years after her death, teresa mayfield s friends and family gathered to remember. i talk to her almost every day and i miss those talks. they took turns talking about the loving daughter, the softball mom, the sweet woman gunned down on that lonely country road. a murder that was still a mystery. my family will not stop searching or doing whatever it takes to find out who took teresa s life. when scott got up to speak, you can bet people were paying special close attention. yes, she was a loving wife, loving mother and a loving friend to the community, yes, she would do anything for anybody at any time. having discovered he was not exactly husband of the year, some people nursed a lingering suspicion and yet here he was devoted to the care of his children and full of praise for his dead wife. she did a wonderful job raising these kids.
we had no idea how that anger will get the best of you, not knowing who done this and you want the person that done this to be punished for it. kelsey took on the most difficult job of her life. at 17 she stepped into her mother s shoes defended her father, tried to maintain something of a normal life for her little brothers. me trying to fill my mother s shoes. those are some big shoes to fill. i felt like it was my responsibility to help my dad take care of my family. so you were able to continue to have a relationship of trust with your father. right. he was there for you guys? yeah. he tried to be strong for us so we wouldn t have a breakdown. by the first anniversary of teresa s death, there was still no arrest and the story was old news. so teresa s mother plastered
secret is about murder. to begin with, this thoughtful young woman was just a girl of 17 back in 07 when things started coming apart in the way things do when parents don t talk about it. kelsey mayfield saw that troubled look in her mom s eyes, her mom teresa. i could tell she was very stressed. was it clear she was stressed about? money would be the main thing. we wanted to be sure she had enough money to take care of her family. a lot of that going around. like so many americans, kelsey s dad had to work two jobs just to keep his head above water hard working man. it took two jobs to take care of our family. but money trouble aside, teresa seemed to have a happy life as anybody could see including teresa s mother, reba.
we didn t really know what had happened. who would ever imagine you d have a murder in your family? soon there would be secrets. we were dealing with a person that was leading a double life. and one of them would prove deadly. i know that you did this. it hurts too much for me to say it out loud. hello. welcome to dateline. it s a case that centers on a mother who had gone missing and the small town secret that led to a very big surprise. here s keith morrison. suppose for a minute you were sitting in your car smack-dab in the middle of tuscaloosa, alabama and you pointed southwest down highway 69 and kept a sharp eye out after half an hour or so.
her friend? because, listen to this, the whole answer to the whole puzzle comes down to one little word. dawn uses it when telling her cellmate what she did. we? she was not acting alone, she had-conspirator. i don t know if she was trying to be a show off, because she was calling herself a hit man. dawn was a hired gun for you guessed it. scott mayfield. she was a loving wife, loving mother. the man who heaped praise on his dead wife, his grieving children by his side was according to dawn the architect who designed her death, her revelation finally made sense of a trail of disturbing stories the investigators had been running down for months.