hannah s friends and family. brad said he loved hannah and that living under a cloud of suspicion had taken its toll. do you feel like this verdict clears your name? the only thing i m guilty of is being a bad boyfriend. and i can t change that. i wish i could. if i had three wishes, all three of them would be to change that. i can t. on a rainy sunday after the vertical hannah s friends and family gathered for a balloon release in her memory. they passed around sharpies and wrote messages for the lost girl. her brother. i m just glad that it s over with finally. now i can start mourning. her father. i ll always love you. love, dad. the best friend. my bright star. love, tara. and then after a brief prayer, they stood by a pond and the brisk wind carried away their good-byes.
no. my son didn t do this. alan sees hannah showing up at denny s apartment that night looking for a shoulder to cry on, the teenager upset that her boyfriend brad, the guy she d recently scratched up, had cheated on her. the father said the night unfolded just as denny had told the cops. they fooled around a little, kissed and stuff, and hannah left a few hours later. had someone been waiting below for her to leave the notorious party house? so denny ross was framed by the true killer is what you re saying? well, that s pretty obvious. that was the theory defense attorneys roger sinnenberg, larry whitney and dominic coletta took to court. preparing for denny s trial number two was a daunting task. it turned out to be a 13-year investigation, so there was an awful lot of data. they insist denny was innocent. the fallout victim of all that heat that came down on the akron pd when it failed to find hannah s car.
i have no further questions. defense attorneys said to focus on those other witnesses was the prosecutors attempt to shift attention away from the true killer. the person who we still, to this day, believed killed hannah is her boyfriend. brad oborn s alibi as to where he was that night was he was at home watching television with his roommates, and they never interviewed the roommates. now denny s attorneys would have the shot at one man that could create reasonable doubt in their case, brad oborn. they began by attacking his depiction of himself as a bad boyfriend. you were a bad boyfriend but you were also abusive. correct. you hit this young girl. no, i didn t. you slapped her. no, i didn t. you kicked her. no yes, i did. denny s lawyers tried to trip brad up on dates and times. you told us earlier today i just want to get this straight you re not trying to get it straight, you re trying to confuse me. but did brad have a motive for killing hanna
they faced off against what the papers were calling a million-dollar defense dream team hired by denny s father. the lead defense attorney was david chesnau from las vegas. the police rushed to denny and ignored everything else. the girl s mother was called to the stand but not videoed. those were her favorite pants. it all came down to the contents of the trash bag found beneath the window. of all the dna tests run on hannah s clothing spotted with blood, only one came back to denny, a small semen stain on the girl s underwear. hardly proof of a crime, said denny s lawyer. they re kids. they re fooling around. that doesn t mean he raped her. the case went to the jury. and in the midst of deliberations came a stunning turn. the judge, quite unexpectedly, walked into the jury room and declared a mistrial. she said she took that drastic measure because she was getting a report that one of the jurors was talking about a lie detector test not in evidence, a lie detector test br
and she didn t. the kids relied on pagers back then. cell phones and text messaging were off in the future for hannah s circle of friends. her mom, kim, was a homemaker, and dad, elza, was eking out a living as a boilermaker in the smoke stacks of the rust belt. dad loved his girl. hannah, she was a very bubbly kid. she was always loved everybody. she liked the spice girls, and signed her letters with tiny pink hearts. a nice kid. these friends of hannah thought so. she was a very easygoing person. definitely someone you could tell you could be friends with very easily. she was a great friend. she was a great girl. tara ferguson was the best friend forever. she s so fun and silly and funny. there s no doubt she was a very pretty young girl. yes. she was a hopeless romantic, and