5 True Crime Cases Dateline NBC Refused To Cover (Part 2)

Most people think they would recognize danger if it were standing right in front of them, [music] that something would feel wrong, someone would seem suspicious, or there would be enough time to turn around. But in these cases, the danger looked ordinary right up until the moment it wasn't. These are the kinds of crimes that are so disturbing because there's no obvious warning, no chance to prepare, just ordinary people living ordinary moments before everything changed forever. A woman worked with her husband at a store that sold all types of spying equipment. It was a novelty store that sold gadgets and stuff you couldn't get anywhere else. But one day, completely out of nowhere, the woman walked to the back of the store, found a woman's lifeless body. If it wasn't for the dreadful pull that surrounded the body, [music] the woman would have mistaken it for a mannequin. But as we all know, it's never a mannequin. The woman was naturally shaken up, but not just because she'd just discovered a crime scene, but because she'd seen the victim before, just hours ago, shopping around the store. Then, as the woman slowly backed away from the body, trying her hardest not to scream, she backed into something or someone. [music] Ginger Rios was born to parents Denise and George Rios in Huntridge, Las Vegas. She had a sister named Dianiela. Ginger was a vibrant young girl with big dreams. She wanted to become an entertainer and according to her mom, Denise, Ginger vowed to become Miss Las Vegas one day. Ginger, having grown up in Vegas, loved music, dancing, and singing, and she wanted to have her own show, or at least be in one. Ginger, aside from being incredibly talented, was also extroverted. She loved hanging out with people. She was the life of every party, and this girl just had an incredible amount of energy and charisma. When Ginger got older, she worked as a backup dancer in a performance group called The Salsa Machine. Then at the age of 20, she met 34year-old Mark Hollinger. Now, they had quite a considerable age gap between them. But Ginger had a good head on her shoulders. Despite her young age, seeing how happy Mark made her, well, it caused her parents to accept him with open arms. They believed that Mark was the perfect person for Ginger. He was the ying to her yang. complete opposites, but they still complimented each other effortlessly. Mark and Jinger soon got married and they moved into a home shortly before the events of today's case. Now, the couple was originally renting a home, but the option of buying that home was on the table by leasing it. But for that, Ginger and Mark needed a good credit score. The couple thought that buying a house would be better for their future in case they had kids and their family grew. So, they were really serious about buying this house to the point where Jinger wanted to go to a local shop in Las Vegas and buy a book on how to improve their credit score. Mind you, this was 1997. It wasn't quite as simple as just googling it like it is today. So, that's exactly what the couple did on April 4th, 1997. Ginger and Mark drove to 3507 Maryland Parkway. But on the way there, they spotted a very unique store called Spycraft. It was a strange little store. They sold a variety of equipment like surveillance cameras and spying gadgets, listening devices, books on a variety of topics, even trackers. Spycraft was wellknown at the time as it was a chain store with a bunch of branches in the west. Anyway, Mark sat in the car while Jinger hopped out and entered the store. It wasn't meant to be a long trip or anything. Ginger just wanted to pop in, take a look around, and then come right back out. She had her wallet with her, and the rest of her belongings were still in the car. For Spycraft, their usual clientele was quite diverse. Some people came in looking for trackers to keep an eye on their kids, while some had more questionable backgrounds and wanted to get their hands on shady devices without getting into trouble. The specific store was run by a man named John Flowers and his wife, Cheryl. Now, Ginger walked inside the store expecting to only be there for a minute or two, but after several minutes passed by, she just never came out. Mark was right there in the parking lot, but he never saw Ginger emerge from the store. If Jinger had gone somewhere else, surely Mark would have seen her and gone after her. But Jinger never came out of the storefront. A few minutes later, Mark had had enough, and Jinger's unusual delay was getting to him. They had other things to do, so he was naturally a little bit annoyed, so he went inside the store and made a beline for the cash register where Jon and his wife, Cheryl, were tending to customers. Mark proceeded to describe Ginger to the couple and asked them if she was still inside the store and what was taking her so long. The store owner's answer left Mark dumbfounded. John told Mark that Ginger had purchased a book and already left quite some time ago. But Mark knew that that wasn't true. He was right outside and even though he couldn't see exactly inside the store, he could clearly see who left and who entered. So after this bombshell was dropped, Mark went around the store and searched aisle after aisle, hoping to find Ginger. But she wasn't there. Mark again made his way to the store owners and pleaded with them to tell him where his wife was. But Jon said [music] the same thing, leaving Mark more confused than ever. So with no choice, Mark left the store and called his father-in-law, Jinger's dad, George, telling him that Ginger had just disappeared. George, not thinking too much of it, assured Mark that she might have gone to a nearby store, and maybe Mark just didn't notice her leaving. But after hours had gone by and there was still no sign of Ginger, that was when her dad also began to worry. This was totally unlike her. She would never leave just like that. And remember, aside from her wallet, which didn't even have a lot of cash in it, her purse was still with Mark in the car, so she couldn't have just run away on a whim. Something must have happened to her. And by now, both George and Mark feared that they may have to report Ginger as a missing person. But they could never have guessed that in just a few short hours, Ginger would be found, just not the way they had hoped. All of George and Mark's doubts led them back to Spycraft later that night. They wanted to see the surveillance footage of Ginger to try to track her movements and see where she had gone. But when Mark and George arrived at the store, it was closed and Jon and Cheryl were standing outside near a van and there was a baby in Cheryl's arms, her and John's baby. Mark and George approached the couple and requested to just see the footage. But Jon said that they were in a rush, but that the two men could come back after the weekend to see the footage. And just like that, the couple, Mark and George, parted ways. But Jinger's disappearance nagged at them like a shadow that wouldn't leave them alone. By the following Monday, Ginger had officially been reported missing to the police. The detectives found Ginger's disappearance very odd. And even though at first they thought maybe Ginger was a runaway, that theory soon died down when Jinger's bank accounts were checked. Nothing had been spent, and the money was just sitting there untouched. If Ginger had run away, she would probably need money since she didn't have a lot on her the day that she was last seen. So, the police started to make a list of suspects, and Mark naturally was at the top of their list. They wanted to rule Mark out as a suspect since the first people the police look into are usually spouses and family members. Well, investigators had a good reason to look into Mark because they uncovered something. Ginger and Mark's marriage was on the rocks. It was revealed that Jinger had spent some days at a hotel to distance herself from Mark, possibly following an argument. It was also odd to the investigators that Mark didn't call the police right away and instead called his father-in-law. If Mark was that worried about Ginger, you'd think he would have just reported her missing right away, but he didn't. Worse yet, a bizarre incident occurred just days after Jinger's disappearance. Mark's car suspiciously caught fire and was burnt to a crisp. This was really bizarre for the police to hear. The police were now adamant that Mark was hiding something and that the car burning on its own was anything but accidental. Investigators firmly believed that Mark tried to destroy evidence by lighting the car on fire. To add to the suspicion, Mark was also MIA following this incident. Well, once Mark was found, not too long after, he was ruthlessly investigated by the police, but he stood his ground. He claimed he had nothing to do with Jinder's disappearance, and he was just as worried about her as everyone else. But speaking about the car accident, Mark explained that on his way back home, his car overheated and caught fire, which caused Mark to exit the car and just get away from the flames. At that point, the fire was out of control, and Mark was unable to extinguish it since he was in the middle of the road with no help, so he just left it there and went back home on foot. Remember, cell phones weren't really common place at this point yet. So, it's not like he could have just called 911 unless he found a pay phone. So giving up and going home, well, not the best choice, wouldn't have really been that big of a red flag as we may see it these days. But the burned car was taken in as evidence and was tested from top to bottom for anything incriminating. But the police didn't find anything either because the fire had destroyed everything or maybe Mark really had nothing to do with the ginger's disappearance at all and all this was just a bad coincidence. So the police found nothing on Mark and he was naturally free to go. But still, days passed and there was no sign of Ginger, and it was safe to say the police's minds were going to some disturbing places. After striking Mark off the suspect list, the next thing for the police to do was to go to Spycraft, the place where Ginger was last seen. They wanted to look at the surveillance footage, but to their surprise and annoyance, the store owner, John, was in Phoenix, Arizona at the time, managing his other store. So without him, the police couldn't really access the tapes. Well, they still decided to look around. And when they walked to the back of the store where the bathroom was, they were hit with that unmistakable pungent odor of bleach. Eerily, there was also a single but very small stain on the bathroom wall. And the police collected the sample and were waiting on Jon for an explanation. Ginger was missing. She was last seen inside the very store they were standing in. And now there's a very strong smell of bleach and a questionable stain on the wall. What are the odds? Well, the police got a hold of John and inquired about the bleach and the stain. Jon was quick to come to his own defense and he claimed that his pet dog had dirtied up the bathroom and he had to use the bleach to get rid of the awful smell. He further explained that the stain on the wall belonged to the dog, too. Well, the police couldn't do much about the stain because it was too small to be tested. To be fair, it was also 1997, so DNA technology was nowhere near as advanced and meticulous as it is today. Well, the police further asked Jon about Ginger, but he told the police exactly what he had told Mark. Ginger came into the store, bought the books she needed, paid, and left. Jon also claimed to have surveillance footage and Jinger's purchase receipts, but when the investigators asked Jon to provide them with those two things, he couldn't. For some reason, he was either lying or he'd not kept a record of the store footage or the receipts. Either way, it wasn't a good look. Even though the police were not convinced, and they sensed that something was a miss, they really couldn't do anything. There just wasn't any evidence. I mean, literally nothing. The police then looked into Jinger's career as a performer. The police had a theory that Jinger might have a stalker and that she'd been targeted by someone random and deranged. But when the detectives looked further into this theory, nothing came of it. And just like that, a month passed and there was no progress in Ginger's case. No one had any leads, any information, or anything useful that could lead the investigators in the right direction. And things [music] weren't looking good. Well, that would soon change when several months later, someone would come forward with incriminating information about Ginger's disappearance. And this would finally lead to some answers about the missing woman. The person who came forward was a woman by the name of Cheryl. Now, that name should ring a bell. She was John Flowers's wife. Well, ex-wife. The couple had since been divorced, and Cheryl came to the police with information that could help solve Ginger's cold case. When the police asked why she didn't come forward with this information months ago, she claimed she was scared of her husband and wasn't sure how he would react since she was the one who discovered Ginger. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. According to Cheryl, as soon as Jinger walked into the store, Jon was burning holes in the back of Jinger's head with his creepy longing eyes. He then told Cheryl to grab something from the back, which wasn't unusual, as John barked orders at everyone all the time. And after a couple minutes, when Cheryl came back, Jinger was nowhere to be seen. Cheryl assumed that Jinger had purchased her things and left. But that would be far from the truth. Now, when a worried Mark entered the store and inquired about his wife, Cheryl honestly didn't know where Ginger was. But after Mark left, an uneasy Jon warned Cheryl not to go into the back storage room. Now, Cheryl was already on edge, but she went into the back of the store anyway, despite her nerves jumping up and down, fearful at the thought of getting caught by Jon. When she opened the door, she barely bit back a scream as she saw a lifeless ginger on the floor. As Cheryl was backing away, she bumped into none other than Jon. It was literally a scene out of a horror movie. Can you imagine how scared Cheryl must have been at that exact moment? Jon then cornered Cheryl and warned her to never breathe a word about what she saw in front of anyone, or else she and her baby wouldn't like the consequences. According to Cheryl, Jon told her what he had done to Ginger. When Cheryl left to get what Jon wanted, Jon immediately subdued Ginger from behind and attacked her savagely until tragically she had lost her life. But Jon didn't tell Cheryl why he attacked Ginger, which is even more mind-boggling. Can you imagine how Jinger must have been feeling getting fatally attacked in a store from behind by a stranger? It is chilling. Cheryl also remembered Jon cleaning up the back room with tons of bleach alongside another employee. And afterward, he loaded Ginger's body in a van, the same van by which the couple stood and talked to Mark and George when they came looking for Ginger later that evening after she'd gone missing. Mark and George were mere feet [music] away from Jinger's lifeless body. And to make matters worse, Cheryl knew where Mark's wife was, but she couldn't [music] dare open her mouth in front of her husband. Cheryl told the police that she, Jon, and their baby drove to Arizona, and Jon encased Jinger's body in a concrete grave, which he then buried in the desert. Coincidentally, a month after Jinger's disappearance, the police did find an unidentified body in the desert. But it was later revealed to not be Ginger. But when Jon caught wind of this, he left Cheryl and went on the run. [music] It was actually Cheryl who led the investigators to the place where Jinger's body was buried. And sure enough, understand there was concrete and [music] encased in that concrete were human remains. When the remains were recovered, they were tested and were ultimately identified as 20-year-old Ginger [music] Rios. With Jinger's body now found, the police could finally get a search warrant for the spycraft store. And when they searched the place, Jinger's DNA was found in the back row. The police knew that they had their guy. But there was one problem. John Flowers was on the run. And to everyone's surprise, John wasn't even his real name. His real name was Craig Lesley Jacobson. And boy, did he have a laundry list of crimes behind him. So [music] Craig, aka John, was actually a fugitive. He was wanted for burglary and fraud, and he fled to Florida to avoid getting caught. Afterward, Craig changed his name to John Flowers, married Cheryl, who I'm not sure was aware of Craig's CDI past or not, and then opened up four Spycraft stores in the West, including the one in the Las Vegas strip mall. [snorts] Several people came forward and accused Craig of targeting dark-haired women, and a young man even claimed that Craig paid him to take pictures of dark-haired women, which is just disturbing. Craig was soon arrested in LA in August of 1997 after he got into a physical altercation with a police officer, but we don't really know what that was even about. But I guess Craig or John or whoever he was wasn't even good at keeping a low profile because he was soon extradited to Nevada and charged with the Ginger's murder and he confessed to taking Ginger's life. Craig claimed that he suffered from schizophrenia and was also paranoid, but this could have just been his plan of getting a lower sentence all along. See, a psychologist came forward and said that Craig had told people in prison that he would quote plead insanity and act crazy [music] to get off lightly. The prosecution stressed that Craig was mentally fit to stand trial and that he was in fact faking his mental illness. The prosecution was planning on going for the death penalty, but they offered a plea deal to Craig, which he quickly accepted. Craig, as part of the plea deal, plead guilty to Jinger's murder and would pay her family approximately $3,200 in restitution, as well as spend life in prison with parole after 20 years. And this was exactly what Craig received in the end. But there was more. Remember the unidentified body that was found just less than a mile away from Jinger's body in the desert? Well, it took the police several years to identify the victim, but it was also a young girl, and she was named Christina Martinez. She was 15 at the time she passed away. And is believed that Craig was behind her attack as well. Christina had gone missing after going to a local laundromat on May 3rd, 1997. And she lived in a group home that was coincidentally right across the street from the Spycraft store in Arizona. Tragically, since Christina had a turbulent past and a history of running away before, no one reported her missing, which is just heartbreaking. This girl was out there buried in the desert for months on end, and no one was even looking for her. But in 2015, Craig was released from prison in Nevada, and he was extradited to Arizona to then be tried for Christina's murder. But he hasn't been sentenced for her murder as of present. In 2016, he was deemed incompetent to stand trial by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge. But later, that same judge ruled that he was indeed competent and that he was faking mental illness. Well, on September 21st of 2017, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville granted a defense motion for the evaluation of Craig's competency to stand trial for Christina's murder. But there haven't been any updates so far, at least none that have been announced publicly. We only know that Craig is still in prison and that he's taken the lives of more young girls and women than he's letting on, including another young girl named Mary Stoddard in May of 97. And her body hasn't even been found yet. Ginger's passing was quite the blow to her family. Craig sent apology letters to Ginger's dad from behind prison walls, saying that he was sorry for what he made the family go through. Craig confessed that he attached Ginger because she apparently had snapped at him in the store. Now, I'm sure dealing with difficult customers is not what any store worker wants to do. But do others just go around murdering people? No. And I'm not even sure if what Craig was saying is true. He is a sick human who targets young girls and women and he's a serial killer for crying out loud. He doesn't have a leg to stand on. And it can only be assumed that nearly everything he says, well, it's most likely a lie. [music] Mark, who was initially suspected of Jinger's disappearance, was very emotional and distraught in televised interviews. He just wanted his wife back. They were on the brink of starting their lives together. And sure, their life wasn't perfect, but he adored Jinger and all that she was. Tragically, Jinger's mom, Denise, lost her life to cancer on July 24th of 2014. George and his remaining daughter, Daniela, were both naturally torn up by losing Denise as well. But they say that the one bit of peace they found was understanding that [music] at this point, at least Jinger and Denise are both together in a land beyond. Ginger had so much to look forward to in her life. She wanted to own a house with her husband, have kids, and watch them grow up. But she didn't get to do anything she planned. She didn't get to have her own performance show. She didn't get to make her debut as a dancer or a singer because now she was just a memory [music] in the hearts of her loved ones who still go through unimaginable grief when they think of how their lives changed forever that fateful day in April of 1997. Breck Bedner wasn't taken by someone his family never saw coming. His mother saw it all. She heard the older voice in Breck's gaming chat room. She watched her 14-year-old son change. She took away his devices. She warned all the other parents. And she even called the police and told them exactly what was happening. Her son was being groomed online. But the predator had another way in. A secret phone, [music] a fake fortune, a lie about dying, and one invitation Breck thought was going to change his life. and it led him straight to the man [music] his mother had been trying to save him from. Breck Bedner was born in Michigan in the United States. But when he was still very young, the Bedner family moved to the UK and settled in Suri. The reason for this big move was because of his dad, Barry, and his job. Barry was an oil trader and a shipping consultant. So, his work caused the family to move to different places. Breck's mom, Lauren, was a teaching assistant. Breck was the oldest of four siblings, and his siblings were actually triplets. The entire family was also super religious and Breck was always described as a smiling, happy kid who was sociable, easygoing, and kind. He was also very smart. He attended St. Bead's school in Red Hill, Suri. And he was a member of the 135th Squadron Air Training Corps in Red Hill. He got good grades in school and from a very young age, his passion was anything computer and techreated. So overall, Breck was a well-rounded, great kid. He didn't misbehave. He had a good relationship with his family even though his parents had divorced when he was young and he had a bright future ahead of him. But as he got older and developed more interests, he also came across someone who would become extremely significant in today's case. And that person did not enter his life in some dark alley or some obviously dangerous place. He came through a screen. As I said before, Breck loved computers, tech, gaming, and all that sort of stuff. So, when he was in his early teens, he was introduced to the world of online gaming. Like a lot of kids who discover online and interactive video games, he loved it. He spent a lot of time on these platforms, and these games allowed him to interact with other people, too. Now, they weren't all strangers. In fact, most of the boys that he was playing with he knew from church. So, from the outside, this didn't look especially dangerous. It wasn't like he was secretly talking to random adults in hidden chat rooms, at least not at first. He spent a good amount of time on these gaming and online chat platforms, but it wasn't like he was glued to the screen all day. He still had a life. He was doing well in school, and his mom, Lauren, knew what he was doing most of the time. She even knew that he talked to these boys online, and there wasn't really any secretive element to it. But then someone new entered the chat. Now, to give you some perspective, Breck and most of his friends in the gaming chat room were about 14 years old, but there was another gamer in the group who was older than the rest of them. His name was Lewis Danes, and he was 18 at the time. To everyone in the group, including Breck, Lewis seemed like that cool older brother figure. He was a self-proclaimed millionaire. [music] He told the boys stories about his successes and helped them get access to better games. [music] And by better, I mean maturated games, those meant for people 18 and older. And he seemed to know everything there was to know about the gaming world. And if you remember, Breck loved anything that [music] had to do with gaming, tech, and computers. So naturally, he quickly took a liking to Lewis. They had a common ground to bond over, and it was only a matter of time before the two got on like a house on fire. To these boys, Lewis, he seemed like a superstar. According to what Lewis told them, he was from Essex and he traveled to all different countries. He owned multiple companies at the ripe age of 18 and he worked for Secret Services and had millions and millions of dollars. Basically, Lewis claimed to be living the dream. And to a group of 14-year-old boys, that kind of story is fascinating. I mean, wouldn't it be? Especially if you're young, you're impressionable, and talking to someone who acts like he has the keys to bigger, cooler, more exciting things. But not everyone believed Lewis. And if you're already feeling suspicious, well, get in line because Breck's mom, Lauren, she felt the same way. But her fears and her warnings fell on deaf ears. Breck was smitten by this guy, and he had no idea just how dangerous the internet can really be. At this point, Breck was spending about 5 to 6 hours a day on gaming and [music] chat platforms, and Lauren knew most of the people he was talking to. She allowed Breck to game under certain conditions. For example, he couldn't close his bedroom door, and she needed to know who he was talking to. And Breck kept that promise for the most part. And truth be told, the world is changing. While it might sound insane for someone to sit in their room staring at a TV for 5 or 6 hours a day, Bret was at least hanging out with other kids his age. He was still forming relationships, bonding, the same stuff you and I used to do as kids. [music] He was just doing it inside. The relationships that these kids build, they're often just as strong. They're [music] just different. And while Lauren would occasionally come into Breck's room, check on him, and even say hi to the boys whose voices she recognized from church or school. But during one of these checkups, she heard a voice that she didn't recognize. It was deeper and more serious, older. It didn't sound like any of the boys from church and didn't sound like a 14-year-old. And that voice belonged to Lewis Dates. Right away, Lauren asked Breck who this person was. From what she could tell, Lewis appeared to be a young, attractive guy, but Breck shrugged it off and said he was just one of their friends. Everything was fine. Well, at first, Lauren had her suspicions, but she didn't immediately panic. Breck wasn't showing any major changes yet. He wasn't lashing out. He wasn't abandoning his routine. So she decided to just watch things for a bit and see what happened. But very soon things did start to change. In mid 2013, Laura noticed drastic changes in her son. First, he stopped attending the Air Training Corps, which he loved. This wasn't just some casual activity that he didn't care about. It was one of the things he enjoyed most. And suddenly, he completely lost interest. Then he stopped going to church. Now, I'm not saying that this kid was in church 24/7, but he did go all the time, and his friendship with Lewis started to deepen. He started pulling away from the things he used to care about. And this was a major red flag for Lauren. And on top of that, she noticed a drastic change in his behavior and his demeanor as well. Instead of being the polite, well- behaved boy that she knew and she raised, he started to rebel. He wouldn't listen to his mom anymore. He would stay cooped up in his room playing video games. And now his bedroom door was closed. [music] And that was the dealbreaker for Lauren. Whenever [snorts] Lauren went into Breck's room, he wasn't warm or welcoming anymore. His room was messy. His attitude was different. And he was turning into someone she barely recognized. Now Lauren was really suspicious. She felt like this behavior change had to be connected to Breck's mysterious older friend. And keep in mind, she knew almost nothing about Lewis. She didn't know exactly how old he was, what he looked like, or where he lived. She knew Bret's other gaming friends because they were boys from church. She knew the ins and outs of that specific group. But Lewis was different. Something about this mysterious older boy rubbed Lauren the wrong way. And no matter how much she tried to ask Bre about him, she just got very little information. But Lauren wasn't the only one who became suspicious. The rest of Breck's friends started to grow suspicious of Lewis, too. There were times when the boys asked Lewis for pictures for his social media or to just turn on his camera during a video chat. But guess who always had an excuse? Lewis. He always had a reason why he couldn't send photos, why he couldn't turn his camera on, [music] and why he didn't have social media. He would use the Secret Service excuse, the broken webcam excuse, [music] whatever excuse worked in that moment. And eventually Breck's friends stopped believing him. They started distancing themselves from Lewis because luckily for them, they saw through this [music] weird facade. I mean, what teenager has no social media, no pictures, and no ability to ever turn on a camera, especially one that's supposed to be a millionaire? But Bre didn't see it. [music] Tragically, he was already in too deep. By then, he saw Lewis as a best friend, as a buddy, as a mentor, someone older and cooler who seemed to choose him above everyone else. And that was another thing the boys noticed. Lewis seemed particularly interested on Breck. He started picking Breck for different activities and leaving the rest of the boys out. The others thought this was weird [music] and none of them had ever met Lewis in real life before. And Breck and the boys, well, they obviously knew each other outside the chat room. They'd physically met in person several times. But Lewis, it was like he didn't exist outside the internet. And that was bizarre. Well, eventually Lauren had one conversation with Lewis. Her son was present in the room when it happened, and that short conversation told Lauren everything she needed to know. [music] Lewis was manipulative. He was coaching Lauren on how to raise her own son. He was essentially telling her to get off of his back. This was another red flag. And at that point, Lauren knew enough was enough. She didn't care that Lewis and Brett were buddies. She didn't care that Brett saw Lewis as a mentor or older brother figure because she knew that wasn't what this was. This was entering a very dark territory. So to protect Bre from this mysterious online friend, Lauren decided to take away all of his technology. He was obviously not happy about this, but a mom has to do what a mom has to do. When your child's life and future is in danger, there's no room for but mom or that's unfair. There's only time for get my son out of this situation right now at all costs. Lauren was an amazing mother through and through. And eventually, she called the authorities just to be safe. She clearly told the police on the phone that she felt her 14-year-old son was being groomed by an older man online. And she even gave the police the name of him, Lewis Danes. But the police failed to investigate early on. They never even checked on who Lewis was. They didn't think it was serious, but it very much was. After the conversation between Lauren and Lewis, Breck's computer and technology were all taken away. But what Lauren did not know was that this wasn't enough to cut off contact between Breck and Lewis. They were still communicating. But how? Well, Lewis [music] had bought Bre and they kept in touch that way. And Laura never found out. [music] I seriously feel for Lauren here because she was doing everything right. She had suspicions, so she tried probing Breck for more information. When that failed, she spoke to the mystery friend herself. And when that went badly, she called the police. She even held a meeting with the parents of the other boys that Breck and Lewis knew, and she brought everyone into [music] the loop. And everyone agreed Lewis was bad news. Everyone else had distanced themselves from him. But Breck was still in contact, completely unbeknownst to Lauren, who was only trying to protect her son from someone dangerous on the internet. She thought that her son was safe. She thought that she'd successfully pulled him out of Louiswis's influence by taking away his computer. But she didn't know about that secret phone. She also didn't know that he was secretly recording conversations Lauren was having with the other parents and he was sending them to Lewis, giving him updates, basically allowing Lewis to carefully craft a narrative to convince [music] him that his mother was being ridiculous, dumb, and unreasonable. Things that every teen already believes in the first place. It's unbelievable, and it shows just how much control Lewis had over him by this point. Bre was essentially acting like Louiswis's little messenger, feeding him information about what the adults were saying. And if that isn't creepy, I don't know what is. But after a couple of days, supposedly without technology, at least as far as his mom knew, Breck started behaving normally again. He was doing well in school. He was spending time with his family. And things started looking okay to Lauren. [music] This prompted her to give him his belongings back. But this time, she had ironclad conditions. there would be no more contact with Lewis and Lauren would monitor everything he did. Surprisingly, Breck agreed and he didn't put up a fight. He didn't nag or rebel. He seemed okay with the conditions. But now things would [music] take a very tragic turn because while Brett kept everything clean and clear on the surface, we all know he never stopped speaking to Louis. On the outside, February of 2014 seemed like a normal and even wonderful month. Lauren saw her son gaining interest in things other than his computer again. He was enrolled in a Spanish exchange program and he went on that trip happily. [music] She really thought that this whole fiasco with Lewis had just been a speed bump in their life. And now Lewis was gone. Everything was back to normal. So Breck spent a week in Spain and it was amazing. Partly because Breck had met someone. He had his first ever girlfriend and he was so happy about it. The pictures from the trip told the story of a young boy finally coming out of his shell and enjoying his first trip away from home. Lauren remembered that week like it was yesterday. There was no sign of Lewis. Greck was just happily living his life and stepping [music] into a new chapter of it, his love life. So after that trip was over, he was due to stay with his dad and three siblings for the weekend. And if you remember, his parents were separated and the triplets lived with their dad while Breck lived with his mom. and he would go to visit his dad and siblings every once in a while. Even at the airport when he landed, his dad and siblings remembered him being [music] happy. He didn't seem worried. They didn't seem on edge. He was just typical Breck. Now, I know I'm using the word normal a lot, but that really is the best way to describe this scene. Completely normal, calm, or at least that's how it looked because Lewis had been in contact with him all [music] along. And as soon as he landed back in Siri after his trip, Lewis dropped a huge bomb cell. Lewis told him he had very little time to live. He claimed he was sick and on the verge of dying. He wanted to hand over his entire multi-million pound estate to Breck, his 14-year-old online friend. Not siblings, not extended family, and not actual legal heirs, but a teenage boy he met through gaming. Lewis still had a hold on him. They were still secretly in contact and he still managed to manipulate him successfully, I might add. Breck believed every word Lewis said, so he asked his dad, Barry, if he could go spend the night at a friend's house. Now, this is a side note, but I'm sure Lauren had filled Barry in on what was happening with Brett and Lewis. But their son never said he was going to see Lewis. He just said he wanted to go sleep over at a friend's house. Barry thought nothing of it, and Barry allowed him to go. To give you perspective, he returned from Spain on February 15th and he wanted to have a sleepover at his friend's house, meaning Louiswis's, on February 16th, just one day after his trip. This was all happening with rapid speed. Breuin was excited to see Lewis for that first time. It would be the first time they ever met in person. And in his mind, his cool older friend, his idol, was about to hand over his entire estate to him. And what teenager wouldn't be excited if those were the stakes? But nothing was what it seemed. And tragically, by the time Breck realized that, it was too late. A day later, on February 17th of 2014, police received a calm but chilling phone call from a young man. He told the operator he'd gotten into an altercation with his friend, and he was the only one that survived. And if you haven't put the pieces together by now, that caller was Louisis Dates. And his friend was Breck. The same boy he had begged to come meet him. The same boy he promised a fortune to. The same boy who believed he was walking into a life-changing opportunity with a friend. [music] But instead, Bre had walked into a trap. One of the most chilling parts about that 911 call was Louis's demeanor. He was calm, unemotional, collected. He sounded almost like he was explaining a computer program step by step. And even more bizarre, while describing what happened, Lewis specifically demanded the operator not interrupt him. This man was confessing to murder and somehow had the mental clarity to calmly but directly ask the operator to not interrupt him. His supposed best friend had just lost his life by his hand. Police were sent to the scene of the crime immediately. And as I mentioned a moment ago, this all happened incredibly quickly. There was no buildup. There was nothing out of the ordinary. As far as Brett's father knew, he went over to a friend's house for the evening. But now, just hours later, his son lost his life. As the officers made their way to the apartment where the crime unfolded, they quickly found Breck. As described in the phone call, he was unresponsive and heartbreakingly he could not be revived. And there were signs of an obvious struggle. There were trash bags filled with clothes inside the apartment. There were hard drives submerged in water. And there was evidence of a cleanup. And then the police found the murder weapon. Lewis Danes was taken to the police station and charged with the murder of Breick Batner. Now, Lewis had claimed that there had been some sort of altercation, but police were not buying this one bit. And if you're wondering why, well, the evidence inside that apartment started answering that question. While police were going through the scene and all the heaps of evidence, they found pieces of duct tape. [music] And when reconstructed, the tape appeared to resemble restraints. That did not fit the supposed self-defense story that Lewis was trying to push. and instead it suggested Breck had been overpowered and restrained by Lewis before he was attacked. And there was also DNA evidence. Well, I'm not really going to get into where they found the DNA, but it belonged to Lewis and it was found on Breick's body. The clothes in the trash bags, the signs of a struggle, the cleanup, the damaged hard drives, the DNA, and the overall scene were eerie and disturbing. Brick was helpless in that apartment. This was not self-defense. It was cold, calculated murder after Lewis had taken exactly what he wanted from Breck, who only thought he was coming to visit his best friend. Turns out Lewis Daines was actually a 19-year-old young man from Essex. And no, he was not a multi-millionaire. He was not a secret service agent. He was not a successful businessman with some fortune to hand over. He was an unemployed online predator. But are we even surprised by this? Lewis was described by the people that knew him as reclusive and odd. His parents had separated and he'd spent some time in the foster care system before going to live with his grandparents at their apartment. We don't know exactly when Lewis started targeting boys online. But what we do know is that Breck was not the first. Lewis had another potential target before Breck, a 13-year-old boy from the United States who was also starruck by Lewis and his so-called achievements. Lewis managed to manipulate this boy, too, even trying to force him to come meet him in the UK. Fortunately, that boy's parents refused. They were not about to let their son travel overseas to meet a stranger he'd never even met before in person. Obviously, what parent would? So, when that plan failed, Lewis found Breck and he picked up right where he left off. But this time, things ended in the worst possible way. The news of Breck's death reached his [music] parents, siblings, and friends, and they were I mean, I don't even know. It can't be described. Lauren, for one, couldn't be consoled. She tried so hard to protect her son from the dangers of the world. She saw the warning signs. She confronted them. She warned others. And she even called the police. And still, [music] Lewis found a way in. It was tragic beyond comprehension. And in the end, Lewis Dains pleaded guilty to the charges against him. Even though he initially seemed to be prepared to go with a not-uilty plea and stick to his watered down self-defense story, but by now it seems obvious that Lewis needed to have the upper hand in every situation. Everyone was shocked because not long before this, Lewis had been clinging to that self-defense story. But now, suddenly, he just pleaded guilty. And it felt like one final manipulation tactic, one last way to control the narrative before the sentencing [music] so that the truth never fully had to come out. Even though we don't know the full extent of what happened to Bret that day, it's believed that Lewis lured him there under the false pretenses. The two spent a few hours in Louiswis's apartment. Then something escalated. It's unclear exactly what happened or how it unfolded, but Lewis overpowered Breck and a struggle ensued. What he did to this young man before taking his life, it added an even darker layer and more disturbing layer to this case. And it ended with a bright young boy's family being fractured forever. But next came his sentencing. [music] After Lewis's guilty plea, he was handed a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years behind bars. I think we can all agree that with any luck, this man will rot behind those prison walls for the rest of his days. And it's safe to say his prison stay will not be pleasant. I've heard most prisoners don't take too kindly to predators. What happened to Breck was heartbreaking, and his family is still reeling from that painful loss, but they've also used their grief to try to protect other children from online predators. The truth is, the police failed Breck and his family badly. Lauren had already told them about an obvious grooming situation. They didn't even look into it. She did everything she could within her power, but she still lost her son. A boy who should have had so many more happy years to live. And all because he crossed paths with a dangerous and twisted individual who knew exactly how to exploit impressionable teens. In the aftermath, Lauren and Barry established the Breck Foundation, and they now stress the importance of parents having these conversations with their children. They advocate for safer online spaces and warn about the dangers of online predators that are hiding in plain sight. All Lauren wants is to save children and their parents from the same tragedy. Because every child counts. If they spend the rest of their lives preaching this lesson to children and they only manage to change the mind of one, then their job was well worth it. In the age of the internet, [music] it is scarily easy for the wrong people to say the right things, to build trust, to isolate victims, and hide behind a screen until it's too late. Ultimately, it's up to all of us to use this resource responsibly and teach young people about being wary of people who sound too good to be true. Now, I say this in every case like this, and I'll continue to say it each and every time. When you give your kids access to the internet, you're giving the internet access to your kids. And we both know the sorts of things and the sorts of people that are on the internet. I just hope Brex family is doing okay. And I hope in some small way, [music] the mission to help these children across the globe is not only successful, but may help to ease their pain little by little and day by day. Sarah Yarro made one small mistake that morning. She thought she was late. She rushed out the door in her drill team uniform, rollers still in her hair, and drove to school almost an hour early. But the real problem wasn't that she was late. She was alone. A little while later, two boys taking a shortcut saw something in the bushes. Then they looked closer. And at first they thought they were staring at a mannequin lying on the frozen ground. But mannequins [music] don't have red hair, and mannequins don't wear hair rollers. And when the boys looked back up, a man was sitting in his car watching them. For more than 30 years, no one knew his name. But the investigators finally found out who he was. The most disturbing part wasn't what he did to Sarah. No, it was his true identity. And it only made things worse. Sarah Yarborough was a 16-year-old high school student who'd been born in Portland, Oregon. But by the time this case took place, her family was living in Federal Way, Washington. They'd moved there with Sarah when she was only 8 years old. And in many ways, Federal Way had become the place where she was growing into the person that everyone around her loved so deeply. Sarah had two younger brothers, and at the time, she was attending Federal Way High School. She was bright, responsible, and curious. She loved math, science, and art. And she was also part of the high school drill team and dance club. She had the kind of busy teenage life that seems ordinary to the outside, but means everything to the people who are living in it. [music] Practices, friends, family, school commitments, and the feeling that life is just beginning. Her mother, Laura, described Sarah as the highlight of her life. [music] and her friends said her personality matched her vibrant red hair. Fiery, vibrant, and almost impossible not to notice. She was friendly, she was sociable, she was energetic, and according to her family, she made friends with nearly anyone. But as we've come to realize, in true crime cases, this trait is often true for people who become victims. But Sarah was not only outgoing, she was also deeply protective of the people she loved, especially her younger brothers. She helped them with homework, looked after them, and shared a bond with them that her family would later describe as incredibly close. And that detail matters because the more you understand who Sarah was, the more devastating this case becomes. She was responsible for her age. She was helpful, and she was not the kind of teenager who would always be pushing limits or trying to disappear from her parents' view. She was a normal 16-year-old girl with school, friends, family, and a future in front of her. And then one cold December morning, all of that ended just yards away from [music] a place where she should have been safe. The day before everything happened was a Friday, December 13th, 1991. And yes, it was Friday the 13th, but strangely enough, that was not the actual day that everything went wrong. For Sarah, that Friday passed like any other. The Arbor family had plans to leave town for the weekend and travel to Ocean Shores for her brother's soccer game. Now, Ocean Shores was about 2 hours away from Federal Way, and Sarah was supposed to go with them, but she had an important drill competition the next day, and she didn't want to miss it. Her mother was hesitant to leave her 16-year-old daughter behind, but Sarah had given her parents every reason to trust her. She was responsible, wasn't planning the party, and hadn't really been getting into any trouble. She simply wanted to keep a school commitment. So, her parents agreed, but only on one condition. A friend had to stay with her overnight. It was the kind of rule that just made sense. Sarah would not be completely alone. Her parents could still go to the soccer game, and everyone had a plan that felt safe. To Sarah, that probably felt like the perfect arrangement. She was going to stay home, go to her competition, spend the night with a friend, and so one of her friends came over with an overnight bag. And the two girls went to a school basketball game. And afterward, they stopped for snacks and went to the house, watched TV, and went to [music] bed. Nothing about that night seemed dangerous. There was no warning sign, no strange call, no decision that seemed reckless in that moment. Nothing suggested that Sarah was about to cross paths with someone who would change the rest of her family's life. The next morning, December 14th, Sarah woke up and believed she was running late. Now, it's not clear if she misread the time or simply panicked when she woke up, but she rushed to get ready. She put on her drill team uniform, left her rollers in her hair, and said goodbye to her friend and just got into her car and drove straight to Federal Way High School. The drill team was supposed to board a bus from the high school and head to Wanita High School in Kirkland for that competition, but Sarah would never [music] make it on that bus. And in reality, she wasn't late at all. The team was not supposed to meet until around 9:00 a.m. But Sarah arrived closer to 8:00. That meant that she had almost an hour to wait at the school alone on a cold Saturday morning when very few people were around. And that empty hour is where everything changed. Sarah was not the only teenager awake and out and about that morning. Two other boys, 13-year-old Drew Miller and his friend Adam, had spent the night at Drew's house. And after breakfast, they decided to go skateboarding near a grocery store close to Federal Way High School. And to get there, they took a shortcut. They climbed over a fence, followed a trail that passed near the school, and well, it was December, so it was pretty cold outside. There were puddles frozen all along this trail, and the path was lined with these thick bushes. There were no crowds, no teachers, no parents dropping kids off cuz it's Saturday, and no real reason for anyone to be hiding there. The boys were just being kids, walking through this frozen path, hearing the ice and snow crunch under their feet, when Adam suddenly saw something that made him stop. A man was coming out of the bushes. At first, that alone did not seem like proof of anything. The boys thought maybe he had been hiding there to smoke or do something that he didn't want anyone to see. It was strange, but not automatically terrifying. But still, something about it felt off. The man walked ahead of them towards his car, and as the boys passed the place where he'd come out of the bushes, they looked behind the brush. That was when they saw what they thought was a mannequin. It was lying on the cold ground and it looked real, but in their minds they didn't want to accept that it could be real. And then they noticed the hair. Mannequins don't have red hair and they don't have rollers in their hair. And that's when the boys understood they were not looking at a mannequin at all. They were looking at a young girl unresponsive on the ground. Their ordinary mourning turned into something horrifying in one single second. And when they looked back towards the man they had just seen coming from the bushes, he was now sitting in his car watching them. The boys froze. They were confused, terrified, and too young to fully even process what they had just walked into. And then Instinct took over. They turned around and ran as fast as they could back to Drew's house because they needed the police. And they had every reason to wonder if they were in danger, too. But thankfully, they made it home safely. And Drew's parents were told about what they had seen. and police and emergency services were called and they were there within minutes. And that quiet shortcut near that school was now filled with officers, paramedics, and flashing lights. When first responders first arrived, they found exactly what the boys described, a young girl with red hair wearing a Federal Way High School drill team uniform lying on the cold ground. It was Sarah Yarro. She'd left that morning for a competition, but she never even made it out of the school parking area. Investigators searched the scene and soon enough they found her car abandoned 100 yards away from where her body had been discovered. It was clear Sarah had driven herself to the school, but what happened after that was much harder to understand. Inside her car, nothing looked chaotic. There were no obvious signs of a major struggle. Her belongings were all still there, and even a pack of orange juice was just sitting there undisturbed on the front seat. That detail is eerie because it makes the scene feel suspended in time as though Sarah simply walked away for just a moment and she was supposed to come right back. That told investigators something important and also disturbing. Whatever happened to Sarah may not have started with some violent ambush inside the car. It was possible that the attacker approached her, spoke to her, and somehow convinced her to get out and walk towards that isolated area where she was later found. And because Sarah was known as someone who was kind and willing to help, investigators wondered if that kindness had been used against her. Maybe this person asked her for help. Maybe this person created a problem. And maybe they said just enough to get this responsible teenage girl out of her car. And if they did, then Sarah's last act of ordinary kindness may have been the very thing that put her in danger. However it happened, Sarah ended up alone with someone who had no business being near her. DNA was recovered from her body, and that did give investigators hope. But in 1991, having DNA did not mean what it means today. They had a profile, but no match. They had evidence, but no name. So, for the moment, the only people who had seen the person responsible were the two shaken boys who'd stumbled into the aftermath by accident. Police knew that foul play was involved from the very beginning and their attention centered on the man that drew an Adamant scene coming out of those bushes. The boys were the only witnesses in the case, so investigators worked with them to create a composite sketch. That sketch was shared across the area on the news and anywhere police thought might bring in a lead. But despite that attention, [music] the case did not break open. Tips came in. Investigators followed them. People called with names, theories, and other possible sightings. But one by one, the leads either fell apart or went nowhere. Over time, the call slowed down. The investigation cooled, and the question that mattered the most remained. Who killed Sarah Yarborough? In June of 1993, about a year and a half after Sarah had been killed, a memorial bench was placed in the Federal Way High School courtyard in her honor. It included pieces of Sarah's life. Images of her dog, her ballet shoes, books, and her favorite motto, carpy diam. Graduation came and went without her. Her friends moved forward, but with an empty space where Sarah should have been. She did not get to accept her diploma. She didn't go to college. She didn't get to chase the dreams that she used to talk about. Whether that meant becoming an engineer one day or maybe a museum curator the next. For her family, time didn't move the same way that it moved for everyone else. Life continued, but Sarah was always missing from it. There are families who lose someone and then they slowly began to learn to carry that grief. But in Sarah's case, grief came with a second wound. The person who did this was still unnamed. Her brothers grew up without the sister who protected them. Her parents lived with that kind of guilt that no parent should have to carry, replaying the decision to leave her home alone that weekend and wondering what might have happened if one small detail had changed. Meanwhile, the case remained open, but the truth seemed farther away with every passing year. Investigators still had the DNA. They still had the boy's description, but neither one could give the family what they needed the most, a face, a name, and an arrest. But then time did something unsuspected. It gave investigators a tool they had not even thought of in 1991. DNA technology advanced and cold cases that once seemed impossible now looked different. Evidence had been sitting for years and it could now be tested in new ways. Profiles that had no match could now be compared through different methods that didn't even exist when Sarah was killed. And eventually Sarah's case became one of the cases that would help prove just how powerful those methods could be. It would not be quick and it would not erase the decades Sarah's family had already lost, but it gave investigators a path forward [music] where every other path had gone cold. Years after Sarah's murder, investigators turned to forensic genetic genealogy. The basic idea is that an unknown DNA sample can be compared to public DNA databases and family trees. Not necessarily to find the suspect directly, but to find relatives. [music] And from there, investigators can work backward and forward through the family until they find a person that starts to come into focus. At the time, this approach was still new and controversial. Some people in law enforcement were skeptical. Others wondered whether it would actually hold up or whether it would waste more time in cases that had already gone cold. But in cases like Sarah's, where police had DNA but no match, even a distant family connection could be the first real movement in years. But Sarah's case needed something new. The DNA profile was compared through genealological research and eventually a surname emerged. Fuller. The name stunned people in the Arbor family because there was a Fuller already connected to them. Bill Fuller was a family friend. He'd supported the family after Sarah's death and had even helped build the memorial bench at the school. So, at first, the discovery felt impossible. Was someone close to the family connected to Sarah's murder? Well, the answer was complicated. Bill Fuller did not match the description of the man seen by Drew and Adam. He was older. He had no apparent reason to hurt Sarah. And when he voluntarily gave his DNA, it didn't match the evidence from the crime scene. [music] But the genealogy work suggested that Bill and the killer shared the same paternal family line. In other words, [music] we're not looking at Bill Fuller himself. They were looking at someone in his extended family. And that narrowed down the search, but it did not [music] end it. More years passed and more testing was done. More family lines were examined and investigators kept working the case until 2019 when the suspect pool was narrowed down to two brothers. One brother was ruled out because his DNA had already been in the criminal database and it didn't match the killer's profile. And that left one man, Patrick Leon Nicholas. At the time of his arrest, Patrick was 55 years old. Police began watching it because they needed one thing to be sure, his DNA. See, Patrick was a smoker. and investigators eventually collected discarded cigarette butts from him. They also obtained a used napkin. Those items were enough to test and when the results came back, they matched the DNA from Sarah's case. After nearly three decades, investigators [music] finally had the name they had been chasing. The Fuller surname had pointed them towards the right family line. And the reason that Patrick's last name had been different from that of his grandfather is because he was adopted. Once that piece made sense, the genealogy work locked into place. And what made the moment even more chilling was that Patrick bore a striking resemblance to the composite sketch that Drew and Adam had helped create all those years earlier. Those boys had only been 13 when they saw them in near the bushes. But what they remembered mattered. [music] Their account had helped preserve the face of a suspect long before science could help finally put a name to him. But the most disturbing discovery [music] was not just that Patrick matched the evidence. It was that the investigators learned about this man's past. And Patrick had a history of violence against women. All the way back in 1983, years before Sarah's murder, a woman named Anne was sitting in her car near the Columbia River when Patrick, who was just 19 at the time, approached her and made small talk at first. But when she tried to leave, he threatened her with a weapon and forced her towards an isolated area near the river. Now, thankfully, Anne escaped by jumping into the water to get away. But Patrick tried to flee and police caught up to him before he could disappear. And once they looked closer, they learned this was not his first sign of violence. His record included serious crimes from back when he was a juvenile. His pattern was already there. [music] He would approach a woman, use a weapon to fear or control her, and then force her towards isolation. That's what makes his history so important in Sarah's case. This was not a man who had never shown any warning signs. This man was clearly a repeated offender. He pleaded guilty in Anne's case, and at her request, he received the maximum sentence, 10 years. But he didn't serve 10 years. He was released after just four. That detail is crushing in hindsight because if Patrick had served his full sentence, he would have still been in prison when Sarah Yarborough was killed. But instead, he was free. And not long after Sarah's murder, [music] his name surfaced again. In 1993, Patrick was convicted in a case involving his six-year-old stepdaughter. [music] The charges were eventually reduced to gross misdemeanor, and once again, the sentence was shockingly lenient. And even after all that, his DNA was not entered into a criminal database in a way that would have helped Sarah's case be solved earlier. That is one of the most frustrating parts of this story. Investigators had DNA from Sarah's case. They had a witness sketch. They had a man with a violent history, but because the right connection was never made, Sarah's family waited for almost 30 years for an answer. Patrick Nicholas finally went to trial for Sarah Yarro's murder in April of 2023. By then, more than 31 years had passed since Sarah had driven to school in her drill uniform and [music] never came home. The prosecution argued that Patrick saw Sarah alone that morning and targeted her. She was a young girl sitting by herself near a school with almost no one else around. Investigators believed he lured her out of her car and into the most isolated area under some kind of pretense, possibly asking for help. And Sarah's kindness may have been the very thing that he'd been used to get close to her. And the defense tried to challenge the case in several ways. They questioned the use of forensic genealogy, especially because the technology had been used early in the development. They also argued that Patrick was not necessarily the man that Drew and Adam saw near those bushes, even though his appearance strongly resembled the sketch created after the murder. The trial lasted a little over 2 weeks. For Sarah's family, those weeks were the end of a wait that lasted longer than Sarah herself had even been alive. Her loved ones have been through memorials, anniversaries, birthdays, graduation day, and decades of ordinary life continuing [music] without her. every year of grief, every unanswered question, and every false lead, and even every hope that rose and fell, [music] all of it now came down to the jury. And when the verdict came back, Patrick was found not guilty of premeditated first-degree murder. But he was found guilty of first-degree murder committed during the commission of attempted assault and seconddegree murder during the commission of indecent liberties. The defense asked for a lighter sentence of around 20 years, but the state pushed for 45 or more. And in the end, Patrick was sentenced to 45 years in prison, meaning he will almost certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars. For Drew Miller, who is now in his 40s, the sentencing brought relief. He'd been one of the boys who found Sarah that morning, one of the only witnesses to the man leaving the bushes, and one of the only people who carried that memory for decades. For the Yarborough family, justice had finally arrived, but it arrived painfully late. [music] Sarah was still gone. Her parents still lost their daughter. Her brothers still lost the sister who had loved and protected them. Her friends still lost the fiery red-haired girl who should have grown up with them. And what makes this case so haunting is not just the brutality of what had happened. It's the ordinary morning. Sarah was stolen from the school parking lot, the drill uniform, the rollers in her hair, the competition. She never reached. Sarah Yarborough was doing what a responsible teenage girl was supposed to do. And for more than 30 years, the man who took her life walked around with a [music] name no one knew. These sorts of cases are some of the most haunting. Sarah wasn't out drinking with friends. She wasn't out asking for trouble. She wasn't dating someone her parents had warned her about a dozen times. She was just doing her best to live a quiet, productive life. And still, somehow, she got taken away. But the most disturbing part of all is that [music] this story is nothing new. It's a tale as old as time. You can think all the way back to the times of Cain and Abel 6,000 years ago. Abel wasn't murdered because he was doing something wrong. He was killed because he was doing something right. Evil always finds a way. Sarah's story is not a warning that she did something wrong. It's a reminder that tragedy is not always explainable. It's not always fair and it's not always tied to someone's choices. Sometimes evil finds the innocent because our world is critically broken and because wicked people continue to choose darkness. Most routines feel safe because nothing ever happens. Same path, same time, same park, same run. For Karina Vrono, her daily jog routine was something she usually shared with her father. But on August 2nd of 2016, Karina went alone. She told her family she'd be right back, but hours passed and her phone kept ringing. And by 11:00 that night, her father walked into the park looking for his daughter and found her lying lifeless just feet off the trail. What happened to Karina looked random, but as police started digging, they realized that the man they were searching for may not have been a mystery at all. He may have been a warning no one took seriously. It was August 2nd of 2016, and Karina wanted to go for a postwork run in Spring Creek Park. [music] This was normal for her. The place wasn't foreign to her or her dad. If you remember, Karina and her dad, Phil, would jog together almost every single day. Karina was active and she jogged pretty much her whole life. But on this day, Karina was not accompanied by her dad. See, Phil was suffering from extreme back pain and he wanted to take it slow that day. So, Karina decided to just go on the run on her own. Phil wasn't too comfortable letting her go on her own, but she waved off the concerns and told her family she'd be right back. She got dressed in her running clothes and she took off. Her jog wasn't super long. It was decent. But sometime later, her parents got a little worried because it had now been hours and Karina hadn't come back. This was very much unlike her. As far as her parents remembered, Karina didn't mention having any plans after that run. So, where was she? Well, Phil and Kathy tried calling her, and that was when worry seeped deeper and deeper into their hearts. Karina wasn't picking up her phone. She had her phone with her. She always did on her daily runs and jog, but now she wasn't picking up. and too much time had passed, too much for Phil and Cathy's liking. So, they decided to reach out to their neighbor, who happened to be a New York Police Department police chief. And that was when a ground search got underway. Now, this may feel like a bit of a sudden escalation. I mean, she'd only been gone a few hours. Jumping right into a missing person case so quickly sounds like a bit much, but the thing is, Karina just wasn't the type of person to do this sort of thing. See, she was raised in a close-knit family in Queens that seemed kind of to revolve around each other. Her father, Philip, or Phil, as most people knew him, was a retired New York City firefighter who also worked on the Twin Towers during the September 11th attacks. Her mother, Kathy, helped raise her alongside her siblings. And by all accounts, the Vronos were a small but incredibly tight family. Karina herself was just under 5t tall, but she was bold, energetic, and hard to miss, and the kind of person that typically left an impression. Now, two of her biggest passions were working with children and running. And she studied speech pathology at St. John's University, eventually working with autistic children in Manhattan. She was also a creative, an aspiring writer, and even starred in a short film that she'd helped write in 2013. But running was something she loved a lot. It was kind of a bonding ritual between her and her father. Most days the two would jog together through Spring Creek Park and it was a routine that became a consistent part of their daily lives, something they could depend on. But one day that familiar path that she'd taken countless times before would become the place where everything changed. Because after alerting their neighbor, the police chief, about Karina not returning home for several hours, well, countless people gathered from the neighborhood and started searching for her. And I don't know if I mentioned this, but Spring Creek Park, it's hardly a block away from Karina's home. So, the searchers decided to also check the route that Karina usually took to get to the park. Everyone was worried about her, and the search carried on for hours. At some point around 11:00 p.m. at night, Phil thought to check a path that was right off their usual walking trail. But this would be a decision that in some ways he would regret for the rest of his life because tragically he would find something he could never unsee. 15 or so feet off the walking and jogging trail in Spring Creek Park, Phil saw a dark figure on the ground. And it didn't take him long to realize that he'd found Karina. Phil himself had to be the one to discover the body of his daughter. Phil was immediately pulled away from the scene and he was understandably in disbelief, wanting nothing more than to go over to his daughter and just hold her. He was inconsolable. The police officers taped off the scene and they got to work. Because this peaceful trail was now a crime scene, attack had been incredibly violent. Police were in total disbelief. She had injuries all over her body, which suggested she put up a great fight against the asalent. She was trying everything in her power to save herself, but she was unsuccessful. Unfortunately, it looked like there was a perverse motive behind the crime, too, which only added another painful facet to this already tragic case. Forensic experts took over the scene as well, and they managed to find a significant amount of DNA evidence on Karina and nearby, too. Her phone was also found at some distance away, and it was tossed a few feet from her body in a patch of weeds. But the disturbing thing was she was murdered by the asalent's bare hands. The evidence also suggested she tried to stop the onslaught as much as she could during that time, but was relatively quickly overpowered. It's believed that she was grabbed while she was on the trail and then dragged out of sight. But the entire time she fought with everything in her. But the thing is, no one knew exactly how this had happened, who' done it, or [music] more importantly, why. The most devastating part of this case was the fact that Karina was in a familiar place. Sure, she was alone and not with her dad as she always was, but she was targeted in broad daylight. Her family needed justice for their daughter more than anything else. In a sense, after this day, getting justice for her, it became their new life's purpose, and they would not sleep until this animal paid for what he had done. But the police could never have guessed that the man responsible was right under their noses the entire time. >> [music] >> At the beginning of the investigation, the police had no idea if this was a random incident or if it was the doing of someone who knew Karina. Honestly, it could have gone either way. This was a place that Karina frequented. She was alone. So, did someone know that she'd be going out jogging alone that day and decide to act? Or was it some actual cruel crossing of fate and someone just randomly decided to spill violence in that park that day? Well, the police started their investigation from the ground up. They decided to talk to all of the people that Karina knew, her friends, close people, any acquaintances at work, literally anyone. The police wanted to clear all possible people before they could move on to the next step. And they talked to Karina's friends, and they did divulge that a male coworker was extremely interested in her, but she did not reciprocate his advances. And he didn't take it all that well. So, the police confirmed this co-orker's alibi, and it was confirmed, well, he had nothing to do with Karina's murder. He was at work at the time of the crime, and when he received the news, he seemed genuinely shocked. So, this coworker was struck off the list of people to question. A reward of $10,000 was also put up for any credible information leading to progress in the case. Phil and Kathy were making appeal after appeal in the media in the meantime, trying to keep Karina's case afloat in the news. This was really the only way to keep as many eyes on the case as possible and hopefully jog someone's memory on if they saw something out of the ordinary on the day that Karina was attacked. In the meantime, Karina's funeral was held and he was attended by hundreds of people. In a strange but heartwarming way, Karina's death brought the community closer than ever. People who'd never even met her, attended her funeral, and were seen weeping. Not because they'd lost some dear friend, but out of genuine hurt for her surviving family and the disturbing realization that tragedy can strike anywhere, even in your own community. And it hardly ever gives a warning. At this point, less than a week had passed since Karina was attacked on her jog, and the NYPD was contacted by someone, and it was actually the Massachusetts State Police Department. It was kind of weird, but when the NYPD heard what the Massachusetts police had to say, they were definitely interested. See, miles and miles away from New York, another woman in Massachusetts was fatally attacked during a run as well. And her name was Vanessa Marco or Marquott. She was 27 and she was a Google accounts manager. Now, I actually covered her case a little over a year ago, so check that one out if you're interested in learning more. But the similarities between Karina and Vanessa's attacks were really striking. Both women were targeted near their homes in broad daylight while they were on a jog. So both the New York and Massachusetts police were dreading the same thing. Were they looking at a serial killer who carried out these crimes across state lines? Well, both police departments shared the information they had, including the DNA samples obtained from both of the women. But it wasn't a match. Now, this was devastating for the police. I mean, it was great that there wasn't some serial killer on the loose, but they thought that they were finally close to catching this asalent, but one test threw it back to square one with no leads, no answers, and no progress. But thankfully, it wouldn't be much longer before police were catching on to someone. And in August of that year, they reached their first breakthrough. So, on the day Karina was attacked, there was a utility worker in the vicinity of the weed patch where her phone was later recovered. It was there that the co-orker saw a man in a wool cap making a run for it on the road. And according to the worker, the guy just looked suspicious. I mean, first of all, he had no business being there in such a relatively remote area of the park. And second of all, he was wearing this thick wool cap in the middle of summer, which [music] I mean, it's hot outside. And it suggests maybe he was trying to hide his face or blend in with, you know, the public or something. Basically, he just didn't want to get noticed is what it seemed like. And he also seemed very on edge and agitated. A sketch of this man was made public. And now all police needed to do was get a lead. The police played the waiting game. And sometime later, they hit the jackpot because a Howard Beach resident who was also an NYPD lieutenant told them about a suspicious man lurking in the neighborhood parking lot with a crowbar. And if that wasn't enough, he kind of matched the guy in the sketch, too. Police headed off to that parking lot and they took this man into custody. His name was Chanel Lewis and he was 20 at the time. Surprisingly, he also lived less than 3 minutes away from the Vrono residence. Coincidence or something else? Well, that would be something the police would find out very soon. [music] Chanel was taken into custody in February of 2017. For some reason, it literally took them months to actually get this guy cuffed, but he was questioned by the investigators for quite some time. And right off the bat, Chanel seemed very suspicious, but he was cooperative. He didn't beat around the bush and he told the police exactly what he was doing on the day of August 2nd, 2016. He confessed to attacking Karina Vrono that day. Just like that, he just opened up and admitted to it like right away. This was shocking for the police, her family, for everyone. He also admitted that the attack on her was random. They didn't even know each other. They just crossed paths at the park [music] and things escalated. But how? Well, according to Chanel, on the day of August 2nd, he'd gotten into a fight with his mom over something, and he left the house fuming. It was around 5:00 p.m. when he got to Spring Creek Park, and he was walking on the trail when he noticed Karina jogging on that same trail, too. And right away, things escalated. Chanel was already angry, and he decided to make Karina his target. He overpowered her. The two got into a very serious physical fight. And during that struggle, Chanel sustained some pretty serious injuries, too. specifically to his hand. It was also during the struggle that the tube strayed off the trail and ended up in that wooded area where Karina was eventually found by her dad. Well, after the fact, Chanel disposed of Karina's phone nearby in that weed patch and then took off on foot. This interrogation left everyone in shock. Chanel didn't even resist. He just confessed to everything with a straight face. It basically went down as, "Did you kill this girl?" And he just said, "Yeah, and here's how I did it." seriously. To confirm the involvement of Chanel, the detectives also talked to his parents and they also had something to say about the night that Chanel came back home following the attack. According to his mom, she remembered her son returning home in a very disheveled state. His clothes were torn and he had injuries on his arms and face and they were all mainly on his upper body. When his mom asked what had happened, he told her he'd been robbed by a group of men. But after his confession months later, his mom was floored. [music] Well, on August 3rd, Chanel asked his dad to take him to the hospital to treat his injuries, which he did. And the hospital staff remembered Chanel and a distinct injury that he had on his hand. There was also something lodged inside of his hand where the injury was. And when the staff pulled it out, it was a chipped tooth. Police now believe that this tooth likely belonged to Karina. There was little room for doubt, but still the police needed to verify this detail before they could charge Chanel with the murder of Karina. So to the hospital the detectives went. And even though 6 months had passed at this point, and there was a high chance the police would leave empty-handed, the hospital staff still had what the police needed. This was no less than a stroke of good luck. They talked to the doctor and the staff who treated Chanel, and sure enough, they corroborated the event of extracting that chipped tooth from Chanel's injured hand. and it was believed to be Karina's tooth. So, along with the other strong DNA evidence, the police arrested 20-year-old Chanel Lewis and charged him with the secondderee murder of Karina Vrono. Karina's parents and loved ones [music] were very hopeful. All they wanted since they discovered their deceased daughter in that park was to get justice for her. That was literally all they cared about and lived for. And finally, that day was drawing near. Soon enough, Chanel, sporting a gleeful smile on his face, was taken away in handcuffs, and the preparations for a trial were underway because he pleaded not guilty to the charges, even though he just confessed. The trial for her murder was held in November of 2018, a little over 2 years after her attack. During that trial, the state put a spotlight on Chanel's personal life and how he had disturbing thoughts about women since he was a young boy. Chanel was defined as a loner and had just a handful of friends. He loved listening to music and walking to clear his head. And at the time of the case, he was a recent high school graduate living with his mom and three sisters in East New York in an area that was really close to Spring Creek Park. When the police went to his high school during the course of the investigation, they found out many things about it, all of which were disturbing. For some odd and unknown reason, Chanel had a fuming hatred towards women [music] and girls, according to one of his high school teachers. According to that teacher, he also had a very troubled past. On one occasion, he straight up told the teacher that he wanted to hurt all the girls of his class. He even asked the teacher for permission to bring a weapon to school the very next day to act on these urges. Like what? Well, following this, Chanel was understandably suspended from school and put in an institution and he was in protective custody for quite some time. But even though he didn't have an actual criminal record, he did have a number of run-ins with police. He was summoned to court for violating rules in Spring Creek Park, the very place where the crime took place. And he would also lurk around in the neighborhood with a crowbar and other weapons, presumably trying to break into cars is what it seemed. But he was also deemed mentally unstable. So he was never really charged for anything. According to the prosecution, he had fled his house angry following that fight with his mom that night. and he started walking on the trail listening to music and that's when he saw Karina and he decided to act out on his anger. The attack was random, [music] but that that just makes it all the worse. A park, a literal public place, was deemed unsafe for a woman because of people like Chanel. There's something here that should shock everyone. [clears throat] But the defense then came to the front with their arguments, and they paid no heed to the DNA evidence. Chanel's parents even testified in his favor that their son was supposedly a god-fearing, friendly, and loving man who wouldn't hurt anyone. But this was an obvious, blatant lie. The defense also blamed the government for panning the crime on Chanel and deemed the DNA inadmissible in court because of its supposed contaminated nature. See, according to the defense, the place where Karina was found was possibly contaminated by her dad, Phil's, and other people's DNA in the vicinity before it was taped off as a crime scene. So, the DNA evidence, which was one of the strongest things in this case, was suddenly becoming a source of doubt for the jurors. All of the sudden, a case that seemed pretty straightforward, became complicated because of the defense's claims. In the end, the jury deliberated, but they could not reach a verdict. So, the trial ended in a hung jury, which was devastating for Karina's family. The trial lasted a little over two weeks and ended with no conviction and no closure. All because of a single seed of doubt planted by the defense. Well, a new date was set for a second trial in January of 2019, but ended up being delayed until April of that year. This time around, the prosecution heavily relied on Chanel's internet searches and his blatant hatred and urge for violence towards women. The prosecution also got their hands on his search history that showed that he was googling things like indictment, plea bargains, and updates on Karina's murder. And they claimed that this somehow proved he had no remorse whatsoever. These actions, according to them, just didn't seem like the actions of someone who was mentally unstable. [snorts] Now, I'm not trying to downplay his mental health here. Sure, he may have had some problems and he needed help, but the fact that he resorted to such violence as intense and inexplicable as Karina's, who was a practical stranger to him, is chilling. And to know that he was indulging in dark and graphic online content prior to his arrest and searching legal and criminal terms and researching about his victim's case, it says a lot about how unaffected he likely was considering he committed such a violent crime. With all of this new evidence and a new strategy, the prosecution pulled through and now it was time for a verdict. Everyone was holding their breath. They didn't want a repeat of that previous trial. What was Karina's family going to do if the jury came back with an unfavorable verdict this time around, too? But soon enough, that verdict was announced. It was April 1st of 2019 when the verdict was finally read. The jury found Chanel guilty. Chanel Lewis was found guilty of two counts of secondderee murder. One count of first-degree murder and then another count of sexual abuse. The sentencing was pushed back a few times thanks to an instance involving an anonymous letter, jury drama, and more pain and anger for the Vrono family. And finally, by the end of April, on the 23rd, the sentencing was given to the perpetrator, and Chanel Lewis was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. [snorts] Karina's parents were happy with the outcome. But the pain of their loss was unrelenting. Alone was out in a place where she'd been countless times before peacefully, but one day things ended tragically. Not because she was alone, which is the most stereotypical reason given in cases like this, but because there was someone with violent tensions lurking freely. This is a neverending debate that sparks anger and frustration. Also, this didn't just happen once. Just a week after Karina's murder, Vanessa Marco Marott was also found in an eerily similar circumstance. My point is that women not leaving the house or not going anywhere alone, [music] it doesn't stop these crimes. It doesn't stop these people. Why aren't people with a record of violent tendencies involving women not taken seriously? But a woman going alone somewhere is now considered the problem somehow. This leads people to a question such as where are we going as a community? It's 2026 and the debate of women's safety is still not taken seriously. It doesn't matter what time of day or if it's a woman or anyone else for that matter. It doesn't matter if you're alone or with a flock of people. If we aren't safe during the day or night that there's something seriously wrong with the way things are being handled. Chanel Lewis was a walking cautionary tale. But because he didn't have a supposed criminal record and may or may not have had mental health issues, he wasn't taken seriously by law enforcement. And look what happened. A family that was once happy and thriving lost their daughter forever in the most tragic way. Darren couldn't believe that his 16-year-old daughter was gone until he saw her body in the morg. To this day, he [music] still has nightmares about that day, as well as the struggle between his daughter and her killer. The hardest part is Darren accepted the murderer as his own family. They shared the same food at the dinner table most nights. Darren could have never thought that one day the very person he cared for, like his own flesh and blood, would turn into a murderer and target his own daughter in the worst way. Rebecca Watts, better known by her nickname, Becky, was born after her parents, Darren and Tanya, had already gotten divorced. She initially lived with her mom, but was eventually put into the foster system because of concerns of neglect. But a few years later, she and her brother Dan went on to live with her dad, Darren. When Becky was a child, she was defined as a feisty kid. She was a ball of energy and had a lot of confidence. But tragically, when she grew up and got into high school, that was when she was in a very dark place. She was battling an eating disorder and she burrowed back into her shell. Nonetheless, she was still kind and caring and had a great group of friends who loved and cared for her just the same. When Becky was in her teens in 2013, her dad Darren married a woman named Angie who had a son herself. And now Becky had a stepmom as well as a step-brother named Nathan. But all of these changes aside, life was going great. And she had a good relationship with everyone in her blended family. And she had a place to call home in St. George, Bristol. But one day in 2015 would change Becky's family's lives forever, and Becky would go missing. February 19th, 2015 was the day when Becky was last seen. Her mom, Angie, remembered seeing Becky at about 11:15 in the morning when she left for a doctor's appointment. See, Angie suffered from multiple scerosis and she had to go to the hospital for regular checkups. But when Angie and Darren both returned home in the afternoon and saw Becky was nowhere to be found, that was when they blew up her phone, but she wasn't answering. Then the parents took to social media and checked Becky's activity there, but it was also radio silent. This was a huge red flag for Darren. Becky, a typical teenage girl who loved fashion, movies, and taking pictures, was a very active on social media. But now, there were no updates, not even a blip of activity. This caused Darren and Angie to report 16-year-old Becky Watts as missing at around 400 p.m. The police first went about the usual questions. Did Becky run a one away? Was she under stress? Maybe she was out blowing off some steam somewhere. Well, those questions were immediately put to a stop when one of Becky's friends came forward and said that she had talked to Becky the day before and she sounded normal. She wasn't upset or contemplating running away from it all. The friend also told the investigators that she and Becky had made plans to meet up with each other the next day. The investigators then searched everywhere, open spaces, park areas, properties in Barton Hill, Southme St. George's Park and Troopers Hill Nature Reserve and even water reserves including Warf Road and Fish Ponds, Trim Valley, Baddockwood. But again, it was like the ground or sky had swallowed Becky whole and left no trace. Despite having six search teams out at all times looking for Becky or any clue about her, absolutely nothing came to light. The police as well as Becky's family made several public appeals asking for people to come forward with any information. They were desperate for answers. It had been days since Becky had gone missing and they were worried to the bone. But 2 weeks into the search, the police would discover something. And this would be a tragic and devastating turn of events in Becky's case. The investigators were already searching the area of Barton Hill, but they decided to give it one more shot. They ultimately focused on a property that was in Barton Court, about 1.3 miles away from Becky's home in St. George. And it was there that they made a horrifying discovery. The detectives found some bags hidden away in a shed, and they had a really bad feeling about what they would find in said bags. When they opened them, it was like a scene from a horror movie. Body parts mixed in among cat litter and salt were found in the bags. And since Becky was missing, the investigators as well as the community were terrified of the possibility and whatif scenarios going through their heads. When DNA tests were run on the body parts, everyone's worst nightmare came [music] true. The body belonged to 16-year-old Becky Watts, and she had been through the worst. An autopsy revealed that someone had suffocated Becky. But not only this, she'd suffered from about 15 slash wounds. Investigators were certain that this was a personal attack. The murderer using their hands as well as weapons to leave Becky's body in the state that it was found. It sounded like a very rageful and passionate crime. Someone wanted to make sure that Becky was gone for good. Well, as tragic as the discovery of Becky's body was, it also opened a new Pandora's box. See, when DNA tests were run on Becky's body, as well as everything that was found with it, the police found more traces of DNA, but it wasn't Becky's. This led the investigators to suspecting two people who were close to Becky, or at least that was until they pretended to show the world away. Truth is, a lot of things happened in those two weeks when the search for Becky was underway. [music] And I know I kind of long jumped through everything to get here, but things are about to make a lot more sense. See, when detectives were busy searching for Becky, a bunch of investigators questioned Becky's family to get the gist of what happened on the day that Becky went missing. They talked to Darren, Angie, as well as Becky's stepbrother, 28-year-old Nathan, and his girlfriend, 21-year-old Shauna. And this was the first time the investigators were highly suspicious of two people in particular, and they were Nathan and Shauna. Firstly, the last people to see Becky on February 19th weren't Angie and Darren, but Nathan and Shauna. When the investigators questioned both Shauna and Nathan, they both remembered returning to Darren and Angie's house sometime after 11:00 a.m. And while Shauna was in the kitchen washing her hands, she heard stomping on the stairs and then the sound of the front door slamming. She thought it was Becky leaving in quote a mood. Nathan gave the exact version of events and this was precisely what made the police eye them suspiciously. Both Nathan and Shauna had the exact same story. Word for word, scene for scene. No going off track even once or anything. To some people, this might not look suspicious at all, but both of their stories to be exactly the same was fishy to the police. To them, the stories seemed rehearsed, as if they practiced what they were going to say beforehand. Well, from this point on, things only got weirder. The fact that Shauna was all smiles and Nathan was uninterested and bored during the questioning also added confusion to the case. I mean, sure, Becky and Nathan weren't biologically related, but neither were Angie and Becky, but she was extremely worried and cooperative with the investigators and always asking for updates on Becky's case, whereas Nathan and Shauna couldn't be bothered. Nathan and Shauna were continuously brought in for questioning by the police. And that was when the investigators discovered something very bizarre. For the first time, Nathan and Shauna's stories didn't line up. According to Shauna, Nathan was finding it hard to cope with Becky's disappearance. But when Nathan was questioned, he said he never really liked Becky to begin with. Nathan said that she was bratty and that he didn't like how she talked to his mom, Angie. Now, we don't know the relationship between Becky and Angie, but from the looks of it, everything seemed fine. I mean, sure, not everything was perfect since it was a blended family, but there didn't seem to be any major rift between Becky and Angie that could confirm Nathan's version of events. A promising clue in Becky's disappearance was when Becky's house was searched for forensic evidence. Becky's room was swabbed, swiped, and tested for all kinds of evidence. But when they reached the door, a discovery was made. There were faint red spots on the door to Becky's room. And as you can imagine, this wasn't a good sign. The specs were taken in as evidence and were sent to the lab for testing. And some days later, tests revealed that the spots had Becky's DNA. The investigators were sure that something bad had happened to Becky in this very room, and the people behind it were most probably Shauna and Nathan. Also, remember the DNA found on the bags in which Becky's body was found? Well, the DNA belonged to none other than Shauna. Why would her DNA be on Becky's body and the bags that she was in if she didn't know what happened to her? Moreover, the detectives decided to track the movements of Nathan and Shauna after Becky went missing. And what they found was pretty much the final proof they needed. The family had some dark secrets. The investigators were able to get a hold of CCTV footage from February 19th and they discovered a great deal of things. First of all, on February 19th, the same day when Becky was last seen, Nathan and Shauna were seen buying batteries at a local Tesco. These batteries were used in stun guns. Now, you might be thinking, why did Nathan and Shauna need a stun gun? Well, hang tight because we're about to answer that question and a lot of other things for that matter. Well, on February 20th, the day after Becky went missing, Nathan was seen buying something really bizarre, a circular saw. In the days following this purchase, the couple also been seen buying cleaning products and trash bags. Disappearance, finding a dismembered body, and now a stepbrother and girlfriend are buying sketchy things. Things weren't looking good. After this incriminating discovery, the police searched the home Nathan and Shauna shared. It was the police's first time stepping foot into their home. And from the looks of it, it was a mess. And that's putting it lightly. The walls, floors, cabinets, counters, everything was overflowing with things. If investigators didn't know any better, they would think they were standing in a hoarder's den. They literally trudged through piles upon piles of junk, and they made it into the bathroom. and that was where they stopped dead in their tracks. Nothing was alarming there, per se, but the only alarming thing was how different the bathroom looked from the rest of the home. While the rest of the house looked like it had been through a hurricane in back, the bathroom looked squeaky clean, immaculately clean, like no one had ever used it, even to shower or for a bath. Even the bathtub was so white that it was blinding. But to the police, this was evidence that something terrible had happened here. And if you add in the cleaning products that the couple bought earlier, well, it's safe to assume that these bathroom walls enclosed a chilling secret. Now, Nathan was just a weird guy from the start. When his mom Angie married Darren, and Becky and Dan came along, Nathan got along with Dan, but seldom even communicated with Becky. He didn't even live with Angie and Darren. He actually lived with his grandmother and would frequently visit his mom and stepdad just from time to time. It seemed like Nathan didn't like Becky. But this next bit is truly triggering and very infuriating. But when Becky was suffering from an eating disorder and would faint because of not eating enough, Nathan would be the opposite of worried. He would criticize Becky and say that she was doing it all for attention. He passed uncalled for and mean remarks about his stepsister. Even though Becky did nothing to even provoke him, Becky was very shy and quiet, and she mostly kept to herself. Again, it didn't look like she was rude to Angie or wasn't accepting of her dad's new wife. If anything, it was Nathan who was being a petulant child, even though he was a grown man in his 20s. To make matters worse, Nathan had unusual interests. He was spotted hanging out with underage girls on more than one occasion. Darren remembered an incident when Nathan brought four young girls home with him in his car. They were a little older than 10, and Darren immediately demanded that Nathan take the girls back home. In 2008, 21-year-old Nathan introduced his family to his girlfriend, Shauna. Nathan told everyone she was 19, when in reality, Shauna was only 50. I want to point out that the age of consent in the UK is 16, so this was illegal without a shadow of a doubt. To make matters worse, Nathan and Shauna soon even had a daughter together. But if that weren't bad enough, the police were about to uncover some evidence that would take this horrible situation even further down the drain. The detectives finally made an arrest. Nathan and Shauna were arrested on March 2nd, 2015 and were charged with murder and perverting the course of justice. Ultimately, the duo was charged with conspiracy to kidnap, preventing the lawful burial of a body and possession of an illegal weapon. To make things so incredibly worse, Nathan and Shauna were also both charged with endangering children as well. Now, I can't really get into this kind of stuff in this video or it may get flagged and pulled down, but police found images of children that were not great and [music] certainly not legal. And both Nathan and Shauna were believed to have been the ones to have taken these photos of these individuals in compromising positions. [music] And I'll just leave that there. It's clear to see Nathan and Shauna were pretty much the worst of the worst. A couple days later, a written statement was released in which Nathan confessed to murdering his stepsister Becky. According to Nathan, on February 19th, he and Shauna went to Becky's home after Angie had left for her appointment. In Nathan's car, there was a bag filled with handcuffs, restraints, stun guns, masks, and other things that made up a so-called kidnap kit. Nathan confessed that once the couple reached the home, Shauna apparently went out to the garden for a smoke. And Nathan had a plan in mind. He wanted to scare Becky to quote make her behave so that she wouldn't be rude to Angie anymore. So he pulled a mask over his face, knocked on Becky's door, and entered. And that was tragically when things took a very dark turn. Out of the blue, Nathan subdued Becky with the things in his kidnap kit. And during the struggle, Becky knocked Nathan's mask off. Nathan, [music] terrified of being found out, took Becky's life on the spot with his bare hands, and he then proceeded to attack her postmortem with a sharp weapon about 15 [music] times. He then hid Becky's body in a large bag and dumped in the trunk of his car. According to Nathan, Shauna still didn't know anything at this point. What was so bizarre was that the couple lounged around the house after ending Becky's life until Angie and Darren came back. Once Nathan and Shauna left in his car, he bought all the things he needed to quote, "get Becky's body. And then he took her to the apartment and put her in the bathtub of his and Shauna's home." [music] The same bathtub that was immaculately clean. Nathan then loaded Becky's body or whatever was left of it in plastic bags and disposed of it in the shed in Barton Court. So, after the arrest, you would think that everything's out in the open, but that wouldn't be the case. See, Shauna was adamant she had nothing to do with Becky's murder and how and when Nathan disposed of her body. And even Nathan urged that he acted all alone. Well, Shauna's DNA was found on the plastic bags that contained Becky's body, as well as on Becky's body itself. So, it didn't seem like a one-man job anymore. Moreover, deleted text messages between Shauna and Nathan that took place months before Becky's tragic passing were recovered, and they were haunting. See, Nathan and Shauna were planning on abducting teenage girls and locking them in their attic to do who knows what to them. The messages showed that Shauna was a willing participant in Nathan's twisted game of hurting children. Nathan and Shauna were literally the UK version of the Kin and Barbie Killers, better known as Paul Bernardo and Carla Hulka, who also worked together to lure their victims, who also happened to be teenage girls. Shauna, similar to Carla, was making plans with Nathan on how she would abduct young girls and bring them to him for his own sick and twisted pleasure. And speaking of phones, the investigators were also able to recover bookmarked inappropriate content that involved perverted violence of teenagers. Need I say more? These two are sick people and they still have the nerve to deny everything. So, what did Shauna say in her defense when investigators presented these messages? Well, she said that the messages were sarcastic and unfortunate. [music] That's all. So, in October of 2015, almost 8 months after Becky's disappearance, Nathan and Shauna were collectively tried at Bristol Crown Court for her murder. The prosecution argued that Becky's murder was influenced by a crime of carnal nature. Nathan wasn't trying to teach Becky a lesson on treating his mom well. He deliberately attacked Becky because he was fixated on girls her age and wanted to take advantage of her in any and every way he could. The prosecution believed that Shauna was persuaded to join him in his fixation because if you remember, Shauna was also a victim of Nathan. He basically groomed her. The prosecution also rebuffed Shauna's claims of not knowing anything about Becky's murder and how Nathan carried it out all on his own because Shauna was with Nathan when Becky went missing. So her conveniently not knowing what happened to Becky was anything but convincing to the prosecution. The trial lasted for over a month and on the 11th of November 2015, the jury delivered the verdict after debating for 3 and 1/2 hours. Nathan Matthews was found guilty of murder and Shauna Horb was found guilty of manslaughter. 4 days later on November 15th, Nathan was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 33 years. and Shauna was sentenced to just 17. The reason why Shauna was given a lighter sentence is because she claimed she was forced by Nathan to do whatever they did to Becky. But if you ask me, she was still an accomplice at the end of the day. Victim or not, she didn't resist or stop what happened to Becky. So that makes her equally as guilty. Nathan and Shauna eventually exhausted all of their appeals. But Shauna was released on license in September of 2023 after serving only half of her sentence. She was released on strict license conditions and could be thrown back in jail if she breaks [music] any of the rules of her release. Becky's family, especially her biological mom, Tanya, was shocked at the news that one of her daughter's murderers was now out of [music] jail. It was nothing less than a slap in the face for the victim's family. Becky's funeral was held at St. Ambrose Church in Whiteall, Bristol on April 17th of 2015. Attendees wore white t-shirts with Becky's picture on them and pink flowers adorned her casket. Becky's favorite songs were played at the service and a white dove was also released outside of the church. This funeral was more like a celebration of Becky's life. Her family wanted to remember all the good times and memories with Becky, who lost her life in such a tragic way and had way more to look forward to than [music] her very short 16 years of life. Becky's dad, Darren, also went on to write a memoir on his daughter's life and the murder and [music] everything that affected him. It was titled Becky, the heartbreaking story of Becky Watts, but [music] it was later retitled to The Evil Within. In February of 2016, the Neighborhood Watch Partnership funded the carving of a bench in Becky's [music] memory. It's in Goats Field, which is close to her home. And on the bench are the words Becky [music] and Bristol's Angel. On the back of the bench, a unicorn is carved. Becky was a young girl who struggled a lot with mental health, [music] but was finally at a good point in her life. But then that life was taken by one of the people that she'd learned to trust the most. Someone she'd shared a home with at one point and often shared meals with. Usually I make these videos to serve as somewhat of a warning about the dangers that are out there. But sometimes cases like this, they do nothing but prove that even some of the people we hold closest may be hiding some dark demons. >> [music]