the morning. looking for michelle. it was real hard because you know, i d be circling the block or whatever, see somebody that may appear to be the size of michelle, a small person, and go around the block two or three times and me wondering who they were as well as them wondering who i was. it had to be brutally difficult to think of michelle living that kind of life. definitely. definitely. it was not the way that her mother and i raised her. reporter: those were long nights, filled with bittersweet memories of michelle the way she used to be, before the drugs took over. and thoughts of rare moments together before she went missing. she came over to the house one day, and i d given her a few dollars, and she stood up. she said, well, dad, i m going to run. i said all right. and she said she went up to put her arms around me, and i
younger sister camille is also evident in dan s videos. as camille becomes a teenager, she no longer seems to want to acknowledge michelle or even have her around. we were always bumping heads. we weren t as close. because of the drugs. she d come over and steal my things or, you know, i would see how upset it would make my dad. so i would tell her, you know, mean things. reporter: before long michelle valdez stopped showing up in her father s videos. sometimes because she avoided the camera. other times because she simply didn t show up. she knew that there was events at the house because she d call and ask if she could borrow $25, she was hungry or whatever. she was at you know, at a hurting spot. so i gave her the money. even though you knew even though i knew that it could be going for drugs.
i was on a ski trip. and when i came home, i had seen it on the news, and i told my boyfriend. i said, you know, what if that s michelle? when you heard it, what did you think? hoping again. the old parental parental feeling is hoping that it wasn t. reporter: over the next few days investigators would find more bones scattered over a 30-yard swath of that abandoned construction site. one mystery was ending. another was just beginning. the hardest part of this why did i walk away?
i m guessing you noticed before anybody else. yeah. i noticed when she started seeing one of her boyfriends, you know. he opened up the door for all the wrong things. like? the drugs. the drugs. definitely. reporter: dan knew about the drugs and twice got her to agree to enter rehab. but michelle never showed up. increasingly there were run-ins with the law. michelle had already been busted for receiving and transported stolen property, drug possession and car theft. dan knew about some of the arrests. most he didn t. when a stolen car rap in arizona landed michelle in jail, dan says he bailed her out and pleaded with her to change her ways. on the way back from arizona to here she promised, i m not going to hang out with the same people, i m going to do things different and you re going to be proud of me again, and then she bails two hours after she s home. reporter: the toll of michelle s addiction on her
maybe he knew where the money was going to go. but he saw his daughter. and that didn t take that part away, that she was still somebody s little girl. i think they re trick candles. reporter: the name, the face, belonged to michelle valdez, one of the first women on ida s list. dan valdez, her father, had reported michelle missing six months before ida got the case. he was the guy who kept the calendar. the xs indicating no no knowledge of her, disappeared, nothing. no word. reporter: the fact is dan valdez had been recording his daughter s comings and goings for years. this is michelle. hi. i took it upon myself to tape them, tape every event. every chance that i had i had the videotape there. reporter: the michelle valdez that appears in these home videos with her little sisters is a far cry from the thin,