thank you for watching. i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales. and this is dateline! he said he couldn t handle talking about it. i was angry at him. if you re not going to tell me what happened, then you re going to dance around the issue and tell three different stories, what are you hiding? it started as a teen romance. two of my girlfriends are like, there s this guy, and you need to meet him. i was in love, yes. it ended in one of the strangest love stories you ll ever hear. i felt like i got hit by a bus. right before their wedding, her mother and his father got married. they told us, we ran off, we eloped. who does that? two families and a small town left stunned. but it was nothing compared to what happened next. he looks like he s been shot. he said someone broke in last night. a deadly attack in the dark of night. her mother murdered. i realized that last conversation i had with her, that was it. his father bruised and bewildered.
bus. right before their wedding, her mother and his father got married. they told us, we ran off, we eloped. who does that? two families and a small town left stunned. but it was nothing compared to what happened next. he looks like he s been shot. he said someone broke in last night. a deadly attack in the dark of night. her mother murdered. i realized that last conversation i had with her, that was it. his father bruised and bewildered. i don t remember anything else, other than waking up in the morning. was it a robbery? the television s on. was it darker? you re always going to look at the closest people to the victim. or was it something much darker? you were 11 years old when your mother disappeared. a missing woman, a murdered woman, and a lie. i didn t get through more than a page and a half, and i threw it. i could barely stomach to finish it. but the family was rocked by scandal and then murder. aaron s father was found at the cri
i mean, i ve never seen these rugs. the minute we heard he had never seen them, we knew the rugs had importance. we just didn t know how. they sent the rugs to the lab. and months later they heard back. what did you find when you tested them? pam s blood was found on the rugs. they had caught ralph in an obvious lie. he must have put those rugs into the machine himself, hoping to wash away the evidence. finally they had enough. almost nine months after pam s death, officers went to the antique store with an arrest warrant. that s when we learned that he decided to go on vacation. ralph candelario was gone. coming up, a manhunt for a suspected killer by cell phone. i initiated some phone calls with ralph so we could try to track him down. but would he answer? when dateline continues. dateline continues
that was my final piece of the puzzle. he left it there. left the box in the basement and emerged a changed person. shannon told us, aaron wouldn t talk much about his mother when they were married. but i would find him up at night just, over her stuff, just over papers. i mean, just emotional. going through her papers. just going through her stuff. whatever little bit and pieces he had left of his mother he couldn t even handle. just it wrecked him. and when aaron heard pam was dead my first response was, how did he do it? and then he told the cops about his mother. now, you may have a serial killer on your hands. serial killer of spouses. something like that. that was the thought. two wives, one missing, the other dead. and the one thing they had in common was ralph candelario. but suspicion alone wasn t enough. it wasn t proof.
driver, get your hands in the air. in northern california. walk back to the sound of my voice. back to me. you all right? yeah. charged him with first degree murder. pam s daughters were relieved when they got the news. all i could think to myself was finally. what was that like? it was like yea, then it was like this is reality all over again. it s starting. meaning, of course, reliving the crime at the trial. i m antsy. i m eager. you want to go and testify? yeah. i want this to be over. and i know that i need to cope with whatever answer comes. youre opening. yes, your honor. then here it was, february 25th, 2016. already ralph had managed a victory, had tied prosecutor ryan brackley s hands, in one way, anyway. well, we tried to tell the entire story about ralph candelario and ralph candelario s life. in other words, the very suspicious disappearance of dena, the first wife, whose body has never been found. but