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. there was no stopping. reporter: as did her attorney. she would hear a piece of information from a neighbor or a news source or a detective that wasn t supposed to tell her. and then she would confirm it, run with it, call m
gonna spend the rest of my life in jail. phillip barr said something similar because peewee is talking about, well, i ve only seen a body. it s not against the law to see 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. 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 informati
detectives up north before they, 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
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, 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 results. they were not helpful. only half of the bones in her
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 had 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.