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. much of what they d say sounded 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 i d ever seen. reporter: the idea worked. the grand jury indicted both phil barr and dave mcmannis for tara s murder. they were arrested in late 2012, 11 years after tara vanished from her home. dave mcmannis was arrested in maryland, where he grew up, while u.s. marshals mounted a
too, retired and moved to punta gorda, mike vogel and kurt mehl. i moved to florida and came down here to hunt and fish and play golf and go boating and go to the beach and just relax. and that lasted a couple months. i got very bored. reporter: and so three bored ex-detectives put on badges again to form the sheriff s very first official cold case unit and decided early on they d work on tara s case. prosecutor feinberg was finally optimistic, sort of. i always felt that this was a case that could be solved. if it had a new set of eyes, it had somebody that could put the case together, connect all of the dots. what requests did you make of them? we wanted to know more about every piece of evidence, every we have to rule out every piece of dna in that house.
up. we re all gonna end up in prison. and it was somebody with credibility. be 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. much of what they d say sounded 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 i d ever seen. reporter: the idea worked. the grand jury indicted both phil barr and dave mcmannis for
to kill her. reporter: the woman who d been sitting out in the front yard told the jury how the two men had been laughing and joking when they arrived, but later when she saw them backing their truck up to tara s front door 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 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. 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 testi
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 residence either came back to the family or was not relevant to this case.