reporter: which was certainly true when it came to the newest member of mollie s unusually large posse of friends, 18-year-old kristene chapa. could you tell they really liked each other? yeah. yeah. mollie talked about her a lot. reporter: kristene lived in a neighboring town where she was earning a reputation as a softball superstar. kristene was a softball icon for this town. reporter: brittany selby was kristene s close friend. she was, like, the comic relief in our little group of friends. reporter: brittany says kristene s sense of humor was a perfect match for mollie s. mollie definitely brought out kristene s crazy side. it was never never a dull moment with those two. reporter: but for this group of girls, crazy and dull were relative terms. we were not the party kids. we never drank or anything like that. we would go to taco bell. we would go to coffee shops. and we would go to parks.
i was in shock. i remember crying really hard, and i was throwing stuff in my room because it just didn t seem real to me. how were your parents? really emotional. i had never seen my dad cry. they took it really hard. reporter: so did mollie s friends, stephanie and brooke. i just remember like, she s dead, she s dead. and everyone s like, who s dead? and i said, mollie. reporter: over the next few days, neighbors here began asking the same question, who had pulled the trigger and why? finding those answers fell to portland, texas, police detective roland chavez. mollie can t give us any information, and kristene s in the hospital and she can t give us any information. at that point, not even clear whether kristene s gonna survive. right? yeah. reporter: tips were coming in. someone said they saw a white car speeding from the park the night of the shootings.
the missing pieces. detective aaron veuleman had been working the case. and now he took the lead. what we first wanted to do was expand the scope of the crime scene search because we there was one crucial piece of evidence that we didn t have at that point, which was a murder weapon. reporter: veulman hoped the murder weapon might definitively link spellman to the shootings. what d that turn up? we didn t find anything. nothing of value. so you re back to kinda nowhere. that s right. and then? we received a phone call from the investigators at the sinton police department. reporter: those investigators in the neighboring town of sinton had just been given a letter addressed to kristene chapa s father. what does the letter say? the letter is written from the perspective of a hitman who has been hired to kill the surviving victim in this case, kristene chapa. reporter: in the letter, the hitman even named the person who had hired him. if you re wondering, the le
then forced the two girls down a steep embankment and into the tall beach grass below. and she recalled the odd way he referred to them both. he called mollie girl number one and i was girl number two. reporter: and he referred to you that way, by numbers, all the way through it? he did. reporter: what d you say to him? i asked him if he was going to take us anywhere, and he said, no, this was going to be quick and easy. i could feel my heart beating so fast. i m like, man, i want my mom. and that s when i m just like praying, please god. don t don t let don t let me die. please. reporter: mollie say anything? we both asked each other if we were okay. and that was the last thing we asked, we both asked each other. reporter: that s when kristene says she was raped. but the ordeal wasn t over. he had the gun pointed at us still, and he made me put duct take duct tape over mollie s mouth and her eyes, and i had to
her and mollie as girl one and girl two. he used numbers in that other crime? yes. they referred to each other by number in that particular crime. reporter: the similarities between the two crimes didn t end there. in the nevada home invasion, were the victims bound? yes, they were. he s gotta be number one on the list at this point. he he definitely jumped to the to the top. reporter: by that time, dylan spellman had already returned to nevada to begin serving his three-year sentence. so chavez hopped a plane to las vegas, hoping to hear what mr. spellman might reveal about his brief stay in texas. spellman admitted he was in the park the night of the shootings. but he denied being anywhere near the area where the girls were found. he said he was never on the deck. well, we ve got dna on the cigarette butts that prove otherwise. why lie about that unless you re involved in the crime? sure. so, i mean, it that definitely raised more suspicion. report