dawn and james both. we were finding reasons to take them to jail. reporter: and while they had james, they asked him pointblank about the murder of ben oxley. did i kill ben? no. do i know who kill ben? no. did dawn kill ben? no. do i know anything about the murder? no. were you and dawn involved in any way in the planning of the murder of ben? no. i m looking you in your eyes. i did not kill him. reporter: but that was it. lots of denials. no real evidence. a year and a half had gone by since the murder. it was the summer of 2009. on to cold case territory. getting there. reporter: then one afternoon, as detective elgis was recovering from a night on the graveyard shift, his cell phone rang. it was dawn oxley. she basically said she couldn t take it anymore and she wanted to talk. what were you thinking on the way to see her? it s about time. reporter: the detective drove over to dawn s house.
and probably have so many, have told moments, generally that and you laugh, generally he had just had a wonderful sense of humor and was able to even in briefest of interactions, portray some of that humor that he very much probably needed to get through the remarkable life that he led. he had a fantastic sense of humor. as the congresswoman said, it could be sharp. i love john mccain, it is like loving loving a porcupine, he would jab you at every juncture. one of my favorite moments, after the campaign i was doing a television show on competing network and got irritated with the other person on the show and sort of lost my temper on the air, it wasn t the best moment. i got off the set and my cell phone rang and it was john mccain, you need to learn to control your temper and just started laughing. you brought up something at the beginning of this interview, you talked about john mccain,
she introduced me to him as her friend, not her boyfriend. what was he like? he was just a nice, goofy kid. i mean, they were joking and making jokes and laughing and having a good time. and you could tell she liked him. she would blush and kinda giggle, and reporter: really? you hadn t seen that from her before? not like that, no. reporter: it was a fellow art student, chris phillips, who saw them as a couple. she was exactly in the same vein as nathan, you know. they were both artists. they both loved to draw. they both kind of kept to themselves. you know, they were pretty quiet. reporter: and then one terrible day chris heard that a female art student had been killed somehow over at the falls apartment complex. so, said chris, he and nathan and a few others piled into his car and headed over there to see if they could find out what happened. on the way, chris s cell phone rang. it was a friend named jeremi. who told them it was shelley who was dead.
this was a kidnapping. they scrambled to set up a recording system. they told lor ren da amanda was likely taken by islamic rebels. the phone kept ringing. it was the kidnappers. they had amanda and her friend nigel. the ransom, 1.5 million for each of them. the negotiators told her as hard as it would be every time she answered the phone she had to stay calm. so the next morning right before noon actually my cell phone rang and it was adam who was negotiator for the kidnappers. hello. hello. when he called on day for he had a surprise. okay, lorenda, talk to your daughter. amanda? mom? amanda, i love you, sweet heart. that call was the first proof that amanda was still alive.
themselves. you know, they were pretty quiet. reporter: and then one terrible day chris heard that a female art student had been killed somehow over at the falls apartment complex. so, said chris, he and nathan and a few others piled into his car and headed over there to see if they could find out what happened. on the way, chris s cell phone rang. it was a friend named jeremi. who told them it was shelley who was dead. i hear those words and i look at nathan and it s you know, it s one of those defining moments in your life where it s, like, what what happens now? did you hand him the phone or did you tell him yourself? no, i told i told jeremi that he needs to tell him, you know, so i handed him my phone. and you know his [ sigh ] you know, you kind of see this sudden shift of emotion going from worry to absolute just i