in this college town she wasn t the only one. he said that he would go to jail for murder before he d ever go to jail for rape. what is going through your mind? i wish i had told all the people that i loved, you know, that i loved them. but was their private horror connected to a very public mystery? everyone s saying, what is going on in this community it just had people asking what s gonna happen next. more women connected by tragedy and by questions. could a killer have been stopped sooner? i was so angry that two people had to die in order for someone to believe me. the story begins in a small texas town. but it s not just any town. this is college station, home to texas a&m, and in 1999, the home to 21 year old student jamie hart. i was immediately struck with her beauty. chuck crews was her boyfriend at the time. he says jamie was the light of his life. he remembers when he
troubling to me that what were we missing? what part of the story did we not have? did the detectives say something that made them think, maybe it was consensual? he was still facing the misdemeanor charge of unlawful restraint scheduled to go to court down the road. in the meantime, he was a free man. he s out walking around. he s out walking around. in the next town over, detectives at the brazos county sheriff s office were still working the jamie hart murder case in addition to keeping an eye on jamie s boyfriend chuck, they say they followed up on hundreds of other leads and tips. but no one in that department looked at kristin s case for a possible connection. you were sexually assaulted. jamie hart was sexually assaulted. did you start to think that these could be connected? i didn t think they were connected. and that was primarily because, with jamie there was a boyfriend that may have been involved. it was a romantic relationship that went wrong. it wasn t some ran
been sexually assaulted and left to die on the side of a busy roadway. i could barely function. i i all i could think about was loss, that she s gone from my life forever. jamie s boyfriend, chuck cruz, then 24, says right after the murder he took off to baytown, texas, jamie s hometown. about the only thing i remember her father asking me is, when are you coming down? so i got some stuff together and drove down as soon as i could. and i spent most of the next week with them, mourning with the family. and then acting as a pallbearer for her funeral.
taken up running had a new boyfriend. and though kristin hoped the pain of that horrible night was behind her for good. it wasn t. and there s police tape everywhere. may 28 2000. kristin had just arrived to visit friends at an apartment complex. there was no reason, not then anyway, to think her case was connected to the scene unfolding there. police cars and ambulances and all kinds of, you know, vehicles, like, emergency response vehicles everywhere. and now the sight of police tape sent memories rushing back. it was just, you know, fear. firefighter leon moore had arrived at the apartment early that morning, after a neighbor reported smoke in one of the units. the bedroom door was open and we could see some flames. they were on the carpet so we had a water extinguisher that we used and and put the small fire out. there on the floor a body we backed out and made sure that we preserved as much evidence as we could. he sensed foul play not just a fire. and call
communicated with the da about possibly convening a grand jury. chuck and his lawyer spoke to the detective on many occasions. and the detective continued to think chuck s behavior was suspicious. and he still seemed nervous. cid you ever think that maybe the reason that chuck cruz was acting this way was that you guys were coming down pretty hard on him and he s lost his girlfriend. i mean, is this a way to act? i don t know, but he had he had several things goin against him, and we just couldn t walk away from him. we either had to prove that he did it, or prove that he didn t do it. but chuck says he should have been cleared almost right away. so even though the dna didn t match there was no match. but they insisted on targeting me as the prime suspect. they were trying to build a case that wasn t there. while chuck s life had been on hold for a year kristin was starting to feel like her old self again. in the six months since her attack she d