misjudged him. but soon it turned to dust. dixon got himself in charge of fire district investments, put public money in what he said was a sure thing. it wasn t. the money vanished. blew as i recall about $750,000 in bad investments for the fire district. reporter: peter hautzinger was at that time the mesa county d.a. i made the decision to take that case to the grand jury and ultimately the grand jury decided felony s stupid but not worthy of criminal charges. reporter: then one day a repo man showed up for that shiny new fire truck dixon had donated. it turned out the fire truck was leased and they came and took it away from the fire department. reporter: that s when frank and paige and the whole town found out dixon s money was gone, too.
know? the detective goes, what happened there? i said, well, i burned myself at work. he s like, well, are you good enough of a friend to burn a car down for george, you know. it was a traumatic time in grand junction, colorado. what with the fruitless search for the mother of three loved by so many who turned out to have secrets. and the day planner and voicemails and phone records that seemed to point eight different ways at once. two ex-husbands and six clients. i don t think i ve ever seen a more difficult case in my entire career. one by one the detectives cleared their suspects. or tried to. ex-husband number one and current boyfriend ron beigler. we were able to determine that mr. beigler had been in the denver area through cell phone
wrong. my guess is that he physically subdued her and drove her down to where her body was found but she was conscious and had the ability to throw things out the window or trunk or whatever it was leaving the trail going down to delta and she was ultimately killed not far from where her body was found. reporter: but the defense had its own compelling story to tell, or rather stories, a separate tale for each of those alternate suspects. waste of time? well, maybe not. remember, it takes just one juror with reasonable doubt to throw a whole case into well, you ll see. coming up at trial the defense goes hard at the original lead detective in the case. did you actually receive an official reprimand for the poor quality of work you did in this case?
um, yes. okay. has it come to your attention that you did, in fact, forget to book in a few recordings into evidence for this? yes. reporter: jarrell admitted reports had gone unwritten and evidence was actually lost like jose tavera s first police interview. and did you actually receive an official reprimand for the poor quality of work you did in this case? i don t remember that. you don t remember getting a major disciplinary action because you kept evidence from this case in your office? in writing? no. reporter: jarrell said her memory s been fuzzy since a 2010 horseriding accident, something that happened three years after the slip-ups on the birgfeld case. and then came the alternate suspects, the guy who called paige from that motel 6. and in that storage unit you had numerous guns, right? i did have, yes.
if someone s mom is missing, that people are gonna work hard to find her. reporter: paige s brother and his wife came from seattle to help. the thing is i know that somebody out there knows where she is, and you know we re looking for clues to find that person, but there s somebody maybe who s watching this who knows where she is. reporter: but this seemed odd. not helping to find paige was her ex-husband and current boyfriend ron beigler. do you feel like you wish you could go there and help search for her? a part of me does, definitely. what s keeping you away from there? i don t know if i can handle being being right in the situation. reporter: then, knowing we were preparing a report about the case, beigler made a strange request. try to keep me out as much as possible. like just a few words here and there, but i don t want to i don t want to be on talking about things.