did the shooting. and what tower near the murder scene had the phone pinged off? we had tons of, and i m not exaggerating, thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of phone calls that hit all these various towers. reporter: in that electronic haystack, a sharp-eyed cop noticed a call around the time they believed brandy was killed. it was made from a number with a 310 area code. now normally that s southern california. the county lawmen traced that 310 number back to an anonymous disposable phone, a burner purchased in zanesville a week before brandy died. i get the call records for the 310 area phone, and start combing through those. he only called two people a second burner phone and josh daniels. those were the only two. reporter: was this their breakthrough? that burner phone, at the right time, right place, had called josh s phone in alaska. then the phone techs did another extraction of josh s phone, and they retrieved something josh thought he d deleted.
cops had her downtown the same day as sirius. i just wanna let you know, you re not under arrest, okay? reporter: detective ryan asked about the night of the murder. he used wendy s texts with sirius to refresh her memory. could you put it here so we both could see? oh, yeah. may 5th. reporter: did wendy s texts that night fit in the timeline they were building of brandy s murder? and did they speak to sirius whereabouts? at 11:00, when you type these, you were sure he was not in the house at 11:00? at 11:00, he was not at your house? he was not in my house then. reporter: sirius arrived, wendy said, after that 11:00 text. sirius had given the cops wendy as his alibi and she d inadvertently only made him someone detectives needed to take a closer look it. there s a window of opportunity in there in which he could easily have done this crime. yes. reporter: and there was another thing, the squad s phone
huh? well, at that point, anybody close to brandy, we need to take a real hard, serious look at. reporter: within hours of brandy s death, craig got the third-degree. were they asking you hard questions? where have you been? what are you doin ? did you think, wow, they think i m a suspect here? oh, yeah. well, that s common, right. until you re in it and then there s a cop right in your grill. right. they asked for my cell phone. i handed it over right then. how long did that last? i got home at 5:30 that morning. reporter: then the legwork of the investigation began in earnest. starting with where she was last seen alive. so you re talkin to your victim s coworkers. what s the picture coming together there? they all described brandy as a very good young lady. a devoted mother in a marriage that she really wanted to get out of. reporter: patrol officers traced the route from kohl s to the murder scene, hoping they d find a security cam that recorded brandy
couldn t tie the two of them together despite some suspicious phone traffic between the pair. an additional difficulty in the investigation was the fact that josh was still living in alaska, about as far away as you could get from ohio and still be in the same country. josh daniels was here starting his new chapter, living in wasilla about an hour outside of anchorage with his mother and step-father. keeping tabs on him from thousands of miles away were the zanesville police, and they were seeing some patterns. when he wasn t working a job in the north slope oil fields, he was partying, pumping iron and chasing women. back in zanesville, meanwhile, the cops kept the pressure up on the person they did have in their zip code, sirius underwood. the detectives were all over his girlfriend wendy. every time that i had a little spat or whatever i was frustrated or disgusted with sirius, they would always show up, again, just wondered if maybe you remembered something. trying to find yo
my sister is in my driveway and her head is bloody. reporter: so you bury your girl. and then it s a murder te investigation? yep.ig reporter: there were two people brandy feared. one in town. she thought she was being followed. reporter: one thousands of ow miles away.r: josh was still in alaska.ay reporter: and then there was the new man in her life. anybody close to brandy, we need to take a real hard, r: serious look at. reporter: no fingerprints. no dna.r: and no arrests, for years. reporter: you re grieving, how do you put all that awful time together, molly? day by day. reporter: then hints emerge of someone s dark past. you ve got robberies going on, the homicide.go reporter: and one brave woman willing to talk. he told me the same that happened to brandy would happen to me.ld reporter: the question wasn t just who murdered a young m mother.st it was why? there was no money.hy there just wasn t a reason to do it. she didn t hurt nobody. she