police ignored those possible sightings of nancy and those mysterious vans for months. >> the defense was thinking that the jury wasn't listening. the police indicated that they followed up with every one of those people. >> as for john pearson, whose indiscretion with nancy should have made him a suspect, at least according to the defense, he had an alibi. on that friday night pearson spent the night with heather. the very same woman behind brad and nancy's breakup. >> at the beginning of the tapes -- >> still, as the long trial finally wound down, the defense hammered home its claim that the police and prosecution bought in to a whispering campaign by nancy's friends against brad. >> it made it easier for them to simply let the gossip about brad become their reality even when the facts and the evidence did not fit it. and now, the police department and the prosecutors are willing to send an innocent man to rot in a dungeon in essence for the rest of his life.