here and saying, go find it. and you miss it by an inch, you might as well have missed it by a mile because it is not that easy to find something. marshburn needed help, so several months into his very private search he added two new members to his team, an assistant named marcia ward and a specially-trained search dog with a keen sense of smell named cass. he s trained on tracking, trailing, whatever you want, what odor you want. including buried bodies. together marshburn, marcia and cass slogged through ponds, fields, forests, thousands of acres and searched for months, but no trace of kelli. i got really frustrated and disappointed, and i m at my wit s end. then came an unlikely break. in may 2013, nick holbert was released from jail after being
locked up on that parole violation. if holbert was happy, david marshburn was thrilled because now he could deal with him face-to-face. so just a day after his release marshburn pulled up to the house where holbert was staying. i dve never talked to a killer. have you? i work for dateline. oh, yeah. i take that back. what were you nervous about, that he would try to hurt you or just that the stakes are high here? sort of like a star struck, you know what i mean? you re like, wow, it is happening. marshburn took a deep breath and knocked on the door. and he answered the door, and i said, hey, nick, i m david marshburn, i m a private investigator, i m here to try to find kelli bordeaux and i think you can help me. his strategy was simple, trick holbert into thinking he was an ally. it was basically telling him,
all of this stuff going on of what he done. do you think he s finally going to reveal to you? oh, i know he is. this is it? oh, yeah, this is it. i had chills. marshburn then applied one last bit of pressure, his own ticking clock of sorts to push holbert over the edge. i pick up a stick, i figure if i sit there and snap it, it would ring in his mind, hey, i m on a time limit, the clock is ticking. i started snapping the twigs off it. finally i got to the last pieces off of it and he said something like, okay, i m ready. ready to confess, finally after a year-long cat and mouse game, holbert revealed to marshburn that he killed kelli bordeaux. they got back in the van and holbert directed marshburn to a remote area where he remembered burying the body. and then he said, right
overwhelmed with emotion. at that time, i said, you re going home, baby girl. you re going home, baby girl. i m sorry, i get emotional. had you even seen her yet? hmm-mh. you just knew? we just knew. but they had to be sure. so then the grim task of digging began. we find a little piece of a jacket. when we pulled that jacket back, that s when he stopped. we said, this is her. this is it. throughout the day, marshburn had been texting fayetteville police about her progress. now, minutes after sending kelli s body, he sent them something definitive and dreadful. a photo of what appears to be a human bone. a place he s digging. and at that time, he contacted him and said, hay, cease and desist on digging. don t do nothing else. police rushed to the scene
everybody rise, please. just over a a measure of justice. are you, in fact, guilty of each of these crimes? yes, i am. facing the possibility of the death penalty, nick hoblert pleaded guilty to kidnapping and killing kelli in exchange for a life sentence. i wanted my sister. i didn t want her body, i wanted her. so what happens to nicholas hoblert isn t going to change what he s done. whether he says he s sorry, whether it doesn t matter. for david marshburn, his remarkable work was done. case closed, justice served. kelli bordeaux was finally home. but he says solving her case left him with mixed emotions. once we got finished, we were depressed. it was a depression like you would not believe. because we went from two years, nonstop, kelli, kelli, kelli, kellie.