numbers of that fund, there were supposed to be several hundred,0hundred thousand and instead just a couple of thousand. he had been living off it. something like $300,000 was missing. though dave cried poverty. he bought his girlfriend a 26,000 lexus. and paid off divorce costs and what he owed his kids from the first set of trust. here was the heart of the murder. debbie, if she hadn t disappeared. was about to expose all that in court. he steyou steal 300,000. certainly one more piece of the puzzle. yet another strange piece to the puzzle. the mess around debbie s desk.
they did not: no debby hawk. no anywhere. there was some drag marks, some kind of smear marks leading out to the garage where they stopped. and debbie s van was gone too. my initial reaction is oh, my god. what has happened. who could have done this. the girls ran to a neighbor s house. conrad called 911. we went in my mom s room and bathroom and there s blood on the carpet. after the initial shock of it. i kind of start to be reasonable and think, wait a minute. let s not overreact here. clearly she cut her hand with a knife or something and she was bleed and raced out to the car to go to the mrnl roomemergency this is all just a big misunderstanding. but it wasn t. though there were plenty of misunderstandings to come and questions that refused to be answered.
and then get back to his house without getting any blood on him. without being discovered. so what did happen to debbie hawk? the defense floated this theory. debbie worked in pharmaceutical sales. perhaps a drug addict had gone after the samples she kept in her van. all of the pharmaceuticals in her van were missing. somebody took them. that was a ludicrous idea. countered the prosecution. debbie carried very few samples and anyway if drug theft was behind it. why didn t the thief take any jewelry or electronics. no at all seemed to come down to dave. his behavior, his character. his own words. like the conversation with a friend, police recorded. in which dave speculated on what might have happened to debbie. the defense played it in court as an unguarded indication that dave had no idea what happened.
welcome back to dateline, i m craig melvin. even though investigators looking into the homicide of debbie hawk had no physical evidence tieing her husband, dave, to the crime. they did uncover information about possible financial wrongdoing on his part. considered it enough to warrant an arrest. could they get the prosecutor to agree. here with more of our story is keith morrison. they kept pushing and pushing and we kept setting back. the prosecutor at the time, 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 california turned up no sign of her anywhere. after police had convinced themselves dave was responsible.
besides, dave them he was at home asleep in the early morning hours when police believe debbie must have been killed. kids said they didn t hear him leave the house. they were too at the time. there was no evidence that dave was ever at the crime scene. did you find any dna. no. did you find any fingerprints no. no hair. no they just begun to uncover the troubling secrets of dave and debbie hawk. coming up, a family divided: i don t believe he would even be capable of doing something like this. my suspicion was going stronger and stronger. when dateline continues. i m mark and i quit smoking with chantix. my friends and family never thought i d be the one to quit smoking, i was such a heavy smoker. but i was able to do it with chantix. i did not know that chantix would reduce my urges so significantly. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. chantix reduced my urge to smoke. when you try to quit smoking,