Barr.
00:23:52
Would he have a possible motive? He's in her inner circle too. He is in her inner circle.
00:23:58
So did you bring Andre in for questioning? Well, we point out how none of this makes sense.
00:24:03
He finally cracks that the story that he gave us about how he found the jacket in Corey French's house was not how it actually happened.
00:24:13
The plot thickens. Andre Barr was now the latest person on Detective Benjamin's radar.
00:24:32
Andre had helped find not one, but two key pieces of evidence. First, AJ's jacket, and now more pieces of AJ's clothing.
00:24:40
We're not sure what dynamics are playing out at this point, But we do think it's odd that he was involved in the finding of both of these pieces of evidence.
00:24:49
So Detective Benjamin sat Andre down for an intensive grilling. They were just asking questions nonstop.
00:24:56
Did you ask Andre, did you have anything to do with AJ's disappearance? Oh, of course.
00:25:00
What did he say? He denied, obviously, anything like that. I was shocked that we were even going down that pathway.
00:25:05
That's when Andre revealed something startling about how he found AJ's jacket at Corey's house.
00:25:11
Wesley had told him where to look for it. How did Wesley know where it was? Andre tells us that Wesley Hatzel approaches him
00:25:20
and says that he broke in to Corey French's house in an attempt to look for A.J. and to look for any evidence
00:25:27
because he so strongly suspected Corey French of being involved. And that while he was in the house, he found A.J.'s jacket.
00:25:37
Wesley said he didn't tell police about his discovery because he feared they would arrest him for breaking and entering.
00:25:43
He says to Andre, I want you to get into Corey French's house, use some kind of ruse,
00:25:50
and find the jacket and then report it to the police. He wants to make it look like you found it.
00:25:56
Yeah. And he wants to keep that story alive. Right. This is a crazy story. It is a crazy story.
00:26:02
To Benjamin, it also made a lot of sense. Early on in the investigation, he learned there was more in Wesley's checkered past than just drug abuse.
00:26:11
Wesley had an extensive criminal record that included, what else? Breaking and entering.
00:26:16
He had a fairly lengthy criminal past, starting from when he was a juvenile. He had robbed a bank at one point. He had burglarized several businesses.
00:26:28
But it wasn't just Wesley's past that raised a flag. Benjamin said he'd been acting strange ever since the investigation started.
00:26:35
He was constantly receiving tips that would require us to follow up, finding evidence.
00:26:43
Isn't that something a dad would or should do if their daughter was missing? Yes, to an extent.
00:26:49
But we did come to believe, or feel rather, that he was inserting himself too much in the investigation,
00:26:56
which is a red flag for us, as if he wants to know what we're doing, what we know.
00:27:03
Even more troubling, investigators couldn't verify Wesley's account of where he last saw AJ.
00:27:08
He was insistent that he met her at a gas station off of Tidewater Drive. What he didn't know was that we had obtained the surveillance video from the gas station
00:27:19
for several hours prior to the time that he says he met her to several hours after the time that he says he left her there.
00:27:29
Was he on that video with AJ? He was not on their video at all. Wasn't even at the gas station?
00:27:33
Wasn't even at the gas station. So this story totally isn't adding up? Not at all.
00:27:38
That didn't sit right with us and was pointing towards him as a suspect. It was hard to believe.
00:27:44
After weeks of talking to numerous people inside AJ's circle, it was AJ's adoptive father,
00:27:50
the person adamant about finding her, who would now become Benjamin's number one suspect.
00:27:55
The detective didn have enough to accuse him of abducting AJ but he did have enough to arrest Wesley for breaking into Corey house We thought we had enough at least for a burglary charge
00:28:08
The arrest stunned the Norfolk community. A strange turn of events down on your side as learned. The missing girl's father, Wesley Hadsell, was arrested by Norfolk police overnight.
00:28:19
Tony Colvin was a Southampton County Commonwealth assistant attorney. When AJ went missing, I was aware. I remember seeing the searches and started to see what was going on with Mr. Hadsell when he got arrested for that burglary charge.
00:28:34
Wesley's arrest gave them probable cause to search his property, starting with his hotel room.
00:28:40
We found ammunition. He's a convicted felon. He's not supposed to have ammunition. It was hidden in a vent in his hotel room.
00:28:47
Benjamin then moved on to Wesley's work van. Inside his work van, we see a Garmin GPS device that's in the dash of the vehicle.
00:28:57
Investigators painstakingly analyzed the data from that device, focusing on the several days before and after AJ went missing.
00:29:05
He turns on his GPS and he goes to some location in Suffolk, and then he just keeps the GPS on.
00:29:12
And we got this wonderful track of every place that that GPS unit had been. It's pinging off the satellite and leaving breadcrumbs very close together.
00:29:23
Most of Wesley's movements during that period of time could be explained, but there was one unusual detour Wesley took that seemed very suspicious.
00:29:31
It led investigators to this abandoned house in a remote rural area about an hour west of Norfolk.
00:29:37
It was very much an abandoned looking home, little furniture, if any, overgrown.
00:29:43
That doesn't sound good. It didn't sound good and it didn't make a lot of sense.
00:29:47
The detective immediately gathered his team and raced out to the location. It was gray and misty out.
00:29:54
It had a very creepy feel to it. As investigators slowly walked the property, Benjamin made his way to an area in the back.
00:30:03
And I'm looking at this little waterway. It's like a drainage dish. And somebody had placed a sheet of plywood to bridge this little waterway.
00:30:13
So I put my right toe underneath the piece of wood, and I pulled up on it and kind of leaned over and looked underneath it.
00:30:23
It was there Detective Benjamin found AJ. It had been five weeks since she disappeared.
00:30:29
She was lying face down in the water, her body badly decomposed. There were some telltale signs that were very disturbing.
00:30:37
Her pants had obviously been pulled down. So what this is saying to us is that she had been sexually assaulted.
00:30:45
It kind of all came crashing down at that moment for us. We were always holding out hope that she was alive,
00:30:51
and now it just, the reality of it, here she was in a ditch. News quickly spread that AJ had been found.
00:30:58
Such a sad ending. The community must have just been in a state of shock. Heartbreaking, but also a sense of, now there are some answers.
00:31:09
With the discovery of AJ's body in her county, Tony Colvin would prosecute the case.
00:31:15
Anytime you have a circumstantial case, you always are concerned that you can paint an adequate picture
00:31:22
for the jury to understand what happened and that they can put all of those pieces together.
00:31:31
There are people who think you're a monster. Well, people have opinions. I never heard anything wrong with that kid.
00:31:40
What will the jury's opinion be? The search for AJ lasted more than five weeks Multiple police agencies had answered the call as did an entire community Now it was over with the discovery of AJ body behind an abandoned home
00:32:09
That's when I just lost it, and I felt like, in that moment, I felt like I just kind of died.
00:32:15
I couldn't believe what had happened. I couldn't believe that she was now gone. Prosecutor Colvin and Detective Benjamin began building their case against AJ's father, Wesley Hadsall.
00:32:30
Are you convinced in this moment that Wesley did this? Yes. His GPS led us to her body. There's no getting around it whatsoever.
00:32:40
So they went back to the beginning, to the morning AJ went missing. On a hunch, the detective had his investigators comb through hours of footage from a 7-Eleven security camera
00:32:51
that captured traffic near the Hadsall residence. The tedious work paid off when they spotted Wesley driving to the house around noon.
00:32:59
We were able to determine that Wesley Hadsall left his work, went to the residence knowing that Angelica was going to be home alone
00:33:08
and that something happened when he was there. So our theory is that's when he abducted her.
00:33:13
We believe that he forced her to write that note. The note was out of character for AJ.
00:33:18
Okay. Investigators then saw him on that same security footage driving his van away from the house at 1.27 p.m.
00:33:26
Are you thinking she's in that van? At that point, most likely, because there would have been no other place to hide her.
00:33:34
Although they can't say exactly when or where it happened, Benjamin believes at some point over the next several hours,
00:33:40
Wesley killed AJ. And then he drove her out to an abandoned house, took her behind the house and dumped her face down.
00:33:48
In a ditch. And then went and joined the family. And acted like nothing happened, that he had no involvement in it.
00:33:56
Not only that, acted as a very concerned father. Correct. That's when they say Wesley started covering his tracks.
00:34:04
He sent those cryptic text messages from AJ's phone. He also began planting evidence.
00:34:10
First, pieces of AJ's credit card, then her jacket. You're now thinking that Wesley broke into Corey French's house and planted AJ's jacket.
00:34:20
That's exactly what we thought. It's like out of the movies. It is. Framing somebody for murder.
00:34:24
Corey French was the perfect patsy for this. He had been in a relationship with Angelica and it had ended and he obviously still had feelings for her.
00:34:34
You were framed for murder. Yeah. Or at least someone attempted to frame you for murder.
00:34:40
No, it still affects me to this day. Every good moment I had growing up in Norfolk, anything like that, all of it's gone.
00:34:48
It broke me down to almost nothing. Colvin believes that of all the evidence against Wesley, the most damning is AJ's cause of death.
00:34:58
The medical examiner determined that she died of heroin poisoning. She was not a drug user.
00:35:03
There was no evidence that showed that she would have been able to have access to heroin.
00:35:08
The only evidence of anybody that had that access to heroin is the defendant. Police located Wesley's drug dealer.
00:35:15
He told them he sold Wesley heroin soon after AJ went missing. And in another search of Wesley's hotel room, police found heroin hidden in the ceiling.
00:35:24
So he's the individual that was able to obtain heroin. He did obtain heroin, and then he forced her to consume it.
00:35:31
But the question remained, why? Why would this seemingly loving stepfather who ultimately adopted AJ want to kill her?
00:35:39
The detective had a theory. I think he had maybe an unhealthy attraction to Angelica.
00:35:46
He might have tried something. She might have resisted. With his drugs, everything unraveling in his life, I think he lost control.
00:35:55
Almost seven years after AJ disappeared her father Wesley Hatzel faced a jury of his peers Defense attorney James Ellenson knew he had his work cut out for him but he also believed that as strong as the Commonwealth case was
00:36:09
it still couldn't prove how and when Wesley poisoned AJ with the heroin. I would challenge anybody as to how did she actually die?
00:36:20
There's no solid evidence that puts him there with killing her. I know. I don't see whether it was proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:36:29
Ellenson also pointed out the Commonwealth couldn't say for certain why Wesley killed AJ.
00:36:35
Was there any evidence to show that Wesley was in love with AJ, that Wesley was obsessed with AJ?
00:36:40
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is absolutely not a shred of evidence of any of that.
00:36:47
After two weeks of testimony, jurors left the courtroom to deliberate. They didn't need much time.
00:36:52
Forty minutes for a almost three-week trial to come to a decision that quickly is not something anybody thought was going to happen.
00:37:00
We the jury finally defended Wesley Paul Hansel, guilty as charged in the indictment.
00:37:06
Were you just so surprised? I think it showed us how strong of a case that we had.
00:37:14
Wesley Hansel chose not to testify in court, but he did speak to us from jail. He maintained his innocence, despite all the evidence indicating otherwise.
00:37:23
Wesley denied planting the credit card and the clothes. And as for the jacket? That jacket? It wasn't there by my means. I didn't plant that jacket.
00:37:32
What about the garment that led investigators to the abandoned house? It's your GPS.
00:37:37
It's my GPS, you know. I can't explain why it was there. I definitely know that I wasn't there.
00:37:43
What do you say to anyone who's hearing this who's saying this guy is telling lie after lie after lie
00:37:48
That he is the worst kind of human being that would do this to his own daughter and try to cover it up
00:37:54
That's their opinion. I mean, I have not heard Angelica ever. Were you obsessed with her? No, ma'am
00:37:59
Were you harboring secret feelings for her? No, no ma'am. Did you sexually assault AJ? No, ma'am
00:38:06
There are people who think you're a monster Well People have opinions Would you like to confess here today that you killed A.J.?
00:38:16
No, ma'am. Never did anything wrong with that kid. He denied it to us that he had anything to do with A.J.'s death.
00:38:23
The evidence is overwhelming. Absolutely overwhelming. I feel 100% confident that we got the right person and that he got the appropriate punishment.
00:38:33
Prosecutors never brought sexual assault charges against Wesley. his sentence for murder, life in prison, which was vindication for the many people caught in his web of deceit,
00:38:43
including Zach Hoffer, AJ's first stepfather, whose deep love for her was questioned as something sinister.
00:38:50
You were the caring parent here. You obviously cared a lot about her. That's all it was. It's just that simple. I just cared about her. I cared about my children, and that's it.
00:39:01
Like Zach Hoffer, Andre Barr became a suspect too. Worse, he was used by Wesley to try and frame a close friend.
00:39:08
Wes was just good at manipulating people. He played everybody in his game of chess, and he lost.
00:39:14
As for Corey French, the young man Wesley tried to frame for AJ's murder, he says his life will never be the same.
00:39:20
The only thing I really have to say to him is, basically just f*** you, dude. That's all I can say.
00:39:26
I just, I hope that he sees her every single day and that in the way that he left her.
00:39:34
AJ Hatzel left an indelible mark on her family and all her many friends. Through them, her memory will live on.
00:39:42
I just hope that everyone is aware of how great she was, of how amazing she was, how smart she was, how dedicated she was.
00:39:51
yeah I just I just miss her and I just I know I'll never forget her