living out the dream of owning her own island. but then last spring, she vanished. i imagine you were calling? calling. leaving messages? texting, facebooking. and then i started reading her facebook. and it s, like, cher, where are you? people who were in panama, in bocas, haven t seen you around town, where you at, gimme a call. and we started wondering. reporter: when cher s husband keith realized she d left town, he was surprised. but he thought he might know why. cher had been talking about spending time in panama city. a place where she could blend into the scenery more easily, and wrap her head around their breakup. she told me she wanted to have an apartment in panama city and just spend some time in the city and get out of bocas. cause it was such a small community and she was getting a little tired of it? yeah, you just keep bumping into the same people, having to tell the same story. and she was just ready for a little break of bocas. it s not unusual
off, leading them on a high speed chase before escaping. it seems it was only after he moved to panama that dathan s scams took a sinister turn. the change was he killed people to get the documentation in order to take over the property. reporter: and not only was he stealing their property, he would steal everything in the house cars, boats, right down to the toothbrush and the underwear and their dogs. he took on their entire lives? yeah, right down to the change in their pocket. reporter: four years after fleeing from the states, wild bill was finally in police custody, charged with heinous crimes the murders of bo icelar and cher hughes. there are dozens, if not a hundred people in this town, in bocas, that all knew cher, that all knew bo, and they re all thinking, wow, man, this guy fooled us all. he fooled everybody. reporter: he got away with murder. he got away with it for awhile. yeah. reporter: little did everyone know that wild bill had actually gotten
reporter: back in the us, cher s sister judy learned the devastating news. i was in hysterics for hours. i just paced the floor and just kept saying, no, no, no. it s not true. it s not. reporter: but the horror wasn t over. as police continued searching bill s property, they discovered another mound of disturbed dirt another shallow grave. and there, buried beneath more rubble, the body of bo icelar the other missing american. when they found the bodies, that s when//they realized that it s not just people with suspicions and making accusations. it s all it s really happening. reporter: keith watched as authorities raided bill s home. he says they found evidence of the ghastly crimes bo s id, cher s passport, her purse, and her cell phone, from which she d allegedly sent those text messages, saying she d simply gone for a sail. and there was more nazi memorabilia, strange satanic signs, jewelry that may have belonged to the victims. and the most gruesome discover
they got the drop on him with machine guns and basically said, halt or die. and he stopped. he gave himself up. reporter: the end of the line. that was the first time he had ever had handcuffs on in his life. reporter: it was also the first time anyone on the island heard wild bill s real name my name is william dathan holbert. reporter: fun loving bocas del toro bartender wild bill cortez was in fact, william dathan holbert a 30-year-old who d been on the run from american authorities since 2006. as the islanders absorbed the headlines of a killer among them, they discovered that wild bill had a long and notorious past that stretched nearly 2,000 miles. from the white sand beaches of bocas del toro all the way to the blue ridge mountains of north carolina. that s where he grew up, going by his middle name dathan. he played high school football. married his sweetheart, had three kids, and worked as a landscaper. his old boss at a gym, kevin hoover, liked dathan un
his employees and hoover says, embezzled $25,000 from the gym s accounts. he had told me he had thought that was part of his his pay, his package. and i said, no, dathan, it s not part of your package. reporter: and that was just the beginning. dathan left the job and his wife. he ran off with laura michele reese, who d later be known as jane cortez in bocas. in 2005, police say dathan started in on his real estate scams. he sold a home that wasn t his for $200,000. police charged him with obtaining property under false pretenses. by the time the owner realized what had happened, dathan was on the run. that landed him on the television program america s most wanted. cops in north carolina say reporter: somewhere along the line, police say dathan sold a stolen car in montana, and when cops pulled him over for speeding in wyoming, he took