and told her something that got her attention. he said, anything that ever happens can be found on microfiche at the library. this is a light bulb moment for you? uh-huh. i was like, well, what is that? and he said, all the newspaper articles, all the police reports. anything you ve ever done that s on a record or that s happened is going to be on an archive. reporter: that night brittany scored a lift to the library and headed straight for the archives. and i just started scanning all the newspapers they had on file. after i found her obituary, i found another article and the headline was 19-year-old found on road, dead. so i read through that one, and then thereas another one. and this is your mom, this is not a uh-huh. right. paper for school or an historic figure. this is your mom you re researching. yeah. and so i think it was more of a shock, you know, and i just every article that was on there. reporter: shocking to read about her mother s death i
stories, you know, he couldn t cope with it. reporter: it s been 30 plus years, toby. you still miss her? tremendously. she was the love of my life. she was the love of my life. reporter: it was painful for both father and daughter to read the coroner s report when it finally came. three long months after dana s exhumation, the coroner changed the manner of dana s death to homicide. i was ecstatic, i was sad, you know, it s just the mixed emotions because it was like everything i had dreamt or thought or said or anything, it was like, i was right. reporter: now that the case was officially declared a homicide, investigators were working it hard. and their focus wasn t toby. it was the bouncer. investigator kinder had always thought there was something off about adkins statement to detective bratton. one of the things that he said was, we weren t even fighting or anything. i ve talked to a lot of people over the years, and that just kind of struck me as odd of repor
it doesn t fit what we knew. she either fell out of the car or it was russ because he s the last one with her. reporter: it was a terrible thing for brittany to hear about her dad but she didn t buy it for a second. my mom wasn t the one that would put up with that crap. yeah yeah. they fought. i ve heard the stories. but if my dad beat her and raped her before she went out, she would have either fought back or the cops would have been there cause she would have had him thrown out. reporter: but there s something else roxy told us, something the jury and brittany never got to hear. roxy says toby followed dana to the club that night. toby was there? toby was there. what d you see in him? mean, nasty, the guys that were there the at the front door wouldn t let him in cause he was steamin and he was bein hot. reporter: roxy says that s why dana had asked for a lift home. she was scared of what toby would do to her if he caught up with her.
reporter: on october 9th 2013, brittany stork stood vigil as a backhoe broke open her mother s grave. i think i just stared. and i wanted to make sure that, no matter what you do, just please put her back exactly the way you found her. reporter: aunt deb was at brittany s side. it might have been better to leave her in the ground and just say something happened. but it s beyond our capacity to come to terms with it. we just don t know. let it be. no. that s not right. that s not fair. it s not fair to dana. somebody s accountable for what happened to her and they need to be held accountable. so if she has to come up, be exhumed and be examined by the forensic pathologist, then that s what needs to be done. reporter: thirty years after dana rosendale s mysterious death, her coffin was loaded onto a truck and taken to the lucas county coroner s office for a second autopsy. and they don t tell you anything, right?
it, and you don t have a resolution one way or the other. the judge gave them what what we generally term the dynamite charge, which is, you re the best jury. now, go back in there try and come up with a determination. and they went back for about an hour. an hour, yeah. for an hour, and they came back and they said there s just no way. with that said, i will declare a hung jury. you had pushed this thing for so long. did you think that s all there s ever going to be? right then in that right second, i just kept thinking, oh my gosh. is he getting out? is it over? reporter: fear. disappointment. exhaustion. brittany wondered what would happen next. only the prosecutor could decide. his team sat down with some of the jurors hoping to understand where the case had gone wrong. from what we were told by the jurors that we spoke to, they they did not believe for a second that dana fell out of the car. but for a few of the jurors, they just were not confident of how