and this is dateline. this doesn t happen in our happy little world. their world shattered, a young mother strangled. we had a homicide and no lso no evidence. but police found a dark side behind that bright suburban facade. she slept with the children and the door locked. and finally a vital clue. what happened to nancy the day she disappeared? welcome to dateline. a young mother disappeared one her husband said she went for a run and never came home. the puzzling case happened in a safe, suburban neighborhood where crime is unexpected. but sometimes there are secrets hidden behind closed. nothing about that morning made any sense. it seems like such a bad nightmare. this doesn t happen our happy little world. it was a saturday morning in july 2008. the happy total world of sweet and leafy suburb of raleigh north carolina, called carry. the sort of place a young family would aspire to. if you are someone like hannah pritchard, for example. there s always l
also no evidence. but police found a dark side behind that bright suburban facade. she slept with the children and the door locked. and finally a vital clue. what happened to nancy the day she disappeared? welcome to dateline. a young mother disappeared one her husband said she went for a run and never came home. the puzzling case happened in a safe, suburban neighborhood where crime is unexpected. but sometimes there are secrets hidden behind closed. it all seemed like such a bad . it. . at reporter: it was a saturday morning in july. the happy little world suburb of raleigh, north carolina, called cary, a place where a young family would aspire to if you were someone like hanna pritchard, for example. there s always lots of friend making going on through someone you meet. lots of cookouts and family functions. reporter: like the one in the neighborhood the night before. so hanna would have heard party stories that saturday morning from her friend nancy co
phone. then, the day after nancy s body was identified, her family went to court to try to get those two little girls away from brad. by 4:00 in the afternoon, we had papers in the judge s hand for temporary custody of nancy s children. the family acted so fast because according to their complaint, brad s behavior was so disturbing before she disappeared, they had seen emotional abuse. and they were sure she never went jogging on july 12. then after she went missing? he was very stunned, aloof with the family and didn t contact anybody and he just didn t want anybody around, didn t want any help, and it was strange enough to be alarming. reporter: and so they fear for bela and katie s safety. did you think they were in danger too? if he was a place to do this, that you ve been hard to those kids, the answer to that was absolutely. at the end of the day you have to live with the fact that if we re wrong, then this is
to north carolina. she was a little apprehensive. there was lots of tears at the airport, fear of the unknown, but i think she was excited. reporter: a few years later there were two bmws in the driveway, nancy a vast circle of friends and brad a bright future at cisco where he d become an expert in the marriage of internet technology and telephones. best of all, two little girls, bela born in 2004, katie two years later. the best mother i ve ever seen. she played and played and played. she was so hands on. reporter: and now, they were putting up missing posters. sunday went by, all day monday, monday someone called 911. the chief of the cary police department it is my very sad duty to tell you that the search for our nancy is over. reporter: it was a man walking his dog who found her. lying face down in water at the edge of a storm drain near a
didn t want anybody around, didn t want any help. it was strange enough to be alarming. reporter: and so they fear for bela and katie s safety. did you think they were in danger too? if she was a place to do this, the answer to that was absolutely. are we sure that this happened? at the end of the day you have to live with the fact that if we re wrong, then this is way over the line. we did it for the right reason. as a family we decided, we re going to take that step over the line. reporter: there was an emergency hearing, and the judge determined that the intense scrutiny brad was likely to face