over the years, and that just kind of struck me as odd of reporter: introduce that thought, huh? you introduce that thought, she falls out of your car, but yet you ve got to interject, we weren t fighting or anything. reporter: the investigator also wondered why dana would have suddenly fallen out of the bouncer s car. there was talk back in the day that the car had a defective door. but detective bratton told the new investigator he didn t think so. he d taken a look for himself. i know i got in the car and i checked it because i had pushed up against it. and i m a pretty good size guy. my weight should maybe tell us. reporter: if the door s bum, it would have popped, yeah. i felt comfortable that i didn t see anything wrong with the door. reporter: you didn t feel you needed to get a search warrant or call to have this thing towed? no, not at that point. looking back, probably an error. reporter: there was another problem. there was no note of the detective chec
she d been a passenger in his car. he admitted as much to the original detective in 1982, when he was called in for an interview. one of the first things that russ said to detective bratton was the reason i didn t say anything was because i was on parole and i was scared to have police contact me. and he was gonna get jammed up if he correct. reporter: the bouncer had served time for receiving stolen property. he didn t want any trouble, he told the detective. but he did want to help. here was the truth, he said: he was driving dana home, nearing a corner, when suddenly he heard the engine rev louder and his car door close. next thing he knew dana was out of the vehicle. it would be such a simple explanation, if true. dana s massive head wound had been the result of an unlucky fall from a moving car, an accident. but that wasn t what was written on dana s death certificate. what did your coroner, back in the day, find? he found that she had, in fact, died from skull fract
when i found out what she was doin , i just didn t want her to be pushed to the side like it never mattered. and if she s kicking over this rock anew again, you know, there you were gonna be with the bull s-eye again, right? i got another bull s-eye on my back. reporter: when the investigator cracked open the thin case file. this is what it told him where dana s body had been found. the file also told him who found her that young man who d been driving by in his car. but just as interesting was where dana had been partying that night that nightclub on the seamier side of town. so, what was that place all about? it was very typical stereotypical of the early 80s in a lotta the nightclubs a lotta music, a lotta lights, lotta people. reporter: and a hotspot well-known to the city vice unit, according to detective bratton. toby had a theory about the club he shared with police. dana, he said, had gotten mixed up in something and was scared. dana actually told me th
dying on an ohio back road, deb s family made the decision to take her off life support. how did you say goodbye to her? that was so absolutely horrible, it was horrible. once they took the ventilator off, probably less than three minutes and she was dead. it was horrible. reporter: deb says her family was shattered. you never heal from this ever. ever. you grieve and you re angry. and then you grieve, but you never get over it. reporter: and with the grief came the rumblings of suspicion. no one believed dana had been killed in an accident, deb says. and some people in the family openly wondered whether dana s boyfriend, toby, father to baby brittany, might have hurt dana. the relationship was a rocky one. it was kind of like a a can t live with you, can t live without you type of relationship. reporter: toby certainly caught the wary eye of detective bratton. the boyfriend refused to talk to him in the hospital waiting room.
and he just said you know, you need to keep pushing and that s all he d say. reporter: so she did. brittany says she began calling the prosecutor s investigator every week like clockwork. and amazingly he started showing some interest in the case. and he d say, you know, nothin new, or you re looking for a killer? right. is he looking for a killer or just trying to find out what happened? i tnk at thatoint at first he was just trying to put the es together. reporter: it wasn t going to be easy. what brittany didn t know was that detective bratton had done a fair bit back in the day, chasing down leads, trying to make sense of it all, but interview tapes, crime scene photos, evidence most of that was missing. not to beat people up, but what happened to all those boxes, the interviews, the pictures, the measurements it seems like it disappeared, just vanished. to the average person that s probably unnexcusable and why did it happen? it is possible somebody look