she is the definition of grit. she didn t give up. he s hurting me. the details that she gave. it was unbelievable. she said, you did it. i said, no, you did. route 66 once stretched across the southwest from one horizon to the next, going from what america was to what it wanted to be. cities like albuquerque, new mexico, were celebrated stops along the journey. today buildings that once lined this part of the iconic highway faded and closed as the cotton wood mall became the new downtown. the mall was the big hangout. i met my husband at the mall. so did i. it has played a pivotal part in our lives. for the marcell sisters, all six of them, along with their brother, jonathan, the cotton wood mall in albuquerque was important in their lives. 17-year-old brittani worked at a sunglasses kiosk. she is this blue-eyed girl with a big eyes and a striking mile. everything was good, until september 11th, 2008, brittani just starting high school had planned
And that was all we knew. Narrator by this time, codis, the national dna database, was in full swing, but the Dna Sample from individual a didnt match anyone in the system. Years and years went by with no luck, no matches in the database. Narrator in 2010, Dna Analysts turned to the letters. Using touch dna, they were able to lift a genetic profile, but it did not match the dna of individual a. In an attempt to generate more leads, copies of the letters were broadcast and published. Amazingly, someone recognized the handwriting. A potential suspect was finally identified and confronted. He readily admitted that he wrote the letters and apologized for doing so. Narrator and the letterwriters dna
cases that bore some similarity to brittani s attack. they found one that was eerily similar. oh my gosh, the same part of town. it was at her own home. it was a shovel. they knew her. i thought how could it not be? but his dna didn t match, either. he wasn t john doe. the old school approach of working tips, leads and hunches wasn t paying off. so she went over the case file and came across a report about brittani s cell phone. in 2008, police didn t have the technology to break into the phone without erasing the data. so when it was first processed, there were only so many tools to get in it. brittani couldn t remember her pin. so years later, i took it down to the forensics laboratory for computers. you tried it again? tried it again. there was new advancement in technology? yes. this time technicians were
to look at the item of evidence, swab the sample, extract the dna, see how much you have, and when it s on the instrument, you get a dna profile. at the end of all that did you think it was him? i thought it was a possibility got my hopes up. then i was very disappointed when it wasn t. the dna didn t match. a big let down. one of many to come. then another tip. gonterman took it seriously because of who it was from. a parent saying i think it s my son who did this. my son would visit the house right across from brittani s home and he looks like the sketch and this was considering this would be very difficult for a parent, i thought, wow, okay. but when she got the man s dna sample he was excluded. another let down? yes. so she and thomson tried a different strategy, focusing on
towards guilt. and he was also at the scene when they were recovering her body. that very day. one of the looker s as they say. which is often the case with someone who killed someone to go back and look at the investigation. right. so what did you think when you heard that? i thought this is it. i remember instantly thinking bonnie had pepper spray. i wonder if she pepper sprayed him and that s why he had to mask it with cologne. that sounded very suspicious to us you know. right away, we are talking about, that jumping on that, fanning out. the dna eliminated him as well. or so the troopers told karen. they said no. the dna didn t match and he had a alibi. is step mom said he slept in that day. did you buy that?