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in the midst of a promising dance career tracy joe shine suddenly dropped out of
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school and shortly afterward disappeared twelve years later debris from an old refrigerator would
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warm up what had become a very cold case [Music] tracy joe shine grew up in houston texas
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she was a good student a girl scout and played sports but her real interest her passion
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was dance [Music] oh at the age of 13 she auditioned and was accepted at the prestigious high school
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for performing arts in houston it was a dream come true and while away at school
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tracy joe began to experiment with drugs that's when [Music] she started having the problem she
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started meeting the wrong people and started getting involved in taking drugs and uh
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and i at that time just really didn't understand it or didn't know what to do
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she started skipping classes her grades began to slip and she became romantically involved with 31 year old
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michael neal who had recently been released from prison the first time i'd met him and she
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brought him over to my apartment he seemed to be polite enough and seemed to be nice enough
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eventually tracy joe abandoned her dreams of a career in dance dropped out of school and at the age of 18 moved in
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with her boyfriend michael and his mother tracy joe's mother didn't know what to
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do next tracy was not the tracy that she was before she did the drugs tracy had become someone else it was
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controlled by drugs and i just kept praying that you know she just lived through this
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and get out of all of it and then we could have our lives together again and go on
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michael neal had recently been implicated in a racially motivated drive-by shooting
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detective marcel dion went to neal's home to question him neal wasn't home
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but tracy joe was [Music] how long have you known him tracy had just taken a a shot the
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syringe was still there on the couch right there with her at first you could make heads or tails out of anything she
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was saying so he arrested tracy joe for using drugs she'd been arrested two other times i
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believe for the drug problem she said she had tried to stop i had attempted to see if there was
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some way that i could get tracy committed to a drug program and i was finding that there was a
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waiting list at different places and there really wasn't a whole lot i could
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do since she wasn't a child anymore at police headquarters tracy joe offered
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to make a deal she said her boyfriend michael was the one who committed the drive-by shooting
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and she agreed to testify against him in return for a lighter sentence for her drug charge
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detective dion agreed to the deal early the next morning michael neal walked into police
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headquarters and put up the bail for tracy joe she was never seen again nobody had seen or heard it from
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so at that point is uh you start calling her friends and start calling anybody that she'd been
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associated with well nobody had seen her and nobody had heard from her marcel dion discovered that michael neal
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was a member of the aryan brotherhood a violent white supremist group this explained neal's alleged
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involvement in the drive-by shooting which occurred in a black neighborhood when dion asked michael neal about tracy
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joe's whereabouts he said that tracy joe left home shortly after her arrest and
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that he hadn't seen her since [Music] dion wasn't so sure the day after tracy joe shine was
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released from prison on drug charges she visited her mother to borrow some money
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although tracy joe had always stayed in touch with her mother and brother that visit was the last time her family saw
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her tracy joe had simply dropped out of sight something was the matter i for some reason just felt
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something was wrong virginia contacted tracy joe's boyfriend michael neal i called over there to find out about
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tracy because i hadn't heard from her in a couple of weeks and to see what was happening
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and they told me she wasn't there anymore when michael neal wasn't forthcoming
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virginia had no other choice but to file a missing person's report detective marcel dion immediately
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suspected foul play [Music] then a few weeks later dion received an anonymous telephone call
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yes i'd like to report a murder she was telling me about this girl that was apparently killed by her boyfriend
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stuffed in a refrigerator and taken out to a car lot the informant eventually revealed the
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identity of the dead girl it was tracy joe shine the informant also said that the
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refrigerator used to store tracy joe's body was still at the used car lot owned
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by michael neal and his brother robert armed with the search warrant detectives went to the car lot found the
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refrigerator but discovered it had recently been cleaned with bleach we took the refrigerator apart we
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collected a piece of human tissue from the freezer unit and it had some hair follicles on it
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forensic scientists attempted an rflp dna enzyme analysis on that tissue but were unsuccessful
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the hair was compared visually to hair taken from tracy joe's hairbrush but that comparison was inconclusive
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with no other leads detective dion spent the next few months looking all over houston anywhere he
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suspected a body might have been buried i took a lot of heat everybody thought i
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was crazy because i was digging up half of harris county i was draining ponds we
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used horses we used four wheelers i was given the nickname of digger because every time i received a phone call i
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would dig him somewhere but none of the leads were fruitful i knew that she had to be out there
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somewhere i just wouldn't give up dion also questioned michael neal's mother barbara at her consignment shop
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there dion noticed something suspicious in the display case was some women's
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jewelry which was identical to jewelry owned by tracy joe shine i just couldn't believe the way they
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they had taken tracy joe's jewelry and placed it in a in a glass case at the business they were running and
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selling it over the calendar barbara mcallister told police that after tracy joe moved out of her home
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she simply took the jewelry tracy joe left behind and was trying to sell it although it may have been in poor taste
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it still didn't prove foul play but with nowhere else to turn the investigation faltered
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dion had no choice but to attend to other cases i ordered all the evidence plus the
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refrigerator stored in our property room and basically just about every year almost of the day they would call me and
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want to get rid of the refrigerator and i kept telling him no this is an open case i'm still working it
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michael neal was later arrested for another shooting incident and was convicted he was sentenced to life in
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prison his brother robert neal was arrested on a methamphetamine charge he too was
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convicted and sent to prison despite their convictions the neil brothers continued to insist they knew
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nothing about tracy joe's disappearance it would take another 10 years before a
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cold case unit took a fresh look at the disappearance of tracy joe shine [Music]
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nothing was heard from tracy joe shine for over a decade and police could find no solid evidence
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of what might have happened to her during those years there had been no credit card activity no applications for
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driver's licenses no history of employment nothing tracy joe's ex-boyfriend michael neal
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and his brother robert were serving time in prison for crimes unrelated to her disappearance
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[Music] then in 1999 the harris county sheriff's department formed a new cold case unit headed by
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detective roger wedgeworth and harry fakaris the tracy joe shine case was one of the
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first to cross their desk tracy's like a lot of young girls if you look at her
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her upbringing she was a girl scout very much loved by her mother just a normal kid who goes up goes to high school goes
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to proms and everything and she got mixed up in drugs and of course one of the worst mistakes
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of her life was meeting our suspect in this case michael neal as a first step they decided to retest the tissue sample
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found in michael neal's refrigerator with the new more sophisticated pcr dna
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test but after more than 12 years the sample was too badly degraded then there was another setback
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the hair found with the tissue sample could not be located but vacaris and wedgeworth were
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astonished to learn that the refrigerator was still in the sheriff's department property room
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in a long shot investigators decided to take a look at the refrigerator one more time
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we opened it up and it looked fairly clean but we knew that it had been laid down on its back and we thought if if
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there was any kind of body fluids or any kind of evidence that may have drained into the wiring harness on the back side
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of it forensic scientists swabbed every square inch of the refrigerator and this time
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included the wiring and harness areas for any biological material that might be present
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there's so many nooks and crannies in a refrigerator or any other machine like
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that that they have body fluid and things like that's going to seep through there's
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just it would be impossible probably to clean it all the swabs were sent to the forensic lab
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i was skeptical that we would find anything of any value in the refrigerator simply because of the amount of time
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that it had been stored and the fact that like so many other evidence storage areas the environment was not ideal for
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preserving the evidence when watson looked closer at the swabs he discovered what appeared to be
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a piece of human skin [Music] watson tested that skin sample using a pcr dna test
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pcr testing essentially takes my new traces of dna then amplifies or makes enough copies of it so that it can be
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analyzed the analysis was long and arduous and unfortunately was unsuccessful after months of frustration watson heard
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about a new test the fbi laboratory had been experimenting with a test using mitochondrial dna
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traditional dna testing uses dna from the cell's nucleus mitochondrial dna is taken from the
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mitochondria which exists outside of the cell's nucleus it's not as precise as traditional dna
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testing but in some cases it's all scientists can get and this time watson was successful
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the next step was to find a known sample of tracy joe shine's dna for comparison
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bill watson took letters written by tracy joe over a decade earlier to see if her dna could be identified in the
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saliva from the envelope flaps but the dna from the saliva was too badly degraded
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mitochondrial dna is passed from generation to generation maternally meaning the tracy joe's
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mitochondrial dna profile would be identical to her mothers even though we didn't have a sample from
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tracy joe to compare to the tissue that was inside the refrigerator we did have her mother
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and we were able to get a mitochondrial profile from her mother when the mitochondrial dna from the
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refrigerator was compared to virginia shine it matched the biological material most likely was
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that of tracy joe shine had tracy joe's dna been discovered on the handle of the refrigerator
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that might not have been unusual but skin found on wiring on the back harness was a completely different
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matter it's a wonderful wonderful feeling it's uh you know you finally feel like all that
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hard work is finally coming together but even even whenever we got that we knew that
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this guy would never do the right thing and step up to the plate and tell the truth
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with this discovery michael neal was charged with murder his brother robert hoping to gain an
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early release from prison for his drug conviction offered to make a deal after all these years that he'd spent in
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prison i guess he finally realized he would never be getting out of prison unless he did something
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and we know you have something to tell us and we sat down worked out a deal and he gave us his honest testimony which we
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felt mostly was honest testimony and told us what he knew about the case robert not only revealed his brother's
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involvement in the murder he also implicated his mother his sister and himself robert neal told police that his brother
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michael feared tracy joe shine would testify against him for the drive-by shooting in exchange for a lighter
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sentence for her drug arrest so when michael went to veil tracy joe out of jail he did so to eliminate a potential
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witness the most important thing that robert told us was he actually showed us how
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michael neal killed her and robert made this motion like this like a choking motion so we knew that she'd been
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strangled robert said michael killed tracy joe in his bedroom and left her body there for three days
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the smell of decomposition prompted michael's mother to look into the couple's bedroom where she saw the body
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she goes into the bedroom she sees that she's turning purple i mean that's a
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clue right there that something is not right neal's mother never reported tracy joe's death to
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police [Music] after the body was removed robert said his mother and sister cleaned the
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bedroom and burned incense to remove the odor robert admitted helping michael transport the refrigerator with the body
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inside to the used car lot the brothers owned robert told us that he never saw the
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body he said his brother just told him help him move the refrigerator basically don't ask me any questions
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and i won't tell you anything we'll just move this refrigerator out to the car
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lot he said i can assume that tracy joe shine was in there but i never saw her in there
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i never saw her in there robert said he sat outside while michael placed the body in a
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55-gallon drum where michael later took the barrel is unknown but michael neal didn't realize the
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tissue invisible to the naked eye would lead to his downfall over a dozen years later
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[Music] michael made a lot of mistakes at the very beginning by leaving the body in
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there for several days by his mother finding out that tracy was dead instead of immediately disposing of the
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body it allowed us to get evidence out of the refrigerator the fact is science always
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progresses always moves forward and as it has we've been able to develop the type of
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testing that could let us test those smaller and smaller samples and match it up so his his biggest mistake was in
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thinking he'd get away with it although prosecutors had no body michael neal was convicted of tracy joe
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shine's murder and was sentenced to an additional 45 years in prison he won't be eligible for parole until
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2017 when he'll be 60 years old michael neal can look you straight in the eye
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and there's no doubt in my mind that he could cut you he could shoot you he could
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uh do anything humanly possible to you would not change his impression in any way
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his brother robert is still serving time for his earlier conviction for manufacturing methamphetamine
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michael's mother barbara denied any knowledge of the murder saying she thought tracy joe had died of a drug
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overdose neither barbara nor her daughter jeannie were ever prosecuted for their alleged
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involvement in concealing evidence or abuse of a corpse since the statute of limitations for those crimes had expired
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virginia shine says she will never stop looking for her daughter's grave even though michael neal stubbornly
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refuses to say where it is the sad part of it is is if he's just trying to just keep on being the one in
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control is that he won't let us know where she really is so that i can have some kind of peace there
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because i mean it's not going to be any worse for him to tell me to tell us the real truth
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and uh and so i can't ever forgive him for that marcel dion's insistence on preserving
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the refrigerator for all those years provided the crucial forensic evidence necessary for a conviction
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i just couldn't believe it to me it was just a huge white off my back i've never been so happy over anything
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in my life the amount of effort that went into the sample processing on the front end
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was as much as you would put in any any case any very difficult case i mean it was just
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on a scale of one to ten i would say it was an eight or a nine [Music] [Music] [Music]
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you