cigarettes. which made travelers think about those cigarette butts found at the crime scene. he asked that the dna test on those be put on the fast-track. one of the things that christine was also able to give us was that the assailant wore gloves. and under armor groves specifically. she saw the logo. yes. and she was a softball player so she is saying, under armor gloves, under armour gloves is probably exactly what we are looking for. but during those sessions with christine, childless wasn t the only one asking questions. christine struggle to ask a few of our own. tough ones. was christina asking you about molly? she did. we did not initially give her any of that information. both of us and kristene the parents were afraid that the truth about mollie would upset kristene and maybe jeopardize her recovery. i would just tell her,
for more than eight hours. somehow she had survived. then just days after her brain surgery, kristene again defy the odds, and began to stern. that was an incredible little girl. here i m telling you, she is something else. we asked her questions, she would squeeze our hand. that must of been a wonderful thing to see. it was. for police, the pressure to find the shooter was intense. detective roland childless hope christine now conscious would be playing a big part in that. but kristene still cannot speak. it was either a squeeze of the hand, and that blanking of the eyes. so thomas kept his question simple. the first thing we asked are of course is did you know the person that did this? and she said no. how tall was he? she described them as about five, 859. within the first two weeks of her recovery, christine helped police draw this sketch of the man who shot or. she said he smelled of
no history of violence at all. david strickland did not do this. it was sam smith who had the last word. dylan spellman, he told the jury, might have been under suspicion. but ultimately had nothing to do with this crime. david strickland, he said, was the man holding the gun. shooting both of these girls for no identifiable bull reason at all. he certainly is a psychopath. he never offered the jury a possible motive. christine says, she is sure that it is about her sexual orientation. what is the reason for thinking it is a hate crime? in the letter that he supposedly tried to send to my dad, it says something in the letter like those lesbians! in his interrogation, strickland made a point of saying that he had no issues with the gay community. whether or not that was the truth, prosecutors decided not to charge him with a hate crime. after five days of testimony,
not dispute that christine was a sympathetic witness. but the court argued that she was also unreliable. she was not able to pick him out of a photo lineup. she wasn t able to point and him in court and say he did it. what s more, christine originally told police the gun was silver. his gun is black. they also went over it with the investigators, saying they bungled the two year investigation by losing critical documents and mishandling evidence. we have documentation that the evidence was mishandled from the police. chastising the officer who handled them. that left the detective to say that mistakes were made. he is now retired. the second detective was let go. for sharing sensitive details of the case with someone outside of the department. strickland s attorneys can see
, christine was absolutely certain that the shooter wore a pair exactly like that. i know that, because i played softball. and it stuck out to me right away. detective immediately sent strickland s gun to be tested. to see if it fired those two spent shell cases at the crime scene. he did not have to wait long at for the results. what the report said was the two found at the scene, the two shell casings, from the test fire were linked to the same weapon. for the detective, the report was a missing case of the puzzle. which he believed now directly linked david strickland to the shootings. the day i looked at that ballistics report, is the day that we arrested david strickland. the charges, aggravated assault, aggravated sexual assault, and capital murder. while in custody, david strickland agreed to sit down for a police interview. just have a seat for me.