but they still didn t know if kristene was alive or dead. the nurse walks in and tells us, one girl died and one girl is on the second floor, and we need to identify her. and they don t know who died and who lived? no. it was up to the chapas to identify the survivor. you couldn t go? i couldn t go. i couldn t do it. so, grace assigned her eldest daughter that grim task. so, the best you re going to hope for here is that it s your daughter, but she s she s hurt, yes. pretty seriously hurt. mm-hmm. for the chapas, the wait was excruciating. and then their daughter returned with the news they had been praying for. she comes back down, she tells me, mom, it s grace. family and friends took turns at kristene s bedside, wondering if she would ever regain consciousness. i was talking to her,
the shootings. we have no gun. we have no usable prints. the only thing we have are cigarette butts, a monster can, and suspicion. it didn t help that chavez s one eyewitness to the shootings could not identify spellman from a photo lineup. it was very hard because the suspects all looked the same. and then there was the matter of mr. spellman s height. he s big. he s what, 6 8 ? 6 8 . remember, kristene said the shooter was quite a bit shorter than that, 5 8 , maybe 5 9 . for me, it was always the difficulty of getting over the size. so chavez and his team regrouped. we begin getting cell phone records for him, getting hair samples or anything off the duct tape, anything off of the girls clothing, anything that would be able to attach dylan spellman to them. does any of that lead
her eyes, and i had to do the same to myself. i was already at the stage like i m going to die, like, this is it. and i hear the gun go off, and then i went black, and like everything went black. kristene s remarkable physical recovery turned out to be the easier part. i come out here for the anniversary of the shooting for mollie s birthday, and, like, for the day we met. this is not a painful place to return to? it s not painful. i guess i just kind of feel closer to her, i guess, because it s the last place i saw her at. rehab helped distract kristene from her sadness. so did working with police to find mollie s killer. kristene was kind of our inspiration. seeing how hard she was working just made us continue to work even that much harder for her. it wasn t for lack of hard work, but police had to face the truth. the investigation had stalled.
seeing more and more things that are lining up with what we re looking at. for example? the use of numbers. remember, kristene had said the shooter referred to her and mollie as girl one and girl two. he used numbers in that other crime? yes. they referred to each other by number in that particular crime. the similarities between the two crimes didn t end there. in the nevada home invasion, where the victims bound? yes, they were. he s got to be number one on the list at this point. he definitely jumped to the top. by that time, dylan spellman had had already returned to nevada to begin serving his three-year sentence, so chavez hopped a plane to las vegas, hoping to hear what mr. spellman might reveal about his brief stay in texas. spellman admitted he was in the park the night of the shootings, but he denied being anywhere near the area where the girls were
used to cover the girls eyes, chavez thought maybe that was itself a clue. sometimes that can suggest somebody who knows the victim, didn t want to see them? yes, mm-hmm. as far as you know, either of them have any enemies? no. that s what was so confusing. everyone loved them, you know? and that s probably why they were also discrete when it came to kristene and mollie. now as a murder investigation began, friends revealed something that not many knew. they began to tell us they were in a relationship. these weren t just two friends. they were dating? yes. that had many here wondering if a romance that was hidden from many might have in some way been a motive for the attack. conceivable that this was some kind of hate crime? i mean, i d be lying if i said that thought didn t cross through my mind. three days later came news from the hospital, kristene chapa had regained consciousness.