something s not right. the prime suspects in diane tilly s disappearance were the middle aged man and young girl last seen driving a white pickup truck. every plam in the area was on the look out. it wasn t long before they stopped two people who fit that description. they were identified as 15-year-old pearl cruz and her 33-year-old father ronnie neal. both denied any involvement in diane tilly s disappearance, but they admitted stealing her car. you said, i was at a car wash and i found diane tilly s car. he said, you re not going to believe this, but the car was running and the door was open and there was all this stuff in it and i just couldn t resist it.
ronnie neal s fingerprint matched the partial print found on the liquor bottle in diane s home. and the check of his cell phone records indicate he called his ex-wife on the night of diane s abduction. he gets on his cell phone and we actually have this cell phone bouncing off a tower. the area was about 15 miles from diane tilly s home, an area encompasses hundreds if not thousands of acres. it did however lead to speculation. i believe he was standing over the body of diane tilly when he called his ex-wife. when questioned, she confirmed the call, but claimed she knew nothing about diane s abduction. according to ms. stanley, neal told her he came into some money and asked her to go shopping.
and how did he get diane tilly s atm card? what he said was in the glove box of this car, he found her atm card. with a little piece of paper just below it with the pin number. i knew he was lying. you could tell by his body language that just everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. neal said he was following diane s ace eye peerns in the news and didn t want to be lipged to it, so he got rid of diane s car. this was a man who was just grasping at straw. a background check revealed he had multiple convictions for robbery and had recently been released from prison for a weapons violation. and police discovered a link between diane and ronnie. ronnie met diane first through his lawn mowing business. diane had apparently hired him to do some work in her yard.
fortunately, she wasn t. another witness saw a white pickup truck leave the scene, but he didn t get the license plate number. they gave the same descriptions of the suspects that we had in the surveillance videos. back in diane tilly s home, investigators were able to find a partial fingerprint on a liquor bottle. i think that they wore gloves through most of what was going on in diane tilly s house. he apparently took the gloves off long enough to enjoy a drink of some scotch in the kitchen, thus leaving the fingerprint on the bottom of the bottle. investigators desperately wanted to find the man and young girl using diane s atm card. they knew that diane tilly s life might depend on it.