significant so the case went back into the file and got colder. mike took over the house painting business from carol s dad and went on to marry carrie and have two more sons. gayle and terry raised their own families and it was having babies that started to change terry s way of looking at her sister s disappearance. as unhappy as you might be in your life, you might leave your husband. you d take your kids with you. and you began to suspect that she wouldn t leave her children. uh-huh. what did that mean to you? that something happened to her. in 1996, 15 years since they d heard from carol, the police came around again. this time they scanned the lubon s backyard with ground-penetrating radar. even dug up the ground. didn t find a thing. funny thing, though, about four
welcome back. detective walt delsigne could not let go of the carol lubon cold case. after the california mom disappeared, police found no evidence of a crime. but over the years, carol s husband mike had made a few slight changes to his story about the night his wife vanished. now the detective was determined to dig into those inconsistencies. and mike was about to share a chilling new detail. what he told investigators would send the case into overdrive. here s keith morrison. for eight years, torrance police detective walt delsigne worried away at the carol lubon file, drawn by an irresistible hunch, that this young mother did not day peer voluntarily. but actual evidence of a crime? just wasn t any. so finally in 2010, 29 years
issues all came to her defense. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline extra. i m craig melvin. detectives investigating the disappearance of carol lubon were convinced she had been murdered. leaning hard on her husband mike, they believe he was on the verge of confessing. but then he stopped talking. with no hard evidence of a crime, the investigation ground to a halt. but time proved to be their ally. facebook, which did not exist when carol vanished, was about to play a crucial role in the case. here s keith morrison. the deputy da john lewin and the torrance police department cold case team believed mike lubon killed his wife carol back in 1981. but they had one big problem.
gayle. she would have not taken all of it. that was in carol s personality to just be very fair. made sense then? uh-huh. and then there were those mysterious phone calls. we d get the calls on special days. her birthday, my birthday. my grandmother. we d get calls. and just silence on the other end? yeah. what would you do? we d say, carol, we love you. we hope you come back. we felt like she was finding a happier life somewhere. and understood that to make that successful she might have to make a complete and total break? yeah. almost three months after carol vanished, the detective handling her case put it in the inactive file in his report he wrote, no foul play involved. i remember thinking about her all the time and i used to play records over and over that she liked. and just thinking, where is she? when is she coming back? eventually, mike started dating a 19-year-old names
shortly after his second wife left him. he talked about my stepmother constantly for years. was nonstop. and why was that so significant to you? because he never talked about my mother. at all? never. but mike never confronted his father. i just knew in the back of my mind that this could be a possibility. and i really, honestly, at that time, i never wanted my father to go to jail. i just wanted to know. it was so important to me to know the truth behind that evening. to get the truth, and avoid a trial, prosecutor john lewin was willing to make a deal. we had offered him voluntary manslaughter if he gave us carol s body. and he turned you down flat? he did. repeatedly. mike pleaded not guilty. the case was going to trial. and if members of carol s own family didn t believe mike did it, what would a jury think?