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The desert is a strange place. It's so isolated. Somebody got lost out there. A Marine's wife had gone missing.
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I never expected to be a huge piece of a murder case. My heart just sunk. Something had happened.
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We don't know if she's stranded in the desert, if she's being held somewhere. Can we find her before she meets a horrible end?
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It was a little suspicious that he waited. the reporter as missing. They treated me like a suspect.
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They were laughing and carrying on. We just kind of started building a bond. There was something big going on there.
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I had no idea what we were getting into. It makes me think of Indiana Jones. One wrong turn can be your last.
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This really can't be happening. We didn't realize that there would be a predator.
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They say if you're feeling down, it's time to saddle up. With a little love, trust, and respect,
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these majestic creatures can emerge as loyal and gentle companions. For both horse and rider, there's nothing like it.
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She transformed into this awesome horse handler, and she knew what she was doing and what she was talking about.
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if only romantic relationships were that simple. This is the story of a young woman, so gentle, so vulnerable.
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She may have understood what makes horses tick, but humans? A different beast indeed.
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This doesn't happen to people we know. It just doesn't. It was crushing. I cried. I cried for days.
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I still cry when I think about it. I'm not really sure what type of person it takes to do that.
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Oak Ridge, Tennessee, nestled along the beautiful Clinch River, is an unassuming place with a big story.
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Atomic capital of the world, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They call it the secret city for its part in the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb.
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Oak Ridge still prides itself on being a community that values science and education, and it's a good place to raise a family.
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This is where Erin Hevlin grew up. When Erin was three weeks old, she joined our family as a foster child.
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Erin's mom, Laura. She was a teeny tiny little thing. I think she was five pounds, three ounces when we got her.
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That's small. Oh, we thought she was the sweetest little thing. Our oldest girls were 16, and they carried around.
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She was like their little doll. Yeah, they loved her. Laura and her husband officially adopted their little doll when she was three.
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Erin grew into a shy little girl, reserved around those she didn't know. But with the horses she cared for at the East Tennessee Riding Club, that was a different story.
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When I think of Erin with horses, I think of her as a bigger, she's very confident.
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She knows exactly what she wants and what she's going to do. Erin's friend, Abby Gouge.
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But with people, she was much meeker, much quieter, calmer. Horses would always be Erin's first love.
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But as she entered her teen years, a certain young man caught her eye. His name is John Corwin.
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What was it about you that could kind of break through to Erin? Because her mom says how shy she was, and she was better with horses than people.
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So what was it about you? I guess it's my charming personality. I have no idea. It still surprised me today.
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Really? Yes. I guess I was always able to talk to her, figure out what she was feeling.
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Erin's parents had strict rules about when she could start dating. John was sure to get their blessing first.
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That's very chivalrous of you to go to her parents. That's the way I was raised. You always get the parents' permission before anything.
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After graduating from high school, John joined the Marines. He asked Erin to marry him when she was just 18 years old with an unusual proposal.
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There was no champagne, but there was a cup of Sprite. His hands are clammy and everything, nervous as heck.
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And so I go grab the Sprite, I put the ring on top of it and ask her to marry me.
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So the ring was around the straw? Yes. Did she see it right away? No. I told her, hey, look, get your drink.
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Oh, and what was her reaction when she finally looked down? She was crying tears of joy, ecstatic, and just screaming, yes, yes, yes, I would love to.
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Erin's mom had heard that being a military wife comes with sacrifice. I'm a Marine Corps wife myself, and I know that it can be a very lonely life for people, and it's not easy.
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Did you try to warn her? Oh, yes. And did she listen? I know mom, I know mom. You know, and of course when I was 18, I knew also.
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You know, you probably couldn't tell me a whole lot. The couple decided to elope to Las Vegas
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and tied the knot after an annual formal celebration known as the Marine Corps Ball.
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Okay, so my husband and I have had a lot of fun at Marine Balls. However, I never thought about getting married at one of them.
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Why did you guys decide to get married there? Because we were young. It was Vegas.
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We honestly didn't plan out a lot of things. It was more like spur-of-the-moment type deal, and that's how we lived.
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John was assigned to the 29 Palms Marine Base out in the California desert. In September 2013, Erin packed up for her move to join him.
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Her mom saw her off at the airport. She's very directionally challenged, and she had two layovers.
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And I'm like, when you get off that plane, you ask somebody where you need to go,
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and you let me know as soon as you get there. What emotions were you feeling letting your baby go to start her new life It was scary for me You know I knew that it was going to be harder than she ever dreamt
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Like any parent, Laura worried about her daughter finding her place in this new life.
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She's very shy, and I did have concerns about her making friends. We felt like base housing would be safer for her because her husband was out in the field so often.
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It wasn't long before John and Erin learned they were expecting a baby. She was very excited. I was excited for her.
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Sadly, her excitement was short-lived. In early 2014, she suffered a miscarriage.
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Wanting desperately to be a mother, Erin vowed to try again. Around four months later, in June of that same year,
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during a visit to the hospital for nausea, the couple got good news. Erin was pregnant again.
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She decided to wait to surprise her mom with the news. Laura already had a trip planned to visit the following month.
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We had plans of just going for walks. We were going to go to San Diego to go to SeaWorld and San Diego Zoo,
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but mostly just spend time together. You both must have been really wanting, needing this trip.
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Absolutely. In anticipation of her mother's visit, Aaron told her husband she was going to scout out some good hiking locations at nearby Joshua Tree National Park.
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She had woke up and gotten dressed and gave me a kiss goodbye and said, hey, I'm heading out for the day and I love you.
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Told her I love you too and I rolled back over and went to sleep. A routine goodbye, or so it seemed, until Aaron Corwin vanished without a trace.
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What had happened to Aaron? John calls and he said, Aaron's missing. I was just so stressed and worried.
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John was concerned, but he was withdrawn. When you have a spouse who's not extremely frantic, you've got a question, why aren't they super upset?
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We had a lot of questions for John. 19-year-old Erin Corwin couldn't wait. Her mom would soon be making her first trip to see Erin and her husband John
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at their new home in 29 Palms, California, at the Marine Base in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
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Around 7 in the morning, Erin said goodbye to John and told him she was coming here to Joshua Tree National Park
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to scout out hiking trails for her mother's upcoming visit. John expected her home that afternoon, but she didn't show.
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He tried her phone. No answer. Did you keep calling? Called her throughout the night.
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How many times would you say you tried to call her or text her? At least 50 times. I was just so stressed and worried.
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Hours passed, and by the next morning, John was frantic. John calls, and he said, Aaron's missing.
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Laura Hevland got the call back home in Tennessee. He said, she left yesterday morning, and I haven't seen her since.
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My first question was, how much water did she have with her? You're thinking this is like maybe a hiking situation.
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Well, this is the child that has no sense of direction. You know, so I'm assuming she's lost.
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John reported his wife's disappearance to the local police station. San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department was soon notified.
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Detective Travis Newport. Obviously, we were concerned, can we find her before something, you know, horrible,
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before she meets a horrible end? You don't know if she's being held somewhere. We don't know if she's stranded in the desert still.
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Lore's phone rang again. This time it was a deputy. He had another idea about what might have happened to Aaron.
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One of his first questions was, do you think she's driving home? To Tennessee? Yes.
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So maybe she's just left. Yes. And I about laughed because I know how much she hates to drive, has no sense of direction,
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and there's absolutely no way she would give up a trip to SeaWorld and the zoo. Back at 29 Palms, John rounded up some of his marine buddies and headed into the national park.
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It's a vast expanse of nearly 800,000 acres of rugged rock formations, twisted Joshua trees, and desolate open desert,
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where summer temperatures climb well past 100 degrees. We literally drove around Joshua Tree National Park all day,
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trying to find any signs and clues of where she might have been. Do you see anything? Any signs of her?
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Her car, a piece of clothing, anything? Nothing. There's a certain protocol detectives follow when investigating a missing person.
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Start small and close to home. That inner circle of friends and family, the ones who know the person best.
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So when John Corwin reported that his wife Erin had disappeared, it was natural they'd look at him.
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So like with any investigation, you start closest to the source of the missing person.
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So we had a lot of questions for John. Investigators learned that once childhood sweethearts Aaron and John settled in 29 Palms,
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things were far from perfect. Their relationship wasn't intertwined. We knew that it was a relationship that was probably starting to dwindle.
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There was her miscarriage in early 2014. John says it was heartbreaking and Aaron had trouble coping.
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She became very enclosed and depressed and would stay at home. and I'm definitely not the one that actually speaks out on his emotions.
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I've always kept him bottled up my whole life. She felt like I didn't care about him and I did.
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It actually hurt me a whole lot. It really took a toll on our relationship. And Aaron's mom, Lore, knew that the young married couple also had money problems.
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We gave each of our kids a certain amount of money when they got married and they kept just buying things and all of a sudden I think that huge chunk of money was not there You struggled with finances Definitely the pay pay not that great but we had food on the table We just didn have any money for extracurriculars
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Was that hard for Erin? I know there was an issue with her credit card. Yes, it was hard.
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We ended up racking up debt. I ended up having to take away the card. Times were lean?
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Yes, very lean. They were grown-up problems for a couple barely out of high school.
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Erin shared her worries with her friend Abby. It's just hard to transition from being on your own to being married.
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And sometimes a hard hand is what you need. And I think that's what John was teaching her.
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And she didn't like it. Detective Newport and his colleague Jonathan Woods wondered about John's behavior when his wife didn't return home.
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Why did he wait a whole day to call police? It was a little suspicious that he waited until the next day to report her as missing.
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John said he explained to the investigators he thought that was how these things worked.
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You see these common things on television now. You can't report a missing person until 24 hours after they've been missing.
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And I truly believe that. Made sense. Maybe. But detectives noticed something. John was kind of withdrawn.
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He was concerned, but he was withdrawn. And at times we wondered, is it his military background?
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You know, when you have a spouse who's not extremely frantic, you've got a question, you know, why aren't they super excited?
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Why aren't they super upset? John had gone into the park to search for his wife, sign of a concerned husband or something else.
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Well, obviously, as an investigator, you have to wonder, is this person trying to put themselves there?
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Is this person trying to give us a reason why they would be there where the last person was seen or was possibly contacted?
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You were seriously looking at him. Yes. I did think maybe John. And I think that's normal.
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It doesn't make it right, but I think that it's normal human response to think the spouse.
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But really, they might have been getting ahead of themselves. Erin was missing and could well have run off on her own.
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There was no reason yet to believe any harm had come to her, much less that John was responsible.
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There were other people to talk to and a new place to explore. A sanctuary for Erin right here in the desert.
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One that would prove to be full of clues and secrets. They were laughing and carrying on.
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Anything flirtatious? Giggly. I hadn't seen her act like that. Erin, the shy young wife.
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Exactly what kind of secret was she keeping? You have a spouse who's missing, and there might be some infidelity involved.
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When Erin Corwin went missing after a trip to Joshua Tree National Park, detectives started out by questioning her husband, John.
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Then they widened the circle, trying to learn as much as they could about her life at the Marine base here in 29 Palms.
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They discovered that Erin had been lonely when she first moved to the base, but quickly bonded with other military families.
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It was kind of like Melrose Place in there. That's the perfect description of that apartment complex.
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Everybody's friends. Everybody's door is 10 foot away from the next couple's door.
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Erin and John grew close with their fellow Marine Corps neighbors, including Nicole and Chris Lee.
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A couple originally from Alaska, Aaron's mom, Lore. Chris and Nicole and John and Aaron cooked out together all the time.
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I was happy, you know, that she had this. Aaron and Nicole shared a common passion for horses.
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I was excited when Aaron and Nicole met because Nicole was into horses, and I knew Aaron needed the horses.
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Nicole introduced Erin to the White Rock Horse Rescue Ranch and its owner, Isabel Megley.
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You're not very far away from 29 Palms, the Marine Corps base. 45 minutes. So is this not only kind of a sanctuary for the animals, but maybe a little bit for the Marine Corps wives?
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Yeah. Isabel started the ranch in 2004. The spouses come to the ranch when their husbands or their fiancés or boyfriends are out in the field.
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They have nothing to do. Most of them don't work. And they get very lonely. Loneliness is probably the biggest problem that they have.
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And this is where Erin had her horse named Cassie. And that was very special to her.
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Yes, it was. Come here, Cassie. Come here. Hi. So you're Erin's horse. She picked a horse that I would never have chosen for her.
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Why? What was with the horse? The horse was standoffish. It didn't like anybody.
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And it liked her. This horse was so bonded to her, and we couldn't believe it. Before long, Aaron and John, Chris and Nicole, were spending more and more time at the ranch together.
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We'd go shooting, go out in the desert and shoot our guns, and we'd go up to the horse ranch and typical shenanigans.
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I had a little dune buggy that we'd all go take off-roading while the girls were doing their horse stuff.
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Isabel said when the couples were together, Chris was always the life of the party.
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At the ranch, Chris was very funny. He was a real soft individual when he talked about his daughter, his wife, his family.
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But he also had the ability to be very stern. The ranch was clearly an escape for Chris, who struggled after returning from deployment in Afghanistan.
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There was something that he just stayed away from that subject So he might have had a rough time overseas Yes he did Had a very hard time But said Isabel Chris was a loving father to his and Nicole daughter Liberty
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Erin took to the little girl, too, and would help out her friends by babysitting the six-year-old.
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Erin's mom says she was always good with children. Gentle, very gentle. The younger kids at the barn, you know, they knew that she cared about them.
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So Erin had found her place here, surrounded by friends and horses. But Isabel said that around Christmas of 2013, she started to see a connection between Chris and Erin that seemed a little too close for comfort.
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They were laughing and carrying on about something on the computer. Was there anything flirtatious about it, or was it just too close for you?
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Giggly. I hadn't seen her act like that. It was like a kid in candy store. I wasn't used to it, so it stuck out.
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Isabel said she found the behavior so alarming, she mentioned it to Chris's wife, Nicole.
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I said, Nicole, something's wrong. I said, the way they're acting, she says, no, no, there's nothing going on.
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She says, they connect. What was it that they could relate to each other about? She said they could relate to being sad.
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She said Chris was sad. and that when he came back from the service, he was a different person
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and that he just wasn't himself. And Aaron could understand depression. She said they were just friends.
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But two months later, Nicole told Aaron's husband, John, she needed to talk to him.
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And by then, she was singing a very different tune about Aaron Corwin. Nicole had found out that Chris had been having an affair with Aaron.
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I didn't actually get specifics at the time. You're totally clueless. Yes. Is this just a bombshell to hear this news?
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Yes, it was a bombshell. It was earth shattering. But John says he still loved his wife and was committed to his marriage.
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I tried my hardest to make it work. Were you in this for life? Yes. This marriage?
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Definitely. You should always try to fix something instead of just replacing it.
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And I was trying everything I could to fix it. He says that over time, he and Aaron reconciled and even patched things up with Chris and Nicole.
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They started hanging back out with us. Really? Yes. You were able to accept them in, knowing what Chris had done with Aaron?
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It wasn't the same that it was before, but they always give somebody a second chance.
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Or do you? Aaron was now missing. and the fact that she'd been unfaithful to her husband
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just added to investigators' suspicions about him. Anytime you have a spouse who's missing
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and you hear that there might be some infidelity there involved, it's just human nature, not just as an investigator,
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but as a human being to question whether or not that person might possibly be involved
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and the significant other is missing. But then detectives found out something that made the potential pool of suspects
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a whole lot deeper. It was full on. Stunner number one. The secret affair with the neighbor
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wasn't exactly over. Felt like somebody literally stuck a knife in my back. And stunner number two.
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This baby might not even be his. Absolutely. Did John realize that it was very likely not his kid?
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Detectives in San Bernardino, California, were working around the clock to figure out
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what had happened to 19-year-old Marine wife Erin Corwin. They soon learned that Erin had had an affair,
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and that made them suspect that her husband, John, may have had something to do with her disappearance.
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Some of the detectives thought that your behavior was strange, that you weren't acting sad enough.
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Do you get why they were thinking that? I understand. I'm a very inclusive kind of person. I don't show emotions at all.
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Did you worry at all in the moment that they're looking at me? No, I did not. John told detectives that his wife said the affair was over.
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He and Aaron had reconciled, and he'd even reestablished his friendship with Aaron's former lover, Chris Lee, and Chris's wife, Nicole.
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But in the first days of their investigation, detectives learned that Erin's relationship with Chris
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seemed to be going strong right up until the day she disappeared. It wasn't just your friendship, slight infidelity.
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It was full on. They were completely involved with each other. One of Erin's close friends back in Tennessee
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told investigators she talked and texted with Erin nearly every day. Erin, the friend said, was making plans for a life with Chris Lee.
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Erin had expressed to this friend that she was going to get married to Chris. The friend told investigators Erin said that Chris was taking her on a special trip the morning she disappeared.
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And she texted her all about it. Erin wrote, So apparently this surprise trip is super important, and I finally got him to tell me it's by the national park.
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Erin told her friend she didn't know what plans Chris had in store. Yeah, I'm clueless, lol. I'm ready to know what it is.
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I mean, I have a couple ideas. I feel like it's big, but yeah, LOL, we shall see.
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The friend responded with a series of emojis, including a diamond ring, hearts, and question marks,
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suggesting perhaps an engagement? Aaron responded, maybe, and mentioned he was mysteriously playing with my ring the other night.
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Aaron added, we shall see. This day cannot come quick enough. And it apparently takes two hours just to get there,
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Long, slow drive. Good talking time, though. After Aaron went missing, that same friend spoke to John.
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She had told me that Aaron had supposedly went out with Chris that day. And that she was expecting that Chris was supposed to propose to her that day.
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How betrayed did you feel? It was earth-shattering. I felt like somebody just literally stuck a knife in my back.
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I was honestly ready to have outstrain with Chris. But detectives soon learned something even more explosive.
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Remember, Erin had recently found out she was pregnant. She told her friend that she believed the father of her baby was her lover Chris, not her husband.
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Did you think that the possibility existed that he did find out that this affair had not ended like he had thought,
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and that this baby might not even be his? I mean, that's heavy stuff for someone to deal with.
00:24:59
Absolutely. That's why we wanted to question him so much. Did John realize that it was very likely not his kid?
00:25:05
Which, again, that brings motive to a spouse. Did you have anything to do with your wife's disappearance?
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No, I did not. Everybody that knew me personally knew that there was no way I could do that.
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But John says Marines on the base who didn't know him well seem suspicious. You could tell if they would look at me differently.
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and I eventually ended up staying home because of it. Were you not able to do your job then
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if you didn't want to leave the house? No. At that time, they considered me to be mentally unstable
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and they took me away from everything pretty much because we handled firearms every day.
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And so I stayed at home. But now, John wasn't the only one on detectives' radar.
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If his fellow Marine Chris Lee might be the father of Aaron's baby and the person she was going to meet that day,
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then Chris, too, might have a motive and an opportunity. Did you look at both Chris and John as suspects?
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Yes, absolutely. There was at least one other possibility, that Erin, naive and just 19 years old,
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had simply decided to run away from her troubles. Whatever happened, there was still no sign of her.
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That is, until this woman noticed something strange, something she had never seen before.
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I didn't know if somebody was doing drugs in there or if somebody was just up to no good,
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and I knew that it wasn't supposed to be there. A breakthrough new clue. There were shoe impressions, tire impressions.
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Something had happened. I know my daughter. I couldn't get to 29 Poms quick enough.
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29 Palms is definitely an experience to live out there. The desert is one of those places that you go out to find yourself,
00:27:08
and then after you've found yourself, you're really happy to leave the place behind.
00:27:14
Debbie Valick and her family lived just outside the Marine Corps base in 29 Palms, California.
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It's pretty barren. It's really flat. You can see for hundreds of miles in every direction.
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It was so remote, in fact, that a Saturday morning donut craving met an eight-mile drive to the nearest grocery store.
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So around 8.30 on June 28, 2014, Debbie and her daughter set off. And we were going to go get donuts together, and my daughter was all excited.
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They took their typical path into town via Ranch Road. And as we were driving down the road there,
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I noticed a car parked off to the left-hand side of the road that wasn't there the night before.
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Debbie said it was extremely rare to ever see cars parked near their home in this desolate stretch of desert outside the National Park,
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a full five miles from the entrance. I thought it was odd because there was no reason for it to be there.
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there's no hiking trails near my property. There's nothing to do out there. And if you don't live out there,
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there's no reason for the car to be there. About 30 minutes later, on their return drive from town,
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Debbie said she was surprised to see the vehicle still sitting there. And I decided to drive up behind the car
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and take some pictures with my cell phone. From inside her truck, she took three photos of the back of the car.
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I didn't want to get out of my truck because I didn't know what was inside the car
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and who it belonged to. She had no idea at the time how important those photos would become.
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Debbie and her daughter went home, enjoyed those donuts, and got on with their day.
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She said she thought about reporting the car to police, but... I think I thought my imagination was just getting the better of me,
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and somebody had probably parked it out there with good reason. So there it sat until two days later.
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9 a.m., Monday, June 30th. Debbie and her family were eating breakfast when, to their surprise, they heard choppers overhead.
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I guess it dawned on me at that moment that I probably should have called the police
00:29:14
because you could tell there was something big going on there. Someone else had called police, who quickly determined the abandoned vehicle was Aaron Corwin's.
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Debbie's photos showed it had been there for two days since the morning Aaron disappeared.
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What's more, next to Aaron's car, detectives noticed tire tracks and shoe prints.
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Those tire impressions made what appeared to be a loop back towards the vehicle, Aaron's vehicle.
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And there were shoe impressions that appeared to walk from the driver's side of Aaron's vehicle
00:29:45
to those tire impressions that came through that area. It appeared to detectives that Aaron had driven to this spot and possibly switched into another car and gone off.
00:29:54
I realized at that point we were dealing with a situation where we being led into one direction which is the Joshua Tree National Park Whereas in fact now her car is several miles north of that location
00:30:06
So I'm obviously very concerned that we hadn't been searching the right area. That's a daunting task. Joshua Tree National Park is huge.
00:30:15
And then now you're adding on this new area. Is it like finding a needle in a haystack? Did it feel like that?
00:30:22
It's like finding a needle in a thousand haystacks. When Erin's mom heard about the car, her mind went to the worst possible place.
00:30:31
When they found her car without her, that's when I knew something else had happened.
00:30:41
And I think at that point in time, I knew she was not with us anymore. You knew just from the car?
00:30:47
Yeah. I know my daughter. and it was just, I couldn't get to 29 Palms quick enough.
00:30:58
What's that like getting on a plane? You've had this revelation, the worst kind of revelation,
00:31:06
and there you are. You have to turn your phone off. You know, you can't get any communication
00:31:12
until you get back on the ground. I mean, it was... It must be excruciating. It was.
00:31:19
The plane could not fly fast enough. But detectives had to keep an open mind. They had no way to know yet whether Aaron had run away or gotten lost or was the victim of a crime.
00:31:32
We had to bifurcate the investigation. We had to turn it into a search and rescue mission and potential homicide investigation.
00:31:39
One was to try and look for a live and well, hopefully, Aaron Corwin. And the other was to work another angle, whereas, unfortunately, we might be looking for a deceased Aaron Corwin.
00:31:50
Whichever course the investigation took, they knew they needed to check out a key piece of information.
00:31:56
Erin had told her friend back in Tennessee that she was supposed to meet up with someone the day she vanished,
00:32:02
her neighbor and lover, Chris Lee. Deputies first knocked on Chris's door the day Erin was reported missing.
00:32:09
Christopher Lee told the deputies the extent of any contact he had ever had with Erin Corwin
00:32:15
was waving hi in passing in a hallway of the apartment complex. Apparently, that wasn't true.
00:32:22
But it wasn't necessarily incriminating either. Chris had every reason to downplay his relationship with Aaron.
00:32:29
Nevertheless, detectives knew it was time to talk to Chris Lee again. We found a car. How did he?
00:32:38
I could see definitely him more tense in his body. Marine Corporal Chris Lee prepares for battle.
00:32:46
Your tire tracks in here, as well as her tire tracks. It was just a very unusual, wild story that he was telling me.
00:33:04
Two days after Aaron Corwin disappeared, Chris Lee sat down for a formal interview.
00:33:10
Was he being cooperative? Yes, he was. How you doing? Detective Daniel Hanke was part of the team investigating Aaron Corwin's disappearance.
00:33:20
He wanted to know why Chris didn't admit to police right away that he and Aaron were more than just friends.
00:33:26
I didn't bring up mine and Aaron's thing because it didn't seem pertinent at the time.
00:33:31
Okay. But now Chris began to open up. He said his relationship with Aaron started innocently enough.
00:33:38
He was depressed after his 2013 tour in Afghanistan. Aaron was someone he could talk to.
00:33:44
I confided in her that I was feeling suicidal. And, you know, she's like, you can't be doing that stuff.
00:33:51
And, you know, it's kind of like she was someone to talk to about stuff that I didn't want to talk to about with my wife.
00:33:56
He said Aaron confided in him as well, a terrible secret, that she suffered physical abuse at the hands of her husband, John.
00:34:04
She said her husband was beating her and choking her, and, like, she was scared for her life.
00:34:08
She'd say that he would choke her whenever, like, he would get mad. The way Chris told it, Aaron's story of John's abuse is what brought them together.
00:34:24
Chris said that bonding soon turned to love. Remember, police had heard from a friend of Aaron's that she thought she was pregnant with Chris's baby.
00:34:39
But Chris insisted the relationship had stayed pretty PG. Chris said they talked about running away together, but he didn't want to risk losing his daughter Liberty.
00:35:02
And then I told her, I'm not going to put her with her broken home. You know, we bounced back and forth.
00:35:09
He said the affair ended abruptly when his wife, Nicole, found out about it. Chris also said that's when he learned a big part of his bonding with Aaron was based on lies.
00:35:19
Would she lie to you? She told me that her husband was beating her and that she was afraid for her life.
00:35:24
He said he never talked to Aaron again after that. But detectives had those text messages between Aaron and her friend back in Tennessee,
00:35:31
which seemed to show the affair was far from over. Detective Travis Newport confronted Chris.
00:35:38
So no reason at all why she would message people saying that she's planning to meet with you on Saturday.
00:35:45
Like, she'd very well could have overheard me and I'm not going to meet Scott or talking.
00:35:49
Chris suggested Aaron had overheard his plans for a trip to the desert and upset that she wasn invited lied to her friends saying Chris planned to meet her that day I just don think she ever got over the fact that we had stopped seeing each other We all know cheating in the military that can be a dishonorable discharge
00:36:08
Did you think that that could be a possible reason he didn't want to talk about it?
00:36:11
Yes, and it's not uncommon to see military personnel deny such a relationship because they know that it could lead to repercussions.
00:36:20
Still, they pressed Chris on his whereabouts the day she went missing. He told them he'd taken a drive to Joshua Tree National Park to hunt coyotes,
00:36:29
and that he'd shot his .22 caliber rifle four to five times at some rocks. And at one point, he said he encountered another man with a gun.
00:36:38
I'm not sure if the individual shot at me, or if it was just like recreational shooting,
00:36:42
but there was an individual out there with a handgun, and it was fired in my general direction.
00:36:47
He was very descriptive about this guy and his clothing and where he was out on a ridgeline and that he was reloading and he fired four rounds at him.
00:36:59
I got kind of lost and at one point in time I came out, followed Goldtown Road to Old Delmine Road and then followed that to the road that comes out of the National Park and came home that way.
00:37:13
And then I got home about 3.30. It was just a very unusual, wild story that I thought he was telling me.
00:37:20
So Detective Henke tried to shake Chris up with new information. We found our car. How did you?
00:37:25
Yeah, it was parked in that dirt. Okay. He seemed surprised that we had found the car.
00:37:31
Did he start to tense up after this reveal? Yes. I could see definitely him more tense in his body.
00:37:40
And then Henke tried bluffing. Your tire tracks are here, as well as her tire tracks, and your tire tracks are on over hers, showing that you had her there.
00:37:49
But you didn't know for sure. I didn't know for sure, but I had a suspicion. Under pressure now, Chris changed his story slightly, saying that while he didn't see Erin the day she disappeared, he did see her car.
00:38:03
I was worried that if I told you guys I saw her car because of my previous relationship with her, you would have automatically assumed I did something.
00:38:11
That didn't ring true to Hankey, and his ears perked up even more when Chris said this.
00:38:21
You heard that word. Yes. We. Yes. Yeah, that was a big tell for me. He had told me this entire time he was by himself.
00:38:33
Detectives interviewed Chris for nine hours and thought they'd caught him in numerous lies,
00:38:38
but they didn't have proof he'd committed a crime. or for that matter, that anything bad had even happened to Aaron.
00:38:45
So, Detective Henke drove Chris home. Anything telling from that car ride? Yes, it was pretty chilling, actually, some of the questions he asked me.
00:38:56
Like what? What was he asking you? He asked me how good I was at my job and how good our detective team was.
00:39:04
What did you tell him? Really good? I told him we were very good. He asked me specifically how many bodies have we not found in the desert,
00:39:11
This is a freaky conversation. Yeah. It wouldn't be long before investigators heard another strange thing,
00:39:18
this time from Chris's wife, Nicole, about something out at Isabel Megley's horse ranch.
00:39:23
Nicole told you that something was hidden in Isabel's closet. Yes. What was that?
00:39:28
It was a rifle, a .22 caliber rifle. Chris Lee's wife. Extremely uncooperative, angry.
00:39:37
A chilling warning. Tell Erin that if she ever had anything else to do with her husband, she'd kill her herself.
00:39:44
Really makes you wonder, did this person pay somebody to harm Erin? Three days had passed since Erin Corwin told her husband
00:40:05
she was going out to scout hiking locations in Joshua Tree National Park. But there was still no sign of her.
00:40:12
And so, detectives turned their attention back here, the horse rescue ranch that seemed to hold so many secrets.
00:40:20
Aaron Corwin and John, Chris Lee, his wife, they were all tied to that ranch. You conducted a search of the entire ranch?
00:40:27
Yes. Looking possibly for a body on that ranch? Not just a body, we were looking for any piece of evidence we could.
00:40:34
You know, anything linking anybody to Aaron's disappearance. I said, she's not here.
00:40:40
But they said they had to follow every lead that they thought might be possible.
00:40:45
So that's what they did. Detectives knew one thing they were looking for. Nicole told them she had stashed a rifle in Isabel's bedroom closet.
00:40:54
You had no idea it was there? I had no idea. It was the .22 caliber rifle that Chris had told detectives he took with him to the park the day Aaron went missing.
00:41:02
I was very disturbed. I can't imagine somebody hiding something in my house and not telling me.
00:41:10
So I'm starting to get more angry at Chris and Nicole because now I'm part of it and I didn't even know I was part of it.
00:41:19
And you don't allow guns here? No, I don't. Now Isabel told detectives that the day Aaron disappeared, she received a text from Nicole saying she and Chris wouldn't be at the ranch that day because she was sick.
00:41:30
The next morning, Chris and Nicole were back at the ranch. By then, Isabel had received a call that Aaron was missing.
00:41:37
And I kind of blew it off because I couldn't believe it. They'll find her. Isabel noticed things were tense between Chris and Nicole that day
00:41:46
and that Nicole had nothing good to say about her missing friend. Nicole was telling me that Aaron is probably hiding out somewhere to make Chris life miserable That she setting us up She trying to hurt our family Erin doing this just to get even
00:42:05
She's trying to get sympathy. So the idea was that Erin was okay somewhere, but was causing trouble to make Chris look bad.
00:42:14
Right. Chris was about to be discharged from the Marines and planned to move back to Alaska.
00:42:21
Isabel had lent them her SUV to move some of their belongings. Detectives searched the SUV and found a potato launcher like this one,
00:42:30
a sort of homemade cannon that shoots chunks of potato or other small objects. And the officer said, you didn't know that's a weapon?
00:42:40
I said, I had no idea it was even in my car. A weapon, as it happens, that is illegal in California.
00:42:47
Detectives were already suspicious of Chris. Now they use that potato launcher to get some leverage on him.
00:42:54
He's arrested here. This patio we're sitting on is where Chris was arrested. He was handcuffed to a chair.
00:43:00
The charge? Possession of a destructive device. Chris had already spoken to detectives at length,
00:43:07
but now that he was under arrest, Isabel noticed that Nicole seemed to be getting nervous,
00:43:12
and she started to say some odd things. She was very concerned that he would get his story confused
00:43:21
because he wasn't in control of the facts as much as she was. Detectives had already noticed Nicole didn't seem interested in helping to find her friend Aaron.
00:43:35
Extremely uncooperative, angry, just not what you would expect of somebody who's trying to assist in an investigation.
00:43:43
Isabel told them Chris and Nicole had also searched the Internet for some very specific information.
00:43:49
They had researched how to dispose of a body, a dead body. She said that we'd watched enough of those CSI movies to know no body, no case.
00:44:04
Remember, it was Nicole who told John about the affair. According to Isabel, Nicole said that she then confronted Aaron.
00:44:12
It was very important to her to tell Aaron that if she ever had anything else to do with her husband, she'd kill her herself.
00:44:22
Given that Aaron has disappeared, that is a very strong statement and now very relevant.
00:44:27
Yes. Did you have to consider her as a possible suspect as well? Of course we did. Hearing a statement like that obviously just raises all kinds of red flags.
00:44:38
Nicole Lee had an alibi. Detectives learned she was at home with her child the day Aaron disappeared.
00:44:44
But even if she wasn't out in the desert that day, investigators believed she still could have played a role in arranging Aaron's disappearance.
00:44:51
It really makes you wonder, you know, did this person pay somebody to harm Aaron?
00:44:59
Aaron's mom, Lore, had suspicions of her own. In those initial days following Aaron's disappearance,
00:45:05
Lore stayed at Aaron and John's apartment on the base. I went for a walk, and I come back, and Nicole's sitting on their walkway, and if looks could kill.
00:45:18
Toward you? Towards me. Must have been an odd moment. I guess it, for some reason, didn't surprise me.
00:45:25
Instead of shrinking, the suspect pool seemed to be growing. But there was still no proof any crime had even occurred,
00:45:33
except maybe possession of a potato gun. Chris bailed out on July 5, 2014, one week after Aaron disappeared.
00:45:42
Two days later, he was officially discharged from the Marines, and the Lees returned to Alaska.
00:45:48
People kept having a fit because they let him go to Alaska. Meanwhile, detectives in San Bernardino continued to hunt for clues
00:45:56
as to where Aaron Corwin might be found. and they learned something that would launch them on a massive, treacherous search in the desert.
00:46:07
You don't want to make one wrong little turn. One wrong turn can be your last turn.
00:46:13
Danger in the heart of the desert. It makes me think of Indiana Jones. What would investigators find?
00:46:28
Was Erin Corwin still alive somewhere in the desert, or was she the victim of foul play?
00:46:39
This is a huge operation, trying to find Erin Corwin. Yes. We had hundreds of searchers from four different counties.
00:46:47
But with such an enormous area to cover, the search dragged on. And in the withering desert heat, the odds of finding Erin alive dwindled.
00:46:57
Her parents had long ago returned home to Tennessee. It must have been so hard getting on that plane.
00:47:02
It was. Was there any part of you that felt like, of course it's reasonable, but did you feel guilt or I shouldn't be leaving?
00:47:10
Or what if they find her tonight or tomorrow? Right. The investigation had narrowed in one way.
00:47:16
Detectives cleared Erin's husband, John, of any wrongdoing in connection with her disappearance.
00:47:22
Cell phone and computer records showed John was on the base the entire day that Aaron went missing.
00:47:27
They also concluded Chris was lying when he said Aaron claimed John had been abusive.
00:47:32
Over the period of the investigation, John was interviewed multiple times. John submitted to a polygraph test.
00:47:41
I mean, easily 20 hours total we had spoken with John. Did he pass the polygraph?
00:47:47
Yes. I knew what was true and I gave them my honest answers and I never lied to them and the light
00:47:57
shined through. But Chris Lee had lied to me. to them and seemed interested in how to dispose of a body.
00:48:04
Come on, baby. And Isabel told them he'd taken a trip to the desert with a friend the week before Aaron disappeared.
00:48:10
He said we found a lot of mines, but I found this one mine no one will ever find.
00:48:16
Detectives believed it was all adding up. Chris killed Aaron and then dumped her body in a mineshaft.
00:48:22
So they decided to start searching. But here was the problem. The Mojave Desert is pockmarked with hundreds of mine shafts.
00:48:31
Detectives knew they needed help. The search and rescue folks explained that there was a guy who knew a lot about the desert,
00:48:39
knew a lot about the caves, you know, would be a great resource to us. This is the man they were talking about, Doug Billings, cave Doug to his pals.
00:48:50
As much desert rat as the gold miners who used to roam the Mojave a century ago.
00:48:56
But instead of a pickaxe and a mule, he's outfitted with GPS and a Hummer. I've been down every one of these mines, including the one we're standing in front of right now.
00:49:06
I know how deep they are. I know what's inside them. When other kids were playing Little League, Billings was hanging off a rope catching rattlers.
00:49:14
By the time he was an adult, Billings was traveling the globe, exploring the underworld.
00:49:19
But the Mojave is his home. So Detective Newport and Billings started talking, and a relationship quickly formed.
00:49:26
Almost every day, Doug and I would talk on the phone, and he would send me photographs, aerial images, satellite images,
00:49:32
and say, check these mine shafts, you know, these are more that I have located. Just getting to a mine shaft could be an ordeal, as we discovered.
00:49:42
Billings took us out to one of the high-priority search areas, but the road got so rugged and treacherous,
00:49:48
we were forced to leave behind our SUV. along with two members of the crew, and carry on in Billings Hummer.
00:49:57
This is really hard to get around. I mean, this is sort of, at times, white-knuckle driving.
00:50:01
I have to admit, you look straight down, you don't want to make one wrong little turn.
00:50:06
Yeah, one wrong turn can be your last turn. So this is one of the mines that was searched?
00:50:13
Yes. Billings and the other volunteers checked off one dangerous mine shaft after the next.
00:50:18
We're monitoring the oxygen, so it's all clear. The next step we do is we always throw in a little bit of rocks, and you listen quietly for a rattlesnake.
00:50:25
It's kind of a general protocol. This part of the desert, they love to come and hide out in these mines to get out of the sun.
00:50:33
Yeah, you see the temperature drop. And as we walk in here, you click your light on.
00:50:39
Ooh, that could be scary if it dropped down. Yeah, so this could be a false floor here.
00:50:43
We'll stay on this side here. It makes me think of Indiana Jones, kind of the unknown trap almost.
00:50:47
Uh-huh, uh-huh. I've seen that. in real life. These are the most dangerous shafts to search, vertical ones that go straight down
00:50:57
into a crumbling abyss. Originally we were dropping mine shafts. We were physically going
00:51:02
down the shaft. We would rig the ropes, rappel in, check it, clear it, and move on. But it became
00:51:08
not feasible with the amount of mines we had to search. So they outfitted buckets with cameras.
00:51:14
It sped up the process to be sure, but with hundreds of minds to explore, the search dragged on for days, then weeks.
00:51:25
How daunting of a task was this? Well, at first I didn't really quite grasp it. And then once we had been out here pounding this area for several weeks, it started going through my head like, oh my God, when is this going to end?
00:51:40
you know. Detectives were often side by side with the hundreds of searchers looking for Erin.
00:51:46
We were digging holes. We were searching. I was wearing t-shirt and jeans, going into mine shafts.
00:51:53
We wanted to find her. So we were doing everything we could to help. And yet there was no sign of
00:51:58
Erin Corwin anywhere. No clothing, no footprints, nothing. But then detectives caught a break.
00:52:07
Remember that trip Chris took with a friend to look at mines? Turns out, Chris's friend had taken pictures.
00:52:14
Detectives obtained the photos, and seven weeks into the search, showed them to Cave Doug.
00:52:20
Without skipping a beat, Mr. Billings almost immediately began identifying each photograph,
00:52:25
and we began plotting them on the topographical map. The first picture they showed me was of the mine across here.
00:52:29
I immediately recognized the tower. They showed the shaft, going down the shaft, I recognized that.
00:52:34
The second they showed me the cabin, and then the next picture was of actually the mine we're standing next to.
00:52:42
So they bet on Billings' memory and focus their efforts here around what's known as the Rose of Peru mine.
00:52:49
Around the Rose of Peru mine are hundreds of other abandoned mines like this one,
00:52:54
and any one of them could have been a potential burial site. Investigators had high hopes that they were finally targeting the right area,
00:53:03
But after an exhaustive and expensive search that lasted for weeks and weeks, they decided this was it.
00:53:10
Saturday, August 16, 2014, would be the last day of the search. We felt we had one more shot at it.
00:53:18
In the early evening, they headed for the very last mine on their list. And as nighttime falls out there, you don't want anybody out there still.
00:53:27
So we began to really collect our thoughts and decide, you know, any minute now we need to start calling this search.
00:53:33
A member of the San Bernardino Cave Rescue Team, a doctor in fact, came upon this mine and right away noticed a strange smell.
00:53:41
It was the stench of gasoline. There was also a shell casing resting near the mouth of the mine.
00:53:47
The searchers lowered a bucket cam. We received a phone call from one of the satellite phones that was out there with the search team
00:53:54
and they could see what appeared to be a leg or some sort of a body part down at the very bottom of the mine shaft That is unbelievable that this search was minutes away from being called off after weeks and weeks and you find something
00:54:12
It was very unbelievable. A full exploration of the mine would have to wait until daybreak.
00:54:19
Detective Hankey, he called me at roughly 9 or 10 o'clock that night and said that we had found a body at the bottom of this mine shaft.
00:54:30
Did you sleep at all that night? I did not know. Do I want to put my life in danger?
00:54:39
Journey to the bottom of the mine. Whatever was down there, could rescuers retrieve it?
00:54:45
Overwhelming emotion. This really can't be happening to us. A massive search effort that once spread across 2,000 square miles of desert
00:55:08
was now focused on a single 4x6-foot hole. I had no idea what we were getting into.
00:55:15
Paul Anastasia and Brenton Baum are with the San Bernardino County Fire Department's elite urban search and rescue team.
00:55:23
I was told they had found a body approximately 140 feet in a mine shaft. But there were problems.
00:55:31
They detected propane gasoline fumes. The bucket cam used the day before picked up images of a gas can and propane tank, which were venting fumes into the shaft.
00:55:41
That's why Anastasia and Baum were called. They're trained to work inside tight spaces while using sophisticated breathing equipment.
00:55:50
From what they described, it sounded pretty precarious, just as far as the soil type we were facing, how deep in the environment it was.
00:55:58
It seemed like a pretty questionable entrance. The two regularly risked their lives to rescue people in danger.
00:56:05
But in this case, taking a grave risk in order to recover a dead body gave them pause.
00:56:12
It's risk versus gain. Do I want to put my life in danger? After talking it over
00:56:19
and knowing how important their recovery efforts could be to solving Aaron's disappearance,
00:56:24
they agreed to go. Baum, who's admittedly claustrophobic, got the short straw and was first in the hole.
00:56:32
I started descending down. How deep were you going in? About 100 to 140 feet. It was a lot deeper than I've ever been.
00:56:39
And what are you seeing as you're on your way down? How tight is it? It was eerie, rock collapsing, snakes, and also just the heat.
00:56:50
It was about 110 degrees topside, and I believe it was about 90 degrees downside.
00:56:54
So working in that environment, you only have a limited amount of time effectiveness before you're quickly fatigued.
00:56:59
What did you see? A Sprite bottle, a rope, a tire down there, a propane tank, some plastic jugs, a lot of rock and rock debris, some railroad ties.
00:57:16
And then he sought a human body. That sounds like out of a horror movie. I mean, I hate to say it like that, but to rappel down and then to see a decomposing body.
00:57:27
Obviously, we see a lot of death in this line of work. Over time, you just develop a method where you just ignore your emotions for a little while
00:57:34
and you just focus on the task you need to do and then face up with your emotions later.
00:57:40
Baum first took photos while suspended above the grisly crime scene, then methodically set about gathering evidence and sending it back to the surface.
00:57:49
The original plan was for me to do the whole operation, but I had been down there about 45 minutes and was pretty fatigued,
00:57:56
so our captain made the decision to go ahead and rotate us out. How did you feel when you finally got out of that mine?
00:58:02
I took my mask off. I was hit with the smell all of a sudden. What I had been immersed in, I didn't smell in the shaft.
00:58:08
I smelled on the top side because it was all saturated in my clothes. I started dry heaving.
00:58:12
Then it was Anastasia's turn. His assignment? Get the body. I would be lying if I said I was excited about going down to that mine shaft.
00:58:21
I never put a body in a bag. Once in the mine, Anastasia realized retrieving the body was going to be far harder than expected.
00:58:31
I did a little assessment with my flashlight, and I realized that that was a false bottom.
00:58:35
And then I got a little more concerned with some rocks coming down and knocking out that false bottom or loosening it up.
00:58:43
Because then everything would be gone. Yeah, I had no idea how deep that shaft was.
00:58:48
So, suspended in midair, Anastasia began placing the body in the bag without disturbing the false bottom on which it rested.
00:58:56
Once that was done, he found something else. A torch in the corner of the mine. Had it been lit?
00:59:04
It didn't look like it had been lit to me. It looked like it was brand new, like someone had just made it.
00:59:10
Ever so carefully, Anastasia made his way back up the mine shaft with that torch and with the body.
00:59:17
Back on the surface, detectives made a positive ID. After eight weeks of searching, on the day they decided would be their last,
00:59:25
they had finally found Erin Corwin. I don't know if either of you are religious,
00:59:30
but it almost feels like some kind of divine intervention that it would happen that way.
00:59:34
I felt it was a small miracle. I get emotional just thinking about that day. All these hours we had worked and just thinking deep down inside,
00:59:44
she's got to be somewhere in one of these last caves. She just has to be. And then actually
00:59:49
having that confirmed just overwhelming emotion A few minutes before midnight the phone rings again wakes us up and it Detective Dan and says it her
01:00:06
It's like, this really can't be happening to us. You know, not that child. The cause of Aaron's death?
01:00:16
Possible blunt force head injury and apparently strangulation with a sinister tool.
01:00:22
The pathologist discovered what's known as a garrote. I was unfamiliar with that at the time, but I quickly learned what that was.
01:00:32
It was a paracord with two rebar handles, and it encircled her neck. Isabel from the horse ranch said Nicole Lee once told her,
01:00:43
No body, no case. Now detectives finally had the body, and soon they had an arrest warrant.
01:00:50
The charge, murder. All of the evidence in this case points to one person. One person who prepared, planned, studied, and executed the murder of Aaron Corlin.
01:01:05
An accused killer on trial. Ladies and gentlemen, at its core, this is really a very simple case.
01:01:29
October 2016, two and a half years after Aaron Corwin's death, a jury gathered in the San Bernardino courtroom.
01:01:37
The person on trial, Chris Lee. The charge, first-degree murder. Prosecutor Sean Daugherty.
01:01:44
All of the evidence in this case points to one person. One person who prepared, planned, studied, and executed the murder of Aaron Corwin.
01:01:57
There was so much connecting him out there at that mine shaft, even the very location of that particular mine that tied him to the crime,
01:02:07
that for him not to have done it, he would be probably the unluckiest man ever. The prosecutor used friends and family of the Lees and Corwins to lay out the case against Chris.
01:02:18
Several people who knew Chris, including this fellow Marine, testified he'd shown a lot of interest in how to dispose of a body.
01:02:26
He did mention the benefits of hiding a body in a vertical position, so ground-benefrating radar wouldn't be able to see the outline of a body.
01:02:34
Former downstairs neighbor and one-time friend, Aisling Maliki, also took the stand.
01:02:40
How many times prior to June 28th did you hear the president talking about? More than I can count.
01:02:47
Aisling also told the jury about Chris's wife Nicole's odd and cold response when she heard Aaron was missing.
01:02:55
I called Nicole and said, where's your husband? There's people here looking for her. You know, Aaron's missing.
01:03:03
She replied with, I don't care what happened to that little bitch. And she laughed at me and told me to mind my own business. And then I hung up on her.
01:03:14
So you're becoming emotional. Why? Because I just, I knew something happened to Erin at that point, and there was no way she went off on her own.
01:03:35
And Aisling's husband, Connor Malachy, testified he saw Chris Lee around 6 o'clock the morning Erin disappeared.
01:03:42
And in the back of his Jeep, he noticed something. I saw a bunch of items covered by a tarp, and I saw a white propane cylinder.
01:03:49
White propane cylinder? Correct. Like for a barbecue? Yes. Connor said the propane tank he saw in the Jeep looked like the one recovered from the mine.
01:03:59
I asked him why it was in there, what he was planning on doing with it. What was the defendant's response?
01:04:04
That he was going to blow up a mine shaft with it. Isabel Megley from the horse ranch told the jury she also recognized the tank pulled up from the mine.
01:04:13
She said Chris had borrowed it from her the day before Aaron disappeared. I asked him if he was going to have a barbecue.
01:04:21
And what was his response? He said no, he was going to use it to play games. Did the defendant ever return the propane tank?
01:04:28
No. And Detective Woods testified that a search of the SUV Chris was driving at the time of his arrest
01:04:35
yielded another piece of evidence. That is the garage that was located underneath the front passenger seat.
01:04:41
I'd only seen one of those in my life, and that was the one that was wrapped around Ms. Corwin's neck.
01:04:46
And for the second time in the same week, I saw the second one. And there was another link to Chris.
01:04:53
That shell casing found near the mouth of the mine shaft, it matched Chris's rifle.
01:04:59
The jury also got to hear from Aaron's confidant back in Tennessee. Jessica Trentham was Aaron's close friend and secret keeper.
01:05:08
She's the one who told detectives everything she knew about Aaron's affair with Chris.
01:05:13
Did she tell you how she felt about Christopher Lee? She made it known that she loved him more than her husband.
01:05:22
Jessica said Aaron had plans for a future with Chris. She stated that she believed she would be divorcing her husband,
01:05:32
or that a divorce would come, and that she was hoping to be able to stay with him.
01:05:37
She said Chris told Erin he had a special trip planned for her the weekend she disappeared.
01:05:43
She said that he was going to surprise her with a trip out to the desert. How did she sound? What was her feelings about her? What did she sound like to you?
01:05:52
She was excited to get to spend time with him. Jessica also testified about a text she got from Aaron My mother comes in a week I excited Jessica responded are you going to tell her What did you mean when you said you said you were going to tell her
01:06:09
That she was pregnant. Aaron texted back, well, Chris wanted to tell everyone next week.
01:06:15
On June 28, 2014, Jessica spoke to her friend for the last time. At 7.19 a.m. California time, Aaron called Jessica back in Tennessee.
01:06:25
She said that she was getting ready and about to leave the apartment to go meet Chris to have their special day.
01:06:36
What was your response to that? I was excited for her. Why? I wanted her to be happy.
01:06:45
Did you guys make plans or talk about her calling you later? She was supposed to call and let me know how it went.
01:06:56
Did you ever get that phone call? No. Do you think she was planning to start this new life with him?
01:07:03
With the baby? Seems so. It seems so. It was really hard to hear that. I think one of the harder things is to know that she was going through all that
01:07:14
and she did not share it. It just makes me wonder the level of his manipulation because obviously he was leading her on.
01:07:26
But perhaps the most damning evidence came from this DNA expert who analyzed the items that were pulled out of the mine shaft
01:07:32
where Aaron's body was recovered. In this case, I chose to go with more substantial testing.
01:07:39
Remember that homemade torch? It consisted of a piece of wood with a green t-shirt wrapped around one end.
01:07:46
On the shirt's collar, DNA. In this particular case, we have a major DNA profile, which includes Christopher Lee.
01:07:56
There was also DNA around the mouth of the Sprite bottle found in the mine. I have a mixture of two individuals, Christopher Brandon Lee and Aaron Corwin.
01:08:05
Aaron and Chris, it appeared, had been sharing a Sprite that day. the same drink her husband had once used to propose marriage.
01:08:14
I believe Christopher Lee took Erin Corwin out to the desert to kill her that day
01:08:18
because she was a hurdle between him and the rest of his life. By the end of this entire investigation,
01:08:25
we realized Christopher Lee didn't care about anybody but himself. The prosecution said Chris took Erin out to the mine,
01:08:34
strangled her with the garrote, and dropped her in. He may have intended to use the propane tank and torch to blow up the mine and conceal her body,
01:08:42
although he apparently didn't follow through. Their conclusion? It was a carefully planned, cold-blooded murder.
01:08:50
The evidence seemed overwhelming. But now it was the defense's turn, and jurors were in for a surprise.
01:08:58
Chris Lee was about to testify, and no one was prepared for the dark tale he would tell.
01:09:06
I need to tell the truth. A story from the stand that stuns the court. I couldn't live with myself if I kept this a secret any longer.
01:09:29
I need to tell the truth. Chris Lee, a husband, father, and decorated Marine, would be the first and only witness in his defense.
01:09:38
His attorney, David Kalunidis, took Chris through his version of events. I couldn't live with myself if I kept this a secret any longer.
01:09:47
By June 2014, Chris was preparing to leave the Marines. He told the jury that he knew it was time to end his relationship with Aaron.
01:09:55
Did you have any plans after leaving the Corps? Yes, me, Nicole and Liberty were planning on moving back up to Alaska.
01:10:05
Had you told Aaron this? I did. Chris said that he had planned a hunting trip and that he invited Aaron along so they could talk.
01:10:13
Was it just going to be you and Aaron? No, it wasn't. Chris had asked two friends to join him, including his neighbor Connor.
01:10:20
Why were you inviting all these other friends of yours if you needed to talk to Aaron?
01:10:26
Because I didn't really want to have lengthy conversations, so I wanted to be able to go hang out with my friends
01:10:35
and actually do some hunting in case the conversation got too deep or became to the point where I was uncomfortable with it.
01:10:42
But Chris said by the morning of June 28th, he found out his friends had bailed.
01:10:47
So he and Aaron set out for the park, just the two of them. Chris had a propane tank, and he said he wanted to blow off some steam, literally.
01:10:56
Had you told Aaron that you were going to actually try to blow up this mine? On the way there.
01:11:03
Do you remember what her reaction was? She wasn't happy about it. She thought it was stupid, unsafe.
01:11:10
You know, she thought this trip was going to be about us talking. And I told her that it was, but, you know, that I wanted to try and do this too.
01:11:17
When they arrived, Chris began unloading his supplies. I took the tires out of my Jeep and I tossed them down the mine shaft.
01:11:25
What was Erin doing during this time? She was sitting in the Jeep listening to music.
01:11:29
She didn't want to be near any of this. All right, so what did you do next to blow the mine?
01:11:36
I went to the back of the Jeep to grab my torch and I realized I had not doused it in gasoline.
01:11:42
Feeling frustrated, Chris said he returned to his Jeep. We started having a conversation about what?
01:11:49
about plans. She wanted to come to Alaska. She wanted to be part of Liberty's life. I told her, you know,
01:12:00
I didn't want that. I told her, you know, I decided that, you know, you can't be part of Liberty's life.
01:12:10
And she said that she wanted to, that she loved Liberty, you know. And I told her, you know, it's not your choice, it's not your daughter, you don't get to love her, she's mine.
01:12:21
What were you thinking at that point? I was thinking there's no reason for Erin to love Liberty. She was not hers.
01:12:28
She shouldn't have any kind of emotional attachment to her. And then, Chris said, he remembered something else,
01:12:35
a story that would be central to his defense and would stun this courtroom. He said he recalled something his wife had shown him one night
01:12:43
when she was giving Liberty a bath, signs, Chris said, that Nicole believed showed sexual abuse.
01:12:50
That she thought maybe Erin had molested Liberty because she was uncomfortable with the way she was around her
01:12:56
when she had been watching her. What was your reaction to that? I felt so safe in my little community that I didn't think it was possible.
01:13:06
So you didn't believe Nicole? No, no, it's not. But now, as they talked at the mine, he said Aaron seemed way too attached to Liberty.
01:13:14
When Aaron told me she loved Liberty and that she wanted to be with her, something clicked, it turned a gear in my head.
01:13:24
And I said, why do you care about Liberty so much? Why do you want to be part of her life?
01:13:28
And Erin told me, you know, I just love her. And I stood up and I stopped her. I said, did you touch liberty?
01:13:38
And she reeled back a little bit and started stuttering up her words. And she was saying, you know, I, I.
01:13:45
And I stopped her again. And I yelled at her this time. I said, did you molest my daughter?
01:13:52
And she said, yes, but. And that was the last thing I heard her say. An explosive allegation against the victim.
01:14:02
Did you worry that that could really turn off the jury? Absolutely. But it was what Chris insisted was the truth.
01:14:09
Aaron's husband said it simply wasn't possible. She was nurturing, caring, never did anything elusive or crude or harmful.
01:14:22
Nobody that personally knows Aaron or has even heard of Aaron would believe that.
01:14:26
And for detectives... I personally felt disgusted. From all the people we've talked to that knew Aaron,
01:14:34
we didn't think this was even an angle that Christopher Lee would play. This came out of left field.
01:14:40
But Chris said it was hearing what he believed to be a confession from Aaron that caused the horrible events he now recounted in chilling detail.
01:14:48
I stumbled back and I sat on the edge of my Jeep and caught myself with my hands and in my right hand I felt the metal from the garrote It set me off I just felt so much hate so much rage
01:15:08
And I grabbed it, and I stood up, and I came up behind her, and I put it around her neck.
01:15:13
Training took over then, and I turned around, and I started pulling. Nothing would have stopped me from doing what I was doing.
01:15:22
I told myself while I was doing this, never again. I wasn't going to let anybody hurt my daughter again.
01:15:28
I had let her into my daughter's life. It was my fault that my daughter was hurt.
01:15:35
I just kept choking her. I don't know how long it was. It might have been five minutes.
01:15:41
Ten minutes, it felt like forever. And I just kept choking her. And then the anger, that feeling of disgust and hate ebbed a little bit, and I let go, and she dropped to the ground.
01:15:59
Christopher Lee was describing for the jury how he had killed Erin Corwin. After a few minutes went by, I realized what happened. I know I killed her.
01:16:08
And so the grove was still around her neck. So I grabbed it and I dragged her to the edge of the mine shaft and I pushed her in.
01:16:19
His story accounted for all the physical evidence and portrayed the killing as a crime of passion committed by an outraged father.
01:16:26
But now the prosecution took over and shocked the courtroom all over again. A heart stopping moment.
01:16:36
He could have stopped there, right? No. He couldn't have stopped. No. The fate of Marine Corporal Chris Lee.
01:16:43
What will the verdict be? Chris Lee had shocked the courtroom, telling the jury that he did kill Aaron Corwin, but it wasn't premeditated.
01:17:05
Instead, he said, he snapped when he claimed Aaron confessed to him that she'd been molesting his daughter.
01:17:12
Now, prosecutor Sean Doherty cross-examined Chris, confronting him on those allegations against Aaron.
01:17:19
You heard these accusations from your wife, who you loved, right? Yes. So you immediately picked up and called the police?
01:17:26
No. Nicole immediately picked up and called the police? No. So you're still having sex with a woman who your wife thought was molesting your daughter?
01:17:35
Right? Yes. The prosecution's mission? Show the jury that they could not believe Chris, because he'd lied, claiming not to
01:17:43
know where Aaron was through all eight weeks she was missing. People lie for a reason.
01:17:48
It important that I point out that he lies to protect himself You had a choice to tell the truth right I did You knew Aaron had a mother Yes You knew she had people that loved her Yes You knew a lot of people were looking for her
01:18:01
Yes, I did. You essentially made the decision to hold them hostage, right? Yes. Perhaps the biggest moment in court came when the prosecutor found a striking way to demonstrate
01:18:12
how Chris had killed Aaron. Okay, so for the record, what you did is you put it around the dummy's neck that I'm holding,
01:18:18
you twist it around and then you turn backwards so you're actually back to back with her yes sir
01:18:23
okay and you testified earlier that you pulled really really hard yes sir you could have stopped
01:18:27
there right no you couldn't have stopped no you already made the decision to kill her yes and
01:18:31
you're going to follow through with that decision yes okay my goal was to show the jury how long it
01:18:37
takes to kill somebody like that and to show them the brutality of what was done it's one thing to
01:18:42
say as he did on on direct and then i strangled her and i pushed her down the hole it's another
01:18:47
thing for him to actually show us what you did. So I think the jury was entitled to see that.
01:18:54
It was heavy. It was one of the heavier moments I've had in court. That's about 10 seconds in. You could have stopped. Right? No.
01:19:10
20 seconds in, you could have stopped. No. Why not? Nothing would have stopped me at this point.
01:19:15
I was too angry. I saw the reaction of the jurors. It was pained. Their expressions were pained.
01:19:22
So we're about 40 seconds in. You're still doing it. Yes, sir. That's about a minute in.
01:19:29
Still doing it. Yes, sir. And your testimony is you couldn't have stopped. You couldn't have just let go of those handles.
01:19:34
No. Minute 20? Still no, huh? No. Can you let go now? Yes, sir. Then you threw her down a mineshaft, didn't you?
01:19:51
I did. Like a piece of trash. I threw her down the mineshaft, yes. Like a piece of trash.
01:19:59
Right? Is that a question? Yes. Yes. The jurors had heard a confession from Chris Lee.
01:20:06
Would they think it was voluntary manslaughter? A killing carried out in the heat of passion?
01:20:11
Or was it premeditated murder? The prosecutor made his final appeal to the jury.
01:20:17
You think the defendant testified to express remorse? Ladies and gentlemen, if you do, you're mistaken.
01:20:24
The defendant is not remorseful. He didn't care. He didn't care when search and rescue and homicide and fire departments are putting their life at risk looking for Erin.
01:20:36
He didn't care that he was holding her mother hostage. He didn't care one bit until it came time to talk to you,
01:20:44
the people who are going to decide what crime he's guilty of. Defense attorney David Call Unitas asked the jury to consider this case as a tragic crime of passion not one of premeditated murder Mr Lee was provoked Only you can decide whether that provocation was sufficient to justify a lesser included
01:21:09
Not justify the killing because it wasn't justified. But was it murder? Was it deliberate, willful, premeditated, lying-in-wait murder?
01:21:29
Or was it a tragic killing that shouldn't have happened? The jurors pondered those questions for just an hour and a half.
01:21:42
Then they reached a verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant, Christopher Brandon Lee, guilty of first-degree murder.
01:21:50
The defendant intentionally killed the victim by means of lying in wait. Christopher Lee was convicted on all counts.
01:21:57
He will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. What was that moment like for you? That was pretty final at that point, guilty.
01:22:07
It was like taking a breath of fresh air. Although John Corwin still feels the lasting pain of regret.
01:22:13
I just wish I could have been there for her more. I've tried my hardest, but it wasn't enough.
01:22:21
Erin was a kid. She had her whole life ahead of her. She just didn't know that, in my opinion, she was dealing with the devil.
01:22:32
Chris's wife, Nicole, told detectives she had nothing to do with Erin's disappearance,
01:22:36
and she has not been charged with any crime. Is there still a chance? Is Nicole out of the woods?
01:22:42
Not every door has been closed. But for Erin's mom, the door on Chris Lee is closed
01:22:47
and she breathes a little easier knowing it. Every time there's a hearing, your emotional scab gets ripped off.
01:22:55
And to know that I'm not going to have to deal with that? Lore finds comfort here, way out in the Joshua Tree Desert,
01:23:02
where Doug Billings, Cave Doug, created this. In the desolate place where Erin's life was cut short, a garden now grows in her memory.
01:23:15
When you look at that desert garden, what are you thinking? It's beautiful, like my girl.
01:23:24
It's a peaceful place. I have a peace that can't be explained. I decided I couldn't be bitter and angry.
01:23:34
He's already taken enough from me and if I'm bitter and angry He's taking my mind, my soul and my heart
01:23:42
and I'm not giving Him that