reporter: caroline knew derek too and thought he was a decent kid, misunderstood. i guess everyone thought that he was that type of person because he s he was the kid that skipped school and that didn t got in trouble with teachers, or spoke back, or something like that. school bad boy, huh? yeah. really he was just a really soft-hearted guy. he would always be there for anybody who needed him. reporter: in the end police couldn t find any electronic trail linking derek to danielle. detectives latest lead had fizzled out, and with no explanation for that word, help that chena found scrawled at the creek, they were down to their two main clues. so you got the sock on the trail, and you got a phone out at 95, more questions than answers. danielle s last cell phone ping was miles away from her neighborhood. we can see that she s moving in a fairly quick fashion, faster than a person could walk. the story told by the phone is, i m in a car. yeah. reporter: had
how did she seem to you, caroline? she was just texting me, hurry up get down here, everyone s having fun. when i got down there, she was hanging out with everybody, having a blast, laughing. kids were celebrating what seemed like the first day of spring. we were doing like chicken fights in the water, just making jokes and stuff. it was a good day. after a day of laughs, danielle headed home. she has dinner with her grandfather. she s accounted for. mm-hm. her grandfather said he had seen her that evening. so now why is this sock over here at the entrance to this creek? police theorized that after dinner danielle had gone from her home back to the creek. why else would they have recovered that sock that she only wore at night? they wondered if she had met up with someone there, and other information was rolling in. the high school grapevine was abuzz with rumors about the boys danielle spent the day with at the creek. you identified a boy maimed
there anyplace you can think of that she could have ran off to or any people she could have ran off with is this. alexis couldn t think of anyone. but danielle s class meat also classmates had an idea. you still have a whole hool. . and her friends that were prepared to come forward with their own version of what transpired. and the stories police were getting were leading right back to the creek. coming up. the rumor mill churns out a new name. derrick. but he says he was at home, online when danielle disappeared. i m derrick telling you i was noodling around the computer but you re not going to find record of that because i deleted the history. if you re not doing anything wrong, why are you deleting your history? when dateline continues. del.
if the weather was good, her decision was made, go right to the creek and bypass school all together. tell me about an afternoon at the creek, caroline, what would you do? just go swimming. after we were done swimming we would sit by the fire and get dry, and hurry up and go back to the bus and take it home. they would play all day like frisky otters. innocent fun until one day when this secret teenaged world collided with tragedy. i just knew in my heart something was wrong. people were actually hiding their kids. you think i m going to risk not knowing what actually happen happened? no i was going to find out. so this story is about a teejed sweetie named danielle. danielle locklear. it seeps everyone in her orbit got a boost from her sunny take
walking his dirt bike down and leading to me where the stream s. yeah. then the kid pointed to the ground. he saw something. there, carved in the dirt with some care, a single word. the word help was scratched in the ground. as though somebody had picked up a stick. like someone had scraped help in the ground with a stick. the creek, help , frightening. just made my hair stand up, and i started getting really nervous. she fla didn t know what was going on, but it couldn t be good, that s.o.s. in the sand. did it mean anything to you? it s alarming. it was extremely i alarming. i didn t know if it was a call for help. i didn t know if this was something danielle left for me. sheena kept walking upon the long path and then came upon it, the creek down a steep lot.