Archived Investigations | "48 Hours" Full Episodes | Forensic Files

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

"48 Hours" explores the significant developments in these true-crime investigations. Watch the YouTube mini-marathon, which includes "Fateful Connection," "A Knock on the Door" and "Taken: The Amber Dubois Story."

00:00 Fateful Connection 40: 55 A Knock on the Door 01:23:08 Taken: The Amber Dubois Story

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Detective Lisa Schauerman investigates the 1982 disappearances of Amy Hurst and Wendy Hughey, leading to Amy's identification and ongoing search for Wendy.

Key points

The Search for Answers. Detective Lisa Schauerman is determined to solve the intertwined cases of Amy and Wendy.
A Family's Heartbreak. Amy's family clings to hope for years, believing she might still be alive.
Amy Hurst's Murder Confirmed. After 30 years, the truth about Amy Hurst's murder is revealed.
The Verdict. William Hurst is found guilty of first-degree murder after a long trial.
The Murder of David Harmon. David Harmon was brutally murdered in his home, shocking the community.
Melinda's New Life. Years later, Melinda Harmon, now Melinda Rash, leads a seemingly normal life.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Someone thinks they got away with murder. No way.

2:09WatchMay 9, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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