but memories don t increase in details over the years, and they don t increase in different details. and that s a sign of what we call a lie. his version of what happened from the start made no sense to any of us. and why would mike lie? to the cold case team it seemed obvious. he killed her that night. she stopped living that night. everything else that s going that doesn t make sense is all because it s a lie. if you know it s a lie, then it all lines up. remarkably mike continued to talk to them three more times of his own free will. very friendly, without an attorney. he even let the prosecutor take a crack at him. if you were me, if you were in my position, tell me what you would think. probably what you re thinking. which is? that i did it. well, mike, i can tell you, sometimes you know the kind of murder cases we get, we get cases where the husband finds
they finally knew that carol was dead and he, their sweet mike, killed her. but the whole truth, was it actually out there somewhere? and so on that cold and foggy january day, mike, surrounded by cops and lawyers, floated out into the mist to find carol. to find whatever was left. if they find the cinder block in the ocean after the search, they find that, that will give me half of the closure i need. reporter: she didn t get it, because after the boat ride, mike admitted his ocean tale was one more lie. and perhaps it was finally for the sake of his son. the son who never abandoned him, that he finally passed a polygraph and led investigators to the place he now says mike s mother has been all these many years. police hope to eventually no
different. he remembered that on that terrible morning when carol left, he heard the garage door go up before she drove away. just one more little detail, though nothing profoundly different. and of course no evidence whatsoever of any crime. police went away again. and then one day in 2002, a detective named walt delsigne was rummaging through some cabinets behind his sergeant s desk. i was just being nosy. i thought what was this. reporter: it was the carol lubahn case folder. over 20 years old and as cold as they come. i thought this is interesting. i wonder if this lady is still missing. reporter: of course she was. so again he read through the police reports. couldn t help notice the subtle changes in mike s story. and i thought that was kind of strange, because i wouldn t think that you would forget the last time you saw your wife. reporter: so he went to see
reporter: mike stepped up and married her after the baby was born. he was a good father. he seemed to enjoy his kids. reporter: enjoyed carol s family too. especially her dad, milt. mike became like his son. reporter: milt brought young mike into the family house painting business. he just took to him immediately. everybody felt that way about reporter: friendly, loyal, but not exactly ambitious. he didn t seem to mind at all settling down to a modest existence, them and the two kids all cramped up in a two bedroom, one bathhouse in torrance. but carol did mind it very much. i think she may have outgrown reporter: she had a secret affair by then. maybe more than one. she got herself a cute little red car, an audi fox, ordered personalized plates. the car is long gone now, so we did this one up to look just like it. and quite often, she d get in her little car alone and go roaring off to school or to meat markets, like the local red
mike took over the house painting business from carol s dad and went on to marry carrie and have two more sons. gail and terri raised their own families and it was having babies started to change terri s way of looking at her sister s disappearance. as unhappy as you might be in your life, you might leave your husband, you would take your kids with you. and so when you began to suspect that she wouldn t leave her children, what did that mean to you? that something happened to her. reporter: in 1996, 15 years since they had heard from carol, the police came around again. this time they scanned the lubahn s background with ground-penetrating radar, even dug up the ground. didn t find a thing. funny thing, though. about four months later, the local paper did a little story, interviewed mike, and this time his memory was slightly