dateline. bree carlson was a force of nature. enthusiastic, spirited, beautiful. behind the radiant glow, she hid a darkness. for awhile marie drifted. then a pastor and his wife welcomed her into their lives. it was a spiritual awakening, which made marie s sudden disappearance all the more mysterious. it would take a detective with a special bond and some divine intervention to find out what happened tote marie. here s keith morrison with secrets on the emerald coast. reporter: how do you catch a dancing sprite? do you put her in a bottle? can you package the joy she brings? can you keep it when she goes? she was like a gravitational pull. reporter: her name was marie. marie carlson. she was magnetic. reporter: when she was happy she could make the whole world r sing. live life to the fullest, isu what marie would tell me. you know, you might not have tomorrow. reporter: and so she offered herself, her goodness.sh
when she woke up, and then went out for a run. and when he returned marie and her white mazda pickup truck were gone. strangely, the flanders said, marie had packed her bags, but didn t take them. why would she take off and not take her bags with her? reporter: anyway, said the flanders, when she didn t come back that day or the next, they drove around town looking for her. went to the airport. maybe she d parked her car there and flown away. reporter: did they find it? they did. james says that he finds it in long-term parking. reporter: at least part of the mystery was solved, said the pastor. she must have flown off to visit someone. they took her pickup home. so the mazza. what did you do about that car when you got your hands on it? we searched it. but it was you know, there was nothing to search. it was clean. reporter: they went to the airport. we checked the airlines. there s nothing. she didn t fly out.
be connected with her, there it s my fault. i m sure it s the way people would look at it, it s james. do you know where marie is? no, i do not. if i did, i would go get her. did you kill marie carlson? no. reporter: and that was that. they were stalled. marie was missing. and the case was getting very cold. coming up, new revelations from the pastor. they were sending pornographic photos back and forth from the church. and an answer at last to the biggest mystery of all. where was marie? nesli passed me a note that said, i missed her. i was pretty devastated. the guilt. the feeling of, i could have found her six months after she was reported missing. when dateline continues.
and it came directly from marie when she came to visit jeff shortly after she got pregnant. i put my hand on her stomach. and i said, what s what s going on with this? and she wasn t really showing. and her story at that time was, well, i m just being a surrogate for james and tanya. so we did basically the a type of artificial insemination. reporter: well, well, well, the pastor was the sperm donor. in this new story, marie s gift was to be the pastor s artificially inseminated surrogate. but why the conflicting stories? to find out, the detectives consulted three special church ladies, tanya flanders closest confidants. did you have a name for this group? we called them the inner circle. reporter: and the inner circle said yes, tanya told them. but swore them to secrecy. but then tanya gave up a little more. the method was very homemade. i remember them saying, oh, it was with the turkey
reporter: though look at this. marie shot this video that did survive. showing the pastor hawking gold and silver online, apparently while running the church. valuing this coin at over $500. lemme tell you, that s exciting stuff. reporter: was james just a pastor? or part time flim-flam man? so this is where things stood when an anonymous tip came in. crimestoppers. reporter: startling. if true, it would solve the case. and in the tip, it says that james buried her in the backyard. reporter: that s some tip. yeah. i can remember getting that tip and thinking, no way. like, who would who would kill somebody and bury them in their own backyard? reporter: could be bogus, of course. just another false lead. but nesli was hopeful. we brought cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar and we didn t find anything. reporter: nothing? nothing. reporter: no body. so what happened to marie? more months went by.