Transcripts for MSNBC Dateline 20211106 08:12:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
yeah. but it even made me feel more nervous that it was by 95 because i m like she we re looking around here and she possibly could be somewhere else. reporter: after several days of searching the rv park, there was no sign of danielle, and no sign of her cell phone that last pinged by the highway. both could be anywhere. 95 is different than a county road. she could ve been five states away at that point. absolutely. absolutely. i mean, on i-95 an hour either way and you re in a different state and a few hours and you re in a different region of the country. reporter: a bad, bad feeling in the pit of her stomach gnawed away at chena. and we re kind of like well something bad has i felt something bad has happened. reporter: the news may not be good, but danielle s mother still held out hope she would one day see her alive again. i said, i m not leaving until i find my child. reporter: and that day might come sooner than anyone thought. and just when all seemed lost,
miles away. that night, but at 10:40 pm it suddenly started pinging off a tower miles away. the phone, and presumably danielle, were on the move. we get a pin drop that pretty much puts it on i-95, but in that pin out is a certain amount of area that the phone could be in. so helpful as phones are, it doesn t give you x marks the spot. reporter: not in this case. the last ping came from that spot near the highway. a worry in itself because i-95 is a big ribbon of opportunities from miami to the state of maine. was danielle a runaway? had she been abducted? no one knew, but the records did give investigators a direction to go in because within that area was derek s house. police interviewers brought this information to derek s attention. we know where danielle s phone was, okay? what area her phone was. it s out there around your house was she alive when she left that area out there around your house on tuesday night? i have no idea, i didn t see her. you re saying she was
yeah. really he was just a really soft-hearted guy. he would always be there for anybody who needed him. reporter: in the end police couldn t find any electronic trail linking derek to danielle. detectives latest lead had fizzled out, and with no explanation for that word, help that chena found scrawled at the creek, they were down to their two main clues. so you got the sock on the trail, and you got a phone out at 95, more questions than answers. danielle s last cell phone ping was miles away from her neighborhood. we can see that she s moving in a fairly quick fashion, faster than a person could walk. the story told by the phone is, i m in a car. yeah. reporter: had she been abducted, grabbed by a person or persons unknown? the stranger-danger abduction theory was gaining traction with both the police and danielle s peers. a lot of girls at the high school were scared of like walking around you know in their neighborhoods and stuff at night now. reporter: and
reporter: word that danielle s body had been found was tearing through south view high school. somebody messaged me. i can t remember who it was. and they told me, turn on the news. and i turned on the news, and they were it was, like, the video of them pulling the body out. and i called my mom s work and i was crying on the phone. i was just begging her to come home. reporter: danielle s family, too, was trying to come to grips with her death. her grandfather, who d let danielle leave that night, was plagued by guilt. so was her grandma kelly. i feel like i failed. i failed my granddaughter by not being there for her when this happened. reporter: the discovery of danielle s body had started the mourning process for her family. but it was also a turning point for detectives. because danielle knew someone who lived just down the road from the river where her body