i did not expect him to be right in front of me. so that was extremely frightening. i picked him out of a lineup immediately. i was feeling a lot of guilt. i don t know why. you know, you just feel what could i have done? somebody s dead. and this man was with me. reporter: how many of those witnesses picked out the right guy? i believe it was 15 women. reporter: out of the total of how many? i think it was 30. reporter: eyewitness testimony is notoriously not great and often doesn t carry much weight in the trial so you needed something more, right? yes. reporter: what they needed was something definitive to put tony russo in diane holik s house. we sent in samples from where her ring had been yanked off to that towel from the couch. finally the results. what did the dna tell you? the swab on her hand was a
see a house who is single. every time. i could have been a victim. reporter: absolutely. i was an intended victim. that s why he called me. so that s a hard thing to think about. reporter: and they told us, the trauma lives on. though it s comforting to know that he s in there, that he can t hurt anyone else. reporter: they are sorority sisters of a sort. who, unwilling to live their lives as silent victims, came together to help get tony russo off the street for good. we did our job, and we got him convicted. reporter: so they did, this sisterhood. for the sake of a woman whose fate might have been theirs, diane holik, whose friends came together to remember how they miss her even after all these years. she was a constant friend. she was in my life every day. and all of a sudden she was gone out of my life. in an instant like blowing a candle out. reporter: you see the smile in all these photographs. was she always smiling?
about diane s dogs. she thought i was accepting the fact that her dogs were going to be in the house. not long before diane was killed- i remember her saying, you know, that she loved me. that she would jump at the chance to be in a relationship and marry me. you know, no matter how long it took. we had our ups and downs, no question. no physical fights? never. never angry or loud words. it was just it s stupid you know. she thought i should be more of a handymankind of guy, like her dad, right? i thought that she should be more appreciative. was she faithful to you? i would be shocked if she wasn t. i would be stunned. everyone has his or her version of the truth. dennis story not at all what
life was so suddenly asphyxiated, her friends gathered again for a murder trial. friends and a whole group of women who had never met each other or diane holik but you could see they were all attractive women. looked like he had a type. it was obvious what this man was looking for. everyone had the same look. reporter: and the same determination to testify against tony russo, music minister, born-again christian, happily married man. but the case against him, not so easy. the most complex murder case, definitely the most complex murder case i ve ever tried. reporter: that s because without hard evidence linking tony to the murder or even putting him in diane s house, she d have to assemble all the jagged puzzle pieces of coincidence into a coherent pattern for the jury. when you re getting ready for trial, you put it together almost like a play. you know, what are you going to tell them first? so you script it out.
that s when the heavy winds started coming, and the tornadoes, i guess. what time did you get home finally? my wife s better at the timing on this than i am. 5:30, i guess or 6:00, i m not really sure exactly the time frame. reporter: thing was the house where she was killed was not far from the radio station. do you remember ever talking to her? uh-uh. no, sir. reporter: tony was adamant he d never seen diane. you never talked to her? no. reporter: interesting. then detectives asked had he been doing some house hunting. is there any reason why you d be in a neighborhood looking for a house? no. none whatsoever? uh-uh. reporter: of course, they knew a thing or two about that. so the detectives leaned on him