scenes task force investigate the crime. back to dateline. ine. welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. nine months after tara ord disappeared her bones were found in the woods outside town. as her family absorbed the devastating news, detectives began to comb the site searching for any clue that could lead them to the killer. here again is keith morrison with a knock at the door. reporter: in the end, bones and a few teeth were all they found. there was every reason to think tara was murdered, and then dumped in the woods. but murdered how? by whom? sharon s attorney called her as soon as she heard the news. she was obviously distraught, devastated, hysterical, crying. now what? find out the killers and make them pay for the crime. reporter: prosecutor dan feinberg got the autopsy
breaking that small palm tree in the process. it was almost like they had a mission, that they had a plan. and one went straight to the tailgate and put the tailgate down out the truck and the other went straight to the front door. all business? all business. reporter: that, said the prosecutor, is when they cleaned up and took tara s body in a bed sheet, loaded it into the truck, and waited for dark when one or both of them dumped her body in the woods. but to tell that story took two long trials, each peopled by witnesses the jury might not think were very credible. people who supposedly heard barr and mcmanis say we raped and killed the girl. they re not gonna find her. i m going to kill you like i killed the girl in florida. the girl i killed was 20. reporter: one witness testified about overhearing a conversation between barr and mcmannis. phillip barr was saying to david mcmannis, i didn t want to kill her.
talking about, well, i ve only seen a body. it s not against the law to see a body. and barr tells him, hey, shut up. we re all gonna end up in prison. and it was somebody with credibility? better than what we had before, yeah. reporter: but overall, a key problem remained. terrible witnesses. reporter: meaning detectives spoke with other people who d also heard the men talk about the murder, but they were not the type a jury would likely believe. like drug and booze soaked gossip. there wasn t enough certainly to support charging peewee. but, thought the prosecutor, maybe he could find a way to go after barr and mcmannis. and he had an idea. bring some of the key witnesses before a grand jury just to see who passed the credibility test and who didn t. i ve prosecuted over 100 homicide cases and the complexity, and the amount of information that we had to review to determine if we could prosecute this case was the most
residence either came back to the family or was not relevant to this case. there was no indication that the perpetrators had left blood or body fluid at the home. reporter: and so cases typically go cold when you run out of leads and when you run out of information and you run out of ideas. reporter: tara s mother, sharon, again and again, demanded to know what, if anything, was going on. prosecutor feinberg had no choice, he said. he couldn t tell her. the frustration was clear. you could see it on her face. you could hear it in her voice. the family was devastated and they wanted answers. and i can understand that. you can t as a prosecutor and you can t as a detective give all those answers. you can t put that information out there. reporter: still, sharon continued to ferret out what she could. we just never gave up.
told investigators, tara was fine when he and his helper left her house that afternoon. but questions went on and on. and phil barr, who had a business to run, didn t appreciate that kind of attention. barr complained to a local nbc reporter about it. it s been very stressful. i realize the police are doing their job and they re looking into things, but nonetheless i feel like, you know, i ve been harassed. reporter: and several times, he, himself, confronted the detectives. insisted he was innocent, all the talk was unfair. i am telling you the truth. i have nothing to do with this girl s disappearance. i m getting the [ bleep ] shaft here. reporter: it was a problem. detectives certainly had their suspicions. but evidence? there was none. and most everyone they questioned who knew barr was, well, a bit shady. hard to believe. prosecutor feinberg concluded he simply didn t have enough to make a charge stick. the dna evidence in this case that was collected from the