no death penalty, no sex crimes charges. and in exchange he would give them a complete confession. what he did to kenia and lydia. and one more thing. he would show them exactly where kenia was. and so on a humid morning in september 2011 forbes found himself in a procession of police cars on a country road northeast of denver. investigators had been here many times before, searching the fields near the farm town of keenesburg looking for kenia. but this day travis had solemnly promised he was going to show them. trailing a car behind travis was d.a. kerri lombardi, nervous, anxious, and pessimistic. i was worried he wouldn t follow through. because i felt like he sort of liked this game, i thought. so on the way what were you thinking? will he do this? will he not? will something spook him? will he change his mind? is this a big farce?
she came from having nothing to being somebody, and on one of her calendars it says like study, study, study, and then it says party on the last day. she was balancing her job, and she was balancing school, and she was balancing like her party life. reporter: but on the morning of april fools day 2011 nothing was balanced. something was wrong. her friend janet gomez desperate to hear from kenia dove for her phone the moment it rang. but it wasn t from kenia. it was another girlfriend. she s like, are you with kenia? and i say no. i thought she was with you. and that s when it all started. reporter: started? oh, it had more than started for kenia monge. swallowed up by, well, whatever it was. some dark presence haunting the happy dipsy streets of lodo.
probably just having fun, she ll call tomorrow. she would always call me in the morning. did you ever worry about her when she went out like that clubbing? no, she was very smart. she wouldn t take chances? no. no, because though she loved to party, kenia was known as the responsible one. reliable, ambitious, hard-working, not flaky at all. she had recently graduated from one of colorado s top high schools, was now considering careers in tv production or criminology. here she is directing a student film. all the more remarkable because just seven years earlier kenia didn t know more than a word or two of english. [ speaking spanish ]. reporter: and not a single person in denver. apart, that is, from her mother, maria, who had migrated from honduras a few years before. and when she and kenia were finally reunited it was the happy day in my
still here somewhere needing my like needing me to come help her, just save her and just bring her back home. were you thinking about it all the time? yeah. it s hard going from talking to someone every day and then not being able to talk to them anymore. it like breaks your heart. reporter: kenia s father tony made himself a public fixture on local media. but privately, he conducted his own very lonely investigation. i went dumpster diving. i was looking at trash cans for her body. up and down the alleys, all over. and yet you couldn t tell maria. i couldn t tell her. i could not share what i was feeling because that early in would have removed the only thing that right now everybody had. and that one thing that everybody had was hope.
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