she left her three month old baby in the care of her pastor, james flanders and his wife, tanya, and not her family. not the woman she looked to as a mother figure, kay barber. it was heartbreaking. it was heartbreaking. marie s ex-husband, jeff carlson, got the text, too. didn t make sense to him that she would leave without calling her seven-year-old daughter, paris. kay called jeff and said she he should file a report. she said, i don t know what s going on but i think something happen. and i said, yeah i agree with you. and then just called the okaloosa county sheriff s office to report marie missing. the investigator said, we re going to open a case and investigation on this, which surprised me because she s an adult. she could ve just left. because marie was very adventurous, she liked to travel. and when the mood struck her, sometimes she just took off for a few days on some women. but some things seem to different this time. she would ve never have left
thanks to a young woman, and a little dog who fought for her life, and won. that s all for this edition of dateline. i m natalie morales. thanks for watching. i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales. and this is dateline . marie was a very loving person. she had a heart of gold. what happened to this woman? my job is to be a truth teller and seek out the truth. i wanted to solve it. her case was a mystery for years. the mom with a tender heart and tough as nails career. she was part of the sheriff s department. her ultimate goal was to try to get into the fbi. she found a new sense of
throuple. then the pastor offered his version of that last awful night. he claimed that marie was in a downward spiral, mentally, and erupted after he told her she should be hospitalized for depression. she hit me in the chest and i grabbed ahold of her. and just hugged as tight as i could. in the scuffle, we filled down on the floor. when we hit the floor, we hit it hard. when i realized something was a right, i rolled hero for end she wasn t breathing. a fatal bear hug? not possible. thought nesli. and then she breezed for the answer she d waited five years to hear. did you bury marie in the backyard? i ll tell you exactly where it s at. is that where you buried her? yes. and at that point, the detective got up and left the room. nesli past me a note that
there had been an abusive boyfriend who abandoned her and left her pregnant. and in july, 2011, marie gave birth to a baby girl and named her grace. the pastor and his wife took care of both of them. it was explained to me that they were helping her out. that she was down on her luck. she was by all appearances, saved. spiritually by faith, and practically by the pastor and his wife. so, imagine the surprise, when a strange group text message popped up on the phones of her family and friends. do you still remember the words of that mass text? she said that yesterday she left for long beach to do something that she always wanted to do. she didn t want us to try to stop her. her last words were i love and appreciate you all. but the biggest surprise?
maybe marie wanted it all, the baby and james, all for herself. that s what this member of the inner circle believed. but i did i hear that from marie, that moore marie wanted. james did tanya strike back somehow, fight for her marriage by getting rid of marie? listen to how church members quote tanya s words. she s basically like, james would never that was kind of shockers? i told her, you are not capable of killing. her but tanya leans over and goes, he couldn t, but i could. so wouldn t that lead you like a bloodhound to? tanya she would have a motive? she. but tanya, now the only mother figure in grace s life, did she know more than she was saying? did she do something? did someone in the church have a confession to make? coming up, a confrontation in