agree? here with more of our story is keith morrison. they kept pushing and pushing and we kept sitting back. prosecutor larry crouch told his investigators he would not charge dave hawk with the murder of his ex-wife debbie, even after it was obvious this popular single mother had been murdered, even after months of searching around hanford, california, turned up no sign of her anywhere and police convinced themselves dave was responsible. prosecutor crouch would not budge. not yet, anyway. we re going to wait until we find the body or give the body more time to come up. instead, a year after debbie vanished, dave was charged with embezzling, stealing more than $300,000 from his own children s trust funds. he pleaded not guilty, was released on bail. dave, how does it feel to be out of jail? and waited for the other shoe to drop.
apparently because none of these things are true. a guilty man or not? the jury did not take very long to decide. we, the jury, find the defendant, david martin hawk, guilty of the murder of debbie hawk. guilty of murder and nine financial crimes. dave hawk was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. but was that the end of this story? not in the least. his defense attorney appealed the case as high as he could, even trying the supreme court, which declined review. then in march, 2016, ten years after debbie hawk disappeared, a farm hand found her remains in a field in the neighboring town where dave grew up. debbie s father, bud, had a dying wish that she be found before he passed away. he left this earth just a week after that discovery. and the children who held opposing views about their
friend, if i was a bad guy, i would throw somebody off a bridge. my point was they haven t looked for her. if someone had thrown her off a bridge it would have floated downstream. they didn t look anywhere. so did you throw her off the bridge. no. i didn t throw anybody off a bridge. they made a huge deal about something he supposedly said to his girlfriend about dave. dave said we won t be rid of that f ing bitch until he is she is dead. i might have. i don t that. that doesn t mean i m going to go kill somebody. then there was his own son conrad who, after all, believed he was guilty. and told police he saw dave and mary share a celebratory toast after debbie s disappearance.
it was a frustrating summer back in 2006 here in the farmlands of california s central valley. the purple ribbon search teams came up empty though they looked everywhere for weeks. police named dave hawk a person of interest. he seemed to have an alibi. all three kids were with him in his house the night debbie vanished. and besides there wasn t a shred of physical evidence to tie dave to the scene of an apparently violent abduction. his own daughter who spent the day after the abduction with dave told police it couldn t be him. i don t believe he would be capable of doing something like this. then they started poking before debbie disappeared dave dave asked the court for a debbie asked the court for more time with the children. his response was to ask for half custody. the percentages were 65 with debbie and 35 with dave. he wanted to make it an even 50-50. and that is when the battle moved to these, trust funds set up for the childrens futures the mon came from dave s fat
first-degree murder and a special circumstance murder for financial gain. he pleaded not guilty. when the trial finally began more than a year later dave faced murder and the earlier embezzlement charges together. prosecutor larry crouch offered the jury this theory, that dave snuck out of his house in the middle of the night without waking his sleeping children, maybe even used a ladder to get out of the window, and got someone to give him a ride to debbie s house and entered her bedroom. i think he tried the stun gun on her and she screamed very loudly and he struck her with something more than once. at that point, i assume he suffocated her. then, said the prosecutor, he must have dragged debbie s body to the garage, put her in her own van, disposed of her somewhere and drove to fresno. and left it in a high crime zone. how did he get back home?