00:00:00
She said, oh, mom, Lisa's missing. What do you mean Lisa's missing? This is just unfathomable.
00:00:09
She can't be missing. We started an immediate search of the surrounding area. Things happen so fast.
00:00:17
We need to find her. So her body was found? Right in here. Why would anyone do this?
00:00:22
Motives were thrown out like jealousy, some kind of love triangle. Did you keep getting new tips in all the time?
00:00:28
Tips were coming in. But kept hitting dead ends. Hitting dead ends. A massive law enforcement project that had gone on over 25 years.
00:00:39
God, could you give us a little something here? We've just got to keep going. For the first time, we had a face to put with the boogeyman.
00:00:50
What are you thinking? I took a big, deep breath, and my mind began racing. Your jaw must have dropped.
00:00:55
To say the least. I picked up a rose and I put a card on it. It just said, Lisa, it's done.
00:01:10
It's a pretty little thing. Whimsical. Frivolous. But three decades ago, this music box became something else.
00:01:21
A symbol of deadly intent. Did that give you chills seeing that music box? Yes, absolutely.
00:01:27
A gift from an evil soul. He had bought the music box prior to her being abducted.
00:01:33
And a clue for the homicide investigators who never gave up on this case. Women grew up afraid having heard this story, and they deserved an answer.
00:01:43
The whole community deserved an answer. Agawam in western Massachusetts is the home of Six Flags,
00:01:52
New England's biggest theme park. The town itself is small, with a wholesome vibe.
00:01:58
Generations of families have grown up here. But on April 16, 1992, Agawam was in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
00:02:08
Is this just like any typical day you're on your way to work? Exactly, just another typical day.
00:02:14
Just another typical day, until it wasn't. Sophia Maynard, back then a clerk at Brittany's card and gift shop,
00:02:21
noticed something strange as she pulled up to the store that Thursday morning. A parked car that shouldn't have been there.
00:02:29
It belonged to Lisa Ziegert. Lisa worked evenings at the store. During the day, she was a teacher's aide.
00:02:35
Drove in and really couldn't quite figure out, you know, why she would be there.
00:02:40
At that time, she would be at the Yaguam Middle School. Was that odd? Teaching. Seeing her car?
00:02:46
Definitely was odd, yes. Sophia parked and went inside. The door was unlocked and the music was on, the lights were on.
00:02:54
So that's weird. Yeah. Like maybe she had opened the store. Maybe she forgot something there and, you know, maybe had a break between classes or, you know, whatever.
00:03:04
Something, maybe. She called Lisa's name. No answer. Went up and down the narrow aisles, past the coffee mugs, the porcelain knickknacks, the music boxes and cards.
00:03:16
I walked around the counter where the cash register was. And her purse was there.
00:03:22
So then I kind of started thinking, that's odd. It's odd. Why would her purse be there and she's not?
00:03:28
Exactly. She checked the back of the store, saw that one room was a mess. Were you worried that you were going to look into one of these rooms and possibly find Lisa in there?
00:03:39
That was the first thought in my head was if something had happened to her, that I was going to find her there.
00:03:47
But 24-year-old Lisa Ziegert wasn't there, wasn't anywhere in the store. Is your heart pumping?
00:03:54
Yes, I was pretty panicked at that point. I knew something obviously happened to her.
00:04:03
So I just, my first instinct was to just run and call the police. She ran to a store across the road to call 911.
00:04:12
They told me that I needed to go down right away to Brittany's card shop. Detective Wayne Macy of the Agawam Police Department was assigned the case.
00:04:20
You head over there right away? I did. I did. How much information do you have? Very little at this point?
00:04:26
Not at the time. Just that somebody was missing from that store. Once inside, Macy saw Lisa's coat, as well as her purse, the messy storeroom, the untouched cash register.
00:04:37
And it doesn't take a detective even to know when someone's belongings are all left behind like that.
00:04:43
It's not a good sign. Right. It's not, you know in your heart and in your mind that when those kinds of things are left behind, obviously this is not going to be a good thing.
00:04:56
Macy and his colleagues had their video camera out, searching for clues. Meantime, the news spread to Lisa's mom, Dee Ziegert.
00:05:04
I got a phone call first from the school. The school where Lisa worked during the day as an aide.
00:05:10
She said, you know, hey Dee, do you know where Lisa might be? She didn't come in.
00:05:19
And I said, I don't know, maybe she overslept. Dee didn't think anything of it. But then Lynn Rogerson, Lisa's older sister, got a call.
00:05:29
This one from a friend who told her that Lisa was nowhere to be found. My anxiety was through the roof. I was completely freaked out.
00:05:35
Right away? From the phone call onward. Is this because her personal belongings were left behind in her car?
00:05:41
Is that in the... And the store was open. Yeah. She would never do that. She would have never left that store at risk by leaving it unlocked, ever.
00:05:51
Lynn raced over to her mom's office. When Lynn came to the office to tell me she said Oh Mom Lisa missing And poor Lynn my response was what do you mean Lisa missing
00:06:05
This is just unfathomable. It's just unfathomable. What do you mean she's missing?
00:06:09
She can't be missing. Just not at all what you're ever expecting to hear in Agawam, Massachusetts.
00:06:15
No. No, not at all. No. But what was coming was even more incomprehensible and almost more than they could bear.
00:06:25
We started looking in the store for clues as to what could have happened there at the scene.
00:06:31
Detectives turn up evidence of a fierce struggle in the gift shop, triggering a massive search for the missing Lisa.
00:06:37
There was a door that actually had what appeared to be a heel mark in it, and there was a little bit of blood spattering.
00:06:43
You don't know what you're going to find, but you just keep looking. And later, a picture of a killer painted by DNA.
00:06:51
It doesn't tell you who the killer is, but it can tell you what the killer looks like.
00:06:56
Correct. Lisa Ziegert disappeared in April 1992 during her evening shift at a gift shop.
00:07:17
Detective Wayne Macy was called to the store the next morning. You're worried immediately?
00:07:22
Very much so. So we started looking in the store for clues as to what could have happened there at the scene.
00:07:28
Police swarmed the place. And it was a back room. There was a door that actually had what appeared to be a heel mark in it where somebody might have kicked it.
00:07:38
The boxes were actually flattened down like somebody might have been on those boxes.
00:07:43
And there was a little bit of blood spattering on some of the boxes. So you're looking at the beginnings of an abduction.
00:07:51
Yeah. They believed the boxes, the dent in the door, and the blood spatter all pointed to a struggle.
00:07:57
We started an immediate search of the surrounding area, dumpster areas, back alley areas behind.
00:08:05
This was kind of a strip mall type area. And there was a lot of little nooks and crannies that somebody could put somebody.
00:08:13
Did your team find anything? No. They talked to everyone who was in the area that night.
00:08:20
Did anyone see anything? They were not of any significance. Detectives developed a timeline.
00:08:26
What time are you thinking this happened? We're thinking somewhere between 8.30 and 10 minutes to 9 on that evening.
00:08:32
That's a really accurate small window. The last transaction on the cash register was at 8.20 p.m.
00:08:40
A customer told police she came into the store at 9, but it was empty. She thought she heard a noise in the back and left.
00:08:47
So she was about 40 minutes from closing when this happened. Yes. They soon had a working theory of what happened.
00:08:54
There was an assault that took place in that store to gain some kind of control over Lisa.
00:08:59
There was also a side door, and the side door led to an alley. And they probably went out the side and just pulled the car out and left from there.
00:09:08
And then just vanished. And then just vanished. But where was she now? The Agawam PD, the Massachusetts State Police, and the FBI launched an intensive search.
00:09:21
Lisa's parents, Dee and George, her siblings and friends, gathered at the family home to wait.
00:09:26
They were terrified. Who would hurt their fun, friendly Lisa? The girl with the cornflower blue eyes.
00:09:33
She was bubbly, and as Lynn would be quick to say, when she'd laugh, she'd laugh like this.
00:09:37
She always covered her. But if she was laughing, you were laughing too. She had an infectious giggle.
00:09:44
And she was small, but her personality was pretty big. Lisa's life was full, packed with her many interests.
00:09:52
So this is Lisa's artwork. Yes, yes, yes. Some of it. Some is from college, some is from high school.
00:10:00
These are pretty colors. It has to have blue. Everything has to have blue in it, according to Lisa.
00:10:04
And she was always sketching in her spare time. Yes. This is just something she loved to do.
00:10:09
She did. Something else, Lisa loved to dance Here she is at her parents' anniversary party a year before she vanished
00:10:16
Kim Murray, one of her oldest friends We would go out to clubs and we would listen to music and dance
00:10:23
and she had her favorites but if we were in a car even driving and a song came on that she loved
00:10:29
she would pull over to the side of the road into a parking lot and just turn up the radio and get out and dance
00:10:35
Really? She would pull the car over? Yes This sounds like a dance like everybody's watching.
00:10:42
Yeah, kind of like that. Instead of dance like no one's watching. The middle school kids Lisa taught were drawn to that zany, fun-loving spirit.
00:10:51
David Ziegert is her younger brother. I think that she decided to become a teacher because she always liked to be around children.
00:10:58
You know, I mean, she was kind of a big kid herself. She was ready to enjoy life and see the silliness in things.
00:11:04
And, you know, to be able to relate to kids that well. At the time she vanished, Lisa was in love.
00:11:12
Her boyfriend, Blair Messoya, worked with computers. He lived in a house with a bunch of roommates, including Ed Borgotti.
00:11:19
Was your house kind of the gathering place for all the friends, parties, dinners?
00:11:25
Yes, we're young, so yeah, I mean, all the friends would come there, and we had a lot of fun.
00:11:30
We had a lot of different parties and had family over a lot, which was unusual for kids our age.
00:11:35
Ed and Blair were good friends and co-owners of the house. Were you happy that Lisa and Blair found each other?
00:11:41
Oh, absolutely. I've never seen them happier. She seemed really happy. They were great together. Everyone talked about it.
00:11:48
Lisa's sister, Lynn, was another roommate. So you all knew each other. This was a tight-knit circle of friends.
00:11:54
Yes very So had Lisa spent a lot of time at your house Yes In the days after she went missing Lisa friends formed their own search parties
00:12:05
Ed went out with Lisa's boyfriend. I remember it was raining and cold, and we walked through the woods, and he didn't want to stop looking.
00:12:14
And I said, you know, we were soaking wet, and I said, he didn't want to stop looking, and I wasn't going to stop.
00:12:20
So we just kept looking. What was the mood like? It was stressful, like that sick feeling that you don't know what you're going to find or, you know, you wonder why are we doing this or what happened.
00:12:31
Like, she must be somewhere. But you just keep looking. Did you think that maybe she was okay or were you starting to lose hope?
00:12:42
I don't know. Things happened so fast. We just were, it was just, we need to find her.
00:12:47
Those were probably the longest days of our lives. I mean, there was a lot of, in order to help the police, there was constant calls from them with questions.
00:12:55
And could you come down and look at this? Or, you know, does any of this sound familiar to you?
00:12:59
I think there was so much of that that your anxiety was kind of on high all the time.
00:13:05
And that was especially hard for her group of friends. Four days passed in a heart-thudding, hand-wringing, miserable blurb.
00:13:14
And then on Easter Sunday, the Ziegerts got the news they never wanted to hear. There were tire tracks that had been going in and coming out of here.
00:13:26
Possibly from the person who took Lisa here? Very possible, yeah. One mystery about to be solved, another just starting.
00:13:34
This could be someone you knew. Yes. That's a scary feeling. It's very scary. It was Easter Sunday, 1992, four days after Lisa Ziegert disappeared.
00:14:00
I think we were all in kind of disbelief at the time. Stephanie Berry, now a reporter for the local newspaper, The Republican,
00:14:09
was just 20 years old when Lisa disappeared, working at a restaurant in town. And of course, we were trying to sort through, is it really true, sifting through the rumors.
00:14:21
We just couldn't really believe it because Agawam is such a sleepy little town. And it's very insular.
00:14:28
Detective Wayne Macy was worn out that day. He and his team, along with the state police and the FBI, had been working long days searching for Lisa.
00:14:37
Then they got the call that changed everything. The call came through to dispatch that a man walking his dog after dinner had actually observed what he believed to be a female body laying in the woods on a small hill.
00:14:52
And do you head right over there? Yes. The four of us jumped in a car and we headed over there to that location.
00:14:59
It was a scant three miles from the gift shop where Lisa had been abducted. When they got there, they found a dirt path leading into the woods.
00:15:07
But a path that you could easily miss if you're just driving past here. simply, especially at night, simply a curb cut.
00:15:13
And we suspect that the suspect knew exactly where he was going because you'd have to go right by it, by the way.
00:15:21
The landscape has changed since that gray spring day. It was much more open back then and muddy.
00:15:28
And it had been rained on for basically three days and some sleet and a little bit of snow.
00:15:34
So what we did was, the four of us that came in here, we walked in each other's tracks all the way down.
00:15:39
Not to disturb the ground. Right. We were about up to our ankles in month. Wow. Going out here.
00:15:44
And there were tire tracks? There were tire tracks that had been going in and coming out of here.
00:15:49
Possibly from the person who took Lisa here? Very possibly, yeah. That's what we figured.
00:15:54
They didn't have to go far before they came upon a grisly scene. So her body was found?
00:15:59
Right in here. Right in this area? Right in this area, yeah. And what is the scene telling you?
00:16:04
Well, she is partially clad. She has a pair of boots on. And some of her clothing had been pulled down.
00:16:13
Sexual assault? Obvious sexual assault, defensive wounds on the hands, things like that.
00:16:20
Do you believe she was still alive when she came here? There was evidence that there had been a scuffle in this area and that she had ended up over there.
00:16:32
And that's where the assault actually took place, where she was killed. How did you know for certain it was Lisa?
00:16:39
We had a description of her on that particular evening, what she was wearing, and also a particular charm bracelet that we all were aware of, and the charm bracelet was still there.
00:16:51
A young woman with her life ahead of her, brutally assaulted and stabbed multiple times.
00:16:57
Detective Macy had the dreadful task of telling the family. I can remember jumping into the car and racing at a very high rate of speed down to the Ziegert's house.
00:17:07
because I thought that if I ever slowed down or stopped, I might turn around and let somebody else do it.
00:17:15
But he kept his nerve and kept driving until he got to the Ziegert house. And when I got there, as I was walking up to the door,
00:17:23
I can remember thinking to myself, what is the easiest, the safest, the best way to say the word dead?
00:17:32
Dee Ziegert spared him that. Wayne came to the front door, and I looked at him. and I said, you found her?
00:17:42
He said, yes. I said, she's dead, isn't she? And to this day, I think how brave he was,
00:17:51
what courage that took to come. I just I went down to my knees and it was something you really didn expect to hear Your mind doesn let it go that far It always like it could be this it could be that
00:18:05
but it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I actually did something similar to Mom,
00:18:12
and I almost went to my knees, and then I took a deep breath in and said to myself, I got stuff to do.
00:18:19
There was a lot of stuff to do. Sad stuff. Hard stuff. That night, investigators brought Lisa's body out of the woods, and the Ziegerts began making arrangements so a shattered community could say its goodbyes.
00:18:32
How many people do you think came out? Strangers, loved ones, friends? Strangers, thousands.
00:18:38
And it was raining. They stood in the rain. Yeah, they stood in the rain outside the funeral home and were so good.
00:18:43
And you couldn't talk with anyone, but yet you didn't feel like talking. For Lisa's brother David, who had flown home from California,
00:18:50
it was a reminder of the tight-knit community he knew as a child. When big tragedies happen, communities kind of join together and have each other's back,
00:19:02
and Aguam is no different. They did that. They did that for us. They put themselves in our position.
00:19:08
Imagine if my daughter or my sister or one of my family members had this happen to them.
00:19:15
How would I feel? A sleepy little town learned about real fear after Lisa's murder.
00:19:20
Our parents were horrified, and they started not letting us walk to our cars after dark alone.
00:19:29
Some of the parents wouldn't let their daughters even go to work for a few days after she was kidnapped.
00:19:37
Everyone knew there could be a killer living among them. Someone who knew the area, its side alleys, its unmarked pathways.
00:19:44
This could be someone you knew. Yes. Could be a resident of Agawam. Right. That's a scary feeling.
00:19:53
It's very scary. Many women felt the same way, signing up for self-defense classes and carrying mace.
00:20:01
I know that I stopped talking to many of my male friends at that time. You know, I was afraid to even carry on friendships with people because I didn't know what had happened to her.
00:20:12
Investigators worked flat out for months. Little did they know that decades later, they'd still be at it.
00:20:21
We found DNA and the analysis came back. So this could be your ace in the hole. This could be our suspect.
00:20:30
Exactly. A possible motive. Motives were thrown out like jealousy, some kind of love triangle.
00:20:37
And a possible suspect. I would hear that definitively that he was the one who killed Lisa Ziegert.
00:20:57
The lonely wooded area on the edge of Agawam where Lisa's body was found was lonely no more.
00:21:04
We have no less than 15 detectives assigned. Investigators fanned out across the muddy patch of land,
00:21:10
searching for anything that would help them catch Lisa's killer. At this time, we're analyzing all of our evidence.
00:21:17
We're continuing to follow up on leads, and we have investigators assigned to work around the clock.
00:21:24
The first piece of evidence we have is a button. They found buttons from Lisa's clothes and her denim skirt.
00:21:30
They took molds of the track spotted on the pathway, and they studied the autopsy report,
00:21:36
which said Lisa died of knife wounds to the neck. But her body had another story to tell them.
00:21:42
Did you find male DNA on her? We found DNA and the analysis came back. We always assumed at the time that it was going to be a male.
00:21:53
So this could be your ace in the hole. This could be our suspect, exactly. As they questioned Lisa's circle of friends,
00:22:01
Investigators asked the men to give DNA samples. They scrutinized the boyfriend closely, as they always do in cases like this.
00:22:09
But Blair's DNA wasn't a match, and he had an alibi. They ruled him out. The Ziegerts and their friends, for their part, never once suspected him.
00:22:19
Was there any part of you or anyone else who had to at least look at Blair? No. Like, just because?
00:22:27
I mean, no. I can honestly, no, never, ever. In fact, as investigators drill deep into Lisa's life, there seemed to be nothing troubling.
00:22:38
Did you learn anything about Lisa as far as like maybe an angry ex-boyfriend, an enemy, somebody that may have wanted revenge on her?
00:22:47
No. A lot of cases we find out that there were some difficult situations in the relationships.
00:22:52
With Lisa, that wasn't the case. She was just a regular person, a schoolteacher person who worked nights.
00:22:59
She had a lot of friends. She had a great family. One account did give them pause.
00:23:05
Lisa's good friend, Kim Murray, told investigators that Lisa often talked about an eerie feeling that she was being watched.
00:23:13
Yeah, that night, or Thursday night before all of this happened, I stopped by the store and she was there alone.
00:23:20
and I remember standing in front of the big windows in the store and she said that she was having that feeling again.
00:23:27
Someone was watching her. Yeah, and I said, there's nobody out there. We never really got much more information out of Kim or anybody else's
00:23:35
in regards to the particulars about that feeling. In this particular case, it was probably significant.
00:23:43
Significant, maybe, but not enough to go on. And anyway, Agawam's detectives were swamped with tips.
00:23:49
They followed up on every one. You found Lisa, your job now is to find her killer.
00:23:55
Right, that's correct. And there's, I can't imagine what else Much more important than that in Aguam.
00:24:01
Nothing at the time that was going to be more important than this particular homicide.
00:24:06
And we worked around the clock. Sometimes 6 a.m. until 2 a.m. We would go home and get a few hours sleep and shower up and come back at 6 a.m.
00:24:16
and do the same thing for six, seven, eight weeks in a row, seven days a week. But as the days passed without an arrest,
00:24:24
some of the locals became obsessed with the terrible thing that had happened in their town.
00:24:28
They would gather at the little coffee counter. Stephanie Berry. And at the time you could smoke in a restaurant, so they would smoke endless cigarettes and drink endless cups of coffee and just talk about theories endlessly.
00:24:44
One theory about the killer's identity tore through town. I do vividly recall people saying, that kid, his father owns E.B.'s. Oh, he did it.
00:24:55
E.B.'s was a popular restaurant in town, just steps from the gift store where Lisa was working when she was abducted.
00:25:03
The owner of the restaurant was Ed Borgatti. His son is Ed Borgatti Jr. I would hear that definitively, that he was the one who killed Lisa Ziegert.
00:25:15
The same Ed who owned the house with Lisa's boyfriend. The same Ed who helped search for her, who comforted her family after her death,
00:25:22
and who helped carry the coffin at her funeral. Motives were thrown out like jealousy, some kind of love triangle.
00:25:30
People were calling and stating that he might have been involved in this crime in one way or another.
00:25:36
Detective Macy says many of the callers pushed the love triangle theory, but it was a triangle with a twist.
00:25:42
The rumor that was coming in from an awful lot of people was that Ed had a relationship with Lisa's boyfriend,
00:25:52
and that at one point Lisa might have come home and found them in a compromising position, both Ed and Blair,
00:25:59
and that now something would have to be done with Lisa. This is what we were getting.
00:26:04
A possible motive. Exactly. And everything had to be investigated to its fullest.
00:26:10
Ed Borgatti was so close to the Ziegerts, he was like one of their own. Could this be possible?
00:26:16
a link to police leads to accusations of a cover-up people were calling from ag-wom stating that it
00:26:26
was because his father was a police chief which he wasn't that we were hiding it that is a direct
00:26:31
and serious allegation against you all of us that wear the uniform to think that anybody would do that
00:26:46
Ed Borgatti was one of Lisa Ziegert's close friends. But now, many in the community believed he may have killed her.
00:26:58
Did you have anything to do with Lisa's death? Absolutely not. But Ed says he understands why the police had to look at him in those early days after Lisa was killed.
00:27:09
I mean, that's what the police have to do. And they had to talk to all of us. I mean, you've got to start somewhere.
00:27:14
And I was more than happy to talk to them. tell him anything I could tell him. While Ed was cooperating with police,
00:27:20
the rumor mill went into overdrive. One of the rumors that persisted was that you were in a relationship with Blair and that Lisa caught you together and so you had to get
00:27:33
rid of her for that reason. What's your reaction to that? The reaction is ridiculous. It's a rumor
00:27:39
and that's all I'm going to say. It's just even ridiculous to even address that.
00:27:43
The Borgotti family name was well known in town. Ed's father, Ed Sr., was not just the owner and namesake of the family's restaurant.
00:27:52
He was also a retired Agawam police detective and a prominent member of the community, says his daughter Shelly.
00:27:59
My father was on the town council. He has a park named after him. He did a lot for this town.
00:28:03
So I think it was an easy target, easy name to remember because the name was known in town and then it just spread.
00:28:08
It just snowballs it out. So I really think that's what happened. Shelly says the rumors about her brother were hard to ignore,
00:28:16
particularly whenever someone called the restaurant to threaten or confront him.
00:28:20
We're going to egg his car. You know, why did he do this? And what's the frustrating part is you can't stop it.
00:28:27
You can't stop it. And they didn't even have social media. I don't know how it went around that fast.
00:28:32
Making it even more frustrating, says Shelly, is that she knew it was impossible for her brother Ed to have killed Lisa.
00:28:39
Where was your brother that night? He was here working with me and a whole crew of people.
00:28:44
Never left? Never disappeared for a time? No, absolutely not. He was here working with all of us.
00:28:50
There's plenty of witnesses. Not only did Ed seem to have a solid alibi, he also had the Ziegert support.
00:28:57
So how did you feel when his name started emerging in public as the person who may have killed Lisa?
00:29:07
I was angry with people who were making the comments. Very angry. Because I knew he never did it.
00:29:17
But the chorus of accusations against him was almost deafening, says Detective Macy.
00:29:22
When you have everyone beating the drum in the town that this guy did it, you can't ignore that.
00:29:27
No, we wouldn't until we absolutely were sure that he had no involvement in it. They had to follow up on information that his truck was similar to a suspicious vehicle seen by witnesses.
00:29:40
And of course, they had to ask him for DNA. You took a DNA sample from Ed Borgatti?
00:29:45
Yes. Was it a match? No, it was negative. And his father, who I knew very well, Ed Sr., had come up and said,
00:29:53
Wayne can you just go forward and let the community know that Ed didn do it And I told Ed you know I can do that The policy of the department is not to admit to who your people of interest are period
00:30:08
Because at some later date something happens and you have to change the story. They had to consider whether Ed might have had an accomplice
00:30:15
or that evidence could surface implicating him later. He wasn't crossed off the list.
00:30:21
It was so frustrating when you're in that position and they're spending the time on you and you're thinking to yourself, this guy's getting away.
00:30:27
But for those who thought it was Ed who was getting away with Lisa's murder, the rumors turned into conspiracy theories.
00:30:35
So many people were calling from AGWAM stating that it was Eddie Bergatti and that it was because his father was a police chief, which he wasn't, that we were hiding it.
00:30:46
The dad was a detective. He was a detective. And we're going to cover it up because of somebody's relationship with somebody in the police department.
00:30:54
That is a direct and serious allegation against you. All of us that wear the uniform to think that anybody would do that.
00:31:02
Many in Agawam continue to believe Ed Borgati was involved in Lisa's murder. But detectives had to move on.
00:31:10
They had other tips to follow, other leads to pursue, hoping that one of them would reveal Lisa's killer.
00:31:18
One of his keys hit the lock. Detectives may have unlocked the mystery. That's kind of an aha moment.
00:31:27
Well, yeah, then I'm saying bingo. Did you think that you might be looking at the killer?
00:31:32
Absolutely. Despite having DNA from Lisa Ziegert's likely killer, detectives tasked with solving the case had so far come up empty.
00:31:56
But it wasn't for a lack of grit. We had 10 to 12 in our immediate detective bureau meeting on a daily basis.
00:32:04
And it also wasn't for a lack of tips. Those kept pouring in. Each one of those tips had to be followed up and discounted or kept going, one of the two.
00:32:14
One such tip led investigators to bring a local man in for an interview. Along with the questions they had for him was an unusual request.
00:32:23
They wanted to see his keys. There was one thing missing in the abduction of Lisa,
00:32:30
and that was a key off of her key ring. A key belonged to her apartment. So we assumed that very possibly the suspect had the key.
00:32:41
Detectives had taken the lock from Lisa's apartment and brought it to the station.
00:32:45
Whenever they interviewed someone, they would see if one of the person's keys fit the lock.
00:32:50
And this time, it worked. One of the other officers came in and whispered in my ear
00:32:58
that the key fit the lock. Ooh. One of his keys fit the lock. That's kind of an aha moment.
00:33:04
Well, yeah, then I'm saying, bingo. I came up with the key and I said, what is this key for?
00:33:11
And he said, that's the key in my apartment. And I said, well, then let's go to your apartment.
00:33:16
Did you think that you might be looking at the killer? Absolutely. But when they got to the man's apartment...
00:33:22
The key fit his lock. It was the key to his apartment. Wow. Turns out the man's key also fit Lisa's lock
00:33:29
because their buildings were run by the same management company, which sometimes used the same locks.
00:33:35
It was a deflating moment. We had so many of those moments. Like the call about a man who seemed fixated on the women coming in and out of Lisa's health club.
00:33:45
Or the tipster who said a man borrowed his truck only to return it with bloodstains all over the inside.
00:33:52
Detectives determined neither of those men killed Lisa. They also used hypnosis to help two women try to recall the license plate of a suspicious vehicle they'd each seen the night Lisa was abducted.
00:34:07
Nothing. And with the help of Interpol, they traced an SUV from Agawam all the way to Russia to check its tires against the tracks left at the crime scene.
00:34:17
No match. Macy even met with FBI profilers hoping they could help focus the search.
00:34:24
So what were they telling you as far as the profile of who this could be? It would have been somebody between the ages of 22 and 30, probably on the lower end of that age,
00:34:36
who was from around the area of where the dump site was, where he left Lisa, and also the card shop.
00:34:45
But the FBI profile didn't get them any closer to Lisa's killer. In an investigation, you usually start out getting this much information, and eventually it starts to go like this.
00:34:56
and you come to the point where you actually have the person involved. This investigation kept going like this.
00:35:04
It was getting bigger. Getting bigger and bigger and sending us in different directions.
00:35:08
And every one of those directions has to be followed up. Whether they wanted to or not,
00:35:14
Detective Macy and his team found themselves tangled up in bad breakups and ugly divorces
00:35:19
as numerous women called in tips pointing to their husbands and boyfriends as Lisa's killer.
00:35:26
Some of them had ulterior motives, whether their husband had beat them or abused them,
00:35:32
or the ex-boyfriend had gone with another girl. Like revenge reporting. Right. And we actually had to kind of make a determination here as to what we were dealing with.
00:35:42
Case in point, the call that came in from an attorney across the country in Seattle.
00:35:47
He stated that both he and his private investigator had come across some things that they thought might be of interest to us.
00:35:54
Kevin Healy was that attorney He was calling on behalf of his client Joyce Schera who confided in him her darkest fears about her estranged husband Gary
00:36:06
She thought he was involved in a murder. Lisa's murder. The couple lived in Massachusetts when Lisa was killed,
00:36:13
one town over from Agawam. And despite having no connection to her or the Ziegert family...
00:36:20
Anytime any news came out, she said that he would be glued to the television. And he needed to know every single little detail about the murder and the progress of the case catching the murderer.
00:36:31
Joyce and her husband were going through a nasty divorce, fighting over custody of their young son.
00:36:37
And Healy knew full well the lengths spouses sometimes go to gain the upper hand.
00:36:42
But he says it was different with Joyce. Everybody makes allegations, but she had a visceral response that was so pained,
00:36:53
it was clear there was something more to it. It wasn't like she was just pulling something out of the news to use it as ammunition in a custody battle.
00:37:01
It was real for her. That's why Healy felt compelled to reach out to the Agawan Police Department.
00:37:07
This is the first time you're hearing about this man. Right. Detective Macy wanted to speak with Gary Sherrub.
00:37:13
He didn't wait long, because the same day Healy called, so did Gary. He calls the station and wants to know if he is in fact a suspect.
00:37:24
Eager to clear his name, Gary said he'd come by the next day to meet with Macy. But instead, Macy heard from another lawyer.
00:37:32
This time, it was Gary's divorce attorney. She said Gary wouldn't be talking to police,
00:37:38
because the accusations against him were a setup concocted by his estranged wife.
00:37:42
And you had seen a bunch of those before. Oh, yeah. We had seen a number of those before.
00:37:47
With all these girlfriends you talked about calling in and saying their boyfriend had done this or that.
00:37:52
At some point, the credibility of the witness comes into question. That credibility took another hit after detectives spoke with Gary's friends,
00:38:01
who described the demons Joyce was struggling with. She was an alcoholic. She was depressed. So many things entered into this.
00:38:09
So where does this lead go then at this point? At this point, we take it as far as we can, and barring anything else coming in,
00:38:17
we don't have enough to get a search warrant or a subpoena to get Gary in and have him give us his DNA.
00:38:26
So it kind of goes on the back burner. Another name, another accusation, with no direct evidence implicating him in the murder.
00:38:35
And so it was filed away among the boxes of expanding case files, and the detectives moved on to other leads.
00:38:43
In the fall of 1993, a year and a half after Lisa's murder, the investigation got a national boost
00:38:50
when the TV show Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment devoted to the case. Agawa, Massachusetts, near the western Connecticut border, is a small town.
00:38:59
Did the show give you hope? It did. It had such a wide reach and it was a popular show.
00:39:04
We were ecstatic when they agreed to do the show. We picked it up because it was the family who was affected and the town that was affected.
00:39:11
I mean, the more we looked into it, it became a crime against the town. The show generated hundreds of tips, many again pointing to Ed Borgatti.
00:39:21
Were you aware that after Unsolved Mysteries aired that more tips were called in about you again?
00:39:26
I was aware of that, and again, that frustration of their spending all that time answering the phone about me
00:39:36
when you just want them to get tips on somebody else, like move on. But for some reason it just wouldn't. I don't know why.
00:39:44
Ultimately, the show failed to provide the breakthrough investigators were hoping for.
00:39:50
At this point, we're getting used to letdowns. We've just got to keep going and keep moving ahead with any and all information that's coming in.
00:39:59
While investigators kept searching, kept following leads, filling more boxes, Lisa's family kept hope and her memory alive.
00:40:12
We want people to know that we will not forget, we will not give up. Someone knows something, and we hope that they will find the courage to come forward.
00:40:23
A new face on the case. Even after 10 years, did you keep getting new tips in all the time?
00:40:32
Tips were coming in. But kept hitting dead ends. Hitting dead ends. But then you pick up another file and you run with that.
00:40:39
And later, a message from the killer himself. Your jaw must have dropped. To say the least.
00:40:53
The years moved slowly for the Ziegert family. Each anniversary of Lisa's murder marked by a vigil with no arrest.
00:41:09
Chronicled by NBC affiliate WWLP. They come every year to sing, to pray. It was six years ago today that Agawam native Lisa Ziegert disappeared from the card shop.
00:41:22
Lisa Ziegert's murder is an active one despite the passage of nine years. The Ziegerts found touching ways to mark the milestones.
00:41:30
Lisa should have been the maid of honor at Lynn's wedding. My husband and I went to the cemetery and brought her a bouquet that she would have carried.
00:41:38
That is a really nice way to include her in your wedding. Yeah. They all had an extra bouquet for Lisa.
00:41:46
The family raised money for scholarships in Lisa's name and helped dedicate memorials to her.
00:41:52
There memories and reminders of Lisa everywhere Yeah she still makes a difference At every vigil every press conference every event there was Lisa mom standing front and
00:42:07
center, the face of a determined family. We want people to remember Lisa for what she was and also
00:42:14
to remind people that this is an unsolved case. No one has led the charge more than you to ensuring
00:42:21
that it stayed active and that people cared and people were paying attention. This is a real mother's love right here.
00:42:28
I never refused an interview. I never refused working on something so that if they saw me, then they saw Lisa.
00:42:37
They remembered about Lisa. I think it was helpful in keeping Lisa's story relevant.
00:42:43
It kept it very real to everyone. For a number of years, we did a memorial golf tournament.
00:42:49
And we raised money for scholarships for kids at Agamom High School. But Lisa's brother David says at times the family paid an emotional price for their efforts.
00:43:00
It became so much of kind of a mental drain for my family because all it reminded us is,
00:43:08
oh, another year has gone by and we still have no answers. She's gotten no justice.
00:43:13
So it just became too much and we stopped it. Lisa's unsolved murder also weighed heavily on Detective Wayne Macy,
00:43:20
who, with the passage of time, had grown close to Lisa's parents, Dee and George Ziegert.
00:43:26
This family that started off as strangers really became like family to you. From that first day sitting on her steps, from that day on,
00:43:34
I have so much respect for both George and Dee, mainly because I don't know how Dee does it.
00:43:40
And Lisa herself held a special place in his heart. I never met Lisa, but I know her.
00:43:48
I know her picture because it's in my mind. And I visited the grave quite often during the investigation,
00:43:58
just talking to her, letting her know we're not giving up. But after a decade of investigating,
00:44:05
Macy had still not been able to solve the case. Did this case haunt you? It did.
00:44:11
There were eight murders in Agawan that I remember. And we had seven arrests and seven convictions.
00:44:20
Lisa's was the only one that was unsolved. Macy had worked tirelessly to find Lisa's killer.
00:44:27
Investigators had crossed oceans running down leads. They had built a massive case file filled with names of potential suspects,
00:44:35
names of people who had been cleared, names of people who had refused to submit DNA samples.
00:44:42
All those boxes and file cabinets, proof that the case never went cold. It was never far from all of our thoughts in the forefront, really,
00:44:52
because even though you have a larceny or a bank robbery or whatever other crime you're going after,
00:44:58
Lisa's the number one case. The effort wasn't lost on Lisa's family. I think that you do feel like, well, they can only give resources to it for so long.
00:45:09
It's not their fault that there is nothing there to find. So I think it was always astounding and yet a comfort every time that they would remind us that this will never be a cold case.
00:45:22
But despite Macy's best efforts, he would never see an arrest on his watch. You retired in 2003 with this case unsolved.
00:45:32
That's a bitter pill to swallow as you walk out the door of that police station for the last time.
00:45:38
I had thought about that in thinking about not retiring, but I had truly had enough.
00:45:46
Sometimes you have to know when to pass on the torch and to give it to somebody else with some fresh energy, some new ideas.
00:45:54
Just give it to them and let them fly with it. That somebody was Sergeant Mark Fowle.
00:46:00
You were a patrolman on this case from day one. And now, fast forward 10 years, you're in charge now of the whole case.
00:46:09
That's correct. Wayne Macy retires. I get promoted. And then when he leaves the detective bureau, the case is assigned to me.
00:46:16
So much to do. So much to do. So much to do with regards to where the case stands.
00:46:23
Val faced an enormous task of combing through file cabinets and boxes filled with evidence and leads,
00:46:30
rereading every note and document that was gathered. Throughout the years, a lead, a tip, a phone call would come in and the investigators would take it and they'd start a file on that individual.
00:46:43
And they'd work that file as far as they could take it at that time. So even after 10 years, did you keep getting new tips in all the time?
00:46:52
Tips were coming in. But kept hitting dead ends. Hitting dead ends. But then you'd pick up another file and you'd run with that.
00:46:59
How frustrating was that, hitting so many walls? It was very frustrating because you saw the time and effort of the previous investigators,
00:47:08
and your team are working hard. And you kept the faith that the answer was in these files,
00:47:15
and it was just going to be a matter of time. Time, it turns out, was on their side.
00:47:22
Another decade passed, but then a groundbreaking tool in DNA analysis emerged, and investigators were about to take a giant leap toward identifying Lisa's killer.
00:47:36
A picture of a killer drawn by DNA. What were the physical characteristics and traits coming from this profile?
00:47:44
Brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin, and European ancestry. For the first time, we had a face to put with the boogeyman.
00:47:53
Who would it lead to? What do you think when you see that sketch? so It was 2015.
00:48:15
Anthony Galuni was the newly elected district attorney for Hamden County. Galuni may have been new to the job, but he was no stranger to the Ziegert case.
00:48:24
How old were you when this murder happened? I was 12 years old, and I grew up in an adjacent place.
00:48:30
You remember the case? I do. As a lifelong resident of Western Massachusetts, Galuni understood what was at stake.
00:48:39
That I now have inherited this investigation and have an opportunity and a responsibility
00:48:44
to investigate this case and make my best efforts and my team's best efforts to bring
00:48:50
justice for Lisa and her family was a remarkable realization at the time. Galuni also realized the asset he had in Detective Pfau.
00:49:00
Detective Pfau had more experience certainly with this case and had an institutional and historical perspective on the case that very few had at the time.
00:49:11
Galuni decided their best chance to crack the case would be to match Pfau with an investigator who could bring with him a new perspective and the latest investigative tools.
00:49:21
Enter State Trooper Noah Pack. You're the newest member to this investigative team.
00:49:28
What did you think about the case? I thought it was a massive law enforcement project that had gone on over 25 years.
00:49:36
Hundreds, if not thousands, of reports. Hundreds, if not thousands, of witness statements.
00:49:40
Hundreds of DNA samples had been taken. Dozens of law enforcement investigators had worked on it.
00:49:46
Quite frankly, it was overwhelming. What are you seeing with your fresh eyes? I'm seeing a lot of names.
00:49:52
names coming out of files, names of people who have come up, and it becomes a task of trying to figure out
00:49:58
whether or not we've looked into these people, if they've been eliminated, and whether they should be looked into in greater detail.
00:50:05
Fow and Pat got to work, seamlessly combining their different skill sets and years of experience to focus on finding Lisa's killer.
00:50:14
I love the dynamic, too, of the young guy gets paired with, please forgive me, the old guy.
00:50:22
And you guys come together and both have unique approaches to this that complement each other perfectly.
00:50:29
It really did. It really did. And it was a friendship that was formed as well. I mean, it was a partnership, but a true friendship that was formed.
00:50:38
And a lot of respect to the young kid and a lot of respect coming back to the old guy.
00:50:43
And he did get called my dad on an airplane once. We can leave that out. No, we can't.
00:50:48
Along with a fresh approach to the investigation came a new take on how to approach the DNA.
00:50:56
The DA decided to try something called phenotyping. So DNA phenotyping is essentially reverse engineering DNA.
00:51:03
It doesn't tell you who the killer is, but it can tell you what the killer looks like.
00:51:08
Correct. Certain characteristics like hair color and eye color and skin tone, including ethnic background.
00:51:14
Galuni had the DNA from the crime scene analyzed by Parabon Labs, the leaders in DNA phenotyping technology.
00:51:21
But with a nearly 25-year-old sample, there was no guarantee the process would work.
00:51:27
If it did, Parabon would be able to create a composite sketch of what the person with that DNA might look like.
00:51:34
The authorities hoped they, or someone, would recognize the sketch. Morning. It took a year and a half, but Parabon was able to complete its report.
00:51:45
Thank you all for coming. To thank in particular the Ziegert family who's here. There was all of this kind of intrigue.
00:51:51
We have a big announcement regarding the Lisa Ziegert case, so we're all on pins and needles.
00:51:56
Today, I am releasing the snapshot composite sketches as developed by Parabon to the public.
00:52:03
Two composite sketches were generated. one of the person at age 25 and the second of what he may look like today.
00:52:11
These facial images represent a new and significant development in this investigation.
00:52:16
Could these sketches help ID Lisa's killer? When they released that sketch, perhaps because I didn't understand the science behind it,
00:52:23
I will confess, I kind of rolled my eyes. Like, that guy looks like lots of people.
00:52:29
I was expecting more from this big announcement. What do you think when you see that sketch?
00:52:34
Disappointment that I didn't know who it was by looking at it. Watching movies and TV shows, you think that you're going to see this profile picture,
00:52:42
and you're going to say, I know that guy. And then I looked at the picture and I went, nope, I got nothing.
00:52:47
He doesn't look like anybody that I can recall. So that was a little deflating thing after being so anxious to see what this picture looked like.
00:52:57
But David says the sketches still made a huge impression on the family. For the first time, we had a face to put with kind of the nebulous, the boogeyman, you know, for lack of a better term,
00:53:10
this kind of mystery person who had done such a horrible thing and then disappeared into the mist.
00:53:15
What were the physical characteristics and traits coming from this profile? Brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin, and European ancestry.
00:53:24
And that effectively statistically eliminated people who didn't meet that criteria.
00:53:28
That's a helpful tool. Very. The authorities, like the Ziegerts, weren't able to match the sketches to any single individual,
00:53:36
but plenty of people around town felt they could. We got somewhere to the tune of 170 tips that came in after the initial press release related to Parabon.
00:53:45
Did Ed Borgati's name get called in again on a tip? It did. Anything different from before?
00:53:53
Nope just basically the same stories that just would never go away with regards to his involvement in the case But soon after taking office D Galluni finally dismissed those stories
00:54:07
There were suggestions that Ed had romantic relationships with people around Lisa.
00:54:11
Lisa's boyfriend. That was something that was explored and found to be totally false.
00:54:18
False, as well were those rumors linking his truck to the suspicious vehicle seen that night.
00:54:23
There was concrete forensic evidence against that theory of the case. Ed Borgatti, accused and hounded for two and a half decades, had nothing to do with Lisa's death.
00:54:35
Did you tell Ed Borgatti this? No. Law enforcement does not make statements eliminating suspects prior to the case being resolved.
00:54:45
But investigators felt they were now one step closer to that resolution. Armed with an idea of what Lisa's killer might look like,
00:54:53
they went back to those file cabinets, started by Macy and his team, and took a long look at all those names.
00:55:00
They called the names down to only those men who matched the Parabon profile, but had refused to submit a DNA sample.
00:55:07
Here's one. Where do you go from there? Because these individuals had refused to provide their DNA voluntarily,
00:55:14
we were essentially going to go to the court through a grand jury proceeding to essentially compel them to provide their DNA sample.
00:55:21
The grand jury voted to order the men to provide their DNA. Eleven men were in the first batch.
00:55:29
Trooper Pack began knocking on doors, serving the papers. Some of the men were more familiar to investigators than others,
00:55:36
including one who made quite an impression over the years. Hey, you're in the state of my gross door.
00:55:42
As we walked in, he says, I got no problem sitting and talking to you people, but I'm not giving my DNA.
00:55:52
A bizarre reason for not providing DNA. He stated he was afraid of cloning. That's got to be a new one, a first for you.
00:55:59
There was a first and last. It was August 2017. A grand jury decided 11 men who fit the Parabon profile should turn over their DNA to investigators.
00:56:24
One of the 11 was Gary Schera. Trooper Pack went to his home. Schera wasn't there.
00:56:30
So Pack asked his roommate to deliver a message. We have some important paperwork that we need to serve him.
00:56:36
Here's my card. Please have him call me as soon as possible. No one had matched Schera's face to the sketch.
00:56:42
But Shara's name wasn't new to detectives. Remember, police looked into him in 1993, months after Lisa was murdered.
00:56:51
Gary Shara's name first was reported to the Aguon Police Department by an attorney
00:56:55
who was representing Gary's soon-to-be ex-wife. Her name was Joy Shara, and she suspected that her husband murdered Lisa.
00:57:05
There were a number of concerns that she had represented to her attorney that then got relayed back to us about his potential connection to this case.
00:57:13
One of her concerns was that he had an unusual interest in the case. Anytime the news was on,
00:57:20
and this story came on, he would come running in from the other room to see what was being said on TV.
00:57:31
Back then, he wouldn't talk to police, and detectives were told Joyce wasn't credible.
00:57:36
They also received lots of similar calls. You had a lot of ex-wives, girlfriends seeking almost like revenge on their partners or ex-partners.
00:57:48
So the tip from Joyce's attorney went into the massive file along with all the others.
00:57:53
It went on like that for years. Investigators methodically following up on hundreds of persons of interest.
00:58:00
It wasn't until 2002, 10 years after Lisa's murder, that Sergeant Fow followed up on that tip and called Gary Shara in for an interview.
00:58:09
What happens? He's willing to talk this time? In 2002, he was willing to talk. We did a short interview with him with the hopes of getting a sample from him.
00:58:20
And he was cordial. He was polite. The detective brought up Lisa's murder. Shara was vague.
00:58:28
He danced around it in a sense. I think I remember that. I think I remember reading about it in the paper.
00:58:34
And when the detective asked for DNA, Shira refused. What's your gut telling you that he's not willing to give up his DNA?
00:58:43
Well, it was odd, but yet it wasn't odd, because it's your constitutional right not to give it,
00:58:50
and numerous people through the years refused to give it. Now, his reasoning was odd.
00:58:57
he stated he was afraid of cloning. That's got to be a new one, a first for you.
00:59:02
It was a first and last. That made an impression on the detective. But Shara had no criminal record, no connection to Lisa,
00:59:11
and there was no evidence linking him to her murder. So Shara remained in their file, and investigators again moved on.
00:59:19
Six years later, in 2008, detectives spoke to him again. The list is getting smaller and names are coming back up again and Gary Shearer's name
00:59:30
comes back up again. So let's try to get him back in again. Do you do the interview this time?
00:59:35
I talked to him out in the lobby, but I do not conduct the interview. And as we walked in, he says, I got no problem sitting and talking to you people, but I'm
00:59:43
not giving my DNA. And I was like, that's fine. We just want to go over a few things with you and put him in the interview room and two
00:59:50
other investigators did the interview. This time it was recorded Investigators kept it friendly low hoping he change his mind about the DNA
01:00:12
Shara appeared relaxed, even friendly. He was a very personable guy. While Shara said nothing about Lisa, he said plenty about his ex-wife.
01:00:44
Shara told them about his relationship with his wife, her drinking problem, and their acrimonious divorce and custody battle.
01:01:14
How was she linking to the homicide back there? I really don't know. That's what I mean.
01:01:18
It basically, she comes out in court, or actually her attorney comes out in court and says,
01:01:23
you know, this guy's person of interest in the homicide. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about?
01:01:30
Anything jump out at you? He was afraid of the DNA. He would not touch anything.
01:01:35
He kept his hands to himself. I mean, to the point where he wouldn't even lean in, you know, and have any part of his torso touching the table.
01:01:42
Would he accept a drink of water? No drinks. The investigators came back with three bottles of water, you know, I think with the hopes of if they started drinking, he would start drinking.
01:01:54
I mean, he didn't even push the water aside. He just left it where the investigators put it on the table.
01:02:00
Nine years after that interview, Trooper Pack was standing outside Shara's door, delivering the message to his roommate.
01:02:07
Pack had no idea if Shira would turn out to be Lisa's killer or just another dead end.
01:02:17
A suspected killer friends never suspected. Just a regular everyday person. By all accounts, Gary lived an unremarkable life.
01:02:27
He kept to himself. He worked a low-profile job. He lived in a low-profile location.
01:02:33
And a musical clue. He had claimed that he had purchased it in that shop. After all these years, investigators hoped that Gary Shara would be forced to turn over his DNA.
01:02:58
If it turned out that Shara really was the killer, he'd done a great job of hiding it.
01:03:03
By all accounts, Gary lived an unremarkable life. He kept to himself. He worked a low-profile job.
01:03:10
He lived in a low-profile location. Aside from the months he was in Seattle, Shara lived most of his life near Agawam.
01:03:17
He was a shuttle car driver for a rental car company. But in the past, he'd also worked in bars and restaurants.
01:03:23
Just a regular guy. Just a regular, everyday person. Shara worked in Joe Stevens' restaurant in the late 90s, after Lisa's murder.
01:03:33
Joe knew Shara's father. That's how we first met him. His dad, who was an executive for a local company, said, I have a son.
01:03:41
And he says, he's looking for a job. I said, we'll send him by. Just a great, handsome young man, very outgoing.
01:03:50
Shara also had rave reviews from another restaurant, so Joe hired him. He was one of our dining room managers. For about two and a half years he was with us.
01:03:59
Shara got on well with his customers. They enjoyed him. He was very personable to everyone. Good conversationalist, could talk big into sports, loved his sports. And, you know, he could he could converse with almost anyone.
01:04:15
Not only did his customers take to him, Stephen's daughters did, too. Well, they would play together. You know, Gary would chase them around the dining room. They would be giggling and pick them up, throw them up in the air.
01:04:27
But remember, there was a very different side to Gary Shara. If you believed his ex-wife, Gary was a monster.
01:04:35
Not only did she tell her attorney she thought Gary killed Lisa, she also told her siblings, Jeff and Janice McDonald.
01:04:43
Janice says Joyce called her the morning after Lisa disappeared. And she told me Gary got home really late, and he seemed really amped up,
01:04:52
and he couldn't give her a definite answer where he was. He kept saying, I was just out, I was just out.
01:05:00
Her instincts were, I think he was up to something, no good. She's convinced that he had something to do with the disappearance.
01:05:10
I remember her kind of telling me that night that he came home, super duper late in the middle of the night.
01:05:14
He was really kind of wild, I guess. She knew that he was absent at approximately the time that the murders happened.
01:05:22
Joyce's attorney, Kevin Healy. She knew that he came back with unexplainable cuts on his hands right after what turned out to be the death of Lisa.
01:05:32
So again, over a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, it all started coming together of maybe there actually is a link.
01:05:41
And there was more. Joyce shared her suspicions about a gift she received from her husband, a music box.
01:05:49
She said he told her it came from Brittany's gift shop. It was a little carousel music box with a blue horse And Joyce loved trinkets but she said that was the only trinket that she never liked because she felt like it had something to do with Lisa disappearance
01:06:07
That stood out to her. He had claimed that he had purchased it in that shop before the actual murder of Lisa.
01:06:15
And Healy says Gary described the woman who sold him the music box. Well, he told Joyce, as she told me, that it was a little old lady gray-haired, which apparently doesn't fit an employee that was there.
01:06:30
Were you able to confirm that it came from Britney's card shop? We were never able to confirm that definitively.
01:06:36
We wound up interviewing an employee who had worked at Britney's card shop around the same time.
01:06:40
She did say that this was consistent with the type of music box that was sold at Britney's at that time.
01:06:45
So was that Shara's connection to Lisa? The detectives didn't know. But even if it was, it wasn't enough.
01:06:52
If they were going to prove Gary Shara was Lisa's killer, they needed his DNA. Trooper Pack, who went to Shara's home to deliver court papers, was waiting for him to call.
01:07:03
Does he call? No. The next thing that happened with Gary Shara was we had a surprise visit at a state police barracks in Westfield.
01:07:14
A special delivery. What are you thinking? I took a big deep breath and my mind began racing.
01:07:21
And a suspected killer on the run. You just knew that this was the guy. It was just that feeling in your gut.
01:07:27
We had to find him for two reasons. The first is now he's a fleeing murder suspect.
01:07:33
And the second is he was thinking about harming himself. Gary Sherratt never called Trooper Noah Peck after the detective visited his home.
01:07:55
But what happened next was straight out of a cop show. Sherratt's girlfriend showed up at the state trooper barracks the very next evening.
01:08:03
She had a stunning story to tell them. She told us that she left early in the morning to go to work.
01:08:08
He was expected to leave after her to go to work. And when she came home at the end of the day,
01:08:12
his personal belongings, which he normally would have taken with him, were on the counter.
01:08:16
and she found the letters left behind for her. Those letters left detectives reeling
01:08:21
and cracked the case wide open. There were three separate letters. One of them was essentially a confession letter.
01:08:30
The confession was staggering. It said, I abducted, raped, and murdered a young woman
01:08:35
approximately 25 years ago. I had no intention of killing her when I grabbed her,
01:08:40
but events spun out of my control. I have never regretted anything so much. Were you shocked by this?
01:08:48
Yes. We knew that we were going to solve this case with a DNA match. We didn't expect to solve this case by somebody writing confession letters.
01:08:55
Shara added, I hated what happened. I despised myself. I thought of turning myself in hundreds of times over the years, but I truly am a coward.
01:09:05
Another letter was a last will and testament. He also left a apology letter for the Zeger family.
01:09:12
It was short. I can never apologize enough for taking your daughter and sibling from you, he said.
01:09:18
I have regretted it and hated myself every day since. You read the letters. You just knew that this was the guy.
01:09:25
It was just that feeling in your gut. You had been chasing an unknown attacker for decades.
01:09:34
For 25 years, and here we are with the state police, in the state police barracks, with these notes in front of us.
01:09:41
It was a surreal feeling. Was there one thing that stuck out from those notes, aside from the obvious, which is a confession?
01:09:50
The violence. He wrote in his note that he had been fascinated by certain types of violence for his entire life.
01:09:58
That stood out to us as being very unique. I'd never really been or even felt normal, he wrote.
01:10:05
From a very young age, I was fascinated by abduction and bondage. I could never keep it too far from my mind for long.
01:10:12
On that fateful day, I let myself do something terrible. Did he say why now? Why Lisa?
01:10:19
The notes didn't say why he had chosen Lisa as a victim. There was some indication that she was chosen perhaps to fulfill one of his fantasies that he had clearly struggled with.
01:10:28
Your jaw must have dropped. To say the least, I was at home and I received a phone call on my cell phone.
01:10:35
What are you thinking? I gasped first. I took a big, deep breath, and my mind began racing.
01:10:43
Then he received the letters on his cell phone. I got very emotional, very excited, and very hopeful that this was the moment that was going to take this case in a different direction.
01:10:54
Dozens of investigators had worked thousands of hours and sleepless nights on this case,
01:10:59
and after 25 years, we finally knew who did it, and we just had to go out and get him.
01:11:04
It was a race against time, because in his confession letter, Shara also wrote that he knew detectives were closing in on him.
01:11:12
The state police were at the house with some important papers for me. That will be a warrant to take DNA, and that will send me away for life.
01:11:20
Today, it will all end. I'll either take my own life or face the music as it were.
01:11:25
We had to find him for two reasons. The first is now he's a fleeing murder suspect,
01:11:30
and the second is he was thinking about harming himself. So we had to find him before he was able to end his own life as well.
01:11:37
So we started pinging his phone and investigators located him down in Connecticut.
01:11:43
It was almost 10 at night, four hours after reading those letters, when police found Shara's car in a hospital parking lot.
01:11:51
They saw a suicide note on the dashboard of the empty car. The note read, To whomever finds my body,
01:11:58
I apologize for any circumstances ...trauma incurred. Call Mass State Police. Thank you.
01:12:04
It was an ominous note. Did it mean there would be no justice for Lisa? A race was on to catch a suspected killer
01:12:15
before it was too late. Did someone find him in time? And a long road finally reaches an end
01:12:22
for a family. I went, really? It's been 25 and a half years. It's kind of like you're stunned.
01:12:32
And a detective. I picked up a rose and I put a card on it. It just said, Lisa, it's done. Rest in peace.
01:12:42
police found gary sharers car in a hospital parking lot inside the car was a suicide note
01:13:03
there was no body but investigators soon found sharra he was in the emergency room
01:13:10
He took a large quantity of over-the-counter pills. Did someone find him in time?
01:13:16
He actually drove to the hospital and parked his car and walked into the emergency room,
01:13:20
basically checking himself in. While Shara was recovering in the hospital, detectives searched his home.
01:13:26
Even with that confession, they still needed his DNA to prove he was Lisa's killer.
01:13:32
They took his toothbrush and had it tested. The result came back the next day. The lab representatives worked around the clock.
01:13:39
Did you have your match? We had a match. When I got that call, it was unbelievable.
01:13:43
Blue denim skirt. It was Gary Shira's DNA at the crime scene. The DA and his team delivered the news to Dee and George Ziegert and their family.
01:13:54
There was about six of them that came in to our kitchen. Did you faint? No, I sat there like this and I went, really?
01:14:03
it's been 25 and a half years it's kind of like you're stunned stunned is is the word and they're
01:14:12
waiting for us to jump up and down and we're going are you sure it's almost too good to be true
01:14:16
exactly it's like after all this time it's really gonna happen i grew up in the town of agwam
01:14:24
the zegers represent agwam you know and so to be able to say to them that we found them it was
01:14:31
It's powerful. September 18th, 2017, DA Galooney made the announcement. Today I am informing the public that the search for leases assailant is over An arrest warrant was issued for Gary E Shara in the 25 year long search for answers is over You know we we waited for this day for a long time
01:15:00
But it came. Did anyone at the press conference know the name Gary Shara? No, no, no, not our friends. No. Gary, did you do it?
01:15:10
Did you kill Lisa Ziegert? Sir, it's alleged that you did commit murder, aggravated rape, and kidnapping.
01:15:17
Now, he was behind bars. But despite the rock-solid evidence against him, his confession, his DNA,
01:15:25
Gary Shara pleaded not guilty. The detectives had to get ready for a trial. After Gary Shara's arrest, we had to essentially work the case backwards.
01:15:34
That meant traveling to the West Coast, where the Shara's had lived briefly after the murder.
01:15:39
We're trying to create a picture of who Gary is and who Gary was before he was arrested.
01:15:45
The detectives reviewed thousands of pages of court documents from the Shara's divorce and custody case.
01:15:52
And they discovered a remarkable statement from Joyce. She wrote, Gary claimed that he could only have sex with me if he was controlling,
01:16:00
was wearing his Batman costume, and held a knife to my throat. Gary has proven himself to be vicious and merciless and often sadistic.
01:16:10
At the time, Shara denied it. But decades later, the similarity to Lisa's brutal death was eerie.
01:16:17
Knife-related sexual violence was emerging as a theme in Gary Shara's relationships with women.
01:16:25
And he had written 25 years later, From a very young age, I was fascinated by abduction and bondage.
01:16:31
It's very possible that this was an expression of Gary's deviant fantasies that he wrote about in that letter.
01:16:40
As Gary Scherrer languished in jail, both sides got deep into trial preps. But then, a bombshell.
01:16:47
You solemnly swear that you will give true answers to the questions the court shall ask of you, so help you God.
01:16:53
Thank you. September 2019, almost two years to the day after Gary Shera pleaded not guilty to Lisa's murder, he was back in court.
01:17:03
This time acknowledging the mountain of evidence against him. Yes, sir. Tell me then in your own words why we're here.
01:17:11
We're here to make a change of plea. To guilty to murder in the first degree. Do you understand that?
01:17:17
Yes, sir, I do. It was huge. Gary Shera was changing his plea to guilty. The Ziegert family was there to watch him do it.
01:17:27
As the proceedings began Dee and Lynn were nervous There was a lot of anxiousness around the fact that until he actually said the words
01:17:37
he could change his mind at any moment. That was his right to do that. Finally, they heard the words they longed for.
01:17:45
So we're clear you're pleading guilty to murder in the first degree of Lisa Zeger.
01:17:49
Is that correct? That is correct. 27 years after Lisa vanished, after Dee got the awful news on her front porch,
01:17:58
27 years after the Agawam police force got the case, her family finally got justice.
01:18:05
It was really good to hear him say the words that we know that would put him into jail for the rest of his life without chance for parole.
01:18:17
Is there anything further? No, Your Honor. And it's like you're done. You're done.
01:18:24
But one question lingered. Shara never explained why he targeted Lisa. I think we'd all like to know more about what happened in the store,
01:18:34
why Gary went in the store, and why Lisa was chosen. We can speculate as to what he went in there with the intentions of doing,
01:18:42
but what matters is that the outcome resulted in Lisa's death, and it was a very violent crime.
01:18:51
The estranged wife of Gary Shara is kind of the hero in this. Gary's ex-wife is definitely an unsung hero in this case.
01:18:58
If she had not made the initial report to her attorneys with her concerns back in the early 90s,
01:19:04
he might not have come up any other way. Sadly, Joyce wasn't there. She died in 2014.
01:19:11
My sister knew all along. You know, she was unfairly painted as just, you know, a person with struggles that was just trying to blame him.
01:19:22
Your Honor, as you heard her spirit and her... You were the 12-year-old boy who followed this case.
01:19:27
And now, more than two decades later, you're the district attorney who helped solve the case.
01:19:34
Surreal. Just an incredibly gratifying moment as I realized that this was coming to an end.
01:19:41
and a very gratifying process to bring justice to the Ziegert family. There was one more ordeal for Dee that day.
01:19:51
After all the years of speaking out, thanking law enforcement and rallying the community,
01:19:56
it was her turn to talk publicly in court about her private pain. She is gone. I'll never hold her, talk with her, laugh with her, or share important occasions with her.
01:20:13
This never gets better We just handle it better One does not get over the death of a child Lisa friends were in court that day too Kim Murray
01:20:22
Do you still think about Lisa all the time? I do, all the time. You know, I talk to her when I'm in the car, going somewhere.
01:20:29
What do you say to her? Or if I'm having a bad day. You know, I just talk to her like she was there, you know.
01:20:35
She's with you? With any of us, I think, I really believe. Ed Borgatti was also there.
01:20:42
What would you say to Lisa's family for standing by you when not everyone did and the rumors got really bad?
01:20:54
I'd say thank you and that I just, they don't even know how much I appreciate them and I can't.
01:21:10
Just I appreciate it. When it was all over, Detective Wayne Macy, who caught the case the day Lisa went missing
01:21:19
and tried so hard to push it over the finish line, had some business to take care of.
01:21:25
First, he went to the Ziegert home. And we hugged and we cried. And we just talked about how great this was that it happened.
01:21:38
And that the guy was finally caught. and I went to stop and shop, picked up a rose, put it in a little wrapping, and
01:21:58
I put a card on it. It just said, Lisa, it's done. Rest in peace. And I put it on a stone.
01:22:10
And it was done. The young woman with the cornflower blue eyes, the dancer, the artist, the teacher,
01:22:26
Lisa Ziegert, full of fun and laughter, at peace at last. I suppose I want people not to think of
01:22:35
the horrible thing that happened to her. I want them to think of her as smiling, smiling down on all of us and giving the joy that she shared when she was here.
01:22:52
That's what I want.