his mom mona was going through a difficult divorce. and financial troubles. she, cody and cody s young sister lindsey, moved in with their good friends trish and lou at the apartment complex. i remember lou taking us to baseball practice. my sister and lou taking her home from school in south like. that his mom and trish took turns cooking for what was the beginnings of the common. so you really an extended family? pretty much. i looked at lou and trish as an uncle. so when trish and lou decided want to pick up six and moved to south dakota, mona decided she wanted to go to and take cody and his sister along as. well i ll never forget it, it is just like yesterday. and i told her, no i m not leaving. and i had gotten extremely upset. the very thought of being so far away from his dad was too much for codi. what does she say, yes you are, you re going to go with us? no she let me make that decision. she would ve not wanted me to do something i didn t want to do. so, a la
how did you find out about the plane? my dad had called me inside, and he just looked at me. and i knew something wasn t right. and then he just told me, hey, your mom and sister have been missing. reporter: your dad must have been all ripped up, huh? there s nothing you can say. i mean he didn t there was no way that he could explain to his son that his sister and mom are gone. reporter: and imagine you hope that somebody s crawled out of the wreckage and they ve got some food and water and they re in a little tent waiting for search and rescue to find them but that s the only thing i could pray for. reporter: as cody was praying for a miracle, mona s sister lisa also got a phone call, from another sister. and she s crying hysterically. and she said that mona and lindsey had left on a plane, and the plane had never reached its destination. and they didn t know where it
mona and cody s younger sister lindsey ended up leaving corpus christi and settled near rapid city, south dakota, where, one christmas, cody paid them a visit. it was an extremely small home. it was like in the mountains. we even went and cut our own christmas tree. reporter: off the grid kind of a cabin place? yeah. reporter: the cabin was a tight-squeeze for sure, but the family commune was growing. it was here that trish met and married brian, the auto mechanic, and they had a daughter. mona, cody s mom, had also found a boyfriend, a rapid city realtor and experienced private plane pilot. you were okay with that, huh? oh, yeah. i wanted my mom to be happy. and, you know, i looked forward to meeting him. reporter: did you ever meet him? no. reporter: one friday in february of 2001, mona and her boyfriend decided to take daughter lindsey on an exciting birthday trip to nebraska. exciting because mona s boyfriend would fly them there himself. they took off from rapid city
was. reporter: mona s boyfriend hadn t filed a flight plan, so the plane could be anywhere. rugged territory. correct. up in the badlands area, we assume, or nebraska. we really had no clue. reporter: but in south dakota, lou castro, a former navy plane mechanic, was on it. when lisa paid a short visit to try to help find her sister and niece, lou was in constant touch with search and rescue. a huge comfort. soft spoken, nice, funny, friendly. he seemed very concerned. very, very distraught over mona and lindsey s disappearance. and very helpful. i mean, he was very gracious in whatever we wanted. reporter: so it s thank goodness we have lou at the helm here, huh? exactly. you know, he didn t work. so he seemed to have plenty of time. he seemed to know everybody. they knew him.
five so far. money in a, her boyfriend and daughter lindsey perished in the plane crash, trish in the pool and now brian had been crushed under a car he was working on. while all of the deaths were deemed to be accidents really he wondered how could any family be so unlucky? what baffled him most is he didn t know who the central man, lou castro, really was. rifling through angels landing trash cans hadn t worked. what do you do next? one day when i was out on a day off i just happened to see lou castro with a female in an suv vehicle. i followed them to a restaurant on the north end of town. goodwyn sat in the restaurant, watched and waited. after they finished, i contacted the manager and asked if i could collect the dishes and glasses they had used at that table. reporter: the idea was to get fresh fingerprints that could